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I can’t gag a person, but I don’t have to lend them my bullhorn.
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Apr 6, 2021 11:42
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You in this case being one of the three or four corporations that control nearly all speech on the Internet, who we probably shouldn't be trusting to only wield this power against only bad people? You personally would at least have some hypothetical power regarding government control of the bullhorn. You have none against corporate control.
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Apr 6, 2021 11:47
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Everything being controlled by Facebook and Twitter of course sucks but what's the proposed alternative and how is it going to work? If the platforms aren't allowed to moderate the content, there will have to be actual laws defining what's ok in order for them not to turn into even bigger cesspools than they are now. But would a republican congress ban Trump from twitter? Or are they more likely to pass some sort of "religious freedom on the interwebs" act that says gay conversion therapy can't be blocked on social media?
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Apr 6, 2021 12:03
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Some Guy TT posted:So you're not a fan of free speech then? Or is your issue rather that you think corporations are better stewards as to what constitutes criminal speech than the government? It is not "free speech" to be able to buy a specific companies soap box to yell at people. Free speech is not being jailed for your beliefs, a newspaper is not required to publish your views; even if there was supposedly only one newspaper company in existence. "Oh I guess you hate freedom?" is also a ridiculous thing to assert even in context. No one has also suggested that they think corporations are better than the government, I'm not sure where you got the idea from. It's not about trusting corporations either, that is not what's at stake, you are not understanding the issue. Common carrier doesn't mean the government gets to regulate it.
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Apr 6, 2021 12:07
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Common carrier also doesn't mean you have to let nazis use it to commit crimes, if you're going to insist on being pedantic about the definition.
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Apr 6, 2021 12:13
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Some Guy TT posted:Common carrier also doesn't mean you have to let nazis use it to commit crimes, if you're going to insist on being pedantic about the definition. What are you on about.
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Apr 6, 2021 12:20
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When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
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Apr 6, 2021 12:24
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Some Guy TT posted:Common carrier also doesn't mean you have to let nazis use it to commit crimes, if you're going to insist on being pedantic about the definition. No, it kinda does- a phone company isn't really allowed to regulate anything based on content and 'using it to commit crimes' is content. Now, they can allow government monitoring, but they can't find nazis and cut their calls off. The more realistic outcome of social media as common carriers will just be they die because they get deluged in spambots because they can't be moderated any more. Honestly, though, freedom of speech is a joke, and always has been. All forms of mass communication are controlled by some entity, public or private that has to decide what the bounds of speech on any given platform are. There's only so much a human can read, so much space for ink, so much cable TV time, that something has to give. Shrugging and saying 'freedom of speech' is dodging the question.
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Apr 6, 2021 12:27
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Would you trust phone companies to take proactive efforts to cut down on crime, or do you think they would simply abuse this power any time people weren't looking, which would be most of the time, since as you acknowledge, there's far more communication going around than anyone can keep track of? And if not, why do you trust big Internet companies to be any more above board?
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Apr 6, 2021 12:32
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Some Guy TT posted:Would you trust phone companies to take proactive efforts to cut down on crime, or do you think they would simply abuse this power any time people weren't looking, which would be most of the time, since as you acknowledge, there's far more communication going around than anyone can keep track of? And if not, why do you trust big Internet companies to be any more above board? I'm saying these problems would exist no matter who ran social media, or under what rules. You could absolutely have them be common carriers, and then they would just be inundated with spam bots. It would be hard to justify considering social media to be common carriers and not other parts of the internet, like forums, comment sections, etc. and it would most likely just result in a far less usable internet. Censorship would exist in a working social media platform even if the government ran it.
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Apr 6, 2021 12:38
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mobby_6kl posted:Everything being controlled by Facebook and Twitter of course sucks but what's the proposed alternative and how is it going to work? If the platforms aren't allowed to moderate the content, there will have to be actual laws defining what's ok in order for them not to turn into even bigger cesspools than they are now. But would a republican congress ban Trump from twitter? Or are they more likely to pass some sort of "religious freedom on the interwebs" act that says gay conversion therapy can't be blocked on social media? If elected officials wrote the laws, Republicans could write laws making it illegal to be gay!
