4 ms·

This is not talking about bogus "my freedoms" claims of people being kicked off Twitter, it's talking about actual loss of freedom of expression, where the gove

This is not talking about bogus "my freedoms" claims of people being kicked off Twitter, it's talking about actual loss of freedom of expression, where the government imprisons people for saying the wrong things. In the US we have loss sight of what real freedom of expression means.

thfuran 4y ago
Getting kicked off social media is essentially having your ability to engage in public discourse removed, or at least severely restricted.
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  - thfuran 4y ago
    You seem to be replying to a comment that I didn't write. I said nothing whatsoever about what the most extreme sort of punishment for speech is or about the maximal extent to which speech can be restricted. I certainly never suggested that being banned from twitter is either of those things.
    - panarky 4y ago
      Do you think Twitter should be forced to provide a platform for all speech with no exceptions? If not, what exceptions do you think should be allowed?
  - TobyTheDog123 4y ago
    I never understood the sarcastic, smarmy, dismissive tone people take when talking about these kinds of issues. The parent poster obviously was not implying getting banned on Twitter is in any way similar to the government imprisoning you for your speech, yet you straw-man him while being on some kind of unearned intellectual high-horse. He is, however, stating the fact that being banned from the platform is having your ability to participate in discourse removed or limited. While the platform may have the right to do so, it doesn't change the fact that there are varying degrees of censorship, and it's not the black-and-white "prosecution/execution or nothing."
    - Melatonic 4y ago
      The real problem here is the SIZE of the social media companies.
  - tailrecursion 4y ago
    But, it is correct to say that being banned from social media severely restricts one's ability to participate. In addition, banning has a significant effect on anyone aware of the ban. It's important to learn from the mistakes of ____(some worse country), so that we don't continue in the direction of ____.
- michaelmcdonald 4y ago
  There are still city / township board meetings. You have the ability to converse with your neighbors. You can write to / contact your local representatives. If you feel that being kicked off social media is the same as the removal of your ability to engage in public discourse can you tell me what people did BEFORE social media?
  - thfuran 4y ago
    Are you going to also suggest that being banned from using motor vehicles wouldn't be a restriction on travel because people did without them in the past?
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      It's a restriction, but not a particularly punitive or effective one, unless you live in a city that's become so beholden to a single mode of travel that car usage has become some kind of dependency . Even then I'd hardly compare it to being booted from a single platform like Twitter that despite the claims of many here only represents a fraction of "public discourse" (indeed, not even a particularly large percentage of online discourse).
      - thfuran 4y ago
        >unless you live in a city that's become so beholden to a single mode of travel that car usage has become some kind of dependency Then I guess it's a good thing no one in the world lives like that...
        wizofaus 4y ago
        I'd agree it certainly would be a good thing :-)
  - Hizonner 4y ago
    They went to where the people they wanted to communicate with were, and communicated with them. The people they want to communicate with have all moved to social media. Before the Internet, there were systems in place for public discourse. Most of them have been dismantled. In the 1970s or 1980s, you read or wrote letters to the editor (now nonexistent or ignored), subscribed to specialty publications (all moved to social media), attended physical meetings (now organized mostly over social media if they happen at all). You might even have literally gone down to the public square to see what people had posted or were saying there (but nobody's posting or speaking now, because nobody's listening, because they've all moved to social media). If you build a new public square, and everybody abandons the old one, you don't get to forbid soapboxing in the new one because the old one is "still available". ... and formal "board meetings" and one-to-one communication are NOT what is meant by public discourse.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  That's absolute nonsense. Social media platforms are PRIVATE forums. Public discourse is getting up on your soap box and speaking directly to people, or engaging city council meetings and various public boards, or talking to your representatives and communicating with various leaders via mail and email. THAT is what public discourse is, and absolutely none of it is affected due to decisions by Facebook or Twitter or Tiktok. You are conflating being seen with being public. They aren't remotely the same.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    Private forums, but with the government having the power to exclude anybody they dislike from 90% of these forums. That's not the way public discourse should be held in a democracy.
