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Saying that "you don't need to use FB/Twitter, you can write your own blog" is like saying in 1789 "You don't need to be allowed to distribute your pamphlets in

Saying that "you don't need to use FB/Twitter, you can write your own blog" is like saying in 1789 "You don't need to be allowed to distribute your pamphlets in front of Faneuil Hall in Boston, you can exercise your free speech on the top of a mountain in Colorado." Sure, if free speech is only about speaking, then someone can speak just as well on a mountaintop as they can in downtown Boston. But speech also has an element of being heard. When the First Amendment was ratified, speech in a public square was the commonplace way of getting a message out to the world. Now, that commonplace medium is controlled by private corporations that don't fall under the jurisdiction of the First Amendment. If "free speech" continues to be important, then we need to create additional protections for speech in these virtual public squares where people can be heard, not just for speech in Internet wastelands that are the digital equivalent of an ice floe in Antarctica.

shuntress 6y ago
The solution is to maintain the public nature of the public square by taking steps to reduce Facebook/Twitter's de-facto ownership rather than to assert that the rules for the public square must also apply to the private sections cordoned off by Facebook/Twitter.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Here's why I don't think your time-based analogy is correct. First of all, there's no geography on the internet. Being able to only speak from the top of a mountain in Colorado in 1789 would have severely limited the potential of the population to hear you (essentially, to zero). Being able to speak "only" from one's own blog only makes discovery difficult, it does not limit people's access post-discovery. Secondly: you appear to consider FB/Twitter etc. to be "virtual public squares". They demonstrably are not this. At the very least, it would require legislation to make them so. Thirdly: even given the 1st amendment, even physical public squares have distinct limitations in how they can be used. For one thing, they do have geography. Any given public square is a long way from most of the population in a country of any size (even more so in countries like the USA that span thousands of miles), meaning that a particular public square is not effectively accessible to most people. As a corollary, most of the public will never be present in any actual public square. They also have geometry: there are limits to how many people can speak in them at once. Finally, in a public square you still cannot do the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, along with presence of simple noise limits for many possible public square locations. These things work very differently, or are non-existent, for written communications.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >Being able to speak "only" from one's own blog only makes discovery difficult, it does not limit people's access post-discovery. Exactly. And furthermore, while the big social media platforms help discovery and amplification, they're not that powerful (fortunately). They're not the difference between Faneuil Hall and a remote mountaintop. Posting on Facebook and Twitter is no guarantee of being heard. You can ignore all the major social media platforms and your ability to reach a wide audience is still incredibly democratized.
- spoonjim 6y ago
  > you appear to consider FB/Twitter etc. to be "virtual public squares". They demonstrably are not this. At the very least, it would require legislation to make them so. Yes, that is what I am saying. I am advocating for legislation to protect free speech on platforms like FB and Twitter in a similar (but not identical) way that the First Amendment protects free speech on a public street.
dfxm12 6y ago
When the First Amendment was ratified, speech in a public square was the commonplace way of getting a message out to the world. No it wasn't. If you wanted wide distribution of getting a message out to the world (or even wider than your literal public square), you needed it to be published & distributed. That means you had convince a publisher (i.e. a private corporation) to print your pamphlet or have the means to buy your own press. You also had to physically get it into people's hands. The Internet reduces these costs so that making your thoughts available to anyone is easier today than it ever was. Even if it was, that still doesn't show any implied intention (it certainly is not explicit) of some right for one's speech to be heard. Enforcing such a right would be impossible and probably contradictory to some other freedoms granted in the bill of rights.
shuntress 6y ago
To expand your metaphor: Facebook is a roped-off section at the edge of the public square. Most people who visit the public square spend most of their time in this roped-off Facebook section. In the Facebook section, Facebook concierges monitor each person carefully. The concierge will occasionally bring various third-parties up to each person while constantly gauging engagement as a proxy for how likely a person is to return to Facebook section. Facebook uses their engagement metric (plus all of the observations taken to derive the engagement) to value and sell access to (through the concierge) their patrons. You are equating some specific consequences of this concierge service to censorship as if that is the only problem. This censorship is not the only problem it is also not even a relevant problem.
cageface 6y ago
The problem with social media isn't that it's a conduit for misinformation. It's that it's an unprecedented amplifier and megaphone for misinformation. I think the real fix, which would also make them much less profitable, is to radically reduce the virality of their platforms. Since they're not willing to give up the billions that spreading rabble rousing lies makes them they instead have to play censor and make everybody unhappy.