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Apr 6, 2021 12:40
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Some Guy TT posted:Would you trust phone companies to take proactive efforts to cut down on crime, or do you think they would simply abuse this power any time people weren't looking, which would be most of the time, since as you acknowledge, there's far more communication going around than anyone can keep track of? And if not, why do you trust big Internet companies to be any more above board? How is this being relevant to anything going on in this thread? Who are you responding to? How does this legally or constitutionally relate to what people are discussing?
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Apr 6, 2021 12:40
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Panzeh didn't seem to have any trouble understanding and answering my question. Maybe you just have bad reading comprehension.
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Apr 6, 2021 12:45
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Some Guy TT posted:Panzeh didn't seem to have any trouble understanding and answering my question. Maybe you just have bad reading comprehension. I do think it's getting away from the question of what common carrier regulation means, however.
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Apr 6, 2021 12:47
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Some Guy TT posted:Panzeh didn't seem to have any trouble understanding and answering my question. Maybe you just have bad reading comprehension. Panzer responding to one aspect of your post doesn't mean that your argument is clear or your position obvious. You keep coming around to asking if "we" trust corporations more than the government, where is this coming from? Sanguina's original post: Sanguinia posted:The idea of an internet-enabled platform for public speech being a common carrier which cannot in any way regulate who uses it or what they use it to say is horrifying in ways I can't even conceive. Some Guy TT posted:So you're not a fan of free speech then? Or is your issue rather that you think corporations are better stewards as to what constitutes criminal speech than the government? You're post seems like a non-sequitor to me assuming it was in response to Sanguinia. Where is your position coming from?
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Apr 6, 2021 13:10
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I don't have a position. I was just curious why Sanguina thought this alternate situation was horrifying when the current one isn't much better. You've spent more effort misunderstanding this query than anyone else did simply answering it.
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Apr 6, 2021 13:14
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Some Guy TT posted:I don't have a position. I was just curious why Sanguina thought this alternate situation was horrifying when the current one isn't much better. You've spent more effort misunderstanding this query than anyone else did simply answering it. The problem is I don't think you understand the issue because the question doesn't make sense. Here's a video that explains
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Apr 6, 2021 13:21
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Some Guy TT posted:Panzeh didn't seem to have any trouble understanding and answering my question. Maybe you just have bad reading comprehension. No you've hedged your own path deep into the weeds of irrelevance
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Apr 6, 2021 14:14
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Some Guy TT posted:So you're not a fan of free speech then? Or is your issue rather that you think corporations are better stewards as to what constitutes criminal speech than the government? I'm fine with not going down the slippery slope of government regulating speech just so your favorite fascists can continue to be human garbage on social media.
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Apr 6, 2021 14:16
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So the slippery slope of corporations regulating speech doesn't bother you at all? For the moment at least Democrats control the government. You're not only betting that Republicans will never get it back, you're also betting that the corporations are never going to change sides.
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Apr 6, 2021 14:49
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Some Guy TT posted:So the slippery slope of corporations regulating speech doesn't bother you at all? For the moment at least Democrats control the government. You're not only betting that Republicans will never get it back, you're also betting that the corporations are never going to change sides. Corporations aren't regulating speech though, that isn't what's happening. What are you talking about?
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Apr 6, 2021 14:55
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It's complicated because these are just privately owned bulletin boards. The popularity of some of them does not give them the same kind of power ownership of the only bulletin board in a small town might. As long as comcast isn't censoring and rewriting which facebook posts I see I'm ok with facebook being allowed to do so. We allow newspapers to regulate what they print and be choosy about their editorials, but not the post office. I'd say Facebook is more the former than the latter, with the ISP being your common carrier. Platystemon posted:I can’t gag a person, but I don’t have to lend them my bullhorn. This is more succinct. Facebook can't stop me from posting about Facebook privacy leaks on SA. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 14:56
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Some Guy TT posted:So the slippery slope of corporations regulating speech doesn't bother you at all? For the moment at least Democrats control the government. You're not only betting that Republicans will never get it back, you're also betting that the corporations are never going to change sides. You should really just take this to QCS imo.
