So I'm getting more and more exhausted by people trashing the notion of free speech for their own gain. It's such an important principle to understand and live by, yet people who should know better are literally trying to redefine the term for their own purposes.

And it's working. At least in the USA, free speech is a notion that only applies to government or public property. It does not apply to web sites, social networks, or places of private business. People are now believing that private companies must publish all the lies, disinformation, and meanness anybody wants to type; That removing messages or kicking them off is infringing on their free speech. It's not. Actually, the platform kicking you off is THEIR exercising of free speech.

Furthermore, everyone agrees that there are limitations to free speech anyway. Like you can't yell fire in a crowded theater because people may get hurt in the chaos. Free speech does NOT excuse people to incite riots or other types of chaos for the same reason.

If we want to be assholes to each other there are plenty of ways to do that, but we can't force a company to publish it. If we wish for platforms to be more lenient, then say just that, but don't call it free speech. Don't suck all the energy and meaning out of our sacred notion in order to trick people into believing your own victimhood. Don't call it censorship against an idea when it's really moderating against assholishness.

When someone is trying so hard to redefine a term like this for everyone, they are straightup lying.

As far as UMD goes, I've always felt you've been a fair arbiter. Even when you've had to remove things I've posted.

You can see a direct line from people trying to push misinformation and platforms punishing them for their actions and the claims of freedom of speech. They cry free speech because they know what they are saying is bullshit, it is the only defense they have and their followers drink it in like kool aid. I heard a joke the other day that fits here, what is the difference between Trump and Jonestown? Trump charges for the kool aid. Just like how when they are asked about their vaccine status they state it is violating HIPPA to talk about it. There are reporters that are smart enough to know that HIPPA deals with a medical professional discussing your health care and not you discussing it, but they are afraid to call them out. I don't understand why people in power are being allowed to tout this shit unchecked but here we are.

This is an uncomfortable topic for a lot of people. But our country was founded on free speech. And not the controlled kind. But the kind that told people to pick up their arms and fight back. See a red coat, shoot them, send a message back to King George that we were tired of his shit and to get the fuck out.

Free speech, our laws (every country's laws) are founded in violence and written into law on ground freshly nourished by blood and ash. It's not pretty, it's not favorable, but it's been the truth of human history.

Free speech should prevent violence through dialogue and understanding (not necessarily agreeing). If that much can be said to be true, then censorship guarantees violence by making it the dissidents' only remaining option to be heard. Starting to look like party lines eh? This is how wars fucking start.

If it's censored EVER, then is it really "free"? I guess so... it's "free", in the same way that so long as we pay our government 30% of our income they won't send armed IRS auditors to threaten us with violence and/or jail and otherwise leave us to our devices.

"Free" unless you are forced, coerced, judged, shamed, etc. by the government and/or court of public opinion to do or follow along with something you dare to have a contrary opinion on, or not want to do.

Free like when Elon Musk tells you that "free speech" can now be yours... now for the low cost of $8 a month?

That's not freedom, that's not even liberty. Let an asshole speak and it will reveal their character plainly and immediately. Just don't give them the microphone. Honestly, don't give anyone the microphone.

So, no matter how shitty the message, all dissident voices are important. Otherwise you increase the divide, the echo chambers reinforce the sides until the sabers start rattling. And then folks, you get a civil war.

People NEED to hear each other. They need to hear each other's shitty ideas, and to hear their ideas are also shitty. They need to learn to disagree and learn to walk away from each other. If someone walks away, don't pursue them. If they speak back, here them. If they're wrong, rebuke them (just don't be a dick about it). Be willing to assume someone else may have something to contribute you may not have though of before.

If two people in conflict can do this, they can possibly resolve the conflict, probably without violence, AND gain understanding of each other.

Alternately, don't. The echo chambers reinforce everyone's beliefs into ideologies, and then into their schema. This is why we have CNN vs FOX. Twitter brought about Parler, Truth Media, and Mastodon, because people said 'if x does then then I'm out' etc.

