At least two brands have said they will suspend advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after their ads and those of other companies were run on an account promoting fascism. The issue came less than a week after X CEO Linda Yaccarino publicly affirmed the company’s commitment to brand safety for advertisers.
Free speech is good and must be protected, that’s clear. But it should not be virtually limitless. The US played a major role sorting out the negative consequences of the Weimar republic, which did not contain fascist ideology, which then (edit: among other things ofc) lead to WW2.
It still baffles my mind how the US cannot see that tolerating the intolerant must inevitably lead to an intolerant and possibly facist society.
I have thought about it for a while but the US is basically in a cold civil war, with a significant chance of it becoming hot. And it looks very similar to their previous one. Neither side seem to have a charismatic enough leader.
It’s easy to look over the pond and think it’s none of our problem. But if the US falls to chaos a lot of other countries will follow suit. We can already see this influence in the UK and I’d argue many other EU countries. Russia probably saw this weakness, bet on it worsening much quicker than it did, but lost that bet (so far).
With that said, addressing the US as a whole no longer makes sense. I’m sure plenty, plenty of Americans see what is happening.
It’s unfortunate that one of the wealthiest people on this planet has taken the anti-democratic side, but it’s not the first or the last time in history a powerful man, rich beyond measure has done so.
Very much so, the Bavarian Conservative Party literally has gone to have talks with republicans to use their election strategies, the German-wide AgD has ramped up their Anti-LGBT campaigning and started to use similar messaging to far-right propaganda networks, e.g. “protect our children”, “pedophiles”, photoshopped images of CSAM at pride events, etc.
All the conservative parties in the west seem to be pushing the same thing. It seems pretty co-ordinated which is even scarier. Every country is hearing the same talking points.
Yep, it’s very clear. Far right parties are growing, conservatives are running after them trying to keep their voters by using more and more populist tactics, often crossing the line to keep up with far-right talking points, since they can’t keep their voters with their status-quo, corporations-first policies that they’ve been pushing for decades.
Yeah the Tories in the UK which were once the mainstream right are now sucking deeply on the crack pipe of Republican culture wars because after thirteen years in power it’s all they have left.
are now sucking deeply on the crack pipe of Republican culture wars
As are the conservative parties in Canada.
Until recently the federal conservative party had one of Trump’s co-conspirators listed as someone they had worked with. As so as he was indicted, thwy rapidly and quietly removed any mention of him.
Years ago I worked for a guy who came from old old money. He told me that he believed that something like the Illuminatti was real based on the notion that really wealthy people have similar goals everywhere and frequently interact. At the time I thought he was crazy but now Im less sure.
Wtf, csam photoshopped in? So gross and evil. How are people not arrested - idk about other places but i thought it is illegal in us to own it at all. So if someone photoshopped it - they should be in jail.
My country (Australia) has tied itself to you guys so if you go down we definitely go down with you. I’m 100% hoping the US doesn’t fall into chaos. We also birthed Rupert Murdoch and he’s played a huge part in heating up this civil war.
They are but things are definitely getting hot with China. There’s also been some issues with trade and diplomacy since our ex PM publicly called for an investigation into the origins of covid. China did not respond well to that and our previous government’s approach to diplomacy didn’t help. At one point China actually wasn’t answering calls from us.
We are walking a very fine line because we absolutely depend on trade with China but we’ve also entered in an alliance for the explicit purpose of preparing for a potential conflict with China. There’s absolutely no reality where we side with China over America. We would destroy our economy before we back out of our alliance with the US. We have followed them into every war since ww2.
Oh, yeah I know you wouldn’t. You’re in kind of a tricky situation but I think that spat over covid sort of tested boundaries for you.
I’m in Aotearoa, obviously we have a similar problem. Culturally we would go where you go, but on the other hand we didn’t follow the US into Iraq. China are by far our biggest trading partner, and also those of us with a long memory were disillusioned by how our allies treated us over the Rainbow Warrior terrorist attack so there’s probably not the same level of confidence.
