13 ms·

Why is spam always glossed over in these "principled defenses" of free speech? It's legal speech.

by drewrv 4y ago

abathur 4y ago
A kind of motte-and-bailey, I guess.
Extropy_ 4y ago
What desire does a platform like Twitter have for spam? We have laws that prevent people from uttering threats. Twitter has rules against spam. It's their platform and they want their users to be free in their discourse, they just don't want spam.
onetimeusename 4y ago
it is or can be. It's a weird case though because you could theoretically drown out everyone else's speech with it. Like imagine if there were no spam inboxes or spam restrictions on SMTP or email inboxes and for every one good email you got, there were 10K spam emails about enlargement pills. It would make email much less useful and maybe unusable. I have thought about this before and I get kind of annoyed when people assume spam is a given exception to free speech. Free speech by itself doesn't imply a limit. So I think you have to carefully design around this issue or just let it happen and maybe it dies off on its own since too much spam chases everyone away and then what's the point of spamming? edit: drowning out other people's speech may be allowed by total free speech but it's also contrary to the intention I think. I think free speech means that any speech someone wishes to make, they may do so without restriction or censorship by the medium. This isn't a completely satisfying definition though.
- Animats 4y ago
  That's because you can spam anonymously. If email senders had to be securely identified, as in China, spam would not be a problem. Spam, and a ton of CAN-SPAM lawsuits land on you. Most of the problems that seem to justify prior restraint come from poor source identification. If it's illegal, deal with it through the legal system, after the fact. Facebook may have had the right idea with their "real names" policy, if they'd stuck to it and required strong authentication.
- concordDance 4y ago
  Email could still be useable in that case using personal whitelists and shared whitelists.
jchw 4y ago
Because it's not very interesting because nobody has a good faith reason to argue in favor allowing SPAM. I assume it's being used to demonstrate the arbitrary nature of what speech people would want to allow, but it's a bit pointless. SPAM falls in the category of things that arguably are simply abuse of the system, using it in an unintended way. SPAM is not discourse, or an ideology, or a belief. SPAM is a pattern of behaviors. The general idea is simple: in principle, expressions that are legal should not be disallowed on moral grounds, but disruptive patterns of behavior absolutely should be.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Which side of that line does neo-Nazis trolling Twitter count as?
  - jchw 4y ago
    Trolling is a pretty vague word, it doesn't really mean anything. So it's hard to really reply to this with any degree of seriousness, if it even was serious to begin with. That said, on properly moderated forums, trolling would usually be moderated, by a human that proactively moderates discussions. Social media can't really do that because the scale of the moderation team they'd need to do it would be literally unthinkable. It's clear that they need huge moderation teams just to upkeep the crappy standard of handing reports inconsistently that they have today. Exactly what to do with that information, I don't know.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      Trolling is online speech used to deliberately upset others. That's it. That's what it means. It has a clear definition. You might have wanted to say that no one can agree on what speech is trolling and what speech isn't, but that's not because the word is vague. It's because people disagree on the deliberate and the upset part.
      - jchw 4y ago
        No, I didn't mean to say that. Case in point... Even that definition is vague.
autoexec 4y ago
I love me some free speech, but I don't think I've ever met a true free speech absolutist. Most of are just fine with limiting speech when it's for the public good. We don't want companies to be able to lie about their products, so we support laws against false advertising. We're okay with people getting arrested for making bomb threats. We even approve of compelling speech when it means forcing companies by law to label the ingredients of their products! Left unchecked spam makes the services we love unusable. It can prevent us from having those same discussions we flock to social media platforms to try to engage in. Social media platforms should provide a constructive environment where ideas can be freely discussed and that means moderation is necessary for things like keeping out spam, keeping discussions on topic, and even filtering out trolls. Content moderation is essential to a healthy forum, but obviously care has be taken to maintain a balance between restricting and allowing content guided by what would best facilitate the constructive discussion of ideas, and not based on personal feelings about the ideas themselves. It's not an easy task, and it's thankless work, but if it wasn't for moderation none of us would be here talking about how spam should or shouldn't be allowed to ruin everything.
