The old conduct policy read a bit like copy/paste "well surely we need something here" that grew organically to cover specific situations as encountered, and this new policy looks extremely thought-out, like it was written actually with the protection of users in mind, so I think from that perspective it's an improvement.
On the other hand (and maybe I'm being overly cynical here),
the real reason you rewrite this, as a company, is that your old policy was causing you legal issues, right? This is first and foremost a legal document, yeah? I wonder which of the dozens of public "incidents" informed this decision (or maybe the fact that so many have happened is what spurred the rewrite).
Just something to think about from a "new startup" perspective; if you have users that can post content, you need something like this, and the old "don't be evil" versions probably don't cut it today.
if you have users that can post content, you need something like this, and the old "don't be evil" versions probably don't cut it today.
This depends entirely on the kind of culture you want to foster. If you chase advertising money then sure. But the Parlers and 4chans of the world are doing just fine.
I think that's key here in this conversation. The only reason this is being done here is because it helps make them money. It does so by avoiding pushing away advertisers.
There's probably some public relations and real actual concern about what people are doing on their platform too.
I also wonder why you think it is cynical to point out that a business is acting like a business. Of course they do.
It would be cynical to outright dismiss the possibility that individuals involved in the process also had concerns about things happening on the platform and argue that it was purely for business reasons.
I'm curious if they'll ban symbols associated with any religions with theologies they would consider to have racist elements.
And perhaps ban the showing of flags of all nations with laws they consider racist.
My point is that I have trouble taking a company's public justifications seriously, when the company appears unwilling to take the financial/reputational hit of applying that reasoning consistently.
I genuinely believe that some people consider the Confederate flag a symbol of the true United States, which was betrayed by the North. And while they lost the civil war, they were still in the right. For these people, the Confederate flag is a symbol of resistance to an oppressive nation state, and flying it is no more "racist" than it would be for someone to fly the flag of Tibet.
And obviously, some other people associate the Confederate flag with institutional slavery.
That's why I think we need to discuss the fact that these policies tacitly involve choices about:
(a) Which groups can and cannot be offended.
(b) Given the large variety of associations that different people can have regarding a particular symbol, which of those many associations are given primacy?
> For these people, the Confederate flag is a symbol of resistance to an oppressive nation state, and flying it is no more "racist" than it would be for someone to fly the flag of Tibet.
> And obviously, some other people associate the Confederate flag with institutional slavery.
As someone who considers themselves squarely in the first group, but who is cognizant of others’ views and therefore choose alternate symbols, I feel compelled to point out that there is significant overlap. They are far from a “union set” (a pun!) but there are actual racists who use that flag.
I’m just happy that the actual first flag of the Confederacy is largely unmarred in popular culture, along with the Bonnie Blue
Also, you miss my point. While you might expect different rules for national flags, you wouldn't apply those rules to the flags of a defunct uprising. Even if some people have some beliefs about what the defunct uprising was.
I don't think there is any reasonable interpretation of history in which South was betrayed by the North. You might claim that they should have been allowed to leave the union, you might make statements on which way territories should have gone, but it is really hard to see betrayal there.
Second, actual breaking point between the states at the time was slavery. The "states right" in question was the one that allowed or disallowed slavery on new territories.
> I don't think there is any reasonable interpretation of history in which South was betrayed by the North.
You may be right. It's likely that you know more of that war's history than I do.
For the sake of the larger discussion, however, let me ask: Suppose that a group takes offense at some symbol, but it's based on a dubious understanding of historical fact.
I'm curious if Twitch's underlying reasoning would consider that to disqualify the viewpoint of those who feel offended by the display of the symbol.
I have no idea, but I also have no idea why you would expect me to have answer that. I am not even sure what disqualify the viewpoint is.
And I also think that trying to frame all these conflicts solely through lens of "offense at some symbol" is reductive. It is popular and easy way to talk about all that.
> I have no idea, but I also have no idea why you would expect me to have answer that.
I apologize for being confusing. I wasn't trying to imply that you in particular should answer that question. I should have written something like, "In the greater context of trying to see if Twitch's tacit reasoning is logically consistent, I'm also curious how they'd deal with ...".
