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"Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet forum, it means that you can speak your mind and your government can't arrest or c

"Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet forum, it means that you can speak your mind and your government can't arrest or censor you for it. If someone invites you into their home and you start calling their family names and pissing all over the carpet, the homeowner is well within her rights to throw you out and shut the door on you. Similarly, if you go onto an Internet forum that is owned by someone who is not you, they can moderate you into oblivion because it's their forum. > On HN you also can't really say many things cause it is moderated, I've experienced it many times that people will just try to ban/downvote you into oblivion instead of discussing anything. That is the community doing that, not the owners of HN, so I don't understand why you'd have a problem with it. You are free to post what you want here, and other users are free to up/down vote you, or reply to you, as they see fit. That is the very freedom you're crying for here, right? I get it though: You want a fully unmoderated soap box to say whatever you want and don't want anyone to censor or moderate you. You're never going to get that using someone else's forum, so the solution is simple: Build your own! Buy a domain, learn to code or use a premade platform, launch a VPS or CoLo box, and post to your heart's content. If you are able to build an audience and get people to listen to you, great. If you choose not to censor or moderate your users, great. But I think your eyes will then be opened to exactly how difficult it is to maintain an Internet forum without some sort of rules and moderation.

norea-armozel 11y ago
I'm glad you've made this post because all too often there's an odd streak of this good-whatever-you-want-even-if-it-harms-someone mentality on the Internet. It's like some people think the use of an electronic broadcast medium some how mitigates or eliminates the actual harm that comes from their actions. But if we remove the notion of "it's only the Internet" from the equation the same behavior comes under harassment and anti-stalking laws in the US. So, how it is any different if you stalked a person online from that doing it in person? How it is less of a threat because the Internet makes it easier to do? The possession of a firearm makes murder easier to do but it doesn't make murder less of a crime either. I just think some people are looking for an excuse to break the core values of civil society for the sake of some sadistic pleasure of harming another human being. /rant
wtbob 11y ago
> "Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet forum, it means that you can speak your mind and your government can't arrest or censor you for it. No, it's the First Amendment which means that the government may not arrest your for what you say or censor your speech. 'Freedom of speech' means exactly what it says on the tin: that you may speak freely. In the United States, the government must respect your freedom of speech, and private entities have no such restriction. > If someone invites you into their home and you start calling their family names and pissing all over the carpet, the homeowner is well within her rights to throw you out and shut the door on you. Note that this is the same argument used by a monarch to justify restrictions on speech: it's his home, and you're welcome to leave. I think that it's fine and proper that private entities are free to regulate speech on their properties, but I also think that it's often inadvisable and unfortunate that they do so.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Agreed. Freedom of speech doesn't begin and end in the Constitution. Its an American ideal, embodied in the Constitution to show we mean business. But at every level, we mean that everyone is born with the right to speak their mind. Opposing that is un-American at core. To say "I suppressed their speech but it wasn't unconstitutional" is a very poor defense - that what you did can't be punished by the supreme court. I'm supposed to respect you for that? Its not just inadvisable and unfortunate; its wrong. At least here in America.
  - kps 11y ago
    Agreed. In America, people don't self-censor out of rational fear that the government will take them away in a black van in the middle of the night. People self-censor out of rational fear that they'll lose their jobs.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      I'd argue that institutional opposition to free speech is a critical threat to freedom of speech. What you say outside work hours should be especially protected.
pdkl95 11y ago
> "Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet forum The amazing benefit of the internet was the solution to this. In network protocol that doesn't distinguish between different classes of network hosts, each network peer has the ability to publish on their own. Sure, there are technical details in figuring out how to run your own server. The cost of learning that or paying someone else to handle it is a normal cost of publication (which isn't particularly expensive). The point is that there is no authority standing in the way. As you say, if someone doesn't like how they are moderated on someone else's forum, they have the same ability they had to run their own forum where they get to be the moderator. The catch is that Freedom of Speech doesn't guarantee an audience, so getting people to participate is a problem for the individual publishers to solve on their own. Unfortunately, we have lost a lot of this freedom, and that loss is accelerating. NAT has created multiple classes of hosts, some of which cannot publish on their own. This created a culture of software where connections that should be peer-to-peer are brokered through a central authority. We need to regain the true right to publish - where network peers are equal - before these rights are lost completely. The imprimatur[1] is almost finished and the discussion is focused on how people moderate (or don't moderate) various forums, when the focus should be on making sure the right run those forums still exists in the future. [1] https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
deleted 11y ago
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norea-armozel 11y ago

