Twitter is not free speech system to begin with so ”free speech” purists are not obligated to be ok with this unless the whole platform is based on free speech. In that kind of system any user would be able to prompt any popup for any user when they are about to like any tweet. Now only twitter has that power.
Why would a free-speech "purist" be okay with authorities having special abilities to append emphasized messages below other messages?
People that care deeply about free-speech tend to want a level playing ground for every person in a discussion, and to not have platforms that have a centralised bias for or against different messages or identities.
It's disingenuous to tell a bunch of people with principles towards discussions happening on a relatively level-playing ground ("fairness") that what they really wanted all along was a central authority fact-checking certain perspectives.
Free-speech is mainly about avoiding situations in which there is an authoritarian bias towards the speech of one group over another. It doesn't matter whether that bias is due to deletion, banning, shadow-banning, algorithmic/statistical manipulation, editorial notes, etc. All of these things are forms of bias that the powerful can use in an attempt to control the speech of others.
The thing is, most of us aren't purists at all. Many agree that there should be some limits to free speech, and that certain things like calls to violence, dehumanisation of people, disinformation that doesn't get corrected until too late, and so on, are big issues for democratic society. However, it would be better if we could discuss this, rather than having our position straw-manned into something contrary to its inner morality/logic, and then getting treated as if we are all strict adherents to this as opposed to practical people that try to balance it with other things.
If Twitter is an “authority”, what is the President of the United States?
Twitter has a platform whose design inherently amplifies the voices of high-profile people, and consequently dampens the voices of the non-high-profile. Why be OK with that, and yet somehow not be OK with minor design adjustments that provide a small, partial, counterweight?
You cast this as a “special ability” but isn’t this simply the design of the platform, as decided by the people who control the platform, and whose job it is to decide what the platform is? And how is a platform design dictated by someone else for their own benefit somehow more valid?
Perhaps you don’t know, but as President, Trump is given special privileges on Twitter, and is exempt from virtually all the normal TOS. By basic fairness in free speech principles, you would be arguing that he be held to the same standard as everyone else. That would have had gotten him banned from Twitter a long time ago.
Anyway, just to clear your thinking, think of what a truly fair speech platform would be like. It would, e.g., ensure that any message I or you posted would be just as prominent as one Trump or other high-profile person posted. Of course, such platforms aren’t of interest to high-profile people. They want a platform like Twitter where the rules are tilted in their favor. The only thing being argued about here is how massively in their favor the platform is made. That’s fine, but it doesn’t have anything to do with free speech. You express a desire for a relatively level playing field, but if that’s the case, why even talk about Twitter, which has never been even remotely about that?
> straw-manned
I’m afraid you’re getting lost here. I’m not straw-manning you or anyone. You can have any stance you want. It’s just up to you to express it.
Don't you think that this comes across as quite arrogant?
I wrote quite clearly that most people interested in free-speech aren't purists and might expect "limits to free speech" in certain circumstances, but that we'd like to discuss what this means with respect to the actual goal of a relatively level playing field for discussion.
You tell me that you've not strawmanned anybody, but within your first comment you wrote that "if you're a free speech purist you are OK with [Twitter] responding to free speech with their own free speech". This suggests that free speech is merely about being able to speak and that advocates would be happy for their speech to be stymied in other ways - and, in fact, pleased when all their speech has mandatory notices about its invalidity. Clearly this is not what free-speech advocates believe, so it certainly is straw-manning or as another put "some gymnastics".
Apart from that, the rest of what you said is relatively coherent and you did at least try to unpack the platform as-is.
It is true that the President of the United States is also an authority. However, are they an authority of Twitter? Well, they can't ban people or add editorial notes below the tweets of their opponents so perhaps not.
You also mention that "Trump is given special privileges on Twitter, and is exempt from virtually all the normal TOS", so shouldn't he be held to the same standard as everyone else? Well, yes. Why not?
As for whether new ways of adding editorial comment below people's tweets are "special abilities" I think so (because normal users can't do this).
However, I agree that Twitter was never "a free speech platform" and that by design it always amplified particular voices via crowd-sourcing. But, there is a difference between crowd-sourced amplification and centralised editorial oversight/amplification. While Twitter has "never been even remotely about [free speech]" the new features are clearly changing what it is from a crowd-sourced amplification platform to a platform with significant editorial oversight.
Is it better for there to be a centralised bias for or against different messages or identities or is it better for the bias to be crowd-sourced? Is the editorial oversight US-centric only? Who gets this power (e.g. governments, institutions, HR, etc)? When should there be limits to free speech? When some speech needs to be inhibited should this be done in the open or behind closed doors? Should infractions be explained? Does anybody get to break the rules?
I and many others would like if these questions could be answered by the big social networks. It's annoying when people simplify all of this into some primitive desire for everybody to be able to say whatever and have their voice amplified by a platform, since that is not what I am saying.
> This suggests that free speech is merely about being able to speak and that advocates would be happy for their speech to be stymied in other ways
I do not suggest that. I am not trying narrowly define speech. My point is: It is free speech for someone to make claims about election fraud. It is also free speech for someone to refute those claims.
