[donkeyd]

Thanks for this. We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN. That commenter would probably be alright with that because those types of comments are not ok. For some reason, however, these people are never ok with censorship by anyone if it impacts their beliefs.

I find this highly hypocritical.

The Reddit hunt for the Boston bomber is a perfect example of how this type of unbridled free for all posting can lead to very bad stuff happening.

[kevinpet]

So you think Voltaire was a liar? That no one could ever support free speech as a principle, even while disagreeing with the content of that speech?

[hiq]

The quote you're thinking about is apocryphal.

[kevinpet]

Thanks. I suppose it should have been too good to be true.

[gnicholas]

Posting false statements about someone molesting children would be libel, so it would not be protected under the First Amendment.

Censorship of ideas, even demonstrably false ones, is completely different (and much more dangerous because you have to appoint a censor who decides what is false).

[Retric]

How Censorship of lie A fundamentally different from Censorship of lie B?

Picking arbitrary facts as somehow political issues is very dangerous waters. I honestly have less problems with someone saying a Holocaust was a good idea than I do when people say they aren’t happening.

[gnicholas]

People seem to be upset by my comment, but I am just stating what the actual law is regarding free speech about ideas and about libel. These rules are very well established in terms of what they encompass and don't.(IAAL, FWIW.)

I would recommend checking out Professor Volokh's series of YouTube videos on the First Amendment. [1]

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWzNDKtp9w

[Retric]

That’s irrelevant to this discussion. Saying free speech excludes a limitation on free speech as defined by a specific country means anything that country excludes is therefore perfectly acceptable.

It’s the same Doublethink that defines income taxes as exclusive of payroll taxes by naming a subset of income taxes as income tax.

[gnicholas]

Wrong on both counts, actually (I am a former tax lawyer, so your second example is right in my area of expertise). The exception for libel is in the First Amendment in the US and in many other countries. This is not just about the US.

And as for payroll taxes, they are still taxes, but they are not applied on all income. For example, they do not apply to capital gains, or to income above ~$140k. Also, social security is (at least in theory) a forced savings plan, and people who pay into it more over their career then receive more out when they retire.

Income taxes, on the other hand, are not capped at a certain level, and you never get money back later based on how much income tax you paid in the past.

There are times where it is silly to refer to them in the aggregate, but it is not "Doublethink" to talk about them separately. They are different in important respects.

[Retric]

> they are not applied to all income.

To show why this is a logical fallacy.

The US definition of income taxes also excludes gifts received even though that’s also “income.” As such by your definition they aren’t income taxes. Of course you could just define gifts as not income and things are ok, except if you continue to define income taxes as taxes based on a specific system then the definition is only applicable to that system at a specific point in time.

For example, is money received by tax free investments income? That’s now undecided until you determine the specific source, time period, and country involved. And as soon as you have statements that are both true and false you have a problem.

Even if you want to stick with US definitions, the states and federal government have different rules. As such the exact same transaction can be both income and not income. Which is about the clearest example of Doublethink I can think of.

PS: Instead, if you say for purposes of X it’s defined as Y then you don’t have this issue. But, then it’s very clear that specific things are exceptions. (To be clear I kept adding to this comment.)

[treeman79]

So your good with active calls for mass murder?

Because denying something happened doesn’t physically hurt anyone. Mostly just dumb.

Asking for it to happen again means one is an evil monster that needs to be stopped.

[nextaccountic]

You have just established that

> There is no "buts" regarding freedom.

Is false. People have freedom of speech, but -- "but" -- not freedom to libel people, for example.

[glenstein]

Exactly. There's a familiar pattern to this debate. Someone categorically declares there can't be any exceptions to free speech.

Inevitably, someone brings up a counterexample.

Then the original person replies that it doesn't count, because it's not speech and there's a different word for what it is. Libel, incitement, terrorism, whatever word is needed to cover the example.

But in doing that, you've carved out a category for things that are excluded from protections afforded to speech.

Then the next thread comes around, someone declares there's no exceptions to speech, and the cycle continues.

[glenstein]

>under the First Amendment.

If you're going to confine this conversation to the first amendment, then that's not relevant to youtube. For many the concept of speech in the sense pertinent here is broader than just U.S. law.

I've been on many HN threads where free speech absolutists make explicitly this point because they want to apply the concept of unfettered speech to private platforms, and they square the circle by insisting it's bigger than just the first amendment.