> I am not even sure what disqualify the viewpoint is.
Sorry again for being unclear. Some background, if you're interested:
I'm working on the assumption that there are myriad things in our world that different people find offensive. There's (almost?) no ethical position on which 100% of humans agree.
When companies pick which particular issues on which they'll take public positions, they're implying a few things:
(1) That of all the issues that people have gripes with in the world, this issue is more important to the company than any of the issues on which they're not taking a position.
(2) The people who agree with their position are right, and those who disagree with their position are wrong.
To whit, when Twitch disallows showing the Confederate flag, I would say this disqualifies the viewpoint that it's a symbol primarily regarding states' rights. Sorry if "disqualify the viewpoint" isn't the best term.
>And I also think that trying to frame all these conflicts solely through lens of "offense at some symbol" is reductive.
I didn't mean to be reductive. My larger goal is to understand the implicit reasoning behind companies taking stances like this, and deciding at least for myself if those stances are internally consistent.
When I talk about "taking offense at some symbol", it's one of my straw-man theories regarding the company's justification for proscribing a certain kind of speech on their platform.
And TBH, what I truly suspect is that companies just try to accommodate whatever public sentiment / outrage is currently in vogue, and make public statements rationalizing that position rather than being honest about the arbitrariness of their posturing.
You're raising a "where will they draw the line?" argument.
The thing is, there is always a line to be drawn. These are not black and white issues. There is always a line to be drawn.
You're worried about consistency, but it's not inconsistent to draw a line in a grey area in an inherently grey space.
You can still make a good inconsistency argument, but you need to understand where they've drawn their line, by what principles, and show how they've failed to meet them.
(If I'm missing something, I'd be grateful for a correction. I don't want to hold wrong beliefs, especially ones that make me more cynical.)
Here's my (current) reasoning, explained by example:
(1) Twitch's new rules ban display of the Confederate flag for this reason: "Given its historic and symbolic association with slavery and white supremacist groups in the US".
(2) I'm assuming that Twitch's general reasoning is: "Displaying symbol ${S}, which [some subgroup of humans, selected by an unspecified criterion] ${G} associate with bad-thing ${B} and supremacist group ${R}, will be treated as Hateful Conduct."
(3) Assuming that I've correctly inferred Twitch's reasoning in (2), then here are some real-world examples that I think also meet their reasoning's criteria:
(3a) S="Israeli flag", G="Arabs living in Israel", B="Denying national rights to non-Jews", R="Israeli government". (See [0] below)
(3b) S="PRC flag", G="Uyghers living in PRC", B="religious persecution", R="Non-muslims in control of PRC government." (See [1] below)
(3c) S="Islamic crescent-and-star symbol", G="some Christians living in Muslim countries", B="religious persecution", G="The persons in power who use ${S} and do ${B}". (See [2,3] below; also backed by personal knowledge.)
(3d) S="Political symbols of the U.S. Democratic party", B="advocacy of black slavery", G="black slaves prior to the U.S. civil war".
(3e) S="Political symbols of the U.S. Republican party", G/B/R left as an exercise to the reader. (I'm not trying to pick on Republicans more than Democrats; it's just that the post is getting long and I need to do my day job.)
"Free". We are not free to do evil, only good, though we can be permissive of certain evil acts committed by others because its punishment would lead to still greater ills.
Speech can also be good or evil. To make slanderous claims is evil because it not only perverts the faculty of speech, but maligns someone innocent of the accusation which brings others into errors about that person and also harms that person. calls for violence are evil. Those who claim free speech means saying whatever you want whenever you want aren't very rigorous and often fall back on some kind of incoherent and insidious skepticism (a la "says who") or relativism. Or they don't really mean it and are reacting to abuses of censorship.
And that's the other side of the coin. Theory is one thing, but out of a concern about the abuse of censorship by tyrants and those in power, we may wish to tolerate evil speech to some degree. So the question now becomes: what are the acceptable limits of the permissiveness in the current conditions?
There is a correct answer, but in practice, that is going to be determined by various political forces acting for various reasons.
