Been following this, was kind of put off replying by the ranting, good to know that's been resolved.

In response to the general principles, I suspect this is an entirely new area of law that still needs to be thrashed out.

I'm also not entirely sure the only division is government vs private, there can also be non-government but not private. Example here in the UK would be the BBC. While it is the "state broadcaster" it is effectively at "arms length" from the government, it operates under a Royal Charter and its income comes from a license fee paid by every television owner, which is separate and ring-fenced from general taxation, and hence out of the control of the Treasury. Which means that a government can't apply direct pressure by threatening to cut funding, as they could if it was a direct government agency.

Broadcast media here has, by law, to be impartial. Newspapers can and do have biases and political agendas. But broadcast media, because of the directness with which it enters people's homes, has always been tightly regulated. Now to an extent the state broadcaster will always have a slight bias towards whoever is in government at any given time, but given the never-ending complaints of bias from all sides of the political divides, it seems to manage a reasonable job of being mostly impartial.

There are also private broadcasters funded by advertising, but those also are required, by law, to be impartial. Mostly it works.

Now, as to the Twitter question - the issue isn't specifically to do with size or page views or suchlike, but rather with "power in the community". And I've no idea how one would attempt to measure that. By the time random posts on a network are affecting billion dollar share movements it's a bit late to realise that something needs regulating.

The Internet has changed the entire nature of media and idea consumption and use. In the days of TV and print media only a relatively few people could control information flow, now, anyone can literally say anything - even in China there are limits to how effective censorship can be, as the recent anti-lockdown protests have proved. They can effectively suppress all mention of what happened in 1989, because that's a specific event with specific terms and words that can be blocked / auto-deleted. But when something entirely new erupts, tens of thousands, possibly millions of people will have seen it before anyone has reacted fast enough to shut it down.

If Twitter really is a town square, then I suppose the real question is who should be allowed in, and who should be banned from it - and of course how do you even attempt to enforce that. I'm sure security-minded people could come up with all kinds of ways to register and verify people based on passports or other ID documents, but try and impose that and all that will happen is everyone will jump ship to a no-ID-required alternative that's hosted in South Korea or the Falkland Islands, and run out of Bermuda, or Lagos, or Finland, or Vietnam - far beyond the reach of US law. Or the Chinese fund the development of some new super-Twitter-killer run out of nations in Africa.

So at the moment, I'm not sure there is a solution.

Yeah, I think National Public Radio here in the states is similar. The details are different, but I think it's the same general principle.


Yeah, this is the type of thing I was referring to earlier. I don't know why so many people seem to think that things must always be terrible (partisan media, profiteering health care, etc. etc. etc.) when there are other places in the world that have proven otherwise.


Right. But, still, better late than never.


So I'm not actually terribly worried about alternatives popping up, for the same reason that I'm not convinced that "competition" will solve any problems with moderation. That idea sounds good in theory and works well on paper, but it doesn't tend to work in practice. Twitter is (was?) Twitter not because of its format or its code but because of the people who happened to use it in the specific ways that they did. You could develop an exact replica of the software, but unless you can also transplant the same user base, it won't be the same. As soon as Group A moves to Competitor X and Group B moves to Competitor Y, the magic is gone, both competitors are likely to go under, and both groups are likely to become digitally homeless.

For the same reasons, I wouldn't expect most users to abandon Twitter even if Twitter started to enforce stricter ID rules. As a comparative case in point, note that Facebook did not experience any kind of mass exodus after it required people to use their real names. I mean, if you got really draconian, then I guess people might leave. But it'd have to be really extreme.

Still, that leaves the question of how it could actually work. My honest answer is that I don't know, because I'm not a security expert. But Twitter already does (...or did, anyway) make efforts to delete accounts that they identified as being state-sponsored disinformation outlets, not to mention people guilty of harassment and the like. So they must have had some methods for doing so. And whatever those methods are, presumably they can be codified and refined over time.