Until people can learn to not be so fucking insecure in themselves, that they can bear to hear someone else thinks that what they believe to be dumb and walk away; only then will there be progress.

And if someone uses that speech to incite violence, let them paint the target on their own back. Let them say it openly for all to hear instead of scheming and planning in a corner unbeknownst to all. Then everyone can prepare to see if they intend to follow their speech with action. And if they DO move to act on it, no one will be surprised. Everyone had the chance to ready themselves and take a united stance against it. And if they don't, they only have themselves to blame.

Anyways, that's my exercise of our first amendment rant.

I personally, wish you all peace, love, and understanding.

I guess my post makes the point in it if itself

The internet cloud and platforms need terms of service for compliance and running on cloud always makes speech fall under terms of the use of a cloud provider.

That's in part why I appreciate this place even if post get deleted I learn what's appropriate and try to get my point across another way. I don't find a hinderence but more or artistic appreciation in my approach.

Here's also a good podcast on the topic

https://directory.libsyn.com/shows/view/id/systemofsystems

You've given us a brisk statement of a widely held mistake, which is this idea that the enlightenment notion of freedom of speech is interchangeable with your first amendment. I don't know what motivates the assumption.

For what it's worth, the position seems fairly implausible to me, just from a broader enlightenment perspective. Classical liberals were not naive about political economy. They could have easily told you that private governance -- especially, corporate rule over the minutiae of our lives -- is a huge threat to freedom. (Adam Smith's quote about the secret dealings of elites comes to mind, but so does Locke.)

You don't have to drudge up quotes from the classics to appreciate the point, though. It's common sense. Twitter is not just a mom and pop shop. On paper, it is a private entity; but in politics, it occupies something far too close to being a public square. Being booted off Twitter, or being amplified by their algorithm, is not an exercise of their freedom. It is a distortion of the public sphere.

If you don't find classical liberalism plausible, you can even put it in libertarian terms, if you like. Consider the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP): that coercion isn't justified unless in self-defence. It's a favoured libertarian canard.

Now consider two cases.

(1) I carry a sign that says, "Political Party X is bad". A police officer threatens to put me in jail if I don't put it away and keep my mouth shut.
(2) I carry that same sign. A random person threatens to break my legs if I don't put it away and keep my mouth shut.

According to you, (1) is a threat to free speech, while (2) is not. But that's absurd, from NAP. Threatening to break my legs is not replacing my speech with more speech. It's civil *assault*.

So yeah, I think people have very serious reasons to disagree with you on this matter, and I hope they do so in a vigorous and reasonable way.

Which wars would those have been, exactly?


This is pretty naive. First off, not every messenger speaks in good faith, and there are plenty of messages whose express purpose is to "increase the divide." As such, you cannot realistically have both absolutely free speech AND a guarantee of a peaceable dialogue. It can't be done. So even if you want both of those things, you have to pick one and abandon the other.

Second, as it turns out, you shouldn't want either one. We already covered the reason why you should not want absolutely free speech. Meanwhile, if moral progress is possible, it's possible only because groups of people eventually change their ideas. This does not happen without divides, echo chambers, and so on. Like, there's a reason why people say that progress in the sciences happens one funeral at a time: no matter how reasonable you are and how much good evidence you present, some people will never, ever change their minds, meaning that progress will only happen when those people are not active participants in the process. A ban is one way of making that happen. Waiting for them to age out is another. But naive idealism is not. So, really, not only can you not have both "free speech" and peaceful speech together, you shouldn't even try to have either of them - at least, not without major caveats on both sides.


When? Why? If I'm looking for a way to keep myself safe from a virus and someone else believes that a de-worming medicine will help (which it won't; obviously this is a real example), why do I "NEED" to hear from that person?


Again, I'm curious about what you think we "NEED" to hear from Parler or Fox.


Yyyyyyikes! Unless I'm very much misunderstanding this, it sure sounds like you're calling for widespread vigilantism while also claiming that powerless people "only have themselves to blame" for becoming victims. Surely if you're worried about a civil war you should be less willing to advocate for a society-wide arms race?

