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Musk and everyone else is right that we do need a platform with free speech. The only problem is that all those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when

by mrtksn 4y ago

Musk and everyone else is right that we do need a platform with free speech. The only problem is that all those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech. I have been following self proclaimed free speech absolutists(because I too, believe in free speech but don't believe it exists) and they are totally not the kind of people that say "I hate what you say but I will die defending your right to say it". In all places, these people are curating comments and posts to push agenda. The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for anything because they don't claim virtue in first place. It's a bit like companies doing greenwashing, which can be exposed when they don't deliver on their claimed virtues versus companies who don't even claim such virtues and instead pretend that it doesn't matter. Those who claim virtue are better even if they ultimately fail.

BWStearns 4y ago
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. You've found the problem. There _are_ "anything legal" online spaces, and they _suck_. There's no way to have 0 moderation and not have the place turn basically into 4Chan. If people really want to be on totally free speech platforms, they can just go on 4Chan, but what they really want is to force everyone else to engage with the toxic shit they want to say and no one else wants to hear.
bergenty 4y ago
I’m no longer a free speech idealist.
drc500free 4y ago
> Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. What does "holding them responsible" look like? Making pseudo-anonymous comments on HN calling them out? Giving them the benefit of the doubt at this point that they are acting in good faith seems hopelessly naïve and exactly the smokescreen they are looking for. They're saying whatever Bullshit(tm) it takes to get through this week with the best possible outcome, and you want to circle back in a couple years? No one will care or remember remember what the initial statement was. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit#Lying_and_bullshit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit#Lying_and_bullsh...
guerrilla 4y ago
> at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for anything because they don't claim virtue in first place. What's the plan to do that when they censor all dissent on the platforms they just bought?
- impowski 4y ago
  When it happens we’ll call you.
- hoseja 4y ago
  Probably similar to what is currently happening on all the other platforms censoring dissent.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    What do you mean? Be a billionaire and buy the platform?
    - mrtksn 4y ago
      You don't actually need to be a billionaire to have a platform. It helps to quickly own one but you can always build it yourself. Those who felt censored just created their own social media. Some prominent figures in extreme right community are blue collar workers.
- rvz 4y ago
  Then do what Gab, Gettr and Truth Social did and 'build your own platform'. If not that, then use a Mastodon instance like mastodon.social as an alternative? The only thing these networks censor is anything that is illegal in their hosted jurisdiction i.e the US.
  - easrng 4y ago
    The fediverse (network of activitypub servers, including mastodon) itself doesn't censor anything at all, but if you don't moderate your instance then other instances might decide to stop federating with you to protect their users.
brazzy 4y ago
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. I posit that this is the unavoidable result of free speech absolutism. People like their idea of what absolute free speech will be like, but they don't like the real thing when they see it.
smcl 4y ago
But Musk doesn't want a platform for "free speech" - he wants a platform where guys like him can do or say what they like without repercussions, but where he can crack down on anyone he doesn't like. Like it or not Twitter is about as good a compromise as you're going to get. The "free speech" places like Truth Social and Gab will happily boot you off if they don't like you. Twitter have a TOS where they are very forgiving - for the most part issuing suspensions for violations and allowing you to delete TOS-breaking tweets rather than banning you. The line for Twitter seems to be when there is actual real-world harm that can be directly attributed to your actions on the platform. So if you're getting banned from Twitter you need to have fucked up big time
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  As much as I would like to believe otherwise, I think I agree. Musk is all about Musk. Everything is a tool to accommodate that process. I still think he is the best thing that came out of Paypal, but arguably that is not a tall order.
- martin1975 4y ago
  Assuming the user's comment meets the legal definition of 1A speech and is not porn, if you can show me a single instance where anyone that posted a comment that was either removed or censored in some way by anyone with access at Gab, I will personally send you USD $50 in crypto at any address you specify in the comment, after I corroborate your example/evidence with Gab's management. I've been on Gab since its inception - the only type of comments/users that get booted are those who engage in illegal speech. Illegal speech != distasteful/hateful/politically-charged/racist/sexist/divisive/etc. https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-re... Is hate speech right? In most cases, probably not unless you're saying things like "f..k all pedophiles who rape children", then it's righteously motivated. Is it legal? Yes. This is a very important distinction and what gives the USA its unique character and distinguishing trait among ALL other nations who do not have these types of freedoms codified in their constitutions...in fact, in many countries you'd be sacked quietly for saying the "wrong" thing - where "wrong" is defined by whomever happens to be in power (e.g. Russia, China come to mind)
tgv 4y ago
Why do we need an absolute free speech platform? What good does it do? > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. Sounds like a hint to me. There are more free speech sites, e.g. saidit.net. I would wholeheartedly recommend staying away from it: it's a cesspool, like the other reddit wannabes. Voat also comes to mind. Freedom of speech on such sites only serves to say the worst of the worst, and that will predictably include escalating aggression towards other users.
- stale2002 4y ago
  > Why do we need an absolute free speech platform? To ensure that ideas that people want to be censored or deplatformed can be evaluated by others who want to see what they are. If people are not able to read oposing viewpoints, it makes them less able to understand them, and why they are wrong.
- shafyy 4y ago
  > Why do we need an absolute free speech platform? What good does it do? This is exactly the right question to ask. I'm convinced that it's not possible to have constructive "free speech" social media platform. There's always the need for moderation.
  - btbuildem 4y ago
    I agree, but I'd like to play with what "moderation" means. A great example of when moderation fails / is abused is Reddit, or the big socials like IG. The bots can be overly sensitive / have lots of false positives, and the individuals in charge of moderation are not accountable to anyone (except maybe advertisers, indirectly). I would like to see a platform where moderation exists, but it's "opt-in" only. Meaning, the mods / bots can tag / categorize user posts, and other users can control the visibility of tagged material. This way everything -- the most vile, twisted, hateful and disturbing things are still permitted a place to exist, but they're effectively shadowbanned by individual choice. Start with some sane defaults, and allow people to peel back the lid on the box of horrors if they want to. This could work with age-restrictions (users below a certain age cannot see certain tags) as well as satisfy advertisers that their ads are shown next to the most innoffensive, oatmeal-bland content (they choose tags next to which their ads are never shown).
lm28469 4y ago
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. Almost as if allowing absolute free speech has consequences, almost as if there was a reason absolute free speech isn't a thing anywhere in the world... we might be onto something
- Dig1t 4y ago
  Okay I'm going to try and engage in a good faith reply here: "Free speech absolutist" does not mean "absolute free speech", you're misunderstanding the premise here. The term does not mean that anyone should be allowed to say anything they want at any time. The phrase means that we should permit any LEGAL speech. Where "legal" has tons of historical precedent and can be decided by the country. We've seen time and again, that if the ability to speak freely isn't a priority, then censorship grows quickly. If you don't believe that there is a ton of censorship happening on these platforms with a specific set of biases (the biases that the employees of these companies carry) then I would say that you might not be viewing the situation with an open mind. This is becoming a problem because the Internet has become the new town square where people learn what's going on in the world and talk with each other. If the people running these platforms are allowed to suppress speech that they don't like and promote speech that they do like, then they wield an incredible amount of power. This power is rife for abuse, both by people inside the corporation and within government. You are correct though that 4chan is a gross cesspool, though its one I believe should be allowed to exist simply because I believe freedom of speech is important. The problem with that site is obviously that it's anonymous. Coupling anonymity with free speech is a recipe for bringing out the worst in people, but a system where peoples' identities are out in the open and where they can speak freely is good in my opinion. We need more free speech and we need to engage with our fellow countrymen and find common cause, otherwise this insanely polarized partisan situation will continue to get worse.
