12 ms·

It is amazing to me that there are so many people, smart people even, that are adamant that we shouldn't have free speech in society.

titanomachy 6y ago
You have a right to say whatever you want to whomever you want without fear of government retaliation, as long as it isn't "hate speech" in a fairly narrow legal sense. This is what "having free speech in society" has always meant. The government will also punish people who commit crimes against you merely because they dislike your words, which frees you to say things you might otherwise keep to yourself. What you don't have a right to do is amplify your message using the massively powerful social-media megaphones which are created and owned by tech companies. If you want to amplify a message that these companies find strongly objectionable, you'll have to build your own megaphone, or find one owned by someone with different views from Google/Facebook/Twitter. That said, I wonder if it's sufficient to reduce the amount of amplification rather than outright censoring things the company disagrees with. For example, YouTube could let conspiracy videos be hosted but leave it up to viewers to discover them rather than recommending them in search or "related videos". It seems likely that censoring will have unintended consequences.
- Vomzor 6y ago
  It used to be that the tech companies where champions of free speech, the ideal. It changed when generation woke entered their workforce. There has been a generational change brought on by changed values in American universities. That's what really is happening. > We asked whether people believe that citizens should be able to make public statements that are offensive to minority groups, or whether the government should be able to prevent people from saying these things. Four-in-ten Millennials say the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups, while 58% said such speech is OK. Even though a larger share of Millennials favor allowing offensive speech against minorities, the 40% who oppose it is striking given that only around a quarter of Gen Xers (27%) and Boomers (24%) and roughly one-in-ten Silents (12%) say the government should be able to prevent such speech. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millennials-ok-with-limiting-speech-offensive-to-minorities/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-mille...
  - jfrunyon 6y ago
    No, it changed when capitalism got involved and realized it was more profitable to centralize, close themselves off, and gain a monopoly.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      Thats an interesting definition of capitalism that excludes the part where the capital was accumulated. Probably that's why the libertarians say "free market capitalism" in order to exclude the mixed market and autocratic versions.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Don't blame the children; they don't know any better.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    What a retconning farce this is. 40 years ago you could not publicly endorse recreational drug use, atheism, or interracial marriages without a substancial block of society chastating you as an incorrectable heathen. Values change, what people find acceptable and what they do not find acceptable changes.
    - Vomzor 6y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is? As we seem to agree values change.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - titanomachy 6y ago
        I'm not 100% sure either. I think maybe GP is suggesting that rather than being stalwart champions of free speech as you implied, boomers are just more racist and want to be free to say racist things. Fortunately for all of us, it's not the general population of millenials or boomers who decide what speech the government gets to prevent; it's experienced justices, who tend to take the constitution much more seriously than the average person. The statistic that 40% of millenials want laws preventing statements offensive to minorities is kind of baffling to me. Do you think they just don't understand the constitution, or do they want it rewritten to allow this kind of law?
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "What you don't have a right to do is amplify your message using the massively powerful social-media megaphones which are created and owned by tech companies." What makes anyone think that other groups won't be able to create their own social-media megaphones? The tech is well understood already and they're highly motivated and well funded. It's been tried a couple of times already and eventually they're going to succeed. And if the last two US presidential election results are any indication, they might grow as big (or bigger!) as any of the other social-media giants. What will we do then?
  - optimalsolver 6y ago
    Whenever the other side tries something like this, they just end up with something resembling Voat.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    Let the market sort it out. If the market is there, the competition will be good for everybody.
- will4274 6y ago
  > You have a right to say whatever you want to whomever you want without fear of government retaliation, as long as it isn't "hate speech" in a fairly narrow legal sense. This is what "having free speech in society" has always meant Wrong twice. First of all, the United States doesn't have laws against hate speech. The US Supreme Court has said hate speech is protected by the first amendment. So, you're protected from government retaliation, even if it's hate speech. Second of all, that's NOT what "having free speech in society" means. It's what the first amendment means. In American culture, writing op eds to a privately owned newspaper is a classic example of free speech, going all the way to revolutionary times (and actually predating the constitution). In the past (before the internet), prominent newspapers would brag that they would publish editorials from any significant public figure, even if they detested that public figure, because free speech was a good thing. That's why the NYTimes has published so many editorials from dictators.
  - d1zzy 6y ago
    And so have we proposed laws to regulate newspapers on what they should be and what they shouldn't be allowed to decline for publishing?
    - will4274 6y ago
      The article you are commenting on did not propose any new laws, nor did I in my comment. Did you mean to reply to somebody else or to comment on another article? I don't think the government should require tech companies like Google to support free speech. I think Google should support free speech because it's the right thing to do. I believe the author of this article feels similarly, just as the editors of major American newspapers did from about 1600 to 2005.