shuntress 6y ago

The solution is to maintain the public nature of the public square by taking steps to reduce Facebook/Twitter's de-facto ownership rather than to assert that the rules for the public square must also apply to the private sections cordoned off by Facebook/Twitter.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

Here's why I don't think your time-based analogy is correct. First of all, there's no geography on the internet. Being able to only speak from the top of a mountain in Colorado in 1789 would have severely limited the potential of the population to hear you (essentially, to zero). Being able to speak "only" from one's own blog only makes discovery difficult, it does not limit people's access post-discovery. Secondly: you appear to consider FB/Twitter etc. to be "virtual public squares". They demonstrably are not this. At the very least, it would require legislation to make them so. Thirdly: even given the 1st amendment, even physical public squares have distinct limitations in how they can be used. For one thing, they do have geography. Any given public square is a long way from most of the population in a country of any size (even more so in countries like the USA that span thousands of miles), meaning that a particular public square is not effectively accessible to most people. As a corollary, most of the public will never be present in any actual public square. They also have geometry: there are limits to how many people can speak in them at once. Finally, in a public square you still cannot do the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, along with presence of simple noise limits for many possible public square locations. These things work very differently, or are non-existent, for written communications.

ghaff 6y ago
>Being able to speak "only" from one's own blog only makes discovery difficult, it does not limit people's access post-discovery. Exactly. And furthermore, while the big social media platforms help discovery and amplification, they're not that powerful (fortunately). They're not the difference between Faneuil Hall and a remote mountaintop. Posting on Facebook and Twitter is no guarantee of being heard. You can ignore all the major social media platforms and your ability to reach a wide audience is still incredibly democratized.
spoonjim 6y ago
> you appear to consider FB/Twitter etc. to be "virtual public squares". They demonstrably are not this. At the very least, it would require legislation to make them so. Yes, that is what I am saying. I am advocating for legislation to protect free speech on platforms like FB and Twitter in a similar (but not identical) way that the First Amendment protects free speech on a public street.

dfxm12 6y ago

When the First Amendment was ratified, speech in a public square was the commonplace way of getting a message out to the world. No it wasn't. If you wanted wide distribution of getting a message out to the world (or even wider than your literal public square), you needed it to be published & distributed. That means you had convince a publisher (i.e. a private corporation) to print your pamphlet or have the means to buy your own press. You also had to physically get it into people's hands. The Internet reduces these costs so that making your thoughts available to anyone is easier today than it ever was. Even if it was, that still doesn't show any implied intention (it certainly is not explicit) of some right for one's speech to be heard. Enforcing such a right would be impossible and probably contradictory to some other freedoms granted in the bill of rights.

shuntress 6y ago

To expand your metaphor: Facebook is a roped-off section at the edge of the public square. Most people who visit the public square spend most of their time in this roped-off Facebook section. In the Facebook section, Facebook concierges monitor each person carefully. The concierge will occasionally bring various third-parties up to each person while constantly gauging engagement as a proxy for how likely a person is to return to Facebook section. Facebook uses their engagement metric (plus all of the observations taken to derive the engagement) to value and sell access to (through the concierge) their patrons. You are equating some specific consequences of this concierge service to censorship as if that is the only problem. This censorship is not the only problem it is also not even a relevant problem.

cageface 6y ago

The problem with social media isn't that it's a conduit for misinformation. It's that it's an unprecedented amplifier and megaphone for misinformation. I think the real fix, which would also make them much less profitable, is to radically reduce the virality of their platforms. Since they're not willing to give up the billions that spreading rabble rousing lies makes them they instead have to play censor and make everybody unhappy.