It’s safe to say Russia and China have actually helped contribute to a lot of the issues in the last decade by holding a lot of soft power online. The US government can’t stop an enemy that blends in with their sovereign users, advertisers, and content creators.
I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech. Period. It’s not like the government is going around throwing people in prison for being racist fucks on Twitter. Twitter can moderate content if they want to. If they don’t want to moderate content they don’t have to as long as the material isn’t illegal.
I don’t know why people keep thinking this has anything to do with the first amendment at all. Twitter is not public, not even close.
I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech.
Twitter positions itself as the Internet’s public square, and free speech certainly does apply in an old-fashioned offline public square, so yeah, Twitter kinda does have something to do with free speech. Don’t seek power if you don’t want the responsibility it comes with.
There’s no such thing as “the internet’s public square”. It is the “X-owned public square”. In an offline public square, the government owns the square, so free speech protections apply. But this “square” is privately owned. There’s an incredibly fundamental difference here.
That’s not how it works, what you are talking about is often called freeze peach.
Until Twitter can fine you or lock you up for saying the wrong thing or exercise prior restraint over all your expression, it’s not a free speech issue.
By positioning itself as the Internet’s public square, Twitter seeks a monopoly over public discourse. If it is successful, then yes, it can exercise prior restraint over virtually all of your expression.
I think you’re mostly right but there’s a host of nuance and legalese that muddies this up. Social media is always in a conflicted relationship with speech, wanting to have no culpability over what’s posted while also making decisions over what to feature/restrict/etc. They’re actually really cautious to not position themselves as the “town square” for that reason since it does channel a sort of legal definition of such.
You’re partly right. But it’s the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state. We can’t keep our heads down and hope it goes away on its own. We shouldn’t allow the state, with its monopoly on violence, to fight our social battles for us.
I dislike the idea of the state getting to start making decisions on what is “hateful”. And I’m disgusted we don’t have more people standing up and loudly declaring how wrong the hateful viewpoints are. It is our responsibility and we are failing.
It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don’t have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power and starts redefining what is “hateful”.
Regulate an economy, maintain a border (meaning this is our stuff and everything outside the border is not it isn’t necessarily manning a border), and enforce laws. That’s the three basic tasks of any government.
If you take intro to poli sci literally anywhere in the world this is part of your first lesson. The three things listed are what makes a government a government. Kenya has no space program and is still a government.
This doesn’t define what a properly constituted government is though. Any government can prevent other worse governments from forming, all they need to do is massacre their citizens and there will be nobody left to form a government.
It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don’t have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power
You seem to be suggesting that separating hate speech prevention from legislation will protect you from a “tyranny of the majority” situation.
But if the populace has a bigoted plurality, won’t that also create a tyranny of the majority?
If the populace has a bigoted plurality, then they get to declare what is officially hateful. So yes, you’re right.
I put the onus on the collective citizenry, but there is no perfect solution in reality. There is a role for the state to play in protecting people, I just don’t think they should dip much into what speech is or isn’t allowed. The majority should rule in my opinion, but we have the job of maintaining a majority that isn’t regressive bigoted shitheads. It’s an eternal struggle, unfortunately.
Defamation, intellectual property, stalking/threats, harmful digital communications, false advertising, accurate declarations of food contents, protected names, conspiracy to commit serious crimes: all these forms of speech are regulated by law and the judiciary where I live, so I have no problem with hate speech laws as long as they are clear and reasonable.
Personally I am in favour of proportionally representative democracy with a lot of checks and balances to enshrine human rights in law, so that if a populace wavers toward the hateful there are still protections for minorities and the non-hateful.
Fair, but the more people you have, with more diverse viewpoints, the harder it will be to get people to agree on what is hateful. And the more nuanced your laws, the harder it will be to agree on what is reasonable or even clear.
But we have got people to agree on everything from what is a fair defense against defamation, right through to the percentage of meat a product such as a meat pie has to contain in order for it to be able to be labelled “meat”.
Democratic consensus is something that gets built up and refined over time. We don’t try to invent it all in a single day.
AFAIU this is a result of the wording in the US constitution. The freedom of speech in the US has a stronger legal implication than in other countries, even stronger than western democracies like the UK.
