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There is an idea in human culture that we make decisions by looking at the evidence and then changing our minds to coincide with the truth. In this world unlimi

There is an idea in human culture that we make decisions by looking at the evidence and then changing our minds to coincide with the truth. In this world unlimited Free Speech makes sense. But humans do not do this. We make decisions based on what others around us are doing, on what the people we see as our team are doing, to show that we belong, no matter how stupid or ignorant those decisions are. In this world, unlimited Free Speech creates chaos. And that is the world we live in now. Free Speech is a good. But it is not the highest good. And the sooner we realize that the better off all humans will be.

barbacoa 5y ago
The key thing here to recognize is that this unlimited free speech on platforms ended the day Trump was elected. It's presented as about hate speech or preventing misinformation but it's really about class and culture. The top 20% or so of the population, those that are employed by and control all the American mega corporations comprise the professional managerial class. There is nothing they despise more than the cultural values of the Walmart-shopping working class. When those people elected that insane clown as president is the day the professional managerial class decided they need to play a more active role in projecting their moral and cultural values onto everyone else. Incidents like the one in the article are collateral damage to this policy.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "top 20% or so of the population, those that are employed by and control all the American mega corporations" Dont the top 2% that actually own these corporation control them?
  - barbacoa 5y ago
    It's the rank-and-file employees demanding these moderation policies too.
- philipkglass 5y ago
  Facebook never allowed porn or even artistic nudes. YouTube only sometimes allows nudity/sex. Twitter and YouTube started scrubbing media drops from ISIS and other violent Islamist groups before Trump even had the nomination. They did so after bipartisan calls for social media to deplatform terrorist propaganda. Reddit also cracked down on Syrian civil war media around this time. The videos were often gruesome propaganda and evidence of war crimes at the same time. The reason people called on social media to remove this material instead of making it a job for law enforcement is that First Amendment protections are very broad. Praising ISIS or sharing "inspirational" videos of them killing government soldiers is not a crime if it doesn't also call for imminent lawless action. But few Americans of any political affiliation want such material to spread freely online, so it has been suppressed by other means on major platforms. I'm not endorsing or condemning how these platforms behave. I'm just pointing out that they have long suppressed material that the First Amendment protects. The timeline of moderation well predates the Trump presidency.
savingsPossible 5y ago
It is also trivially the case that "due process is good, but not the highest good". Or, to take a less charged example, freedom of contracts I don't mean to be snarky, but to try to draw a line. There are goods and rights that are intrinsically important (say food, water, social life, freedom from crime) and some that are important for the maintaining of a society (contracts are a good example here). One of these "to maintain a society" freedoms is due process. Another, free speech. Both are important for their own sake, but also to check and control power. You can say, and it is reasonable to say, that not suffering the ill effects of crime is more important than having good due process. But, given that due process is an important check on those in power, whenever they say "we need to reduce due process to get better law enforcement", you should be wary. To sum up: some seemingly rational trades between values are dangerous, especially since they reduce our ability to influence society/to undo those trades.
EricE 5y ago
"Free Speech is a good. But it is not the highest good. " Sunlight is ALWAYS the best disinfectant. Free speech is the first amendment in the US Constitution because those that wrote it had first hand experience what life is like without it.
- danaris 5y ago
  That's an argument for transparency, not for unlimited free speech. It is, in fact, somewhat the opposite of what's been pushed for recently, with people like Zuckerberg wanting "privacy for me, but not for thee". Transparency allows us to see what's going on inside companies, and make sure that they're not making decisions that are to the detriment of our society as a whole. Unlimited free speech allows bigots and fascists to spread their poison unobstructed, which demonstrably helps them to recruit more people into their white supremacist, genocidal, and anti-democratic movements. Meanwhile, as a cost to maintain this "principle", thousands (and more) of real people are being hurt or killed, or having their livelihoods destroyed, simply because of the way they were born.
  - godshatter 5y ago
    >Unlimited free speech allows bigots and fascists to spread their poison unobstructed, which demonstrably helps them to recruit more people into their white supremacist, genocidal, and anti-democratic movements. Meanwhile, as a cost to maintain this "principle", thousands (and more) of real people are being hurt or killed, or having their livelihoods destroyed, simply because of the way they were born. In my opinion, the best way to give credence to these kinds of beliefs is to drive them underground. Now you have people whispering from the bushes about the topic to people they think might be swayed to join them and no one is around to counter what they are saying. The best way to keep people from believing these kinds of things is to let their proponents speak, and then call them on it. Joe Gullible will at least be able to see both sides. Similarly, the best way to unlearn bigotry is to converse with people you are bigoted towards about a range of topics. Eventually you learn that they are just people, like everyone else. The same thing could happen with politics if we stopped being shoved into bubbles (or willingly building them up). Unfortunately, advertisers don't want to place ads where contentious discussions occur and big companies don't want to lose advertising revenue, so here we are.

