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The more important point (and this is really like a high school civics debate) is that the government and/or a big tech company shouldn't decide what people are

by andy99 1y ago

The more important point (and this is really like a high school civics debate) is that the government and/or a big tech company shouldn't decide what people are "allowed" to say. There's tons of dumb stuff online, the only thing dumber is the state dictating how I'm supposed to think. People seem to forget that sometimes someone they don't agree with is in power. What if they started banning tylenol-autism sceptical accounts?

mapontosevenths 1y ago
> the government and/or a big tech company shouldn't decide what people are "allowed" to say. That "and/or" is doing a lot of work here. There's a huge difference between government censorship and forcing private companies to host content they don't want to host on servers they own. Then again, Alphabet is now claiming they did want to host it and mean old Biden pressured them into pulling it so if we buy that, maybe it doesn't matter. > What if they started banning tylenol-autism sceptical accounts? What if it's pro-cannibalism or pedophilia content? Everyone has a line, we're all just arguing about where exactly we think that line should be.
- MostlyStable 1y ago
  It can simultaneously be legal/allowable for them to ban speech, and yet also the case that we should criticize them for doing so. The first amendment only restricts the government, but a culture of free speech will also criticize private entities for taking censorious actions. And a culture of free speech is necessary to make sure that the first amendment is not eventually eroded away to nothing.
  - lkey 1y ago
    Or it might be the case that that 'culture' is eroding the thing it claims to be protecting. https://www.popehat.com/p/how-free-speech-culture-is-killing-free-speech-part-one https://www.popehat.com/p/how-free-speech-culture-is-killing...
    - AfterHIA 1y ago
      This. Even if we have concrete protections in our society it takes a society of people committed to a common democratic cause and common functional prosperity that prevents there from being abuses of the right to speak and so on (..) This isn't complicated and this wasn't always controversial. I've already described above that even in this thread there's a sentiment which is that, "as long as somebody has gained coercive power legitimately then it is within their right to coerce." I see terms thrown around like, "if somebody owns" or, "if somebody is the CEO of..." which speaks to the growing air of illiberality an liberal autocranarianism which is a direct result of the neoliberal assault founding and funding thousands of Cato Institutes, Adam Smith Societies, and Heritage Foundations since the neoliberal turn in the late 1960's. We've legitimized domination ethics as an extension of the hungry rights of pseudotyrants and the expense of people in general. I wonder what people in general might one day do about this? I wonder if there's a historical precedent for what happens when people face oppression and the degradation of common cultural projects? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution#October_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution#October_Rev... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
  - plantwallshoe 1y ago
    Isn’t promoting/removing opinions you care about a form of speech? If I choose to put a Kamala sign in my yard and not a Trump sign, that’s an expression of free speech. If the marketing company I own decides to not work for causes I don’t personally support, that’s free speech. If the video hosting platform I’m CEO of doesn’t host unfounded anti-vax content because I think it’s a bad business move, is that not also free speech?
    - lmz 1y ago
      Agreed. If I have a TV network and think these anti-government hosts on my network are bad for business, that is also freedom of speech.
      - rubyfan 1y ago
        Maybe. If it is independent of government coercion.
        Jensson 1y ago
        But Youtube did this after government coercion, so what is the difference?
        alphabettsy 1y ago
        I think you should look up the definition of coercion.
        Jensson 1y ago
        Have you seen the emails the Biden Administration sent to Youtube? Here is a quote verbatim that they sent to Youtube: > we want to be sure that you have a handle on vaccine hesitancy generally and are working toward making the problem better. This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the White House Saying you want to make sure they will censor these videos is a threat, and then they said that Biden was behind this to add legitimacy to the threat. If it was just a friendly greeting why would they threaten youtube with Bidens name? If youtube did this willingly there would be no need to write such a threatening message saying they want to make sure Youtube censors these. You can read the whole report here if you wanna see more: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Censorship-Industrial-Complex-WH-Report_Appendix.pdf https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j... And if you don't see that as a threat, imagine someone in the trump administration sent that, do you still think its not a threat? Of course its a threat, it makes no sense to write that way otherwise, you would just say you wanted to hear how it goes not say you wanna make sure they do this specific thing and threaten them with the presidents powers.
  - asadotzler 1y ago
    Will you criticize my book publishing company for not publishing and distributing your smut short story?
    - user34283 1y ago
      No, but I will criticize Apple and Google for banning smut apps. If those two private companies would host all legal content, this could be a thriving market. Somehow big tech and payment processors get to censor most software.
    - AfterHIA 1y ago
      Perhaps and if you have some kind of monopoly than definitely. Things beings, "yours" isn't some fundamental part of the human condition. CEOs serve their employees and shareholders and the ethics of the business space they operate in. Owners are ethically obligated to engage in fair business practices. I'm sick up to my neck of this sentiment that if John Galt is holding a gun he necessarily has the right to shoot it at somebody. Modern democracies aren't founded on realist ethics or absolute commitments to economic liberalism as totalizing-- they're founded on a ethical balance between the real needs of people, the real potential for capital expansion, and superior sentiments about the possibilities of the human condition. As a kid that supported Ron Paul's bid for the Republican nomination as a 16-year-old I can't help but feel that libertarian politics has ruined generations of people by getting them to accept autocracy as, "one ethical outcome to a free society." It isn't. The irony in me posting this will be lost on most: https://www.uschamber.com/ https://www.uschamber.com/
