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I bet some of those who advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants" are probably re-thinking their stance on deplatforming from a maj

I bet some of those who advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants" are probably re-thinking their stance on deplatforming from a major social media.

mcintyre1994 5y ago
Musk can ban whoever he wants if he buys Twitter. I assume he’ll want to do at least some of that given his past actions and the fact that there are critics of him and his companies on there.
x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
Not really. When moderation goes away, platforms become rife with racism, spam, scams and less than desirable actors. We've seen this with Gab and Parler.
- CivBase 5y ago
  While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that assessment, I think those examples of Gab and Parlor are weak. Those platforms were essentially created and marketed specifically to individuals and groups who were kicked off of other platforms. That demographic will naturally include a much higher proportion of "less than desirable actors". Many of the largest platforms featured much less moderation in their past - even when they were much larger than Gab or Parlor - while also enjoying a smaller proportion of "less than desirable actors". Of course, whether that level was acceptable is debatable. Free speech is a double-edge sword and moderation is an astoundingly complex problem.
  - bduerst 5y ago
    Gab, Parler, Voat, et al are marketed as forums with lax moderation. The flavors of prejudice that they attract are the direct result of their function. Platforms that start to grow large without controls against hate and other bad actors simply do not continue to grow.
- indiv0 5y ago
  Eh that's a bit of a different mechanism. If you bootstrap a platform from 0 users with the core concept being a lack of moderation, then you're likely to attract those who have been banned, excluded, or otherwise ostracized from existing platforms. This happens because those who support lack of moderation but still have a choice to remain are likely to remain on the existing platforms due to network effects. Whereas if you start with the popular platform and progressively remove moderation, you end up with different effects, because you still have the core, non-bad-actor population. That is, if your signal-to-noise ratio goes down, but the absolute amount of interaction with your platform increases, it may still be worth it.
  - starlust2 5y ago
    The point of reducing moderation is to allow the bad actors back in. Musk has been very vocal about supporting all speech regardless of impact.
    - indiv0 5y ago
      That may be one of the effects of reducing moderation, but not necessarily the only one. It may also reduce chilling effects on good actors. Some speech may be worth sharing but may not currently be shared because of those effects.
      - madeofpalk 5y ago
        It is naive to not believe that would happen, so much so that it must be the point.
    - jesusofnazarath 5y ago
  - nialv7 5y ago
    > Whereas if you start with the popular platform and progressively remove moderation, you end up with different effects, because you still have the core, non-bad-actor population. Pretty sure that will just let bad actors back in and drive the good faith users away. You could be underestimating the number of normal users a single bad actor can drive away. Even when you remove the more centralized moderation, there still have to be some mechanism there to remove the bad actors.
- coolso 5y ago
  Why does everyone think Elon Musk wants zero moderation? He always talks about free speech, not zero moderation. There’s an important difference.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
    Do we ever hear people talk about "free speech" without regards to someone being moderated off of a platform? The only reason we have talking points such as Facebook/Twitter = Utility/Town-Square is because right-wingers were being moderated off of digital platforms. Before recently, no one really cared unless it was something such as a child wearing an offensive t-shirt at school.
    - MrStonedOne 5y ago
  - Banana699 5y ago
    Authoritarians tend to caricature freedom as lawlessness.
    - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      This is by far the most articulate and apt seven words I’ve read all day.
- tonguez 5y ago
  "When moderation goes away, platforms become rife with racism, spam, scams and less than desirable actors." so... Twitter
  - colordrops 5y ago
    Twitter is heavily moderated.
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      Twitter is heavily moderated but has a large amount of "racism, spam, scams and less than desirable actors".
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  I think that's more of a product of displacement. Those people get pushed out of big sites into smaller free-speech absolutist platforms. Thus, the proportion of these actors in the latter is much higher. Loosening moderation on a big platform would not have this same displacement dynamic. Sure, previously excluded people might rejoin but the bulk of the user base will remain. So there's no drastic shift on proportions here. Furthermore, there's a difference between totally doing away with moderation and pruning some of the more ideologically slanted moderation policies at twitter.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
