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If your speech is really valuable you shouldn't depend on the free services of a privately-owned ad-supported company meant for streaming games to propagate it.

If your speech is really valuable you shouldn't depend on the free services of a privately-owned ad-supported company meant for streaming games to propagate it. Furthermore speech as the forefathers probably meant was people physically going to town squares and talking there. There is free press, which is what social media is more like, and the owner of a press has the right to decide what he/she will print--the Constitution prevents government interference, not private interference.

dimgl 6y ago
Just because you (and dozens of others on this site) continue make this argument over and over doesn't mean that it isn't a problem. Edit: someone built that town square. Someone founded those forums. At the end of the day, someone is always in control of something.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  Free speech includes reacting to what someone else has said. You can make an argument about whether or not people should have thicker skin, but you can't make an argument that people should not be allowed to react to speech without forfeiting the moral concept of freedom of speech. Someone did build the town square, and if that someone was a private entity, that someone can kick everyone right the heck out of the town square, because it's theirs. If the people of the town want to make that reality different, they should probably band together and purchase the town square and own it collectively, as a government. If you think Twitch, Twitter, HN or Reddit are such critical infrastructure, then you should lobby your government to purchase them.
  - ipaddr 6y ago
    They are like a mall. It appears to be a public space. It shares the characterics of one. But at it's heart it is a private space with camera everywhere and eager to throwout those who do not appear to be the norm. Homeless, poor, young and oddities get removed from malls for being themselves. We're seeing the same online. Governments don't buy malls. Malls are designed to get you to spend. These sites want you to spend and if you do or don't they will send all of the info they collected about you and sell it to someone else. We need more hobbiest sites. Government should provide free spaces.
Spartan-S63 6y ago
So much this. Society is balking at the cession of power from governments to private companies and are all of a sudden upset that private companies don't have to grant them any rights. If we really want free speech platforms, lobby government to craft spaces for it in the digital age. Instead of muddying public rights in private property, let's just fund more public property (i.e. nationalized social media platform).
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  > If we really want free speech platforms, lobby government to craft spaces for it in the digital age. “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything away.” I disagree this is a job for government directly. No, I don’t want government socialized Facebook! I want the government to enforce the spirit of antitrust law. They are ignoring that a competitor to Facebook CAN NOT exist because Facebook will smother or absorb them. I would like government to compel Facebook to use open data standards I can use to take my data to a service that isn’t actively trying to psychologically bleed me daily. If Google trying hard couldn’t dent Facebook, there is no chance an organic startup will do it. And double extra certain a state run expensive and uninspired clone would do it - not to mention you’d be more wise to trust Facebook with your data than the government directly.
- throwaway33432 6y ago
  There's no cession of power from governments to corporations; consider the recurrent social media hearings in DC, which as far I can tell are effectively just the bullying of CEOs to censor less/more. Even this latest Delta, Coca-Cola, etc. seems to be just bullying: https://twitter.com/AmyBeePhoenix/status/1379295393301868546 https://twitter.com/AmyBeePhoenix/status/1379295393301868546 It's just an upheaval of the elite.
  - esyir 6y ago
    You call it bullying, I call it ineffective posturing and pretending to get things done. Feels to me like a song and dance to placate the voters while not actually doing anything with impact.
makomk 6y ago
> If your speech is really valuable you shouldn't depend on the free services of a privately-owned ad-supported company meant for streaming games to propagate it. Remember, this announcement is about speech that occurs outside of Twitch entirely. So what you'd really need to argue is that anyone who ever wants to be able to speak freely on their own time shouldn't depend on income from big companies... including, at the rate things are going, even income from minimum wage retail jobs.
theandrewbailey 6y ago
We arguably gave up that freedom when governments started forcing people to bake cakes with specific messages.
- ProfessorLayton 6y ago
  This is such a bad faith argument. No one is being forced to write specific messages, but merely follow the law. The law that states that to legally do business then the business will not discriminate against certain classes of people — This is not unusual, there are tons of laws a business must follow to stay open. Protected classes are narrowly defined. You may or may not have an issue with what those protected classes are, but that's a separate argument. The main argument is that businesses must follow the law to stay in business.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > We arguably gave up that freedom when governments started forcing people to bake cakes with specific messages. Who won that case again?
malandrew 6y ago
> Furthermore speech as the forefathers probably meant was people physically going to town squares and talking there. Facebook and other such platforms have become a town square of sorts. This idea that the principles that founding fathers championed, especially the Bill of Rights, should somehow be restricted only to what was possible with the technology of their time is pretty preposterous.
- mahogany 6y ago
  >This idea that the principles that founding fathers championed, especially the Bill of Rights, should somehow be restricted only to what was possible with the technology of their time is pretty preposterous. This is true, but also, the town squares were public places. Are you suggesting to nationalize Facebook? Adding to this, maybe the best thing to do is to just fund a public social media site, where constitutional protections apply, and treat that as a virtual town square.
  - esyir 6y ago
    Everyone saying "just build your own lol" is either accidentally or deliberately ignoring network effects and said impact on social media dominance. The government writes legislation, it doesn't build, or build well anyway. This goes 10x for tech platforms, where the US government is beyond incompetent and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. I would rather suggest something along the lines of this. At a certain scale (user count), sufficient implicit selection of users and their content revokes section 230 rights. If you start implicitly removing specific viewpoints and topics it's no longer "user-generated content" and is now your content. Of course there have to be provisions for explicit content scope and spam, but that's roughly where I would start.
    - mahogany 6y ago
      I think this issue is more nuanced than you (and many other people every time these threads comes up) make it out to be, which is why I brought up this point. Saying "certain scale duh" is just as an empty idea as "just build your own lol". Can you explicitly tell me how you would codify that scale in law? And whatever you make the cap, what then is the incentive for a website to allow more users over the cap? > Of course there have to be provisions for explicit content scope and spam "Of course" they can moderate spam. Can you tell me how to objectively identify spam? If I have a religious forum, and it passes the user cap, suddenly we have ourselves a public town square. Then someone comes in and starts saying "God isn't real!" several times in literally every thread. Is that spam? Because to me, it looks like an exercise of free speech, so you can't erase those messages. Certainly if someone was repeating that in a public space, we wouldn't silence them. By exceeding the user cap, that site would become a worse experience because you've severely limited moderation abilities by your proposed law.
cblconfederate 6y ago
Then we need public services for communication to save the world from private dystopia, the same way we have public roads. Every country should set up a free mastodon account and email for every citizen. Plus i m not sure the principle of Free speech is that limited, speech doesnt count as speech if it cant reach anyone. And giving to a handful of employees the power to shape the messaging of millions is directly affecting democracy itself.
- stonogo 6y ago
  Perhaps you'd be interested in HAM radio or public-access TV. I don't see why the answer has to be national.
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    TV is 20th century. It has to be public the same way that roads are public.
    - stonogo 6y ago
      Gatekept by testing and licensure requirements?
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  We need public infrastructure for communication that doesn't create conditions where all we do is try to emulate older broadcast media models such as TVs, radio, or newspaper. This means 25Mbps uncapped IPv6 (no NAT) symmetric bandwidth for everyone and safe harbor laws for individuals and not just corporations. I think at that point centralized services for Internet-based communication become unnecessary, though centralized storage for things like long video posts may still be needed.
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    We have public radio though, not just public antennas.