And, then in the civilian level, as you say, US netizens tend to write “you are entitled to your opinion” to basically anybody with any horrible belief as if they were government officials.
The US has limits on free speech in the name of public health and safety. There’s no assumption of limitless free speech in the US. People who cry “free speech” typically have no understanding of its actual legal definition in the country and just want an excuse to be a bigoted asshole without consequences.
Twitter, not being part of the government, gets to decide what content they allow and doesn’t need to worry too much about the legal definition of free speech. But, despite Musk’s claims, Twitter is not actually a space of limitless free speech. They’ve taken plenty of actions since he took over that limit the speech of individuals he disagrees with. Twitter is just interesting in giving a platform to hate. There’s certainly money to be made in monetizing hate (see Trump), but hopefully it doesn’t work out well in the end for Twitter or Musk.
I think it depends on how you define free speech. There are plenty of people arguing against unrestricted free speech on this particular instance, and it’s a core value of the instance (intolerance of the intolerant).
On the contrary, people who argue for unrestricted free speech always seem to do so on legal grounds, constantly quoting the first amendment as though it applies to private platforms or to people outside the US.
Free speech is good and must be protected, that’s clear. But it should not be virtually limitless. The US played a major role sorting out the negative consequences of the Weimar republic, which did not contain fascist ideology, which then (edit: among other things ofc) lead to WW2.
It still baffles my mind how the US cannot see that tolerating the intolerant must inevitably lead to an intolerant and possibly facist society.
I have thought about it for a while but the US is basically in a cold civil war, with a significant chance of it becoming hot. And it looks very similar to their previous one. Neither side seem to have a charismatic enough leader.
It’s easy to look over the pond and think it’s none of our problem. But if the US falls to chaos a lot of other countries will follow suit. We can already see this influence in the UK and I’d argue many other EU countries. Russia probably saw this weakness, bet on it worsening much quicker than it did, but lost that bet (so far).
With that said, addressing the US as a whole no longer makes sense. I’m sure plenty, plenty of Americans see what is happening.
It’s unfortunate that one of the wealthiest people on this planet has taken the anti-democratic side, but it’s not the first or the last time in history a powerful man, rich beyond measure has done so.
Very much so, the Bavarian Conservative Party literally has gone to have talks with republicans to use their election strategies, the German-wide AgD has ramped up their Anti-LGBT campaigning and started to use similar messaging to far-right propaganda networks, e.g. “protect our children”, “pedophiles”, photoshopped images of CSAM at pride events, etc.
All the conservative parties in the west seem to be pushing the same thing. It seems pretty co-ordinated which is even scarier. Every country is hearing the same talking points.
Yep, it’s very clear. Far right parties are growing, conservatives are running after them trying to keep their voters by using more and more populist tactics, often crossing the line to keep up with far-right talking points, since they can’t keep their voters with their status-quo, corporations-first policies that they’ve been pushing for decades.
Yeah the Tories in the UK which were once the mainstream right are now sucking deeply on the crack pipe of Republican culture wars because after thirteen years in power it’s all they have left.
As are the conservative parties in Canada.
Until recently the federal conservative party had one of Trump’s co-conspirators listed as someone they had worked with. As so as he was indicted, thwy rapidly and quietly removed any mention of him.
Steve Bannon was quoted as wanting to create an “international network of nationalists”
An international group that advocates for not cooperating across international lines?
That (hopefully) seems doomed from the outset.
It does. I think what he really means though is an international group of spin doctors who mobilise nationalist sentiments.
Probably in service to Disaster Capitalism.
Absolutely that, and fascism
Years ago I worked for a guy who came from old old money. He told me that he believed that something like the Illuminatti was real based on the notion that really wealthy people have similar goals everywhere and frequently interact. At the time I thought he was crazy but now Im less sure.
Well its not conspiratorial to say right wing organizations meet and collaborate.
I think they try and see what works to push their agenda of consolidating power and protection for the rich at any cost.
Orban was at Cpac
Wtf, csam photoshopped in? So gross and evil. How are people not arrested - idk about other places but i thought it is illegal in us to own it at all. So if someone photoshopped it - they should be in jail.