Annnnnyway...


(a) I don't really know if he did assume that, which is nitpicking, but whatever. More importantly, (b) imo the bigger problem with our country is not that we tried to replace or distill the Enlightenment into our Constitution but rather that we never believed (and still don't believe!) that there was such a thing as the common good. Instead, the overwhelming weight of our governing philosophy is designed to promote the private good (which, in practice, means promoting the welfare of people who are already powerful, rich, well-connected, and so on; in fairness, it does work as designed).

In other words, it's not necessarily that we wrongly classify e.g. Twitter as private as opposed to public. After all, to do that we would first have to have a reasonable concept of what "public" is (i.e., what the "public sphere" is there for, why the commons matter, and so on). Rather, we see it as corporate as opposed to governmental, which is technically true but totally irrelevant to any line of thought that would actually help.

Sorry MM, private company excuse does NOT apply when the govt gets involved. Big tech can go fuck themselves, they're nothing but the digital gestapo of the American Empire. People have been saying this for YEARS, and it's only until recently we get confirmation:

https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/

We're not that different from China's censorship, but by a sheer stroke of genius luck, Elon has decided to risk it all on Twitter, and has unbanned most people on Twitter. Most of the banned folks are coming from one side, you think it's a coincidence? I call it political persecution the type of things we see in banana republic nations. And the truth is that in a level playing field, most people do not want to live in an authoritarian regime that's a racist shithole supporting a culture of sexually grooming kids (which IMO is what this country is today). Let's use UMD as an example, we won't allow vid clips that the person being WAMmed is an adult but there's some kid in the tiny corner background who just happens to be there... ok fine. But we want kids to actively participate in BDSM-themed adult entertainment with naked adults in fetish gear? FYI, moderation and censorship is the same thing, the former is just less egregious than than the latter.

This shit has consequences, and those living in the matrix will start to realize assuming you live long enough. Even the Chinese people are fighting back against COVID authoritarianism. Americans to be honest have been bloody pathetic sheep in the last 2 years. I'm very disappointed in this country.

Do you remember when there was pride in journalism? Where you could turn on the news and hear the facts about situations. No one was there to tell you how to feel about something or to coddle you. You got the facts and you did with them what you will. We slowly taught the media that the more sensational, the more antagonistic or controversial something is the more we will watch. The more we watch, the more we click, the more dollars they make. That is something Christine Chubbuck was trying to warn us about when she blew her brains out. The more sensationalism dominated the news the further we got away from the facts. With the sensationalism came being told how to feel. Being told to like this person over another because we told them to. Because we told them we were too stupid, too lazy to form our own opinions and had to have someone form them for us and spoon feed them to us. We can't say anything to the press because that is how Hitler started. The press has freedom of speech and we must fight for their right to say what they want. The state our country is in, the stupidity of our citizens, the zombification process is complete. Because we did not hold the press accountable. Politicians started having a bigger and better contest with the press to see who could get society to believe the bullshit they were peddling. It is hard to tell who is winning that contest any more. We have taught the media and they have proven why oversight is necessary. It is just too bad that they do not use that oversight to do anything worth while. They would rather listen to radical conservatives and have warning labels put on CD's and Tapes. Fine radio stations for saying fuck when a child could hear it. We deem those things important, but the spread of misinformation is perfectly fine. Now when you call people out about their lies they have all done their own research. They have ran to social media so their slightly more intelligent but not by much friends and family can share all the funny pictures spoon feeding the opinion to them. That is what is considered research. No peer reviewed studies. No we don't know the answer yet or we need to do some more testing and study this. When they disagree with the facts they call them fake. Most of them can't even support their opinions with facts. Have you ever thought to look behind the curtain at the people using their free speech to sway your opinion so they can keep in office and keep coating their pockets? No matter what they tell you it is not the truth. While they are screaming look over there, look over there at what they are doing, you might want to look right at them. Many forget that as a condition of returning to work, the same people telling you not to get vaccinated and that it violated HIPPA to discuss it, are all 100% vaxxed and boosted. Their audience has taught them the lies they want to believe. So like any good con artist, they are giving you exactly what you want to hear. Not the hard truths, the bullshit conspiracies. The lies are more profitable than the truth ever was.

