> But here it's not what they choose to remove, not "moderation.. It's what those in power press them to remove, aka "censorship"
Moderators are literally censors, by definition. Look up the definition of "censor" if you don't believe me.
People need to stop playing word games to avoid the label of "censorship". Just accept that you're ok with some types of censorship and try to justify the types you support rigourously. That's the only way to avoid a slippery slope. Trying to tap dance around calling it censorship serves no one.
There's a meaningful and important distinction between restrictions on speech that are enacted and enforced by private companies, and restrictions that are enacted by the government with enforcement outsourced to companies (that may be reluctant to comply).
Using the word "censorship" for the latter but a milder word like "moderation" for the former seems like a perfectly reasonable way to convey this distinction in this context, even if a dictionary might provide a broader definition of "censor".
I don't think the distinction is as clear as you imply. Facebook is a multinational corporation that is arguably more powerful than many governments, and it can and has swayed elections.
At what point are Facebook's "moderation" decisions "censorship"? You're effectively saying that it's only when moderation is driven by some kind of government policy, which completely erases the factors that actually matter in evaluating the danger of any given suppression decision, ie. understanding of harm, considerations of power and oppression, etc.
It's moderation when it's content I don't like. It's censorship when it's content I do like. Period. That's how it's treated in the public discourse. Accept this, and let's build upon it.
Moderation a conversation implies somebody is getting threatened with their comment being deleted or account suspended. That is censorship. Moderation is just the brand friendly term for it.
When corporate and government power are tied at the hip the distinction is meaningless. Its been meaningless for a long time. Look up Banana Republic as a term.
Think of it this way. If AliBaba does something you know China the government is connected. Same goes true for Zoom.
America is no better. (as the Banana Republic example shows) The head of Apple can call the Speaker of the House directly on the phone whenever he wants and that person will answer. I can guarantee you that the same is true of Google. I am also sure if Jack Dorsey wanted to talk to someone with decision making power in the Whitehouse it could happen within the day. (probably slower than Google or Apple though)
This distinction is meaningful, but not as persuasive as you might think. If you're, say, a journalist with unpopular opinions that are typically censored on social media, you arguably do need to support those venues. Consider the fact that corporate power now extends beyond national borders, so in some very real senses, some corporations are more powerful than many governments.
I'm trying to make a distinction between removing literal hooliganism and obstruction, like repetitive posts consisting of "aaaaa", goatse links, etc (the "moderation"), and removing meaningful but politically unpalatable content (the "censorship").
BTW I like how HN allows for moderation that makes certain low-quality comments invisible, but there is a mode when you still can inspect them if you want to. It's like the "spam" folder that allows you to have a clean inbox, but also allows you not to miss something that was deemed spam by mistake.
it’s not simply wordplay when they defined their understanding of these terms explicitly.
with that said, neither moderation nor censorship should be tolerated for (political) speech by any (large) organization or bureaucracy, because they are using outsized power to influence opinions unduly, and thereby stripping us of our independence (literally coercing conformation). we can otherwise quibble about drawing a small line at the very far end of the slope where child porn lives.
I don't care what Twitter does. I just don't want the government mandating what it does. If a private company wants to censor, then sure.
But as soon as the government requests takedowns and shadowbans, that's majorly crossing the line into infringement of free speech.
The whole reason we constitutionally limit the governmental repression of free speech is because we're all made to support it. If I could chose to pay my taxes to an alternative, then fine, but we're made to pay taxes to a government that now can take down speech critical of it.
Twitter has many friends in the government and vice versa. So politicians enacts policies keeping twitter in power, and twitter enacts censorship keeping those politicians in power. This is completely fine and not "real censorship" since there was no formal agreement to do this, just some friends helping each other.
Either we can keep that corrupt view, or we can agree that huge corporations are inseparable from governments and reign in their freedoms in a similar manner.
Excellent point, but it's important to note that currently the systems private companies use are little better than censorship. We need a non-affiliated govt agency to handle censorship/moderation requests.
As someone who leans right wing.... I have 0 trust in these types of institutions. They overwhelmingly have views that are aligned directly with the far left and they seem to exercise their authority when given it to further their own political objectives. Take the SPLC which is used by some tech platforms to decide who to censor. They wield their power to label people as white supremacist to get them banned not because they are in any reasonable persons view based on evidence have said or done things that are clearly racist.... but its just the labeling of an enemy to fit narrative. We don't need censorship with extra steps... we need free speech.
