14 ms·

EFF's response to social media companies' decisions to block Trump’s accounts

229 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

mc32 6y ago
I see. Hold your ground for free speech till... Ok, we were kidding we were just bluffing. Go ahead. We don't care. We support corporate censorship now full throat. It's for the best. We're looking out for your own good. I mean really, so you know it was in the government's purview to hold Snowden, Manning and Assange accountable to what's within their rights too. Nice to see you sway with the wind there EFF. Guess Biden can pick up the phone and tell them to let them hang out to dry because you know, the government has the right. Why, why bother contesting them, right? I was the one thing. The one thing you had as a mission.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  it's pretty surreal. i guess we all learnt something new. didnt we..boys and girls?
  - mc32 6y ago
    They obviously must have been on the fence about it during the summer and it tortured their conscience so much that this was just too much for them to bear and they no longer could believe in freedom of speech. We'll probably hear them retracting support for Snowden soon. they're probably typing it up as we speak.
- stretchcat 6y ago
  https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine
- RobLach 6y ago
  Free speech for a corporation is allowing them to ban whatever they want that's effecting their bottom line. Hosting and publishing certain speech is a liability. Why should the state dictate what a corporation must allow on their own servers facilitated by the services they created? Should the state force YouTube to include videos no advertiser wants to be associated with? EFF's statement is consistent with protecting digital rights.
  - mc32 6y ago
    I'm sorry but it's not consistent with protecting digital rights. This is not the same EFF that supported the Freedom of Speech stance by Apple against the FBI when terrorists killed 16 people in San Bernardino. Below a poster liked a response by the ACLU which is a much better response to Freedom of Speech than that by the EFF. The EFF caved. They abandoned their one and only mission to promote freedom of speech.
    - RobLach 6y ago
      How so?
    - dbsmith83 6y ago
      The fact is that a company has the right to moderate their own content because that in and of itself is free speech. There is a difference between the government not allowing you to have a say vs. a company moderating their own platform that they own
    - grahamburger 6y ago
      > This is not the same EFF that supported the Freedom of Speech stance by Apple against the FBI when terrorists killed 16 people in San Bernardino. In both cases the EFF sided with the company's ability to practice their free speech instead of the government compelling them to speak or not speak. Seems perfectly consistent.
      - mc32 6y ago
        Aha, so in your heart of hears if Tim was like, yes, FBI, here are 100 engineers, we'll let you into any phone you want! EFF is HAPPY yes? That's what you're saying? I mean, in this hypothetical this would be what Tim/Apple wants...
        grahamburger 6y ago
        EFF seems to dislike corporations and governments working together against people, whether voluntary or compelled. I expect they would dislike Tim Cook handing over info, and would dislike Twitter being compelled to carry speech by government officials.
- kodah 6y ago
  The EFF has held this position for quite some time. They think the existing laws are just fine and oppose the idea that additional regulation would be meaningful in compelling companies to do the right thing. Instead, they worked with other activist organizations to create The Santa Clara Principles. [0] The chief problem is that enforcement will always be unequal, especially when the majority of people in positions of authority come from one political culture. The EFF thinks it's just fine to deal with this retroactively, but basically, that's saying it's okay to sacrifice a few to save the many. I'm okay with saying that if you're okay with making the consequences for sacrificing those few huge. eg: If Facebook disables someones account because they misunderstood some context because they don't have people working there that can properly frame it, then Facebook owes them substantial damages. [0] https://santaclaraprinciples.org/ https://santaclaraprinciples.org/
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  Free speech is not just the freedom to say what you want to say. It is also the freedom not to be compelled to say what you don't want to say. That includes the right not to be compelled to let others use you to broadcast messages you disagree with. Furthermore, freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequences.
  - xpe 6y ago
    > Free speech is not just the freedom to say what you want to say. It is also the freedom not to be compelled to say what you don't want to say. This is a powerful idea. Have you found legal protections in the United States for this principle? I can think of some limited examples (Miranda rights, for example), but I do not, off the top of my head, see the the U.S. Constitution as generally protecting this right broadly.
    - mumblemumble 6y ago
      https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/933/compelled-speech https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/933/compelled-speec...
  - mc32 6y ago
    Wait... so Zuckerberg is totally cool if he goes and censors anything and everything that speaks ill of him or Facebook? Cool if he censors anyone who sues FB or him? Is that your position on a medium that is built for people to post diverse opinions? What if he suffers a stroke and suddenly becomes a religious nut, cool if he only allows promotion of his religion on his medium and bans all others? Good god, we’re effed!
    - marcinzm 6y ago
      Zuckerberg is free to do what he wants on the platform he owns. Just like you're free to do what you want on a platform you own. Or are you saying that if you publish a webpage on your own server promoting your religion I can force you to also post my religion on the same page?
- erentz 6y ago
  What are you trying to say Biden can do now because of this? It wasn’t clear to me. But more broadly what is your position here? Are you saying companies and people that run any kind of forum are not allowed to moderate it? They must allow all posts? Or do they have to have approval from the government for their moderation? Or do you want all forums and social media to be nationalized run by the government and we can have a state social media? Surely I’d think state media and state censorship is worse for everyone than private media and private censorship (which is something we have always had in the US). And surely forcing every website with a commenting system to post everything anyone wants to share is not fair on anyone either. The problem therefore is something other than these bans.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  They're saying to apply the same rules to everyone, and that the rules should be based on a human rights framework. Those seem like pretty good ideals to me.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Unfortunately this is categorically untrue. Twitter does not ban international terrorists from its ranks nor does it remove regular people who say awful things on Twitter. Go for it, do a search for violent threats on twitter. See if they have banned every account in Africa or the Middle East, or Asia, etc. Even north America. They may ban Luis CK for misogyny let's say, but they sure as hell would not ban all the Bros who use misogynistic language. Do you think we can't find twitter handles of cartelists making terroristic threats in Mexico or other places? Is that all gone now?
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      Twitter has a system that misses a lot but they ban regular people all the time. You can pick up a suspension for saying you hope someone steps on a lego.
Nicksil 6y ago
dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696511
stefantalpalaru 6y ago
> The decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to curate their sites. EFF supporting corporate personhood and private censorship? It's time to restart the cycle with new means of communication that the new establishment cannot police.
- xpe 6y ago
  It is a naive hope that technology alone can solve major social problems. > It's time to restart the cycle with new means of communication ... My response is: yes, innovation can be good, exciting, powerful. But never forget to assess how human nature will respond. > ... with new means of communication that the new establishment cannot police. Perhaps this will arrive, but I doubt it. Governments have many levers to influence behavior. Unless you are an anarchist, I suspect you support some role for goverment. Even if a new communication form arises that cannot be policed -- be careful what you hope for. Free speech is not a panacea.
ng12 6y ago
Remarkably tepid response.
- kortilla 6y ago
