If You Don't Want EU Style Censorship To Take Over The Internet, Support Section 230:
Last summer, I mocked the EU a bit for setting up a new office in Silicon Valley, and sending an official here to "liaise with Silicon Valley companies affected by EU tech regulation," noting how it felt weird to have EU internet police setting up shop in Silicon Valley. Given that, I was a bit surprised that the new office invited me to "moderate" a panel discussion last month about the Digital Services Act (DSA), a bill I have regularly criticized and which I think is going to be dangerous for free speech on the internet.
There was no recording of the actual panel, but much of it involved me, as moderator, and Berkeley's Brandie Nonnecke (who was a panelist, but could have just as easily moderated the panel) quizzing the EU official sent to Silicon Valley, Gerard de Graaf, about how the DSA would actually work in practice, and specifically about our concerns regarding the potential censorial nature of the law. de Graaf insisted, repeatedly, that the DSA is "not a speech regulation," but then he basically kept going back to effectively admitting that it very much is a speech regulation. That is, he said it's not a speech regulation, it's just asking companies to have in place some practices to deal with "bad" speech. And, even as he kept insisting that it wasn't a speech regulation, he admitted that if it didn't lead to less misinformation online, EU officials would be disappointed.
Which... means it's a speech regulation.
[...] My takeaway is that the EU really wants to have it both ways. It wants to have speech regulation, but they know they can't call it speech regulation, so instead it's all just winks and nudges, telling companies they need to effectively disappear "unwanted" speech... or something bad might happen to them. [...]
[...] But all of this is why Americans — and American tech companies — really should strongly embrace Section 230. Section 230 is, in many ways, the anti-DSA. Even as a bunch of very ignorant, very foolish people insist that Section 230 was how the US government pressured internet companies to "censor," the opposite is true.
Section 230 gives companies the freedom to moderate how they want, without fear of facing liability or regulatory pressure for their decisions and non-decisions. Take that away, and suddenly lawmakers and bureaucrats — and anyone who can file a lawsuit — gain tremendous power to suppress speech. With 230, the companies get to decide, and if there are people who disagree with them, their options are to take their business elsewhere, not to create a legal punishment for the company.
[...] Over the past year or so, I've heard (somewhat tragically) that the big American internet companies (beyond Twitter and whatever it is that Musk thinks he's doing), recognizing that they're going to have to live with the DSA in the EU, are becoming more open to importing that model to the US.
They should not. That's not a model that the US should want, and it's a model that is dangerous for the American approach to free speech. Section 230 and the 1st Amendment, combined with normal business pressures, provides the exact right balance. Private companies moderate how they see best to do so, recognizing that allowing too much garbage will often drive away any business prospects. But without the extremely heavy hand of government (and its questionable motives) telling them what to take down and what to leave up.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 12 2023, @02:16AM (4 children)
Yes, I've had to deal with people whose description of what they want is censorship, slavery, perpetual motion, unobtainium, or something else bad or impossible, but who refuse to use the negative term, and insist that it isn't that negative thing. It's like they think that by refusing to call a spade a spade, they can avoid the problems. I ran into this as a defense contractor. The military boys insisted on computer security that can be broken. If it can be broken, then it's not secure!
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Thursday January 12 2023, @04:32AM (3 children)
European Union: We don't think it's in everyone's best interest to for this genie to freely enter and exit its bottle
Social media companies: We support freedom of action and motion for the genie
European Union: Well, sometimes when it comes out, it does bad things, and we want to make it *your* responsibility to suppress it when that happens
Spectators: Maybe we're missing something here, but ...
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2023, @03:24PM (2 children)
LOL--You actually think Social Media Companies (tm) support freedom? How cute.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday January 13 2023, @12:18AM
I think that's their argument. But also, you know, the elephantine genie in the room.
(Score: 2) by rpnx on Saturday January 14 2023, @07:06AM
Of course they do. It's cheaper to not have to moderate things.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2023, @02:23AM (1 child)
As long as companies and government are somewhat in opposition, I think we're safe. It's when the two of them gang up... that's when you know we're screwed.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Thursday January 12 2023, @03:46AM
As appears to be happening in India now, as the press and the government suppress muslims and treat criticism of these policies as sedition.
