It may not be long before these major firms are regulated like a public utility. I read that Steve Bannon had been working on that suggestion, but since he's out now, hard to say how much traction it actually had in the White House.
It's a great example of how public regulation is an insidious form of censorship. Public regulation is used to force major firms to toe the line of the political party in power, if it's Steve Bannon's crew you ain't going to like the result.
We don't need public regulation of social media or app stores because we all have the opportunity to get our information and apps from other sources.
The constitution serves as the U.S.'s first principles of a moral society. No matter how good the intentions, once we start to let other moral imperatives supersede the moral imperitives set forth in the constitution we fundementally change the fabric of the U.S. and frankly it puts the entire experiment in peril.
So where was the peril for the first century, with slavery and blacks not guaranteed the rights stated in the document? Or the fifty years after where women couldn't vote? The imprisonment and killing of leftists during the red scares and other labor movements? The imprisonment of a hundred thousand innocent civilians during WWII?
The experiment has survived two hundred years of bigotry, if it can't handle private companies choosing not to help racists it isn't worth continuing.
I love this comment...that and I think op hasn't read the constitution at all: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Where does it state that companies must allow free speech on their business property, or servers? It doesn't, it applies to GOVERNMENT entities and public lands/property.
If a Nazi steps foot on my PRIVATE property I can call the cops and charge with trespassing. Once they're on my property their freedom of Speech goes out the window. Same w/ google/fb et. al.
They're more than free to start their own google/fb/apple competitors and gain market share...but good luck with that.
In a hypothetical future, if Facebook were able to exploit its network effect to the point of having near-100% market share on all private communications, would you still defend their right under the constitution to police all private speech in America at their sole discretion?
That's the question that's being asked.
And you can say people can vote with their feet, but what about when "voting with your feet" means permanently and significantly extricating yourself from your family and friends?
> They're more than free to start their own google/fb/apple competitors and gain market share...but good luck with that.
That's exactly the point. Through network effects, these companies have achieved monopolistic market positions on how American citizens communicate with each other.
If we're going by spirit of the law (as we often do with the law out of necessity, especially as technology advances), then clearly the spirit of the first amendment did not intend to nullify itself in a hypothetical future where all communications were privately owned by a handful of corporations.
If the telecoms all decided to put in speech recognition software that automatically terminated phone calls when it detected negative sentiment toward a particular political group or initiative, would you defend that?
What if UPS and FedEx decided to do the same to letters, and return them all to sender or burn them? They have a right to burn letters that criticize their favored candidate, because you agreed to it in the EULA. Don't agree to the EULA? You don't get to receive Amazon packages anymore. Would you defend that?
This isn't a science fiction-fantasy short story. Facebook can't control shit.
You will always have freedom of speech in your home, and you can always choose a free platform to share your thoughts on, even if you have to build it yourself from open source software.
What you actually are describing is government driven tyranny. UPS and FedEx and Facebook have no direct commercial interest in censoring you. The reason they take any interest in your parcels and posts is because our government and our legal system has required them to. They have been made liable if they ship your letter bombs or share your hate speech.
If you are afraid of a society where all corporations restrict your rights in concert, you are actually afraid of an overarching government without limits that's stripped you of your rights and uses corporations to extend it's reach. There is actually a name for this type of government, they call it Socialism.
Socialism is actually an economic concept not a form of government just as Capitalism isn't our form of government, but Republic is. Socialism means pooling resources to get shared commodities for instance: Public roads and Firehouses are socialist programs as is Medicare/Medicaid and single-payer healthcare.
I think you're thinking more of Fascism:
Definition: Fascism is a way of ruling that advocates total control of the people. ... Fascism comes from the Latin fascio, meaning “bundle, or political group.” In fascism, the people are looked at as a bundle — one body that must be controlled by the government with absolute force.
It would be an authoritarian plutocracy. Power is held in the hands of a small group of super rich. Fascism isn't a form of government either, it was the name of Mussolini's party which has since been applied to any authoritarian or nationalist movement.
All socialist governments are plutocracies. Witness Venezuala where Chavez divvied up the economy and gave all the pieces to his closest friends. Those in power always enrich themselves just as Putin and his cronies have.
Even if true, which I don't believe, your own reply points out the problem. Russia isn't socialist country, and pre-socialist Venezuela had a similar rate of corruption. Not all plutocracies are socialist.
There is a reason german fascists named their movement National Socialism. Socialism is an economic concept that requires government control for it to be implemented. Socialism is a pre-existing requirement to create a Fascist regime.
You might think the US is far from that, but right now we are spending 36% of our GDP on federal, state and local government , and the remaining 64% is heavily regulated and controlled by the government. In fact, you can argue that the federal government already "owns" over 1/3 of all private businesses given it's right to 35% of all their profits.
No. No one's telling Nazis they can't put their venom on the Internet - they're just disinclined to help them. Joe Nazi has the right to say stupid things, but what about Google and Apple's right not to host their content? And what if hosting that content reduces others' freedom of speech by making them afraid to speak?
Frankly, the slippery slope argument doesn't carry much weight with me here. Companies are choosing not to help literal swastika-wearing Nazis. No one's refusing to carry other non-extremist content, whether garden variety conservative pro-life or anti-gay-marriage messages, or liberal BLM or Antifa pages.
I'm a huge free speech supporter. I donate to EFF and the ACLU. And yet, I'm perfectly OK telling Nazis to go find their own Internet and please stay off mine.
(And to be clear, I don't mean "Nazi as in someone whose opinions I don't like", but "Nazi as in throwing a sieg heil salute and calling themselves Nazis".)
You are allowing speech on your internet to be arbitrated by a bunch of big corporations. There is no reason to think that's going to go well in the long run. There are about a thousand special interests each with their own agenda that want something blocked. There is already huge pressure to remove ISIS content. It puts these companies in an untenable situation if they take down the nazi content, but leave up ISIS recruiting and terror bombing videos. We've already seen the Syria War crime video fiasco, so I think there is slippery slope already happening.
