6 ms·

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

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.
- hackyhacky 6y ago
  "Power leakage" is inevitable. Everyone has political opinions. Most cops are Republicans. That alone doesn't mean that they're incapable of doing their job competently. What you're doing amounts to an ad hominem attack: you're criticizing the person delivering the message, rather than the message itself.
  - googthrowaway42 6y ago
    I'm not talking about political opinions, I'm talking about highly connected political operatives in positions of power within these companies. Liz Bourgeois would be an example of such a person. She was Assistant Press Secretary at the DNC and prior to that was a Legislative Correspondant for Nancy Pelosi and Debbi Wasserman Shultz. Now she works as "Director, Strategic Response Communications" at Facebook.
    - dlp211 6y ago
      This would be a valid criticism if these companies didn't hire top tier operatives from both parties and donate substantial amounts via their PACs to both.
      - CamTin 6y ago
        It's not clear why this would be the case. Why should we care which "party" somebody is from when then issue at hand is a revolving door between DC and the Valley? The military-industrial complex has done fine under a two-party system and so presumably will the private-public corporate surveillance state. Everybody in power in the US has to pick one of two letters to put after their name, but they're all part of the same ruling class.
        sieabahlpark 6y ago
        It's because he naively believes one party is the bad version of government and the other is good. Instead of reasonably believing that all government is bad when unchecked, regardless of who.
RhysU 6y ago
> But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. Those private entities can censor in excess of the government. They are scarier.
- stonogo 6y ago
  Get back to me when Twitter has the power to round up everyone who read a given story and have them executed in the street, because that's what government censorship can look like. It's not limited to some partisan nerd toggling a flag in a database somewhere. I think you should probably take this opportunity to re-evaluate the relative powers of these entities.
  - onecommentman 6y ago
    I think the discussion is focusing on levels of the US government and what has been experienced by the public under that government since its founding. Actual exercised power by US governmental entities. The discussion of other governments will probably lead this thread into a swampy delta and it will lose its motive force.
    - stonogo 6y ago
      I'm not sure why the artificial limitations on comparison; Twitter and Facebook are wholly active and engaged in markets with governments with such histories. Anyway, if you want such examples, look to the Mexican Dirty War for many, as well as the Banana Massacre. The latter of course was merely a threat to deploy the Marines, but the reasoning announced was not strikebreaking but because the strikers were "subversives"; that is, the US claimed to want them silenced not for what they were doing but for what they were saying. In the past, I would have said that Posse Comitatus would have prevented such behavior from being directed toward American citizens, but after seeing the mutual-law-skirting nature of the Five Eyes approach, as well as the presence of Federal troops in law enforcement roles in US cities over the past year, I'm no longer confident.
    - dnautics 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mellosouls 6y ago
I think that is an optimistic view. Consider that an overwhelmingly partisan ownership and stewardship of the majority of media, (whether left or right - currently, as the example in the article it's liberal left) has a more insidious power to control the narrative and push counterpoints to the margins until they die naturally, partly because there is in that situation a de facto monopoly. Government-censored material never actually dies, and has a habit of being leaked (or released on change of government) and causing scandals; Silicon Valley etc-suppressed material has a habit of being sidelined into the anaemic and eccentric irrelevance of the cancelled and the crackpots, and by the time we realise some of them are actually worth listening to, the damage is done. Especially in the context of a society where "speech is free", and egregious censorship is assumed not to exist, this is arguably even more damaging - the idea that suppression exists is itself dismissed by the mainstream and chattering classes; that isn't necessarily the case in a country under authoritarian, censoring governance.
acituan 6y ago
> But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor Agreed, their narrative shaping capabilities far exceed governments'. > As proof, consider that we are having this conversation right now, That is a very poor way of judging it for several reasons; a) we are not currently on Twitter or Facebook, we don't have the same reach nor subject to same corporate normativities b) past performance is not always indicative of things to come. > You can disagree with Twitter's editorial choices, Except they claim they are not making editorial choices, and can't be held up to that standard, which a great chunk of the problem.
Synaesthesia 6y ago
They're unaccountable and significant centers of power (unaccountable to the public), yes maybe not with the power of the government, but approaching it. Is that the kind of rule we want?
- barumi 6y ago
  > Is that the kind of rule we want? It's the kind of rule you have since, well, ever. Does anyone expect to force a private publisher such as the NY Post or even NY Times to publish content against the will of their editorial board just because you see fit? This issue has absolutely zero to do with censorship. A random publisher not posting something is not censorship. It's literally the editorial board's job to decide which gets published and which is left out. Not posting false or deceitful information forced upon by third parties is also not censorship. Just because you have a personal view that is not aligned with an editorial board's mission statement that doesn't mean the editorial board is engaged in censorship. This topic seems to boil down to some people wanting the benefits of abusing a publisher's reputation and readership to force-feed their own personal opinion on the public. Not being able to perform that kind of abuse is not censorship.
  - etripe 6y ago
    They can either be editorialising, in which case they're a publication, or they can be censoring as a platform. They're not currently regulated like a publication, so they must be censoring, then.
- roenxi 6y ago
  Yes, it is better for power to reside with people who are easily replaced and/or ignored if necessary. I'd rather have Twitter go off the rails than my local council. However, it is still a scandal and worth bringing everyobody's attention to. I don't think we've ever seen such naked politicking by a tech company in the West. This is a concerning new low for Silicon Valley.
raxxorrax 6y ago
I think the perspective of Schwartz is much better developed instead of just ignoring the negative effects of well visited social media sites removing content on political grounds. Yes, technically the info is still available.
lki876 6y ago
> 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. As long as you control what a large segment of the population sees, you can orchestrate peoples actions. Censorship has never been absolute or complete and doesn't need to be in order to be effective.

