Advertising is hateful content. Ban the entire marketing industry now please.
The majority of advertising we see in the US should be banned for sure. It is just thinly veiled psychological fuckery designed to manipulate us. Not cool.
Agreed. Let everyone be free to decide. I don’t want something shoved to my face 24x7, its inorganic and harmful.
I mean it is, but it’s also not a bad thing in moderation (heh)
Who decides what is hateful and worthy of removal? How is it not censorship? This is such a dumb article lol
You don’t have to be a free speech advocate. It’s fine if you want censorship, just quit changing definitions to make yourself sound less authoritarian.
There’s a fundamental Americanized understanding of censorship as de facto BAD. So in order to justify doing what is very obviously a form of censorship, we don’t establish a justifiable and transparent process for censoring content. We just redefine the thing we’re doing as “Not Censorship”.
At the same time, with so much of social media in the hands of a tiny minority of mega-advertisers, the debate is pointless. We don’t get to decide what is or is not censured. The advertisers do. Smears against ethnic groups or religious movements or people of a particular gender or persuasion are only prohibited when they interfere with the distribution of marketing materials.
Now that advertisers have sufficiently A/B tested their marketing material, there’s no reason to explicitly prohibit bigoted content because you can simply cloister particular communities into atomized walled gardens of advertising media.
I can sell Bud Light Fuck The Trans cans to the evangelical chuds, I can sell Bud Light Israel Did Nothing Wrong to Zionists, and I can sell Bud Light Communism Will Win to the Tankies. Everyone can have their own boutique Bud Light experience and sales of piss beer can keep going up forever.
I mean it is censorship. But not all censorship is bad.
There will be no protection under the social contract for those who wish to violate it.
Some might argue that calling what happens in Gaza a genocide might be hate speach against Israel, and it should be censored. So who decides what is “hate” and what is not?
In your example, there is clear, observable evidence of genocide occurring. They are killing civilians and demolishing critical civilian infrastructure. So, saying Israel is committing genocide has a certain amount of truth/accuracy in it, and the intent isn’t to smear Israel, it’s to point out what they are actively doing, while the world is receiving constant updates. In other words, there is objective evidence behind the claims.
Hate speech is the opposite. It has no objective evidence behind it, and the intent is to make specific people/groups look a certain way. We can typically infer the intent of hate speech by the words they choose to use, and the way they frame their “argument”. We employ critical thinking to do this. This process can also be peer reviewed for further accuracy.
In your example, there is clear, observable evidence of genocide occurring.
I’ve seen many denying the evidence which seems so obvious to you. Even my government is denying it.
Who decides about objectivity?
Who decides about objectivity?
In principle, you don’t need anyone to decide. The facts speak for themselves.
In practice, people get the overwhelming majority of their information third-hand. So the people who decide on objective reality are the people who manage the media infrastructure that provides information of the outside world to their audience.
As audiences become more fractured and information streams more selective (particularly in political media), the different viewpoints provided by various news outlets and propaganda firms can create the illusion of multiple competing objective realities.
But lying and denial and selective reporting don’t change reality. Eventually, the reporting begins to produce contradictions - images and statements that don’t line up with one another, because they are so busy trying to reframe a momentary narrative or shape a shifting popular opinion. That dissonance is a big warning sign of an illusion at play.
Those arguing objective facts when the point is clear tend to argue from a position of bad faith, and should be ignored. Hence the critical thinking.
Look at what those who are denying genocide in this example have to gain from such a claim. If it’s much, those individuals have a vested interest in denying the truth and as such, should no longer be allowed a seat at the table.
There is plenty across history that defines a genocide. Leaders arguing there aren’t exact parallels this time around, makes them despot. Complicit is too kind a word.
We have footage of them bombing schools, hospitals, shooting up aid convoys… What is there to deny?..
Schools, hospitals, and aid convoys that are hijacked and used by Hamas for conducting military operations, which makes them valid military targets under international law.
Except, in all cases, there were a lot of dead doctors, teachers, and children. The UN investigated each instance and found war crimes. The aid convoys were with registered international aid organizations and, upon investigation, they were found to be legitimate, had no weapons, we have footage of the attacks happening, they were not entering legitimate Israeli territory, and Israel has not shared any evidence of hamas operating out of these locations or via aid convoys.
If I take the time to back this up with sources, would you be receptive to the information? Don’t want to waste my time if you’re not willing to assess evidence that disproves your currently held beliefs.
