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You are conflating the concept of free speech with "free reach." At least in the US, you have always had the right to create your own web site and say whatever

You are conflating the concept of free speech with "free reach." At least in the US, you have always had the right to create your own web site and say whatever you want. That right should never be taken away. However, another privately-run website should never be forced to broadcast anyone's content to hundreds of millions of other people.

needlefish 5y ago
theandrewbailey 5y ago
When that privately-run website becomes the public square (as Twitter wants or has done), it should forfeit some moderation rights.
- wan23 5y ago
  Twitter is an influential platform, but most people aren't on it. It's not that big of a deal.
  - _bfhp 5y ago
    Newspapers are an influential platform, but most people aren't reading them. It's not that big of a deal if the government decided to censor them, agreed?
    - cmatthias 5y ago
      Wait, either I'm missing something huge or this analogy is fatally flawed. Are you claiming that the _government_ is censoring Twitter?
    - themitigating 5y ago
      I don't think you understand the original comment. 1. Newspapers and Twitter should be able to and often censor themselves 2. The government shouldn't censor newspapers or Twitter.
      - _bfhp 4y ago
        On the contrary, the question I was asking is unclear: if, for a given platform, the only reason the wrong political speech shouldn’t be censored by rich and powerful men is because it’s too populous, what’s the difference if the government’s men decide what is too hateful/misinfo for Twitter and newspapers, versus the owners of those? This isn’t a rhetorical question either, I am curious for an answer! I guess a common answer would be “you can move off Twitter, but you can’t leave your country” which is odd two ways: first, if you say you want hate and misinfo banned from Twitter (whatever those mean) shouldn’t you want that for all other big platforms? And it’s very possible to move abroad while not spreading hate and fake facts in the meantime, isn’t it?
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > When that privately-run website becomes the public square (as Twitter wants or has done), it should forfeit some moderation rights That’s fair. Twitter is far from the public square. To lazy journalists and addicts, sure. But plenty of discourse manages just fine without it.
- yardie 5y ago
  My city has a public square and a privately owned mall. Just short of being violent you are allowed to do and say as you wish in the public square. But most people prefer to go to the much cleaner, privately owned mall. Where our values and polite society are reaffirmed. We choose moderation constantly in our lives, intentionally.
  - _bfhp 5y ago
    Do you ask the Chamber of Commerce which malls and stores to frequent whenever you want to shop? I think that would be a great way to avoid the bad areas with all the hobos and sketchy businesses that are probably fronts for drug dealers anyway. You can "choose moderation" by not viewing Twitter accounts and conversations you don't care about and muting words you dislike.
    - 7steps2much 5y ago
      > You can "choose moderation" by not viewing Twitter accounts and conversations you don't care about and muting words you dislike. In that case however I would also like the possibility to turn off any algorithms that recommend stuff to me. I want to see only things i put on my whitelist, otherwise i will have to constantly moderate and it will take up loads of my time. As long as that doesn't happen I am more than happy to let others do the moderation based on some frameworks that I agreed on (ToS in Twitters case).
      - _bfhp 4y ago
        If you think a ToS can capture every bigotry, propaganda technique, and misinformation campaign in perpetuity, I am impressed and hope for success in installing it on every centralized internet platform. Otherwise we would need individual humans at a corporation owned by rich men interpreting a vague set of principles about what "hate" and "misinfo" means, which is a different discussion... But I'm not sure how it could work without having users agree to a new ToS frequently, due to things like the Euphemism Treadmill: https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/08/ableist-language-and-the-euphemism-treadmill/ https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/08/ableist-language-and-t...
jrsj 5y ago
These companies all spy on you on behalf of the government and have censored legitimate news stories in a coordinated fashion to manipulate an election. Their connections to intelligence agencies alone make them effectively public institutions in my view.
- judge2020 5y ago
  If you have any proof feel free to drop it. The thing that has historically made a company bound to free speech is whether or not the government requires them to specifically search for certain types of infringing content. Coincidentally, this is the current legal framework that makes reporting images of child abuse legal: companies can voluntarily choose to to either not scan for CSAM, or can choose to scan for CSAM and must report it to NCMEC if they find any, and Apple is a prime example of a company that doesn't scan for it[0]. If the government is asking a company to go searching for specific otherwise legal content, that would be pretty good evidence for a court case to be made. 0: "Of all of the companies identified by NCMEC, I only saw one that had an unexpected decrease in reporting: Apple. According to NMEC, Apple submitted 205 reports in 2019 (a third my my reporting volume). Apple increased a little, to 265 in 2020, but then dropped in 2021 to only 160 reports. That's nearly a 22% decrease over two years!" https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/955-NCMEC-2021-Reporting.html https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/955-NC...