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.

hackyhacky 6y ago
"Power leakage" is inevitable. Everyone has political opinions. Most cops are Republicans. That alone doesn't mean that they're incapable of doing their job competently. What you're doing amounts to an ad hominem attack: you're criticizing the person delivering the message, rather than the message itself.
- googthrowaway42 6y ago
  I'm not talking about political opinions, I'm talking about highly connected political operatives in positions of power within these companies. Liz Bourgeois would be an example of such a person. She was Assistant Press Secretary at the DNC and prior to that was a Legislative Correspondant for Nancy Pelosi and Debbi Wasserman Shultz. Now she works as "Director, Strategic Response Communications" at Facebook.
  - dlp211 6y ago
    This would be a valid criticism if these companies didn't hire top tier operatives from both parties and donate substantial amounts via their PACs to both.
    - CamTin 6y ago
      It's not clear why this would be the case. Why should we care which "party" somebody is from when then issue at hand is a revolving door between DC and the Valley? The military-industrial complex has done fine under a two-party system and so presumably will the private-public corporate surveillance state. Everybody in power in the US has to pick one of two letters to put after their name, but they're all part of the same ruling class.
      - sieabahlpark 6y ago
        It's because he naively believes one party is the bad version of government and the other is good. Instead of reasonably believing that all government is bad when unchecked, regardless of who.

RhysU 6y ago

> But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. Those private entities can censor in excess of the government. They are scarier.

stonogo 6y ago
Get back to me when Twitter has the power to round up everyone who read a given story and have them executed in the street, because that's what government censorship can look like. It's not limited to some partisan nerd toggling a flag in a database somewhere. I think you should probably take this opportunity to re-evaluate the relative powers of these entities.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  I think the discussion is focusing on levels of the US government and what has been experienced by the public under that government since its founding. Actual exercised power by US governmental entities. The discussion of other governments will probably lead this thread into a swampy delta and it will lose its motive force.
  - stonogo 6y ago
    I'm not sure why the artificial limitations on comparison; Twitter and Facebook are wholly active and engaged in markets with governments with such histories. Anyway, if you want such examples, look to the Mexican Dirty War for many, as well as the Banana Massacre. The latter of course was merely a threat to deploy the Marines, but the reasoning announced was not strikebreaking but because the strikers were "subversives"; that is, the US claimed to want them silenced not for what they were doing but for what they were saying. In the past, I would have said that Posse Comitatus would have prevented such behavior from being directed toward American citizens, but after seeing the mutual-law-skirting nature of the Five Eyes approach, as well as the presence of Federal troops in law enforcement roles in US cities over the past year, I'm no longer confident.
  - dnautics 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mellosouls 6y ago

I think that is an optimistic view. Consider that an overwhelmingly partisan ownership and stewardship of the majority of media, (whether left or right - currently, as the example in the article it's liberal left) has a more insidious power to control the narrative and push counterpoints to the margins until they die naturally, partly because there is in that situation a de facto monopoly. Government-censored material never actually dies, and has a habit of being leaked (or released on change of government) and causing scandals; Silicon Valley etc-suppressed material has a habit of being sidelined into the anaemic and eccentric irrelevance of the cancelled and the crackpots, and by the time we realise some of them are actually worth listening to, the damage is done. Especially in the context of a society where "speech is free", and egregious censorship is assumed not to exist, this is arguably even more damaging - the idea that suppression exists is itself dismissed by the mainstream and chattering classes; that isn't necessarily the case in a country under authoritarian, censoring governance.

acituan 6y ago

> But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor Agreed, their narrative shaping capabilities far exceed governments'. > As proof, consider that we are having this conversation right now, That is a very poor way of judging it for several reasons; a) we are not currently on Twitter or Facebook, we don't have the same reach nor subject to same corporate normativities b) past performance is not always indicative of things to come. > You can disagree with Twitter's editorial choices, Except they claim they are not making editorial choices, and can't be held up to that standard, which a great chunk of the problem.

Synaesthesia 6y ago

They're unaccountable and significant centers of power (unaccountable to the public), yes maybe not with the power of the government, but approaching it. Is that the kind of rule we want?

barumi 6y ago
> Is that the kind of rule we want? It's the kind of rule you have since, well, ever. Does anyone expect to force a private publisher such as the NY Post or even NY Times to publish content against the will of their editorial board just because you see fit? This issue has absolutely zero to do with censorship. A random publisher not posting something is not censorship. It's literally the editorial board's job to decide which gets published and which is left out. Not posting false or deceitful information forced upon by third parties is also not censorship. Just because you have a personal view that is not aligned with an editorial board's mission statement that doesn't mean the editorial board is engaged in censorship. This topic seems to boil down to some people wanting the benefits of abusing a publisher's reputation and readership to force-feed their own personal opinion on the public. Not being able to perform that kind of abuse is not censorship.
- etripe 6y ago
  They can either be editorialising, in which case they're a publication, or they can be censoring as a platform. They're not currently regulated like a publication, so they must be censoring, then.
roenxi 6y ago
Yes, it is better for power to reside with people who are easily replaced and/or ignored if necessary. I'd rather have Twitter go off the rails than my local council. However, it is still a scandal and worth bringing everyobody's attention to. I don't think we've ever seen such naked politicking by a tech company in the West. This is a concerning new low for Silicon Valley.

raxxorrax 6y ago

I think the perspective of Schwartz is much better developed instead of just ignoring the negative effects of well visited social media sites removing content on political grounds. Yes, technically the info is still available.

lki876 6y ago

> 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. As long as you control what a large segment of the population sees, you can orchestrate peoples actions. Censorship has never been absolute or complete and doesn't need to be in order to be effective.