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This is a good article that explores many of the angles involved. Deplatforming is a dangerous step for a free society, especially when so much power is accumu

This is a good article that explores many of the angles involved. Deplatforming is a dangerous step for a free society, especially when so much power is accumulated in a few platforms* The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts and risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. These companies should not act as a moral police and should not impose their own personal governance above what is minimally required by the law. Nor should they rely on the judgment of an angry mob to make decisions. Case and point, take a look at Medium blocking Gab, as referenced in this article. Gab's _statement about the shooting_ is being blocked? That is ridiculous, and unacceptable. And we should not patronize such businesses. * Spare me the tired arguments that these private companies have a right to not serve customers at will. That seems like self-serving cherry-picking, when in other situations the same folks would be against granting freedom of association.

patrickmay 8y ago
> Spare me the tired arguments that these private companies have a right to not serve customers at will. That seems like self-serving cherry-picking, when in other situations the same folks would be against granting freedom of association. Some people's hypocrisy doesn't undermine the core principle of freedom of association. The more abusive the big players become, the more incentive there is for people to use alternatives. Getting the government involved will slow that process and, inevitably, have unforeseen negative consequences. > And we should not patronize such businesses. I agree, and that is the best solution.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  > Spare me the tired arguments that these private companies have a right to not serve customers at will. Some people's hypocrisy doesn't undermine the core principle of freedom of association. There is a lawsuit where a mining company owned an entire town, including the roads. A Jehova's witness won a lawsuit allowing them to distribute pamphlets there on the basis of free speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc In any case, freedom of association shouldn't apply to online platforms. The average person isn't possessed by the illusion that any YouTuber's opinion is necessarily ratified by YouTube. If you don't want to hear someone's opinion nor associate with them, then you unfriend/block/unsubscribe. On the other hand, freedom of speech is very relevant from a practical standpoint.
  - sanderjd 8y ago
    If I start a company that allows users to upload content over the internet, is it your contention that I should not be within my rights to control what is stored and who is allowed to use my services?
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      You wind up in a monopoly, or a near-monopoly position, and you can practically suppress the free speech of people, then yes. There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehova's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that town and distribute her pamphlets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc Originally, it was widely recognized by US jurisprudence, though property rights and freedom of association are important, the First Amendment was even more important.
      - geeostation 8y ago
        why is this downvoted? seems very good counterpoint to private companies can do whatever they want. The reality of the free speech online is that US constitution comes stapled with a "Terms of Service" by tech oligopoly
        sanderjd 8y ago
        I see a tag that says "dupe" on the comment, so maybe that's why. I did see that anecdote about the company town elsewhere in the thread.
  - PeterisP 8y ago
    For pretty much every online community starting from the smallest web forums, you need an ability to remove unwanted content and people from that platform. Even platforms for very free, unrestricted discussion need to fight commercial spam and simple vandalism. The ability to have a community of group A for topics that interest group A requires effective moderation, i.e. the ability to remove unwanted topics and people from that forum, blocking them before the majority of the group have had to encounter that unwanted content, otherwise you have a very, very poor experience full of spam that kills the forum, and that is very relevant from a practical standpoint. For some of that content the proper answer is "go have your community somewhere else"; for other content (e.g. penis enlargement spam and people who post it) there probably is no community that wants them, and for that freedom of speech consists of being able to freely speak on a soapbox somewhere where all the 0 people who want to hear you can do it.
roenxi 8y ago
> has similar impacts and risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law We can't really compare them to the government until they have a standing army. That said, pure scale does matter. There will debate over whether powerful organisations are currently benign or hostile, but there is no doubt whatsoever that they are a mighty force. If Google or Facebook ever decides to seriously wake up politically, China's internet strategies will start looking very sensible. I don't agree with them either though.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > We can't really compare them to the government until they have a standing army. While I disagree that the firms in question have government-like comprehensive power, even without their own army, a monopoly or coordinating oligopoly able to lock out new participants on essential communication services would have such power, and be a de facto part of the government, even if they lacked formal command relationship over the armed forces of the host state.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehovah's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that town and distribute her pamphlets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc Originally, it was widely recognized by US jurisprudence, though property rights and freedom of association are important, the First Amendment was even more important.