  - jrsj 5y ago
    Hunter Biden laptop story was legit & censoring it across all social media simultaneously was absurd. Considering his financial connections to Ukraine & current events it’s even more fucked up that it was censored.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Proof that it was censored by the United States government is what decides if it’s legal censorship.
      - 4y ago
snarf21 5y ago
Wow, that is an amazing way to describe it. I've never heard that before. That is a great framing of the debate: free speech doesn't mean free reach. I don't know who made it up (kudos to you if you did) but having terms to describe each part of the issue is very helpful. TIL
- rchaud 5y ago
  It's a useful framing to to have, because "reach" is indeed the issue. Analogies to "guy yelling in the town square" aren't valid with Twitter because the town square doesn't have algorithms that moderate how often the town crier is audible to the public. And the town square also never had automated bots that parrot the criers' views (or contrary view) at zero marginal cost. if Musk takes over Twitter, we'll be able to see how much 'freedom' he tolerates when the topics are things he has personal interests in.
- cmatthias 5y ago
  Thank you! I did not make it up but I don't recall where I first heard it, unfortunately. But I am definitely not claiming credit for it! :)
- aqsalose 5y ago
  So, what if all the publishers in one country just so happen to decide that Mr. Solzhenitsyn's book "Gulag Archipelago" is politically very uncomfortable to the ruling elite and all decline to publish it? This was Finlandized Finland in the 1970s. (To be clear, government didn't formally ban it. All publishing houses were privately owned companies. Yet somehow the decision was made.) Maybe nobody is entitled to book publishers providing "free reach" of publishing your book, especially in thousands of copies. Yet something went wrong there. I don't have a catchy slogan for it, but sometimes the decisions to prevent reach are functionally antithetical to the purpose of free press.
contravariant 5y ago
The problem with this narrow definition is that in it you don't have the right to create your own website, nobody is forced to sell you the IP, hostname or bandwidth, and to the extent that they are it's because letting private companies dictate public discourse is a bad idea. There's a fine line between not amplifying someone and silencing them, and when the choices of very few privately run websites affect who gets heard and who not then we should be wary about them amplifying harmful speech and equally wary about them silencing speech harmfully.
- sidlls 5y ago
  We don't consider something a right based on whether it costs money or not.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    I think they're saying that private companies aren't forced to actually rent you out a server, in which they aren't, but that's simply those companies' own free speech at work allowing them to choose who to associate with. The same freedom to not rent out servers to some racist/twitter canceled person gives them the freedom to not associate with people who want to host vile and disgusting porn on their servers.
- cmatthias 5y ago
  I reject the notion that this is a narrow definition. In the US, it's the _standard_ definition that was widely accepted until the recent advent of the "but muh free speech" people on twitter and other social media. I'm also quite skeptical of the "slippery slope"-style argument regarding IP connectivity. The number of available ISPs, web hosts, domain registrars, etc is pretty large. There are even web hosts that have an explicit policy of letting you host _any_ content you want as long as it's not against the law in their jurisdiction[0]. And they'll even host it on a subdomain of theirs, if for some reason you have trouble getting a hostname for your hateful or crazy (but legally protected from censorship by the government) blog. And if laws are ever made restricting what those web hosts can do, then we're getting into the realm of the government restricting free speech, which is a different conversation entirely. Regarding your second paragraph, the right to "get heard" is not a right guaranteed to anyone, at least not in the US. If you are spewing garbage, no one should be forced to hear it. (caveat: I'm in the US, so my opinions are US-centric) [0] for example, https://nearlyfreespeech.net https://nearlyfreespeech.net
psyc 5y ago
The ability to do this depends on the will of private hosting providers and ISPs. It’s the same problem. It’s infeasible to maintain a site that permits all legal speech. It’s a constant legal battle and you’d better know a great lawyer who believes in the cause enough to work pro bono.
- judge2020 5y ago
  For reference, Compuserve was an ISP that historically didn't moderate ony of its content on its forums, under the legal framework that not moderating anything meant Compuserve wasn't liable for any of its content, while another ISP Prodigy lost a defamation lawsuit because they did moderate their forum's content. This gave rise to the Communications Decency Act which allows these services to moderate some content without being civilly liable for all of the content on their service. Compuserve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe#Legal_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe#Legal_cases Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod.... Legal Eagle video if you prefer his video format: https://youtu.be/eUWIi-Ppe5k?t=243 https://youtu.be/eUWIi-Ppe5k?t=243
foxhill 5y ago
