[core-questions]

I see you've rediscovered the publisher vs. platform dichotomy! Those of us who believe in free speech understand that people will say things we don't like, and further understand that the sacrifice of ignoring content we dislike is worth it for the greater principle.

I know this is difficult when people are saying things you believe to be untrue, but thus far nobody has come up with an alternative that doesn't result in censorship or end up having an unrealistically high moderation cost.

[Gene_Parmesan]

I've never understood people's conflation of "I do not like your speech" with "censorship." A bookstore refusing to carry books by certain authors is in no way censorship, for instance (the books still exist, just not in that bookstore), yet when we bring things into the digital realm for some reason people seem to lose the distinction.

Let me put it this way. Nothing is stopping hateful people from creating their own video hosting platform and hosting their drivel. Hence, free speech. But nothing in the entirety of free speech, whether the legal notions or the philosophical notions, requires platforms to give that speech a place to live. The whole "marketplace of ideas" concept fundamentally works by having the community at large reject hateful speech.

Free speech does not mean each instance of speech needs to be weighed and evaluated equally by the community.

From a far more practical perspective, allowing this sort of thing onto your platform spells death for any content-platform startup. Seeing this sort of thing is going to immediately (a) drive sensible content consumers -- your actual users -- away from the platform, and (b) draw other hate speech creators to you like flies to shit. If that's what the platform wants to do, then nothing in the world is stopping them, but they will never gain mainstream success.

[colesantiago]

Gab looks like it's doing well, being the largest mastodon node with lots of non technical users.

That's about as 'mainstream' as you can get in the fediverse.

[andrewzah]

It's absolutely hilarious they switched to mastodon, given the nature of the overall mastodon culture.

[Covzire]

The problem with your analogy is how you define bookstore. If there were dozens of Youtube "bookstores" in every major city this wouldn't be an issue but functionally speaking every city or town or hamlet has the same 2 or 3 bookstores to choose from and they're all awful at supporting freedom of speech.

[BurningFrog]

Every era has its things it considers beyond decency to discuss. Most people agree with them, and even if they don't, they know to keep quiet.

Those who agree with the norms of 2020 also think many of the norms of past times were awful. Homosexuality was considered beyond decency not long ago. Race mixing, premarital sex as well. The list can be made very long.

So what are the chances that mainstream decency right now has found the perfect set of correct values, that never needs to be challenged?

[core-questions]

> Nothing is stopping hateful people from creating their own video hosting platform and hosting their drivel.

Cloudflare and domain registrar bans, payment processor bans and deplatforming, etc. would beg to differ.

[wlll]

You can still do it, you don't need to use cloudflare, you don't need to use that registrar.

You don't even need to use the Internet, paint it on a sign and walk around the street with it on a pole.

You're not having your free speech impeded by any of this, because refusing to carry someone elses speech isn't censorship, it's just that when you say things that are repulsive to people they won't want to help promote it.

If you want free speech go to your door, walk outside, start taking. You got your free speech. Everything else is a bonus.

[tristor]

> If you want free speech go to your door, walk outside, start taking. You got your free speech. Everything else is a bonus.

This argument is reductio ad absurdum, except executed against an argument you support. De-platforming online is in opposition to free speech, and the fact you can walk out your front door with a sign does not mitigate the loss of equal power behind your speech that others enjoy by using Internet services. You standing on the street with a sign is in no way equivalent in character or reach to writing what your sign says on Twitter. So here we are, the Internet is a thing, it exists, and so do digital platforms. Free and open access to web platforms is a core philosophical requirement to ensure freedom of speech, and de-platforming people damages that.

It's okay to be opposed to freedom of speech, it's okay to be opposed to the open web, but don't act as if you are not while advocating de-platforming as being an acceptable behavior.

[ilikehurdles]

> the fact you can walk out your front door with a sign does not mitigate the loss of equal power behind your speech that others enjoy by using Internet services. You standing on the street with a sign is in no way equivalent in character or reach to writing what your sign says on Twitter

Maybe the answer is obvious to you, but it is not to me: why should these things be equivalent? Why should you be entitled to twitter's channel for your views that twitter does not want to host?

