Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if a video producer uses PornHub because YouTube keeps demonetizing them for, for example, gun reviews?
What's wrong with PornHub?
I would consider it far from ‘polite company’.
Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
181–190 of 261 posts
Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're not talking about inalienable rights. That's implied in the title of the linked post. If you don't care about "good"/"bad" decisions and just care about the legal bounds, just say so and dismiss the article out of hand. Your roundabout question just drags discussion down.
The thing is, people rightfully are pointing out an important issue ("corporate tech giants have monopolized the public speaking space and are holding unaccountable power") and but inexplicably ignore the obvious solution (break them up and/or emigrate to federated/decentralized platforms while actively promoting them) in favor of the worst possible one (force Twitter to unban nazis).
Yes, this is essentially my point, except stated in a much more concise way than I was able to. The author wants something we all want – less power for massive private companies to control our society. But he doesn't want to accept what that takes – greater government control. So his essay is little more than inane rhetoric, e.g. journalists are basically silenced if they can't be on Twitter.
Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're not talking about inalienable rights. That's implied in the title of the linked post. If you don't care about "good"/"bad" decisions and just care about the legal bounds, just say so and dismiss the article out of hand. Your roundabout question just drags discussion down.
The title and content of the post implies that we should regard private censorship with the same concern as we do government censorship, regardless of the current legal framework. Which I don't necessarily disagree with. In fact, I think most people here are on the same page of: it sucks big time when a company like Facebook can unilaterally decide that the famous Napalm Girl photo should not be displayed. So where's…
Ostensibly that's the argument. But the real argument is that platforms are wising up to being used for extremist positions and that the extremists don't like it and so they twist everything to associated themselves with content that should get a pass.
Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I run a website, why doesn't my free association right extend to kicking people off it?
you are absolutely free to - but in that case you should be held to the same legal standards as newspapers who edit their content.
Why? A newspaper is composed almost entirely of content that the paper is paying journalists and writers to produce whereas a social media site is almost entirely composed of content posted by individuals, how does it make any sense that a platform becomes a newspaper because they ban some content from being posted on their platform?
Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. -- John Stuart Mill
Point is, Mill lived in an era where dissemination of information was barely at a steam-engine equivalent, whereas now we've got automated opinion-generating rocket systems in orbit ready to barrage millions of info missiles at any online discussion at any point in any language within 300 nanoseconds. New realities need new quotes.
I started reading through On Liberty recently and I was surprised by how topical it was. This discussion doesn't seem to have changed much over the past 150 years. Mill spends a long time addressing arguments for censorship that I still see used today.
A lot is lost when a book-length discussion is reduced to a single sentence. In his work, there's a very thorough discussion of why this liberty is essential. I don't like how the grandparent used the quote so flippantly. Without the supporting context, it's a baseless statement that encourages low-quality discussion.
One of things Mill did really well is that he thoroughly described his opponents' position before arguing why it was incorrect. You haven't done that, which is why it's unclear what part of his argument is invalidated by improvements in communications.
Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
What right do journalists have to have a platform for promotion and advertising? Either before or after the Internet and Twitter.
None, until we concede that — because the world in which we want to live includes quality writing from a free press engaged in investigative journalism — it is required that journalists be able to promote themselves somehow.
I don't disagree, and I think that's an ideal virtually everyone agrees with. But an ideal alone cannot be the premise for asserting an enforceable change to the status quo.
The reason why the Founders – and subsequently, the courts – enshrined freedom of speech from government censorship, is because that is the most the government can enforce without violating other limitations and stipulations of the Constitution. It's not as if the Founders completely forgot to consider "Hey wouldn't it be nice if everyone had a right to be heard in our society?"
If the author wants this ideal to become reality, then he needs to accept giving greater power to the government (or propose a completely different paradigm). The fact that he apparently can't – possibly because he recognizes that increased powers would end up undermining freedom of speech – is the reason why things are as they are right now.
Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
#187Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
you are absolutely free to - but in that case you should be held to the same legal standards as newspapers who edit their content.
Why? A newspaper is composed almost entirely of content that the paper is paying journalists and writers to produce whereas a social media site is almost entirely composed of content posted by individuals, how does it make any sense that a platform becomes a newspaper because they ban some content from being posted on their platform?
Newspapers aren't held responsible for the stuff people post on their comment sections either. Otherwise they'd have long since been sued into the ground, considering the sheer amount of bile exercised in said comment sections.
Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I run a website, why doesn't my free association right extend to kicking people off it?
you are absolutely free to - but in that case you should be held to the same legal standards as newspapers who edit their content.
What legal standards are you referring to? Newspapers and media are not held to additional obligations than what a normal person has – e.g. it's illegal for anyone to commit slander, or violate obscenity laws. The fact that a publisher can be held liable for publishing illegal content is not what gives them the "right" to edit and censor their own publication.
Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies
#190> For instance, if you’re a journalist and you want to promote your work, there is simply no viable alternative to Twitter at the moment. No other microblogging platform comes even close to having the number of users Twitter does, and most of the alternatives are hotbeds of extremism, so that anyone who joins them is thereby disqualified in polite company. IMO if you can't even try to use an alternative microblogging…
> IMO if you can't even try to use an alternative microblogging platform for fear of being labeled an extremist by "polite company" I downvoted you because this is a ridiculous claim. If you use a platform like Gab that embraces bigots and extremists perhaps, but that's not the only other platform.
I do not consider the claim in the grandparent comment ridiculous, but I would consider your claim ridiculous. As a sibling comment pointed out, Gab does NOT embrace bigots and extremists, it simply does not remove legally allowed content. Can you truly not see the difference?
Edited to clarify my opinion that only one of these two claims is ridiculous