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The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

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Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#111

Post by rayiner »

skorpeon87 wrote: post #22
throwawaydad12 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> (or who's old enough to remember Polanski) That's not a resolved matter by the way. He's still alive, still a convicted rapist, still a fugitive, and still defended and respected by Hollywood-centric media. He continues to evidently be immune to 'cancellation' because... influential people in movie industry like his movies I guess.

That was a product of a bubble of 1970s liberalism that was open minded towards sex between adults and young teenagers. It was an intersection of the 1960s sexual revolution, and the 1960s trend of treating kids more like adults (e.g. Tinker v. Des Moines)—but prior to the #MeToo era focus on affirmative consent and power dynamics. They simply couldn’t understand the backlash against Polanski.

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#112

Post by theossuary »

catiopatio wrote: post #93
jmyeet wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it transphobia to argue if children should have access to surgery? It is transphobia to deliberately and knowingly lie that children are getting gender confirmation surgery. Because they aren't. > To argue about puberty blockers? Puberty blockers are non-invasive and reversible and given as medical care for harm reduction. Why do you think what medical care someone gets is anyone else's business? More importantl…

The most interesting thing about your reply is that you are, yourself, parroting misinformation. Children are being subject to surgery, and puberty blockers are not “non-invasive and reversible”. This is trivially verifiable and well-documented, including, most recently, in the New York Times; that you’d label objective, obvious truths as “transphobia” demonstrates exactly why we need robust, open discourse. https://…

Honestly I completely agree with you. Even though the wpath standards of care for transgender people clearly shows the benefits outway the potential downsides, and those downsides haven't even been proven to exist yet due to lack of data; I don't think it's fair to children to force them to grow without hormones for years. We should really be allowing trans children to start hrt much sooner, that would deal with all the potential problems of puberty blockers

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#113

Post by abathur »

drewrv wrote: post #108
autoexec wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All online platforms need to have moderators to prevent things like spam and illegal content. That doesn't mean that they can't also uphold the idea of free speech principles though. Musk really went crazy with cutting staff, but I'm not sure if it was because he wrongly thought he needed to cut the moderation teams in order to support free speech or if he just did it because moderation is expensive.

Why is spam always glossed over in these "principled defenses" of free speech? It's legal speech.

A kind of motte-and-bailey, I guess.

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#114

Post by onetimeusename »

ceejayoz wrote: post #27
autoexec wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private parties are (with some number of government constraints) free to pick who to work with, who to play with, and who to talk with, and who they don't want to do anything with. This is so true. The problem we have now is that online platforms are preventing us from making those choices for ourselves. We're being told we're not allowed to talk to certain types of people, often for ideological reasons. Online pla…

Why doesn’t Twitter, one of your “private parties”, also get to pick “who they don't want to do anything with”?

To you and the OP's point, if I am understanding where you are going with this, Twitter previously had a right to remove people it didn't like, as they should. That seems fine. Although there is no obligation to provide any reasoning, I think it would have been better for Twitter to just say "yes, if you are ____ please don't come on here". I don't think it would have even had any consequences. It's not even weird given how social media sites tend to self segregate. Instead we got lectures about policies and disinformation and algorithms and moderation teams. Why not just make explicit rules?

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#115

Post by giantrobot »

sokoloff wrote: post #54
anonyme-honteux wrote: post #35

Freedom of speech exists in dozen of countries but "Free Speech (TM)" is a very US specific thing that seemingly generate an infinite amount of non-sense. People get lost in abstraction and start to think that giving a megaphone to fascists like Twitter did even before Musk is somehow good because the best way to defeat fascism, when you live on planet Mars, is on the "marketplace of ideas". On planet Earth this is n…

Political speech, especially unpopular political speech, is among the speech that I think is most deserving of free speech protections. I specifically want the political speech of the people most ideologically opposed to my point of view to be able to make their speech, free from government intrusion on it. I will almost surely not like it, but I will defend vigorously their right to say it.

