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Perhaps mine is a bit of a strange/controversial view among the HN crowd - but I find the conflation of "right to free speech" and "right to a platform for said

Perhaps mine is a bit of a strange/controversial view among the HN crowd - but I find the conflation of "right to free speech" and "right to a platform for said speech" to be odd. I don't agree that "infringement of free speech" can happen in a commercial context. The right to free speech is the right that you cannot have government force act on you for what you are saying; e.g. the government has no right to tell you "don't say this or it will have consequences". As for private contracts: Trying to enforce "free speech" that must not be infringed upon in private contracts would also mean all NDAs are always void, and would be a huge intrusion into another liberty: That of entering into arbitrary agreements with each other. The .cn regulator cracking down on Ant Financial because they did not like what Jack Ma said is an infringement on free speech. A private business actor deciding to terminate a contract because they don't like the business partner is not. Related: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/midtown-uniform-patagonia-will-no-longer-sell-vests-with-finance-firms-logos-on-them/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/midtown-uniform-patagonia-will-...

peteretep 6y ago
It’s worth taking a step back here too and remembering that the speech Parler is being kicked off AWS for isn’t protected under 1FA either. There is no protection for calls to violence.
- gwright 6y ago
  Well, is it Parler's speech or the speech of it users? I don't think anyone has asserted that Parler or its employees are advocating violence.
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    Parler's inaction and bad faith moderation has enabled the calls to violence. This is a violation of AWS's TOS which is why they're breaking it.
    - gwright 6y ago
      I understand that. Not disputing that. But that is an entirely different (as in not the same) thing than being the source of the violent/illegal threats or incitement. The comment I was responding to was misleading IMHO ("the speech Parler is being kicked off AWS for"). As you point out, they aren't being kicked off "for speech" they are being kicked off for insufficient moderation of someone else's speech, which speaks to the difficulties of being an at-scale content provider.
      - peteretep 6y ago
        Content moderation at scale is hard and expensive, but so is regulating emissions from industrial processes, and we don’t (or at least shouldn’t?) throw up our hands and say “let’s not bother then”. Again though, we’re getting lost in the weeds here. Parler’s entire selling point, and the only reason it had any users or any product, was the implicit promise that “we won’t moderate content”.
      - Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
        The difference is that Parler considers their lack of moderation a feature and even advertises it.
        ehsankia 6y ago
        Yeah, when you advertise your platform as "Twitter but without the strict moderation", and then people find a ton of calls for violence on your platform, it's a little hard to argue you were actually trying to moderate said content. Maybe they were, it'll be tricky to show it for certain from our vantage point, but it certainly doesn't help their case that the whole point of platform that they weren't going to moderate said content.
        coffeefirst 6y ago
        And wink, wink, nudge, nudge because everyone knows what they mean by that. You can’t build a platform for organizing murders, knowingly allow users to organize murders on your site, and then claim it’s not your fault because technically you aren’t responsible for UGC. Surely there’s a line where it’s just a veneer of an excuse.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nwsm 6y ago
    It doesn't matter. Apple/AWS are using the lack of moderation of unprotected speech to not host them.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 3131s 6y ago
  Ban reddit then. There were guillotine memes with 50k upvotes on reddit right before the "insurrection" happened!
  - peteretep 6y ago
    Reddit makes a good-faith effort to moderate
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
strken 6y ago
Free-speech-as-legal-right and free-speech-as-moral-principle are different: the legal right exists to uphold the moral principle. You're probably correct when you say the legal right can't be infringed in a commercial context, but the moral principle can be violated by anyone. I think a lot of confusion comes from people who only acknowledge free-speech-as-legal-right encountering people who support free-speech-as-moral-principle.
- dontreact 6y ago
  I'm not sure that free-speech-as-moral-principle applies to platforming speech vs. not platforming speech. Everyone is free to say and think and express themselves as they want to, and this seems totally separate from a right to reach millions via the work of others.
  - humanrebar 6y ago
    Sure, but you're selling something other than a platform for open interaction and discussion at that point, right?
    - dontreact 6y ago
      If you allow trolls and nazis to take over an online space, it scares people away and is no longer a place for open interaction
  - strken 6y ago