I'm sure you can think of many more well-known examples.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday January 12 2023, @03:14AM (30 children)
You can't leave freedom of speech to a market dominated by a single social network monopoly anymore than we can call a single party or a single news publisher nation with elections a democracy. Throw in the state of campaign funds and gerrymandering and you've basically turned the elections into a competition between the rich on who gets to run the worst demagogue while keeping government doing the most for them and least for the public.
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2023, @04:16AM (5 children)
There are alternatives, but they tend to get crushed in strange ways.
When web sites, hosting services, anti-ddos services etc. can have no fuss access to payment processors, then you don't have a social network monopoly problem. All that's needed is to allow people to send money to each other.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rpnx on Thursday January 12 2023, @03:06PM (4 children)
This. Financial freedom is the requirement to have free speech at scale.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 12 2023, @08:41PM (3 children)
Before the internet, freedom of the press was only for those rich enough to buy or build a newspaper. Did the founding fathers envision our present day plutocracy?
However, you know what? I can say any damned thing I want on my own website and nobody can stop me, unless I'm slandering or threatening, two things free speech doesn't cover. You can get a domain name and hosting for cheaper than your internet bill, I pay $15 a year for mcgrew.info.
Your freedom ends where mine begins, and vice versa.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2023, @07:59AM (2 children)
No. If you say the wrong thing in 2023, even if it's completely legal speech containing no libel or threats, payment processors and banks will refuse to do business with you, your domain name and hosting services will be pulled, any server you control will be DDoSed to hell, and your IP addresses will be black holed by Tier 1 networks. You may be able to operate using Tor but you can be DDoSed there too. The future of controversial speech on the "Internet" is bleak.
The man known as Stephen McGrew will not face any of these consequences. He'll post his little books on his little website without drawing anyone's ire. He won't live to see the end results of the nightmare world milleni-zoomers are creating.
(Score: 2) by rpnx on Saturday January 14 2023, @06:53AM (1 child)
This exactly. Though I haven't heard of T1 networks black holing IP addresses of people based on speech, everything else does happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2023, @01:31PM
It's a new and improved way to censor websites: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/total-retard-war.141231/ [kiwifarms.net]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @05:46AM (7 children)
Or dominated by a single government, right?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 12 2023, @04:11PM (1 child)
There are a hell of a lot more internet talky sites than governments that can round me up for thought crime at the moment!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @06:39PM
And don't forget all the restaurants and hot dog stands out there. You are truly threatened.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday January 12 2023, @04:17PM
Governments have a natural monopoly by definition so you have to check and balance everything around them.
Regardless, there were/are examples where you had multiple governments to this or that extent: The Church operated their own courts and executives (inquisition)... Sheriffs used to enforce the king's laws on noble lands that had their own men enforcing their own laws... FBI vs. State police... Hague and Interpol... China's policing outposts [nytimes.com]... But it's less to do with civil liberties and more to do with geopolitics so it's off-topic.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Thursday January 12 2023, @08:45PM (3 children)
Or dominated by a single government, right?
Russia and China? Yes. North America or any other democratically elected government? No. Dude, if you hate the idea of government so much, move to Haiti where they don't have one. We, the people, select ours. Don't like it? Bye.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @11:41PM (2 children)
My point remains. If it's so scary for private enterprise to have dominant positions in a market (what was termed "monopoly"), then the actual monopoly of government power is going to be more serious, even if it is a democracy.
(Score: 1) by Techlectica on Friday January 13 2023, @09:11AM (1 child)
The thing is that private enterprises are hierarchical power structures, with no way to change the management structures unless it's a publicly owned company and you have a ton of money for a hostile takeover, and if it's privately owned you're pretty well SOL if the existing owners don't want to sell. Whereas if you have a democracy then in theory you can replace the executive, either with a different political party than the one in power or by forming a completely new political party, through convincing enough people to make the same choice at the ballot box.
Commercial monopolies are effectively the despotic authoritarian state equivalents of the private enterprise landscape.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 13 2023, @06:53PM
"In theory". I doubt you can find a democracy, consisting of more than a few dozen people, that doesn't have a hierarchical power structure in there somewhere. And the problem isn't hierarchy, it's that you have one organization with the power - a real monopoly not merely a dominant market position.
Most which aren't actually monopolies.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 12 2023, @04:09PM (15 children)
Which one is the One Network that rules them all?
Twitter
Facebook
TikTok
Instagram
SoylentNews
Boy, for having no competition I sure was able to come up with a bunch of examples rather quickly!
