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> This is a specious argument on its face. The First Amendment does not say that private companies are obligated to spend money broadcasting someone else's spee

by Closi 6y ago

> This is a specious argument on its face. The First Amendment does not say that private companies are obligated to spend money broadcasting someone else's speech. Hosting and serving isn't free and any private company has the freedom to decide what not to host. I'm in the UK, but the difference is that right now, these private companies control communication. I'm not allowed outside my house and I live alone. I'm not even allowed outside to go and talk to friends - people are getting fined and arrested for just sitting on a park bench because of the latest lockdown. All my communication with everyone I know is done via private companies. If they lock me out, I'm totally screwed. What is free speech if I can't talk to anyone? Are the phone companies allowed to lock me out if they don't like what I'm saying? So one could argue, that actually if we want free speech in the 21st century, and want to honour the intent of what it means to have free speech, there does need to be some protection here. The protections around freedom of speech were put in at a time where it was inconceivable that a huge majority of worldwide speech could be mass-monitored and auto-censored by a few giant private companies that self-police what can and can't be said - and I think the legislators would have been horrified!

mgkimsal 6y ago
> Are the phone companies allowed to lock me out if they don't like what I'm saying? Possibly, although... you're paying for your phone service. You're not paying for parler, facebook, twitter, etc.
- Closi 6y ago
  Parler were paying for AWS.
GrinningFool 6y ago
> censored by a few giant private companies that self-police what can and can't be said But you have to keep in mind the other side of that - the protections around freedom of speech were put in place at a time when it was inconceivable that a majority of people in the country had the ability to be seen and heard _by the majority of other people in the country_. In near real-time, anytime. And that they could do so in a way that meant often they did not have to accept any consequence for the wider-ranging effects of their words. Separately I also have to wonder if the knowledge acquired as a result of that would have affected their framing. In particular the advances in psychology and group psychology, and in understanding how it's possible to use this instant mass communication to manipulate even people who are on guard against manipulation.
epistasis 6y ago
If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. Have they shut down text messaging, phone calls, group messaging, all the encrypted messaging apps? Do the tech companies control postal mail, letters to the editor, and printing presses? Of course not. You are looking for others to give you a platform to reach a wide audience. There are many. But no platform requires people to publish you. You have lost being able to yell in a public square, temporarily, due to public safety, but you haven't lost the ability to transmit speech that would have been acceptable in the public square. So so so tired of these false equivalencies, and an unwillingness to engage with the type of speech that results in this. Normal, political speech is just fine. Incitement to violence, no. Hell, AWS still hosts the publication that posted Bezos' dick pics! These shutdowns are not some sort of political censorship, these shutdowns are the natural result of speech that societies have determined not to be free.
- StanislavPetrov 6y ago
  >If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. That's completely absurd. Tens of thousands of people are silenced by corporations every day for speech that is considered offensive by one metric or another, but is by no means illegal. An associate of mine was permanently banned for, "deadnaming" someone else. Certainly very offensive according certain standards but hardly something that you wouldn't be allowed to say in the public park. You can reasonably argue about the right of private corporations to choose to do business with who they want, but you cannot reasonably argue that people are only being silenced for explicitly illegal behavior that would also be illegal offline.
  - vkou 6y ago
    If I get banned from HN for violating it's ToS (By, say, personally attacking people, or posting links to pornography, or just engaging in insane off-topic ramblings), can I also describe that as being silenced for my beliefs? Despite retaining access to hundreds of unmoderated channels by which I can communicate?
8note 6y ago
You can send a letter in the mail, can't you?
- Closi 6y ago
  Oh great, that totally resolves the dystopian nightmare we might be heading for!
  - scsilver 6y ago
    I mean, the UK is still has vestigial Monarchal components as opposed to the US constitution which was built from the ground up with severe limits and federation of power. We'd likely see that distopia in england long before the US justice system can adjust itself to allow it.
crazydoggers 6y ago
The difference with the phone companies is you’re talking one on one communication. Not a publishing platform which is what these social media services really are. You can always use text, signal, etc if you want to communicate with your group. These are the same kinds of issues society dealt with, with the advent of radio and television, platforms that allowed small groups to reach out to very large groups of people with minimal effort. Most countries have something like the FCC that regulates those platforms. Not only is it not permitted to incite violence in tv, even gross displays of real violence are censored, and even offensive speech. (For instance swearing). Now we can have debates about the degree of that censorship, but the topics of free speech and first amendment rights have largely been settled. If companies don’t self censor stuff that clearly 99% of society doesn’t like, then you’re going to see someone like the FCC or other government agencies step in. So what would you rather. If someone like Parler or Gab wants to exists, they are free to at the moment, and they are also free to speak anything they want to whom ever they want. They just don’t get to force other people to support them in the process. Coming from a family who’s relatives escaped from places which had true censorship, lack of any first amendment rights, the entitlement, and disconnect from reality in these arguments bothers me. You do not have a protected right to a mass publication forum. That is not a first amendment right. You do have the right to establish such a platform if you wish to. But just like you had to buy you’re own printing press, you’ll have to buy your own internet infrastructure. And I and other groups of citizens (including companies made up of those citizens) also have a right not to listen to you and to throw your pamphlets in the trash. And as a society, we have a right to limit free speech when it is very clearly only about hate and violence. You don’t get to call my house and tell me you’ll kill me for instance. “ Under state criminal codes, which vary by state, it is an offense to knowingly utter or convey a threat to cause death or bodily harm to any person. It is also an offense to threaten to burn, destroy or damage property or threaten to kill, poison or injure an animal or bird that belongs to a person.”
- a_band 6y ago
  > You can always use text, signal, etc if you want to communicate with your group. Does Signal run on AWS? If I can shut you down at the cloud level then I'm not sure these options will be available in the future. Someone is going to coordinate a protest/riot on Signal, screenshots will leak, then what happens?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
munificent 6y ago
> these private companies control communication. I think verbs are important. Another way to say this is that these companies enable or provide communication. Imagine that COVID-19 had hit in the 80s before we had all of this. It would have been miserable, isolating, tragic. But would it make sense to blame the tech companies we have now for not existing then? Would it have been someone's fault? > All my communication with everyone I know is done via private companies. Another way to frame that is just to be thankful that those companies are there to enable that communication. That, of course, doesn't mean they are free from moral consequences or anything. But we are only beholden to them because they are providing us so much value. > The protections around freedom of speech were put in at a time where it was inconceivable that a huge majority of worldwide speech could be mass-monitored and auto-censored by a few giant private companies that self-police what can and can't be said It was also authored in a time where "broadcasting" meant literally printing copies of pamphlets and physically depositing them in every town square you wanted to reach. I don't know if we have any clue how the Founding Fathers of the US would have interpreted today's communication systems. I think we need principles that are designed for the structures we do have without necessarily assuming any at-the-time-excellent principle from the 1700s must be directly mapped to today's needs.
- Closi 6y ago
  “Control communication” is intentional - Content is scanned to understand intent, promoted/demoted based on an invisible algorithm, and your communication can be labelled or shut down if you have a dissenting opinion. In-between your conversation political adverts are inserted, specifically tailored to your demographic data and personality profile (and rather than encouraging you to vote for the party, they are actually designed to disenfranchise you and make you not vote for anyone). This isn’t a future dystopia - this all already happens on Facebook. And that’s why this involves a level of control over being a neutral communication channel. > Another way to frame that is just to be thankful that those companies are there to enable that communication. Yes be thankful to mega corp. mega corp good. Mega corp has our interests at its heart.

