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> Both the government and private companies can censor stuff. But private companies are a little bit scarier. They have no constitution to answer to. They’re no

> Both the government and private companies can censor stuff. But private companies are a little bit scarier. They have no constitution to answer to. They’re not elected. They have no constituents or voters. All of the protections we’ve built up to protect against government tyranny don’t exist for corporate tyranny. - Aaron Swartz

krapp 6y ago
I mean, I can switch social media platforms a lot more easily than I can switch governments, and corporations don't have a monopoly on violence which would allow their tyranny to lead to torture, gulags and mass graves, but OK. I guess being banned from a forum is much much worse than being sent to the re-education camps.
- akhosravian 6y ago
  You could switch off Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Twitch, but for all but the most influential of people the folks you interact with won’t follow.
  - krapp 6y ago
    That's still not tyranny, that's just the network effect. They have a choice about what platform to use as do you and I.
- zo1 6y ago
  The methods have changed, the motivation and net result is the same: opinion and thought control. Tech has made it impersonal, clinical, obfuscated, random and ubiquitous. There is no need to "send people to gulags" or torture them in order to suppress their ability to sow dissent amongst their peers. That is the sole purpose, even if it's algorithmic and emergent without a central "dictator" controlling what can or can't be said. Essentially only approved opinions and movements are allowed to gather steam, no different to the movement of dissent and mistrust of the government that had to be stemmed previously using gulags. So yes, you are 100% right it's not the same and we are not being sent to re-education camps. But that doesn't mean certain individuals are not being persecuted through "random" algorithms that target and marginalize them. As another poster here mentioned, censorship does not need to be absolute for it to have an effect. You also mentioned network effects earlier: I would urge you to consider what "network effects" are occurring due to mild and moderate censorship that is not absolute.
  - krapp 6y ago
    I don't see social media suppressing dissent at all. I see dissent everywhere - from anti-vaxxers, flat earthers, anti-maskers, BLM, Antifa, neo-nazis and militias. Ideologies and conspiracy theories once confined to AM talk radio and underground forums have become mainstream politics. Pedophiles have rebranded themselves "minor attracted persons" and are campaigning on social media for pedo rights as human rights. QAnon is mainstream enough to win elections. Even conservatives who are, we are told, terrified to speak openly in what they describe as an oppressive Orwellian atmosphere of left-wing censorship, somehow manage to flood social media with right-wing speech. If the sole purpose of tech and social media is opinion and thought control and dissident suppression, it doesn't seem to be working outside of the obvious authoritarian places like China. > I would urge you to consider what "network effects" are occurring due to mild and moderate censorship that is not absolute. Subtle network effects and mild censorship exist everywhere - we typically refer to these networks as "society", "culture", "religion", "family,", "employer," etc. Certainly social networks can modify behavior, but typically it's easier to undermine that effect on social networks (through alternate accounts) than it is in real life, and typically the negative consequences for breaking norms on social media are less severe than in real life.
chroem- 6y ago
It gets better (worse?) though: reddit has removed any references to Aaron Swartz from its list of founders. https://www.redditinc.com/ https://www.redditinc.com/ > Reddit was founded in 2005 by two college friends. > Steve Huffman, Co-Founder/CEO > Alexis Ohanian, Co-Founder
- sparky_z 6y ago
  Isn't that technically true, though? I thought Swartz joined them later, months after they had already launched the site.
  - nl 6y ago
    Yes, this is true. Aaron always seemed to regard it as a sore point, but he was never listed as a Reddit founder. I'm aware that PG has called him a founder, but seemingly the Reddit guys never thought of him as one.
    - whamlastxmas 6y ago
      Aaron's contract with the reddit founders explicitly gave him a "founder" title. To say he was never "listed" as a founder is misleading - listed where? He definitely was entitled to call himself as much and in most startup contexts it would be hard to claim he wasn't.
- mjfl 6y ago
  why?
- SquareWheel 6y ago
  The quoted section is accurate. Swartz received the title of co-founder as part of a merger, but he never actually co-founded reddit.
hackyhacky 6y ago
I respect Swartz a lot, and he makes many good points. But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. As proof, consider that we are having this conversation right now, about an article that was published and is freely, legally available online to anyone with a web browser. You can disagree with Twitter's editorial choices, but (as long as we prevent a literal technological monopoly, a prospect that seems increasingly probably) the consequences thereof are in no way similar to government censorship.
- kodah 6y ago
  You missed the part where this thread was flagged by HackerNews earlier.
  - striking 6y ago
    If it was flagged, and then became unflagged, it may have been flagged by the users of HN and then may have been unflagged by mods. Is it then mods enhancing the freedom of expression by unflagging something, or censoring the community self-moderation? You decide!
    - kodah 6y ago
      Personally I look at it as a barometer for where peoples sentiments fall on a linear path. Who is doing moderation vs censorship has little consequence if you acknowledge that the entire system is distributed and the outcomes are the same.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  This is a forum sponsored by multimillionaires, therefore not responsible to advertisers. Also heavily moderated.
- googthrowaway42 6y ago
