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Freedom of expression inherently includes the freedom to pay for expression. What are your expression worth if you wouldn’t be able to pay a service, cellphone

Freedom of expression inherently includes the freedom to pay for expression. What are your expression worth if you wouldn’t be able to pay a service, cellphone/internet connection/reddit gold to express that? How is paying ads different than paying a campaigner set up a loudspeaker in the middle of a city? But then again, since twitter is a private enterprise, I fully respect their right to act on their own platform.

asdf333 7y ago
freedom of expression is different from freedom to pay to amplify the expression.
- streblo 7y ago
  Account age has no bearing on whether a comment is high or low quality.
- asxd 7y ago
  I don’t think the age of their account should be a factor in the validity of their arguments. It would be one thing if our rights were restricted so that we could never pay for reach of expression. That seems like it would be a violation of free speech. But in this case (as noted) it’s a private entity enforcing their own legitimate policy exclusively on their own platform.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  Yes, and freedom of expression includes people who created account 3 months ago, who decided to amplify his message which are then read by you here. In order to do that, the person paid for internet, electronics, invested time and thought into this practice. The right to pay for something using money is inherent as the right to spend another resource such as time or labor.
baddox 7y ago
I think the distinction is very clear between paying for telephone service to call your friends and family and running an ad campaign.
- zbyte64 7y ago
  Telemarketers who fake their phone number are just practicing free speech. /s
basilgohar 7y ago
Citizens United is the example that shows it's more complicated than that. Once limits are removed, then the same power structures that make and keep powerful entities powerful can continue to be reenforced if checks are not put into place to limit the power money can have in being a vector or amplifier for free speech. What paying for expression has come to is that you can dominate discourse simply by paying more. So if you have money, you can buy influence even more directly than by paying for bribes and courting legal ramifications. The reality is marketing works, and that is to say, people's opinions can be changed quite malleably by just inundating them more-and-more with the idea you want them to adopt, whether it's seeing a movie, listening to an album, or adopting an opinion. Freedom for all cannot exist where power can buy influence in this fashion, and that's where freedom to pay for expression is more complicated than, say, printing my own newspaper and sharing it with others. It lets you also gain the system and buy-up all options of expression (e.g., all ads in a newspaper or website) and in the more insiduous ways, buy "grassroots" influencers through sockpuppet accounts. I don't have a solution, but it doesn't mean there's not a fundamental problem when we make freedom to pay for expression free of roadblocks to dominating behaviors.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  Arguably the problem is that the limits on contributions to candidates and parties puts them at a specific disadvantage. PACs and advocacy-as-journalism partly exists because political parties are restricted while relatively unaccountable organizations are not.
- drak0n1c 7y ago
  Ads sometimes help the underdog much more than they help the already-known incumbent - ads can put them both on equal footing if the volume is reasonable. I've discovered new small family restaurants I never would have noticed if I didn't get their postcard ads. Similarly, thanks to ads I've heard of new political candidates challenging long-time incumbent politicians - they may be spending much less than the incumbent but they could afford to write me a postcard. Maybe instead of a digital ban, there could be rationing on a per-user basis of how often they are repeatedly shown a political ad from the same faction. That way challengers can get their word in.
basch 7y ago
IF google and microsoft came to an agreement over what people where allowed to email, it would be pretty interesting to see if most people just accepted censorship on private communication. To an extent they already do so, in that they block spam at their discretion. Do you respect that same right for google and microsoft to ban the propagation of pro-political-opinion-you-dont-agree-with from their platforms?
- xkjkls 7y ago
  A better example would be something like the NBA's situation in China currently. If a government has the market power to determine what those in a private enterprise should be able to say, is that a situation that we accept?
- harry8 7y ago
  "IF google and microsoft came to an agreement over what people where allowed to spam email, ..." And they have. This is not consenting communication. This is broadcast. Different game, different rules.
paulddraper 7y ago
