Sometimes people repeat ideas without sufficient critical thought. That critical thought may well be due to lack of understanding around the subject which limits the ability for the person to review whether it is correct before spreading the information wider.
I think that some of this is because the news that we get from credible sources doesn't explain why they're credible (e.g. no sources). Consequently when we see news in the same form from other venues (which are less credible) they look and appear no different from the credible sources. My proposal here is that news sites should link and quote sources. Example: The Times (UK) quoting the UK Government on lockdown rules. The government web site is actually clearer in many cases, and people don't seem to know where to go to get the actual facts.
(I've not covered bias here either, but that's important).
Another issue that we have is that the experts that are used sometimes don't understand it either! I follow a Doctor (@curexcomplex on twitter) who is an expert immunologist and she often corrects those on news sites. I think that part of this is that when ideas are dumbed down so that a non expert can understand, some of the nuances or subtleties are lost. We can then have 'Chinese whispers' where non-experts then repeat information and the nuance or subtleties are further eroded.
I think that also we have a 'fast' news culture, where there's a level of 'coolness' of spreading news first. I think that means that we don't necessarily check things because we want to share that 'cool' story as fast as possible. I've done this myself and been corrected by peers (who are actually experts in Chemistry (the video was on chemistry) which I'm definitely not!)
Everyone thinks that they're above average. That means that they think that their view is valid. The opinion is equally valid but as a reliable source this is not directly related. For example, unless a Celebrity is a reliable source (a qualification in the subject would give credibility) on immunology we should call them out as such when they talk about vaccinations. For example we could say 'You don't have a high school qualification in Biology. Your credibility in areas relating to biology is therefore less than someone who has a degree in Biology. Your opinion will therefore get a lower weighting by default.'. That doesn't mean that their opinion is less important than anyone else's but their credibility on this subject is worse. I fear that most don't understand this concept. I think this is much like how in history we have primary sources and secondary sources. Maybe we ought to have a way to indicate if the person is a primary source or secondary source.
Lastly, I think that the news sites need to sell ads, so there is and incentive to publish stories quickly and less incentive to take extra time to confirm stories are correct. This is made worse because people have moved on by the time a correction is provided, and it is not shown with the same visibility. That means that the correction is not seen by the same number of people.
(One other thing; I think that folk need to be more humble about learning things when they don't know, and when people are factually wrong we should be happy to say that and to receive it. Obviously this needs adequate supporting evidence.)
Great answer. I did want to highlight the selling of ads as I believe this is the primary and largest reason behind influencing less informed masses to take unwarranted actions in a harmful 'us vs them' way. Engineered (human or otherwise) attention/action getting ads have given us clickbait, raigebait, and cross-sectional identity politics. I believe that without regulation on the beancounting ad algorithms that fight for attention this will continue and we will have even more extreme "us vs them" attitudes and fallouts in the future. How that is done, I have no idea, but cancel culture seems inherently wrong to me. Perhaps educational reform is the place to start and should focus on helping people be both open-minded and skeptical in their openminded-ness ie, switching from 'i'm right, they are wrong' to 'no one is right'. and from there, humbly rejecting objectively(scientifically) proven falsehoods and seeking to understand the fallacies we all fall victim to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
First, as always, we rely on authority to fill in our knowledge gaps for us. But the authority that we've come to trust has an estranged relationship with the truth.
Second, with widespread instant communication, you can choose to listen to just about anyone to trust as an authority. And with so many voices saying so many things (without vetting their own knowledge), you have your pick of the "facts" that you enjoy most.
I think the confusion stems from the fact that it should be illegal for a private business to censor someone. But that does not preclude the democratically created law from censoring someone, as interpreted by the judiciary.
The issue in the US has been that the executive and judiciary part of the state did nothing for four years.
As per the first sentence of the article: "Polish government wants to protect posts that do not break nation’s laws"
Here is one from the other side of the pond: Private entities setting up rules for their services and then enforcing those rules are not that controversial.
Actually, I am Dutch, but have lived in the UK and am now living in France. I agree that "freedom of speech" is less of an issue for the average European, than for an average American. But Angela Merkel for example critisized strongly the actions of Facebook, Twitter et al.
You may agree with private entities censoring now, because you disagree with the censored statements. What if the roles are reversed? What if Mark Zuckerberg runs for president and uses his platform to this end? What if whomever-you-disagree-with pays private entities to censor your newspaper / internet site?
Democratically defined censorship, enforced by the state is one thing (and already complicated). Censorship without all those guarantees is, IMHO, quite another.
> But Angela Merkel for example critisized strongly the actions of Facebook, Twitter et al.
If we’re talking about her recent comments, I think “strongly criticised” is a reach. The comments were essentially “Twitter was right to flag Trump's inaccurate tweets about the 2020 U.S. election, banning his account altogether was a step too far ... governments, not private companies, should decide on any limitations to freedom of speech”.
She missed the fact that freedom of speech in the US doesn’t protect incitement to violence, by law that was decided by the legislature.
But anyway, I do agree that there is a problem here, in that some corporations have way too much power. I would argue that the solution is that those corporations need to be regulated and broken up into smaller parts.
So, I think we need to do something about amazon, but in this case, we also needed to do something about parler, and now amazon did that for us.
The zuckerberg example: I would argue that in that scenario, it would be (at least) equally obvious that said regulations where needed. The difference would be that in that scenario, I would argue that zuckerberg was abusing his power, but with what's happening now, I don't think that amazon is abusing their power, (because I think that amazons reason is a valid one), but I still think that they shouldn't have that much power.
I'm a bit tired, but hopefully I'm still making some sense.
There is simply far too much content being created all the time for current judicial systems to keep up with. Much of the law breaking content out there is never pursued.
If we agree that greater censorship on social media is necessary, and if private companies aren't taking on the role of censor here, I think that suggests governments must become more active in their roles as censor. What would that look like and how would it work?
Well I suppose if I were put in power, and "only" had to apply the law (and not come up with censorship laws), the idea would be focus my effort to have the maximum effect.
So perhaps not focus on an individual Twitter account with 10 followers, but do focus on influencers, media or politicians with 10's or 100's of thousands of followers.
That's still a hairy prospect, because - justly - we are weary of censoring policitians. But if they are breaking the law, they are breaking the law (or we have to change the laws). And start with the few cases that are the most likely to be convicted. Those cases will then set precedent, be reported on in the press, and hopefully help society refind a path to legal discourse.
A bit like we do with almost all other crimes really. For exemple, when people started flaunting COVID restrictions, we did not hire thousands more officers to enforce the law. We prosecuted the most willful cases, and reported about them in the press.
Isn't this a relatively censorship-free time compared to, say, the 60s? If I wanted to spread some nonsense, I had to get approval from a publisher or editor or radio or TV station that would allow me to put it out there.