(Score: 5, Informative) by RamiK on Thursday January 12 2023, @04:56PM (13 children)
Considering Meta owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram while Twitter's form-factor makes it about as comparable to Facebook as radio is to television... I'd say Facebook.
As for TikTok, for better or worse, they're a good example of what happens when you try to actually compete and don't play by the local's rules.
And Soylent... Well, I'm here to read about tech and complain about stuff I know I can't do anything about. So, while I appreciate the catharsis, it's not part of the solution so long as it's doesn't have public reach. Which is why I suggested Soylent should host a lemmy server back when the technical problems started... But that's just another thing to complain about so I'll leave that at that.
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(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 12 2023, @06:28PM (5 children)
And? Seems to me you're entitled to free speech, not Facebook's userbase or a large audience.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday January 12 2023, @06:44PM (4 children)
Seems to me the Chinese are entitled to free speech on the merit there's no (longer) laws preventing them from saying whatever they want in their own homes.
Conversely, the fact I can't say whatever I want in fear of a copyright takedown seems pretty un-free to me.
So, as with all legalise, your mileage may vary.
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(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 12 2023, @08:53PM (3 children)
Conversely, the fact I can't say whatever I want in fear of a copyright takedown seems pretty un-free to me.
You can't be sued for copyright violation if you haven't copied someone else's speech verbatim. One of the scientists I worked with had a poster on his office wall: "Copy one person and it's plagiarism. Copy fifty and it's research." Of course, that was tongue in cheek, or print's version. Also, copyright doesn't refer to what you say, only what you PUBLISH. Copyright is about publication. Unfortunately, if you say it on the internet, you've published it.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday January 12 2023, @10:17PM (2 children)
It varies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphrasing_of_copyrighted_material [wikipedia.org]
That's not true. If you give a sermon or perform a musical / theater piece and someone writes it down / records and/or publishes it, they're violating your IP. It's why the freedom of the press and freedom of speech went hand-in-hand:
In fact, the modern phrasing of "copyright" is a fairly narrow interpretation to IP since they were supposed to deal with the broader writings and discoveries:
That is, even if you never published it, technically, congress can (and does in case of performance arts) pass laws protection it. So, at the heart of the issue, it's not necessarily JUST about publishing and can be interpreted with quite a bit of latitude.
Besides, the 1st amendment was always loosely interpreted. i.e. Libel and defamation as well as the whole "fire in a crowded theater" thing and its follow up "proof of harm" supreme court rulings are all abridging the 1st amendment out of practical "common sense" necessity that is simply not common at all. It's just that whenever there's room for practical considerations, the courts take the freedom to apply their own standards until the legislator opposes by passing laws or possibly even constitutional amendment.
So, in effect, the current freedom of speech status quo is a violation of the 1st amendment that is tolerated by congress through inaction and they can similarly write new restrictions regarding social media that could pass the supreme since, in the end, it's all about who sits in the chair and who got them there.
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(Score: 2) by j-beda on Friday January 13 2023, @02:16PM (1 child)
Are you sure about that? In my brief investigation of the legalities of sales/ownership of university lecture notes (in the USA) I understood that if a lecturer did not actually make a "fixed copy" of an event, they could not actually assert copyright control of others who were selling lecture notes. Thus the advice was to use a cassette recorder (this was a while ago!) to record one's lectures, and retain those cassettes, to establish the original copies that other people were not permitted to redistribute.
Thus, I think that recording the dance performance with your phone is not necessarily a copyright violation if the creator is not actually committing it to a fixed media.
Am I going to actually search for and find references to this? Probably not.
OK, here is a bit that provides some support to my understanding, speaking to dance co:
https://www.dancemagazine.com/choreography-copyright/ [dancemagazine.com]
"Under the Copyright Act of 1976, choreography is directly addressed and—once registered—protected as long as it is “fixed.” Attorney and former dancer Gregory DeSantis, who focuses his work on trademark and copyright law, says the definition of “fixed” choreography lies in the difference between something imagined and something tangible. “Thinking something in your head—not protectable,” he says. “Once you write it down somewhere .... then there is something protectable.
The United States Copyright Office defines a “fixation” in choreography or pantomime as something that allows movement to be performed in a “consistent and uniform manner.” Choreographers can fix their work through dance notation, video recording or textual descriptions or photographs. But to solely teach the choreography isn’t enough. It needs to be on paper or video, or documented somehow so it can be shared."
