6 ms·

It's interesting how this gets framed differently nowadays. 20 years ago, before social media, there was no assumption that everyone has a fundamental right to

It's interesting how this gets framed differently nowadays. 20 years ago, before social media, there was no assumption that everyone has a fundamental right to be able to broadcast their ideas using others' platforms. Since publication was more resource-intensive, the default for most media was to not publish things, and deciding that someone's ideas didn't merit publication wasn't seen as a violation of any great moral code. They were always free to self-publish. At their own expense, of course. Fast forward, and, since most these sites default to letting anyone publish on their platform, with no questions asked beforehand, we've apparently come to think that using these platforms is a human right. It is not. It is a privilege. One with which they have been quite liberal with sharing, yes, but one that they are still free to revoke at any time. There's another important right to consider, in this siuation: Freedom of association. It is also fundamental, and it goes hand-in-hand with freedom of speech. It encompasses, among other things, the right to not associate with people you don't want to be associated with. If Patreon, a private entity, does not want to be associated with sexism and racism, they should not be required to do so.

coffeemug 8y ago
I just made an argument about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494, and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765509. > The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users. > This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  The fact that Twitter is way more popular than Mastodon doesn't really change anything. It's freedom of speech, not freedom of venue.
  - kristofferR 8y ago
    If you are only allowed to speak freely when noone can hear you - are you then allowed freedom of speech?
    - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
      I believe the answer is yes, in that no one is forced to read spam or flyers.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        kristofferR wrote "can hear you" not "wants to hear you".
        SolaceQuantum 8y ago
        Yes, and by being limited to local flyers, the vast majority of America cannot hear your speech.
    - toofy 8y ago
      > If you are only allowed to speak freely when no one can hear you - are you then allowed freedom of speech? Yes. Of course you are being allowed freedom of speech.
    - Udik 8y ago
      Sure. For example, you can say what you want, after you've been exiled by the government to some desert island. An alternative would be a special muzzle to be fitted on the mouth of someone, so that he can say what he wants but emit no sound. /s
    - root_axis 8y ago
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  I don’t use twitter but this seems purposefully naive. Human attention does not scale like technology. You’re not going to reach the entire user base of twitter with your annoying quirky content. You probably won’t even reach 1/10000th of it. Also, we probably would kick people out of public commons for yelling vile opinions on the grounds of disturbing the peace. if you simply must shout such things, you can apply to do a formal protest- a thing anyone on the web can effectively accomplish by making their own web page.
unethical_ban 8y ago
Ooo, I can link to my blog for relevance: https://wannabewonk.com/gab-and-free-speech-on-the-internet/ https://wannabewonk.com/gab-and-free-speech-on-the-internet/ Summary: I agree, largely. Socially, we should be able to debate people with diverse opinions without turning the world into one big safe space. As far as the rights of hosting platforms: There has to be a line somewhere. I draw the line at CAs, ISPs and registrars. They should have to serve ANYONE unless the government mandates otherwise. Maybe Twitter and AWS shouldn't have to support abhorrent speech, but my home ISP can't pick and choose if I reach the larger world.
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  This is a great line to draw, similar to a phone company not getting to choose to carry me based on the content of my conversations, but a party line has no legal or moral burden to have me. And yes, I realize how massively outdated that example was.
- jnbiche 8y ago
  I agree. I don't believe each and every social network should be obliged to host every damn extremist group in the nation. On the other hand, ISPs, CAs, and registrars should be obligated to do so, being analogous to public utilities. I'd support a law codifying this requirement. Social media companies, in the other hand, are more like the modern version of newspapers and magazines. And you don't have the right to be published been the most popular magazine simply because there's where the most readers are. However, I would put cloud companies like AWS in the bucket of utilities and not media. Gab shouldn't have to worry about being cut off for lack of a hosting company. We can't say, "go find another social media home" to people we disagree with, only to watch in glee as the social media companies that will have them are shut down for lack of a hosting company or data center.
prepend 8y ago
“20 years ago, before social media, there was no assumption that everyone has a fundamental right to be able to broadcast their ideas using others' platforms.” I definitely remember the 80s and 90s with controversy over Walmart not carrying “obscene” records. Or nc-17 movies not being played by movie theaters. Or books being banned from libraries (public and private). It wasn’t Facebook, but it was definitely a similar theme of cultural norms not being upheld and corporate powers suppressing free speech. Just like now.
toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
It’s interesting, and weird when you consider that the people who seem to be railing against this supposed censorship share significant overlap in the Venn diagram of people who complain about a growing sense of entitlement among others. Ironically at some point these same people decided that they deserve to be published wherever they want, and anything else is censorship. Presumably these are people who felt even harder done by when newspapers, magazines, and book publishers refused to give them full print runs too. Honestly though, I have another theory. There is no sense of entitlement or hypocrisy, no confusion about what is or isn’t censorship. What we’re seeing is almost purely calculated, and just about trying to get a bigger audience. Twenty years ago if you wanted to publish your ideas about the queen of England being a lizard, you had to either self-publish, rant to a crowd, print fliers, or get lucky. Not that long ago blogs and forums were a huge improvement for those people, and it’s still very effective, but less effective than Facebook or Twitter or YouTube. So do they really think that having the ability to self publish to the planet through blogs and modern self-publishing doesn’t count as speech? Or... do they just want more, and realize that position of “I want more” is less appealing than “I fight censorship!” It’s not that they don’t get it, it’s that it’s inconvenient to admit it?
