both parties are bad at violating free speech - but republicans are worse

Author: n8nrgim

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#31
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@Double_R
"So like S1 said, the idea of government getting involved in any way is not protection, it’s a violation. You cannot protect one’s right to use a platform without violating the right of those who wish for their platform to not be used."

i'm not arguing that the government should get involved in the private sector to promote free speech.  i agree with you that would be inappropriate. but i still maintain that if we support the government facilitating free speech, we should support non-government entities promoting free speech for the same or similar reasons.  you can't claim to be a big free speech proponent, if you only care about it when the government is involved. 

do you think it's virtuous for facebook to ban trump? even if i agreed he should be censored sometimes, that doesn't mean an outright ban. as has been said, the proper way to respond to stupid ideas, is with better ideas. not banning speech. if you feel the need to ban someone's ideas, you aren't afraid of just their ideas, you are afraid of free thought in general.
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#32
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@SkepticalOne
see my last post. you guys are guilty of the straw man fallacy. attacking arguments i didn't make. 
#33
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People love a good lap top scandal.
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@thett3
I’m sure Trump tax returns were obtained in a totally legal and legitimate manner as well. It doesn’t matter in my view, the counter to misinformation is good information not censorship. 

You would think.
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@n8nrgim
i still maintain that if we support the government facilitating free speech, we should support non-government entities promoting free speech for the same or similar reasons.
You are confusing the right free speech with the right to be heard. The latter is not a real thing and it shouldn’t be.

The reason we have free speech is so that the government cannot shield its citizens from reality thus allowing it to commit atrocities unchecked. This is exactly what’s happening in Russia right now. We all have a right to make informed decisions when electing our leaders. That’s what free speech protects.

What you’re arguing for is for private companies to provide platforms to anyone even if they abuse those platforms. The free market is a completely different animal, so it should be treated as such. If one platform bans you, go to another. If your ban is unwarranted, the free market will treat it accordingly because there is always somewhere else to go. If the government punishes you, there is no where else. So these are not remotely the same thing.

When you are banned from every prominent platform out there, you are probably the problem.

I agree 100% with what Facebook and Twitter have done. Free speech as you’re defining it is nice in theory, but when one uses those platforms to spread misinformation and foment violence, it would be incredibly irresponsible for those companies to not ban him.
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#36
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@Double_R
so do you only agree with the private sector banning speech when it's something that you personally disagree with? you say that you support banning trump from social media, but i couldn't see you supporting it if barnes and noble decided to ban books by joe biden or i guess if social media banned biden.  i happen to agree with you that trump's speech is bad and biden's isn't, but dont you at all support the idea of ideas spread freely even when it's something you disagree with?  do you admit you only support banning speech you disagree with, and if you dont say that, how can you make that claim? trump had plenty of speech that was worth not censoring. maybe it makes the jobs harder for the mediums like social media, to have to pick and choose what's censored, but that's the price we have to pay for free expression. 
#37
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@n8nrgim
You see all the liberal heads exploding when Musk buys Twitter. That’s all you need to know about who’s doing the censorship lol
#38
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@n8nrgim
see my last post. you guys are guilty of the straw man fallacy. attacking arguments i didn't make. 

[...] you can't claim to be a big free speech proponent, if you only care about it when the government is involved. 
"Free speech"  is literally about speech with relation to government. If someone (other than the government) wants to prevent me from preaching in their yard or on their social media site, my "free speech" hasn't been affected. 

do you think it's virtuous for facebook to ban trump? even if i agreed he should be censored sometimes, that doesn't mean an outright ban.

Absolutely. He used social media to incite insurrection and keep pressure on Mike Pence while the Capitol was besieged (among other numerous lesser offences). I personally think Twitter/Facebook gave Trump far too much latitude for far too long. 