Years back a Colorado bakery refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding, the resulting lawsuit ended up going all the way up to the supreme court. The law firm that represented the baker is now officially labeled as a anti gay hate group by the splc.
All we need is rules about what content can be removed for what reasons, and Twitter can just follow those rules itself, with the potential for audits. That's how we handle every regulatory requirement for companies. Even taxes basically work that way.
Censorship is the moderation of content that may be disturbing or cause painful thoughts or feelings. So a person leaking state secrets on Twitter, and the government asking Twitter to take the tweet down, is not censorship: it's protecting national security, or law enforcement. They're drastically different things being taken down for very different reasons.
You don't need an independent body to handle either type of request because we already have mechanisms for a company to handle both. What people are getting worked up over now is the potential for governments to abuse their legal right to remove illegal content, in order to censor. Since it's the govt doing it, the govt is not going to create an agency just to wave a big flag when it is doing something bad. That would be like creating a "National Agency Of We Don't Trust The Government".
I find that scary actually. Many of the same people were ostensibly for unions and breaking up big tech to minimize their power, but are now embracing the full exercise of their power? Worse, endorsing an effective merger of media and state, which is an expansion of centralized power into the ultimate monopoly. The big tech giants are increasingly setting the boundaries of conversation based on government agencies.
Is this not an incredibly powerful tool of censorship and propaganda? Imagine this in the hands of a dictator. We are sowing the seeds of our own oppression.
I think that the problem is about concentration of power more than speech rights and the real takeaway is that allowing 3 or 4 companies to control such an overwhelming share of communications infrastructure is a mistake regardless of what rules there are.
The argument that we should lean on Twitter to maintain such nebulous concepts as "freedom" at the expense of their own profits is never going to convince me.
I think the fact that they’re a monopoly is the big thing (or effectively one).
Monopolies have always had different rules. My electric utility is a private company but in my state they have to ask permission before raising prices.
And they can't decide to not serve me because they don't like my political views. They can't choose to not give me power because they don't like what I put on my neon sign.
By "the government" do you mean every government in the world?
I don't agree with censorship in other countries but I also think it's weird to expect transnational companies to push western laws and values in places where the ruling government doesn't want them.
I do not want any government to attempt to coerce a private company to censor private speech. That said, it's particularly egregious if a nation with a constitution limiting it participates in said coercion.
That said, regarding...
> I also think it's weird to expect transnational companies to push western laws and values in places where the ruling government doesn't want them.
I too find that weird. I don't expect Twitter to act in any particular way. My expectation is that my government doesn't act irresponsibly.
And to think that Twitter is an arms length away from the government when it - along with every other Big Tech - helped the NSA illegally spy on literally hundreds of millions of Americans.
Twitter is going to do what the people in the government want it to do.
In thinking on it a bit, you could call Twitter a “printing press” of sorts. They have no stake in the content game, per se, but are the means of transmission.
The precedent here is that printing presses also held a lot of power in their time to print, which is why the newspapers themselves owned their own printing presses: so they couldn’t silenced by a third party.
I don’t think you can expect to use someone else’s means of transmission freely and expect free reign of usage.
That just means we ought to explore ways to decentralize distribution systems like Twitter.
As a private company, Twitter's goal is to maximize shareholder revenue. Without external forces, Twitter wouldn't moderate anything because it costs money and reduces ad revenue. Twitter is just following what the governments and cancellers want.
> Editorial control over twitter.com is Twitter's freedom of expression as well.
That's debatable. What twitter decides to promote, in feeds and other things via algorithms, certainly falls under their freedom of expression. But their "editorial control" currently also extends over hosting comments by others as well (which they can choose not to promote), and that is questionable and arguably could be made illegal. We had a recent discussion on an article by a legal scholar that argues for this distinction:
> Editorial control over twitter.com is Twitter's freedom of expression as well.
Indeed. I don't know why more people don't see this; also note that recommendations are the speech of the person, algorithm, or company doing the recommending.
I would agree, except in the case of a monopoly, or a consortium of companies acting together as a monopoly. And in this case I would say that the social media companies enforcing the same censorship policies counts. Remember when AWS terminated Parler's account, and then no other cloud providers would work with them? It's nothing new that we require private entities that become too big and powerful to give rights to customers that they normally wouldn't. e.g. a utility company can't set whatever price they want like any other company could.
