6 ms·

And where exactly is free speech left? Every public platform I’ve used over the last 20 years that had freedom of speech was shut down. Currently if you want to

And where exactly is free speech left? Every public platform I’ve used over the last 20 years that had freedom of speech was shut down. Currently if you want to discuss ideas or issues that are outside of the publicly approved consensus, the only choice left is private chats. Even there the options are continually shrinking.

krapp 3y ago
Freedom of speech implies the freedom to choose what speech one associates with and allows. It doesn't mean a platform is forced to allow all possible speech without moderation - that isn't freedom, it's coercion. And it wouldn't even be legal on whatever "public platforms" you're talking about. If you're looking for absolute, unfettered fuck-the-law freedom you're not going to find it on the open web. No administrator is going to be willing to take the bullet for you.
- injeolmi_love 3y ago
  If that’s the case, then why did these platforms exist in the past and don’t exist now? I’m not just talking about virtual platforms, but also physical public forums and meetups. I agree with what you’re saying about admins, but the “who” that is shooting the bullet seems to be a growing bipartisan antiliberal movement. It’s not just my personal experience; globally there’s been a decrease in freedom of speech metrics with the US experiencing less of a decline than the average but still a significant one.
  - krapp 3y ago
    You're going to have to get into specifics, I doubt "a growing bipartisan antiliberal movement" is responsible for the categorical removal of free platforms from the internet. This seems like a framing designed to avoid necessary context or mischaracterize motives. If you mean, for instance, Kiwifarms - their ISP and Cloudflare refused to do business with them for reasons other than being "antiliberal." You can't blame opposition to heinous behavior, or not wanting to do business with or be associated with KF, on simply being opposed to free speech. But they still exist, AFAIK. Gab was similarly "cancelled" by their host and service providers, because the platform itself and its behavior had become too toxic to be associated with, and violated terms of service for those partners. Again, free speech doesn't guarantee a platform - it's a marketplace of ideas and you have to convince people your ideas are worth their time, doubly so where business associations are involved. Gab was fine until they started planning an insurrection and cheering on mass shooters. Trump was fine until he lost his mind and threatened the peaceful transfer of power. Omegele was fine until someone sued over the one thing Omegele is known for. There are always limits, everywhere. There are plenty of reasons to not want to be associated with such platforms and their content besides opposition to freedom of speech, but conflating everything into the actions of an "antiliberal movement" seems like bad faith. So I don't know. You see attacks on free speech, I see the inevitable consequences of bad actors pushing things too far.
    - injeolmi_love 3y ago
      I cannot get into specifics because I don’t want to get banned on hacker news. I will generally wave in the direction of authorities that are violating human rights.
      - krapp 3y ago
        If you're gesturing in the general direction of the Israel/Palestine discourse, I would agree with you that the eagerness with which a lot of that has been stifled in the public sphere is disturbing. But it's also still going on regardless, even on HN. And I still wouldn't hold up Omegle as an example of the same class of problem. Freedom of speech should cover political disagreement and debate, but it shouldn't cover sexual abuse.
  - rainonmoon 3y ago
    You can literally develop and stand up Omegle tomorrow if you want to, dude. Nobody's going to stop you until you start enabling child sexual abuse, so go ahead.
    - behringer 3y ago
      Pretty sure the person filing lawsuits would try and stop you
    - RecycledEle 3y ago
      Stop trolling. Every web site I ever built with ANY political content was vandalized by my hosting providers then disabled.
      - krapp 3y ago
        That's odd. I see political content all over the web, all the time. And there are hosting providers whose entire business model is hosting "controversial" content. Also, Omegle didn't host political content. Also, no one vandalized it or took it down until someone sued the site owners over a crime being committed, not for any political expression.
xtracto 3y ago
Just yesterday I was thinking of publishing a heavy moderated sit or subreddit named "nuance" . A platform for healthy dialogue of subjects that normally cannot be discussed . With a minimum of say 100 words per reply, and a weekly vote of the subject of discussion for next week. I dream of being able to healthy discuss stuff like "illegal crossing/immigration of mexicans" or "US gun control/freedom" , or even more touchy subjects like "pedophilia, as a mental sickness". But in a place that is heavily moderated, free if bigots, knee jerk reactions and all those behaviours that online discussions are plagued with. I am a Mexican myself, and I love being subscribed to the r/ccw subreddit (concealed carry). I've learned a lot and although I dont agree with a lot of the culture there, i am happy to try understand where pro-gun people are coming from. There is nuance to every issue, and the only real way to make progress is to be able to establish a dialogue bringing forward and listening to all sides of the conversation.
- appplication 3y ago
  This is a noble and challenging goal, and I’d encourage you to pursue it
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  > I dream of being able to healthy discuss stuff like "illegal crossing/immigration of mexicans" or "US gun control/freedom", or even more touchy subjects like "pedophilia, as a mental sickness". You call those "touchy subjects"? Do "Jewish history" and watch it get shut down in a week.
  - HumanReadable 3y ago
    actually, 'Touchy Subjects' would be a decent name for a site like this.
fortyseven 3y ago
Again I have to roll out the "what topics are you being denied discussion of" question. That usually clears up quite a bit.
- junofan 3y ago
  I’m not sure how you expect to answer that without access to the inner workings of content moderation decisions on the major social media platforms. Sunshine laws would be a good starting point for productive discussions.
- injeolmi_love 3y ago
  Many different areas and topics. The most concerning to me is bans and shutdowns of public forums where there is discussion of how authorities are disregarding human rights as defined by the UN in the UDHR.
- sneak 3y ago
  There are a lot of true things (especially government programs in the wake of Snowden and ubiquitous smartphones/encryption) that the discussion of which is shut down due to being literally conspiracy theories (ie proposals about the true functioning of the state to enable surveillance and deny people their rights). People don’t like addressing the fact that there are parts of the state that are actively malicious and hostile to the population they are ostensibly designed to serve. You also can’t generally criticize the police or military or social order beyond the standard “everybody knows” talking points. Honest discussions of how society should deal with and treat people who are afflicted with pedophilia is another. There are entire swaths of viewpoints which are basically not allowed to be expressed, including most/all of the compassionate ones. Criminal justice reform and the prison-industrial complex. Atheism. Suicide, and people’s rights thereto. Drug usage, and people’s rights thereto. The occasional need and right of a populace to employ violent revolution to secure human rights. The illegitimacy of state violence. Artistic nudity (I’m a portrait photographer). Non-artistic nudity (porn is great). Artistic non-mainstream porn (weird BDSM stuff is great). Individual responsibility of people doing immoral jobs. People get absolutely outraged at true reporting of facts (“John Doe, whilst at $EMPLOYER, implemented unethical feature $X”). Criticism of group identity, or discussion of the legitimacy of identity politics in general. Jokes or memes about any of the previous, or sexual violence, or tragic deaths. Increasingly, anti-war viewpoints. The global west is heavily invested in any enemies of Russia or China being unswervingly supported. Being anti-war is more and more a fringe position that is subject to censorship. Criticizing the major publishing platforms, on those platforms themselves. You won’t be able to run an Amazon workers union site on AWS, for example. Nor can you discuss CCP censorship on TikTok. Lots of things are off limits in most parts of the internet. People who think the only people complaining about the restrictions on speech online are nazis or pedos are... fairly unimaginative.

