4 ms·

It means nobody is allowed to police public discourse and that anyone who wants to be a dick can be a dick and if others don’t want to deal with it they can ign

It means nobody is allowed to police public discourse and that anyone who wants to be a dick can be a dick and if others don’t want to deal with it they can ignore it. The only complications have always been situations where private enterprise dominates or impedes on public discourse.

whimsicalism 5y ago
Sure, now you're just laundering the explanation into what public discourse is.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  That is exactly where the conversation should be. It’s a world more productive than implicating false dichotomies of government authority vs. private authority, or polite vs. annoying.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
awb 5y ago
In the US, this isn’t accurate at all. > It means nobody is allowed to police public discourse No, it means the government cannot restrict speech. > Freedom of speech, also called free speech, means the free and public expression of opinions without censorship, interference and restraint by the government. [0] Most people assume “free speech” means “nobody” can restrict it, but it is in fact only “by the government”. For example, you do not have freedom of speech at my house. I am free to demand anyone who says the word “blue” on my property to immediately leave. You also don’t have free speech on the public comment section of my blog. I can delete (or not approve) any comments that don’t adhere to a list of approved words, or are not sufficiently praiseful of my views. There are some state and federal laws that protect free speech at private companies, but they are mostly around employment as you can read about in the article. That’s why I think OC is stating that the definition of “free speech” is important. Are we talking about US law, or about an abstract concept that “nobody can restrict public discourse” that doesn’t exist in reality? > The only complications have always been situations where private enterprise dominates or impedes on public discourse. Not true. There are many, many complications to free speech. > Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment include obscenity (as determined by the Miller test), fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising. [1] These types of speech can be legally restricted, punished and censored. This list was not created in 1776, it was created over time because the line isn’t clear. What’s always been clear though is that there have always been complicated edge cases concerning free speech. The issue is so complicated it’s been litigated in the Supreme Court possibly hundreds of times [2]. Keep in mind that the Supreme Court only takes on a case if it presents a novel problem or if they thought a previous Supreme Court mad an egregious error in judgement. So the sheer volume of cases means that there continue to be many unique, complicated facets to “free speech”, not all of which involve private enterprise. Protesting, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom to petition, compelled speech, false speech, etc. all can be complicated issues concerning individuals or public institutions. [0], [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Uni... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_cases_involving_the_First_Amendment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Suprem...
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  Implying a clear line between private authority and government authority is just dishonest.
  - chillwaves 5y ago
    The real question is if private owners have rights over their property to police behavior. The second consideration is what recourse private owners have to disallowed speech. It's not jail or execution. Typically just dismissal. I do not understand the argument that a platform is not allowed to police itself.
    - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
      What is the difference between a society and a private entity? Are they interchangeable? Does ownership constitute absolute authority? Historically, I know of no such society which has considered them interchangeable so I find it outrageous to act like they are.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- bambax 5y ago
  Yes, but the paradox is that, because the government can't properly regulate speech (outside of the categories you listed), speech is heavily regulated by private operators, starting with you at your house, going to newspapers, TV, and Twitter, Facebook, etc. Everyone has their own rules, some explicit, some secret, most entirely arbitrary, and there is never a proper appeals process.
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    Thank you. And these complications are nothing new. Newspapers have long been regulated and the Fairness Doctrine defined the period during which Americans almost universally trusted the news media. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
csee 5y ago
> anyone who wants to be a dick can be a dick and if others don’t want to deal with it they can ignore it The problem is that in the real world you can't silo off dicks like that. Bad opinions (e.g. racial hatred) can spread through the society and cause tremendous damage. If you're going to argue for zero content moderation, the only good faith way to do so is to first admit that this could be a problem, and secondly admit that you have no problem if Twitter became like 8chan. If you just pretend like these kinds of things aren't possible, I can only conclude you're arguing from a position of ideology.
- chmod600 5y ago
  I've been on the internet for quite some time, and I just haven't seen a lot of the bad stuff, or even the dumb stuff, that people say is unavoidable. I struggle to think of examples, and the worst ones are things that might be described as "sounds kinda racist but the person who wrote it is probably not the cross-burning type". Sure, I could find it if I went looking. But I don't. You could argue that this is because of some kind of benevolent filtering, and I'll grant that dang (of HN) does a great job. But I think it's mostly because I don't delve into the kinds of places where that would happen. So I'm honestly just not sure what you mean when something will devolve into 8chan. I've heard of that but I don't know anyone on there, so I don't even really know what it is or how the devolution might happen. Mechanically, what would take place? Would I follow a friend, and then start getting weird flat-Earth stuff because of their second cousin?
  - csee 5y ago
    There is automated moderation of Twitter, Youtube, etc, that aggressively blocks or downweights such comments, so it is not surprising that you don't find it. Go and make a Twitter account and start spewing racial hatred, and see what happens. Do you remember all the anti-semitic crap in the Youtube comments from a few years ago (all the triple parentheses etc) that are now mostly gone thanks to AI moderation? The comments section is now actually alright. So your argument is based on the incorrect premise that the sanitized nature of these online spaces is organic. It is actually heavily engineered. > Mechanically, what would take place? You would likely get three things: - Informal networks of political extremists with a recruitment platform of global reach. Similar to r/genzedong in extremism, but far worse. Think ISIS, The Base. - A tool that authoritarian regimes can use to exercise influence over open societies via coordinated misinformation and sowing division. This centralized effort to divide Western societies via coordinated social media manipulation is already being done. - A society overtaken by conspiracy theories, with unpredictable consequences. Empirically, sunlight isn't the best disinfectant. I make these claims by observing the local gradient and extrapolating.

