I've been having this argument more and more lately. People keep coming around to "surely, we must prevent *THIS* content?" and every time the answer is no. Somehow, we seem to be forgetting how free speech benefits us all, but only when it is categorically FREE and there are not exceptions "just this one time"
Why just the other day, I had friends blow up on me for daring to suggest that a particular type of bigoted speech should remain legal.
The free exchange of ideas is a prerequisite for a just world. You cannot build one without it. If you place limits on the free exchange of ideas, "just for this one really bad kind of thing", then you have forfeited your own future ability to resist WHEN - not if, but WHEN - a good and true idea is wrongfully labelled harmful and banned by the same mechanisms.
Every single authoritarian regime in history has made speaking ill of the leadership a crime. Every last one.
You, like a lot of other people, confuse free speech with "but mom, the other kids won't let me play with them!". Actually the only threat to freedom is trying to imply that a company or any other association or institution ought to be compelled to host someone else's speech.
Being able to kick the idiots out and not compelling other people to amplify their nonsense is a basic mechanism of any society that wants to function.
Also the free exchange of ideas isn't a prerequisite for a just world, it's the consequence of a just system. You can "free exchange of ideas" yourself into a gulag if the population is dumb enough. Exchanging ideas is a process that can go as wrong as it can go right, it's a process, not a set of values.
What built the just institutions you like in the US were semi-aristocratic founding fathers, I went to school in a school system that was built in Prussia, colloquially called "a military with a country", and the civic code in France was written by Napoleon. People in Singapore are prosperous because Lee Kuan Yew had his wits together, not because they enjoy a lot of free exchange of ideas.
It's sane and capable elites building lasting institutions that afford you the luxury of free exchange of ideas, even if this offends the egalitarian myth that is popular in the US. Sorry to say it, but mom, pops and Donald Trump being able to post on Twitter doesn't built functioning states.
An underlying issue is the formation of the digital world - what once was a town square is now a (ex.) Facebook page, or network of Twitter followers.
The mechanism of communication exchange have changed so rapidly, that compelling companies to abide by free speech is a tough legislative decision. Yes, they’re corporations and can decide who to have and who not.
But an emergent phenomenon are people using these services as their lens to the world. This was obvious in the last election, red or blue, it was obvious whose side big tech was on. They were not unbiased, as I think they should be.
I’d say just as AOC wanted to get a list created of trump political supporters/affiliates (not general public, but a stepping stone away) and essentially cancel them, the same rhetoric is used to ban forms of speech. “It’s for the better”.
Another reason for controlled speech is a patronizing one, that “you’re head/emotions can’t handle X form of speech”.
Let people decide what they want to see. If I want a censored Twitter, or Wild West Twitter, let me choose. Though I understand the impracticality of forcing this on a corporation.
The only thing banned should be what is illegal. Let legislatures and judges determine it.
We're so used to communicating online that we can't even see how absurdly powerful the tools at our disposal actually are. Posting on social media isn't like chatting with your friends at the bar - it's like shouting into a colossal, ear-shatteringly loud megaphone aimed directly into the ears of billions of people. A system like that probably shouldn't even exist, let alone be put in the hands of every person above the age of thirteen [1].
You wouldn't say I was being censored because MSNBC decided to air Morning Joe instead of my hour-long documentary about how the moon landing is fake. They simply aren't obligated to grant me the power of their massive communications network if they don't like my content. In what I can only call a massive failure of judgment, Twitter, Facebook etc. have outsourced their editorial decision-making to algorithms designed to maximize their profit.
This is not the same as making speech a crime. You still have the right to speak your mind, with your own voice, on any street corner you want. You can even print out fliers if you can convince anyone to take them from you. That was true before Facebook, and it will be true after they're gone. Now if the government tries to threaten this form of communication, I'll be right there with you protesting.
But on other side of free exchange of ideas we have this idea of cancellation, which results from freedom of speech + freedom of association. As part of freedom of speech, we can also use that speech to narrate moral perspectives of whether some speech is good or bad.
Freedom of association also implies the right to choose not to associate with people due to characteristics like religion, race, wealth, etc.
Some people have made laws outlawing discrimination based on some of those characteristics. This is a kludge, with all kinds of annoying implications.
The classic argument in favor of unconditional freedom of association is, "If some companies are refusing to deal with some group of people for stupid reasons, then they will get outcompeted by other companies who don't have such prejudices and can therefore hire cheaper workers or charge higher prices."
This argument works less well when certain extremely valuable services (some would call them "essential") are provided by a small group of huge companies, and entry by new competitors is very difficult.
The solution I would favor is reducing those barriers to entry. Ideally by repealing laws that I think are unjustified in the first place.
In particular, for these social networks with their network effects, but also have something that sucks (be it "they use dark patterns", "they ban people for bad reasons", "their 'feed' algorithm is bad"), why can't someone create a "better network" that acts as a new interface to the old network, but also has better features or has additional members that aren't part of the old network?
My impression is that it would be "against the site's terms of service", and there may also be allegations of copyright violation, and that anyone who made such a thing would eventually get sued. Well, could we change the law so that the site would have no standing to get sued?