- chillacy 8y ago
  Depressingly so much of politics is about coalitions and power instead of principles. What does abortion have to do with fiscal policy and ethnicity? And how come most people line up so perfectly in their beliefs with their peers?
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > in the Venn diagram The one you just made up from whole cloth? > Honestly though, I have another theory. Do you have an actual position, too?
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    You don't want to address actual people so you talk about a Venn diagramm you made up, and you have several theories, so I guess not one of them is what you actually think. Prove me wrong. You can't have two opinions, so is either one of those "theories" your opinion, or is neither? You see, I'm not being snarky when I'm being short, I'm giving the reader the benefit of the doubt. I can expand and substantiate everything I hint at, or I wouldn't hint at it. And also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word and then notice how HN is positively gushing with super-couched "arguments", in any thread. "I'm not entirely sure it would be impossible to theorize that"... it's like the only subjects many people are comfortable with talking about with any level of attention or intellectuality are those that are purely technical, i.e. where person doesn't need to have position. With anything that can't be decided by reading specs or benchmarks, wishy-washy stuff comes out, and doesn't get defended either. It just keeps getting posted, and calling it out may get downvoted -- as if showing something to mean nothing is worse than writing something that means nothing [0] -- but no actual defense, at most one half-assed attempt and when that is refuted, no conceding of a point either.. rinse, repeat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ2AH7u_9Xo&t=1m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ2AH7u_9Xo&t=1m10s > the ways in which we were turning politics into economics, and allowing our faculty of reason to be denigrated into a faculty of calculation ... which might lead a person to think that being in the majority makes them right, or that an imaginary Venn diagram describes all sorts of real people, or that truth is decided by votes, or that the wisdom with which someone votes makes a quantum leap when they reach 500 karma. Among other things. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18759743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18759743
chr1 8y ago
Framing the question in terms of "rights that people have" obscures it, because "rights" is an answer for the question of what people want and what compromises they can achieve. To map the space of possible compromises it is useful to think (1)"what would i do if the roles were reversed", (2)"does the opposing idea leave any space for compromise or should it be forcefully eliminated", (3)"is the opposing party weak enough to cheat and not give the treatment you wouldn't want to get in its place". I think most of us would agree that (2) should be rulled out unless the opposing idea is itself violent, (3) is unfair and also dangerous if the opposing party is stronger than it seems. If we agree on the above then from (1) a reasonable compromise is to allow reprehencible people to say their non-violent reprehencible things in exchange of us saying things that are reprehencible to them. Coming back to the Freedom of association for platforms, we should consider that the value of these platforms is largely in the people using them, so in a way they belong to their users, and don't have much choice. Many people think that the platform they use should be reliable and therefore not be able to randomly decide with whom it wants to be associated. But many people also think that some reprehencible speach should be banned. If platform decides to not be neutral and take the side of the second group, it makes a bet that the first group and the banned group are not powerful enough to compare with the second group, and moves stakes away from compromise towards play on elimination. It may succeed but a pushback from the banned group and large part of the first group is entirely natural. I hope that i managed to convince you that the position taken by the first group is more rational, as it leads to a more stable state. And if a platform absolutely has to take sides because second group of their users is too large/vocal, it may be better to do that by means that leave some space for a compromise. E.g. display a red badge near the name of disassociated users or display green for good users.
eli_gottlieb 8y ago
I'd like to agree with you, but I have to insist that there's some difference between, say, CloudFlare, Patreon, and Twitter. Twitter is the most straightforward regarding freedom of association: they are literally providing you with a platform to say things, and to broadcast saying things. They're a private company. If they decide they hate everyone born on May 4th or something, fuggit, they've (legally and philosophically) got that right. Patreon and PayPal, on the next hand, are payment processors. They're not the only payment processors. Patreon also provides you with more publicity for yourself as a payee than PayPal does. Still, these digital payment processors are the cash of the internet. Before we had them, or just when we were teenagers, the best you could do was ask for Mom and Dad's credit-card number, or maybe send a money-order (remember those) by mail to some dude for stuff. It was a damned shady way to do business and we all ditched it the first thing we could. Next comes CloudFlare. They literally just provide mirroring and maintenance for your web-servers. You supply the software and the content, yes? They don't even publicize you; in fact, they try to avoid publicizing you by keeping your site visible and their service invisible. At what point does any of these things become, ethically speaking, a common carrier, providing something like unto a public utility, requiring some degree of common carrier protections to make sense as a business? Are we really going to insist that once you're selling nasty porn or passing out Nazi pamphlets over the Internet there should be no equivalent of payment in cash or a private copy machine that lets you operate a deeply unpopular, even immoral, enterprise without asking the permission of a major advertising firm? In the physical world we have public spaces and legal tender that guarantee us real spaces in which to carry out our legal rights to do things everyone else despises. We should have some equivalent of that over the web, too.

