It's not just about facts: Democrats and Republicans have sharply different attitudes about removing misinformation from social media

The state deciding on speech is a red line yes but that’s not even on the table here. This is about social media moderation. It actually seems really suspiciously disingenuous to bring that up here.

OP: Thread about social media moderation

You: The state deciding what’s true is the death of free speech!

Actually your comment is one of the big problems in this debate. People can’t tell the difference between a private social media firm moderating hate content and the government taking away their freedom of speech. You just slurred the two together yourself by bringing this up here.

Centralized for-profit companies policing speech doesn’t really solve free speech concerns. It doesn’t violate the US first amendment, but corporate-approved speech isn’t really free speech either. No person or organization is really suitable to be the arbiter of truth, but at the same time unmoderated misinformation presents its own problems.
- Yes it solves it. Companies are not required to carry your voice around the world, which is what their platforms do. Stop equating guaranteed amplification with your freedom of speech. It’s wrong and dumb. I’ve lived in countries that actually restrict speech and whatever the Facebook mod did to you is NOTHING. The only reason Americans even fall into this stupid way of thinking is because their speech is so free. When your speech has never truly been restricted you have no idea what that freedom even means.
  
  I’m not necessarily in favor of “guaranteed amplification”, as you put it. Anyone is free to yell whatever ideas they have on a street corner. Barring some specific exceptions, that is free speech. I understand why a for-profit company might not want to amplify any means everything someone decides to spew out. We’ve designed an un-free capitalist system though where some people do have guaranteed amplifiers, and others do not. That’s the problem I’m more interested in solving. It’s not forcing any one company to be forced to amplify any specific idea, but rather to make sure that centralized authorities, be they governments, social media companies, etc can’t in unison stamp out those ideas. I think decentralized platforms like this are somewhat key to that goal, even with individual instances having full moderation and federation control.
  
  I’m not necessarily in favor of “guaranteed amplification”, as you put it.
  ...and...
  We’ve designed an un-free capitalist system though where some people do have guaranteed amplifiers, and others do not. That’s the problem I’m more interested in solving.
  Those two statements of yours seem in opposition to one another. In your second statement you're calling out that some people have guaranteed amplifiers while others don't and say thats a problem. However your first statement says you're not in favor of guaranteed amplifiers for everyone.
  The only logical third outcome I can make out that would make those two statement NOT contradictory is if you don't want guaranteed amplifiers for ANYONE, but I don't think you're saying that.
  Can you clarify who you believe should have guaranteed amplifiers?
  
  I’m not looking for guaranteed amplifiers. I’m looking for an outcome where anyone can find an amplifier if that’s what they want. No party should be required to amplify anyone else. It’s possible in this situation that someone could fail to find an amplifier, but I’d like to minimize that by just having many platforms with different incentives such that it is unlikely that they would all align against any one persons message.
  The fediverse is built on this concept. Every instance can moderate their own users and communities, and choose which other instances to federate with. It’s unlikely that a specific user would be unable to find an instance that accommodates them, even if larger instances won’t. This contrasts with traditional social media where there is a sole for-profit entity that controls the entire network, able to completely remove people and ideas they don’t want.
  
  I’m looking for an outcome where anyone can find an amplifier if that’s what they want.
  How is that not a guaranteed amplifier?
  but I’d like to minimize that by just having many platforms with different incentives such that it is unlikely that they would all align against any one persons message.
  So if a person's message is something clearly abhorrent like "white supremacy" advocating violence against other races, you're hopeful there is a platform that person can amplify their voice with their ideas to the general public?
  It’s unlikely that a specific user would be unable to find an instance that accommodates them, even if larger instances won’t.
  My guess is that as the user increases the level of their bigotry, if the instance still allows is, that instance will be de-federated by nearly everyone. So they have their own echo chamber at that point. How is this different than what groups like that have done for decades prior to the internet with a private newsletter mailed out? This is essentially the situation we have at present.
  What are you advocating that would change this?
  
  "designed an un-free capitalist system though where some people do have guaranteed amplifiers, and others do not."
  This is simply bullshit. Facebook has the same rules for everybody.
  I don't get why people like you don't seem to understand that if you use someone else's system that has rules you have to follow those rules.
  No you don't have free speech on fb. No it is not the same thing as "yelling on a corner".
  You people have made up a concept of what you think free speech is that isn't reflected in reality in any way.
  No one owes you an unfettered voice on any platform.
  
