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It's 100% inline with free speech to let a given website decide what they want to publish. Even if it is a very popular website. If they make bad decisions, th

It's 100% inline with free speech to let a given website decide what they want to publish. Even if it is a very popular website. If they make bad decisions, then people can go to competitors; it's as easy as typing in a different URL. That's how the Internet--and open societies in general--are supposed to work. What it looks like to me--someone who has been on the Internet since before the turn of the century--is that a more recent generation of people grew up with these very popular websites as part of their lives, and they came to believe that these very popular websites are somehow inherent to the Internet and to society in general. They're not. The Internet is more available to entrepreneurs, startups, and new ideas today than it was when Twitter and Facebook were started. They're not too big to fail.

manigandham 6y ago
Scale makes a difference. These social networks are no longer just a small private website serving a local community but a critical communications medium. When they can influence billions and shape elections, it's time to seriously review their power. This is how we treat ISPs and phone providers today, and social networks of a certain size should be considered in the same class.
- riffic 6y ago
  > critical communications medium Undersea cables, phone lines, and the radio spectrum are critical communications media. Private web sites with selective publication criteria by way of their content moderation policies are not.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    Why? What's your reasoning exactly? Should private companies have any regulation at all? Should oil companies avoid pollution? Should ISPs ensure quality of service? Should medical companies ensure safety? Why is it that trillion-dollar companies that are larger and more powerful than anything else before should not be regulated when it comes to something as crucial as our freedom to communicate? I find it ironic that another major HN story today is another instance of Google wiping out someone's account without any recourse, erasing their online presence and decades of data. Is that the new normal? Megacorporations ruling our lives without reason or appeal? The world has changed. Social media is no longer just a website. It's communication fabric with network effects larger than entire nations that surrounds our lives. We either deal with it accordingly or risk losing much more.
    - riffic 6y ago
      I fundamentally disagree with your premise that these incumbent commercial social media services are a communications fabric. These companies are in no way common carrier, critical communications media. The underlying physical infrastructure, sure, the underlying standards like the TCP/IP stack, DNS, Ethernet, etc, well those are too, but these are categorically not quite same as what you are arguing should also be included in that group.
      - username90 6y ago
        It is about political power, Facebook and Twitter shouldn't have the power to significantly alter elections by selectively choosing what information people see.
        riffic 6y ago
        Facebook and Twitter make money through the sale of advertisements and the sale of data for market research purposes. If their power needs to be moderated, people can do like the old television days and boycott their advertisers: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/28/arts/a-boycott-of-tv-advertisers-is-again-threatened.html https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/28/arts/a-boycott-of-tv-adve...
        manigandham 6y ago
        The "old television days" are long over. Considering the size of these companies and their advertisers, there is no way that boycotting or other protest would make any impact. You're dealing in fantasies from an obsolete era.
        username90 6y ago
        Basically everyone advertises there. So boycotting their advertisers is like boycotting earning money because your disagree with the government and want to hurt their tax revenue.
      - manigandham 6y ago
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Until you are delisted from google, banned by youtube, blocked by facebook and twitter and now your online potential was reduced in 90%. Imagine being blocked from every walmart,costco, 7-eleven and being told that it is freedom because you still have the choice to go elsewhere
    - SECProto 6y ago
      > Imagine being blocked from every walmart,costco, 7-eleven and being told that it is freedom because you still have the choice to go elsewhere I'm imagining someone who messes up badly enough to get banned from all those places and still somehow blames the stores rather than their own actions.
      - cambalache 6y ago
        Yes, perfect analogy, everybody knows all people who has been blocked from twitter "had it coming" to them.
      - alentist 6y ago
        > I'm imagining someone who messes up badly enough to get banned from all those places and still somehow blames the stores rather than their own actions. That’s exactly what antisemites say of Jewish expulsions.
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  When they can influence billions and shape elections, it's time to seriously review their power. Yeah, but it seems like FB and Twitter have been reviewing their power over the last four years. They looked at the power of trolling-network, botnets etc to the influence elections. They basically triggered a circuit-breaker when a heavy hit-piece hit their networks. Which is to say "the power of social networks" isn't just the power of the owners of the networks but also the power of groups embedded in the networks. Should these providers be fair brockers for all kind of manipulated viral content as well as for individual positions? Should they use their position of the ultimate kill switch to be the ultimate authority? I don't know but I don't think you put the most recent events as Facebook versus Organic Content - it's more Facebook versus Rupert Murdoch.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    They have no accountability or oversight. Their reviews are completely up to them and they have nothing to prove to anyone about efficacy beyond increasing advertising revenue as much as possible for investors.