    >... Sure, previously excluded people might rejoin but the bulk of the user base will remain. So there's no drastic shift on proportions here. Advertisers will not want to see their ads featured next to a post calling for the genocidal extermination of a race. When you allow Gab/Voat/4-chan style moderation, you run-off advertisers which are the lifeblood of social media.
    - Manuel_D 5y ago
      Most advertisements in Twitter are in the form of sponsored posts right? This isn't like YouTube where an ad is displayed embedded in a video.
      - lanternfish 5y ago
        The same mechanism applies - sponsored posts don't want to be seen with any proximity (distance or time) to image-detrimental content.
        Manuel_D 5y ago
        Those sponsored posts appear next to whatever appears in the user's feed. If a user follows a bunch of cat photos, then the sponsored post appears next to cat photos. If the user follows a bunch of NASCAR related accounts it appears next to NASCAR. The ad company has little agency over this. I don't think advertising companies would really see this as an issue. It's not like an ad playing before a video where sponsorship can be directly tied to a piece of content. The content adjacent to ads is determined by users' viewing habits and follows.
- RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
  So create free market plugins to filter based on preferences. Imagine: scam protection plugin. spam protection plugin. anti racism plugin. Let users vote who gets ears. If users say they want to silence racists, by saying racists things a user ends up being blocked by all the people who want to silence all racists. Users then vote and racists know that algorithmically they cannot heard because they know the majority have silenced them. But they also aren't enraged that they are being silenced because they aren't. They're just blocked by the user base who doesn't think their words have value. If twitter does not allow as much free speech as possible, that speech simply ends up moving to other platforms anyways. So much to all the pro censorship crowd's chagrin, their censorship isn't actually doing anything except protecting their ears from hearing what they don't want to hear, and in reality making the other side band together even more fiercely. Might as well keep all the speech and just allow people to choose their own protection. You never have to listen to them if that's what you choose. Let people choose what gets silenced instead of letting some authority choose for you. Giving up that power has historically lead in only one direction, and I don't see why its any different in this case. Adults are not children. Let them discern what is right and what is wrong. The only way forward is to keep free speech available, and we can keep it and have protections for those who want it, so why not?
  - codyb 5y ago
    Cause that's what I want to do with my free time... install plugins operated by... who knows... to filter out the blatant racism I don't even have to see if I just don't use the website. But... I don't use social media, so maybe I'm not the one this would appeal to.
    - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
      You wouldn't have to install them. They would be toggled on in the app by default with a modal or some notification ensuring you know what you're being protected from. If you are okay with the default protections, closing that modal is one [x] away. If for some reason you want spam, then toggle it back on.
- jstream67 5y ago
  but twitter is already all of those things.
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  I think "moderation going away" is a gross exaggeration of what Musk has said he wants. Twitter has had spam and crypto scams in replies for years now. Every tweet by Elon Musk has had scammy fake giveaways that steal people's financial info, from accounts that copy his profile picture and name. Anyone would agree Twitter's response has not been adequately effective, and he has complained about this for a while, and even said during today's TED event that he wants to stop this sort of spam. If anything, I think it's more likely we'll see hardcore engineering efforts - I'm not sure why Twitter hasn't looked into some sort of perceptual hashing database for profile pictures of popular accounts, and hide replies from anyone who uses a similar profile picture. This is obviously different from the political censorship, such as Hunter Biden's laptop, where I think Musk strongly disagrees with current leadership. Parler/Gab failed in having approximately zero engineering efforts to prevent spam.
  - madeofpalk 5y ago
    How are the two congruent though? How can you say "this type of speech (spam) is not allowed" but also say "I want less censorship and more 'free speech'" (whatever that means). Those two view points seem incompatible. The moment you confess that some types of speech are harmful to your platform, it just becomes about defining where that line is, and naturally people will have differing opinions on whether they agree with those moderation decisions.
