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I've been trying to argue for awhile that if the major public venues become privately moderated that it would have a chilling effect on free speech. I continual

I've been trying to argue for awhile that if the major public venues become privately moderated that it would have a chilling effect on free speech. I continually get the rhetoric that free speech only applies to the government (it doesn't; the First Amendment only applies to the government but the ideal of free speech is a universal human right) and that censorship is something only the government can do (also not true for the same reason). This is not a new concept. In 1859, John Stuart Mill argued in On Liberty that the tyranny of the majority and the de facto censorship that they can create is just as if not far more dangerous to actual liberty than government control. If we have laws for common carriers, and laws like network neutrality, then there must also be laws protecting the right of the people to participate in public discourse even when the venue is privately held. It is vital to the existence of a free state!

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
What you say is true, but the better solution is for huge corporations not to have a monopoly/oligopoly on channels for public discourse.
- da_chicken 7y ago
  That's an extremely difficult problem given the speed at which social media changes and the slowness of legal changes. Look at the explosion of Discord. Also, social media isn't a commodity service. What happens if YouTube is broken up? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? It seems safer to also require that any platform that offers free, open access to social media style content not show any bias towards that content unless it is otherwise illegal. If you want to pretend to be a public venue, you've got to have the responsibility of keeping a public venue.
  - missingrib 7y ago
    I'm so torn on this issue. I dislike the idea of the government interfering with private business very much, and I can see how easily it can get scary. That said, it really is insane how influential and widely used a well made application/website can get (youtube/discord/etc). I really cannot think of something that YouTube could do that would make people leave the platform. The amount of users and content on there just totally cements their position. In this specific situation I think tech-savvy people can find where these videos will be located. In other situations, it's pretty strange/scary. I wish people were more open to alternative platforms. Sometimes I talk about DuckDuckGo and get the weirdest stares
    - da_chicken 7y ago
      > I'm so torn on this issue. I dislike the idea of the government interfering with private business very much, and I can see how easily it can get scary. When corporations were first created, they used to have to show how what they were doing was for the benefit of the community. The protections against risk afforded to companies was once granted only in exchange for the ability of a company to add real value to the people and the state. This made sense because very few people would primarily profit, so it made sense to get a guarantee or promise that the company would invest into the community. Companies had a responsibility to ensure that happened. None of that is true anymore, but that's not because it's immoral to require companies to invest in and have a responsibility for improving and supporting the community. Those corporations only exist by the leave of the state, and in a western republic, that means the leave of the people. Food companies are responsible for producing healthy food. Automobile companies are responsible for producing safe vehicles. Social media services should be responsible for creating environments and discussions that benefit the people.
      - gerikson 7y ago
        > Food companies are responsible for producing healthy food. Automobile companies are responsible for producing safe vehicles. Social media services should be responsible for creating environments and discussions that benefit the people. Are you proposing regulation/legislation for social media services?