  - titanomachy 6y ago
    > the United States doesn't have laws against hate speech Interesting, thanks for enlightening me! Canada does have laws against hate speech and I'd mistakenly thought the US did as well. In any case, speech intended to incite lawbreaking, whether a hate crime or otherwise, is not protected under the first amendment. If you tell your Twitter followers to go burn down all the Jewish-owned business or whatever, and they do, your speech is illegal. So there are at least some limits. And I agree that freedom of speech goes beyond the first amendment. But the "significant public figure" of that is important: not anyone could get published in the New York Times, you already had to have reach and notoriety. They wouldn't have published articles by some random basement crackpot moon conspiracist, because that person wouldn't have a chance to get famous in the first place. They probably also don't publish opinion pieces with easily-disproven counterfactual statements. YouTube's algorithm, by default, makes no distinction: any idiot can go viral and get tons of reach on a video loaded with outright lies. YouTube has provided a platform that makes the spread of misinformation much easier and in my opinion it's their responsibility to take action to correct that.
- int_19h 6y ago
  What happens when all megaphones are either government- or large-corporation-owned, and whenever you try to speak on your own, the nearest megaphone just yells over whatever you have to say?
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    It's a very good argument to support 1950's style anti-monopoly legislation, and as someone who defends platforms' rights to have some degree of moderation it follows that we should have as many platforms as needed to satisfy demand.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      Absolutely. I don't think that private censorship per se is problematic - the problem, rather, is that it amounts to monopoly abuse in the present configuration of the market. (Although I'd prefer an economic system that makes monopolies fundamentally impossible or very unlikely - i.e. one that constrains the ability to concentrate capital.)
  - titanomachy 6y ago
    Was that ever not the case? Was there a time when any person with any message could reach the whole country with their message? The scarce resource here isn't freedom of speech, it's people's attention. As always, you can say whatever you want, and as always, it's hard to get people to listen to you. Before the internet, you basically needed an already-famous person to take an interest in you in order to get noticed. Now a message can go viral organically, without needing to involve any journalists or talk-show hosts, but the platforms are free to stop something from going viral if they don't like it. Facebook giveth and Facebook taketh away. But to answer your question, I think breaking up the platforms would be a better solution than treating them as de-facto public services and trying to regulate them as such. Or appropriate them and make them into actual public services :)
    - int_19h 6y ago
      It's a matter of relative power to spread the message, not absolute. So it's not a question of whether any single random person could reach the whole country, but rather how many people can that single random person reach, and how much can those who control the means of mass distribution of information can use that to reduce the reach of a single person.
- jb775 6y ago
  Google/Facebook/Twitter have become monopolistic de-facto utilities. The you'll have to build your own megaphone argument is no longer valid. Especially when they're attempting to impact election results while cashing in on governmental protections that minimize their risk.
falcrist 6y ago
Freedom of speech in the broadest sense (as in "the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or sanction.") isn't binary, and cannot be absolute. There are some forms of expression that we almost universally agree shouldn't be allowed. Incitement to violence, "shouting fire in a crowded theater", depictions of sex with minors, etc are all unprotected from restriction. In that sense it's like the concept of freedom in general. It's slippery, difficult to define, and has fuzzy boundaries. We're not always going to agree on the extent of each freedom. Where does your freedom end and mine begin? In this particular case, how big does a company need to be before we start forcing it to host content that it doesn't want to host? When is it ok to force someone to provide a universal platform... to tie their hands so they can't moderate as they see fit? Do I have a right to stand on your stage and shout whatever I want at your audience?
justinzollars 6y ago
> It is amazing to me that there are so many people, smart people even, that are adamant that we shouldn't have free speech in society. This can be attributed to nothing more than personal political bias. There is no way these people would be arguing for censorship if the censorship favored the other side. It also makes me want to move. There is no advantage to being an American without the freedom of speech and press.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Where could you move that has more freedom of speech and press than the US? Asking for a friend...
  - justinzollars 6y ago
    No where on earth. If freedom of speech and press are over here, and it certainly looks like it is over here. Then why not move to China or Singapore? You could have the same level of censorship, but a more effective political system and more opportunity to grow wealth.
matthewmacleod 6y ago
I have encountered few people who have said “we shouldn’t have free speech in society”. Perhaps your argument needs more nuance to reflect the complexity of this issue.
- pie_flavor 6y ago
  I have seen fifteen or so such top- or second-level comments on this and the previous thread. It was about one apologist to every two critics there, and one to four here. It is by no means a rare perception here.
TameAntelope 6y ago
Why does YouTube not also get a shot at free speech? You have a right to free speech until it infringes on someone else. The real problem is that people falsely think YouTube is the only way to publish a video on the Internet...
- kome 6y ago
  yeah but i wonder... the main argument here is that youtube is private and it can do whatever it wants. but if it's true for youtube, why it cannot be true for an hosting company or a service provider? can't they just shut down my server or my ip? they are private after all... is there a legally safe to speak freely on the internet? or our freedom of speech is limited only to photocopies?