> You are allowing speech on your internet to be arbitrated by a bunch of big corporations.
I disagree. First, Apple and Google are refusing to host a particular app in their stores. But on the subject of hosting, there many thousands of web hosts, many in places that probably wouldn't care about serving such content. The oppressed literal Nazis can pick any one of those, but I think it's ludicrous to expect that any particular provider should be expected to serve it. Even if they're big and popular. Maybe especially then.
Suppose Google were an Israeli company. I'd like to think we could all agree it would be unreasonable to call on them to demand they help disseminate literal Nazi content. Google and Apple aren't Israeli, but I don't think that makes it OK to insist they go along with it.
And ultimately neither company is saying that you can't go find that information on your own, even using the browsers they provide. They're just saying they're not going to cooperate to make it easier and more convenient. I can't think that's a bad thing.
All I know is this is a very slippery slope and somewhat of a litmus test, much like Larry Flynt / Hustler case. The reasoning goes that these, admittedly extreme views are a canary in the coal mine, and for as long as they aren't suppressed everyone else is likely to be OK. But once our corporate masters figure out they can now suppress speech they disagree with (or even agree with but can't publicly admit it), they'll be pulling on that handle like an opioid junkie. The list of topics could be very broad, and the recent example of James Damore shows that views don't even have to be extreme: a bit of virtue signaling from professional victim groups is quite sufficient.
To use the wikipedia definitionof net neutrality:
Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers and governments regulating the Internet must treat all data on the Internet the same, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.
What does that have to do with googles decisions on community grooming?
Do you disagree with the notion that googles appstore forms a (sort of) community with moderation (regardless of what one thinks about this exact moderation-action) where as the data an ISP delivers isn't a community?
Because if we accept that notion, then your comment seems to be a red herring.
Let's say Google bowed to internal/external pressures and started "grooming" its communities by denying service to conservative news outlets and individuals its AI and human curators decided are not in alignment with Google's prevalent ideology. To me such a thing is just a few steps away from where we are at the moment. In fact in some cases it's already happening: demotion in search ranking, demonetization of YouTube videos, cooked autocomplete results, just to name a few examples. Twitter also engages in "grooming" all the time. Even unquestionably legitimate opinions (like those of e.g. Scott Adams) are shadowbanned and de-trended, where more radical ones from the left (calls for assasination of the president or calls for violence) are present in the trends.
If your retort is that these platforms are companies, then you have to apply the same reasoning to Comcast, Verizon, and many others that control the last mile. If CEOs of those companies also decide to engage in "community grooming", life could get very interesting.
>If your retort is that these platforms are companies, then you have to apply the same reasoning to Comcast, Verizon, and many others that control the last mile. If CEOs of those companies also decide to engage in "community grooming", life could get very interesting.
Do you agree or disagree with the notion that the google play store or twitter have communities while ISP do not (and, according to net neutrality proponents: should not)?
(At this point of the discussion: regardless of what you think of the specific community grooming actions taken)
Because if one side has communities and the other does not, then your comment is comparing apples to oranges. (in the context of net neutrality)
But these companies dont just provide a service. They provide the infastructure of the public.
If the very same Nazis would have closed a private owned water suppliers water-pipe in the 40's for jews and exclaimed "There is always the well in the town and the river." could that be called discrimination?
I think that the author had a good point, that while we're worried about "hate speech", the real first amendment is being attacked in many other ways. That right wing terrorists want to take away the freedom of speech for Jews immigrants, and protestors. That companies now want to remove the free speech rights for their own customers. That politicians want to get rid of any speech that maligns them. I agree wholeheartedly with the author when said that these are the real threats to the first amendment. "Hate speech" isn't the issue. The issue is the scumbags spouting the hate.
I'm a strong proponent of free speech, including abhorrent speech, but capricious removal from the platform stores doesn't offend me. On Android, it's not hard to install apks from websites. On iPhone, it's a lot harder, but iPhone is a minority of the market, and Apple has made a point of curating their store to some degree, I simply don't expect them to accept everything and they are inconsistent, too; but even old iPhones have enough economic value to trade for an Android, if the owner decides they don't like the aesthetic choices Apple has made with their app catalog.
This feels significantly different than refusing to register a domain, or even refusing to host objectionable content. As a user, I expect app stores to perform some sort of judgement about apps, and not simply allow any app that is not unlawful.
This is pure hyperbole. Mobile phones have these things called browsers where users can visit websites. Is having an app convenient? Yes, definitely. But in this case the lack of an app does not threaten the First Amendment.
This is a dangerous argument. The government censors this or that site. But wait, you have a VPN? Then your rights are respected. Oh, the government forbids VPN. But wait, you have Tor? Then you rights are respected. Making one particular medium more difficult to access than other comparable medium is one kind of censorship and threatens the first amendment.
The first amendment (in case you haven't even read it!) : Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Nowhere in there does it say.. and by the way ALL corporations must ALSO allow freedom of speech. Their servers, their rules. The internet is about freedom and it goes both way -- you're free to say what you want and the site you post it to is free to remove that content if they deem it hurtful to others.
YES. This. I have tried to remind people that the amendment is only about that. Corporations and anyone can do anything they want to (and risk the blowback)
That's fine, but when most of civil society moves over to closed corporate eletronic platforms, you have to ask whether those platforms should have analogous rules, and if not, why not.
That's a personal choice. If you don't like the restrictions of the most popular platforms, you can choose a different one.
Freedom of speech can never be taken away by corporations. Open source software gives you the power to create your own platforms if none of the commercial ones meet your requirements.