While tradition used to have a greater say in determining prohibitions on speech and "expression" for the sake of the common good (seen in blasphemy and pornography laws), today the revolutionary left has taken control and has been busily imposing speech codes that prevent "undesirable" discussion in opposition to the revolutionary ideology, often in the name of "the people". Meaning, we're no longer talking about banning swastikas and other pernicious symbols. We're talking about the silencing of even rationally defended views that don't agree with the revolutionary ideology while giving virtual free reign to toxic leftist polemic because it falls in lockstep with the ideology.
All of this is to say that this move by Twitch is not really that interesting. There are far more dangerous developments in play. And to your point, I do expect even more pressure to be put on religious faiths to conform the revolutionary ideology. Take the Roman Catholic Church, for example. Catholicism was always hated and feared in the United States. And indeed, it had been neutered in various ways to conform to liberal ideological expectations over the course of the 20th century. However, given the proliferation of various novel and exotic sexual identity protected groups, I fully expect the RCC to experience a new period of persecution in the US under the guise of protecting these groups from the supposed persecution by the Church. Either that, or the bishops will continue down the path of going full Protestant and step in line with the demands of the state (and subsequently crumble into even greater irrelevance and apostasy). Probably both and in either case this is a success for revolutionary social engineers. A similar fate awaits others.
The confederate flag isn't a national flag, though. The Confederacy isn't a religion. It was, at one point in history, a nation that lost an ideological war over a state's right to allow for the ownership of slaves
It deserves the same treatment as a swastika or Nazi flag. Bringing it back isn't some matter of "pride" - it's to let certain people know where you stand
The confederate flag is about exactly one thing, which is white supremacy. The other flags being sarcastically listed as replies to this comment stand for higher ideals, whether or not those ideals were misguided and whether or not the nations behind those flags lived up to those ideals.
If someone puts a sign up in the break room that says “don’t steal other people’s lunches” and then proceeds to steal everyone else’s lunch, you can still point to that sign and say, yeah, that’s a standard we should strive to live by. It would be more difficult to say that if someone puts a swastika up in the break room.
I'm not asking someone to judge the ideals of the UK vs the ideals of the Confederacy — it is an exercise in subjectivity for you or I to declare that the UK or the US is or isn't "bad enough," or whether the Confederacy had ideals. This doesn't mean either of us are wrong or that these guidelines can't or shouldn't exist, it just means we're not in a position that our judgements on the matter mean anything.
The specific practical matter is that the last actual official Mississippi Flag contains, in one corner, the flag which people think of when you say "Confederate flag" which has specifically been called by Twitch for its association with slavery in America. While the Mississippi flag might in select contexts be used to mean "white supremacy," it also means things that are not identical to the concept of white supremacy: for instance, it means "Mississippi". Is this enough of a difference to allow the Mississippi flag, or is it still associated with slavery in a strong enough matter that it should be banned?
One recurring problem with speech codes is ambiguity of this sort. Even though the guidelines Twitch has provided are much more detailed than most online chat platforms have deigned to make available (cough Discord cough) there is still nontrivial ambiguity over these matters — ambiguity which can only really be resolved by authorized representatives of Twitch itself. In the broader world, when such ambiguity exists in the law, we have things like a court system with evidentiary standards and a presumption of innocence; these are things we lack on Twitch.
Seeing how the CCP currently and actively mistreats Uyghurs, and that the flag represents the CCP, I’d say your logic is correct. The Chinese flag does represent the human rights abuses performed by the Communist Party.
USSR insurrection were from their southern borders. If i remember something from highschool, those are not white europeans, but mostly Turkomongols and Tatars. The USSR integrated most of Transoxiana, and and financed conversion to atheism, how could this possibly end well?
It's amazing that the Russian empire is given a complete pass on its colonization. It was just as brutal as the colonization of Africa and the Americas, for example, yet unlike the other European countries, Russia never gave up its colonies that stretch from Moscow all the way to Japan (including some of Japan). The ignorance in the West is so great that they think that Siberia is naturally part of the "white people" domain, kind of like Finland is.
We often talk about the sanctity of "freedom of speech" for people who say harmful things, but what about the people that are suppressed from participating, because of fear of being brigaded, doxxed, or emotionally harmed. These people are being prevented from "freedom of speech" as well. Usually for reasons of being in an out group. Shouldn't the platform be able to censor those who would limit it's growth?
