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> Twitter is a megaphone, not a public square. I agree but the analogy is still a bad fit. A better one would be a phone company back in the days of of AT&T's

> Twitter is a megaphone, not a public square. I agree but the analogy is still a bad fit. A better one would be a phone company back in the days of of AT&T's monopoly. If they kicked you off of their service then you'd lose access, in practical terms, to all those people. This was considered enough of a problem in the past that you weren't allowed to lose your phone service for the content of your speech, on or off of the phone. I think the analogy extends quite well when we consider the lengths other concerns have gone to in crushing competition, the Parler debacle being the most obvious.

tshaddox 5y ago
Phone networks don’t really have any sort of fan-out speech amplification though (unless you’re talking about things like robocalling, which generally are regulated and aren’t considered protected the same as individuals).
- brigandish 5y ago
  That amplification is the choice of the users (or should be, obviously Twitter likes to try and shape this). It's like me calling you and you liking what I have to say and then calling all your friends to tell them, modern tech makes that easier. Robocalling is more akin to running a script to spam users via a bot, wouldn't you say? The part of the analogy that holds, in my opinion, is the part where a monopoly concern can kick people off for the content of their speech. It wasn't right with telephone and it doesn't seem right with this but they are being treated differently. I'd say that's because speech is powerful so the logic goes that it must be curtailed, if you're against certain views. I'm someone who's confident that truth will win the day given a fair hearing, hence, I want freedom of speech.
  - jacobsenscott 5y ago
    > I'm someone who's confident that truth will win the day given a fair hearing, hence, I want freedom of speech. I think this is a 19th/20th century idea that generally held because of, and not in spite of, the natural barriers to mass communication. Those barriers were the "fair hearing" (an author needed to spend weeks/months/years on their work. They probably spent several years before that studying their topic, or journalism, or whatever. It needed to pass through editors, maybe peer review, etc. It had to compete with others working just as hard, etc.) For the first time in human history it is easier to broadcast disinformation, lies, and propaganda than it is to broadcast accurate information. This form of truly unrestricted access to mass communications has nearly put a stake in the heart of western democracy in less than 20 years. I am not at all confident truth will win the day.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      To preface this, I am not a free speech absolutist. > I think this is a 19th/20th century idea that generally held because of, and not in spite of, the natural barriers to mass communication I've heard this take a lot and I'm not sure I agree. The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg offered the same relative change in communication reach. Previously, only wealthy entities (nobles, ecclesiastical authorities, etc) could have the money to create actual written books to disseminate ideas. Literate non-wealthy people could only hope to make a sign and hope for the best. The monopoly on distributing ideas lay with the wealthy and the state. > For the first time in human history it is easier to broadcast disinformation, lies, and propaganda than it is to broadcast accurate information. The printing press led to centuries of chaos in the form of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther used the printing press to print several copies of his "99 Theses" and plastered them on the walls of churches, widely disseminating his ideas. Now, after a renaissance, an enlightenment, and an Industrial Revolution in the West, we have built the cultural norms in place to deal with the negatives of Print. We have social norms separating tabloids from newspapers. We understand that different newspapers have different biases. Governments have tried to restrict what can and cannot be printed. Many Enlightenment-era empires (Empire of Russia, Austro-Hungarian empire, etc) restricted what can be printed by whom. The Soviets famously only allowed government-approved publications until Glasnost under Gorbachev. In the end, despite the dangers we've found in unfettered public speech, the benefits have proved more salient. I think it's a lack of norms. A lot of folks don't know how to treat the Web. They see a hot-take/dunk on Twitter and because they agree with the aesthetics of a person's post and some of their other content, they think of the poster as "correct" and retweet/share their content. That's how online tribes form. I'm confident that in a few generations, we'll all "know" much better how to navigate the online world. Until then, much like the aftermath of the printing press, there will be instability.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    > It's like me calling you and you liking what I have to say and then calling all your friends to tell them, modern tech makes that easier. Robocalling is more akin to running a script to spam users via a bot, wouldn't you say? When you share something on Twitter, there is literally a script (executed by Twitter) that shares that same thing with all your followers. That's essentially the primary mechanism of Twitter, and I would argue that it's fundamentally very different than you choosing to call everyone to know to tell them something (at least for people with more than, say, Dunbar's number of followers). Because of the fact that it's automated, essentially instant, and essentially unbounded in its reach, it is mechanically much more similar to robocalling than to calling your friends to tell them something.
    - brigandish 5y ago
      Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word "script". That's it's a script is an implementation detail, it's not automated like a bot. In the same way, if we focus on the mechanism of a call then a robocall is not much different to a human. > I would argue that it's fundamentally very different than you choosing to call everyone to know Okay, one is a broadcast to subscribers and the other is single calls to subscribers. The end result is the same, again, the difference is in implementation and convenience.