Freedom of Speech is one of the most important freedoms of all.
Daily, we read of dozens of countries where you will be jailed, tortured, or worse if you speak out against authority.
But, all freedoms also carry a responsibility.
Freedom of speech carries with it a responsibility to remain within the law, to be truthful, to be factual, and to be considerate towards others.
When these responsibilities are ignored, then the value of Free Speech is diminished.
I agree completely that websites should curtail those who abuse their freedom.
I live in Europe, so I am not completely familiar with all the arguments posted here.
But I fear for the future of democracy in America if people there can not agree on what is lawful, on what is truthful or factual, and where abuse of others seems to count for more than good manners.
Peter

Well said Peter.

I look at it as a small group of hate filled fearmongering people trying to destabilize and overthrow a democratic nation by pushing the limits of a right granted to us by the very nation that they are trying to overthrow. I can sum it all up in America as "Everybody has rights except everyone else."

You can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater but that's exactly the point they are trying to destroy... to them, they can because they have a right to. Other people mean nothing to them, all that matters is their right to say anything they want.

What if I walked up to a couple who thinks like this, look the woman up and down and say, "Wow. I'd like to fuck the living shit out of you with a big black dildo!" and when they become angry and want to beat the hell out of me, I just throw my hands up and say, "Woah there, free speech!" Let me see them stop, smile, shake my hand and say' "yeah, you're right, go ahead and say more..."

Everyone has rights except everyone else.

They are pushing the gun thing the same way for the same reasons... everyone has guns so they can overthrow the very government that granted them the right to own, carry and use one. Everyone gets a gun here and the result is that thousands of our children are being shredded to pieces by assault rifles. My right to be free to live in peace doesn't matter... everyone has rights except everyone else, so our children die in what should be the safest place they know, and that's okay, because they have rights.

The forces trying to take over have no problem using violence, with guns, gangs or words. The ends justify the means. If people have to die, so be it, whether they are our children in schools or duly elected politicians in our capitol. The ends justify the means.

So we all get guns and we all can say anything we want. The Constitution has been weaponized and bastardized by straight white xtian national racists who are hell bent on overthrowing the government so they can create an all white, all straight, all xtian nuclear armed ethno state, and the same is happening all over the world. They want a king that will give them the power they lost with democracy. They want their countries back. They want it all.

The only thing that can stop them is the rest of us. Bad people take over when good people remain silent and all that sort of thing. So to me, the fight is not what you can and cannot say, or what someone has a right to say, it's about common decency, decorum, treating others the way you want to be treated and simply doing the right thing, the decent thing. It's about common sense and civility. It's about what's right and not what's legal. It's about being a human and not an animal.

We the people, the people of the world, have to unite against this animal tendency to rule by hate, fear and violence. The problem has always been that the good people of the world wait until severe damage is done before acting. Good people feel that everyone has rights. Bad people feel that everyone has rights except everyone else.

So the debate will continue about twitter and the first amendment, nazi's and Kanye West, guns and the lives of children... I can care less about the conversation and the details... all I see is that the hate filled, violent among us are angry because they are losing power and will do anything to get it back.

My hope for the world is that the vast majority stand up to those yelling fire in a crowded theater, and that they shame and silent those that feel they can. Because of their rights.

Madeline

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing after they've tried everything else."
~Winston Churchill~

Well, now that the dust has settled:


If you're going to continue to run this place in a sane and responsible way, I see no way you can do anything but exactly what you're doing.

You cannot just randomly publish assholery, which is, at its core, just assholery.

If anything, you are somewhat lenient. They don't ask us what we think on my other forum. Just breathe politics over there and it's immediately erased.

Stomping on the "right" to free (assholery) works like a charm over there. I have been in mud with a Republican, and we were all so very used to not mentioning current events that I didn't realize it for a couple years.

Nessie

This is so tough.

The idea of "free speech" and "freedom" drastically differ from person to person.

As an example, I once heard someone say "I want my gay neighbors to be able to protect their weed gardens with fully automatic machine guns"

Sounds like freedom, right?

Well there will always be someone whos like "sounds great...buuuuuut not sure I agree with the guns" then "ehh I have issue with two of those things" and then of course "all three of these things are absolutely wrong!"

That is just one example, with only 3 points of contention addressed.