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You see all the liberal heads exploding when Musk buys Twitter. That’s all you need to know about who’s doing the censorship lol
A bunch of deplorables over at Twitter I tell ya.
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@SkepticalOne
"Free speech"  is literally about speech with relation to government. If someone (other than the government) wants to prevent me from preaching in their yard or on their social media site, my "free speech" hasn't been affected. 
Do you really believe this? Free speech is a principle. Elon Musk kicking someone off Twitter because they criticize him is a violation of the principle of free speech, it just isn’t a violation of the first amendment or the law. But for people who value free speech as a principle, as most do, it’s still something worth criticizing 
#41
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@n8nrgim
If Barnes and Noble decided to ban Joe Biden’s books I would disagree with their decision but not their right to make it. Banes and Noble is a private entity, so there is no mechanism to stop them other than to violate their right to free speech by telling them they are not allowed to express their dissent by banning him.

There is no principal violation here. If Biden had a book and people wanted it, someone else will sell it. The only way Biden would have no other place to go is if no significant portion of our society wanted it. That’s a consequence imposed by the free market. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

You claim this is stopping ideas from moving freely. It’s not. Ideas will always move freely in a free market provided that people want to hear them. Again, you have the right to express your ideas, you do not have the right to use other peoples platforms to do so. If your ideas are in demand someone will always be there to help you spread them, if no one wants to then that is nothing more than society exercising it’s right to not hear you.
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@thett3
Elon Musk kicking someone off Twitter because they criticize him is a violation of the principle of free speech, it just isn’t a violation of the first amendment or the law.
It is worrying when folks appeal to this noble ideal that humans should be able to express themselves freely while oblivious to the fact that 'I don't want to prop up your BS in my space" is also a form of expression. Government 'protection' of this obliviousness would certainly have first amendment implications...and not in a good way.
#43
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@thett3
Elon Musk kicking someone off Twitter because they criticize him is a violation of the principle of free speech
No, it’s not. The principal of free speech is that people in government positions are accountable to the people they serve, therefore the people have a right to express their views in order for the citizenry can make informed decisions regarding their representation. This creates a conflict of interest for any government official to decide whether someone can have a platform to speak.

If the person making that decision however is not an elected government official then they are a part of the citizenry, and the citizenry has the right to govern itself in this regard.

Or to simplify, free speech is there to stop us from becoming Russia, where one man gets to use government power to stop the citizenry from keeping itself informed.

The thing that concerns me about the Twitter move is that there is a legitimate debate regarding how large Twitter is and whether they have reached monopoly status in this regard, EM’s purchase elevates that problem because at least before these decisions were made by a CEO accountable to the shareholders, now it’s being made by one man accountable to no one.
#44
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@Double_R
No, it’s not. The principal of free speech is that people in government positions are accountable to the people they serve, therefore the people have a right to express their views in order for the citizenry can make informed decisions regarding their representation. This creates a conflict of interest for any government official to decide whether someone can have a platform to speak. 
That’s not how I define free speech as a principle. To someone who is close to a free speech absolutist, like me, censorship is something I consider bad whether it’s done by the government or a private entity. The reason I bring this up is because I don’t think most people actually support free speech, they openly celebrate when people they don’t like are forced to shut up through social pressure or a private entity censoring them and they say “but it’s not the government!” I wish people would just admit that they don’t support the principle of free speech and believe that certain people shouldn’t be allowed to speak or certain ideas ought not be discussed so that we could talk about it. 

The thing that concerns me about the Twitter move is that there is a legitimate debate regarding how large Twitter is and whether they have reached monopoly status in this regard, EM’s purchase elevates that problem because at least before these decisions were made by a CEO accountable to the shareholders, now it’s being made by one man accountable to no one.
Does his stated intention to make the platform more pro free speech alleviate your anxiety or make it worse?
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@thett3
That’s not how I define free speech as a principle.
I think it’s a bit disingenuous to use the term free speech in this way given the context of this discussion. Words have power given their historical usage, free speech is well known not only as a fundamental American right but perhaps the most fundamental right there is outside life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Because of that the term tends to sneak in a connotation that isn’t earned given how you are using it. And it may not matter within this particular conversation, but at large I guarantee you that is manipulating a lot of people into taking a position they do not understand. 

With that said, let’s continue based on your definition…

I don’t think most people actually support free speech, they openly celebrate when people they don’t like are forced to shut up through social pressure or a private entity censoring them and they say “but it’s not the government!” I wish people would just admit that they don’t support the principle of free speech
Most of us don’t because the principal is logically self defeating. If Person A uses Platform 1 to spread their ideas and the owner of Platform 1 stops it, that is the owner of Platform 1 using his freedom of speech. To be against that is to be against the very principal you are espousing.

