It is also completely ignoring, like most "free speech on social media" proponents do, the fact that what we're talking about is not only free speech, but also free reach, that is, the ability for the algorithms of the platform in question to amplify your "free speech" so that it reaches far more people than it otherwise would were you merely saying it out loud, in person, with your mouth, or publishing it on a regular website.
Due to the above, I am adamantly against "free speech" in the context of algorithm-driven social media, and I wish that people complaining about being censored on social media would stop using the term, because they're (knowingly or not) conflating two very different ideas.
There is, in principle, no difference between controlling what people are allowed to say and controlling what people are allowed to hear, including controlling any middlemen who are involved in propagating speech.
In the USSR, you could say what you wanted inside your own home, to your own family, but were you to speak it where others could hear it, or publish it so others could read and share it...
So, no, you are wrong: the ideas are not different at all, and if you are against one, you are against the other. You judge yourself to be worthy of deciding what others are allowed to hear. Would you allow me to judge what you are allowed to hear? If you would, I would feed you a steady diet of history and philosophy until you discarded such ideas, ideas which enabled much oppression and suffering in the 20th century.
I’m not saying we should control what people are allowed to hear, and even if I were, banning people from posting garbage on social media hardly rises to that level. I think you’ve got this part drastically wrong, but maybe I didn’t explain myself well enough, so I’m sorry for that.
I’m specifically against the amplification of radical content through profit-driven social media algorithms, which has no analogue in the 20th century or indeed any other time in human history. There is no historical or philosophical context that I’m aware of that you could share with me that would be equivalent.
This is what I mean by “free reach” — radical content keeps eyeballs on apps/websites, so it gets amplified so that shareholders can make more money via advertisements. The algorithms that do this need to be banned and/or heavily regulated, and until they are I am in favor of banning/silencing entities who use those algorithms to their advantage to spread dangerous content.
Any of the above-mentioned entities is free to post whatever content they want on their own sites, blogs, or social media that isn’t profit/algorithm-driven. Therefore, no “free speech” (ugh, again, I hate that term in this context) rights are lost, nor is anyone being deprived of the right to hear something.
They are propagating propaganda pieces in the very comment that you’re asking about their ignorance of these topics.
It isn’t that they don’t understand how disinformation and propaganda is powerful and problematic. It is that they actively want to push said propaganda and it is difficult to do so when you have pesky things like technology that can automatically fact check you.
That's bad but most of that takes place all the time with centralised media distributors. Its admittedly much worse on social media (for complex reasons), but censors probably aren't going to be much faster than community notes (unless you're happy with a lot of false positive censoring), and centralized government mandated censoring gives an incredibly dangerous amount of power to the censoring body that will inevitably be abused (swapping social media providers, while nontrivial is much easier than swapping government censoring bodies).
My hope is that eventually the people will develop habits such as distrusting any information without a clear chain of custody.
This is such a naive viewpoint. Are you completely unaware of how authoritarian governments falsely label things as "propaganda" or "misinformation" in order to promote their own narratives?
Seriously! And this is the comment that gets downvoted? Who is to say what is misinformation, the KGB? What has gone wrong in the past 30 years that we are pining to be like Soviet Russia was? Are we so historically ignorant of world history one generation previous that we don't understand the problem? Or are we so arrogant that we think we are qualified to decide what information other human beings should be allowed to have?
It is also completely ignoring, like most "free speech on social media" proponents do, the fact that what we're talking about is not only free speech, but also free reach, that is, the ability for the algorithms of the platform in question to amplify your "free speech" so that it reaches far more people than it otherwise would were you merely saying it out loud, in person, with your mouth, or publishing it on a regular website.
Due to the above, I am adamantly against "free speech" in the context of algorithm-driven social media, and I wish that people complaining about being censored on social media would stop using the term, because they're (knowingly or not) conflating two very different ideas.
There is, in principle, no difference between controlling what people are allowed to say and controlling what people are allowed to hear, including controlling any middlemen who are involved in propagating speech.
In the USSR, you could say what you wanted inside your own home, to your own family, but were you to speak it where others could hear it, or publish it so others could read and share it...
So, no, you are wrong: the ideas are not different at all, and if you are against one, you are against the other. You judge yourself to be worthy of deciding what others are allowed to hear. Would you allow me to judge what you are allowed to hear? If you would, I would feed you a steady diet of history and philosophy until you discarded such ideas, ideas which enabled much oppression and suffering in the 20th century.
I’m not saying we should control what people are allowed to hear, and even if I were, banning people from posting garbage on social media hardly rises to that level. I think you’ve got this part drastically wrong, but maybe I didn’t explain myself well enough, so I’m sorry for that.
I’m specifically against the amplification of radical content through profit-driven social media algorithms, which has no analogue in the 20th century or indeed any other time in human history. There is no historical or philosophical context that I’m aware of that you could share with me that would be equivalent.
This is what I mean by “free reach” — radical content keeps eyeballs on apps/websites, so it gets amplified so that shareholders can make more money via advertisements. The algorithms that do this need to be banned and/or heavily regulated, and until they are I am in favor of banning/silencing entities who use those algorithms to their advantage to spread dangerous content.
Any of the above-mentioned entities is free to post whatever content they want on their own sites, blogs, or social media that isn’t profit/algorithm-driven. Therefore, no “free speech” (ugh, again, I hate that term in this context) rights are lost, nor is anyone being deprived of the right to hear something.
They are propagating propaganda pieces in the very comment that you’re asking about their ignorance of these topics.
It isn’t that they don’t understand how disinformation and propaganda is powerful and problematic. It is that they actively want to push said propaganda and it is difficult to do so when you have pesky things like technology that can automatically fact check you.
That's bad but most of that takes place all the time with centralised media distributors. Its admittedly much worse on social media (for complex reasons), but censors probably aren't going to be much faster than community notes (unless you're happy with a lot of false positive censoring), and centralized government mandated censoring gives an incredibly dangerous amount of power to the censoring body that will inevitably be abused (swapping social media providers, while nontrivial is much easier than swapping government censoring bodies).
My hope is that eventually the people will develop habits such as distrusting any information without a clear chain of custody.
This is such a naive viewpoint. Are you completely unaware of how authoritarian governments falsely label things as "propaganda" or "misinformation" in order to promote their own narratives?
Seriously! And this is the comment that gets downvoted? Who is to say what is misinformation, the KGB? What has gone wrong in the past 30 years that we are pining to be like Soviet Russia was? Are we so historically ignorant of world history one generation previous that we don't understand the problem? Or are we so arrogant that we think we are qualified to decide what information other human beings should be allowed to have?