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I don’t fully understand how anti-censorship is a virtue when defending Google and Netflix but then becomes a vice when defending regular people’s ability to no

I don’t fully understand how anti-censorship is a virtue when defending Google and Netflix but then becomes a vice when defending regular people’s ability to not be arbitrarily banned on Twitter.

robonerd 4y ago
Corporate media instills corporate values. Corporations being censored is bad for profit. But corporations not being allowed to censor regular people is also bad for profit.
kmeisthax 4y ago
Because the Republicans were hypocrites on this issue. No more and no less. "But Twitter is a private platform" is entirely a way for Democrats to wave that in their face. Trump called Net Neutrality "Obamacare for the Internet" and gave Ajit Pai the power at the FCC to kill it. The GOP was all for "ISPs are private platforms" and "regulating ISPs violates their free speech" back then, when they thought they were on "their side". To their credit, they were, kind of. Twitter decided to give Trump special treatment under their World Leaders policy, allowing him to break rules[0] with minimal consequences. They did this because Trump[1] gave Twitter clout and relevance that they wanted. This all changed after Jan 6; when a mob of extreme-right Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Suddenly, big tech flip-flopped on Trump and decided they weren't going to serve extreme right-wingers anymore. Republicans had taken tech companies as public utility for granted, while at the same time they were hard at work ensuring there would be no legal basis for actually regulating tech companies as public utilities. Yes, there's a few right-libertarian arguments[2] against this kind of regulation, but that entire wing of the GOP has been a lame duck for half a decade by now[3]. As far as I can tell, Republicans saw that liberals had been screaming their heads off about Comcast censoring the net, and that was apparently good enough justification to oppose Net Neutrality. The Stupid-Partisan wing of American politics wins again. I'm not saying it's good that Twitter censors politicians that I don't like; of course. I'm saying that those politicians need to apologize and admit they were on the wrong side of the argument[4], because "censorship is OK when Comcast does it but not Twitter" is not a coherent argument. It's just self-dealing. [0] Most egregiously: Donald Trump was exempted from DMCA 512 takedown notices, so if he used your song in a video and posted it on Twitter, you couldn't take down the tweet for stealing your song. [1] More generally, any @POTUS account [2] e.g. "How does Comcast pay for better routers if they can't double-bill Netflix" [3] Source: I used to be deep into right-libertarianism back in college, during the "Ron Paul R[3vol]ution" days. As far as I can tell everyone involved either went alt-right, or left-libertarian. Or their name is Louis Rossman. If you're wondering, I still support Net Neutrality and I think large social media platforms should also be regulated under common-carrier rules. However, I don't think even that should get Trump back on Twitter. The World Leaders policy was itself a common-carrier violation. [4] https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
- CyberRabbi 4y ago
  > "But Twitter is a private platform" is entirely a way for Democrats to wave that in their face. So inconsistency on matters of equal treatment and individual freedom is due to cynicism and political expediency? That doesn’t sound good
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    Sort of. It's more like one side is being inconsistent because the other side has given them adversarial license to do so by also being inconsistent, but in the opposite direction. Both sides should want common-carrier regulation for both residential ISPs (Comcast) and OSPs (Twitter). There's also a related problem in which both sides not wanting something their constituents want will use each other as an excuse to not do the thing. For example, Right to Repair polls very favorably with basically anyone, but politicians do not want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. It is an "antipartisan issue", one that has popular support but bipartisan opposition. One way you can kill an antipartisan issue is by turning it into a partisan one, so that your side's supporters shut up about it and the opposing side's supporters are deadlocked by yours. There have been attempts to do this by R2R opponents, by say, telling angry farmers that R2R actually only benefits rich, MacBook-toting liberals.
randrews 4y ago
Doesn't become a vice for me; I'm against censoring regular people too. Everyone should be able to say whatever they want.

I don’t fully understand how anti-censorship is a virtue when defending Google and Netflix but then becomes a vice when defending regular people’s ability to not be arbitrarily banned on Twitter.

robonerd 4y ago

Corporate media instills corporate values. Corporations being censored is bad for profit. But corporations not being allowed to censor regular people is also bad for profit.

kmeisthax 4y ago

Because the Republicans were hypocrites on this issue. No more and no less. "But Twitter is a private platform" is entirely a way for Democrats to wave that in their face. Trump called Net Neutrality "Obamacare for the Internet" and gave Ajit Pai the power at the FCC to kill it. The GOP was all for "ISPs are private platforms" and "regulating ISPs violates their free speech" back then, when they thought they were on "their side". To their credit, they were, kind of. Twitter decided to give Trump special treatment under their World Leaders policy, allowing him to break rules[0] with minimal consequences. They did this because Trump[1] gave Twitter clout and relevance that they wanted. This all changed after Jan 6; when a mob of extreme-right Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Suddenly, big tech flip-flopped on Trump and decided they weren't going to serve extreme right-wingers anymore. Republicans had taken tech companies as public utility for granted, while at the same time they were hard at work ensuring there would be no legal basis for actually regulating tech companies as public utilities. Yes, there's a few right-libertarian arguments[2] against this kind of regulation, but that entire wing of the GOP has been a lame duck for half a decade by now[3]. As far as I can tell, Republicans saw that liberals had been screaming their heads off about Comcast censoring the net, and that was apparently good enough justification to oppose Net Neutrality. The Stupid-Partisan wing of American politics wins again. I'm not saying it's good that Twitter censors politicians that I don't like; of course. I'm saying that those politicians need to apologize and admit they were on the wrong side of the argument[4], because "censorship is OK when Comcast does it but not Twitter" is not a coherent argument. It's just self-dealing. [0] Most egregiously: Donald Trump was exempted from DMCA 512 takedown notices, so if he used your song in a video and posted it on Twitter, you couldn't take down the tweet for stealing your song. [1] More generally, any @POTUS account [2] e.g. "How does Comcast pay for better routers if they can't double-bill Netflix" [3] Source: I used to be deep into right-libertarianism back in college, during the "Ron Paul R[3vol]ution" days. As far as I can tell everyone involved either went alt-right, or left-libertarian. Or their name is Louis Rossman. If you're wondering, I still support Net Neutrality and I think large social media platforms should also be regulated under common-carrier rules. However, I don't think even that should get Trump back on Twitter. The World Leaders policy was itself a common-carrier violation. [4] https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/

CyberRabbi 4y ago
> "But Twitter is a private platform" is entirely a way for Democrats to wave that in their face. So inconsistency on matters of equal treatment and individual freedom is due to cynicism and political expediency? That doesn’t sound good
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Sort of. It's more like one side is being inconsistent because the other side has given them adversarial license to do so by also being inconsistent, but in the opposite direction. Both sides should want common-carrier regulation for both residential ISPs (Comcast) and OSPs (Twitter). There's also a related problem in which both sides not wanting something their constituents want will use each other as an excuse to not do the thing. For example, Right to Repair polls very favorably with basically anyone, but politicians do not want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. It is an "antipartisan issue", one that has popular support but bipartisan opposition. One way you can kill an antipartisan issue is by turning it into a partisan one, so that your side's supporters shut up about it and the opposing side's supporters are deadlocked by yours. There have been attempts to do this by R2R opponents, by say, telling angry farmers that R2R actually only benefits rich, MacBook-toting liberals.

randrews 4y ago

Doesn't become a vice for me; I'm against censoring regular people too. Everyone should be able to say whatever they want.