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > What happens if YouTube is broken up? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? If you're going to break them up, you don't do it along those lines. You don't need to have six separate Facebook clones so that five of them can fail or flail around until they get bought back up by the others. Look at what happened with the AT&T breakup. The lines you break them up on are the preexisting ones. Facebook can't continue to own Instagram and in general major social media companies can't buy competitors. Split YouTube off from Google so that YouTube competitors have equal access to Google's ad network and Google searches don't have any reason to suspiciously favor YouTube videos. That sort of thing. > It seems safer to also require that any platform that offers free, open access to social media style content not show any bias towards that content unless it is otherwise illegal. That is hopeless. To give an obvious example, a lot of spam isn't strictly illegal. You do want platforms to filter out content that all of their users want filtered out. The problem is when they filter out content that some of their users actually want to see, merely because some other users don't want anybody to see it. But there is no principled test for that because the spammers and trolls will insist that they want to see spam and trolling while the censors insist that anything they don't like is spam and trolling that nobody wants to see. It's inherently subjective. On top of that, you have the "anything not prohibited is now mandatory" problem where you have something which is questionably legal and if you allow it and then a court says it's illegal you're screwed but if you remove it and then a court says it's legal you're also screwed. The only real solution is to fracture the power to banish into a million separate pieces so that everybody has a little but nobody has too much.
- solveit 7y ago
  Economies of scale and network effects mean that government (or comparable entity) will have to go out of their way to foster competition way beyond what the market will bear. How can we make this happen?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- FooHentai 7y ago
  Better perhaps, but what's your proposed path to implementing that? Is it achievable, and what eggs get broken in the course of cooking that omelette? One huge roadblock I can see is that you would need to address the question of what would replace privately held platforms? If the suggested replacement is something the government operates, you now have to address how that conflicts with the overall neoliberal philosophy of government that we've been operating under for the past couple of decades that precludes the notion of such a thing being operated in that manner. So now we're looking at quite a lot of smashed eggs. Whereas the former suggestion is something that has, at first glance, a reasonably straightforward path to implementation via legislation, and related precedent to boot. It's easier to make a targeted override of a behavior that is an inherent part of the system under which it emerged, than it is to overhaul the entire system to correct that particular behavior.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > If the suggested replacement is something the government operates No. That is the exact opposite of helpful. What you need is something that nobody/everybody operates, in the style of email. A protocol (like SMTP), not a platform (like Facebook). A government could usefully fund the development of such a thing though.
    - lucb1e 7y ago
      I like your idea since it would mean more self-hosting and decentralisation, but I'm afraid it's the much more complicated way of doing things, and if it could ever happen, I'm not sure it can anymore given that we already have these platforms and especially the USA government would never shut them down, citing economic and national security (everyone's data now has to pass through the USA) reasons.
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        "More complicated" isn't really the issue. It's the same amount of complicated as email and people use that. And people use it by mostly using gmail and other big providers -- but that's not really a problem as long as setting up your own and still communicating with everybody who uses gmail continues to be an option. It means Google can kick you off of gmail but they can't kick you off of email. > especially the USA government would never shut them down, citing economic and national security (everyone's data now has to pass through the USA) reasons. On the other hand, it means every other government has every incentive to make the alternate succeed so that doesn't happen. How about the EU take that fine money they've been sucking out of Google and use it to fund a solid free competing social media protocol implementation.
scoutt 7y ago
to participate in public discourse even when the venue is privately held So if I come to your house, to your birthday party, and I start teaching people (or just talking) about torture, scams, rape techniques, differences of classes/races/whatever, etc. or simply teaching kids how to hack an ATM, will you be OK with it? Would you ask me to leave? Edit: saying all of that possibly while arguing that "it's just educational" even when it may or may not be the real reason.
sullyj3 7y ago
the idea that a private entity should be compelled to host speech they don't like seems like a massive violation of rights to me.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