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks And when a single company has similar control over the internet, even for a particular group of people such that they are otherwise unreachable (as AT&T once did nationalky over telephone communications), Marsh v. Alabama might be relevant (It might not, since active relaying is not the same of not denying access to property, and is itself an issue of the first amendment rights of the party who would be compelled to relay the speech.) That's not the case now, and the Marsh v. Alabama doctrine does not compel internet companies to relay content they don't want to, see Cyber Promotions v. America Online. > Originally, it was widely recognized by US jurisprudence, though property rights and freedom of association are important, the First Amendment was even more important. The issue with regard to relaying is neither a free association nor a property issue, but a free speech/press issue—whether the state can compel a party to actively participate in relaying ideas that they do not wish to participate in.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Deplatforming is a dangerous step for a free society, Deplatforming is simply the a natural consequence of the operation of the marketplace of ideas, a central necessity for a free society. If ideas don't have to compete for the privilege of access to resource to relay them, there is no marketplace of ideas, and society drowns in noise. > The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts and risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. It's arguable that the concentration of these organizations is too great as private businesses and they should either be broken up or regulated as monopolies with common carrier style neutrality and government price, access, and service regulations. But unless you are going to advocate that—and strangely those who selectively dislike deplatforming when it targets right-wing extremists never do, and in fact often oppose sich government intervention universally and support explicit legal protection for denial of generally-offered services based on religious disagreement, especially when the actor so doing is a member of the dominant religious community—the idea that businesses cannot exercise their right to free speech, free press, and free association to choose not to participate in relaying certain views is incoherent.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Deplatforming is simply the a natural consequence of the operation of the marketplace of ideas That's just as silly as if someone had said, "Certain people losing their 1st Amendment rights is simply the natural consequence of the operation of the marketplace of ideas." It's nonsense, because once you let people start silencing others, there is no more free marketplace of ideas. That's pretty much like some Victorian gentleman telling himself that he's won it over those peasants over there because of his superior breeding. In the case of Facebook and Google having the practical ability to censor, it's not because they won the marketplace of ideas. It's because they're the "Equity Lords" that got there first and who hold on through network effects. There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehova's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that town and distribute her pamphlets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc Originally, it was widely recognized by US jurisprudence, though property rights and freedom of association are important, the First Amendment was even more important. It's not at all foreign to US legal tradition for the government to tell private companies to let others use their facilities in the interest of free speech. When people make that argument, they do so from ignorance.
uabstraction 8y ago
> Deplatforming is a dangerous step for a free society, especially when so much power is accumulated in a few platforms I disagree here. Communities like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc, have grown to such enormous scales, that their eventual fracture is inevitable. Whether it takes the form of griefers getting the boot, or communities leaving on their own accord, the root problem is the same. You simply can't put a billion people together in a box without any stronger identity or culture tying them together. Think of how things work in the natural world. We have universities, libraries, coffee shops, pubs, clubs, offices, stores, restaurants, museums, parks, playgrounds, fairs, festivals. Each social setting has its own culture, its own rules, its own priorities. If you take the riffraff from the pub and inject them into the library, you're going to have a bad time. If you start club dancing on the HR lady at the office, you're going to have a bad time. The problem with the current crop of social media is that they are meant to be everything for everyone. We mash hundreds of different communities that have nothing to do with each other into the same platforms like square pegs into round holes. Engagement and user count are the ONLY thing the companies care about - but those KPIs aren't what drive healthy communities. The future of the web is going to be fractured and federated. The pains being experienced by the big players right now are the obvious outcome of trying to apply the same set of standards and rules to thousands of different sets of people. If there is no set of rules you can make to please everyone, the answer is simple: it is time to split.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  If you take the riffraff from the pub and inject them into the library, you're going to have a bad time. According to Kevin Creehan, his grandson, Irish fiddler Junior Creehan was always amazed that Irish Traditional music became a thing for pubs. To him, it had started out as thoughtful people gathered around in their kitchens playing music together. I can attest that a trad session can be a contemplative and even a bit trance-like.

