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Of course! But when China says you're free to discuss the Free Tibet movement in any other country but China, we rightly call it censorship. What makes this any

Of course! But when China says you're free to discuss the Free Tibet movement in any other country but China, we rightly call it censorship. What makes this any different? Or, I suppose, what makes the differences one of kind and not of degree? In a lot of ways, Facebook is as much of a country as the Vatican is.

jjjensen90 8y ago
The analogy holds no water, it is infinitely easier to broadcast your speech on another platform (or make your own platform) than to deal with state level censorship. Publishing them on a company's dime and expecting platform neutrality is preposterous.
- willpiers 8y ago
  It's not easy to make a new platform. it's insanely difficult. These big social media companies have huge moats at this point, due to network effects and scale. When other things have such powerful network effects we force them, through the state, to treat people fairly. For instance, utilities like water and electricity are natural monopolies because of the limited physical space for the infrastructure. Social networks aren't quite the same but there are powerful similarities.
fucking_tragedy 8y ago
> Of course! But when China says you're free to discuss the Free Tibet movement in any other country but China, we rightly call it censorship. What makes this any different? If you talk about a Free Tibet in China, you risk having your legs broken and your family put in camps. If you violate Facebook's ToS, you might get banned from their website. Then you can just type literally any other website into your address bar and be on your way.
chillacy 8y ago
They are indeed differences of degree, not kind. I don't know of any culture that has embodied 100% free speech through-and-through, it's all degrees of what you can say and what you can't. The key difference is the penalty: is it going to jail or some people roll their eyes and stop being your friend? I don't think it's ever going to be "people enthusiastically try to understand your positions and respect them". That has been the ideal in the US, but historically I can't find the pages in a history book where it's been largely true.

jjjensen90 8y ago

The analogy holds no water, it is infinitely easier to broadcast your speech on another platform (or make your own platform) than to deal with state level censorship. Publishing them on a company's dime and expecting platform neutrality is preposterous.

willpiers 8y ago
It's not easy to make a new platform. it's insanely difficult. These big social media companies have huge moats at this point, due to network effects and scale. When other things have such powerful network effects we force them, through the state, to treat people fairly. For instance, utilities like water and electricity are natural monopolies because of the limited physical space for the infrastructure. Social networks aren't quite the same but there are powerful similarities.

fucking_tragedy 8y ago

> Of course! But when China says you're free to discuss the Free Tibet movement in any other country but China, we rightly call it censorship. What makes this any different? If you talk about a Free Tibet in China, you risk having your legs broken and your family put in camps. If you violate Facebook's ToS, you might get banned from their website. Then you can just type literally any other website into your address bar and be on your way.

chillacy 8y ago

They are indeed differences of degree, not kind. I don't know of any culture that has embodied 100% free speech through-and-through, it's all degrees of what you can say and what you can't. The key difference is the penalty: is it going to jail or some people roll their eyes and stop being your friend? I don't think it's ever going to be "people enthusiastically try to understand your positions and respect them". That has been the ideal in the US, but historically I can't find the pages in a history book where it's been largely true.