Now, anyone can say anything for all to see, with the occasional purging of public forums. You can't argue that there's no censorship, but I certainly argue that there's much less.
Have we always been proclaiming that free speech is being eroded, or is this merely a product of our time?
My broader view is that the society at large is woefully under-educated for dealing with the new complexities of life. Most educational systems I know of don't really teach critical thinking, evaluation of sources, dealing with biased accounts etc.
Censorship of the worst lies is justified as something like "we know better that these are lies, so we'll hide the content from those who don't", and in some sense this does send shivers down your spine. The long-term solution must be that an average person can do the evaluation for themselves.
The funny thing is, who would Twitter care more about? Polish government anti-censorship, or wider corporate governance issues vis-a-vis its shareholders and US regulators? I know where I'd put my money.
Plus, who is to decide what content is violating the country's laws? Surely not courts - they would be inundated with every little petty hate comment or reference to Nazis. So it will have to be the platform anyway. And incitement to violence, hate, racial discrimination etc. are already illegal in Poland, so Twitter could go on banning whatever they like.
The government would like the enforcement of these laws to be very selective, but as said, in practice, it won't be the up to the government to say what is and what isn't legal content.
I'm not sure this is a right move considering Poland's gov is among the most authoritarian in the West. On the other hand Merkel have said that Trumps Twitter ban is problematic. There is no silver bullet here.
Yes, people need to know the motivations - the current polish government basically won the election on spreading hoaxes on social media (Facebook) and heavily polarizing the population on LGBTI, migrant wave, abortion laws and other topics.
This is absurd. Twitter etc are private companies and can do what they want wrt their user's accounts. If they don't want their far-right politicians getting censored, then they can ban those platforms from the country completely. As the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
of course, you can always create your own social platform, and then if some hosting company decides to ban you, you can always create your own, and have own internet as well right?
Time to go to Neocities? I know they're a company subject to the same laws of the countries in which they operate but it seems like a suggestion to go back to that (which I've seen Linux-y Youtubers suggest) but it's an old method of solution to a different problem Geocities was set up to solve.
Surely then it is much simpler/cheaper to ban fascists and delete content that incites violence?
Unless of course... you aren't really a social platform, and what you really want to be is a fascism platform. Parler pretending to be social media is transparent as glass. There's a fabricated narrative that "right wing ideas" are being censored which is simply untrue. Twitter does not care if you post that you think healthcare should be private. But Twitter obviously does care when people start spreading objectively false information with the express aim of inciting violence.
Twitter can cease offering service in Poland if they don’t like it.
Poland has (wisely) decided social media is like telephones and you can’t stop providing service because of what customers say, as long as it is legal. Good for them.
Poland is a sovereign country — Twitter doesn’t get to tell them how to act. That’s “tail wags dog”.
Social media companies blatantly exerted themselves as political entities — and now they’re facing “common carrier” regulation from existing political entities who don’t like that.
Again, if Twitter is uncomfortable being a common carrier for Polish social media — they’re free to exit the market and offer their services elsewhere.
This is a naive argument: the "X is a private company and can do anything they want" is completely wrong when you can affect hundreds of millions of people with a few click through your platform.
Once a company can affect X million+ people they become a direct manipulator of societal/democratic opinion.
Poland is a country. They aren't responsible for upholding US law. They can do what they want to companies that decide to operate in Poland. Not only can they have their cake and eat it too, they will - unless said companies stop operating there.
once suppose the polish politician says something that is not allowed in other countries, so for example facebook has to delete it. but in poland it must not be "censored". what should happen then?
i think smaller companys will have start geo/ip blocking countries then. great.
well, we're already there. For example according to the Ukranian laws the Crimea is a part of Ukraine and according to the Russian laws - part of Russia, and you really don't want to violate those very politically sensitive laws in either country, so:
ok. This is basically what I said, so it seems like I did not explain it well enough.
It's like what Google did in China. They did not want to agree to the censorship terms imposed by the Chinese government so they stopped operating there. (It looks like they are reversing course on this now and may release a censored version soon, but that is neither here nor there)
The Polish government cannot make Twitter do something it does not want to and still permit it to operate in the country. They will have to ban it outright if Twitter does not agree to their terms.
No, this is absurd. So you would let all media companies censor someone "because they don't like him"?
The only reason you trust private media companies is because they are supposed to be as neutral as possible, not political.
If not neutral, then perhaps society should start treating them for what they really are - private political machines.
Furthermore censorship is stupid. You might like it when it's Trump getting censored, but you wont be laughing once the censorship comes back and hits you. Free speech fuck yes.
Public entities have no obligation to be neutral, in fact quite the opposite: many political parties and labor unions are public entities, and their non-neutrality is the main reason for their existence.
This comment is beyond ridiculous. Private American corporations are not above law or democratically elected governments. This is not any different than GDPR or other regulations.
I think the difference is that unlike spoiled American "Bernie Sanders voter"-generation, Polish people still remember what it's like to live under a far-left censorship and simply do not want to experience that again.
No one has been banned from Twitter for being black, or jewish.
You see now how absurd that argument is?
If you go into a restaurant and start screaming at people that the election was rigged, or waving a nazi flag, or telling everyone they should storm the kitchen to demand gluten free pasta, they will kick you the fuck out.
A restaurant is a private company and if a customer is abusive and they don't want to serve them they can completely do it.
The argument is not absurd, it only has its limitations and is not absolute. You have shown one of the limitations: Discrimination based on identity is one of them.
Having been born a black or a jew (at least for the genetics) is not.
Edit: more generally, this is something you are vs something you did. The latter is widely considered as acceptable criterion for revoking your privileges or rights.
That something is voluntary is irrelevant. It's a question of harm. If some group of people were to have green skin, and green skin emitted deadly substances on its own, then this would be involuntary. Should you ban such people from bars, etc?
Taking a wider interpretation of the harm principle:
Discriminating people for what they are (deadly skin emissions aside; I challenge you to come up with a real-world example) doesn't feel fair, neither to those who are being discriminated against nor the population in general. Unfair constructs in the society are likely to cause overall harm in the long term (if nothing else, the society is unlikely to extract the full potential of those who feel unjustly treated by it). So you'd have to have some benefits that are greater (or greater harm avoided) than the likely harm to justify causing that harm.
So voluntaryness is not irrelevant, with a footnote that there might exist a case where it needs to be weighted against other factors.
Alexandria, Virginia had a whites only bar until sometime in the mid 2000s.
There was no state law against racial discrimination and the bar only used local products so didn’t engage in interstate commerce.
You see, unless we specifically make laws to protect a class of people, private companies will discriminate on that basis.
