6 ms·

Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral, when YouTube's algorithm hoists your video to the front page they are "manipulating"

Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral, when YouTube's algorithm hoists your video to the front page they are "manipulating" the system. Personally, I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion and it as the basis for other challenges. Internet providers just serve bits, any effort to "manipulate" those bits based on who is providing them is looked at with great aversion (net neutrality), tech platforms have done a good job so far distancing what they do to other times of platforms but I believe we are all awakening to the power that these obtuse algorithms have on us.

solotronics 7y ago
It is pretty obvious that things like search results are manipulated to fit an agenda. Search Google Images for "white american family" and "black american family" and compare the results. You can replace "black american family" with indian or any other group and the results are similar. There are many interracial couples under "white american family" and none under "black american family". The only way I can explain this is there is manipulation of the algorithm to fit a certain perspective. I don't think there is anything wrong with interracial families but I do think it is concerning that our search results are being subtly manipulated like this without most people knowing.
- pwinnski 7y ago
  That's the only way you can explain this? Really? This is a popular exercise on the internet, but there are any number of explanations for this that are satisfied entirely by understanding how any search index works.
  - imbored 7y ago
    It's a white supremacist talking point. Don't bother.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  > The only way I can explain this is there is manipulation of the algorithm to fit a certain perspective. Unless... the two search terms have different distributions in their raw, unbiased results which seems completely plausible to me.
- codingslave 7y ago
  This is happening all over American society
- arkades 7y ago
  Out of curiousity I did just that. And aside from skin tone, I got identical sets of people in khakis and button-downs hugging in front of houses, white picket fences, and couches. And found interracial families under black, but not white. Something something anecdote not data.
  - solotronics 7y ago
    compare these I just did it again http://i68.tinypic.com/213nty.jpg http://i68.tinypic.com/213nty.jpg http://i67.tinypic.com/fnqoib.jpg http://i67.tinypic.com/fnqoib.jpg http://i65.tinypic.com/20krl6p.jpg http://i65.tinypic.com/20krl6p.jpg
  - solotronics 7y ago
    This is weird also, why would you be shown different results than me? If search was unbiased wouldn't we all be getting the same results?
- untog 7y ago
  Taken from a Reddit thread: "If you're talking about this picture, it is tagged as "white" because of the background colour." As usual, Occam's Razor applies here. Just imagine for a second that Google sent out a specific instruction to employees that they wanted to alter the algorithm so that a search for "white american family" returns mixed-race couples. Imagine the number of employees that would see a code commit like that, or otherwise be involved in the decision. Do you really think that not a single person would have blown the whistle?
  - cheese4242 7y ago
    Not related to OP's specific example, but very recently a Google employee came forward and blew the whistle on Google intentionally biasing their algorithms to sway public opinion : https://www.theblaze.com/newsletters/wtf-msm-google-whistleblower-reveals-himself-and-googles-attempts-to-sway-elections https://www.theblaze.com/newsletters/wtf-msm-google-whistleb...
    - untog 7y ago
      He hasn't actually presented any meaningful evidence and is a kook that believes in QAnon. So excuse me if I'm more than a little dubious of his claims. https://www.thedailybeast.com/james-okeefes-google-whistleblower-loves-qanon-accused-zionists-of-running-the-government https://www.thedailybeast.com/james-okeefes-google-whistlebl...
      - cheese4242 7y ago
        Well he handed over 950 pages of docs and a laptop to the Department of Justice so we just might find out.
        eclipxe 7y ago
        The 950 pages were posted to Project Veritas. I read each single doc. It was a load of nothing. Not a single piece of evidence that points to his claims.
        7y ago
- fromthestart 7y ago
  Project veritas leaked a candid, hidden camera chat with Google's Head of Responsible Innovation, Jen Gennai, where, essentially, she and an engineer shamelessly describe using ML to manipulate search results to better align them with the reality that they would like society to adopt, i.e., a strongly left leaning agenda. Among other topics, she specifically mentioned that Google is working against "another 2016 situation" (regarding the election of Trump). The clips in this video stand on their own-there is no context which mitigates the fact that Google is injecting political bias into its search results. In an interview with a whistleblower in the same video[1], claims of blacklisted autocomplete terms are also implied to be part of search curation. Given Google's status as the defacto gateway to information for the majority of the first world, this kind of meddling with queries and query results should be cause for concern, regardless of one's political leaning. Ironically, the video was taken down from YouTube. Note: I don't appreciate the bias of the following source either, but the content is damning on its own. 1.https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec-reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/ https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whis...
