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this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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There is no freedom of speech guarantee in private or public enterprise. Only government.
Yet another tool that uses “freedom of speech” incorrectly to basically mean “I want to force people to listen to my bullshit.” How these people running for office don’t get the first amendment is amazing.
Often freedom of speech is a moral ideal, a moral aspiration, and dismissing it on legal grounds is missing the point.
If I say "people should have a right to healthcare", and you respond "people do not have a legal right to healthcare", you are correct, but you have missed the point. If I say people should have freedom of speech and you respond that the first amendment doesn't apply to Facebook, you are right, but have again missed the point.
In general, when people advocate for any change, they can be countered with "well, the law doesn't require that". Yes, society currently works the way the law says it should. But what we're talking about is how society should work and how the law should change.
Okay, but you don't win lawsuits based on how the law ought to be
That’s lovely, and I appreciate the sentiment. It doesn’t change the fact that someone abuses the term in order to force others to listen to BS. I’m not opposed to the ideal, I am opposed to the expectation that people have a right to make you listen to them.
I'm okay with algorithms not recommending certain posts. I just don't like shadowbans because the platform is lying to the user, the user interface is essentially telling the user "your post is available for viewing and is being treated like any other post" when it really isn't.
There's a balance between the free speech of individuals and the free speech of the company. I think a fair balance between the two is, once a company is big enough to control a significant percentage of the entire nation's discourse, the company at least has to be up front and avoid deceptive practices like shadow-banning. (This should only apply to large companies, once a company is large enough it has a responsibility to society.)
I'm opposed to the idea, we've got enough people that think their ideas need to be broadcast to everyone in the world.
The thing is people shouldnt have that level of "freedom of speech"
No one is above reproach.
And the consequence of this policy is a back-door path to censorship. A combination of surveillance, selective-admittance, and media saturation allow certain ideological beliefs to suffice the "marketplace of ideas" while others are silenced.
Its more that privatized media infrastructure allows for a monopolization of speech.
Big media companies still force people to listen to bullshit, by way of advertising and algorithmic promotion. Go on YouTube, click through their "recommended" list a few times, and you'll quickly find yourself watching some Mr. Beast episode or PraegerU video, simply because these folks have invested so heavily in self-promotion.
But there's a wide swath of content you won't see, either because YouTube's algorithm explicitly censors it for policy reasons, because the media isn't maxing out the SEO YouTube execs desire (the classic Soy Face thumbnail for instance), or because you're not spending enough money to boost visibility.
This has nothing to do with what the generic video watcher wants to see and everything to do with what YouTube administration wants that watcher to see.
RFK Jr is a nasty little freak with some very toxic beliefs. But that's not why he's struggling to get noticed on the platform, when plenty of other nasty freaks with toxic beliefs get mainstream circulation.
Yeah. That’s also a problem. But then you have to upend corporate ownership of the control of speech, and we’re already facing that problem.