I think it's hilarious. I grew up with Republicans and neoliberals using this argument as the basis for anti-LGBT discrimination, but now it's problematic? I have some genuine concerns about what people are calling censorship and cancel culture, but I'm not saying anything for at least a few more years.
I know this is hard to believe, but there are people who actually hold principles instead of just performing them. It's not especially surprising that you don't have exposure to them, but the vast majority of people I personally know who complain about speech restrictions from the left also complained about restrictions from the right when they held more cultural power.
Obviously your counterparts also exist, who cheered rightwing restrictions and complain about leftwing ones. But both of you are the proglem: gleefully proclaiming that you have no actual beliefs is practically a non sequitur in a conversation among people with actual moral centers complaining about the underlying principle violation.
We get it, we know you (and your rightwing counterparts) exist, as much as we wish you didn't. You're exactly what we're complaining about.
That's maddening for sure, but not as maddening as the argument that it's okay to censor something that is wrong or fake news or misinformation. History is littered with wrong takes that turned out to be correct, fake news that turned out to be real, and misinformation that turned out to be informative.
And the worst of all is the censorship of hate speech, because hate speech has become a malleable term used simply to eventually become an opinion I don't like.
Remember the whole "punch a Nazi", meme? Who doesn't think a Nazi deserves punching? But eventually, everyone becomes a Nazi, so any violence against them is justified.
This artificially constructed right not to be offended needs to die in a fire.
I feel like "they are a private company" is a NO U argument - after Comcast spent the better half of a decade arguing against common-carrier/Net Neutrality rules on the same basis. Right-wingers were very supportive of this argument when it protected ISPs, even though the result was more social media consolidation that ultimately harmed right-wingers.
That being said, we do need to be cautious of extending the (legal) definition of censorship out this far. You run the risk of defining censorship to include any sort of counter-speech, or making it impossible to legally moderate Internet platforms for any purpose. "Anyone who provides an Internet platform must be willing to host any and all speech whatsoever" just means nobody will want to host such forums.
Something like common-carriage for large social media platforms could work - though it won't give the right wing what they want. Most of them absolutely were violating those platforms rules, and common-carriage won't let them back on those platforms. The reason why I say common-carrier rules would be a good thing for large Internet platforms is because in practice companies like Twitter and Facebook adopted a policy of "let world leaders do what they want on our platform", up until January 2021. This is not at all a defensible policy. If you have a rule against doing something on your platform, why let people in power do it anyway?
It seems like there ought to be something gated around the size and market dominance of a platform. If you want to spin up a PHPBB forum for like 1,000 people around some hobby or something, feel free to ban and censor anyone you don't like for any reason. If you're effectively a monopoly like Facebook or Twitter, congratulations on getting so big, but now any moderation decisions you make effectively controls the ability of people to express themselves in our new public square. This doesn't seem like a good practice - nobody voted for the Facebook moderation team, why do they get to decide what is and isn't okay to say?
I'm not sure exactly where the line should be drawn or exactly what the rule should be, but it seems clear that we need to do something here.
The problem is that bad actors can abuse these platforms from multiple sides. In this case the issue is censorship, but there’s also the spreading of misinformation and propaganda that can also pose serious threats to democracy. I don’t know why the anti-censorship crowd doesn’t acknowledge this.
In the US, Trump used social media to spread lies about the results of the elections. He tried to pull all the stops to stay in power. This is the same President who attacked journalism, rescinded access to White House press events for news sources that were critical of Jim, and used the Justice department to seize records of journalists. Trump was a bigger threat to journalism while he was in office than any content moderation rules Twitter could ever enforce.
>Trump was a bigger threat to journalism while he was in office than any content moderation rules Twitter could ever enforce.
Besides idle threats to "open up the libel laws" and temporarily blocking random journos from white house events, I don't see how this could possibly be true.
Two things can be bad at once. In measurable terms I'd say opaque, coordinated social media bans are the greater and more permanent of the evils here. We can't deflect to Trump forever.
I think I agree with you. But I also agree with enumjorge when he says that we need to acknowledge that the unchecked spread of disinformation is a real problem. Worse, it can be driven by malice in a coordinated campaign. And it's a real problem that, when someone gets to define and censor disinformation, then they define disinformation, and they may be biased (or worse, part of a coordinated campaign).
I don't have an answer. But we can't find a workable answer without recognizing both sides of the problem.