The more issues addressed, the more difference in opinion.

Disagreeing is not an attack on free speech or freedom.

"Free speech" means a government can't arrest you for saying "I want my gay neighbors to be able to protect their weed gardens with fully automatic machine guns" in the first place, and that is a "freedom" some countries don't have.

Opinion means nothing in the context of free speech and if you get blocked, shouted at, "cancelled" then it's not your free speech that is being attacked, you're just a dick that people don't like because of what you have said...you're free to say it and stay out of jail, but not free from other consequences.

I think you might want to think about this a bit harder. So, for instance, when the Dixie Chicks criticized the Iraq war in 2003 in simple dispassionate terms ("We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.") and were deluged with death threats and rape threats, had their music blacklisted by radio stations, and had people publicly destroying piles of their CDs, then that's OK because "opinion means nothing in the context of free speech and if you get blocked, shouted at, 'cancelled' then it's not your free speech that is being attacked, you're just a dick that people don't like"?

That was almost 20 years ago before smartphones and most social media, and we're now in an era where people are routinely sent the most vile abuse from strangers, up to and including doxxing and death threats, over the most asinine things, even for just disagreeing with someone about something in a fandom. And it disproportionately affects women: a lot of men really enjoy anonymously abusing women online and will use any excuse to do so.

The idea that there's no such thing as cancel culture and it's just "consequences" is a completely asinine take. You're making the mistake of thinking it's only your side that's doing the cancelling. Even if it were, that doesn't make it OK.

The problem is you just made the point that was trying to be made. Pull out politics and this your side my side bullshit. To take your example, the people who disagreed with the Dixie Chicks thought they were dicks and consequences were had. Yes it is worse on women as there were many many many men who disagreed with the war in Iraq and nothing happened to them. Many comedians were vocal about the war. Hell, Al Franken wrote part of a book about it and no "cancel culture" there. Had the Dixie Chicks been male there would not have been anything cancelled. Looking back at the opinion they shared with the hindsight goggles that we have, they were not wrong.

If someone does not like what you say rather than change the damn station or turn it off etc people have to announce for all to read that they have been offended by something. Then off to social media they go to bitch about it to get all of their followers to get behind them and wave the banner of cancel. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. 1 religious asshole was so offended by the use of free speech that they took the argument to the supreme court over the word fuck. So now if you say fuck on TV or Radio during hours that kids might hear it, you can expect a fine. That is not the government restricting free speech in this case, it is suffering consequences for the words you chose to use. Same thing as someone thought you were a dick for saying fuck on TV and so you suffer consequences aka fine.

With respect, I don't think you've thought this through all the way, either.

First, internet harassment is not automatically cancel/consequence culture. You can get called a slur just for beating someone else in a video game and you can get SWATed at random just for being on Twitch. Like you said, this really has nothing to do with speech or free speech norms. People will take "any excuse" they can get. So for you to act like this is an argument about internet abuse in general is more than a little disingenuous.

Second, as you yourself point out, cancel/consequence culture is not new. To the contrary, this stuff has been going on forever. You cited the Chicks, but you could just as well have cited the assassination of MLK, McCarthyism, "struggle sessions" in Maoist China, religious oppression throughout world history, and so on and so forth. Speech has never been 100% free of consequence and we have no reason to believe that it ever will be (or can be, even). So unless you know something that the rest of us don't, the operate question is not *whether* speech will be punished. Rather, we're only haggling over the details: which speech will be punished, what form that punishment will take, and who gets to dole it out.

Following from that point, third, the phrase "cancel culture" is a political buzzword coined by right-wing operators. Likewise, the phrase "consequence culture" is a counter-buzzword coined by left-wing operators. I happen to agree with you that "consequence culture" is an oversimplified and even somewhat foolish (left-ish) label that's been attached to a (right-ish) concept that was invented specifically in order to deceive people. But it's equally oversimplified, foolish, and deceptive to reduce the whole conversation to whether "cancelling" is or is not "OK." Again: unless you're making some progress towards identifying the details (the which, the what, and the who), you're not actually doing anything to advance the conversation.