Confused. (a) is absolutely clear, and the central point of his post. There's this notion of 'free speech', being redefined, and the reality of it is "free speech is a notion that only applies to government or public property" in America. But that's not true -- in America, or more broadly. The first amendment is a major tentpole, but it's not the whole tent.

(b) Agreed. I can only speak of what the problems are with MM's reasoning, which may or may not be mixed up with the broader America-centric tradition he is in.


There are plenty of definitions of the public out there that are good enough for the purposes of discussion. For instance: the public is the space of equals under some formal description. Obviously, that's ambiguous, and demands clarification -- but it's hardly irrelevant to the issue phrased in your own terms. Private governance of common space is arbitrary or unequal domination.

Learned at Uni that free speech in Australia is not a right but a privilege. One that the governemnt can take away under the right, or wrong circumstances.

That was an interesting day in class with the tutor well at people to stop talking as they controlled who could speak. Living in a Empire back in the 17th-18th centruy must have really sucked.

"Free speech advocates": You can say what you want, but others don't have to believe, care or even listen.

That's what the shittiest of people want you to think (not calling you shitty!): That you must publish all their shitty shit no matter what, or else shit will escalate because you're protecting whoever they're disagreeing with. It's a logical trap that leaves no room to moderate for civility and legitimizes the most harmful behavior. Shitty ideas do need to be aired and debated publicly so we can all become less shitty, but it hits negative returns at some point.


In the USA, our 1st amendment is about the freedom of speech. It has always carried a lot of weight for us and now the term is being genericized and abused to mean something else.


#1 is a violation of free speech as defined by our 1st amendment, and #2 is not. I didn't define the terms. You can't charge a non-government entity with violating free speech because they are not the government, *at least in the USA*. Of course in a generic way, both things are a violation of a person's free speech! But I'm not talking generics; I'm specifically talking about people misreading our own 1st amendment to apply to private businesses.

To keep us from getting confused, maybe we should capitalize Free Speech in reference to the 1st amendment, and do lower-case when speaking about it generically. This distinction in terms is what this whole post was about.


The distinction between government and private is literally the entire purpose of the 1st amendment. It doesn't matter how large a corporation gets, or if it becomes a public sphere. The 1st amendment and Free Speech (caps!) will never apply to it. If UMD gets really big, and some government tries to tell ME who I can and can't have on here, I'll tell them to go kick rocks!


Despite your strong opinion about any private company, they are not bound by the USA's 1st amendment. Either you're not disputing this fact, or you yourself are on the disinformation train.


That was him, and Twitter, exercising their First Amendment right. No government should be able to tell him who he can and can't have on his platform. And no government will be able force him to HAVE somebody on his platform who he wants to ban. He's been banning people left and right for whatever reasons he has, but that's his 1st amendment right to do so. But then he calls it a violation of Free Speech when others did the same thing for different reasons. He's muddying the term up!


Maybe you want that, but I don't know anyone else who does?


No, they're not. That's why we have two different terms. Conflation is a weapon used by those who have an agenda to mislead, so let's keep it real. Check my FAQ on "Is it Censorship or Moderation?" https://umd.net/about_us#moderation

To the contrary -- the tradition that you are referring to does not get to define freedom of speech in terms of your first amendment. If you want to talk about the first amendment, talk about the first amendment. Other people are talking about the enlightenment ideal, and bringing up moral issues that we have in our collective mind paid insufficient attention to.

The gap between the way we think about freedom of expression, and the way that freedom of expression works, combined with big social media, has brought about a crisis in civil society. We would be better off if the ambiguity in the phrase, 'free speech', were settled on the question of substance regarding the things worth caring about, and not on a technical stipulation that grows out of a particular liberal-institutional corner of the American legal culture that fetishizes the first amendment. 1A was an accomplishment, but it tells us nothing about freedom of expression in a time when we are starving for guidance.