  - SantalBlush 1y ago
    Are you in favor of HN allowing advertisements, shilling, or spam in these threads? Because those things are free speech. Would you like to allow comments about generic ED pills? I simply don't believe people who say they want to support a culture of free speech on a media or social media site. They haven't really thought about what that means.
    - AfterHIA 1y ago
      Without being crude I think they stopped, "thinking about that means" in any positive sense a long time ago. Cultures of discourse and criticism are never good for the powerful. The goal is to create a culture when anyone can say anything but with no meaningful social consequences negative or positive. I can call Trump a pedophile all day on my computer interface and maybe somebody else will see it but the Google and Meta machine just treat it as another engagement dollar. These dollars are now literally flowing to the White House in the form of investment commitments by acting Tech Czar Zuckerberg. While I'm with my dudes in computer space-- it all starts with the passing of the Mansfield Amendment. You want to know why tech sucks and we haven't made any foundational breakthroughs for decades? The privatization of technology innovation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Silicon_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Silicon_Valley https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/narrative#chapter-iv-tumultuous-times-1968-1976-dd8 https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/narrative#chapter-iv-tumul...
  - AfterHIA 1y ago
    Bingo. This is Adam Smith's whole point in the second half of, "Wealth Of Nations" that nobody bothers to read in lieu of the sentiments of the Cato Institute and the various Adam Smith societies. Nations produce, "kinds of people" that based on their experience of a common liberty and prosperity will err against tyranny. Economics and autocracy in our country is destroying our culture of, "talk and liberality." Discourse has become, "let's take turns attacking each other and each other's positions." The American civilization has deep flaws but has historically worked toward, "doing what was right." https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/book-v-of-the-revenue-of-the-sovereign-or-commonwealth https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/book-v-of-the-reven...
- mc32 1y ago
  The thing is that people will tell you it wasn’t actually censorship because for them it was only the government being a busy body nosey government telling the tech corps about a select number of people violating their terms (nudge nudge please do something)… so I think the and/or is important.
  - AfterHIA 1y ago
    Great post mc32 (I hope you're a Wayne Kramer fan!) This private-public tyranny that's going on right now. The FCC can't directly tell Kimmel, "you can't say that" they can say, "you may have violated this or this technical rule which..." This is how Project 2025 will play out in terms of people's real experience. You occupy all posts with ideologically sympathetic players and the liberality people are used to becomes ruinous as, "the watchers" are now, "watching for you." The irony is that most conservatives believe this is just, "what the left was doing in the 2010's in reverse" and I don't have a counterargument for this other than, "it doesn't matter; it's always bad and unethical." Real differences between Colbert and Tate taken for granted.
    - mc32 1y ago
      All sides and i mean all sides with one tiny sliver of an exception will be hypocrites about freedom of speech. I’m not an absolutist as I think there are things we know produce harm in people, specially susceptible young populations, but definitely strictly political speech should be protected and allowed. How can we not have debates about efficacy of medical products or about trustworthiness of the data?
      - mapontosevenths 1y ago
        > How can we not have debates about efficacy of medical products or about trustworthiness of the data? We must be able to have those debates, but we must also guard against grifters selling 5g-proof underwear to the functionally illiterate or serving up vaccine skepticism based more on their desire to score political points than science. The devil will always be in the details, and it's a tough balancing act. I personally suspect that the way we do this is by checking credentials. Doctors and scientists should be allowed to offer alternative theories. Meth-addicts posting from labs hidden in the Ozarks, software developers, and unqualified politicians, maybe not.
- briHass 1y ago
  The line should be what is illegal, which, at least in the US, is fairly permissive. The legal process already did all the hard work of reaching consensus/compromise on where that line is, so just use that. At least with the legal system, there's some degree of visibility and influence possible by everyone. It's not some ethics department silently banning users they don't agree with.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- int_19h 1y ago
  > There's a huge difference between government censorship and forcing private companies to host content they don't want to host on servers they own. It really depends. I remember after the Christchurch mosque shootings, there was a scramble to block the distribution of the shooter's manifesto. In some countries, the government could declare the content illegal directly, but in others, such as Australia, they didn't have pre-existing laws sufficiently wide to cover that, and so what happened in practice is that ISPs "proactively" formed a voluntary censorship cartel, acting in lockstep to block access to all copies of the manifesto, while the government was working on the new laws. If the practical end result is the same - a complete country block on some content - does it really matter whether it's dressed up as public or private censorship? And with large tech companies like Alphabet and Meta, it is a particularly pointed question given how much the market is monopolized.
  - onecommentman 1y ago