barbacoa 5y ago

The key thing here to recognize is that this unlimited free speech on platforms ended the day Trump was elected. It's presented as about hate speech or preventing misinformation but it's really about class and culture. The top 20% or so of the population, those that are employed by and control all the American mega corporations comprise the professional managerial class. There is nothing they despise more than the cultural values of the Walmart-shopping working class. When those people elected that insane clown as president is the day the professional managerial class decided they need to play a more active role in projecting their moral and cultural values onto everyone else. Incidents like the one in the article are collateral damage to this policy.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"top 20% or so of the population, those that are employed by and control all the American mega corporations" Dont the top 2% that actually own these corporation control them?
- barbacoa 5y ago
  It's the rank-and-file employees demanding these moderation policies too.
philipkglass 5y ago
Facebook never allowed porn or even artistic nudes. YouTube only sometimes allows nudity/sex. Twitter and YouTube started scrubbing media drops from ISIS and other violent Islamist groups before Trump even had the nomination. They did so after bipartisan calls for social media to deplatform terrorist propaganda. Reddit also cracked down on Syrian civil war media around this time. The videos were often gruesome propaganda and evidence of war crimes at the same time. The reason people called on social media to remove this material instead of making it a job for law enforcement is that First Amendment protections are very broad. Praising ISIS or sharing "inspirational" videos of them killing government soldiers is not a crime if it doesn't also call for imminent lawless action. But few Americans of any political affiliation want such material to spread freely online, so it has been suppressed by other means on major platforms. I'm not endorsing or condemning how these platforms behave. I'm just pointing out that they have long suppressed material that the First Amendment protects. The timeline of moderation well predates the Trump presidency.

savingsPossible 5y ago

It is also trivially the case that "due process is good, but not the highest good". Or, to take a less charged example, freedom of contracts I don't mean to be snarky, but to try to draw a line. There are goods and rights that are intrinsically important (say food, water, social life, freedom from crime) and some that are important for the maintaining of a society (contracts are a good example here). One of these "to maintain a society" freedoms is due process. Another, free speech. Both are important for their own sake, but also to check and control power. You can say, and it is reasonable to say, that not suffering the ill effects of crime is more important than having good due process. But, given that due process is an important check on those in power, whenever they say "we need to reduce due process to get better law enforcement", you should be wary. To sum up: some seemingly rational trades between values are dangerous, especially since they reduce our ability to influence society/to undo those trades.

EricE 5y ago

"Free Speech is a good. But it is not the highest good. " Sunlight is ALWAYS the best disinfectant. Free speech is the first amendment in the US Constitution because those that wrote it had first hand experience what life is like without it.

danaris 5y ago
That's an argument for transparency, not for unlimited free speech. It is, in fact, somewhat the opposite of what's been pushed for recently, with people like Zuckerberg wanting "privacy for me, but not for thee". Transparency allows us to see what's going on inside companies, and make sure that they're not making decisions that are to the detriment of our society as a whole. Unlimited free speech allows bigots and fascists to spread their poison unobstructed, which demonstrably helps them to recruit more people into their white supremacist, genocidal, and anti-democratic movements. Meanwhile, as a cost to maintain this "principle", thousands (and more) of real people are being hurt or killed, or having their livelihoods destroyed, simply because of the way they were born.
- godshatter 5y ago
  >Unlimited free speech allows bigots and fascists to spread their poison unobstructed, which demonstrably helps them to recruit more people into their white supremacist, genocidal, and anti-democratic movements. Meanwhile, as a cost to maintain this "principle", thousands (and more) of real people are being hurt or killed, or having their livelihoods destroyed, simply because of the way they were born. In my opinion, the best way to give credence to these kinds of beliefs is to drive them underground. Now you have people whispering from the bushes about the topic to people they think might be swayed to join them and no one is around to counter what they are saying. The best way to keep people from believing these kinds of things is to let their proponents speak, and then call them on it. Joe Gullible will at least be able to see both sides. Similarly, the best way to unlearn bigotry is to converse with people you are bigoted towards about a range of topics. Eventually you learn that they are just people, like everyone else. The same thing could happen with politics if we stopped being shoved into bubbles (or willingly building them up). Unfortunately, advertisers don't want to place ads where contentious discussions occur and big companies don't want to lose advertising revenue, so here we are.