Oh, for sure I agree with you about the tentpole and the tent. I just think that it might be a stretch to say that MM's personal beliefs are intended to reflect, interpret, or modify a specific historical concept instead of just, like, being his personal beliefs. Like, if he'd said, "As we know, the Enlightenment concept of freedom of speech says XYZ," then that'd be a pretty clear indicator that he had the historical idea in mind.

Now, maybe he does; I'm not saying for sure that he doesn't have the historical idea in mind, I'm just saying it's not totally clear from his post whether or not he does. And maybe he should have the historical idea in mind; I'm not saying that he shouldn't, just that he might not currently. Like I said, nitpicking


Yeah, definitely. I'm not saying they don't exist or that, like, the whole of the US is somehow unaware of them. I'm just saying they don't have a real foothold in our culture, probably because our culture is predicated on denying the good definitions and using bad ones instead.


Well, I mean, setting aside the exceptions you've already pointed out (e.g. if someone comes on here and starts posting child pornography or the nuclear codes or some shit), and also setting aside the other parts of the First Amendment (religion, press, assembly, etc.), that's true in a legal sense. Again, though, I do agree with Sure that there's a deeper question to be asked about the purpose of laws and whether governments should be oriented towards a robust, ideal image of the common good or just some minimal version of non-interference.

Like, why do we want freedom of speech? Is it just so that everybody can spout off, or is it because we think that freedom of speech is a rule that's conducive to some other outcome (productive debate, a flourishing society, whatever)? If it's the former, well, then we have that, notwithstanding the usual cases of police brutality and whatnot. But if it's the latter, then it's worth checking in every so often to see whether we're actually getting the results that we want. Personally, I don't think we are. So then the question becomes: how can we do better?

As long as the term Free Speech is rigorously defined in the USA constitution, and as long as people (including American politicians) keep trying to leverage it in use cases that do not apply, semantics will always be the white elephant in the room. You're exactly right: We need to use better, more exact terms. "Free Speech" already has so much great branding that some would rather co-opt it for their own agendas.


Count me in as someone who fetishizes the 1st amendment then. In terms of keeping government out of private spaces, I'm all in. For example, this site is like my home. It's a very personal, private space that nobody owns but me. I'm throwing a huge house party every day and I'm the MC and the DJ, and everybody is invited. I can invite all kinds of weirdos or whoever I want, and I feel it's essential that the government can't tell me not to. I can also kick you out because... I don't like your shoes, and the government can't say anything about that either. You have no right to force yourself into my private space for any reason, and cries of 1st amendment and Freedom of Speech (caps!) don't apply. Anyone trying to use the 1A to force their way into here does not understand 1A. If we want to have an argument about the modals of moderation and everything that's cool, but it ain't Free Speech or 1A!

I missed this... In terms of the USA constitution, it's public if it's a government-controlled space. Freedom of Speech depends on that definition because its jurisdiction stops precisely at the doorstep of a private residence or business.

The world should debate about how to approach freedom of speech (no-caps generic term), but the phrase Freedom of Speech in the USA has a specific meaning and legal consequence.

True, those things are actually illegal, and the first amendment can't protect you from illegal stuff.


That's the debate we should have. I have opinions about corporations and governments and everything else, but my point in this thread is that I'm worried that the actual terms of debate are being manipulated and scoffed at. We can't have a real conversation that way.


It's so that we don't have to be afraid of being jailed for speaking our minds.

I am a full supporter of all forms of free speech, other than the obvious problematic speech with Disniformation, Hate speech, hurtful comments that are directed at Trans, Bipoc, Latinx, women, other members of the LGBTQ+/LGBTQ2S+ community, Asian-beings, Jewish communities and other non-privileged. You should also not give platforms to individuals who have these kinds of hate opinions and they can not be tolerated in a free and open society.

That's a matter of perspective, and a point on which we have very clear disagreements. In an era of corporate governance of common shared space -- a space where we can discuss and decide how to do politics together to solve our collective problems -- the "FS=1A" formula is malign because it whitewashes away a private monopoly on an essential public good by passing it off as a function of private ownership. In another era -- Mill's era, for instance -- "FS=1A" was far closer to being a good thing -- though even he saw exceptions.