    I wonder, in the case of mass violence events that were used as advertisement for the (assumed) murderer’s POV, whether there should be an equivalent of a House of Lords for the exceptional situation of censoring what in any other context would be breaking news. You don’t want or need (or be able) to censor a manifesto for all time, but you would want to prevent the (assumed) murderers from gaining any momentum from their heinous acts. So a ninety day (but only 90 day) embargo on public speech from bad actors, with the teeth of governmental enforcement, sounds pretty reasonable to me. Even cleverer to salt the ether with “leaks” that would actively suppress any political momentum for the (presumed) murderers during the embargo period, but with the true light of day shining after three months.
    - int_19h 1y ago
      It doesn't sound reasonable to me tbh. If anything, reading those manifestos is a good way to learn just how nutty those people are in the first place. At the same time, having it accessible prevents speculation about motives, which can lead to false justification for politically oppressive measures. OTOH if the goal is to prevent copycats then I don't see the point of a 90-day embargo. People who are likely to take that kind of content seriously enough to emulate are still going to do so. Tarrant, for example, specifically referenced Anders Breivik.
- AfterHIA 1y ago
  There's a literal world of literature both contemporary and classical which points to the idea that concentrations of power in politics and concentrations of wealth and power in industry aren't dissimilar. I think there are limits to this as recent commentaries by guys like Zizek seem to suggest that the, "strong Nation-State" is a positive legacy of the European enlightenment. I think this is true, "when it is." Power is power. Wealth is power. Political power is power. The powerful should not control the lives or destinies of the less powerful. This is the most basic description of contemporary democracy but becomes controversial when the Randroids and Commies alike start to split hairs about how the Lenins and John Galts of the world have a right to use power to further their respective political objectives. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm (Leviathan by Hobbes) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50922 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50922 (Perpetual Peace by Kant) https://www.heritage-history.com/site/hclass/secret_societies/ebooks/pdf/butler_racket.pdf https://www.heritage-history.com/site/hclass/secret_societie...
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago
  The middle ground is when a company becomes a utility. The power company can't simply disconnect your electricity because they don't feel like offering it to you, even though they own the power lines. The phone company can't disconnect your call because they disagree with what you're saying, even though they own the transmission equipment.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> the government and/or a big tech company shouldn't decide what people are "allowed" to say This throws out spam and fraud filters, both of which are content-based moderation. Nobody moderates anything isn’t unfortunately a functional option. Particularly if the company has to sell ads.
zetazzed 1y ago
Does Disney have a positive obligation to show animal cruelty snuff films on Disney Plus? Or are they allowed to control what people say on their network? Does Roblox have to allow XXX games showing non-consensual sex acts on their site, or are they allowed to control what people say on their network? Can WebMD decide not to present articles claiming that homeopathy is the ultimate cure-all? Does X have to share a "trending" topic about the refusal to release the Epstein files? The reason we ban government censorship is so that a private actor can always create their own conspiracy theory + snuff film site if they want, and other platforms are not obligated to carry content they find objectionable. Get really into Rumble or Truth Social or X if you would like a very different perspective from Youtube's.
- AfterHIA 1y ago
  Let's say that in the future that the dominant form of entertainment is X-rated animal snuff films for whatever reason. Would a lack of alternative content constitute an attack on your right to choose freely or speak? Given your ethical framework I'd have to say, "no" but even as your discursive opponent I would have to admit that if you as a person are adverse to, "X-rated furry smut" that I would sympathize with you as the oppressed if it meant your ability to live and communicate has been stifled or called into question. Oppression has many forms and many names. The Johnny Conservatarians want to reserve certain categories of cruelty as, "necessary" or, "permissable" by creating frameworks like, "everything is permitted just as long as some social condition is met..." At the crux of things the libertarians and the non-psychos are just having a debate on when it's fair game to be unethical or cruel to others in the name of extending human freedom and human dignity. We've fallen so far from the tree.
heavyset_go 1y ago
This is just a reminder that we're both posting on one the most heavily censored, big tech-sponsored spaces on the internet, and arguably, that's what allows for you to have your civics debate in earnest. What you are arguing for is a dissolution of HN and sites like it.
asadotzler 1y ago
No one in Big Tech decides what you are allowed to say, they can only withhold their distribution of what you say. As a book publisher, should I be required to publish your furry smut short stories? Of course not. Is that infringing on your freedom of speech? Of course not.
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago
  No, they ban your account and exclude you from the market commons if they don't like what you say.
  - mulmen 1y ago
    Yes that’s how free markets work. Your idea has to be free to die in obscurity. Compelled speech is not free speech. You have no right to an audience. The existence of a wide distribution platform does not grant you a right to it. These arguments fall completely flat because it’s always about the right to distribute misinformation. It’s never about posting porn or war crimes or spam. That kind of curation isn’t contentious. Google didn’t suddenly see the light and become free speech absolutists. They caved to political pressure and are selectively allowing the preferred misinformation of the current administration.
    - int_19h 1y ago
      A market that has companies with the size - or rather, the market dominance - of the likes of Google is not meaningfully a free market. The fundamental problem isn't whether Google censors or not, nor what it censors, but the very fact that its decision on this matter is so impactful.
      - mulmen 1y ago