  - imbored 7y ago
    Project veritas routinely edits videos. Don't fall for fascist propaganda.
  - eclipxe 7y ago
    The content is not damning at all and the "2016 situation" is clearly taken out of context - it is referring to Russian manipulation and fake news.
- ptx 7y ago
  Another subtle manipulation you might unknowingly be exposed to is the word "interracial" itself and the notion of using it to classify people. Growing up in Europe, I have only ever heard of this concept from Americans and it continues to baffle me why it would be a useful distinction to make. The word seems to imply the segregation of people of different "races".
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    America has a history of defining "black" as being as little as 1/8 African blood. You can be 7/8 white European heritage and be "black" in America. Historically, it was illegal in much of the US for a white person and black person to marry. It's just a raft load of nonsense rooted in the detail that America imported slaves from Africa, then used skin color to distinguish free from slave. It hasn't really fully died. We are still living with a lot of those mental models in new guises.
stcredzero 7y ago
Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral, when YouTube's algorithm hoists your video to the front page they are "manipulating" the system. Sure, and when someone puts weights on both sides of a scale, operating it correctly, they are still "manipulating" the scale. That's not what people get mad about. It's when someone puts their thumb on the scale, because they want it to read a certain way, that people get mad. It should be fine if the YouTube algorithm finds things which go viral, then promotes them, so long as that's neutral. It's even fine when things which are clearly abuses of the system or people are squashed, so long as that's neutral. It's not fine when it gets to the level of pushing or squashing a political agenda, however. It's not going to be easy to draw the line, but in the case of pushing politics, it has clearly gone too far.
- AgentME 7y ago
  >It's not going to be easy to draw the line, but in the case of pushing politics, it has clearly gone too far. In which way? I've seen a lot of arguments that YouTube pushes people into alt-right and ethnonationalist content way too easily. I don't think there's an objective way to choose what videos to promote. Obviously they're going to try to come up with some right way to put the weights, and then if they subjectively think that results in the wrong thing, they're going to tweak the weights. Even if there is a weighting that objectively results in more views, it's a value judgment to choose to use that weighting. It could be that prioritizing outrage-bait content gets more views, but I wouldn't call prioritizing that neutral or beneficial.
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    There's way more than algorithm tweaking going on there. There are employees who are manually treating the same thing differently, depending on who and also subject to their own biases. The examples of this on YouTube are legion. Also, there are people who gained viral notoriety, but were going against YouTube/Google politics, then had their whole Google account disappear, then get restored, or remain disappeared. There's some thumbs on the scale over there.
  - imbored 7y ago
khawkins 7y ago
Here's an excellent video breaking down with extremely compelling data how the "trending" tab is very heavily manipulated in favor of mainstream media sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqBeXJ8Zx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqBeXJ8Zx8 What's interesting is that extreme bias in the US is not seen in Canada. Though I'm not sure it's stated in the video, I think that Youtube has been propping up MSM sources so that they can make themselves seem more relevant in the eyes of the MSM. They're doing this so that they can partner with the MSM and expand their YoutubeTV service. They desperately want some sort of service model to make money, and they're willing to destroy the goodwill of the community to achieve it.
- mtgx 7y ago
  It's been obvious for years Google is moving in this direction of favoring "big brands". I mean I think they even said it out-loud about a decade ago when they made a Google search algorithm update. Then the whole thing with AMP and them "partnering with big publishers" to show you carousels of big brand content at the top of the search page also happened. And the same thing with YouTube happened the moment Google decided to turn it into "web TV", also many years ago. There's also the trend of top of all these other trends of Google trying to do everything by itself, which the European Commission noticed a while ago and started investigating it in multiple antitrust lawsuits. But I fear even several multi-billion dollar fines won't be enough to actually stop Google from going down this path even more.