If Twitter is making the decision on its own -- that is, it's not coerced by the state, and if you are still capable of getting your information online by some other means, then Twitter is making its own free speech decision to curate its own website like you would your own site or your own store. Free and accessible doesn't and shouldn't mean that you get to hold the platform for ransom with your content. That is, Twitter shouldn't be chained to indefinitely dedicating hosting specifically for any one kind of unpopular content.

Your definition for the "open web" sounds to me like, honestly, very severe state control of private enterprise. You, a member of the open web, not being permitted to choose what content belongs on your own website just defeats the purpose of any kind of experiment of free expression online. A government telling you that you must always carry this or that particular view is totally antithetical to the First Amendment that establishes the Freedom of Speech.

Getting kicked out of the bowling club for sharing highly offensive statements has not prevented you from sharing those statements. Losing your job over them has not prevented you from sharing those statements. Being banned from twitter has not prevented you from sharing those statements. I really do mean to be absolute about this -- your freedom of speech would not have been impeded _at all_, no matter how many hosts or bans or jobs you go through.

If you're reduced to screaming your opinions from a street corner in order to have anyone hear them, and you're still being ignored by people, well you've still got 100% of your freedom of speech -- it's just that the speech isn't resonating and the government isn't some despotic, Orwellian regime that would force audiences to listen to those views.

[heartbeats]

Losing my job over them definitely dissuades me from sharing them in the future. This impedes my freedom of speech.

If you're saying that you're not physically prevented from saying whatever you'd like, but with that being the limit, it seems like just about any infringement becomes acceptable.

> Being put to death by the government has not prevented you from sharing those statements.

[tristor]

> Maybe the answer is obvious to you, but it is not to me: why should these things be equivalent? Why should you be entitled to twitter's channel for your views that twitter does not want to host?

I don't think there is an obvious answer here. We're in the realm of philosophy. My response to the grandparent was less about my own advocacy for freedom of speech (although that is clearly my position/bias) and more about their statements being disingenuous.

What my own personal opinion is as to the answer to your questions is pretty simple though. Twitter, like other social media "publishers", enjoys special legal status under the law via [0]Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. As such, they themselves do not have freedom of speech, they must not interfere with the content of the creators who use their platform. Interfering with that content (in theory) loses them that special legal status and opens them up to liability for the content they do choose to retain/host. So our legislation is pretty clear on the matter, Twitter does not have the right to censor you simply because they're a private business while also maintaining liability immunity as a common carrier.

> If Twitter is making the decision on its own -- that is, it's not coerced by the state, and if you are still capable of getting your information online by some other means, then Twitter is making its own free speech decision to curate its own website like you would your own site or your own store.

See above. "Publishing platforms" don't have free speech rights as long as they choose to operate as common carriers to maintain liability immunity, which Twitter does. That's setting aside the separate argumentation point which is that corporations are not people and corporate personhood is a sham, and therefore corporations themselves do not fundamentally have freedom of speech.

> Your definition for the "open web" sounds to me like, honestly, very severe state control of private enterprise.

Please elaborate. I can't imagine how you would come to that conclusion from what I wrote.

> A government telling you

"You." Civil Rights are individual rights, not collective rights. Compelled speech is obviously not philosophically aligned with freedom of speech. But it seems you are using a collective "you", strongly implying the impositions that come from corporate personhood as a legal concept to be more tangible than they are even in current law.

> Getting kicked out of the bowling club for sharing highly offensive statements has not prevented you from sharing those statements. Losing your job over them has not prevented you from sharing those statements. Being banned from twitter has not prevented you from sharing those statements. I really do mean to be absolute about this -- your freedom of speech not impeded _at all_. If you're reduced to screaming your opinions from a street corner in order to have anyone hear them, and you're still being ignored by people, well you've still got 100% of your freedom of speech -- it's just that the speech isn't resonating and the government isn't some despotic regime out of 1984 that would force audiences to listen to those views.

