| ▲ | MostlyStable 12 hours ago |
| It can simultaneously be legal/allowable for them to ban speech, and yet also the case that we should criticize them for doing so. The first amendment only restricts the government, but a culture of free speech will also criticize private entities for taking censorious actions. And a culture of free speech is necessary to make sure that the first amendment is not eventually eroded away to nothing. |
|
| ▲ | plantwallshoe 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Isn’t promoting/removing opinions you care about a form of speech? If I choose to put a Kamala sign in my yard and not a Trump sign, that’s an expression of free speech. If the marketing company I own decides to not work for causes I don’t personally support, that’s free speech. If the video hosting platform I’m CEO of doesn’t host unfounded anti-vax content because I think it’s a bad business move, is that not also free speech? |
| |
| ▲ | AfterHIA 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The crux of this is a shift in context (φρόνησις) where-in entities like marketing companies or video hosting platforms are treated like moral agents which act in the same manner as individuals. We can overcome this dilemma by clarifying that generally, "individuals with the power to direct or control the speech of others run the risk of gross oppression by being more liberal with a right to control or stifle rather than erring on the side of propagating a culture of free expression whether this power is derived from legitimate political ascension or the concentration of capital." In short-- no. Your right is to positively assert, "Trump sign" not, "excludes all other signs as a comparative right" even though this is a practical consequence of supporting one candidate and not others. "Owning a marketing company" means that you most hold to industrial and businesss ethics in order to do business in a common economic space. Being the CEO of any company that serves the democratic public means that one's ethical obligations must reflect the democratic sentiment of the public. It used to be that, "capitalism" or, "economic liberalism" meant that the dollars and eyeballs would go elsewhere as a basic bottom line for the realization of the ethical sentiment of the nation-state. This becomes less likely under conditions of monopoly and autocracy. The truth is that Section 230 created a nightmare. If internet platforms are now ubiquitous and well-developed aren't the protections realized under S230 now obsolete? It would be neat if somebody did, "you can put any sign in my yard to promote any political cause unless it is specifically X/Trump/whatever." That would constitute a unique form of exclusionary free speech. | | |
| ▲ | plantwallshoe 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Being the CEO of any company that serves the democratic public means that one's ethical obligations must reflect the democratic sentiment of the public. How does one determine the democratic sentiment of the public, especially a public that is pretty evenly ideologically split? Seems fraught with personal interpretation (which is arguably another form of free speech.) | | |
| ▲ | AfterHIA 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Let's think pragmatically and think of, "democracy" as a way of living which seeks to maximize human felicity and minimize human cruelty. In a fair society there would be/is a consensus that at a basic level our social contract is legitimized by these commitments to that. The issue stems from splitting hairs about what human felicity constitutes. This can be resolved as recognizing that some dignified splitting of these hairs is a necessary component of that felicity. This presents in our society as the public discourse and the contingent but distinct values of communities in their efforts to realize themselves. I'm reminded of that old line by Tolstoy-- something like, "happy families are all happy for precisely the same reasons; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The point from an Adam Smith perspective is that healthy societies might all end up tending toward the same end by widely different means: Chinese communists might achieve superior cooperation and the realization of their values as, "the good life" by means dissimilar to the Quaker or the African tribesperson. The trick is seeing that the plurality of living forms and their competing values is not a hinderance to cooperation and mutual well-being but an opportunity for extended and renewed discourses about, "what we would like to be as creatures." Worth mentioning: https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Courses/Antirepresentationa... |
|
| |
| ▲ | lmz 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Agreed. If I have a TV network and think these anti-government hosts on my network are bad for business, that is also freedom of speech. | | |
| ▲ | rubyfan 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe. If it is independent of government coercion. | | |
| ▲ | Jensson 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | But Youtube did this after government coercion, so what is the difference? | | |
| ▲ | alphabettsy 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think you should look up the definition of coercion. | | |
| ▲ | Jensson 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Have you seen the emails the Biden Administration sent to Youtube? Here is a quote verbatim that they sent to Youtube: > we want to be sure that you have a handle on vaccine hesitancy generally and are working toward making the problem better. This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the White House Saying you want to make sure they will censor these videos is a threat, and then they said that Biden was behind this to add legitimacy to the threat. If it was just a friendly greeting why would they threaten youtube with Bidens name? If youtube did this willingly there would be no need to write such a threatening message saying they want to make sure Youtube censors these. You can read the whole report here if you wanna see more: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j... And if you don't see that as a threat, imagine someone in the trump administration sent that, do you still think its not a threat? Of course its a threat, it makes no sense to write that way otherwise, you would just say you wanted to hear how it goes not say you wanna make sure they do this specific thing and threaten them with the presidents powers. |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | crtasm 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I hope to see the anti-government hosts before they're let go. The channels I've tried so far only seem to have boring old anti-corruption, anti-abuse of power and anti-treating groups of people as less than human hosts. | |
| ▲ | AfterHIA 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You use terms (other as well) like, "own, is the CEO of, and the owner of" and this speaks to the ironically illiberal shift we've seen in contemporary politics. Historically one needed to justify, "why" some person is put into a position of authority or power-- now as a result of the Randroid Neoliberal Assault™ it's taken for granted that if, "John Galt assumed a position of power that he has a right to exercise his personal will even at the behest of who he serves or at the behest of ethics" as an extension of, "the rights of the individual." I want to recapitulate this sentiment as often and as widely as possible-- Rand and her cronies know as much about virtue, freedom, and Aristotle as they do about fornicating; not much. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | lkey 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Or it might be the case that that 'culture' is eroding the thing it claims to be protecting.