> I specifically want the political speech of the people most ideologically opposed to my point of view to be able to make their speech, free from government intrusion on it.

Neat. But I'm under no obligation to carry that shit in my blog's comment section, social media platform, or any other service. If you want to stand up some service you're under no obligation to carry my speech that you don't agree with either.

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#117

Post by zmgsabst »

ceejayoz wrote: post #102
zmgsabst wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you could state what you think those differences are.

Sure. US law, particularly Section 230, makes it very clear that social networks are not common carriers. Section 230 indemnifies them for liability when moderating material that is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected". These actions that would be explicitly forbidden for a common carrier to perform…

Right — I said “should” to explain why people socially expect that they should be treated that way.

I didn’t say the current law was that way. Twitter didn’t exist (nor did social networks) when they law you’re citing was written - so it’s quite possible Congress didn’t contemplate this case or express any intent at all.

That would be a good reason to change the law:

If the way it is written doesn’t match how it should apply because the case in question wasn’t contemplated at the time.

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#118

Post by Extropy_ »

drewrv wrote: post #108
autoexec wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All online platforms need to have moderators to prevent things like spam and illegal content. That doesn't mean that they can't also uphold the idea of free speech principles though. Musk really went crazy with cutting staff, but I'm not sure if it was because he wrongly thought he needed to cut the moderation teams in order to support free speech or if he just did it because moderation is expensive.

Why is spam always glossed over in these "principled defenses" of free speech? It's legal speech.

What desire does a platform like Twitter have for spam? We have laws that prevent people from uttering threats. Twitter has rules against spam.

It's their platform and they want their users to be free in their discourse, they just don't want spam.

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#119

Post by RustLove »

esparrohack wrote: post #109
whateveracct wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen it. It's a child with one of their stuffed animal purses in BDSM gear. And there's some wine in a shot. And there's text for a SCOTUS ruling that child pornography is not protected speech. I'm honestly not seeing what's so grotesque about it all? Feels tame as far as fashion stuff goes. Wouldn't bat an eye in the '90s.

I think it's really creepy that you don't see anything wrong with a child in BDSM gear. And alcohol. That's actually sadism. I dunno, maybe you just don't get it. Do you know what sadism is? On the other hand, I've yet to hear a convincing argument as to why it shouldn't bother me other than "oh just get over it it's not that bad", which isn't working with me, since I have no petty bourgeois sensibilities, and I know…

I thought the ad was creepy and weird, but you're lying here. There was no " child in BDSM gear" in the photo. Why lie to make a point? That's creepy and weird, too

Re: The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

#120

Post by zmgsabst »

nonameiguess wrote: post #74
zmgsabst wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you could state what you think those differences are.

Most people in the world don't have Twitter accounts and get along perfectly fine. You need phone service to apply for most jobs, contact government emergency services, go to school. It's a far more essential service. Although the definition of a common carrier isn't necessarily that it is essential anyway. It's that it is offered explicitly as being available to the general public, not involving any sort of individu…

I think there’s lots of good reasons to consider Twitter and similar as common carriers:

The presidents and major politicians of many nations communicate via Twitter.

Major businesses, eg Gooogle and its subsidiary YouTube, only respond to customer service via Twitter, eg improper account bans.

There are some businesses, eg YouTube content creators, who you can only contact through Twitter; and some businesses, eg news agencies, which primarily source their content from Twitter.

- - - - -

> Everybody gets exactly the same deal. In that sense, Twitter arguably qualifies, but being a common carrier doesn't mean you can't ban people. Taxis and airlines are common carriers and can absolutely ban you if you don't follow their rules.

The difference comes when Twitter bans the NY Post from receiving the same treatment because they posted a true story that was politically inconvenient for Twitter leadership during an election.

There is more to it than a common carrier can “ban you for not following their rules”. Common carriers have limits on their rules:

A taxi service can’t refuse to take you to a political rally because they don’t like your politics; nor a phone company disconnect you because they don’t like what you’re saying.

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