I'm glad you've made this post because all too often there's an odd streak of this good-whatever-you-want-even-if-it-harms-someone mentality on the Internet. It's like some people think the use of an electronic broadcast medium some how mitigates or eliminates the actual harm that comes from their actions. But if we remove the notion of "it's only the Internet" from the equation the same behavior comes under harassment and anti-stalking laws in the US. So, how it is any different if you stalked a person online from that doing it in person? How it is less of a threat because the Internet makes it easier to do? The possession of a firearm makes murder easier to do but it doesn't make murder less of a crime either. I just think some people are looking for an excuse to break the core values of civil society for the sake of some sadistic pleasure of harming another human being. /rant

wtbob 11y ago

> "Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet forum, it means that you can speak your mind and your government can't arrest or censor you for it. No, it's the First Amendment which means that the government may not arrest your for what you say or censor your speech. 'Freedom of speech' means exactly what it says on the tin: that you may speak freely. In the United States, the government must respect your freedom of speech, and private entities have no such restriction. > If someone invites you into their home and you start calling their family names and pissing all over the carpet, the homeowner is well within her rights to throw you out and shut the door on you. Note that this is the same argument used by a monarch to justify restrictions on speech: it's his home, and you're welcome to leave. I think that it's fine and proper that private entities are free to regulate speech on their properties, but I also think that it's often inadvisable and unfortunate that they do so.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Agreed. Freedom of speech doesn't begin and end in the Constitution. Its an American ideal, embodied in the Constitution to show we mean business. But at every level, we mean that everyone is born with the right to speak their mind. Opposing that is un-American at core. To say "I suppressed their speech but it wasn't unconstitutional" is a very poor defense - that what you did can't be punished by the supreme court. I'm supposed to respect you for that? Its not just inadvisable and unfortunate; its wrong. At least here in America.
- kps 11y ago
  Agreed. In America, people don't self-censor out of rational fear that the government will take them away in a black van in the middle of the night. People self-censor out of rational fear that they'll lose their jobs.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    I'd argue that institutional opposition to free speech is a critical threat to freedom of speech. What you say outside work hours should be especially protected.

pdkl95 11y ago

> "Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet forum The amazing benefit of the internet was the solution to this. In network protocol that doesn't distinguish between different classes of network hosts, each network peer has the ability to publish on their own. Sure, there are technical details in figuring out how to run your own server. The cost of learning that or paying someone else to handle it is a normal cost of publication (which isn't particularly expensive). The point is that there is no authority standing in the way. As you say, if someone doesn't like how they are moderated on someone else's forum, they have the same ability they had to run their own forum where they get to be the moderator. The catch is that Freedom of Speech doesn't guarantee an audience, so getting people to participate is a problem for the individual publishers to solve on their own. Unfortunately, we have lost a lot of this freedom, and that loss is accelerating. NAT has created multiple classes of hosts, some of which cannot publish on their own. This created a culture of software where connections that should be peer-to-peer are brokered through a central authority. We need to regain the true right to publish - where network peers are equal - before these rights are lost completely. The imprimatur[1] is almost finished and the discussion is focused on how people moderate (or don't moderate) various forums, when the focus should be on making sure the right run those forums still exists in the future. [1] https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/

deleted 11y ago

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