  The lines get blurry when there is a revolving door between Silicon Valley tech companies and DC. Recent example from the banning of Bret Weinstein from Facebook: https://twitter.com/Liz_Shepherd/status/1319451084859953154?s=20 https://twitter.com/Liz_Shepherd/status/1319451084859953154?... This is a Facebook communications person responding with an official reply to this incident. She describes herself as "Facebook comms, formerly @TheDemocrats and @SpeakerPelosi". This is an example of power leakage. These institutions do in fact (i.e. de facto, not de jure) have elements of sovereign power given their relationship with the political/ruling class, it's just that they are not directly accountable in the same way that a government is. They engage in censorship for the benefit of the ruling/political class and use political formulae as a mask (TOS violations, "community standards" violations, exhortations to the first amendment, section 230 protections, etc) in the same way governments do.
yenwodyah 6y ago
And at the same time, private companies cannot force you to use their services, or threaten you with violence or imprisonment if you refuse to follow their rules.
- beagle3 6y ago
  This is getting blurry as well, and though you are technically correct, one might have to sue or suffer damages for not following their rules: My children’s schools requires the use of Microsoft Teams From home (and associated TOS) for them to attend class. There is also a parent WhatsApp group for urgent messages to parents. And as of the pandemic, there is also mandatory Zoom classes. This is a public school. If I sue I could possibly avoid these - I am not even sure of that. But either way, I and my children will suffer if I don’t comply. Microsoft. Facebook. Zoom. Coerced de facto to follow their rules; they might cancel my accounts if I don’t behave accordingly - Facebook and Google have certainly done so before.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    It's still fundamentally government that made that choice to force you into one service.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - beagle3 6y ago
      So? Whoever runs that service gets to set and enforce their ToS and you don't get to appeal. So they enjoy many government rights with non of the checks and balances. (They don't get to employ physical violence yet, true).
  - unishark 6y ago
    The millions of people locked up in prison would see it as more than a technicality. Personally I'm much more nervous about screwing up some details in following the govt's rules versus a private company. Getting banned by Google/Facebook and losing all your data in the cloud is just the modern equivalent of losing everything when your hard drive dies. The way to mitigate this danger is the same.
Spooky23 6y ago
I guess. It’s pretty obvious who the Post answers to. Companies ultimately have shareholders and customers they are accountable to. Even fairly awful companies like Facebook have to meet some minimal standard of conduct to keep advertisers on the platform.
- 0x262d 6y ago
  unfortunately what those shareholders want is the highest possible overall profit extraction from the areas they operate at any cost, which is anti-social and bad.
dnautics 6y ago
I have a lot of respect for Aaron swartz, but: > They have no constitution to answer to. Do we seriously believe any government follows it's constitution? What is the mechanism for redress should it fail to do so? > They’re not elected. Neither are most operators in the government. And even for those operators that are elected, the role of government has expanded to the point where any given elected official has authority over so many concerns that the one you care about is going to be diluted to the point where you may not even want to vote for the thing you care about the most.
- folleno00 6y ago
  It says answer to, not follows If the people demand they answer to it, it’s that or off with their heads, usually. The hard part is getting people to demand they answer. Lots of cool gadgets and the belief we’re making each other better to dispose of.
- skinkestek 6y ago
  > Do we seriously believe any government follows it's constitution? Absolutely. Many do. Look at America and their second amendment: there's no way that would fly today if it wasn't in the constitution. Luckily it is and power hungry politicians have to accept it. Same with the first amendment. Some of these are even are powerful today than before and I hope the fourth amendment will soon see a renaissance. > What is the mechanism for redress should it fail to do so? Courts. Also it affects politicians directly. There was a petition here to give a mountain on the Finnish border to the Finnish people. Many people advocated for this but in the end it was struck down because politicians aren't even allowed to give away land and they know it.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    >Look at America and their second amendment In America the right to an abortion is more respected under our legal system than the right to a gun despite what is written in the Constitution. The law is downstream of culture, and that document only says what 5 Justices say it says.
dd36 6y ago
And now we have forced arbitration with class action bans.
PaulAJ 6y ago
Thus it always was. Back in the day in America there were a few big newspapers (basically, USA Today plus a couple of local city or state papers) and three TV channels. They all broadly agreed on what was important and how to present it. That was "the news", and it shaped how people saw the world. If you were so inclined you could find some alternative points of view in the right newsagents, but mainstream mass-media generally represented a single perspective, and that was the filter through which most people saw the world. People back then complained that the "Republocrats" were a cosy duopoly. There was no culture war because a large majority of Americans were part of a single culture. (As long as you were white, of course. If you were anything else then nobody cared what you thought).
dang 6y ago
No one seems to have pointed it out, so I'll mention that Aaron was clearly paraphrasing Noam Chomsky there. The point about government being partially limited by constitutions and elections while private companies are not is one that Chomsky has been repeating for decades, and the phrase "corporate tyranny" is very much Chomsky's. This is in keeping with his left-libertarian view that workplaces should operate democratically. It's not that Aaron was plagiarizing—the quote is from a documentary interview (https://www.reddit.com/r/aaronswartz/comments/dpo2ot/both_the_government_and_private_companies_can/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aaronswartz/comments/dpo2ot/both_th...). In that context it's not common to make attributions and the editors would probably have cut it out in any case.
- AniseAbyss 6y ago
  Whenever America disappoints me, and that's basically all the time these days, I remind myself that it has also produced critical thinkers like Twain and Chomsky.
bitwize 6y ago
Except that, you know, private corporations usually can't legally jail you or shoot you in the head for expressing the wrong opinions or propagating the wrong info.