whimsicalism 5y ago

Sure, now you're just laundering the explanation into what public discourse is.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago
That is exactly where the conversation should be. It’s a world more productive than implicating false dichotomies of government authority vs. private authority, or polite vs. annoying.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

awb 5y ago

In the US, this isn’t accurate at all. > It means nobody is allowed to police public discourse No, it means the government cannot restrict speech. > Freedom of speech, also called free speech, means the free and public expression of opinions without censorship, interference and restraint by the government. [0] Most people assume “free speech” means “nobody” can restrict it, but it is in fact only “by the government”. For example, you do not have freedom of speech at my house. I am free to demand anyone who says the word “blue” on my property to immediately leave. You also don’t have free speech on the public comment section of my blog. I can delete (or not approve) any comments that don’t adhere to a list of approved words, or are not sufficiently praiseful of my views. There are some state and federal laws that protect free speech at private companies, but they are mostly around employment as you can read about in the article. That’s why I think OC is stating that the definition of “free speech” is important. Are we talking about US law, or about an abstract concept that “nobody can restrict public discourse” that doesn’t exist in reality? > The only complications have always been situations where private enterprise dominates or impedes on public discourse. Not true. There are many, many complications to free speech. > Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment include obscenity (as determined by the Miller test), fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising. [1] These types of speech can be legally restricted, punished and censored. This list was not created in 1776, it was created over time because the line isn’t clear. What’s always been clear though is that there have always been complicated edge cases concerning free speech. The issue is so complicated it’s been litigated in the Supreme Court possibly hundreds of times [2]. Keep in mind that the Supreme Court only takes on a case if it presents a novel problem or if they thought a previous Supreme Court mad an egregious error in judgement. So the sheer volume of cases means that there continue to be many unique, complicated facets to “free speech”, not all of which involve private enterprise. Protesting, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom to petition, compelled speech, false speech, etc. all can be complicated issues concerning individuals or public institutions. [0], [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Uni... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_cases_involving_the_First_Amendment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Suprem...

nopenopenopeno 5y ago
Implying a clear line between private authority and government authority is just dishonest.
- chillwaves 5y ago
  The real question is if private owners have rights over their property to police behavior. The second consideration is what recourse private owners have to disallowed speech. It's not jail or execution. Typically just dismissal. I do not understand the argument that a platform is not allowed to police itself.
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    What is the difference between a society and a private entity? Are they interchangeable? Does ownership constitute absolute authority? Historically, I know of no such society which has considered them interchangeable so I find it outrageous to act like they are.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
bambax 5y ago
Yes, but the paradox is that, because the government can't properly regulate speech (outside of the categories you listed), speech is heavily regulated by private operators, starting with you at your house, going to newspapers, TV, and Twitter, Facebook, etc. Everyone has their own rules, some explicit, some secret, most entirely arbitrary, and there is never a proper appeals process.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  Thank you. And these complications are nothing new. Newspapers have long been regulated and the Fairness Doctrine defined the period during which Americans almost universally trusted the news media. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

csee 5y ago

> anyone who wants to be a dick can be a dick and if others don’t want to deal with it they can ignore it The problem is that in the real world you can't silo off dicks like that. Bad opinions (e.g. racial hatred) can spread through the society and cause tremendous damage. If you're going to argue for zero content moderation, the only good faith way to do so is to first admit that this could be a problem, and secondly admit that you have no problem if Twitter became like 8chan. If you just pretend like these kinds of things aren't possible, I can only conclude you're arguing from a position of ideology.

chmod600 5y ago
I've been on the internet for quite some time, and I just haven't seen a lot of the bad stuff, or even the dumb stuff, that people say is unavoidable. I struggle to think of examples, and the worst ones are things that might be described as "sounds kinda racist but the person who wrote it is probably not the cross-burning type". Sure, I could find it if I went looking. But I don't. You could argue that this is because of some kind of benevolent filtering, and I'll grant that dang (of HN) does a great job. But I think it's mostly because I don't delve into the kinds of places where that would happen. So I'm honestly just not sure what you mean when something will devolve into 8chan. I've heard of that but I don't know anyone on there, so I don't even really know what it is or how the devolution might happen. Mechanically, what would take place? Would I follow a friend, and then start getting weird flat-Earth stuff because of their second cousin?
- csee 5y ago
  There is automated moderation of Twitter, Youtube, etc, that aggressively blocks or downweights such comments, so it is not surprising that you don't find it. Go and make a Twitter account and start spewing racial hatred, and see what happens. Do you remember all the anti-semitic crap in the Youtube comments from a few years ago (all the triple parentheses etc) that are now mostly gone thanks to AI moderation? The comments section is now actually alright. So your argument is based on the incorrect premise that the sanitized nature of these online spaces is organic. It is actually heavily engineered. > Mechanically, what would take place? You would likely get three things: - Informal networks of political extremists with a recruitment platform of global reach. Similar to r/genzedong in extremism, but far worse. Think ISIS, The Base. - A tool that authoritarian regimes can use to exercise influence over open societies via coordinated misinformation and sowing division. This centralized effort to divide Western societies via coordinated social media manipulation is already being done. - A society overtaken by conspiracy theories, with unpredictable consequences. Empirically, sunlight isn't the best disinfectant. I make these claims by observing the local gradient and extrapolating.