24 ms·

As somebody from the first world who has had the experience of moderating Internet forums… free speech in the sense of “the government generally shouldn’t contr

• bluescrn 5y ago
  Governments don’t control these massively influential communications platforms (Maybe they should?) In some ways, huge tech companies are more powerful than governments. So why should they have the power to essentially remove ideas from public discussion?
  • boplicity 5y ago
    > So why should they have the power to essentially remove ideas from public discussion? They don't. They never have. You're ascribing way more power to tech companies than they've ever had. That being said, the combined power of tech companies and media companies -- of which there are many -- does have the ability you're talking about. (For example, Fox, Warner, Google, Nytimes, etc.) The lines certainly have become a bit blurred, with Comcast and Verizon buying media companies though.
    • ccn0p 5y ago
      I agree a single company doesn't have all the power, but for some reason they generally seem to act in concert with one another. Take for example the Hunter Biden laptop story. It was suppressed "by mistake" according to Jack himself [1]. Later, survey indicated many voters believed it was a "very important" story [2]. Another example is lab leak. Thus, yes, yes they do. [1] https://nypost.com/2021/03/25/dorsey-says-blocking-posts-hunter-biden-story-was-total-mistake/ https://nypost.com/2021/03/25/dorsey-says-blocking-posts-hun... [2] https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/march_2022/hunter_s_laptop_from_hell_is_an_important_story_voters_sayhttps://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/march_2022/hunter_s_laptop_from_hell_is_an_important_story_voters_say https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/gen...
      • themitigating 5y ago
        Do you have any evidence the laptop story suppression wasn't a mistake?
        • overrun11 5y ago
          Do you have evidence that it wasn't? Why do you get to decide the null hypothesis?
          • themitigating 5y ago
            Twitter claimed it was a mistake, that's all the information we have. You're claiming they are lying, you have to offer evidence to prove that claim.
            • overrun11 5y ago
              You've ignored the point. Twitter made the claim that they made a mistake, should they be held to your standard that "you have to offer evidence to prove that claim."
        • the_doctah 5y ago
          I'm sorry, you think every social media company censoring a story at the same time was somehow a mistake??
      • boplicity 5y ago
        Strangely, practically everyone knows about the Hunter Biden laptop story, so no, that was certainly not very suppressed -- and you certainly did see articles about it in established media organizations, just not all of them. So, no, it was not "essentially removed" from "public discussion" as the OP claimed. In fact, your bringing up the story (which I immediately recognized) proves the point. It is indeed, part of public discussion.
        • overrun11 5y ago
  • emteycz 5y ago
    What? I am not aware of a single company that is at least as powerful as the smallest government. What do you mean?
    • kevingadd 5y ago
      Try paying for things at a shop or service that only accepts credit cards when you've been banned from having one. Who bans you from that? Payment processors. If all the insurance companies decide they won't insure you, how will you get health care? The government had to intervene (with the ACA) because that particular problem was so bad. People trying to immigrate often have to use email to communicate with government agencies. If gmail bans their account, they can no longer talk to the immigration agency. I've seen a couple different people have this exact problem. There are plenty of other examples. Certainly governments have the power to do all these things as well, but large influential companies can absolutely ruin your life if you get the wrong kind of attention (or in the case of automated policy decisions, get unlucky).
      • emteycz 5y ago
        This is something much different from the previous claim (that companies are as powerful as states). None of this means that the company is more powerful than any state. And regardless - no business is going to send you to prison, while the state can. No business will shoot you, while the state can. So even in this interpretation of "how much can they fuck up my life" the state wins.
        • kevingadd 5y ago
          Many of the things I cited are powers that businesses have and the US government does not have. I don't know why this is hard to understand. Businesses are free to shoot you as well, private security guards can carry guns in most parts of the US. Businesses can also send you to prison via false police reports, which is a thing that has happened periodically.
          • emteycz 5y ago
  • sp332 5y ago
    That sounds like an argument against monopolies, not and argument against moderation.
    • mab122 5y ago
      or argument *for* inter-op of those platforms (reducing network effects of monopolies)
  • jermaustin1 5y ago
    > So why should they have the power to essentially remove ideas from public discussion? A private company is not required to publish your rants on the current state of underground mole peoples' infiltration of the highest offices of the world's governments. If you somehow get it onto the platform, and they are made aware of it, they can unpublished it. Just like the NYT is not required to post every opinion piece that is submitted to them.
    • nottorp 5y ago
      > Just like the NYT is not required to post every opinion piece that is submitted to them. That worked when there were more than two platforms to post your opinions on.