I guess the question here is do we want to make “people who lie and spread disinformation about important matters” into a protected class. As if is now, we barely discriminate against them. You have to lie for 4 solid months, culminating in a violent riot against the central government before any private entity will ban you.
The recent big tech actions call for regulation.
The main question is, who is responsible for the content published in specific mediums - users or platforms?
If they put themselves in a position of publishers, then they should fall under specific laws accordingly.
They can do what they want because that's the law, if the Polish government change the law then they can't. In the US there are also laws regarding discrimination based on race or gender or whatever and private companies must abide by those laws, so it is not that far fetched. The only thing the Polish government add is disallowing discrimination based on opinion and dealing with criminal speech by going to the police, not by being the court and executioner.
One of the reasons why laws actually even exist is to limit the freedom of private actors to do what they want.
You, I and many others actually cannot do whatever we want, even on our own property.
It is true that the software world isn't used to the same level of regulation as manufacturing or agriculture, so the idea of application of, say, antitrust laws to digital giants seems unusual to software people.
Not only ironic, also hypocritical: they are proposing to make it illegal to censor views that don't break Polish laws, while replacing a halo with a rainbow in a photo of an icon does break Polish laws, because it "offends religious sentiment", so it could (and probably also should, if you ask them) be censored.
Not really. What constitutes free speech is always qualified, so that's a fantastical argument. In this case, Poland has blasphemy laws (and btw, even Strasbourg allows for these under the margin of appreciation).
In principle, this move shifts decisions from private global corporate power brokers to national representative government. Facebook and Twitter are private, but they've become so powerful and influential that they function like utilities used for communication. It is better to subject these platforms to laws that can be checked by representative government than to the whims of tech oligarchs.
It's still hypocritical to peddle this bill as "protecting freedom of speech" when it is in fact about "who defines what speech deserves freedom".
Unsurprisingly the "who" above is the proponents of the bill and, as the OP notes, they don't exactly have a track record of protecting free speech which makes it even more hypocritical.
You claim to value something but you are not maximalist, therefore there are exceptions you tolerate.
A demagogue that doesn't value it at all but he/she confronts you about your imperfection and demands to you to be a maximalist or you are a corrupt lier and claims that he/she would totally be maximalist about it.
You accept that you are a "fraud" so you oblige to the demand of this person and the value you claim to hold is now a value of someone who doesn't value it at all.
When you transfer the power accept that the demagogue has higher moral ground, the demagogue can drop the claim and do it's own thing.
A good example is Turkey's Erdogan. He was banned from politics but he suddenly decided that will of the people is the highest priority, he was a flaming democrat and he was right that it's not right to ban him from politics. With the pressure from EU and USA his right were restored and Democracy began to flourish in Turkey up until he had enough power to not to have to deal with this.
Fast forward today, He actually tried to steal elections(made the elections canceled, then he lost again with higher margin then proceeded to remove power from the office he lost) and whoever seeks support from EU or USA is labeled as traitor.
It's simply sad that the trick works so well everywhere.
Good. Social media sites have for far too long avoided liability for the content on their site by saying they're just platforms, whilst selectively censoring like a publisher. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
All I see lately is people conflating the right to free speech with the right to be heard.
Free speech means that you can't be put in jail for something you say. That's it.
But nobody has an entitlement to be amplified. That's not a right. Nobody has the right to unfettered access to someone else's platform. That's never, ever been the case. You never had the right to edit the front page of a newspaper that you don't own, you don't have the right to set up a platform in the middle of some company's office to talk about your crazy ass theory, and you don't have the right to spew malicious, bad-faith shit into a twitter thread.
Interesting. In India a comedian was arrested (still is) for making a joke which he didn't crack. Some people wanted to make a joke of the system by a false complaint and guess what, the police is supporting a false claim instead of letting the accused go. So much for free speech. Literally the guy didnt say something and he is being arrested for that
Because people don't understand? Because people don't read? I don't know. Why would people keep failing to make the distinction between "free speech" and "consequence free speech"?
Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech. This is well defined in the case of the US 1st amendment: it has zero implication on private entities.
Edit to add:
So in the example case, the US President has been banned from Twitter. People are claiming he's been "censored" by twitter. The government has done nothing to stop him saying whatever the fuck he wants, on national television even.
The hypocrisy on this topic by right wingers is pretty crazy when you think about it: Apparently a baker can refuse to make a cake because he can't sleep at night if two dudes kiss, but a social media platform can't stop someone from posting violence inciting messages on their website?
> Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech.
While this is mostly technically true, unique aspects of the law in the US compared to other countries makes this false for practical purposes.
For example, labor protection laws in other countries protect employees from retaliation for their speech: a company is usually only allowed to fire employees for cause related to their employment. Private speech unrelated to my employer wouldn't suffice in the country I live in. Effectively, this means my employer cannot censor me.
A standard retaliatory consequence for disapproval of speech that people seek in the USA on the other hand is to have a person fired.
Your argument about employment falls down because the law doesn't prevent them from reacting to things you do.
If you go on TV and call the CEO a pig fucker, I guarantee you will face some consequences.
If you go on TV and call the President or Prime Minister a pig fucker, you may also face consequences from your employer, but the government (in countries where a concept of free speech applies) can't do shit about you saying that. They may decide to look more closely at your tax filings, or immigration status, or what have you.
The biggest chilling factor to speech in the USA is that your employer will fire you because a mob decides you said something wrong. This cannot happen in the country I live. That I could make my employment grievances public and this would give reason to my employer to terminate me with cause is irrelevant to the fact that my employer cannot fire me for wrongspeak on facebook.
Edit: of course I can still feel social consequences since my colleagues can make it very clear they disagree with me or find my view abominable.
That's an indication that the US needs to fix their laws about wrongful termination. It's unrelated to "censorship".
Of note, the current president and the party that nominated him, many of whom are complaining about this current situation, is in favour of "at will" hiring, whereby a person can be fired without reason.
I agree they need to fix their laws, but this is censorship.
Punishing people for their speech with the intention of suppressing other people from speaking is censorship and the people that do it are would-be censors. That is what the statement of chilling effect means. Instead of harassing librarians until the librarians burn books, the censors nowadays harass employers until they fire the speakers.
They're not making the distinction because there isn't one.
Speech can have all sorts of consequences, from losing a friendship to being imprisoned or executed. "Consequences" are a spectrum, and you're simply drawing the line in a different place to other people.
> Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech.
This is a bold claim without any evidence. Certainly it's not the understanding that I grew up with, but I had the good fortune to have a history teacher who liked JS Mill.
I see open debate as part of a healthy society. I value the ability to hear perspectives other than my own. That's what "freedom of speech" means to me, not the narrow, American legal definition.
> The hypocrisy on this topic by right wingers is pretty crazy when you think about it.