where does this argument end, exactly? it seems that the majority of people grossly underestimate corporation's level of involvement in our every day lives: if i were to become a persona non grata to google, apple, HN, social media, etc., how would i talk to anyone? how could i do anything? isolation will cause more harm than incarceration, yet i am not recognized a right to trial. not that it would matter anyway, the decision would likely be made algorithmically, without any one human knowing why it's happened. what i'm saying is: corporations have come to own the infrastructure of our modern society. the protections that freedom of speech gave were (and still are) valuable in the context in which they were made. they don't address the reality that communication is fundamentally different to how it was in the 19th century.
- judge2020 5y ago
  But would this still extend to 'free reach'? ie. if I go on Twitter, and say horrible things, then everyone blocks me, is my free speech being impeded because Twitter allows these people to block me? What about the algorithm, if Instagram's stories feature tries to show new videos based on people's interests, can I sue them for not showing my videos to other people?
  - foxhill 5y ago
    > is my free speech being impeded because Twitter allows these people to block me? of course not. if you choose to block me, i am not prevented from communicating with others. > What about the algorithm, if Instagram's stories feature tries to show new videos based on people's interests, can I sue them for not showing my videos to other people? the algorithm is the problem: if you subscribe/follow, you should see all the content (this is how facebook used to be).
    - judge2020 5y ago
      TikTok is only as big as it is because of its efficient and useful algorithm/'for you' page. It's a testament to the fact that even the small amount of friction introduced in signing up and managing a friends list is too much for most people.
overrun11 5y ago
You claim to support private companies adopting whatever moderation policies you want and yet your examples of "hate/conspiracy bullshit" go against this. If you believe this absolutely then _what_ is being censored would be unimportant. You are unwilling to confront the idea of Twitter censoring true things that you agree with but by your own principles you'd find this agreeable.
- cmatthias 5y ago
  I'm sorry if "hate/conspiracy bullshit" was too inflammatory or specific here. I meant it as a stand in for "any content that most would find objectionable." I've edited my post to remove that language. You are correct that I do believe that what is being censored is unimportant. Please don't presume what I am or am not willing to do. I am perfectly willing to confront the idea that Twitter is censoring true things that I agree with: it's fine with me. I'm not sure if they're already doing that, but they have every right to, just as I have every right to use (or create) an alternative platform.
zionic 5y ago
> you have always had the right to create your own web site and say whatever you want Try it. The DNS providers will delist you, cloudfare will ban you, AWS etc etc. You’ll lose your bank accounts too. This isn’t a game to the other side, we have freedom in theory but little in practice.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
No I'm not conflating these concepts. No, you can not create your own website. Take this Parler debacle: booted off appstores, AWS, DNS providers, Cloudflare, etc. Go build your own internet, we're in a free country? Not that I have sympathies for Parler folks, but I was horrified when people even here were cheering at Parler's demise. Don't you look somewhat ahead? Don't you see how many centralized gatekeepers are now everywhere? The potential of abuse to quash dissent is immense, and the possibility of all gatekeepers closely allying with the government is not alien to me. I have seen this happen right in front of me. When it will happen in your country, it'll be too late. The reality is that some companies are so dominant in their respective fields, that it is in the interests of society they should not discriminate anyone if they don't like their views. Google and Apple should not be the ones to decide if the user can install the app on his device, even if this app is made by a militant far-right neo-nazi group. DNS providers should do their technical job and not engage in censoring websites spreading views they don't like.
- cmatthias 5y ago
  > No, you can not create your own website. Yes, in the US, you can. Giving me an example of one site that was booted off a small set of providers does not disprove that. I do completely agree with you that having e.g. Apple be the sole gatekeeper of what users can install on their platform is problematic, but I view this as somewhat orthogonal to the Twitter censorship question. IMHO Apple should be required to allow users to install apps downloaded from alternative sources, however I still don't feel they should be compelled to host apps in their own store. I'm not sure there's a great way to map the above opinion to Twitter -- maybe something like forcing twitter to become federated/decentralized would be the closest. But I am not convinced that Twitter is of the same size as Apple where we should mandate that. I don't regularly use twitter and I don't feel that we, as a society, are nearly as dependent on it as we are on phone manufacturers.
  - gjs278 5y ago
soundnote 5y ago
I propose that water companies don't have to promote your ability to speak either by selling you water. You can collect rainwater provided by nature just fine. Same with gas stations and transport: You're not owed free reach, people back in the day just walked where they wanted to get to. Cars, electricity and running water are just modern conveniences.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  This is a poor metaphor. Water companies provide something essential for life and are de facto gov't entities. It's unclear if your objective was to change people's minds, or just to mock OP with a shallow dismissal, but either way it's a weak argument unless you establish why these comparisons are valid.

