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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

(techcrunch.com)
707 points patd | 4 comments | 27 May 20 12:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.862s | source
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Traster ◴[27 May 20 13:09 UTC] No.23322571[source]▶
I think this is going to be a discussion thread that is almost inevitably going to be a shitshow, but anyway:

There are people who advocate the idea that private companies should be compelled to distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment under the concept that free speech is should be applied universally rather than just to government. I don't agree, I think it's a vast over-reach and almost unachievable to have both perfect free speech on these platforms and actually run them as a viable business.

But let's lay that aside, those people who make the argument claim to be adhering to an even stronger dedication to free speech. Surely, it's clear here that having the actual head of the US government threatening to shut down private companies for how they choose to manage their platforms is a far more disturbing and direct threat against free speech even in the narrowest sense.

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missosoup ◴[28 May 20 03:03 UTC] No.23332934[source]▶
> distribute hate speech, dangerously factually incorrect information and harassment

Until everyone can agree on a universal arbiter for what those things mean in a concrete way, there will always be demographics who strongly disagree.

The reason free speech exists as a concept is because of a historic understanding that there fundamentally cannot be an unbiased arbiter for 'good' or 'bad' speech.

On the other side of this, the internet is increasingly controlled by a particular demographic with a particular definition of what things like 'hate speech' mean. Which suppresses and censors a wide range of topics that the other demographics do want to discuss. When the entire internet makes it impossible to express certain views, we can't claim to have free speech anymore. It's not good enough to say 'well if you don't like it then you can go and shout your views out on the street instead'.

The weapon against 'incorrect information' is education, not censorship. Censorship has never worked to actually quash 'wrongthink', it only marginalises and energises demographics who are censored, and drives them to eventually revolt. See: trump winning presidency.

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1. spankalee ◴[28 May 20 03:06 UTC] No.23332954[source]▶
Moderation of non-state-managed platforms is not censorship. In fact, it would be a violation of free speech to limit private parties ability to moderate.
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2. missosoup ◴[28 May 20 03:15 UTC] No.23333003[source]▶
This is where it gets tricky. Because 99.9% of the popular internet is 'non state-managed platforms'.

There doesn't exist an avenue to meaningfully exercise free speech on the internet. You can make your own blog, but it will never go viral. Because the only means for something to go viral is that 99.9% composed of privately censored platforms. We've gotten into a situation where censorship has changed shape from 'one is prevented from expressing a view' to 'a view is prevented from reaching an audience'. Which is far worse than old school Stalin era censorship.

This is not an easy question, but it is clearly a case of the law needing to be updated in light of how technology has evolved. We can't claim to have free speech if there's de-facto no way to exercise it on the primary communication channel of our time.

Concrete example: it has recently come out that youtube has been silently censoring a wide array of comments that express anti-china views. Like most users, I was completely unaware that this is going on. Youtube distorted my perception of reality by suppressing an entire class of opinions from being visible. They didn't tell anyone that they're doing it, there was no transparency, and when they were caught, they said 'whoops it was a bug sorry lol'. That's crazy. What else are they suppressing? I do want laws to stop that even if it exposes me to comments I don't like.

Or consider the degenerate case: Imagine Facebook takes over the entire internet. They buy Google, they buy Twitter, they buy pretty much everything than an average user will ever see. And Zucc comes along and says, from now on any mention of a certain political view on any of these platforms will be censored. This is ok by the rules you're proposing, but it's clearly not ok in terms of the spirit of free speech laws.

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3. mikeg8 ◴[28 May 20 03:21 UTC] No.23333038[source]▶
I think you are wrong it saying that there doesn’t exist an avenue to excercise free speech on the internet. The internet in and of itself is arguably the best tool ever developed for expression of free speech. It’s the distribution to a mass audience that becomes tricky, but any and every media/medium before the internet had the same challenges to the individual.
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4. missosoup ◴[28 May 20 03:26 UTC] No.23333068{3}[source]▶
On today's modern internet, you can express just about anything you want.

The issue is that if you express 'wrongthink', then the 99.9% of platforms will prevent your idea from spreading, even if it would have otherwise spread or become popular.

This is how censorship has changed form. It's no longer about stopping someone form saying something, it's about preventing certain views/ideas from ever being allowed to spread or become viral or reach a wide audience.

Twitter is notorious for soft-censoring posts, where only connections 1-2 hops away from the author can see them, and then they don't exist. Those posts, no matter how much they resonate with people, can never spread to a large audience.

If we backport it to the real world, it's a bit like saying, sure we still have freedom of speech. You are welcome to go and say anything you want inside this soundproof box with room for only 1 person.