These 'closed' entities like facebook...you realize their only power is the people... if people get fed up they can just leave... All the Nazi's are free to go leave start their own networks, and leave the rest of us in peace. Freedom of speech also doesn't mean we need to hear you rant on and on about 'white culture'. So if the majority of us complain, and FB/Google/Apple listen to the majority (i.e. democractically decide) that you're out -- then goodbye you've lost in the marketplace of ideas.
I'm white, a mutt from Irish, German, and English stock, but white culture doesn't mean shit to me...now Irish, German, English culture--that actually means something. I'm sure there's probably some hispanic/indian could even be some african american.. I think a lot of racists would be surprised if they ever would ante up for a DNA test.
I wish we'd disconnect the discussion about declining Nazis as customers from the discussion about whether certain platforms/products have become important or monopolistic enough that they should be regulated as a 'public' platform where freedom of speech is upheld.
The former issue is almost impossible to discuss rationally at this point (which is understandable), whereas the latter strikes me as ultimately more important but also more complicated. Discussing them together makes everything more difficult...
So which newspaper is forced to run stories on topics they don't like?
I don't get how you could ever claim a private business should be forced to publish content they disagree with simply because they're a platform lots of people gravitate towards. You want to talk about erosion of rights? What next, scientific journals have to post bible passages alongside peer reviewed papers as a "counter-point"?
I agree with you. I don't think a private business should be forced to publish content they disagree with simply because they're a platform lots of people gravitate towards.
I'm not sure why you choose to 1) be antagonistic/hostile for no good reason, and 2) misinterpret my words, or worse, choose to put words in my mouth so you can go and be outraged about it.
It does seem like a good illustration of the point I was trying to make, though.
There is never an absolute and total freedom of speech. That is, there is always speech of the kind than a society cannot and must not tolerate.
Either a country accepts this within its legal framework and has e.g hate speech laws (e.g Germany) or it doesn't (e.g US), but in the latter case as being "outside" the law - and it must be met with force outside the law.
There are benefits and drawbacks to both models (which is why both exist). But at the end of the day there is little practical difference between "if you carry a nazi flag you'll go to jail" and "if you carry a nazi flag you'll be punched in the face".
In both cases open society is judging and delivering the sentence.
The notion that all speech must be accepted and never met with violent protest is both unrealistic and dangerous.
So to get back on topic: 1st amendment protects the open society but doesn't function without an open society. Violent protestors at rallies and tech companies gagging fascists is what it needs, and not a problem.
The thought that words or ideas should be met with violence concerns me. You're not going to end hate speech by attacking people, however wrong they may be. Google and Apple don't even need to adhere to the first amendment so I'm not sure why you conflated this with "hate speech should be met with violence", which would only cause more fighting and more violence (I doubt a Nazi would take a punch to the face without trying to throw his own punches, resulting in straight out combat between people with very strong notions of 'us' and 'them')
What I meant was that everyone who values tolerance should defend it with the means they have available. A web host should deny hosting, an employer denies employment and a citizen denies use of public space for speaking hate and intolerance. What is necessary to deny this (whether it's enough to bring a vuvuzela) will vary.
Punching nazis won't convert them, so it's probably counter productive - but disturb their rally and there is a risk you'll be attacked. No need to throw the first punch, ever.
I 100% agree with you in principle, but I honestly never thought we'd be having this debate in 2017 about people carrying swastika flags and calling themselves Nazis. Frankly, that changes the entire equation for me.
We cannot, cannot, cannot allow this to take root and grow. Everything thinks "it can't happen here", but it doesn't not-happen on its own. I don't want my grandkids asking "how did you try to stop them?", and having to answer "well, I very adamantly told them they were wrong but they didn't listen."
I am incredibly tolerant of diverse idea. I grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt, and now I live in the bluest of blue places. I have wonderful lifelong friends in both places (and lots of others) who I love as people but whose opinions infuriate me. That's OK! We talk about stuff and occasionally ruffle each other's feathers, but we get along just fine. I can argue both sides of gun control, abortion, and anarchism with clever friends for the fun of it. But what I can't tolerate is people in my America wearing, carrying, and acting out Nazi symbols in my backyard. That cannot be allowed to find fertile soil.
I've said this before but I want to be perfectly clear: I have an exceedingly tight definition of that term. I have never called someone that word because I disagree with them, no matter how important the matter to me or how ferociously I oppose their opinion. I'm referring specifically to people who show up at white power protests wearing the uniforms, carrying the flags, and throwing the salutes of the group my family fought to stop within my mom's lifetime.
That's not a slippery slope. It's perfectly possible - and reasonable, and good - to say "we'll allow people to speak abhorrent opinions" and still draw the line at literal Nazis.
You don't put out a fire with gasoline. The way to diminish something is not to make it illegal or prohibited -- that didn't work for prohibition and it won't work for nazism in America (which has been around for as long as nazis have existed.)
You're making an ends justify the means argument. While I agree that less Nazism in America is better, using a bad means (intolerance, violence) to get to that end is unjustifiable. Even if it were justifiable, it is ineffective and actually strengthens their cause.
Why do you you think the fascists try to speak at Berkeley and other leftist institutions? To incite "de-platformers" to violence which reafffirms their message of victim hood and "opression," which emboldens their supporters and furthers their cause.
See the stances of ACLU and SPLC for smarter people than I making similar arguments.
> Either a country accepts this within its legal framework and has e.g hate speech laws (e.g Germany) or it doesn't (e.g US), but in the latter case as being "outside" the law - and it must be met with force outside the law.
Or it could, you know, not be met with force outside the law, because we live in a civil society where people are free to think independently and express themselves, and we have laws against assaulting people.
Call me crazy.
I don't know when in my lifetime liberals pulled this 180 on freedom of speech, but seriously, it's causing me to do the hardest 180 of MY life right the fuck into being a conservative after spending the first 30 years of my life as a liberal.