easrng 4y ago
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. And even 4chan has rules and mods to enforce them.
asddubs 4y ago
>The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. welcome to true free speech on the internet. the worst and most abrasive of the bunch drive everyone away.
madeofpalk 4y ago
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. Here, you've solved it. "The free market", both users and advertisers, demand content moderation. If you want to attract users, you need a website that isn't a cesspool of 'toxicity'. If you don't want to drive away those who actually pay for your website (advertisers), you'll need to moderate. Reddit has proved this out - they started out trying to say they're hands off, and they'll only remove illegal content (ignoring how troublesome that is to define for a global website), and they've slowly learned over the years that they cannot grow their website with those policies. You could say that you don't want to grow your platform, and stay a small niche, which is totally fine. That's what gab and parlor and 4chan are. We have them already!
- bombcar 4y ago
  They could grow the website just fine - it was growing the advertising (read: profits) that is the problem. And you'll know the death-knell for reddit is here when they crack down on the porn.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    No, it wasn't just about advertising. Some types of content (piracy, child porn, etc) would get them in actual legal trouble
    - philippejara 4y ago
      that falls under illegal content in the US which they never didn't remove. Maybe not piracy but there's plenty of piracy subreddits last I checked. What made them start changing things iirc was the backlash over the Icloud(?) celebrity nude leaks.
threatofrain 4y ago
You're basically looking for people like Stallman, who is a very rare kind of person. He thinks about the principles he would like to advocate for and then he fleshes out how these principles interact and how to deal with tensions or contradictions. Most people who declare their affinity for a value or policy or position merely do so tactically; they think that there's a short-term relationship between the furthering of some movement and their ability to get closer to what they want. Such people are allies when convenient.
vikaveri 4y ago
Interesting how often "free speech" seems to equate with "free to be offensive jerk". If your best argument is presented in s way that makes it sound like "You're ruining my life! I hate you forever!" then maybe you should go for a timeout and come back when you can discuss things calmly and rationally. I listen to arguments, not tantrums and swearing Edit: typo
chalst 4y ago
> at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. These are people who have a track record of evading responsibility.
hrbf 4y ago
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. I’d argue that every place that allows every kind of speech without restriction will eventually degenerate into a cesspit. You lose the reasonable people quickly because they don’t want to deal with the toxicity and it’s all downhill from there. > The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
nailer 4y ago
> All those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech. Can you give examples?
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Elon Musk, for instance, claims to be a free speech absolutist. However, in practice, he attempts to suppress speech that is expressed through bots that advertise crypto currency in replies to him.
  - nailer 4y ago
    Wanting to stop fraud isn’t the same thing as wanting to stop political speech you don’t like.
    - poorlyknit 4y ago
      Free speech isn't just about political speech though.
      - nailer 4y ago
        That’s true but I don’t think it includes fraud by most people’s definition (which is most of what the fake Elon bots are doing).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- status200 4y ago
  Not OP, but this example is probably the most famous: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/30/business/elon-musk-private-jet-twitter https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/30/business/elon-musk-private-je...
  - nailer 4y ago
    Wanting privacy is not the same thing as trying to stop political speech.
jonathanyc 4y ago
I don't like how "I'm a free speech absolutist" has become "I want to force you to read my toxic rants, even when you try to get away from me." You yourself say 4chan is "barely bearable." What free speech has meant historically is "I don't believe the government should be able to criminalize certain kinds of speech." It never meant "I am entitled to insert garbage into someone else's newspaper or book" until people started misappropriating the term.
- stale2002 4y ago
  That is what the block button is for. Most people who are in favor of free speech, are perfectly fine with you personally clicking the block button. Instead, what they don't want, is a centralized platform preventing consenting parties from engaging with each other. See the difference?
  - fzeroracer 4y ago
    What exactly is the difference, again? A block button is prone to breaking thru numerical power. If enough people are responding to you and or harassing you there is no manageable way to block all of them, especially without first passively engaging with their posts in the first place. So instead people build addons and blocklists to manage all of that for them. Now you have a separate centralized platform for dealing with a certain subset of users. And if that doesn't work or if they don't want to put in that effort they just leave the platform instead. They go to somewhere else where the social agreement with the platform is to automatically filter out or remove those users. Hence why few people actually use the free speech platforms like Gab, Parker etc.
    - stale2002 4y ago
      > What exactly is the difference, again? Think about 2 situations. Person A, wants to see the content of Person B. So person A voluntarily chooses to see the content. And the other situation is Person C, does not want to see the content of person B, so chooses not to do so. > there is no manageable way to block all of them Yes there is. Someone could choose to allow an automated method of blocking people that they don't want to see. As long as nobody is forced to use this automated moderation, or can change it, while still having access to that platform, then it is fine. > Now you have a separate centralized platform for dealing with a certain subset of users. No actually, it is quite a bit different. The difference being that a person could chose to modify this blocking authority. It is all fine and well to have blocking authorities, as long as I, the user can turn it off, if I choose to do so, on that platform, or otherwise modify my own blocklist, or add a white list. So that is the solution. Feel free to have blocklists. Just let me change the blocklist, for myself, if I disagree with it. There, everyone gets what they want.
causi 4y ago
"I hate what you say but I will die defending your right to say it". In all places, these people are curating comments and posts to push agenda. It's incredibly tiresome, not just online but in real life. There is no freedom vs control debate. There's just the people who advocate arresting those who teach their children inconvenient truths vs those who advocate arresting those who use naughty language.
- 1270018080 4y ago
  That's kind of a hilarious way to frame each side of the debate. Hilarious in a bad way that doesn't give you the benefit of the doubt on the topic.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  The 2020 election was stolen isn't an inconvenient truth, it's not naughty language, it's a lie that the majority of GOP house candidates are furthering. You're mischaracterization of the debate leads me to believe you made this comment in bad faith.
  - causi 4y ago
    I was actually talking about CRT and the history of slavery in the United States. That's the inconvenient truth legislatures in some states are attempting to arrest people for teaching. Plenty of people are trying to keep election conspiracy theories off social media but as far as I know nobody is trying to pass a law against spreading them. You're mischaracterization of the debate leads me to believe you made this comment in bad faith. And there it is. Advocate for free speech in front of a left-leaning audience and you're a conspiracy-spewing Republican. Advocate for free speech in front of a right-leaning audience and you're a child-grooming communist. Like I said, tiresome.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      Right, no one actually wants free speech, they're just mad when the moderator disagrees with them.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
