I don’t, it’s a rhetorical suggestion. The reason I don’t is because they can’t, as I said:
“Even if we got Facebook to agree to embody ideals of free expression, even if it believed in them to the heart of its culture, its nature and vulnerability as a private corporation forces it [to do otherwise]”
I am. But I am a proponent of your speech, not a proponent of the false and dangerous delusion that you should consign your speech to Facebook (or Boing Boing) or anyone else who lacks the power to guarantee its freedom (and who, besides, have all sorts of plainly posted limits on what they’ll publish)
It’s true that I think Facebook’s policies are bad on an epic scale, whereas our are merely strict for the sake of convenience and idiosyncratic quality control. But none of it matters when it comes to free speech, because in both places you have none, and cannot possibly be given it.
i’m really curious about this part of things. do you mean for technological, or social reasons? and semi-related, do you think isps can provide neutral platforms?
as things stand today, there’s always a company in the way of internet person-to-person contact. the logical extension would seem to say virtual speech can never be free speech, which seems an odd place to start from.
How is that different than the way Facebook would characterize their own efforts?
Both BoingBoing and Facebook must moderate comments to create a culture that isn’t YouTube or 4Chan or whatever. So I totally agree that moderation is a necessary function of user comments but I’m not understanding how Facebook vs BoingBoing is a fundamental difference rather than just a difference of scale.
I should add that I’ve never been banned from Facebook for talking about any aspect of their advertising practices, whereas I have been banned from here twice for just that. Boing Boing, of course, has that right. But, again, Facebook is not the only site with user content that sometimes makes arbitrary decisions about users and user posted content.
My feeling is that ISPs already have an intimate relationship with the public sphere, not least because their cables sit on public poles and use public airwaves. So my perhaps-naive preference is that ISPs should be required at a regulatory level to host and publish any legal speech, should be required to provide hosting for it, and that all services that transit ISPs (i.e. everyone) should allow access to that speech without discrimination and be legally prevented from denying access to it.
This is, amazingly, already close to the real-world state of affairs. But it’s just so low quality (10MB of free hosting and a shitty @verizon email address or whatever) that no-one uses it and it doesn’t really feel like speech. But you know what? No-one ever got kicked off their free ISP webspace for having stuff on it that no-one else would publish.
I’d be OK with taxpayers subsidizing them if those subsidies were exclusively tied to the provision of public-access freeze peach.
You know, I always wanted to create a non-profit comment hosting service designed so that the public could easily comment on anything online and, so long as it were legal, the subject of that commentary had no control over it.
The downside, of course, is that the subject wouldn’t be insta-publishing it vicariously with the original content, though I suspect many sites would eagerly drop in the code anyway. Whatever policies they have for local presentation, bans, or moderation, the comment would still exist in public form at the central repository.
I changed my mind because of gmaergate and turmp, which exposed what such a service would be doomed to embody.
I think this brings up a question I’ve not seen the answer to, which whether web forums like BB BBS are public accommodations subject to anti-discrimination laws that prohibit discrimination against protected classes. I doubt given the BB ethos that such an issue would ever come up directly since I don’t think BB would do so, but what about other sites? Could, say, a for profit right wing media site with a web forum ban blacks? Jews? Muslims? Women? Arabs? Or would that be impermissible discrimination? I’d think that ad supported nationally frequented webforums are a prima facie example of interstate commerce subject to Federal anti-discrimination laws, but I’m not sure how such a case would be adjudicated given how web forums are also like private clubs, and given the constitutional right to free association…
What a great question. Until SCOTUS has an opinion…
I think it might hinge on whether the public can walk in. A nazi web designer gets to pick his clients according to his conscience, but as soon as a nazi restauranter or cake baker opens his door, he’s got to serve whoever drops by.
My completely not-a-lawyer hunch is that the process of signing up for an account makes something no longer a “public accomodation” or whatever the criterion is, but what a great question for an actual expert. I might ask Popehat!