notadev 6y ago
Where does one go when Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube seem to take these steps in tandem? The joke of "go make your own social network" has been tried with places like Parler and Gab, but they get banned from app stores, ironically blocked from technically, but not ideologically, decentralized services like Mastodon, or even dropped from web hosts. The open Internet is dead.
- krimeo 6y ago
  TDW is the most successful alternative social network at the moment and it got hugely popular very quick despite being blocked.
- zaptrem 6y ago
  Those projects failed because the general public agrees with FB/TW/YT’s actions so far. When they bad QAnon, the only people annoyed enough to leave are QAnon adherents, so you get a new social network full of trash. As a result, nobody else follows them.
  - username90 6y ago
    People don't visit FB/TW/YT for their editorial control. People tolerate FB/TW/YT's actions because it is easier, they don't necessarily agree with them.
  - newcomputer 6y ago
    Those projects failed because Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have enormous network effects that make it nearly impossible to usurp them.
- encom 6y ago
  CUT TO: Stallman standing on a rooftop, brooding. His hands at his hips. His cape flutters in the chilly evening wind. "In your darkest hour, when the demons come, call on me brother, and we will fight them together!"
- ProcNetDev 6y ago
  You can still publish! AWS and cloudflare will happily take your money if you're not a neonazi. If you are a neonazi, A) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTs_Q4hEqmA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTs_Q4hEqmA B) you can find some mom-and-pop co-lo that will take your money. AFAIK, 8chan is still serving page views.
AlexandrB 6y ago
If you're an entrepreneur today and you start an internet company without paying Google or Facebook money for advertising you're probably not going to succeed. The only question is how much marketing "tax" these companies will extract from you. If you have direct competitors, you'll at least have to pay Google to keep their name off of the first search results for your company.
tossAfterUsing 6y ago
> .... and they came to believe that these very popular websites are somehow inherent to the Internet and to society in general. They're not. Amen. And my feeling is that we would be better off without them. This is why i'm in favor of slow computing, slower network speeds, and slower lifestyles. (I should state that this is not sarcasm)
- Const-me 6y ago
  Agree on lifestyle, but not computing. Modern 4k monitors are awesome. Need a fast computer to drive them. My phone shoots 20 megapixels photos. I only post them on social media once in a year or so, but have cloud backups and I need bandwidth for that. I watch movies sometimes, Blu-ray ain’t available at local physical retail, again need internet bandwidth and local storage.
nickysielicki 6y ago
> It's 100% inline with free speech to let a given website decide what they want to publish. Imagine I make a website where I censor everything except pro Trump memes. Is that a bastion of free speech, compared to a website where I allow, y'know, actual free speech and discourse? I can't stand when people try to conflate the first amendment with freedom of speech. Nobody is (seriously) arguing that websites shouldn't have the legal freedom under our government to limit speech to whatever they desire. What we're arguing is that these platforms ought to value free speech as a principle and act impartially. Of course they have, and should have, the freedom to censor whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. But they should have the integrity not to.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >What we're arguing is that these platforms ought to value free speech as a principle and act impartially. [...] But they should have the integrity not to. But you're ignoring the fact that the corporations' value system consists of maximizing profit. Anything that isn't pushing in that direction is both a distraction and a hindrance to the stated goals of the corporation -- making money. Valuing free speech or having integrity are laudable ideals. I do my best to prioritize both. Sometimes I fail. But I do the best I can. But my (or your) goals as an individual aren't relevant in this context. Changing the incentives for these corporations to do whatever it takes to maximize profit would be a good thing. That will entail the willingness of a majority of us to vote with our feet/wallet, likely aided with smart regulation. But until we change those incentives/priorities, the status quo is what we'll get.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  Facebook and Twitter have never been impartial principled venues for free speech. They have blocked content from the very beginning, mostly relating to sex and violence. Facebook even banned photos of mothers breastfeeding their children. And they make editorial decisions constantly about what content each person sees. The fact that these decisions are scaled by computer algorithms does not mean they are not happening. This idea that they are neutral and free communications channels is a marketing message that they invented and pushed, because they thought it would help them succeed in business. We don’t have to believe them. They’re just private companies, two among millions. If they make unpopular decisions about how to operate, they will fail. They should be allowed to do that. Conversely, if they make popular decisions that you disagree with, it doesn’t mean the whole concept of free speech is damaged. Again: just two companies.
ww520 6y ago
The more reason to break up these corporations.

