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> the vast majority of progress civilization has made has been under conditions much more regulated in terms of which ideas may propagate. Lots of good things

> the vast majority of progress civilization has made has been under conditions much more regulated in terms of which ideas may propagate. Lots of good things have happened in spite of bad conditions that hampered progress. These bad conditions have often revolved around a lack of freedom of expression, especially in the modern era, where this has been extensively documented. For example, there has historically been intense stigma for expressing skepticism of the local religion, and scientists have famously suffered for it. Should we bring that back as well, since most progress has been made under such conditions? If not, why? Do you like today's authorities better than those of centuries past?

beowulfey 5y ago
Aren’t we already there? Just replace local religion with local ideology/belief. Edit: parent expanded their comment.
- ianai 5y ago
  And isn’t twitter really reinforcing that already? So the sun rises and sets as it has for billions of years in the past and will another billion at least.
  - beowulfey 5y ago
    Yup, Twitter is just another “locality” no different than a town, state, or region. It has pockets of subgroups with different beliefs and has an overarching majority opinion. It is different only in the speed that communication travels peer to peer (and maybe in its size) but otherwise it is indeed the same shit that humanity does and has done for millennia.
    - ianai 5y ago
      Only you get the benefit of a whole, new organization of people to shame you into submission independent from your already binding social organizations. How wonderful. Edit-and I emphasize shame because the number of people who agree with everybody on earth is vanishingly small. Meanwhile, twitter does push your content to potentially everybody on earth. And we know that the people most likely to respond to content are those who disagree with it.
      - beowulfey 5y ago
        Well, it is optional at least. Nobody forces us to use it. I have one but barely look at it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ignoramous 5y ago
Well, their point is, allowing all speech may aid in spreading such stigma nationally, even if not globally. Local pressures are at least contained.
- civilized 5y ago
  I do not understand the eagerness to cede strong individual rights of expression to faceless institutions. Do you expect these institutions to be on your side? They will happily shut you up, permanently, the moment they do not like what you have to say.
  - jupp0r 5y ago
    There was never a right for your opinion to be published on a particular platform, nor is this free speech.
    - civilized 5y ago
      I do not think that social media platforms should be obligated to publish anything any individual wants published on them, and I do not think they should be legislated into a particular attitude toward speech. But a permissive default attitude with limited restrictions seems preferable to me, and such an attitude amounts to a policy of free speech in a facially obvious sense.
  - ss108 5y ago
    As the other poster said, our right to speech is not something a corporation needs to abide by, it's something the government needs to abide by (at least in the US). I see your point below about basically that we should have a more expansive view of the Right than the scope of its actual legal application, and, while I think it has merit, I ultimately think it's just a normative view that most of us simply don't share. If I don't like Twitter's policies, I won't use Twitter (I already don't, and would be even less inclined if someone like Musk owned it). Not to mention it's not clear that Twitter is even censoring speech--there is plenty of garbage on Twitter. The notion it's even an example of censorship is laughable, actually.
cft 5y ago
Modern local religion (at least in the US) is neomarxism, and FAANG serves it on their platforms, duly suppressing opposing speech.
- toiletfuneral 5y ago
  [dead]