needlefish 5y ago

theandrewbailey 5y ago

When that privately-run website becomes the public square (as Twitter wants or has done), it should forfeit some moderation rights.

wan23 5y ago
Twitter is an influential platform, but most people aren't on it. It's not that big of a deal.
- _bfhp 5y ago
  Newspapers are an influential platform, but most people aren't reading them. It's not that big of a deal if the government decided to censor them, agreed?
  - cmatthias 5y ago
    Wait, either I'm missing something huge or this analogy is fatally flawed. Are you claiming that the _government_ is censoring Twitter?
  - themitigating 5y ago
    I don't think you understand the original comment. 1. Newspapers and Twitter should be able to and often censor themselves 2. The government shouldn't censor newspapers or Twitter.
    - _bfhp 4y ago
      On the contrary, the question I was asking is unclear: if, for a given platform, the only reason the wrong political speech shouldn’t be censored by rich and powerful men is because it’s too populous, what’s the difference if the government’s men decide what is too hateful/misinfo for Twitter and newspapers, versus the owners of those? This isn’t a rhetorical question either, I am curious for an answer! I guess a common answer would be “you can move off Twitter, but you can’t leave your country” which is odd two ways: first, if you say you want hate and misinfo banned from Twitter (whatever those mean) shouldn’t you want that for all other big platforms? And it’s very possible to move abroad while not spreading hate and fake facts in the meantime, isn’t it?
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> When that privately-run website becomes the public square (as Twitter wants or has done), it should forfeit some moderation rights That’s fair. Twitter is far from the public square. To lazy journalists and addicts, sure. But plenty of discourse manages just fine without it.
yardie 5y ago
My city has a public square and a privately owned mall. Just short of being violent you are allowed to do and say as you wish in the public square. But most people prefer to go to the much cleaner, privately owned mall. Where our values and polite society are reaffirmed. We choose moderation constantly in our lives, intentionally.
- _bfhp 5y ago
  Do you ask the Chamber of Commerce which malls and stores to frequent whenever you want to shop? I think that would be a great way to avoid the bad areas with all the hobos and sketchy businesses that are probably fronts for drug dealers anyway. You can "choose moderation" by not viewing Twitter accounts and conversations you don't care about and muting words you dislike.
  - 7steps2much 5y ago
    > You can "choose moderation" by not viewing Twitter accounts and conversations you don't care about and muting words you dislike. In that case however I would also like the possibility to turn off any algorithms that recommend stuff to me. I want to see only things i put on my whitelist, otherwise i will have to constantly moderate and it will take up loads of my time. As long as that doesn't happen I am more than happy to let others do the moderation based on some frameworks that I agreed on (ToS in Twitters case).
    - _bfhp 4y ago
      If you think a ToS can capture every bigotry, propaganda technique, and misinformation campaign in perpetuity, I am impressed and hope for success in installing it on every centralized internet platform. Otherwise we would need individual humans at a corporation owned by rich men interpreting a vague set of principles about what "hate" and "misinfo" means, which is a different discussion... But I'm not sure how it could work without having users agree to a new ToS frequently, due to things like the Euphemism Treadmill: https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/08/ableist-language-and-the-euphemism-treadmill/ https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/08/ableist-language-and-t...