  - anon1m0us 7y ago
    Google has just become "The Internet" on the internet. Youtube is what the internet was. Tumblr is what the internet was. Facebook is what the internet was. All those together are "The new internet" which is really just the new main stream media. We grew up with ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS. Now it's facebook, twitter, and youtube. Those new internet bootstrapped itself off the hopes and dreams of individual content creators and now that they are big enough, they are disregarding the individual and moving back toward the "mass brain" corporations. 20 years ago, the internet was the dream that now individuals could create and have as much visibility as big corporations. It was liberating. It was democratizing! But the internet has gone the way of the airwaves and sadly, the content has too -- for the most part. Yes, there's still good content out there, but if ABC, CBS, and NBC won't show it to you, you have to work harder as a consumer to find it. Like at the library or from your friends and family, or idk, ddg? We need a search engine that refuses to index any content with Google Ads on it. Or any ad network on it. We need to actively disengage from anything associated with Google.
IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
Section 230 does the exact opposite of what you want (think?). The idea being that a platform's effort to curb hate/violence/porn/whatever should be applauded, and not open them up to endless liability. The internet as we know it is not workable without Section 230. Youtube would have to decide between becoming Netflix or *(something-worse-than-)Pornhub. HN wouldn't be possible, nor would reddit (both would become 4chan).
imbored 7y ago
> Personally, I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion and it as the basis for other challenges. Are you a far right person who thinks youtube shouldn't be allowed to ban Nazis, or do you just agree with them about this? Either way, please stop.
rhcom2 7y ago
The Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act makes no guarantee of "neutrality" nor does it prevent sites from "manipulating" the things they display.
- imbored 7y ago
  It would just force Youtube to be extremely aggressive in their censorship and fully embrace the role of editors, or shutdown.
root_axis 7y ago
> Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral Why should these companies have an obligation to be neutral? > I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion Could you elaborate a little more on the details of the challenge? What aspects of section 230 would the challenger suggest are unconstitutional? > Internet providers just serve bits, any effort to "manipulate" those bits based on who is providing them is looked at with great aversion (net neutrality) Internet providers are not legally obligated to adhere to net neutrality, so why should website operators be obligated to do so? > I believe we are all awakening to the power that these obtuse algorithms have on us. Could you give some examples of the power they have over us, I don't believe any of google's algorithms have any power over me and I think that is true of most people, unlike, e.g. algorithms used by banks, credit bureaus and insurance companies to calculate risk with literal life and death consequences.
danShumway 7y ago
> I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion I would also not be surprised, but I think it would be a mistake. If YouTube's algorithm makes them ineligible for 230 protections, then it seems like the same rules should apply to DuckDuckGo -- after all, they're using algorithms to rank sites. Not everything is a slippery slope of course, but absent some kind of consistent line it's not clear to me that the removal of 230 wouldn't very quickly lead to a world where very little user content was allowed online at all. The definition of an algorithm will be constantly evolving, and few small companies will want to risk running afoul of the law. This is probably not what people want when they talk about neutrality -- content gatekeepers aren't neutral. I'd give the same warning to people coming from the opposite perspective -- that YouTube shouldn't get 230 protections because it's not moderating enough. If 230 goes away, there's another way that YouTube can avoid liability, and it's to stop moderating anything at all, regardless of how foul it is. This is also probably not what people want when they talk about moderation -- Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube are pretty bad about removing hate speech, but at least they're not 8chan. They at least do some moderation. The purpose of Section 230 is to avoid punishing platforms for moderation/curation attempts, and to let companies accept user content from diverse sources without needing to pre-vet all of it. Get rid of 230, and we'll end up with a smaller selection of services that are less eager to let users upload content; and the services we're left with won't be in a hurry to moderate or curate any of the content that users do upload.
eclipxe 7y ago
You fundamentally misunderstand Section 230. Also, as a private company, Google/Youtube should be free to moderate what content is on their platform, and I am free to use it or use a competitor. Freedom of speech includes freedom of association.