    Like all moral principles, everyone interprets it differently, and your interpretation probably differs from my interpretation. My personal belief about why free speech should exist is that it helps us discover the truth, both morally and factually. As such, I think we should make spaces accessible that allow any idea to be discussed, even the ones we currently think are wrong, and if we limit speech we should do it such that no idea is rendered inexpressible. However, I understand that not every space should be a complete free-for-all, and I have no problem with limiting the way in which an idea can be presented to ensure politeness or harmlessness. Within the scope of this belief, I find it obviously okay to deplatform speech up until doing so harms our overall ability to discover the truth. Past that point a tradeoff exists. I think that the removal of Parler is a tradeoff between the free speech of its users, vs the self-determination of Google, the potential harm done by Parler, and the existence of other spaces where ideas can still be discussed. While I therefore find removing Parler to be acceptable, I still feel that the moral principle of free speech must be applied to that decision, even if it's outweighed by other factors.
cjohnson318 6y ago
It is odd. I've tried (unsuccessfully) explaining it like, you have a right to free speech, but you don't have a right to use my phone to call people, or use my database to store your opinions.
- base698 6y ago
  Or sit at my lunch counter and order a smoothie, or force me to bake a cake for you?
  - cjohnson318 6y ago
    There's a difference between refusing someone service because they're black, or queer, and refusing a corporation service because their user base stormed the capitol to disrupt a free and fair election. If those men had found Pelosi, Schumer, or "The Squad", the same people they've been talking about killing for years, what do you honestly think would have happened?
downandout 6y ago
Perhaps mine is a bit of a strange/controversial view among the HN crowd Actually yours is the predominant view of those on the left and HN in general - “they are private companies so deal with it”. From a purely legal perspective, that view is almost certainly correct. The issue is a societal one. Half the country isn’t just going to sit down and shut up because a few liberal billionaires told them to. They’ll create alternatives, and then we will have not just a philosophically divided country, but effectively two Internets - one for conservatives and one for liberals. Where does it end from there? Do hotels and restaurants in California demand to see proof that you are a registered Democrat before you are allowed to patronize them? Do liberal employers start carrying out mass firings of conservative employees? We are seeing the beginnings of a country of ~300 million people being cracked in two, on a much deeper level than has ever happened before. I can’t think of something less American than a bunch of business owners ganging together to strangle the life out of a small business because they disagree with the politics of some its users.
- jacobr1 6y ago
  Right, we are talking about social norms. The social norm for most transaction commerce seems to be, that if the fees are paid and the services isn't "abused" (in a criminal sense) then the private beliefs of the purchaser don't matter. The grocer should still sell lettuce to heinous racists. But we are starting to break that norm, beginning with the natural wedges: commerce where the service or product _IS_ enabling the purchasing in a direct way. The question is if we can stop at _direct_ enablement or whether it will continue to indirect forms. A scary example would be for Square to start refusing to process payments for ideological reasons.
  - spollo 6y ago
    I suppose one could argue your scary example has already occurred. I believe stripe cut off Donald Trump [1]. As a non-American, I don't really care about Trump and may be a bit ignorant here, but I find the big tech companies cutting him off under "inciting violence" a bit of a stretch. To me, it's actually extra scary to cut off a politician's fundraising for disagreeing with their "politics". [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-stops-processing-payments-for-trump-campaign-website-11610319116 https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-stops-processing-payment...
jolincost 6y ago
That's one of the ideas behind why these platforms which facilitate so much societal communication should not be treated as private corporate entities with regards to free speech they should be treated as public utilities
- jmull 6y ago
  They definitely should not. (1) There is a better solution. The problem is that they are monopolies. So bust the monopolies. Require interoperability — a proven solution in other industries. A service needs to be treated as a utility — meaning large amounts of regulation — when it is a natural monopoly, meaning there’s no practical way to avoid a monopoly. That’s not the case here. Don’t use a ton of regulation where a much smaller amount will do. (2) It doesn’t solve the problem. A social network utility still needs moderation. How would making a social network a utility make the moderation decisions better than what you’re getting now? Complicating things, in the US the first amendment means the government can’t establish laws to limit free speech, so a public utility would have to be a minimally moderated cesspool.
  - jolincost 6y ago
    I think consistent standards about it what is and what is not free speech and what is and what isn't protected and what is and what isn't allowed to propagate on a big platforms is something that's good for the culture. so I see making them public utilities that are regulated as creating that overlap between the state definition of free speech and the corporate enforced reality.
    - jmull 6y ago
      A uniform set of rules for culture would be awful for culture. That would be a dystopian anti-culture.

