That "and/or" is doing a lot of work here. There's a huge difference between government censorship and forcing private companies to host content they don't want to host on servers they own.
Then again, Alphabet is now claiming they did want to host it and mean old Biden pressured them into pulling it so if we buy that, maybe it doesn't matter.
> What if they started banning tylenol-autism sceptical accounts?
What if it's pro-cannibalism or pedophilia content? Everyone has a line, we're all just arguing about where exactly we think that line should be.
It really depends. I remember after the Christchurch mosque shootings, there was a scramble to block the distribution of the shooter's manifesto. In some countries, the government could declare the content illegal directly, but in others, such as Australia, they didn't have pre-existing laws sufficiently wide to cover that, and so what happened in practice is that ISPs "proactively" formed a voluntary censorship cartel, acting in lockstep to block access to all copies of the manifesto, while the government was working on the new laws. If the practical end result is the same - a complete country block on some content - does it really matter whether it's dressed up as public or private censorship?
And with large tech companies like Alphabet and Meta, it is a particularly pointed question given how much the market is monopolized.
OTOH if the goal is to prevent copycats then I don't see the point of a 90-day embargo. People who are likely to take that kind of content seriously enough to emulate are still going to do so. Tarrant, for example, specifically referenced Anders Breivik.
If I choose to put a Kamala sign in my yard and not a Trump sign, that’s an expression of free speech.
If the marketing company I own decides to not work for causes I don’t personally support, that’s free speech.
If the video hosting platform I’m CEO of doesn’t host unfounded anti-vax content because I think it’s a bad business move, is that not also free speech?
In short-- no. Your right is to positively assert, "Trump sign" not, "excludes all other signs as a comparative right" even though this is a practical consequence of supporting one candidate and not others. "Owning a marketing company" means that you most hold to industrial and businesss ethics in order to do business in a common economic space. Being the CEO of any company that serves the democratic public means that one's ethical obligations must reflect the democratic sentiment of the public. It used to be that, "capitalism" or, "economic liberalism" meant that the dollars and eyeballs would go elsewhere as a basic bottom line for the realization of the ethical sentiment of the nation-state. This becomes less likely under conditions of monopoly and autocracy. The truth is that Section 230 created a nightmare. If internet platforms are now ubiquitous and well-developed aren't the protections realized under S230 now obsolete?
It would be neat if somebody did, "you can put any sign in my yard to promote any political cause unless it is specifically X/Trump/whatever." That would constitute a unique form of exclusionary free speech.
How does one determine the democratic sentiment of the public, especially a public that is pretty evenly ideologically split? Seems fraught with personal interpretation (which is arguably another form of free speech.)
I'm reminded of that old line by Tolstoy-- something like, "happy families are all happy for precisely the same reasons; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The point from an Adam Smith perspective is that healthy societies might all end up tending toward the same end by widely different means: Chinese communists might achieve superior cooperation and the realization of their values as, "the good life" by means dissimilar to the Quaker or the African tribesperson. The trick is seeing that the plurality of living forms and their competing values is not a hinderance to cooperation and mutual well-being but an opportunity for extended and renewed discourses about, "what we would like to be as creatures."
Worth mentioning:
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Courses/Antirepresentationa...
It’s a problem especially if there is a direct or implied threat to use the powers of the government to impact a business if the government is acting counter to the first amendment. This is essentially the government causing the outcome, not a business using its free speech after an independent business decision.
One could argue a business might come to a decision to pull content the government doesn’t like independently without coercion if they had an antitrust case pending with the DOJ. There’s probably a line here where the government needs to act in a specific way to threaten to make it coercion. Maybe the line was crossed in YT’s case?
On all of these cases I come to the conclusion there needs to be separation of powers on some of these executive branch actions. I’m not sure how to do it something is needed to protect individual rights from executive overreach (regardless of which party is in power).
> we want to be sure that you have a handle on vaccine hesitancy generally and are working toward making the problem better. This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the White House
Saying you want to make sure they will censor these videos is a threat, and then they said that Biden was behind this to add legitimacy to the threat.
If it was just a friendly greeting why would they threaten youtube with Bidens name? If youtube did this willingly there would be no need to write such a threatening message saying they want to make sure Youtube censors these.
You can read the whole report here if you wanna see more: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j...
