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I find it very disturbing to see these allegations of censorship directed at large tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and even Google. I thought th

by Claudus 10y ago

I find it very disturbing to see these allegations of censorship directed at large tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and even Google. I thought that the Internet was the greatest empowerment of free speech in history. Now that so much communication happens through private services, it seems like free speech is effectively being damped. Can you imagine decades ago, the phone company revoking your phone number because they didn't like what you said to your friends over their wires?

bambax 10y ago
When this discussion happens, people inevitably point out that those are private companies that can do as they please, and that "free speech" is only about forbiding the government from limiting the expression of opinions, not of anyone else. This is true, and a big problem. We need new laws to enforce free speech in private companies that provide means of expression and are in a position of near-monopoly. "Justin" shouldn't get to decide what is hate speech and what isn't.
- wyager 10y ago
  As a very aggressive free speech advocate, forcing companies or individuals to serve certain kinds of content is just as bad as preventing them from doing so. Free speech is both a positive and negative right; I should be able to say whatever I damned well please, and I shouldn't be obligated to say anything I don't. If Facebook wants to keep pursuing their absurd politically-charged censorship policies, they are free to do so. Forcing Facebook to allow whatever pre-approved speech is "protected" (and who gets to decide that list?), besides being a violation of their rights, is probably worse for the users than doing nothing at all, because it gives users the illusion that Facebook is a platform for free speech. Users should be fully cognizant of the fact that they are not free to speak their mind on Facebook, as this provides encouragement for people to seek freer platforms.
  - bambax 10y ago
    > who gets to decide that list The courts, obviously. As the law stands today, you can't sue FB for closing your account for a perceived violation of their ToS (you can maybe sue, but you'll lose); with different laws you could sue, and the matter would be decided by judges. The fundamental problem is that companies like FB consider user-generated content as a free resource, much like a river onto which they build dams to make money from its flow. But speech is fundamentally free (and, arguably, public property); the medium it uses to express itself shouldn't get to regulate it.
    - wyager 10y ago
      In other words, the courts should be able to force websites to host content?
- luso_brazilian 10y ago
  > and that "free speech" is only about forbiding the government from limiting the expression of opinions, not of anyone else. > This is true, and a big problem. This is not true, it is a product of people confusing two different things: > the first amendment to the constitution of the United States > the unalienable right to freedom of speech The american tradition is founded on the principle that there are natural rights that can never be given (as people are born with them), only taken away. Among these rights it's the right to freedom of speech and of assembly. The first amendment (along with the rest) only clarifies the role the founding fathers intended to the government they created: one that shouldn't be allowed to infringe on these rights by legislation or otherwise. The first amendment doesn't give the right to freedom of speech, only prevents the government from infringing on it, that's right. But it doesn't follow from that that private companies cannot infringe on anyone's freedom of speech, it is a non sequitur. Private companies can and do infringe on people freedoms of speech and assembly all the time, and what happened to this reporter seems to be another example of that. The thing is: it is perfectly in their right to do so, as it is very clear in their terms of service that they reserve that right, the right to control what can and what cannot be published on their properties. The confusion comes from the fact that most of these companies (social media companies) like to pretend that's not the case, that they are proponents of freedom of speech even when it is inconvenient to the powerful. For an example of that see the Arab Spring, what was publicized in those days as "a revolution powered by social media", "a media where people can freely express their thoughts and exercise their freedom of assembly without government interference". As we came to realize in the subsequent years is that it was only true because 1) governments underestimated something they still didn't fully understand and 2) there was a temporary alignment between the position of these companies and that one of the revolutionary. This alignment is over now. Governments worldwide pressure and succeed in making these companies to remove inconvenient speech from their services (examples abound). In other cases perfectly valid forms of speech gets removed, suppressed or banned from their services for no other reason as they don't align to these companies goals. It's their right to do so and they exercise it. The important thing is: let's not pretend they are not suppressing speech, curtailing freedom of assembly only because it's their right to do so. They do curtail freedom of speech (on their premises), they do ban speech that is valid but inconvenient to their goals and objectives. As is their right. It is just that they lose the claim to be (as in the case of a particular service) "bastions of freedom of speech" when they do so.
- icebraining 10y ago
