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In the realm of corporate censorship, I still believe that politics is much less important to companies than profits. My takeaway from censorship on YouTube and
by manfredo 6y ago
In the realm of corporate censorship, I still believe that politics is much less important to companies than profits. My takeaway from censorship on YouTube and other social media is that it's levied at content that could reflect poorly on advertisers. Inconvenient and controversial content more so than any specific political views. Granted, controversial does overlap with politic and especially fringe politics.
Personally I'm much more worried about infrastructure becoming closed off than any specific sites. I don't know whether companies' moderation is effective or not. I trust the market to sort that out. What would be really concerning, though, is if the underlying infrastructure starts conducting censorship of their own.
We've already witnessed this to a degree with 8chan being effectively wiped off the face of the internet for the better part of a year. Square and other payment providers have started refusing to do business with certain people and groups. I'm less concerned of a world where Facebook censors its content, and much more concerned with a world where someone can't even run their own personal website because DNS providers, payment providers, and hosting services have blacklisted them.
- aklemm 6y agoRight, this is the hard part and I don't understand what the law says so far and what may need changed. Imo, if you won't publish my book, I still have free speech, but if no one will sell me paper, then I don't.
- manfredo 6y agoIt's definitely a hard problem. I definitely don't agree that companies need to host speech. Freedom of speech also means freedom from compelled speech. I think a good boundary is to define whether an entity is actually hosting speed or providing general communications services. Platforms like facebook are the latter. Comments and photos exist on their servers, and they have a right not to host speech they don't want. But things like DNS providers are more akin to paper produces in your analogy. And things like banking services are a whole different story. I see no reason why they shouldn't be regarded as utilities like telecoms, mail carriers, etc. I think banks have to honor checks. Maybe there's a startup idea in letting people send paper checks through the mail via an app?
- manfredo 6y ago"hosting speed" -> hosting speech
- unishark 6y agoI think it's always been this way to a degree. But the mob can't completely exclude companies beyond a certain appeal, only the most extreme fringe. E.g. when they try to "excommunicate" firms over more mainstream views it doesn't work. Groups also use various forms of harassment to censor individuals which I think is a much harder problem online.
- manfredo 6y agoPayment processors refusing to do business is a new thing. As is cloudflare and dns providers refusing service.