4 ms·

I completely agree with this - why is freedom of speech even coming up? You couldn't say this stuff in real life on a street corner, why should it be protected

I completely agree with this - why is freedom of speech even coming up? You couldn't say this stuff in real life on a street corner, why should it be protected online?

mschuster91 6y ago
> why is freedom of speech even coming up? The wider context of the debate is the thing, IMO. Prior to the Internet, exchange of opinions used to be locally restricted - now with the Internet, we have a couple of clashes. The most obvious is that the US model of "free speech" is almost absolute, whereas European societies believe that some forms of speech (esp. calls to violence, Holocaust denial, Nazi imagery) should be banned to protect society and its minorities from the worst. I'm German, given the history of what my ancestors did I'm firmly on the latter camp. The second one, related to that, is that social networks are, for about the first time in human history, truly global, and it's not in the clear at all who should / could claim legal authority over what happens there. When a person denies the Holocaust, Twitter can ban them, they can refuse to do anything or they can place a German-wide ban (per the NetzDG law). On the other side, when a German woman posts a photo of herself topless on Facebook, that is perfectly fine by German law but risks heavy fines for Facebook in the US, so Facebook errs on deleting stuff. And the third and final clash is STBX President Trump: should a private company have the power to take away the capability of a sitting US president to communicate efficiently with his citizens? Should a President (or any other political figure) be allowed to "govern by Tweet" in the first place? Is a call for violence, even for genocide (Iran's Khamenei comes to mind), acceptable simply because its caller is a government leader?
sleepysysadmin 6y ago
>I completely agree with this - why is freedom of speech even coming up? You couldn't say this stuff in real life on a street corner, why should it be protected online? Because the platform was not 100% about violence. Do you think it would be impossible to find threats of violence on twitter? How many twitter accounts say "kill trump" as their name? https://twitter.com/kill_trump_rn https://twitter.com/kill_trump_rn Finding examples of threats of violence is not difficult regardless of platform. If deplatforming only requires finding say 100 cases of inciting violence. Which is all Amazon ever found. Then to silence your political opponents requires nothing more than getting on their platform together to threaten violence. Your political opponents become silenced and must find a new platform. Rinse repeat.
- mrstone 6y ago
  Yeah I think the difference is that twitter will take action against people who issue credible threats. Parler explicitly did not, in the name of "free speech".

I completely agree with this - why is freedom of speech even coming up? You couldn't say this stuff in real life on a street corner, why should it be protected online?

mschuster91 6y ago

> why is freedom of speech even coming up? The wider context of the debate is the thing, IMO. Prior to the Internet, exchange of opinions used to be locally restricted - now with the Internet, we have a couple of clashes. The most obvious is that the US model of "free speech" is almost absolute, whereas European societies believe that some forms of speech (esp. calls to violence, Holocaust denial, Nazi imagery) should be banned to protect society and its minorities from the worst. I'm German, given the history of what my ancestors did I'm firmly on the latter camp. The second one, related to that, is that social networks are, for about the first time in human history, truly global, and it's not in the clear at all who should / could claim legal authority over what happens there. When a person denies the Holocaust, Twitter can ban them, they can refuse to do anything or they can place a German-wide ban (per the NetzDG law). On the other side, when a German woman posts a photo of herself topless on Facebook, that is perfectly fine by German law but risks heavy fines for Facebook in the US, so Facebook errs on deleting stuff. And the third and final clash is STBX President Trump: should a private company have the power to take away the capability of a sitting US president to communicate efficiently with his citizens? Should a President (or any other political figure) be allowed to "govern by Tweet" in the first place? Is a call for violence, even for genocide (Iran's Khamenei comes to mind), acceptable simply because its caller is a government leader?

sleepysysadmin 6y ago

>I completely agree with this - why is freedom of speech even coming up? You couldn't say this stuff in real life on a street corner, why should it be protected online? Because the platform was not 100% about violence. Do you think it would be impossible to find threats of violence on twitter? How many twitter accounts say "kill trump" as their name? https://twitter.com/kill_trump_rn https://twitter.com/kill_trump_rn Finding examples of threats of violence is not difficult regardless of platform. If deplatforming only requires finding say 100 cases of inciting violence. Which is all Amazon ever found. Then to silence your political opponents requires nothing more than getting on their platform together to threaten violence. Your political opponents become silenced and must find a new platform. Rinse repeat.

mrstone 6y ago
Yeah I think the difference is that twitter will take action against people who issue credible threats. Parler explicitly did not, in the name of "free speech".