  What counts as means of publishing? Do comments on a blog? What about forum posts? If a bunch of trolls hijack HN, can they be banned? If so, how would you draw up that distinction into a law?
  - bambax 10y ago
    I didn't say it would be easy. Illegal content (threats, etc.) isn't a problem: it can be moderated out / censored, and if someone's unhappy about it, they would sue, and if they're right they'd win. I'm not sure "trolling" can be defined with objectivity; contrarian opinions are what makes freedom of speech interesting. What's difficult is spam: of zero value, extremely undesirable, and yet not illegal. The way HN traditionally did this, was to "kill" comments without erasing them; one could still read dead comments if one wanted. My point is there should be some kind of an appeals process in those matters. The moderators can't also be the judges of last resort.
- lumberjack 10y ago
  It's not just that they don't have any obligation. The are private commercial entities. They have incentives to take sides and manipulate what they serve to their users as they please. I absolutely don't get why you trust them at all.
  - bambax 10y ago
    ? I don't trust "them"; I rarely trust individuals, and absolutely never any corporation. Corporations are necessary evils that need to be strongly supervised and regulated, in my opinion.
vertex-four 10y ago
No, but I can certainly imagine a printing company refusing to print something they didn't like, or a TV/radio station refusing to air something it doesn't like. The post office doesn't have to mass-deliver pamphlets for you at less than the cost of posting a regular letter if it doesn't like them. One-to-one communication isn't the same as mass communication, and people have generally enjoyed a great deal of leeway when having private conversations vs mass media. Very little on Facebook is private - that's the point of it. The right to free speech, if literally nobody agrees with you enough to help distribute your media, protects nothing more than your right to stand in a busy city square with a megaphone. That has always been the case - it's not a new phenomenon with Facebook. Those with radical ideas have always been silenced, and still are on a regular basis.
legulere 10y ago
I think your analogy is flawed on several levels. Phones are a medium of direct communication, Facebook, Twitter and reddit are media of publishing, so more like a newspaper or a public stage. They're empowering and supporting people to spread their ideas. But with this you also have the responsibility to not support e.g. neonazis. This has nothing to do with free speech. Just like when you go to a publisher and they tell you they won't print your book. You can still print the book yourself or somewhere else and this is exactly the same situation with things on facebook, twitter or reddit (on reddit you can even just go to another subreddit with different moderators). So this is not a free speech issue, but an issue that websites like facebook twitter and reddit have lots of power that they could abuse. They actually don't look like they're abusing it, but are sometimes a bit overcautious in removing stuff that's not supposed to be endorsed.
- icebraining 10y ago
  The difference is that readers don't go to Random House offices to read. A service like Wordpress or Blogger can be considered a publisher, but FB et all are both publishing and distribution mediums.
- hga 10y ago
  But with this you also have the responsibility to not serve lunch to blacks in your whites only lunch counter. Fixed it for you, at least in putting it in historical context, if you're willing to entertain the concept that Facebook et. al. have reached public accommodation status (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations), for which as least as strong a case can be made as that they're an old fashioned media publisher, which is a stretch when their customers provide 99% of the content on these sites. And while it may have nothing to do with "freedom of speech" as those words of art are used in the US, it has everything to do with the more fundamental principle of freedom of expression. You may not see a problem today, but those of us on the right see our access to the public square, the "soap box", being systematically proscribed on these essential platforms, and we will not suffer that forever, one way or another.
  - deleted 10y ago
lumberjack 10y ago
Well I guess I'm a bit of a cynic but if anything I find it concerning that people expect "free press" out of private entities like Facebook and Google.
Sir_Substance 10y ago
>I thought that the Internet was the greatest empowerment of free speech in history. It is, but facebook is not. The empowerment of the internet is that you can publish a website saying something and no one can stop you[1]. However, if you publish via facebook, you give an additional (and unregulated) party control over your publishing. Basically, you should stop doing that. Even if you're not willing to host your own services[2], there's a lot of benefit in spreading your publishing between multiple providers, preferably smaller ones, so that a decision from one person cannot muzzle you. [1] This is not quite true, a government order can get you disconnected from your ISP. However, removal of a DNS entry does not in fact stop you from publishing, and enormous tracts of the web are made up if sites that can only be accessed by IP address. [2] Which you totally should, especially for the easy stuff like file syncing
DanBC 10y ago
Facebook doesn't have common carrier status, and the US phone companies did. There are pros and cons to each situation, but it's probably good that Facebook is a private company and that they can ban who they like (so long as they're not doing it to discriminate against protected characteristics).