    - diebeforei485 5y ago
      Censorship (automated or human or both) is not the same as spam filtering. There might be some edge cases where some non-spam content gets caught in a spam filter. But these should be two separate systems under different teams and leadership. And if your tweet was removed, you should know if this was antispam or censorship in order to craft an appeal effectively.
    - wonnor 5y ago
      What part of "I want less censorship and more 'free speech'" implies that censorship needs to go to 0 and free speech needs to go to 100? Drawing somewhat arbitrary lines between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable is not the impossibly difficult task that people who make this argument like to think it is. The US first amendment excludes certain types of speech and it hasn't been a problem.
kizer 5y ago
Someone noted this in a thread on Reddit. Will be very funny to see the political spectrum reflect on this; suddenly many crying first amendment will be taking the position you quoted while some of those there now will may perhaps argue for Twitter to become a subsidiary of PBS (joking).
bena 5y ago
It seems to me that you are implying that the people who previously defended twitter's decisions to ban certain public features may not fare so well under a regime managed by Elon Musk. Everything that follows is based on that inference. There are two major possibilities here. Either Musk lets twitter continue much in the same manner as it operates today. In which case, nothing really changes. Musk operates twitter as his personal bullhorn, promoting beneficial tweets and removing tweets that are critical of him, his companies, his ideals, whatever. All of which would be his right to do. However, all actions have consequences. Twitter isn't twitter because it was ordained from on high as the service to spit hot takes in 140 characters or less. Twitter is twitter because of everything twitter did. From the initial concept, to the pivoting to whatever the hell "micro-blogging" is, to letting people say mostly whatever, to the various standards they've implemented over the years. All of that makes twitter what it is. If twitter just becomes "Elon Musk's dream platform where he can shit post all day and no one can say shit to him", that's entirely something else. Most of the people left on twitter would be Musk and people who want to follow him. Like how the crowd shifted from Slashdot to Digg to reddit. From Friendster to MySpace to Facebook. Something will come along and supplant twitter. So, I believe the people who "advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants"" are going to be fine with their stance. Because if Musk changes twitter into a shithole, no one is going to want to stay regardless.
bduerst 5y ago
Nah, the people who advocate that private platforms reserve the right to censor themselves tend to know what the 1st amendment means regarding government censorship.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  I think they were referring to the fact that "it's a private company" is usually used in response to any moderation complaints or accusation of censorship. Yes, everyone know the first amendment only applies government to the government but it does not mean a private corporation cannot censor or is immune from complaints on it's moderation policy. But now that it's been used as a way to deflect criticism or excuse any excess on what's deemed acceptable by one side, it will be funny to figuratively see the leopoards eating their faces. At least I think that's what the parent comment meant.
  - bduerst 5y ago
    - xanaxagoras 5y ago
      The main gripe isn't that hate speech is being censored, although personally I don't think it should be. We complain about Twitter because anything to the right of Stalin is a potential censorship target, depending on Twitter's editorial marching orders for the day. edit: I'm a little disappointed in myself for thoughtlessly going along with your framing. There's no such thing as "hate speech".
    - max599 5y ago
      >Not really. There's a certain political party who seems to want to redefine private companies as public commons, all because they don't like their hate speech being censored. no, it's because it actually became the new public commons. That's where most gets their news, meet people, organise events, find jobs, etc. Politicians and organisations are now using it as their main mean of communication. How do you think the 2020 election would have gone if twitter + facebook + reddit decided after 2016 that most anti-trump posts should be removed from the platforms for misinformation and instead they promoted anti-Biden content? I think they could easily have made him won by a landslide
weeblewobble 5y ago
Why would you assume that? If Elon buys twitter and starts banning everyone with pronouns in their bio I think that would be bad and stupid but it wouldn't be a free speech issue. People would just go elsewhere. Everything would be fine.
- gwright 5y ago