Andwhen it comes to social pressure it’s even more logically contradictory. Social pressure is nothing more than people within a society each exercising their own right to free speech to criticize someone else. To be against that is to remove everyone’s right to free speech in favor of one individual.

What you are ultimately advocating for is not a right to free speech, it’s a right to shove your ideas down the throat of a society that does not want to hear you.

Does his stated intention to make the platform more pro free speech alleviate your anxiety or make it worse?
I have no anxiety about this, I don’t really care. I will be disappointed if he restores certain accounts like Trump’s because I agree with the decision to ban him, but I also think that might come back to hurt the political right. Not only because the man is such a buffoon he will create so much unhelpful attention, but also because of this is really what drives a lot of republican voters to the polls then they can stay home now. Same with abortion. I believe in a woman’s right to choose but I care about maintaining US democracy more. So I’m fine with giving them the victory here, we have more important issues to deal with.

#46
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@Double_R
I think it’s a bit disingenuous to use the term free speech in this way given the context of this discussion. Words have power given their historical usage, free speech is well known not only as a fundamental American right but perhaps the most fundamental right there is outside life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Because of that the term tends to sneak in a connotation that isn’t earned given how you are using it. And it may not matter within this particular conversation, but at large I guarantee you that is manipulating a lot of people into taking a position they do not understand. 

With that said, let’s continue based on your definition…
Well I did jump in on the conversation so it's possible I am missing some context. But let me explain a little more what I mean. The head mod on this site, Barney, is staunchly pro-choice. Imagine if he decided to remove all posts advocating for the pro-life position, and even started banning users who expressed pro-life views. Then someone says hey, I don't think that kind of suppression of views is appropriate for a debating website, a debating website should be a free speech zone and he responds "I'm totally committed to the principle of free speech, but that only applies to the government, I'm not violating anyones free speech rights by removing them from a private platform." That's true from a legal standpoint...but is that the way a person who supports free speech as a principle would behave?

So if someone supports the social media giants colluding to censor debate on, say, if the COVID-19 virus leaked from a lab or had a natural origin, or suppressing a major news story about a presidential candidate a few weeks before an election they don't really support free speech. There is a lot of reasonable debate to be had about where the principle of free speech ends (fire in a movie theater, where libel/slander start, obscenity on TV, etc) but absolutely nobody who supports the examples I listed is in favor of free speech as a principle. I really wish people would just admit that so we could talk honestly about it.

Most of us don’t because the principal is logically self defeating. If Person A uses Platform 1 to spread their ideas and the owner of Platform 1 stops it, that is the owner of Platform 1 using his freedom of speech. To be against that is to be against the very principal you are espousing.

Andwhen it comes to social pressure it’s even more logically contradictory. Social pressure is nothing more than people within a society each exercising their own right to free speech to criticize someone else. To be against that is to remove everyone’s right to free speech in favor of one individual.

What you are ultimately advocating for is not a right to free speech, it’s a right to shove your ideas down the throat of a society that does not want to hear you.

Well if I were advocating forcing private actors to platform people then I would be violating their rights. Since as you noted these platforms are basically a monopoly and since we know they collude to determine acceptable bounds of speech there may be some argument for doing that but it's a lot stickier than what people on the right often think. What I'm advocating for is free speech as a principle, they may have the right to ban people for expressing perfectly rational and ethical viewpoints but I also have the right to criticize that.

As for the highlighted bit I was going to say that's a strawman but that's actually fairly close to my view even if its an uncharitable way to phrase it. I absolutely think society would be better if there was a stronger social norm that people should not be punished for privately holding or advocating for a political position.