by Claudus 10y ago

bambax 10y ago

When this discussion happens, people inevitably point out that those are private companies that can do as they please, and that "free speech" is only about forbiding the government from limiting the expression of opinions, not of anyone else. This is true, and a big problem. We need new laws to enforce free speech in private companies that provide means of expression and are in a position of near-monopoly. "Justin" shouldn't get to decide what is hate speech and what isn't.

wyager 10y ago
As a very aggressive free speech advocate, forcing companies or individuals to serve certain kinds of content is just as bad as preventing them from doing so. Free speech is both a positive and negative right; I should be able to say whatever I damned well please, and I shouldn't be obligated to say anything I don't. If Facebook wants to keep pursuing their absurd politically-charged censorship policies, they are free to do so. Forcing Facebook to allow whatever pre-approved speech is "protected" (and who gets to decide that list?), besides being a violation of their rights, is probably worse for the users than doing nothing at all, because it gives users the illusion that Facebook is a platform for free speech. Users should be fully cognizant of the fact that they are not free to speak their mind on Facebook, as this provides encouragement for people to seek freer platforms.
- bambax 10y ago
  > who gets to decide that list The courts, obviously. As the law stands today, you can't sue FB for closing your account for a perceived violation of their ToS (you can maybe sue, but you'll lose); with different laws you could sue, and the matter would be decided by judges. The fundamental problem is that companies like FB consider user-generated content as a free resource, much like a river onto which they build dams to make money from its flow. But speech is fundamentally free (and, arguably, public property); the medium it uses to express itself shouldn't get to regulate it.
  - wyager 10y ago
    In other words, the courts should be able to force websites to host content?
luso_brazilian 10y ago
> and that "free speech" is only about forbiding the government from limiting the expression of opinions, not of anyone else. > This is true, and a big problem. This is not true, it is a product of people confusing two different things: > the first amendment to the constitution of the United States > the unalienable right to freedom of speech The american tradition is founded on the principle that there are natural rights that can never be given (as people are born with them), only taken away. Among these rights it's the right to freedom of speech and of assembly. The first amendment (along with the rest) only clarifies the role the founding fathers intended to the government they created: one that shouldn't be allowed to infringe on these rights by legislation or otherwise. The first amendment doesn't give the right to freedom of speech, only prevents the government from infringing on it, that's right. But it doesn't follow from that that private companies cannot infringe on anyone's freedom of speech, it is a non sequitur. Private companies can and do infringe on people freedoms of speech and assembly all the time, and what happened to this reporter seems to be another example of that. The thing is: it is perfectly in their right to do so, as it is very clear in their terms of service that they reserve that right, the right to control what can and what cannot be published on their properties. The confusion comes from the fact that most of these companies (social media companies) like to pretend that's not the case, that they are proponents of freedom of speech even when it is inconvenient to the powerful. For an example of that see the Arab Spring, what was publicized in those days as "a revolution powered by social media", "a media where people can freely express their thoughts and exercise their freedom of assembly without government interference". As we came to realize in the subsequent years is that it was only true because 1) governments underestimated something they still didn't fully understand and 2) there was a temporary alignment between the position of these companies and that one of the revolutionary. This alignment is over now. Governments worldwide pressure and succeed in making these companies to remove inconvenient speech from their services (examples abound). In other cases perfectly valid forms of speech gets removed, suppressed or banned from their services for no other reason as they don't align to these companies goals. It's their right to do so and they exercise it. The important thing is: let's not pretend they are not suppressing speech, curtailing freedom of assembly only because it's their right to do so. They do curtail freedom of speech (on their premises), they do ban speech that is valid but inconvenient to their goals and objectives. As is their right. It is just that they lose the claim to be (as in the case of a particular service) "bastions of freedom of speech" when they do so.
icebraining 10y ago
What counts as means of publishing? Do comments on a blog? What about forum posts? If a bunch of trolls hijack HN, can they be banned? If so, how would you draw up that distinction into a law?
- bambax 10y ago
  I didn't say it would be easy. Illegal content (threats, etc.) isn't a problem: it can be moderated out / censored, and if someone's unhappy about it, they would sue, and if they're right they'd win. I'm not sure "trolling" can be defined with objectivity; contrarian opinions are what makes freedom of speech interesting. What's difficult is spam: of zero value, extremely undesirable, and yet not illegal. The way HN traditionally did this, was to "kill" comments without erasing them; one could still read dead comments if one wanted. My point is there should be some kind of an appeals process in those matters. The moderators can't also be the judges of last resort.
lumberjack 10y ago
It's not just that they don't have any obligation. The are private commercial entities. They have incentives to take sides and manipulate what they serve to their users as they please. I absolutely don't get why you trust them at all.
- bambax 10y ago
  ? I don't trust "them"; I rarely trust individuals, and absolutely never any corporation. Corporations are necessary evils that need to be strongly supervised and regulated, in my opinion.