- lwelyk 4y ago
  Do you truly believe that? It's a privately owned place to post thoughts, you were not being restricted if no newspaper would print your letter to the editor.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    Absolutely. “Letters to the editor” is the best real-world analogy to social media. SM is not the telephone. It’s not the public square. It’s a company that you send content to, which in turn re-publishes, often after applying algorithmic curation (like a newspaper editor would for user generated letters). People forget: none of these services are direct connections between one person and their audience like the telephone or public square. There are always three distinct steps: 1. You send content to them, 2. They analyze/curate, and 3. They publish it (or not) to the recipient(s). If you want a direct connection unencumbered by a company, choose a medium that works by establishing direct TCP connections between users.
core-utility 4y ago
One can still say that freedoms they had are being restricted or backsliding while acknowledging that other people are far less free.
Blackstrat 4y ago
As a retiree, I'm older than most here, and can attest to the fact that the freedom of expression in the United States is suppressed to a greater degree than at anytime in my lifetime. And it's only getting worse. To accept censorship on Big Tech platforms, e.g., Facebook & Twitter because they are "private companies", is to ignore revelations over the recent years of working in concert with offices of the federal government. Speech codes, gender identity, climate change, election meddling, excessive government spending, two tiers of justice (compare the treatment of Antifa/BLM with the J6 protestors), et al, all lead to a severe erosion of liberty. And that's the way it's intended.
- Fatnino 4y ago
  You fit the stereotype quite well
  - Blackstrat 4y ago
    Stereotype?
    - Fatnino 4y ago
      The stereotype that older people lean conservative.
      - Blackstrat 4y ago
        What I wrote was not conservative. It was just reality. Having been educated at a time when schools/colleges still taught and not indoctrinate, I passed by college biology course. I've read histories of the rise of the Third Reich, for example. I worked with people from all over the world, many escapees from brutal, communist regimes, e.g., the Soviet Union, Cuba, et al. Based on my education and experience, I don't buy into every stupid, little virtue signaling scheme folks come up with these days. Some here still do. They think it makes them more compassionate, more understanding, etc. It gives their lives meaning, whether it's "gender identity", climate change, or EVs. It doesn't. It simply makes them useful idiots, a tool of the ever expanding socialist state.
smsm42 4y ago
If the government "asks" private companies to shut you up - it's better than being jailed or shot by the same government, but the former is an attack on freedom of expression nevertheless.
smsm42 4y ago
No, we haven't. We just didn't lose all the freedom of expression yet. But if we stay silent while the federal government "gently leans" on every major venue of discussion to exclude dissenting voices and everybody who really disagrees with the government - then when the government decides the time has come to be less gentle, and eliminate with force what they couldn't eliminate with covert pressure - the battle would be much, much harder. People in the US have a good position in the fight for their freedoms. If they give it up because "we haven't lost all our freedoms yet, just a little bit of them" then when the bit becomes bigger the position would be much worse - because we assented to the smaller infringements and gave up our good position. Tyranny rarely starts with take-all power grab. It's usually small, "common sense" little things, that establish the basis for more and more power grabs, until the framework is ready for the final strike. This is how it happened in Germany, this is how it happened more recently in Russia. One day you wake up and discover that one of those "extremists", "foreign agents" and "domestic terrorists" that you and everybody else agreed need to be suppressed for the common good - is you. How could that happen?!

