9 ms·

It's not a slippery slope at all. It's Facebook. The slope is made of rough grit sandpaper. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube et al. should go on outright banfests. T

It's not a slippery slope at all. It's Facebook. The slope is made of rough grit sandpaper. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube et al. should go on outright banfests. There is no free speech argument to be made. None. Zero. These aren't government enterprises and getting banned from these sites for any reason really shouldn't matter. Facebook already enforces some weird moral code where a nipple gets you instantly banned, but when it comes to politics somehow it's a "free speech" argument and they don't want to take sides. It's 100% bullshit. These companies need to grow up. If people don't like that they have been banned then they can start an alternative site or, you know, use the decentralized Internet the way it was designed. If we were talking about ICANN policing domains that would be a legitimate "slippery slope", but we aren't. The only thing they really stand to lose by banning blatant conspiracy theory whack jobs and divisive hate speech is some ad revenue associated with that stuff, most of which is predatory anyway. Nipples? Not acceptable, banned. Fair use of media owned by a large company? Copyright strike, banned. Divisive conspiracy theories that promote hate? Free Speech! Selling literally snake oil? Free speech! Americans LOVE to pretend like they are morally superior, but the moral code and values built into todays companies are completely bonkers. Free speech is constantly invoked when it doesn't even apply, and it's applied so inconsistently it doesn't even make sense. Mark Zuckerberg should travel to Nidavellir and have the Dwarf King Eitri forge him a ban hammer the likes of which the Facebook has never seen.