jrsj 5y ago

These companies all spy on you on behalf of the government and have censored legitimate news stories in a coordinated fashion to manipulate an election. Their connections to intelligence agencies alone make them effectively public institutions in my view.

judge2020 5y ago
If you have any proof feel free to drop it. The thing that has historically made a company bound to free speech is whether or not the government requires them to specifically search for certain types of infringing content. Coincidentally, this is the current legal framework that makes reporting images of child abuse legal: companies can voluntarily choose to to either not scan for CSAM, or can choose to scan for CSAM and must report it to NCMEC if they find any, and Apple is a prime example of a company that doesn't scan for it[0]. If the government is asking a company to go searching for specific otherwise legal content, that would be pretty good evidence for a court case to be made. 0: "Of all of the companies identified by NCMEC, I only saw one that had an unexpected decrease in reporting: Apple. According to NMEC, Apple submitted 205 reports in 2019 (a third my my reporting volume). Apple increased a little, to 265 in 2020, but then dropped in 2021 to only 160 reports. That's nearly a 22% decrease over two years!" https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/955-NCMEC-2021-Reporting.html https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/955-NC...
- jrsj 5y ago
  Hunter Biden laptop story was legit & censoring it across all social media simultaneously was absurd. Considering his financial connections to Ukraine & current events it’s even more fucked up that it was censored.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Proof that it was censored by the United States government is what decides if it’s legal censorship.
    - 4y ago

snarf21 5y ago

Wow, that is an amazing way to describe it. I've never heard that before. That is a great framing of the debate: free speech doesn't mean free reach. I don't know who made it up (kudos to you if you did) but having terms to describe each part of the issue is very helpful. TIL

rchaud 5y ago
It's a useful framing to to have, because "reach" is indeed the issue. Analogies to "guy yelling in the town square" aren't valid with Twitter because the town square doesn't have algorithms that moderate how often the town crier is audible to the public. And the town square also never had automated bots that parrot the criers' views (or contrary view) at zero marginal cost. if Musk takes over Twitter, we'll be able to see how much 'freedom' he tolerates when the topics are things he has personal interests in.
cmatthias 5y ago
Thank you! I did not make it up but I don't recall where I first heard it, unfortunately. But I am definitely not claiming credit for it! :)
aqsalose 5y ago
So, what if all the publishers in one country just so happen to decide that Mr. Solzhenitsyn's book "Gulag Archipelago" is politically very uncomfortable to the ruling elite and all decline to publish it? This was Finlandized Finland in the 1970s. (To be clear, government didn't formally ban it. All publishing houses were privately owned companies. Yet somehow the decision was made.) Maybe nobody is entitled to book publishers providing "free reach" of publishing your book, especially in thousands of copies. Yet something went wrong there. I don't have a catchy slogan for it, but sometimes the decisions to prevent reach are functionally antithetical to the purpose of free press.