Schools, hospitals, and aid convoys that are hijacked and used by Hamas
The “human shields” rhetoric is traditionally used as a reason why you can’t target a militant, not a reason why you can kill a civilian.
Israel has inverted the narrative, both by asserting that a dozen dead Palestinians are justified if one Hamas militant is killed, and by asserting that anyone in proximity to a Hamas militant is a collaborator.
The end result is a free-fire zone, wherein nobody an Israeli bomb or hit squad targets is exempt from the status of “military target”. This is a legal claim that Israel makes independent of international legal courts, and has resulted in the Israeli government being repeatedly sanctioned and threatened with prosecution by those same courts.
So no, they are not
valid military targets under international law
Just the contrary. The IDF is implicated in war crimes by engaging in these rampant and lawless slaughters.
Some might argue that calling what happens in Gaza a genocide might be hate speach against Israel
Paxton Wins Major Case Defending Texas’s Anti-Boycott-of-Israel Law
“Texas’s anti-boycott law is both constitutional and, unfortunately, increasingly necessary as the radical left becomes increasingly hostile and antagonistic toward Israel,” said Attorney General Paxton. “Though some wish to get rid of the law and see Israel fail, the State of Texas will remain firm in our commitment to stand with Israel by refusing to do business with companies that boycott the only democratic nation in the Middle East. In this case, I’m pleased to see the court recognize that the plaintiff lacked any standing to bring this challenge. Thus, our important law remains in effect, and I will continue to defend it relentlessly.”
A tolerant society can not tolerate intolerance.
Sure, but there’s an lot of people classifying disagreement as hatred and using that to stamp out the discourse we need to have as a society.
Take positive discrimination. Some see it as corrective action for historical injustices. Some see it as newspeak it for just another form of discrimination and two wrongs don’t make a right. There’s a societal discourse that needs to happen there.
Nobody is preaching hatred, but I expect I’ll get shit for even suggesting there’s a ethical argument against DEI.
You’re talking about equality vs equity. DEI is equitable.
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Running a company with people who are all exactly the same is such a stupid idea that it doesn’t even merit a discussion. How are you going to understand your market, your demographics, cultural changes? Dumbest shit I’ve heard in awhile.
It would help if you re-thought your argument from the perspective of a person with the intelligence to understand the difference between discourse and intolerant hate speech. Yes. We are discussing hatred.
No, don’t drag DEI into this. There is no equivalency in this discussion. It just shows your biases to even remotely associate it.
You are proving the parent’s point and you don’t even realize it.
It is intolerant hate speech targeted at people who are specifically targeted by racist, genderist, ableist, and sexist double standards, going against the very pillars of democracy and modern science, to serve a religious and corporatist agenda. What was your point, mfer?
DEI, when applied in the real life, usually means if there’s two people with similar enough skillsets, one hires the more disadvataged one. Some programs use a scoring system, where being marginalized grants you extra scores on top of what you get on the tests, sure, but it’s usually pretty low (10-20 max for a 450+ max score system). It also involves training for the HR, so their prejudices can be overwritten with actual fact.
However, when I first heard about DEI in 2012 (!), it was that people told me I could get fired for being white just so the workplace can expand its “diversity”, while the guy telling me its existence told me how can I help Fidesz to win the next elections, and that I should become a hardcore conservative ASAP because I would grow out of leftism.
And society != government.
The law should tolerate intolerance, outside of credible threats of violance/restrictions of others’ rights. However, society shouldn’t tolerate intolerance, meaning we should shut down intolerance in all privately controlled spaces, and confront intolerance in all public spaces.
This is extremely wrong. The government is most definitely our society. Trying to pretend the government is not made up of us is ridiculous and reeks of othering.
I have read several of your posts and they all rely on government bad private sector good methodology. It reminds me of good old fashioned anti-government propaganda pushed by corpo bootlickers.
The government is and always will be a tool of society. I can certainly appreciate your apprehension with our current government in the US. I also appreciate your diligence in defining the difference between public and private spaces.
Trying to pretend the government is not made up of us is ridiculous and reeks of othering.
Oh, the incoming US government is made up of us? There is no “us” that includes both me and those thieving, murderous, lying pieces of shit.
And as the man said, if my thought-dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.
Yup it is, you must understand the incoming administration is just a fraction of the actual government.