  It has to be. EFF is pro free-speech and pro privacy (fights censorship tools and government back doors to encryption, etc). Huge powerful corporations coordinating to censor someone is antithetical to their mission. However, they can’t take the pro free speech stance here because most of their donors are generally leftists who absolutely despise Trump. So the only move is to put the mission on the back burner and kowtow to the zeitgeist.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    even ACLU managed to squeak a protest via their counsel. weak squeak..but a statement nevertheless. https://www.newsweek.com/aclu-counsel-warns-unchecked-power-twitter-facebook-after-trump-suspension-1560248 https://www.newsweek.com/aclu-counsel-warns-unchecked-power-... : [..]A legislative counsel member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned Friday that the suspension of President Donald Trump's social media accounts wielded "unchecked power," by Twitter and Facebook. Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU said in a statement that the decision to suspend Trump from social media could set a precedent for big tech companies to silence less privileged voices.[..]
    - adventured 6y ago
      Meanwhile Twitter lets "Hang Mike Pence" go trending with 14,000 tweets (that oh so peaceful, non-violent Twitter, not deserving of being removed from the Internet, unlike Parler). Everyone knows what's going on, the nature of the blatant double standards and bias that have gone on for years now (with eg left wing celebrities openly, routinely calling for violence with zero consequences). The Republicans were dumb enough to not do anything about these speech-controlling monopoly platforms while they had a chance. Now we've got big tech CCP censorship rolling through the virtual streets.
    - miek 6y ago
throwawgler87 6y ago
This seems like a completely reasonable response.
koolba 6y ago
So the EFF is fine with a political party censoring their rivals as long as the work is outsourced to their corporate operatives.
that_guy_iain 6y ago
Basically the EFF are more concerned they don‘t ban political accounts for stuff normal people get banned for. Seems fair.
- mc32 6y ago
  Yeah, this is quite remarkable. basically they are agreeing with the Government's case against Snowden. If most people would go to Jail for what Snowden did then so should Snowden! Yay EFF! Thanks for the cooked spaghetti backbone buddy.
fangpenlin 6y ago
Their response to Parler's shutdown situation will determine my respect to EFF
- RobLach 6y ago
  Surely the EFF will say that Amazon shouldn't be forced by the state to provide their services to a company they don't want to.
  - guilhas 6y ago
    The problem is that this companies leaders are not independent. They go to summits/foruns/events with politicians, think tanks and foundations, and they subscribe to this other organizations rules. So at some point this actions move from freedom to monopoly?
postalrat 6y ago
Is "to curate their site" the same as "to curate their content"?
- mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
  I would think so, yes - the contents of their site.
jumelles 6y ago
This is absolutely as close as anyone should come to arguing against removing Trump. Once you're inciting violence free speech goes out the window -- and free speech here also gives companies the right to block you.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  Free speech like the response to this week by the Cincinnati Mayor? > "These are traitors," Cranley said, mentioning a pro-Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, a California resident who was shot and killed by Capitol police and a history of supporting unfounded conspiracy theories. "Traitors get shot. That's what happened." [0] Is that the sort of inciting violence that should get you banned on Twitter? [0]: https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2021/01/08/as-council-denounces-dc-riot-cranley-says-traitors.html https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2021/01/08/as-co...
  - olliej 6y ago
    You look at the context, he’s saying a person in the act of a violent insurrection should expect lethal force in response. He’s not inciting violence, he’s stating why the violence occurred. He could also be simply saying treason carries the potential for the death penalty. Either way not inciting violence. He isn’t saying go use force against all the insurrectionists, unlike some politicians who were actively saying use force to overthrow the election.
    - throwaway201103 6y ago
      "use force to overthrow the election" Which politicians said that?
      - kube-system 6y ago
        Rudy told the crowd “let’s have trial by combat” shortly before they marched to the capitol.
Nerada 6y ago
If the EFF actually cared about freedom of speech they'd set up a registrar and hosting service.
- dbsmith83 6y ago
  Why would they do that? How would it be any different if the government shut down their hosting service vs. someone else's? They'd still have to do their normal legal thing they do, while also having to manage a hosting service.
  - perryizgr8 6y ago
    > They'd still have to do their normal legal thing they do, while also having to manage a hosting service. Yeah, you generally have to put in some efforts to realize your beliefs.
    - lumpenprole 6y ago
      Not really. You could hang out here instead.
    - dbsmith83 6y ago
      They focus on certain things while plenty of other companies run their own hosting services. It is not needed effort.
mellosouls 6y ago
Bland, waffly "we support this but bear in mind...".
samatman 6y ago
> A platform should not apply one set of rules to most of its users, and then apply a more permissive set of rules to politicians and world leaders who are already immensely powerful. Ok... why not? A government is an unavoidably violent institution, and what's more, one which assumes the right and responsibility to use violence. In a free nation, it derives that right through various rituals from the consent of the governed, but it remains a fact: if a governmental leader says, for example, "There's a curfew, stay home or be arrested", that's what's going to happen. If I message someone else "leave your house and me and my boys will stomp you", it's different, isn't it. So I ask again: why should there be one set of rules for both?
- Miner49er 6y ago
  Maybe the EFF has an anarchist political philosophy and doesn't think the state should have a monopoly on violence and that these types of positions of power shouldn't exist?
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    There's a difference between prescription and description, and just because you have the prescriptive belief that nobody should murder doesn't mean your worldview works that way. All governments since forever have used violence as a core technique for order, and I doubt the EFF thinks otherwise.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Freedom-respecting governments are bound by the rule of law. A government official tweeting "leave your house and me and my boys will stomp you" in the absence of a lawful policy directing as such is not really acting pursuant to the government's "right and responsibility to use violence", so there's hardly any reason to treat them differently from a random person doing the same.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Any rule by any group ultimately comes down to enforcement through some variety of force. I have never seen it as a particularly useful talking point to highlight that governments are also subject to this foundational principal of the enFORCEment of a rule/law etc.
noodles_nomore 6y ago
Echo of majority view on incident. Clarification of legal basis for censorship on private platforms. Support of section 230. Concern about bias in private censorship. Call for transparency and consistency. It's as neutral as can be.
- yyyymmddhhmmss 6y ago
  Yep. Despite all the agony and defeat that comes with being a trusty practitioner, Marxism comprises the only reconcilable political comprehensions of our society today.
- colanderman 6y ago
  They sort of have to be. In the fight to preserve electronic freedoms, freedom from censorship and freedom to operate a service as one pleases come at odds with each other in cases like this. If instead, the government had confiscated Parler's domains, or enjoined Apple, Google, and Amazon from booting them, I think EFF's response would (rightly/expectedly IMO) be very different. As an EFF member I think they made the right call here.
  - repolitical 6y ago
    I guess there are ways to transcend this conflict. For example, perhaps social networks can sort themselves into two types, public-square type and non-public-square type. The networks which self-identify as public-square shall (1) employ a stronger set of freedom of speech protection rules, (2) be supervised by the government, an independent council, the media and the public, and (3) receive financial incentive, which could be a limited tax exempt status or governmental subsidy, depending on your preference.
  - disown 6y ago
