It's worth revisiting the Constitutional philosophy of separation of
church and state [0]. When technology became our new religion, it
prefigured the establishment of new churches. The five giant websites
that ministrate to all our earthly needs demand fresh Jeffersonian
ideas.
Y'know I thought that too, and even wrote a (I hope reasonably well
argued) piece on why people should not throw a religious mantle over
issues that can better be framed within rationalist secular ethics
[0]. But then I keep seeing more and more that scares me in people's
reactions to AI and what are clearly cult-like tendencies to submit
before the power of technology. The very conceit of "technological
determinism" [1] is already an abdication of reason. Check out
Techno-Theodicy, the relation between Silicon Valley, Cosmism and
transcendence, and the now old but very salient Andrew Kimbrell talk
on "Cold Evil" [2]. It always starts as " a stretch" and in the blink
of an eye it's "just accepted as the normal culture". I think it would
behove us well to at least recognise and address this.
It would be nice to see folks who take such a rigorous stance on the First and Second Amendments (not in this article, but in author’s book _Battlefield America_) adopt similarly rigorous and detailed readings of the other twenty-five.
See the historical notes under proposal and ratification, in particular the table of article revisions approved in 1789. The order of ratification was contingent on a series of historical accidents and has little to do with Madison’s (or any other individual founder’s) intentions.
The table "Approval of the Bill of Rights in Congress and the States" shows that the amendments are in the same order in the Bill of Rights as they were in Madison's original proposal, and all were ratified December 15, 1791.
Some of his proposals were removed, though, and one of those was resurrected two hundred years later.
What a disingenuous take - his web site is NOT social media, nor are the other examples you cite.
Your take is about as useful as the arguments that the only way to end racism is through noble bigotry (quotas, DEI, etc.)
If we wade past all the dramatic language like "tyranny" and "fascism" and "authoritarian intolerance", his main point appears to be:
> On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.
> In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.
This take ignores all the other ways "we" are able to speak whatever we want, online and offline. These corporate entities are not required to publish any old thing that their users want them to publish, and those users have other ways to get their messages out, if their message is not OK on those particular corporate platforms. If "we" were actually being "muzzled" the author wouldn't even be able to publish his article and get it onto HN.
So in your worldview, the only time the author can actually say what he's saying, is a situation where it's already impossible for him to say it at all.
I think you should consider the practical ramifications of the standard you're suggesting, even if you feel like in some abstract way it is correct.
Most tyranny relies on such pedantry, e.g., "you do have freedom of thought, just not the freedom to spread your harmful ideas!", this sentence makes complete sense, but in that example, in what useful sense do you have freedom of thought?
I don't really know what you're getting at here. Nobody is stopping anyone from saying things. If I want to say the sky is orange, I can write a post about it on my blog, send it out to my E-mail list, distribute it as a printed newsletter, write a book about it, or walk into town and tell people as I walk by them. Nobody is being muzzled.
What I don't have the right to do is force Platform X, Y, and Z to publish my speech on their platforms. Just like here. If I write something here that goes against HN's guidelines or if they just feel like moderating it away, they have the right to do it. They don't have to keep this post on their site. This is not tyranny.
There's a couple lines of argument to go down here, but to stick with the one I was already on, how many of those need to disappear before you're sufficiently satisfied that somebody is allowed to object to it?
>I don't have the right to do is force Platform X, Y, and Z to publish my speech
Everyone wants their speech to be favored, and everyone wants the speech of their opponents to be disfavored. Wanting these things does not mean you follow the principal of freedom of speech. Following the principal of freedom of speech means you choose not to favor your own speech or disfavor the speech of your opponents when you have ability to do so, and instead relying on the merit of your arguments to win a debate. The US government is generally seen as not favoring or disfavoring anyone's speech because it follows the principle of freedom of speech. The fact that the leading citizens of these United States choose to favor speech they agree with and disfavor speech they oppose on the social media platforms they control means that they themselves in fact do not believe in freedom of speech at all. This should, on its own, call into question the assumption that the government beholden to these leading citizens is in fact such a follower of the principal of freedom of speech as it claims to be.
Freedom of speech is irrevocably tied to how information actually spreads in a society. Inhibiting someone from accessing the superhighways of information is effectively suppressing their speech. In practise, if not in pedantic principle.
If you weren’t allowed to drive on the highway, but everywhere else, would your freedom of movement not be suppressed, to some degree?
If in North Korea they’d allow you to say whatever you want as long as you only shouted it from the top of a mountain when alone, or wrote it on a note and buried it in your backyard, would they have freedom of speech?