- katbyte 4y ago
  For the public good? You mean “aligns with what they think is for the public good and their own views” - there is no such thing as free speech as there is always limits, and really it is just where the lines are drawn.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  > Most of are just fine with limiting speech when it's for the public good. I'd edit this. "Most are just fine with limiting speech when it isn't them." The "public good" to, say, Andy Ngo is going to involve throwing a whole lot of leftists in prison. This whole thing is just about having the guy you like be the one making the decisions.
upsidesinclude 4y ago
Imagine for a moment that the volume of spam is compared to the volume of oration. Unlimited volume is not permitted in free speech. That is a disruption to public life. There is no reason to assume that this theory would fail to be legitimized in courts. Spam is not legal in other arenas, i.e. phone calls & texts. The fact that the operators of spam bots are difficult to prosecute does not mean what they are doing has legal grounds.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  Spam restrictions aren't generally applied by the government, and therefore don't fall under the constitution. The law doesn't require anyone to listen to someone else's speech. It is not a violation of anyone's rights to discard their emails unread using an automated filter.
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    I can't make sense of your statement. Can clarify what it is this means?
    - denton-scratch 4y ago
      Hmmm. I thought it was straightforward. I'll unpack it: > Spam restrictions aren't generally applied by the government, and therefore don't fall under the constitution. The "free speech" constitutional amendment stipulates that the government can't restrict speech. It doesn't apply to a mail service provider, which is free to reject whatever it likes. > The law doesn't require anyone to listen to someone else's speech. Your freedom to speak to me ends when I decide I don't want to listen to you. I have a right to not listen, and I have a right to reject spam. > It is not a violation of anyone's rights to discard their emails unread using an automated filter. I don't know how to say that more clearly; using a spam filter doesn't violate the US constitution. Email would be unuseable without spam filters.
xigoi 4y ago
Free speech is about allowing any idea to be expressed. Spam is not an idea, but a way of expressing something, so it's not inherently against free speech to restrict it.
- majormajor 4y ago
  Yet many will complain that what they call "hurt feelings" are irrelevant regarding whether or not their statements were OK and should be welcome. What separates a "way of expressing" from a true "idea"? "Abuse" is not an idea, but a way of expressing something? "You suck" is something of an "idea," but "I hope you die" or "watch out for your kids" if it's not a literally true threat? Not so much... And if it IS a true threat? For that matter... "mockery" is not an idea... "hateful" is not an idea... "insulting" is not an idea? Seems like you can take that definitional dodge to lengths to allow just about any sort of moderation. (Any given post of spam, basically just unsolicited peer-to-peer advertising, seems evidently an idea, IMO - it's very much something you are supposed to believe and act on. If it's a volume/repetition/thoughtlessness thing, how's that different from a wave of trolling posts?)
  - xigoi 4y ago
    These are all heavily subjective and often used as a code for certain opinions. In current political discourse, “hateful” usually means “disagrees with the woke ideology”, so a statement like “kill all white people” would not be considered hateful, whereas “children under 18 shouln't be allowed to take unnecessary cosmetic surgery” would.
    - majormajor 4y ago
      You carefully avoid saying that "spam" isn't subjective, but if you think it is, your reply wouldn't be relevant, so: I doubt you'll have any luck trying to "objectively" establish a criteria for spam classification that nobody disagrees with. Or what about the threat examples, since you claim all those categories were subjective? You didn't engage with that one, or many of the others. "I know your kids go to [specific school], watch out"? Subjective? "I'm going to kill you and your family?" Subjective or straight up threat? How about mockery or insults? "Your post is stupid and you are stupid?" Is it subjective that that's insulting? So is it an "idea" or just a particular way of saying I disagree with you? "You are clearly politically motivated and not arguing in good faith?" Maybe that one is actually an idea!

