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Ask HN: Should Alex Jones or James Gunn be suppressed, free speech?

5 points by gamechangr 8y ago

gamechangr 8y ago
Does it worry anyone that more and more people are okay with having an institution suppress an opposing view? Governments wanting to suppress opposing views is normal. Citizens asking for others to be silenced is now becoming the new norm. Who gets to decide?
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  Citizens asking for others to be silenced certainly isn't new. The demand for blasphemy laws is generally bottom-up, not top-down. (Though there is a top-down equivalent, sedition or lèse-majesté laws.)
- krapp 8y ago
  In a democracy, governments wanting to suppress opposing views is the result of citizens asking for others to be silenced and voting in the means to silence them. What you're worried about is the second edge of the double edged sword that is free speech - the right to express a view on the one side, and the right to oppose that view on the other.
mhkool 8y ago
The platforms decide and the question is if that is good. If the platforms have a monopoly, and silence parties at will, it is bad for democracy. I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence. I have seen that Youtube took away the channel of Mika Adams, aka the Health Ranger, taken down. Youtube not responding to any attempt of conversation. Youtube putting the channel 3 weeks later back but with 50% of the followers "removed". We can only guess what Youtube was thinking but there should be a law against abusing the platform rules to ban somebody, even if that person did not break any platform rule. Removing a channel from Youtube has such a deep impact that one must be able, within reason, to be able to resolve issues. I am not a big fan of Alex Jones and think that most of the times he talks BS and some of the times he is probably right. I see no good reason to ban him.
- krapp 8y ago
  >I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence. What counts as "major influence?" Major relative to what, and what sort of influence? Would Hacker News have enough of an influence on SV culture to warrant government intervention? >Removing a channel from Youtube has such a deep impact that one must be able, within reason, to be able to resolve issues. I agree, but I feel like that's more of a market issue than one that requires regulation. Google's 'monopoly' isn't being enforced by the government, so people can leave to other platforms if they're unsatisfied with Google's arbitrary and opaque methods... and they are. If enough people like Alex Jones need a platform, someone will provide it, either out of ideological solidarity or capitalist opportunity. And I think that's a good enough solution.
- greenyoda 8y ago
  > "I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence." Giving the government the power to regulate speech on privately owned media is very dangerous, and is precisely what the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press were designed to prevent. If the government can regulate who YouTube or Facebook or Twitter must allow to post on their sites, what's to stop them from telling the New York Times what they have to print on their front page? (The Times also fits your description of a platform with major influence. Should they be required to publish an article that I wrote? Or that the President wrote?) I'm much more scared of the government exercising control over speech than corporations, since the government has much more power (they can put people in prison, etc.).
jstewartmobile 8y ago
Private censorship by semi-monopolies is a sticky situation. Even so, it's better than the way things were. Pre-internet, it was network television, local newspaper, or bust. Those platforms make facebook and youtube look like free speech fantasy-lands. As for the actual question, at least Alex Jones still has his own website... until cloudflare decides to block him. That's what really sucks about the whole thing; since we refuse to police the internet with civil law, we have unelected and unaccountable private entities policing it instead. With a judge and a jury, the wheels may have turned slowly, but at least there was a chance to put the case forward. Now all of the rights are firmly on the side of the service provider, and all the rest of us can do is squeal loudly enough to where--hopefully--one of the wizards behind the algorithm is forced to take action.

5 points by gamechangr 8y ago

Does it worry anyone that more and more people are okay with having an institution suppress an opposing view? Governments wanting to suppress opposing views is normal. Citizens asking for others to be silenced is now becoming the new norm. Who gets to decide?

thaumasiotes 8y ago
Citizens asking for others to be silenced certainly isn't new. The demand for blasphemy laws is generally bottom-up, not top-down. (Though there is a top-down equivalent, sedition or lèse-majesté laws.)
krapp 8y ago
In a democracy, governments wanting to suppress opposing views is the result of citizens asking for others to be silenced and voting in the means to silence them. What you're worried about is the second edge of the double edged sword that is free speech - the right to express a view on the one side, and the right to oppose that view on the other.

mhkool 8y ago

The platforms decide and the question is if that is good. If the platforms have a monopoly, and silence parties at will, it is bad for democracy. I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence. I have seen that Youtube took away the channel of Mika Adams, aka the Health Ranger, taken down. Youtube not responding to any attempt of conversation. Youtube putting the channel 3 weeks later back but with 50% of the followers "removed". We can only guess what Youtube was thinking but there should be a law against abusing the platform rules to ban somebody, even if that person did not break any platform rule. Removing a channel from Youtube has such a deep impact that one must be able, within reason, to be able to resolve issues. I am not a big fan of Alex Jones and think that most of the times he talks BS and some of the times he is probably right. I see no good reason to ban him.

krapp 8y ago
>I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence. What counts as "major influence?" Major relative to what, and what sort of influence? Would Hacker News have enough of an influence on SV culture to warrant government intervention? >Removing a channel from Youtube has such a deep impact that one must be able, within reason, to be able to resolve issues. I agree, but I feel like that's more of a market issue than one that requires regulation. Google's 'monopoly' isn't being enforced by the government, so people can leave to other platforms if they're unsatisfied with Google's arbitrary and opaque methods... and they are. If enough people like Alex Jones need a platform, someone will provide it, either out of ideological solidarity or capitalist opportunity. And I think that's a good enough solution.
greenyoda 8y ago
> "I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence." Giving the government the power to regulate speech on privately owned media is very dangerous, and is precisely what the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press were designed to prevent. If the government can regulate who YouTube or Facebook or Twitter must allow to post on their sites, what's to stop them from telling the New York Times what they have to print on their front page? (The Times also fits your description of a platform with major influence. Should they be required to publish an article that I wrote? Or that the President wrote?) I'm much more scared of the government exercising control over speech than corporations, since the government has much more power (they can put people in prison, etc.).

jstewartmobile 8y ago

Private censorship by semi-monopolies is a sticky situation. Even so, it's better than the way things were. Pre-internet, it was network television, local newspaper, or bust. Those platforms make facebook and youtube look like free speech fantasy-lands. As for the actual question, at least Alex Jones still has his own website... until cloudflare decides to block him. That's what really sucks about the whole thing; since we refuse to police the internet with civil law, we have unelected and unaccountable private entities policing it instead. With a judge and a jury, the wheels may have turned slowly, but at least there was a chance to put the case forward. Now all of the rights are firmly on the side of the service provider, and all the rest of us can do is squeal loudly enough to where--hopefully--one of the wizards behind the algorithm is forced to take action.