laretluval 8y ago
So if they go that way, and you get banned, would you be ok with that?
- untog 8y ago
  The implication in that is that the OP would be engaging in behaviour that warrants a ban, so at a guess their answer would be "my opinion wouldn't matter", which can probably be distilled down to "yes".
- themagician 8y ago
  Yes. ༼ つ ◕ ◕ ༽つ GIVE BAN ༼ つ ◕ ◕ ༽つ These are free websites on the internet that cater to the lowest common denominator of media we have today. Being banned is not a big deal.
nugget 8y ago
>The only thing they really stand to lose by banning blatant conspiracy theory whack jobs and divisive hate speech is some ad revenue associated with that stuff Facebook is at or near monopoly status and as such the largest risk to their business is regulation. That's why this is such a sensitive issue for them.
- themagician 8y ago
  No they aren't. Monopoly status for what? It's just a shitty website. Take a step back and think about what Facebook is. It's no different than the forums of old. It's the same recycled technology with a new interface. For a while you might have said that they were approaching some kind of weird monopoly status because you had to use FB to login to third party sites/services, but that didn't last long.
  - packet_nerd 8y ago
    There are developing countries where FB is so much a monopoly that huge percentages of people don't even know that anything else exists on the Internet. To them, FB is the Internet. But anyway, that's an argument for encouraging competition and computer literacy, not for or against free speech.
    - themagician 8y ago
      It's actually reversed. People in developing countries are actually more savvy in many ways, as they entered into the Internet during an era where there was no Facebook or Facebook wasn't the dominate player. It's really only in the US where people are so illiterate that FB is a primary destination. But that doesn't make it a monopoly.
      - e40 8y ago
        Not from what I've read. There are literally places in the developing world where FB fake news has caused the death of people. This example was from Asia. I don't remember the country, but it was news a few months ago.
wuliwong 8y ago
Just because there isn't a free speech argument doesn't mean a communication company would benefit by going on a politically driven "banfest". >Americans LOVE to pretend like they are morally superior, but the moral code and values built into todays companies are completely bonkers. Free speech is constantly invoked when it doesn't even apply, and it's applied so inconsistently it doesn't even make sense. ^^this doesn't make sense.
- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  It does to me. The US constitutional right to Free Speech only applies to government actions, not to private individuals or companies. To use someone else's analogy: if you come into my house and talk shit, I have every right to ask you to leave, and you don't have constitutional protection for that. Yet, "Free Speech" is constantly invoked when people are banned from privately-owned sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It doesn't even apply to these sites. Free Speech is also applied inconsistently. Pornography is protected Free Speech under the US Constitution. Yet Facebook's Nipple Ban is usually not even mentioned when people talk about Free Speech on Facebook. Their right to remove pornographic content from their site is not questioned, but their right to remove someone's hate-filled rant is. This is clearly inconsistent.
  - nailer 8y ago
    If you advertise your house as a wau for people to meet and communicate with their friends, then kick out all your conservative guests, then yes, you've done something morally wrong. Free speech laws don't stop this, it's your property , but they also don't make it right.
    - marcus_holmes 8y ago
      If someone came into my house and started insulting people based on the colour of their skin, I'd feel morally obliged to throw them out. Your morals are obviously very different from mine. That's OK, you can have all the racists in your place, and I will support your right to do so. But I expect you to support my right to throw them out of my place too...
bvc35 8y ago
Free speech in America isn't just valued as a legal right before the government, but as a general principle. Most people think that free speech in most situations (not just before the government, and with a few restrictions) benefit everyone.
- cm2012 8y ago
  All good communities practice some level of moderation, or else they just get worse and worse.
  - merpnderp 8y ago
    Moderation is usually applied as having people direct their free speech back at you, not by taking away your free speech. It is far superior to have bad ideas met with good ideas, than to have bad ideas circulate unopposed within unpopular groups.
    - cm2012 8y ago
      Not really. HN will ban you if you are unreasonable. The best subreddits (askhistorians, etc.) will instantly delete low quality posts. Reddit as a whole banning bad subreddits (fatpeoplehate, coontown) made reddit a better place for everyone, and the trash moved to voat which is barely active now. Most big sites will now ban you for for threatening or very hateful speech. Etc.
    - themagician 8y ago
      Free speech is not the issue. No one is taking away free speech by banning you on Twitter. Your free speech is taken away when something you say lands you in prison. Getting banned from a shitty private website doesn't violate your free speech rights in any way, full stop.
- sanderjd 8y ago
  Freedom of association is also an important general principle. For instance, I don't think many place any value whatsoever on the freedom of other people to speak in their own home. I certainly wouldn't let someone stay in my house while saying the kinds of things I regularly see on Facebook, and that's my right. I think this is quite an important property of our system, and I think most agree. As a private commercial enterprise, Facebook itself is, for the people who own it, much like my home; they are free to set whatever policy they like regarding what goes on there, as long as they aren't discriminating against certain specifically protected classes of people. It's shortly tricky, it's not unreasonable to argue that a platform the size of Facebook should be treated more like a public space than a private one. But I personally think the bar for overriding freedom of association should be extremely high, and I don't think Facebook is over it. Those who have been disallowed to associate with Facebook remain free to associate with other very similar platforms.
nilkn 8y ago
I think this is a more nuanced topic than you're giving it credit for. While free speech does not classically apply to corporate enterprises like Facebook, as society shifts into the digital world the nature of communication itself shifts as well. The 1700s and 1800s version of Twitter was standing in the street square, handing out pamphlets, and screaming your message. You were protected to say what you wanted to say via free speech. The 2018 version of that is online through tools like Twitter. By refusing to acknowledge this, we're actually experiencing a dramatic practical reduction in free speech rights without ever technically violating the Constitution. It's really the ultimate loophole to the ultimate problem. Want to limit free speech? Simply remold society so that communication patterns across the entire nation change and become controlled by private corporations. Done. A particularly dystopian and extreme imagining of this would involve the CEO of a company like Facebook running for President and controlling speech and news to an unprecedented extent in favor of his/her candidacy.
- themagician 8y ago
  It's really not. You aren't entitled to an audience. Such bullshit. Put whatever you want up on your own website. I can't walk into SirusXMs office and demand that they give me a channel so my voice can be heard. I'm not entitled to my own TV station. I really wish one of these companies would just do something like ban Trump from Twitter so we can let the courts just put an end to this discussion. Getting banned from Twitter has nothing—nothing—to do with free speech. Nothing. Zero.
  - nilkn 8y ago
    I appreciate your viewpoint, but this is largely not a response to anything in my post, just a restatement of your previous post.
    - themagician 8y ago
      It is, because your talking about Twitter as if it's somehow analogous to a town square, and that's bullshit. It's not a public space and you have no rights to it or on it.
polski-g 8y ago
> Facebook, Twitter, YouTube et al. should go on outright banfests. There is no free speech argument to be made. None. Zero Not true. These are CA corporations. The CA supreme court has already stated that businesses that hold themselves open to the public must allow lawful speech. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/447/74/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/447/74/
- themagician 8y ago
  Super narrow scope. Doesn't apply here. Read your own source. Smh.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  NB: That's SCOTUS, not SCOCA.
smelendez 8y ago
> Facebook already enforces some weird moral code where a nipple gets you instantly banned, but when it comes to politics somehow it's a "free speech" argument and they don't want to take sides. It's 100% bullshit. That just comes down to the bottom line. People are on Facebook at work, in the grocery checkout line, in the park while their kids play on the jungle gym. People tap Facebook on their phones when they have 30 seconds to kill. If there were the possibility of nudity popping up on their devices, they wouldn't feel comfortable using it in those settings and would see fewer FB ads.
shoguning 8y ago
Since ISP's are not government enterprises should they be able to ban users they don't like? Legally, maybe you're right, but socially I don't think the argument is as clear cut as you make it sound.
- themagician 8y ago
  I mean, that actually IS a good question. ISPs are pseudo government enterprises—that is, they become government enterprises when they need to be. It's really on a whole different level though. ISPs are access to infrastructure. Should ISPs be able to ban people? I'm not sure. It's a valid question though. I tend to think that they shouldn't, but I'm not sure it would be a violation of free speech if they did. Good question though mate. It's also worth nothing that they DO ban people. If you don't pay an ISP can ban you, outright, permanently.
- iamdave 8y ago
  Question about that, if it's something that takes us too far into the weeds I'll stuff it and save it for later in the interest of keeping us on topic: When people make the argument of-wrt suppression or censorship of speech "Legally no but socially/in the court of public opinion yes", I often want to fire back "But...are not our laws a distilled and concentrated output of what we value in social publics? If we start allowing exemptions and exceptions to that value system to get an outcome that takes away liberties in social publics, are we unwittingly creating the 'case' to erode those values in (the grander) legal establishment-given enough time?" (This might be a long winded argument of 'slipper slope', unsure. Someone call me out on this if so) Maybe it's a question of ethics versus law, or perhaps ethics in the context of buffers between person/individual and state/government?
  - shoguning 8y ago
    I think you're right. My suspicion is that if FB/TWTR go totally ban-happy, the social discussion will evolve into a legal one and move towards overt regulation a la utilities. EDIT: IANAL, but if these platforms start favoring one political group over others, it seems potentially illegal, as it could be considered in-kind political donations.
AmericanChopper 8y ago
>divisive hate speech All of the people who are so vocally anti-free speech always fall back to "hate speech", but there is literally no such thing. There is no robust definition of what "hate speech" is, and whenever it is invoked, it invariably turns into "whatever I disagree with". The truth is that "hate speech" is entirely in the eye of the beholder, it is exactly the same as "offensive speech". The listener/reader is the person who decides whether or not they perceive something to be hateful in exactly the same way as they perceive something to be offensive. You can come up with entirely contrived examples that most people will agree is hateful, but that's not what you're trying to stop. Saying that a country should have borders is considered hateful by many, saying that there are only two genders is considered very hateful by many, promoting national sovereignty or pride is considered hateful by many, and this is what you're talking about when you refer to "hate speech". The other premise that all free speech detractors completely fail to understand, is that free speech is not just a law, it is a foundational value of the nation. You can't dismiss free speech in any situation where the 1A doesn't provide protection, because people are often talking about values, not laws.