Not to mention the fact that "politics" winds up being a very wide swath. I will be interested to see how Twitter classifies this. 1. Suppose you advertise for an donations to an adoption charity? Finding good homes for children is surely universally recognized as a wonderful, noble cause. Advertise on Twitter. 2. Now suppose the adoption charity partners with and funds pregnancy centers needing adoption services. 3. Now suppose that many of these partner pregnancy center don't offer or recommend abortion services. 4. Now suppose that proposed legislation requires pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion, with resistance from these pregnancy centers. 5. The organizations directly funded by your charity are now embroiled directly in one of the most hot-button political issues of the last 50 years. Is your charity now political? Can it run ads on Twitter? --- Note: A common misconception is that there is no such thing as 509(a) political charity. This is incorrect. Non-profits are only restricted from supporting political candidates. They can support political issues all they want and do limited lobbying. The easy thing is for Twitter is to just use 509(a) status as the yardstick for bordline orgs, but that line would be far into the "politics" space.
- skybrian 7y ago
  There is politics in everything, but when we say "political ad" we really mean ads primarily intended to influence voters in elections.
xkjkls 7y ago
If we create a system where only those who can pay are able to get their message across, is that really free expression for the millions who can't?
CharlesColeman 7y ago
> What are your expression worth if you wouldn’t be able to pay a service, cellphone/internet connection/reddit gold to express that? How is paying ads different than paying a campaigner set up a loudspeaker in the middle of a city? Absolutes don't really work well in the real world: there are too many trade-offs to be balanced and too many positive goals that are at tension with each other. For instance, and absolute right to paying for free expression sounds nice in isolation, because we value free speech. But we also value democracy, and democracy doesn't work well when an oligarchy or foreign power can use its massive wealth overwhelm and confuse the expression of the common people.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  Free speech comes with downsides just like every other thing. The alternative is to censor some things and allow other things, which work fine until more and more things gets banned, sometimes out of good intention. I’m totally onboard with banning hate speech and so on, but we need a very hard line of freedom somewhere that no bans get to cross, to me, this crosses it
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    The word "censorship" has a lot of moral baggage, and using it here obscures more than it clarifies. Not all limits on speech are censorship. For instance, it's not "censorship" to insist everyone speak in turn, and to tell someone who's continuously shouting their opinion over others to shut up and let others speak. That scenario is very similar to putting limits on how much someone or some group can "pay for expression."
proverbialbunny 7y ago
In 1971 the US Supreme Court ruled on this very issue, stating that if it costs more than what the average person can pay for, then paying for speaking restricts freedom of speech. They compared the cost to mail a letter vs a commercial. At the time they stated, "$1000 is beyond the reach of the majority." which at the time was what campaign donations were limited to.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wpietri 7y ago
No, not at all. Freedom of expression is the right to say your piece to willing listeners. It's a guarantee the state won't interfere in most speech, not a guarantee that rich people can buy an audience. Cellphones and internet connections are content-neutral pipes that convey content between a willing listener/reader and a speaker they select. So paying for those is a very different case than buying ads, and especially buying false ads. Especially now that we're 25+ years into the web era, I don't think there's a strong argument for the legal necessity of paid political advertising at all. If I'm curious about candidate or an issue, I can find out anything I want from anybody who can use two thumbs to type something into a box on Facebook or Twitter. I can also get vetted content from a variety of aggregators, from commercial media to non-profit election guides to Wikipedia-style references to my friends sharing things on social media. Given that, a law saying, "Nobody can pay for reach," certainly wouldn't harm democracy any. And it might help. So I think this is a great step forward on Twitter's part.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  There’s no such thing as “legal necessity” to allow something. Our law is based on what is not allowed, instead of what is allowed. There’s an increasing drive towards banning more things and that’s fine if they are warranted, but I hope that we never get to the point where there are a set of action that we are _allowed_ to do.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Sure, but did you really not understand what I meant? We outlaw things when a) they cause sufficient harm, and b) don't have sufficient countervailing utility. E.g., kitchen knives remain legal even though people are murdered with them, but you aren't allowed to buy a tactical nuke. I'm saying that whatever previous necessity drove us to allow political advertising despite the historically obvious harms, the Internet makes that much, much smaller.