dimgl 6y ago

Just because you (and dozens of others on this site) continue make this argument over and over doesn't mean that it isn't a problem. Edit: someone built that town square. Someone founded those forums. At the end of the day, someone is always in control of something.

TameAntelope 6y ago
Free speech includes reacting to what someone else has said. You can make an argument about whether or not people should have thicker skin, but you can't make an argument that people should not be allowed to react to speech without forfeiting the moral concept of freedom of speech. Someone did build the town square, and if that someone was a private entity, that someone can kick everyone right the heck out of the town square, because it's theirs. If the people of the town want to make that reality different, they should probably band together and purchase the town square and own it collectively, as a government. If you think Twitch, Twitter, HN or Reddit are such critical infrastructure, then you should lobby your government to purchase them.
- ipaddr 6y ago
  They are like a mall. It appears to be a public space. It shares the characterics of one. But at it's heart it is a private space with camera everywhere and eager to throwout those who do not appear to be the norm. Homeless, poor, young and oddities get removed from malls for being themselves. We're seeing the same online. Governments don't buy malls. Malls are designed to get you to spend. These sites want you to spend and if you do or don't they will send all of the info they collected about you and sell it to someone else. We need more hobbiest sites. Government should provide free spaces.

Spartan-S63 6y ago

So much this. Society is balking at the cession of power from governments to private companies and are all of a sudden upset that private companies don't have to grant them any rights. If we really want free speech platforms, lobby government to craft spaces for it in the digital age. Instead of muddying public rights in private property, let's just fund more public property (i.e. nationalized social media platform).