We don't need a free speech platform. People need a choice as to how the content they see is moderated. That's what forums used to do, until we collectively decided to just put all the forums on Facebook or Twitter rather than having separate forums for each interest. Everyone thinking "we need free speech on Twitter" has lost the plot, and, as you mentioned, the revealed preference of people who claim they want free speech is actually toward heavier moderation (but moderation they like). Most of them go on Twitter for one kind of content, and on Parler or "Truth" Social for another kind, and they don't really want the streams to cross. We used to have this in the 90's and early 2000's. The question is how to get it back.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- _chu1 4y ago
  How about we just go back to not using one big central social communication platform and go back to the spirit of using separate independently owned forums, chatrooms and websites for our little niches and communities to prevent this issue.
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    we can't uninvent the smartphone but every day I wish we could
  - themitigating 4y ago
    How does this prevent the issue? You can say horrible things on smaller forums as well
    - api 4y ago
      Sure, and people who don't want to circle jerk about it can leave. This is exactly how it always worked. I've left a lot of toxic forums.
    - mancerayder 4y ago
sph 4y ago
> The only problem is that all those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech It's unclear from your comment. Are you saying that Musk and West are our free speech champions and everybody else is a poser? Because Musk and West do not care about free speech either. It's the problem these rich idiots all claim to have: "I need a platform where my voice can be heard," while their voice already gets top spot on the trending Twitter page and on newspaper front pages. Of course Michael Spicer said it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrqhgTjFkLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrqhgTjFkLo
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Musk and West are part of "all those".
klyrs 4y ago
> Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. How do you propose to do that, if you can't hold reddit, twitter et al accountable for the same today?
shadowgovt 4y ago
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does wiggle its eyebrows meaningfully in causation's direction.
- dcow 4y ago
  - jslaD 4y ago
    4chan does not have the concept of “Internet points”. Are you thinking Reddit?
    - dcow 4y ago
      No. I'm talking about 4chan.
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  It tells me there's places of free speech on the internet but what is really wanted here is forced listening. Free speech on small fringe sites somehow doesn't count because it's not forced on people that don't want to see it. It's pretty clearly not a free speech issue at this point.
  - btbuildem 4y ago
    That's a good observation! I get unreasonably irked when some subreddit won't let me post a comment / removes a comment. Like, "who do you think you are to limit my ability to express myself here?!" Deprived of context, my contribution is meaningless -- so, how does that interact with the freedom of speech, really? Say I'm in a crowded square where people are arguing about squids, and I have a squid-related revelation I'd like to share, but the self-appointed Guardians of the Square have gagged me. Is this an infringement on free speech? I'm free to leave the square and speak -- but what I have to say is relevant within the confines of the square, not elsewhere.
Aloha 4y ago
Absolute free speech and anonymity is a toxic combination. Free speech in the way it was envisaged in the constitution presumes there is a feedback loop back to the emitter of the speech. Anonymity breaks that feedback loop. Anyone who tells you that free speech without consequences has ever existed pretty much anywhere is lying to themselves and to you. If you want anonymity you need some measure of bounds on speech in those places.
- jpadkins 4y ago
  "Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it." - contemporary philosopher
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  Free speech was not "envisaged in the constitution." Free speech is an unalienable right of men, which our Creator endowed us with.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I mean, we haven't had a society that was free of violence either, but that doesn't invalidate the cause of nonviolence.
- dcow 4y ago
  Exactly. Personally I’d rather see more of internet communities/products regulating access to anonymity. This opinion is intensely unpopular around here, but IMO it addresses the root cause. The internet made it instantly easy and cheap to have multiple identities. Don’t get me wrong, we still need that tool in a modern human’s toolset, but it shouldn’t be cheap and easy to generate low value spam. Imagine if Twitter had a community reputation system and Twitter itself never removed any Tweets but just let the community downvote them into nonexistence, like we do here…
  - Aloha 4y ago
    Community reputation (mostly) works the same as a lack of anonymity, it means your actions are tied to your account (in re twitter) and some extent to your pseudonym. I'm a furry, furry is a community built around an isolation between our IRL identity and our online one. But the community is tight knit enough that your reputation will follow you around - the identity you created for yourself yes - but still your identity, and if you're too far out of bounds, you get quietly (or loudly) excluded from the mainstream of the community. It largely functions the same way as tying your real name to every online identity. Now take something like twitter - you start with a karma of say 75, anything less than 100 karma, and your tweets wont show up in searches, anything less than 50 and you start to disappear from timeline - even for followers, anything less than 30, you disappear from lists - effectively this creates an automatic shadow banning system. But a saving grace, you earn a quarter point of karma just by not having any negative interactions on the site, you could also earn positive karma by upvotes on content. You could also put some other bounds in there too, like limiting how much positive karma or negative karma a single post could earn, to prevent it from skewing the numbers too much (it should be based on a weighted average of interactions, not just on one tweet that goes viral and the rest of it is low effort shitposting). Ideally you'd have a cross site 'identity' service that would also carry along a weighted karma score from all of the places you interact, and allow people to see those links - you're still abstracted from your real identity, and you're always welcome to start over again, abandon your account and start from zero, but there is persistent history of your interactions.
joshstrange 4y ago
> Musk and everyone else is right that we do need a platform with free speech. The only problem is that all those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech. Agreed. Truth Social/Parlor as "Free speech" spaces is 100% laughable. > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. AKA: Every totally-free-no-holds-barred-speech sites, there is a reason it's a stupid goal held by people either too naive or those using it as a dog whistle. > Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. Yes, because we have such a good track record of holding liars accountable... > This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for anything because they don't claim virtue in first place. I can't even with this line. We have plenty of fascists running around claiming mountains of virtue and lying through their teeth. Their base/audience continues to blindly follow them and holding any of them accountable (especially by their base) is a pipe dream. > It's a bit like companies doing greenwashing, which can be exposed when they don't deliver on their claimed virtues versus companies who don't even claim such virtues and instead pretend that it doesn't matter. Again, this just isn't happening at scale. > Those who claim virtue are better even if they ultimately fail. False.
LatteLazy 4y ago
Forgive my ignorance: I thought you could basically say/post anything on Twitter as long as: * it was not actively illegal (CP, terrorism etc) * hacked info * deadnaming trans people Is that not the case anymore?
- kbelder 4y ago
  That is not the case, and hasn't been for years.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    I read the rules and the Wikipedia page and that's all I can find. What else is there?
    - LegitShady 4y ago
      https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies why would you go to wikipedia to get a copy of twitter's policies? Anyways based on what you've said so far you haven't actually been paying attention. It's been year's since Dorsey went Rogan's show and took one his trust and safety lawyers with him to do all the legal talk so he could maintain deniability.
      - LatteLazy 4y ago
        I read that. It seems to back up my point. Moderation is minimal outside of the specific cases I listed...
chasing 4y ago
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. And what might we learn from this?
coinbasetwwa 4y ago
I’m pretty sure all you need is a free speech platform with a tiktok style algorithm that suppresses the grimiest of toxicity. Such a platform would blow every other one of the park and have a rush of content creators. I believe as those engagement algorithms become more accessible we’ll see a clear winner emerge.
Joeri 4y ago