        If you want to debate anti trust and regulation then let’s do it. Google’s dominance is bad for our society, culture, and our economy but it’s not a reason to erode our fundamental rights. Compelling free speech will do nothing to erode Google’s market share or encourage competition. In fact it will further entrench Google’s dominance.
mulmen 1y ago
I have some ideas I want to post on your personal webpage but you have not given me access. Why are you censoring me?
- mitthrowaway2 1y ago
  Is andy99's personal webpage a de-facto commons where the public congregates to share and exchange ideas?
  - AfterHIA 1y ago
    I know that your post is rhetorical but I'll extend your thinking into real life-- has andy99 personal webpage been created because you're an elected official representing others? Would this still give andy99 the right to distribute hate speech on his personal webpage? I think we can harmonize around, "unfortunately so" and that's why I think the way forward is concentrating on the, "unfortunately" and not the, "so." We have the right to do a potentially limitless amount of unbecoming, cruel, and oppressive things to our fellow man. We also have the potential for forming and proliferating societies. We invented religion and agriculture out of dirt and need. Let us choose Nazarenes, Jeffersons, and Socrates' over Neros, Alexanders, and Napoleons. This didn't use to be politically controversial!
  - mulmen 1y ago
    It would be if they’d stop censoring me!
- AfterHIA 1y ago
  I have a consortium of other website owners who refuse to crosslink your materials unless you put our banner on your site. Is this oppression? Oppression goes both ways, has many names, and takes many forms. Its most insidious form being the Oxford Comma.
  - mulmen 1y ago
    > Is this oppression? Are you the government? If not then it is not oppression. It is free speech. This is the point of my rhetorical device.
AfterHIA 1y ago
Another way of articulating this: "concentrations of power and wealth should not determine the speech or political sentiments of the many." My fear is that this is incredibly uncontroversial this is until it's not-- when pushes becomes shoves we start having debates about what are, "legitimate" concentrations of power (wealth) and how that legitimacy in itself lets us, "tolerate what we would generally condemn as intolerable." I feel we need to take a queue from the Chomsky's of the world and decree: "all unjustified concentrations of power and wealth are necessarily interested in control and as such we should aggressively and purposefully refuse to tolerate them at all as a basic condition of democratic living..." This used to be, "social democracy" where these days the Democratic Party in the United States' motto is more, "let us make deals with the devil because reasons and things." People have the power. We are the people. Hare fucking Krsna.
ncallaway 1y ago
As with others, I think your "and/or" between government and "big tech" is problematic. I think government censorship should be strictly prohibited. I think "company" censorship is just the application of the first amendment. Where I think the problem lies with things like YouTube is the fact that we have _monopolies_, so there is no "free market" of platforms. I think we should be addressing "big tech" censorship not by requiring tech companies to behave like a government, but rather by preventing any companies from having so much individual power that we _need_ them to behave like a government. We should have aggressive anti-trust laws, and interoperability requirements for large platforms, such that it doesn't matter if YouTube decides to be censorious, because there are 15 other platforms that people can viably use instead.
ben_w 1y ago
> There's tons of dumb stuff online, the only thing dumber is the state dictating how I'm supposed to think I've seen stupidity on the internet you wouldn't believe. Time Cube rants — four simultaneous days in one rotation — burning across static-filled CRTs. Ponzi pyramids stretching into forever, needing ten billion souls to stand beneath one. And a man proclaiming he brought peace in wars that never were, while swearing the President was born on foreign soil. All those moments… lost… in a rain of tweets. But even that dumb stuff aside: there's two ways for a government to silence the truth: censorship, and propaganda. We've got LLMs now, letting interested parties (government or not) overwhelm everyone with an endless barrage of the worst, cheapest, lowest quality AI slop, the kind that makes even AI proponents like me go "ah, I see what you mean about it being autocomplete", because even the worst of that by quality is still able to bury any bad news story just as effectively as any censorship. Too much noise and not enough signal, is already why I'm consuming far less YouTube these days, why I gave up on Twitter when it was still called that, etc. And we have AI that's a lot better at holding a conversation than just the worst, cheapest, lowest quality AI slop. We've already seen LLMs are able to induce psychosis in some people just by talking to them, and that was, so far as we can tell, accidental. How long will it be before a developer chooses to do this on purpose, and towards a goal of their choice? Even if it's just those who are susceptible, there's a lot of people. What's important is the freedom to share truth, no matter how uncomfortable, and especially when it's uncomfortable for those with power. Unfortunately, what we humans actually share the most is gossip, which is already a poor proxy for truth and is basically how all the witch hunts, genocides, and other moral-panic-induced horrors of history happened. It is all a mess; it is all hard; don't mistake the proxy (free speech in general) for the territory (speak truth to power, I think?); censorship is simultaneously bad and the only word I know for any act which may block propaganda which is also bad.
singleshot_ 1y ago
> a big tech company shouldn't decide what people are "allowed" to say On their platform, that’s exactly what they are entitled to do. When you type into the box in the Facebook app, that’s your speech. But unless the platform wants to add your contribution to their coherent speech product, they have every right to reject it. Otherwise, the government is deciding what people can say, and you’d be against that, right? Further, if I wanted to start a social media platform called thinkingtylenolcausesautismisstupid.com, wouldn’t restricting my right to craft my product defeat the whole point of my business? Giving platforms the ability to moderate their output to craft a coherent speech product is the only reason we have multiple social networks with different rules, instead of one first-mover social network with no rules where everyone is locked in by network effects.