solotronics 7y ago

It is pretty obvious that things like search results are manipulated to fit an agenda. Search Google Images for "white american family" and "black american family" and compare the results. You can replace "black american family" with indian or any other group and the results are similar. There are many interracial couples under "white american family" and none under "black american family". The only way I can explain this is there is manipulation of the algorithm to fit a certain perspective. I don't think there is anything wrong with interracial families but I do think it is concerning that our search results are being subtly manipulated like this without most people knowing.

pwinnski 7y ago
That's the only way you can explain this? Really? This is a popular exercise on the internet, but there are any number of explanations for this that are satisfied entirely by understanding how any search index works.
- imbored 7y ago
  It's a white supremacist talking point. Don't bother.
b_tterc_p 7y ago
> The only way I can explain this is there is manipulation of the algorithm to fit a certain perspective. Unless... the two search terms have different distributions in their raw, unbiased results which seems completely plausible to me.
codingslave 7y ago
This is happening all over American society
arkades 7y ago
Out of curiousity I did just that. And aside from skin tone, I got identical sets of people in khakis and button-downs hugging in front of houses, white picket fences, and couches. And found interracial families under black, but not white. Something something anecdote not data.
- solotronics 7y ago
  compare these I just did it again http://i68.tinypic.com/213nty.jpg http://i68.tinypic.com/213nty.jpg http://i67.tinypic.com/fnqoib.jpg http://i67.tinypic.com/fnqoib.jpg http://i65.tinypic.com/20krl6p.jpg http://i65.tinypic.com/20krl6p.jpg
- solotronics 7y ago
  This is weird also, why would you be shown different results than me? If search was unbiased wouldn't we all be getting the same results?
untog 7y ago
Taken from a Reddit thread: "If you're talking about this picture, it is tagged as "white" because of the background colour." As usual, Occam's Razor applies here. Just imagine for a second that Google sent out a specific instruction to employees that they wanted to alter the algorithm so that a search for "white american family" returns mixed-race couples. Imagine the number of employees that would see a code commit like that, or otherwise be involved in the decision. Do you really think that not a single person would have blown the whistle?
- cheese4242 7y ago
  Not related to OP's specific example, but very recently a Google employee came forward and blew the whistle on Google intentionally biasing their algorithms to sway public opinion : https://www.theblaze.com/newsletters/wtf-msm-google-whistleblower-reveals-himself-and-googles-attempts-to-sway-elections https://www.theblaze.com/newsletters/wtf-msm-google-whistleb...
  - untog 7y ago
    He hasn't actually presented any meaningful evidence and is a kook that believes in QAnon. So excuse me if I'm more than a little dubious of his claims. https://www.thedailybeast.com/james-okeefes-google-whistleblower-loves-qanon-accused-zionists-of-running-the-government https://www.thedailybeast.com/james-okeefes-google-whistlebl...
    - cheese4242 7y ago
      Well he handed over 950 pages of docs and a laptop to the Department of Justice so we just might find out.
      - eclipxe 7y ago
        The 950 pages were posted to Project Veritas. I read each single doc. It was a load of nothing. Not a single piece of evidence that points to his claims.
      - 7y ago
fromthestart 7y ago
Project veritas leaked a candid, hidden camera chat with Google's Head of Responsible Innovation, Jen Gennai, where, essentially, she and an engineer shamelessly describe using ML to manipulate search results to better align them with the reality that they would like society to adopt, i.e., a strongly left leaning agenda. Among other topics, she specifically mentioned that Google is working against "another 2016 situation" (regarding the election of Trump). The clips in this video stand on their own-there is no context which mitigates the fact that Google is injecting political bias into its search results. In an interview with a whistleblower in the same video[1], claims of blacklisted autocomplete terms are also implied to be part of search curation. Given Google's status as the defacto gateway to information for the majority of the first world, this kind of meddling with queries and query results should be cause for concern, regardless of one's political leaning. Ironically, the video was taken down from YouTube. Note: I don't appreciate the bias of the following source either, but the content is damning on its own. 1.https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec-reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/ https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whis...
- imbored 7y ago
  Project veritas routinely edits videos. Don't fall for fascist propaganda.
- eclipxe 7y ago
  The content is not damning at all and the "2016 situation" is clearly taken out of context - it is referring to Russian manipulation and fake news.
ptx 7y ago
Another subtle manipulation you might unknowingly be exposed to is the word "interracial" itself and the notion of using it to classify people. Growing up in Europe, I have only ever heard of this concept from Americans and it continues to baffle me why it would be a useful distinction to make. The word seems to imply the segregation of people of different "races".
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  America has a history of defining "black" as being as little as 1/8 African blood. You can be 7/8 white European heritage and be "black" in America. Historically, it was illegal in much of the US for a white person and black person to marry. It's just a raft load of nonsense rooted in the detail that America imported slaves from Africa, then used skin color to distinguish free from slave. It hasn't really fully died. We are still living with a lot of those mental models in new guises.

