[hstan4]

> You can just ignore what’s being said in “free speech circles”

The irony here is hilarious. This is the exact point people arguing against social media censorship are pointing out: if you don’t like it and the speech is protected under law, use your little block button and ignore it (rather than asking a social media company to ban it because it hurts your feelings).

[throwaway82652]

>The irony here is hilarious.

I fail to see why. If you get your way, and all the "free speech" people get blocked because everyone else finds them insufferable, then that's exactly what you asked for. It's also incredibly bad taste and rude to suggest that blocking happens because things "hurt your feelings", please never utter that phrase in this context again. That's an extremely trollish way to approach conversation and you need to stop. Disagreement happens for other reasons besides "hurt feelings".

I think you do actually understand though that "just block it" is a bad strategy because this is fundamentally not how humans interact in a large group. Every person can't go through the trouble of vetting every single thing that's being said all the time. At some point you have to trust someone to tell you if someone else is being a jerk or not a jerk. And that's why it's weak to somehow try to turn this into an issue of "social media censorship". If blocking isn't censorship then this isn't censorship either.

[stale2002]

> and all the "free speech" people get blocked because everyone else finds them insufferable

No actually. The problem with the pro-censorship people is that they don't just try to block people. Instead they try to get them kicked off of platforms.

The "free speech" circles just want to have the ability to be on the same platform, and talk to other people within that circle. If you don't want to listen to them, thats fine. They just want the ability to be on the same platform, and talk to the people who don't block them.

> Every person can't go through the trouble

That is why someone suggested allowing voluntary, 3rd parties tools. That way, everyone can get what they want. You can choose to use 3rd parties tools. And those who don't like those tools are free to not do so.

> At some point you have to trust someone

It is fine for you to personally trust someone to handling blocking for you. The issue is when you try to force everyone else to accept that same 3rd party.

If you can choose to use that censor, but other people can be on the same platform and choose to not do so, then everyone gets what they want.

[hstan4]

You call the “free speech people” insufferable and say they have no idea what they’re talking about, yet say I’m the one being rude referring to offended people crying to Twitter to ban people because they can’t just ignore (as you suggested you’d do) the tweet they didn’t like?

[8note]

If I don't like it, I don't want to use the platform, and I want the platform to know about it so they can decide whether it's speech they want to go shouting to the world. Social media companies have a right to speech too.

If you want the block button to be the way, everyone should start blocked from each other, with no option to start seeing each other's posts without both paying $100 to the platform, per relationship.

Discovery is the company's speech, and unrelated to the posters' protections. If you want one that doesn't have a company's speech involved, get the government to build a social media system, or just the one they already have: the post office

[parkingrift]

How do you handle this for yourself in the physical world? What do you do when you come across someone on a street corner with a megaphone shouting some insane nonsense?

[riffraff]

"Ignore it/ mute it" is about what you read. "Censor it/report it" is about what others read.

For a silly example: you may block people who talk about moon landing not happening, but you censor people who suggests we should kill all the <insert group>.

You may be against or in favor of either but they are different things.

[philistine]

What if it makes Twitter look bad that nazis/violent communists are organizing rallies on the platform? After all, it's Twitter's servers after all.

[ipaddr]

Then twitter is not a public square. It's disney world where you are allowed fun with parameters.

[nemothekid]

The argument is whether Twitter should be a public square. It's pretty ironic people are obsessed with the public square metaphor when American try their damned hardest to eliminate any public square via zoning.

I doubt, and not really concerned that Twitter will become a den for Nazis. If you look at the actions of the Twitter moderation team, you will find that they don't do all that much and in fact Twitter is pretty much self moderated. You get cancelled by the mob, not Jack Dorsey. It's this fact that should be watched - will Elon enforce free speech by silencing the mob of dissenting opinion?

This is how public squares actually operate. If I begin hollering at the top of my lungs in the middle of a public square either (1) everyone leaves or (2) I'm violently removed. I don't know what free speech haven people are looking for; even 4chan has rules.

[femiagbabiaka]

Then there are no public squares on the internet. Even 4Chan has rules and moderation.

[krapp]

Bingo.

There never were "public squares" on the internet. Every site has always been someone's private fiefdom. Every social media platform has always been a business, and no matter how big it is, it doesn't automatically become public property.

Also freedom of speech doesn't guarantee the right to a platform.

All this used to be common knowledge until a few years ago.

[ipaddr]

Public squares in real life have rules and moderation.

[noTooMooch]

300 million monthly active users including noise on Twitter.

Last I checked there are 7+ billion humans.

It’s a town square in Elons hyperbolic narcissistic imagination.

It’s where westerners shit post at each other, not a town square

[Lutger]

Nazi's rallying to kill Jews, or Jihadi to behead infidels, is not something that is normally allowed on a public square either. Does that make the entire public space in Western countries a Disneyland in your opinion?

[ipaddr]

Nazis rallying to kill Jews and Jews rallying to kill Nazis are allowed in different countries in different time periods and forbidden at different times or places.

Disneyworld not Disneyland or euro Disney. Disneyworld has a corporate vision of family, happiness which is at odds with the way they are run internally.