22 ms·

In the abstract, no. But we already know that Facebook excludes free speech: simply attempt to post a photograph containing bare female breasts on Facebook or

In the abstract, no. But we already know that Facebook excludes free speech: simply attempt to post a photograph containing bare female breasts on Facebook or a Facebook-owned property like Instagram, and it will swiftly be removed for violating “community guidelines”. So Facebook themselves have clearly excluded themselves from the former.

buboard 7y ago
Fair. Though that has more to do with potentially being illegal. The more serious (violation of free speech) thing is political censorship
- root_axis 7y ago
  Why is that serious? Why shouldn't Facebook be permitted to operate their business in an explicitly partisan way if they so choose?
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    Simple: because they’re too big
    - root_axis 7y ago
      Are you suggesting that the laws should be changed to limit the political freedom of some companies? If so, what would be your criteria for determining which companies this would apply to?
      - CamperBob2 7y ago
        When they get too big.
        root_axis 7y ago
        I appreciate the snark, but I'll just say anyway that I'm actually asking what are the factors that determine when a company is "too big"?
        CamperBob2 7y ago
        In all honesty, the only way a company like Facebook gets this big is through the support of the larger society that sustains them. The Internet itself is a product of that society. Everyone with a stake in that society is at least entitled to an opinion, if not an outright vote, regarding how the company operates. This is a reflection of a larger point, which is that any sufficiently-dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government. Especially with the introduction of Libra, that's starting to sound less like a cliche and more like an axiom. This also (should) give the rest of us more input in how the company does business.
        root_axis 7y ago
        I don't disagree with much of anything you've written there, but corporate dominance has been an issue for a long time and the impact of social media companies is trivial compared to the impact of companies that e.g. kill citizens with addictive drugs for profit, withhold life saving drugs and medical treatment for profit, hoard and reserve huge swaths of residential property for rent seeking, contaminate the water table and arable land for natural gas etc and the political proclivities of these companies is never scrutinized outside of partisan politics. I'm not saying that Facebook isn't also a problem, but it seems very much like bikeshedding to tie ourselves into knots writing new laws so that people have the right to share low-effort memes on Facebook's servers when there are so many real problems that could be solved with new laws.
      - semiotagonal 7y ago
        When they're so big that no competition can challenge them. My personal opinion is that Facebook should be broken up, but social media remain unregulated, since a ban on lies only rewards the most skilled liars, whose statements can fool the evaluators.
        root_axis 7y ago
        > When they're so big that no competition can challenge them. This is pretty vague though. It also raises questions about why we don't limit the political proclivities of other types of companies that also deal in political speech (cable news, broadcast news, talk radio, public radio). I also disagree with the idea that access to Facebook and similar platforms is fundamentally important; it's well known by now that these systems are engineered to be addictive and that heavy use of social media is associated with poor mental health, if anything we should make ad based social media platforms illegal altogether. > My personal opinion is that Facebook should be broken up Why? I am not opposed to the idea but I just don't see how it would improve the situation at all.
        chroma 7y ago
        > When they're so big that no competition can challenge them. That's what people said about MySpace before Facebook. It's also what people said about IBM, Microsoft, AOL, Nokia, and Kodak. Big companies have a hard time changing direction. They also tend to be more risk averse, causing them to coast on their brand and network effects. Eventually they're usurped by smaller companies that take more risks and innovate better.
      - buboard 7y ago
        the self-preservation instict of states would dictate that they will limit them when they threaten the power of the government.
  - buboard 7y ago
    nobody says they re not. They wouldn't be able to advertise their free speech though
- msbarnett 7y ago