krapp 6y ago

I mean, I can switch social media platforms a lot more easily than I can switch governments, and corporations don't have a monopoly on violence which would allow their tyranny to lead to torture, gulags and mass graves, but OK. I guess being banned from a forum is much much worse than being sent to the re-education camps.

akhosravian 6y ago
You could switch off Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Twitch, but for all but the most influential of people the folks you interact with won’t follow.
- krapp 6y ago
  That's still not tyranny, that's just the network effect. They have a choice about what platform to use as do you and I.
zo1 6y ago
The methods have changed, the motivation and net result is the same: opinion and thought control. Tech has made it impersonal, clinical, obfuscated, random and ubiquitous. There is no need to "send people to gulags" or torture them in order to suppress their ability to sow dissent amongst their peers. That is the sole purpose, even if it's algorithmic and emergent without a central "dictator" controlling what can or can't be said. Essentially only approved opinions and movements are allowed to gather steam, no different to the movement of dissent and mistrust of the government that had to be stemmed previously using gulags. So yes, you are 100% right it's not the same and we are not being sent to re-education camps. But that doesn't mean certain individuals are not being persecuted through "random" algorithms that target and marginalize them. As another poster here mentioned, censorship does not need to be absolute for it to have an effect. You also mentioned network effects earlier: I would urge you to consider what "network effects" are occurring due to mild and moderate censorship that is not absolute.
- krapp 6y ago
  I don't see social media suppressing dissent at all. I see dissent everywhere - from anti-vaxxers, flat earthers, anti-maskers, BLM, Antifa, neo-nazis and militias. Ideologies and conspiracy theories once confined to AM talk radio and underground forums have become mainstream politics. Pedophiles have rebranded themselves "minor attracted persons" and are campaigning on social media for pedo rights as human rights. QAnon is mainstream enough to win elections. Even conservatives who are, we are told, terrified to speak openly in what they describe as an oppressive Orwellian atmosphere of left-wing censorship, somehow manage to flood social media with right-wing speech. If the sole purpose of tech and social media is opinion and thought control and dissident suppression, it doesn't seem to be working outside of the obvious authoritarian places like China. > I would urge you to consider what "network effects" are occurring due to mild and moderate censorship that is not absolute. Subtle network effects and mild censorship exist everywhere - we typically refer to these networks as "society", "culture", "religion", "family,", "employer," etc. Certainly social networks can modify behavior, but typically it's easier to undermine that effect on social networks (through alternate accounts) than it is in real life, and typically the negative consequences for breaking norms on social media are less severe than in real life.