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Apr 6, 2021 14:58
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Corporations own the government so I don't see a practical difference between either of them doing the actual censoring. The only real difference is that we can fire individuals in the government and therefore they occasionally have to act like they're accountable to the people. Can't fire Zuckerberg.
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Apr 6, 2021 15:05
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FlamingLiberal posted:I thought Thomas hated regulation but he’s essentially calling Twitter a common carrier Even a common carrier can kick you out if you poo poo on the floor. A lot of the above discussion is at about "hurf durf what if *hits bong* corporations are just as bad as the government man" level. If you're going to talk about supreme court opinions at least try to read them first. Thomas is making a fairly specific argument. It has nothing directly to do with monopoly power because Thomas is fine with that. quote:First, our legal system and its British predecessor have long subjected certain businesses, known as common carriers, to special regulations, including a general requirement to serve all comers. quote:Second, governments have limited a company’s right to exclude when that company is a public accommodation. You can read his argument here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/20-197 . Importantly, this isn't a decision; it's a concurrence on a decision to accept cert. It's weird he's writing a whole opinion on that and he's basically showing his hand on how he's going to rule. He's arguing that facebook is akin to UPS or the railroad or a tavern on a highway and thus can be subject to regulation, and then such regulations would invoke First Amendment protections. As far as that goes, his argument isn't wrong; comically, he's in effect making a strong net neutrality argument, which Thomas has previously ruled against, a ruling he now says he regrets: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/clarence-thomas-regrets-ruling-that-ajit-pai-used-to-kill-net-neutrality/ Basically the tea leaves here are that Thomas is finding himself in an incoherent position: he wants to regulate facebook and twitter because they were mean to Strong Daddy President, but he also doesnt' want to let anyone regulate Facebook or Twitter because FREE MARKET. So he's lashing out and waving the first amendment like a bloody dress. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 15:05
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Harold Fjord posted:It's complicated because these are just privately owned bulletin boards. The popularity of some of them does not give them the same kind of power ownership of the only bulletin board in a small town might. As long as comcast isn't censoring and rewriting which facebook posts I see I'm ok with facebook being allowed to do so. I kinda disagree -- Facebook probably does have a functional monopoly on large portions of the internet, and so does twitter. There are millions of people for whom one or the other of those IS "the internet." The best solution won't happen because the first amendment probably does block it (nationalization followed by strict regulations banning advertising, nazi content, paradox of tolerance issues, etc.), so the next best answer is strict regulations requiring private companies to maintain the general network and banning deceptive or targeted advertising but also allowing private providers to ban disruptive or dishonest content. Problem is I don't think even that gets past the current Supreme Court.
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Apr 6, 2021 15:25
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ok so government censorship is a dangerous slippery slope to somethingsomething, and must be opposed on principle, but also censorship is a pillar of civil society without which the internet would devolve into anarchy, horror, cats and dogs living together, etc. So there's no debate about whether we should have censorship, only over who should be the censor, and instead of the elected government that is at least nominally accountable to the public, the censors should be a self-appointed select few of our richest (and therefore most trustworthy) citizens? Citizens who, incidentally, have made billions of dollars turning your grandma into a white nationalist QAnon flat-earther. Hieronymous Alloy posted:I kinda disagree -- Facebook probably does have a functional monopoly on large portions of the internet, and so does twitter. There are millions of people for whom one or the other of those IS "the internet." for example quote:NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar — They posed as fans of pop stars and national heroes as they flooded Facebook with their hatred. One said Islam was a global threat to Buddhism. Another shared a false story about the rape of a Buddhist woman by a Muslim man. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 15:33
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I kinda disagree -- Facebook probably does have a functional monopoly on large portions of the internet, and so does twitter. There are millions of people for whom one or the other of those IS "the internet." I don't think popularity is a factor. I can't force NYT to publish my rant because they are the "paper of record".
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Apr 6, 2021 15:37
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Harold Fjord posted:I don't think popularity is a factor. I can't force NYT to publish my rant because they are the "paper of record". Sure you can. You buy adspace. 