stcredzero 7y ago

Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral, when YouTube's algorithm hoists your video to the front page they are "manipulating" the system. Sure, and when someone puts weights on both sides of a scale, operating it correctly, they are still "manipulating" the scale. That's not what people get mad about. It's when someone puts their thumb on the scale, because they want it to read a certain way, that people get mad. It should be fine if the YouTube algorithm finds things which go viral, then promotes them, so long as that's neutral. It's even fine when things which are clearly abuses of the system or people are squashed, so long as that's neutral. It's not fine when it gets to the level of pushing or squashing a political agenda, however. It's not going to be easy to draw the line, but in the case of pushing politics, it has clearly gone too far.

AgentME 7y ago
>It's not going to be easy to draw the line, but in the case of pushing politics, it has clearly gone too far. In which way? I've seen a lot of arguments that YouTube pushes people into alt-right and ethnonationalist content way too easily. I don't think there's an objective way to choose what videos to promote. Obviously they're going to try to come up with some right way to put the weights, and then if they subjectively think that results in the wrong thing, they're going to tweak the weights. Even if there is a weighting that objectively results in more views, it's a value judgment to choose to use that weighting. It could be that prioritizing outrage-bait content gets more views, but I wouldn't call prioritizing that neutral or beneficial.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  There's way more than algorithm tweaking going on there. There are employees who are manually treating the same thing differently, depending on who and also subject to their own biases. The examples of this on YouTube are legion. Also, there are people who gained viral notoriety, but were going against YouTube/Google politics, then had their whole Google account disappear, then get restored, or remain disappeared. There's some thumbs on the scale over there.
- imbored 7y ago

khawkins 7y ago

Here's an excellent video breaking down with extremely compelling data how the "trending" tab is very heavily manipulated in favor of mainstream media sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqBeXJ8Zx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqBeXJ8Zx8 What's interesting is that extreme bias in the US is not seen in Canada. Though I'm not sure it's stated in the video, I think that Youtube has been propping up MSM sources so that they can make themselves seem more relevant in the eyes of the MSM. They're doing this so that they can partner with the MSM and expand their YoutubeTV service. They desperately want some sort of service model to make money, and they're willing to destroy the goodwill of the community to achieve it.