I fully agree, and I'm not interested in emulating their hypocrisy.
> This is a bold claim without any evidence. Certainly it's not the understanding that I grew up with, but I had the good fortune to have a history teacher who liked JS Mill.
What are you talking about? It doesn’t matter who your history teacher is, the entire concept of free speech is about not locking people up for what they say.
That said, here in Australia we actually don’t even have a legally protected right to free speech. We don’t even have a bill of rights. And while I support the right to say anything without being punished by the government, I definitely don’t think that people should be able to broadcast a political message without doing the hard yards of actually, you know, telling the truth and formulating a reasonable argument.
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. [1]
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient."Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. [2]
I am confident that my teacher was correct. Mill even shows up in the first article :)
> That said, here in Australia we actually don’t even have a legally protected right to free speech.
Yes, in countries that inherited the UK's common law system it is rarer for rights to be explicitly iterated. This only adds to the absurdity of claiming that "freedom of speech" is a purely legal concept, mind you.
> I see open debate as part of a healthy society. I value the ability to hear perspectives other than my own. That's what "freedom of speech" means to me
I don't think this open debate you're talking about actually happens much on social media. At least, outside of a few select Subreddits, I've very rarely seen it.
It's similar to when "human rights" is brought up.
There is no exact immutable universal definition, especially when it comes to edge cases and specifics. It varies across cultures, jurisdictions, and time.
Freedom from some consequences, yes, but it's secondary. The primary meaning is the ability to say things to the public.
In the Soviet bloc all media were state controlled and even xerox machines and typewriters were tightly controlled. It was non-trivial to even publish something (not to say there weren't consequences).
I’m not being pedantic at all. Free speech - both the idea and the law - are about freedom to say what you like without interference from the government. That’s it.
I don’t know the name of the concept which says that companies should be forced by the government to let anyone use their platform to spread their lies, but it’s not “freedom of speech”.
You're only seeing a straw man version of the view opposing yours.
Claiming to have a right to use a telephone isn't a demand to be heard, it is a demand to let a person talk to people that want to hear them. People blocking a number because they don't want to hear from it is another story. While some people are demanding the right to speak, most defenders aren't demanding the right to be heard, those people are demanding the right to hear something.
Yes, the company may be facilitating communication is doesn't approve of, but it isn't amplifying it. The amplification with social media occurs because people that want to hear the message tell other people that want to hear the message about it and it is so easy to go out and hear the message. Telephone companies helped facilitate organization of all kinds of odious things, but rarely is it suggested that the phone companies should deny access.
Censorship is equivalent to the censor telling people, "Because we don't like the message, we won't let you hear this message."
The debate is on how necessary social media is to our communications and how reasonable it is to deny access. That is, how similar is it to a telephone or mail.
It’s not legal, and you don’t have the right, to threaten or harass or people over the phone. There are all sorts of laws about your conduct over a phone. Owning a phone isn’t a constitutional right. And a phone doesn’t amplify your voice - you can only call one person at a time.
I accept your point that people want to hear the message. But that’s irrelevant. There is no legal or historical basis for forcing a company to give someone a platform.
You might not agree with that in principal, but the legal argument is about the right to speak without being punished, not the right to be heard.
There are directly legal and historical bases for forcing companies to give someone a "platform" to speak, as I have already stated: telephones, mail, and public forums.
The debate is about how much social media resembles those communication media and how much of the philosophy of treatment in one situation is transferable from one context to another.
You cannot disentangle the right to speak from the right to listen, and that is why so many people are frustrated: their ability to listen to their chosen speaker was taken away from them. Which is my only point (having not given my opinion on where I stand): accusing opposition as demanding to be heard and have their voice amplified is uncharitable and misunderstands the extent of the debate.
Unless you believe so strongly about FOS that you'd object to it in all counts, eg ISIL recruitment material and propeganda, then your argument is really about whether these Trump accounts have crossed a line of legitimacy, not FOS. If they're involved in pushing for armed, violent insurrection against the US government, then give one credible argument for why you'd defend them, but not ISIL doing the same.
Well farewell to any hacker news readers in Poland. That is, unless the administrators are willing to restore any comment here at the whim of a foreign court.
> Censorship of free speech, which is the domain of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is now returning in the form of a new, commercial mechanism to combat those who think differently.
As terrible as PiS are for other reasons, Morawiecki has a point here, although I don't see he is standing by this point consistently when it comes to, e.g., those who "think differently" about sexuality.
The fact that PiS is terrible is clear indication that they have a bad agenda behind this move.
In some countries, it is illegal to promote racist speech, or to call for violent actions, etc. These countries define a limit to free speech. Morawiecki would call these limits censorship of free speech, but these are not.
Moreover, anyone crossing these limits may be sued in court. No such things with FB / Twitter ban. This makes Mariewki's statement even more pointless.
Say what you want, but I'm not a fan of what the Polish government is doing overall. Feels like they are moving away from democracy. When will the EU say enough is enough?
And by doing that you allow a competitor to emerge.
You are free to do that, however note that there are more than enough companies willing to jump at the opportunity...
That is a simple arithmetic question: Which results in higher operating expenses, the loss of a minor market or the increased liability imposed by that market?
If you wonder what exactly they want to protect, [1] is the recent ruling of a Polish court. As of Jan 12th, publicly saying that "gay people are perverts" is fine as far as Polish law is concerned.
Yes exactly. Typical far right / extremists tactic, disguise their discourses as well accepted democratic ones. They say they want to protect free speech, etc, but in fact are only pushing for their own definition of free speech and will be very quick at banning any other speech that are not according to their views/laws.
As opposed to left-wing/progressive tactics of lumping half the country in with one particular group of rioters (ignoring the violent riots that progressives have encouraged all summer) and then trying to completely eliminate any speech that does not agree with their woke agenda. Got it. Thanks for posting your balanced viewpoint.
Ad hominem much? And yes, why shouldn't someone have the right to say that? Under natural law theory, same sex attraction is gravely disordered, and indulging that attraction by engaging in an active gay lifestyle is perverse and self-destructive. That some people want to silence traditional views is revealing. Instead of counterargument, you see totalitarian attempts to silence people, in this case Catholics, though one not need be a Catholic to hold this view. The presumption that such criticism must come from a place of contempt shows a profound misunderstanding of the nature of love (the willing of the true good of the other), conflating it with the scandalous encouragement of self-destructive behavior. Regardless, let us suppose such remarks show contempt. Then by that definition, the rabidly anti-clerical and Church-hating Jacobins on the left are the pot calling the kettle black.
Under natural law theory, same sex attraction is gravely disordered, and indulging that attraction by engaging in an active gay lifestyle is perverse and self-destructive.