      • jermaustin1 5y ago
        You say that like there aren't hundreds of social media platforms out there now and like it isn't trivial for a technical person to set up your own social media service on some "bulletproof host" in Lithuania or Russia. There isn't a dearth of social media. There are a couple of GIANT social media websites that have sprung up in the last 2 decades, but there are dozens of semi-popular niche-ier forums that cater to any rant you might want to leave.
      • rosndo 5y ago
        Today there are more platforms to post your opinions on than ever before.
        • mojzu 5y ago
          And very easy ways for people to create their own platforms/blogs with their own rules too, they almost certainly won't have the same reach as the larger platforms but it seems to be a common view that Facebook/Twitter/etc. owe people access to their platform and maximum potential audience for some reason. Personally I really don't understand how those espousing free speech principles are making arguments that seem to require other private individuals and companies to repeat/amplify speech they don't want to
  • zamfi 5y ago
    > In some ways, huge tech companies are more powerful than governments Sure, but in other ways, they are not. They do not, for example, break the government's monopoly on force; tech companies generally cannot compel you to pay taxes or imprison you. If you make them unhappy, mostly the worst thing they can do is ignore you -- and unlike a government, they cannot force others to ignore you, and they cannot much affect your life outside of their own transactions with you. The centralization of multiple forms of power is more concerning than the mere existence of power in separate spheres. You say "maybe they should?" but collaboration between the organization that controls force and the organizations that control speech seems like an opportunity for much more substantial oppression.
  • wsc981 5y ago
    > Governments don’t control these massively influential communications platforms (Maybe they should?) Trusted News Initiative says otherwise. Which is why all big platforms either censor or warn public on information that is counter to the Western governments narratives.
  • 542458 5y ago
    If social media companies actually had the true power to remove topics from public discussion, there would not be public discussion on increasing regulation on these companies or breaking them up.
    • ccn0p 5y ago
      the key word we might be hung up on is "remove". they can't just remove, but they can sway just enough to have real social impact.
      • themitigating 5y ago
        And yet Trump was elected in 2016 and almost in 2020. Polls also indicate he would win an election between him and Biden right now. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/600146-poll-trump-leads-biden-harris-in-2024-matchups/ https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/600146-poll-trump-lead... 33% of the US population thinks the 2020 election was stolen https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-12-28/poll-a-third-of-americans-question-legitimacy-of-biden-victory-nearly-a-year-since-jan-6 https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-12-28/pol... What evidence do you have that they hold sway over society?
        • Iwan-Zotow 5y ago
          Ever heard about HB laptop?
          • themitigating 5y ago
            Yes, what about it?
            • refurb 5y ago
              Well the former Democratic PAC leader now Facebook PR executive had that story pulled until such time it could be “fact checked”. Still waiting 16 months later. https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1316395902479872000 https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1316395902479872000
• jansen555 5y ago
• mc32 5y ago
  HN may be “heavily” as you say, moderated, but you are allowed to discuss things that counter any narrative as long as you make a reasonable effort at presenting your ideas in a reasonable way. You don’t get banned for criticizing bitcoin, VCs, Hunter Biden, US policies, BLM, the police, inflation, gender, feminism, masculinity, etc., etc, whereas Twitter tends to ban things that go counter to particular narratives even in the face of evidence. You’re a epidemiologist and critique Covid policies? Not allowed!!!
  • SirHound 5y ago
    Drawing equivalence between Twitter bans and government censorship is the height of western privileged ignorance.
    • mc32 5y ago
      Not when the government lobbies the companies for certain viewpoints.
    • jrsj 5y ago
      Not when there’s bidirectional communication happening between govt and tech companies on these issues. We’ve seen them coordinate to erase particular stories from the public narrative etc. They literally have manipulated elections by doing this. These companies were engaged in a covert surveillance program on behalf of intelligence agencies too. That by itself makes them effectively an extension of the state.
    • scurraorbis 5y ago
      • philistine 5y ago
        The only time I see rank propaganda on HN, it’s about stuff Elon Musk loves, like the blockchain or self-driving cars. I dread what he’ll do to Twitter.
        • 5y ago
• bko 5y ago
  > This is key for a good user experience Do you think Twitter optimizes their speech policies for a good user experience? My impression is that things that are very mainstream are disallowed on Twitter while very fringe ideas as allowed
  • 542458 5y ago
    I apologize if I was unclear - the post I was replying to was making a general statement about moderation, and so was I. Some level of moderation is essential to keep good user experience. I do not know enough about twitter’s particular moderation policies to comment on them. It is possible (and likely) that they could be improved - but I do not think removing all moderation would be an improvement.
