Comment by freen
2 months ago
How dumb does one have to be to fail to realize that kicking an asshole out of a party (read website/app/whatever) isn’t the government censoring you.
Xkcd covered this in detail, what a decade ago?
2 months ago
How dumb does one have to be to fail to realize that kicking an asshole out of a party (read website/app/whatever) isn’t the government censoring you.
Xkcd covered this in detail, what a decade ago?
I guess I'm pretty dumb cuz when I hear about the government asking Facebook to censor stuff and they do, sorry, when I hear about the government asking Facebook to kick someone they don't like out of the party because they're saying inconvenient things about the government and they do, it sounds like the government censorship.
FB was doing this on their own during covid, the government simply pointed FB towards content they found concerning w.r.t. public health policy during a global pandemic. FB then made their own calls for their content moderation policy
The general idea is that social media platforms especially at the scale of twitter and facebook are not private parties but public squares, in which free speech must be protected. I think this is obviously true, but there is of course the question of how exactly to draw the line between a large public square and a small private platform. There are many good possible answers.
It could be delimited by user count, by moderation style, by liability accepted (section 230 is frequently brought up as an option). In any case, if you think a billion user platform is a private party, you are plainly wrong.
It's a bit telling that you think a a 6 panel comic is "covering it in detail". If you want an even more simplified version of how this can go, free speech is a human right, and given that you're against free speech we can limit yours and make everyone happy. I'm more than happy to let people play by their own rules in this case.
That is a line pushed by the owners of these privately owned platforms.
But they really are not public squares. They are not publicly owned or managed in the best interests of the users. They are corporate money-making machines. Don't be fooled.
I agree that they are not publicly owned or managed decently, but regardless these are the large publicly available communications platforms that people use these days, in massive numbers. Therefore repressing speech here causes a violation of free speech. That is what's important. "But they are run like shit and against the user's interests" Doesn't somehow justify even more repression.
In a sense, what these companies invested into is capturing the public square, capturing speech, because controlling it allows profitable advert injection, manipulation and generic power. But their awful motives don't mean they were unsuccessful. They were, they have the public square now.
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Gonna hazard that if the above gets moderated/deleted, our new friend “eff-tagline” won’t complain that my freedom of speech is being impinged.
Yes, free speech advocates seem to lose enthusiasm for the freedom of speech they disagree with. Curious.
They never seem to be grumpy about spam getting deleted.
It’s always “why can’t I be mean to people without consequences?”
Or, “I should be able to be racist/ableist/discriminatory and you have to host my vitriol or else you are violating my freedom of speech, private company!!”
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A very good comic. But it would be even better and more accurate if it changed "the people" in
"It's just that the people listening think you're an asshole, and they're showing you the door."
to "the unelected multinational corporation". Anyway I'll go tell Human Rights Watch [1] that it's just free association in action and that if Palestinians want to have their stories heard they should just build their own competing media platform with global reach. And the EU Commission should also have a copy of that comic sent to them [2].
[1] https://text.hrw.org/news/2023/12/20/meta-systemic-censorshi...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/eu-energetically...
Unelected multinational corporation: still just a bunch of people.
A bar, or a music festival is also possibly an unelected multinational corporation. Still can kick people out.
I wonder, why can’t I go into the lobby of the Sony building in NYC and stand in my soapbox and rant about TimeCube?
Technically, my blog is run by an unelected multinational corporation… I guess when I delete spam, I’m censoring, right?
It’s just not that hard people.
Facebook is t the government.
Yes, if I kick someone out of my house for being a jerk, and if Google and Facebook globally censor a story, it's the same, because in both cases it's done by people. Thank you for this insightful contribution.
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I’m glad you’ve shared your opinion that “free speech” strictly refers to government censorship. I disagree.
You're free to disagree. But you're not free to force me or HN or anyone else to host your disagreement. To do so would be a violation of their free speech.
Would love to see votes of case law where individuals/people/conpanies have successfully sued/prosecuted/convicted for violating the first amendment rights of other people/entities/companies etc.
I bet spammers would love to argue that deleting their Facebook posts is a violation of their first amendment rights.