I totally agree with you that Aotus and his handlers along with a lot of our representatives are pieces of shit. We definitely need to vote them out. Hopefully we will still be able to when it is all said and done.
Really though we need some serious reforms to restore our confidence.
The government is most definitely our society.
That’s absolutely not true. To use a sports analogy (any sport), the government is the referees, and society is the culture around the game (cheers, rituals, etc). If nobody shows up to the stadium, the refs have nothing to referee, yet society carries on.
We try to set up rules that match the values we hold (i.e. no dangerous tackles), but if we try to rig the game in our favor, the other team will use those same rules against us. If we give the referees too much leeway in interpreting the rules, we open ourselves up to bribery and unfair game calling.
As you rightly said, government is a tool of society, but it’s also a dangerous tool. The same tool can guarantee equal protection under the law like the civil rights movement in the US, or it can guarantee unequal protection like in Nazi Germany. The difference comes down to what powers we let the government have.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
You can throw “fascists” (general term for the right wing these days it seems) in there as well. Once you give the government power to regulate speech, it becomes very easy to abuse. If you can control the narrative, you can hold on to power.
they all rely on government bad private sector good methodology
While I do most closely align with libertarians than either major party (who are stereotypically pro-private sector), I don’t think this is a good summary. I think government is a dangerous tool and we should be very careful in using it to solve problems. However, I also think large corporations are also dangerous, and we should have tools to keep them in check. For example:
- rescind corporate protections for larger orgs - if a company is worth more than a certain amount, it no longer needs public protection and should be expected to carry insurance for any debts
- expose executives to criminal prosecution
- set strict limits on election interference, and get money out of elections
- I believe in NIT, a formulation of UBI that has less sticker shock, so people can walk way with confidence from bad employment situations
We absolutely need checks on both the private and public sectors, the first to prevent any one individual or group from having an outsized influence, and the second to prevent weaponization of the state’s monopoly on force. I believe government should be decentralized, but powerful in the limited roles it has.
If they’d come for the Nazis first, the remainder of that over-repeated list would not matter.
I know people who have ran for office and been successful on the city/county level. They made a difference in our communities. The people in government are not any different than you or I.
On a local level there is not even a doubt that we have a lot of control. I have “lobbied” local, state level, and federal level and I can tell you we have less control over the federal side. This does not mean we have no control though.
We are literally the government. The government has the power to regulate speech and exercises it’s authority regularly. The judicial branch is well known for regulating free speech in the public sector. We have a lot of laws for things like broadcasting or radio in the private sector.
Unfortunately our government never really caught up with the Internet age quite yet. The regulations they have wrote heavily favor corporate interests. Concepts like Net Neutrality were politicized instead of embraced. We still lack basic privacy protections. We gave hundreds of billions of dollars to telecom to provide fiber throughout the country and they squandered it.
We are forced to use shitty private companies for communication. We have to go through third parties for all our banking needs. Meanwhile these companies lie, cheat, and decieves us. Truly a libertarian hellscape where private interests control everything.
The very reason you dislike the government is the very reason we are here today. Our government is so ineffective it has basically given into private interests. This is particularly noticeable in the Tech sector.
I think it is past time to write a new constitution that actually works for everyone. We need to shed the “for the rich by the rich” part of our government and basically grow up. Governing should be highly regulated and designed to resist corruption.
The people in government are not any different than you or I.
Yup, and I’ve thought of challenging my state rep because he always runs unopposed. I honestly don’t have time for the job, but my rep is such an idiot that maybe it’s worth risking the very remote chance that I’ll win. I doubt I’d get >20%, and that’s including all the protest and pity votes in my district.
Concepts like Net Neutrality were politicized instead of embraced.
It’s also not at all what it says on the tin.
Ideally, something like that wouldn’t be necessary at all because nobody owns the internet. Yet for some reason everyone wants to regulate it. If I pay for service, I should get the advertised speed, regardless of what I’m accessing. If someone like Netflix wants to host a cache at my ISP, go for it, but it should only be hit if my DNS resolves to that cache (and I control my DNS).
Yet ISPs, governments, and big tech companies all think they own it. Just back off.
Truly a libertarian hellscape where private interests control everything.
More like a nightmare for libertarians. Everywhere I look there’s cronyism, and that’s distinctly anti-libertarian. Banks get bailed out when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar instead of the execs serving jail time. ISPs violate their contracts and nobody holds them to task.
Our government is so ineffective it has basically given into private interests.