mtgx 7y ago
It's been obvious for years Google is moving in this direction of favoring "big brands". I mean I think they even said it out-loud about a decade ago when they made a Google search algorithm update. Then the whole thing with AMP and them "partnering with big publishers" to show you carousels of big brand content at the top of the search page also happened. And the same thing with YouTube happened the moment Google decided to turn it into "web TV", also many years ago. There's also the trend of top of all these other trends of Google trying to do everything by itself, which the European Commission noticed a while ago and started investigating it in multiple antitrust lawsuits. But I fear even several multi-billion dollar fines won't be enough to actually stop Google from going down this path even more.
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  Google has just become "The Internet" on the internet. Youtube is what the internet was. Tumblr is what the internet was. Facebook is what the internet was. All those together are "The new internet" which is really just the new main stream media. We grew up with ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS. Now it's facebook, twitter, and youtube. Those new internet bootstrapped itself off the hopes and dreams of individual content creators and now that they are big enough, they are disregarding the individual and moving back toward the "mass brain" corporations. 20 years ago, the internet was the dream that now individuals could create and have as much visibility as big corporations. It was liberating. It was democratizing! But the internet has gone the way of the airwaves and sadly, the content has too -- for the most part. Yes, there's still good content out there, but if ABC, CBS, and NBC won't show it to you, you have to work harder as a consumer to find it. Like at the library or from your friends and family, or idk, ddg? We need a search engine that refuses to index any content with Google Ads on it. Or any ad network on it. We need to actively disengage from anything associated with Google.

IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago

Section 230 does the exact opposite of what you want (think?). The idea being that a platform's effort to curb hate/violence/porn/whatever should be applauded, and not open them up to endless liability. The internet as we know it is not workable without Section 230. Youtube would have to decide between becoming Netflix or *(something-worse-than-)Pornhub. HN wouldn't be possible, nor would reddit (both would become 4chan).

imbored 7y ago

> Personally, I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion and it as the basis for other challenges. Are you a far right person who thinks youtube shouldn't be allowed to ban Nazis, or do you just agree with them about this? Either way, please stop.

rhcom2 7y ago

The Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act makes no guarantee of "neutrality" nor does it prevent sites from "manipulating" the things they display.

imbored 7y ago
It would just force Youtube to be extremely aggressive in their censorship and fully embrace the role of editors, or shutdown.

root_axis 7y ago

> Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral Why should these companies have an obligation to be neutral? > I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion Could you elaborate a little more on the details of the challenge? What aspects of section 230 would the challenger suggest are unconstitutional? > Internet providers just serve bits, any effort to "manipulate" those bits based on who is providing them is looked at with great aversion (net neutrality) Internet providers are not legally obligated to adhere to net neutrality, so why should website operators be obligated to do so? > I believe we are all awakening to the power that these obtuse algorithms have on us. Could you give some examples of the power they have over us, I don't believe any of google's algorithms have any power over me and I think that is true of most people, unlike, e.g. algorithms used by banks, credit bureaus and insurance companies to calculate risk with literal life and death consequences.

danShumway 7y ago

> I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion I would also not be surprised, but I think it would be a mistake. If YouTube's algorithm makes them ineligible for 230 protections, then it seems like the same rules should apply to DuckDuckGo -- after all, they're using algorithms to rank sites. Not everything is a slippery slope of course, but absent some kind of consistent line it's not clear to me that the removal of 230 wouldn't very quickly lead to a world where very little user content was allowed online at all. The definition of an algorithm will be constantly evolving, and few small companies will want to risk running afoul of the law. This is probably not what people want when they talk about neutrality -- content gatekeepers aren't neutral. I'd give the same warning to people coming from the opposite perspective -- that YouTube shouldn't get 230 protections because it's not moderating enough. If 230 goes away, there's another way that YouTube can avoid liability, and it's to stop moderating anything at all, regardless of how foul it is. This is also probably not what people want when they talk about moderation -- Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube are pretty bad about removing hate speech, but at least they're not 8chan. They at least do some moderation. The purpose of Section 230 is to avoid punishing platforms for moderation/curation attempts, and to let companies accept user content from diverse sources without needing to pre-vet all of it. Get rid of 230, and we'll end up with a smaller selection of services that are less eager to let users upload content; and the services we're left with won't be in a hurry to moderate or curate any of the content that users do upload.

eclipxe 7y ago

You fundamentally misunderstand Section 230. Also, as a private company, Google/Youtube should be free to moderate what content is on their platform, and I am free to use it or use a competitor. Freedom of speech includes freedom of association.