I think that, fundamentally, the principle would be, "If users can use a site through the site's interface, then they can also use it through someone else's interface. The site is free to try to detect the difference and block people who do this, but cannot get the law to punish anyone." So the site can either play cat-and-mouse with those developing better interfaces, or they can improve their own interface enough to keep their customers; in terms of banning people, they could either fix their banning practices, or just gamble that those who care enough to use the alternate interface are a sufficiently small group.
No right is absolute, because there are areas where exercising one right might infringe on another right.
Everyone has a right to their life, which is one of the most sacrosanct rights, but in self-defence you might still rightfully kill someone else. Those intersections of rights are always a fine line to walk on and you have to be careful so it is not abused. Just putting one right above the other can never be the solution.
Also freedom of speech has its limitations. Defamation is one case where I guess most people can get behind.
I think one could also make the case here, where there is a real danger that democracy can be lost.
I'm going to skip over defamation for now, both because I'm not a lawyer and because it's slightly more complicated. You can tell that's different because nobody preemptively censors defamation - it's a suit brought after-the-fact and then argued. Skipping it...
No. If "real danger Democracy can be lost" is your measuring stick, then whatever "Democracy" you have in charge is free to defend itself against any speech that may fight it. It's free license for the government to shoot down dissent and not reasonable.
Think of it this way. There is a lot of harmful speech which, in a perfect world, we could prevent. But because power corrupts, we cannot afford to give out the power to prevent speech because it is too easily abused. The benefit of preventing [harmful speech x] is not worth the cost of granting the government the power to jail you for speaking counter to what it believes is right.
Would child porn, trademarks, advertising regulation, nutrition labels, and threatening letters be more interesting examples?
> But because power corrupts, we cannot afford to give out the power to prevent speech because it is too easily abused.
Why can the same argument not be made for, say, food regulation? Or in most countries, for some weapons regulation. All of these could be easily abused to some very powerful, political ends, yet they very rarely, if ever, are. Most abuse of such laws actually comes from companies skirting them.
>the power to jail you for speaking counter to what it believes is right.
Nobody is arguing for that - that the government should be an arbiter of truth. Instead, the argument is that the principle of an absolute right - which cannot ever be overridden - is insufficiently justified. I have some scholarly work from philosophers of law cited in this comment if you're interested in this point of view: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23136757
Ultimately, I do agree with you - but not on the basis that free speech should supercede all other rights, but because the (capitalist) state cannot be trusted, and has a worse track record with censorship over other kinds of regulation. This is because I do not have faith in the populace to decide such regulation.
> Somehow, we seem to be forgetting how free speech benefits us all
In normal times, I would agree. Philosophies and ideals like this effectively discourage people from taking action. That makes a lot of sense during times of peace when our asses aren't actively on the line.
However, these are not normal times. We are facing a threat that might just overwhelm our society and rob us of our way of life. We must act now to neutralize the threat or risk going extinct. We can sort out the ethics of it all later.
So you're okay giving someone else the power to declare something "a threat" and sacrificing your rights to neutralize it? China is perfectly happy to declare all kinds of opinions threats to their way of life and disallow them from being spread. What's different?
You are not thinking it through. An imperfect analogy to help make the point: You can't put a backdoor in encryption "just for the good guys" because there's no way to prevent that backdoor being used by other actors. Similarly, you can't put restrictions on speech "just for the really bad things" because there's no way to prevent things being labeled as "really bad things"!
"Encryption" is not a place or a thing. It's a fact of nature. It's a mathematical truth. Anyone can take advantage of it once it's been discovered and disseminated. That cat cannot go back in the bag.
The US government is a unique thing that we risk losing control of if we don't act now to defend it. Social media platforms are single things or entities that can revert policies once a situation de-escalates.
I imagine that a lot of the people making these calls at these companies would like not to have to do it this way but feel they have no choice. I believe they would be happy to resume business as usual when they're not worried that a violent movement will overthrow their government. Until then, could you really see yourself sitting by, doing nothing, and hoping for the best while watching these maniacs use your platform to organize their movement?
> can revert policies once a situation de-escalates
This is rarely observed. See all of the legislation and policies that have remained, and even expanded, after 9/11. Politicians tend to make laws, not remove them. See the tax code for a good example of asinine infinite expansion.
Maybe reddit should completely end moderation then? So progressives and liberals can take over /r/conservative and post anything they want without fear of being banned? No more 'flaired users only'?
because that's ALSO censorship, no?
Also, who's stopping you from starting a reddit competitor and saying whatever you want? You have ZERO rights to THEIR customers, their users, etc.
I mean, can you go to the local news station and get on the air whenever you want? Because they aren't saying what you want to hear? No. They control who they put on the air. Social media is no different in this aspect.
You're thinking I'm upset specifically about reddit banning the group because that's the article I posted it on. That's sensible, and on me somewhat for not being quite clear enough.
I'm upset at the broader topics that are always brought up when articles like this are posted. I also have an opinion about what reddit should or shouldn't do, but the post you're responding to is not it.
Why just the other day, I had friends blow up on me for daring to suggest that a particular type of bigoted speech should remain legal.
The free exchange of ideas is a prerequisite for a just world. You cannot build one without it. If you place limits on the free exchange of ideas, "just for this one really bad kind of thing", then you have forfeited your own future ability to resist WHEN - not if, but WHEN - a good and true idea is wrongfully labelled harmful and banned by the same mechanisms.
Every single authoritarian regime in history has made speaking ill of the leadership a crime. Every last one.