There are also communications-related legal mires in the mix. We aren’t held responsible for other people’s postings on our site (at least until we’re challenged, per the CDA safe harbor stuff) but it’s always legally our speech and we can’t be compelled. We do get to have our cake and eat it, it’s true. But we do bear any remaining risk of publication, so there you go.
I suspect the issue is a bit hidden because users can be banned based on proxies for race, religion or sex - for their expression of ideas - rather than explicitly for being a member of a protected class. “No, we banned you because you don’t support ‘All Lives Matter’, not because you are black! Didn’t we, boys? [much good ole boy gefawing in the background]”
Fair enough, but I think for most people, it’s not a matter of absolutes. You wouldn’t expect David Suzuki to have absolutely zero impact on the environment… but it would be surprising to see him drive a Hummer, or burn tires in his yard.
If he claimed he did those things because he’d never have a guaranteed footprint of 0, would that be a good reason?
He probably makes an effort to live as closely to his values as possible. Even if sometimes it’s inconvenient. You are proponents of free speech, but you have a rule against tangential discussion. It’s the principal that you don’t think any form of free speech should start here.
Why not adopt the harm principal as a limitation on speech, and disallow commercial spam as your rules? At least then visitors would have the sense that they are free in most practical ways to express themselves in a place where other people are interested in the same topics, and a place that sticks to it’s values. Try it for a month!
[quote=“Umm, post:138, topic:85010, full:true”]Why not adopt the harm principal as a limitation on speech, and disallow commercial spam as your rules? At least then visitors would have the sense that they are free in most practical ways to express themselves in a place where other people are interested in the same topics, and a place that sticks to it’s values. Try it for a month!
[/quote]
Please don’t.
The curated/civilised community is a major reason why I’m here. If the BBS turns into the Popehat commentariat, I’m gone.
You can start a thread on any subject you like! The rule only applies within specific discussions, to prevent derailing, threadshitting, etc. If it gets shut down, it’ll probably be of naked racism, sexism, trump-driving trollies, etc., and you’ll be told why.
You closed down a thread for, “using up enough oxygen”. Is that a good reason? When I pointed this out to you, you called me an “entitled infant”, made a tweet about how foolish I am, then referred me to the rules that say you don’t need a good reason.
That’s fine, you’ve got rules, but if you present yourself as a proponent of free speech, vague limitations on what we can say are unexpected. You can’t preach free speech then call me entitled for being surprised that you don’t hold those values in a domain under your control.
In other words, you’re still mad about being mocked by other users in a 220-post topic for your handwringing over a post you did not like (“it’s wrong to post this on the internet to humiliate him”) complete with a Dr. Google diagnosis of mental illness, which was rightfully ridiculed in turn for its sanctimonious and plainly censorious attitude by other people, none of whom were me.
The thread wasn’t closed when I said it was “using up enough oxygen,” either. It was closed later after becoming completely derailed. Perhaps, when I said that, you felt it had been closed? (This should tell you something about how underlying power imbalances tend to sit in the air, irrespective of policy…)
But hey, you should be happy! You got what you wanted: something removed from the internet on grounds that turned out to be largely specious.
A good reminder that we have no power to offer you the guarantee of unfettered free speech you persist in suggesting we provide, but not enjoy.
(“entitled infant” is a fair characterization of people who think they have a human right to have their commentary published on other people’s websites because those people advocate for free speech.)
Sort of. Genius also superimposes the commentary on a scraped copy of the original content, though, which is a psychological headgame designed to increase the tension and anxiety of author and audience, not resolve it.
Isn’t this the same thread in which someone asked BB to pull the video that was posted because they believed it was mocking a “silent disability”? Wasn’t that person, in fact, arguing for censorship?
Wellllllllll that rather depends on whether you think that applying a subjective editorial policy to what people post on your website is censorship, don’t it?