You're claiming a natural law that doesn't exist. Even lions on the African savannah have been documented to engage in same-sex sexual acts. Worse, you're using that imagined "law" to disparage a whole class of people that do not fit your imagined world order. Even worse, you're then claiming that you should have the right to disparage these other people, and that not being allowed to spread your intolerance is somehow equal to you not tolerating these other people. And to top it off, in order to justify your position, you're claiming a universal concept (love), giving it your own spin, and claiming that any other interpretation than yours is invalid.
So let me give you a counterexample: the Ancient Greeks had four main words for love: eros, philia, storge, agape. The latter one has been narrowed by Thomas Aquinas into the definition you just gave, but even in the language of the Bible, that does not preclude the other instances of love.
So please, get off your high horse and stop imposing your narrow worldview on the rest of us.
Let's not act surprised here, it was only natural it would come to this, and I expect other countries to follow suit.
If the (still current) president of the world's largest power can be silenced, then just how easily can Jack Dorsey silence a president of a country like let's say Moldavia... I'm not arguing if someone is a bad person or good person, just stating the obvious POV one might get looking at the status quo.
And for the classical comments here on HN about how it is "their platform" and they can choose what they want to, do not forget that the platform needs to play by the government's rule, not the other way...
Exactly. Let's have US companies be ruled by US laws. But then, should Poland ban Twitter? Who's censoring who?
The move here is only pushed by bad political agenda. If the move would come from EU, it would be much more neutral and more protective of civil rights and freedom, which is not what Poland wants here.
While I strongly disagree with social media censorship and I think a lot it is politically motivated, I do recognise that they probably should have the legal right to censor content.
Where I personally get far more uncomfortable is with the payment processors. When you have a companies like MasterCard banning donations from all republicans who take a certain political positions (objecting to the electoral vote in this case) then something needs to be done.
If Twitter censors you it is possible to move to another platform, or even create your own, but if Visa and Master card ban you, what exactly do you do?
To some extent I feel similar about core AWS services. I think people probably should have a some legal right to basic internet services. I understand it's possible to build your own internet infrastructure as Gab has proven, but it's very difficult for the average person to do what Gab did. As an individual I could move to another social media platform, but if my web hosts bans me I wouldn't have the resources to host my own website which seems wrong given how important the internet is to us as a utility today.
IMO social media censorship, while an important conversation to have, isn't the primary conservation. This would be far less of an issue if alternative platforms like Gab and Parler weren't constantly under attack by monopolies which provide core services like payment processing and core internet services. The fact a company like Gab has had resort to accepting cash in the post for PRO membership for simply trying to protect its users right to free speech online is a complete failure of regulation IMO.
Politics aside this is an interesting situation in that social media companies have forever sought special protections based on the claimed impossibility of their moderating user content - turns out they can moderate content just fine when they want to, so maybe it’s time for their special protections to end, and for them to be responsible for their content.
You can blame Twitter for shattering the myth since they keep broadcasting the number of accounts they are suspending and hash tags they are banning, at this point it’s impossible to backtrack and say it’s too hard to do - and if Twitter can do it then it’s hard for any of the other giants to say they can not.
I’m betting in future we’ll see these companies held to the same standards that newspapers, tv, and radio are held to today.
Deleting one guy's account requires much less moderating resources than evaluating each post of an army of bots. So this particular case doesn't prove anything about their moderation capabilities. Yes, they COULD technically look at each and every account and each and every post, but I can't imagine any entity, private or not, having the resources to do so. Which leaves us to the manual banning (irregular, mostly high profile = low hanging fruit) or AI based solutions (and we know already how good they work)
So I've been reading everybody's comments as this comes up about five times a day now and did a little research [1] and the following is what I've come up with for these platforms:
- They must censor what's illegal
- They may censor what violates TOS
- They may not censor what is not illegal and does not violate TOS
I think breaking these rules would automatically convert you from a platform to a publisher and you'd have to follow whatever those rules are. Spam handling would have to be part of the TOS. I'm looking for feedback. What would be the problem with this? Doesn't it seem fair?
I haven't thought about it much but I wonder if this would also work for cancelling contracts/refusal of service but that's a whole other topic.
You're missing the part where "what's illegal" varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. No international platform can simultaneously comply with points 1 and 3 everywhere in the world.
I'm not missing that poiny but my post is. What is presented would have to vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Good point to bring up though, especially for we who wouod have to implement it.
By bringing national law to bear on Facebook, Twitter, etc. in such a vivid way, it sets a precedent that other countries will follow (like EU members). Now, because contradictions b/w any two bodies of law may come into existence, this will lead to blocks of countries that share a similar body of laws regarding speech meaning greater accommodation and less censorship. If there is a high degree of disagreement, however, there may be a good number of such blocks which means decentralization of social media. So either these companies face increased regulation, or they will be force to retreat from global dominance.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadSometimes people repeat ideas without sufficient critical thought. That critical thought may well be due to lack of understanding around the subject which limits the ability for the person to review whether it is correct before spreading the information wider.
I think that some of this is because the news that we get from credible sources doesn't explain why they're credible (e.g. no sources). Consequently when we see news in the same form from other venues (which are less credible) they look and appear no different from the credible sources. My proposal here is that news sites should link and quote sources. Example: The Times (UK) quoting the UK Government on lockdown rules. The government web site is actually clearer in many cases, and people don't seem to know where to go to get the actual facts.
(I've not covered bias here either, but that's important).
Another issue that we have is that the experts that are used sometimes don't understand it either! I follow a Doctor (@curexcomplex on twitter) who is an expert immunologist and she often corrects those on news sites. I think that part of this is that when ideas are dumbed down so that a non expert can understand, some of the nuances or subtleties are lost. We can then have 'Chinese whispers' where non-experts then repeat information and the nuance or subtleties are further eroded.
I think that also we have a 'fast' news culture, where there's a level of 'coolness' of spreading news first. I think that means that we don't necessarily check things because we want to share that 'cool' story as fast as possible. I've done this myself and been corrected by peers (who are actually experts in Chemistry (the video was on chemistry) which I'm definitely not!)
Everyone thinks that they're above average. That means that they think that their view is valid. The opinion is equally valid but as a reliable source this is not directly related. For example, unless a Celebrity is a reliable source (a qualification in the subject would give credibility) on immunology we should call them out as such when they talk about vaccinations. For example we could say 'You don't have a high school qualification in Biology. Your credibility in areas relating to biology is therefore less than someone who has a degree in Biology. Your opinion will therefore get a lower weighting by default.'. That doesn't mean that their opinion is less important than anyone else's but their credibility on this subject is worse. I fear that most don't understand this concept. I think this is much like how in history we have primary sources and secondary sources. Maybe we ought to have a way to indicate if the person is a primary source or secondary source.
