Comment by dilap
8 years ago
In China, when you post a politically unacceptable idea on a social media site, it is removed by a state censor. In the US, when you post a politically unacceptable idea on a social media site, it is removed by corporate censors or allied groups like the SPLC.
I'm not sure I see a huge difference, in practice.
"But if you don't like Twitter's policies, you can just make your own app." Sure, like Gab, which was subsequently banned from both the Google and Apple app stores for not itself censoring. Not a lot of breathing room when the modern communication mediums are dominated by a duopoly.
But that's all tangential to my point, which was referring to the cultural appreciation of free speech.
It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when site's like Twitter claimed to be strong supporters of speech as both a principle and a practical reality to strive for.
Nowadays, the more common attitude is, "if we allow people to speak freely, they will spread conspiracy theories, fake news, and hateful thoughts harmful to society, so these ideas must be suppressed."
In just a few years, the zeitgeist has gone from valuing free speech as one of our most cherished ideals to valuing social cohesion as the most important good.
Pretty crazy.
And given that the corporations have bought the Government, it is really VERY similar to what is happening in China.
How to jump the shark on Hacker News: compare a private US corporation who has ample competition to communist China, where people are literally imprisoned for posting "politically-unacceptable ideas".
I can understand that an app may be more convenient to use, but needing to use the website instead of an app seems pretty different than having no place at all to post the messsages that most users do not want on Twitter.
That's a fair point -- and it's great the web exists. Super-awesome, open platform. We're really lucky to have it, and here in the US, in a raw, uncensored form. Frickin' awesome.
But from a tech/convenience perspective, the web is pretty...janky. Native apps are where it's at. And those have centralized gatekeepers with absolutely no freedom of expression.
It's not just conservative-ish stuff like Gab that gets hit. Another example is Apple refusing to accept an app that sent notifications when the US assassinated people via drone strikes. I think this does real damage to the polity; this is an important political message that cannot be delivered by the most salient medium because of corporate censorship.
And in the artistic or gaming realm, there's all sorts of "adult themed" stuff that'll get you rejected from the store. It's like a return to the 50s before the various Ferlinghetti obscenity trials.
Do you think the app-equivalent of Lolita or Howl or the Tropic of Cancer of even American Psycho would ever make it onto the app store today? Highly unlikely.
(Maybe you don't think apps are as important as books, but I think they will be.)
(And again, more generally, the interesting thing is we seem to have rapidly culturally shifted, where many people value the desire to be protected from disruptive speech more than the freedom to speak without disruption.)
the web is pretty...janky. Native apps are where it's at. And those have centralized gatekeepers with absolutely no freedom of expression
Sure, the web is pretty janky now, but it's the future (if we have one for apps). Native apps are doomed. Progressive web apps are catching up fast, and the good ones are already providing a more seamless experience, particularly on mobile, than native apps can. Ask yourself, how many users now, on average, install new apps on their device from an app store?
And your example of Apple, while true, only puts a fine point on this. What developer wants to write 3 different apps instead of just one that works across all platforms? And Steve Jobs knew this and pushed devs to build iPhone apps using standard web technologies.
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Sounds more like an antitrust issue than a censorship issue to me. My local grocery store doesn't carry Daily Stormer magazine, but I doubt that'd be cast as "corporate censorship" by anyone.
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The only thing that's "Pretty crazy" is this idea that giving free reign to the Nazis and the trolls represents an "embrace of free speech." Americans really don't understand their own history. Free speech has nothing to do with letting the most vile elements of society and hostile foreign nations deploy bots to spread as much hate and fear as possible.
I think the key change here is how completely radicalized even the mainstream has become. This popular defense of actual neo-Nazis would be unthinkable even just 20 years ago. But now we see the power of common interests (ending all immigration) and the terminal logic of "the enemy of my enemy."
Here, learn some history.
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-sp...