So, like, do you want to actually have this conversation? Because, if so, it'd be better to put your cards on the table and tell us where you actually stand instead of shrouding your opinion so that you can remain at an untouchable remove.

It's more complex than that, I'm afraid, for reasons stated upthread. Free speech != the first amendment. Private government controls the vast majority of our lives, and it squelches speech routinely -- sometimes legitimately, but often not. These are reasons to actually take notice of the corporate capitalist system and take it seriously as an area of concern, specifically when it comes to a quasi-public good like Twitter. We can adapt to this set of plain facts by either extending certain rights and privileges related to tolerance of conflict, or by noticing the limits of those rights and privileges. (It's not difficult to do, since no real world system survives free speech absolutism -- torts of defamation and assault are parts of American law, so far as I know.) But it is nonsense to turn one's back on those facts in the age of public-facing social media.

So there are several things to consider about speech insulting offensive or hurtful speech is that it doesn't necessarily constitute hate crimes under the law in the US so it can be murky unless the person is making specific threats. On the other hand if you say something stupid or hateful to someone and you happen to get a negative outcome like getting punched out you exercised that freedom of speech but you still felt the outcome.


As for Twitter and the first amendment for instance musk can ban anyone he wants unfortunately, but not because of the 1st amendment, that only deals with the right to free speech in the public sphere. Twitter on the other hand is a private company and can set its own rules as to what constitutes hate speech or not and ban someone accordingly if they violate that.

For instance people on Twitter before the musk takeover spreading conspiracy theories about covid and peddling false "cures" like oleander from the pillow dude or ivermectin which can harm people taken for the wrong reason constituted medically Harmful misinformation and could rightly be removed.


Now there are also people who were removed from Twitter for other reasons inciting hate and rightly so. The tldr is in privately owned companies they set the tos (terms of use) and you agree to them if you breech it you agree they can suspend or ban you.


However when places like Twitter start to become too unregulated and not moderated enough some people if they don't like the services may choose to leave to another.


There is a balancing point because a person does have the right to be an offensive person, but again there is the principle of action/reaction in the public freedom of speech like the 1st amendment doesn't give freedom from consequences necessarily.

In the private sector they can set certain rules to an extent as long as it doesn't violate the law on The topics discussed

Cancelling/boycotting is fine. They people can always find somewhere where they can play etc. That will be their audience.

How they are cancelled is dependant on the people. As your example shows the right-wing generally do it worse e.g. death threats. But this is on them, and there will be more consequences on their actions. Of course this is not ok, but the concept of cancelling the dixie chicks is fine, just not how the 'cancellers' they went about it.

At no point did I say there was no such thing cancel culture (though it is right wing propaganda for boycotting). But if you are cancelled for something you have done/said then it is the consequences of your actions.

None of this has anything to do with free speech.

Now YOU go think harder about it...but I doubt we will agree so I'm "cancelling" you via ignoring (i.e. your asinine comments trying to link me to abuse of women being ok, nice dog whistle there, leading me to block you...the consequences to your actions. Note you have not been stopped in saying this as that is what free speech is about).

I mean, ultimately, a lot of folks in this thread here have a very liberal/institutional view of what freedom means. And there is no point denying that it is a popular view. It just happens to be an untenable shibboleth, and it's a good thing that its popularity is gradually dimming. The cost is that, because people aren't really prepared to prioritize the conversation around it, they're left talking about first amendment nostrums as if they were only tangentially related to actual facts about how the system works and the oppressive consequences it has, relative to episodes of actual speech being suppressed for its contents. (Not to mention completely ignoring the bald-faced and obvious senses in which the first amendment has never been implemented in any sense that would satisfy the free speech absolutist.)

But, echoing what larryniven said above, this conversation also requires putting one's political cards on the table. I am on the left. And yet, a lot of the right-wing people who have the correct insight about freedom -- who notice that private government and political economy are a source of constant oppression in their lives -- also have absolutely no grasp on the facts of the system (and/or subscribe to cruel, stupid values). This makes it harder to make the case for the correct (post-liberal) position about freedom of speech, because of guilt by association. But what can you say? Even a broken clock gets it right twice a day.