by andy99 1y ago

mapontosevenths 1y ago

> the government and/or a big tech company shouldn't decide what people are "allowed" to say. That "and/or" is doing a lot of work here. There's a huge difference between government censorship and forcing private companies to host content they don't want to host on servers they own. Then again, Alphabet is now claiming they did want to host it and mean old Biden pressured them into pulling it so if we buy that, maybe it doesn't matter. > What if they started banning tylenol-autism sceptical accounts? What if it's pro-cannibalism or pedophilia content? Everyone has a line, we're all just arguing about where exactly we think that line should be.

MostlyStable 1y ago
It can simultaneously be legal/allowable for them to ban speech, and yet also the case that we should criticize them for doing so. The first amendment only restricts the government, but a culture of free speech will also criticize private entities for taking censorious actions. And a culture of free speech is necessary to make sure that the first amendment is not eventually eroded away to nothing.
- lkey 1y ago
  Or it might be the case that that 'culture' is eroding the thing it claims to be protecting. https://www.popehat.com/p/how-free-speech-culture-is-killing-free-speech-part-one https://www.popehat.com/p/how-free-speech-culture-is-killing...
  - AfterHIA 1y ago
    This. Even if we have concrete protections in our society it takes a society of people committed to a common democratic cause and common functional prosperity that prevents there from being abuses of the right to speak and so on (..) This isn't complicated and this wasn't always controversial. I've already described above that even in this thread there's a sentiment which is that, "as long as somebody has gained coercive power legitimately then it is within their right to coerce." I see terms thrown around like, "if somebody owns" or, "if somebody is the CEO of..." which speaks to the growing air of illiberality an liberal autocranarianism which is a direct result of the neoliberal assault founding and funding thousands of Cato Institutes, Adam Smith Societies, and Heritage Foundations since the neoliberal turn in the late 1960's. We've legitimized domination ethics as an extension of the hungry rights of pseudotyrants and the expense of people in general. I wonder what people in general might one day do about this? I wonder if there's a historical precedent for what happens when people face oppression and the degradation of common cultural projects? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution#October_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution#October_Rev... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
- plantwallshoe 1y ago
  Isn’t promoting/removing opinions you care about a form of speech? If I choose to put a Kamala sign in my yard and not a Trump sign, that’s an expression of free speech. If the marketing company I own decides to not work for causes I don’t personally support, that’s free speech. If the video hosting platform I’m CEO of doesn’t host unfounded anti-vax content because I think it’s a bad business move, is that not also free speech?
  - lmz 1y ago
    Agreed. If I have a TV network and think these anti-government hosts on my network are bad for business, that is also freedom of speech.
    - rubyfan 1y ago
      Maybe. If it is independent of government coercion.
      - Jensson 1y ago
        But Youtube did this after government coercion, so what is the difference?
        alphabettsy 1y ago
        I think you should look up the definition of coercion.
        Jensson 1y ago
        Have you seen the emails the Biden Administration sent to Youtube? Here is a quote verbatim that they sent to Youtube: > we want to be sure that you have a handle on vaccine hesitancy generally and are working toward making the problem better. This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the White House Saying you want to make sure they will censor these videos is a threat, and then they said that Biden was behind this to add legitimacy to the threat. If it was just a friendly greeting why would they threaten youtube with Bidens name? If youtube did this willingly there would be no need to write such a threatening message saying they want to make sure Youtube censors these. You can read the whole report here if you wanna see more: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Censorship-Industrial-Complex-WH-Report_Appendix.pdf https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j... And if you don't see that as a threat, imagine someone in the trump administration sent that, do you still think its not a threat? Of course its a threat, it makes no sense to write that way otherwise, you would just say you wanted to hear how it goes not say you wanna make sure they do this specific thing and threaten them with the presidents powers.
- asadotzler 1y ago
  Will you criticize my book publishing company for not publishing and distributing your smut short story?
  - user34283 1y ago
    No, but I will criticize Apple and Google for banning smut apps. If those two private companies would host all legal content, this could be a thriving market. Somehow big tech and payment processors get to censor most software.
  - AfterHIA 1y ago
    Perhaps and if you have some kind of monopoly than definitely. Things beings, "yours" isn't some fundamental part of the human condition. CEOs serve their employees and shareholders and the ethics of the business space they operate in. Owners are ethically obligated to engage in fair business practices. I'm sick up to my neck of this sentiment that if John Galt is holding a gun he necessarily has the right to shoot it at somebody. Modern democracies aren't founded on realist ethics or absolute commitments to economic liberalism as totalizing-- they're founded on a ethical balance between the real needs of people, the real potential for capital expansion, and superior sentiments about the possibilities of the human condition. As a kid that supported Ron Paul's bid for the Republican nomination as a 16-year-old I can't help but feel that libertarian politics has ruined generations of people by getting them to accept autocracy as, "one ethical outcome to a free society." It isn't. The irony in me posting this will be lost on most: https://www.uschamber.com/ https://www.uschamber.com/
- SantalBlush 1y ago
  Are you in favor of HN allowing advertisements, shilling, or spam in these threads? Because those things are free speech. Would you like to allow comments about generic ED pills? I simply don't believe people who say they want to support a culture of free speech on a media or social media site. They haven't really thought about what that means.
  - AfterHIA 1y ago
    Without being crude I think they stopped, "thinking about that means" in any positive sense a long time ago. Cultures of discourse and criticism are never good for the powerful. The goal is to create a culture when anyone can say anything but with no meaningful social consequences negative or positive. I can call Trump a pedophile all day on my computer interface and maybe somebody else will see it but the Google and Meta machine just treat it as another engagement dollar. These dollars are now literally flowing to the White House in the form of investment commitments by acting Tech Czar Zuckerberg. While I'm with my dudes in computer space-- it all starts with the passing of the Mansfield Amendment. You want to know why tech sucks and we haven't made any foundational breakthroughs for decades? The privatization of technology innovation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Silicon_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Silicon_Valley https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/narrative#chapter-iv-tumultuous-times-1968-1976-dd8 https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/narrative#chapter-iv-tumul...