laretluval 8y ago

So if they go that way, and you get banned, would you be ok with that?

untog 8y ago
The implication in that is that the OP would be engaging in behaviour that warrants a ban, so at a guess their answer would be "my opinion wouldn't matter", which can probably be distilled down to "yes".
themagician 8y ago
Yes. ༼ つ ◕ ◕ ༽つ GIVE BAN ༼ つ ◕ ◕ ༽つ These are free websites on the internet that cater to the lowest common denominator of media we have today. Being banned is not a big deal.

nugget 8y ago

>The only thing they really stand to lose by banning blatant conspiracy theory whack jobs and divisive hate speech is some ad revenue associated with that stuff Facebook is at or near monopoly status and as such the largest risk to their business is regulation. That's why this is such a sensitive issue for them.

themagician 8y ago
No they aren't. Monopoly status for what? It's just a shitty website. Take a step back and think about what Facebook is. It's no different than the forums of old. It's the same recycled technology with a new interface. For a while you might have said that they were approaching some kind of weird monopoly status because you had to use FB to login to third party sites/services, but that didn't last long.
- packet_nerd 8y ago
  There are developing countries where FB is so much a monopoly that huge percentages of people don't even know that anything else exists on the Internet. To them, FB is the Internet. But anyway, that's an argument for encouraging competition and computer literacy, not for or against free speech.
  - themagician 8y ago
    It's actually reversed. People in developing countries are actually more savvy in many ways, as they entered into the Internet during an era where there was no Facebook or Facebook wasn't the dominate player. It's really only in the US where people are so illiterate that FB is a primary destination. But that doesn't make it a monopoly.
    - e40 8y ago
      Not from what I've read. There are literally places in the developing world where FB fake news has caused the death of people. This example was from Asia. I don't remember the country, but it was news a few months ago.

