3 ms·

Expression is not public communication. Are you not conflating freedom of speech with freedom to be heard/reach an audience? Even 2 centuries ago, the US govern

Expression is not public communication. Are you not conflating freedom of speech with freedom to be heard/reach an audience? Even 2 centuries ago, the US government wouldn't intervene to force newspapers to publish the op-eds of hateful people looking to grow their followers. Why would Youtube or Twitter have to?

sb057 7y ago
>Why would Youtube or Twitter have to? Because combined, Google, Twitter, and Facebook have an effective monopoly on modern public discourse.
- hacknat 7y ago
  No they don't. A huge section of the population is not on Twitter and gets their news from old media.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    "gets their news from old media." which extensively quotes Twitter and gets much of their leads and sources from Twitter.
- root_axis 7y ago
  No they don't. Those companies can't erase you from the internet, only from their own individual platforms that they own and operate. A "monopoly" would imply that without the use of these sites you could not be heard, but this is obviously false, not only because there are many other similar sites out there, but also because nobody is stopping you from creating your own blog or platform or whatever you like. No, your site won't be as popular as twitter, but so what? Your hyperlinks work just as well as twitter's.
  - SmartJerry 7y ago
    I don't think the monopoly the previous user mentions implies you can't speak but it implies you can't be found. For instance if you don't show up on Google, yes you can tell your friends to visit your website but you can't tell everyone where your website is. If you get banned from one or more of these websites, it is like there is a town square and 99% of people are huddled in one side of the square and you are standing in the far corner where no one can hear you even if you shouted. Maybe you can tell your friend to go walk over to that side and tell people to come over to this side, but no one wants to come over to this side because they want their voices to be heard over where the rest of the town is having a conversation.
panarky 7y ago
> I can’t imagine anyone going through tweets from 2010 and actively reporting them, so it seems more likely that they must be using some algorithm ... Moderation tools have been weaponized in the troll propaganda war. Post an insightful and highly liked reply to a controversial topic, watch the likes roll in, and then suddenly go dark after about three minutes. View the thread incognito, and the popular comment cannot be found. Trolls brigade-block-and-report views they don't like, and your reply gets memory-holed until a human moderator can review it. Hours or days later your comment gets restored, but the damage is done. Of course troll armies are mining old tweets for any violation, so they can remove you from the conversation and manufacture the illusion of consensus.
leereeves 7y ago
> Why would Youtube or Twitter have to? Comparisons with the old media always neglect to mention the unique protections these platforms enjoy. Unlike the old media, they aren't responsible for the content they publish. If they'd prefer to be treated like publishers, not platforms, they should also have the responsibility of publishers, not the protections of platforms. But as long as they remain platforms, they have a unique responsibility to respect the freedom of speech of everyone.
camdenlock 7y ago
Because there’s no objective definition for “hateful”. It can easily be defined as “content I don’t like”, leading to arbitrary silencing of voices. As always, the question becomes: who decides which people are to be silenced?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

sb057 7y ago

>Why would Youtube or Twitter have to? Because combined, Google, Twitter, and Facebook have an effective monopoly on modern public discourse.

hacknat 7y ago
No they don't. A huge section of the population is not on Twitter and gets their news from old media.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  "gets their news from old media." which extensively quotes Twitter and gets much of their leads and sources from Twitter.
root_axis 7y ago
No they don't. Those companies can't erase you from the internet, only from their own individual platforms that they own and operate. A "monopoly" would imply that without the use of these sites you could not be heard, but this is obviously false, not only because there are many other similar sites out there, but also because nobody is stopping you from creating your own blog or platform or whatever you like. No, your site won't be as popular as twitter, but so what? Your hyperlinks work just as well as twitter's.
- SmartJerry 7y ago
  I don't think the monopoly the previous user mentions implies you can't speak but it implies you can't be found. For instance if you don't show up on Google, yes you can tell your friends to visit your website but you can't tell everyone where your website is. If you get banned from one or more of these websites, it is like there is a town square and 99% of people are huddled in one side of the square and you are standing in the far corner where no one can hear you even if you shouted. Maybe you can tell your friend to go walk over to that side and tell people to come over to this side, but no one wants to come over to this side because they want their voices to be heard over where the rest of the town is having a conversation.

panarky 7y ago

> I can’t imagine anyone going through tweets from 2010 and actively reporting them, so it seems more likely that they must be using some algorithm ... Moderation tools have been weaponized in the troll propaganda war. Post an insightful and highly liked reply to a controversial topic, watch the likes roll in, and then suddenly go dark after about three minutes. View the thread incognito, and the popular comment cannot be found. Trolls brigade-block-and-report views they don't like, and your reply gets memory-holed until a human moderator can review it. Hours or days later your comment gets restored, but the damage is done. Of course troll armies are mining old tweets for any violation, so they can remove you from the conversation and manufacture the illusion of consensus.

leereeves 7y ago

> Why would Youtube or Twitter have to? Comparisons with the old media always neglect to mention the unique protections these platforms enjoy. Unlike the old media, they aren't responsible for the content they publish. If they'd prefer to be treated like publishers, not platforms, they should also have the responsibility of publishers, not the protections of platforms. But as long as they remain platforms, they have a unique responsibility to respect the freedom of speech of everyone.

camdenlock 7y ago

Because there’s no objective definition for “hateful”. It can easily be defined as “content I don’t like”, leading to arbitrary silencing of voices. As always, the question becomes: who decides which people are to be silenced?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]