What you just wrote is one of the craziest things I've ever read. You're directly calling for and praising violence against people based on their ideas and beliefs and how they choose to non-violently express them. Just 10 years ago you'd be booed by every liberal in the nation and rightfully regarded as an anti-intellectual, a book burner, or a fascist.
My whole life, liberals were so proud to declare that they defend their opposition's right to speech even though they don't agree with it. When did this change?
When we grew up and realized that no, people really shouldn't be marching the street calling for genocide or calling for other groups to be treated as animals. When we realized it is bad to harass others, by surrounding them with torches and yelling racist slurs or by burning freaking crosses in someone else's yard.
When we realized that we don't actually want to spread hate and convince others to think the same.
This won't stop folks from thinking this or spreading it to some extent, but there isn't a reason we have to give them space in the public sphere, with marches on public roads obviously meant for everybody, regardless of background. Nor does an employer have any need to respect the right of their employee to spread hate, a web hosting service to host the websites, and other such things.
Another thing we've realized as we've grown up is that one cannot both protect freedom of speech like this and have any true means of actually overcoming it. This puts actual goals like equality and a more fair society at risk.
And above all, it changed when folks re-thought "Fuck Nazis and Fight them".
Of course, this is all just speaking from the top of my head and nothing in here is known fact without someone factchecking it, as I have not.
You fight bad ideas with reason and persuasion. Period. If someone does something illegal, you get the authorities involved. Speech is protected, even "offensive" speech. Civics 101.
Trying to compromise with a nazi is like agreeing to putting a kitten in the blender at half speed instead of full speed. These aren't folks that reason and persuasion is working for, as they think they are reasonable.
Have you considered the fact that most of our great-grandparents who defeated the nazis also hold positions on foreign policy and social issues that would likely cause them to fall under your definition of "nazi"?
The "Nazis" in the Charlotteville incident were literally waving Nazi flags, throwing Hitler salutes, and shouting "Heil Trump". I don't think your definition needs to be overbroad to include that.
So? You do realize that WWII was quite some time ago and society has changed since then. We also had African-Americans fighting, who went back to a segregated society. Women weren't their own person - heck, in the 70's women generally couldn't get a credit card without male approval. Oddly enough, the US also turned away Jewish refugees before we got involved in the war. I think these things were as wrong then as they are now, we've just updated the laws and society to show this. So yes, of course some of the views from the 40's are going to be evil, crass views today. And yes, if someone hasn't updated their social views from the 40's or 50's, I'm gonna keep my distance. It isn't like we'd ever get along anyway - I'm a boyish bisexual woman, an immigrant (In norway, from the US), someone that dates outside of her "race" and can easily be called a "sand nigger" if I have too much of a tan.
But overall, they were fighting a greater evil compared to the times. It doesn't matter if their views are now considered outdated, they were doing the right thing for the time.
How far do you need to go? Mind control until everyone thinks exactly as you do?
You can't change peoples minds by restricting their speech. Those people will always exist, some will change over time. In the mean time let them out themselves.
Their speech is protected as legal (in the US, might vary elsewhere).
What I was getting at is that their platform is not guaranteed. They must be shut down, their speech drowned. Non-violent protest as long as possible, violent only as a last resort. But you don't let nazis speak and shrug and say "it's their right, let's hear them, try to convince them they are wrong".
We live in a country where people will label you a nazi for thinking voters should have to provide ID, or that we should enforce border laws or have a border at all, or that capitalism is preferable to socialism.
This is precisely WHY we have freedom of speech as an absolute in this country. Because once you empower people to attack hate speech, the definition of "hate speech" will invariably be expanded and abused in ways that are totalitarian and fascistic, which is EXACTLY what we're seeing from the left today.
It's why every time I respond to people like you, they post openly and I'm forced to use a throwaway. It's reverse McCarthyism. You probably think that's progress too, but you didn't convert me or anybody else, you just made us go into hiding. But we can still vote while we're hiding.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I will vote for a thousand Trumps before I give up freedom of speech in America. If we don't have that in America then it's all for nothing. As long I keep reading this garbage from people on the left, I'll happily be a single-issue voter.
Unless they are literally calling for imminent violence against other human beings, it is their right to protest. It's your right to counter-protest all the same. But it's not your right to get violent. Ever. Only in self-defense. What the hell happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"?
I never said it was counterprotester's "right" to intervene physically. I do argue it's in rare cases the right "right" to do.
My point is that if left unrestricted, free speech kills itself. Those who speak against it can end it without ever doing anything violent.
You can't wait for something illegal to intervene.
I'm not saying it's somehow "wrong" to have a 1st amendment style law as in the US - I'm saying it doesn't matter. When people speak against the open society and people's equal value, society will try to stop them. If it's in the law as in Germany then those that intervene have police uniform. When it's not law, those who intervene don't have police uniforms, and do formal "right" to do it.
Third option where nazis speak freely and people listen and then meet their opinions with their own? Not happening, anywhere.
> I don't know when in my lifetime liberals pulled this 180 on freedom of speech
When they collectively came to realize that the evidence doesn't support some of their most cherished beliefs, including black-slatism, and they could no longer prevail in open debate.
> Or it could, you know, not be met with force outside the law, because we live in a civil society where people are free to think independently and express themselves, and we have laws against assaulting people.
This is of course the ideal, and works in most situations. That doesn't work though. You can't reason with intolerance.
This is the age old paradox of tolerance: how can you be tolerant and not tolerate intolerance?
The answer is you cannot and must not. You must resist intolerance and those that seek to end the open society
Violence must as always be a last resort of course.
The notion that all speech is protected and all opinions can be listened to and met with other opinions is cute but unfortunately naive. I prefer non violent protest of course, but these are often violent people and if you deny them their platform there will undoubtedly be violence. It's an acceptable side effect, not a goal in itself.
Of course it's not a fact, it's a philosophical idea (originally by Popper?). And of course it's controversial, especially in the US where 100% freedom of speech is protected by the constitution. But it's not that far fetched to think that the options are nearly free speech forever, versus completely free speech for a while.
