5 ms·

The big platforms will silence you for saying things that clearly fall under free speech.

dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 5y ago
The big platforms have no ability to silence anyone. They have the ability to limit your use of their resources, which is well within their rights.
- beervirus 5y ago
  It’s within their rights (currently…) but it’s still problematic.
  - OrvalWintermute 5y ago
    I don't know that I agree, because once a thing becomes part of the public square, the rules change.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
cjensen 5y ago
Platforms have a First Amendment right to silence voices they don't like on a platform. The First Amendment protects both a person's ability to say things, and the person's ability to not say things. As a general rule, both people and the government cannot compel someone to say or reproduce an opinion they don't want to.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- horseradish 5y ago
  Free speech is a far larger concern than what the First Amendment covers. Platforms that have grown into de facto public squares are large enough that there is a public interest in how they regulate speech, given that the vast majority of people are on the big tech platforms while the alternatives are negligible and choked out by network effects. They are now a gray area between state and what is typically understood by private entity. There are massive and obvious dangers in letting Google, Facebook, Twitter decree for millions/billions of people what counts as "science" or "misinformation", and they've already demonstrated getting it spectacularly wrong. It's vital to a free society to have a culture of open debate, and these platforms are now our media for such debate. It's not clear yet what the best mechanism or remedy for this will be, but citing the First Amendment alone is not sufficient to resolve the concern. The First Amendment only applies to government, and the cultural and social issues around free speech have always been much broader than that. There are older precedents for regulating speech on private platforms in an earlier technological period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine. Perhaps we need an updated version of that. I wouldn't be surprised if the platforms themselves were ok with it, since I don't believe they wanted to get into the truth-regulation business in the first place. They're doing it because they're subject to intense, inner and outer, political pressure. Without getting into rightness or wrongness of views, I think it's factually the case that those pressures are coming from a fairly narrow band of political opinion which is far from being the entire spectrum and excludes many mainstream views, so in that sense what we're seeing is something analogous to "regulatory capture" of the big platforms. This gives enormous leverage to one cluster of political opinions over all the others. It's a distorting factor which I think is against the public interest (even though I personally agree with some of their views). We need debate and persuasion, not hard use of power. This understanding was commonplace, in fact bedrock, for so long that many of us are shocked at how quickly it could be abandoned, and not just abandoned or even forgotten but replaced with a narrative in which it was never that way to begin with!
  - caseysoftware 5y ago
    > Platforms that have grown into de facto public squares are large enough that there is a public interest in how they regulate speech, given that the vast majority of people are on the big tech platforms while the others are negligible and are choked out by network effects. They are now a gray area between state and what is typically understood by private entity. In the lawsuit against Trump for blocking people on Twitter, the court ruled that Twitter was a public square for the express reason that government policy was discussed and promoted there. Therefore, Trump (as a government figure) could not block people. Further, the current Press Secretary Psaki has described how they're directing Facebook to monitor and remove both people and content which was otherwise legal but simply unacceptable to the Administration. The first situation demonstrates the gray area but the second makes a case that Facebook was acting as an arm of the government.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      > In the lawsuit against Trump for blocking people on Twitter, the court ruled that Twitter was a public square for the express reason that government policy was discussed and promoted there. Therefore, Trump (as a government figure) could not block people. No it didn't. It ruled that trumps account was acting as an official government account, and so trumps account fell under stricter regulations that govern how the government can communicate. Twitter was still able to ban his account though, because Twitter isn't the government! > Further, the current Press Secretary Psaki has described how they're directing Facebook to monitor and remove both people and content which was otherwise legal but simply unacceptable to the Administration. No, Facebook used the government as a source of official information. They then chose to remove other information. The government wasn't telling Facebook to remove stuff. The choice to make the CDC authoritative was Facebooks choice. They aren't acting as an arm of the government.
      - caseysoftware 5y ago
        The White House claims to be an active participant and directing their attention to things to be removed. In case you missed that press conference, here's a transcript and video: > QUESTION: Thanks, Jen. Can you talk a little bit more about this request for tech companies to be more aggressive in policing misinformation? Has the administration been in touch with any of these companies? And are there any actions that the federal government can take to ensure their cooperation? Because we've seen from the start, there's not a lot of action on some of these platforms. > PSAKI: Sure. Well, first, we are in regular touch with the social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 Team. > Quote continuing: Given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation specifically on the pandemic. In terms of actions, Alex, that we have taken or we're working to take, I should say, from the federal government, we've increased disinformation research and tracking. Within the Surgeon General's Office, we're flagging posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. Unless you believe Psaki is lying which I hadn't considered. Ref: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/07/15/psaki_were_flagging_problematic_posts_for_facebook_that_spread_disinformation.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/07/15/psaki_wer...

