Whose voice is getting quashed in the US? Everyone has a Facebook, Twitter, email, phones, a magazine, protests, their own news channels, subReddits.
What group doesn't have all those things? Whose voice is being quashed - exactly? Even straight up Nazis have websites, newsletters, gatherings, organized protest marches and Facebook pages. The fucking Taliban is on Twitter.
So...who is being quashed because of their beliefs, exactly?
> Everyone has a Facebook, Twitter [...] subReddits
You appear to be arguing that no-one has ever been kicked off Facebook or Twitter, and that no subreddits have ever been banned. Is that your position?
The ACTUAL complaint is that people demand an AUDIENCE - they want to be able to broadcast their views to the largest number of people possible.
Nobody in the US is being "quashed" - you can run your own website, print your own newsletter, and nobody is going to kick down your door or send you to a re-education camp. Like I said, Nazis run their own websites, and the Taliban is on Twitter. Nobody here is being "silenced" because they can't grab the microphone - nobody's owed a microphone in the first place.
It's not even "relative privation" - nobody has a God given right to...Facebook. People serious about their causes run their own websites - they don't immediately start whinging because they've been booted from Reddit.
> Whose voice is getting quashed in the US? Everyone has a Facebook, Twitter, email, phones, a magazine, protests, their own news channels, subReddits.
Your second comment:
> So "Silencing" is just getting kicked from Twitter and FB?
The first indicates that there are multiple services to "be heard" - but I've said repeatedly that the ultimate fallback is running your own website.
Sorry I was responding to the notion that people took being banned from FB/Reddit/whatever as being quashed. Those people are free to print their own newsletters or run their own websites.
It seems like two separate points, which is why I don't see it. Maybe I should have made it more cohesive.
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.
Amazon, Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are multibillion-dollar corporations that control a colossal share of online communications.
You approve of said quashing because it aligns with your political ideology.
> Those people are free to print their own newsletters or run their own websites.
And if the registrars and payment processors do the same, as has already happened? You'll move the goalposts again.
Having a voice doesn't not equal being heard. Especially not if you define A Voice as writing on Facebook or Twitter. You might as well stand on a box in the dead parts of Detroit and talk politics. Being heard in a democratic country means your vote matters.
Nobody has the right to "be heard"! That's the thing. You have the right to scream it out loud, but nobody is forced to stand there and listen.
No - you can't falsely equate "being heard" by being on FB and Twitter to voting.
If my neighbor starts screaming Nazi talking points, I have the right to walk away. They still have the right to scream them.
Buy Facebook isn't "forced" to carry their views, either! And the Nazi believes what they're saying, so to ensure they're heard, they launch their OWN websites, print their own newsletters, and show up at protests.
No. Just No. Nobody is forced to carry anyone else's speech, and only people so weak in their beliefs as to "give up" when banned by FB and Twitter are complaining.
This is completely wrong. "Being heard" is being on FB and Twitter, as these platforms (1) are effectively public forums by nature of their massive, near-monopolistic reach, (2) claim protections of public forums, such as immunity from liability due to user-posted content, and (3) implicitly and explicitly portray themselves as public squares/forums[1].
The online equivalent to "having the right to walk away" is blocking someone on a platform. It's that simple.
Once a company has reached a monopolistic size, which describes FB and Twitter, then it either needs to be broken up, or treated like a utility/government service - this is exactly the argument that you see all the time about e.g. ISPs and Alphabet/Google - because there's no other morally excusable way to act. The first amendment was written to only apply to the government because that's the entity that's the most likely to (and most dangerous in) silence speech and discourse, not the only one.
You definitely would not be making these arguments if it were your ideological tribe that were being censored.
Bullshit. If I was a serious <whatever> I'd go run my own website.
People whinge about being censored but don't care enough to run a website? Nazis run their own websites. It's easier than ever to run a website.
Nobody is owed being on a private platform, and it's total bullshit to say that we should force companies to. It's not a "de facto public square" - it's an advertising platform, first and foremost.
So @Jack said it was a public square - in the context of the ideal. Did he make that statement to a court? Because I'll bet being deposed, he'd say that was flowery talk.
> People whinge about being censored but don't care enough to run a website?
People talking about "whinging" usually do so because they can't come up with a logical counter-argument. That pattern holds true here.
> Nobody is owed being on a private platform, and it's total bullshit to say that we should force companies to.
If a private platform holds a near-monopoly on speech online, and actively uses anti-competitive behavior to hold people on their platform (as Facebook does, at least) - yes, individuals are owed the right to be present on that platform, because (as stated repeatedly before) it's a monopoly. Facebook is one of the largest sites in the world and enjoys the network effects of being the largest social media site in the world, as well as the lens through which millions of people perceive the world around them, and does its best to keep people there through a variety of anti-competitive strategies - if, at that scale, they decide that they want to ban people for non-illegal content, then the only sane thing to do is to break them up so that they no longer have a monopoly position, which is clearly not happening.