coffeemug 8y ago

I just made an argument about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765494, and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765509. > The difference is that the internet has discontinuously more scalable network effects, so technology companies often find themselves in a winner-takes-all dynamic. If some publisher, newspaper, or literary magazine refused to publish Walt Whitman, he could always try and find another publisher. But if Twitter bans Titania McGrath, there is no other Twitter for her to join because the next best alternative has 1/10000th the number of users. > This effect is new. These platforms are private entities, but effectively they operate as public commons. So culturally we must treat them similar to public commons where it isn't acceptable to kick out quirky characters because some of us don't like what they have to say.

bunderbunder 8y ago
The fact that Twitter is way more popular than Mastodon doesn't really change anything. It's freedom of speech, not freedom of venue.
- kristofferR 8y ago
  If you are only allowed to speak freely when noone can hear you - are you then allowed freedom of speech?
  - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
    I believe the answer is yes, in that no one is forced to read spam or flyers.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      kristofferR wrote "can hear you" not "wants to hear you".
      - SolaceQuantum 8y ago
        Yes, and by being limited to local flyers, the vast majority of America cannot hear your speech.
  - toofy 8y ago
    > If you are only allowed to speak freely when no one can hear you - are you then allowed freedom of speech? Yes. Of course you are being allowed freedom of speech.
  - Udik 8y ago
    Sure. For example, you can say what you want, after you've been exiled by the government to some desert island. An alternative would be a special muzzle to be fitted on the mouth of someone, so that he can say what he wants but emit no sound. /s
  - root_axis 8y ago
b_tterc_p 8y ago
I don’t use twitter but this seems purposefully naive. Human attention does not scale like technology. You’re not going to reach the entire user base of twitter with your annoying quirky content. You probably won’t even reach 1/10000th of it. Also, we probably would kick people out of public commons for yelling vile opinions on the grounds of disturbing the peace. if you simply must shout such things, you can apply to do a formal protest- a thing anyone on the web can effectively accomplish by making their own web page.