    > As an EFF member I think they made the right call here. They didn't. They chickened out. The ACLU was more vocal in its opposition to censorship. That should show how cowardly the EFF is being right now. You falsely made it seem like EFF only deals with or is concerned with government "suppression". That isn't true. Most of EFF dealings is with corporate "suppression". Under normal circumstances, EFF would have been far more vocal. But since they are extremely biased in this case, they chose to be anti-free speech. "The EFF was active in the United States presidential election 2016 because of online phishing related to the controversy over fabrication of election results. J. Alex Halderman, a computer security professor at the University of Michigan, wrote an article that was published in Medium in 2016 stating he thought it was advisable to have a recount on some of the election results from states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation Don't you think EFF's belief in 2016 election fraud had anything to do with their lukewarm defense of Trump's free speech here? They have a long history of questioning voting results, but only when republicans win... "The EFF has long been an advocate of paper audit trails for voting machines and testified in support of them after the United States presidential election 2004." I generally think EFF is a worthy enterprise, but it's obvious political bias is the reason for their pathetic "support" for free speech here.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
https://twitter.com/balajis https://twitter.com/balajis : there are some interesting viewpoints being espoused on balajis' twitter feed. one of them cut and paste below. (there is a 'thread unroll' feature on twitter.. too many retweets. but it makes for an interesting train of tweet thoughts) quoting balajis [..]How would countries build sovereign apps? 1) Clone the features of WeChat, FB, or Twitter, which is much easier than developing from scratch 2) Encourage or requirr citizens to sign up, which is much easier if you’re a state That’s product and distribution respectively.[..] essentially..decentralised web.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  Sounds like centralized web to me since for every person there is a single app they are required to use made by their country of residence.
motohagiography 6y ago
The idea that this particular U.S. president is exceptional underpins the policies and actions of the platform companies. The EFF has to respond, as this is specifically what they were set up to respond to, sort of what the ACLU's original mandate was. However, that major platform companies are working on behalf of a (still) opposition party to obstruct and suppress a (still) sitting president with some 10 days left in his term, could have unforeseen legal consequences. It will be a very interesting week. The problem is that if well meaning people break the rules, there is no reason for less well meaning ones not to ignore them.
- shkkmo 6y ago
  What rules are you alluding to being broken?
  - motohagiography 6y ago
    Not a lawyer, but most countries have a rule, if perhaps only a convention, where you don't collude with other businesses to obstruct the sitting head of state, and probably specifically during a state of national emergency. Maybe the U.S. is different, and even if it isn't, the incoming admin won't prosecute it, but it looks bad for tech platforms either way. We indeed live in interesting times.
    - shkkmo 6y ago
      I have never heard of that rule. Do you have any sources on it? Court cases or such? Any sort of precedent as to what qualified as "obstruction"?
      - motohagiography 6y ago
        I do recommend googling "obstruction," in its myriad forms. Of course, communication companies banning their heads of state is probably normal, unless we'd like to sealion this thread?
lettergram 6y ago
Well, I’ll never be donating again. I’m more concerned about parler being banned or that “hang pence” was trending, but banning the president - who said LEAVE IN PEACE is what we should be doing. I’m against all rioting (all year it feels like) and what happened Jan 6 was horrifying. You know how to simmer tensions? You convince the leaders of said movement to calm followers. banning / arresting / killing all the leaders and then banning their other platforms will make people scared and ready to fight.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  >You know how to simmer tensions? You convince the leaders of said movement to calm followers. this. this is why the deplatforming of a single political leader is confusing. if trump can calm down the fringe elements, that's what he needs to do. gagging him from ever reaching that base is counter productive. one day..we will all be looking back at these events and scratch our heads. this course of action makes no sense. its all very strange and surreal. irrational.
  - lumpenprole 6y ago
    Yes, after four years of the Trump administration, this is what we'll scratch our heads about. This is what will seem strange and surreal and irrational. Absolutely.
  - xpe 6y ago
    > if trump can calm down the fringe elements, that's what he needs to do. On what basis do you think Trump has the interest in calming the fringe elements? And if he did have the motivation, on what basis do you think he would be successful?
    - 1MachineElf 6y ago
      >On what basis do you think Trump has the interest in calming the fringe elements? You are aware he said for everyone to go home and he condemned the violence? https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/trump-condemns-violence-at-us-capitol-in-strongest-possible-terms-spokeswoman/story-CMYeV2i8SqKQuTIJbiBNqK.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/trump-condemns-vio...
deleted 6y ago
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jelliclesfarm 6y ago
question: the whole thing is a blur. i think the last tweet by the POTUS was that he wont be attending the inauguration. was the decision at twitter made by jack & co before the last tweet or after it? jack was vacationing on an island in the french polynesia while he and his executives made the decision. maybe it's a time zone thing? because the timeline doesnt make sense to me. after the temporary ban, what happened that it became a permanent ban? what did the potus say that violence was glorified?
- carey 6y ago
  Unless you think Twitter was lying in https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio..., that last tweet was the call to violently disrupt the inauguration in POTUS’ absence that was the final straw.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    Do you have a screenshot? Maybe Twitter posted it? > “that last tweet was the call to violently disrupt the inauguration in POTUS’ absence” What you are saying is not the last tweet from Trump I saw.
    - carey 6y ago
      It’s in the blog post that I linked to, which quotes the tweet that you seem to be referring to.
      - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        This is from the blog [..]On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump Tweeted: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” Shortly thereafter, the President Tweeted: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”[..] I don’t see what you are reading from it. Do you want to translate?
xpe 6y ago
There is a large difference between the EFF (a) promoting privacy protections on social media versus (b) advocating for free speech on social media platforms.[1] I want to emphasize that (b) (free speech on social media) is not protected by the First Amendment. The First Amendment begins with: > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment is about what Congress cannot do. One has to look elsewhere to understand free speech protections (if any) in other contexts. [1] I have not reviewed the EFF's complete history regarding free speech on social media. Of course, the EFF tends to opposes censorship, but I would also expect they have a history of taking more nuanced and calibrated stances on free speech outside the scope of the First Amendment.
- deleted 6y ago
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helloycombinat 6y ago
I disagree. For example people who know what their officials are saying which is why twitter let trump on while he violated some rules. Making shit they say less visible is not a great idea
chaganated 6y ago
Dotcom lobbyist backs dotcom decision. Color me surprised! https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine
breatheoften 6y ago
