[aww_dang]

>When in our history...

Before the masses were corralled into walled gardens. If a free and open Internet was a threat to gatekeepers, walled gardens are the solution. You can say anything you want on their platforms, as long as it adheres to the party's content guidelines.

The gate-kept illusion of freedom is arguably more toxic, because it normalizes the curated garden of propagandized views.

Yes, you have more options than broadcast TV, newspapers and radio. Especially if you espouse mainstream views which one would easily find on those sources.

There was a time before eternal September, let's call it August. Google searches were populated by independently run forums and websites. Tech giants were not bent on imposing their political will. Individuals were getting the word out about Hans Blix on independent sites. One can only wonder how Twitter or Facebook's fact checkers would handle that today.

"Experts confirm Saddam has WMD"

In the august days before fact checkers and Facebook, users could still obtain free hosting. They could even post on forums without learning the basics of HTML. That's when the history of the Internet turned.

[code_duck]

Anyone can easily obtain various forms of anonymous free hosting at the present.

What some people don’t seem to understand about the first amendment is that while the government is obligated to not stop you from publishing, no private party is obligated to assist you.

[vanattab]

> What some people don’t seem to understand about the first amendment is that while the government is obligated to not stop you from publishing, no private party is obligated to assist you.

What some people don't understand about freespeech is that it's a bigger principle then just the 1st amendment protections. Most of us are not arguing that companies ARE violating the law/first amendment. only that political/religious speech restrictions by large gate keeping institutions can have similar negative effects on society. We are arguing for ether more protections to be put in place or even for social change where instead of demanding companies censor these who disagree with us we demand they allow them to speak, EVENTHOUGH we disagree with them.

[pron]

What some people don't understand is that the freedom to create a reputation by selecting which speech to amplify and disseminate is, itself, an integral part of free speech, and the reputations of the oldest, best established social institutions for the dissemination of information -- such as schools, universities, and publishers -- have been built on what they don't publish as much as on what they do. We are arguing for more freedom of speech for organisations to allow them to choose what level of scrutiny, or even what bias, to apply, so that we can establish the level of trust we think they deserve based on their record.

[slavik81]

> Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries.

> Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.

> Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.

> There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.

~ John Stuart Mill, On Library (1859)

[ewindal]

Free speech is the concept, the human right. The first amendment is the government’s pinky promise to not violate that right. Swearsies. Unless you say something they’d rather be secret, of course.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Before the masses were corralled into walled gardens

The total audience for the internet was far less in those days.

[Workaccount2]

It's weird to think back to a decade or 15 years ago where it was shameful to be an "internet addict". Spending a lot of time online was generally frowned upon, and not something you would talk about.

Now the entirety of society is an "internet addict". I'll admit the nerd inside me feels a bit vindicated, even if horrified overall with where the internet has taken us.

[effingwewt]

Wow, I had forgotten that term!

The other day I was thinking back to when I was younger and people freaked out at the possibility of dating someone you met online. Now with dating apps it's the norm.

[aww_dang]

Agreed, but that isn't a rationalization of the walled garden or proof that the Internet couldn't have continued to grow without the model imposed by "platforms".

To the contrary, the Internet was still growing by leaps and bounds. I propose that the Internet had reached a point where vested interests needed to capture it to maintain control of the narrative.

[tw04]

>Before the masses were corralled into walled gardens.

I'm not sure how old you are, but when is this time you speak of? AOL had users in a walled garden for decades. Then those users moved to myspace, then facebook. You're going to need to be more specific about this magical time when the average user was somehow "free of walled gardens".

[slumdev]

Compuserve and a number of other credible alternatives to AOL existed during that time. Usenet and BBSes also existed. Myspace and Facebook (initially) were only for teenagers, college students, and people who never grew out of those phases. You might as well put Livejournal in this list, because none of those platforms (at those times) were as effective at corralling and suppressing wrongthink as Twitter and Facebook have been today.

[tw04]

CompuServe and bbs's weren't "the masses". CompuServe peaked at 3 million users to AOL's 35 million.

There have always been alternatives to the walled gardens, they have never been larger than their walled alternatives.

[slumdev]

Apart from their obligations under the law, AOL did not police content. In one example, AOL banned explicit discussions of homosexual activity but did not ban anti-homosexual hate speech. They policed the first type of speech because the CDA required them to prevent the transmission of explicit material to minors, but they did not police the second type of speech because it was not illegal.

Facebook and Twitter are actively policing speech that is not illegal.

That is why your analogy is inapt.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gays-protest-aol-censorship/

[aww_dang]

The drink coaster distributor was popular without a doubt. They never factored into my use of the Internet. Without fact-check, there's a mild equivalence at best. It is hard not to encounter platforms and their agendas in some form today.

The free hosting providers were not engaging in political censorship. Google had a maxim, "Don't be evil". They didn't have infoboxes explaining, "Experts agree that enhanced interrogation is not torture".

[tw04]

I'm not even sure how to respond other than to point out AOL is literally where the term walled garden in reference to the internet came from. They were WORSE than what is around today by an order of magnitude.

[aww_dang]

I never used them and don't know of the political parallels. I know they had more biz relationships for search results as an example.

Maybe start by explaining how they were worse?

[tw04]

Early AOL didn't give you access to the broader internet, you got access to the content they allowed you access to. That was far, far worse than today when individual platforms choose not to host certain content whether by force or choice. Your ISP isn't curating a tiny subset of the internet for you.

[bjowen]

A historian’s word for this might be inclosure. A wag’s might be the hostile corporate takeover of everyone’s private life.