I think the opposite is true. Our government is so effective that special interests rarely need to lobby, because our reps sell us out on their own. If you want to see who representatives are loyal to, look no further than their campaign contributions.
The problem is that we keep expecting government to solve our problems without ensuring that they’re actually loyal to us, the people. And why should they? It’s not like we’re going to vote them out next time, we’ll keep voting with our tribe because maybe this time they’ll listen (they won’t).
No, for government to actually be worth trusting, we need massive reforms to realign the federal government with the interests of the people. State governments are often better (esp in smaller states) because there’s less to get from buying those reps, though that’s not exactly true in my area (Utah, where the predominant church largely calls the shots on important legislation). Some options:
- eliminate what campaign funds can be spent on, and largely eliminate rallys (candidates can host one town hall in each state), political ads, etc
- replace House districts with proportional representation in each state
- replace FPTP with something like STAR or Approval voting
In general, get money out of politics as much as possible, and attack the two party duopoly. That probably won’t fix it, but it’s a start.
write a new constitution
Maybe. I’m not sure what I’d change that couldn’t be fixed with an amendment or two though, and that’s likely way easier than replacing the Constitution (which I largely like).
Suddenly they care. One dead CEao and a bunch of whiny scared Billionaires is enough to stop 10 years of hateful content. Interesting lesson right there. Censorship is only good if it protects the rich.
Who decides when the content is “hateful”? The perpetrators of genocide characterize themselves as marginalized and their victims as a force seeking to eradicate them. That is the problem with censorship. Those are the people who end up with the control of speech. You end up with an Orwellian inversion of concepts like hateful speech for the exact reason that they can be weaponized for profit and power.
You show me which fascist government is going to censor the fascists living under it. It’s a paradox. They will not. They will censor the resistance.
We’ve come to decide ‘hate content’ on ideological basis that the question of ‘who decides’ arises. If people could be more realistic than idealistic, that would’ve never been the issue. In this situation, what’s in your head becomes more important than what you really need because something didn’t go your way.
It IS censorship and they should stop saying it isn’t, but they should clearly say “we will censor X because Y” and be transparent about it. Censorship where the majority of population agrees with it is still censorship, but approved and accepted for the greater good.
Now, the question is what does “hateful” mean? And where does “hateful” start and begin? Is saying “I hate my neighbour” and “I hate Nazis” the same? Is “I hate gay people” and “I hate Manchester United” the same? Why not focus on violence instead of hate. We should have the freedom to hate (hear me out…) but in the end it is a feeling and a preference and no censorship will change that. What should be prevented at all costs however, is violent content. People can love or hate whoever, but they shouldn’t be allowed to call upon any type of violence towards them.
Someone hating someone doesn’t change a thing, but someone calling for attacks against someone - this is a whole new dimension and deserves total censorship.
Censorship isn’t policing people’s feelings, you’re allowed to hate. Why should you be allowed to express hate, and make those people feel unwelcome?
Your questions are also not as morally grey as you think. Manchester United isn’t hated for a core part of their being, they’re not victims of violence, they’re not a class of person who has been enslaved or erased or mistreated throughout their existence.
Individual freedom needs to take a back seat to collective freedom, and the freedom to self expression, identity, and well being for all. Freedom to oppress isn’t freedom. Nobody is free unless we’re all free.
It’s simple. If your rights infringe on my rights, and there is no way for me to avoid the “you”, whatever it may be at the moment, it should be regulated.
Go ahead and hate gays, but on a multicultural/multi-national platform that over a 3rd of the population use, you shouldn’t be allowed to project that because it makes gay people feel unsafe. It infringes on their humanity.
Just because a group is immune to the intricacies of this, re: straight and white, shouldn’t be a license for them to say and do whatever they want.
Try a group of gay people against straights, see how long that group lasts. Why the double meaning
If in a work of fiction I have a villain call my hero the n-word to demonstrate that the villain is an unapologetic racist, and I am told that I can’t have that because the word is bad in and of itself and that racist behavior cannot be tolerated even in fiction…
That is censorship, even if your goals are noble they are also ignorant, as showing disgusting things in fiction is often done in order to condemn similar behavior in real life.
If you call a black person the n-word in real life, and he stomps your ass.
This isn’t censorship, this is comedy.
If one goes onto an online community and calls its members radical insults in an unfriendly clearly non-joking hostile manner. Then the guilty party should be removed from that community,
Well it depends on the definition of censor.