My comments aren't really about UMD, which is kind of a private/third space situation. But anyone who takes the classical liberal tradition in America seriously, should be appalled by Twitter and the way it functions in our political life. Twitter, specifically, is the menace here. UMD doesn't feed into the news cycle, it isn't the place where we decide what to attention to every day, it doesn't addict millions in clickfarms, doesn't have bots skewing political races. It is not like a party, it is like a park. And the central thing it commodifies is speech. You should not see Twitter and UMD as analogous.

You are either a hypocrite or dont understand free speech. Hate speech IS free speech. I have no issues hurling racial insults at me. All I ask is a level playing field so that I can insult them back.

ACLU when it used to be a decent org defend free speech of neo-Nazis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie

In short, if you don't protect the right of your enemies to say mean tweets against you, you're a fascist anti-free speech bigot.

And if you guys (Americans) don't like it, move to some fascist authoritarian country like China, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.

Heh - you mean the law doesn't condone actions that are against the law? Y'don't say


Oh? So then why not let the government kick people off of Twitter? I mean, there's a big, big gap between "kicked off of Twitter" and "in jail," right? So if freedom of speech just exists to keep people out of prison, who cares about policing social media?

You are not internally consistent, Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc... are NOT private entities precisely because it's govt controlled. The govt told big tech to remove "misinformation" (aka things the govt don't like) about COVID, Afghanistan, Ukraine and political enemies.

UMD is private, because as far as I know, you are not under duress from the US govt.

Legislatively I would go further, once a private entity becomes too big, they should be treated like public entities and regulated accordingly by 1A.

As wrong as all that hate speech stuff is, it's still not really something the government should put their hands on, unless it's deemed to be inciting chaos or violence (fire in a theater).


I agree! But that's not jurisdiction of the government at all. Lazily calling everything Freedom of Speech implies that it's under government jurisdiction, and fools people into thinking the government is allowed to censor (or force-allow) certain types of speech in a private space. That's what happens when you deliberately mis-apply a term like Freedom of Speech in America which is our first amendment and is supposed to mean something very specific.


I think you're in Canada, and of course you would have a different perspective. My OP was about Freedom of Speech in the USA, and our first amendment is not ambiguous. It applies only to our Congress.


We can wish that America's first amendment didn't say what it says, but it does. Perhaps it catalyzes our plunge into oligopoly, or empowers elites to control worldwide discourse. But that doesn't erase its exact meaning to Americans. We can use the public space to say whatever we want, but private spaces are off-limits. No matter how large they've gotten, the government can't suddenly claim jurisdiction over a private company's First Ammendement rights. Why would we want government to have that level of control anyway? What happened to limited government?


Then who gets to define when UMD comes out of that private/third space situation? Is it the number of visitiors? Is it the number of servers we have? At what point would you OK the government to come and tell us what we're not allowed to publish, or what we HAVE to publish on this site?


I do see them as analogous. They are both private companies that have to deal with the same moderation issues and operate under the same laws of (and disinformation about) Free Speech. We are still privately liable and morally responsible for publishing certain things.


In the past few years it seems that a lot of these brand new free speech advocates seem more interested in being allowed to insult people with impunity than coming to a common understanding about something. I love the fact that I am allowed to moderate this site to a higher standard where people actually have to be somewhat nice to each other.

You can't really just make up a new definition of "private" and run with that. What private means, at least in the USA, is that it's not a government-controlled entity. We're not talking about market share or how much influence politics may have had over a company. We literally mean "not government owned." We don't suddenly just get to decide that a company is private and then allow governments to control them on that basis.


That's something a private company may decide to do, but that doesn't make them a public entity, and isn't an excuse to exert governmental control over their moderation decisions. If we wish to define some set of actions that a private company takes that can be used to excuse a government takeover into a public company, then those terms should be defined and debated, not glossed over.


