If you don’t mind when platforms get rid of spam, child porn, normal porn, doxxing, death threats, ISIS recruitment videos or assassination contracts, then guess what: censorship has value to you, too.
So to be clear, you're opposed to platforms removing any of those things? Child pornography and spam should remain up? If someone doxxes you, platforms should just leave it?
No, we have legal and moral obligations when there are immediate dangers and harm.
Simple expressions are different.
Look, I wish the world were pure and good. That no one had ill intent. But we know that we cannot have good things because a very small fraction of a percentage are bad people.
I don’t like having very bad people destroying freedom for everyone else.
I believe people have a right to express unpopular even odious opinions as long as there is no threat to body and life.
Unfortunately online media like Twitter give people psychological distance as well as augment the audience for kooks.
I’m resigned to believing there is no solution to this dilemma because psychopaths will ruin it for honest but brutal dissenters as well as run of the mill dissenters.
That's absolutely a fair position to take. But you have to realize that it's moving the goalposts from your original one, which was that anything short of free speech absolutism is "censorship".
Discussions like this are frustrating, because one side frames it as though they're defending free speech from the insidious censors — except it's painfully obvious that if you push them enough, they'll admit that yes, there is some speech they're fine getting rid of. It takes a ton of effort to get back to that baseline, and the actual conversation about acceptable speech never happens.
Because if you don't support literal free speech absolutism — with child porn, spam, et al. — then you have to draw a line somewhere. By definition. And we can debate where that line should be drawn, but the debate is still between people who agree on the principle that some speech is unacceptable. Not between Team Freedom and Team Censorship.
Absolutist free speech is the _ideal_, but we don't live in an ideal world. There are bad people.
That said, unilateral one-sided censorship is not okay. It's like Red Scare Hollywood.
My point a few rungs up was that there are many other forms of expression that are notoriously violent and misogynistic but don't get flagged by these same companies. I'm not saying I want that but I'm pointing out insistencies. Doxxing is another. It's very inconsistent how that is handled.
Free speech absolutism as an ideal doesn't make sense. The whole reason the notion of free speech exists is that people should be able to say things that other people don't like. Saying that we'd be able to have free speech absolutism if only people didn't say or do X is just "X is unacceptable speech" in disguise. If you exclude "bad" speech, freedom of speech is easy!
This thread originated with a comment saying it would be ideologically inconsistent for Pirate Bay's mantra to be "information wants to be free" and still remove schematics for 3D printing guns. My point was that a non-absolutist free speech stance is not inherently contradictory.
I'm not really interested in a full-throated debate about tech giants' moderation policies right now. But since you seem to think the censorship is unilateral and one-sided, I'd invite you to search through Twitter histories and see who was speaking out about FOSTA-SESTA, or Tumblr's NSFW ban. You'll find it was opposed mostly by libertarians and leftists — while the conservatives now wailing about censorship (and, in fairness, corporate liberals) didn't make a peep.
While what you're saying is completely true, and I've been trying to get this point accross online many times, it is still concerning to me that the same philosophical literature that argues for hate speech to be limited also suggest that porn should be too. There are also arguments that there shouldn't be a constitutional right to freedom of speech at all. If these arguments are convincing, the only line of defense against them is the argument that the state (and/or the population in general) cannot be trusted to make any further restrictions - and I think that's a good argument. Similarly, in countries where speech is more limited, we can point out problems of those limitations; I think it is not a fallacy to suggest there is a slippery slope - especially in the case of governments that serve capital, be they conservative or liberal.
I'm very skeptical of the benefits of free speech. I don't think the arguments along the lines of free speech promoting truth or being beneficial to political discourse or allowing 'bad ideas' in the open to be 'disinfected' with debate are valid. But I'm even more skeptical of the state, and I do not trust it to use evidence-based methodologies. I've completely lost all faith in the whole political spectrum, particularly the left-anarchists who promote governmental and corporate censorship.
I'm not sure absolutist free speech is an ideal. Would it be ok to post private pictures taken without consent of an individual? I don't ever see that being ideal. Also 'speech' can cover a lot of things. If I make a 'speech' where I suggest that someone could perform a violent act and get financially rewarded for it - I'm clearly doing something wrong that needs to be stopped.
>No, we have legal and moral obligations when there are immediate dangers and harm.
Piratebay exists largely to circumvent the law. They therefore can't really use the law as a guideline for what to censor. They have to make active choices of what illegal content is allowed and what isn't.
IIRC when pirate bay was founded what they did was not against the law in Sweden. It was only after immense pressure from the US that it became illegal.
Platforms set the policies to fit the communities they want to build.
Twitter allows porn, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook do not
Newspaper comment sections will often moderate the word "fuck", while Facebook, YouTube and other will not
There are hundreds of dials you can tune in terms of moderation to adjust to fit the community you want to build. Apparently the Facebook moderation guide is 300+ pages long.
Parler isn't a "free speech platform" - they pretty much have a ban on porn. You'll find that most other "free speech" platforms also have hard limits (usually _stricter_ than what Twitter allow).
Try going onto thedonald and post one of the photos of Trump with Epstein, or Parler with porn, or Gab and curse Jesus[0] in a reply and see what happens
They're not free speech platforms, they're _their_ speech platforms. They have built the ultimate safe spaces for some of the worst online communities.
[0] Gab's own ToS refers to their discretion in removing content and a "God given right" https://gab.com/about/tos