chroem- 6y ago

It gets better (worse?) though: reddit has removed any references to Aaron Swartz from its list of founders. https://www.redditinc.com/ https://www.redditinc.com/ > Reddit was founded in 2005 by two college friends. > Steve Huffman, Co-Founder/CEO > Alexis Ohanian, Co-Founder

sparky_z 6y ago
Isn't that technically true, though? I thought Swartz joined them later, months after they had already launched the site.
- nl 6y ago
  Yes, this is true. Aaron always seemed to regard it as a sore point, but he was never listed as a Reddit founder. I'm aware that PG has called him a founder, but seemingly the Reddit guys never thought of him as one.
  - whamlastxmas 6y ago
    Aaron's contract with the reddit founders explicitly gave him a "founder" title. To say he was never "listed" as a founder is misleading - listed where? He definitely was entitled to call himself as much and in most startup contexts it would be hard to claim he wasn't.
mjfl 6y ago
why?
SquareWheel 6y ago
The quoted section is accurate. Swartz received the title of co-founder as part of a merger, but he never actually co-founded reddit.

hackyhacky 6y ago

I respect Swartz a lot, and he makes many good points. But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. As proof, consider that we are having this conversation right now, about an article that was published and is freely, legally available online to anyone with a web browser. You can disagree with Twitter's editorial choices, but (as long as we prevent a literal technological monopoly, a prospect that seems increasingly probably) the consequences thereof are in no way similar to government censorship.

kodah 6y ago
You missed the part where this thread was flagged by HackerNews earlier.
- striking 6y ago
  If it was flagged, and then became unflagged, it may have been flagged by the users of HN and then may have been unflagged by mods. Is it then mods enhancing the freedom of expression by unflagging something, or censoring the community self-moderation? You decide!
  - kodah 6y ago
    Personally I look at it as a barometer for where peoples sentiments fall on a linear path. Who is doing moderation vs censorship has little consequence if you acknowledge that the entire system is distributed and the outcomes are the same.
pessimizer 6y ago
This is a forum sponsored by multimillionaires, therefore not responsible to advertisers. Also heavily moderated.
googthrowaway42 6y ago
The lines get blurry when there is a revolving door between Silicon Valley tech companies and DC. Recent example from the banning of Bret Weinstein from Facebook: https://twitter.com/Liz_Shepherd/status/1319451084859953154?s=20 https://twitter.com/Liz_Shepherd/status/1319451084859953154?... This is a Facebook communications person responding with an official reply to this incident. She describes herself as "Facebook comms, formerly @TheDemocrats and @SpeakerPelosi". This is an example of power leakage. These institutions do in fact (i.e. de facto, not de jure) have elements of sovereign power given their relationship with the political/ruling class, it's just that they are not directly accountable in the same way that a government is. They engage in censorship for the benefit of the ruling/political class and use political formulae as a mask (TOS violations, "community standards" violations, exhortations to the first amendment, section 230 protections, etc) in the same way governments do.

yenwodyah 6y ago

And at the same time, private companies cannot force you to use their services, or threaten you with violence or imprisonment if you refuse to follow their rules.