patrickmay 8y ago

> Spare me the tired arguments that these private companies have a right to not serve customers at will. That seems like self-serving cherry-picking, when in other situations the same folks would be against granting freedom of association. Some people's hypocrisy doesn't undermine the core principle of freedom of association. The more abusive the big players become, the more incentive there is for people to use alternatives. Getting the government involved will slow that process and, inevitably, have unforeseen negative consequences. > And we should not patronize such businesses. I agree, and that is the best solution.

stcredzero 8y ago
> Spare me the tired arguments that these private companies have a right to not serve customers at will. Some people's hypocrisy doesn't undermine the core principle of freedom of association. There is a lawsuit where a mining company owned an entire town, including the roads. A Jehova's witness won a lawsuit allowing them to distribute pamphlets there on the basis of free speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc In any case, freedom of association shouldn't apply to online platforms. The average person isn't possessed by the illusion that any YouTuber's opinion is necessarily ratified by YouTube. If you don't want to hear someone's opinion nor associate with them, then you unfriend/block/unsubscribe. On the other hand, freedom of speech is very relevant from a practical standpoint.
- sanderjd 8y ago
  If I start a company that allows users to upload content over the internet, is it your contention that I should not be within my rights to control what is stored and who is allowed to use my services?
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    You wind up in a monopoly, or a near-monopoly position, and you can practically suppress the free speech of people, then yes. There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehova's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that town and distribute her pamphlets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc Originally, it was widely recognized by US jurisprudence, though property rights and freedom of association are important, the First Amendment was even more important.
    - geeostation 8y ago
      why is this downvoted? seems very good counterpoint to private companies can do whatever they want. The reality of the free speech online is that US constitution comes stapled with a "Terms of Service" by tech oligopoly
      - sanderjd 8y ago
        I see a tag that says "dupe" on the comment, so maybe that's why. I did see that anecdote about the company town elsewhere in the thread.
- PeterisP 8y ago
  For pretty much every online community starting from the smallest web forums, you need an ability to remove unwanted content and people from that platform. Even platforms for very free, unrestricted discussion need to fight commercial spam and simple vandalism. The ability to have a community of group A for topics that interest group A requires effective moderation, i.e. the ability to remove unwanted topics and people from that forum, blocking them before the majority of the group have had to encounter that unwanted content, otherwise you have a very, very poor experience full of spam that kills the forum, and that is very relevant from a practical standpoint. For some of that content the proper answer is "go have your community somewhere else"; for other content (e.g. penis enlargement spam and people who post it) there probably is no community that wants them, and for that freedom of speech consists of being able to freely speak on a soapbox somewhere where all the 0 people who want to hear you can do it.

