4 ms·

Honestly. I’m for this (hello downvotes). There are a lot of platforms that have been censoring right wingers for years. And while they may indeed be “private c

Honestly. I’m for this (hello downvotes). There are a lot of platforms that have been censoring right wingers for years. And while they may indeed be “private companies”, they nevertheless function as public spaces with significant public trust, and monopoly power on public discourse in their respective mediums.

SonOfKyuss 6y ago
Should a platform be coerced into allowing harassment and hate speech just because that happens to be someone’s political stance?
- Gollapalli 6y ago
  Apple's and oranges. Harassment is a specific legally definable thing that we have legal processes in place to handle. I don't see why platforms can't model their harassment policies off of that, and enforce them impartially, or just have the courts handle it. Hate speech is not something you can nail down, because it's not a real thing. The working definition of hate speech, as it's actually used is "Anything I don't like". I could very well say that you are being hateful against right wingers (I'm not saying that, but I COULD), and it would be about as sound an argument as any other for hate speech. So yes, if a platform has a monopoly, then they should be coerced into allowing "hate speech". EDIT: I should probably make it clear that my preferred solution is to force (yes, force) Twitter and Facebook to make themselves compatible with API's like activitypub or similar. I understand that's a pandora's box, but we seem to be in Pandora's emporium in this situation, and must open some box or other.
  - sfj 6y ago
    If you believe in freedom of speech, you should believe in a company's right to censor. Otherwise you are violating their freedom of speech to not speak. There is no justification to force someone to make available what someone else uploaded on their servers. From a practical level, the internet is a new medium, and were constantly transitioning from one state to another, and are far from settling down yet. Therefore, any rule you make will be out of date a few years down the road. And I say this as someone who doesn't believe “hatespeech” should be censored or punished in any way.

SonOfKyuss 6y ago

Should a platform be coerced into allowing harassment and hate speech just because that happens to be someone’s political stance?

Gollapalli 6y ago
Apple's and oranges. Harassment is a specific legally definable thing that we have legal processes in place to handle. I don't see why platforms can't model their harassment policies off of that, and enforce them impartially, or just have the courts handle it. Hate speech is not something you can nail down, because it's not a real thing. The working definition of hate speech, as it's actually used is "Anything I don't like". I could very well say that you are being hateful against right wingers (I'm not saying that, but I COULD), and it would be about as sound an argument as any other for hate speech. So yes, if a platform has a monopoly, then they should be coerced into allowing "hate speech". EDIT: I should probably make it clear that my preferred solution is to force (yes, force) Twitter and Facebook to make themselves compatible with API's like activitypub or similar. I understand that's a pandora's box, but we seem to be in Pandora's emporium in this situation, and must open some box or other.
- sfj 6y ago
  If you believe in freedom of speech, you should believe in a company's right to censor. Otherwise you are violating their freedom of speech to not speak. There is no justification to force someone to make available what someone else uploaded on their servers. From a practical level, the internet is a new medium, and were constantly transitioning from one state to another, and are far from settling down yet. Therefore, any rule you make will be out of date a few years down the road. And I say this as someone who doesn't believe “hatespeech” should be censored or punished in any way.