asdf333 7y ago

freedom of expression is different from freedom to pay to amplify the expression.

streblo 7y ago
Account age has no bearing on whether a comment is high or low quality.
asxd 7y ago
I don’t think the age of their account should be a factor in the validity of their arguments. It would be one thing if our rights were restricted so that we could never pay for reach of expression. That seems like it would be a violation of free speech. But in this case (as noted) it’s a private entity enforcing their own legitimate policy exclusively on their own platform.
Aperocky 7y ago
Yes, and freedom of expression includes people who created account 3 months ago, who decided to amplify his message which are then read by you here. In order to do that, the person paid for internet, electronics, invested time and thought into this practice. The right to pay for something using money is inherent as the right to spend another resource such as time or labor.

baddox 7y ago

I think the distinction is very clear between paying for telephone service to call your friends and family and running an ad campaign.

zbyte64 7y ago
Telemarketers who fake their phone number are just practicing free speech. /s

basilgohar 7y ago

Citizens United is the example that shows it's more complicated than that. Once limits are removed, then the same power structures that make and keep powerful entities powerful can continue to be reenforced if checks are not put into place to limit the power money can have in being a vector or amplifier for free speech. What paying for expression has come to is that you can dominate discourse simply by paying more. So if you have money, you can buy influence even more directly than by paying for bribes and courting legal ramifications. The reality is marketing works, and that is to say, people's opinions can be changed quite malleably by just inundating them more-and-more with the idea you want them to adopt, whether it's seeing a movie, listening to an album, or adopting an opinion. Freedom for all cannot exist where power can buy influence in this fashion, and that's where freedom to pay for expression is more complicated than, say, printing my own newspaper and sharing it with others. It lets you also gain the system and buy-up all options of expression (e.g., all ads in a newspaper or website) and in the more insiduous ways, buy "grassroots" influencers through sockpuppet accounts. I don't have a solution, but it doesn't mean there's not a fundamental problem when we make freedom to pay for expression free of roadblocks to dominating behaviors.

humanrebar 7y ago
Arguably the problem is that the limits on contributions to candidates and parties puts them at a specific disadvantage. PACs and advocacy-as-journalism partly exists because political parties are restricted while relatively unaccountable organizations are not.
drak0n1c 7y ago
Ads sometimes help the underdog much more than they help the already-known incumbent - ads can put them both on equal footing if the volume is reasonable. I've discovered new small family restaurants I never would have noticed if I didn't get their postcard ads. Similarly, thanks to ads I've heard of new political candidates challenging long-time incumbent politicians - they may be spending much less than the incumbent but they could afford to write me a postcard. Maybe instead of a digital ban, there could be rationing on a per-user basis of how often they are repeatedly shown a political ad from the same faction. That way challengers can get their word in.

basch 7y ago

IF google and microsoft came to an agreement over what people where allowed to email, it would be pretty interesting to see if most people just accepted censorship on private communication. To an extent they already do so, in that they block spam at their discretion. Do you respect that same right for google and microsoft to ban the propagation of pro-political-opinion-you-dont-agree-with from their platforms?

xkjkls 7y ago
A better example would be something like the NBA's situation in China currently. If a government has the market power to determine what those in a private enterprise should be able to say, is that a situation that we accept?
harry8 7y ago
"IF google and microsoft came to an agreement over what people where allowed to spam email, ..." And they have. This is not consenting communication. This is broadcast. Different game, different rules.