  > it wouldn't be a free speech issue It really hinges on what you mean by the phrase "free speech" when there is no clear context. It is true that in the context of US lawmaking, the free speech rights specified in the 1st Amendment are in play. But there is the concept of free speech outside that context also. For example the editors of a newspaper being inclusive of viewpoints in the "Letters to the Editor" section or a radio show being inclusive of viewpoints from callers or a website operator being inclusive of viewpoints in public comment sections. I think there is value in advocating for inclusiveness in those (and other) contexts and labeling that idea "free speech" but I don't think it has to be "absolutely no moderation or restrictions". There is room for an editorial policy in those places and there is room to criticize any particular policy that some entity might put in place as not being supportive of "free speech" even when there is no 1st Amendment context in play.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  Right. It wouldn't be a free speech issue in the same sense that Elon is wrong about Twitter currently having a free speech issue.
aeturnum 5y ago
I think it's interesting to note how differently people see this conversation! > advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants" To me, this compresses several conversations into one: - In the US, the first amendment applies to the government, not to private actors, so companies do not need to allow any particular person on their site (with the provision that it's illegal to ban people because they are part of a protected class). - The idea of a "public square" is in flux and we are in the midst of trying to figure out what areas of our interactions we would like to consider public and what the advantages and disadvantages each approach are. - The tactic of urging private companies to ban certain people for certain reasons as practiced by many groups (often with different justifications). Different groups have different interests at each level and have different preferences as to how policy should change. In some sense, your statement of: "I bet some of those who..." will always be correct because of course *some of them* will! I have a guess about how you feel about the above issues (and other involved issues that I didn't break out), but I'd be interested to have you expand what you actually mean.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  Great comment! This is a very reasonable take.
fknorangesite 5y ago
This is extraordinarily vague, and so the replies to you so far have had to guess at exactly what you mean. Care to explain more clearly?
- narag 5y ago
  For me, and I don't even use Twitter, it's clear. GP means that those resorting to "freedom of speech is not for companies" are hypocrites. They're defending the right of companies to supress opinions on their services, not because they believe that's fair --actually they're anti-business-- but because they can pressure the companies, threatening their advertisers, so only opinions approved by them will show. If Twitter goes private and stops depending on ads, they won't be able to exert such pressure and will lose that advantage. Even if Musk is totally fair with moderation, they're going to complain he's not censoring enough.
- Banana699 5y ago
  I suppose I'm doing exactly what you want to avoid here (guessing GP's meaning), but I think their meaning is really quite obvious and isn't that hard to guess. GP can contradict me if they feel I'm talking out of my back. American Social Media corps are pretty heavily progressive-dominated, which is typically called "The Left-Leaning Bias", but that's a shame, because American "Leftism" is really a laughable low-dimensional projection of what actual leftism looks like. So anyways, because of this, progressive social media denizens reciprocate this preferential treatment by being free (as in bear) and dependable apologists, always defending said corporations whenever they arbitarily ban, censor or otherwise unfairly treat those with the wrong opinons, often employing the well-known phrase that GP quoted. GP is implying that those people are about to discover the brutal truth that suppression tactics are perfectly symmetric and care not who employs it against whom.
nonethewiser 5y ago
Re-think? No. Move goalposts to "Twitter has no progressive bias" ? Yes.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sanderjd 5y ago
I'm one of those people and I really don't see how this follows. Freedom of association for private entities is important, whether or not they are owned by Elon Musk.
jimbob45 5y ago
Ideally, deplatforming is done in in illegal cases and the government/people decide what is grounds for deplatforming instead of some coked-out execs at Twitter.
hooande 5y ago
People seem to believe that it's impossible to create a competing platform. That's built on the assumption that most people are generally happy with current offerings. If Musk does anything that a critical mass of users finds objectionable, they can and will leave or go to a competitor. Part of me hopes he buys it just to test this hypothesis. My feeling is that we'll learn one way or another how important a given social media brand is.