  > Though that has more to do with potentially being illegal. Death threats, and many other forms of hate speech, are illegal in many jurisdictions, and yet that is not used to justify a blanket ban on angry text. > The more serious (violation of free speech) thing is political censorship It is not obvious to me that these things are even separable; to pick but one obvious example, a topless photograph posted by advocates for an equal right for both men and women to be topless in public is clearly political speech. More broadly, look at someone like Larry Flint. The pornagraphic is the political. The current hand-wringing over “censorship of political speech” seems terribly narrowly focused on but one fairly conservative form of speech, to the point that it’s a bit hard to take at face value.
  - buboard 7y ago
    because the people advocating for tits equality are a tiny group, while mainstream politics have wide implications. I m all for tit freedom, but facebook's lawyers have to weigh in the costs of litigation
    - msbarnett 7y ago
      free speech is only for popular, mainstream speech? I don’t really care what’s cost effective for Facebook’s lawyers; we don’t have to care about that, so we should stop enabling the lie that their main concern is enabling free speech. Costs, playing nice with established powers, not scaring away advertisers by putting their ads too near a nipple — these are their concerns, and we should stop participating in the destruction of the meaning of “free speech” by calling “a narrow spectrum of speech compatible with our current corporate goals” “free speech”.
      - buboard 7y ago
        Sure, but , i mean they are free to call it free speech, and use it as a selling point. People judge the truth of that statement by their actions
        7y ago
dahart 7y ago
Free speech itself as a legal concept comes with limitations based on community guidelines, including obscenity and pornography. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitation... I don’t believe there is any country in the world today for which “free speech” means that anything that can be said is legal and protected, but many people seem to think otherwise based on the name.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  I was always under the impression free speech advocacy is the spirit of unlimited speech and not the literal word of law in speech. For example, I recall lots of controversy that is the deplatforming of various alt-right advocates and speakers (Sargon of Akkad for example, or 8chan, or the banning of various subreddits). And while it is literally legal for a private entity to no longer want to service parties it doesn’t find tasteful, the actual act of doing it I’ve seen violates the ‘spirit’ of free speech. I believe that phenomenon is the one being referenced.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    Free speech is a value as much as it is a legal concept (and a rather foundational value in the US at least). People who don’t want to engage in discussion about the importance of free speech as a cultural value will often try to reframe the debate to be an entirely legal one, as that’s open to much less discussion.
  - dahart 7y ago
    That’s a good point that there are two separate kinds of free speech. One is the legal protections, and one is the idea of speaking to power. But when people complain that their free speech is being infringed, that necessarily means they’re complaining about the legal Freedom of Speech protections. The latter one, being irreverent and speaking to power, is never guaranteed to be legal nor come without negative consequences or having your platform removed, so if that is the one being referred to, the feigned incredulity about Facebook taking it down is misplaced. It was always going to be taken down or fought against, if you’re going to say something they don’t like. In fact, the act is a provocation who’s goal is to stir the pot. The goal may be to shame or embarrass someone, or it might be to change policy and making things more fair, but a reaction is expected and desired. For the other kind, legal Freedom of Speech protections, not all speech is protected. So, being incredulous about Facebook removing obscenity is misplaced here too, because removal of some kinds of things is completely within the bounds of Free Speech Protections. Either way, in both cases, the speech is subject to community guidelines, and some kinds of speech will result in consequences you might not like. In particular, things that might be considered pornographic or obscene. Note this is different from what Facebook might allow, and as far as I’m concerned they can make whatever rules they like and it doesn’t infringe on “free speech”. I’m making the separate point that Free Speech itself always comes with the same kind of limitations the GP comment was referring to.