Why deny Twitter the right to their own editorial position, whatever its bias, while certain twitter users — with strong biases of their own — have free reign?
You seem to want to cast Twitter expressing their own position as inhibiting someone else’s free speech, but it’s just their own free speech. Free speech means you get to express yourself, not be free from contradiction.
I agree that Twitter should be able to have an editorial position, even though this might mean that are trending away from how they were originally. As you said, you cannot be "free from contradiction".
On the other hand, there are many ways to stymie speech which don't involve outright supression. Some of the things that Twitter does to stop certain speech are better than other ways -- I think it's good when they can be explicit about what they are doing and why they are doing it. It might be better business for them to be non-partisan as they provide a platform for people across the world but that is also their choice.
However, if for example, I was an admin on HN and had some special ability to put emphasized disclaimers below your comments about how they were mistaken and you were wrong, I think you would be right to feel like I was biasing the discussion and that it was unfair. An advocate for free speech (to the extent that I am, and in the way that I am) might be against this, since it does not create a good environment for discussion (new arguments or new ideas).
As I said, it kind of depends on the particulars and the context, but I kind of think about it like a debate between two people overseen by a moderator. If the moderator is neutral it is preferred by the audience, and if it looks like unfair treatment by the moderator it could easily backfire. Of course, this metaphor is quite specific and not guaranteed to apply to all situations -- but, I think it should be considered, since it's not uncommon for grifters on Twitter to make a fuss about how they are being unfairly targeted, in order to persuade their audience that "the truth" is being hidden from them by an unchecked elite (this is along the lines of my first comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25044396).
I'm not sure of any free speech "purist" that conflates the government with private parties. Regardless of how much "power" or "authority" the private party has. In fact, by every measure I've ever seen, a free speech "purist" would specifically say that Twitter has the right to amend, change, alter, or provide any opinion they so choose, no matter how much "authority" they may or may not have.
Every free speech "purist" I've ever met limits their opinion of control to the government.
> Every free speech "purist" I've ever met limits
> their opinion of control to the government.
I'm not American so don't have First Amendment rights.
There are people that have argued for free speech outside of this narrow lense. John Stuart Mill, one of the original advocates of free speech, argued against censorship by private parties.
He discussed the "the moral coercion of public opinion" and wrote that "the chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they strengthen the social stigma" and added that "It is that stigma which is really effective".
What's with this arbitrary distinction between "government" and "not government" with regard to rights? You never hear this made when talking about how the government is run by an oligarchy of billionaires.
Free speech "purists" (which I think is a stupid term, one only ever used by critics) set the distinction at having power. Power to silence people. The saying is "speak truth to power", not "speak truth to elected bureaucrats."
> People that care deeply about free-speech tend to want a level playing ground for every person in a discussion, and to not have platforms that have a centralised bias for or against different messages or identities.
By that argument free-speech advocates would support the inclusion of intelligent design and flat earth into public schools. You seem to be constructing a strawman.
Freedom of speech does not exclude the possibility of explicitly labeling certain speech as wrong, and what twitter is doing here is definitely better that removing tweets outright.
It would be even better to explicitly include opposite sources when marking disinformation. The primary concern is that this "labeling" is just a prelude to removal.
> Free-speech is mainly about avoiding situations in which there is an authoritarian bias towards the speech of one group over another.
Allowing a heavily annotated of speech is a minimum guarantee of "freedom", and vastly better than outright suppression.
> Freedom of speech does not exclude the possibility
> of explicitly labeling certain speech as wrong,
> and what twitter is doing here is definitely better
> than removing tweets outright.
Yes, I agree with this.
I disagreed with how the person I was responding to was formulating free speech, but think that there must be some middle path where we can be clear about why certain messages have disclaimers, and why certain people get banned, and what will get you banned, and how to get your account back if you've done nothing wrong, etc.
I also think that right now people complain about shadow-bans and so on, and I think these things are dangerous because they make people feel that authorities are conspiring against them.
> Why would a free-speech "purist" be okay with authorities having special abilities to append emphasized messages below other messages?
A free-speech purist would recognize that these aren't “aurhorities”, they are actors exercising their free speech, and which people are free to not associate with by not choosing Twitter as a platform for their own (distribution or consumption of) speech.
You forcing your own caveat on what I said before other people get to read it is a good bit different that simply freely speaking, regardless of the fact that you own the medium.
Either Twitter is a place for us to speak or it is the blog of the moderation team. It cannot be both. If they want to caveat everything everyone says then you're right, the solution is to not use the site, but it isn't because we don't like what they're saying, it is because Twitter is no longer a website designed for people to have discussions with one another, it is a website designed for the owner to control the flow of ideas.
If they are running a blog, then this is more evidence that Twitter is acting as a Editor.
> It was never [a website designed for people to have discussions with one another].
I'm old enough to remember when Twitter used SMS gateways. Because the idea was to connect multiple people so that they may share ideas and have discussions.
Twitter isn’t removing these tweets, just adding their own messages. That is, they are responding to free speech with their own free speech.
If they use this feature on high-profile figures it’s even better: free speech to authority.
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