I bet some of those who advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants" are probably re-thinking their stance on deplatforming from a major social media.

mcintyre1994 5y ago

Musk can ban whoever he wants if he buys Twitter. I assume he’ll want to do at least some of that given his past actions and the fact that there are critics of him and his companies on there.

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago

Not really. When moderation goes away, platforms become rife with racism, spam, scams and less than desirable actors. We've seen this with Gab and Parler.

CivBase 5y ago
While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that assessment, I think those examples of Gab and Parlor are weak. Those platforms were essentially created and marketed specifically to individuals and groups who were kicked off of other platforms. That demographic will naturally include a much higher proportion of "less than desirable actors". Many of the largest platforms featured much less moderation in their past - even when they were much larger than Gab or Parlor - while also enjoying a smaller proportion of "less than desirable actors". Of course, whether that level was acceptable is debatable. Free speech is a double-edge sword and moderation is an astoundingly complex problem.
- bduerst 5y ago
  Gab, Parler, Voat, et al are marketed as forums with lax moderation. The flavors of prejudice that they attract are the direct result of their function. Platforms that start to grow large without controls against hate and other bad actors simply do not continue to grow.
indiv0 5y ago
Eh that's a bit of a different mechanism. If you bootstrap a platform from 0 users with the core concept being a lack of moderation, then you're likely to attract those who have been banned, excluded, or otherwise ostracized from existing platforms. This happens because those who support lack of moderation but still have a choice to remain are likely to remain on the existing platforms due to network effects. Whereas if you start with the popular platform and progressively remove moderation, you end up with different effects, because you still have the core, non-bad-actor population. That is, if your signal-to-noise ratio goes down, but the absolute amount of interaction with your platform increases, it may still be worth it.
- starlust2 5y ago
  The point of reducing moderation is to allow the bad actors back in. Musk has been very vocal about supporting all speech regardless of impact.
  - indiv0 5y ago
    That may be one of the effects of reducing moderation, but not necessarily the only one. It may also reduce chilling effects on good actors. Some speech may be worth sharing but may not currently be shared because of those effects.
    - madeofpalk 5y ago
      It is naive to not believe that would happen, so much so that it must be the point.
  - jesusofnazarath 5y ago
- nialv7 5y ago
  > Whereas if you start with the popular platform and progressively remove moderation, you end up with different effects, because you still have the core, non-bad-actor population. Pretty sure that will just let bad actors back in and drive the good faith users away. You could be underestimating the number of normal users a single bad actor can drive away. Even when you remove the more centralized moderation, there still have to be some mechanism there to remove the bad actors.
coolso 5y ago
Why does everyone think Elon Musk wants zero moderation? He always talks about free speech, not zero moderation. There’s an important difference.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  Do we ever hear people talk about "free speech" without regards to someone being moderated off of a platform? The only reason we have talking points such as Facebook/Twitter = Utility/Town-Square is because right-wingers were being moderated off of digital platforms. Before recently, no one really cared unless it was something such as a child wearing an offensive t-shirt at school.
  - MrStonedOne 5y ago
- Banana699 5y ago
  Authoritarians tend to caricature freedom as lawlessness.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    This is by far the most articulate and apt seven words I’ve read all day.
tonguez 5y ago
"When moderation goes away, platforms become rife with racism, spam, scams and less than desirable actors." so... Twitter
- colordrops 5y ago
  Twitter is heavily moderated.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    Twitter is heavily moderated but has a large amount of "racism, spam, scams and less than desirable actors".
Manuel_D 5y ago
I think that's more of a product of displacement. Those people get pushed out of big sites into smaller free-speech absolutist platforms. Thus, the proportion of these actors in the latter is much higher. Loosening moderation on a big platform would not have this same displacement dynamic. Sure, previously excluded people might rejoin but the bulk of the user base will remain. So there's no drastic shift on proportions here. Furthermore, there's a difference between totally doing away with moderation and pruning some of the more ideologically slanted moderation policies at twitter.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
  >... Sure, previously excluded people might rejoin but the bulk of the user base will remain. So there's no drastic shift on proportions here. Advertisers will not want to see their ads featured next to a post calling for the genocidal extermination of a race. When you allow Gab/Voat/4-chan style moderation, you run-off advertisers which are the lifeblood of social media.