    • bko 5y ago
      Thanks for clearing that up. Moderation is definitely important but moderation, apart from the obvious abuse and illegality, should be done on the smallest level possible. Banning someone from a platform for expressing an offensive view is not moderation; its censorship. Creating customizable user filters or groups that hide these people is a better answer. Reddit has a lot of their own problems, but the federated model of subreddits works. The problem arises when some subreddits are banned or the overlap of mods on each subreddit, but in principal its correct. I would love shared filters on twitter. For instance, if I don't want to hear things about topic X, I can download a topic X filter that's community maintained that hides posts from troll accounts or keywords. You can mix and match filters. This is better than banning people. Is twitter going to allow back all those people that were banned for discussing lab theory?
      • philistine 5y ago
        Show me people banned for only discussing the lab theory. There was a global mistake in harshly categorizing the lab leak theory as wrong, but the people who were banned were banned because they used the theory (which it still is) to advance dangerous views that Twitter decided not to engage with. There’s the word media in social media. A newspaper will carry a theory, but not an article using the theory to spuriously decry public health mesures.
• hwers 5y ago
  I think we're not discussing the real point here which isn't whether "full completely unregulated free speech" should be the norm on twitter or not. Elon isn't proposing allowing CP or whatever the worst stuff you see on 8chan is. The battleground is simply in a much subtler grey area of idea space. Elon basically seems to think there's been push to disallow discussion about quite reasonable subjects (which indeed would have been allowed on HN too, e.g. covid vaccine pros and cons) and he'd like it to be allowed again. Note also that twitter is quite different from traditional forums in the way it's structured. You follow people, you can block people. The analogy to traditional forums needing moderation isn't really one-to-one.
  • mupuff1234 5y ago
    Pretty sure you can discuss cons of vaccinations as long as you don't delve into conspiracy theories / claims without scientific backing. Edit: But I do recall the COVID origin discussion being quite a censorship trainwreck.
    • hwers 5y ago
      Making claims without scientific backing probably shouldn't be a bannable offence. The spirit of science is about discussion and counter arguments and being open to being wrong or even the idea that the consensus might be invalid, not about coercion.
      • JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > spirit of science is about discussion and counter arguments and being open to being wrong or even the idea that the consensus might be invalid I have seen very few antivax arguments made in the spirit of science. Those that were got repeated lacking the original comment’s nuance. Keep in mind that the spirit of science was developed with the gates of wealth, literacy and education in mind. Remove those, add in anonymity, or even pseudonymity, and the system veers towards chaos. We are far more open, today, than the Enlightenment-era West was. That requires new tools and guardrails. (What this discussion, broadly, is about.)
• rubyfan 5y ago
  100% agree. Freedom of speech protects you _from_ government. The idea that government should compel commercial or private entities to give all voices a megaphone is misguided.
  • bko 5y ago
    What about if the government tells private platforms what speech is acceptable, going so far as flagging "problematic" posts?
    • JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > What about if the government tells private platforms what speech is acceptable, going so far as flagging "problematic" posts? Then it would be a clearly different situation.
      • bko 5y ago
        > Biden administration ‘flagging problematic posts for Facebook,’ Psaki says If you think that social medias speech policies are developed in a vacuum from influence from politicians, then you're mistaken. How could it be? Imagine being a CEO and getting dragged in front of Congress every 6 months to explain yourself. Or politicians calling your platform a threat to democracy and threatening to break you up. You think that would have no impact on your speech policies? What would government restriction on speech look like if not soft (effective) influence on big media companies? https://news.yahoo.com/biden-administration-flagging-problematic-posts-202600638.html https://news.yahoo.com/biden-administration-flagging-problem...
        • JumpCrisscross 5y ago
          > if you think that social medias speech policies are developed in a vacuum from influence from politicians Moving the goalpost. Nobody claimed private companies should ignore government sources. You asked about “the government tell[ing] private platforms what speech is acceptable.” That would be a First Amendment violation. > What would government restriction on speech look like if not soft (effective) influence on big media companies? Flippantly: Russia. Less flippantly: freedoms exist in balance. Taking an absolutist stance on individual speech curtails freedom of association. In practice, I suspect it will make most social media unusable in its current form. (Which may be for the worst.)
• radu_floricica 5y ago
  Some private enterprises are treated like government services and regulated as such. Utilities, for example. I doubt there are many countries where the electricity company can fire a paying client. The key is not who manages or owns the business, but whether it's a commons platform - something needed to function in society. So yeah, there's a pretty strong case to be made that certain internet companies are like that. Can you survive without social media? Sure, but you can also survive without sewer. It's just a lot harder to live a normal life.
  • jliptzin 5y ago
    Comparing social media to sewage is appropriate because they are both filled with shit, not because they are both essential to living a normal life.
  • gitfan86 5y ago
    Electricity and Sewer can and will be cutoff if you do not follow the terms of service. If the electric company discovers that you do not have a circuit breaker you will be cutoff.
