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by bko 17 days ago
Just saying "regulate" it is not an answer and won't give you the results you think.

What you'll get is restrictions on speech. UK arrests thousands every year for what essentially amounts to mean tweets. There have been people that comment publicly on horrendous crimes that get harsher sentences than those that commit the crimes.

At any point in time politicians could have enforced existing terms of service violations like kids must be 13 or older. But they choose to look the other way and target only things that's a threat to their political future.

Social media helps organization and political action. Maybe you don't like the outcome at this point in time but it's a powerful weapon against those in power. It's no wonder politicians will try to neuter it. But it will not help anyone but themselves.

6 comments

Currently, the fact that these large platforms can block you and they block you randomly (which is the case of Reddit for me, because I dared to use privacy protecting extensions when I commented on a subreddit to which I wasn’t subscribed; Instagram permanently blocked me because I used VPN when I wanted to login) is way larger restriction on my speech than removing these harmful platforms completely. Currently, I’m not allowed to react to others at all on some of these platforms. Even TV is better, because there is contact information for all of them.
Sure there was basically a cartel in social media. You saw coordinated censorship campaigns to ban the former president of the United States for example. But I wouldn't discount the amount of political interference there as well. The last administration admitted to flagging individual posts for the social media companies.

But it's true there is a lot of coordinated censorship even without state interference. But this tends to resolve itself as there is a market opportunity to create a better product. This coordination and censorship campaign has led to the acquisition of Twitter, which lifted its restrictions and other companies more or less followed suit because an open platform is obviously better for most people. And you had offshoots like Bluesky that had the old centralized censorious pre twitter acquisition policies, and things work out in the long run

https://substack.com/@mleverything/p-41310456

> this tends to resolve itself as there is a market opportunity to create a better product

If the market is fair and leveled. Which is not the case without intervention as we know for hundreds of years at this point. And governments clearly started to no intervene even when their own laws would require it.

> which lifted its restrictions

This is categorically not true. Twitter home page is massively censored and coordinated. And this was quite obvious around Charlie Kirk's death, when normalization of racism was heavily promoted, and without a doubt promoted. Not before that, and after that was so obvious that they touched the algorithm for that (I have a far right racist fake account there to monitor this specifically). Also from Musk's own words, when Grok didn't lie for them. And since controversial topics, like racism, alt-right, etc spreads better, "lifting restrictions" mean exactly to form public opinions towards these. The market is not fair even towards ideas for a long time (and probably it was never true).

Twitter was an easy one to get a ban from, just by saying "this is racist" or "racism is bad" and you're gone.

Went through quite literally hundreds of accounts through it.

It's censored and there is a ton of controversial opinions being spread?

Do you see how these two statements are in conflict?

What is being censored? You don't like some speech but that's proof that restrictions on speech have been lifted. Get your narrative consistent at least. There's either vile speech due to lifting speech restrictions or there are still restrictions so these opinions are suppressed.

The charlie kirk stuff wasn't censored. You can still find it there. I see daily conspiracy theories about his wife being involved. Before the acquisition you had a satirical newspaper banned for referring to someone by their biological sex. Do you see the difference?

I guess you could have the opinion that normie moderate speech is censored but thats just silly.

> It's censored and there is a ton of controversial opinions being spread?

> Do you see how these two statements are in conflict?

It's not in conflict. Both can be true at the same time. Also, there is nothing which is not "controversial".

> You don't like some speech but that's proof that restrictions on speech have been lifted.

Still, nothing in conflict. I can have problem with some speech, and I can support full blown free speech at the same time. Also, there is literally nobody who supports uncontrolled free speech. Not even, who lie to themselves that they support that.

> The charlie kirk stuff wasn't censored.

It wasn't "censored" in the sense, that you can find whatever you want. That was true on Twitter always in every single topic, even before Musk. It was censored how you can find it. Which is the case even by government censorship. You can find Mein Kampf even in countries where it's completely banned. You can find weed everywhere, the difference is only how.

I see crazy stuff relating to conspiracy theories about Kirk every day. It's not censored.

If you don't see the contradiction around censorship while seeing a ton of controversial opinions, I don't know how to convince you. It reminds of the quote "It's amazing how much leftist discourse is just them pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible."

If it tends to resolve itself then why has it got worse not better? reality seems to contradict your position.
How has it gotten worse? You have a lot more freedom on all social media platforms than you did 4 years ago.

What's gotten worse in some countries is the government censorship which I'm against.

??? no you don't, if you disagree with Musk on Twitter your account gets visibility-limited and if you want to use Reddit it's hard to even get an account that's allowed to post anywhere and not shadowbanned
I get a ton of ppl on my feed that I do not follow that say awful things about Musk daily. What are you talking about?
Reddit is a platform that LARP's about "freeze peach", but you get an automated site-wide ban for nothing. And it will link you to the post, it has now deleted to try and show you what was banned.

I posted "So you're blaming jews then?" to a clearly anti-semitic comment and poof. Gone

Are you confusing subreddit chosen restrictions (like minimum karma) and banning?

> UK arrests thousands every year for what essentially amounts to mean tweets.

Somebody is peddling lies in your direction. These claims don’t hold up to any sort of cursory examination.