What you say is true, but the better solution is for huge corporations not to have a monopoly/oligopoly on channels for public discourse.

da_chicken 7y ago
That's an extremely difficult problem given the speed at which social media changes and the slowness of legal changes. Look at the explosion of Discord. Also, social media isn't a commodity service. What happens if YouTube is broken up? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? It seems safer to also require that any platform that offers free, open access to social media style content not show any bias towards that content unless it is otherwise illegal. If you want to pretend to be a public venue, you've got to have the responsibility of keeping a public venue.
- missingrib 7y ago
  I'm so torn on this issue. I dislike the idea of the government interfering with private business very much, and I can see how easily it can get scary. That said, it really is insane how influential and widely used a well made application/website can get (youtube/discord/etc). I really cannot think of something that YouTube could do that would make people leave the platform. The amount of users and content on there just totally cements their position. In this specific situation I think tech-savvy people can find where these videos will be located. In other situations, it's pretty strange/scary. I wish people were more open to alternative platforms. Sometimes I talk about DuckDuckGo and get the weirdest stares
  - da_chicken 7y ago
    > I'm so torn on this issue. I dislike the idea of the government interfering with private business very much, and I can see how easily it can get scary. When corporations were first created, they used to have to show how what they were doing was for the benefit of the community. The protections against risk afforded to companies was once granted only in exchange for the ability of a company to add real value to the people and the state. This made sense because very few people would primarily profit, so it made sense to get a guarantee or promise that the company would invest into the community. Companies had a responsibility to ensure that happened. None of that is true anymore, but that's not because it's immoral to require companies to invest in and have a responsibility for improving and supporting the community. Those corporations only exist by the leave of the state, and in a western republic, that means the leave of the people. Food companies are responsible for producing healthy food. Automobile companies are responsible for producing safe vehicles. Social media services should be responsible for creating environments and discussions that benefit the people.
    - gerikson 7y ago
      > Food companies are responsible for producing healthy food. Automobile companies are responsible for producing safe vehicles. Social media services should be responsible for creating environments and discussions that benefit the people. Are you proposing regulation/legislation for social media services?
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > What happens if YouTube is broken up? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? If you're going to break them up, you don't do it along those lines. You don't need to have six separate Facebook clones so that five of them can fail or flail around until they get bought back up by the others. Look at what happened with the AT&T breakup. The lines you break them up on are the preexisting ones. Facebook can't continue to own Instagram and in general major social media companies can't buy competitors. Split YouTube off from Google so that YouTube competitors have equal access to Google's ad network and Google searches don't have any reason to suspiciously favor YouTube videos. That sort of thing. > It seems safer to also require that any platform that offers free, open access to social media style content not show any bias towards that content unless it is otherwise illegal. That is hopeless. To give an obvious example, a lot of spam isn't strictly illegal. You do want platforms to filter out content that all of their users want filtered out. The problem is when they filter out content that some of their users actually want to see, merely because some other users don't want anybody to see it. But there is no principled test for that because the spammers and trolls will insist that they want to see spam and trolling while the censors insist that anything they don't like is spam and trolling that nobody wants to see. It's inherently subjective. On top of that, you have the "anything not prohibited is now mandatory" problem where you have something which is questionably legal and if you allow it and then a court says it's illegal you're screwed but if you remove it and then a court says it's legal you're also screwed. The only real solution is to fracture the power to banish into a million separate pieces so that everybody has a little but nobody has too much.
solveit 7y ago
Economies of scale and network effects mean that government (or comparable entity) will have to go out of their way to foster competition way beyond what the market will bear. How can we make this happen?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
FooHentai 7y ago
Better perhaps, but what's your proposed path to implementing that? Is it achievable, and what eggs get broken in the course of cooking that omelette? One huge roadblock I can see is that you would need to address the question of what would replace privately held platforms? If the suggested replacement is something the government operates, you now have to address how that conflicts with the overall neoliberal philosophy of government that we've been operating under for the past couple of decades that precludes the notion of such a thing being operated in that manner. So now we're looking at quite a lot of smashed eggs. Whereas the former suggestion is something that has, at first glance, a reasonably straightforward path to implementation via legislation, and related precedent to boot. It's easier to make a targeted override of a behavior that is an inherent part of the system under which it emerged, than it is to overhaul the entire system to correct that particular behavior.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > If the suggested replacement is something the government operates No. That is the exact opposite of helpful. What you need is something that nobody/everybody operates, in the style of email. A protocol (like SMTP), not a platform (like Facebook). A government could usefully fund the development of such a thing though.
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    I like your idea since it would mean more self-hosting and decentralisation, but I'm afraid it's the much more complicated way of doing things, and if it could ever happen, I'm not sure it can anymore given that we already have these platforms and especially the USA government would never shut them down, citing economic and national security (everyone's data now has to pass through the USA) reasons.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      "More complicated" isn't really the issue. It's the same amount of complicated as email and people use that. And people use it by mostly using gmail and other big providers -- but that's not really a problem as long as setting up your own and still communicating with everybody who uses gmail continues to be an option. It means Google can kick you off of gmail but they can't kick you off of email. > especially the USA government would never shut them down, citing economic and national security (everyone's data now has to pass through the USA) reasons. On the other hand, it means every other government has every incentive to make the alternate succeed so that doesn't happen. How about the EU take that fine money they've been sucking out of Google and use it to fund a solid free competing social media protocol implementation.

scoutt 7y ago

to participate in public discourse even when the venue is privately held So if I come to your house, to your birthday party, and I start teaching people (or just talking) about torture, scams, rape techniques, differences of classes/races/whatever, etc. or simply teaching kids how to hack an ATM, will you be OK with it? Would you ask me to leave? Edit: saying all of that possibly while arguing that "it's just educational" even when it may or may not be the real reason.

sullyj3 7y ago

the idea that a private entity should be compelled to host speech they don't like seems like a massive violation of rights to me.