My country (Australia) has tied itself to you guys so if you go down we definitely go down with you. I’m 100% hoping the US doesn’t fall into chaos. We also birthed Rupert Murdoch and he’s played a huge part in heating up this civil war.
y’all can just flip to china and they’ll treat you really nice to try and placate future potential allies
at least… for like a decade or two
Nah we just signed a big pact with the US and UK and now we’re buying all their hand me down helicopters and shit.
China’s still one of your major trading partners, though.
They are but things are definitely getting hot with China. There’s also been some issues with trade and diplomacy since our ex PM publicly called for an investigation into the origins of covid. China did not respond well to that and our previous government’s approach to diplomacy didn’t help. At one point China actually wasn’t answering calls from us.
We are walking a very fine line because we absolutely depend on trade with China but we’ve also entered in an alliance for the explicit purpose of preparing for a potential conflict with China. There’s absolutely no reality where we side with China over America. We would destroy our economy before we back out of our alliance with the US. We have followed them into every war since ww2.
Oh, yeah I know you wouldn’t. You’re in kind of a tricky situation but I think that spat over covid sort of tested boundaries for you.
I’m in Aotearoa, obviously we have a similar problem. Culturally we would go where you go, but on the other hand we didn’t follow the US into Iraq. China are by far our biggest trading partner, and also those of us with a long memory were disillusioned by how our allies treated us over the Rainbow Warrior terrorist attack so there’s probably not the same level of confidence.
Good ol’ “Foundations of Geopolitics” by Aleksandr Dugin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
And helped it along as much as they could get away with.
It’s safe to say Russia and China have actually helped contribute to a lot of the issues in the last decade by holding a lot of soft power online. The US government can’t stop an enemy that blends in with their sovereign users, advertisers, and content creators.
The problem is free speech absolutism is very popular here with dumb dumbs.
Correction: fake free speech absolutionism of Musk where he gets to decide who gets censored for their opinion is very popular with dumb dumbs.
I agree, but Twitter has nothing to do with free speech. Period. It’s not like the government is going around throwing people in prison for being racist fucks on Twitter. Twitter can moderate content if they want to. If they don’t want to moderate content they don’t have to as long as the material isn’t illegal.
I don’t know why people keep thinking this has anything to do with the first amendment at all. Twitter is not public, not even close.
Twitter positions itself as the Internet’s public square, and free speech certainly does apply in an old-fashioned offline public square, so yeah, Twitter kinda does have something to do with free speech. Don’t seek power if you don’t want the responsibility it comes with.
There’s no such thing as “the internet’s public square”. It is the “X-owned public square”. In an offline public square, the government owns the square, so free speech protections apply. But this “square” is privately owned. There’s an incredibly fundamental difference here.
That’s not how it works, what you are talking about is often called freeze peach.
Until Twitter can fine you or lock you up for saying the wrong thing or exercise prior restraint over all your expression, it’s not a free speech issue.
By positioning itself as the Internet’s public square, Twitter seeks a monopoly over public discourse. If it is successful, then yes, it can exercise prior restraint over virtually all of your expression.
It can succeed in that endeavor the moment I become unemployable. I’m not making an account there, never will, and I will die on this hill.
I think you’re mostly right but there’s a host of nuance and legalese that muddies this up. Social media is always in a conflicted relationship with speech, wanting to have no culpability over what’s posted while also making decisions over what to feature/restrict/etc. They’re actually really cautious to not position themselves as the “town square” for that reason since it does channel a sort of legal definition of such.
Since it is Musk that manages the “Internet’s public square”, it isn’t a public square at all.
You’re partly right. But it’s the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state. We can’t keep our heads down and hope it goes away on its own. We shouldn’t allow the state, with its monopoly on violence, to fight our social battles for us.
I dislike the idea of the state getting to start making decisions on what is “hateful”. And I’m disgusted we don’t have more people standing up and loudly declaring how wrong the hateful viewpoints are. It is our responsibility and we are failing.
It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don’t have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power and starts redefining what is “hateful”.