    • HideousKojima 5y ago
      Sure, but the terms of service cannot legally include such things as "You have political opinions we dislike" as a valid reason for terminating service.
      • themitigating 5y ago
        You're poor, a.k.a a class of society.
      • gitfan86 5y ago
        Why would they? They are not providing a service for sharing opinions. Twitter is a service for sharing your opinions with the public. Obviously terms of service are going to include limits around your ability to share your opinions. If the service had no terms, that would mean that you could post 1 million spam replies to every single tweet anyone made. Similarly Twitter's TOS shouldn't include anything around electricity usage.
• tomp 5y ago
  This is a false dichotomy. There are other ways to implement moderation that isn't censorship. I've proposed "blocklists" before, where users could create different blocklists (e.g. "no vegans"), other users could subscribe to them, and there would be some default blocklists (e.g. "no porn" and "no gore") that people could also unsubscribe...
  • bcrl 5y ago
    The only problem with that idea is that the blocklists will inevitably end up being used to slander and malign other groups as people will use them to assign unpleasant labels to others. In the end, someone will need to moderate the lists, so you're right back at the same moderation problem. Humans on the internet tend to find all the creative ways to be assholes-at-scale.
    • dataduck 5y ago
      So long as everyone using the platform can modify their own list, no it's not the same problem at all. The question is: do I get to decide who I listen to, or do you?
      • philistine 5y ago
        Do you get to decide who can use Twitter, or does Twitter?
      • ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
        Who to listen to, where? Out on the street? You do. On someone else's platform? Also you. You choosing to listen to something doesn't mean you also get to force whatever platforms you want, to carry whatever you choose to listen to. I find it hard to believe that there is someone you want to listen to, who you currently aren't able to, because twitter deplatformed them.
      • bcrl 5y ago
        You can already block people on Twitter. The problem arises with shared blocklists. How is a shared blocklist identified? Well, the odds are that it will probably need to have a name. You now have the following problem: the name can be used to promote hate if the name of that blocklist is visible to other users, or to falsely associate a given user with other nefarious groups, as Google will probably crawl the lists and the results will show up in searches. The whole thing ends up being exactly an added moderation mess, just like what you started with, but with a few more layers of indirection and different ways it can be abused. Plus you still have the original problem of moderating messages that needs to be solved. Solutions like this look great initially if everyone uses them properly, but everything falls apart when people inevitably start actively abusing the new feature. The design needs to handle assholes-at-scale from the outset.
• JohnWhigham 5y ago
  What if ISPs start really inspecting your traffic and then ban you when you start visiting certain sites they don't like? You going to say the same thing then especially when how ingrained the Internet has become in everyday life?
  • chasd00 5y ago
    I’m surprised this hasn’t already happened. If everyone’s browsing history was published in the way everyone’s opinion is published on twitter then I bet ISPs would be blocking sites left and right
• macspoofing 5y ago
  >free speech in the sense of “everybody should be forced to platform every idea” is silly IMO. That's a red-herring. The debate isn't really about free speech rights on a private platform. 'Web-scale' platforms will always need a certain level of moderation. This debate is really about the who is within the Overton window and who isn't. Conservatives and certain parts of the Progressive Left want to be within this Overton window, while mainstream Democrats want to keep them out. Having said that, there is a related matter of government's indirect incursion into moderation policies of private social media companies, by way of use of executive and legislative threats, and what that actually means for constitutionally protected speech. Right now that part is ignored by the supporters of one political party because it serves their political goals.
• jrsj 5y ago
  Hacker News isn’t comparable to Twitter. They’re not doing coordinated censorship with other big tech companies or working on behalf of intelligence agencies to spy on their users etc. Twitter & other large corps aren’t just private companies because they have such strong relationships with the government. Politicians also threaten to penalize them for not doing censorship the way that they want, so they aren’t really acting in a free market regardless.
  • jameshart 5y ago
    > They’re not doing coordinated censorship with other big tech companies You ever notice how you’re not permitted to comment on Y-combinator company announcement posts on HN?
    • saagarjha 5y ago
      You can comment on anything but job ads on this site.
    • jrsj 5y ago
      Not really in the same ballpark as simultaneously banning an individual or a news story across every social media platform
  • philistine 5y ago
    Looking at what is not allowed on HN, the same things are disallowed here. How is that not the same? Elon will either let Twitter be run over by political spam and see it lose its value, or realize he needs to healthily stifle some speech to maintain his investment.
    • phkahler 5y ago
      >> Looking at what is not allowed on HN, the same things are disallowed here. How is that not the same? Not true. If Donald trump wanted to post here on tech or business I think he'd be allowed. The ban hammer might come quick not because of his views, but his inflamitory style. Twitter sensors ideas, not language.