wuliwong 8y ago

Just because there isn't a free speech argument doesn't mean a communication company would benefit by going on a politically driven "banfest". >Americans LOVE to pretend like they are morally superior, but the moral code and values built into todays companies are completely bonkers. Free speech is constantly invoked when it doesn't even apply, and it's applied so inconsistently it doesn't even make sense. ^^this doesn't make sense.

marcus_holmes 8y ago
It does to me. The US constitutional right to Free Speech only applies to government actions, not to private individuals or companies. To use someone else's analogy: if you come into my house and talk shit, I have every right to ask you to leave, and you don't have constitutional protection for that. Yet, "Free Speech" is constantly invoked when people are banned from privately-owned sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It doesn't even apply to these sites. Free Speech is also applied inconsistently. Pornography is protected Free Speech under the US Constitution. Yet Facebook's Nipple Ban is usually not even mentioned when people talk about Free Speech on Facebook. Their right to remove pornographic content from their site is not questioned, but their right to remove someone's hate-filled rant is. This is clearly inconsistent.
- nailer 8y ago
  If you advertise your house as a wau for people to meet and communicate with their friends, then kick out all your conservative guests, then yes, you've done something morally wrong. Free speech laws don't stop this, it's your property , but they also don't make it right.
  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
    If someone came into my house and started insulting people based on the colour of their skin, I'd feel morally obliged to throw them out. Your morals are obviously very different from mine. That's OK, you can have all the racists in your place, and I will support your right to do so. But I expect you to support my right to throw them out of my place too...

bvc35 8y ago

Free speech in America isn't just valued as a legal right before the government, but as a general principle. Most people think that free speech in most situations (not just before the government, and with a few restrictions) benefit everyone.

cm2012 8y ago
All good communities practice some level of moderation, or else they just get worse and worse.
- merpnderp 8y ago
  Moderation is usually applied as having people direct their free speech back at you, not by taking away your free speech. It is far superior to have bad ideas met with good ideas, than to have bad ideas circulate unopposed within unpopular groups.
  - cm2012 8y ago
    Not really. HN will ban you if you are unreasonable. The best subreddits (askhistorians, etc.) will instantly delete low quality posts. Reddit as a whole banning bad subreddits (fatpeoplehate, coontown) made reddit a better place for everyone, and the trash moved to voat which is barely active now. Most big sites will now ban you for for threatening or very hateful speech. Etc.
  - themagician 8y ago
    Free speech is not the issue. No one is taking away free speech by banning you on Twitter. Your free speech is taken away when something you say lands you in prison. Getting banned from a shitty private website doesn't violate your free speech rights in any way, full stop.
sanderjd 8y ago
Freedom of association is also an important general principle. For instance, I don't think many place any value whatsoever on the freedom of other people to speak in their own home. I certainly wouldn't let someone stay in my house while saying the kinds of things I regularly see on Facebook, and that's my right. I think this is quite an important property of our system, and I think most agree. As a private commercial enterprise, Facebook itself is, for the people who own it, much like my home; they are free to set whatever policy they like regarding what goes on there, as long as they aren't discriminating against certain specifically protected classes of people. It's shortly tricky, it's not unreasonable to argue that a platform the size of Facebook should be treated more like a public space than a private one. But I personally think the bar for overriding freedom of association should be extremely high, and I don't think Facebook is over it. Those who have been disallowed to associate with Facebook remain free to associate with other very similar platforms.

nilkn 8y ago

I think this is a more nuanced topic than you're giving it credit for. While free speech does not classically apply to corporate enterprises like Facebook, as society shifts into the digital world the nature of communication itself shifts as well. The 1700s and 1800s version of Twitter was standing in the street square, handing out pamphlets, and screaming your message. You were protected to say what you wanted to say via free speech. The 2018 version of that is online through tools like Twitter. By refusing to acknowledge this, we're actually experiencing a dramatic practical reduction in free speech rights without ever technically violating the Constitution. It's really the ultimate loophole to the ultimate problem. Want to limit free speech? Simply remold society so that communication patterns across the entire nation change and become controlled by private corporations. Done. A particularly dystopian and extreme imagining of this would involve the CEO of a company like Facebook running for President and controlling speech and news to an unprecedented extent in favor of his/her candidacy.