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  You have misspelt Neoliberalism
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    Neoliberalism as a term is something that the Left came up with to describe all policies they don't like. There was something called Neoliberalism in Europe but doesn't really fit with what is called 'Neoliberalism' became and was basically a term had very little use for decade and was basically not used anymore by anybody. Then the term 'neoliberalism' was used in a article used to critic the Chile Coup and from there spiraled into a everything that is not far left. Its really a critic of the Far left against the Center Left and has from there expanded to basically encompass everything. Its a terrible term that the supposed neoliberals have never actually used. But I guess is a great term if leftist hang around with each other and try to prove how smart they are. Anybody from the center left to the far right is an evil neoliberal apparently. Because if not then claiming that traditional neoliberalism is the 'local religion' is crazy as you could win a single election with classical neoliberal ideas.
    - toiletfuneral 5y ago
      [dead]
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Jesus, please read Economics - the User's Guide', it explains that Neoliberalism is a school of thought in economics, real economists debate it's merits, along with classical, neoclassical, Shumpeterian, etc. This comment is so big on hating the left, it's bordering on 'race mixing is communism'
ss108 5y ago
> These bad conditions have often revolved around a lack of freedom of expression, especially in the modern era, where this has been extensively documented. Yeah, I just don't think this is true. I think a lot of progress has been agnostic in this sense--i.e., "free speech" in the sense that modern advocates of the term use it had nothing to do with, e.g., the invention of automobiles. Was it the yellow journalism of the late 19th/early 20th century that gave us any of the progress of those eras? It was instead property rights and basic rule-of-law things. > For example, there has historically been intense stigma for expressing skepticism of the local religion, and scientists have famously suffered for it. Again, a problem that wasn't solved via allowing every grandmother to be exposed to and propagate conspiracy theories; if anything, one might argue, those biases might have been continually reinforced if everyone had their say. Query whether the kinds of people who have brought about the positive changes to which you allude were analogous to Fauci or whether they were analogous to Breitbart.
- civilized 5y ago
  This argument always revolves around whether the authority with the power to restrict speech can be trusted not to abuse that power. I don't think the state can be trusted to decide what is propaganda and what is a conspiracy theory. Historically, states have been the foremost perpetrators of propaganda and conspiracy theories. Democracies are not immune. See the propaganda efforts surrounding the Vietnam and Iraq wars, just the top of a very long list. The protest movements against these wars were so powerful and inspirational because the state had so little power to suppress them. Similar movements in Russia and China essentially do not and can not exist. State power is a ratchet. Limits on state power, once removed, do not come back. Every power we give to the state today will be used against us decades from now, in an utterly different context, with utterly different people in charge. Giving away limits only makes sense to stave off imminent demise, which, panicked op-eds aside, is not what we face today. I mostly agree with the people who currently have the most power to censor speech. My interests and viewpoints would be advanced by increased state censorship. But I am still against it for the reasons above. I'm more okay with private companies deciding these things, because other private companies can do things differently. They do not have the monopoly on power that the state does. I think a cultural norm favoring free speech should apply, but it's reasonable for platforms to apply judgment to set more limits.