I said in another thread that I think the solution to misinformation is good information, not censorship. I'm going to tell you a story and I would appreciate your thoughts on it. When the results of the 2020 election were rolling in, 538 (a popular left leaning elections blog) was live tweeting batches of votes as they came in. There was a batch of votes that came in from Philadelphia and 538 described the batch as something like "38,000 votes, all for Biden." I thought surely they are exaggerating, they can't ALL be for Biden, 38,000 to 0. But they linked to a file from the state that showed votes as the batches were processed and this one was indeed close to 40k votes for Biden and zero for Trump. Even if 99% of these votes were expected to go to Biden, NONE going to Trump is incredibly unlikely. My scientific calculator returns a result of zero when I plug in .99^38000. Clear evidence of fraud, right? 

Well, me and a few other people noticed this and asked 538 about it, and to their credit they actually provided a good explanation. In the very next batch of votes from Philadelphia, Trump did twice as well as expected. What likely happened is that some ward sorted their votes by Biden vs. Trump, and in the process of uploading their "vote dumps" at one point they reported a bunch of the Biden ballots, then in the next report they reported more Biden ballots + all the Trump ballots they had missed. Now it's possible that these were fraudulent votes still and the next batch Trump just happened to overperform for some reason but I find the explanation that they were uploaded weirdly more plausible. If instead of answering my questions, 538 had reported me and gotten me banned I would have thought that the 2020 election was rigged until the end of my days. Would that really have been a better outcome than rational discussion? I'm fairly certain that if someone is inclined to believe something anyway, shutting down all discussion of it makes them double down a lot more than proving them wrong does.
#47
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The difference is that one sides believes it’s a God given right to freely express yourself and the other believes it is given by the government only.
#48
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@thett3
So if someone supports the social media giants colluding to censor debate on, say, if the COVID-19 virus leaked from a lab or had a natural origin, or suppressing a major news story about a presidential candidate a few weeks before an election they don't really support free speech.
This is a strawman of what the majority of the left supports and a conflation of two different issues.

The fact that such a small handful of companies controls such a large portion of the country’s digital platform infrastructure is something we pretty much all agree is an issue. But that’s about monopolies and the outsized power they create, a totally different concept from free speech.

That said, the huge hole in your case is the answer to this question: who has the right to decide whether one can use a platform to spread their views?

No matter which way you answer this, it defeats your concept. If no one has a right then you are not advocating for free speech because you are against the right of the rest of society to express it’s dissent. If you say the owner has the right then you are advocating for the system we’re already have.

Again, you have the right to say whatever you want, and I have the right to criticize it. That’s what free speech means, that’s what those who agree with me support.

I'm going to tell you a story and I would appreciate your thoughts on it.
This isn’t a question regarding free speech, now you’re just criticizing what you view as dumb decisions to ban people for the hell of it. Most of those (like this one) I will agree with you on anecdotally, but if we’re talking about rights then anecdotes are irrelevant.

Question for you, do you agree with YouTube’s decision to ban all content propagating the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories?
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@Double_R
That said, the huge hole in your case is the answer to this question: who has the right to decide whether one can use a platform to spread their views?

No matter which way you answer this, it defeats your concept. If no one has a right then you are not advocating for free speech because you are against the right of the rest of society to express it’s dissent. If you say the owner has the right then you are advocating for the system we’re already have.
It isn’t a hole because I think the platform has the right to censor, I just don’t think they should. I have the right to be rude to a guest in my house, but that behavior is still worthy of criticism. Make sense? I don’t see a lot of people on the modern left criticizing the behavior which makes me think their revealed preference is that they support it. And I would rather talk about that than if a platform has the right to censor because they do

Question for you, do you agree with YouTube’s decision to ban all content propagating the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories?
I think it’s generally better to debunk conspiracies instead of censor them. Tons of people love getting clicks making fun of conspiracy idiots, there used to be a huge ecosystem of debunkers for that reason. The problem I have with banning “conspiracy theories” is that a minority of them turn out to be true. A billionaire running a sex slave island visited by dozens of prominent politicians and celebrities sounds like a conspiracy but it’s something that actually happened. Also like I said there ARE at least some people willing to change their minds, and if you can’t expose their arguments to scrutiny because they aren’t allowed to put them forward the change won’t happen. 