It does hinge on the premise that speech is such a powerful tool that it can be used to remove fundamental freedoms. That's also just a hypothesis.
>My whole life, liberals were so proud to declare that they defend their opposition's right to speech even though they don't agree with it. When did this change?
Most likely at some point the perception went from the danger being 'offense' or maybe delays in bettering society ("if we keep explaining how gay marriage hurts nobody and helps parts of society, people will eventually come around, just gotta keep arguing!") to the danger being literally people dying ("They killed 1 counter protester, injured 19 and marched past a synagogue, hurling anti-semitic slurs... What are they going to do next?")
I disagree, there are some huge practical differences actually. When government gets to decide what political views are not acceptable it results in:
* Potential abuse of this power by (elements of) the government to silence the opposition or hides mistakes;
* Police, army and secret services in time get very close ties with extremists, like it happened in Germany and many other European countries;
* Censorship is done by bureaucracy, and bureaucracy always tends to blindly apply the rules. There are many examples of how this is bad and dysfunctional (e.g. when Uncle Tom's Cabin book was banned for racism);
* These bans are really easy to circumvent, as can be seen all across Europe;
* By forcing extremists to hide their most notorious symbols, you actually make them less horrible and more acceptable to the general public, and it actually helps them to move into a mainstream and spread their ideas. Alt-right is much more dangerous than bat-shit crazy right, because (as we've seen in US recently) it will get traction much easier.
* You can ban nazi symbols, but it will not change a single idea in anyones head, these people will still believe in the same things as they do now.
* equally important: you create a bubble where bad things are boiling in the underground, but general public is not aware of this. Having nazis or KKK freely marching around is a reminder to the rest of people that this threat exists and that things are far from ideal for minorities. If it's the government's job to take care of this then people will leave it to the government, they'll not feel it's up to them to take active part in it.
* and the last, but also important: these people are citizens, with the same rights as anyone else. And with the need to be heard as anyone else. By silencing them you will push some of them into even more crazy extremism and you will give the whole movement the aura of the forbidden fruit, mystery and secrecy and that will make it more attractive to many, especially to teenagers. On the other hand, by letting them march around from time to time you channel that negative energy, they can't complain about being mistreated, and you keep them at bay and their influence marginal.
A violent reaction to speech you hate is unnecessary and corrupting. Only countering with persuasion based on reason and facts will stop the abyss from staring back into you.
> Perhaps it is time that spectrum licenses to mobile-phone companies be conditioned on their recipients providing freedoms for customers to use the apps of their choice.
Do google and apple have any spectrum licenses?
(ignoring that fact that you can install apps on android without needing googles consent)
> We also understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy. So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don't feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.
> Compare that to the response after a Muslim intentionally murders innocent people going about their daily routine. “We have to understand the conditions that lead these young men to do this.” “They lack job opportunities.” “This has nothing to do with Islam.” “Our military interventions are to blame.”
> Similarly, after false reports that a police officer has shot the proverbial “unarmed black man” and violent riots ensue, we are told that socio-economic or educational inequities are the reason. Most everyone sees through this, but the show must go on.
> A consistent theme becomes obvious–when non-whites commit crimes and even murder, the moral, enlightened thing to do is find out what bad thing white people did that caused their behavior. But when white people take to the streets as white people, unmitigated revulsion must be exhibited for all to see.
...
> But what keeps bubbling to the surface and ruining this fantasy is human nature. All people desire to live in communities and countries that reflect their identities, cultures, and histories. That feeling—not particular political or economic systems—is foundational. And so, like trying to keep two opposing magnets in close contact, non-stop effort has to be made in multiracial societies to keep natural forces of repulsion from winning out.
> But the grand diversity experiment in America is not just about seeing whether different racial and cultural groups can successfully coexist in the same country (history suggests they can’t); it is about denigrating white people and denying them a positive racial identity. The scope of this undertaking is striking–academia, media, entertainment, and politics are all saturated with various forms of white guilt and white shaming.
> The resentments engendered by this psychological abuse are made worse when they’re dismissed as paranoia, or when dissenters are diagnosed as being “scared of people who don’t look like them” or “filled with hate.”
> No people will tolerate this for long, and what we are seeing now is the inevitable blowback to decades of a one-sided culture war on white people.
The argument here isn't really whether Google has the right to censor free speech or not. It clearly does, the First Amendment only applies to the government.
The real issue here is how much control two companies have over nearly all of the country's computing. These devices are locked down to the point where Apple or Google choose what you can and can't do with your device, and give the user few ways around it (At least Android allows sideloading apps). Free computing will soon be dead.
The internet isn't as bad, but is headed in the same direction. Information is being increasingly consolidated into CDNs. While you can still host a server yourself, I fear that soon that will be dis-incentivized: Just look at Google AMP. Not to mention the shaky status of Net Neutrality at the moment.
None of this is illegal of course, private companies are free to do what they wish. However, the way things are heading is depressing.
> The argument here isn't really whether Google has the right to censor free speech or not. It clearly does, the First Amendment only applies to the government.
Mostly true but not completely true. Look up penumbral constitutional rights.
How is not allowing an app on either App Store preventing people from exercising their free speech? Why do you need an app at all? They could easily just build a website and call it day.
79 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] threadWe don't need public regulation of social media or app stores because we all have the opportunity to get our information and apps from other sources.
The experiment has survived two hundred years of bigotry, if it can't handle private companies choosing not to help racists it isn't worth continuing.
Where does it state that companies must allow free speech on their business property, or servers? It doesn't, it applies to GOVERNMENT entities and public lands/property.
If a Nazi steps foot on my PRIVATE property I can call the cops and charge with trespassing. Once they're on my property their freedom of Speech goes out the window. Same w/ google/fb et. al.