And so is the free market. What you're seeing is just how unrestrained Capitalism works. Businesses respond to market pressures and implement features/constraints based on what their customers want. In this case, Twitch has made a business decision that advertisers/users want this stuff off of the platform; and honestly as a user, I do want that stuff off of the platform. I want to be able to read Twitch chat without being subjected to racism.
But that's always been how Capitalism has worked. That's why people get concerned about excessive privatization and mass corporate consolidation. That's why it's not a good idea to blindly privatize literally everything. Free speech won't save you in an Anachro-Capitalist world, it wasn't designed to save you from that world.
I know that there's sometimes a perception that support for the 1st Amendment is a Conservative/Libertarian vs Liberal issue, but the irony here is that it was far-Left candidates like Warren who were pushing hardest for companies like Amazon to be broken up. Those people recognize that Twitch censorship isn't the problem, Amazon ownership of the entire streaming market is the problem.
I'm not trying to tell people how to vote or start an argument, but if you're actually concerned about private tech dominance over public spaces like communication and social networking, antitrust law should be one of the top solutions that you're looking into. A lot of the Republican solutions getting pushed through Congress right now are basically just the Fairness Doctrine v2. I don't think those people have thought through the implications and consequences of directly attacking private platforms' freedom of association.
I see a lot of people who get 90% of the way to "it's bad for a single company to control the entire market", but that for some reason haven't made the final jump to "the problem is lax laws around monopolies." If you're a Libertarian, donate money to Peertube, they're working on adding streaming support right now. If you're not a Libertarian, support sensible Democratic market regulations to make the market more competitive. And also consider donating money to Peertube anyway, just because it's the most promising federated alternative out there right now.
> Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising. [0]
Absolute free speech, like the free market, has only ever existed in theory. In practice even most free speech absolutists are just quibbling over where to draw the lines of censorship and tolerance.
Am I allowed to come into your house and scream into your ear without limit? Can you expect to go into a synagogue and hang a nazi flag from the rafters without them being able to ban you from the premise?
I think that much of this kind of stupid discourse on HN is driven by thiel-worshipping reactionaries who believe weird theories about why their genes make them better than black people, but another huge part of it seems to be literally fourteen year old libertarians. Which are you?
It’s interesting. Pepe has never actually really been a hate symbol. He’s an Everyman symbol, in the tradition of Pierrot, the sad clown, the trusting fool, who just happens to be used by a casual online video game culture (which is definitely a superset of various hate groups, but also contains many who are simply there to Minecraft and shoot aliens.)
Pepe was 4chan culture, but was it gaming culture outside of 4chan? Cause I really did not seen it much in general gaming culture, except from chan people.
This Pepe shit is crazy to me. Pepe was and still is used as a generic meme in so many contexts it just makes no sense that people declare it a hate symbol. I was watching a keyboard review by a Korean guy the other day and it had pepe meme in the video. He has hundreds of thousands of subscribers. English isn't his first language. You really think he's dog whistling to thousands of racists, or people just like stupid memes? Do you think whoever made this (extremely popular) short is a racist? https://youtube.com/watch?v=gAbi2_n8_Mw
It really feels like some CNN broadcaster said something like "Trump bad, and Trump Pepe!" And suddenly there's this small subset of the population who dropped everything they were doing, faces flushed, veins popping, and started vehemently writing about why this crude depiction of a frog used by teenagers for laughs should be #cancelled. It's absurd. It's like progressives are parodying themselves.
Twitch does not represent the US government. It's just a private entity doing business in the USA.
Completely free speech has never existed on internet platforms. E.g. we ban and remove spam comments all the time from forums, blogs and other forms of online discussion. We've also constantly banned bad behavior too (death threats, racism, brigading... etc).
I don't know why you're upset about this particular incident?
> Twitch does not represent the US government. It's just a private entity doing business in the USA.
This is funny. Do you think someone confused Twitch with the US government? Do you think only the government should be concerned with free speech? Do you think corporate censorship isn’t important?