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    Most advertisements in Twitter are in the form of sponsored posts right? This isn't like YouTube where an ad is displayed embedded in a video.
    - lanternfish 5y ago
      The same mechanism applies - sponsored posts don't want to be seen with any proximity (distance or time) to image-detrimental content.
      - Manuel_D 5y ago
        Those sponsored posts appear next to whatever appears in the user's feed. If a user follows a bunch of cat photos, then the sponsored post appears next to cat photos. If the user follows a bunch of NASCAR related accounts it appears next to NASCAR. The ad company has little agency over this. I don't think advertising companies would really see this as an issue. It's not like an ad playing before a video where sponsorship can be directly tied to a piece of content. The content adjacent to ads is determined by users' viewing habits and follows.
RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
So create free market plugins to filter based on preferences. Imagine: scam protection plugin. spam protection plugin. anti racism plugin. Let users vote who gets ears. If users say they want to silence racists, by saying racists things a user ends up being blocked by all the people who want to silence all racists. Users then vote and racists know that algorithmically they cannot heard because they know the majority have silenced them. But they also aren't enraged that they are being silenced because they aren't. They're just blocked by the user base who doesn't think their words have value. If twitter does not allow as much free speech as possible, that speech simply ends up moving to other platforms anyways. So much to all the pro censorship crowd's chagrin, their censorship isn't actually doing anything except protecting their ears from hearing what they don't want to hear, and in reality making the other side band together even more fiercely. Might as well keep all the speech and just allow people to choose their own protection. You never have to listen to them if that's what you choose. Let people choose what gets silenced instead of letting some authority choose for you. Giving up that power has historically lead in only one direction, and I don't see why its any different in this case. Adults are not children. Let them discern what is right and what is wrong. The only way forward is to keep free speech available, and we can keep it and have protections for those who want it, so why not?
- codyb 5y ago
  Cause that's what I want to do with my free time... install plugins operated by... who knows... to filter out the blatant racism I don't even have to see if I just don't use the website. But... I don't use social media, so maybe I'm not the one this would appeal to.
  - RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
    You wouldn't have to install them. They would be toggled on in the app by default with a modal or some notification ensuring you know what you're being protected from. If you are okay with the default protections, closing that modal is one [x] away. If for some reason you want spam, then toggle it back on.
jstream67 5y ago
but twitter is already all of those things.
diebeforei485 5y ago
I think "moderation going away" is a gross exaggeration of what Musk has said he wants. Twitter has had spam and crypto scams in replies for years now. Every tweet by Elon Musk has had scammy fake giveaways that steal people's financial info, from accounts that copy his profile picture and name. Anyone would agree Twitter's response has not been adequately effective, and he has complained about this for a while, and even said during today's TED event that he wants to stop this sort of spam. If anything, I think it's more likely we'll see hardcore engineering efforts - I'm not sure why Twitter hasn't looked into some sort of perceptual hashing database for profile pictures of popular accounts, and hide replies from anyone who uses a similar profile picture. This is obviously different from the political censorship, such as Hunter Biden's laptop, where I think Musk strongly disagrees with current leadership. Parler/Gab failed in having approximately zero engineering efforts to prevent spam.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  How are the two congruent though? How can you say "this type of speech (spam) is not allowed" but also say "I want less censorship and more 'free speech'" (whatever that means). Those two view points seem incompatible. The moment you confess that some types of speech are harmful to your platform, it just becomes about defining where that line is, and naturally people will have differing opinions on whether they agree with those moderation decisions.
  - diebeforei485 5y ago
    Censorship (automated or human or both) is not the same as spam filtering. There might be some edge cases where some non-spam content gets caught in a spam filter. But these should be two separate systems under different teams and leadership. And if your tweet was removed, you should know if this was antispam or censorship in order to craft an appeal effectively.
  - wonnor 5y ago
    What part of "I want less censorship and more 'free speech'" implies that censorship needs to go to 0 and free speech needs to go to 100? Drawing somewhat arbitrary lines between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable is not the impossibly difficult task that people who make this argument like to think it is. The US first amendment excludes certain types of speech and it hasn't been a problem.