beowulfey 5y ago

Aren’t we already there? Just replace local religion with local ideology/belief. Edit: parent expanded their comment.

ianai 5y ago
And isn’t twitter really reinforcing that already? So the sun rises and sets as it has for billions of years in the past and will another billion at least.
- beowulfey 5y ago
  Yup, Twitter is just another “locality” no different than a town, state, or region. It has pockets of subgroups with different beliefs and has an overarching majority opinion. It is different only in the speed that communication travels peer to peer (and maybe in its size) but otherwise it is indeed the same shit that humanity does and has done for millennia.
  - ianai 5y ago
    Only you get the benefit of a whole, new organization of people to shame you into submission independent from your already binding social organizations. How wonderful. Edit-and I emphasize shame because the number of people who agree with everybody on earth is vanishingly small. Meanwhile, twitter does push your content to potentially everybody on earth. And we know that the people most likely to respond to content are those who disagree with it.
    - beowulfey 5y ago
      Well, it is optional at least. Nobody forces us to use it. I have one but barely look at it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ignoramous 5y ago

Well, their point is, allowing all speech may aid in spreading such stigma nationally, even if not globally. Local pressures are at least contained.

civilized 5y ago
I do not understand the eagerness to cede strong individual rights of expression to faceless institutions. Do you expect these institutions to be on your side? They will happily shut you up, permanently, the moment they do not like what you have to say.
- jupp0r 5y ago
  There was never a right for your opinion to be published on a particular platform, nor is this free speech.
  - civilized 5y ago
    I do not think that social media platforms should be obligated to publish anything any individual wants published on them, and I do not think they should be legislated into a particular attitude toward speech. But a permissive default attitude with limited restrictions seems preferable to me, and such an attitude amounts to a policy of free speech in a facially obvious sense.
- ss108 5y ago
  As the other poster said, our right to speech is not something a corporation needs to abide by, it's something the government needs to abide by (at least in the US). I see your point below about basically that we should have a more expansive view of the Right than the scope of its actual legal application, and, while I think it has merit, I ultimately think it's just a normative view that most of us simply don't share. If I don't like Twitter's policies, I won't use Twitter (I already don't, and would be even less inclined if someone like Musk owned it). Not to mention it's not clear that Twitter is even censoring speech--there is plenty of garbage on Twitter. The notion it's even an example of censorship is laughable, actually.

cft 5y ago

Modern local religion (at least in the US) is neomarxism, and FAANG serves it on their platforms, duly suppressing opposing speech.

toiletfuneral 5y ago
[dead]
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
You have misspelt Neoliberalism
- panick21_ 5y ago
  Neoliberalism as a term is something that the Left came up with to describe all policies they don't like. There was something called Neoliberalism in Europe but doesn't really fit with what is called 'Neoliberalism' became and was basically a term had very little use for decade and was basically not used anymore by anybody. Then the term 'neoliberalism' was used in a article used to critic the Chile Coup and from there spiraled into a everything that is not far left. Its really a critic of the Far left against the Center Left and has from there expanded to basically encompass everything. Its a terrible term that the supposed neoliberals have never actually used. But I guess is a great term if leftist hang around with each other and try to prove how smart they are. Anybody from the center left to the far right is an evil neoliberal apparently. Because if not then claiming that traditional neoliberalism is the 'local religion' is crazy as you could win a single election with classical neoliberal ideas.
  - toiletfuneral 5y ago
    [dead]
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Jesus, please read Economics - the User's Guide', it explains that Neoliberalism is a school of thought in economics, real economists debate it's merits, along with classical, neoclassical, Shumpeterian, etc. This comment is so big on hating the left, it's bordering on 'race mixing is communism'

ss108 5y ago

> These bad conditions have often revolved around a lack of freedom of expression, especially in the modern era, where this has been extensively documented. Yeah, I just don't think this is true. I think a lot of progress has been agnostic in this sense--i.e., "free speech" in the sense that modern advocates of the term use it had nothing to do with, e.g., the invention of automobiles. Was it the yellow journalism of the late 19th/early 20th century that gave us any of the progress of those eras? It was instead property rights and basic rule-of-law things. > For example, there has historically been intense stigma for expressing skepticism of the local religion, and scientists have famously suffered for it. Again, a problem that wasn't solved via allowing every grandmother to be exposed to and propagate conspiracy theories; if anything, one might argue, those biases might have been continually reinforced if everyone had their say. Query whether the kinds of people who have brought about the positive changes to which you allude were analogous to Fauci or whether they were analogous to Breitbart.

civilized 5y ago
This argument always revolves around whether the authority with the power to restrict speech can be trusted not to abuse that power. I don't think the state can be trusted to decide what is propaganda and what is a conspiracy theory. Historically, states have been the foremost perpetrators of propaganda and conspiracy theories. Democracies are not immune. See the propaganda efforts surrounding the Vietnam and Iraq wars, just the top of a very long list. The protest movements against these wars were so powerful and inspirational because the state had so little power to suppress them. Similar movements in Russia and China essentially do not and can not exist. State power is a ratchet. Limits on state power, once removed, do not come back. Every power we give to the state today will be used against us decades from now, in an utterly different context, with utterly different people in charge. Giving away limits only makes sense to stave off imminent demise, which, panicked op-eds aside, is not what we face today. I mostly agree with the people who currently have the most power to censor speech. My interests and viewpoints would be advanced by increased state censorship. But I am still against it for the reasons above. I'm more okay with private companies deciding these things, because other private companies can do things differently. They do not have the monopoly on power that the state does. I think a cultural norm favoring free speech should apply, but it's reasonable for platforms to apply judgment to set more limits.