vertex-four 10y ago

No, but I can certainly imagine a printing company refusing to print something they didn't like, or a TV/radio station refusing to air something it doesn't like. The post office doesn't have to mass-deliver pamphlets for you at less than the cost of posting a regular letter if it doesn't like them. One-to-one communication isn't the same as mass communication, and people have generally enjoyed a great deal of leeway when having private conversations vs mass media. Very little on Facebook is private - that's the point of it. The right to free speech, if literally nobody agrees with you enough to help distribute your media, protects nothing more than your right to stand in a busy city square with a megaphone. That has always been the case - it's not a new phenomenon with Facebook. Those with radical ideas have always been silenced, and still are on a regular basis.

legulere 10y ago

I think your analogy is flawed on several levels. Phones are a medium of direct communication, Facebook, Twitter and reddit are media of publishing, so more like a newspaper or a public stage. They're empowering and supporting people to spread their ideas. But with this you also have the responsibility to not support e.g. neonazis. This has nothing to do with free speech. Just like when you go to a publisher and they tell you they won't print your book. You can still print the book yourself or somewhere else and this is exactly the same situation with things on facebook, twitter or reddit (on reddit you can even just go to another subreddit with different moderators). So this is not a free speech issue, but an issue that websites like facebook twitter and reddit have lots of power that they could abuse. They actually don't look like they're abusing it, but are sometimes a bit overcautious in removing stuff that's not supposed to be endorsed.

icebraining 10y ago
The difference is that readers don't go to Random House offices to read. A service like Wordpress or Blogger can be considered a publisher, but FB et all are both publishing and distribution mediums.
hga 10y ago
But with this you also have the responsibility to not serve lunch to blacks in your whites only lunch counter. Fixed it for you, at least in putting it in historical context, if you're willing to entertain the concept that Facebook et. al. have reached public accommodation status (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations), for which as least as strong a case can be made as that they're an old fashioned media publisher, which is a stretch when their customers provide 99% of the content on these sites. And while it may have nothing to do with "freedom of speech" as those words of art are used in the US, it has everything to do with the more fundamental principle of freedom of expression. You may not see a problem today, but those of us on the right see our access to the public square, the "soap box", being systematically proscribed on these essential platforms, and we will not suffer that forever, one way or another.
- deleted 10y ago

lumberjack 10y ago

Well I guess I'm a bit of a cynic but if anything I find it concerning that people expect "free press" out of private entities like Facebook and Google.

Sir_Substance 10y ago

>I thought that the Internet was the greatest empowerment of free speech in history. It is, but facebook is not. The empowerment of the internet is that you can publish a website saying something and no one can stop you[1]. However, if you publish via facebook, you give an additional (and unregulated) party control over your publishing. Basically, you should stop doing that. Even if you're not willing to host your own services[2], there's a lot of benefit in spreading your publishing between multiple providers, preferably smaller ones, so that a decision from one person cannot muzzle you. [1] This is not quite true, a government order can get you disconnected from your ISP. However, removal of a DNS entry does not in fact stop you from publishing, and enormous tracts of the web are made up if sites that can only be accessed by IP address. [2] Which you totally should, especially for the easy stuff like file syncing

DanBC 10y ago

Facebook doesn't have common carrier status, and the US phone companies did. There are pros and cons to each situation, but it's probably good that Facebook is a private company and that they can ban who they like (so long as they're not doing it to discriminate against protected characteristics).