And if you don't see that as a threat, imagine someone in the trump administration sent that, do you still think its not a threat? Of course its a threat, it makes no sense to write that way otherwise, you would just say you wanted to hear how it goes not say you wanna make sure they do this specific thing and threaten them with the presidents powers.
We don't need to imagine anything. The chair of the FCC publicly threatened ABC over Kimmel. This morning Trump posted a direct threat of government reprisals if they didn't fire a comedian over a joke he doesnt like.
Nothing vague or implied about it. Just the government of the United States directly threatening free speech
I wont link to truth social. You can Google it.
Fortunately, the Trump administration has given us an example of what a threat and coercion actually looks like. They declared exactly the action they would take if they did not get their preferred outcome and it’s clearly politically motivated.
That’s quite a bit different than we’re concerned about this misinformation and would like you to do something about it.
I think a reasonable and nuanced debate can be had on whether or not that was appropriate, but there is a difference.
I very much agree. It's reasonable to ask if the Biden admin overstepped their boundaries by politely asking if Youtube would help them stop people from murdering each other with disinformation and trying to overthrow the government.
I think the current situation is much less debatable. The government is now issuing ultimatums and very publicly threatening corporations to stifle free speech.
I want to recapitulate this sentiment as often and as widely as possible-- Rand and her cronies know as much about virtue, freedom, and Aristotle as they do about fornicating; not much.
Even if I disagreed with you I would upvote for this gem. I'll be chuckling at this one randomly for weeks.
The American civilization has deep flaws but has historically worked toward, "doing what was right."
https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/book-v-of-the-reven...
I've already described above that even in this thread there's a sentiment which is that, "as long as somebody has gained coercive power legitimately then it is within their right to coerce." I see terms thrown around like, "if somebody owns" or, "if somebody is the CEO of..." which speaks to the growing air of illiberality an liberal autocranarianism which is a direct result of the neoliberal assault founding and funding thousands of Cato Institutes, Adam Smith Societies, and Heritage Foundations since the neoliberal turn in the late 1960's. We've legitimized domination ethics as an extension of the hungry rights of pseudotyrants and the expense of people in general.
I wonder what people in general might one day do about this? I wonder if there's a historical precedent for what happens when people face oppression and the degradation of common cultural projects?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution#October_Rev...
I simply don't believe people who say they want to support a culture of free speech on a media or social media site. They haven't really thought about what that means.
While I'm with my dudes in computer space-- it all starts with the passing of the Mansfield Amendment. You want to know why tech sucks and we haven't made any foundational breakthroughs for decades? The privatization of technology innovation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Silicon_Valley
https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/narrative#chapter-iv-tumul...
Modern democracies aren't founded on realist ethics or absolute commitments to economic liberalism as totalizing-- they're founded on a ethical balance between the real needs of people, the real potential for capital expansion, and superior sentiments about the possibilities of the human condition. As a kid that supported Ron Paul's bid for the Republican nomination as a 16-year-old I can't help but feel that libertarian politics has ruined generations of people by getting them to accept autocracy as, "one ethical outcome to a free society." It isn't.
The irony in me posting this will be lost on most: https://www.uschamber.com/
If those two private companies would host all legal content, this could be a thriving market.
Somehow big tech and payment processors get to censor most software.
The legal process already did all the hard work of reaching consensus/compromise on where that line is, so just use that. At least with the legal system, there's some degree of visibility and influence possible by everyone. It's not some ethics department silently banning users they don't agree with.
This private-public tyranny that's going on right now. The FCC can't directly tell Kimmel, "you can't say that" they can say, "you may have violated this or this technical rule which..." This is how Project 2025 will play out in terms of people's real experience. You occupy all posts with ideologically sympathetic players and the liberality people are used to becomes ruinous as, "the watchers" are now, "watching for you." The irony is that most conservatives believe this is just, "what the left was doing in the 2010's in reverse" and I don't have a counterargument for this other than, "it doesn't matter; it's always bad and unethical." Real differences between Colbert and Tate taken for granted.
We must be able to have those debates, but we must also guard against grifters selling 5g-proof underwear to the functionally illiterate or serving up vaccine skepticism based more on their desire to score political points than science.
The devil will always be in the details, and it's a tough balancing act. I personally suspect that the way we do this is by checking credentials.