The big platforms have no ability to silence anyone. They have the ability to limit your use of their resources, which is well within their rights.

beervirus 5y ago
It’s within their rights (currently…) but it’s still problematic.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  I don't know that I agree, because once a thing becomes part of the public square, the rules change.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

cjensen 5y ago

Platforms have a First Amendment right to silence voices they don't like on a platform. The First Amendment protects both a person's ability to say things, and the person's ability to not say things. As a general rule, both people and the government cannot compel someone to say or reproduce an opinion they don't want to.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
horseradish 5y ago
Free speech is a far larger concern than what the First Amendment covers. Platforms that have grown into de facto public squares are large enough that there is a public interest in how they regulate speech, given that the vast majority of people are on the big tech platforms while the alternatives are negligible and choked out by network effects. They are now a gray area between state and what is typically understood by private entity. There are massive and obvious dangers in letting Google, Facebook, Twitter decree for millions/billions of people what counts as "science" or "misinformation", and they've already demonstrated getting it spectacularly wrong. It's vital to a free society to have a culture of open debate, and these platforms are now our media for such debate. It's not clear yet what the best mechanism or remedy for this will be, but citing the First Amendment alone is not sufficient to resolve the concern. The First Amendment only applies to government, and the cultural and social issues around free speech have always been much broader than that. There are older precedents for regulating speech on private platforms in an earlier technological period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine. Perhaps we need an updated version of that. I wouldn't be surprised if the platforms themselves were ok with it, since I don't believe they wanted to get into the truth-regulation business in the first place. They're doing it because they're subject to intense, inner and outer, political pressure. Without getting into rightness or wrongness of views, I think it's factually the case that those pressures are coming from a fairly narrow band of political opinion which is far from being the entire spectrum and excludes many mainstream views, so in that sense what we're seeing is something analogous to "regulatory capture" of the big platforms. This gives enormous leverage to one cluster of political opinions over all the others. It's a distorting factor which I think is against the public interest (even though I personally agree with some of their views). We need debate and persuasion, not hard use of power. This understanding was commonplace, in fact bedrock, for so long that many of us are shocked at how quickly it could be abandoned, and not just abandoned or even forgotten but replaced with a narrative in which it was never that way to begin with!
- caseysoftware 5y ago
  > Platforms that have grown into de facto public squares are large enough that there is a public interest in how they regulate speech, given that the vast majority of people are on the big tech platforms while the others are negligible and are choked out by network effects. They are now a gray area between state and what is typically understood by private entity. In the lawsuit against Trump for blocking people on Twitter, the court ruled that Twitter was a public square for the express reason that government policy was discussed and promoted there. Therefore, Trump (as a government figure) could not block people. Further, the current Press Secretary Psaki has described how they're directing Facebook to monitor and remove both people and content which was otherwise legal but simply unacceptable to the Administration. The first situation demonstrates the gray area but the second makes a case that Facebook was acting as an arm of the government.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    > In the lawsuit against Trump for blocking people on Twitter, the court ruled that Twitter was a public square for the express reason that government policy was discussed and promoted there. Therefore, Trump (as a government figure) could not block people. No it didn't. It ruled that trumps account was acting as an official government account, and so trumps account fell under stricter regulations that govern how the government can communicate. Twitter was still able to ban his account though, because Twitter isn't the government! > Further, the current Press Secretary Psaki has described how they're directing Facebook to monitor and remove both people and content which was otherwise legal but simply unacceptable to the Administration. No, Facebook used the government as a source of official information. They then chose to remove other information. The government wasn't telling Facebook to remove stuff. The choice to make the CDC authoritative was Facebooks choice. They aren't acting as an arm of the government.
    - caseysoftware 5y ago
      The White House claims to be an active participant and directing their attention to things to be removed. In case you missed that press conference, here's a transcript and video: > QUESTION: Thanks, Jen. Can you talk a little bit more about this request for tech companies to be more aggressive in policing misinformation? Has the administration been in touch with any of these companies? And are there any actions that the federal government can take to ensure their cooperation? Because we've seen from the start, there's not a lot of action on some of these platforms. > PSAKI: Sure. Well, first, we are in regular touch with the social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 Team. > Quote continuing: Given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation specifically on the pandemic. In terms of actions, Alex, that we have taken or we're working to take, I should say, from the federal government, we've increased disinformation research and tracking. Within the Surgeon General's Office, we're flagging posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. Unless you believe Psaki is lying which I hadn't considered. Ref: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/07/15/psaki_were_flagging_problematic_posts_for_facebook_that_spread_disinformation.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/07/15/psaki_wer...