https://www.popehat.com/p/how-free-speech-culture-is-killing... |
| |
| ▲ | AfterHIA 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | This. Even if we have concrete protections in our society it takes a society of people committed to a common democratic cause and common functional prosperity that prevents there from being abuses of the right to speak and so on (..) This isn't complicated and this wasn't always controversial. I've already described above that even in this thread there's a sentiment which is that, "as long as somebody has gained coercive power legitimately then it is within their right to coerce." I see terms thrown around like, "if somebody owns" or, "if somebody is the CEO of..." which speaks to the growing air of illiberality an liberal autocranarianism which is a direct result of the neoliberal assault founding and funding thousands of Cato Institutes, Adam Smith Societies, and Heritage Foundations since the neoliberal turn in the late 1960's. We've legitimized domination ethics as an extension of the hungry rights of pseudotyrants and the expense of people in general. I wonder what people in general might one day do about this? I wonder if there's a historical precedent for what happens when people face oppression and the degradation of common cultural projects? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution#October_Rev... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror |
|
|
| ▲ | AfterHIA 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Bingo. This is Adam Smith's whole point in the second half of, "Wealth Of Nations" that nobody bothers to read in lieu of the sentiments of the Cato Institute and the various Adam Smith societies. Nations produce, "kinds of people" that based on their experience of a common liberty and prosperity will err against tyranny. Economics and autocracy in our country is destroying our culture of, "talk and liberality." Discourse has become, "let's take turns attacking each other and each other's positions." The American civilization has deep flaws but has historically worked toward, "doing what was right." https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/book-v-of-the-reven... |
|
| ▲ | SantalBlush 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Are you in favor of HN allowing advertisements, shilling, or spam in these threads? Because those things are free speech. Would you like to allow comments about generic ED pills? I simply don't believe people who say they want to support a culture of free speech on a media or social media site. They haven't really thought about what that means. |
| |
| ▲ | AfterHIA 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Without being crude I think they stopped, "thinking about that means" in any positive sense a long time ago. Cultures of discourse and criticism are never good for the powerful. The goal is to create a culture when anyone can say anything but with no meaningful social consequences negative or positive. I can call Trump a pedophile all day on my computer interface and maybe somebody else will see it but the Google and Meta machine just treat it as another engagement dollar. These dollars are now literally flowing to the White House in the form of investment commitments by acting Tech Czar Zuckerberg. While I'm with my dudes in computer space-- it all starts with the passing of the Mansfield Amendment. You want to know why tech sucks and we haven't made any foundational breakthroughs for decades? The privatization of technology innovation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Silicon_Valley https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/narrative#chapter-iv-tumul... |
|
|
| ▲ | asadotzler 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Will you criticize my book publishing company for not publishing and distributing your smut short story? |
| |
| ▲ | user34283 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No, but I will criticize Apple and Google for banning smut apps. If those two private companies would host all legal content, this could be a thriving market. Somehow big tech and payment processors get to censor most software. | |
| ▲ | AfterHIA 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Perhaps and if you have some kind of monopoly than definitely. Things beings, "yours" isn't some fundamental part of the human condition. CEOs serve their employees and shareholders and the ethics of the business space they operate in. Owners are ethically obligated to engage in fair business practices. I'm sick up to my neck of this sentiment that if John Galt is holding a gun he necessarily has the right to shoot it at somebody. Modern democracies aren't founded on realist ethics or absolute commitments to economic liberalism as totalizing-- they're founded on a ethical balance between the real needs of people, the real potential for capital expansion, and superior sentiments about the possibilities of the human condition. As a kid that supported Ron Paul's bid for the Republican nomination as a 16-year-old I can't help but feel that libertarian politics has ruined generations of people by getting them to accept autocracy as, "one ethical outcome to a free society." It isn't. The irony in me posting this will be lost on most: https://www.uschamber.com/ |
|