beagle3 6y ago
This is getting blurry as well, and though you are technically correct, one might have to sue or suffer damages for not following their rules: My children’s schools requires the use of Microsoft Teams From home (and associated TOS) for them to attend class. There is also a parent WhatsApp group for urgent messages to parents. And as of the pandemic, there is also mandatory Zoom classes. This is a public school. If I sue I could possibly avoid these - I am not even sure of that. But either way, I and my children will suffer if I don’t comply. Microsoft. Facebook. Zoom. Coerced de facto to follow their rules; they might cancel my accounts if I don’t behave accordingly - Facebook and Google have certainly done so before.
- dnautics 6y ago
  It's still fundamentally government that made that choice to force you into one service.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - beagle3 6y ago
    So? Whoever runs that service gets to set and enforce their ToS and you don't get to appeal. So they enjoy many government rights with non of the checks and balances. (They don't get to employ physical violence yet, true).
- unishark 6y ago
  The millions of people locked up in prison would see it as more than a technicality. Personally I'm much more nervous about screwing up some details in following the govt's rules versus a private company. Getting banned by Google/Facebook and losing all your data in the cloud is just the modern equivalent of losing everything when your hard drive dies. The way to mitigate this danger is the same.

Spooky23 6y ago

I guess. It’s pretty obvious who the Post answers to. Companies ultimately have shareholders and customers they are accountable to. Even fairly awful companies like Facebook have to meet some minimal standard of conduct to keep advertisers on the platform.

0x262d 6y ago
unfortunately what those shareholders want is the highest possible overall profit extraction from the areas they operate at any cost, which is anti-social and bad.

dnautics 6y ago

I have a lot of respect for Aaron swartz, but: > They have no constitution to answer to. Do we seriously believe any government follows it's constitution? What is the mechanism for redress should it fail to do so? > They’re not elected. Neither are most operators in the government. And even for those operators that are elected, the role of government has expanded to the point where any given elected official has authority over so many concerns that the one you care about is going to be diluted to the point where you may not even want to vote for the thing you care about the most.

folleno00 6y ago
It says answer to, not follows If the people demand they answer to it, it’s that or off with their heads, usually. The hard part is getting people to demand they answer. Lots of cool gadgets and the belief we’re making each other better to dispose of.
skinkestek 6y ago
> Do we seriously believe any government follows it's constitution? Absolutely. Many do. Look at America and their second amendment: there's no way that would fly today if it wasn't in the constitution. Luckily it is and power hungry politicians have to accept it. Same with the first amendment. Some of these are even are powerful today than before and I hope the fourth amendment will soon see a renaissance. > What is the mechanism for redress should it fail to do so? Courts. Also it affects politicians directly. There was a petition here to give a mountain on the Finnish border to the Finnish people. Many people advocated for this but in the end it was struck down because politicians aren't even allowed to give away land and they know it.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  >Look at America and their second amendment In America the right to an abortion is more respected under our legal system than the right to a gun despite what is written in the Constitution. The law is downstream of culture, and that document only says what 5 Justices say it says.

dd36 6y ago

And now we have forced arbitration with class action bans.

PaulAJ 6y ago

Thus it always was. Back in the day in America there were a few big newspapers (basically, USA Today plus a couple of local city or state papers) and three TV channels. They all broadly agreed on what was important and how to present it. That was "the news", and it shaped how people saw the world. If you were so inclined you could find some alternative points of view in the right newsagents, but mainstream mass-media generally represented a single perspective, and that was the filter through which most people saw the world. People back then complained that the "Republocrats" were a cosy duopoly. There was no culture war because a large majority of Americans were part of a single culture. (As long as you were white, of course. If you were anything else then nobody cared what you thought).

dang 6y ago

No one seems to have pointed it out, so I'll mention that Aaron was clearly paraphrasing Noam Chomsky there. The point about government being partially limited by constitutions and elections while private companies are not is one that Chomsky has been repeating for decades, and the phrase "corporate tyranny" is very much Chomsky's. This is in keeping with his left-libertarian view that workplaces should operate democratically. It's not that Aaron was plagiarizing—the quote is from a documentary interview (https://www.reddit.com/r/aaronswartz/comments/dpo2ot/both_the_government_and_private_companies_can/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aaronswartz/comments/dpo2ot/both_th...). In that context it's not common to make attributions and the editors would probably have cut it out in any case.

AniseAbyss 6y ago
Whenever America disappoints me, and that's basically all the time these days, I remind myself that it has also produced critical thinkers like Twain and Chomsky.

bitwize 6y ago

Except that, you know, private corporations usually can't legally jail you or shoot you in the head for expressing the wrong opinions or propagating the wrong info.