OK, so maybe the it is true that recording someone's dance "violates their IP", but unless the creator "fixes" that dance onto paper or film, they can't actually enforce their copyright, so the pirate filmer is in the clear. The sermon is perhaps written down before the performance, so maybe that is enough to get registered and allow enforcement. In any case, one does need to register a copyright to get full protection, and that requires something to send to the copyright office beyond ideas in one's head.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday January 14 2023, @01:46AM
You're talking about specific and limited fair use rules regarding educational material. Performance arts don't have those specific exceptions.
Btw, those rules are in flux due to how online courses work and how COVID-19 lockdowns added a few new layers to the matter.
Performance is fixing. The issue with not writing / recording it is burden of proof.
A variation of this comes up with recordings public domain works: The recordings themselves are still the copyright of the performer even if the song is free to play and record by others so you can't record and make copies of it without their consent. It's why wikipedia is missing so many recordings of classical music.
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(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 12 2023, @07:40PM (6 children)
You just listed three entirely separate entities and six competing companies to defend your monopoly claim.
I didn't even know you were talking about Facebook. If you call a company a monopoly and I don't even know which of the multitude of companies in the domain you are referring to it might not be a monopoly.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday January 12 2023, @10:46PM (5 children)
Shall I list you 20 different ISPs? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_broadband_providers_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
Facebook dominated over 95% of its market. Twitter dominates over 95% of their market. To throw another company into the mix, LinkedIn dominate over 95% of their market. Every social network operating in the US dominates its own little niche and the only way to introduce competition and prevent the military-industry complex from becoming a self-appointed speech censor is to legislate rules that either implicate them with responsibilities and/or force them to federate. The former is compatible with the existing EU regulations and places a higher barrier of entry to the industry so the industry wants it. The latter would hurt their revenues so they'll oppose it.
Regardless, section 230 in the current reality isn't serving free speech. It only privatizes censorship at the hand of the people already running everything else.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @11:46PM (4 children)
Defined that way, SoylentNews dominates over 95% of their market. You have to remember though that there are a wide variety of means for communication. Facebook and Twitter in particular are in the same market.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday January 13 2023, @03:47AM (3 children)
Slashdot, Ycombinator, lemmy, techmeme... Even some of the subreddits compete as tech oriented news aggregator forums and users migrate between them on occasions.
They target entirely different demographics and have different use cases as reflected in their average posts' life spans: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/ [sproutsocial.com] https://www.scottgraffius.com/blog/files/tag-lifespan-0028half-life0029-of-social-media-posts003a-update-for-2022.html [scottgraffius.com]
Their user discovery is also widely different: With twitter it's basically topical around hashtags. But Facebook does things more or less by region and personal history.
One example of the demographics differences is how the Twitter's recent exodus over Musk's shenanigans aided TikTok, Reddit and Snapchat rather than of Facebook: https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20221112293/twitters-advertiser-exodus-benefits-tiktok-reddit-and-snapchat-data-suggest [morningstar.com]
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 13 2023, @04:29AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday January 13 2023, @06:42AM (1 child)
What more does an SNS provide other than a platform for users to interact with content and advertisers to sell wares? It's all superficial by nature. Users get hooked by age-specific interfaces and interactions and stay on those SNSs because their friends are there. For most young people, SNSs are the mediator of all their professional and private social interactions. They need them to find jobs. They need them to date. It's how they were born and raised and it's that central to their lifestyles. It's simply how the world works for them nowadays in the same way most of us will be completely helpless without our bank accounts.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 13 2023, @07:03PM
In other words, SoylentNews dominates over 95% of their market.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday January 13 2023, @12:20AM
Please submit polls to the proper location. I mean, hell, I'll definitely vote if it's put up.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday January 12 2023, @03:25AM (7 children)
but that's not speech regulation?
TFA's author gets its pants in a knot because it's the EU and he's stuck with this idea that it's a giant bureaucracy hell-bent on censoring its citizens. But the US is exactly the same and is calling for big tech to do exactly the same thing.