But if the US government did "duress" me, then would you call UMD public then? And then say the government gets to control us?


We have to then define what "big" is in the first place, then "too big." To some people, I'm sure UMD is already too big. How big would your house have to be before the government just considers it a public space and they start regulating who you're allowed to come visit? I feel that there is no house too big. If it's private then it's not subject to Free Speech and you cannot force it to be.

The government shouldn't be able to jail someone for speaking their mind on Twitter or anywhere else, unless it's illegal or an exception to Free Speech as we've been talking about. The Fist Amendment isn't just to keep people out of prison; It's to avoid government censorship of opposing ideas.

Lots of baggage being added to the conversation, but the point is how to frame the discussion around Freedom of Speech and what it actually means to us. When does a private company cross the line into something that you feel the government should control? Can we actually codify that in some way with some metric? We can get mad at the Left and the Right, but that avoids the question of who gets to control this speech and at what point do you think politicians have a say over it?

I disagree. Based on your logic, the US govt can then use taxpayer money to buy Twitter, and appoint non-govt people to the board and the CEO. It's not owned the govt right? There are no govt employees! This needs to be litigated at the supreme court level. Our laws have yet to catch up to the big tech era.


You're missing the point, these big tech platforms were told to remove information the govt didn't like. They did not do it on their own free will. Go look at Zuckerberg interviews, even back as late in 2015, he was saying Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth. Now, they are censorship in chief. What changed? Hint: CISA creation in 2018.

And I never said govt takeover of the public company, I just meant different regulation/rules for these big tech companies. Also, note that I am proposing to prevent big tech from banning folks, which is anti-censorship.


First, it's not about directly controlling UMD, it is about enforcing free speech laws. It's the same reasoning behind anti-discrimination law. No company can legally discriminate based on race and gender, but we don't consider that govt control.

Personally, I think the criteria should be govt intervention and size/influence of the company. So in this case, UMD would not meet 2nd criteria. However, in practice, govt intervention can be covered up, so I would propose different rules based on company size/influence. Details on how we define size/influence is up for debate.


Fine, my arbitrary metric up for discussion, some threshold of daily active users. Maybe use what the DAU number was for Twitter in 2015 as the threshold.

We'd want the government to take over Twitter for the same reason that we'd want the government to move to a single-payer health care system, which is the same reason that countries like Australia, France, Canada, Germany, Iceland, Japan, and Spain nationalized (at one point or another) utilities, banks, railways, and other major industries: because the government can do it better.

As for "what happened to limited government," you're seeing it right now. Even if for some reason you're willing to overlook our shameful life expectancy, poverty rate, education rate, etc. etc., this entire conversation that we're having right now is a downstream consequence of having "limited government." Like I said in my earlier post, you can't have both absolute freedom of speech and a well-functioning national dialogue. We as a nation chose the former over the latter, with the result being that our national dialogue is now in a shambles.

And, look, you're allowed to say that this is within your parameters. It would be perfectly consistent for you to go, "Hey, sometimes things get rough, but I'd rather have it this way than [insert a fair depiction of the alternative here]." But I do feel it's a bit flippant to just say "what happened to limited government."


I mean, in some sense the ideal would be to put it up for a popular vote, but in our system it'd work the same way that everything else does: people would lobby their elected representatives, and then the representatives would decide.

Right, yeah, I get that part. I don't think we disagree there, unless we have slightly different ideas about which exceptions should be built in. I think we can safely leave this part of the conversation behind.


Er, but when I asked you why you wanted freedom of speech, you said to keep people out of jail. Are you now augmenting your initial answer?

Also, I didn't propose a scenario that involved censoring opposing ideas. I asked whether you'd be okay with the government kicking people off of Twitter specifically. They could still go do whatever they wanted on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. They could stand on a street corner and shout their message to the world. They could even go on TV or a podcast and stir things up. I wasn't asking about any of those things. What I was asking was, given your stated motivation, why do you care about Twitter specifically? It's not as though the alternative to Twitter is either jail or outright censorship. It's just one platform.