If you define censor as, “to suppress or delete as objectionable” (Webster) then it fits just fine.
Lemmy was created because Desaulines(sp?) got “censored” on reddit. Now he famously over-censors his darling instance lemmy.ml.
My point is just that nobody really thinks it should be a free for all. Everyone is human and doesn’t want to hear anything that they consider egregious, or in the case of lemmy.ml “against rule 2”.
nobody really thinks it should be a free for all
Social media probably shouldn’t, but the law should allow for a free for all. I personally think we should be closer to “free for all” than “completely locked down,” but everyone has their preferred balance.
The creator of Lemmy is just one example. They remove a lot of content that isn’t hateful, just against their political ideology. I used that as an example of a private social media website which does a lot of censoring, even though the creators are sort of, somehow, outwardly against censoring? So everyone is human is my point.
The article in question is about hate speech, not political dissent. Hate speech is pretty widely moderated away on Lemmy, and I think a majority of people here are cool with that. Some here are arguing semantics which is fair. Censoring is censoring which is the definition of censoring. I’m in the camp that if someone online is threatening another person or group of people, that should be hidden/removed.
which does a lot of censoring, even though the creators are sort of, somehow, outwardly against censoring?
Another perspective on the Lemmy situation is that, for example, I can sincerely say I believe free speech has merits while creating a book club where political discussion isn’t allowed. Some would call that censorship, but restricting a certain community doesn’t mean I approve of unconditional societal censorship. “Censorship”, like many abstract concepts in the liberalist worldview, doesn’t make sense to think of as a universal value, but rather in contexts, like you pointed out with hate speech removal being in line with the beliefs of most people on the main Lemmy instances.
There are some concepts, for example, that I think are fine to discuss in an academic situation but should be censored in public spaces, especially when it comes to explicitly genocidal ideologies like Nazism, or bigoted hate speech.
The article in question is about hate speech, not political dissent.
It’s also by a politician with political power.
Do you know what the difference is between political dissent and hate speech? A clever application of the law, or a particularly persuasive lawyer. The law should be limited to prosecuting credible threats of violence or other speech intending to cause direct harm (e.g. repeated harassment, shouting “fire” in a crowded room, etc).
Overbearing private moderation is absolutely fine, since people can take their speech to another platform or create their own. Laws controlling speech is another matter entirely.
Lemmy devs are free to moderate their instances however they see fit, and I’m free to not engage with their instance.
It sounds like we agree, but I’m much less lawerly due to my lack of experience in that field.
No worries, I don’t have any direct experience either, just a strong interest.
As a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer, but I was quite introverted so litigation wasn’t appealing, so I decided to go into software patent law (I loved computers). While doing a CS undergrad, I learned how terrible software patents are, so I stuck to software dev.
I still really like the law, but now I’m more interested as a citizen knowing my rights instead of looking to prosecute the law.
Right, but they gave everyone their own platform which can compete with .ml in the same space
.ml doesn’t do parma bans generally speaking…
While I still think their over zealous daddy sheepooh and pootin speech policing is rather clown, their mod style is more reasonable vis-a-vis.World mods who are just same as reddit lol
Poor reading comprehension and regime narrative weaving…
Never forget how they handled Saint Luigi
.ml is garbage lead by legit garbage people. But, open source means we can take lemmy code made by garbage people and repurpose it for good. Unfortunately it seems like Lemmy image is forever stained by those people and the network will never be adopted by normal people fully.
Lemmy is fine. It will blow up in the next 2-5, guaranteed. We will also learn new ways disinformation techniques will evolve in that time frame to adjust.
It will blow up in the next 2-5, guaranteed
Big doubt. People will flock to something like BlueSky before they flock to Lemmy.
Bigger doubt.
Unless the government outlaws federating/VPNs and forces ISPs to block instances.
We had the chance in the last five elections to secure net neutrality. What can I say, people are fucking stupid.
People don’t even understand what those two words even mean. The chronically stupid will stay stupid. My own mother is a prime example of this. Her brain is warped by whatever Fox News, Facebook, and health guru podcasts she listens to tell her how to think and feel. The majority in this country are just like her.
Unfortunately, yeah. It was remarkable that for some amount of time america was unique and maybe a decent place to live. All be it 10-20 years cumulatively, maybe. Best you can do now is look out for yourself; give the finger to your mom and people like her every chance you get; and hold tight while these idiots organizing leads to their idiotic demise.
