4 ms·

What worked in the 1960s does not necessarily work in 2020s. In the 60s University of California Berkeley started the Free Speech Movement. But more recently th

What worked in the 1960s does not necessarily work in 2020s. In the 60s University of California Berkeley started the Free Speech Movement. But more recently the same UC Berkeley was in the news for banning the infamous Ann Coulter from speaking on campus. This is not because young people today are less woke than young people in the 60s. Societal attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot. This is related to technological advancement and the rise of social media. The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. Malicious individuals and groups now have the power to reach hundreds of millions instantly, at no cost to themselves. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to YouTube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, adversarial nations were spreading fake news to influence who gets elected, and others were even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. Enough is enough! There needs to be limits. Communities started imposing limits to free speech. Society — as opposed to governments — have decided that some censorship is in order. Some censorship, by private parties such as Twitter, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal. We live in a new world; the old norms no longer apply.

minikites 5y ago
>The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. It's clear that the "marketplace of ideas" isn't self-regulating, just like the marketplace for healthcare or pork bellies also isn't self-regulating.
- Retric 5y ago
  Social media distorts the marketplace of ideas. Things that seem dumb upon reflection may easily get shared without a thought. It’s the same effect that dumbs down reality TV. Charters can seemly pull inspiration from nowhere, but the people actually writing a script get time to reflect on what their going to say. Real people simply can’t pull that off, at best they can prepare for a debate with canned responses.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- zepto 5y ago
  Is it? Instagram is around a decade old and Facebook is only around two decades old. Attitudes them today are quite different from how they were even 5 years ago. What other major institutional shift would we think was ‘clear’ after so short a time.
throwawaysea 5y ago
> We live in a new world; the old norms no longer apply This feels a bit defeatist, like accepting a new dictator because the “old norms no longer apply”. Big tech companies are that dictator. They have garnered a critical mass of power due to a lack of regulation and anti-trust enforcement, and are using it to support their predominant ideologies. Members of our federal government recognize this and have regularly started applying pressure to these companies to perform censorship on their behalf. Is that really a new norm that we must accept or a blatant abuse of power and a runaround on the first amendment? I think what we have really, is a new product landscape where network effects create natural barriers to competition that we need to deal with. Our laws and enforcement of laws haven’t caught up to this reality. This has allowed a powerful tyranny of the technologically powerful to manifest, outside the scope of current law. The rationalizations such as radicalization and so on don’t convince me - those seem like the socially acceptable virtuous justifications that cloak a simple abuse of power.
lijogdfljk 5y ago
Agreed. Furthermore there is no limit to free speech here. You can still, in all cases i'm aware of, host your own site, and post your own thoughts. What extremists are upset about is that private institutions are no longer willing to help them. The same folks who previous applauded private institutions are now impacted by this same decision. There is a line where, imo - these people should not be limited. We don't prevent some dude from yelling stuff on the corner of the intersection. I believe access to the internet to be the virtual parallel there, "some dude" should also be allowed access to the internet. Which is to say i don't think we should block their freedoms from accessing/posting information online in the same way that we don't prevent them from spreading it in person. However there's a far line between yelling on the street corner and yelling inside starbucks. I applaud community/content hosts for recognizing their involvement in whatever data they host.

minikites 5y ago

>The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. It's clear that the "marketplace of ideas" isn't self-regulating, just like the marketplace for healthcare or pork bellies also isn't self-regulating.

Retric 5y ago
Social media distorts the marketplace of ideas. Things that seem dumb upon reflection may easily get shared without a thought. It’s the same effect that dumbs down reality TV. Charters can seemly pull inspiration from nowhere, but the people actually writing a script get time to reflect on what their going to say. Real people simply can’t pull that off, at best they can prepare for a debate with canned responses.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
zepto 5y ago
Is it? Instagram is around a decade old and Facebook is only around two decades old. Attitudes them today are quite different from how they were even 5 years ago. What other major institutional shift would we think was ‘clear’ after so short a time.

throwawaysea 5y ago

> We live in a new world; the old norms no longer apply This feels a bit defeatist, like accepting a new dictator because the “old norms no longer apply”. Big tech companies are that dictator. They have garnered a critical mass of power due to a lack of regulation and anti-trust enforcement, and are using it to support their predominant ideologies. Members of our federal government recognize this and have regularly started applying pressure to these companies to perform censorship on their behalf. Is that really a new norm that we must accept or a blatant abuse of power and a runaround on the first amendment? I think what we have really, is a new product landscape where network effects create natural barriers to competition that we need to deal with. Our laws and enforcement of laws haven’t caught up to this reality. This has allowed a powerful tyranny of the technologically powerful to manifest, outside the scope of current law. The rationalizations such as radicalization and so on don’t convince me - those seem like the socially acceptable virtuous justifications that cloak a simple abuse of power.

lijogdfljk 5y ago

Agreed. Furthermore there is no limit to free speech here. You can still, in all cases i'm aware of, host your own site, and post your own thoughts. What extremists are upset about is that private institutions are no longer willing to help them. The same folks who previous applauded private institutions are now impacted by this same decision. There is a line where, imo - these people should not be limited. We don't prevent some dude from yelling stuff on the corner of the intersection. I believe access to the internet to be the virtual parallel there, "some dude" should also be allowed access to the internet. Which is to say i don't think we should block their freedoms from accessing/posting information online in the same way that we don't prevent them from spreading it in person. However there's a far line between yelling on the street corner and yelling inside starbucks. I applaud community/content hosts for recognizing their involvement in whatever data they host.