I see comments like yours frequently and get confused. Of course government censorship is more dangerous than corporate censorship. But saying that Twitch isn’t government is like responding to BLM with “well, technically all lives matter.” Of course it is true, but not really relevant.
The issue here is that Twitch doesn’t seem to respect free speech and build it into their services. Legally, they are allowed to do this. Ethically, that’s bad. Ethically, companies not supporting and building and fostering free speech leads us to some sort of Disney hellscape where all video calls must include smiles or people get booted, etc etc
Slippery slope hyperbole aside, I think it seems pretty fundamental to me that private communication platforms for the general public need to have free speech as an ideal and apply restrictions carefully. Making blanket band without considering context seems like it will make the experience less useful for communication.
That being said, I’m surprised there was even a confederate flag emoji ever available and surprised took this long to remove.
you can watch how parler evolves compared to other platforms that do not uphold your ideals, and see how it goes. maybe you are new to the internet, those who have been here a while have seen a lot of online forums without any moderation and seen what they turn into. it was never good.
I read your whole comment and I’m not calling for completely free speech like yelling “fire” in a theater.
I just find it odd that you brought up government like it’s relevant to free speech and censorship by corporations. I’m genuinely curious as to maybe you think corporations censoring speech is appropriate. And I like this forum to be able to ask.
In my mind, I don’t want the phone company bleeping me out when I curse. Or disconnecting my service because they think I might be buying drugs. Phone companies are regulated by government to legally require these kinds of free speech requirements. But that doesn’t mean I can crank call people, or spam people, there’s still rules.
I think my problem with these companies is that they are arbitrary in their restrictions. And they seem biased politically.
Perhaps they aren’t biased. But similarly, while being required to show ID to vote may seem reasonable, in practice it discriminated against certain political parties.
Correct, but how people use the web has changed over time. Content and interaction was also far less centralized. I had to dig for specific channels on IRC to find the kind of hateful discussion I can find in 5 seconds on Twitter. There was far less spam and noise in those days.
Many of us run an ad blocker in our browser. Is this not censorship of certain types of speech?
It’s not a motivator at all and your argument is invalid. Secondly, hiding things on your own screen is not censorship, hiding things on someone else’s screen is.
>Do you think someone confused Twitch with the US government?
Yes, this is exactly what's happening. Or, maybe the inverse: people think "free speech" means they can say whatever they want without consequences. This is not the letter nor spirit of the law.
That may be true, but why is that a good thing? Would it not be better for users, if private platforms also provided the same free speech guarantee that the government is obliged to give.
>Would it not be better for users, if private platforms also provided the same free speech guarantee that the government is obliged to give.
No, because forcing social media platforms to publish speech they object to would infringe upon the free speech and free association rights of those platform owners. Twitter has the right to decide what it will and will not allow on its platform, and it has the right to change the rules as it sees fit. And I guarantee that everyone with an account had to agree to terms of service to that effect.
And no, just in case this comes up, Twitter doing so does not mean they somehow stop becoming a "platform" and become a "publisher" and should lose Section 230 protection. That's not how Section 230 works, and the distinction between platform and publisher commonly used in these arguments doesn't really exist in a legal sense - Twitter is allowed to moderate their platform beyond merely removing illegal content, and can even express political bias in doing so - while remaining not liable for user supplied content.
I think it's more accurate to view the first amendment as a limit on government, not as a fundamental right the government gives to all people, in all circumstances.
Oh yes displaying the confederate flag which is protected speech, is comparable to death threats now? Yes Twitch isn’t a government agency, they can censor speech however they like, much like Reddit.
Perhaps we are too used to take free speech on private walled gardens for granted. These sites used to pretend to be proponents of free speech, but now that veil is being lifted and we see what they truely are. Is one not allowed to complain about this transformation? To the casual observer, these sites set the impression that they are a public forum yet they enforce their policies with a strict partisan bias. That is the crux of the issue.
No right is absolute, and free speech is no exception. To quote Popper: "In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance." [0]
A paradox is defined as a well-founded but self-contradictory statement. The existence of this paradox means that absolute freedom of speech is impossible, it's not a rule you can follow.
It's a value so important to society it is included in our most authoritative laws.