titanomachy 6y ago

You have a right to say whatever you want to whomever you want without fear of government retaliation, as long as it isn't "hate speech" in a fairly narrow legal sense. This is what "having free speech in society" has always meant. The government will also punish people who commit crimes against you merely because they dislike your words, which frees you to say things you might otherwise keep to yourself. What you don't have a right to do is amplify your message using the massively powerful social-media megaphones which are created and owned by tech companies. If you want to amplify a message that these companies find strongly objectionable, you'll have to build your own megaphone, or find one owned by someone with different views from Google/Facebook/Twitter. That said, I wonder if it's sufficient to reduce the amount of amplification rather than outright censoring things the company disagrees with. For example, YouTube could let conspiracy videos be hosted but leave it up to viewers to discover them rather than recommending them in search or "related videos". It seems likely that censoring will have unintended consequences.

Vomzor 6y ago
It used to be that the tech companies where champions of free speech, the ideal. It changed when generation woke entered their workforce. There has been a generational change brought on by changed values in American universities. That's what really is happening. > We asked whether people believe that citizens should be able to make public statements that are offensive to minority groups, or whether the government should be able to prevent people from saying these things. Four-in-ten Millennials say the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups, while 58% said such speech is OK. Even though a larger share of Millennials favor allowing offensive speech against minorities, the 40% who oppose it is striking given that only around a quarter of Gen Xers (27%) and Boomers (24%) and roughly one-in-ten Silents (12%) say the government should be able to prevent such speech. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millennials-ok-with-limiting-speech-offensive-to-minorities/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-mille...
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  No, it changed when capitalism got involved and realized it was more profitable to centralize, close themselves off, and gain a monopoly.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    Thats an interesting definition of capitalism that excludes the part where the capital was accumulated. Probably that's why the libertarians say "free market capitalism" in order to exclude the mixed market and autocratic versions.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Don't blame the children; they don't know any better.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  What a retconning farce this is. 40 years ago you could not publicly endorse recreational drug use, atheism, or interracial marriages without a substancial block of society chastating you as an incorrectable heathen. Values change, what people find acceptable and what they do not find acceptable changes.
  - Vomzor 6y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is? As we seem to agree values change.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - titanomachy 6y ago
      I'm not 100% sure either. I think maybe GP is suggesting that rather than being stalwart champions of free speech as you implied, boomers are just more racist and want to be free to say racist things. Fortunately for all of us, it's not the general population of millenials or boomers who decide what speech the government gets to prevent; it's experienced justices, who tend to take the constitution much more seriously than the average person. The statistic that 40% of millenials want laws preventing statements offensive to minorities is kind of baffling to me. Do you think they just don't understand the constitution, or do they want it rewritten to allow this kind of law?
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "What you don't have a right to do is amplify your message using the massively powerful social-media megaphones which are created and owned by tech companies." What makes anyone think that other groups won't be able to create their own social-media megaphones? The tech is well understood already and they're highly motivated and well funded. It's been tried a couple of times already and eventually they're going to succeed. And if the last two US presidential election results are any indication, they might grow as big (or bigger!) as any of the other social-media giants. What will we do then?
- optimalsolver 6y ago
  Whenever the other side tries something like this, they just end up with something resembling Voat.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  Let the market sort it out. If the market is there, the competition will be good for everybody.
will4274 6y ago
