4 ms·

You cannot have freedom of speech without freedom of association. When it comes to deplatforming it does matter who's doing it, because there is a fundamental

You cannot have freedom of speech without freedom of association. When it comes to deplatforming it does matter who's doing it, because there is a fundamental difference between a private entity (corporate or living person) and a government (only one has a monopoly on violence). The government shutting down your youtube channel; that's a problematic infringement on speech; Google shutting down your channel, that's within their rights.

zzzcpan 7y ago
> because there is a fundamental difference between a private entity (corporate or living person) and a government (only one has a monopoly on violence). Only works for private entities in markets with a lot of competition and no dominance. Otherwise there is no difference whether a government does it or a private entity under pressure.
ryacko 7y ago
The EFF defends Backpage when credit card companies are pressured to withdraw services to Backpage. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/sheriffs-threats-against-credit-card-companies-violate-first-amendment https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/sheriffs-threats-again... The EFF does not defend Wikileaks when pressure was placed for hosting companies to withdraw services to them. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/how-lieberman-got-amazon-to-drop-wikileaks http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/how-lieberman-got-ama...
- root_axis 7y ago
  Not a great example. Backpage was facilitating prostitution and trafficking for years, naturally that is going to attract some negative attention from the authorities.
chr1 7y ago
Russia buying few ads which could have some effect on election results is considered serious issue. Google influencing elections by shadow-banning channels is a much more serious issue. Currently google is treated as a platform, and does not take responsibility for the content users post to it, but that means that google also must have fair rules by which it treats everyones content. If google wants to decide which channel to shut down and which one to keep, it should not be treated as a platform, but as a publisher.
philwelch 7y ago
The problem is that Google is a monopoly. IIRC, it used to be the case that shopping malls were, in some situations, treated as public squares and couldn't just expel people. For example, if someone like Steven Crowder hypothetically set up his infamous "change my mind" table in the middle of the mall, the mall actually didn't have the legal power to expel him. This was in the era when a lot of towns didn't actually have a real public square, they just had shopping malls, and the landowners of the shopping malls had an effective commercial monopoly on the city square. YouTube is in a very similar situation. And frankly, it's not even just the outwardly political channels like Crowder that are getting the short end of the stick.

zzzcpan 7y ago

> because there is a fundamental difference between a private entity (corporate or living person) and a government (only one has a monopoly on violence). Only works for private entities in markets with a lot of competition and no dominance. Otherwise there is no difference whether a government does it or a private entity under pressure.

ryacko 7y ago

The EFF defends Backpage when credit card companies are pressured to withdraw services to Backpage. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/sheriffs-threats-against-credit-card-companies-violate-first-amendment https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/sheriffs-threats-again... The EFF does not defend Wikileaks when pressure was placed for hosting companies to withdraw services to them. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/how-lieberman-got-amazon-to-drop-wikileaks http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/how-lieberman-got-ama...

root_axis 7y ago
Not a great example. Backpage was facilitating prostitution and trafficking for years, naturally that is going to attract some negative attention from the authorities.

chr1 7y ago

Russia buying few ads which could have some effect on election results is considered serious issue. Google influencing elections by shadow-banning channels is a much more serious issue. Currently google is treated as a platform, and does not take responsibility for the content users post to it, but that means that google also must have fair rules by which it treats everyones content. If google wants to decide which channel to shut down and which one to keep, it should not be treated as a platform, but as a publisher.

philwelch 7y ago

The problem is that Google is a monopoly. IIRC, it used to be the case that shopping malls were, in some situations, treated as public squares and couldn't just expel people. For example, if someone like Steven Crowder hypothetically set up his infamous "change my mind" table in the middle of the mall, the mall actually didn't have the legal power to expel him. This was in the era when a lot of towns didn't actually have a real public square, they just had shopping malls, and the landowners of the shopping malls had an effective commercial monopoly on the city square. YouTube is in a very similar situation. And frankly, it's not even just the outwardly political channels like Crowder that are getting the short end of the stick.