I think EFF should look for improvements to their communication on this topic. They need to be providing much more practical leadership guidance. The ideological goals don't need compromise -- but the practical reality is that our society _needs_ an organization like EFF to be at the forefront on these topics -- advocating for better abstractions to help shape how we as a society should think and deal with these complex issues. EFF shouldn't be effectively silencing itself by becoming a voice that just repeats platitudes. This article to me felt like the right wing response to gun violence events "we send our thoughts and prayers but let's not politicize this tragedy". In particular -- there are simple ways to avoid worry over the "slippery slope" associated with defining policies that apply different rules to different users -- you can espouse policy frameworks that are explicitly parameterized by impact (impact is a bit fuzzy to capture in truth but conceptually clear -- and simple proxies suffice to communicate the concept -- in most cases the number of followers is a reasonably close conceptual proxy for a social network). If you have 70 million followers and you say "let's punish immigrants" it's just simply a different thing than if you say the same thing and you have 10 followers -- pretending there "must not exist" a different framework for responding to events that occur on such vastly different scales is not practical and it's actually a failure to provide good advice here on an ideological level -- because we _know_ that these events are different and project meaningfully different risk profiles onto the world. There is not a clear ideological reason to falsely pretend that "the same thing" is happening when two users with such vastly different impact publish the exact same sequence of words ... The threat model for "danger of communication" is based on impact and so should be the policy frameworks aimed at managing these risks.
- xpe 6y ago
  > EFF shouldn't be effectively silencing itself by becoming a voice that just repeats platitudes. I don't follow how this is tantamount to silencing itself. Would you explain?
  - breatheoften 6y ago
    The context as I see it -- one of the largest (if not the largest) social media megaphones controlled by a single human was recently silenced because of a recognition that this megaphone was being actively used to cause widespread harm. The eff response to these actions is to emphasize that such blocking should be allowed so long as a consistent set of rules is used to perform blocking for this reason across a whole network. And they suggest the communication scale of the actor being blocked should not be a factor in the management criteria applied to the speech flowing across a given channel. That's a principled position but it's also ludicrous - and it's impossible to take advice from that position which can then be applied to the real world. It's as tho they've said "yes, we acknowledge that free speech faces limits -- such as no yelling fire in a crowded theater -- but we do not acknowledge the existence of crowded theaters". What kind of advice are we left to take from such philosophizing? Text sent over the largest of megaphones is just not the same thing as text sent over the much smaller megaphones available to most social media users. Taking the EFF position espoused here to an extreme for illustration -- suppose Alice decides to use the emergency broadcast system as her personal twitter account for a day. With her every message all the cell phones in the country buzz an emergency broadcast alert letting us know what Alice wants to say. She exercises her right to political speech to let us all know that she thinks birth control pills are evil -- and in so doing she consumes some seconds of attention from 300 million people. At the same time -- she cross-posts to her twitter where she is followed by 50 people. The EFF are more or less suggesting that the same principles and rules should apply to her twitter posts and her emergency broadcast system posts. But in reality -- do we consider these information publishing channels directly comparable? Are we forced to accept that because these are both information publishing channels -- the set of things Alice is allowed to say on both channels must be the same? Obviously we are not forced to take this position. And obviously this is a bit of a silly example since we all already know that different rules apply to the emergency broadcasting network -- yet we don't use the word "censor" to describe the set of things we don't want Alice to send out over the emergency broadcast network -- and why is that? Going back to my claim that they are silencing themselves -- I think the EFF position in this article is basically abstract philosophy and that they are going out of their way to avoid addressing any of the specifics required to guide action in the real world. They had an opportunity to say something useful -- instead they said nothing in more words.
chaganated 6y ago
Read this article before you downvote or flag: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine
deet 6y ago
Could anyone point me to some cogent, well-formed arguments for why censorship of social media platforms is a good idea? i.e. books, articles, etc? I have some thoughts but would like more perspective before fully forming an opinion. (not arguing one way or the other below) For example, I’d like to understand the defining characteristics of social media platforms that contrasts them from traditional public forums that have existed through history. And what about those characteristics would make one think that physically removing questionable speech would be effective in preventing the underlying event, crime, movement, or social change the speech was attempting to facilitate. Comparing Twitter, say, to a literal town square — we don’t ask the air in the town square to stop transmitting the vibrations of someone who is speaking in a dangerous manner or trying to incite some action that might harm others or damage social structures. Instead we use normal human social interactions to mediate the speaker’s effect on listeners — countering their arguments, questioning their credibility or motives, telling others an opposing viewpoint, letting a person’s past speech affect their reputation, etc. We leverage our social nature and counter speech with more speech. (The prominent exception being threats of violence which are treated differently legally) In all the years of human history before social media, there have been countless examples of insurrections, of hateful acts inspired by a few, of coups, of routine crimes, of widely believed mistruths, etc. So obviously individuals in those societies were able to communicate and organize without social media (and in many cases without any electronic communication at all). Which means that access to social media is not a necessary condition for bad events to happen or bad social phenomena to spread. And therefore these things will find a way to continue to happen even if all social media communication were terminated. My naive assessment is that social media is different than a physical town square in: - Its anonymity / dehumanized nature - Its built-in amplification of controversial ideas (ie the algorithms of town square air does not carry further just because a statement raises eyebrows) - Its speed - … but there must be more? Basically, why is making the “digital air” in the "digital town square" not vibrate better than utilizing (and perhaps reinforcing) the social structures that moderated public forums in the analog world?
- danhak 6y ago
  > For example, I’d like to understand the defining characteristics of social media platforms that contrasts them from traditional public forums that have existed through history. They are privately held.
beaner 6y ago
This feels like when all those doctors signed a letter saying that they supported mass pretests in the middle of a rampant pandemic.
illustriousbear 6y ago
The EFF giving a nothing statement that sides with corporate monopoly censorship. This is how you become irrelevant as an activist organisation, what sane person would donate to them now?
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  That’s the most interesting question to me. Why? Why are all these organizations willing to burn bridges? Rational people can see this surreal juvenile drama..this theatre..for what it is..and they are also watching and noticing the cognitive dissonance that has gripped our country. After Jan 20, the real damage would be the aftermath of tech industry’s blitzkrieg. There is a silent majority that is watching and wondering. And shaking our heads. My fear is darker. Are they acting on their own/in tandem or are they acting upon orders? If so, from who? These are not irrational people. These are the best run corporate behemoths and such decisions are not made by one person. And it’s too swift to be made via consensus or analysis. None of this makes sense. There are going to be questions after the dust settles.
  - trendoid 6y ago
    >There is a silent majority that is watching and wondering. And shaking our heads. I am not sure that you are in silent majority. Most people agree that Twitter should have banned Trump long time ago and are relieved that they finally did that. Since the majority do believe Trump incites violence, Twitter and Facebook etc. felt okay going ahead with banning him. I still haven't heard a rational argument against banning Trump on Twitter. All free speech bullshit, which has been explained (why it is nonsense) for many years.
    - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
      > I am not sure that you are in silent majority. You said it. You are not sure. Look. I speak for myself. And people I know. And the majority of people in MY circle are silent and confused and scratching our heads. There is literally no evidence that ‘most people agree that Twitter should have banned Trump long time ago’. Are you speaking for ‘most people you know’ or ‘most people in the world’? I am going to assume it’s the former. Point taken. Thanks for engaging.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

