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There's a very important distinction to be made. Nazi rhetoric earning bans on private platforms happens because a large number of people organize in protest a
by atmavatar 4mo ago
There's a very important distinction to be made.
Nazi rhetoric earning bans on private platforms happens because a large number of people organize in protest against such rhetoric. Advertisers see this and don't want to be associated with it, so the ad-driven platforms make the obvious choice to remove the Nazis. This is an example of people exercising their free speech and their often overlooked freedom of/from association.
Nothing stops the Nazis from creating their own platform or buying out an existing one, which is why we have Gab, Truth Social, and X. They're also free to organize themselves and try convincing people to leave the platforms which banned them and/or convince advertisers to apply pressure to let them stay.
You have to appreciate the absurdity of getting airtime on nearly every right wing media platform to complain about being silenced, though.
Arguing private platforms should be forced to keep Nazi rhetoric around isn't meaningfully different from arguing I shouldn't be able to kick a guest out of my house when they start spouting intolerable bullshit.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- rayiner 4mo ago[flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 4mo agoI would absolutely draw a distinction between government enforced censorship and private platforms censoring content. Where it becomes a larger problem is if the private platform is an effective monopoly; using monopoly power to censor viewpoints would be a bad. Normally we would call a monopoly platform a common carrier and outlaw censorship by them.
- CM30 4mo agoThe issue is that there are plenty of large companies that are effectively censoring legal views, and making it harder for people to setup alternative platforms that support them. For example, Visa and Mastercard control much of the payment infrastructure used online, and have far stricter rules about the type of content they allow payments for than what many countries actually allow. Same with Paypal to some extent, or Cloudflare, or cloud hosting platforms like AWS.
- atmavatar 4mo agoThe problem you're describing isn't so much that private companies are allowed to choose who they do business with, but rather that the US has allowed far too much consolidation of markets to occur. Regarding your example: I fully agree that Visa and Mastercard have way too much control over payment infrastructure. Before doing anything else, I'd break up their de facto duopoly. I'd focus on Visa in particular, as they control nearly 2/3 the market by themselves.
- coldtea 4mo ago>I would absolutely draw a distinction between government enforced censorship and private platforms censoring content. I would absolutely not.
- amanaplanacanal 4mo agoSo... If I run a bbs, I can't delete spam or porn, or kick people off my platform? That's an infringement of free speech? Or say I run a newspaper, I have to print every editorial letter somebody sends in? I can't pick and choose? Do I as the platform owner lose my free speech?
- coldtea 4mo ago>So... If I run a bbs, I can't delete spam or porn, or kick people off my platform? That's an infringement of free speech? Question: What if ...contrived example... Answer: you can do the contrived example. Porn is porn, spam is spam. Editorial sections have limited space (even on an online newspaper). And newspapers aren't social media platforms. A newspaper can have an editorial voice. I'm not sure why the need for contrived examples. You don't have to consider porn or spam as free speech, and that's that. Is it a uniquely US thing to think of it that way (like the pedantic "fire in a crowded theater" arguments)? If you're a platform and someone has a political theory or some social observation, however, you should treat it as a manner of free speech. If it's an erotic work, you can debate whether it's art or porn, and if art, should treet is as a matter of free speech.
- amanaplanacanal 4mo agoHow are these contrived examples? Every subreddit, every discord, even this very site will run into these same issues. Maybe the confusion here is around what you consider a "platform"?
- iliveinberlin 4mo agoCurrently lot of mainstream political speech is literally things the nazis said
- coldtea 4mo ago[flagged]
- cramer4next 4mo ago[flagged]
- krapp 4mo agoMeh. There is no communist or socialist leadership in any state. Socialism died in the US when socialists stopped bombing universities and kidnapping heiresses and ceased being an actual threat to power. Now they just exist as an ineffectual and endless purity spiral of shitposting and theory on social media. Even Mamdani is at best a European style Democratic Socialist, which is still capitalist and nationalist in all but name. Pretending that is equivalent to Nazism is specious at best.
- cramer4next 4mo ago[flagged]
- krapp 4mo agoAntisemitism isn't an indicator of communist or socialist sympathies. As for the rest of your comment, you seem to be hiding a lack of substance behind an attempt at obscurant bullshit. Who are you talking about? What are you talking about? Your account is getting banned sooner or later judging from your posting history, just come out with it.
- cramer4next 4mo ago[flagged]