5 ms·
So much for the free speech wing of the free speech party. :(
by bjt2n3904 7y ago
So much for the free speech wing of the free speech party. :(
- metalliqaz 7y agoDaily reminder that free speech entitles you to protection from the government. It doesn't grant you rights to verbally puke all over any social network you please.
- inimino 7y agoDaily rejoinder that this argument is getting really old when most political speech has moved to online fora controlled by a small number of corporate players which have more power than any traditional publisher ever did due to network effects.
- bduerst 7y agoDisagree. Media has always centralized on key players who distribute the information, from newspapers to radio towers to broadcast TV to cable networks, all who maintained a modicum of quality. The internet is a turn in the opposite direction which is why there has been such an explosion of misinformation and feeding of confirmation bias.
- inimino 7y agoCentralized because running a press or a radio tower is expensive. For the same reason, there were a smaller number of channels, and a more unified discourse (everyone reads the same newspaper). Now, neither of these is true. Twitter, Facebook, etc can customize the feed to every user to maximize engagement. At the same time, whatever doesn't fly politically at corporate HQ can be restricted, with as much or as little visibility as they choose.
- 50656E6973 7y ago>all who maintained a modicum of quality. Not exactly... "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." -Thomas Jefferson, 1807
- bduerst 7y agoSure, but consider what Jefferson would have also said about the internet, social media, and recent elections.
- 50656E6973 7y agoThe same thing?
- FireBeyond 7y agoWhose decision was that? Is the US (or any other) government incapable of creating their own online fora for dissemination of information from leaders?
- inimino 7y agoHuh? The argument here is "free speech is an important principle, and is being eroded online", then "yes but that only applies to the government", then "no, if the principle is important, it is important whether it is the government or powerful media corporations in control". Saying that the government is free to create a Twitter clone is a non-sequitur. But yes, to answer your question, the US government has no authority to be in the internet platform business, and that's generally regarded as a good thing.
- freehunter 7y agoIt's amazing to me how many people on Hacker News, a technical forum full of the most technically capable people in the world, seem to forget that the Internet is still a thing, domain name registrars (and failing that, IP addresses) still exist, and anyone can put almost anything they want on the Internet regardless of their political views. So many people here seem resigned to this idea that Twitter and Facebook are the only ways to communicate online. I would have thought the most technically capable people in the world would remember that HTML can be served from basically any Internet-accessible computer in the world.
- 50656E6973 7y agoWhat about the Network Effect? What does it matter if anyone can have a say if they don't get heard?
- thatswrong0 7y agoWhat do you mean? The freedom to communicate your ideas is not the same thing as a guarantee to an audience.
- thrwayxyz 7y agoDaily reminder that you can get run off all of those without doing anything illegal.
- freehunter 7y agoHas there ever been a situation where someone lost their IP address and was completely banished from Internet because of their free and legal speech, without committing a crime?
- thrwayxyz 7y ago8chan. Contrary to popular belief being accused of a crime by a mob does not mean you are guilty.
- 7y ago
- SamReidHughes 7y agoAnybody who doesn't want to see your retweets can turn off your retweets or unfollow.
- colechristensen 7y agoFree speech doesn’t necessarily only refer to the first amendment. You can talk about that particular legal protection but the principle isn’t limited to it. If you believe in free speech, those values will probably extend beyond what a court would defend. But free speech doesn’t mean absolute speech anarchy either.
- bjt2n3904 7y agoHey, that was how Twitter referred to itself. Their words, not mine. :)
- stale2002 7y agoHe was repeating Twitter's own talking points. Twitter itself states that it represents these values. And according to their own definition, that they self proclaim, that is a lie.