They're more than free to start their own google/fb/apple competitors and gain market share...but good luck with that.
That's the question that's being asked.
And you can say people can vote with their feet, but what about when "voting with your feet" means permanently and significantly extricating yourself from your family and friends?
> They're more than free to start their own google/fb/apple competitors and gain market share...but good luck with that.
That's exactly the point. Through network effects, these companies have achieved monopolistic market positions on how American citizens communicate with each other.
If we're going by spirit of the law (as we often do with the law out of necessity, especially as technology advances), then clearly the spirit of the first amendment did not intend to nullify itself in a hypothetical future where all communications were privately owned by a handful of corporations.
If the telecoms all decided to put in speech recognition software that automatically terminated phone calls when it detected negative sentiment toward a particular political group or initiative, would you defend that?
What if UPS and FedEx decided to do the same to letters, and return them all to sender or burn them? They have a right to burn letters that criticize their favored candidate, because you agreed to it in the EULA. Don't agree to the EULA? You don't get to receive Amazon packages anymore. Would you defend that?
You will always have freedom of speech in your home, and you can always choose a free platform to share your thoughts on, even if you have to build it yourself from open source software.
What you actually are describing is government driven tyranny. UPS and FedEx and Facebook have no direct commercial interest in censoring you. The reason they take any interest in your parcels and posts is because our government and our legal system has required them to. They have been made liable if they ship your letter bombs or share your hate speech.
If you are afraid of a society where all corporations restrict your rights in concert, you are actually afraid of an overarching government without limits that's stripped you of your rights and uses corporations to extend it's reach. There is actually a name for this type of government, they call it Socialism.
I think you're thinking more of Fascism:
Definition: Fascism is a way of ruling that advocates total control of the people. ... Fascism comes from the Latin fascio, meaning “bundle, or political group.” In fascism, the people are looked at as a bundle — one body that must be controlled by the government with absolute force.
You might think the US is far from that, but right now we are spending 36% of our GDP on federal, state and local government , and the remaining 64% is heavily regulated and controlled by the government. In fact, you can argue that the federal government already "owns" over 1/3 of all private businesses given it's right to 35% of all their profits.
Frankly, the slippery slope argument doesn't carry much weight with me here. Companies are choosing not to help literal swastika-wearing Nazis. No one's refusing to carry other non-extremist content, whether garden variety conservative pro-life or anti-gay-marriage messages, or liberal BLM or Antifa pages.
I'm a huge free speech supporter. I donate to EFF and the ACLU. And yet, I'm perfectly OK telling Nazis to go find their own Internet and please stay off mine.
(And to be clear, I don't mean "Nazi as in someone whose opinions I don't like", but "Nazi as in throwing a sieg heil salute and calling themselves Nazis".)
I disagree. First, Apple and Google are refusing to host a particular app in their stores. But on the subject of hosting, there many thousands of web hosts, many in places that probably wouldn't care about serving such content. The oppressed literal Nazis can pick any one of those, but I think it's ludicrous to expect that any particular provider should be expected to serve it. Even if they're big and popular. Maybe especially then.
Suppose Google were an Israeli company. I'd like to think we could all agree it would be unreasonable to call on them to demand they help disseminate literal Nazi content. Google and Apple aren't Israeli, but I don't think that makes it OK to insist they go along with it.
And ultimately neither company is saying that you can't go find that information on your own, even using the browsers they provide. They're just saying they're not going to cooperate to make it easier and more convenient. I can't think that's a bad thing.
Trump: Hold my beer
What does that have to do with googles decisions on community grooming? Do you disagree with the notion that googles appstore forms a (sort of) community with moderation (regardless of what one thinks about this exact moderation-action) where as the data an ISP delivers isn't a community?
Because if we accept that notion, then your comment seems to be a red herring.
If your retort is that these platforms are companies, then you have to apply the same reasoning to Comcast, Verizon, and many others that control the last mile. If CEOs of those companies also decide to engage in "community grooming", life could get very interesting.
Do you agree or disagree with the notion that the google play store or twitter have communities while ISP do not (and, according to net neutrality proponents: should not)? (At this point of the discussion: regardless of what you think of the specific community grooming actions taken)
Because if one side has communities and the other does not, then your comment is comparing apples to oranges. (in the context of net neutrality)
If the very same Nazis would have closed a private owned water suppliers water-pipe in the 40's for jews and exclaimed "There is always the well in the town and the river." could that be called discrimination?
This feels significantly different than refusing to register a domain, or even refusing to host objectionable content. As a user, I expect app stores to perform some sort of judgement about apps, and not simply allow any app that is not unlawful.
Nowhere in there does it say.. and by the way ALL corporations must ALSO allow freedom of speech. Their servers, their rules. The internet is about freedom and it goes both way -- you're free to say what you want and the site you post it to is free to remove that content if they deem it hurtful to others.
Freedom of speech can never be taken away by corporations. Open source software gives you the power to create your own platforms if none of the commercial ones meet your requirements.
I'm white, a mutt from Irish, German, and English stock, but white culture doesn't mean shit to me...now Irish, German, English culture--that actually means something. I'm sure there's probably some hispanic/indian could even be some african american.. I think a lot of racists would be surprised if they ever would ante up for a DNA test.
The former issue is almost impossible to discuss rationally at this point (which is understandable), whereas the latter strikes me as ultimately more important but also more complicated. Discussing them together makes everything more difficult...
I don't get how you could ever claim a private business should be forced to publish content they disagree with simply because they're a platform lots of people gravitate towards. You want to talk about erosion of rights? What next, scientific journals have to post bible passages alongside peer reviewed papers as a "counter-point"?
I'm not sure why you choose to 1) be antagonistic/hostile for no good reason, and 2) misinterpret my words, or worse, choose to put words in my mouth so you can go and be outraged about it.
It does seem like a good illustration of the point I was trying to make, though.