And on a personal level I just prefer the Wild West style pre 2020s internet. I’m an adult, while I’m sure I can fall for misinformation occasionally I don’t like having an eternal child lock on the content I can access
#50
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@thett3
I think it’s generally better to debunk conspiracies instead of censor them. Tons of people love getting clicks making fun of conspiracy idiots, there used to be a huge ecosystem of debunkers for that reason.
I think this right here is our difference. When I talk about the free market I am expressing faith in the idea that as long as the arena of ideas remains free from overlord intervention (aka the government), reality will always win out in the end. I think that’s the same basic idea you have towards it.

The difference is that you extend the overlord concept to the owners of those platforms while I don’t. I view companies like YouTube and Facebook as part of the debunking process - these platforms have an interest in shielding themselves from liability, legal or in the court of public opinion, so when dangerous content is purposefully left unchecked they are obligated to do something about it. To me that is part of how dangerous information gets checked.

I see things that way in part because I find your faith in the debunking process to be overblown. Any psychological study will show that it is easier to spread a lie than to correct it, so relying on better information to correct bad information is just not in line with human nature, at least not on a large scale. In fact many studies (and frankly common sense) have shown that the rise in conspiracy theories is directly tied to the rise of social media. There is no way to check this without the owners of these platforms taking some responsibility for what gets posted on their sites.

People believe what they hear, particularly when it’s repeated over and over. Your idea of just letting nonsense propagate until it’s defeated with reason is in today’s world a recipe for a failed society, and honestly even with these companies fighting back I fear it’s already too late.
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@Double_R
The difference is that you extend the overlord concept to the owners of those platforms while I don’t. I view companies like YouTube and Facebook as part of the debunking process - these platforms have an interest in shielding themselves from liability, legal or in the court of public opinion, so when dangerous content is purposefully left unchecked they are obligated to do something about it. To me that is part of how dangerous information gets checked.
Yeah I guess to me I consider true information being labeled false a lot worse than free exchange of information even if that means that false information is available. I also don’t trust the people making these decisions. But it does seem like we reached fundamental disagreement so this was a productive conversation 
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@thett3
Expanding on that, if truth is truly defined by repetition rather than evidence and logic, then we no longer have a rational society anymore, so free speech would no longer be a fundamental tool to progress society.
#53
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For a Democrat that believes half of the country are idiots, it is very easy to understand why the left would be reflexively anti- free speech.
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@thett3
What are your thoughts on Biden's new Minister of Truth?

#55
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@Greyparrot
Expanding on that, if truth is truly defined by repetition rather than evidence and logic, then we no longer have a rational society anymore
Which is exactly how we ended up with a President Donald John Trump

For a Democrat that believes half of the country are idiots, it is very easy to understand why the left would be reflexively anti- free speech.
Setting aside the redefining of the term free speech into something that has nothing to do with the constitution or rights… yes, exactly.

It’s the same thing as when VA banned CRT or when Florida passed the don’t say gay bill. We all believe dangerous information should on some level be checked, the only difference is what we consider dangerous information to be.

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@Double_R
It’s the same thing as when VA banned CRT or when Florida passed the don’t say gay bill
Right, equate 5 year olds to the general public for being able to evaluate the truth.
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#57
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@Double_R
aside from dangerous speech, what does it hurt everyone to have ideas freely passed around? im not saying it isn't the right of the company to make those calls, so you shouldn't keep harping on that point. it makes society better for ideas to be freely spread around, and stupid ideas should be countered by better ideas. 

how can you claim to support free thought if you dont think it's an idea non-government should espouse too?  clearly, you dont support free thinking. 
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#58
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my position is actually the liberal position. bill maher, a traditional liberal, agrees with me. 

it's obvious watching the back and forth that most people are just brain dead reactionaries latching onto whatever their party is promoting at the time. if this was joe biden getting banned on twitter, these same liberals fighting to support twitter banning trump would then be saying we should promote free experession of ideas. 
#59
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@n8nrgim
how can you claim to support free thought if you dont think it's an idea non-government should espouse too?  clearly, you dont support free thinking. 
Free thinking includes the right to say "I don't want your trash on my site", or "I dont want someone with your trash ass views on my TV screen".

I don't agree with many instances of this, but if you believe in the free market and free thought then you'd believe in the principal here as well. What you're ultimately fighting for is not freedom of thought, you're fighting against the right to fight back against bullshit as it permeates throughout our society.