• thaway2839 5y ago
  It's, in fact, the opposite of free speech. Now, there may be an argument that Twitter, for example, has become such an integral part of the public square that the government SHOULD compel Twitter to allow every form of speech on it. And that could be a reasonable argument to make. What it wouldn't be is free speech. It would, in fact, be coerced speech.
• nradov 5y ago
  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested extending common carrier legislation to cover social media platforms. That would essentially prevent them from censoring any content legal in the US. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2021/04/09/justice-thomas-sends-a-message-on-social-media-regulation/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2021/04/09/justice-t... I don't understand your point about user experience. Twitter is already mostly low effort flame wars, political proselytizing, and porn. But people seem to still use it anyway.
• tailspin2019 5y ago
  > Note that you’re choosing to spend your time on HN (a relatively strongly moderated forum) instead of a less moderated forum like 8chan’s This is a good point! I agree with both you and the parent - which is to say that I'm entirely torn on this subject. Moderation on platforms makes sense. Trying to work out where to draw the line is difficult. And free speech is incredibly important. How to balance these competing concerns is really beyond me. I'm a proponent of the idea of "the solution to bad speech, is more speech", but if you take this to its logical conclusion on the internet, you often end up in the wild west.
  • themitigating 5y ago
    "I'm a proponent of the idea of "the solution to bad speech, is more speech", but if you take this to its logical conclusion on the internet, you often end up in the wild west." If that's the logical conclusion, and I'm making the assumption this based on your observations, why are you a proponent of it? "I think this is for the best, however it always leads to problems"
    • tailspin2019 5y ago
      > "I think this is for the best, however it always leads to problems" Well to be fair, I did say I was torn on this and have no answers :) The concept of "the solution to bad speech, being more speech" is somewhat of a safe default to me. All things being equal, I think it's more important to err on the side of protecting the voices of those who should and need to be heard, while accepting the risk that these very protections may also inadvertently benefit "extremists" in that they too are more likely to be heard. I prefer this balance, as opposed to the opposite, of strict moderation. Silencing the voices of those with something important to say, in order to ensure that we don't let any extremists get their views out. So that's my default starting position. But I'm not absolutist about it. I think we can't be too binary about it, at either end of the spectrum. The answer is not one of two choices, "100% no free speech" or "100% free speech". Instead, it's presumably somewhere in the middle. So the answer is probably, "light touch, just enough moderation, based on some form of consensus". How you define "just enough" is a tough problem. Perhaps it's the consensus part that's missing at the moment.
• spamizbad 5y ago
  You raise a good point that does make me wonder: why isn’t there more pressure from free speech advocates to liberalize moderation on HN?
  • saagarjha 5y ago
    Relevant username ;)
  • EL_Loco 5y ago
    Because moderation here works quite well and they usually aren't the ones being moderated. Like someone wrote earlier in this thread, why aren't the free speech advocates using less HN to debate hacker/tech stuff and using more 8chan or something?
    • bnralt 5y ago
      > Because moderation here works quite well I think that probably stems mostly from Hacker News avoiding controversial subjects in general. When they do slip through, the moderation can be pretty bad, particularly when it comes to new accounts. I've seem innocuous comments shadowbanned for voicing fairly milquetoast heterodox opinions (with shadowbanning in general being a pretty unpleasant action). Usually that isn't an issue with accounts that have been here for a long time, but since Hacker News doesn't allow people to delete comments, you have to be comfortable with having that comment tied to you for decades to come (not always the safest thing in this environment). The whole thing ends up exerting a chilling effect on alternative opinions.
  • P_I_Staker 5y ago
    If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Discourse on HN is a breath of fresh air compared to reddit, where everything is a knockdown, dragout deathmatch.
  • moduspol 5y ago
    If the moderation here starts banning / shadow-banning / hiding prominent voices that run counter to HN's politics, they will.