[gnicholas]

It's not all about the First Amendment, but if someone is going to equate two things that are treated differently under both American and other (UK, for example) laws, it's a relevant point. Also, Google is a company headquartered in the US, so US law is somewhat more relevant than other law.

[glenstein]

>but if someone is going to equate two things that are treated differently under both American and other (UK, for example) laws, it's a relevant point.

It's relevant insofar as legal distinctions between US and UK are relevant, which is to say, not relevant at all so far as I can tell. I don't think anyone's argument here hinged on such a distinction. If it did, and to that extent, it's relevant. But the heartland of this whole conversation has to do with a conception of speech as a principle that's broader than just U.S. law.

So we should be clear about the extent to which this is, or isn't, speaking to the conversation that everyone else is having.

[jeanjogr]

You still have to appoint a censor who decides what is false for libel, don't you?

[gnicholas]

Good point. We allow judges and juries to do this. It is much more tractable problem in the case of statements about individuals. Also, it avoids questions of legal standing (who has suffered injury and is allowed to sue).

[dtech]

What is the difference between libel and a demonstrably false idea?

[gnicholas]

Libel is a statement that damages the reputation of a person. Libelous statements are not protected under the First Amendment.

Ideas about election fraud do not fall into this exception to the First Amendment unless they refer to individuals and make defamatory statements about them.

For the record, I'm not saying there couldn't be a reason to ban these statements, just that a libelous statement is not a good comparison because it is one of the established exceptions to the First Amendment.

[tw04]

>exceptions to the First Amendment.

In other words, a but. Which is the whole point - the original statement was you can't have freedom of speech with "buts". We already have "buts", and most people would agree we have freedom of speech.

A functioning society can't have the unbridled "freedom of speech" op is insinuating we should have. You aren't free to lie in a court of law, that's infringing on your freedom of speech. You can't falsely accuse someone of a crime - also an infringement on freedom of speech. Add countless other exceptions to the rule. And all of that is ignoring the fact that "freedom of speech" doesn't mean: other people are forced to listen to you or repeat what you said.

[lopmotr]

I used to live in China in the pre-Trump days when most westerners believed in free speech. Sometimes I would hear about "draconian" Chinese censorship. It seemed obviously bad by western standards. For example, they would prohibit industrial action in case it threatens some vital industry or prohibit protests in case it threatens the power of the government which could lead to unrest and violence. Or they prosecuted someone for spreading a rumor after Fukushima happened that iodized salt protects against cancer which led to supermarkets getting sold out of it. Or they would suppress anti-government talk like what Falun Gong and the Uyghurs were doing. In the case of the Uyghur, they did actually commit some terrorists acts because of the anti-government things they were telling each other. All that seemed like bad totalitarian censorship. But now American leftist believe similar censorship is OK for essentially the same reasons. "social harmony" was never seen as a valid reason for censorship by westerners before, but since Trump, they changed their mind.

You example of accusations of child abuse as a way to insult somebody is actually fine as long as the society can recognize unfounded accusations from actual reality. This is still acceptable for many other insults, like "you're stupid", but somehow, people seem to have elevated sexual abuse accusations to the status of truth. I'd say the antidote to that is to allow more open unfounded accusations so we're all immunized against their effects. We do have the justice system to address real allegations.

[JoshTriplett]

There's a huge difference between government censorship/suppression, and a private entity deciding what they will and won't host.

[rndgermandude]

I fail to see how massive global wealthy companies with immense influence and who by now control a sizable chunk of the places where public life and moreso public discourse takes place are so much different from governments in this context. Other than that we actually elect governments, meaning the mega corps are even less accountable to the general public. The Googles and Facebooks have more power (money, influence, etc) than a lot of actual nation states and their governments already, and they are constantly increasing their influence by means of lobbying (including keeping competitors at arm's length with regulatory capture), directing public discourse and quite often just "doing things" and waiting if anything bad will happen to them - which usually won't.

[toofy]

While the amount of wealth companies and a few individuals have is absolutely concerning and something we’d be crazy to ignore, it boggles my mind that you don’t see any differences between governments and companies when it comes to speech....

For one thing, governments can kidnap you, your family and anyone you’ve spoken and lock you in a cage. That’s one of many huge differences between the two.

We live in a time when the ability to find a platform for your ideas is significantly bigger than it’s ever been in history, even without the couple of tech giants.

And just to reiterate, we should be terrified of the power of some of these tech giants, but I’m skeptical of anyone who fails to see a difference between a company saying, “not on my servers” in a world where governments literally kill people who say things they don’t like.