contravariant 5y ago

The problem with this narrow definition is that in it you don't have the right to create your own website, nobody is forced to sell you the IP, hostname or bandwidth, and to the extent that they are it's because letting private companies dictate public discourse is a bad idea. There's a fine line between not amplifying someone and silencing them, and when the choices of very few privately run websites affect who gets heard and who not then we should be wary about them amplifying harmful speech and equally wary about them silencing speech harmfully.

sidlls 5y ago
We don't consider something a right based on whether it costs money or not.
- judge2020 5y ago
  I think they're saying that private companies aren't forced to actually rent you out a server, in which they aren't, but that's simply those companies' own free speech at work allowing them to choose who to associate with. The same freedom to not rent out servers to some racist/twitter canceled person gives them the freedom to not associate with people who want to host vile and disgusting porn on their servers.
cmatthias 5y ago
I reject the notion that this is a narrow definition. In the US, it's the _standard_ definition that was widely accepted until the recent advent of the "but muh free speech" people on twitter and other social media. I'm also quite skeptical of the "slippery slope"-style argument regarding IP connectivity. The number of available ISPs, web hosts, domain registrars, etc is pretty large. There are even web hosts that have an explicit policy of letting you host _any_ content you want as long as it's not against the law in their jurisdiction[0]. And they'll even host it on a subdomain of theirs, if for some reason you have trouble getting a hostname for your hateful or crazy (but legally protected from censorship by the government) blog. And if laws are ever made restricting what those web hosts can do, then we're getting into the realm of the government restricting free speech, which is a different conversation entirely. Regarding your second paragraph, the right to "get heard" is not a right guaranteed to anyone, at least not in the US. If you are spewing garbage, no one should be forced to hear it. (caveat: I'm in the US, so my opinions are US-centric) [0] for example, https://nearlyfreespeech.net https://nearlyfreespeech.net

psyc 5y ago

The ability to do this depends on the will of private hosting providers and ISPs. It’s the same problem. It’s infeasible to maintain a site that permits all legal speech. It’s a constant legal battle and you’d better know a great lawyer who believes in the cause enough to work pro bono.

judge2020 5y ago
For reference, Compuserve was an ISP that historically didn't moderate ony of its content on its forums, under the legal framework that not moderating anything meant Compuserve wasn't liable for any of its content, while another ISP Prodigy lost a defamation lawsuit because they did moderate their forum's content. This gave rise to the Communications Decency Act which allows these services to moderate some content without being civilly liable for all of the content on their service. Compuserve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe#Legal_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe#Legal_cases Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod.... Legal Eagle video if you prefer his video format: https://youtu.be/eUWIi-Ppe5k?t=243 https://youtu.be/eUWIi-Ppe5k?t=243

foxhill 5y ago

where does this argument end, exactly? it seems that the majority of people grossly underestimate corporation's level of involvement in our every day lives: if i were to become a persona non grata to google, apple, HN, social media, etc., how would i talk to anyone? how could i do anything? isolation will cause more harm than incarceration, yet i am not recognized a right to trial. not that it would matter anyway, the decision would likely be made algorithmically, without any one human knowing why it's happened. what i'm saying is: corporations have come to own the infrastructure of our modern society. the protections that freedom of speech gave were (and still are) valuable in the context in which they were made. they don't address the reality that communication is fundamentally different to how it was in the 19th century.