229 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

mc32 6y ago

I see. Hold your ground for free speech till... Ok, we were kidding we were just bluffing. Go ahead. We don't care. We support corporate censorship now full throat. It's for the best. We're looking out for your own good. I mean really, so you know it was in the government's purview to hold Snowden, Manning and Assange accountable to what's within their rights too. Nice to see you sway with the wind there EFF. Guess Biden can pick up the phone and tell them to let them hang out to dry because you know, the government has the right. Why, why bother contesting them, right? I was the one thing. The one thing you had as a mission.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
it's pretty surreal. i guess we all learnt something new. didnt we..boys and girls?
- mc32 6y ago
  They obviously must have been on the fence about it during the summer and it tortured their conscience so much that this was just too much for them to bear and they no longer could believe in freedom of speech. We'll probably hear them retracting support for Snowden soon. they're probably typing it up as we speak.
stretchcat 6y ago
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine
RobLach 6y ago
Free speech for a corporation is allowing them to ban whatever they want that's effecting their bottom line. Hosting and publishing certain speech is a liability. Why should the state dictate what a corporation must allow on their own servers facilitated by the services they created? Should the state force YouTube to include videos no advertiser wants to be associated with? EFF's statement is consistent with protecting digital rights.
- mc32 6y ago
  I'm sorry but it's not consistent with protecting digital rights. This is not the same EFF that supported the Freedom of Speech stance by Apple against the FBI when terrorists killed 16 people in San Bernardino. Below a poster liked a response by the ACLU which is a much better response to Freedom of Speech than that by the EFF. The EFF caved. They abandoned their one and only mission to promote freedom of speech.
  - RobLach 6y ago
    How so?
  - dbsmith83 6y ago
    The fact is that a company has the right to moderate their own content because that in and of itself is free speech. There is a difference between the government not allowing you to have a say vs. a company moderating their own platform that they own
  - grahamburger 6y ago
    > This is not the same EFF that supported the Freedom of Speech stance by Apple against the FBI when terrorists killed 16 people in San Bernardino. In both cases the EFF sided with the company's ability to practice their free speech instead of the government compelling them to speak or not speak. Seems perfectly consistent.
    - mc32 6y ago
      Aha, so in your heart of hears if Tim was like, yes, FBI, here are 100 engineers, we'll let you into any phone you want! EFF is HAPPY yes? That's what you're saying? I mean, in this hypothetical this would be what Tim/Apple wants...
      - grahamburger 6y ago
        EFF seems to dislike corporations and governments working together against people, whether voluntary or compelled. I expect they would dislike Tim Cook handing over info, and would dislike Twitter being compelled to carry speech by government officials.
kodah 6y ago
The EFF has held this position for quite some time. They think the existing laws are just fine and oppose the idea that additional regulation would be meaningful in compelling companies to do the right thing. Instead, they worked with other activist organizations to create The Santa Clara Principles. [0] The chief problem is that enforcement will always be unequal, especially when the majority of people in positions of authority come from one political culture. The EFF thinks it's just fine to deal with this retroactively, but basically, that's saying it's okay to sacrifice a few to save the many. I'm okay with saying that if you're okay with making the consequences for sacrificing those few huge. eg: If Facebook disables someones account because they misunderstood some context because they don't have people working there that can properly frame it, then Facebook owes them substantial damages. [0] https://santaclaraprinciples.org/ https://santaclaraprinciples.org/
mumblemumble 6y ago
Free speech is not just the freedom to say what you want to say. It is also the freedom not to be compelled to say what you don't want to say. That includes the right not to be compelled to let others use you to broadcast messages you disagree with. Furthermore, freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequences.
- xpe 6y ago
  > Free speech is not just the freedom to say what you want to say. It is also the freedom not to be compelled to say what you don't want to say. This is a powerful idea. Have you found legal protections in the United States for this principle? I can think of some limited examples (Miranda rights, for example), but I do not, off the top of my head, see the the U.S. Constitution as generally protecting this right broadly.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/933/compelled-speech https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/933/compelled-speec...
- mc32 6y ago
  Wait... so Zuckerberg is totally cool if he goes and censors anything and everything that speaks ill of him or Facebook? Cool if he censors anyone who sues FB or him? Is that your position on a medium that is built for people to post diverse opinions? What if he suffers a stroke and suddenly becomes a religious nut, cool if he only allows promotion of his religion on his medium and bans all others? Good god, we’re effed!
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    Zuckerberg is free to do what he wants on the platform he owns. Just like you're free to do what you want on a platform you own. Or are you saying that if you publish a webpage on your own server promoting your religion I can force you to also post my religion on the same page?
erentz 6y ago
What are you trying to say Biden can do now because of this? It wasn’t clear to me. But more broadly what is your position here? Are you saying companies and people that run any kind of forum are not allowed to moderate it? They must allow all posts? Or do they have to have approval from the government for their moderation? Or do you want all forums and social media to be nationalized run by the government and we can have a state social media? Surely I’d think state media and state censorship is worse for everyone than private media and private censorship (which is something we have always had in the US). And surely forcing every website with a commenting system to post everything anyone wants to share is not fair on anyone either. The problem therefore is something other than these bans.
Dylan16807 6y ago
They're saying to apply the same rules to everyone, and that the rules should be based on a human rights framework. Those seem like pretty good ideals to me.
- mc32 6y ago
  Unfortunately this is categorically untrue. Twitter does not ban international terrorists from its ranks nor does it remove regular people who say awful things on Twitter. Go for it, do a search for violent threats on twitter. See if they have banned every account in Africa or the Middle East, or Asia, etc. Even north America. They may ban Luis CK for misogyny let's say, but they sure as hell would not ban all the Bros who use misogynistic language. Do you think we can't find twitter handles of cartelists making terroristic threats in Mexico or other places? Is that all gone now?
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Twitter has a system that misses a lot but they ban regular people all the time. You can pick up a suspension for saying you hope someone steps on a lego.

