I donāt know, Melzā¦ to be fair, do we have any legal test of that? I agree that first amendment explicitly deals with the federal government infringing on speech, but what about this case where we have such a powerful institution that can curb any kinds of speech at a whim. Because google (and facebook, honestly) is kind of in a uniquely powerful position to make sure something does not get heard. There was this story I heard this week, about a critic of google getting fired from a google-funded think tank, which they claim is not about his work, but I donāt know:
Itās similar I think to oil companies peddling influence in washington, but google is peddling influence on the dissemination of information.
I do agree that neo-nazi broflakes are welcome to build their own infrastructure, but we still have to figure out the problem of google or facebook and the sort of information stranglehold they tend to have on our culture. Is it enough to just have outlets for unpopular speech? Or is google, etc, defacto curbing speech they donāt like and should they be allowed to do so? I honestly donāt know what the answer to that is or how we work this out.
It absolutely does since @Melizmatic also conflated the two and you are pouncing on that to speak your point. They lost their hosting service, no ISP has been purging customers for their posting habits.
EDIT
In other words, white supremacists are not losing access to the internet they lost their ability to host their website - so your argument doesnāt follow your own line of logic.
This is the issue, an absolutist stance on free speech is (part) of the sales pitch of the social media platforms to disrupt the way media is dispersed and now that beast is part of the problem for everyone. While we are beyond that point in history now that private corporations own the vast majority of our means of communication, we are now in uncharted territory where the same platitudes of hate speech fixing itself is part of the original problem getting us here. Getting speech out of the governmentās control just put it into the hands of private holdings which favors a single company taking over a market in all circumstances.
I donāt think anyone is saying that you can solve ābad speechā with regulation, but we certainly canāt fix the current breakdowns in communication in the current system which favors anyone saying anything no matter how extreme or how factual.
This too. Like I noted above, we have most certainly had restrictions on speech in the past, which were deemed perfectly constitutional. But as you note, the absolutist stance has gotten more traction with the rise of ādisruptiveā technologies, like social media. Even here, access to speech is not evenly distributed and not everyone has the same powerful platform, even with access to social media. The groups of people who have historically been given larger platforms to push their agendas STILL have a larger, more powerful platform to push their speech into the public sphere. Social media has not solved the problems of access to places where important decisions are made. Itās eased organizing for mass movements, but people did it well before the current age of mass media and theyāll continue to do it once social media isnāt such a force in our political life.
The basic argument is whether any corporation should purge customers based entirely on the businessās whim.
The issue here is that the method they use to promote their views has been denied them because one of the organisations they use to promote their views decided they didnāt want that.
Whether thatās the ISP or the hosting service is not important to the debate on whether that is something that should be ok or not.
Exactly which company it is and what service they provide may be important when it comes to deciding whether any infringement (if there is one) is material - i.e. if they can easily set up their own replacement or easily find another provider, that may well indicate that any rights there might be have not been materially infringed.
I accept it doesnāt help that there are several slightly different but closely related discussions.
I started by trying to make the point that denying someone a platform to express their views is censorship.
Melz2 disagreed and argued that there is no right to the internet.
I argued that plenty of people think there is and also that itās not enough to say that itās not the government doing it, therefore it canāt be a rights infringement.
Now this does require citation, because this is an unsubstantiated claim. Thereās a good argument that actual hate groups are on the rise in power in the United States (thereās a huge spike in their growth in size, amount of organizations, and money they hold), and by all appearances they have become messily intertwined with the far-right side of our current politics by their unanimous support for Donald Trump who appears to be cool with them. On the European side there has been a rise in right-wing populism and nationalism, but you yourself speak to it as not being racially motivated.
Unless you believe that supremecists are doing false flags using VPNs, you can simply go to those websites and see the amount of Europeans joining in. /pol/ had a European discord, though I donāt know if that is still open with the events regarding their other discord. StormFront had what amounted to AMAs with European hate group leaders. Europe is all over US-based hate sites.
Thatās not the argument you presented, your first argument is that a company removing a platform for speech is a form of censorship and then you went on a bit about how hosting services claim they are not responsible for what is posted on websites because they are not a media organization and that if they take the role or curating what websites are they host then they should be held liable. So you sort of made both arguments at once, that hosting services shouldnāt ācensorā anything and that they should be held liable for any site they host if they do elect to not host a website.
Either way, what I said doesnāt track with this is your then using internet access as a fundamental right as positioned by the UN and signed by the US as an argument that hosting services shouldnāt deny a website a platform. Because access to the internet and access to a hosting service for a website are entirely different. I guess if your point really is that anything internet related should be free and unregulated and whatever else then you are in a territory so removed from any sort of pragmatic thought that you cannot offer an actual solution either - which is also a huge problem in the EFFās stance. How do you promote privatized internet free of government overreach and reign in privatized internet from doing whatever is within its power? Not having an answer to that question removes a key component to successful activism.
Mea culpa. You are correct; access and hosting are not the same thing.
And I donāt like that any single institution has such power, but that ship has long since sailed.
Letās take the specifics out of the equation;
If the internet didnāt exist at all, had never been inventedā¦ would you then argue that people have āa rightā to other physical platforms and venues to spread their message?
I maintain people can say whatever they wish; but no one else is forced to listen, or to aid in spreading that message.