- AfterHIA 1y ago
  Bingo. This is Adam Smith's whole point in the second half of, "Wealth Of Nations" that nobody bothers to read in lieu of the sentiments of the Cato Institute and the various Adam Smith societies. Nations produce, "kinds of people" that based on their experience of a common liberty and prosperity will err against tyranny. Economics and autocracy in our country is destroying our culture of, "talk and liberality." Discourse has become, "let's take turns attacking each other and each other's positions." The American civilization has deep flaws but has historically worked toward, "doing what was right." https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/book-v-of-the-revenue-of-the-sovereign-or-commonwealth https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/book-v-of-the-reven...
mc32 1y ago
The thing is that people will tell you it wasn’t actually censorship because for them it was only the government being a busy body nosey government telling the tech corps about a select number of people violating their terms (nudge nudge please do something)… so I think the and/or is important.
- AfterHIA 1y ago
  Great post mc32 (I hope you're a Wayne Kramer fan!) This private-public tyranny that's going on right now. The FCC can't directly tell Kimmel, "you can't say that" they can say, "you may have violated this or this technical rule which..." This is how Project 2025 will play out in terms of people's real experience. You occupy all posts with ideologically sympathetic players and the liberality people are used to becomes ruinous as, "the watchers" are now, "watching for you." The irony is that most conservatives believe this is just, "what the left was doing in the 2010's in reverse" and I don't have a counterargument for this other than, "it doesn't matter; it's always bad and unethical." Real differences between Colbert and Tate taken for granted.
  - mc32 1y ago
    All sides and i mean all sides with one tiny sliver of an exception will be hypocrites about freedom of speech. I’m not an absolutist as I think there are things we know produce harm in people, specially susceptible young populations, but definitely strictly political speech should be protected and allowed. How can we not have debates about efficacy of medical products or about trustworthiness of the data?
    - mapontosevenths 1y ago
      > How can we not have debates about efficacy of medical products or about trustworthiness of the data? We must be able to have those debates, but we must also guard against grifters selling 5g-proof underwear to the functionally illiterate or serving up vaccine skepticism based more on their desire to score political points than science. The devil will always be in the details, and it's a tough balancing act. I personally suspect that the way we do this is by checking credentials. Doctors and scientists should be allowed to offer alternative theories. Meth-addicts posting from labs hidden in the Ozarks, software developers, and unqualified politicians, maybe not.
briHass 1y ago
The line should be what is illegal, which, at least in the US, is fairly permissive. The legal process already did all the hard work of reaching consensus/compromise on where that line is, so just use that. At least with the legal system, there's some degree of visibility and influence possible by everyone. It's not some ethics department silently banning users they don't agree with.
- deleted 1y ago
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int_19h 1y ago
> There's a huge difference between government censorship and forcing private companies to host content they don't want to host on servers they own. It really depends. I remember after the Christchurch mosque shootings, there was a scramble to block the distribution of the shooter's manifesto. In some countries, the government could declare the content illegal directly, but in others, such as Australia, they didn't have pre-existing laws sufficiently wide to cover that, and so what happened in practice is that ISPs "proactively" formed a voluntary censorship cartel, acting in lockstep to block access to all copies of the manifesto, while the government was working on the new laws. If the practical end result is the same - a complete country block on some content - does it really matter whether it's dressed up as public or private censorship? And with large tech companies like Alphabet and Meta, it is a particularly pointed question given how much the market is monopolized.
- onecommentman 1y ago
  I wonder, in the case of mass violence events that were used as advertisement for the (assumed) murderer’s POV, whether there should be an equivalent of a House of Lords for the exceptional situation of censoring what in any other context would be breaking news. You don’t want or need (or be able) to censor a manifesto for all time, but you would want to prevent the (assumed) murderers from gaining any momentum from their heinous acts. So a ninety day (but only 90 day) embargo on public speech from bad actors, with the teeth of governmental enforcement, sounds pretty reasonable to me. Even cleverer to salt the ether with “leaks” that would actively suppress any political momentum for the (presumed) murderers during the embargo period, but with the true light of day shining after three months.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    It doesn't sound reasonable to me tbh. If anything, reading those manifestos is a good way to learn just how nutty those people are in the first place. At the same time, having it accessible prevents speculation about motives, which can lead to false justification for politically oppressive measures. OTOH if the goal is to prevent copycats then I don't see the point of a 90-day embargo. People who are likely to take that kind of content seriously enough to emulate are still going to do so. Tarrant, for example, specifically referenced Anders Breivik.
AfterHIA 1y ago
There's a literal world of literature both contemporary and classical which points to the idea that concentrations of power in politics and concentrations of wealth and power in industry aren't dissimilar. I think there are limits to this as recent commentaries by guys like Zizek seem to suggest that the, "strong Nation-State" is a positive legacy of the European enlightenment. I think this is true, "when it is." Power is power. Wealth is power. Political power is power. The powerful should not control the lives or destinies of the less powerful. This is the most basic description of contemporary democracy but becomes controversial when the Randroids and Commies alike start to split hairs about how the Lenins and John Galts of the world have a right to use power to further their respective political objectives. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm (Leviathan by Hobbes) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50922 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50922 (Perpetual Peace by Kant) https://www.heritage-history.com/site/hclass/secret_societies/ebooks/pdf/butler_racket.pdf https://www.heritage-history.com/site/hclass/secret_societie...
mitthrowaway2 1y ago
The middle ground is when a company becomes a utility. The power company can't simply disconnect your electricity because they don't feel like offering it to you, even though they own the power lines. The phone company can't disconnect your call because they disagree with what you're saying, even though they own the transmission equipment.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> the government and/or a big tech company shouldn't decide what people are "allowed" to say This throws out spam and fraud filters, both of which are content-based moderation. Nobody moderates anything isn’t unfortunately a functional option. Particularly if the company has to sell ads.