> It's not a "de facto public square"
It is. It has the properties of a public square, namely public visibility, generally available access to the population, a design that allows for and encourages conversation between individuals, and a design meant to emulate a public forum for discussion. Even though it's not legally a public square, it's a de-facto one because it has all of the properties of one and is treated as one - that's what "de-facto" means.
> it's an advertising platform, first and foremost.
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Ultra-scale social media platforms have the properties of both advertising platforms and public fora. You don't like the classification of the latter? Well, it's going to remain one until it's broken up or changes its behavior or suddenly loses users.
> So @Jack said it was a public square - in the context of the ideal. Did he make that statement to a court? Because I'll bet being deposed, he'd say that was flowery talk.
You're intentionally being obtuse. Of course the CEO of Twitter wouldn't stand behind his claim in court - but only because that'd be disadvantageous to him (in any court case likely to come up in the next several years), not because he didn't mean it. Nothing you said has any bearing on the fact that he said that it was a public square and meant it. You can't explain this away - it literally came from the CEO, the strategic lead for the company. If he says that Twitter is like a public square, that means that he's directing the company to that effect.
For one, it's well known in tech that you're putting your job/livelihood at risk by speaking contrary to the political groupthink. Many people who didn't vote for Clinton or Biden are effectively in career hiding. Threatening someone's job over their beliefs/opinions is very effective censorship.
The right of free speech protects against government retribution. It does not protect private individual / corporation retaliation. This is why you have secret ballot - so no one can retaliate against you for someone you’ve voted for.
People are demanding access to an audience like it's a right, and saying their votes don't matter if they can't reach an audience. It's the dumbest shit I've ever heard.
> it's well known in tech that you're putting your job/livelihood at risk by speaking contrary to the political groupthink.
Have you ever tried it?
FWIW, coworkers in my org pushed for a blacklist of words we’re not allowed to check into the codebase within the last year. I raised my counter opinion. I did so respectfully. Today, there’s no blacklist, and I still have my job.
Btw my presidential vote was a write-in for Bernie Sanders as president with Yang as running mate. Laugh if you like. I’m vaccinated; I wear a mask wherever the property owner of whatever establishment I’m in requests it (e.g. signs posted on the door), and omit the mask where not. I think my governor’s recent mask mandate is a mistake because we could already navigate the problem organically with the above approach, and anyone who wasn’t previously respecting an establishment’s masking policy isn’t going to respect a top-down legislative one given there’s no intent of enforcement.
People will disagree with my political opinions. And if they want, they’ll downvote me to communicate that. But I’m confident I won’t get banned from HN for stating these in the unusual event that it’s relevant to the discussion, much less that any future employer of importance is going to comb through here and decide against hiring me because I respectfully put forth an opposing political viewpoint.
Eh, the anti-PC example is anti-progressive though. I didn't want to elaborate my comment with lengthier political views since HN usually isn't the place.
But here's a right-leaning hot take to drive the point home: 18 months into this pandemic and I've never once had any input into the policy response. I thought the agreement was "I get the vaccine, I get to live my life as normal". Now that policy changes (mostly state-level) are flipping that, I regret getting the vaccine: I'm in a low-risk demographic and I just gave up my most powerful tool in influencing policy decision. I won't make that same mistake with the booster shots Biden discussed earlier today: I won't be getting those until my policy leaders actually serve me as a constituent.
> it's well known in tech that you're putting your job/livelihood at risk by speaking contrary to the political groupthink.
Still confident that GP is wrong about that and I won't lose my job or livelihood by posting this.
EDIT: To be clear, this not evidence in favor of the comment you were responding to: "There is a trend of certain dominant power in all of these countries that is quashing all opposing voices". As far as I can tell, supporting things the majority of society disagrees with has always been ground for career repercussions in the "land of the free" (as it is in the rest of the world).
For the same reason I wouldn't put a Biden/Harris sign on my gun store in rural Missouri, I would probably keep my mouth shut on abortion if I'm the CEO of a video game developer.
Your job is to make other people money. If you become a liability you're not going to have a job much longer.
Context and the multiple roles of a person, is why people get upset over this.
I agree with you. As a CEO, estranging any significant section of the market is not a good career move!
But amongst their friends, family, [insert other social circle here] their comments may not be a big deal.
As a non-public persona, I say expletives at work(as an employee) that I wouldn't want my child hearing(as a father). I can get away with it because the two worlds don't collide.
But once you have a public persona - like being a CEO - your worlds are merged into one. You don't get to have a "personal opinion" because your public persona cuts across all boundaries and your comments will be judged in the context of a public majority opinion.
Having a "public" persona is no joke. Take it seriously and expect that non-majority opinions will get public blowback so there better be a good reason for them!
What group doesn't have all those things? Whose voice is being quashed - exactly? Even straight up Nazis have websites, newsletters, gatherings, organized protest marches and Facebook pages. The fucking Taliban is on Twitter.
So...who is being quashed because of their beliefs, exactly?