• Chris2048 5y ago
  The difference between the two is less significant when a few large tech companies monopolise online discourse. Water an electricity is considered a "utility" but still delivered by many private companies - why isn't the same argument used there? I'm sure plenty of people would support cutting off utilities for neo-nazis; that doesn't men it's a good precedent. Consider gabber et al was cut off by their hosting companies, a much harder space to enter for non-established companies - maybe net-neutrality should be extended from traffic to hosting/computing facilities? > Left alone user content rapidly devolves > you need curation and moderation the thing about online content is that it doesn't work like a free-speech bazaar. You can choose which soapbox you want to visit. You can choose what networks to participate in. Also, it should be noted that that these types of places sometime devolve because of bubbles/moderation; e.g. reddit /politics/ is a toxic echo chamber because it bans/downvotes dissenting opinion, resulting in a groupthink-mentality. > instead of a less moderated forum like 8chan’s and that's a choice, until it isn't (e.g. 8chan is banned/blocked/deplatformed)
• jdrc 5y ago
  what brought people here was not the moderation, but the (perceived) access to SV people and capital
• rjzzleep 5y ago
  There is a fairly interesting documentary of what Denmark thinks of free speech. To an extent where politicians are protected from setting the Quran on fire, full well knowing that it is designed to incite hatred. I don't know what the danish voice on silencing dissenting eastern perspectives on the war in Ukraine is, but the EU citizens seem to be themselves cheering on censorship more and more these days. The documentary itself is quite interesting in my opinion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sM8p7hnprM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sM8p7hnprM
• Mezzie 5y ago
  I generally agree with you, but one thing that's been making me extremely uncomfortable lately (since 2016) is the attacking of alternate platforms/communities that are built. Back in The Day(TM), when people had issues with mod/admin decisions and they couldn't be resolved, they'd just spin off a new commmunity/chatroom/forum/etc. Some people would move, some would stay in both, and we'd wait to see if the disagreeing faction was large enough to sustain itself. If so, you'd just end up with 2/3 places to go to talk about X instead of 1. Now it's more common to try to get 'bad' platforms dehosted altogether (e.g. Parler/Gab), subreddits try to get their 'alternatives' banned, and any company/group that challenges a big group is going to be bought out or otherwise dealt with. (See: FB's gobbling of companies to try to keep people in their garden instead of letting people chose which gardens they enjoy.) We used to have the opportunity to walk into the woods and make our own playground. Now people will follow you and attack you for that. THAT'S the problem. Also we're becoming really fond of demanding community loyalty. HN doesn't have this problem (which is one reason I show up), but on other social media sites, it can be, for instance, forbidden to link to/talk about certain other sites. For example, on Reddit, it's common to ban people for posting in the 'wrong' Reddits, and on Twitter finding out somebody participates somewhere 'bad' is practically open season. I should be able to go on HN and /b/, provided I follow my host's rules. I should also be able to set up my OWN site and explicitly say it's because I disagree with - say - HN's moderation policies without worrying about the site being attacked.
  • starfallg 5y ago
    That's really about monopolies on information and other gateways more than anything. We are so used to consolidation to one or few large platforms for us to access information or services. This is in large part due to network effects, but also due to poor regulation as well as us being lazy. So if we have lot of different options to access information and your views are still unwelcome in all but the most extreme places, then I think it reflects quite poorly on your views. You might not get a platform, but that doesn't mean you're being persecuted.
    • Mezzie 5y ago
      It is, but I would argue that was one of the reasons for the establishment of free speech. Back when we were conceiving of free speech as a right, it was in direct response to a monopoly on information. In that case, it was the government backing up their monopoly on information with their monopoly on force. Now, it's companies backing up their oligarchy on information with their resources. I think the problem is the monopoly on information, not its source. I understand some people disagree. > So if we have lot of different options to access information and your views are still unwelcome in all but the most extreme places, then I think it reflects quite poorly on your views. You might not get a platform, but that doesn't mean you're being persecuted. I agree with this. It's just important to still let those extreme places exist.
• mollusk_bound 5y ago
  It's frustrating that this topic keeps being discussed as if there are only two options. Why not provide each individual users with powerful tools that let them specify the type of content they want to see and when. They can have a large amount of presets and with a single button click users can change what they'll be seeing or they can spend some time and modify it to their liking. People can also share the filters they created. Even better create an open API and let companies compete with each other over who provides the best filters. Moderation is important, but why leave it up to executives at these massive companies to decide what is acceptable and what isn't. Let each user decide for themselves.
  • gedy 5y ago
    > Why not provide each individual users with powerful tools that let them specify the type of content they want to see and when. Agreed, but that's the issue - many people don't want anyone to see some content because they are convinced such misinformation causes people they don't like to be elected, etc. I'm of the opinion that filtering is its own type of propaganda.
  • 542458 5y ago
    > Why not provide each individual users with powerful tools that let them specify the type of content they want to see and when Tools like adblock/ublock/etc dramatically improve user experience and performance on the internet, yet less than 30% of desktop users employ adblocking. Requiring end-users to set up filters to not be accosted by content that most people find objectionable will generally not be a winning proposition.
    • mollusk_bound 5y ago
      I don't think that is a good analogy. In this case these filters would be presented to you as you setup your account. In addition with filter sharing any user would only be one button press away from adopting someones else's filter. There could be a wide diversity of filters and users can change their filter by the minute. Imagine if browsers treated adblock/ublock/etc as integral parts of your experience and not as an extra add-on.
• 300bps 5y ago
  Internet forum moderation is nothing like government censorship. If you don’t like a forum’s moderation policies, you can go to another forum. If you run afoul of your government’s censorship, they can jail you or even end your life.
