6 ms·

Right. This isn't a "can't moderate, too much!" problem. This is a "won't moderate, the CEO says so" problem.

by eropple 6y ago

bra-ket 6y ago
That’s called free speech.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  There seems to be a common misconception around free speech: that it is limitless. It isn't. "As the Supreme Court held in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the government may forbid “incitement”—speech “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and “likely to incite or produce such action” (such as a speech to a mob urging it to attack a nearby building)." https://www.britannica.com/topic/First-Amendment/Permissible-restrictions-on-expression https://www.britannica.com/topic/First-Amendment/Permissible...
  - bra-ket 6y ago
    That can be very convenient if you want to silence opposition. Just use an “incitement” clause indiscriminately for the entire conservative platform. There’s lots of incitement of violence on Twitter but no one cancels/de-platforms Twitter.
    - eropple 6y ago
      Twitter has a professional moderation staff dealing with many orders of magnitude more content and, while they do not do a perfect job there is clearly at least some good faith effort going on there. They should still do a better job. Contrast this with Parler, who just doesn't give a damn. Complete abrogation of responsibility, except to kick off accounts that make fun of their "influencers" (shout outs to Devin Nunes's Cow!). Do you see the difference here? Do you see why there might be some, shall we say, recalcitrance to do business with the latter?
  - macinjosh 6y ago
    It is tragic this is the law. It explicitly removes agency from those who commit crimes. The rioters/insurrectionists were all bad people who made bad decisions on their own accord. The concept of incitement dilutes their responsibility. Trump didn't hold a gun to their head and make them storm the capital. Hell, he didn't even suggest it. IMHO, incitement isn't real. It's just spreading blame to people who just made sounds come out of their head. It's barely different than a thought crime.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      Incitement is a legal concept that has existed for centuries. You are free to make your opinion against it, but it’s been long-established and you’d have to do more to remove it other than reducing it to a “thought crime.”
    - Natsu 6y ago
      Legally, incitement is actually pretty constrained to immanent lawless action--i.e. someone doing something bad right now, not at some undefined point in the future, in clear terms. The Volokh Conspiracy discussed this just the other day: https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/08/can-president-trump-be-impeached-and-removed-on-the-grounds-of-incitement/ https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/08/can-president-trump-be-...
      - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
        Interesting read. My TL;DR is that from their perspective, what Trump has said does _not_ constitute incitement of violence.
        mlyle 6y ago
        Trump has frequently amplified Lin Wood. On January 6th, people marched on the Capitol, injured many Capitol police members, and broke in while literally calling for Pence's head and having erected a gallows. On January 7th, Wood said "Get the firing squads ready. Pence goes FIRST." Is this incitement of violence? Why or why not?
  - notabee 6y ago
    Also, there is this standard. It's senseless to allow unlimited extension of a particular freedom to implode the system that provides those freedoms in the first place. Also related to the paradox of tolerance concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suicide_pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...
  - jeegsy 6y ago
    Given the history of this country, I would be very wary of supporting any idea based on Supreme Court precedent.
- eropple 6y ago
  No, it objectively is not free speech! Threats and incitement aren't protected speech (Brandenburg et al.) and Parler's refusing to do anything about it; AWS cited 98 instances that they themselves provided Parler that weren't attended to. Got anything else?
  - verwyrelevant 6y ago
    What is legal speech or not should be decided by courts, not some activists working for Big Tech or outsourced moderators working for $1 an hour.
    - TeaDrunk 6y ago
      It has been, and its enforcement is then passed on to some activists working for Big Tech or outsourced moderators working for $1 an hour. If people don't like how a specific person enforces this or interpreted a judge's rule, they must pony up the money to challenge in court.
    - tdeck 6y ago
      > What is legal speech or not should be decided by courts How would that work in practice? Say I run a forum and I want to take down a post that's calling for a mosque to be blown up. Should I need to hire a detective to discover the identity behind the account, file a lawsuit, serve that person some papers, and wait for the case to make its way through the courts? Do I need to leave the post up while that's taking place?
      - agiroth 6y ago
        This is what the companies do who want to take down copyrighted content, and what governments do when they want to take down illegal content. Why should any other standard apply? Typically in such cases posts are placed in limbo - still present but usually inaccessible while legal questions are answered. Courts should be making these decisions, not companies interfering in other companies. Why? Because at the end of the day these are questions "the people" need to answer, not unelected managers at tech companies. A few people do not have the right to silence the voice of millions. That's what's happening, fundamentally, and it is being cheered, and you all somehow think this is going to end well.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Spooky23 6y ago
  You’re allowed to speak without being punished by the government. But when you act like a ass in my house, you hit the road.
  - agiroth 6y ago
    Your house is not the same thing as Twitter or Parler or Amazon or Apple.
    - Spooky23 6y ago
      It’s private property. As is AWS. Granted a private home has some additional legal attributes, the point remains the same. Are you allowed to screech racist diatribes to call for a riot at my bar’s open mic night? Are you allowed to scream political speech in a shopping mall? Are you allowed to use the PSTN to organize your criminal enterprise?
      - agiroth 6y ago
        You missed the point. Scale is what matters, not privacy. The Supreme Court has ruled that free speech on private property is still protected when questions of scale are introduced. There are circumscriptions on that, but it is still protected.
        Spooky23 6y ago
        Where does scale apply? I don’t recall some carve out in the constitution or in contract law. “Your home is your castle, unless a lot of Vikings show up” If I buy every ticket in Yankee stadium and turn it into a rally for Some political issue, is the management required to just deal with it? What law requires that AWS host people who want to overthrow the government?
        agiroth 6y ago
        https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/326/501/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/326/501/ The more people are involved, the more interest the state has in private property. This is why for example we have employment and health laws.

