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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

#351

Post by freejazz »

jchw wrote: post #180
kelseyfrog wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? It seems definitionally straight forward to me, so I'm not sure what I'm missing.

"online speech used to deliberately upset others" does not actually distinguish trolling versus other malicious behaviors, such as just being rude and flippant on purpose, so it is not very precise. It also doesn't really describe the actual kinds of behaviors that trolls engage in, but rather constitutes a class of behaviors that are not necessarily obviously connected, so it's vague. There's a lot of different ways…

"such as just being rude and flippant on purpose"

How is that not trolling?

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

#352

Post by UncleMeat »

naasking wrote: post #335
UncleMeat wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a whole bunch of people calling somebody a "fa***t" in DMs discourse? Lots of people have told me that this isn't illegal so Twitter should do nothing.

Is a whole bunch of people calling someone a Nazi any different? It's a signal of social disapproval, even if it's distasteful. I think you can meaningfully distinguish individuals expressing distasteful speech from coordinated campaigns and harassment, and spam falls under the latter.

We can have a discussion about what sort of speech is unacceptable on a social media platform. My concern is largely with the people who insist that we shouldn't even have the conversation about insulting messages because of free speech absolutism or whatever.

The "oh but lefties are mean too" argument immediately retreats from the idea of free speech absolutism. I'm down for that.

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

#353

Post by freejazz »

SoftTalker wrote: post #162
SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that is “fair to assume?” To me, it sounds like wild conjecture.

Musk has stated that Twitter interfered with elections. I'm not sure what evidence he's provided for that, but he did say it.

And Trump still hasn't conceded 2020... who cares what people say when it's nonsense?

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

#354

Post by enaaem »

bavell wrote: post #326
mcv wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there's noise you can't speak. And that's really what moderation is ultimately about. On every forum and platform: suppressing noise and increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. > If you're trying to muddle the waters of free speech with false narratives and strawman arguments like spam and porn, that's just cheap manipulation. How is that trying to muddy the waters? It's absolutely relevant. They're both great exa…

> hate speech is the thing that some people try to defend under the banner of free speech. I think it's more of an acknowledgement that there's a price to freedom/liberty and there are fundamental trade-offs involved. I.e. can't have our cake and eat it too. The difficulty is in finding where exactly the draw the line. For better or worse, currently there are many technically legal yet unsavory views allowed under "f…

There’s free speech from a legal perspective and free speech from PR perspective. I’d argue that free speech from a legal perspective is actually pretty free in most western countries.

From a libertarian perspective private platforms should freely decide what they allow and what they won’t. The public can also freely criticise them and move away. Advertisers can freely decide if they want to advertise there.

Every libertarian should visit a true neo-nazi site like Stormfront to see how much we are allowed to say.

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

#355

Post by rayiner »

jmull wrote: post #315
rayiner wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s weird to repeatedly see the argument that a corporation’s moderation of human individual’s speech is itself a form of protected speech, from a group of people who until recently mostly thought corporate speech wasn’t even broad enough to cover a corporation’s production and distribution of its own message in a political movie. Like I think “corporations are people too, my friend” but corporate moderation as a fo…

Should media companies be required to provide a platform for government leaders to broadcast their messages? To me this is basic 1st amendment stuff. We've gone pretty far down the road to authoritarianism when people think we need to protect the leader of the government's ability to force media companies to carry his messages.

It’s authoritarian when leaders force media companies to carry their messages because it puts the imprimatur of the New York Times or CNN on government propaganda. But Twitter isn’t a “media company” it’s a platform for user generated content. It doesn’t purport to have its own viewpoint, or its own editorial stance. Nobody at Twitter purports to stand behind the content posted by users in the site. In that respect Twitter is much closer to say broadband providers than to media companies. Even most opponents of Net Neutrality didn’t argue it was a First Amendment violation to regulate the terms on which third party content was carried. (Maybe they weren’t creative enough.)

The question is whether the government can require a platform to host otherwise legal content on politically non-discriminatory terms. Put differently, it’s about whether platform owners can use their market power over what’s essentially infrastructure to distort the country’s political debate.

Insofar as many folks on the left believe that corporations don’t have free speech rights period, it’s not “basic 1st amendment stuff.” And even for folks who think Citizens United was correctly decided, a company producing a political movie in its own name is much closer to core political speech than the moderation decisions of a user-generated content platform.

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

#356

Post by naasking »

UncleMeat wrote: post #352
naasking wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a whole bunch of people calling someone a Nazi any different? It's a signal of social disapproval, even if it's distasteful. I think you can meaningfully distinguish individuals expressing distasteful speech from coordinated campaigns and harassment, and spam falls under the latter.

We can have a discussion about what sort of speech is unacceptable on a social media platform. My concern is largely with the people who insist that we shouldn't even have the conversation about insulting messages because of free speech absolutism or whatever. The "oh but lefties are mean too" argument immediately retreats from the idea of free speech absolutism. I'm down for that.

> My concern is largely with the people who insist that we shouldn't even have the conversation about insulting messages because of free speech absolutism or whatever.

That's not where I would draw the line against free speech absolutism. Insults or rudeness from individuals should be permitted, insults from groups/coordinated campaigns is where I would draw that line because that starts crossing into inciting a mob. Mobs of any political persuasion are undesirable.