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Apr 6, 2021 15:42
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Harold Fjord posted:I don't think popularity is a factor. I can't force NYT to publish my rant because they are the "paper of record". Maybe it should be a factor. I mean "hey we're just popular, nothing wrong with that" is what every monopolist says
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Apr 6, 2021 15:42
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They can refuse to run the ad if it violates their guidelines
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Apr 6, 2021 15:43
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Yeah if you want your opinion published in the Times, you have to uphold their liberal democratic values of openness and love and goodwill towards men, for example by calling for authoritarian military crackdowns, martial law, and mass atrocities against the US' own people to destroy grassroots protest movements against abuse and injustice
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Apr 6, 2021 15:46
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Harold Fjord posted:I don't think popularity is a factor. I can't force NYT to publish my rant because they are the "paper of record". Yeah, but you're therefore just absolving private entities of responsibility to the public sphere by using a very limited concept of governance that says only state actors can govern anything. Everybody accepts that the state can and does regulate speech, and the state can and does sometimes censor people (for good or bad reasons). For a state entity, we accept that that's a bad thing that has done harm to someone, even if we might in certain cases accept that the harm done to them is less than the harm that would have taken place had they not been censored. But generally speaking, we aren't okay with the state censoring people except in extreme circumstances like hate speech or incitement to violence. And even in those cases, we accept that the government censoring someone is doing harm to them, even if that harm might be justifiable. It's because we acknowledge that that is a harm that we can demand high standards from the government regulating speech. It's also key here that the government is democratically accountable, and so any censorship it does is at least theoretically something that we as a society have agreed to over time by writing constitutions, laws, and regulations, and by electing representatives and constructing a justice system that at least theoretically writes laws governing free speech and censorship in a democratic way, building up over time a democratic consensus over where we draw the line between free and unfree speech. Maintaining such a strict binary between public and private institutions, and absolving private institutions of the same acknowledgment of harm, means that if you privatized the government (to paraphrase another poster who I saw explain this a long time ago, if you turned America into Americorp but changed nothing else about its functionality) you eliminate the harm, because it's now a private actor censoring someone instead of a public actor. And that's absurd, because the only thing you're changing in that scenario is you're removing the patina of democratic accountability from regulation of free speech. If Twitter can censor anyone at any time for any reason, because they're a private platform, then we would accept that Americorp could censor anyone at any time for any reason, because they would also be a private platform. To get around this (because I can already envision you saying, hey but wait, this theoretical Americorp is doing more than just running a communications website) you have to acknowledge that governance, that is, the regulation of societies and collective institutions, isn't something done purely by governments anymore. In the modern world, where so many of the things we use to conduct our lives are barely governed by a state, and are instead governed by the whims of a private market dominated by monopolistic corporate entities, we should acknowledge that regulating governance can't be limited to only public actors. As HA says, for a lot of people Twitter and Facebook are the internet, and for a lot of people they're the public sphere. They are giant hegemonic monopolies that get to dictate the terms of communication for the most important modern means of communication. Like it or not, they play a huge role in governing how people communicate these days. The fact that they're private actors free of democratic accountability doesn't change that. If anything, it makes it worse because they profit off of harmful communications like spreading conspiracy theories. If we accept that Twitter has the right to ban anyone they want because they're a private entity, would that make it okay for them to decide, as a profit-making entity, that they make the most profit off of QAnon followers and then start banning every major content provider except QAnon people, so as to radicalize their userbase and make more money? Or at some point would we decide that that's an irresponsible use of their governance power over internet communications, and intervene?