I'm less absolutist here. Your argument has merit, and yet it misses the point. The bowling club kicking you out is not the same thing as being banned from Twitter. The bowling club is not a publishing platform which exclusively exists for broadcasting speech to people who choose to follow you. Twitter is. People who are highly offended by your statements on Twitter have many modes of recourse in order to not be accosted by your statements such as not following you, blocking you, or otherwise using available technical means to ignore you. The bowling club, however has no such filtering mechanism, nor is it's sole purpose for existence to provide a platform for individuals to broadly publish their speech, it exists for people to bowl and your highly offensive speech reasonably detracts from its purpose for existence.

Platforms are different from other forms of private entities, and they are treated differently under the law as such. Trying to conflate the two is not reasonable, nor is it reasonable to take an absolutist position based in a conflation. Also, it's just plain wrong to say that "your freedom of speech not impededed _at all_." if you've been banned from a broadcasting platform. That's an obvious impediment, which shouldn't need further explanation.

[0]: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

[core-questions]

Well, here's the thing: their actual opposition is not truly to _free speech_ per se, it's to particular ideas that they want to quash. Whether or not there's a legitimate reason to dissuade people from thinking about those ideas is a different question.

[cortesoft]

It's not always about dissuading people from thinking about those ideas, it is about me not wanting to hear them.

[Dylan16807]

Payment processor bans are a legitimate free speech problem, in my opinion. Well, in the US.

[heartbeats]

You do need to use CloudFlare, or your site will get DDoSed into oblivion.

[wlll]

So set up your own "racism allowed" alternative to Cloudflare. At some point, yes, you're going to be basically reduced to shouting at people in the street because mst people think what you're saying is repugnant, but that's (mostly) up to them. It's not their duty to host your stuff.

[heartbeats]

What if my "racism allowed" alternative to CloudFlare gets depeered by, say, AT&T?

[ilikehurdles]

There is nothing unreasonable about choosing alternatives for any of those.

[heartbeats]

CloudFlare doesn't have many alternatives. There's VanwaNet, ddos-guard.net, and I think that's it.

Should you start your own DDoS protection service too?

[core-questions]

Sorry, are you telling people to simply "start their own payment processor"? Do you realize what kind of an ask that is?

[ilikehurdles]

You're not entitled to Square or Visa or Paypal or Mastercard payments. If you're reduced to cryptocurrency and cash, it is what is is. Profiting from your speech in one specific way over another is not enshrined in some code of human rights.

[Dylan16807]

I think "ability to make a payment online" should be in the same category as utilities. Someone having to go cash-only is just as bad as if the power and telephone companies refuse to sell you service. It kind of is a "basic needs" problem.

[heartbeats]

What if you get a letter from the bank telling you to withdraw all your money and cough up the value of the mortgage in a week or be evicted?

[chii]

> A bookstore refusing to carry books by certain authors is in no way censorship

so i have to make my own bookstore just to sell that book? I'd say that's pretty close to censorship. Even tho the constitution doesn't stop private censorship (only gov't censorship), it isn't a good outcome imo.

[ilikehurdles]

If you own a bookstore, you should be able to curate its content at your leisure, which includes but is not limited to removing content that you find objectionable. I don't see how this is a bad outcome, because the alternative -- being forced to carry books on your shelves that you have no power to remove sounds like a much worse outcome.

I, a terrible author, am not entitled to your bookstore's audience.

[Psychlist]

Yes, if that's what it takes.

Flip it around: Imagine you have a tattoo. You're publishing the one tattoo therefore "free speech" means you have to publish all the tattoos? Should you be obliged to allow a big "Kick whites out of America" tattoo next to whatever tattoo you have chosen to wear?

[RonanTheGrey]

Promoting a specific kind of speech is not equivalent to not acting on speech.

Leaving a piece of speech alone and simply doing nothing to it doesn't count as promoting it. That's exactly what section 230 in the USC means.

[kelnos]

If you can't find even one existing bookstore to carry your book, perhaps your views or ideas are so toxic that you should rethink them.

Either way: still not censorship.

[BurningFrog]

Or perhaps the society I live in is so toxic that my sane ideas can't reach out.

To spell it out, your reasoning assumes that the prevailing consensus in any society is good.