kizer 5y ago

Someone noted this in a thread on Reddit. Will be very funny to see the political spectrum reflect on this; suddenly many crying first amendment will be taking the position you quoted while some of those there now will may perhaps argue for Twitter to become a subsidiary of PBS (joking).

bena 5y ago

It seems to me that you are implying that the people who previously defended twitter's decisions to ban certain public features may not fare so well under a regime managed by Elon Musk. Everything that follows is based on that inference. There are two major possibilities here. Either Musk lets twitter continue much in the same manner as it operates today. In which case, nothing really changes. Musk operates twitter as his personal bullhorn, promoting beneficial tweets and removing tweets that are critical of him, his companies, his ideals, whatever. All of which would be his right to do. However, all actions have consequences. Twitter isn't twitter because it was ordained from on high as the service to spit hot takes in 140 characters or less. Twitter is twitter because of everything twitter did. From the initial concept, to the pivoting to whatever the hell "micro-blogging" is, to letting people say mostly whatever, to the various standards they've implemented over the years. All of that makes twitter what it is. If twitter just becomes "Elon Musk's dream platform where he can shit post all day and no one can say shit to him", that's entirely something else. Most of the people left on twitter would be Musk and people who want to follow him. Like how the crowd shifted from Slashdot to Digg to reddit. From Friendster to MySpace to Facebook. Something will come along and supplant twitter. So, I believe the people who "advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants"" are going to be fine with their stance. Because if Musk changes twitter into a shithole, no one is going to want to stay regardless.

bduerst 5y ago

Nah, the people who advocate that private platforms reserve the right to censor themselves tend to know what the 1st amendment means regarding government censorship.

mardifoufs 5y ago
I think they were referring to the fact that "it's a private company" is usually used in response to any moderation complaints or accusation of censorship. Yes, everyone know the first amendment only applies government to the government but it does not mean a private corporation cannot censor or is immune from complaints on it's moderation policy. But now that it's been used as a way to deflect criticism or excuse any excess on what's deemed acceptable by one side, it will be funny to figuratively see the leopoards eating their faces. At least I think that's what the parent comment meant.
- bduerst 5y ago
  - xanaxagoras 5y ago
    The main gripe isn't that hate speech is being censored, although personally I don't think it should be. We complain about Twitter because anything to the right of Stalin is a potential censorship target, depending on Twitter's editorial marching orders for the day. edit: I'm a little disappointed in myself for thoughtlessly going along with your framing. There's no such thing as "hate speech".
  - max599 5y ago
    >Not really. There's a certain political party who seems to want to redefine private companies as public commons, all because they don't like their hate speech being censored. no, it's because it actually became the new public commons. That's where most gets their news, meet people, organise events, find jobs, etc. Politicians and organisations are now using it as their main mean of communication. How do you think the 2020 election would have gone if twitter + facebook + reddit decided after 2016 that most anti-trump posts should be removed from the platforms for misinformation and instead they promoted anti-Biden content? I think they could easily have made him won by a landslide

weeblewobble 5y ago

Why would you assume that? If Elon buys twitter and starts banning everyone with pronouns in their bio I think that would be bad and stupid but it wouldn't be a free speech issue. People would just go elsewhere. Everything would be fine.