thfuran 4y ago

Getting kicked off social media is essentially having your ability to engage in public discourse removed, or at least severely restricted.

SiempreViernes 4y ago
- thfuran 4y ago
  You seem to be replying to a comment that I didn't write. I said nothing whatsoever about what the most extreme sort of punishment for speech is or about the maximal extent to which speech can be restricted. I certainly never suggested that being banned from twitter is either of those things.
  - panarky 4y ago
    Do you think Twitter should be forced to provide a platform for all speech with no exceptions? If not, what exceptions do you think should be allowed?
- TobyTheDog123 4y ago
  I never understood the sarcastic, smarmy, dismissive tone people take when talking about these kinds of issues. The parent poster obviously was not implying getting banned on Twitter is in any way similar to the government imprisoning you for your speech, yet you straw-man him while being on some kind of unearned intellectual high-horse. He is, however, stating the fact that being banned from the platform is having your ability to participate in discourse removed or limited. While the platform may have the right to do so, it doesn't change the fact that there are varying degrees of censorship, and it's not the black-and-white "prosecution/execution or nothing."
  - Melatonic 4y ago
    The real problem here is the SIZE of the social media companies.
- tailrecursion 4y ago
  But, it is correct to say that being banned from social media severely restricts one's ability to participate. In addition, banning has a significant effect on anyone aware of the ban. It's important to learn from the mistakes of ____(some worse country), so that we don't continue in the direction of ____.
michaelmcdonald 4y ago
There are still city / township board meetings. You have the ability to converse with your neighbors. You can write to / contact your local representatives. If you feel that being kicked off social media is the same as the removal of your ability to engage in public discourse can you tell me what people did BEFORE social media?
- thfuran 4y ago
  Are you going to also suggest that being banned from using motor vehicles wouldn't be a restriction on travel because people did without them in the past?
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    It's a restriction, but not a particularly punitive or effective one, unless you live in a city that's become so beholden to a single mode of travel that car usage has become some kind of dependency . Even then I'd hardly compare it to being booted from a single platform like Twitter that despite the claims of many here only represents a fraction of "public discourse" (indeed, not even a particularly large percentage of online discourse).
    - thfuran 4y ago
      >unless you live in a city that's become so beholden to a single mode of travel that car usage has become some kind of dependency Then I guess it's a good thing no one in the world lives like that...
      - wizofaus 4y ago
        I'd agree it certainly would be a good thing :-)
- Hizonner 4y ago
  They went to where the people they wanted to communicate with were, and communicated with them. The people they want to communicate with have all moved to social media. Before the Internet, there were systems in place for public discourse. Most of them have been dismantled. In the 1970s or 1980s, you read or wrote letters to the editor (now nonexistent or ignored), subscribed to specialty publications (all moved to social media), attended physical meetings (now organized mostly over social media if they happen at all). You might even have literally gone down to the public square to see what people had posted or were saying there (but nobody's posting or speaking now, because nobody's listening, because they've all moved to social media). If you build a new public square, and everybody abandons the old one, you don't get to forbid soapboxing in the new one because the old one is "still available". ... and formal "board meetings" and one-to-one communication are NOT what is meant by public discourse.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
That's absolute nonsense. Social media platforms are PRIVATE forums. Public discourse is getting up on your soap box and speaking directly to people, or engaging city council meetings and various public boards, or talking to your representatives and communicating with various leaders via mail and email. THAT is what public discourse is, and absolutely none of it is affected due to decisions by Facebook or Twitter or Tiktok. You are conflating being seen with being public. They aren't remotely the same.
- smsm42 4y ago
  Private forums, but with the government having the power to exclude anybody they dislike from 90% of these forums. That's not the way public discourse should be held in a democracy.
lwelyk 4y ago
Do you truly believe that? It's a privately owned place to post thoughts, you were not being restricted if no newspaper would print your letter to the editor.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Absolutely. “Letters to the editor” is the best real-world analogy to social media. SM is not the telephone. It’s not the public square. It’s a company that you send content to, which in turn re-publishes, often after applying algorithmic curation (like a newspaper editor would for user generated letters). People forget: none of these services are direct connections between one person and their audience like the telephone or public square. There are always three distinct steps: 1. You send content to them, 2. They analyze/curate, and 3. They publish it (or not) to the recipient(s). If you want a direct connection unencumbered by a company, choose a medium that works by establishing direct TCP connections between users.

core-utility 4y ago

One can still say that freedoms they had are being restricted or backsliding while acknowledging that other people are far less free.

Blackstrat 4y ago

As a retiree, I'm older than most here, and can attest to the fact that the freedom of expression in the United States is suppressed to a greater degree than at anytime in my lifetime. And it's only getting worse. To accept censorship on Big Tech platforms, e.g., Facebook & Twitter because they are "private companies", is to ignore revelations over the recent years of working in concert with offices of the federal government. Speech codes, gender identity, climate change, election meddling, excessive government spending, two tiers of justice (compare the treatment of Antifa/BLM with the J6 protestors), et al, all lead to a severe erosion of liberty. And that's the way it's intended.

Fatnino 4y ago
You fit the stereotype quite well
- Blackstrat 4y ago
  Stereotype?
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    The stereotype that older people lean conservative.
    - Blackstrat 4y ago
      What I wrote was not conservative. It was just reality. Having been educated at a time when schools/colleges still taught and not indoctrinate, I passed by college biology course. I've read histories of the rise of the Third Reich, for example. I worked with people from all over the world, many escapees from brutal, communist regimes, e.g., the Soviet Union, Cuba, et al. Based on my education and experience, I don't buy into every stupid, little virtue signaling scheme folks come up with these days. Some here still do. They think it makes them more compassionate, more understanding, etc. It gives their lives meaning, whether it's "gender identity", climate change, or EVs. It doesn't. It simply makes them useful idiots, a tool of the ever expanding socialist state.

smsm42 4y ago

If the government "asks" private companies to shut you up - it's better than being jailed or shot by the same government, but the former is an attack on freedom of expression nevertheless.

smsm42 4y ago

No, we haven't. We just didn't lose all the freedom of expression yet. But if we stay silent while the federal government "gently leans" on every major venue of discussion to exclude dissenting voices and everybody who really disagrees with the government - then when the government decides the time has come to be less gentle, and eliminate with force what they couldn't eliminate with covert pressure - the battle would be much, much harder. People in the US have a good position in the fight for their freedoms. If they give it up because "we haven't lost all our freedoms yet, just a little bit of them" then when the bit becomes bigger the position would be much worse - because we assented to the smaller infringements and gave up our good position. Tyranny rarely starts with take-all power grab. It's usually small, "common sense" little things, that establish the basis for more and more power grabs, until the framework is ready for the final strike. This is how it happened in Germany, this is how it happened more recently in Russia. One day you wake up and discover that one of those "extremists", "foreign agents" and "domestic terrorists" that you and everybody else agreed need to be suppressed for the common good - is you. How could that happen?!