by Closi 6y ago

mgkimsal 6y ago

> Are the phone companies allowed to lock me out if they don't like what I'm saying? Possibly, although... you're paying for your phone service. You're not paying for parler, facebook, twitter, etc.

Closi 6y ago
Parler were paying for AWS.

GrinningFool 6y ago

> censored by a few giant private companies that self-police what can and can't be said But you have to keep in mind the other side of that - the protections around freedom of speech were put in place at a time when it was inconceivable that a majority of people in the country had the ability to be seen and heard _by the majority of other people in the country_. In near real-time, anytime. And that they could do so in a way that meant often they did not have to accept any consequence for the wider-ranging effects of their words. Separately I also have to wonder if the knowledge acquired as a result of that would have affected their framing. In particular the advances in psychology and group psychology, and in understanding how it's possible to use this instant mass communication to manipulate even people who are on guard against manipulation.

epistasis 6y ago

If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. Have they shut down text messaging, phone calls, group messaging, all the encrypted messaging apps? Do the tech companies control postal mail, letters to the editor, and printing presses? Of course not. You are looking for others to give you a platform to reach a wide audience. There are many. But no platform requires people to publish you. You have lost being able to yell in a public square, temporarily, due to public safety, but you haven't lost the ability to transmit speech that would have been acceptable in the public square. So so so tired of these false equivalencies, and an unwillingness to engage with the type of speech that results in this. Normal, political speech is just fine. Incitement to violence, no. Hell, AWS still hosts the publication that posted Bezos' dick pics! These shutdowns are not some sort of political censorship, these shutdowns are the natural result of speech that societies have determined not to be free.