manigandham 6y ago

Scale makes a difference. These social networks are no longer just a small private website serving a local community but a critical communications medium. When they can influence billions and shape elections, it's time to seriously review their power. This is how we treat ISPs and phone providers today, and social networks of a certain size should be considered in the same class.

riffic 6y ago
> critical communications medium Undersea cables, phone lines, and the radio spectrum are critical communications media. Private web sites with selective publication criteria by way of their content moderation policies are not.
- manigandham 6y ago
  Why? What's your reasoning exactly? Should private companies have any regulation at all? Should oil companies avoid pollution? Should ISPs ensure quality of service? Should medical companies ensure safety? Why is it that trillion-dollar companies that are larger and more powerful than anything else before should not be regulated when it comes to something as crucial as our freedom to communicate? I find it ironic that another major HN story today is another instance of Google wiping out someone's account without any recourse, erasing their online presence and decades of data. Is that the new normal? Megacorporations ruling our lives without reason or appeal? The world has changed. Social media is no longer just a website. It's communication fabric with network effects larger than entire nations that surrounds our lives. We either deal with it accordingly or risk losing much more.
  - riffic 6y ago
    I fundamentally disagree with your premise that these incumbent commercial social media services are a communications fabric. These companies are in no way common carrier, critical communications media. The underlying physical infrastructure, sure, the underlying standards like the TCP/IP stack, DNS, Ethernet, etc, well those are too, but these are categorically not quite same as what you are arguing should also be included in that group.
    - username90 6y ago
      It is about political power, Facebook and Twitter shouldn't have the power to significantly alter elections by selectively choosing what information people see.
      - riffic 6y ago
        Facebook and Twitter make money through the sale of advertisements and the sale of data for market research purposes. If their power needs to be moderated, people can do like the old television days and boycott their advertisers: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/28/arts/a-boycott-of-tv-advertisers-is-again-threatened.html https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/28/arts/a-boycott-of-tv-adve...
        manigandham 6y ago
        The "old television days" are long over. Considering the size of these companies and their advertisers, there is no way that boycotting or other protest would make any impact. You're dealing in fantasies from an obsolete era.
        username90 6y ago
        Basically everyone advertises there. So boycotting their advertisers is like boycotting earning money because your disagree with the government and want to hurt their tax revenue.
    - manigandham 6y ago
- cambalache 6y ago
  Until you are delisted from google, banned by youtube, blocked by facebook and twitter and now your online potential was reduced in 90%. Imagine being blocked from every walmart,costco, 7-eleven and being told that it is freedom because you still have the choice to go elsewhere
  - SECProto 6y ago
    > Imagine being blocked from every walmart,costco, 7-eleven and being told that it is freedom because you still have the choice to go elsewhere I'm imagining someone who messes up badly enough to get banned from all those places and still somehow blames the stores rather than their own actions.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Yes, perfect analogy, everybody knows all people who has been blocked from twitter "had it coming" to them.
    - alentist 6y ago
      > I'm imagining someone who messes up badly enough to get banned from all those places and still somehow blames the stores rather than their own actions. That’s exactly what antisemites say of Jewish expulsions.
joe_the_user 6y ago
When they can influence billions and shape elections, it's time to seriously review their power. Yeah, but it seems like FB and Twitter have been reviewing their power over the last four years. They looked at the power of trolling-network, botnets etc to the influence elections. They basically triggered a circuit-breaker when a heavy hit-piece hit their networks. Which is to say "the power of social networks" isn't just the power of the owners of the networks but also the power of groups embedded in the networks. Should these providers be fair brockers for all kind of manipulated viral content as well as for individual positions? Should they use their position of the ultimate kill switch to be the ultimate authority? I don't know but I don't think you put the most recent events as Facebook versus Organic Content - it's more Facebook versus Rupert Murdoch.
- manigandham 6y ago
  They have no accountability or oversight. Their reviews are completely up to them and they have nothing to prove to anyone about efficacy beyond increasing advertising revenue as much as possible for investors.

