4 ms·

I think it's important to remember the context in which the USA created its laws about free speech. In that time, it was your right to buy a printing press, pap

by fiter 10y ago

I think it's important to remember the context in which the USA created its laws about free speech. In that time, it was your right to buy a printing press, paper, ink, movable type, and print your own pamphlets. The government was not to stop you from doing that. The government was not going to force you to print your neighbors pamphlets. Your neighbor is Milo. Your printing press is Twitter.

cookiecaper 10y ago
It's much different now. It's a lot easier to get access to a printing press than to something equivalent to Twitter. Everyone is mutually addressable in meatspace. If you're in the same space, and someone else talks, you have no choice but to hear it or leave the premises (note that here, the people who don't like the speech must vacate, not the people speaking unpopular things). There's a great equalizing power in that. In ye olden tyme, you could walk up to your neighbor and give him a copy of your paper. He could throw it away or refuse to talk to you, but there was no [legal] way to totally disappear/silence you. As for corporations, if they didn't like you, all they could do is print their own counter-arguments. Now the corporate entity can effectively disappear you and cut you off not only from the larger world, but your personal social graph. This is particularly insidious when it comes to the practice of shadowbanning (and I'm speaking in general -- not trying to start a debate as to whether Twitter engages in this or not).
- sanderjd 10y ago
  It is actually much much much easier to start something like Twitter than it ever was to buy your own printing press, run it, and distribute its pamphlets. The analogy is whether or not it was easier to get access to the Philadelphia Gazette's printing press (or whoever was big back then), or to Twitter. Clearly, it's still easier to get access to Twitter, but similarly to the Gazette, they can decide not to print and distribute your pamphlet. And if they did agree to print your diatribe against the President of the day under an anonymous byline, they sure as hell would have claimed the right to not release your name to the government.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    I know that's the analogy people make, but it doesn't hold up. Newspapers were hawked by criers in the street, or sold at stands directly adjacent to competing newspapers, or delivered to your doorstep where the other guy could place his competing paper right next to it. All the conduct was in the real, person-to-person world where every physically able person has the same access. That access is completely non-existent in cyberspace; the user pulls only what he wishes to receive. In the physical world, the user receives pushes from everything in his environment. Twitter is not a publication, but a piece of telecom infrastructure. People do not go to Twitter to see what Twitter thinks. They go to Twitter because they believe Twitter will successfully carry the communication from the people they trust and want to listen to. Is it equally OK for the phone company to kick you off and take your phone number because they didn't like what you said through "their" telephone infrastructure? What about your ISP kicking you off because they don't like what you're posting over "their" pipes? If you don't like it, you can go to another company, or heck, even start your own, right? Not only were newspapers publications with a monolithic, easily attributable point of view, but newspapers did not have circulation that reached into the billions either (and if one newspaper did get that large, they'd have been broken up in antitrust). Now, companies can alter or silence someone else's speech, and remove the entire audience, because ironically, the audience no longer needs to go into the real, physical world that exists behind the keyboard to find out what's happening. They implicitly trust these platforms to present the information they request. There are many big differences between cyberspace and physical space. We've made a lot of short-sighted policy by pretending there's a 1:1 mapping. Let's not keep that habit up.
    - fiter 10y ago
      You're proposing a lot of regulation that I'm personally not interested in. And why is it that Twitter has to carry that regulatory burden? At what point does a company/website become telecom infrastructure? One of the issues with ISPs and other utilities is that they have been given local monopoly in exchange for regulation, so I would not say they are similar to Twitter. This is also why your statement "you can go to another company, or heck, even start your own, right?" is supposed to cut. You're also not giving very much credit to the audience you speak of. The audience has always had to ensure their own information sources are good.
morgante 10y ago
Nothing stops you from making your own website now and distributing it. Indeed, there are entire portions of the internet devoted to giving people like Milo a platform.
tshaddox 10y ago
No, Twitter is your neighbor's printing press. Your neighbor doesn't have to let you use it.
- colanderman 10y ago
  That's what the GP said, just the other way around.
fiter 10y ago
I can't edit my post now, but the original intent was to point out that Twitter does not have to publish Milo according to my understanding of the USA free speech laws and how they would analogously be applied. For some reason, it seems like most people interpreted this the other way around.