Lastly, I think that the news sites need to sell ads, so there is and incentive to publish stories quickly and less incentive to take extra time to confirm stories are correct. This is made worse because people have moved on by the time a correction is provided, and it is not shown with the same visibility. That means that the correction is not seen by the same number of people.
(One other thing; I think that folk need to be more humble about learning things when they don't know, and when people are factually wrong we should be happy to say that and to receive it. Obviously this needs adequate supporting evidence.)
Edit: grammar
Second, with widespread instant communication, you can choose to listen to just about anyone to trust as an authority. And with so many voices saying so many things (without vetting their own knowledge), you have your pick of the "facts" that you enjoy most.
The issue in the US has been that the executive and judiciary part of the state did nothing for four years.
As per the first sentence of the article: "Polish government wants to protect posts that do not break nation’s laws"
Putting the words "the fact that" in front of your opinion on a nuanced and controversial topic does not -- in fact -- make it a fact.
What I tried to say was that the controversy about private entities censoring other private entities should be relatively small.
That does indeed not diminish the fact that the state censoring someone is more complicated, I agree.
Here is one from the other side of the pond: Private entities setting up rules for their services and then enforcing those rules are not that controversial.
You may agree with private entities censoring now, because you disagree with the censored statements. What if the roles are reversed? What if Mark Zuckerberg runs for president and uses his platform to this end? What if whomever-you-disagree-with pays private entities to censor your newspaper / internet site?
Democratically defined censorship, enforced by the state is one thing (and already complicated). Censorship without all those guarantees is, IMHO, quite another.
If we’re talking about her recent comments, I think “strongly criticised” is a reach. The comments were essentially “Twitter was right to flag Trump's inaccurate tweets about the 2020 U.S. election, banning his account altogether was a step too far ... governments, not private companies, should decide on any limitations to freedom of speech”.
She missed the fact that freedom of speech in the US doesn’t protect incitement to violence, by law that was decided by the legislature.
https://www.ft.com/content/6146b352-6b40-48ef-b10b-a34ad585b...
But anyway, I do agree that there is a problem here, in that some corporations have way too much power. I would argue that the solution is that those corporations need to be regulated and broken up into smaller parts.
So, I think we need to do something about amazon, but in this case, we also needed to do something about parler, and now amazon did that for us.
The zuckerberg example: I would argue that in that scenario, it would be (at least) equally obvious that said regulations where needed. The difference would be that in that scenario, I would argue that zuckerberg was abusing his power, but with what's happening now, I don't think that amazon is abusing their power, (because I think that amazons reason is a valid one), but I still think that they shouldn't have that much power.
I'm a bit tired, but hopefully I'm still making some sense.
If we agree that greater censorship on social media is necessary, and if private companies aren't taking on the role of censor here, I think that suggests governments must become more active in their roles as censor. What would that look like and how would it work?
So perhaps not focus on an individual Twitter account with 10 followers, but do focus on influencers, media or politicians with 10's or 100's of thousands of followers.
That's still a hairy prospect, because - justly - we are weary of censoring policitians. But if they are breaking the law, they are breaking the law (or we have to change the laws). And start with the few cases that are the most likely to be convicted. Those cases will then set precedent, be reported on in the press, and hopefully help society refind a path to legal discourse.
A bit like we do with almost all other crimes really. For exemple, when people started flaunting COVID restrictions, we did not hire thousands more officers to enforce the law. We prosecuted the most willful cases, and reported about them in the press.
and the solution of course is "censorship will be increased until free speech and democracy improves".
Now, anyone can say anything for all to see, with the occasional purging of public forums. You can't argue that there's no censorship, but I certainly argue that there's much less.
Have we always been proclaiming that free speech is being eroded, or is this merely a product of our time?
Censorship of the worst lies is justified as something like "we know better that these are lies, so we'll hide the content from those who don't", and in some sense this does send shivers down your spine. The long-term solution must be that an average person can do the evaluation for themselves.
Plus, who is to decide what content is violating the country's laws? Surely not courts - they would be inundated with every little petty hate comment or reference to Nazis. So it will have to be the platform anyway. And incitement to violence, hate, racial discrimination etc. are already illegal in Poland, so Twitter could go on banning whatever they like.
The government would like the enforcement of these laws to be very selective, but as said, in practice, it won't be the up to the government to say what is and what isn't legal content.
This wouldn't have affected Twitter at all, who banned Trump for posting illegal incitements to violence.
Ironically, this would have hit Parler, the site that moderated lefties and people who posted pictures of poop, the hardest.
Unless of course... you aren't really a social platform, and what you really want to be is a fascism platform. Parler pretending to be social media is transparent as glass. There's a fabricated narrative that "right wing ideas" are being censored which is simply untrue. Twitter does not care if you post that you think healthcare should be private. But Twitter obviously does care when people start spreading objectively false information with the express aim of inciting violence.
Poland has (wisely) decided social media is like telephones and you can’t stop providing service because of what customers say, as long as it is legal. Good for them.
Poland is a sovereign country — Twitter doesn’t get to tell them how to act. That’s “tail wags dog”.
Social media companies blatantly exerted themselves as political entities — and now they’re facing “common carrier” regulation from existing political entities who don’t like that.
Again, if Twitter is uncomfortable being a common carrier for Polish social media — they’re free to exit the market and offer their services elsewhere.
Once a company can affect X million+ people they become a direct manipulator of societal/democratic opinion.
Can they do that without leaving the EU?
So far, they've mostly been messing around with environmental rulings, etc. not so much fundamental freedoms.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/12/302337754...
"Google Maps Displays Crimean Border Differently In Russia, U.S."
It's like what Google did in China. They did not want to agree to the censorship terms imposed by the Chinese government so they stopped operating there. (It looks like they are reversing course on this now and may release a censored version soon, but that is neither here nor there)
The Polish government cannot make Twitter do something it does not want to and still permit it to operate in the country. They will have to ban it outright if Twitter does not agree to their terms.
What Twitter wants is irrelevant if it's not within what the local government wants. There's nothing absurd about that.
The only reason you trust private media companies is because they are supposed to be as neutral as possible, not political. If not neutral, then perhaps society should start treating them for what they really are - private political machines.
Furthermore censorship is stupid. You might like it when it's Trump getting censored, but you wont be laughing once the censorship comes back and hits you. Free speech fuck yes.
I am european and I have the exact opposite view:
Public entities are supposed to be neutral, private ones are not.
I disagree. :)
I think the difference is that unlike spoiled American "Bernie Sanders voter"-generation, Polish people still remember what it's like to live under a far-left censorship and simply do not want to experience that again.
You see now how absurd that argument is?
No one has been banned from Twitter for being black, or jewish.
You see now how absurd that argument is?