So what’s the state for?
Serving the interests of the citizens.
That’s a good question ;)
Regulate an economy, maintain a border (meaning this is our stuff and everything outside the border is not it isn’t necessarily manning a border), and enforce laws. That’s the three basic tasks of any government.
Nah. Our state should do more and better things than that.
I like having a space program, for example. And education for all
Those are optional. The three things I listed are the basic requirements for all governments.
A space program is not optional in today’s world. As is education, among a huge number of different things
If you take intro to poli sci literally anywhere in the world this is part of your first lesson. The three things listed are what makes a government a government. Kenya has no space program and is still a government.
There are many schools of thought on what a government is for or should do and most people do not ascribe to the notions you are presenting as fact.
Also make laws
The function of a properly constituted government is to prevent other worse governments from forming.
This doesn’t define what a properly constituted government is though. Any government can prevent other worse governments from forming, all they need to do is massacre their citizens and there will be nobody left to form a government.
‘Hate’ is vague. ‘Intolerance’ however, is probably legally definable.
Definition of intolerance: opposite of tolerance.
QED
You seem to be suggesting that separating hate speech prevention from legislation will protect you from a “tyranny of the majority” situation.
But if the populace has a bigoted plurality, won’t that also create a tyranny of the majority?
If the populace has a bigoted plurality, then they get to declare what is officially hateful. So yes, you’re right.
I put the onus on the collective citizenry, but there is no perfect solution in reality. There is a role for the state to play in protecting people, I just don’t think they should dip much into what speech is or isn’t allowed. The majority should rule in my opinion, but we have the job of maintaining a majority that isn’t regressive bigoted shitheads. It’s an eternal struggle, unfortunately.
Defamation, intellectual property, stalking/threats, harmful digital communications, false advertising, accurate declarations of food contents, protected names, conspiracy to commit serious crimes: all these forms of speech are regulated by law and the judiciary where I live, so I have no problem with hate speech laws as long as they are clear and reasonable.
Personally I am in favour of proportionally representative democracy with a lot of checks and balances to enshrine human rights in law, so that if a populace wavers toward the hateful there are still protections for minorities and the non-hateful.
Fair, but the more people you have, with more diverse viewpoints, the harder it will be to get people to agree on what is hateful. And the more nuanced your laws, the harder it will be to agree on what is reasonable or even clear.
That’s a fair point.
But we have got people to agree on everything from what is a fair defense against defamation, right through to the percentage of meat a product such as a meat pie has to contain in order for it to be able to be labelled “meat”.
Democratic consensus is something that gets built up and refined over time. We don’t try to invent it all in a single day.
Defensive Democracy > Whatever the US is
AFAIU this is a result of the wording in the US constitution. The freedom of speech in the US has a stronger legal implication than in other countries, even stronger than western democracies like the UK.
And, then in the civilian level, as you say, US netizens tend to write “you are entitled to your opinion” to basically anybody with any horrible belief as if they were government officials.
The US has limits on free speech in the name of public health and safety. There’s no assumption of limitless free speech in the US. People who cry “free speech” typically have no understanding of its actual legal definition in the country and just want an excuse to be a bigoted asshole without consequences.
Twitter, not being part of the government, gets to decide what content they allow and doesn’t need to worry too much about the legal definition of free speech. But, despite Musk’s claims, Twitter is not actually a space of limitless free speech. They’ve taken plenty of actions since he took over that limit the speech of individuals he disagrees with. Twitter is just interesting in giving a platform to hate. There’s certainly money to be made in monetizing hate (see Trump), but hopefully it doesn’t work out well in the end for Twitter or Musk.
People who argue against free speech always do so on legal grounds. Nobody seems to want to attack free speech as an ethical concept.
I think it depends on how you define free speech. There are plenty of people arguing against unrestricted free speech on this particular instance, and it’s a core value of the instance (intolerance of the intolerant).
On the contrary, people who argue for unrestricted free speech always seem to do so on legal grounds, constantly quoting the first amendment as though it applies to private platforms or to people outside the US.
Speaking of Weimar and America.