peteretep 6y ago

It’s worth taking a step back here too and remembering that the speech Parler is being kicked off AWS for isn’t protected under 1FA either. There is no protection for calls to violence.

gwright 6y ago
Well, is it Parler's speech or the speech of it users? I don't think anyone has asserted that Parler or its employees are advocating violence.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  Parler's inaction and bad faith moderation has enabled the calls to violence. This is a violation of AWS's TOS which is why they're breaking it.
  - gwright 6y ago
    I understand that. Not disputing that. But that is an entirely different (as in not the same) thing than being the source of the violent/illegal threats or incitement. The comment I was responding to was misleading IMHO ("the speech Parler is being kicked off AWS for"). As you point out, they aren't being kicked off "for speech" they are being kicked off for insufficient moderation of someone else's speech, which speaks to the difficulties of being an at-scale content provider.
    - peteretep 6y ago
      Content moderation at scale is hard and expensive, but so is regulating emissions from industrial processes, and we don’t (or at least shouldn’t?) throw up our hands and say “let’s not bother then”. Again though, we’re getting lost in the weeds here. Parler’s entire selling point, and the only reason it had any users or any product, was the implicit promise that “we won’t moderate content”.
    - Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
      The difference is that Parler considers their lack of moderation a feature and even advertises it.
      - ehsankia 6y ago
        Yeah, when you advertise your platform as "Twitter but without the strict moderation", and then people find a ton of calls for violence on your platform, it's a little hard to argue you were actually trying to moderate said content. Maybe they were, it'll be tricky to show it for certain from our vantage point, but it certainly doesn't help their case that the whole point of platform that they weren't going to moderate said content.
      - coffeefirst 6y ago
        And wink, wink, nudge, nudge because everyone knows what they mean by that. You can’t build a platform for organizing murders, knowingly allow users to organize murders on your site, and then claim it’s not your fault because technically you aren’t responsible for UGC. Surely there’s a line where it’s just a veneer of an excuse.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nwsm 6y ago
  It doesn't matter. Apple/AWS are using the lack of moderation of unprotected speech to not host them.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
3131s 6y ago
Ban reddit then. There were guillotine memes with 50k upvotes on reddit right before the "insurrection" happened!
- peteretep 6y ago
  Reddit makes a good-faith effort to moderate
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

strken 6y ago

Free-speech-as-legal-right and free-speech-as-moral-principle are different: the legal right exists to uphold the moral principle. You're probably correct when you say the legal right can't be infringed in a commercial context, but the moral principle can be violated by anyone. I think a lot of confusion comes from people who only acknowledge free-speech-as-legal-right encountering people who support free-speech-as-moral-principle.

dontreact 6y ago
I'm not sure that free-speech-as-moral-principle applies to platforming speech vs. not platforming speech. Everyone is free to say and think and express themselves as they want to, and this seems totally separate from a right to reach millions via the work of others.
- humanrebar 6y ago
  Sure, but you're selling something other than a platform for open interaction and discussion at that point, right?
  - dontreact 6y ago
    If you allow trolls and nazis to take over an online space, it scares people away and is no longer a place for open interaction
- strken 6y ago
  Like all moral principles, everyone interprets it differently, and your interpretation probably differs from my interpretation. My personal belief about why free speech should exist is that it helps us discover the truth, both morally and factually. As such, I think we should make spaces accessible that allow any idea to be discussed, even the ones we currently think are wrong, and if we limit speech we should do it such that no idea is rendered inexpressible. However, I understand that not every space should be a complete free-for-all, and I have no problem with limiting the way in which an idea can be presented to ensure politeness or harmlessness. Within the scope of this belief, I find it obviously okay to deplatform speech up until doing so harms our overall ability to discover the truth. Past that point a tradeoff exists. I think that the removal of Parler is a tradeoff between the free speech of its users, vs the self-determination of Google, the potential harm done by Parler, and the existence of other spaces where ideas can still be discussed. While I therefore find removing Parler to be acceptable, I still feel that the moral principle of free speech must be applied to that decision, even if it's outweighed by other factors.