I used to be free speech absolutist, but I am not any longer, especially when it comes to social media. The argument in favor of absolute free speech for me was basically “let everyone hear everything and make up their own mind”. This presumes that people are swayed by the content of an argument. This is a false assumption, people are mostly swayed by the volume of the argument. This is well documented in psychological research. Now, if everyone had the same level of visibility for their personal speech this would just lead to an ersatz version of opinion democracy, where the most often held opinions would rise to the top, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. But people don’t have equal visibility. The reach of a wealthy or famous person is so much greater that in the political arena basically only the speech of the wealthy and famous ends up having enough volume to convince people, even if it starts out wildly unpopular and even if it is objectively false. Social media are especially sensitive to this thanks to the ability to buy access to views without the viewers even realizing, to micro-target audiences, and to have zero independent vetting of what is said. This then perverts absolute free speech into a weapon used by the powerful to deceive and subvert democracies. That’s why I think that to protect democracies we must have some limits on the ability to get speech amplification through (social) media, but I don’t have a hard and fast rule for what that should look like. It is far easier to say “let everything pass” but that is the easy way out and ultimately bad.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  > This presumes that people are swayed by the content of an argument. This is a false assumption, people are mostly swayed by the volume of the argument. That's only half the story. The other half is tone. I have been persuaded against several beliefs that should have won me over if volume were the only consideration due to the quality of the writing. "These people type like morons, it's probably a belief primarily found amidst the stupid", as it were.
- poisonborz 4y ago
  There is a very easy theoretical solution to this, discourage platforms beyond a certain size and incentivize topical groups instead of geography. It's just hard to make these kind of regulations at this point, now that everyone got hooked on ad money and data mining.
andrewclunn 4y ago
Free speech advocacy was trendy with the left when the right held more institutional power. Now it's embraced (at least as a slogan) by the right. In much the same way I don't trust Apple to give a damn about software freedom, but they backed Webkit and clang for their own self interested reasons. I accept that being "on the side of free expression" means that I will need to shift political allegiances now and then as power consolidation shifts. Along the way the tools for enabling and preserving free speech get better and better though. Long live the anti-establishment wingnut right... until they win, then I'll be hanging with Jimmy Dore.
CM30 4y ago
I think the main thing that would help there wouldn't be to force any particular platform to allow all speech, but to make it so anyone who wanted to set up such a site or platform could do so without fear of being bullied off the internet by an angry mob or moral puritanism. Web hosting services, firewall services like Cloudflare, payment processers like Visa and Mastercard and internet providers should be regulated as utilities like water and electric companies are. If that was done, then there would be far less issues here. Those who want free speech focused platforms could create them, and those who didn't want to use them wouldn't have to. The problem at the moment is that not only is there no place for free speech online, but any attempts at creating one can be bullied off the internet by an angry mob on social media because of companies and PR.
awb 4y ago
> Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. Really? They've never defined free speech, so how can we hold them accountable? The idea of a "free speech absolutist" is a complete joke destined for legal consequences. For example, I don't think they mean free speech is the ability to post obscene content, threats, state secrets, corporate IP, or any other legal restrictions on free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... Plus, there are all kinds of free speech reductions they could make, like only allowing palatable content onto top trending recommendations. So, you're not banning free speech, but you're actively restricting it based on what's attractive to advertisers or even the general public. If they said "all legally permitted speech on our platform will be given the same protection and visibility based on metrics that do no include the meaning of the speech", then that would be something concrete that we could hold them accountable to.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > the ability to post obscene content, threats, state secrets, corporate IP, or any other legal restrictions Free speech opponents always like to point to these examples when the topic of free speech comes up, but I've never seen free speech advocates use an example of any of these as examples of problematic censorship - instead, they (we) point out voluminous examples of unfashionable opinions being removed. In fact, if Kanye or Musk came out and said "free speech except for" and listed your (specific, easily definable) examples, I'd still agree with them that they were advocating for free speech.
  - awb 4y ago
    > I've never seen free speech advocates use an example of any of these as examples of problematic censorship Just look at some of the exceptions to free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... * Incitement * False statements of fact * Obscenity * Fighting words * Threatening the president of the United States These are all grey areas that are constantly being tested and censored to varying degrees on multiple Social Media platforms. Trump was banned from Twitter because of “the risk of further incitement of violence” after Jan. 6. So it's very much at the crux of the issue on the debate whether or not Trump's speech on Twitter should have been protected by the platform or not, which is what really catalyzed Parler and Truth Social's branding in the market place as "pro- free speech".
par 4y ago
"The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable." Yes, this is what you'll end up getting on so called 'free speech' platforms. Because, unfortunately, these days what people really mean when they say 'free speech' is actually a veil for them to say hateful things about marginalized groups of people.
triceratops 4y ago
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. It's very interesting that you don't see the straight line between "absolute" free speech and toxicity. Absolute free speech IRL is moderated by physical and emotional stimuli and inhibitions against direct confrontation and bucking social norms. There are also legal repercussions, such as libel or defamation suits, for particularly harmful speech. The anonymity, and lack of accountability or feedback to one's words makes people far less inhibited online.
uncomputation 4y ago
> because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it This is a common but I believe overstated, even naive, ideal. What exactly does "holding them responsible" even truly mean? If a company is greenwashing and they are still emitting carbon, what really is the difference between the company who never claimed to care at all? The carbon is emitted all the same. "Oh, the stock price would fall because investors would lose trust." But greenwashing is a dime a dozen these days and I think the investors/upper class know that greenwashing is just marketing and don’t truly expect/care about the cause. Regarding this, how does anyone hold Parler accountable for making a platform of "free speech"? Either you sign up or you don’t. If you sign up and complain they aren’t extreme enough, they don’t care or at least they don’t have any material reason to care. If you don’t, where else are you going to go? Twitter? But the whole demographic is people who didn’t like Twitter in the first place and want to be with their kind. So how do you "hold them accountable" without say, legislation, regulation, and government oversight, something today’s "free" speech advocates are opposed to?
asdff 4y ago
We have a platform with free speech: your own website! I don't get why these personalities who are charging this free speech narrative don't just decamp with their massive following to their own website. It's like arguing a bar has no right to kick out a drunk and disorderly person, because "free speech." Sorry, people can kick you out of the place they own, if you don't like that then start up your own bar/twitter/etc.
coffeeblack 4y ago
> but it contains so much toxicity Easy. Allow all legal speech, but make it very easy for each individual user to block what they don’t want to see. Maybe even allow external providers to offer filters. Like an App Store but for content filters. Let each individual decide how much and what kind of censorship they want.
yokoprime 4y ago
Free speech is only a concept in a judicial sense. E.g. If you come barging into my house spewing racist shit I may not be able to call the police in you for being a racist, but i'm throwing you off my property
mabbo 4y ago
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. That is what happens when speech is free from consequences.
tootie 4y ago
The kind of censorship that occurs on places like Twitter or Facebook is purely an artifact of free market capitalism. The existence of odious people with socially unacceptable opinions decrease the value of the platform. Given those kind of people unfettered access to a private platform when they are not contributing to the growth and vibrancy of the platform is essentially just charity. This is the "marketplace of ideas" functioning exactly as it's supposed to.