  • Koshkin 5y ago
    But some forums like Twitter (and HN, for that matter) are pretty unique, IMO.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
  > Left alone user content rapidly devolves into the most low-effort salient content - flame wars, political proselytizing and porn, mostly. Polemics, porn, and politics
• LanceH 5y ago
  It does become an issue of government censorship when the heads of these companies are hauled before congress with the threat of breakup or regulation, while simultaneously being questioned about the "incorrect" speech they allow on their platforms.
• parkingrift 5y ago
  It is completely acceptable for you to choose to moderate your platform to only allow the content you choose. The caveat is that you should lose your 230 protections. We should only protect neutral, lawful, platforms from user generated content.
• core-utility 5y ago
  I think the large issue with some of these major platforms is that there's some pretty transparent government "suggestion" into these platforms regulating speech that the government doesn't like. It's along the lines of "take care of this or you'll be getting some "help" with your taxes, stocks, etc."
• oceanplexian 5y ago
  Twitter is not a forum though. I understand the need to moderate a forum, since it’s equivalent to a public place with a limited number of rooms. Twitter, on the other hand doesn’t map to that model. If me and my friends want to tweet things to our group, no one is being forced to follow or read that content. I don’t see any justification to moderate that, beyond content that’s actually illegal like child porn, terrorism, etc.
• tapatio 5y ago
  Never heard of 8chan. Quick Google search indicates it is shutdown.
• slibhb 5y ago
  People have to understand that by accepting the concept of "platforming," they're joining the anti-free speech camp. The whole idea of "platforming" is that there should be no obligation to allow opinions with which the "platform" disagrees. Disagreement occurs whenever the least tolerant, most militant group of employees says so. Contrary to this, we should have a free speech culture where the norm is that people can say what they want. Moderation is necessary but it should always be an exception. > Note that you’re choosing to spend your time on HN (a relatively strongly moderated forum) instead of a less moderated forum like 8chan’s /b/. Moderation on HN is based on tone and quality, not content. This distinguishes it from almost everywhere else on the internet.
  • the_doctah 5y ago
    "Platforming" is just weasel wording by people who want to justify censorship. Just like "misinformation" has become a blanket justification to censor. Once you have human arbiters determining what is and what is not "good" information, and censoring based on it, you are acting in bad faith against free speech.
    • smachiz 5y ago
      Do you think they just let anyone publish in a newspaper? Outside of cable access, you couldn't just hop on TV previously either. This is entirely a social media age problem. This isn't "OMG, we're censoring" it's "we're applying the same limitations that have always existed on a new medium" - which is people deciding on what is in good taste (to them) and appropriate for their platform (to them).
      • slibhb 5y ago
        They don't let "just anyone" publish in a newspaper but almost all major newspapers allow voices across the political spectrum in the form of letters and op-eds. That's what free speech culture is about. It's the idea that "everyone gets their say" and by disagreeing and arguing, we get closer to the truth. It's sad that more and more people are taking your view, which is that people can publish contrary opinions but there's no reason in particular to do so.
• nokcha 5y ago
  For Twitter, perhaps a good compromise would be: instead of banning problematic accounts, set to them a "default-mute" state where only people who choose to follow the account can see its tweets. See also Section 1.F of https://www.journaloffreespeechlaw.org/volokh.pdf https://www.journaloffreespeechlaw.org/volokh.pdf , which distinguishes how Twitter's 'hosting' function might be treated differently from its curation functions.
• josephcsible 5y ago
  > “everybody should be forced to platform every idea” Not everybody should have to, but the behemoths that are the only thing that resembles a public square today, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit, should have to.
• geodel 5y ago
  It may be good idea hundred years back where (only?) government was being all powerful in a person's life . So if government denied people speech they are roughly blocked from everywhere. Now with huge dependency on cloud/ social platform to conduct daily life they are pretty much government. SO getting blocked from them has much larger impact then it would be 50-100 years back. Spending time or getting blocked on HN is not as materially impacting as it would be on big cloud services. So it does not compare well.
• rayiner 5y ago
  Nobody is upset that Twitter is moderating porn. (And in fact it allows porn!) People are upset that Twitter censored what turned out to be a true story about the son of the now President, or that you can be blocked or banned for running afoul of rules of decorum embraced by a small minority of the population. If Twitter banned porn and not those other things, people wouldn't be complaining!
• jelder 5y ago
  Not enough people are aware of the Paradox of Tolerance: "The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  • refurb 5y ago
    I find it hilarious when this paradox is trotted out because Popper’s final conclusion was we should tolerate intolerance up until it promotes imminent violence. He’d be entirely opposed to censoring intolerant views the way most people think of intolerance.