The disingenuous take is that somehow (e.g. common carrier, “public square,” other inscrutable nonsense) you have the right to publish things on someone else’s website. where does this idea — that just because some people are allowed to post some things, you must be allowed to post anything — come from?
Is this an equity argument? Is it an anti capitalism argument? An attack on property rights? Mere bellyaching? Aside from the false assumption that the platforms — and not the infrastructure — are common carriers, I can’t figure out why this became a thing.
I agree, the government should not have a role in influencing the content moderation policies of social media networks except for things that are strictly illegal.
It's depressing, though, because the only time people seem interested in this is when someone from the opposite political party is trying to influence content moderation policies.
If the Biden administration put undue pressure on social media companies, that's bad. If Donald Trump as president pressures Twitter to exempt him from their content moderation, that's also bad.
But you'll get very few people who will call out both things.
Sadly, almost nobody seems to care about the free speech of anyone except the people they agree with.
> Sadly, almost nobody seems to care about the free speech of anyone except the people they agree with.
It's at the forefront of public conversation right now because it's an emerging issue in the tech space, but we have a long rich history of free speech cases to look back on.
29 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 85.1 ms ] thread[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state
[0] https://techwrongs.org/2023/03/06/microsoft-is-not-a-religio...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_determinism
[2] https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/cold-evil-tec...
Unfortunately, since it's new to me, I can't provide any kind of reasoned reply, other than to send my thanks and a nice day.
EDIT: That said, I'll also check out your podcast.
See the historical notes under proposal and ratification, in particular the table of article revisions approved in 1789. The order of ratification was contingent on a series of historical accidents and has little to do with Madison’s (or any other individual founder’s) intentions.
Some of his proposals were removed, though, and one of those was resurrected two hundred years later.
> On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.
> In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.
This take ignores all the other ways "we" are able to speak whatever we want, online and offline. These corporate entities are not required to publish any old thing that their users want them to publish, and those users have other ways to get their messages out, if their message is not OK on those particular corporate platforms. If "we" were actually being "muzzled" the author wouldn't even be able to publish his article and get it onto HN.
I think you should consider the practical ramifications of the standard you're suggesting, even if you feel like in some abstract way it is correct.
Most tyranny relies on such pedantry, e.g., "you do have freedom of thought, just not the freedom to spread your harmful ideas!", this sentence makes complete sense, but in that example, in what useful sense do you have freedom of thought?
What I don't have the right to do is force Platform X, Y, and Z to publish my speech on their platforms. Just like here. If I write something here that goes against HN's guidelines or if they just feel like moderating it away, they have the right to do it. They don't have to keep this post on their site. This is not tyranny.
Everyone wants their speech to be favored, and everyone wants the speech of their opponents to be disfavored. Wanting these things does not mean you follow the principal of freedom of speech. Following the principal of freedom of speech means you choose not to favor your own speech or disfavor the speech of your opponents when you have ability to do so, and instead relying on the merit of your arguments to win a debate. The US government is generally seen as not favoring or disfavoring anyone's speech because it follows the principle of freedom of speech. The fact that the leading citizens of these United States choose to favor speech they agree with and disfavor speech they oppose on the social media platforms they control means that they themselves in fact do not believe in freedom of speech at all. This should, on its own, call into question the assumption that the government beholden to these leading citizens is in fact such a follower of the principal of freedom of speech as it claims to be.
If you weren’t allowed to drive on the highway, but everywhere else, would your freedom of movement not be suppressed, to some degree?
If in North Korea they’d allow you to say whatever you want as long as you only shouted it from the top of a mountain when alone, or wrote it on a note and buried it in your backyard, would they have freedom of speech?
Is this an equity argument? Is it an anti capitalism argument? An attack on property rights? Mere bellyaching? Aside from the false assumption that the platforms — and not the infrastructure — are common carriers, I can’t figure out why this became a thing.
It's depressing, though, because the only time people seem interested in this is when someone from the opposite political party is trying to influence content moderation policies.
If the Biden administration put undue pressure on social media companies, that's bad. If Donald Trump as president pressures Twitter to exempt him from their content moderation, that's also bad.
But you'll get very few people who will call out both things.
Sadly, almost nobody seems to care about the free speech of anyone except the people they agree with.
It's at the forefront of public conversation right now because it's an emerging issue in the tech space, but we have a long rich history of free speech cases to look back on.
https://rumble.com/v4fmjiu-mike-benz-part-2-how-the-departme...