by mrtksn 4y ago

BWStearns 4y ago

> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. You've found the problem. There _are_ "anything legal" online spaces, and they _suck_. There's no way to have 0 moderation and not have the place turn basically into 4Chan. If people really want to be on totally free speech platforms, they can just go on 4Chan, but what they really want is to force everyone else to engage with the toxic shit they want to say and no one else wants to hear.

bergenty 4y ago

I’m no longer a free speech idealist.

drc500free 4y ago

> Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. What does "holding them responsible" look like? Making pseudo-anonymous comments on HN calling them out? Giving them the benefit of the doubt at this point that they are acting in good faith seems hopelessly naïve and exactly the smokescreen they are looking for. They're saying whatever Bullshit(tm) it takes to get through this week with the best possible outcome, and you want to circle back in a couple years? No one will care or remember remember what the initial statement was. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit#Lying_and_bullshit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit#Lying_and_bullsh...

guerrilla 4y ago

> at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for anything because they don't claim virtue in first place. What's the plan to do that when they censor all dissent on the platforms they just bought?

impowski 4y ago
When it happens we’ll call you.
hoseja 4y ago
Probably similar to what is currently happening on all the other platforms censoring dissent.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  What do you mean? Be a billionaire and buy the platform?
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    You don't actually need to be a billionaire to have a platform. It helps to quickly own one but you can always build it yourself. Those who felt censored just created their own social media. Some prominent figures in extreme right community are blue collar workers.
rvz 4y ago
Then do what Gab, Gettr and Truth Social did and 'build your own platform'. If not that, then use a Mastodon instance like mastodon.social as an alternative? The only thing these networks censor is anything that is illegal in their hosted jurisdiction i.e the US.
- easrng 4y ago
  The fediverse (network of activitypub servers, including mastodon) itself doesn't censor anything at all, but if you don't moderate your instance then other instances might decide to stop federating with you to protect their users.

brazzy 4y ago

> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. I posit that this is the unavoidable result of free speech absolutism. People like their idea of what absolute free speech will be like, but they don't like the real thing when they see it.

smcl 4y ago

But Musk doesn't want a platform for "free speech" - he wants a platform where guys like him can do or say what they like without repercussions, but where he can crack down on anyone he doesn't like. Like it or not Twitter is about as good a compromise as you're going to get. The "free speech" places like Truth Social and Gab will happily boot you off if they don't like you. Twitter have a TOS where they are very forgiving - for the most part issuing suspensions for violations and allowing you to delete TOS-breaking tweets rather than banning you. The line for Twitter seems to be when there is actual real-world harm that can be directly attributed to your actions on the platform. So if you're getting banned from Twitter you need to have fucked up big time

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
As much as I would like to believe otherwise, I think I agree. Musk is all about Musk. Everything is a tool to accommodate that process. I still think he is the best thing that came out of Paypal, but arguably that is not a tall order.
martin1975 4y ago
Assuming the user's comment meets the legal definition of 1A speech and is not porn, if you can show me a single instance where anyone that posted a comment that was either removed or censored in some way by anyone with access at Gab, I will personally send you USD $50 in crypto at any address you specify in the comment, after I corroborate your example/evidence with Gab's management. I've been on Gab since its inception - the only type of comments/users that get booted are those who engage in illegal speech. Illegal speech != distasteful/hateful/politically-charged/racist/sexist/divisive/etc. https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-re... Is hate speech right? In most cases, probably not unless you're saying things like "f..k all pedophiles who rape children", then it's righteously motivated. Is it legal? Yes. This is a very important distinction and what gives the USA its unique character and distinguishing trait among ALL other nations who do not have these types of freedoms codified in their constitutions...in fact, in many countries you'd be sacked quietly for saying the "wrong" thing - where "wrong" is defined by whomever happens to be in power (e.g. Russia, China come to mind)

tgv 4y ago

Why do we need an absolute free speech platform? What good does it do? > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. Sounds like a hint to me. There are more free speech sites, e.g. saidit.net. I would wholeheartedly recommend staying away from it: it's a cesspool, like the other reddit wannabes. Voat also comes to mind. Freedom of speech on such sites only serves to say the worst of the worst, and that will predictably include escalating aggression towards other users.

stale2002 4y ago
> Why do we need an absolute free speech platform? To ensure that ideas that people want to be censored or deplatformed can be evaluated by others who want to see what they are. If people are not able to read oposing viewpoints, it makes them less able to understand them, and why they are wrong.
shafyy 4y ago
> Why do we need an absolute free speech platform? What good does it do? This is exactly the right question to ask. I'm convinced that it's not possible to have constructive "free speech" social media platform. There's always the need for moderation.
- btbuildem 4y ago
  I agree, but I'd like to play with what "moderation" means. A great example of when moderation fails / is abused is Reddit, or the big socials like IG. The bots can be overly sensitive / have lots of false positives, and the individuals in charge of moderation are not accountable to anyone (except maybe advertisers, indirectly). I would like to see a platform where moderation exists, but it's "opt-in" only. Meaning, the mods / bots can tag / categorize user posts, and other users can control the visibility of tagged material. This way everything -- the most vile, twisted, hateful and disturbing things are still permitted a place to exist, but they're effectively shadowbanned by individual choice. Start with some sane defaults, and allow people to peel back the lid on the box of horrors if they want to. This could work with age-restrictions (users below a certain age cannot see certain tags) as well as satisfy advertisers that their ads are shown next to the most innoffensive, oatmeal-bland content (they choose tags next to which their ads are never shown).

lm28469 4y ago

> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. Almost as if allowing absolute free speech has consequences, almost as if there was a reason absolute free speech isn't a thing anywhere in the world... we might be onto something

Dig1t 4y ago
Okay I'm going to try and engage in a good faith reply here: "Free speech absolutist" does not mean "absolute free speech", you're misunderstanding the premise here. The term does not mean that anyone should be allowed to say anything they want at any time. The phrase means that we should permit any LEGAL speech. Where "legal" has tons of historical precedent and can be decided by the country. We've seen time and again, that if the ability to speak freely isn't a priority, then censorship grows quickly. If you don't believe that there is a ton of censorship happening on these platforms with a specific set of biases (the biases that the employees of these companies carry) then I would say that you might not be viewing the situation with an open mind. This is becoming a problem because the Internet has become the new town square where people learn what's going on in the world and talk with each other. If the people running these platforms are allowed to suppress speech that they don't like and promote speech that they do like, then they wield an incredible amount of power. This power is rife for abuse, both by people inside the corporation and within government. You are correct though that 4chan is a gross cesspool, though its one I believe should be allowed to exist simply because I believe freedom of speech is important. The problem with that site is obviously that it's anonymous. Coupling anonymity with free speech is a recipe for bringing out the worst in people, but a system where peoples' identities are out in the open and where they can speak freely is good in my opinion. We need more free speech and we need to engage with our fellow countrymen and find common cause, otherwise this insanely polarized partisan situation will continue to get worse.

