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Replace Reddit, Twitter, and Discord or any of the zillion other social networks that exist, the existence of which undermines your concerns from the start, and

by SllX 7y ago

Replace Reddit, Twitter, and Discord or any of the zillion other social networks that exist, the existence of which undermines your concerns from the start, and put in something more traditional like a mall, a private cemetery, or the local coffee shop. You can assemble as much as you like in any of these places during business hours. There might be some quality to them, the availability of open space, good seating, amenities, etc. that make them the best for the type of assembly you wish to engage in. You might think how great it is that anyone can basically assemble here, and exercise their first amendment rights, plot how they’re going to take The Man down a few pegs and discuss how evil capitalism is over Starbucks Frappuccinos or how there should be a constitutional amendment against flag burning. Whatever floats your boat. The property owners of these places also have rights, they’re called property rights. Just because you appreciate their general accessibility and other qualities that make them a nice place to meet and politically organize doesn’t make them any less private property than they are, nor does it take away from the right of the property owners to approach your assembly and tell you lot to knock it off and go somewhere else. And the beauty is, you can go somewhere else and engage in the same activity. The amenities in your existing “assembly hall” of choice might be nice, but they’re not yours to demand. Now to make this a little more 21st Century, there are a plethora of means to communicate, assemble, and organize over the Internet that don’t depend on the amenities of reddit, Twitter, Discord, Facebook, Hacker News, Snapchat, iMessages, TikTok, etc. If the one that you’re on now doesn’t want you there, go somewhere else, try Mastodon out or make a blog or mailing list. You’ve got options, and so long as you’ve got options and there’s no one single state sanctioned social network to depend on, I have no more sympathy for someone demanding that Reddit let them post whatever they want than I do for the group that gets kicked out of the food court at the mall. This newfangled technology, for all the importance we seemingly as a society ascribe to it, just isn’t that important to the general functioning of society as demonstrated by the previous hundreds of millennia we’ve existed and organized into societies of some sort without the help of social media. The exercise of your right to peaceably assemble looks exactly as it always has, with the same stipulations and limitations that it always had. It is in fact, easier to exercise these rights by using modern technology, but it isn’t strictly necessary to have modern technology to exercise your rights.

virtuous_signal 7y ago
I like that there is a logic and consistency to this "hyper-capitalist" approach, but the founders could not have had internet platforms in mind when they wrote the rules. Back when the country was 10,000x smaller, then yes, meeting in person at the equivalent of a mall would empower a group enough to keep the authorities worried. But now? Could anything like the umbrella movement in Hong Kong happen without the organizing power of social media?
- SllX 7y ago
  There is a lot that the founders didn’t account for from the cotton gin forward, but they inherited one of the most flexible legal systems in the world and even made some improvements upon it. The nice thing about the common law is that it adapts over time. The nice thing about a republic is that your legal system no longer depends on a King and in the absence of even a President, society will still tick forward with the rules of the road well understood, and human ingenuity can still flourish in these conditions. And the nice thing about capitalism, really just free markets, is that as a byproduct of human ingenuity, you tend to see an increase in the number of choices available to you over time, and the quality of those choices will tend to increase over time even as the price decreases over time. You can choose where to socialize. You can choose who to socialize with. You can choose what to socialize around. If we ever get to the point where we would want something like the umbrella movement to happen here, then we have far bigger problems than whether that could or could not happen without the assistance of certain social networks. Also if I recall correctly, the HK protest movement actually made use of obscure social media tools as mainstream tools became unavailable or inconvenient and built tools of their own to carry out the movement, or repurposed existing tools which never had the purpose of supporting the movement. You know, good old fashioned human ingenuity.
harimau777 7y ago
An essential part of the "town square" is that it is that it is a central place where people can be heard. The fact that zillions of social networks exist is irrelevant since only a few of them have the public scope and size such that they act as a modern town square. The same is true of physical spaces. The right to peaceable assembly doesn't the same as it has in the past because in the past the center of society was in public rather than private places.

by SllX 7y ago

virtuous_signal 7y ago

I like that there is a logic and consistency to this "hyper-capitalist" approach, but the founders could not have had internet platforms in mind when they wrote the rules. Back when the country was 10,000x smaller, then yes, meeting in person at the equivalent of a mall would empower a group enough to keep the authorities worried. But now? Could anything like the umbrella movement in Hong Kong happen without the organizing power of social media?

SllX 7y ago
There is a lot that the founders didn’t account for from the cotton gin forward, but they inherited one of the most flexible legal systems in the world and even made some improvements upon it. The nice thing about the common law is that it adapts over time. The nice thing about a republic is that your legal system no longer depends on a King and in the absence of even a President, society will still tick forward with the rules of the road well understood, and human ingenuity can still flourish in these conditions. And the nice thing about capitalism, really just free markets, is that as a byproduct of human ingenuity, you tend to see an increase in the number of choices available to you over time, and the quality of those choices will tend to increase over time even as the price decreases over time. You can choose where to socialize. You can choose who to socialize with. You can choose what to socialize around. If we ever get to the point where we would want something like the umbrella movement to happen here, then we have far bigger problems than whether that could or could not happen without the assistance of certain social networks. Also if I recall correctly, the HK protest movement actually made use of obscure social media tools as mainstream tools became unavailable or inconvenient and built tools of their own to carry out the movement, or repurposed existing tools which never had the purpose of supporting the movement. You know, good old fashioned human ingenuity.

harimau777 7y ago

An essential part of the "town square" is that it is that it is a central place where people can be heard. The fact that zillions of social networks exist is irrelevant since only a few of them have the public scope and size such that they act as a modern town square. The same is true of physical spaces. The right to peaceable assembly doesn't the same as it has in the past because in the past the center of society was in public rather than private places.