zetazzed 1y ago

Does Disney have a positive obligation to show animal cruelty snuff films on Disney Plus? Or are they allowed to control what people say on their network? Does Roblox have to allow XXX games showing non-consensual sex acts on their site, or are they allowed to control what people say on their network? Can WebMD decide not to present articles claiming that homeopathy is the ultimate cure-all? Does X have to share a "trending" topic about the refusal to release the Epstein files? The reason we ban government censorship is so that a private actor can always create their own conspiracy theory + snuff film site if they want, and other platforms are not obligated to carry content they find objectionable. Get really into Rumble or Truth Social or X if you would like a very different perspective from Youtube's.

AfterHIA 1y ago
Let's say that in the future that the dominant form of entertainment is X-rated animal snuff films for whatever reason. Would a lack of alternative content constitute an attack on your right to choose freely or speak? Given your ethical framework I'd have to say, "no" but even as your discursive opponent I would have to admit that if you as a person are adverse to, "X-rated furry smut" that I would sympathize with you as the oppressed if it meant your ability to live and communicate has been stifled or called into question. Oppression has many forms and many names. The Johnny Conservatarians want to reserve certain categories of cruelty as, "necessary" or, "permissable" by creating frameworks like, "everything is permitted just as long as some social condition is met..." At the crux of things the libertarians and the non-psychos are just having a debate on when it's fair game to be unethical or cruel to others in the name of extending human freedom and human dignity. We've fallen so far from the tree.

heavyset_go 1y ago

This is just a reminder that we're both posting on one the most heavily censored, big tech-sponsored spaces on the internet, and arguably, that's what allows for you to have your civics debate in earnest. What you are arguing for is a dissolution of HN and sites like it.

asadotzler 1y ago

No one in Big Tech decides what you are allowed to say, they can only withhold their distribution of what you say. As a book publisher, should I be required to publish your furry smut short stories? Of course not. Is that infringing on your freedom of speech? Of course not.

mitthrowaway2 1y ago
No, they ban your account and exclude you from the market commons if they don't like what you say.
- mulmen 1y ago
  Yes that’s how free markets work. Your idea has to be free to die in obscurity. Compelled speech is not free speech. You have no right to an audience. The existence of a wide distribution platform does not grant you a right to it. These arguments fall completely flat because it’s always about the right to distribute misinformation. It’s never about posting porn or war crimes or spam. That kind of curation isn’t contentious. Google didn’t suddenly see the light and become free speech absolutists. They caved to political pressure and are selectively allowing the preferred misinformation of the current administration.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    A market that has companies with the size - or rather, the market dominance - of the likes of Google is not meaningfully a free market. The fundamental problem isn't whether Google censors or not, nor what it censors, but the very fact that its decision on this matter is so impactful.
    - mulmen 1y ago
      If you want to debate anti trust and regulation then let’s do it. Google’s dominance is bad for our society, culture, and our economy but it’s not a reason to erode our fundamental rights. Compelling free speech will do nothing to erode Google’s market share or encourage competition. In fact it will further entrench Google’s dominance.

mulmen 1y ago

I have some ideas I want to post on your personal webpage but you have not given me access. Why are you censoring me?

