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Free speech means that the government doesn't go after you. It doesn't shield you from consequences (which you may or may not agree with) from private parties.

by ahoef 7mo ago

CorrectHorseBat 7mo ago
In the USA
ben_w 7mo ago
And what should we do when it's the un-elected corporations, rather than the democratically elected government, whose censorship of us and our views is a consequence we object to? e.g. how Paul Graham got his Twitter account suspended for posting "This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site.": https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-suspends-account-paul-graham-232754736.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-suspends-account-paul... Musk was 100% allowed to do that. Should he have been allowed to do that? It was undone, but should it have been within the set of things he was allowed to do in the first place?
- krapp 7mo ago
  >And what should we do when it's the un-elected corporations, rather than the democratically elected government, whose censorship of us and our views is a consequence we object to? Find another service. Find another platform. Or make one. You say "un-elected corporations" as if to imply something sinister about the fact that businesses can have terms of service, but every business in existence is un-elected and has terms of service. What is the alternative, to have a grand jury decide everything? >Musk was 100% allowed to do that. Should he have been allowed to do that? Yes, it's obvious Musk should have been allowed to do that. Just as the mods on Hacker News are allowed to do that. It's their shop, they can refuse service to anyone. Should Musk have done it? No. He's an asshole, and that kind of behavior ruins the value of his platform. Should it be legal for Musk to be an asshole and ruin the value of this platform? Yes, because Twitter isn't a monopoly and people can (and have) gone elsewhere. The alternative is direct government control of all online platforms and all means of communication and replacing private censorship with government censorship, which is worse than letting Musk be an asshole, because Musk can't put people in jail or shoot them dead in the street for their speech. I can far more easily leave Twitter than I can my government's sphere of influence.
  - ben_w 7mo ago
    > Find another service. Find another platform. Or make one. 1. Which is the topic of the post, and where the solution is being objected to. 2. Network effects are a thing 3. Efforts to deeply integrate these networks into societies, make them seem irreplaceable, are a thing; in the case of Twitter in particular, it appears to have full-throated support of the US government, despite how this kind of thing is what DOGE itself was objecting to when it was in the form of fairly cheap radio stations in random 3rd world nations. > You say "un-elected corporations" as if to imply something sinister about the fact that businesses can have terms of service, but every business in existence is un-elected and has terms of service. What is the alternative, to have a grand jury decide everything? First: When it's a matter of freedom of speech, that can be encoded into the law, then it is just like the various bans on discrimination against protected groups. Are those done with grand juries? Second, consider the opposite: given Musk's censorship preferences, is it OK for the US government to make heavy use of X.com for direct communication? Or is that use, as per judge ruling from first Trump term saying the POTUS account wasn't allowed to block people, now covered by 1st Amendment constraints despite being theoretically a private corporation? https://web.archive.org/web/20180524014547/https://knightcolumbia.org/sites/default/files/content/Cases/Wikimedia/2018.05.23%20Order%20on%20motions%20for%20summary%20judgment.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20180524014547/https://knightcol... Third, there are rules about what is and isn't allowed in terms of service. Is Apple now banned from banning app developers from linking to non-Apple storefronts? I've lost track of which jurisdiction has placed which restrictions on them and where they're at with appeals. > The alternative is direct government control of all online platforms and all means of communication and replacing private censorship with government censorship Not so. First: there are many laws governing corporations and online platforms and means of communication, none of which are "direct control". All corporate law, in fact. It is a setting of the rules of the game, and no more "direct control" than a referee in a ball game. Second: The US government has the 1st Amendment, the EU has the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (amongst other things), these are meta-rules, rules about which rules may exist, restrictions against other restrictions. > because Musk can't put people in jail or shoot them dead in the street for their speech. There are plenty of people arguing the case that Musk's purchase of Twitter bought him the US government. Were they right? I am uncertain. > I can far more easily leave Twitter than I can my government's sphere of influence. Can you leave Twitter's sphere of influence, just by leaving the site? If you're an advertiser, will they let you leave or sue you for it? Private corporations have tried moving advertising away from Twitter only to be met with legal retaliation from Musk. Speech about Twitter showing what it gets wrong has met with retaliation from Musk that exceeds the budgets of those making that speech, silencing the critics. Nations demanding Twitter does not interfere with trials about domestic attempts at overthrowing elections have been met with Musk trying to circumvent those rules. Nations whose population and government both demand that Twitter does not spread CSAM are now facing threats from the US government itself.
- JuniperMesos 7mo ago
  Should the previous ownership of Twitter have been allowed to suspend all the accounts they did? And make all the other moderation decisions that inspired Musk to spend billions of dollars buying the site and changing its moderation policy? Plenty of people argued so at the time, generally because they broadly agreed with the moderation decisions the previous ownership was making. I don't trust either an un-elected corporation or a government chosen by an electorate full of people I don't agree with not to censor my speech, or the speech I want to see. As far as I'm concerned all centralized social media platforms are vulnerable to censorship of some kind or another, and the best way around this is to build systems that make it as technically difficult as possible for a 3rd party to intercept a message one person broadcasts to willing listeners.
  - ben_w 7mo ago
    > I don't trust either an un-elected corporation or a government chosen by an electorate full of people I don't agree with not to censor my speech, or the speech I want to see. A government *always* has this power, constrained only by their constitution (not just the American big-C Constitution, but anywhere that would have e.g. a court that can tell the government "no"). Allowing corporations to censor is to grant this power to additional actors, without the oversight or limitations the creators of a constitution place upon subsequent governments within that constitution. Consider the same question with a different right: a government which implements the UN declaration of human rights at a constitutional level, that includes the right to life; if such a nation permits a literal Pratchett-style Guild of Assassins, would this not be outrageous? That the government wasn't the one ordering the killings ought to be irrelevant. The same applies to censorship. And in reverse, if there is a constitutional-level protection of speech that binds on the government, it ought to also bind on those that provide spaces for discussion. And when one set of rights comes into conflict with another, let it be judged in public by the constitutional court, not by the secret court of an opaque private review process. > As far as I'm concerned all centralized social media platforms are vulnerable to censorship of some kind or another, and the best way around this is to build systems that make it as technically difficult as possible for a 3rd party to intercept a message one person broadcasts to willing listeners. Even America deems some speech to be unlawful. Copyright infringement, NDAs, and non-disparagement clauses in contracts being the easy example where some private actor can invoke the power of the state to silence a certain category of speech. Speaking personally, I think copyright should be much shorter (perhaps 20 years or so, perhaps variable with medium as news often stops being important after just a matter of days, but novels and music can remain relevant for a lifetime); I can understand why NDAs should exist, but I think they should also be time-limited; and I think non-disparagement clauses are exactly the kind of thing which any proponent of free speech should consider harmful.