Iāll accept that I obviously made my point badly - I wasnāt arguing that both should apply. I was trying to highlight the hypocrisy of corporations saying that they shouldnāt be liable because itās not feasible for them to censor when they obviously can and do when it suits them.
In the context of discussion about free speech, whether you can look at the internet but not publish your own material is pretty fundamental.
I can put your mind at rest, it isnāt.
Nope. Quite right. As Iāve indicated in other topics, in so far as I have a solution, I lean towards preferring a government regulated arena rather than one left to corporate whim.
Governments are the medium we have chosen to regulate this stuff for us. Itās imperfect but in my view a lot better than letting āthe invisible handā do the regulating.
I can argue myself in circles on both sides of nearly any argument if Iām not careful
I would say that if people have āa right to free speechā at all, that has to include a right to access platforms to express that speech.
What good is a right to free speech if all it means is that I can mumble away to myself?
On that basis, yes, I would argue that if public discourse is carried on in some particular platform or platforms and you assert that people have a right to take part in that discourse freely, then people have to have a right to those platforms.
What good is freedom if Iām forced to listen to your mumblings and distribute them even if I disagree?
āFreedomā of anything to me seems to apply to only as far as the end of our own noses, meaning that once Iām forcing it on you, itās no longer protected, especially when weāre talking about something like supporting a platform with labor and money. Iām aware that this is not always how things work in practice, but thatās my interpretation.
That makes a lot more sense. I agree that access to the internet is something that is fundamental, and I agree that it requires a lot of compromise to keep things running in a way that provides as much liberty as can be achieved. Just the act of fighting for free speech no matter the speech is going to trample on the liberty of others, which is what this thread was even started with.
I think were we disagree is that the access to information and the act of publishing your own information are pretty dissimilar. There will always be a semi-public platform to publish information, because people always organize social groups across technology. However, that doesnāt mean I hold a personal right to establish a website that I then publish on and not agree to a hosting siteās terms of service. Access, on the other hand, needs to be as free as possible. Things like hiding laws or scientific papers behind paywalls or limiting their geography is an extremely bad thing.
Well I hope youāll like listening to my mumblings and want to distribute them āāCause itās gonna be very intelligent, quite interesting, and humane.ā
At least I hope they will be.
Seriously, though I agree. I donāt think you personally should be forced to publish my deranged meanderings.
Then again Iām not arguing that a right to free speech exists just that if it does and the government is charged with ensuring that you get it, the government has a duty to make sure that happens (wow, talk about a tautology).
That could mean requiring ISPs and hosting services to allow access to anyone no matter how abhorrent the views being spouted. It doesnāt have to. It could mean setting up a government-run space for such groups/people or any number of other possibilities.
Or one can say that itās fine for businesses to decide what they are prepared to host and do. We donāt tend to do that elsewhere though - see any number of cake makers who complain about having to do cakes for gay weddings.
Seriously, what is it about wedding cake makers? Are they wedding cake makers because theyāre really religious and thatās why they love weddings?
Ah, I donāt think the government is responsible for seeing that you get it, only that it isnāt suppressed by the same government.
As I said above, forcing others to host your views suppresses their free speech. Setting up a government run space for hate speech would never fly for me, thatās the same as condoning it.
Discrimination is not protected free speech. That is again something thay extends beyond the end of oneās nose.
Is there a difference between a book publisher (or heck, just a white-label printing company) saying āno, weāre not going to print or publish this thing you wroteā and a web hosting provider saying āno, weāre not going to host the content youāve createdā? Penguin isnāt obligated to publish my shitty My Little Pony fanfic just because I wrote it and want other people to read it. Dreamhost or Geocities or CloudFlare similarly arenāt obligated to host a white supremacist hate screed just because someone wrote it and wants other people to read it (hell, theyāre not even obligated to host my website of shitty My Little Pony fanfics).
You are always free to speak your mind. The government (largely) canāt jail or punish you for doing so, nor can they pre-emptively prevent you from doing so. Similarly, you should have access to the internet as a means of obtaining information and doing business, but nobody on the internet is obligated to do business with you except for the government. Thatās all freedom of speech ultimately entails. While public spaces are going to be much more free-speech-absolutist zones for that reason, private spaces are not under the same obligations, except as proscribed by civil rights laws. You are not owed a platform for your speech, and as a society, we can police what we collectively decide is inappropriate speech or behavior without getting the government involved. We do it all the time. Itās why saying the N word in public is frowned upon, and being photographed at a Nazi rally is likely to get you shit-canned from your job.
There are, of course, exceptions. Generally, these revolve around ensuring that everyone has the same rights and access to society as everyone else, and the groups that are helped by these exceptions tend to be those that canāt change themselves to become more socially acceptable. You canāt choose to stop being black or gay, but you can choose to stop being a Nazi. A cake company couldnāt refuse to bake a cake for someone just because theyāre black or gay, but they could refuse to bake a cake for a black or gay person who (for whatever reason) wanted them to cover it in swastikas. This is because being black or gay isnāt āspeechā. Being a Nazi is.
The First Amendment does protect your right to speak freely.
The First Amendment does not mean you will be provided with with a PA system, a stage, and an audience.
Did I say it did? I was pointing out that free speech is not something that has ever been evenly distributed across the American population. How thatās functioning is changing. And letās not forget citizens united SC decision, making $$$$ speech.
Iām not sure that @L0ki is arguing that either, but I suspect they can speak for themselves.