judge2020 5y ago
But would this still extend to 'free reach'? ie. if I go on Twitter, and say horrible things, then everyone blocks me, is my free speech being impeded because Twitter allows these people to block me? What about the algorithm, if Instagram's stories feature tries to show new videos based on people's interests, can I sue them for not showing my videos to other people?
- foxhill 5y ago
  > is my free speech being impeded because Twitter allows these people to block me? of course not. if you choose to block me, i am not prevented from communicating with others. > What about the algorithm, if Instagram's stories feature tries to show new videos based on people's interests, can I sue them for not showing my videos to other people? the algorithm is the problem: if you subscribe/follow, you should see all the content (this is how facebook used to be).
  - judge2020 5y ago
    TikTok is only as big as it is because of its efficient and useful algorithm/'for you' page. It's a testament to the fact that even the small amount of friction introduced in signing up and managing a friends list is too much for most people.

overrun11 5y ago

You claim to support private companies adopting whatever moderation policies you want and yet your examples of "hate/conspiracy bullshit" go against this. If you believe this absolutely then _what_ is being censored would be unimportant. You are unwilling to confront the idea of Twitter censoring true things that you agree with but by your own principles you'd find this agreeable.

cmatthias 5y ago
I'm sorry if "hate/conspiracy bullshit" was too inflammatory or specific here. I meant it as a stand in for "any content that most would find objectionable." I've edited my post to remove that language. You are correct that I do believe that what is being censored is unimportant. Please don't presume what I am or am not willing to do. I am perfectly willing to confront the idea that Twitter is censoring true things that I agree with: it's fine with me. I'm not sure if they're already doing that, but they have every right to, just as I have every right to use (or create) an alternative platform.

zionic 5y ago

> you have always had the right to create your own web site and say whatever you want Try it. The DNS providers will delist you, cloudfare will ban you, AWS etc etc. You’ll lose your bank accounts too. This isn’t a game to the other side, we have freedom in theory but little in practice.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

No I'm not conflating these concepts. No, you can not create your own website. Take this Parler debacle: booted off appstores, AWS, DNS providers, Cloudflare, etc. Go build your own internet, we're in a free country? Not that I have sympathies for Parler folks, but I was horrified when people even here were cheering at Parler's demise. Don't you look somewhat ahead? Don't you see how many centralized gatekeepers are now everywhere? The potential of abuse to quash dissent is immense, and the possibility of all gatekeepers closely allying with the government is not alien to me. I have seen this happen right in front of me. When it will happen in your country, it'll be too late. The reality is that some companies are so dominant in their respective fields, that it is in the interests of society they should not discriminate anyone if they don't like their views. Google and Apple should not be the ones to decide if the user can install the app on his device, even if this app is made by a militant far-right neo-nazi group. DNS providers should do their technical job and not engage in censoring websites spreading views they don't like.

cmatthias 5y ago
> No, you can not create your own website. Yes, in the US, you can. Giving me an example of one site that was booted off a small set of providers does not disprove that. I do completely agree with you that having e.g. Apple be the sole gatekeeper of what users can install on their platform is problematic, but I view this as somewhat orthogonal to the Twitter censorship question. IMHO Apple should be required to allow users to install apps downloaded from alternative sources, however I still don't feel they should be compelled to host apps in their own store. I'm not sure there's a great way to map the above opinion to Twitter -- maybe something like forcing twitter to become federated/decentralized would be the closest. But I am not convinced that Twitter is of the same size as Apple where we should mandate that. I don't regularly use twitter and I don't feel that we, as a society, are nearly as dependent on it as we are on phone manufacturers.
- gjs278 5y ago

soundnote 5y ago

I propose that water companies don't have to promote your ability to speak either by selling you water. You can collect rainwater provided by nature just fine. Same with gas stations and transport: You're not owed free reach, people back in the day just walked where they wanted to get to. Cars, electricity and running water are just modern conveniences.

edmundsauto 5y ago
This is a poor metaphor. Water companies provide something essential for life and are de facto gov't entities. It's unclear if your objective was to change people's minds, or just to mock OP with a shallow dismissal, but either way it's a weak argument unless you establish why these comparisons are valid.