If you go into a restaurant and start screaming at people that the election was rigged, or waving a nazi flag, or telling everyone they should storm the kitchen to demand gluten free pasta, they will kick you the fuck out.
And what makes it so? The law, I presume?
If so, then "censoring a user" is equally a crime, because this Polish law says so.
The argument is not absurd, it only has its limitations and is not absolute. You have shown one of the limitations: Discrimination based on identity is one of them.
Having been born a black or a jew (at least for the genetics) is not.
Edit: more generally, this is something you are vs something you did. The latter is widely considered as acceptable criterion for revoking your privileges or rights.
Discriminating people for what they are (deadly skin emissions aside; I challenge you to come up with a real-world example) doesn't feel fair, neither to those who are being discriminated against nor the population in general. Unfair constructs in the society are likely to cause overall harm in the long term (if nothing else, the society is unlikely to extract the full potential of those who feel unjustly treated by it). So you'd have to have some benefits that are greater (or greater harm avoided) than the likely harm to justify causing that harm.
So voluntaryness is not irrelevant, with a footnote that there might exist a case where it needs to be weighted against other factors.
Nobody is saying anybody should be banned/blocked for who they are - just for what they say.
e.g. Similar to the "gay cake" case (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-45789759). Issue isn't that the customer was gay, the issue was the bakers didn't want to make this particular cake for anybody.
There was no state law against racial discrimination and the bar only used local products so didn’t engage in interstate commerce.
You see, unless we specifically make laws to protect a class of people, private companies will discriminate on that basis.
I guess the question here is do we want to make “people who lie and spread disinformation about important matters” into a protected class. As if is now, we barely discriminate against them. You have to lie for 4 solid months, culminating in a violent riot against the central government before any private entity will ban you.
If they put themselves in a position of publishers, then they should fall under specific laws accordingly.
You, I and many others actually cannot do whatever we want, even on our own property.
It is true that the software world isn't used to the same level of regulation as manufacturing or agriculture, so the idea of application of, say, antitrust laws to digital giants seems unusual to software people.
I can see how there could be bias in determining what is lawful, but that's not hypocrisy.
Yeah, that’s been really hypocritical.
In principle, this move shifts decisions from private global corporate power brokers to national representative government. Facebook and Twitter are private, but they've become so powerful and influential that they function like utilities used for communication. It is better to subject these platforms to laws that can be checked by representative government than to the whims of tech oligarchs.
> “[...]” wrote the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, on Facebook earlier this week, [...]. “There can be no consent to censorship.”
This is consistent only if censorship does not include removing illegal speech, which I don't think is a very widespread definition.
Unsurprisingly the "who" above is the proponents of the bill and, as the OP notes, they don't exactly have a track record of protecting free speech which makes it even more hypocritical.
You claim to value something but you are not maximalist, therefore there are exceptions you tolerate.
A demagogue that doesn't value it at all but he/she confronts you about your imperfection and demands to you to be a maximalist or you are a corrupt lier and claims that he/she would totally be maximalist about it.
You accept that you are a "fraud" so you oblige to the demand of this person and the value you claim to hold is now a value of someone who doesn't value it at all.
When you transfer the power accept that the demagogue has higher moral ground, the demagogue can drop the claim and do it's own thing.
A good example is Turkey's Erdogan. He was banned from politics but he suddenly decided that will of the people is the highest priority, he was a flaming democrat and he was right that it's not right to ban him from politics. With the pressure from EU and USA his right were restored and Democracy began to flourish in Turkey up until he had enough power to not to have to deal with this.
Fast forward today, He actually tried to steal elections(made the elections canceled, then he lost again with higher margin then proceeded to remove power from the office he lost) and whoever seeks support from EU or USA is labeled as traitor.
It's simply sad that the trick works so well everywhere.
Free speech means that you can't be put in jail for something you say. That's it.
But nobody has an entitlement to be amplified. That's not a right. Nobody has the right to unfettered access to someone else's platform. That's never, ever been the case. You never had the right to edit the front page of a newspaper that you don't own, you don't have the right to set up a platform in the middle of some company's office to talk about your crazy ass theory, and you don't have the right to spew malicious, bad-faith shit into a twitter thread.
/rant
Freedom of speech, whatever your take on it, is by definition freedom from some consequences. The argument is over which consequences are acceptable.
Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech. This is well defined in the case of the US 1st amendment: it has zero implication on private entities.
Edit to add:
So in the example case, the US President has been banned from Twitter. People are claiming he's been "censored" by twitter. The government has done nothing to stop him saying whatever the fuck he wants, on national television even.
The hypocrisy on this topic by right wingers is pretty crazy when you think about it: Apparently a baker can refuse to make a cake because he can't sleep at night if two dudes kiss, but a social media platform can't stop someone from posting violence inciting messages on their website?
While this is mostly technically true, unique aspects of the law in the US compared to other countries makes this false for practical purposes.
For example, labor protection laws in other countries protect employees from retaliation for their speech: a company is usually only allowed to fire employees for cause related to their employment. Private speech unrelated to my employer wouldn't suffice in the country I live in. Effectively, this means my employer cannot censor me.
A standard retaliatory consequence for disapproval of speech that people seek in the USA on the other hand is to have a person fired.
If you go on TV and call the CEO a pig fucker, I guarantee you will face some consequences.
If you go on TV and call the President or Prime Minister a pig fucker, you may also face consequences from your employer, but the government (in countries where a concept of free speech applies) can't do shit about you saying that. They may decide to look more closely at your tax filings, or immigration status, or what have you.
The biggest chilling factor to speech in the USA is that your employer will fire you because a mob decides you said something wrong. This cannot happen in the country I live. That I could make my employment grievances public and this would give reason to my employer to terminate me with cause is irrelevant to the fact that my employer cannot fire me for wrongspeak on facebook.
Edit: of course I can still feel social consequences since my colleagues can make it very clear they disagree with me or find my view abominable.
Of note, the current president and the party that nominated him, many of whom are complaining about this current situation, is in favour of "at will" hiring, whereby a person can be fired without reason.
Punishing people for their speech with the intention of suppressing other people from speaking is censorship and the people that do it are would-be censors. That is what the statement of chilling effect means. Instead of harassing librarians until the librarians burn books, the censors nowadays harass employers until they fire the speakers.
Speech can have all sorts of consequences, from losing a friendship to being imprisoned or executed. "Consequences" are a spectrum, and you're simply drawing the line in a different place to other people.
> Free Speech is, in most societies considered to be a concept that applies to the government's ability to censor people's speech.
This is a bold claim without any evidence. Certainly it's not the understanding that I grew up with, but I had the good fortune to have a history teacher who liked JS Mill.