Free speech means that the government doesn't go after you. It doesn't shield you from consequences (which you may or may not agree with) from private parties.

by ahoef 7mo ago

Free speech means that the government doesn't go after you. It doesn't shield you from consequences (which you may or may not agree with) from private parties.

CorrectHorseBat 7mo ago

In the USA

ben_w 7mo ago

And what should we do when it's the un-elected corporations, rather than the democratically elected government, whose censorship of us and our views is a consequence we object to? e.g. how Paul Graham got his Twitter account suspended for posting "This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site.": https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-suspends-account-paul-graham-232754736.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-suspends-account-paul... Musk was 100% allowed to do that. Should he have been allowed to do that? It was undone, but should it have been within the set of things he was allowed to do in the first place?

krapp 7mo ago
>And what should we do when it's the un-elected corporations, rather than the democratically elected government, whose censorship of us and our views is a consequence we object to? Find another service. Find another platform. Or make one. You say "un-elected corporations" as if to imply something sinister about the fact that businesses can have terms of service, but every business in existence is un-elected and has terms of service. What is the alternative, to have a grand jury decide everything? >Musk was 100% allowed to do that. Should he have been allowed to do that? Yes, it's obvious Musk should have been allowed to do that. Just as the mods on Hacker News are allowed to do that. It's their shop, they can refuse service to anyone. Should Musk have done it? No. He's an asshole, and that kind of behavior ruins the value of his platform. Should it be legal for Musk to be an asshole and ruin the value of this platform? Yes, because Twitter isn't a monopoly and people can (and have) gone elsewhere. The alternative is direct government control of all online platforms and all means of communication and replacing private censorship with government censorship, which is worse than letting Musk be an asshole, because Musk can't put people in jail or shoot them dead in the street for their speech. I can far more easily leave Twitter than I can my government's sphere of influence.
- ben_w 7mo ago
  > Find another service. Find another platform. Or make one. 1. Which is the topic of the post, and where the solution is being objected to. 2. Network effects are a thing 3. Efforts to deeply integrate these networks into societies, make them seem irreplaceable, are a thing; in the case of Twitter in particular, it appears to have full-throated support of the US government, despite how this kind of thing is what DOGE itself was objecting to when it was in the form of fairly cheap radio stations in random 3rd world nations. > You say "un-elected corporations" as if to imply something sinister about the fact that businesses can have terms of service, but every business in existence is un-elected and has terms of service. What is the alternative, to have a grand jury decide everything? First: When it's a matter of freedom of speech, that can be encoded into the law, then it is just like the various bans on discrimination against protected groups. Are those done with grand juries? Second, consider the opposite: given Musk's censorship preferences, is it OK for the US government to make heavy use of X.com for direct communication? Or is that use, as per judge ruling from first Trump term saying the POTUS account wasn't allowed to block people, now covered by 1st Amendment constraints despite being theoretically a private corporation? https://web.archive.org/web/20180524014547/https://knightcolumbia.org/sites/default/files/content/Cases/Wikimedia/2018.05.23%20Order%20on%20motions%20for%20summary%20judgment.