>Your regular reminder that the biggest threat to free speech is the government.
> Complaining about social platforms moderating content according to their whims is just how politicians distract you from how fast they’ve all gotten sick of the First Amendment. This story is outrageous — no one will even say what this professor allegedly said that was so offensive!
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/25/23806946/your-regular-rem...
The only thing the first amendment protects you from is the government.
It's not, really. It comes from conflating mentions of "free speech" with "the first amendment". The person you're responding to brought up the latter, despite the fact that the person they were responding to said the former.
That is a dangerous distraction. A private institution doing the same would not be dangerous in a perfect world of spherical cows and purely free market with no hindrances such as wealth concentration, any kind of politics and the involvement of anything that looks like a human. It’s disgusting to see people, even now, missing the forest for the tree because all they can see is their government. Useful idiots, all of them.
Sure, it is terrible and a terrible government is terrible. But get rid of it tomorrow and you’ll just get a corporatist oligarchy that won’t be any better, far from it.
The problem is power, not (only) government. Power needs to be checked. Once you’ve drowned your government in your proverbial bathtub, you’ll still be with any guns you might have, on the wrong side of power dynamics.
You show a mechanism through which the government can abuse its power, which is terrible and everyone should agree that it’s bad and change how this works. But how not having that implies that a chancellor picked by a board with no oversight could not be worse? The problem is the lack of checks against abuse of power and mechanisms to guarantee a basic independence level for the professors. Once you have those in place, how is a university better merely by being private?
I wish free-market neo-liberals would apply to themselves what they say every time someone mentions socialism: pure ideology might sound good but does not work in the real world.
Absolute though it crosses over with social platforms alot. There is currently an injunction against the Biden administration to stop them from instructing social platform on what to censor.
The answer is none. That’s why it’s not government censorship. It’s a completely voluntary. There’s not even a stick nor a treat involved.
In the last 3 years we had government officials directing, in very strong language, various tech companies on what was and was not allowed on their platforms. While many people might argue that tech platforms are not public squares and should be free to censor however they like, everyone should have a problem with politicians directing tech companies on what can be said on their platforms.
As an addendum, I’m always curious to hear what that camp has to say about net neutrality after arguing so vigorously against its core principles.
IMHO if you want to operate as a mass market platform and are pursuing a winner takes all business strategy you should be regulated as a common carrier (Uber, Facebook, Comcast, Google, Microsoft, cloudflare, etc).
And, as is their First Amendment right, those tech companies frequently responded with "no". This is very clear from the Twitter Files information, even if the journalists involved glossed over that point.
For example:
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3849819-trump-asked-tw...
> Then-President Trump asked Twitter to take down a tweet from model and television personality Chrissy Teigen in 2019 because he saw it as “derogatory,” according to testimony from a Twitter whistleblower and former employee.
Trump has the First Amendment right to ask. Twitter has the First Amendment right - which they exercised - to decline that request.
If Trump had sent US Marshals to seize Twitter HQ when they said no, that is where we have issues.
I recommend reading judge Doughty's decision [1]. It's a long read, but well worth your time.
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...
It's since been stayed; https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/14/social-media-injunc....
I read the decision. It's not so great imo by federal bench standards. Judges who write sweeping statements like, “If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” should not be taken very seriously. I'd say the Japanese Americans interned during WWII may like a word, given that they were allowed to neither practice the Shinto religion nor use Japanese in public gatherings.
Certainly not on the same scale of severity of the abuse of Japanese Americans, but much more massive based on the number of people affected.
Really this sort of thing should be seen as an in-kind political contribution, and the fact it’s not shows just how captured the entire judicial and regulatory branch is.
Again, censorship requests aren't a First Amendment violation. Joe Biden can request you go fuck yourself. He cannot order you to go fuck yourself. The Twitter Files make it quite clear Twitter etc. understood this distinction.
For example, here's a Twitter Files post of them saying "go get a court order" to a data request. https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1604888013422485505...
That's probably not true. Volumes of case law support that even subtle pressure from the government to influence speech is a first amendment violation.
Nobody actually believes that other than right wing fundie culture warriors. Elon Musk thinks it’s complete bullshit, as does every other person who is willing to put objective facts above their personal feelings.