Uncoordinated-coordination seems like an emergent phenomenon of social media though, which is why this is a tough issue. It's almost like we need some kind of back pressure against virality to keep mobs in check.

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

#357

Post by judge2020 »

rhaksw wrote: post #223
judge2020 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet people only have so much time, and so much of it continues to be dominated by work and transportation to/from work (if you’re not lucky enough to have the option of remote work). When you’ve been busy and focused for the better part of 10 hours, bettering oneself for immaterial gains is going to be unappealing when you could doom scroll TikTok, watch the latest hit TV series, or even better yourself in areas…

> That’s why people opt for moderated communities, actually learning to handle content and ignore repugnant or vile content takes diligence and building that up is time-consuming, so they’ll happily pay money (via ads or directly) to offload filtering out that content. The catch here is that people are not aware that their content is frequently shadow moderated. Even if you do try to engage with vitriolic commentary,…

> The catch here is that people are not aware that their content is frequently shadow moderated

Is that really the catch? Reddit didn't get to where they are today by saying "we totally allow free speech". Since its inception, it's been a trope that Reddit actively moderates away actively harmful content, and even constructive-but-contrarian content to the point where every small subreddit community is a circlejerk/echo chamber for its own ideals. Anyone that just downloads the app might not know it at first, but if they actually dive into creating an account and joining subreddit communities, they'll learn soon enough since moderators try not to make their own community mad by silencing all criticism of themselves (when they do, it tends to be exposed pretty quickly), and any huge shifts in policy tend to sprout divergent communities, like how r/superstonk was created out of a wallstreetbets moderation issue.

I think people understand that, especially when they're using an iPhone[0,1], everything they see is going to be filtered, with the exception of legal porn on social media apps. It's just the way that anything and everything gains enough traction to become relevant among the masses, and they'll know if they're on a "true free speech" platform as soon as the platform shows then pro-nazi images right next to pictures of puppies with 0 algorithmic filtering or sorting.

0: https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/11/tumblr-for-ios-updated-with-s...

1: https://www.pcmag.com/news/tumblr-explains-why-it-still-bans...

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

#358

Post by valeness »

seanw444 wrote: post #350
valeness wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most watched cable news show" does not equal "most americans"; let's just clear that up before we move on... Also, the people who watch his show agree with his speech and probably don't consider it stochastic terrorism because they also want to genocide trans people. It's not a hard concept to grasp. It's a hate-hour for a very specific slice of the population. And that slice is committing more and more acts of viol…

Tucker disagrees with the extent of some liberal ideas. That does not make him responsible for others taking his beliefs, magnifying them, and committing atrocities. If bluntly disagreeing with progressivism makes you blame-worthy for mass-murderers, well then we should throw all conservative media hosts in indefinite prison. Or execute them.

Uhhh, he magnifies his own beliefs without the help of others.

"The extent of some liberal ideas" is a really soft way of putting "open racist and transphobe" He literally did a segment on the "Great Replacement Theory".

He's a white supremacist. He can get absolutely, thoroughly, and without lube, fucked.

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

#359

Post by valeness »

naasking wrote: post #348
valeness wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most watched cable news show" does not equal "most americans"; let's just clear that up before we move on... Also, the people who watch his show agree with his speech and probably don't consider it stochastic terrorism because they also want to genocide trans people. It's not a hard concept to grasp. It's a hate-hour for a very specific slice of the population. And that slice is committing more and more acts of viol…

> Also, the people who watch his show agree with his speech and probably don't consider it stochastic terrorism because they also want to genocide trans people. This is what happens when you form ideas divorced from any evidence. More Democrats watch Fox News and Tucker Carlson specifically than any of the more liberal-leaning networks. Do most Democrats want to genocide trans people too? Or are you claiming they're…

No post body was provided.

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

#360

Post by jchw »

andsoitis wrote: post #294
jchw wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"online speech used to deliberately upset others" does not actually distinguish trolling versus other malicious behaviors, such as just being rude and flippant on purpose, so it is not very precise. It also doesn't really describe the actual kinds of behaviors that trolls engage in, but rather constitutes a class of behaviors that are not necessarily obviously connected, so it's vague. There's a lot of different ways…

from this thread, it sounds like you're saying spam has a clear, precise definition but trolling does not. what then, in your mind, is the clear, precise definition of spam ?

I'm a little frustrated here, because I never attempted to imply that SPAM is easier to define than trolling. If that's somehow something people are legitimately reading out of my replies, then I must've messed up somewhere. All I have been trying to suggest is that nobody has made a good faith argument in favor of allowing SPAM, which is not the case for trolling. But the thing is, while neither have a concise definition, and social media moderation are imperfect at dealing with both situations, it is MUCH easier for a human to distinguish SPAM from trolling. In some types of trolling, the very point of it is that it is difficult to distinguish from a good-faith post; if it wasn't, it would be bad bait. Whereas many SPAM patterns, by nature of being SPAM, are detectable just by looking at posting patterns and not even contents, which is basically the way that social media handles such content. You can't do that for human trolls, because human trolls don't look much different from a high level as other users do, especially depending on what kind of troll you're dealing with.

I am kind of surprised at how many different ways people have interpreted what I said. I'm frankly feeling a little defeated.

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