[packetlost]

As someone who lives in the midwest, very disconnected from the SV bubble, this is spot on. I know several conservative-minded people that absolutely care about the censorship and policies SV companies push and despise them for it.

[tedivm]

I also live in the midwest, and literally no one I know (family or friends) outside of the tech industry cares at all about this. I'm sure that means my bubble is a bubble- but again, until I see real numbers either way this just looks like people pushing a narrative and using imaginary people to do it.

[packetlost]

It's more on Facebook than Twitter, but it absolutely happens. Maybe you live in a liberal bubble lol

[nonethewiser]

Well, are you liberal?

[sha256sum]

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

[mywittyname]

And yet, they all have Facebook, Google, and Apple accounts. You can hate them all you want, but you're not going to change them by shoveling money into their pockets. They care enough to bitch, but not enough to do anything about it.

These people who hate Twitter probably don't even use Twitter. If you're not interesting or important, then nobody on Twitter cares what you have to say. It's not like Facebook, where you can argue politics with someone from high school. A nobody on Twitter is just screaming at the clouds.

[systemvoltage]

Twitter is a monopoly. When the only way for government officials to relay messages to their constituents is through a private platform such as Twitter, it ceases to have the same privilege as a private corporation. It is a de facto public square. This is not up for debate.

[awb]

> It is a de facto public square. This is not up for debate.

You provide no evidence and then try to shut down other opinions? This is certainly not a self-evident fact.

Maybe the public square is still the public square? Or the Internet itself?

Isn’t “public” in “public square” important? Twitter is a private company. The public square became important to free discussion because it was owned by the public. Twitter isn’t.

And between FB, YT, Reddit, podcasting, Google search, etc. we’ve actually never had this many different, non-siloed ways of communicating publicly. If Twitter went bankrupt tomorrow there would still be many ways for the public to broadcast their thoughts to a wide audience.

I don’t understand how a website that the majority of my friends and family don’t use, isn’t public and isn’t in the top 10 visited sites can be the “de facto public square”.

Sure, it’s a major communication channel, but one of many.

[spsful]

This is very much up for debate. Elected officials actually have free postage and can send letters if they need to. Not only that, they likely enjoy direct access to their local news networks and can broadcast messages through that avenue. Most have email lists, and can send interested constituents updates through that platform. Most also have websites on official .gov accounts where they could host press releases as well.

Not everyone has a Twitter account, and I think you need to seriously reframe your perspective if you think it is the cure-all for delivering news to constituents.

[systemvoltage]

> Not everyone has a Twitter account, and I think you need to seriously reframe your perspective if you think it is the cure-all for delivering news to constituents.

NO! I am not saying that at all. I am saying that this is why Twitter is a de facto public square. I am not advocating that Twitter should be a public square. Frustrating to see a strawman of this sorts. You have completely and utterly misunderstood my points. Basically, 180 degrees opposite of what I was trying to say, may be a failure of mine to be less precise but jeez.

The observation that Twitter has become a public square is undenieable (this is different from advocating Twitter to be a public square. I actually wish it wasn't).

[awb]

> The observation that Twitter has become a public square is undenieable

Please, provide some content besides just a broad declaration. I don’t understand why someone would come to this conclusion.

[systemvoltage]

I thought it was very obvious. Just check your local firefigting department or police. From local Governments to the President, they use twitter to inform their citizens sometimes exclusively. Meaning there is no other place to go for this information.

Unrelated but - Doesn't it bother anyone that it has become a necessity to use Twitter and they demand your phone number to login simply to view the Tweet?

I'd like to see reasons why Twitter is not a public square.

[dragonwriter]

> Twitter is a monopoly.

In what market? What is the evidence of non-substitution/pricing power?

> When the only way for government officials to relay messages to their constituents is through a private platform such as Twitter

It’s...not the only way.

> it ceases to have the same privilege as a private corporation

First Amendment rights of private parties are not privileges.

> It is a de facto public square.

It is neither a de facto nor de jure public square.

> This is not up for debate.

Saying “This is not up for debate“ does not make your bare assertion into an actually unquestionable position.

[Breza]

I don't think they're a monopoly. If Twitter vanished tomorrow, people would quickly move on to a host of other platforms. That's the sad truth about network effects: they can unravel shockingly quickly. My mayor tweets, but her office also uses email, text messages, postal mail, press conferences, and other tools to communicate.

[bpodgursky]

Facebook, for better or for worse, is a really central piece of infrastructure for civic society all across the country nowdays — it's used to organize churches, meetup groups, neighborhood parties, restaurants, festivals, etc.

People care because censorship does affect how they build their real lives.

[tedivm]

> Facebook, for better or for worse, is a really central piece of infrastructure for civic society all across the country nowdays — it's used to organize churches, meetup groups, neighborhood parties, restaurants, festivals, etc.

This may be true, but how many people in those church groups, meetup groups, etc are actually concerned about censorship? In my experience far more of them are worried about harassment- I know far more women who can't use social media because of their stalkers than I do people who were kicked out of social media for having bad opinions.

[ARandomerDude]

> This may be true, but how many people in those church groups, meetup groups, etc are actually concerned about censorship?

Many, in my experience. To the point that I get sick of hearing about it, and I'm not an alt-right Q-anon type or anywhere near it.

[Gene_Parmesan]

I'll take that as a given.

I think what you're missing is that most people don't want to run into vitriolic hate speech while they're going about trying to organize their neighborhood parties (and so on). We can talk about the idealism of free speech all we want; the problem is any platform that stakes a claim as caring about Free Speech almost immediately gets overrun by that sort of vitriolic hate that most people don't want to be around in their daily lives.

I went on one of the "free speech" video platforms about a year ago because I was curious, and on my first visit, right on the front page, were videos about how the Jews rule the world and Holocaust denial. I'm not remotely Jewish and I was immediately put off from ever revisiting.

This is a core problem that people who legitimately care about censorship and free speech need to address. It's extremely unfortunate, but "anti-censorship" has well and truly become a dog whistle in the modern era.

Remember that free speech is about the 'market of ideas.' In even totally free markets, not every product sells. An anti-censorship social network startup cratering because its platform immediately got overrun with hate is not censorship, it's the market at work. The vast majority of 'regular' people I know do not consider Facebook's rules prohibiting hate speech to be censorship. They're just grateful they aren't running into it every time they open their phones to scroll their feed.