buboard 7y ago

Fair. Though that has more to do with potentially being illegal. The more serious (violation of free speech) thing is political censorship

root_axis 7y ago
Why is that serious? Why shouldn't Facebook be permitted to operate their business in an explicitly partisan way if they so choose?
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Simple: because they’re too big
  - root_axis 7y ago
    Are you suggesting that the laws should be changed to limit the political freedom of some companies? If so, what would be your criteria for determining which companies this would apply to?
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      When they get too big.
      - root_axis 7y ago
        I appreciate the snark, but I'll just say anyway that I'm actually asking what are the factors that determine when a company is "too big"?
        CamperBob2 7y ago
        In all honesty, the only way a company like Facebook gets this big is through the support of the larger society that sustains them. The Internet itself is a product of that society. Everyone with a stake in that society is at least entitled to an opinion, if not an outright vote, regarding how the company operates. This is a reflection of a larger point, which is that any sufficiently-dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government. Especially with the introduction of Libra, that's starting to sound less like a cliche and more like an axiom. This also (should) give the rest of us more input in how the company does business.
        root_axis 7y ago
        I don't disagree with much of anything you've written there, but corporate dominance has been an issue for a long time and the impact of social media companies is trivial compared to the impact of companies that e.g. kill citizens with addictive drugs for profit, withhold life saving drugs and medical treatment for profit, hoard and reserve huge swaths of residential property for rent seeking, contaminate the water table and arable land for natural gas etc and the political proclivities of these companies is never scrutinized outside of partisan politics. I'm not saying that Facebook isn't also a problem, but it seems very much like bikeshedding to tie ourselves into knots writing new laws so that people have the right to share low-effort memes on Facebook's servers when there are so many real problems that could be solved with new laws.
    - semiotagonal 7y ago
      When they're so big that no competition can challenge them. My personal opinion is that Facebook should be broken up, but social media remain unregulated, since a ban on lies only rewards the most skilled liars, whose statements can fool the evaluators.
      - root_axis 7y ago
        > When they're so big that no competition can challenge them. This is pretty vague though. It also raises questions about why we don't limit the political proclivities of other types of companies that also deal in political speech (cable news, broadcast news, talk radio, public radio). I also disagree with the idea that access to Facebook and similar platforms is fundamentally important; it's well known by now that these systems are engineered to be addictive and that heavy use of social media is associated with poor mental health, if anything we should make ad based social media platforms illegal altogether. > My personal opinion is that Facebook should be broken up Why? I am not opposed to the idea but I just don't see how it would improve the situation at all.
      - chroma 7y ago
        > When they're so big that no competition can challenge them. That's what people said about MySpace before Facebook. It's also what people said about IBM, Microsoft, AOL, Nokia, and Kodak. Big companies have a hard time changing direction. They also tend to be more risk averse, causing them to coast on their brand and network effects. Eventually they're usurped by smaller companies that take more risks and innovate better.
    - buboard 7y ago
      the self-preservation instict of states would dictate that they will limit them when they threaten the power of the government.
- buboard 7y ago
  nobody says they re not. They wouldn't be able to advertise their free speech though
msbarnett 7y ago
> Though that has more to do with potentially being illegal. Death threats, and many other forms of hate speech, are illegal in many jurisdictions, and yet that is not used to justify a blanket ban on angry text. > The more serious (violation of free speech) thing is political censorship It is not obvious to me that these things are even separable; to pick but one obvious example, a topless photograph posted by advocates for an equal right for both men and women to be topless in public is clearly political speech. More broadly, look at someone like Larry Flint. The pornagraphic is the political. The current hand-wringing over “censorship of political speech” seems terribly narrowly focused on but one fairly conservative form of speech, to the point that it’s a bit hard to take at face value.
- buboard 7y ago
  because the people advocating for tits equality are a tiny group, while mainstream politics have wide implications. I m all for tit freedom, but facebook's lawyers have to weigh in the costs of litigation
  - msbarnett 7y ago
    free speech is only for popular, mainstream speech? I don’t really care what’s cost effective for Facebook’s lawyers; we don’t have to care about that, so we should stop enabling the lie that their main concern is enabling free speech. Costs, playing nice with established powers, not scaring away advertisers by putting their ads too near a nipple — these are their concerns, and we should stop participating in the destruction of the meaning of “free speech” by calling “a narrow spectrum of speech compatible with our current corporate goals” “free speech”.
    - buboard 7y ago
      Sure, but , i mean they are free to call it free speech, and use it as a selling point. People judge the truth of that statement by their actions
      - 7y ago

dahart 7y ago

Free speech itself as a legal concept comes with limitations based on community guidelines, including obscenity and pornography. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Limitation... I don’t believe there is any country in the world today for which “free speech” means that anything that can be said is legal and protected, but many people seem to think otherwise based on the name.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
I was always under the impression free speech advocacy is the spirit of unlimited speech and not the literal word of law in speech. For example, I recall lots of controversy that is the deplatforming of various alt-right advocates and speakers (Sargon of Akkad for example, or 8chan, or the banning of various subreddits). And while it is literally legal for a private entity to no longer want to service parties it doesn’t find tasteful, the actual act of doing it I’ve seen violates the ‘spirit’ of free speech. I believe that phenomenon is the one being referenced.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  Free speech is a value as much as it is a legal concept (and a rather foundational value in the US at least). People who don’t want to engage in discussion about the importance of free speech as a cultural value will often try to reframe the debate to be an entirely legal one, as that’s open to much less discussion.
- dahart 7y ago
  That’s a good point that there are two separate kinds of free speech. One is the legal protections, and one is the idea of speaking to power. But when people complain that their free speech is being infringed, that necessarily means they’re complaining about the legal Freedom of Speech protections. The latter one, being irreverent and speaking to power, is never guaranteed to be legal nor come without negative consequences or having your platform removed, so if that is the one being referred to, the feigned incredulity about Facebook taking it down is misplaced. It was always going to be taken down or fought against, if you’re going to say something they don’t like. In fact, the act is a provocation who’s goal is to stir the pot. The goal may be to shame or embarrass someone, or it might be to change policy and making things more fair, but a reaction is expected and desired. For the other kind, legal Freedom of Speech protections, not all speech is protected. So, being incredulous about Facebook removing obscenity is misplaced here too, because removal of some kinds of things is completely within the bounds of Free Speech Protections. Either way, in both cases, the speech is subject to community guidelines, and some kinds of speech will result in consequences you might not like. In particular, things that might be considered pornographic or obscene. Note this is different from what Facebook might allow, and as far as I’m concerned they can make whatever rules they like and it doesn’t infringe on “free speech”. I’m making the separate point that Free Speech itself always comes with the same kind of limitations the GP comment was referring to.