Doctors and scientists should be allowed to offer alternative theories. Meth-addicts posting from labs hidden in the Ozarks, software developers, and unqualified politicians, maybe not.
Power is power. Wealth is power. Political power is power. The powerful should not control the lives or destinies of the less powerful. This is the most basic description of contemporary democracy but becomes controversial when the Randroids and Commies alike start to split hairs about how the Lenins and John Galts of the world have a right to use power to further their respective political objectives.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm (Leviathan by Hobbes)
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50922 (Perpetual Peace by Kant)
https://www.heritage-history.com/site/hclass/secret_societie...
This throws out spam and fraud filters, both of which are content-based moderation.
Nobody moderates anything isn’t unfortunately a functional option. Particularly if the company has to sell ads.
I think government censorship should be strictly prohibited. I think "company" censorship is just the application of the first amendment.
Where I think the problem lies with things like YouTube is the fact that we have _monopolies_, so there is no "free market" of platforms.
I think we should be addressing "big tech" censorship not by requiring tech companies to behave like a government, but rather by preventing any companies from having so much individual power that we _need_ them to behave like a government.
We should have aggressive anti-trust laws, and interoperability requirements for large platforms, such that it doesn't matter if YouTube decides to be censorious, because there are 15 other platforms that people can viably use instead.
My fear is that this is incredibly uncontroversial this is until it's not-- when pushes becomes shoves we start having debates about what are, "legitimate" concentrations of power (wealth) and how that legitimacy in itself lets us, "tolerate what we would generally condemn as intolerable." I feel we need to take a queue from the Chomsky's of the world and decree:
"all unjustified concentrations of power and wealth are necessarily interested in control and as such we should aggressively and purposefully refuse to tolerate them at all as a basic condition of democratic living..."
This used to be, "social democracy" where these days the Democratic Party in the United States' motto is more, "let us make deals with the devil because reasons and things." People have the power. We are the people. Hare fucking Krsna.
As a book publisher, should I be required to publish your furry smut short stories? Of course not. Is that infringing on your freedom of speech? Of course not.
Compelled speech is not free speech. You have no right to an audience. The existence of a wide distribution platform does not grant you a right to it.
These arguments fall completely flat because it’s always about the right to distribute misinformation. It’s never about posting porn or war crimes or spam. That kind of curation isn’t contentious.
Google didn’t suddenly see the light and become free speech absolutists. They caved to political pressure and are selectively allowing the preferred misinformation of the current administration.
The effect of YouTube’s content moderation size on speech is a symptom of weak antitrust policy, not of free expression. So sure, mention the effect on speech if you want but don’t ignore the solution.
And I don't think it erodes any fundamental rights to put restrictions on huge monopolies.
If you force Google alone to amplify certain speech then what competitive advantage does a less censorious service provide?
> If it's purely by making them suck less, I'm okay with that risk.
Define “suck less”. Now ask yourself if you are comfortable with someone you completely disagree with defining what sucks less.
> And I don't think it erodes any fundamental rights to put restrictions on huge monopolies.
You’re talking about antitrust, not free expression.
Compelled speech is an erosion of the first amendment. You may think that erosion is acceptable but you can’t deny it exists.
If that's the only "advantage" another service has, I don't care if it has no competitive advantage. If it offers anything else then that's the advantage.
Seriously this idea is super weird to me. There are plenty of reasons to avoid too much regulation. But "don't force company X to make their users happier because happy users won't leave" is a terrible reason.
>Define “suck less”. Now ask yourself if you are comfortable with someone you completely disagree with defining what sucks less.
A big part of the "if" is that people are making their own evaluations.
> You’re talking about antitrust
I am not talking about antitrust. I'm saying that the bigger and more powerful a corporation gets the further it is from a human and human rights.
> Compelled speech is an erosion of the first amendment. You may think that erosion is acceptable but you can’t deny it exists.
In this case, barely at all, and it's the same one we already have for common carriers.
The value proposition of a less censorious YouTube alternative is exactly that it is less censorious. You’re seemingly arguing against free markets.
> Seriously this idea is super weird to me. There are plenty of reasons to avoid too much regulation. But "don't force company X to make their users happier because happy users won't leave" is a terrible reason.