Also, it's worth pointing out that, as free as Ameicans think speech is in the US, the First Amendment doesn't cover speech that creates trouble. For example, you can't go into a theater, shout "Fire!" and create a stampede. Or organize a rally and explicitely ask the people in attendance to kill cops.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @06:00AM (2 children)
There's several differences to note. First, the US Constitution's First Amendment is a more absolute right than its EU equivalent and this protection extends to entities that act as proxies for any level of government. US efforts are going to be more limited than their EU counterparts as a result. Second, the US approach really is superior here, no matter the similar ill-intentions of the US government.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 12 2023, @04:14PM (1 child)
The EU will take more action against antisemitism.
The US will take more action against copyright infringement.
Six of one, half-dozen of the other....
At least banning antisemitism (allegedly) protects humans instead of profits.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @06:42PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2023, @03:19PM (3 children)
What utter nonsense.
The 1st Amendment does include the right to "yell fire in a crowded theater": " rel="url2html-1228463">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater
You can he held liable for the consequences of your speech, but you can't be prevented from saying it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2023, @03:22PM
Non-mudged URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2023, @07:51AM
People probably have similar freedoms in China then.
Whereas in North Korea your family might be held liable too. So there's less freedom of speech in North Korea. Hurray the USA is still better than North Korea.
(Score: 1) by Techlectica on Friday January 13 2023, @09:25AM
On the contrary, the whole point of the 1st amendment to the US constitution is that the government cannot impose any legal consequences on speech, with the exception of certain classes of speech such as defamation, slander, false advertising/fraud, incitement to violence (and I'm probably missing a few others), that impact on the rights of other citizens.
Now the other people in the country can certainly be outraged, with consequences such as boycotts, shunning, and booing at restaurants that financially or socially impact the originator of the speech. But the government can't apply legal restrictions because that's the constraint/bargain it operates under due to having a monopoly on legal action and force against "criminal activities".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday January 12 2023, @07:40AM (15 children)
On the one hand, free speech absolutists have one valid point: If you don't support entirely free speech, then you have handed someone the power of censorship, and that power will be abused.
On the other side, people wanted to restrict speech are correct that some kinds of speech are not compatible with civilized, polite society. Discussing and describing illegal acts? Defamation? Verbal abuse? Surely some restrictions are needed.
Both sides are correct. The difficulty lies in finding the middle ground...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by pTamok on Thursday January 12 2023, @08:30AM (2 children)
Everyone has absolute (in the Sartrean sense) freedom of expression: what you don't necessarily have is freedom from the consequences of that expression. Which is why freedom of expression is bound up with ability to remain anonymous whilst expressing yourself - anonymity protects you from many consequences.
If all your speech had to be linked to your identity, then falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre has consequences that you might wish to avoid. You are not prevented from shouting "Fire!", so you are still free to do so, you just can also be punished for doing so. People don't walk around wearing gags preventing them from shouting "Fire!".
If the speech is anonymous, then falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre has no consequences for the shouter. Human nature being what it is, people will falsely shout "Fire!", which has bad consequences for the theatre, and possibly for people who might be injured in an escape crush. Certain categories of anonymous speech are (obviously) harmful. I would suggest that it means that people who enable anonymous speech have a duty of care to ensure it is not 'harmful'.
The problem is, the definition of 'harmful' varies across cultures and across polities - you are not going to get agreement on what 'harmful' is. The EU might well define it differently to the USA, which means that companies that want to operate in the EU might need to behave differently in the EU to the USA. This is normal. What is also normal is wanting a universal ruleset (it's cheaper to implement), and that is unlikely to happen.
Say what you like, with your name attached; and bear the local consequences of doing so.
Say something anonymously, and it will be checked against local rules regarding harmful speech.
The result of this is that cross-border speech will end up regulated, because, in general, countries do not have extra-territorial rights and cannot enforce consequences - speaking cross border is similar in ways to being anonymous - you are protected from consequences.
If you don't like the local rules, campaign to get them changed; or move to somewhere that has rules you agree with; or simply break them and bear the consequences.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 13 2023, @04:34AM
In other words, a pretext and obligation to censor speechcrime. My take is that the anonymous speech platforms are self-regulating naturally - they have a lot of noise that discourages gullibility.
(Score: 1) by Techlectica on Friday January 13 2023, @09:42AM
Of course what happens when the internet results in your speech automatically be seen and therefore distributed across multiple polities, is that companies will try to determine which lowest common denominator policy will satisfy the regulatory constraints and apply that across the board to simplify enforcement and reduce costs.