mitthrowaway2 1y ago
Is andy99's personal webpage a de-facto commons where the public congregates to share and exchange ideas?
- AfterHIA 1y ago
  I know that your post is rhetorical but I'll extend your thinking into real life-- has andy99 personal webpage been created because you're an elected official representing others? Would this still give andy99 the right to distribute hate speech on his personal webpage? I think we can harmonize around, "unfortunately so" and that's why I think the way forward is concentrating on the, "unfortunately" and not the, "so." We have the right to do a potentially limitless amount of unbecoming, cruel, and oppressive things to our fellow man. We also have the potential for forming and proliferating societies. We invented religion and agriculture out of dirt and need. Let us choose Nazarenes, Jeffersons, and Socrates' over Neros, Alexanders, and Napoleons. This didn't use to be politically controversial!
- mulmen 1y ago
  It would be if they’d stop censoring me!
AfterHIA 1y ago
I have a consortium of other website owners who refuse to crosslink your materials unless you put our banner on your site. Is this oppression? Oppression goes both ways, has many names, and takes many forms. Its most insidious form being the Oxford Comma.
- mulmen 1y ago
  > Is this oppression? Are you the government? If not then it is not oppression. It is free speech. This is the point of my rhetorical device.

AfterHIA 1y ago

Another way of articulating this: "concentrations of power and wealth should not determine the speech or political sentiments of the many." My fear is that this is incredibly uncontroversial this is until it's not-- when pushes becomes shoves we start having debates about what are, "legitimate" concentrations of power (wealth) and how that legitimacy in itself lets us, "tolerate what we would generally condemn as intolerable." I feel we need to take a queue from the Chomsky's of the world and decree: "all unjustified concentrations of power and wealth are necessarily interested in control and as such we should aggressively and purposefully refuse to tolerate them at all as a basic condition of democratic living..." This used to be, "social democracy" where these days the Democratic Party in the United States' motto is more, "let us make deals with the devil because reasons and things." People have the power. We are the people. Hare fucking Krsna.

ncallaway 1y ago

As with others, I think your "and/or" between government and "big tech" is problematic. I think government censorship should be strictly prohibited. I think "company" censorship is just the application of the first amendment. Where I think the problem lies with things like YouTube is the fact that we have _monopolies_, so there is no "free market" of platforms. I think we should be addressing "big tech" censorship not by requiring tech companies to behave like a government, but rather by preventing any companies from having so much individual power that we _need_ them to behave like a government. We should have aggressive anti-trust laws, and interoperability requirements for large platforms, such that it doesn't matter if YouTube decides to be censorious, because there are 15 other platforms that people can viably use instead.

ben_w 1y ago

> There's tons of dumb stuff online, the only thing dumber is the state dictating how I'm supposed to think I've seen stupidity on the internet you wouldn't believe. Time Cube rants — four simultaneous days in one rotation — burning across static-filled CRTs. Ponzi pyramids stretching into forever, needing ten billion souls to stand beneath one. And a man proclaiming he brought peace in wars that never were, while swearing the President was born on foreign soil. All those moments… lost… in a rain of tweets. But even that dumb stuff aside: there's two ways for a government to silence the truth: censorship, and propaganda. We've got LLMs now, letting interested parties (government or not) overwhelm everyone with an endless barrage of the worst, cheapest, lowest quality AI slop, the kind that makes even AI proponents like me go "ah, I see what you mean about it being autocomplete", because even the worst of that by quality is still able to bury any bad news story just as effectively as any censorship. Too much noise and not enough signal, is already why I'm consuming far less YouTube these days, why I gave up on Twitter when it was still called that, etc. And we have AI that's a lot better at holding a conversation than just the worst, cheapest, lowest quality AI slop. We've already seen LLMs are able to induce psychosis in some people just by talking to them, and that was, so far as we can tell, accidental. How long will it be before a developer chooses to do this on purpose, and towards a goal of their choice? Even if it's just those who are susceptible, there's a lot of people. What's important is the freedom to share truth, no matter how uncomfortable, and especially when it's uncomfortable for those with power. Unfortunately, what we humans actually share the most is gossip, which is already a poor proxy for truth and is basically how all the witch hunts, genocides, and other moral-panic-induced horrors of history happened. It is all a mess; it is all hard; don't mistake the proxy (free speech in general) for the territory (speak truth to power, I think?); censorship is simultaneously bad and the only word I know for any act which may block propaganda which is also bad.

singleshot_ 1y ago

> a big tech company shouldn't decide what people are "allowed" to say On their platform, that’s exactly what they are entitled to do. When you type into the box in the Facebook app, that’s your speech. But unless the platform wants to add your contribution to their coherent speech product, they have every right to reject it. Otherwise, the government is deciding what people can say, and you’d be against that, right? Further, if I wanted to start a social media platform called thinkingtylenolcausesautismisstupid.com, wouldn’t restricting my right to craft my product defeat the whole point of my business? Giving platforms the ability to moderate their output to craft a coherent speech product is the only reason we have multiple social networks with different rules, instead of one first-mover social network with no rules where everyone is locked in by network effects.