[rndgermandude]

I do see a difference, sure. Just that the difference is getting slimmer and slimmer constantly, and already is too small for me to consider to be comfortable.

>For one thing, governments can kidnap you, your family and anyone you’ve spoken and lock you in a cage. That’s one of many huge differences between the two.

Companies used to do that already. Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. That's why, in my humble opinion, the time is now to reign in the power of mega corps.

It also misses the point a bit by focusing on the most egregious things like kidnapping, imprisonment, killings. You don't have to kidnap, kill or "vanish" your opponents, there are many ways to repress them, scare them into obedience and so on.

[uRStillfree]

You fail to see it.

But the laws are very clear on it.

Perhaps you’re not looking?

I know it’s hip in the tech scene to wave off politics, but the rest of physical reality still exists.

[stickfigure]

This is patent nonsense.

You can quit Google. You can quit Facebook. I know lots of people who have.

Try quitting your government. I don't even need to fill in the rest of this story because you know exactly how well it will go.

[rndgermandude]

You cannot "quit" google when google is actively framing policy and the law for everybody.

You may say that so far google wasn't too bad, and I would agree. Regardless, I still find it concerning that they are able to concentrate that much unchecked power. "Don't be evil" was yesterday, "Don't be evil unless it hurts our margins too badly" is today, I think there is a possibility - but not a certainty of course - that tomorrow it might gonna be "Evil is quite alright if it helps our margins". And that's just google. Other companies with massive influence, like the Murdoch or Koch empires, haven't been as nice as google.

[JoshTriplett]

> You cannot "quit" google

Yes, you absolutely can. Switch from YouTube to a different site, or host video yourself.

If you're complaining about lobbying, that's an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion. If you're complaining about monopolies or concentration of power, that's also an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion.

Right now we're talking about whether the people running a site, who own the servers on which the data lives, can choose what they host, or whether they're forced to host things against their will. Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?

[klyrs]

Try quitting Amazon. I haven't ordered anything from them for over a decade. Easy peasy. Oh but my employer uses AWS. Damn. And so do untold websites that I use. Damn. And just this week, I bought something from good ol' BestBuy -- nothing wrong with that, right? Except they now have "marketplace" listings and my purchase was delivered by Amazon. Shit.

[Const-me]

We have large body of dystopian fiction in all media (books, movies, TV, videogames, comics, etc.) about what might happen if the private entities accumulate more money and power than democratically elect governments.

I’m not saying we’re there just yet, but this Google’s stance is a step in that direction.

[VBprogrammer]

You don't even have reach as far as dystopian fiction. Look at the history of the Hudson Bay Company and the India Trading Company, private companies which were in effect defacto governments.

[DiogenesKynikos]

When that private entity achieves a near-monopoly on search, then it becomes the arbiter of what does and does not get heard.

That's concerning enough in itself for free speech, but add in pressure from government to "self-regulate," and you arrive at effective government censorship/suppression. When Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey are brought before Congress to testify about what they're doing to stop the spread of "fake news," the implicit threat is that if they don't pro-actively do what Congress wants, then Congress will force them to do so (or punish them in other ways).

[d0100]

When will this meme die?

[lopmotr]

Yes but the difference shrinks when all the private entities that dominate the communication between people impose the same censorship and competition is effectively prevented by network effects. It's more of an anti-trust problem. Nobody would be complaining if it was just some small internet forum doing it.

[neogodless]

YouTube (of Google), Facebook and Twitter are three different sources of (peer-propagated) information, and even combined do not constitute a centralized source of information.

It does seem like they are used for "news" way more than (in my personal opinion) is advisable, but they are still each independent organizations, and they do not hold (quite) all of the keys to information, and still want to preserve a reputation of impartiality, as difficult and impractical of a goal as that is.

It's certainly a problem when other sources of information loudly pronounce misinformation as fact. If you only compare YouTube and a single other competing news source, you might feel it's rather odd that YouTube is choosing to stop information of a certain nature. If you look widely enough, you are more likely to find that the information is false, and it was your original comparison source that was, in fact, problematic.

The point of all this is that there needs to be more sources of valid, factual information than sources of the same problematic false information, or we are all going to lose the ability to determine any reasonable facsimile of truth. The fact that is it peer-propagated certainly entangles a complexity that is reflected in the very divided opinion on this issue.