I see open debate as part of a healthy society. I value the ability to hear perspectives other than my own. That's what "freedom of speech" means to me, not the narrow, American legal definition.
> The hypocrisy on this topic by right wingers is pretty crazy when you think about it.
I fully agree, and I'm not interested in emulating their hypocrisy.
What are you talking about? It doesn’t matter who your history teacher is, the entire concept of free speech is about not locking people up for what they say.
That said, here in Australia we actually don’t even have a legally protected right to free speech. We don’t even have a bill of rights. And while I support the right to say anything without being punished by the government, I definitely don’t think that people should be able to broadcast a political message without doing the hard yards of actually, you know, telling the truth and formulating a reasonable argument.
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient."Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
I am confident that my teacher was correct. Mill even shows up in the first article :)
> That said, here in Australia we actually don’t even have a legally protected right to free speech.
Yes, in countries that inherited the UK's common law system it is rarer for rights to be explicitly iterated. This only adds to the absurdity of claiming that "freedom of speech" is a purely legal concept, mind you.
I don't think this open debate you're talking about actually happens much on social media. At least, outside of a few select Subreddits, I've very rarely seen it.
There is no exact immutable universal definition, especially when it comes to edge cases and specifics. It varies across cultures, jurisdictions, and time.
In the Soviet bloc all media were state controlled and even xerox machines and typewriters were tightly controlled. It was non-trivial to even publish something (not to say there weren't consequences).
I don’t know the name of the concept which says that companies should be forced by the government to let anyone use their platform to spread their lies, but it’s not “freedom of speech”.
Assuming the person being censored is a liar helps your argument, but it doesn't really line up with reality at all.
Claiming to have a right to use a telephone isn't a demand to be heard, it is a demand to let a person talk to people that want to hear them. People blocking a number because they don't want to hear from it is another story. While some people are demanding the right to speak, most defenders aren't demanding the right to be heard, those people are demanding the right to hear something.
Yes, the company may be facilitating communication is doesn't approve of, but it isn't amplifying it. The amplification with social media occurs because people that want to hear the message tell other people that want to hear the message about it and it is so easy to go out and hear the message. Telephone companies helped facilitate organization of all kinds of odious things, but rarely is it suggested that the phone companies should deny access.
Censorship is equivalent to the censor telling people, "Because we don't like the message, we won't let you hear this message."
The debate is on how necessary social media is to our communications and how reasonable it is to deny access. That is, how similar is it to a telephone or mail.
I accept your point that people want to hear the message. But that’s irrelevant. There is no legal or historical basis for forcing a company to give someone a platform.
You might not agree with that in principal, but the legal argument is about the right to speak without being punished, not the right to be heard.
The debate is about how much social media resembles those communication media and how much of the philosophy of treatment in one situation is transferable from one context to another.
You cannot disentangle the right to speak from the right to listen, and that is why so many people are frustrated: their ability to listen to their chosen speaker was taken away from them. Which is my only point (having not given my opinion on where I stand): accusing opposition as demanding to be heard and have their voice amplified is uncharitable and misunderstands the extent of the debate.
As terrible as PiS are for other reasons, Morawiecki has a point here, although I don't see he is standing by this point consistently when it comes to, e.g., those who "think differently" about sexuality.
In some countries, it is illegal to promote racist speech, or to call for violent actions, etc. These countries define a limit to free speech. Morawiecki would call these limits censorship of free speech, but these are not.
Moreover, anyone crossing these limits may be sued in court. No such things with FB / Twitter ban. This makes Mariewki's statement even more pointless.
[0] Background in English: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/polish-activis...
[1]The ruling (Polish only): https://oko.press/kaja-godek-wygrala-w-sadzie-zboczency/
You're claiming a natural law that doesn't exist. Even lions on the African savannah have been documented to engage in same-sex sexual acts. Worse, you're using that imagined "law" to disparage a whole class of people that do not fit your imagined world order. Even worse, you're then claiming that you should have the right to disparage these other people, and that not being allowed to spread your intolerance is somehow equal to you not tolerating these other people. And to top it off, in order to justify your position, you're claiming a universal concept (love), giving it your own spin, and claiming that any other interpretation than yours is invalid.
So let me give you a counterexample: the Ancient Greeks had four main words for love: eros, philia, storge, agape. The latter one has been narrowed by Thomas Aquinas into the definition you just gave, but even in the language of the Bible, that does not preclude the other instances of love.
So please, get off your high horse and stop imposing your narrow worldview on the rest of us.
If the (still current) president of the world's largest power can be silenced, then just how easily can Jack Dorsey silence a president of a country like let's say Moldavia... I'm not arguing if someone is a bad person or good person, just stating the obvious POV one might get looking at the status quo.
And for the classical comments here on HN about how it is "their platform" and they can choose what they want to, do not forget that the platform needs to play by the government's rule, not the other way...
The move here is only pushed by bad political agenda. If the move would come from EU, it would be much more neutral and more protective of civil rights and freedom, which is not what Poland wants here.
Where I personally get far more uncomfortable is with the payment processors. When you have a companies like MasterCard banning donations from all republicans who take a certain political positions (objecting to the electoral vote in this case) then something needs to be done.
If Twitter censors you it is possible to move to another platform, or even create your own, but if Visa and Master card ban you, what exactly do you do?
To some extent I feel similar about core AWS services. I think people probably should have a some legal right to basic internet services. I understand it's possible to build your own internet infrastructure as Gab has proven, but it's very difficult for the average person to do what Gab did. As an individual I could move to another social media platform, but if my web hosts bans me I wouldn't have the resources to host my own website which seems wrong given how important the internet is to us as a utility today.
IMO social media censorship, while an important conversation to have, isn't the primary conservation. This would be far less of an issue if alternative platforms like Gab and Parler weren't constantly under attack by monopolies which provide core services like payment processing and core internet services. The fact a company like Gab has had resort to accepting cash in the post for PRO membership for simply trying to protect its users right to free speech online is a complete failure of regulation IMO.
You can blame Twitter for shattering the myth since they keep broadcasting the number of accounts they are suspending and hash tags they are banning, at this point it’s impossible to backtrack and say it’s too hard to do - and if Twitter can do it then it’s hard for any of the other giants to say they can not.
I’m betting in future we’ll see these companies held to the same standards that newspapers, tv, and radio are held to today.
- They must censor what's illegal
- They may censor what violates TOS
- They may not censor what is not illegal and does not violate TOS
I think breaking these rules would automatically convert you from a platform to a publisher and you'd have to follow whatever those rules are. Spam handling would have to be part of the TOS. I'm looking for feedback. What would be the problem with this? Doesn't it seem fair?
I haven't thought about it much but I wonder if this would also work for cancelling contracts/refusal of service but that's a whole other topic.
1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/