Hacker News Reader

Comment by fileeditview | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that what is legal should not be decided by social media platforms or their users but by the law & the courts. But most often this is not the case.. maybe the OP is addressing this issue.

View on HN

This is basically X's position – they will enforce countries speech laws, no more, no less.

But OP says:

> Other places such as x/twitter, has some liberty but not very much. Real subjects are not getting through.

So I'm not sure if they're saying that isn't what X is doing, or that they're criticising X for not going beyond the law (illegally), or that perhaps they feel that some legal speech is not treated equally?

> This is basically X's position – they will enforce countries speech laws, no more, no less.

It may be their stated position, but not their practice, as has been recently demonstrated in Brazil.

> So I'm not sure if they're saying that isn't what X is doing, or that they're criticising X for not going beyond the law (illegally), or that perhaps they feel that some legal speech is not treated equally?

I'm saying that posts get removed if they contain certain subjects. Nothing offensive is in them but only facts.

The law is clear in the US: with a few carved out exemptions, the government cannot penalize you for what you say.

Private platforms and citizens can do what they want.

I am sure a forum where any and all speech is tolerated quickly turns to 4chan but with all kinds of extreme porn. I am sure those places exist on ToR. I do not know why you would want to go there.

Ironically, a lot of the forums which value free speech will kick you out for even sounding like you have the wrong opinions.

The platforms don't decide what is legal, but they do have the right, and in many cases the obligation, to moderate their platforms. They can be held liable for allowing CSAM for example. And these platforms have business goals that can be in conflict with, say, allowing anti-LGBTQ or Nazi content.

Sounds like the problem (for a platform like this) is that they have "business goals" in the first place. Freedom of speech shouldn't be up for sale, especially when it comes to discussing sensitive topics and creating a for-profit business around that would do just that.

so people shouldn't create apps/tools/sites where others can communicate with each other unless they're willing to forgo any moderation? how does that work?

Not every service with user-generated content need to try to cater to maximum freedom of expression, so it first of all doesn't apply to any service with user-generated content.

Secondly, my point is that if you do have a service that is trying to optimize for freedom of expression, mixing in needing to earn money on top of that, is bound to leave you almost penny-less, as advertisers don't like an environment like that and people needing to be anonymous aren't as happy to donate.

Social media companies are private companies. You can set up your own servers and no government will interfere with you as long as you aren’t doing something illegal

If I start spewing political speech on HN, you will soon be banned and dang and company have every right to do so.

> You can set up your own servers and no government will interfere with you as long as you aren’t doing something illegal

Might have been true in the past but no longer. Once your platform gets a large enough audience, governments will try to artificially sway public opinion on the platform. This has been true for every single large social platform so far.

Government always tries to sway opinion. They are made of politicians. I’m not in love with Musk by any means. But do you think the Biden administration could have convinced Musk to change his moderation policy!

unless they are some local jack booted thugs…

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/13/mari...

then don't make it a platform, just a self-hosted blog. then you can say anything you want.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com