> You have a right to say whatever you want to whomever you want without fear of government retaliation, as long as it isn't "hate speech" in a fairly narrow legal sense. This is what "having free speech in society" has always meant Wrong twice. First of all, the United States doesn't have laws against hate speech. The US Supreme Court has said hate speech is protected by the first amendment. So, you're protected from government retaliation, even if it's hate speech. Second of all, that's NOT what "having free speech in society" means. It's what the first amendment means. In American culture, writing op eds to a privately owned newspaper is a classic example of free speech, going all the way to revolutionary times (and actually predating the constitution). In the past (before the internet), prominent newspapers would brag that they would publish editorials from any significant public figure, even if they detested that public figure, because free speech was a good thing. That's why the NYTimes has published so many editorials from dictators.
- d1zzy 6y ago
  And so have we proposed laws to regulate newspapers on what they should be and what they shouldn't be allowed to decline for publishing?
  - will4274 6y ago
    The article you are commenting on did not propose any new laws, nor did I in my comment. Did you mean to reply to somebody else or to comment on another article? I don't think the government should require tech companies like Google to support free speech. I think Google should support free speech because it's the right thing to do. I believe the author of this article feels similarly, just as the editors of major American newspapers did from about 1600 to 2005.
- titanomachy 6y ago
  > the United States doesn't have laws against hate speech Interesting, thanks for enlightening me! Canada does have laws against hate speech and I'd mistakenly thought the US did as well. In any case, speech intended to incite lawbreaking, whether a hate crime or otherwise, is not protected under the first amendment. If you tell your Twitter followers to go burn down all the Jewish-owned business or whatever, and they do, your speech is illegal. So there are at least some limits. And I agree that freedom of speech goes beyond the first amendment. But the "significant public figure" of that is important: not anyone could get published in the New York Times, you already had to have reach and notoriety. They wouldn't have published articles by some random basement crackpot moon conspiracist, because that person wouldn't have a chance to get famous in the first place. They probably also don't publish opinion pieces with easily-disproven counterfactual statements. YouTube's algorithm, by default, makes no distinction: any idiot can go viral and get tons of reach on a video loaded with outright lies. YouTube has provided a platform that makes the spread of misinformation much easier and in my opinion it's their responsibility to take action to correct that.
int_19h 6y ago
What happens when all megaphones are either government- or large-corporation-owned, and whenever you try to speak on your own, the nearest megaphone just yells over whatever you have to say?
- Daishiman 6y ago
  It's a very good argument to support 1950's style anti-monopoly legislation, and as someone who defends platforms' rights to have some degree of moderation it follows that we should have as many platforms as needed to satisfy demand.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    Absolutely. I don't think that private censorship per se is problematic - the problem, rather, is that it amounts to monopoly abuse in the present configuration of the market. (Although I'd prefer an economic system that makes monopolies fundamentally impossible or very unlikely - i.e. one that constrains the ability to concentrate capital.)
- titanomachy 6y ago
  Was that ever not the case? Was there a time when any person with any message could reach the whole country with their message? The scarce resource here isn't freedom of speech, it's people's attention. As always, you can say whatever you want, and as always, it's hard to get people to listen to you. Before the internet, you basically needed an already-famous person to take an interest in you in order to get noticed. Now a message can go viral organically, without needing to involve any journalists or talk-show hosts, but the platforms are free to stop something from going viral if they don't like it. Facebook giveth and Facebook taketh away. But to answer your question, I think breaking up the platforms would be a better solution than treating them as de-facto public services and trying to regulate them as such. Or appropriate them and make them into actual public services :)
  - int_19h 6y ago
    It's a matter of relative power to spread the message, not absolute. So it's not a question of whether any single random person could reach the whole country, but rather how many people can that single random person reach, and how much can those who control the means of mass distribution of information can use that to reduce the reach of a single person.
jb775 6y ago
Google/Facebook/Twitter have become monopolistic de-facto utilities. The you'll have to build your own megaphone argument is no longer valid. Especially when they're attempting to impact election results while cashing in on governmental protections that minimize their risk.