unethical_ban 8y ago

Ooo, I can link to my blog for relevance: https://wannabewonk.com/gab-and-free-speech-on-the-internet/ https://wannabewonk.com/gab-and-free-speech-on-the-internet/ Summary: I agree, largely. Socially, we should be able to debate people with diverse opinions without turning the world into one big safe space. As far as the rights of hosting platforms: There has to be a line somewhere. I draw the line at CAs, ISPs and registrars. They should have to serve ANYONE unless the government mandates otherwise. Maybe Twitter and AWS shouldn't have to support abhorrent speech, but my home ISP can't pick and choose if I reach the larger world.

toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
This is a great line to draw, similar to a phone company not getting to choose to carry me based on the content of my conversations, but a party line has no legal or moral burden to have me. And yes, I realize how massively outdated that example was.
jnbiche 8y ago
I agree. I don't believe each and every social network should be obliged to host every damn extremist group in the nation. On the other hand, ISPs, CAs, and registrars should be obligated to do so, being analogous to public utilities. I'd support a law codifying this requirement. Social media companies, in the other hand, are more like the modern version of newspapers and magazines. And you don't have the right to be published been the most popular magazine simply because there's where the most readers are. However, I would put cloud companies like AWS in the bucket of utilities and not media. Gab shouldn't have to worry about being cut off for lack of a hosting company. We can't say, "go find another social media home" to people we disagree with, only to watch in glee as the social media companies that will have them are shut down for lack of a hosting company or data center.

prepend 8y ago

“20 years ago, before social media, there was no assumption that everyone has a fundamental right to be able to broadcast their ideas using others' platforms.” I definitely remember the 80s and 90s with controversy over Walmart not carrying “obscene” records. Or nc-17 movies not being played by movie theaters. Or books being banned from libraries (public and private). It wasn’t Facebook, but it was definitely a similar theme of cultural norms not being upheld and corporate powers suppressing free speech. Just like now.

toufiqbarhamov 8y ago

It’s interesting, and weird when you consider that the people who seem to be railing against this supposed censorship share significant overlap in the Venn diagram of people who complain about a growing sense of entitlement among others. Ironically at some point these same people decided that they deserve to be published wherever they want, and anything else is censorship. Presumably these are people who felt even harder done by when newspapers, magazines, and book publishers refused to give them full print runs too. Honestly though, I have another theory. There is no sense of entitlement or hypocrisy, no confusion about what is or isn’t censorship. What we’re seeing is almost purely calculated, and just about trying to get a bigger audience. Twenty years ago if you wanted to publish your ideas about the queen of England being a lizard, you had to either self-publish, rant to a crowd, print fliers, or get lucky. Not that long ago blogs and forums were a huge improvement for those people, and it’s still very effective, but less effective than Facebook or Twitter or YouTube. So do they really think that having the ability to self publish to the planet through blogs and modern self-publishing doesn’t count as speech? Or... do they just want more, and realize that position of “I want more” is less appealing than “I fight censorship!” It’s not that they don’t get it, it’s that it’s inconvenient to admit it?