easrng 4y ago

> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. And even 4chan has rules and mods to enforce them.

asddubs 4y ago

>The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. welcome to true free speech on the internet. the worst and most abrasive of the bunch drive everyone away.

madeofpalk 4y ago

> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. Here, you've solved it. "The free market", both users and advertisers, demand content moderation. If you want to attract users, you need a website that isn't a cesspool of 'toxicity'. If you don't want to drive away those who actually pay for your website (advertisers), you'll need to moderate. Reddit has proved this out - they started out trying to say they're hands off, and they'll only remove illegal content (ignoring how troublesome that is to define for a global website), and they've slowly learned over the years that they cannot grow their website with those policies. You could say that you don't want to grow your platform, and stay a small niche, which is totally fine. That's what gab and parlor and 4chan are. We have them already!

bombcar 4y ago
They could grow the website just fine - it was growing the advertising (read: profits) that is the problem. And you'll know the death-knell for reddit is here when they crack down on the porn.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  No, it wasn't just about advertising. Some types of content (piracy, child porn, etc) would get them in actual legal trouble
  - philippejara 4y ago
    that falls under illegal content in the US which they never didn't remove. Maybe not piracy but there's plenty of piracy subreddits last I checked. What made them start changing things iirc was the backlash over the Icloud(?) celebrity nude leaks.

threatofrain 4y ago

You're basically looking for people like Stallman, who is a very rare kind of person. He thinks about the principles he would like to advocate for and then he fleshes out how these principles interact and how to deal with tensions or contradictions. Most people who declare their affinity for a value or policy or position merely do so tactically; they think that there's a short-term relationship between the furthering of some movement and their ability to get closer to what they want. Such people are allies when convenient.

vikaveri 4y ago

Interesting how often "free speech" seems to equate with "free to be offensive jerk". If your best argument is presented in s way that makes it sound like "You're ruining my life! I hate you forever!" then maybe you should go for a timeout and come back when you can discuss things calmly and rationally. I listen to arguments, not tantrums and swearing Edit: typo

chalst 4y ago

> at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. These are people who have a track record of evading responsibility.

hrbf 4y ago

> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. I’d argue that every place that allows every kind of speech without restriction will eventually degenerate into a cesspit. You lose the reasonable people quickly because they don’t want to deal with the toxicity and it’s all downhill from there. > The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

nailer 4y ago

> All those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech. Can you give examples?

renewiltord 4y ago
Elon Musk, for instance, claims to be a free speech absolutist. However, in practice, he attempts to suppress speech that is expressed through bots that advertise crypto currency in replies to him.
- nailer 4y ago
  Wanting to stop fraud isn’t the same thing as wanting to stop political speech you don’t like.
  - poorlyknit 4y ago
    Free speech isn't just about political speech though.
    - nailer 4y ago
      That’s true but I don’t think it includes fraud by most people’s definition (which is most of what the fake Elon bots are doing).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
status200 4y ago
Not OP, but this example is probably the most famous: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/30/business/elon-musk-private-jet-twitter https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/30/business/elon-musk-private-je...
- nailer 4y ago
  Wanting privacy is not the same thing as trying to stop political speech.

jonathanyc 4y ago

I don't like how "I'm a free speech absolutist" has become "I want to force you to read my toxic rants, even when you try to get away from me." You yourself say 4chan is "barely bearable." What free speech has meant historically is "I don't believe the government should be able to criminalize certain kinds of speech." It never meant "I am entitled to insert garbage into someone else's newspaper or book" until people started misappropriating the term.

stale2002 4y ago
That is what the block button is for. Most people who are in favor of free speech, are perfectly fine with you personally clicking the block button. Instead, what they don't want, is a centralized platform preventing consenting parties from engaging with each other. See the difference?
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  What exactly is the difference, again? A block button is prone to breaking thru numerical power. If enough people are responding to you and or harassing you there is no manageable way to block all of them, especially without first passively engaging with their posts in the first place. So instead people build addons and blocklists to manage all of that for them. Now you have a separate centralized platform for dealing with a certain subset of users. And if that doesn't work or if they don't want to put in that effort they just leave the platform instead. They go to somewhere else where the social agreement with the platform is to automatically filter out or remove those users. Hence why few people actually use the free speech platforms like Gab, Parker etc.
  - stale2002 4y ago
    > What exactly is the difference, again? Think about 2 situations. Person A, wants to see the content of Person B. So person A voluntarily chooses to see the content. And the other situation is Person C, does not want to see the content of person B, so chooses not to do so. > there is no manageable way to block all of them Yes there is. Someone could choose to allow an automated method of blocking people that they don't want to see. As long as nobody is forced to use this automated moderation, or can change it, while still having access to that platform, then it is fine. > Now you have a separate centralized platform for dealing with a certain subset of users. No actually, it is quite a bit different. The difference being that a person could chose to modify this blocking authority. It is all fine and well to have blocking authorities, as long as I, the user can turn it off, if I choose to do so, on that platform, or otherwise modify my own blocklist, or add a white list. So that is the solution. Feel free to have blocklists. Just let me change the blocklist, for myself, if I disagree with it. There, everyone gets what they want.

causi 4y ago

"I hate what you say but I will die defending your right to say it". In all places, these people are curating comments and posts to push agenda. It's incredibly tiresome, not just online but in real life. There is no freedom vs control debate. There's just the people who advocate arresting those who teach their children inconvenient truths vs those who advocate arresting those who use naughty language.

1270018080 4y ago
That's kind of a hilarious way to frame each side of the debate. Hilarious in a bad way that doesn't give you the benefit of the doubt on the topic.
colinmhayes 4y ago
The 2020 election was stolen isn't an inconvenient truth, it's not naughty language, it's a lie that the majority of GOP house candidates are furthering. You're mischaracterization of the debate leads me to believe you made this comment in bad faith.
- causi 4y ago
  I was actually talking about CRT and the history of slavery in the United States. That's the inconvenient truth legislatures in some states are attempting to arrest people for teaching. Plenty of people are trying to keep election conspiracy theories off social media but as far as I know nobody is trying to pass a law against spreading them. You're mischaracterization of the debate leads me to believe you made this comment in bad faith. And there it is. Advocate for free speech in front of a left-leaning audience and you're a conspiracy-spewing Republican. Advocate for free speech in front of a right-leaning audience and you're a child-grooming communist. Like I said, tiresome.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Right, no one actually wants free speech, they're just mad when the moderator disagrees with them.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