falcrist 6y ago

Freedom of speech in the broadest sense (as in "the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or sanction.") isn't binary, and cannot be absolute. There are some forms of expression that we almost universally agree shouldn't be allowed. Incitement to violence, "shouting fire in a crowded theater", depictions of sex with minors, etc are all unprotected from restriction. In that sense it's like the concept of freedom in general. It's slippery, difficult to define, and has fuzzy boundaries. We're not always going to agree on the extent of each freedom. Where does your freedom end and mine begin? In this particular case, how big does a company need to be before we start forcing it to host content that it doesn't want to host? When is it ok to force someone to provide a universal platform... to tie their hands so they can't moderate as they see fit? Do I have a right to stand on your stage and shout whatever I want at your audience?

justinzollars 6y ago

> It is amazing to me that there are so many people, smart people even, that are adamant that we shouldn't have free speech in society. This can be attributed to nothing more than personal political bias. There is no way these people would be arguing for censorship if the censorship favored the other side. It also makes me want to move. There is no advantage to being an American without the freedom of speech and press.

chillacy 6y ago
Where could you move that has more freedom of speech and press than the US? Asking for a friend...
- justinzollars 6y ago
  No where on earth. If freedom of speech and press are over here, and it certainly looks like it is over here. Then why not move to China or Singapore? You could have the same level of censorship, but a more effective political system and more opportunity to grow wealth.

matthewmacleod 6y ago

I have encountered few people who have said “we shouldn’t have free speech in society”. Perhaps your argument needs more nuance to reflect the complexity of this issue.

pie_flavor 6y ago
I have seen fifteen or so such top- or second-level comments on this and the previous thread. It was about one apologist to every two critics there, and one to four here. It is by no means a rare perception here.

TameAntelope 6y ago

Why does YouTube not also get a shot at free speech? You have a right to free speech until it infringes on someone else. The real problem is that people falsely think YouTube is the only way to publish a video on the Internet...

kome 6y ago
yeah but i wonder... the main argument here is that youtube is private and it can do whatever it wants. but if it's true for youtube, why it cannot be true for an hosting company or a service provider? can't they just shut down my server or my ip? they are private after all... is there a legally safe to speak freely on the internet? or our freedom of speech is limited only to photocopies?