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20180524014547/https://knightcol... Third, there are rules about what is and isn't allowed in terms of service. Is Apple now banned from banning app developers from linking to non-Apple storefronts? I've lost track of which jurisdiction has placed which restrictions on them and where they're at with appeals. > The alternative is direct government control of all online platforms and all means of communication and replacing private censorship with government censorship Not so. First: there are many laws governing corporations and online platforms and means of communication, none of which are "direct control". All corporate law, in fact. It is a setting of the rules of the game, and no more "direct control" than a referee in a ball game. Second: The US government has the 1st Amendment, the EU has the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (amongst other things), these are meta-rules, rules about which rules may exist, restrictions against other restrictions. > because Musk can't put people in jail or shoot them dead in the street for their speech. There are plenty of people arguing the case that Musk's purchase of Twitter bought him the US government. Were they right? I am uncertain. > I can far more easily leave Twitter than I can my government's sphere of influence. Can you leave Twitter's sphere of influence, just by leaving the site? If you're an advertiser, will they let you leave or sue you for it? Private corporations have tried moving advertising away from Twitter only to be met with legal retaliation from Musk. Speech about Twitter showing what it gets wrong has met with retaliation from Musk that exceeds the budgets of those making that speech, silencing the critics. Nations demanding Twitter does not interfere with trials about domestic attempts at overthrowing elections have been met with Musk trying to circumvent those rules. Nations whose population and government both demand that Twitter does not spread CSAM are now facing threats from the US government itself.
JuniperMesos 7mo ago
Should the previous ownership of Twitter have been allowed to suspend all the accounts they did? And make all the other moderation decisions that inspired Musk to spend billions of dollars buying the site and changing its moderation policy? Plenty of people argued so at the time, generally because they broadly agreed with the moderation decisions the previous ownership was making. I don't trust either an un-elected corporation or a government chosen by an electorate full of people I don't agree with not to censor my speech, or the speech I want to see. As far as I'm concerned all centralized social media platforms are vulnerable to censorship of some kind or another, and the best way around this is to build systems that make it as technically difficult as possible for a 3rd party to intercept a message one person broadcasts to willing listeners.
- ben_w 7mo ago
  > I don't trust either an un-elected corporation or a government chosen by an electorate full of people I don't agree with not to censor my speech, or the speech I want to see. A government *always* has this power, constrained only by their constitution (not just the American big-C Constitution, but anywhere that would have e.g. a court that can tell the government "no"). Allowing corporations to censor is to grant this power to additional actors, without the oversight or limitations the creators of a constitution place upon subsequent governments within that constitution. Consider the same question with a different right: a government which implements the UN declaration of human rights at a constitutional level, that includes the right to life; if such a nation permits a literal Pratchett-style Guild of Assassins, would this not be outrageous? That the government wasn't the one ordering the killings ought to be irrelevant. The same applies to censorship. And in reverse, if there is a constitutional-level protection of speech that binds on the government, it ought to also bind on those that provide spaces for discussion. And when one set of rights comes into conflict with another, let it be judged in public by the constitutional court, not by the secret court of an opaque private review process. > As far as I'm concerned all centralized social media platforms are vulnerable to censorship of some kind or another, and the best way around this is to build systems that make it as technically difficult as possible for a 3rd party to intercept a message one person broadcasts to willing listeners. Even America deems some speech to be unlawful. Copyright infringement, NDAs, and non-disparagement clauses in contracts being the easy example where some private actor can invoke the power of the state to silence a certain category of speech. Speaking personally, I think copyright should be much shorter (perhaps 20 years or so, perhaps variable with medium as news often stops being important after just a matter of days, but novels and music can remain relevant for a lifetime); I can understand why NDAs should exist, but I think they should also be time-limited; and I think non-disparagement clauses are exactly the kind of thing which any proponent of free speech should consider harmful.