We don't need a free speech platform. People need a choice as to how the content they see is moderated. That's what forums used to do, until we collectively decided to just put all the forums on Facebook or Twitter rather than having separate forums for each interest. Everyone thinking "we need free speech on Twitter" has lost the plot, and, as you mentioned, the revealed preference of people who claim they want free speech is actually toward heavier moderation (but moderation they like). Most of them go on Twitter for one kind of content, and on Parler or "Truth" Social for another kind, and they don't really want the streams to cross. We used to have this in the 90's and early 2000's. The question is how to get it back.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
_chu1 4y ago
How about we just go back to not using one big central social communication platform and go back to the spirit of using separate independently owned forums, chatrooms and websites for our little niches and communities to prevent this issue.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  we can't uninvent the smartphone but every day I wish we could
- themitigating 4y ago
  How does this prevent the issue? You can say horrible things on smaller forums as well
  - api 4y ago
    Sure, and people who don't want to circle jerk about it can leave. This is exactly how it always worked. I've left a lot of toxic forums.
  - mancerayder 4y ago

sph 4y ago

> The only problem is that all those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech It's unclear from your comment. Are you saying that Musk and West are our free speech champions and everybody else is a poser? Because Musk and West do not care about free speech either. It's the problem these rich idiots all claim to have: "I need a platform where my voice can be heard," while their voice already gets top spot on the trending Twitter page and on newspaper front pages. Of course Michael Spicer said it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrqhgTjFkLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrqhgTjFkLo

Dylan16807 4y ago
Musk and West are part of "all those".

klyrs 4y ago

> Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. How do you propose to do that, if you can't hold reddit, twitter et al accountable for the same today?

shadowgovt 4y ago

> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does wiggle its eyebrows meaningfully in causation's direction.

dcow 4y ago
- jslaD 4y ago
  4chan does not have the concept of “Internet points”. Are you thinking Reddit?
  - dcow 4y ago
    No. I'm talking about 4chan.
AnotherGoodName 4y ago
It tells me there's places of free speech on the internet but what is really wanted here is forced listening. Free speech on small fringe sites somehow doesn't count because it's not forced on people that don't want to see it. It's pretty clearly not a free speech issue at this point.
- btbuildem 4y ago
  That's a good observation! I get unreasonably irked when some subreddit won't let me post a comment / removes a comment. Like, "who do you think you are to limit my ability to express myself here?!" Deprived of context, my contribution is meaningless -- so, how does that interact with the freedom of speech, really? Say I'm in a crowded square where people are arguing about squids, and I have a squid-related revelation I'd like to share, but the self-appointed Guardians of the Square have gagged me. Is this an infringement on free speech? I'm free to leave the square and speak -- but what I have to say is relevant within the confines of the square, not elsewhere.

Aloha 4y ago

Absolute free speech and anonymity is a toxic combination. Free speech in the way it was envisaged in the constitution presumes there is a feedback loop back to the emitter of the speech. Anonymity breaks that feedback loop. Anyone who tells you that free speech without consequences has ever existed pretty much anywhere is lying to themselves and to you. If you want anonymity you need some measure of bounds on speech in those places.

jpadkins 4y ago
"Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it." - contemporary philosopher
Georgelemental 4y ago
Free speech was not "envisaged in the constitution." Free speech is an unalienable right of men, which our Creator endowed us with.
throwaway894345 4y ago
I mean, we haven't had a society that was free of violence either, but that doesn't invalidate the cause of nonviolence.
dcow 4y ago
Exactly. Personally I’d rather see more of internet communities/products regulating access to anonymity. This opinion is intensely unpopular around here, but IMO it addresses the root cause. The internet made it instantly easy and cheap to have multiple identities. Don’t get me wrong, we still need that tool in a modern human’s toolset, but it shouldn’t be cheap and easy to generate low value spam. Imagine if Twitter had a community reputation system and Twitter itself never removed any Tweets but just let the community downvote them into nonexistence, like we do here…
- Aloha 4y ago
  Community reputation (mostly) works the same as a lack of anonymity, it means your actions are tied to your account (in re twitter) and some extent to your pseudonym. I'm a furry, furry is a community built around an isolation between our IRL identity and our online one. But the community is tight knit enough that your reputation will follow you around - the identity you created for yourself yes - but still your identity, and if you're too far out of bounds, you get quietly (or loudly) excluded from the mainstream of the community. It largely functions the same way as tying your real name to every online identity. Now take something like twitter - you start with a karma of say 75, anything less than 100 karma, and your tweets wont show up in searches, anything less than 50 and you start to disappear from timeline - even for followers, anything less than 30, you disappear from lists - effectively this creates an automatic shadow banning system. But a saving grace, you earn a quarter point of karma just by not having any negative interactions on the site, you could also earn positive karma by upvotes on content. You could also put some other bounds in there too, like limiting how much positive karma or negative karma a single post could earn, to prevent it from skewing the numbers too much (it should be based on a weighted average of interactions, not just on one tweet that goes viral and the rest of it is low effort shitposting). Ideally you'd have a cross site 'identity' service that would also carry along a weighted karma score from all of the places you interact, and allow people to see those links - you're still abstracted from your real identity, and you're always welcome to start over again, abandon your account and start from zero, but there is persistent history of your interactions.

joshstrange 4y ago

> Musk and everyone else is right that we do need a platform with free speech. The only problem is that all those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech. Agreed. Truth Social/Parlor as "Free speech" spaces is 100% laughable. > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. AKA: Every totally-free-no-holds-barred-speech sites, there is a reason it's a stupid goal held by people either too naive or those using it as a dog whistle. > Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. Yes, because we have such a good track record of holding liars accountable... > This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for anything because they don't claim virtue in first place. I can't even with this line. We have plenty of fascists running around claiming mountains of virtue and lying through their teeth. Their base/audience continues to blindly follow them and holding any of them accountable (especially by their base) is a pipe dream. > It's a bit like companies doing greenwashing, which can be exposed when they don't deliver on their claimed virtues versus companies who don't even claim such virtues and instead pretend that it doesn't matter. Again, this just isn't happening at scale. > Those who claim virtue are better even if they ultimately fail. False.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Forgive my ignorance: I thought you could basically say/post anything on Twitter as long as: * it was not actively illegal (CP, terrorism etc) * hacked info * deadnaming trans people Is that not the case anymore?

kbelder 4y ago
That is not the case, and hasn't been for years.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  I read the rules and the Wikipedia page and that's all I can find. What else is there?
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies why would you go to wikipedia to get a copy of twitter's policies? Anyways based on what you've said so far you haven't actually been paying attention. It's been year's since Dorsey went Rogan's show and took one his trust and safety lawyers with him to do all the legal talk so he could maintain deniability.
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      I read that. It seems to back up my point. Moderation is minimal outside of the specific cases I listed...

chasing 4y ago

> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. And what might we learn from this?

coinbasetwwa 4y ago

I’m pretty sure all you need is a free speech platform with a tiktok style algorithm that suppresses the grimiest of toxicity. Such a platform would blow every other one of the park and have a rush of content creators. I believe as those engagement algorithms become more accessible we’ll see a clear winner emerge.