While individuals and private entities are not obligated to follow that law because it is direct at the government people can rightly complain that it is in bad taste when they stray too far from holding themselves to the same standard.
A private entity banning confederate flags and nazi symbols in avatars is palatable enough on its own. But it is decently close to having to censor those sorts of things in legitimate historical contexts. See for example all the genuinely historically centered youtube channels that have to censor those symbols because otherwise the algo will bury them. I think we can all agree that that latter case is not ok and is the kind of censorship that should be complained about. Considering how many historically themed video games there are out there and how strongly people believe in free speech it's understandable why more than a few people do not like this move by Twitch.
I think the short answer is that society simply doesn't value it as much today as it did in the past. We're just seeing the consequences of that slow change in attitude. These days it's more important to have low-effort, smooth relationships with everybody at once.
When machine translation gets so good as to be transparent, correct, and effortlessly ubiquitous, we'll probably see more cross-cultural communication. And along with it, a bunch of additional clashes, new taboos, and additional reduction in the range of acceptable expression. I probably say things that someone halfway across the planet thinks are abhorrent all the time, and I only get away with it because we're not interacting yet.
I think laws should have some flexibility, even frameworks (e.g. US Constitution). The cultural leeway given by freedom of speech is being abused at scale even by foreign entities. We can't just say well because the founding fathers wanted something one way it could never change or adapt to new problems. If you allow no censorship at all the platform becomes a cesspool.
What are your (or anyone's) thoughts on why 1A was written to be limited to the government in the first place? Why didn't the author (James Madison) of the Bill of Rights write it more broadly, preventing even private entities from limiting speech, et. al.?
Not the person you originally applied to, but in my opinion this is most likely because corporations used to be extremely restricted in other aspects. Corporations were limited to operations listed in the charter they applied for and often could be immediately dismantled if they were found to be doing anything in violation of the law.
This mostly changed due to 'corporate personhood', the idea that corporations should have the same rights as people.
This article goes in to a lot of how this has lead to corporate abuses of power:
My initial reaction is to agree with you re: "fucking awful world", but I wanted to explore that a bit more. Would it actually be terrible if we had to allow people space to say what they want on a digital platform?
What would the side effects be of not being able to remove people from your store because they're behaving in a way you don't like? What if YouTube could not, legally, remove content that was "abusive" or "hateful"?
(Again, not saying I think this is how things should be, just trying to entertain the idea a bit.)
This needn't be posed as a hypothetical. There are places, both in the Internet zoo and in the real world, where you can go and look to see what this becomes.
While I dont particularly care about confederate flag, the constitution is not a bible. Constitution also does not defines broad meaning of the word censorship. Censorship can be used for private censorship as well, the only difference is that the constitution is not preventing it.
The discussion about what is and what is not reasonable censorship should not be limited to constitution and its meaning.
Forcing Twitch to host stuff they don't want to host is an infringement on their freedom. You're able to host your stuff elsewhere so their freedom trumps the free speech argument.
Network effects make Twitch a natural monopoly. Which means that a little bit of regulation to combat that might be a good idea.
Recently? No, services have always been at risk for out groups. It was only a few decades ago that minority and lgbtq folks could lose access to services.
Except now it's not normal people, it's hate groups that are being pushed out. This seems like a material change for the better.
If you think this is a recent phenomena or if you think it's somehow only being aimed one way, I suggest you read a bit more American history.
There are an awful lot of "normal people" who want an ethnically homogeneous, harmonious home for their children, while those advocating abortion, transsexuality, homosexuality, childhood sex education, etc are the epitome of evil "hate groups".
Implying that this is a black-and-white issue or that the current status is objectively superior is disingenuous or ignorant.
Fifty years ago it would have been unthinkable that the fringe groups being violently censored and oppressed would now be in power. Where might we be fifty years from now...
On the other hand (and maybe I'm being overly cynical here), the real reason you rewrite this, as a company, is that your old policy was causing you legal issues, right? This is first and foremost a legal document, yeah? I wonder which of the dozens of public "incidents" informed this decision (or maybe the fact that so many have happened is what spurred the rewrite).
Just something to think about from a "new startup" perspective; if you have users that can post content, you need something like this, and the old "don't be evil" versions probably don't cut it today.