There's a lot of people on twitter who just want to say the n-word, want to say Kanye is right about Jewish people, want to say LGBT people are groomers, etc. I personally don't see the justice in letting people who want to cause material harm to others - people who'd put me in a camp if they had their way - like that have a platform, no-questions-asked
There's a philosophical thing here and people have different views. The ACLU used to defend the right for the KKK and neo-nazis to parade around in jewish neighborhoods doing holocaust denial, etc, and if I remember correctly many of their lawyers doing such work were Jewish. The view if those people are idiots, and they can say this if they want, and more decent people (who outnumber the bigots) will counter the bigoted speech with their own.
No one can credibly deny that some speech is harmful. We'd all like to suppress some speech that we don't like, but the reason free speech advocates take the position they take (generally) is that once speech is prohibited the status quo regime will ban legitimate criticisms. So the good has to be accepted with the bad.
It's a tough issue. If I'm honest I favor censorship of views that I believe are harmful, but would object strenuously if my point of view is censored. I also think being called slurs, etc, is an unpleasant user experience, to say the least, so from a business perspective if nothing else I get why that is censored. Still, the censorship has gone too far in my view. We need to figure out a way to circle this square.
There's quite a difference between Twitter and public street demonstration permits. Allowing Nazis to get the same opportunity to gather on a public street as any other interest group is inherently limited. If they were gathering in front of every house of every Jewish person in the country 24/7/365, that would no longer be protected speech. It would be harassment.
Granting, of course, Twitter goes beyond this. They ban all hate speech at all, no matter how limited it is, but they're a private platform, which gets to the real heart of the issue. Everyone that cares deeply about this who is in agreement with Elon's side and isn't just being petulant about having personally been banned seems to equate Twitter with some kind of true public square or some necessary platform that handicaps a political movement if it can't access it. I just don't see this. The public streets, the government itself, I have no choice but to use and participate in. Everyone has to. But I have never had a Twitter account, never visit the site, and seem to have gotten along fine like that for over 40 years. Trump got banned and is still likely to win his party's presidential nomination in two years. It hasn't materially impacted his ability to get his message out and reach followers at all. Everything Kanye says is still going to be on every headline in every news service in the country the same day, and if he releases an album, his fans will still know. He doesn't need Twitter. I just don't see how that isn't definitive proof that Twitter is not this true common carrier people seem to think it is. You don't need access to one specific private platform to be heard. They're not like an electric utility with a local monopoly that is truly your only option to access a critical service. Trump and Kanye were both well known with hoards of followers before Twitter ever existed, and people would still hang on their words if Twitter completely disappeared tomorrow.
They still take these cases. (It is a bit complicated, individual ACLU chapters have a lot of autonomy, and they do not all agree with each other in all ways.)
So I see a substantial difference.
On one hand, you have lawyers from a nonprofit arguing in court that, while someone's views may be abhorrent, they are legal, and the principle matters more than the harm.
On the other, you have a for-profit entity tilting the landscape upon that speech rests, and as the raging debates about this stuff have shown, is difficult to distinguish profit from other motives.
Running a company with specific ideological priors looks a lot different to me than defending assholes for past speech on principle.
I suppose I have a biased view on this, as a holder of some beliefs that already get censored by normal society, but I really just see it as the cost of doing business. It isn't the end of me as an active agent in society who tries to spread my views, in the same way that blocking Nick Fuentes would end Nazism; just something you work with or around.
Following that logic, I support censoring/deplatforming fascists et al. because I want to hurt their ability to do fascism, not for some higher principle of striving towards a perfect, values-neutral marketplace of ideas. Speech is just another front on the plains of power.
I'd be curious to hear examples of views that people consider reasonable that are censored by normal society. Not implying that they don't exist, just that most of the views that are "censored by normal society" that I'm personally aware of are views that I have no interest in defending.
Beyond all that, which is a tough issue, Twitter is also a company, and if people are freely throwing around the N word and crazy conspiracy garbage, normal people are going to leave. Advertisers are going to leave with them.
I guess Musk is going to put less emphasis on outright bans, and more on “quarantining”. He might not ban an account posting racial slurs all day long, but it won’t be recommended, it won’t come up in search unless you set some special flag, and non-followers who visit it will get some kind of warning interstitial “Many users have reported this content as highly offensive, are you sure you want to view it?” Ads will only be displayed if the advertiser explicitly opts in.
> I personally don't see the justice in letting people who want to cause material harm to others - people who'd put me in a camp if they had their way - like that have a platform
Should Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Smith & Wesson be allowed to have Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers each?
Honestly, if you want to be really consistent, almost every world government should have its officials off Twitter. Any US politician who was in power between 2001 and 2020 did far more "material harm to others"[0] than any given teenager who wants to say racial slurs.
> Should Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Smith & Wesson be allowed to have Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers each?
> Any US politician who was in power between 2001 and 2020 did far more "material harm to others"[0] than any given teenager who wants to say racial slurs.
That comparison is invalid because those companies don't commit their purported harm on Twitter. Same with government officials. Even Kim Jong Un has a Twitter account https://twitter.com/official_kju
The "teenager" (or billionaire influencer) dropping racial slurs and either targeted or broad threats uses social media as the method of the harm they inflict. Mainstream social media companies are concerned with their platforms being used for harm.
"Material harm"? As in physical harm via threats of violence or calls to violent behavior? Or emotional and damaging harm? I honestly think people should generally just be nicer, it's more productive.