The problem with compelled speech is that the government should not be in the business of deciding what kind of speech makes people happy.
> A big part of the "if" is that people are making their own evaluations.
People should have the freedom to choose the media they consume. Compelled speech takes that choice away from them by putting the government in the position of making that decision for the people. This distorts the marketplace of ideas.
I don’t have time to read every comment or email or watch every video. Private content moderation is a value add and a form of expression. We need competition in that space, not government restriction.
> I am not talking about antitrust. I'm saying that the bigger and more powerful a corporation gets the further it is from a human and human rights.
If your problem with Google is how much influence they have then yes, you are talking about antitrust. That’s the regulatory mechanism by which excessive corporate influence can be restricted.
> In this case, barely at all, and it's the same one we already have for common carriers.
“A little” is still more than nothing which was your previous assertion. You may be comfortable with the rising temperature of our shared pot of water but I say it is a cause for concern.
You're only talking about the people that like a feature. Why do you need a free market for that if every company can do it?
Not everything has to be a free market. There are reasons to use competition but not this reason.
> the government should not be in the business of deciding what kind of speech makes people happy
I did not say or intentionally imply they should.
> People should have the freedom to choose the media they consume. Compelled speech takes that choice away
Not if the compelling is just that they can't ban content. That only adds choice.
> If your problem with Google is how much influence they have then yes, you are talking about antitrust. That’s the regulatory mechanism by which excessive corporate influence can be restricted.
There can be other mechanisms, and more importantly my argument there isn't about mechanisms. They are barely barely humanlike, so human rights are barely barely relevant.
> “A little” is still more than nothing which was your previous assertion. You may be comfortable with the rising temperature of our shared pot of water but I say it is a cause for concern.
It's barely any increase because we already have common carrier rules.
And I stand by the statement that it doesn't erode fundamental rights. The right of giant corporations to have free speech is at the edge, not fundamental. And a rule like that increases the free speech of so many actual humans.
It is literally the very first thing you said in this comment thread. It either frames your entire argument or you have no idea what you are talking about.
> How is compelling google to censor less going to entrench their dominance? If it's purely by making them suck less, I'm okay with that risk.
And even if it would objectively make them suck less in some scenario, there's still nothing in that post that says I want the government to force them to do it. That post was only about whether it entrenches their dominance or not.
Then in my next comment I:
* put the word 'advantage' in scare quotes
* clarified that "if they suck less" is supposed to be evaluated by individual people and not me
* stated that there are reasons to not want regulation, but that I was skeptical of this specific entrenchment reason
The first two should make it clear that I'm not even saying it's an advantage, and the third should make it clear that I'm focusing on this specific argument and not making an overall case for government intervention. So that's three reasons I'm not saying the government should do it.
How do I make my non-endorsement clearer?
Also you were the one calling it a "competitive advantage" and "value proposition". That's not endorsement but it's definitely closer to endorsement than what I was saying.
Edit: Wait, I made this whole post interpreting the "should" as about government intervention. But I think technically that "should" was actually about the government deciding what makes people happy? If that's what you meant to ask then I have no idea how you got there. The sentences you quoted don't support that interpretation at all. The "suck less -> entrenchment" theory only works if users are actually happy, completely separate from what the government thinks.
Hosting content is not giving someone an audience.
If I take my stool into the main square and stand on it, giving a speech about the evils of canned spinach. People pass by but no-one stops and listens(or not for long), I did not have an audience.
If I record the same thing and put it up on Youtube and the same reaction happens. I only get 5~10 views, Youtube is not giving me an audience. They are hosting the video, just like they do for many other videos that are uploaded everyday.
If Youtube suddenly starts pushing my video onto everyone's "Home", "Recommended " or whatever; then that would be them giving me an audience.
If the Big Spinach Canners find my video and ask Youtube to take it down, that is censorship.
Yes, it is.
> If I take my stool into the main square and stand on it, giving a speech about the evils of canned spinach. People pass by but no-one stops and listens(or not for long), I did not have an audience.
Well, yes, you did. They are free to cheer, boo, or leave. YouTube is more like an open mic night. I reject the idea that it is a public space like a main square.
> If I record the same thing and put it up on Youtube and the same reaction happens. I only get 5~10 views, Youtube is not giving me an audience. They are hosting the video, just like they do for many other videos that are uploaded everyday.