krapp 3y ago

Freedom of speech implies the freedom to choose what speech one associates with and allows. It doesn't mean a platform is forced to allow all possible speech without moderation - that isn't freedom, it's coercion. And it wouldn't even be legal on whatever "public platforms" you're talking about. If you're looking for absolute, unfettered fuck-the-law freedom you're not going to find it on the open web. No administrator is going to be willing to take the bullet for you.

injeolmi_love 3y ago
If that’s the case, then why did these platforms exist in the past and don’t exist now? I’m not just talking about virtual platforms, but also physical public forums and meetups. I agree with what you’re saying about admins, but the “who” that is shooting the bullet seems to be a growing bipartisan antiliberal movement. It’s not just my personal experience; globally there’s been a decrease in freedom of speech metrics with the US experiencing less of a decline than the average but still a significant one.
- krapp 3y ago
  You're going to have to get into specifics, I doubt "a growing bipartisan antiliberal movement" is responsible for the categorical removal of free platforms from the internet. This seems like a framing designed to avoid necessary context or mischaracterize motives. If you mean, for instance, Kiwifarms - their ISP and Cloudflare refused to do business with them for reasons other than being "antiliberal." You can't blame opposition to heinous behavior, or not wanting to do business with or be associated with KF, on simply being opposed to free speech. But they still exist, AFAIK. Gab was similarly "cancelled" by their host and service providers, because the platform itself and its behavior had become too toxic to be associated with, and violated terms of service for those partners. Again, free speech doesn't guarantee a platform - it's a marketplace of ideas and you have to convince people your ideas are worth their time, doubly so where business associations are involved. Gab was fine until they started planning an insurrection and cheering on mass shooters. Trump was fine until he lost his mind and threatened the peaceful transfer of power. Omegele was fine until someone sued over the one thing Omegele is known for. There are always limits, everywhere. There are plenty of reasons to not want to be associated with such platforms and their content besides opposition to freedom of speech, but conflating everything into the actions of an "antiliberal movement" seems like bad faith. So I don't know. You see attacks on free speech, I see the inevitable consequences of bad actors pushing things too far.
  - injeolmi_love 3y ago
    I cannot get into specifics because I don’t want to get banned on hacker news. I will generally wave in the direction of authorities that are violating human rights.
    - krapp 3y ago
      If you're gesturing in the general direction of the Israel/Palestine discourse, I would agree with you that the eagerness with which a lot of that has been stifled in the public sphere is disturbing. But it's also still going on regardless, even on HN. And I still wouldn't hold up Omegle as an example of the same class of problem. Freedom of speech should cover political disagreement and debate, but it shouldn't cover sexual abuse.
- rainonmoon 3y ago
  You can literally develop and stand up Omegle tomorrow if you want to, dude. Nobody's going to stop you until you start enabling child sexual abuse, so go ahead.
  - behringer 3y ago
    Pretty sure the person filing lawsuits would try and stop you
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    Stop trolling. Every web site I ever built with ANY political content was vandalized by my hosting providers then disabled.
    - krapp 3y ago
      That's odd. I see political content all over the web, all the time. And there are hosting providers whose entire business model is hosting "controversial" content. Also, Omegle didn't host political content. Also, no one vandalized it or took it down until someone sued the site owners over a crime being committed, not for any political expression.