Either a country accepts this within its legal framework and has e.g hate speech laws (e.g Germany) or it doesn't (e.g US), but in the latter case as being "outside" the law - and it must be met with force outside the law.
There are benefits and drawbacks to both models (which is why both exist). But at the end of the day there is little practical difference between "if you carry a nazi flag you'll go to jail" and "if you carry a nazi flag you'll be punched in the face".
In both cases open society is judging and delivering the sentence.
The notion that all speech must be accepted and never met with violent protest is both unrealistic and dangerous.
So to get back on topic: 1st amendment protects the open society but doesn't function without an open society. Violent protestors at rallies and tech companies gagging fascists is what it needs, and not a problem.
Punching nazis won't convert them, so it's probably counter productive - but disturb their rally and there is a risk you'll be attacked. No need to throw the first punch, ever.
What intolerance gets you lumped into those you profess to want to starve to death by denying employment or means to a wage?
Easy to put supremacists in, but then if a person makes a comment at Evergreen, they are now in the racist group and can now be destroyed.
You mean who decides what is intolerant enough, and what isn't?
That's a judgment everyone must make. A difficult one. One with lots of room for mistakes and arbitrary decisions. Yet the lesser evil.
We cannot, cannot, cannot allow this to take root and grow. Everything thinks "it can't happen here", but it doesn't not-happen on its own. I don't want my grandkids asking "how did you try to stop them?", and having to answer "well, I very adamantly told them they were wrong but they didn't listen."
I am incredibly tolerant of diverse idea. I grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt, and now I live in the bluest of blue places. I have wonderful lifelong friends in both places (and lots of others) who I love as people but whose opinions infuriate me. That's OK! We talk about stuff and occasionally ruffle each other's feathers, but we get along just fine. I can argue both sides of gun control, abortion, and anarchism with clever friends for the fun of it. But what I can't tolerate is people in my America wearing, carrying, and acting out Nazi symbols in my backyard. That cannot be allowed to find fertile soil.
I've said this before but I want to be perfectly clear: I have an exceedingly tight definition of that term. I have never called someone that word because I disagree with them, no matter how important the matter to me or how ferociously I oppose their opinion. I'm referring specifically to people who show up at white power protests wearing the uniforms, carrying the flags, and throwing the salutes of the group my family fought to stop within my mom's lifetime.
That's not a slippery slope. It's perfectly possible - and reasonable, and good - to say "we'll allow people to speak abhorrent opinions" and still draw the line at literal Nazis.
You're making an ends justify the means argument. While I agree that less Nazism in America is better, using a bad means (intolerance, violence) to get to that end is unjustifiable. Even if it were justifiable, it is ineffective and actually strengthens their cause.
Why do you you think the fascists try to speak at Berkeley and other leftist institutions? To incite "de-platformers" to violence which reafffirms their message of victim hood and "opression," which emboldens their supporters and furthers their cause.
See the stances of ACLU and SPLC for smarter people than I making similar arguments.
Or it could, you know, not be met with force outside the law, because we live in a civil society where people are free to think independently and express themselves, and we have laws against assaulting people.
Call me crazy.
I don't know when in my lifetime liberals pulled this 180 on freedom of speech, but seriously, it's causing me to do the hardest 180 of MY life right the fuck into being a conservative after spending the first 30 years of my life as a liberal.
What you just wrote is one of the craziest things I've ever read. You're directly calling for and praising violence against people based on their ideas and beliefs and how they choose to non-violently express them. Just 10 years ago you'd be booed by every liberal in the nation and rightfully regarded as an anti-intellectual, a book burner, or a fascist.
My whole life, liberals were so proud to declare that they defend their opposition's right to speech even though they don't agree with it. When did this change?
When we grew up and realized that no, people really shouldn't be marching the street calling for genocide or calling for other groups to be treated as animals. When we realized it is bad to harass others, by surrounding them with torches and yelling racist slurs or by burning freaking crosses in someone else's yard.
When we realized that we don't actually want to spread hate and convince others to think the same.
This won't stop folks from thinking this or spreading it to some extent, but there isn't a reason we have to give them space in the public sphere, with marches on public roads obviously meant for everybody, regardless of background. Nor does an employer have any need to respect the right of their employee to spread hate, a web hosting service to host the websites, and other such things.
Another thing we've realized as we've grown up is that one cannot both protect freedom of speech like this and have any true means of actually overcoming it. This puts actual goals like equality and a more fair society at risk.
And above all, it changed when folks re-thought "Fuck Nazis and Fight them".
Of course, this is all just speaking from the top of my head and nothing in here is known fact without someone factchecking it, as I have not.
Trying to compromise with a nazi is like agreeing to putting a kitten in the blender at half speed instead of full speed. These aren't folks that reason and persuasion is working for, as they think they are reasonable.
But overall, they were fighting a greater evil compared to the times. It doesn't matter if their views are now considered outdated, they were doing the right thing for the time.
You can't change peoples minds by restricting their speech. Those people will always exist, some will change over time. In the mean time let them out themselves.
What I was getting at is that their platform is not guaranteed. They must be shut down, their speech drowned. Non-violent protest as long as possible, violent only as a last resort. But you don't let nazis speak and shrug and say "it's their right, let's hear them, try to convince them they are wrong".
This is precisely WHY we have freedom of speech as an absolute in this country. Because once you empower people to attack hate speech, the definition of "hate speech" will invariably be expanded and abused in ways that are totalitarian and fascistic, which is EXACTLY what we're seeing from the left today.
It's why every time I respond to people like you, they post openly and I'm forced to use a throwaway. It's reverse McCarthyism. You probably think that's progress too, but you didn't convert me or anybody else, you just made us go into hiding. But we can still vote while we're hiding.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I will vote for a thousand Trumps before I give up freedom of speech in America. If we don't have that in America then it's all for nothing. As long I keep reading this garbage from people on the left, I'll happily be a single-issue voter.