Nicksil 6y ago

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696511

stefantalpalaru 6y ago

> The decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to curate their sites. EFF supporting corporate personhood and private censorship? It's time to restart the cycle with new means of communication that the new establishment cannot police.

xpe 6y ago
It is a naive hope that technology alone can solve major social problems. > It's time to restart the cycle with new means of communication ... My response is: yes, innovation can be good, exciting, powerful. But never forget to assess how human nature will respond. > ... with new means of communication that the new establishment cannot police. Perhaps this will arrive, but I doubt it. Governments have many levers to influence behavior. Unless you are an anarchist, I suspect you support some role for goverment. Even if a new communication form arises that cannot be policed -- be careful what you hope for. Free speech is not a panacea.

ng12 6y ago

Remarkably tepid response.

kortilla 6y ago
It has to be. EFF is pro free-speech and pro privacy (fights censorship tools and government back doors to encryption, etc). Huge powerful corporations coordinating to censor someone is antithetical to their mission. However, they can’t take the pro free speech stance here because most of their donors are generally leftists who absolutely despise Trump. So the only move is to put the mission on the back burner and kowtow to the zeitgeist.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  even ACLU managed to squeak a protest via their counsel. weak squeak..but a statement nevertheless. https://www.newsweek.com/aclu-counsel-warns-unchecked-power-twitter-facebook-after-trump-suspension-1560248 https://www.newsweek.com/aclu-counsel-warns-unchecked-power-... : [..]A legislative counsel member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned Friday that the suspension of President Donald Trump's social media accounts wielded "unchecked power," by Twitter and Facebook. Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU said in a statement that the decision to suspend Trump from social media could set a precedent for big tech companies to silence less privileged voices.[..]
  - adventured 6y ago
    Meanwhile Twitter lets "Hang Mike Pence" go trending with 14,000 tweets (that oh so peaceful, non-violent Twitter, not deserving of being removed from the Internet, unlike Parler). Everyone knows what's going on, the nature of the blatant double standards and bias that have gone on for years now (with eg left wing celebrities openly, routinely calling for violence with zero consequences). The Republicans were dumb enough to not do anything about these speech-controlling monopoly platforms while they had a chance. Now we've got big tech CCP censorship rolling through the virtual streets.
  - miek 6y ago

throwawgler87 6y ago

This seems like a completely reasonable response.

koolba 6y ago

So the EFF is fine with a political party censoring their rivals as long as the work is outsourced to their corporate operatives.

that_guy_iain 6y ago

Basically the EFF are more concerned they don‘t ban political accounts for stuff normal people get banned for. Seems fair.

mc32 6y ago
Yeah, this is quite remarkable. basically they are agreeing with the Government's case against Snowden. If most people would go to Jail for what Snowden did then so should Snowden! Yay EFF! Thanks for the cooked spaghetti backbone buddy.

fangpenlin 6y ago

Their response to Parler's shutdown situation will determine my respect to EFF

RobLach 6y ago
Surely the EFF will say that Amazon shouldn't be forced by the state to provide their services to a company they don't want to.
- guilhas 6y ago
  The problem is that this companies leaders are not independent. They go to summits/foruns/events with politicians, think tanks and foundations, and they subscribe to this other organizations rules. So at some point this actions move from freedom to monopoly?

postalrat 6y ago

Is "to curate their site" the same as "to curate their content"?

mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
I would think so, yes - the contents of their site.

jumelles 6y ago

This is absolutely as close as anyone should come to arguing against removing Trump. Once you're inciting violence free speech goes out the window -- and free speech here also gives companies the right to block you.

jtbayly 6y ago
Free speech like the response to this week by the Cincinnati Mayor? > "These are traitors," Cranley said, mentioning a pro-Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, a California resident who was shot and killed by Capitol police and a history of supporting unfounded conspiracy theories. "Traitors get shot. That's what happened." [0] Is that the sort of inciting violence that should get you banned on Twitter? [0]: https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2021/01/08/as-council-denounces-dc-riot-cranley-says-traitors.html https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2021/01/08/as-co...
- olliej 6y ago
  You look at the context, he’s saying a person in the act of a violent insurrection should expect lethal force in response. He’s not inciting violence, he’s stating why the violence occurred. He could also be simply saying treason carries the potential for the death penalty. Either way not inciting violence. He isn’t saying go use force against all the insurrectionists, unlike some politicians who were actively saying use force to overthrow the election.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    "use force to overthrow the election" Which politicians said that?
    - kube-system 6y ago
      Rudy told the crowd “let’s have trial by combat” shortly before they marched to the capitol.

Nerada 6y ago

If the EFF actually cared about freedom of speech they'd set up a registrar and hosting service.

dbsmith83 6y ago
Why would they do that? How would it be any different if the government shut down their hosting service vs. someone else's? They'd still have to do their normal legal thing they do, while also having to manage a hosting service.
- perryizgr8 6y ago
  > They'd still have to do their normal legal thing they do, while also having to manage a hosting service. Yeah, you generally have to put in some efforts to realize your beliefs.
  - lumpenprole 6y ago
    Not really. You could hang out here instead.
  - dbsmith83 6y ago
    They focus on certain things while plenty of other companies run their own hosting services. It is not needed effort.

mellosouls 6y ago

Bland, waffly "we support this but bear in mind...".

samatman 6y ago

> A platform should not apply one set of rules to most of its users, and then apply a more permissive set of rules to politicians and world leaders who are already immensely powerful. Ok... why not? A government is an unavoidably violent institution, and what's more, one which assumes the right and responsibility to use violence. In a free nation, it derives that right through various rituals from the consent of the governed, but it remains a fact: if a governmental leader says, for example, "There's a curfew, stay home or be arrested", that's what's going to happen. If I message someone else "leave your house and me and my boys will stomp you", it's different, isn't it. So I ask again: why should there be one set of rules for both?

Miner49er 6y ago
Maybe the EFF has an anarchist political philosophy and doesn't think the state should have a monopoly on violence and that these types of positions of power shouldn't exist?
- threatofrain 6y ago
  There's a difference between prescription and description, and just because you have the prescriptive belief that nobody should murder doesn't mean your worldview works that way. All governments since forever have used violence as a core technique for order, and I doubt the EFF thinks otherwise.
zozbot234 6y ago
Freedom-respecting governments are bound by the rule of law. A government official tweeting "leave your house and me and my boys will stomp you" in the absence of a lawful policy directing as such is not really acting pursuant to the government's "right and responsibility to use violence", so there's hardly any reason to treat them differently from a random person doing the same.
ineedasername 6y ago
Any rule by any group ultimately comes down to enforcement through some variety of force. I have never seen it as a particularly useful talking point to highlight that governments are also subject to this foundational principal of the enFORCEment of a rule/law etc.

noodles_nomore 6y ago

Echo of majority view on incident. Clarification of legal basis for censorship on private platforms. Support of section 230. Concern about bias in private censorship. Call for transparency and consistency. It's as neutral as can be.