chillacy 8y ago
Depressingly so much of politics is about coalitions and power instead of principles. What does abortion have to do with fiscal policy and ethnicity? And how come most people line up so perfectly in their beliefs with their peers?
PavlovsCat 8y ago
> in the Venn diagram The one you just made up from whole cloth? > Honestly though, I have another theory. Do you have an actual position, too?
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  You don't want to address actual people so you talk about a Venn diagramm you made up, and you have several theories, so I guess not one of them is what you actually think. Prove me wrong. You can't have two opinions, so is either one of those "theories" your opinion, or is neither? You see, I'm not being snarky when I'm being short, I'm giving the reader the benefit of the doubt. I can expand and substantiate everything I hint at, or I wouldn't hint at it. And also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word and then notice how HN is positively gushing with super-couched "arguments", in any thread. "I'm not entirely sure it would be impossible to theorize that"... it's like the only subjects many people are comfortable with talking about with any level of attention or intellectuality are those that are purely technical, i.e. where person doesn't need to have position. With anything that can't be decided by reading specs or benchmarks, wishy-washy stuff comes out, and doesn't get defended either. It just keeps getting posted, and calling it out may get downvoted -- as if showing something to mean nothing is worse than writing something that means nothing [0] -- but no actual defense, at most one half-assed attempt and when that is refuted, no conceding of a point either.. rinse, repeat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ2AH7u_9Xo&t=1m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ2AH7u_9Xo&t=1m10s > the ways in which we were turning politics into economics, and allowing our faculty of reason to be denigrated into a faculty of calculation ... which might lead a person to think that being in the majority makes them right, or that an imaginary Venn diagram describes all sorts of real people, or that truth is decided by votes, or that the wisdom with which someone votes makes a quantum leap when they reach 500 karma. Among other things. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18759743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18759743

chr1 8y ago

Framing the question in terms of "rights that people have" obscures it, because "rights" is an answer for the question of what people want and what compromises they can achieve. To map the space of possible compromises it is useful to think (1)"what would i do if the roles were reversed", (2)"does the opposing idea leave any space for compromise or should it be forcefully eliminated", (3)"is the opposing party weak enough to cheat and not give the treatment you wouldn't want to get in its place". I think most of us would agree that (2) should be rulled out unless the opposing idea is itself violent, (3) is unfair and also dangerous if the opposing party is stronger than it seems. If we agree on the above then from (1) a reasonable compromise is to allow reprehencible people to say their non-violent reprehencible things in exchange of us saying things that are reprehencible to them. Coming back to the Freedom of association for platforms, we should consider that the value of these platforms is largely in the people using them, so in a way they belong to their users, and don't have much choice. Many people think that the platform they use should be reliable and therefore not be able to randomly decide with whom it wants to be associated. But many people also think that some reprehencible speach should be banned. If platform decides to not be neutral and take the side of the second group, it makes a bet that the first group and the banned group are not powerful enough to compare with the second group, and moves stakes away from compromise towards play on elimination. It may succeed but a pushback from the banned group and large part of the first group is entirely natural. I hope that i managed to convince you that the position taken by the first group is more rational, as it leads to a more stable state. And if a platform absolutely has to take sides because second group of their users is too large/vocal, it may be better to do that by means that leave some space for a compromise. E.g. display a red badge near the name of disassociated users or display green for good users.

eli_gottlieb 8y ago

I'd like to agree with you, but I have to insist that there's some difference between, say, CloudFlare, Patreon, and Twitter. Twitter is the most straightforward regarding freedom of association: they are literally providing you with a platform to say things, and to broadcast saying things. They're a private company. If they decide they hate everyone born on May 4th or something, fuggit, they've (legally and philosophically) got that right. Patreon and PayPal, on the next hand, are payment processors. They're not the only payment processors. Patreon also provides you with more publicity for yourself as a payee than PayPal does. Still, these digital payment processors are the cash of the internet. Before we had them, or just when we were teenagers, the best you could do was ask for Mom and Dad's credit-card number, or maybe send a money-order (remember those) by mail to some dude for stuff. It was a damned shady way to do business and we all ditched it the first thing we could. Next comes CloudFlare. They literally just provide mirroring and maintenance for your web-servers. You supply the software and the content, yes? They don't even publicize you; in fact, they try to avoid publicizing you by keeping your site visible and their service invisible. At what point does any of these things become, ethically speaking, a common carrier, providing something like unto a public utility, requiring some degree of common carrier protections to make sense as a business? Are we really going to insist that once you're selling nasty porn or passing out Nazi pamphlets over the Internet there should be no equivalent of payment in cash or a private copy machine that lets you operate a deeply unpopular, even immoral, enterprise without asking the permission of a major advertising firm? In the physical world we have public spaces and legal tender that guarantee us real spaces in which to carry out our legal rights to do things everyone else despises. We should have some equivalent of that over the web, too.