Right. This isn't a "can't moderate, too much!" problem. This is a "won't moderate, the CEO says so" problem.

bra-ket 6y ago

That’s called free speech.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
There seems to be a common misconception around free speech: that it is limitless. It isn't. "As the Supreme Court held in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the government may forbid “incitement”—speech “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and “likely to incite or produce such action” (such as a speech to a mob urging it to attack a nearby building)." https://www.britannica.com/topic/First-Amendment/Permissible-restrictions-on-expression https://www.britannica.com/topic/First-Amendment/Permissible...
- bra-ket 6y ago
  That can be very convenient if you want to silence opposition. Just use an “incitement” clause indiscriminately for the entire conservative platform. There’s lots of incitement of violence on Twitter but no one cancels/de-platforms Twitter.
  - eropple 6y ago
    Twitter has a professional moderation staff dealing with many orders of magnitude more content and, while they do not do a perfect job there is clearly at least some good faith effort going on there. They should still do a better job. Contrast this with Parler, who just doesn't give a damn. Complete abrogation of responsibility, except to kick off accounts that make fun of their "influencers" (shout outs to Devin Nunes's Cow!). Do you see the difference here? Do you see why there might be some, shall we say, recalcitrance to do business with the latter?
- macinjosh 6y ago
  It is tragic this is the law. It explicitly removes agency from those who commit crimes. The rioters/insurrectionists were all bad people who made bad decisions on their own accord. The concept of incitement dilutes their responsibility. Trump didn't hold a gun to their head and make them storm the capital. Hell, he didn't even suggest it. IMHO, incitement isn't real. It's just spreading blame to people who just made sounds come out of their head. It's barely different than a thought crime.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Incitement is a legal concept that has existed for centuries. You are free to make your opinion against it, but it’s been long-established and you’d have to do more to remove it other than reducing it to a “thought crime.”
  - Natsu 6y ago
    Legally, incitement is actually pretty constrained to immanent lawless action--i.e. someone doing something bad right now, not at some undefined point in the future, in clear terms. The Volokh Conspiracy discussed this just the other day: https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/08/can-president-trump-be-impeached-and-removed-on-the-grounds-of-incitement/ https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/08/can-president-trump-be-...
    - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
      Interesting read. My TL;DR is that from their perspective, what Trump has said does _not_ constitute incitement of violence.
      - mlyle 6y ago
        Trump has frequently amplified Lin Wood. On January 6th, people marched on the Capitol, injured many Capitol police members, and broke in while literally calling for Pence's head and having erected a gallows. On January 7th, Wood said "Get the firing squads ready. Pence goes FIRST." Is this incitement of violence? Why or why not?
- notabee 6y ago
  Also, there is this standard. It's senseless to allow unlimited extension of a particular freedom to implode the system that provides those freedoms in the first place. Also related to the paradox of tolerance concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suicide_pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...
- jeegsy 6y ago
  Given the history of this country, I would be very wary of supporting any idea based on Supreme Court precedent.
eropple 6y ago
No, it objectively is not free speech! Threats and incitement aren't protected speech (Brandenburg et al.) and Parler's refusing to do anything about it; AWS cited 98 instances that they themselves provided Parler that weren't attended to. Got anything else?
- verwyrelevant 6y ago
  What is legal speech or not should be decided by courts, not some activists working for Big Tech or outsourced moderators working for $1 an hour.
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    It has been, and its enforcement is then passed on to some activists working for Big Tech or outsourced moderators working for $1 an hour. If people don't like how a specific person enforces this or interpreted a judge's rule, they must pony up the money to challenge in court.
  - tdeck 6y ago
    > What is legal speech or not should be decided by courts How would that work in practice? Say I run a forum and I want to take down a post that's calling for a mosque to be blown up. Should I need to hire a detective to discover the identity behind the account, file a lawsuit, serve that person some papers, and wait for the case to make its way through the courts? Do I need to leave the post up while that's taking place?
    - agiroth 6y ago
      This is what the companies do who want to take down copyrighted content, and what governments do when they want to take down illegal content. Why should any other standard apply? Typically in such cases posts are placed in limbo - still present but usually inaccessible while legal questions are answered. Courts should be making these decisions, not companies interfering in other companies. Why? Because at the end of the day these are questions "the people" need to answer, not unelected managers at tech companies. A few people do not have the right to silence the voice of millions. That's what's happening, fundamentally, and it is being cheered, and you all somehow think this is going to end well.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 6y ago
You’re allowed to speak without being punished by the government. But when you act like a ass in my house, you hit the road.
- agiroth 6y ago
  Your house is not the same thing as Twitter or Parler or Amazon or Apple.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    It’s private property. As is AWS. Granted a private home has some additional legal attributes, the point remains the same. Are you allowed to screech racist diatribes to call for a riot at my bar’s open mic night? Are you allowed to scream political speech in a shopping mall? Are you allowed to use the PSTN to organize your criminal enterprise?
    - agiroth 6y ago
      You missed the point. Scale is what matters, not privacy. The Supreme Court has ruled that free speech on private property is still protected when questions of scale are introduced. There are circumscriptions on that, but it is still protected.
      - Spooky23 6y ago
        Where does scale apply? I don’t recall some carve out in the constitution or in contract law. “Your home is your castle, unless a lot of Vikings show up” If I buy every ticket in Yankee stadium and turn it into a rally for Some political issue, is the management required to just deal with it? What law requires that AWS host people who want to overthrow the government?
        agiroth 6y ago
        https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/326/501/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/326/501/ The more people are involved, the more interest the state has in private property. This is why for example we have employment and health laws.