Secretly subpoenaing journalists’ phone records is not an idle threat. Trump tried to change the results of a democratic election. Because of his lies armed protestors broke into the Capitol building while congress people were in it in order to disrupt ratifying Biden as president. Neither one of those were idle threats. They were direct attacks on our form of government. They happen to fail but those attacks were real.
I’m not saying social media censorship isn’t bad. Of course having a few tech companies control the information that most people see is problematic. What I’m saying is that allowing those platforms to act as a megaphone for misinformation is also a huge issue. Censorship and propaganda are both tools of abusive governments.
> The problem is that bad actors can abuse these platforms from multiple sides. In this case the issue is censorship, but there’s also the spreading of misinformation and propaganda that can also pose serious threats to democracy. I don’t know why the anti-censorship crowd doesn’t acknowledge this.
Because nobody trusts you or anyone else to classify "misinformation".
> In the US, Trump used social media to spread lies about the results of the elections.
> He tried to pull all the stops to stay in power.
He gave a lot of speeches and told his supporters to make their voices heard. Peacefully.
If you assume that he genuinely believes the election was marred with fraud, then none of what he said are lies.
> This is the same President who attacked journalism,
The same "journalists" that spent years spreading fake news that he was a Russian spy?
Though that does not go into too much specifics as to what or why.
> Trump was a bigger threat to journalism while he was in office than any content moderation rules Twitter could ever enforce.
Trump was the most open and accessible President that we've ever had. He would literally spend hours standing in front of hostile reporters answering any questions that they have.
If you want to see the reverse of that, check out how Biden only calls on a preselected list of reporters that ask prescreened questions. They even include a wallet sized photo in case he can't read the reporters name: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/photos-biden-cheat-sheets-f...
> I don’t know why the anti-censorship crowd doesn’t acknowledge this.
> In the US, Trump used social media to spread lies about the results of the elections. He tried to pull all the stops to stay in power. This is the same President who attacked journalism, rescinded access to White House press events for news sources that were critical of Jim, and used the Justice department to seize records of journalists
A very significant fraction of the anti-censorship crowd are pro-Trump, or at least right-wing, and of course a characteristic of that is ignoring all these things that he actually did.
(edit: the irony of being downvoted into the grey by the angry "anti-censorship" faction)
I'm anti-censorship. I didn't downvote you, but you are conflating two arguments.
Anti-government-censorship and anti-private-censorship. Myself and I'm guessing many don't actually care what Twitter does so long as the government isn't coercing it to do so.
Question to people from U.S. or familiar with U.S. law:
Isn't the government pressuring a private company to remove/censor a content violation of "Freedom of speech"? As a private company, Twitter can do whatever they want, but if Twitter is forced to remove and censor, wouldn't that be a violation?
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It prohibits Congress from restricting the press or individuals to speak freely via laws that Congress writes. The 1st amendment has nothing to do with Corporations restricting things in their purview. The 1st amendment doesn't apply to any social media or online commentary by people. It might apply to the "press" since online news is more pervasive than physical newspapers. What would be interesting is a clearer definition of press as it relates to social media accounts.
"Freedom of speech" is a political and philosophical principle. It doesn't mean the exact literal text of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and absolutely nothing else. It's going to ring rather hollow to everyone to gleefully censor your political opponents and then say that it's not technically censorship since it doesn't violate the First Amendment.
The parent to my comment was asking about law and specifically about violation of the law. Laws are about specific text and wordings in documents, who can create the laws and how they are interpreted by others (US courts).
I never said the philosophical idea about freedom of speech was only limited to 1st amendment, just my interpretation of the law as the commenter was asking (IANAL).
I believe there should be an independent (as in outside the company) review process for bans/reinstatement - something standardized across various social media platforms, maybe per country jurisdiction if necessary. That is an ideal whose implementation would be extremely hard.
This isn't a veto on speech. It is a veto on a particular means of speech, a particular avenue of expression. The fact that we now equate that with actual censorship shows how disconnected we are from true oppression. Being blocked from twitter is an inconvenience, a non-event. Real censorship comes from government, covers ideas rather than means, and normally ends with people in jail/dead. A loss of one's tweet privileges pales in comparison.
>> Our government isn't supposed to do this stuff.
