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> is dangerously close to becoming a regulated, or more regulated, industry You're absolutely right. And this is an easy, almost childishly obvious end-around
by jMyles 9y ago
> is dangerously close to becoming a regulated, or more regulated, industry
You're absolutely right.
And this is an easy, almost childishly obvious end-around to get at free speech. If speech is "political speech," then it is subject regulation suite A. If it is "advertising", then it is subject to regulation suite B. If it is "legal or medical advice," on and on.
Until there are no spaces left between the suites, and all speech is regulated.
- pjc50 9y agoNeither Facebook nor Google are ""pure"" free speech zones already, or ever were, and both already have categories of advert that you're not allowed.
- chillingeffect 9y agoYet they are digital commons with near monopolies. Should IRL streets be the only place where pure free speech is allowed? Should the entire internet be a purely corporate space with no constitutional rights permitted, only private access? If we are advised to avoid their near monopolies, should we simply wait for another corporate giant to take their place? In order to exercise our rights of free speech, must we erect our own commercial entities? If so, in what way is the government we're supporting working for us?
- pjc50 9y agoThe constitutional right is country-specific and also limited. You're not allowed to publish fraudulent stock prospectuses offline, even in America.
- jimjimjim 9y agoGood example. The venn diagram between the free-speech-or-death people and the market-will-decide people is often very overlapped but your example is a concrete existing example where you COULD publish a false prospectus as an expression of your free speech but you would find yourself very quickly more poor and more incarcerated.
- chillingeffect 9y agoBut in what way is banning all cryptocurrency-related advertising equivalent to publishing false prospectuses? It's not. There are infinite legitimate uses of advertising w/r/t cryptocurrency. I agree we should disallow and punish publishing false prospectuses, but I disagree that cryptocurrency advertising should be completely banned from google. I think it's an overreach of monopolistic power. As a corporate entity, google has too much power to choose what competing businesses succeed, and social progress spreads. I don't even own or have any interest but passing in cryptocurrency, but I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to make their businesses, subject of course to financial regulations.
- chillingeffect 9y agoI appreciate your adhering to the letter of the law, but I'm clearly speaking about ideals. In most democracies, laws are not the final world. We have the ability to change the laws based on our ideals as life evolves. At one time, we were quite free in many countries, but large corporations have put strangleholds on free speech, a fact so well-documented I'm not compelled to source it here. W/r/t your non-sequitor on fradulent stock prospectuses, that's moving the goalposts quite a bit from cryptocurrency advertising. It's so far afield, I'm struggling to understand why you included it in this discussion, but out of respect for you, I'm attempting to connect it to the previous ideas about cryptocurrency offerings. It seems you're implying cryptocurrency advertising is, by definition, fraud? Is that the case? Do you care to elucidate? I posted my open questions because we should be thinking about what we want for societies around the world, not merely conforming to legal precedents set by corporate entities.
- jMyles 9y agoOh, totally. But I was making a different point: I was talking about impending regulations (per GP), not about the speech permissiveness of private platforms.