Because we are the few, we can slip between the cracks and find plenty of places to live where the fasicists can’t breathe down our necks.
Thankfully my Mom and I still have a good relationship. I just don’t talk politics with her, however I am willing to sacrifice my privileged place in society to fight fascism if it comes down to a civil war.
My point is just that nobody really thinks it should be a free for all.
Don’t made judgements about everybody based on one guy. I’m on an instance that doesn’t defederate lemmygrad or lemmy.ml, so I commonly see utterly insane tankie takes in popular, and of course also in various comments - and yet I don’t want those people to not have a platform. Because I trust just about noone to decide whether my opinions should be censored, and if that means also not censoring the opinions of people who I think are very wrong, I’m willing to take that trade.
There’s a big difference between utterly insane tankie takes and hateful content.
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. —Noam Chomsky
I mean, sure, but does that mean people get to express themselves everywhere all the time?
I go to work and there’s always a couple fuckers who bring up their hateful opinions in a “I’m not racist but,” way.
It affects my productivity when I have to hear that bullshit all day while trying to get them to stop in a diplomatic way.
I can’t say it so directly, but it’s not censorship to say “shut up and let me work”
If they’re disturbing you from working, that’s an issue independent from the message they’re expressing, so freedom of expression does not apply.
This is a stupid distinction to make. There is no speech that doesn’t affect people materially.
That’s not what the distinction is about. The important thing is whether you want to shut them down because of what opinion they’re expressing, or how they’re expressing it.
Ok, now I argue that the constant bombardment of misinformation and hate speech we face online and through the media clearly affects people’s ability to live their lives, and is no different than the guy talking my ear off at work.
I’m not saying they can’t express themselves. I’m just saying that we don’t have to listen, but with the current state of things we’re being forced to listen.
Nobody is forcing you to read anyone’s comments on Facebook.
No, but we’re on the receiving end of the consequences of those comments.
When they come for you because they’re acting on some shit that Zuckerberg’s algorithm amplified, your shallow moralizing won’t make any difference.
It’s not just comments and I’m not talking just about me.
You and I and Mel Brooks all know that the common person is a moron.
Algorithms push misinformation. Bots push information. Are we limiting free speech by saying “you can’t use algorithms and bots to spread lies”?
Does lying count as free speech?
For example: I used to like Facebook for seeing what my friends are up to. It’s not that any more. I would be rid of it but I’m a freelancer and a lot of my clients insist on using it.
Now it’s a constant feed of shit I didn’t subscribe to designed to stoke the culture war. Even the shit I did follow way back when I still used it a lot now shows me posts designed to make people argue. It’s like 5 posts I didn’t ask for to every one that did. I’m smart enough to see it, but is everyone?
By this logic they should ban all religious speech from every platform
Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
- Sir Karl Raimund Popper, speaking on The Paradox Of Tolerance.
I feel like it is still censorship, but a degree of censorship required for public safety is tolerable…
Unless he’s saying that social media sites policing content on their platform isn’t censorship, because it’s not. It’s only censorship if it’s a government doing it, you have the right to control what is said on a platform you own
It’s only censorship if it’s a government doing it
The amount of public space, both real and virtual, is decreasing dramatically. I think limits on private censorship should definitely exist.
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Or do these limits only kick in for platforms above a certain size?
That’s how it’s in the EU, the DSA only applies to large providers. It’s kinda like the fairness doctrine in broadcasting but in the digital domain, e.g. TikTok is currently in hot waters over the Romania elections because they did not take sufficient precautions to make sure that everything’s fair and square.
And in that case, why would the same principle not apply?
Because size obliges. If I want to smelt some cans in my backyard I can just do that provided I have a “fireplace” – which is just an area set up to be suitable to have a fire. If I want to build an industrial-scale aluminium smelter I have to get permits and everything. The public interest in the latter is much larger, that’s why I have to jump through hoops and follow regulations.
(I can’t burn garden waste though, gotta give it to the municipality to compost. A matter of waste of perfectly fine organic material and unnecessary emissions).
If I make sandwiches and people decide to eat my sandwiches then why should the government require me to follow basic health and safety.
Service offered to the general public should expect to be regulated.
Excellent point
These are platforms. It isn’t censorship because they are private for-profit entities. They can host or deny any speech they want. And we can post on them or not and take our content elsewhere.