cjohnson318 6y ago

It is odd. I've tried (unsuccessfully) explaining it like, you have a right to free speech, but you don't have a right to use my phone to call people, or use my database to store your opinions.

base698 6y ago
Or sit at my lunch counter and order a smoothie, or force me to bake a cake for you?
- cjohnson318 6y ago
  There's a difference between refusing someone service because they're black, or queer, and refusing a corporation service because their user base stormed the capitol to disrupt a free and fair election. If those men had found Pelosi, Schumer, or "The Squad", the same people they've been talking about killing for years, what do you honestly think would have happened?

downandout 6y ago

Perhaps mine is a bit of a strange/controversial view among the HN crowd Actually yours is the predominant view of those on the left and HN in general - “they are private companies so deal with it”. From a purely legal perspective, that view is almost certainly correct. The issue is a societal one. Half the country isn’t just going to sit down and shut up because a few liberal billionaires told them to. They’ll create alternatives, and then we will have not just a philosophically divided country, but effectively two Internets - one for conservatives and one for liberals. Where does it end from there? Do hotels and restaurants in California demand to see proof that you are a registered Democrat before you are allowed to patronize them? Do liberal employers start carrying out mass firings of conservative employees? We are seeing the beginnings of a country of ~300 million people being cracked in two, on a much deeper level than has ever happened before. I can’t think of something less American than a bunch of business owners ganging together to strangle the life out of a small business because they disagree with the politics of some its users.

jacobr1 6y ago
Right, we are talking about social norms. The social norm for most transaction commerce seems to be, that if the fees are paid and the services isn't "abused" (in a criminal sense) then the private beliefs of the purchaser don't matter. The grocer should still sell lettuce to heinous racists. But we are starting to break that norm, beginning with the natural wedges: commerce where the service or product _IS_ enabling the purchasing in a direct way. The question is if we can stop at _direct_ enablement or whether it will continue to indirect forms. A scary example would be for Square to start refusing to process payments for ideological reasons.
- spollo 6y ago
  I suppose one could argue your scary example has already occurred. I believe stripe cut off Donald Trump [1]. As a non-American, I don't really care about Trump and may be a bit ignorant here, but I find the big tech companies cutting him off under "inciting violence" a bit of a stretch. To me, it's actually extra scary to cut off a politician's fundraising for disagreeing with their "politics". [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-stops-processing-payments-for-trump-campaign-website-11610319116 https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-stops-processing-payment...

jolincost 6y ago

That's one of the ideas behind why these platforms which facilitate so much societal communication should not be treated as private corporate entities with regards to free speech they should be treated as public utilities

jmull 6y ago
They definitely should not. (1) There is a better solution. The problem is that they are monopolies. So bust the monopolies. Require interoperability — a proven solution in other industries. A service needs to be treated as a utility — meaning large amounts of regulation — when it is a natural monopoly, meaning there’s no practical way to avoid a monopoly. That’s not the case here. Don’t use a ton of regulation where a much smaller amount will do. (2) It doesn’t solve the problem. A social network utility still needs moderation. How would making a social network a utility make the moderation decisions better than what you’re getting now? Complicating things, in the US the first amendment means the government can’t establish laws to limit free speech, so a public utility would have to be a minimally moderated cesspool.
- jolincost 6y ago
  I think consistent standards about it what is and what is not free speech and what is and what isn't protected and what is and what isn't allowed to propagate on a big platforms is something that's good for the culture. so I see making them public utilities that are regulated as creating that overlap between the state definition of free speech and the corporate enforced reality.
  - jmull 6y ago
    A uniform set of rules for culture would be awful for culture. That would be a dystopian anti-culture.