by fiter 10y ago

cookiecaper 10y ago

It's much different now. It's a lot easier to get access to a printing press than to something equivalent to Twitter. Everyone is mutually addressable in meatspace. If you're in the same space, and someone else talks, you have no choice but to hear it or leave the premises (note that here, the people who don't like the speech must vacate, not the people speaking unpopular things). There's a great equalizing power in that. In ye olden tyme, you could walk up to your neighbor and give him a copy of your paper. He could throw it away or refuse to talk to you, but there was no [legal] way to totally disappear/silence you. As for corporations, if they didn't like you, all they could do is print their own counter-arguments. Now the corporate entity can effectively disappear you and cut you off not only from the larger world, but your personal social graph. This is particularly insidious when it comes to the practice of shadowbanning (and I'm speaking in general -- not trying to start a debate as to whether Twitter engages in this or not).

sanderjd 10y ago
It is actually much much much easier to start something like Twitter than it ever was to buy your own printing press, run it, and distribute its pamphlets. The analogy is whether or not it was easier to get access to the Philadelphia Gazette's printing press (or whoever was big back then), or to Twitter. Clearly, it's still easier to get access to Twitter, but similarly to the Gazette, they can decide not to print and distribute your pamphlet. And if they did agree to print your diatribe against the President of the day under an anonymous byline, they sure as hell would have claimed the right to not release your name to the government.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  I know that's the analogy people make, but it doesn't hold up. Newspapers were hawked by criers in the street, or sold at stands directly adjacent to competing newspapers, or delivered to your doorstep where the other guy could place his competing paper right next to it. All the conduct was in the real, person-to-person world where every physically able person has the same access. That access is completely non-existent in cyberspace; the user pulls only what he wishes to receive. In the physical world, the user receives pushes from everything in his environment. Twitter is not a publication, but a piece of telecom infrastructure. People do not go to Twitter to see what Twitter thinks. They go to Twitter because they believe Twitter will successfully carry the communication from the people they trust and want to listen to. Is it equally OK for the phone company to kick you off and take your phone number because they didn't like what you said through "their" telephone infrastructure? What about your ISP kicking you off because they don't like what you're posting over "their" pipes? If you don't like it, you can go to another company, or heck, even start your own, right? Not only were newspapers publications with a monolithic, easily attributable point of view, but newspapers did not have circulation that reached into the billions either (and if one newspaper did get that large, they'd have been broken up in antitrust). Now, companies can alter or silence someone else's speech, and remove the entire audience, because ironically, the audience no longer needs to go into the real, physical world that exists behind the keyboard to find out what's happening. They implicitly trust these platforms to present the information they request. There are many big differences between cyberspace and physical space. We've made a lot of short-sighted policy by pretending there's a 1:1 mapping. Let's not keep that habit up.
  - fiter 10y ago
    You're proposing a lot of regulation that I'm personally not interested in. And why is it that Twitter has to carry that regulatory burden? At what point does a company/website become telecom infrastructure? One of the issues with ISPs and other utilities is that they have been given local monopoly in exchange for regulation, so I would not say they are similar to Twitter. This is also why your statement "you can go to another company, or heck, even start your own, right?" is supposed to cut. You're also not giving very much credit to the audience you speak of. The audience has always had to ensure their own information sources are good.

morgante 10y ago

Nothing stops you from making your own website now and distributing it. Indeed, there are entire portions of the internet devoted to giving people like Milo a platform.

tshaddox 10y ago

No, Twitter is your neighbor's printing press. Your neighbor doesn't have to let you use it.

colanderman 10y ago
That's what the GP said, just the other way around.

fiter 10y ago

I can't edit my post now, but the original intent was to point out that Twitter does not have to publish Milo according to my understanding of the USA free speech laws and how they would analogously be applied. For some reason, it seems like most people interpreted this the other way around.