tshaddox 5y ago

Phone networks don’t really have any sort of fan-out speech amplification though (unless you’re talking about things like robocalling, which generally are regulated and aren’t considered protected the same as individuals).

brigandish 5y ago
That amplification is the choice of the users (or should be, obviously Twitter likes to try and shape this). It's like me calling you and you liking what I have to say and then calling all your friends to tell them, modern tech makes that easier. Robocalling is more akin to running a script to spam users via a bot, wouldn't you say? The part of the analogy that holds, in my opinion, is the part where a monopoly concern can kick people off for the content of their speech. It wasn't right with telephone and it doesn't seem right with this but they are being treated differently. I'd say that's because speech is powerful so the logic goes that it must be curtailed, if you're against certain views. I'm someone who's confident that truth will win the day given a fair hearing, hence, I want freedom of speech.
- jacobsenscott 5y ago
  > I'm someone who's confident that truth will win the day given a fair hearing, hence, I want freedom of speech. I think this is a 19th/20th century idea that generally held because of, and not in spite of, the natural barriers to mass communication. Those barriers were the "fair hearing" (an author needed to spend weeks/months/years on their work. They probably spent several years before that studying their topic, or journalism, or whatever. It needed to pass through editors, maybe peer review, etc. It had to compete with others working just as hard, etc.) For the first time in human history it is easier to broadcast disinformation, lies, and propaganda than it is to broadcast accurate information. This form of truly unrestricted access to mass communications has nearly put a stake in the heart of western democracy in less than 20 years. I am not at all confident truth will win the day.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    To preface this, I am not a free speech absolutist. > I think this is a 19th/20th century idea that generally held because of, and not in spite of, the natural barriers to mass communication I've heard this take a lot and I'm not sure I agree. The invention of the printing press by Gutenberg offered the same relative change in communication reach. Previously, only wealthy entities (nobles, ecclesiastical authorities, etc) could have the money to create actual written books to disseminate ideas. Literate non-wealthy people could only hope to make a sign and hope for the best. The monopoly on distributing ideas lay with the wealthy and the state. > For the first time in human history it is easier to broadcast disinformation, lies, and propaganda than it is to broadcast accurate information. The printing press led to centuries of chaos in the form of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther used the printing press to print several copies of his "99 Theses" and plastered them on the walls of churches, widely disseminating his ideas. Now, after a renaissance, an enlightenment, and an Industrial Revolution in the West, we have built the cultural norms in place to deal with the negatives of Print. We have social norms separating tabloids from newspapers. We understand that different newspapers have different biases. Governments have tried to restrict what can and cannot be printed. Many Enlightenment-era empires (Empire of Russia, Austro-Hungarian empire, etc) restricted what can be printed by whom. The Soviets famously only allowed government-approved publications until Glasnost under Gorbachev. In the end, despite the dangers we've found in unfettered public speech, the benefits have proved more salient. I think it's a lack of norms. A lot of folks don't know how to treat the Web. They see a hot-take/dunk on Twitter and because they agree with the aesthetics of a person's post and some of their other content, they think of the poster as "correct" and retweet/share their content. That's how online tribes form. I'm confident that in a few generations, we'll all "know" much better how to navigate the online world. Until then, much like the aftermath of the printing press, there will be instability.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > It's like me calling you and you liking what I have to say and then calling all your friends to tell them, modern tech makes that easier. Robocalling is more akin to running a script to spam users via a bot, wouldn't you say? When you share something on Twitter, there is literally a script (executed by Twitter) that shares that same thing with all your followers. That's essentially the primary mechanism of Twitter, and I would argue that it's fundamentally very different than you choosing to call everyone to know to tell them something (at least for people with more than, say, Dunbar's number of followers). Because of the fact that it's automated, essentially instant, and essentially unbounded in its reach, it is mechanically much more similar to robocalling than to calling your friends to tell them something.
  - brigandish 5y ago
    Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word "script". That's it's a script is an implementation detail, it's not automated like a bot. In the same way, if we focus on the mechanism of a call then a robocall is not much different to a human. > I would argue that it's fundamentally very different than you choosing to call everyone to know Okay, one is a broadcast to subscribers and the other is single calls to subscribers. The end result is the same, again, the difference is in implementation and convenience.