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
> If we really want free speech platforms, lobby government to craft spaces for it in the digital age. “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything away.” I disagree this is a job for government directly. No, I don’t want government socialized Facebook! I want the government to enforce the spirit of antitrust law. They are ignoring that a competitor to Facebook CAN NOT exist because Facebook will smother or absorb them. I would like government to compel Facebook to use open data standards I can use to take my data to a service that isn’t actively trying to psychologically bleed me daily. If Google trying hard couldn’t dent Facebook, there is no chance an organic startup will do it. And double extra certain a state run expensive and uninspired clone would do it - not to mention you’d be more wise to trust Facebook with your data than the government directly.
throwaway33432 6y ago
There's no cession of power from governments to corporations; consider the recurrent social media hearings in DC, which as far I can tell are effectively just the bullying of CEOs to censor less/more. Even this latest Delta, Coca-Cola, etc. seems to be just bullying: https://twitter.com/AmyBeePhoenix/status/1379295393301868546 https://twitter.com/AmyBeePhoenix/status/1379295393301868546 It's just an upheaval of the elite.
- esyir 6y ago
  You call it bullying, I call it ineffective posturing and pretending to get things done. Feels to me like a song and dance to placate the voters while not actually doing anything with impact.

makomk 6y ago

> If your speech is really valuable you shouldn't depend on the free services of a privately-owned ad-supported company meant for streaming games to propagate it. Remember, this announcement is about speech that occurs outside of Twitch entirely. So what you'd really need to argue is that anyone who ever wants to be able to speak freely on their own time shouldn't depend on income from big companies... including, at the rate things are going, even income from minimum wage retail jobs.

theandrewbailey 6y ago

We arguably gave up that freedom when governments started forcing people to bake cakes with specific messages.

ProfessorLayton 6y ago
This is such a bad faith argument. No one is being forced to write specific messages, but merely follow the law. The law that states that to legally do business then the business will not discriminate against certain classes of people — This is not unusual, there are tons of laws a business must follow to stay open. Protected classes are narrowly defined. You may or may not have an issue with what those protected classes are, but that's a separate argument. The main argument is that businesses must follow the law to stay in business.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dragonwriter 6y ago
> We arguably gave up that freedom when governments started forcing people to bake cakes with specific messages. Who won that case again?

malandrew 6y ago

> Furthermore speech as the forefathers probably meant was people physically going to town squares and talking there. Facebook and other such platforms have become a town square of sorts. This idea that the principles that founding fathers championed, especially the Bill of Rights, should somehow be restricted only to what was possible with the technology of their time is pretty preposterous.

mahogany 6y ago
>This idea that the principles that founding fathers championed, especially the Bill of Rights, should somehow be restricted only to what was possible with the technology of their time is pretty preposterous. This is true, but also, the town squares were public places. Are you suggesting to nationalize Facebook? Adding to this, maybe the best thing to do is to just fund a public social media site, where constitutional protections apply, and treat that as a virtual town square.
- esyir 6y ago
  Everyone saying "just build your own lol" is either accidentally or deliberately ignoring network effects and said impact on social media dominance. The government writes legislation, it doesn't build, or build well anyway. This goes 10x for tech platforms, where the US government is beyond incompetent and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. I would rather suggest something along the lines of this. At a certain scale (user count), sufficient implicit selection of users and their content revokes section 230 rights. If you start implicitly removing specific viewpoints and topics it's no longer "user-generated content" and is now your content. Of course there have to be provisions for explicit content scope and spam, but that's roughly where I would start.
  - mahogany 6y ago
    I think this issue is more nuanced than you (and many other people every time these threads comes up) make it out to be, which is why I brought up this point. Saying "certain scale duh" is just as an empty idea as "just build your own lol". Can you explicitly tell me how you would codify that scale in law? And whatever you make the cap, what then is the incentive for a website to allow more users over the cap? > Of course there have to be provisions for explicit content scope and spam "Of course" they can moderate spam. Can you tell me how to objectively identify spam? If I have a religious forum, and it passes the user cap, suddenly we have ourselves a public town square. Then someone comes in and starts saying "God isn't real!" several times in literally every thread. Is that spam? Because to me, it looks like an exercise of free speech, so you can't erase those messages. Certainly if someone was repeating that in a public space, we wouldn't silence them. By exceeding the user cap, that site would become a worse experience because you've severely limited moderation abilities by your proposed law.

cblconfederate 6y ago

Then we need public services for communication to save the world from private dystopia, the same way we have public roads. Every country should set up a free mastodon account and email for every citizen. Plus i m not sure the principle of Free speech is that limited, speech doesnt count as speech if it cant reach anyone. And giving to a handful of employees the power to shape the messaging of millions is directly affecting democracy itself.

stonogo 6y ago
Perhaps you'd be interested in HAM radio or public-access TV. I don't see why the answer has to be national.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  TV is 20th century. It has to be public the same way that roads are public.
  - stonogo 6y ago
    Gatekept by testing and licensure requirements?
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
We need public infrastructure for communication that doesn't create conditions where all we do is try to emulate older broadcast media models such as TVs, radio, or newspaper. This means 25Mbps uncapped IPv6 (no NAT) symmetric bandwidth for everyone and safe harbor laws for individuals and not just corporations. I think at that point centralized services for Internet-based communication become unnecessary, though centralized storage for things like long video posts may still be needed.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  We have public radio though, not just public antennas.