My point is that if left unrestricted, free speech kills itself. Those who speak against it can end it without ever doing anything violent.
You can't wait for something illegal to intervene.
I'm not saying it's somehow "wrong" to have a 1st amendment style law as in the US - I'm saying it doesn't matter. When people speak against the open society and people's equal value, society will try to stop them. If it's in the law as in Germany then those that intervene have police uniform. When it's not law, those who intervene don't have police uniforms, and do formal "right" to do it.
Third option where nazis speak freely and people listen and then meet their opinions with their own? Not happening, anywhere.
When they collectively came to realize that the evidence doesn't support some of their most cherished beliefs, including black-slatism, and they could no longer prevail in open debate.
This is of course the ideal, and works in most situations. That doesn't work though. You can't reason with intolerance.
This is the age old paradox of tolerance: how can you be tolerant and not tolerate intolerance?
The answer is you cannot and must not. You must resist intolerance and those that seek to end the open society
Violence must as always be a last resort of course.
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)
The notion that all speech is protected and all opinions can be listened to and met with other opinions is cute but unfortunately naive. I prefer non violent protest of course, but these are often violent people and if you deny them their platform there will undoubtedly be violence. It's an acceptable side effect, not a goal in itself.
It does hinge on the premise that speech is such a powerful tool that it can be used to remove fundamental freedoms. That's also just a hypothesis.
Most likely at some point the perception went from the danger being 'offense' or maybe delays in bettering society ("if we keep explaining how gay marriage hurts nobody and helps parts of society, people will eventually come around, just gotta keep arguing!") to the danger being literally people dying ("They killed 1 counter protester, injured 19 and marched past a synagogue, hurling anti-semitic slurs... What are they going to do next?")
* Potential abuse of this power by (elements of) the government to silence the opposition or hides mistakes;
* Police, army and secret services in time get very close ties with extremists, like it happened in Germany and many other European countries;
* Censorship is done by bureaucracy, and bureaucracy always tends to blindly apply the rules. There are many examples of how this is bad and dysfunctional (e.g. when Uncle Tom's Cabin book was banned for racism);
* These bans are really easy to circumvent, as can be seen all across Europe;
* By forcing extremists to hide their most notorious symbols, you actually make them less horrible and more acceptable to the general public, and it actually helps them to move into a mainstream and spread their ideas. Alt-right is much more dangerous than bat-shit crazy right, because (as we've seen in US recently) it will get traction much easier.
* You can ban nazi symbols, but it will not change a single idea in anyones head, these people will still believe in the same things as they do now.
* equally important: you create a bubble where bad things are boiling in the underground, but general public is not aware of this. Having nazis or KKK freely marching around is a reminder to the rest of people that this threat exists and that things are far from ideal for minorities. If it's the government's job to take care of this then people will leave it to the government, they'll not feel it's up to them to take active part in it.
* and the last, but also important: these people are citizens, with the same rights as anyone else. And with the need to be heard as anyone else. By silencing them you will push some of them into even more crazy extremism and you will give the whole movement the aura of the forbidden fruit, mystery and secrecy and that will make it more attractive to many, especially to teenagers. On the other hand, by letting them march around from time to time you channel that negative energy, they can't complain about being mistreated, and you keep them at bay and their influence marginal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Do google and apple have any spectrum licenses? (ignoring that fact that you can install apps on android without needing googles consent)
> We also understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy. So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don't feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.
The SoS telling foreigners how she will attack the free speech of the citizens she is supposed to representing.
> Compare that to the response after a Muslim intentionally murders innocent people going about their daily routine. “We have to understand the conditions that lead these young men to do this.” “They lack job opportunities.” “This has nothing to do with Islam.” “Our military interventions are to blame.”
> Similarly, after false reports that a police officer has shot the proverbial “unarmed black man” and violent riots ensue, we are told that socio-economic or educational inequities are the reason. Most everyone sees through this, but the show must go on.
> A consistent theme becomes obvious–when non-whites commit crimes and even murder, the moral, enlightened thing to do is find out what bad thing white people did that caused their behavior. But when white people take to the streets as white people, unmitigated revulsion must be exhibited for all to see.
...
> But what keeps bubbling to the surface and ruining this fantasy is human nature. All people desire to live in communities and countries that reflect their identities, cultures, and histories. That feeling—not particular political or economic systems—is foundational. And so, like trying to keep two opposing magnets in close contact, non-stop effort has to be made in multiracial societies to keep natural forces of repulsion from winning out.
> But the grand diversity experiment in America is not just about seeing whether different racial and cultural groups can successfully coexist in the same country (history suggests they can’t); it is about denigrating white people and denying them a positive racial identity. The scope of this undertaking is striking–academia, media, entertainment, and politics are all saturated with various forms of white guilt and white shaming.
> The resentments engendered by this psychological abuse are made worse when they’re dismissed as paranoia, or when dissenters are diagnosed as being “scared of people who don’t look like them” or “filled with hate.”
> No people will tolerate this for long, and what we are seeing now is the inevitable blowback to decades of a one-sided culture war on white people.
The real issue here is how much control two companies have over nearly all of the country's computing. These devices are locked down to the point where Apple or Google choose what you can and can't do with your device, and give the user few ways around it (At least Android allows sideloading apps). Free computing will soon be dead.
The internet isn't as bad, but is headed in the same direction. Information is being increasingly consolidated into CDNs. While you can still host a server yourself, I fear that soon that will be dis-incentivized: Just look at Google AMP. Not to mention the shaky status of Net Neutrality at the moment.
None of this is illegal of course, private companies are free to do what they wish. However, the way things are heading is depressing.
Mostly true but not completely true. Look up penumbral constitutional rights.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penumbra_(law)
2. https://journalism.ku.edu/cherry-picked-professor-studies-ho...