  • popper_bot 5y ago
    I think everyone on the Internet has heard of that paradox by now, and it is always misinterpreted by people who only want their speech to be allowed. Popper was talking about literal Nazis. We do not know what percentage of the numerous Twitter bans he would have approved (my guess is around 5%). We do not know if he would have been astonished by the fact that proponents of his paradox never use it against overt communist propaganda but only against alleged fascist propaganda (the bar for being called a Nazi has never been lower).
• farmerstan 5y ago
  It’s not just the government. Companies like Twitter are so ubiquitous that they are a form of government entity now, especially when they enforce government talking points. When Twitter decides that talking about the lab leak theory gets you kicked off the platform, they are becoming nothing more than a government tool. This was the breaking point for Musk and for me as well. Not giving a “platform” to alternative views, no matter how “damaging” you or the government feels it is is crucial for a democracy.
• kodah 5y ago
  I think this topic is a little messier than how you put it. 4chan's /b/ is the same exact place that: - posted racist, misogynist, misandrist, and shocking porn - stood up to scientology - acted as an obfuscator for anonymous - led raids on other communities A normal person can pick the things out of that list they don't want and say "be gone". The problem is, the other things on that list don't exist without it. This is generally the allegory and type of connection that keeps our idea of "government free speech" tied somewhat closely with (what I call) "personal free speech". On the other hand, I moderate smaller communities than /b/ (and other large forums) and I agree, in these smaller settings there are left and right political grifters, there's content that will cause people to leave or backlash, and endless personal disputes that must be mediated. The problems between my small communities (a couple thousand) and large forums (hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions) are very different, and they serve a very different purpose in the larger ecosystem of communication that I think is difficult to quantify.
• LMYahooTFY 5y ago
  You're arguing as if "platforms" exist in a vacuum, sealed off from the the 'free expression area'. How much do you think Twitter matters?
• dang 5y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31025740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31025740. (Not for moderation reasons—simply to prune the thread so the server isn't quite as overwhelmed.)
  • moffkalast 5y ago
    You guys should start a fundraiser or something, so you can stop hosting this on your basement Raspberry Pi cluster and finally rent out some proper cloud hosting :D
• Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  There is a difference between a civil discourse and abuse filled with obscenities. There is also a difference between fair moderation and suppression of dissent. When I post on HN anything about Trump or vaccines, HN doesn't add a note to my post informing readers about the 'correct' view on the problem. HN does restrict personal insults, and does it consistently for all sides of the conversation. That is fair moderation. Because it is fair, I don't feel that my (or anyone) right for free speech is limited here. The spirit of free speech principle is not violated. Twitter, on the other hand, was applying their rules very selectively, discrediting views that they consider 'incorrect' with various notices, and blocking or restricting users with political views they don't like. That's suppression. Of course, Twitter, like other plaftorms, DOES have the right to run their platform as they see fit, private company and all, but here comes another facet of this problem: everything can formally be a private platform, yet everything can be run by the government. It is not a hypothetical situation, in Russia every remaining media source is directly or indirectly controlled by the government. Putin's best friend, an oligarch, owns all social networks in Russia, and can just shut down any user that tries to oppose the war. No, not censorship, free enterprises. It is a known fact that oligarchy can merge with the government very closely, and do become a de-facto cernsorship arm of the ruling party, while formally retaining their rights to block anyone who's views they don't like. This is not a theoretical problem and this is what happening now. So the free world is not facing a difficult problem, how to balance the possibility (and dire necessity!) of having a public discourse on painful problems faced by the society with the rights of the commercial platforms that this discourse takes place on. I'd prefer Twitter to be politically neutral than trying to actively taking one side. That would be better for them, for their users, and basically for everybody. And it is actually fully within their rights.
• NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  >Note that you’re choosing to spend your time on HN (a relatively strongly moderated forum) instead of a less moderated forum like 8chan’s /b/. >Free speech in the sense of “everybody should be forced to platform every idea” is silly IMO. This is a strawman. Nobody forced twitter to build twitter. When you build an open platform and let anyone sign up, you're offering a platform. When you then arbitrarily decide to remove people from it for wrongthink you're reneging on the deal. Framing it as "forced to platform every idea" is nonsense. Phone companies are literally required not to discriminate based on content and it's been on the whole a good thing. I don't know why social media gets to be both a platform and an editorial board. It's bullshit. >ote that you’re choosing to spend your time on HN (a relatively strongly moderated forum) instead of a less moderated forum like 8chan’s /b/. Why do moderators always act like a person can only use one website? Is it a power thing? I use reddit, facebook, hn, .win, poal, twitter, and 4chan almost every day. >If you want your platform to be about anything other than those, you need curation and moderation. This is key for a good user experience. This is just your opinion. For me a good user experience isn't even possible if I'm silenced or "moderated" (read: censored).