[kortilla]

Do you know what censorship means? It’s quite literally the textbook definition (explicitly blocking books because of the ideas in them) so I’m curious what you think censorship is.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship

[criddell]

Would you also say if I were to ask you to leave my house because I got tired of listening to you, I'd be infringing on your free speech rights? Is that different than me removing your book from my store?

[strken]

There's a difference between the legal American right to free speech, and the global ethical principle of free speech. One can only have their right breached by the government, but one can be censored by anyone who has the power to read their incoming/outgoing communications and modify or remove parts.

There's a difference between your home, which is a privately owned private space, and a mall, which is a privately owned public space. Youtube is more like a mall or a newspaper conglomerate than your house. For it to have a bias when censoring content can be objectionable in the same way that a big media conglomerate with a bias can be objectionable.

[kortilla]

Censorship is censorship. I’m not sure why you’re prattling on about free speech rights.

[chii]

The difference is that you would be forced to hear the speech in the house, but you are not forced to read/buy the book from the bookstore.

Removing it from the bookstore prevents those who wants the book from getting it. Having it in the bookstore doesn't force those who don't want it from reading it!

[FridgeSeal]

Is this not "the market" simply deciding not to support something? Is that not one of tenets of free-market capitalism?

In the market of video providers, none of them are interested in hosting a particular viewpoint, then the creators of the video either have to put up with that or go make their own.

[kortilla]

> bookstore refusing to carry books by certain authors is in no way censorship

It’s fucking textbook definition of censorship.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship

Are you conflating “government censorship” with censorship?

[p1necone]

What do you think the alternative is? You want the government to mandate that every book store carries all books? Book stores have a right to curate their selection as they see fit in exactly the same way that authors have a right to write what they see fit.

[kortilla]

It’s censorship, I didn’t make any judgments about when censorship should be allowed/encouraged. It’s just the literal definition of censorship and you’re being defensive because you think it’s a bad thing.

[cmrdporcupine]

The most mind boggling thing about your reply is the sentence "I know this is difficult when people are saying things you believe to be untrue"

That's not what is happening here. That's not what the issue is. Hate speech doesn't boil down to "things I don't believe to be true."

Typing "Jews" into these platforms and getting hate speech back isn't an issue of "oh dear, here are some untruths." It's hate and designed to create more hate. Which is why many platforms and many countries have a special category for it.

You can disagree with that philosophically, fine. But you might try not being so flippant about it. Especially when the example here, anti-Semitism, is associated with the death of millions of people's loved ones.

[bobthechef]

Define "hate speech". You never do, you merely assert that there is such a thing, that we know what it is, that it is legitimate, that it can be and probably that it should be legislated and enforced. I'm asking a serious question because we're witnessing the suppression of discussion that some groups don't like. It's an empty phrase. And in the absence of meaning, guess who decides what to classify as hate speech and thus which groups have a voice and which don't? Thrasymachus in Plato's "Republic" has an answer: the powerful.

Since we're on the subject, anti-Semitism is one of those accusations that is used liberally to attack anyone that organizations like the ADL don't like. For example, if you compare the treatment of Palestinians by the Israelis to apartheid, if you criticize Judaism in a way that resembles what Catholics are subjected to on a regular basis, or some tendency in Jewish culture, then suddenly you're an anti-Semite. Anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jewish ethnicity, a hatred of a person who is Jewish because of his ethnicity. It is not a critical stance toward questions of culture, religion, or politics. But the legitimate definition of the term has been expanded by political hucksters into what Norman Finkelstein (whose parents are survivors) calls the Holocaust industry, where a grave crime is exploited to silence criticism and bully people into silence on matters that have nothing to do with anti-Semitism. So we have a textbook example of how "hate speech" is deployed to silence political opposition and stifle debate. There are, of course, other examples.

Mind you, I do not include things like libel and calls for violence in hate speech. Those kinds of things are already legislated and penalized as they should be. Too many things, like pornography, have been falsely defended by appealing to "free speech". What I'm talking about is the use of this insidious term by powerful groups to silence those they don't like, and then pretending like that's not what's happening. It is that simple.