Companies choose to only apply EU GDPR regulation to their customers in regions where it applies and not apply it elsewhere because they can make more money by selling the data on the non-covered customers than they spend having to keep track of who is covered and who is not. But if there is no financial benefit to regional customization, their profit motive is to reduce costs by applying legal speech restrictions across the board, and/or not participating in smaller markets with speech restrictions that excessively interfere with their business plan and product marketing.
The exception is of course a huge market like China (or India), which insists on significant speech restrictions and yet is of a size that is very hard to write off.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday January 12 2023, @03:17PM (11 children)
Two things:
0. Twitter is a great illustration of that point. Musk claims to be a free speech absolutist, yet he is happy to knee-jerk censor things he personally does not like. Which proves something I've suspected here for a couple years . . .
1. There are no free speech absolutists. Full stop. No, not one. They all would allow themselves exceptions to censor certain, in their own opinion, bad thingstm. Just as Morbius is uniquely qualified to decide for the whole human race which bits of Krell technology to hand out, and which to withhold. Answerable exclusively to his own conscience.
OPINION:
Anyone who says they are a free speech absolutist is full of something that I don't want to smear on these fine pages right here.
Being a free speech absolutist is a way to virtue signal when arguing with adults who want to come up with reasonable finely tuned boundaries and fences for what should and not be acceptable on a platform. Something that can be debated, and reasonable policies created. But the mythical "free speech absolutist" is just a way for ACs to throw a grenade into any attempt to discuss acceptable use policies. And disrupting is the purpose.
Before Musk, Twitter had carefully tuned its policies. You or I may not exactly like them. But they were subject to powerful competing forces shaping those policies. Free speech. Advertisers. Not spreading misinformation or dangerous material. It is a difficult juggling act. They may not have done it perfectly.
Musk only got involved because he got "triggered" that Trump was banned from Twitter. Despite Trump being given plenty of opportunities not to offend the policies in place. But since when has he ever cared about boundaries, conventions, norms, rules, laws, oaths, etc . . . but now I digress. So I'll stop hear.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 12 2023, @04:18PM (3 children)
The people who scream the loudest about freedom of speech during the day are busy burning books that feature two dads in the evening.
Methinks they dost protest too much.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday January 12 2023, @04:52PM
The burning of books is necessary to prevent those books from being read. Reading leads to learning which leads to voting democrat which leads to suffering which leads to the dark side.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2023, @06:08PM (1 child)
You should always cast a jaundiced eye towards anyone who repeatedly goes out of their way to demonstrate their piety or patriotism or anything where the speaker is overtly demonstrating their moral superiority over others. They are the worst offenders.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @07:01PM
Which I think is interesting given who's been doing that in this thread.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @06:52PM
Why smear a little shit when you can deliver by the hopper full? Now we discover the worstest problem ever: hypothetical hypocrisy! Reminds me of the AC whining [soylentnews.org] about how the US (excuse me, "we") would instantly invade Mexico, if Mexico pulled a Ukraine. Hypothetically, of course.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @06:56PM (5 children)
And probably quid pro quo with the present US administration, which is in a position to halt regulation to replace or override section 230. Something bad might have happened if Twitter had carefully tuned its policies differently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2023, @08:59PM (4 children)
So you're saying they would, on a whim, make huge changes to 230 and face the consequences that would have just because of Twitter?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @11:37PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2023, @11:51PM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by Techlectica on Friday January 13 2023, @09:52AM (1 child)
They certainly could do that. The risk of course is that when doing such quid pro quos across major hierarchy boundaries, like DOJ vs. IRS or Dept. of Commerce, such a step involves coordination of a lot more people who can become whistleblowers, with devastating political blowback. The most successful conspiracies usually involve as few people as possible.
That said, even just the threat of such an action can have major chilling effects.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 13 2023, @07:01PM
And we might just hear about that. I'll note, for example, that there's interesting play over the past few years between Twitter and the FBI with the hiring of James Baker [wikipedia.org] (and a number [nypost.com] of other former FBI and US intelligence employees) as well as a large number of FBI agents devoted to apparently policing tweets and such.
And Representative Adam Schiff is alleged [jonathanturley.org] to have tried to get Twitter to censor criticism that would have affected him.
Note that Schiff knew of Twitter's capabilities and exercised a considerable degree of hypocrisy in trying to covertly use those capabilities for personal advantage while publicly claiming otherwise and demanding widespread censorship of misinformation.