roenxi 8y ago

> has similar impacts and risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law We can't really compare them to the government until they have a standing army. That said, pure scale does matter. There will debate over whether powerful organisations are currently benign or hostile, but there is no doubt whatsoever that they are a mighty force. If Google or Facebook ever decides to seriously wake up politically, China's internet strategies will start looking very sensible. I don't agree with them either though.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> We can't really compare them to the government until they have a standing army. While I disagree that the firms in question have government-like comprehensive power, even without their own army, a monopoly or coordinating oligopoly able to lock out new participants on essential communication services would have such power, and be a de facto part of the government, even if they lacked formal command relationship over the armed forces of the host state.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehovah's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that town and distribute her pamphlets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc Originally, it was widely recognized by US jurisprudence, though property rights and freedom of association are important, the First Amendment was even more important.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks And when a single company has similar control over the internet, even for a particular group of people such that they are otherwise unreachable (as AT&T once did nationalky over telephone communications), Marsh v. Alabama might be relevant (It might not, since active relaying is not the same of not denying access to property, and is itself an issue of the first amendment rights of the party who would be compelled to relay the speech.) That's not the case now, and the Marsh v. Alabama doctrine does not compel internet companies to relay content they don't want to, see Cyber Promotions v. America Online. > Originally, it was widely recognized by US jurisprudence, though property rights and freedom of association are important, the First Amendment was even more important. The issue with regard to relaying is neither a free association nor a property issue, but a free speech/press issue—whether the state can compel a party to actively participate in relaying ideas that they do not wish to participate in.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Deplatforming is a dangerous step for a free society, Deplatforming is simply the a natural consequence of the operation of the marketplace of ideas, a central necessity for a free society. If ideas don't have to compete for the privilege of access to resource to relay them, there is no marketplace of ideas, and society drowns in noise. > The big risk is this: when only a few entities funnel so much societal discourse or control our communication infrastructure or process payments, those entities making arbitrary decisions about who they serve has similar impacts and risks to the government imposing similar restrictions through the law. It's arguable that the concentration of these organizations is too great as private businesses and they should either be broken up or regulated as monopolies with common carrier style neutrality and government price, access, and service regulations. But unless you are going to advocate that—and strangely those who selectively dislike deplatforming when it targets right-wing extremists never do, and in fact often oppose sich government intervention universally and support explicit legal protection for denial of generally-offered services based on religious disagreement, especially when the actor so doing is a member of the dominant religious community—the idea that businesses cannot exercise their right to free speech, free press, and free association to choose not to participate in relaying certain views is incoherent.

stcredzero 8y ago
Deplatforming is simply the a natural consequence of the operation of the marketplace of ideas That's just as silly as if someone had said, "Certain people losing their 1st Amendment rights is simply the natural consequence of the operation of the marketplace of ideas." It's nonsense, because once you let people start silencing others, there is no more free marketplace of ideas. That's pretty much like some Victorian gentleman telling himself that he's won it over those peasants over there because of his superior breeding. In the case of Facebook and Google having the practical ability to censor, it's not because they won the marketplace of ideas. It's because they're the "Equity Lords" that got there first and who hold on through network effects. There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehova's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that town and distribute her pamphlets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBozijndSLc Originally, it was widely recognized by US jurisprudence, though property rights and freedom of association are important, the First Amendment was even more important. It's not at all foreign to US legal tradition for the government to tell private companies to let others use their facilities in the interest of free speech. When people make that argument, they do so from ignorance.

uabstraction 8y ago

> Deplatforming is a dangerous step for a free society, especially when so much power is accumulated in a few platforms I disagree here. Communities like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc, have grown to such enormous scales, that their eventual fracture is inevitable. Whether it takes the form of griefers getting the boot, or communities leaving on their own accord, the root problem is the same. You simply can't put a billion people together in a box without any stronger identity or culture tying them together. Think of how things work in the natural world. We have universities, libraries, coffee shops, pubs, clubs, offices, stores, restaurants, museums, parks, playgrounds, fairs, festivals. Each social setting has its own culture, its own rules, its own priorities. If you take the riffraff from the pub and inject them into the library, you're going to have a bad time. If you start club dancing on the HR lady at the office, you're going to have a bad time. The problem with the current crop of social media is that they are meant to be everything for everyone. We mash hundreds of different communities that have nothing to do with each other into the same platforms like square pegs into round holes. Engagement and user count are the ONLY thing the companies care about - but those KPIs aren't what drive healthy communities. The future of the web is going to be fractured and federated. The pains being experienced by the big players right now are the obvious outcome of trying to apply the same set of standards and rules to thousands of different sets of people. If there is no set of rules you can make to please everyone, the answer is simple: it is time to split.

stcredzero 8y ago
If you take the riffraff from the pub and inject them into the library, you're going to have a bad time. According to Kevin Creehan, his grandson, Irish fiddler Junior Creehan was always amazed that Irish Traditional music became a thing for pubs. To him, it had started out as thoughtful people gathered around in their kitchens playing music together. I can attest that a trad session can be a contemplative and even a bit trance-like.