xtracto 3y ago

Just yesterday I was thinking of publishing a heavy moderated sit or subreddit named "nuance" . A platform for healthy dialogue of subjects that normally cannot be discussed . With a minimum of say 100 words per reply, and a weekly vote of the subject of discussion for next week. I dream of being able to healthy discuss stuff like "illegal crossing/immigration of mexicans" or "US gun control/freedom" , or even more touchy subjects like "pedophilia, as a mental sickness". But in a place that is heavily moderated, free if bigots, knee jerk reactions and all those behaviours that online discussions are plagued with. I am a Mexican myself, and I love being subscribed to the r/ccw subreddit (concealed carry). I've learned a lot and although I dont agree with a lot of the culture there, i am happy to try understand where pro-gun people are coming from. There is nuance to every issue, and the only real way to make progress is to be able to establish a dialogue bringing forward and listening to all sides of the conversation.

appplication 3y ago
This is a noble and challenging goal, and I’d encourage you to pursue it
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
> I dream of being able to healthy discuss stuff like "illegal crossing/immigration of mexicans" or "US gun control/freedom", or even more touchy subjects like "pedophilia, as a mental sickness". You call those "touchy subjects"? Do "Jewish history" and watch it get shut down in a week.
- HumanReadable 3y ago
  actually, 'Touchy Subjects' would be a decent name for a site like this.

fortyseven 3y ago

Again I have to roll out the "what topics are you being denied discussion of" question. That usually clears up quite a bit.

junofan 3y ago
I’m not sure how you expect to answer that without access to the inner workings of content moderation decisions on the major social media platforms. Sunshine laws would be a good starting point for productive discussions.
injeolmi_love 3y ago
Many different areas and topics. The most concerning to me is bans and shutdowns of public forums where there is discussion of how authorities are disregarding human rights as defined by the UN in the UDHR.
sneak 3y ago
There are a lot of true things (especially government programs in the wake of Snowden and ubiquitous smartphones/encryption) that the discussion of which is shut down due to being literally conspiracy theories (ie proposals about the true functioning of the state to enable surveillance and deny people their rights). People don’t like addressing the fact that there are parts of the state that are actively malicious and hostile to the population they are ostensibly designed to serve. You also can’t generally criticize the police or military or social order beyond the standard “everybody knows” talking points. Honest discussions of how society should deal with and treat people who are afflicted with pedophilia is another. There are entire swaths of viewpoints which are basically not allowed to be expressed, including most/all of the compassionate ones. Criminal justice reform and the prison-industrial complex. Atheism. Suicide, and people’s rights thereto. Drug usage, and people’s rights thereto. The occasional need and right of a populace to employ violent revolution to secure human rights. The illegitimacy of state violence. Artistic nudity (I’m a portrait photographer). Non-artistic nudity (porn is great). Artistic non-mainstream porn (weird BDSM stuff is great). Individual responsibility of people doing immoral jobs. People get absolutely outraged at true reporting of facts (“John Doe, whilst at $EMPLOYER, implemented unethical feature $X”). Criticism of group identity, or discussion of the legitimacy of identity politics in general. Jokes or memes about any of the previous, or sexual violence, or tragic deaths. Increasingly, anti-war viewpoints. The global west is heavily invested in any enemies of Russia or China being unswervingly supported. Being anti-war is more and more a fringe position that is subject to censorship. Criticizing the major publishing platforms, on those platforms themselves. You won’t be able to run an Amazon workers union site on AWS, for example. Nor can you discuss CCP censorship on TikTok. Lots of things are off limits in most parts of the internet. People who think the only people complaining about the restrictions on speech online are nazis or pedos are... fairly unimaginative.