Kayne saying "death", but he has since claimed he reversed "def" and "death", that tweet is understandably considered violence. I don't believe hate is violence. I believe this is a common misconception of people who haven't experienced actual violence or true personal danger. I in no way claim this should be some right of passage. Speach isn't deformative or physically damaging. The idea speach is a "frontier" or is the "catalyst" is misleading. Many organizations have direct calls to action for violence and are still posting today.
I think they should be free to say it. I don't think it should promoted by twitter. I'd like that tweets by people with followers over 1 million be subject to some sort of accuracy standards
Hasn’t ISIS been allowed to be on Twitter? Who could possibly be worse than ISIS?
My neighbor Sam down the street likes to say the n-word sometimes and thinks offering hormones to kids is grooming. Still, I don’t think all the Sams in the US would ever be able to do as much material harm by having access to Twitter as ISIS does in one afternoon. Could be wrong.
I don’t think ISIS is currently on Twitter. They were some years back, but was that because Twitter had decided to allow them, or was that just tardiness in enforcement?
ISIS is a sanctioned entity. Knowingly allowing them, or anyone identified as a member, to post on Twitter, would likely be illegal under sanctions laws.
To the extent that Twitter’s approach to ISIS is not mandated by sanctions laws-I don’t see Musk changing Twitter’s corporate policies on ISIS-he has zero sympathy for them and no doubt views them as a threat to humanity’s future.
Musk is likely good news for Donald Trump, Babylon Bee, Jordan Peterson, Libs of TikTok, etc - but no change for ISIS.
The Taliban is somewhat of a different situation - they are the de facto government of Afghanistan, and are far less extreme than ISIS. While they have supported anti-Western terrorist attacks in the past, they claim to have changed, and it looks like their claim may be true.
I still wonder about the legalities of Twitter allowing them to use the site, given they are still under US sanctions. It is possible, however, that the US government has (quietly) asked Twitter to allow it, as a diplomatic/political calculation. Sanctions concerns disappear if the government is asking you to disregard them (they can give you a formal legal exemption from them - even secretly; even without a formal exemption, if the government asks you to do something, that is an estoppel against them taking legal action for acceding to your request.)
What is your point? I am not sure why I even have to mention this, because to me it is apparent, but statements and opinions that are already a part of the currently shared belief system do not need protections at all. It is the all the other stuff that is often ugly, which is why it DOES require protection ( precisely because people are scared of things that make them uncomfortable and will seek to restrict them as much as possible ).
<<people who'd put me in a camp if they had their way
Eh. This train is never late. Just wait until you find out that eventually all the out groups are thinned out and you are identified as the next one in line. That is the normal course of things. People are assholes. Freedom of speech is a basic safety valve.
I dislike that I even have to explain those. All this stuff should be covered in basic social studies.
I don't think views deserve protection just by dint of existing and being expressed. Someone calling me Jew, Jew, Jew isn't a brave or novel thought that lamestrain society is too square to stomach, it's just a pretense to murder.
If you want to talk about basic social studies, I'd suggest the paradox of tolerance.
It is not about being new or being novel ( edit1: or breaking new ground, or waking up squares, being hip or any of those labels ). It is about something a lot simpler than that and this goes to the crux of the matter.
Would you feel comfortable if your opinion that you just expressed above was being targeted for no other reason that it exists and someone somewhere finds it abhorrent. Do you not agree it is a rather bad standard just because, well, it is very general and can be applied to anything down the line?
Edit2:
Yes, I am invoking the "what if that was done to you".
edit3:
<<I'd suggest the paradox of tolerance.
There is no paradox. What you have is a conflict of values. From my perspective, things are either in balance or they are not. I personally would postulate that "escape from freedom" is a much more applicable here, where the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other.
Personally, I do find it mildly amusing that the groups that were persecuted not that long ago are embarking on their own witch hunts shortly thereafter. It is a fascinating insight into the human condition.
<<If you say yes, then...well there's no further discussion to have, and you scare me.
Heh. I too would love to live in such a binary word, where things are simply black or white and there are no shades of grey. I also love how you think this allows to bow out of the discussion. For the record, it does not and I challenge you to openly discuss it. Otherwise, and I am not using this phrase lightly here, you are an intellectual fraud pretending to engage in a good faith argument.
Now, the actual response to:
<< Should I be allowed to hold a rally and say "Someone needs to start lynching some $RACIAL_SLURs"?
Is that even a real question? Are you really drawing a line at name calling? This the hill you are willing to die on? I might be willing to accept some limits along the lines of the precedent that happens to include relatively conclusive standard of "immediate and present danger", but KKK members going through the streets shouting slogans using words you find offensive is absolutely something I am willing to defend, because I actually happen to believe in the founding document of this nation. Hell, I actually promised I will uphold it. I was not born into it and blessed with apathy. I voluntarily chose that path, because I happen to believe in ideals it espouses.
If you think I am the person to be scared of, I feel genuinely concerned for you. I would recommend less.. whatever it is that got you wound up.
Wait.
Are you arguing that "Someone needs to start lynching" equates to clear and present danger", because I am relatively certain a lot would depend on the context AND the resulting consequences? Like.. not to search very far, and to put things in perspective, to what extent did BLM protest rhetoric contributed to the resulting riots. Should we start locking them up?
I can give you that it is a close call, but nowhere near as clear you as you make it seem.
Either way, you may want to reconsider your argument a little. Those same rules are supposed to protect everyone. There is a reason for it.
Edit:
<< How far are you willing to take the notion of Freedom of Speech?
Notion. It is an idea enshrined in god damn law. It is a right. And it is one of the few things founders agreed upon. And it is the very first one.
You know what is a notion? Deconstructionism. There is a difference.