notadev 6y ago

Where does one go when Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube seem to take these steps in tandem? The joke of "go make your own social network" has been tried with places like Parler and Gab, but they get banned from app stores, ironically blocked from technically, but not ideologically, decentralized services like Mastodon, or even dropped from web hosts. The open Internet is dead.

krimeo 6y ago
TDW is the most successful alternative social network at the moment and it got hugely popular very quick despite being blocked.
zaptrem 6y ago
Those projects failed because the general public agrees with FB/TW/YT’s actions so far. When they bad QAnon, the only people annoyed enough to leave are QAnon adherents, so you get a new social network full of trash. As a result, nobody else follows them.
- username90 6y ago
  People don't visit FB/TW/YT for their editorial control. People tolerate FB/TW/YT's actions because it is easier, they don't necessarily agree with them.
- newcomputer 6y ago
  Those projects failed because Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have enormous network effects that make it nearly impossible to usurp them.
encom 6y ago
CUT TO: Stallman standing on a rooftop, brooding. His hands at his hips. His cape flutters in the chilly evening wind. "In your darkest hour, when the demons come, call on me brother, and we will fight them together!"
ProcNetDev 6y ago
You can still publish! AWS and cloudflare will happily take your money if you're not a neonazi. If you are a neonazi, A) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTs_Q4hEqmA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTs_Q4hEqmA B) you can find some mom-and-pop co-lo that will take your money. AFAIK, 8chan is still serving page views.

AlexandrB 6y ago

If you're an entrepreneur today and you start an internet company without paying Google or Facebook money for advertising you're probably not going to succeed. The only question is how much marketing "tax" these companies will extract from you. If you have direct competitors, you'll at least have to pay Google to keep their name off of the first search results for your company.

tossAfterUsing 6y ago

> .... and they came to believe that these very popular websites are somehow inherent to the Internet and to society in general. They're not. Amen. And my feeling is that we would be better off without them. This is why i'm in favor of slow computing, slower network speeds, and slower lifestyles. (I should state that this is not sarcasm)

Const-me 6y ago
Agree on lifestyle, but not computing. Modern 4k monitors are awesome. Need a fast computer to drive them. My phone shoots 20 megapixels photos. I only post them on social media once in a year or so, but have cloud backups and I need bandwidth for that. I watch movies sometimes, Blu-ray ain’t available at local physical retail, again need internet bandwidth and local storage.

nickysielicki 6y ago

> It's 100% inline with free speech to let a given website decide what they want to publish. Imagine I make a website where I censor everything except pro Trump memes. Is that a bastion of free speech, compared to a website where I allow, y'know, actual free speech and discourse? I can't stand when people try to conflate the first amendment with freedom of speech. Nobody is (seriously) arguing that websites shouldn't have the legal freedom under our government to limit speech to whatever they desire. What we're arguing is that these platforms ought to value free speech as a principle and act impartially. Of course they have, and should have, the freedom to censor whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. But they should have the integrity not to.

nobody9999 6y ago
>What we're arguing is that these platforms ought to value free speech as a principle and act impartially. [...] But they should have the integrity not to. But you're ignoring the fact that the corporations' value system consists of maximizing profit. Anything that isn't pushing in that direction is both a distraction and a hindrance to the stated goals of the corporation -- making money. Valuing free speech or having integrity are laudable ideals. I do my best to prioritize both. Sometimes I fail. But I do the best I can. But my (or your) goals as an individual aren't relevant in this context. Changing the incentives for these corporations to do whatever it takes to maximize profit would be a good thing. That will entail the willingness of a majority of us to vote with our feet/wallet, likely aided with smart regulation. But until we change those incentives/priorities, the status quo is what we'll get.
snowwrestler 6y ago
Facebook and Twitter have never been impartial principled venues for free speech. They have blocked content from the very beginning, mostly relating to sex and violence. Facebook even banned photos of mothers breastfeeding their children. And they make editorial decisions constantly about what content each person sees. The fact that these decisions are scaled by computer algorithms does not mean they are not happening. This idea that they are neutral and free communications channels is a marketing message that they invented and pushed, because they thought it would help them succeed in business. We don’t have to believe them. They’re just private companies, two among millions. If they make unpopular decisions about how to operate, they will fail. They should be allowed to do that. Conversely, if they make popular decisions that you disagree with, it doesn’t mean the whole concept of free speech is damaged. Again: just two companies.

ww520 6y ago

The more reason to break up these corporations.