yyyymmddhhmmss 6y ago
Yep. Despite all the agony and defeat that comes with being a trusty practitioner, Marxism comprises the only reconcilable political comprehensions of our society today.
colanderman 6y ago
They sort of have to be. In the fight to preserve electronic freedoms, freedom from censorship and freedom to operate a service as one pleases come at odds with each other in cases like this. If instead, the government had confiscated Parler's domains, or enjoined Apple, Google, and Amazon from booting them, I think EFF's response would (rightly/expectedly IMO) be very different. As an EFF member I think they made the right call here.
- repolitical 6y ago
  I guess there are ways to transcend this conflict. For example, perhaps social networks can sort themselves into two types, public-square type and non-public-square type. The networks which self-identify as public-square shall (1) employ a stronger set of freedom of speech protection rules, (2) be supervised by the government, an independent council, the media and the public, and (3) receive financial incentive, which could be a limited tax exempt status or governmental subsidy, depending on your preference.
- disown 6y ago
  > As an EFF member I think they made the right call here. They didn't. They chickened out. The ACLU was more vocal in its opposition to censorship. That should show how cowardly the EFF is being right now. You falsely made it seem like EFF only deals with or is concerned with government "suppression". That isn't true. Most of EFF dealings is with corporate "suppression". Under normal circumstances, EFF would have been far more vocal. But since they are extremely biased in this case, they chose to be anti-free speech. "The EFF was active in the United States presidential election 2016 because of online phishing related to the controversy over fabrication of election results. J. Alex Halderman, a computer security professor at the University of Michigan, wrote an article that was published in Medium in 2016 stating he thought it was advisable to have a recount on some of the election results from states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation Don't you think EFF's belief in 2016 election fraud had anything to do with their lukewarm defense of Trump's free speech here? They have a long history of questioning voting results, but only when republicans win... "The EFF has long been an advocate of paper audit trails for voting machines and testified in support of them after the United States presidential election 2004." I generally think EFF is a worthy enterprise, but it's obvious political bias is the reason for their pathetic "support" for free speech here.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

https://twitter.com/balajis https://twitter.com/balajis : there are some interesting viewpoints being espoused on balajis' twitter feed. one of them cut and paste below. (there is a 'thread unroll' feature on twitter.. too many retweets. but it makes for an interesting train of tweet thoughts) quoting balajis [..]How would countries build sovereign apps? 1) Clone the features of WeChat, FB, or Twitter, which is much easier than developing from scratch 2) Encourage or requirr citizens to sign up, which is much easier if you’re a state That’s product and distribution respectively.[..] essentially..decentralised web.

marcinzm 6y ago
Sounds like centralized web to me since for every person there is a single app they are required to use made by their country of residence.

motohagiography 6y ago

The idea that this particular U.S. president is exceptional underpins the policies and actions of the platform companies. The EFF has to respond, as this is specifically what they were set up to respond to, sort of what the ACLU's original mandate was. However, that major platform companies are working on behalf of a (still) opposition party to obstruct and suppress a (still) sitting president with some 10 days left in his term, could have unforeseen legal consequences. It will be a very interesting week. The problem is that if well meaning people break the rules, there is no reason for less well meaning ones not to ignore them.

shkkmo 6y ago
What rules are you alluding to being broken?
- motohagiography 6y ago
  Not a lawyer, but most countries have a rule, if perhaps only a convention, where you don't collude with other businesses to obstruct the sitting head of state, and probably specifically during a state of national emergency. Maybe the U.S. is different, and even if it isn't, the incoming admin won't prosecute it, but it looks bad for tech platforms either way. We indeed live in interesting times.
  - shkkmo 6y ago
    I have never heard of that rule. Do you have any sources on it? Court cases or such? Any sort of precedent as to what qualified as "obstruction"?
    - motohagiography 6y ago
      I do recommend googling "obstruction," in its myriad forms. Of course, communication companies banning their heads of state is probably normal, unless we'd like to sealion this thread?

lettergram 6y ago

Well, I’ll never be donating again. I’m more concerned about parler being banned or that “hang pence” was trending, but banning the president - who said LEAVE IN PEACE is what we should be doing. I’m against all rioting (all year it feels like) and what happened Jan 6 was horrifying. You know how to simmer tensions? You convince the leaders of said movement to calm followers. banning / arresting / killing all the leaders and then banning their other platforms will make people scared and ready to fight.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
>You know how to simmer tensions? You convince the leaders of said movement to calm followers. this. this is why the deplatforming of a single political leader is confusing. if trump can calm down the fringe elements, that's what he needs to do. gagging him from ever reaching that base is counter productive. one day..we will all be looking back at these events and scratch our heads. this course of action makes no sense. its all very strange and surreal. irrational.
- lumpenprole 6y ago
  Yes, after four years of the Trump administration, this is what we'll scratch our heads about. This is what will seem strange and surreal and irrational. Absolutely.
- xpe 6y ago
  > if trump can calm down the fringe elements, that's what he needs to do. On what basis do you think Trump has the interest in calming the fringe elements? And if he did have the motivation, on what basis do you think he would be successful?
  - 1MachineElf 6y ago
    >On what basis do you think Trump has the interest in calming the fringe elements? You are aware he said for everyone to go home and he condemned the violence? https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/trump-condemns-violence-at-us-capitol-in-strongest-possible-terms-spokeswoman/story-CMYeV2i8SqKQuTIJbiBNqK.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/trump-condemns-vio...

deleted 6y ago

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jelliclesfarm 6y ago

question: the whole thing is a blur. i think the last tweet by the POTUS was that he wont be attending the inauguration. was the decision at twitter made by jack & co before the last tweet or after it? jack was vacationing on an island in the french polynesia while he and his executives made the decision. maybe it's a time zone thing? because the timeline doesnt make sense to me. after the temporary ban, what happened that it became a permanent ban? what did the potus say that violence was glorified?

carey 6y ago
Unless you think Twitter was lying in https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio..., that last tweet was the call to violently disrupt the inauguration in POTUS’ absence that was the final straw.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Do you have a screenshot? Maybe Twitter posted it? > “that last tweet was the call to violently disrupt the inauguration in POTUS’ absence” What you are saying is not the last tweet from Trump I saw.
  - carey 6y ago
    It’s in the blog post that I linked to, which quotes the tweet that you seem to be referring to.
    - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
      This is from the blog [..]On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump Tweeted: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” Shortly thereafter, the President Tweeted: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”[..] I don’t see what you are reading from it. Do you want to translate?

xpe 6y ago

There is a large difference between the EFF (a) promoting privacy protections on social media versus (b) advocating for free speech on social media platforms.[1] I want to emphasize that (b) (free speech on social media) is not protected by the First Amendment. The First Amendment begins with: > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment is about what Congress cannot do. One has to look elsewhere to understand free speech protections (if any) in other contexts. [1] I have not reviewed the EFF's complete history regarding free speech on social media. Of course, the EFF tends to opposes censorship, but I would also expect they have a history of taking more nuanced and calibrated stances on free speech outside the scope of the First Amendment.