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Apr 6, 2021 15:55
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vyelkin posted:If we accept that Twitter has the right to ban anyone they want because they're a private entity, would that make it okay for them to decide, as a profit-making entity, that they make the most profit off of QAnon followers and then start banning every major content provider except QAnon people, so as to radicalize their userbase and make more money? Or at some point would we decide that that's an irresponsible use of their governance power over internet communications, and intervene? You're describing Gab/Parlor and I don't think there's really been a problem with the government not intervening and I'm not sure what the legal justification would be that could allow the government to do so short of conspiracy to knowingly to commit crimes being organized and the site/platform owners being aware and doing nothing.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:03
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Harold Fjord posted:I don't think popularity is a factor. I can't force NYT to publish my rant because they are the "paper of record". The NYT doesn't own and operate the network on which newspapers are published. quote:Network effects give rise to the potential outcome of market tipping, defined as "the tendency of one system to pull away from its rivals in popularity once it has gained an initial edge".[17] Tipping results in a market in which only one good or service dominates and competition is stifled. This is because network effects tend to incentivise users to coordinate their adoption of a single product. Therefore, tipping can result in a natural form of market concentration in markets that display network effects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect Facebook and Twitter are network monopolies, just like the old railroad monopolies, or Bell Telephone before we broke it up and allowed the internet to happen. The proper response is to nationalize the network and turn it into a common carrier, but that won't work because the first amendment would then apply to it and we'd have nazis everywhere even worse. So the appropriate response is heavy regulation of the private networks, as common carriers. Net neutrality coupled with strong regulation in light of the paradox of tolerance.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:24
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Raenir Salazar posted:You're describing Gab/Parlor and I don't think there's really been a problem with the government not intervening and I'm not sure what the legal justification would be that could allow the government to do so short of conspiracy to knowingly to commit crimes being organized and the site/platform owners being aware and doing nothing. Furtherance of fraud, profiting off of fraud, deceitful advertising, etc. Conspiracy to defraud. There's a host of laws that would be applicable if there were political and judicial will to make them so.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:25
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Furtherance of fraud, profiting off of fraud, deceitful advertising, etc. Conspiracy to defraud. You're pointing out specific criminality that would apply regardless of what else they were doing though; while simply banning all leftists or something wouldn't be illegal if the goal/hope was for psychology to take over from there. The expectation that a result will happen is not really criminal.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:48
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Raenir Salazar posted:You're pointing out specific criminality that would apply regardless of what else they were doing though; while simply banning all leftists or something wouldn't be illegal if the goal/hope was for psychology to take over from there. The expectation that a result will happen is not really criminal. I'm not sure I follow entirely. I mean, most of the right wing right now is a criminal fraud enterprise -- it's all driven by mypillow buy gold now donate donate donate help strong daddy trump defeat the globalists bullshit. There's a reason Donald Trump keeps getting sued for fraud over and over again his whole career. In theory yeah we need to find appropriate regulations to prevent a private internet monopoly from banning all leftists or whatever while also allowing them to ban all criminals or fraudsters.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:57
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Raenir Salazar posted:You're pointing out specific criminality that would apply regardless of what else they were doing though; while simply banning all leftists or something wouldn't be illegal if the goal/hope was for psychology to take over from there. The expectation that a result will happen is not really criminal. Yes, under the current laws governing social media companies. The point is that Twitter is a monopoly that is offering itself up as a privately-regulated public sphere, and is essentially acting as a common carrier that also has the absolute right to censor speech. It's less like forcing the NYT to publish your editorial and more like the phone company hooking up your phone. With that phone, you can call anybody you like who also has a phone, the same way with Twitter you can tweet at anybody you like who also has a Twitter account, and they can block you the same way someone can block your phone calls--or, if they like what you're saying, they can retweet your tweet the same way they could call up other people and repeat what you told them on the phone. The difference is that the phone company is legally required to serve everyone, because we recognize that it would be an intolerable imposition if a private phone company had the power to decide who could and couldn't access the telephone network, or if they could decide to remove your phone if they don't like the things you say over it. Crucially, there is still regulation of telephone calls, and you can be held accountable for things you do with your telephone, like plan a crime or commit harassment, but it's the state with its theoretical democratic oversight that gets to do that, rather than us relying on the telephone company to determine what is an appropriate use of the telephone network and arbitrarily ban people from having a phone if they violate corporate standards of free speech or fall into a category of people the corporation dislikes.
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Apr 6, 2021 17:01
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The fact is that the US' extremely high standards for criminal speech aren't sustainable when it comes to people in positions of trust and authority. The proscribed remedy for bad speech is good speech, and if we've learned anything over the last four years, it should be that this isn't effective. Good speech is much more effort intensive both on the part of the speaker and the listener, and absent government intervention or laws that encourage risk-adverse private entities to self-regulate, bad speech easily overruns good. This effect is badly exacerbated by the same low standards for permissible speech being applied platformed people in positions of trust, like journalists, politicians, or ostensible experts, as they are to any random person without a platform
fool of sound fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 17:07
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