[duskwuff]

If your platform has become a host for hateful extremist content, you have a problem you need to fix. Shrugging your shoulders and calling it free speech is a lazy non-answer -- it's only going to get worse if it's left unchecked.

[hengheng]

I've never heard this type of speech at a bar when I asked why somebody wasn't shown the door. I guess they didn't have a greater principle.

One core value that a platform could have is common decency, which is not the same as censorship, but it is given up even easier than what your argument calls free speech.

[minkzilla]

That’s because one bouncer can see everyone in the bar. I have heard this type of speech in regards to nations, aka a much larger scale.

[seph-reed]

Terrible metaphor.

How do you suggest making a platform which allows good content while disallowing bad? Also, how do you expect to be able to define these things? Remember: every person you pay to moderate has to be able to discern good from bad in as little time as possible. Even less time than that.

[smogcutter]

Ironic argument to post on such a heavily moderated forum. Also kind of beside the point with regards to a site that seems to be intentionally designed as a safe harbor for venomous trash. Not quite the same thing as throwing up your hands over moderation being hard.

[seph-reed]

The trick with this forum (and IMO the only trick that really works) is narrow-bandwidth community.

I have no idea how to apply this to a content hosting paradigm though. Not without spending a couple million dollars on bots who inevitably make mistakes.

[young_unixer]

If a bar started kicking people out for what they say, then it would be a shitty bar, and not one I would like to visit.

[Psychlist]

Next time you're in a bar try explaining to the bouncer that they should be killed, violently, right now.

I suspect you'll find out that whatever free speech rights your local jurisdiction grants you don't allow you to stay in the bar.

[giancarlostoro]

A bar is private property that just so happens have the doors open for potential customers, whilst some things on the internet are public access, nobody is forcing you to go to any specific website if you don't want to, but at a privately owned bar you might not like someone chanting about politics or whatever the case may be, and this is established laws for platforms vs publishers in the USA. This is why a lot of people have issues with Google editorializing search results (check out Project Veritas on the matter) because they reach out into editor territory and out of just being a platform.

Since somebody downvoted without providing references to their refutes here's an actual case about freedom of speech online which is the main one by the looks of it in regards to suppressing speech online:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberti...

The burden of defamation is on the person not the website if anything, however, if someone posts anonymously who do you sue? The best a platform can do is delete their account. I've successfully had defamatory / false content about myself deleted from a platform in the past.

[mwfunk]

No, none of this applies to privately owned web sites. If anything, forcing them to act like utilities impinges on the speech of the platform owners. The Ben Shapiros of the world have desperately been trying to spin a different narrative though and they will jump through endless hoops and contradictions to do it. This is all just moderated-vs-unmoderated newsgroups/mailing lists/web sites all over again. There’s room for both. Nobody has a constitutional right to force YouTube or anyone else to host their content, or to have those companies shield them from criticism.

If someone wants to argue that YouTube should be declared a public utility that is required to host everyone’s content no matter what, that’s totally understandable and they should make that argument instead. Otherwise they’re just asking for the government to mandate that YouTube, etc. are safe spaces where everything is permitted and no one is allowed to judge other people for what they say, including the company paying for the servers. Which is so totally counter to what those very same people seem to think about everything else that I’m surprised the hypocrisy and inconsistency doesn’t create a singularity or something. But here we are, in 2020, and AM-talk-radio types are demanding the government mandate safe spaces for them on privately owned platforms where they are shielded from consequences.

[wlll]

You're not impinging on the free speech of people when you push them off your platform, they are free to carry on spouting their repugnant shit if they want, it's just that they have to build their own site, or even just try talking to people on the street about it.

What you are doing when you allow racism or xenophobia on your site is helping them promote it. There's a difference, and the fact that you have chosen to stand with those people doesn't put you in the free speech group, it puts you in the "I am a racist" group.

[userbinator]

That's the classic "us vs them"/"if you're not with us you're against us" argument, and it's really the cause of the recent increase in divisiveness that is slowly destroying society.

[wlll]

Not really. Choosing to help promote hate speech isn't a neutral position, it's an active one.

[revscat]

Free speech absolutism is destructive. Facebook is an example of this. Climate change denialism is another. Holocaust denial is another.