themagician 8y ago
It's really not. You aren't entitled to an audience. Such bullshit. Put whatever you want up on your own website. I can't walk into SirusXMs office and demand that they give me a channel so my voice can be heard. I'm not entitled to my own TV station. I really wish one of these companies would just do something like ban Trump from Twitter so we can let the courts just put an end to this discussion. Getting banned from Twitter has nothing—nothing—to do with free speech. Nothing. Zero.
- nilkn 8y ago
  I appreciate your viewpoint, but this is largely not a response to anything in my post, just a restatement of your previous post.
  - themagician 8y ago
    It is, because your talking about Twitter as if it's somehow analogous to a town square, and that's bullshit. It's not a public space and you have no rights to it or on it.

polski-g 8y ago

> Facebook, Twitter, YouTube et al. should go on outright banfests. There is no free speech argument to be made. None. Zero Not true. These are CA corporations. The CA supreme court has already stated that businesses that hold themselves open to the public must allow lawful speech. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/447/74/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/447/74/

themagician 8y ago
Super narrow scope. Doesn't apply here. Read your own source. Smh.
dredmorbius 8y ago
NB: That's SCOTUS, not SCOCA.

smelendez 8y ago

> Facebook already enforces some weird moral code where a nipple gets you instantly banned, but when it comes to politics somehow it's a "free speech" argument and they don't want to take sides. It's 100% bullshit. That just comes down to the bottom line. People are on Facebook at work, in the grocery checkout line, in the park while their kids play on the jungle gym. People tap Facebook on their phones when they have 30 seconds to kill. If there were the possibility of nudity popping up on their devices, they wouldn't feel comfortable using it in those settings and would see fewer FB ads.

shoguning 8y ago

Since ISP's are not government enterprises should they be able to ban users they don't like? Legally, maybe you're right, but socially I don't think the argument is as clear cut as you make it sound.

themagician 8y ago
I mean, that actually IS a good question. ISPs are pseudo government enterprises—that is, they become government enterprises when they need to be. It's really on a whole different level though. ISPs are access to infrastructure. Should ISPs be able to ban people? I'm not sure. It's a valid question though. I tend to think that they shouldn't, but I'm not sure it would be a violation of free speech if they did. Good question though mate. It's also worth nothing that they DO ban people. If you don't pay an ISP can ban you, outright, permanently.
iamdave 8y ago
Question about that, if it's something that takes us too far into the weeds I'll stuff it and save it for later in the interest of keeping us on topic: When people make the argument of-wrt suppression or censorship of speech "Legally no but socially/in the court of public opinion yes", I often want to fire back "But...are not our laws a distilled and concentrated output of what we value in social publics? If we start allowing exemptions and exceptions to that value system to get an outcome that takes away liberties in social publics, are we unwittingly creating the 'case' to erode those values in (the grander) legal establishment-given enough time?" (This might be a long winded argument of 'slipper slope', unsure. Someone call me out on this if so) Maybe it's a question of ethics versus law, or perhaps ethics in the context of buffers between person/individual and state/government?
- shoguning 8y ago
  I think you're right. My suspicion is that if FB/TWTR go totally ban-happy, the social discussion will evolve into a legal one and move towards overt regulation a la utilities. EDIT: IANAL, but if these platforms start favoring one political group over others, it seems potentially illegal, as it could be considered in-kind political donations.

AmericanChopper 8y ago

>divisive hate speech All of the people who are so vocally anti-free speech always fall back to "hate speech", but there is literally no such thing. There is no robust definition of what "hate speech" is, and whenever it is invoked, it invariably turns into "whatever I disagree with". The truth is that "hate speech" is entirely in the eye of the beholder, it is exactly the same as "offensive speech". The listener/reader is the person who decides whether or not they perceive something to be hateful in exactly the same way as they perceive something to be offensive. You can come up with entirely contrived examples that most people will agree is hateful, but that's not what you're trying to stop. Saying that a country should have borders is considered hateful by many, saying that there are only two genders is considered very hateful by many, promoting national sovereignty or pride is considered hateful by many, and this is what you're talking about when you refer to "hate speech". The other premise that all free speech detractors completely fail to understand, is that free speech is not just a law, it is a foundational value of the nation. You can't dismiss free speech in any situation where the 1A doesn't provide protection, because people are often talking about values, not laws.