StanislavPetrov 6y ago
>If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. That's completely absurd. Tens of thousands of people are silenced by corporations every day for speech that is considered offensive by one metric or another, but is by no means illegal. An associate of mine was permanently banned for, "deadnaming" someone else. Certainly very offensive according certain standards but hardly something that you wouldn't be allowed to say in the public park. You can reasonably argue about the right of private corporations to choose to do business with who they want, but you cannot reasonably argue that people are only being silenced for explicitly illegal behavior that would also be illegal offline.
- vkou 6y ago
  If I get banned from HN for violating it's ToS (By, say, personally attacking people, or posting links to pornography, or just engaging in insane off-topic ramblings), can I also describe that as being silenced for my beliefs? Despite retaining access to hundreds of unmoderated channels by which I can communicate?

8note 6y ago

You can send a letter in the mail, can't you?

Closi 6y ago
Oh great, that totally resolves the dystopian nightmare we might be heading for!
- scsilver 6y ago
  I mean, the UK is still has vestigial Monarchal components as opposed to the US constitution which was built from the ground up with severe limits and federation of power. We'd likely see that distopia in england long before the US justice system can adjust itself to allow it.

crazydoggers 6y ago

The difference with the phone companies is you’re talking one on one communication. Not a publishing platform which is what these social media services really are. You can always use text, signal, etc if you want to communicate with your group. These are the same kinds of issues society dealt with, with the advent of radio and television, platforms that allowed small groups to reach out to very large groups of people with minimal effort. Most countries have something like the FCC that regulates those platforms. Not only is it not permitted to incite violence in tv, even gross displays of real violence are censored, and even offensive speech. (For instance swearing). Now we can have debates about the degree of that censorship, but the topics of free speech and first amendment rights have largely been settled. If companies don’t self censor stuff that clearly 99% of society doesn’t like, then you’re going to see someone like the FCC or other government agencies step in. So what would you rather. If someone like Parler or Gab wants to exists, they are free to at the moment, and they are also free to speak anything they want to whom ever they want. They just don’t get to force other people to support them in the process. Coming from a family who’s relatives escaped from places which had true censorship, lack of any first amendment rights, the entitlement, and disconnect from reality in these arguments bothers me. You do not have a protected right to a mass publication forum. That is not a first amendment right. You do have the right to establish such a platform if you wish to. But just like you had to buy you’re own printing press, you’ll have to buy your own internet infrastructure. And I and other groups of citizens (including companies made up of those citizens) also have a right not to listen to you and to throw your pamphlets in the trash. And as a society, we have a right to limit free speech when it is very clearly only about hate and violence. You don’t get to call my house and tell me you’ll kill me for instance. “ Under state criminal codes, which vary by state, it is an offense to knowingly utter or convey a threat to cause death or bodily harm to any person. It is also an offense to threaten to burn, destroy or damage property or threaten to kill, poison or injure an animal or bird that belongs to a person.”

a_band 6y ago
> You can always use text, signal, etc if you want to communicate with your group. Does Signal run on AWS? If I can shut you down at the cloud level then I'm not sure these options will be available in the future. Someone is going to coordinate a protest/riot on Signal, screenshots will leak, then what happens?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

munificent 6y ago

> these private companies control communication. I think verbs are important. Another way to say this is that these companies enable or provide communication. Imagine that COVID-19 had hit in the 80s before we had all of this. It would have been miserable, isolating, tragic. But would it make sense to blame the tech companies we have now for not existing then? Would it have been someone's fault? > All my communication with everyone I know is done via private companies. Another way to frame that is just to be thankful that those companies are there to enable that communication. That, of course, doesn't mean they are free from moral consequences or anything. But we are only beholden to them because they are providing us so much value. > The protections around freedom of speech were put in at a time where it was inconceivable that a huge majority of worldwide speech could be mass-monitored and auto-censored by a few giant private companies that self-police what can and can't be said It was also authored in a time where "broadcasting" meant literally printing copies of pamphlets and physically depositing them in every town square you wanted to reach. I don't know if we have any clue how the Founding Fathers of the US would have interpreted today's communication systems. I think we need principles that are designed for the structures we do have without necessarily assuming any at-the-time-excellent principle from the 1700s must be directly mapped to today's needs.

Closi 6y ago
“Control communication” is intentional - Content is scanned to understand intent, promoted/demoted based on an invisible algorithm, and your communication can be labelled or shut down if you have a dissenting opinion. In-between your conversation political adverts are inserted, specifically tailored to your demographic data and personality profile (and rather than encouraging you to vote for the party, they are actually designed to disenfranchise you and make you not vote for anyone). This isn’t a future dystopia - this all already happens on Facebook. And that’s why this involves a level of control over being a neutral communication channel. > Another way to frame that is just to be thankful that those companies are there to enable that communication. Yes be thankful to mega corp. mega corp good. Mega corp has our interests at its heart.