Hmm, I would have expected more outrage from the US "free speech absolutists" over this US government decision ;)
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0: For example, if HN bans you, shadowbans you, makes your posts dead by default, flags, or downvotes, that's all free speech.
For a large part I see people using digital platforms as a primary method of expressing their thoughts and opinions. Governments in both the US and the EU have imposed restrictions on what platforms may host. I think we have not reconciled yet how to reinterpret free speech online.
Im no expert on free speech, of free speech absolutism, so please let inform me :)
Freedom of association and freedom of speech go hand in hand. You can say whatever you like. You should not be arrested for it. People may choose not to associate with you, or not to do business with you, or not to amplify your speech by hosting it for you.
The difference is that the ownership of HN has their OWN freedom to choose who they let post on here, and what they let be posted.
This is known as the 'Freedom of Association': The right to come together with other people to collectively express, promote, or pursue their common interest. This right also includes the right to accept or decline membership in the group for whatever reason they want. HN can choose to only allow whatever they choose on their site.
In the United States, this right is actually established (according to court rulings) by the same First Amendment that establishes the right to free speech.
The right to free speech does not require a private individual or company give you a platform to make your speech.
Personally, I don't consider paid speech to be free speech, and I don't consider corporations to by humans, but the supreme court does.
Remember, facts aren't real, there is no truth, and crime is legal (in the current "Justice" Dept).
But things like criticising governments, questioning political or economic paradigms, or just making fun of powerful people, should always be legal and protected.
I get the idea behind banning hate speech, but it gets really tricky when you try to think how to define and enforce it. Everyone agrees you need to be able to criticize groups that you don't like, so what makes it cross the line to hate speech (besides calls to violence, which would fall under the 'threats' category anyway)?
The worry is always that if you carve out an exception to free speech to protect vulnerable groups from harassment, how do you stop a future government from expanding those groups to include their political allies?
But what about similar speech against powerful groups, like billionaires? Well, they're not vulnerable or marginalised, they already have a disproportionally large voice, so they're not easily silenced. And of course being a billionaire is a choice; they can abdicate from their wealth in a way people can't do from their gender or ethnic group. So it's not the same. That said, calls for violence against them might still count as hate speech or be considered specific enough to count as threats.
There is obviously some fuzziness, but there also is with other limits to free speech, and there are courts to ultimately adjudicate that.
My worry is that I can easily see an administration like the current US one claiming that MAGA Americans are the most vulnerable in the country, and they need to be protected.
Wrong. HN is not "censoring" you at all, which requires engaging in violence (or threat of violence) against you to inhibit you from speaking in public. HN is literally engaging in Free Speech itself. Take arguably the most fundamental free speech activity in a democracy: advocating to your peers for the candidate you wish to vote for and have elected to represent you. You've researched and listened to Alice, Bob and Carol. You decide the best is Alice, and to show your support you do the quintessential thing and put out a Vote For Alice lawn sign on your lawn. That's obviously free speech right? Now what if instead some volunteer from Alice's election team comes by and asks you if they can put up a sign on your property, and you say yes. That too clearly involves your free speech rights, even if you didn't pay for the sign. Now say Bob & Carol's campaigns turn up, and they ask to put up signs on your lawn too. You don't support them and say no. Have you censored them? Of course not, that's ridiculous. Free speech isn't "everything is equal nothing matters", everyone is trying collectively to iterate towards truth and value by making their cases and listening, without general use of force. To say that "I think this idea/person/item is the best choice" by definition is exclusionary, it's also saying "I think all the other ideas/persons/items are NOT the best choice". It can also simply be "I wish to engage with these subjects, not those". You can make a forum dedicated to airplanes & cats, and ban anyone who starts threads on boats & lizards. You may have nothing whatsoever against boats or lizards, but that's not what you personally want to focus on on your own forum you're paying for.
Hacker News is the private property of its owners. They have their own free speech rights. Exercising those rights is not censorship.
Others in turn are free to use their property and/or their voice on public property to make their cases, and they can try to convince you and vice versa. And there can be social consequences, if someone really dislikes your speech maybe they don't invite you to dinner anymore and urge others to do the same, who might agree (or go the other way, or just ignore it). Humans can get passionate sometimes. But by keeping violence out of the whole thing outside of narrow exceptions that undermine the approach itself, room is preserved for minds to be changed and rifts mended years or even decades later, and for ideas to come back around if someone cares enough.
Government enforcing things though always involves violence, either directly or one or more orders removed. But a general monopoly on the legitimate use of force is a defining feature of government. If government doesn't like Alice, and tells you take down the sign, or else, that's fundamental infringement. They're closing down the whole cycle (if a private person did that it'd also be a bunch of other crimes AND infringement, because private persons are not allowed to use violence against others at all by default outside of narrow exceptions). And if government tells you "oh you can leave up the sign about Alice, but it's not fair you censor Bob & Carol, you must put up signs for them too. Or else." that'd be equally infringing censorship. If everyone has a sign, it's the same message as nobody having one. It's still suppressing "I think Alice is the best choice".
>For a large part I see people using digital platforms as a primary method of expressing their thoughts and opinions.
It is easier and cheaper than any point in human history to put up your own website, including your own forum to try to form a community around. You have no right to an audience though.
>Governments in both the US and the EU have imposed restrictions on what platforms may host.
What? What restriction has government in the US imposed beyond the long standing and unchanged exceptions that prove the rule (which essentially boil down to threats of violence, comms integral to crime, defamation AFTER a court case to prove it, serious violations of personal self with zero public value like CSAM, and purely commercial speech engaging in fraud)?
>I think we have not reconciled yet how to reinterpret free speech online.
There is nothing to reinterpret. We've gotten it fine since the passage of Section 230. The problem are constant efforts to suppress what we've already got, in some cases coupled with completely orthogonal issues like failure to enforce ancient anti-trust legislation.
Testosterone down 50% since 1970.
Childishness up slightly more than that.
Isn't that the opposite of this?
But you've given me quite an interesting endocrinology research project here. Last I heard, the root cause of the drop remains unknown. (And it's still dropping.)
I hope I'll live until their fascist phase ends & historians can properly investigate all the immoral and illegal ways they've been influencing the population. My prediction is that they've scaled Cambridge Analytica to a level that'll make you sick.
The only purpose this rhetoric serves is to justify using the power of government to silence opponents the next time your side happens to be in power.
The libertarian Internet was a mistake and the world will be a better place when it's gone.
In criticizing their inconsistencies, you are highlighting and simultaneously missing your own inconsistencies.
> > If you believe in civil liberties as rights and ideals, your belief shouldn't stop at borders.
If you believe in civil liberties as rights and ideals, your belief shouldn't stop at money.
Either the right extends everywhere, including money, or it doesn't.
It's OK to say you wish a politician was dead. It's not OK to pay someone to kill them. It's OK to say that you support some criminal activity (let's say Luigi), but it's not OK to offer direct financial support for their crimes.
Both actions are equivalent, as such words are (social and/or political) capital bounties offered to the masses in return for fulfilling the death of said politician.
Capital always exists, even in the form of words. To deny a variant of capital whilst allowing another variant is inconsistent/doublespeak.
Just because it's not printed onto a piece of denominated paper, doesn't mean that such capital doesn't exist.
Neither the law nor common interpretation of words agrees with this. There is a significant and crucial difference between words and actions.
The difference is artificial, and delusionally blinds itself to the base reality that social/political capital exists.
Again, just because there isn't a cash figure attached to that bounty, doesn't mean that a reward hasn't been attached to it in the form of social/political prestige.