Except that "our government" regularly does this. There are all sorts of speech that we censor (copyright violations, violence, porn, hate etc). We don't think of it as wrong that our laws restrict such speech. Other countries have different laws restricting different speech. Certainly some countries have greater restrictions than others, but absolute freedom of speech is not a practical reality anywhere. Real anger should pointed not at twitter but at the countries who implement restrictions with which we disagree.
Michael Knowle's book: Speechless, controlling words, controlling minds, covers this topic extremely well. Unbridled free speech has never existed and never will. There will always be standards of speech. The question is always: what are those standards and who is in control of them?
For this particular comment thread, the issue people are discussing is a relatively recent and very dramatic shift in power over speech. Today, a handful of high-tech oligarchs are controlling and enforcing standards of speech with far more efficacy than governments. It gets even scarier when you realize that governments know this and are now pressuring these tech companies to do their bidding.
OK, but we censor calls for violence whether they come from the right or from the left. We censor child porn whether it comes from a Democrat or a Republican. There's no bias there (at least, there's not supposed to be). Censoring based on viewpoint is far different from censoring copyright violations.
Twitter literally censored presidents and ex-presidents. We're already way down the slope. Twitter can't act like they are victim of government pressure when they act like an extension of a certain political party in power and literally does their bidding...
Can we stop pretending that the right didn't do this to themselves? It's fine for politicians and elected officials to have their own opinions, it's not OK for them to misrepresent them as outright facts. That's literally the definition of "fake news" which they love to tout anytime someone says something uncomfortable about them. As these politicians continue to live in an alternate reality, they bring with them an inordinate number of voters. As we go from stretching the truth to lying, the lies become more extreme, as do the political views. We are no longer Americans with different views, we are opponents unable to have a discussion about the issues. And of course now the left is also free to use similar tactics going forward. It's a slippery slope. Both parties must be held accountable for their b.s.
I'm an unaffiliated/independent voter and I've voted for both parties in the past (with varying levels of regret for both parties.)
It's not OK for Fox News & CNN to be political party propaganda machines. It's not OK for Twitter/Facebook/etc to censor only the right for their opinions. Having said that I think it's completely fair for them to kick them off their platform for perpetuating outright, destabilizing lies.
That was their decision, and it's absolutely different than the government demanding that content is removed. The First Amendment applies to the government demands and not Twitter operating as a private entity.
It seems to me that if you really want to be a despot, you should own the companies that control the flow of information. The beauty of it is that the Bill of Rights don't apply to you and you're not obligated to respect the rights it gives citizens because you aren't the government.
1. The government demanding that messages of private citizens be removed is a violation of their First Amendment Rights.
2. Twitter deleting content, banning users, etc, is entirely within their rights and is in no way a violation of anyone's First Amendment Rights.
Twitter is not a government entity. Full stop.
I'm currently sitting on some downvotes, which I find kind of unusual for a topic like this. Here's the text of the first amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
OK, but imagine some rich guy becoming president. Imagine that he owns some companies. Imagine that one of those is a media company. Imagine, for instance, Zuckerberg as president. He ran as part of party X. Now imagine that Facebook (not government, but a private company) suddenly starts deleting content that supports party Y. Is that a problem?
We just had a president with significant business assets, but he owned hotels. The next one may own media companies.
There's some misunderstanding here. I'm not suggesting that there is no problem. I am saying that it is not violating anyone's first amendment rights and I am absolutely correct on that matter.
That's exactly my point. You can violate the principles of liberty freely as long as you aren't "the government". And the beauty of it is that people will defend you while you do it.
I saw they just arrested a man for saying racist things online after the Italy v England game. That's totally bonkers to me. We all agree racism is wrong but should speech backed by no actions be criminalized? I personally don't think so. Just ban the person from the platform and have private individuals handle it. The government has no place policing speech, it's a slippery slope to saying anything falls under x. I remember people complaining the governments were sweeping everything into the category of "terrorism" in order to stifle speech...that has disappeared. People seemed less inclined to support free speech now. Something I don't understand.
Of course its an issue, but arresting someone for saying it and not acting it out seems ridiculous. Words are not actions, even if they are hurtful. Shun the person, ban them from games and platforms, educate them, etc...but arresting them?
We're going through a fascinating phase right now. If one is at all interested in philosophy, politics, religion & history there is a lot of discourse happening on Twitter and Substack, by extremely smart people. Look around, see for yourself who has the best arguments.
Yes and Twitter, FB, YT etc. pushed us on it by firing the first shots. When they decided to impose censorship and de platform as per their whim, they should have understood the consequences.