Regulate the algorithmic feeds and similar non opinionated regulations rather than content itself.
I'm not familiar with what you're talking about. Can you share a real world example of a case like this? You're saying a social media comment about a crime is somehow punished harshly and much harsher than the crime itself?
Here's an example of Westmidlands police bragging about arresting a 12 year old for racist posts.

There are 30 arrests a day for offensive online messages. It's not heavily reported for some reason but it's very real.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

https://x.com/WMPolice/status/1282627004018364416

If you walk through a town shouting racist stuff you'll get arrested too, and rightly so.
In my Northern European small city, just yesterday, there was some non-native shouting "WHITE NIGGA" at children in the city center. Nothing happend to him.
The kid is 12 years old. If he ran around shouting racist stuff in town, that should be addressed by his parents, not by an arrest.
Here's an overview of the situation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62ln7mzd5ro
Are you sure that link's the one you meant to share?

> The former childminder from Northampton, who is married to a Conservative councillor, had posted an abhorrent message on X, calling for people to "set fire" to hotels housing asylum seekers following the murder of three young girls at a dance class in Southport in July 2024.

> Yet the fact both men were able to address a huge crowd in London is perhaps evidence that there is rather more leeway for free speech in this country than those likening the UK to a "tin pot dictatorship" suggest.

Seems fine?

> Are you sure that link's the one you meant to share?

Sorry, I'm confused by the question.

The link seems to make the opposite point you intended.

Criminal threats with appropriate punishment, and regular old hateful speech is ongoing.

The right love to play-down the woman who called for terrorist attacks on British streets as "just a tweet".

Meanwhile there's been two arrests around two prominent right-wing politicians getting threats and celebration of death this week. And they're all silent again.

The link is far broader than that, but even in this case: there was no threat. No more than a university lecturer tweeting that he wanted a white genocide.
So people are getting arrested for tweeting they want to set fire to a hotel full of people?

Seems good to me

It's a common (and somewhat right-wing) trope, but it's not really true. Thousands of people aren't arrested for "mean comments" or similar. That isn't to say the UK has no problem with the balance of freedom of expression and regulation, but it is nothing like the impression you'd get from some sources. There are some high-profile cases which are commonly misrepresented to support these claims.
It is definitely true. It's "right wing" because the soft power is with the left (or was until maybe very recently) and so only principled people of the left (e.g. Bill Maher) and all the people of the right (either principled on speech or saying things that are more likely to be censored) are going to be talking about it.
What on earth are you on about, we've had 20+ years of right-wing governments.

>and all the people of the right

Tell that to the Tory MP who had me arrested for upsetting them, or the UKIP goon's forcibly removed me from their "Free Speech Conference"

> What on earth are you on about, we've had 20+ years of right-wing governments.

The Tories were barely right-wing, and they were in power for 14 years, not 20+, and for the first 4 they were in a coalition with the lib dems.

Look at the immigration numbers in the UK to see how not right-wing they were. Insane to think that's actually right wing.

> or the UKIP goon's forcibly removed me from their "Free Speech Conference"

The UKIP conference removing you is not evidence of general soft power in the UK.

> Thousands of people aren't arrested for "mean comments" or similar

What are they arrested for, or are you disputing the number?

Lucy Connolly was arrested for threatening to kill a thousand people, for example.
I think generally the argument is that these usually aren’t credible threats, they’re hyperbole, and the police are overstepping by arresting people for saying they’ll do something when they have no evidence that that person would actually do that. A free society doesn’t arrest someone for saying “I’m going to burn down so-and-so’s house.” It waits until you actually go to so-and-so’s house with a can of petrol, and then arrests you.
> A free society doesn’t arrest someone for saying “I’m going to burn down so-and-so’s house.”

I feel like it's a significantly freer society when others can't threaten to murder me without consequences.

Sending death threats has never been legal.

The statical lie with the UK numbers is the vast majority of cases are about the use of messaging services in domestic violence cases.

They were credible threats though, as the people were doing EXACTLY what she called for
The poster up thread said people were being arrested for "mean tweets" and now you've moved it to "but those death threats weren't serious!" No, the original claim was dishonest bullshit.
I have no idea what you're on about.

I said "regulate the proverbial crack" and gave two concrete examples of things going wrong. At no point did I hint at "stop people from conversing freely".

Regulating access to speech platforms is a difference of degree, not a difference of kind, from regulating speech.
Requiring universal access is a form of regulation, and the OP asking for regulating the platform, not the access.
We imprisoned kids for making an offensive video of a burning cardboard xopy of grenfell tower

But we gave legal immunity to the corporate executives that forged fire testing certificates and caused the actual fire that killed over 100 people

And when I say we have Russia-style corruption no one believes me

>We imprisoned kids for making an offensive video of a burning cardboard xopy of grenfell tower

40 years are not kids bro. and wasn't jailed

>The 49-year-old was given a 10-week suspended jail sentence.

> They were arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and taken into custody

He was arrested, jailed, tried and convicted. He was not imprisoned, which I did not say he was. The only thing I misremembered is the age.

The actual criminals that caused death of a hundred people have not been charged with any crime.

Amazing how pointing out obvious corruption is unpopular here. Or do people honestly believe that making video about a crime should be punished more than the crime itself?