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helloycombinat 6y ago

I disagree. For example people who know what their officials are saying which is why twitter let trump on while he violated some rules. Making shit they say less visible is not a great idea

chaganated 6y ago

Dotcom lobbyist backs dotcom decision. Color me surprised! https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine

breatheoften 6y ago

I think EFF should look for improvements to their communication on this topic. They need to be providing much more practical leadership guidance. The ideological goals don't need compromise -- but the practical reality is that our society _needs_ an organization like EFF to be at the forefront on these topics -- advocating for better abstractions to help shape how we as a society should think and deal with these complex issues. EFF shouldn't be effectively silencing itself by becoming a voice that just repeats platitudes. This article to me felt like the right wing response to gun violence events "we send our thoughts and prayers but let's not politicize this tragedy". In particular -- there are simple ways to avoid worry over the "slippery slope" associated with defining policies that apply different rules to different users -- you can espouse policy frameworks that are explicitly parameterized by impact (impact is a bit fuzzy to capture in truth but conceptually clear -- and simple proxies suffice to communicate the concept -- in most cases the number of followers is a reasonably close conceptual proxy for a social network). If you have 70 million followers and you say "let's punish immigrants" it's just simply a different thing than if you say the same thing and you have 10 followers -- pretending there "must not exist" a different framework for responding to events that occur on such vastly different scales is not practical and it's actually a failure to provide good advice here on an ideological level -- because we _know_ that these events are different and project meaningfully different risk profiles onto the world. There is not a clear ideological reason to falsely pretend that "the same thing" is happening when two users with such vastly different impact publish the exact same sequence of words ... The threat model for "danger of communication" is based on impact and so should be the policy frameworks aimed at managing these risks.

xpe 6y ago
> EFF shouldn't be effectively silencing itself by becoming a voice that just repeats platitudes. I don't follow how this is tantamount to silencing itself. Would you explain?
- breatheoften 6y ago
  The context as I see it -- one of the largest (if not the largest) social media megaphones controlled by a single human was recently silenced because of a recognition that this megaphone was being actively used to cause widespread harm. The eff response to these actions is to emphasize that such blocking should be allowed so long as a consistent set of rules is used to perform blocking for this reason across a whole network. And they suggest the communication scale of the actor being blocked should not be a factor in the management criteria applied to the speech flowing across a given channel. That's a principled position but it's also ludicrous - and it's impossible to take advice from that position which can then be applied to the real world. It's as tho they've said "yes, we acknowledge that free speech faces limits -- such as no yelling fire in a crowded theater -- but we do not acknowledge the existence of crowded theaters". What kind of advice are we left to take from such philosophizing? Text sent over the largest of megaphones is just not the same thing as text sent over the much smaller megaphones available to most social media users. Taking the EFF position espoused here to an extreme for illustration -- suppose Alice decides to use the emergency broadcast system as her personal twitter account for a day. With her every message all the cell phones in the country buzz an emergency broadcast alert letting us know what Alice wants to say. She exercises her right to political speech to let us all know that she thinks birth control pills are evil -- and in so doing she consumes some seconds of attention from 300 million people. At the same time -- she cross-posts to her twitter where she is followed by 50 people. The EFF are more or less suggesting that the same principles and rules should apply to her twitter posts and her emergency broadcast system posts. But in reality -- do we consider these information publishing channels directly comparable? Are we forced to accept that because these are both information publishing channels -- the set of things Alice is allowed to say on both channels must be the same? Obviously we are not forced to take this position. And obviously this is a bit of a silly example since we all already know that different rules apply to the emergency broadcasting network -- yet we don't use the word "censor" to describe the set of things we don't want Alice to send out over the emergency broadcast network -- and why is that? Going back to my claim that they are silencing themselves -- I think the EFF position in this article is basically abstract philosophy and that they are going out of their way to avoid addressing any of the specifics required to guide action in the real world. They had an opportunity to say something useful -- instead they said nothing in more words.

chaganated 6y ago

Read this article before you downvote or flag: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine

deet 6y ago

Could anyone point me to some cogent, well-formed arguments for why censorship of social media platforms is a good idea? i.e. books, articles, etc? I have some thoughts but would like more perspective before fully forming an opinion. (not arguing one way or the other below) For example, I’d like to understand the defining characteristics of social media platforms that contrasts them from traditional public forums that have existed through history. And what about those characteristics would make one think that physically removing questionable speech would be effective in preventing the underlying event, crime, movement, or social change the speech was attempting to facilitate. Comparing Twitter, say, to a literal town square — we don’t ask the air in the town square to stop transmitting the vibrations of someone who is speaking in a dangerous manner or trying to incite some action that might harm others or damage social structures. Instead we use normal human social interactions to mediate the speaker’s effect on listeners — countering their arguments, questioning their credibility or motives, telling others an opposing viewpoint, letting a person’s past speech affect their reputation, etc. We leverage our social nature and counter speech with more speech. (The prominent exception being threats of violence which are treated differently legally) In all the years of human history before social media, there have been countless examples of insurrections, of hateful acts inspired by a few, of coups, of routine crimes, of widely believed mistruths, etc. So obviously individuals in those societies were able to communicate and organize without social media (and in many cases without any electronic communication at all). Which means that access to social media is not a necessary condition for bad events to happen or bad social phenomena to spread. And therefore these things will find a way to continue to happen even if all social media communication were terminated. My naive assessment is that social media is different than a physical town square in: - Its anonymity / dehumanized nature - Its built-in amplification of controversial ideas (ie the algorithms of town square air does not carry further just because a statement raises eyebrows) - Its speed - … but there must be more? Basically, why is making the “digital air” in the "digital town square" not vibrate better than utilizing (and perhaps reinforcing) the social structures that moderated public forums in the analog world?

danhak 6y ago
> For example, I’d like to understand the defining characteristics of social media platforms that contrasts them from traditional public forums that have existed through history. They are privately held.

beaner 6y ago

This feels like when all those doctors signed a letter saying that they supported mass pretests in the middle of a rampant pandemic.

illustriousbear 6y ago

The EFF giving a nothing statement that sides with corporate monopoly censorship. This is how you become irrelevant as an activist organisation, what sane person would donate to them now?

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
That’s the most interesting question to me. Why? Why are all these organizations willing to burn bridges? Rational people can see this surreal juvenile drama..this theatre..for what it is..and they are also watching and noticing the cognitive dissonance that has gripped our country. After Jan 20, the real damage would be the aftermath of tech industry’s blitzkrieg. There is a silent majority that is watching and wondering. And shaking our heads. My fear is darker. Are they acting on their own/in tandem or are they acting upon orders? If so, from who? These are not irrational people. These are the best run corporate behemoths and such decisions are not made by one person. And it’s too swift to be made via consensus or analysis. None of this makes sense. There are going to be questions after the dust settles.
- trendoid 6y ago
  >There is a silent majority that is watching and wondering. And shaking our heads. I am not sure that you are in silent majority. Most people agree that Twitter should have banned Trump long time ago and are relieved that they finally did that. Since the majority do believe Trump incites violence, Twitter and Facebook etc. felt okay going ahead with banning him. I still haven't heard a rational argument against banning Trump on Twitter. All free speech bullshit, which has been explained (why it is nonsense) for many years.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    > I am not sure that you are in silent majority. You said it. You are not sure. Look. I speak for myself. And people I know. And the majority of people in MY circle are silent and confused and scratching our heads. There is literally no evidence that ‘most people agree that Twitter should have banned Trump long time ago’. Are you speaking for ‘most people you know’ or ‘most people in the world’? I am going to assume it’s the former. Point taken. Thanks for engaging.

deleted 6y ago

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