paulddraper 7y ago

Not to mention the fact that "politics" winds up being a very wide swath. I will be interested to see how Twitter classifies this. 1. Suppose you advertise for an donations to an adoption charity? Finding good homes for children is surely universally recognized as a wonderful, noble cause. Advertise on Twitter. 2. Now suppose the adoption charity partners with and funds pregnancy centers needing adoption services. 3. Now suppose that many of these partner pregnancy center don't offer or recommend abortion services. 4. Now suppose that proposed legislation requires pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion, with resistance from these pregnancy centers. 5. The organizations directly funded by your charity are now embroiled directly in one of the most hot-button political issues of the last 50 years. Is your charity now political? Can it run ads on Twitter? --- Note: A common misconception is that there is no such thing as 509(a) political charity. This is incorrect. Non-profits are only restricted from supporting political candidates. They can support political issues all they want and do limited lobbying. The easy thing is for Twitter is to just use 509(a) status as the yardstick for bordline orgs, but that line would be far into the "politics" space.

skybrian 7y ago
There is politics in everything, but when we say "political ad" we really mean ads primarily intended to influence voters in elections.

xkjkls 7y ago

If we create a system where only those who can pay are able to get their message across, is that really free expression for the millions who can't?

CharlesColeman 7y ago

> What are your expression worth if you wouldn’t be able to pay a service, cellphone/internet connection/reddit gold to express that? How is paying ads different than paying a campaigner set up a loudspeaker in the middle of a city? Absolutes don't really work well in the real world: there are too many trade-offs to be balanced and too many positive goals that are at tension with each other. For instance, and absolute right to paying for free expression sounds nice in isolation, because we value free speech. But we also value democracy, and democracy doesn't work well when an oligarchy or foreign power can use its massive wealth overwhelm and confuse the expression of the common people.

Aperocky 7y ago
Free speech comes with downsides just like every other thing. The alternative is to censor some things and allow other things, which work fine until more and more things gets banned, sometimes out of good intention. I’m totally onboard with banning hate speech and so on, but we need a very hard line of freedom somewhere that no bans get to cross, to me, this crosses it
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  The word "censorship" has a lot of moral baggage, and using it here obscures more than it clarifies. Not all limits on speech are censorship. For instance, it's not "censorship" to insist everyone speak in turn, and to tell someone who's continuously shouting their opinion over others to shut up and let others speak. That scenario is very similar to putting limits on how much someone or some group can "pay for expression."

proverbialbunny 7y ago

In 1971 the US Supreme Court ruled on this very issue, stating that if it costs more than what the average person can pay for, then paying for speaking restricts freedom of speech. They compared the cost to mail a letter vs a commercial. At the time they stated, "$1000 is beyond the reach of the majority." which at the time was what campaign donations were limited to.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

wpietri 7y ago

No, not at all. Freedom of expression is the right to say your piece to willing listeners. It's a guarantee the state won't interfere in most speech, not a guarantee that rich people can buy an audience. Cellphones and internet connections are content-neutral pipes that convey content between a willing listener/reader and a speaker they select. So paying for those is a very different case than buying ads, and especially buying false ads. Especially now that we're 25+ years into the web era, I don't think there's a strong argument for the legal necessity of paid political advertising at all. If I'm curious about candidate or an issue, I can find out anything I want from anybody who can use two thumbs to type something into a box on Facebook or Twitter. I can also get vetted content from a variety of aggregators, from commercial media to non-profit election guides to Wikipedia-style references to my friends sharing things on social media. Given that, a law saying, "Nobody can pay for reach," certainly wouldn't harm democracy any. And it might help. So I think this is a great step forward on Twitter's part.

Aperocky 7y ago
There’s no such thing as “legal necessity” to allow something. Our law is based on what is not allowed, instead of what is allowed. There’s an increasing drive towards banning more things and that’s fine if they are warranted, but I hope that we never get to the point where there are a set of action that we are _allowed_ to do.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Sure, but did you really not understand what I meant? We outlaw things when a) they cause sufficient harm, and b) don't have sufficient countervailing utility. E.g., kitchen knives remain legal even though people are murdered with them, but you aren't allowed to buy a tactical nuke. I'm saying that whatever previous necessity drove us to allow political advertising despite the historically obvious harms, the Internet makes that much, much smaller.