But I think in the end it will boil down to something simple. Like other things we've previously agreed should not be free to be amplified on peer networks, likewise demonstrably false information sourced from the government of the people should also not be free to find amplification on those peer networks.

[chillwaves]

Can google imprison me? Can they seize my assets? Can Google execute me?

[rndgermandude]

Can Google imprison you? Not in the US, unless their lawyers find a nice way to make a prosecutor go e.g. for some fancy computer espionage charges (see Aaron Schwartz for example), but companies in the past had regimes in their bag and made people go to prison or vanish entirely, or perform forced labor for them.

Can they seize your assets? Not directly, but try getting sued by the legal department of a mega corp and see what you have left when it's all over. The end result is the same.

As somebody else pointed out, we already had companies that effectively acted as unelected governments in the past, like the East India Company. They used to execute people.

[defen]

Google can do bad things to you. Significantly less-bad things to you than imprisonment/asset seizure/execution, BUT they are not required to follow due process and are not answerable to anyone but themselves if they do something bad to you. They can also provide substantial amounts of incriminating evidence to the government (the ones who can execute you) and technically a warrant is not required. If the cops go to Google and ask for info about you that is stored on Google's computers, and Google gives it to them without a warrant, your rights as a US citizen have not been violated.

[DiogenesKynikos]

No, but they can effectively stop you from speaking online, which is what we're discussing.

[treeman79]

They have your search history. Or they could make it if inclined. So for a lot of people, yes. They could easily put people in Jail.

More likely scenario would be exposing anyone That wants to be anonymous. Actually I think that happens in other countries all the time.

[chillwaves]

Google cannot put me in jail.

What a low quality response. I'm done with you, please do not reply to me further, here or elsewhere.

[throwmehaweh]

No, but they can use their enormous power and influence to get politicians into office that could write new rules allowing such.

[crpatino]

That's what we do nowadays, is it? Somebody walks and say something against our preferred political ideology and we throw vague threats of ruining that person's life with false accusations?

[donkeyd]

Like that guy who ran for president with vague threats of not accepting the outcome if he would lose. And then when they lost not accepting the outcome and making up a bunch of stories about wide-spread fraud?

If you were implying that I'd actually accuse anyone of doing stuff to kids, you throughly misunderstood the content of my comment.

[pydry]

>We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN.

And nobody would believe it if it wasnt deleted. They'd just be irritated by it.

Nonetheless that's not political speech (unlike the YouTube vids) . It's basic libel.

Goebbels was in favor of free political speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of freedom of political speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise - whether that's Trump or whomever. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.

[chillwaves]

It's not "free speech" for the president to lie and accuse state governments of defrauding the country, without evidence.

This is beyond political speech. It is inherently dangerous.

[pydry]

He is absolutely exercising his first amendment rights to freedom of political speech by lying about what happened without evidence.

The first amendment isn't there to protect you from his lies though. It's to protect you so that you can speak the truth when he or somebody like him wants to stop you.

Be careful what you wish for. The same mechanisms that are used to shut him up will be used to silence you one day.

[sanp]

And Twitter is free to block him as it pleases

[pydry]

Provided they forgo legal common carrier protections they are, yes.

Once they do start censoring on that basis they become criminally liable for all content posted on the platform though.

If they're willing to take the same legal responsibility over all tweets that a publisher would over every page of its magazine id say let them. I'd like them to take legal responsiblity for the toxicity their platform generates.

[chillwaves]

He's speaking as the POTUS not a private citizen. He has duties to the office and to the constitution that supersede your claim to 1A.

What Trump is doing right now is treason against the country. You can call it free speech if you like.

And I have zero worries that any of Trump's legal jeopardy will ever effect myself because I am not a career criminal as he is.

[throwmehaweh]

> without evidence.

we're talking about an election that was won with razor thin margins in a few specific swing states, with numerous statistical anomalies, hundreds of sworn affidavits, and a pending lawsuit to the scotus with 17 states attached.

prior to 2020 election, the democrats, CNN, NBC, and many others are _on record_ saying that Dominion Voting has the potential for massive fraud & shouldn't be used.

the problem is that they're effectively saying no one can question these anomalies, or the claims, and that "youtube" as the expert has adjudicated the election.

the truth is that it could take years of investigation to resolve whether or not some of the alleged evidence was credible or not, and neither youtube nor the claimants can say it's truth until then.

why does big tech get to decide who's right? that's the problem here & why it reeks Orwell.