I am lucky to have never worked in content moderation but I’m certain YouTube refuses or removes submissions every day. So while your spinach speech may survive there are many other videos that don’t.
> If Youtube suddenly starts pushing my video onto everyone's "Home", "Recommended " or whatever; then that would be them giving me an audience.
Being on YouTube at all is YouTube giving you an audience. Their recommendation algorithm is the value proposition of their product to consumers whose attention is the product sold to advertisers.
> If the Big Spinach Canners find my video and ask Youtube to take it down, that is censorship.
Perhaps in the strictest dictionary sense it is censorship but it is not censorship in a first amendment sense. This is a private business decision. You’re free to submit your video as an ad and pay Google directly for eyeballs. And they can still say no.
The only problem here is the size of YouTube relative to competitors. The fix there is antitrust, not erosion of civil liberties.
Consider the landscape that evolves in a post-YouTube environment with an eroded first amendment and without section 230 protections. Those protections are critical for innovation and free expression.
I want to see how steep this hill you're willing to die on is. What's that old saying-- that thing about the shoe being on the other foot?
What you are arguing for is a dissolution of HN and sites like it.
The reason we ban government censorship is so that a private actor can always create their own conspiracy theory + snuff film site if they want, and other platforms are not obligated to carry content they find objectionable. Get really into Rumble or Truth Social or X if you would like a very different perspective from Youtube's.
At the crux of things the libertarians and the non-psychos are just having a debate on when it's fair game to be unethical or cruel to others in the name of extending human freedom and human dignity. We've fallen so far from the tree.
Are you the government? If not then it is not oppression. It is free speech. This is the point of my rhetorical device.
We have the right to do a potentially limitless amount of unbecoming, cruel, and oppressive things to our fellow man. We also have the potential for forming and proliferating societies. We invented religion and agriculture out of dirt and need. Let us choose Nazarenes, Jeffersons, and Socrates' over Neros, Alexanders, and Napoleons. This didn't use to be politically controversial!
On their platform, that’s exactly what they are entitled to do. When you type into the box in the Facebook app, that’s your speech. But unless the platform wants to add your contribution to their coherent speech product, they have every right to reject it.
Otherwise, the government is deciding what people can say, and you’d be against that, right?
Further, if I wanted to start a social media platform called thinkingtylenolcausesautismisstupid.com, wouldn’t restricting my right to craft my product defeat the whole point of my business?
Giving platforms the ability to moderate their output to craft a coherent speech product is the only reason we have multiple social networks with different rules, instead of one first-mover social network with no rules where everyone is locked in by network effects.
I've seen stupidity on the internet you wouldn't believe.
Time Cube rants — four simultaneous days in one rotation — burning across static-filled CRTs.
Ponzi pyramids stretching into forever, needing ten billion souls to stand beneath one.
And a man proclaiming he brought peace in wars that never were, while swearing the President was born on foreign soil.
All those moments… lost… in a rain of tweets.
We've got LLMs now, letting interested parties (government or not) overwhelm everyone with an endless barrage of the worst, cheapest, lowest quality AI slop, the kind that makes even AI proponents like me go "ah, I see what you mean about it being autocomplete", because even the worst of that by quality is still able to bury any bad news story just as effectively as any censorship. Too much noise and not enough signal, is already why I'm consuming far less YouTube these days, why I gave up on Twitter when it was still called that, etc.
And we have AI that's a lot better at holding a conversation than just the worst, cheapest, lowest quality AI slop. We've already seen LLMs are able to induce psychosis in some people just by talking to them, and that was, so far as we can tell, accidental. How long will it be before a developer chooses to do this on purpose, and towards a goal of their choice? Even if it's just those who are susceptible, there's a lot of people.
What's important is the freedom to share truth, no matter how uncomfortable, and especially when it's uncomfortable for those with power. Unfortunately, what we humans actually share the most is gossip, which is already a poor proxy for truth and is basically how all the witch hunts, genocides, and other moral-panic-induced horrors of history happened.
It is all a mess; it is all hard; don't mistake the proxy (free speech in general) for the territory (speak truth to power, I think?); censorship is simultaneously bad and the only word I know for any act which may block propaganda which is also bad.