Why is spam always glossed over in these "principled defenses" of free speech? It's legal speech.

by drewrv 4y ago

Why is spam always glossed over in these "principled defenses" of free speech? It's legal speech.

abathur 4y ago

A kind of motte-and-bailey, I guess.

Extropy_ 4y ago

What desire does a platform like Twitter have for spam? We have laws that prevent people from uttering threats. Twitter has rules against spam. It's their platform and they want their users to be free in their discourse, they just don't want spam.

onetimeusename 4y ago

it is or can be. It's a weird case though because you could theoretically drown out everyone else's speech with it. Like imagine if there were no spam inboxes or spam restrictions on SMTP or email inboxes and for every one good email you got, there were 10K spam emails about enlargement pills. It would make email much less useful and maybe unusable. I have thought about this before and I get kind of annoyed when people assume spam is a given exception to free speech. Free speech by itself doesn't imply a limit. So I think you have to carefully design around this issue or just let it happen and maybe it dies off on its own since too much spam chases everyone away and then what's the point of spamming? edit: drowning out other people's speech may be allowed by total free speech but it's also contrary to the intention I think. I think free speech means that any speech someone wishes to make, they may do so without restriction or censorship by the medium. This isn't a completely satisfying definition though.

Animats 4y ago
That's because you can spam anonymously. If email senders had to be securely identified, as in China, spam would not be a problem. Spam, and a ton of CAN-SPAM lawsuits land on you. Most of the problems that seem to justify prior restraint come from poor source identification. If it's illegal, deal with it through the legal system, after the fact. Facebook may have had the right idea with their "real names" policy, if they'd stuck to it and required strong authentication.
concordDance 4y ago
Email could still be useable in that case using personal whitelists and shared whitelists.

jchw 4y ago

Because it's not very interesting because nobody has a good faith reason to argue in favor allowing SPAM. I assume it's being used to demonstrate the arbitrary nature of what speech people would want to allow, but it's a bit pointless. SPAM falls in the category of things that arguably are simply abuse of the system, using it in an unintended way. SPAM is not discourse, or an ideology, or a belief. SPAM is a pattern of behaviors. The general idea is simple: in principle, expressions that are legal should not be disallowed on moral grounds, but disruptive patterns of behavior absolutely should be.

ceejayoz 4y ago
Which side of that line does neo-Nazis trolling Twitter count as?
- jchw 4y ago
  Trolling is a pretty vague word, it doesn't really mean anything. So it's hard to really reply to this with any degree of seriousness, if it even was serious to begin with. That said, on properly moderated forums, trolling would usually be moderated, by a human that proactively moderates discussions. Social media can't really do that because the scale of the moderation team they'd need to do it would be literally unthinkable. It's clear that they need huge moderation teams just to upkeep the crappy standard of handing reports inconsistently that they have today. Exactly what to do with that information, I don't know.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Trolling is online speech used to deliberately upset others. That's it. That's what it means. It has a clear definition. You might have wanted to say that no one can agree on what speech is trolling and what speech isn't, but that's not because the word is vague. It's because people disagree on the deliberate and the upset part.
    - jchw 4y ago
      No, I didn't mean to say that. Case in point... Even that definition is vague.

autoexec 4y ago

I love me some free speech, but I don't think I've ever met a true free speech absolutist. Most of are just fine with limiting speech when it's for the public good. We don't want companies to be able to lie about their products, so we support laws against false advertising. We're okay with people getting arrested for making bomb threats. We even approve of compelling speech when it means forcing companies by law to label the ingredients of their products! Left unchecked spam makes the services we love unusable. It can prevent us from having those same discussions we flock to social media platforms to try to engage in. Social media platforms should provide a constructive environment where ideas can be freely discussed and that means moderation is necessary for things like keeping out spam, keeping discussions on topic, and even filtering out trolls. Content moderation is essential to a healthy forum, but obviously care has be taken to maintain a balance between restricting and allowing content guided by what would best facilitate the constructive discussion of ideas, and not based on personal feelings about the ideas themselves. It's not an easy task, and it's thankless work, but if it wasn't for moderation none of us would be here talking about how spam should or shouldn't be allowed to ruin everything.