gwright 5y ago
> it wouldn't be a free speech issue It really hinges on what you mean by the phrase "free speech" when there is no clear context. It is true that in the context of US lawmaking, the free speech rights specified in the 1st Amendment are in play. But there is the concept of free speech outside that context also. For example the editors of a newspaper being inclusive of viewpoints in the "Letters to the Editor" section or a radio show being inclusive of viewpoints from callers or a website operator being inclusive of viewpoints in public comment sections. I think there is value in advocating for inclusiveness in those (and other) contexts and labeling that idea "free speech" but I don't think it has to be "absolutely no moderation or restrictions". There is room for an editorial policy in those places and there is room to criticize any particular policy that some entity might put in place as not being supportive of "free speech" even when there is no 1st Amendment context in play.
madeofpalk 5y ago
Right. It wouldn't be a free speech issue in the same sense that Elon is wrong about Twitter currently having a free speech issue.

aeturnum 5y ago

I think it's interesting to note how differently people see this conversation! > advocated "it's a private company, it can deplatform whoever it wants" To me, this compresses several conversations into one: - In the US, the first amendment applies to the government, not to private actors, so companies do not need to allow any particular person on their site (with the provision that it's illegal to ban people because they are part of a protected class). - The idea of a "public square" is in flux and we are in the midst of trying to figure out what areas of our interactions we would like to consider public and what the advantages and disadvantages each approach are. - The tactic of urging private companies to ban certain people for certain reasons as practiced by many groups (often with different justifications). Different groups have different interests at each level and have different preferences as to how policy should change. In some sense, your statement of: "I bet some of those who..." will always be correct because of course *some of them* will! I have a guess about how you feel about the above issues (and other involved issues that I didn't break out), but I'd be interested to have you expand what you actually mean.

sanderjd 5y ago
Great comment! This is a very reasonable take.

fknorangesite 5y ago

This is extraordinarily vague, and so the replies to you so far have had to guess at exactly what you mean. Care to explain more clearly?

narag 5y ago
For me, and I don't even use Twitter, it's clear. GP means that those resorting to "freedom of speech is not for companies" are hypocrites. They're defending the right of companies to supress opinions on their services, not because they believe that's fair --actually they're anti-business-- but because they can pressure the companies, threatening their advertisers, so only opinions approved by them will show. If Twitter goes private and stops depending on ads, they won't be able to exert such pressure and will lose that advantage. Even if Musk is totally fair with moderation, they're going to complain he's not censoring enough.
Banana699 5y ago
I suppose I'm doing exactly what you want to avoid here (guessing GP's meaning), but I think their meaning is really quite obvious and isn't that hard to guess. GP can contradict me if they feel I'm talking out of my back. American Social Media corps are pretty heavily progressive-dominated, which is typically called "The Left-Leaning Bias", but that's a shame, because American "Leftism" is really a laughable low-dimensional projection of what actual leftism looks like. So anyways, because of this, progressive social media denizens reciprocate this preferential treatment by being free (as in bear) and dependable apologists, always defending said corporations whenever they arbitarily ban, censor or otherwise unfairly treat those with the wrong opinons, often employing the well-known phrase that GP quoted. GP is implying that those people are about to discover the brutal truth that suppression tactics are perfectly symmetric and care not who employs it against whom.

nonethewiser 5y ago

Re-think? No. Move goalposts to "Twitter has no progressive bias" ? Yes.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sanderjd 5y ago

I'm one of those people and I really don't see how this follows. Freedom of association for private entities is important, whether or not they are owned by Elon Musk.

jimbob45 5y ago

Ideally, deplatforming is done in in illegal cases and the government/people decide what is grounds for deplatforming instead of some coked-out execs at Twitter.

hooande 5y ago

People seem to believe that it's impossible to create a competing platform. That's built on the assumption that most people are generally happy with current offerings. If Musk does anything that a critical mass of users finds objectionable, they can and will leave or go to a competitor. Part of me hopes he buys it just to test this hypothesis. My feeling is that we'll learn one way or another how important a given social media brand is.