Joeri 4y ago

I used to be free speech absolutist, but I am not any longer, especially when it comes to social media. The argument in favor of absolute free speech for me was basically “let everyone hear everything and make up their own mind”. This presumes that people are swayed by the content of an argument. This is a false assumption, people are mostly swayed by the volume of the argument. This is well documented in psychological research. Now, if everyone had the same level of visibility for their personal speech this would just lead to an ersatz version of opinion democracy, where the most often held opinions would rise to the top, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. But people don’t have equal visibility. The reach of a wealthy or famous person is so much greater that in the political arena basically only the speech of the wealthy and famous ends up having enough volume to convince people, even if it starts out wildly unpopular and even if it is objectively false. Social media are especially sensitive to this thanks to the ability to buy access to views without the viewers even realizing, to micro-target audiences, and to have zero independent vetting of what is said. This then perverts absolute free speech into a weapon used by the powerful to deceive and subvert democracies. That’s why I think that to protect democracies we must have some limits on the ability to get speech amplification through (social) media, but I don’t have a hard and fast rule for what that should look like. It is far easier to say “let everything pass” but that is the easy way out and ultimately bad.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago
> This presumes that people are swayed by the content of an argument. This is a false assumption, people are mostly swayed by the volume of the argument. That's only half the story. The other half is tone. I have been persuaded against several beliefs that should have won me over if volume were the only consideration due to the quality of the writing. "These people type like morons, it's probably a belief primarily found amidst the stupid", as it were.
poisonborz 4y ago
There is a very easy theoretical solution to this, discourage platforms beyond a certain size and incentivize topical groups instead of geography. It's just hard to make these kind of regulations at this point, now that everyone got hooked on ad money and data mining.

andrewclunn 4y ago

Free speech advocacy was trendy with the left when the right held more institutional power. Now it's embraced (at least as a slogan) by the right. In much the same way I don't trust Apple to give a damn about software freedom, but they backed Webkit and clang for their own self interested reasons. I accept that being "on the side of free expression" means that I will need to shift political allegiances now and then as power consolidation shifts. Along the way the tools for enabling and preserving free speech get better and better though. Long live the anti-establishment wingnut right... until they win, then I'll be hanging with Jimmy Dore.

CM30 4y ago

I think the main thing that would help there wouldn't be to force any particular platform to allow all speech, but to make it so anyone who wanted to set up such a site or platform could do so without fear of being bullied off the internet by an angry mob or moral puritanism. Web hosting services, firewall services like Cloudflare, payment processers like Visa and Mastercard and internet providers should be regulated as utilities like water and electric companies are. If that was done, then there would be far less issues here. Those who want free speech focused platforms could create them, and those who didn't want to use them wouldn't have to. The problem at the moment is that not only is there no place for free speech online, but any attempts at creating one can be bullied off the internet by an angry mob on social media because of companies and PR.

awb 4y ago

> Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. Really? They've never defined free speech, so how can we hold them accountable? The idea of a "free speech absolutist" is a complete joke destined for legal consequences. For example, I don't think they mean free speech is the ability to post obscene content, threats, state secrets, corporate IP, or any other legal restrictions on free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... Plus, there are all kinds of free speech reductions they could make, like only allowing palatable content onto top trending recommendations. So, you're not banning free speech, but you're actively restricting it based on what's attractive to advertisers or even the general public. If they said "all legally permitted speech on our platform will be given the same protection and visibility based on metrics that do no include the meaning of the speech", then that would be something concrete that we could hold them accountable to.

commandlinefan 4y ago
> the ability to post obscene content, threats, state secrets, corporate IP, or any other legal restrictions Free speech opponents always like to point to these examples when the topic of free speech comes up, but I've never seen free speech advocates use an example of any of these as examples of problematic censorship - instead, they (we) point out voluminous examples of unfashionable opinions being removed. In fact, if Kanye or Musk came out and said "free speech except for" and listed your (specific, easily definable) examples, I'd still agree with them that they were advocating for free speech.
- awb 4y ago
  > I've never seen free speech advocates use an example of any of these as examples of problematic censorship Just look at some of the exceptions to free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... * Incitement * False statements of fact * Obscenity * Fighting words * Threatening the president of the United States These are all grey areas that are constantly being tested and censored to varying degrees on multiple Social Media platforms. Trump was banned from Twitter because of “the risk of further incitement of violence” after Jan. 6. So it's very much at the crux of the issue on the debate whether or not Trump's speech on Twitter should have been protected by the platform or not, which is what really catalyzed Parler and Truth Social's branding in the market place as "pro- free speech".

par 4y ago

"The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable." Yes, this is what you'll end up getting on so called 'free speech' platforms. Because, unfortunately, these days what people really mean when they say 'free speech' is actually a veil for them to say hateful things about marginalized groups of people.

triceratops 4y ago

> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. It's very interesting that you don't see the straight line between "absolute" free speech and toxicity. Absolute free speech IRL is moderated by physical and emotional stimuli and inhibitions against direct confrontation and bucking social norms. There are also legal repercussions, such as libel or defamation suits, for particularly harmful speech. The anonymity, and lack of accountability or feedback to one's words makes people far less inhibited online.

uncomputation 4y ago

> because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it This is a common but I believe overstated, even naive, ideal. What exactly does "holding them responsible" even truly mean? If a company is greenwashing and they are still emitting carbon, what really is the difference between the company who never claimed to care at all? The carbon is emitted all the same. "Oh, the stock price would fall because investors would lose trust." But greenwashing is a dime a dozen these days and I think the investors/upper class know that greenwashing is just marketing and don’t truly expect/care about the cause. Regarding this, how does anyone hold Parler accountable for making a platform of "free speech"? Either you sign up or you don’t. If you sign up and complain they aren’t extreme enough, they don’t care or at least they don’t have any material reason to care. If you don’t, where else are you going to go? Twitter? But the whole demographic is people who didn’t like Twitter in the first place and want to be with their kind. So how do you "hold them accountable" without say, legislation, regulation, and government oversight, something today’s "free" speech advocates are opposed to?

asdff 4y ago

We have a platform with free speech: your own website! I don't get why these personalities who are charging this free speech narrative don't just decamp with their massive following to their own website. It's like arguing a bar has no right to kick out a drunk and disorderly person, because "free speech." Sorry, people can kick you out of the place they own, if you don't like that then start up your own bar/twitter/etc.

coffeeblack 4y ago

> but it contains so much toxicity Easy. Allow all legal speech, but make it very easy for each individual user to block what they don’t want to see. Maybe even allow external providers to offer filters. Like an App Store but for content filters. Let each individual decide how much and what kind of censorship they want.

yokoprime 4y ago

Free speech is only a concept in a judicial sense. E.g. If you come barging into my house spewing racist shit I may not be able to call the police in you for being a racist, but i'm throwing you off my property

mabbo 4y ago

> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable. That is what happens when speech is free from consequences.

tootie 4y ago

The kind of censorship that occurs on places like Twitter or Facebook is purely an artifact of free market capitalism. The existence of odious people with socially unacceptable opinions decrease the value of the platform. Given those kind of people unfettered access to a private platform when they are not contributing to the growth and vibrancy of the platform is essentially just charity. This is the "marketplace of ideas" functioning exactly as it's supposed to.