katbyte 4y ago
For the public good? You mean “aligns with what they think is for the public good and their own views” - there is no such thing as free speech as there is always limits, and really it is just where the lines are drawn.
UncleMeat 4y ago
> Most of are just fine with limiting speech when it's for the public good. I'd edit this. "Most are just fine with limiting speech when it isn't them." The "public good" to, say, Andy Ngo is going to involve throwing a whole lot of leftists in prison. This whole thing is just about having the guy you like be the one making the decisions.

upsidesinclude 4y ago

Imagine for a moment that the volume of spam is compared to the volume of oration. Unlimited volume is not permitted in free speech. That is a disruption to public life. There is no reason to assume that this theory would fail to be legitimized in courts. Spam is not legal in other arenas, i.e. phone calls & texts. The fact that the operators of spam bots are difficult to prosecute does not mean what they are doing has legal grounds.

denton-scratch 4y ago
Spam restrictions aren't generally applied by the government, and therefore don't fall under the constitution. The law doesn't require anyone to listen to someone else's speech. It is not a violation of anyone's rights to discard their emails unread using an automated filter.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  I can't make sense of your statement. Can clarify what it is this means?
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    Hmmm. I thought it was straightforward. I'll unpack it: > Spam restrictions aren't generally applied by the government, and therefore don't fall under the constitution. The "free speech" constitutional amendment stipulates that the government can't restrict speech. It doesn't apply to a mail service provider, which is free to reject whatever it likes. > The law doesn't require anyone to listen to someone else's speech. Your freedom to speak to me ends when I decide I don't want to listen to you. I have a right to not listen, and I have a right to reject spam. > It is not a violation of anyone's rights to discard their emails unread using an automated filter. I don't know how to say that more clearly; using a spam filter doesn't violate the US constitution. Email would be unuseable without spam filters.

xigoi 4y ago

Free speech is about allowing any idea to be expressed. Spam is not an idea, but a way of expressing something, so it's not inherently against free speech to restrict it.

majormajor 4y ago
Yet many will complain that what they call "hurt feelings" are irrelevant regarding whether or not their statements were OK and should be welcome. What separates a "way of expressing" from a true "idea"? "Abuse" is not an idea, but a way of expressing something? "You suck" is something of an "idea," but "I hope you die" or "watch out for your kids" if it's not a literally true threat? Not so much... And if it IS a true threat? For that matter... "mockery" is not an idea... "hateful" is not an idea... "insulting" is not an idea? Seems like you can take that definitional dodge to lengths to allow just about any sort of moderation. (Any given post of spam, basically just unsolicited peer-to-peer advertising, seems evidently an idea, IMO - it's very much something you are supposed to believe and act on. If it's a volume/repetition/thoughtlessness thing, how's that different from a wave of trolling posts?)
- xigoi 4y ago
  These are all heavily subjective and often used as a code for certain opinions. In current political discourse, “hateful” usually means “disagrees with the woke ideology”, so a statement like “kill all white people” would not be considered hateful, whereas “children under 18 shouln't be allowed to take unnecessary cosmetic surgery” would.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    You carefully avoid saying that "spam" isn't subjective, but if you think it is, your reply wouldn't be relevant, so: I doubt you'll have any luck trying to "objectively" establish a criteria for spam classification that nobody disagrees with. Or what about the threat examples, since you claim all those categories were subjective? You didn't engage with that one, or many of the others. "I know your kids go to [specific school], watch out"? Subjective? "I'm going to kill you and your family?" Subjective or straight up threat? How about mockery or insults? "Your post is stupid and you are stupid?" Is it subjective that that's insulting? So is it an "idea" or just a particular way of saying I disagree with you? "You are clearly politically motivated and not arguing in good faith?" Maybe that one is actually an idea!