  If you want to talk about corporate ownership of media, and how corporate media platforms are so powerful that they become the only thing that matters, there’s plenty to rail against there. It just doesn’t have anything to do with free speech. Here we are discussing how important it is not to let institutions squash ideas. Again, totally not even in the offing. The reality is that social media simply wants to moderate nazi hatred, while conservatives cry “free speech!”
  There’s plenty of free media out there, including this platform we’re talking on. There’s no freedom of speech issue here. In my day we just said fuck the mods. We didn’t clutch our pearls and presume we had a god given right to say whatever we want wherever we want.
  You can’t walk into Davies Symphony Hall and cry freedom of speech because you want to be heard by the crowd that came for the orchestra.
- No person or organization is really suitable to be the arbiter of truth
  Courtrooms are arbiters of truth literally all the time. There are plenty of laws for which truth is a defence, and dishonesty is punished.
  When battling misinformation, the problem is not that lying on the internet is legal - it is still actionable. Fraud is still illegal. False or misleading advertisements are still illegal. Defamation is still illegal. Perjury is illegal in the criminal law sense, not just torts. Ask Martha Stewart who the "arbiter of truth" is.
  The problem is that it's functionally impossible to enforce on the scale of social media. If 50,000 people call you a pedophile because it became a meme even though it was completely untrue, and this costs you your job and you start getting death threats, what are you going to do about that? Sue them all?
  So we throw up our hands and let corporations handle it through abuse policies, because the actual law is unworkable - it's "this is illegal but enforcing it is so impractical that it's legal". Twitter and Facebook don't have to deal with that crap so we let them do a vague implementation of the law but without the whole "due process" thing and all the justice they can mete out is bans.
  If you disagree, then I've got a Nigerian prince who'd like to get your banking info, and also you're all cannibals.
- You don't have free speech.

You do not have free speech on social media today, private platforms decide what they want to have.

The state does not have to be the one to decide these things, nor is it a case of "deciding" what is true, we have a long history of using proofs to solidify something as fact, or propaganda, or somewhere in between. This is functionally what history studies are about.

That brings up another thing. At what point does it become a "public space"?
Theres an old supreme court case on a company town that claimed someone was trespassing on a sidewalk. The supreme court ruled it was a public space, and thus they could pass out leaflets.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/marsh-v-alabama-1946/
Imo, a lot of big sites have gotten to that stage, and should be treated as such.
- I think this is an underrated point. A lot of people are quick to say "private companies aren't covered by free speech", but I'm sure everyone agrees legal ≠ moral. We rely on these platforms so much that they've effectively become our public squares. Our government even uses them in official capacities, e.g. the president announcing things on Twitter.
  When being censored on a private platform is effectively social and informational murder, I think it's time for us to revisit our centuries-old definitions. Whether you agree or disagree that these instances should be covered by free speech laws, this is becoming an important discussion that I never see brought up, but instead I keep seeing the same bad faith argument that companies are allowed to do this because they're allowed to do it.
  
  This is an argument for a publicly-funded “digital public square”, not an argument for stripping private companies of their rights.
  
  Why not both?
  While I agree that punishing companies for success isn't a good idea, we aren't talking about small startups or local business ran by individual entrepreneurs or members of the community here. We're talking about absurdly huge corporations with reach and influence the likes that few businesses ever reach. I don't think it's unreasonable to apply a different set of rules to them, as they are distinctly different situations.
  
  Because one is violating the first amendment rights of a private company, the other isn’t. Punishing a private company for how an individual uses their platform isn’t constitutional. It would be like holding car manufacturers liable for drunk drivers.
  
  I fully agree. Small groups have limited resources. But google and facebook have a ton of resources, they can handle more oversight.
  
  That's a good idea, but I still think big sites are public spaces at this point.
  
  “Publicly-accessible private space” and “public space” are two legally-distinct things. In a public town square, you have first amendment rights. In a shopping mall*, your speech and behavior are restricted. This is similar in that regard. Both are publicly-accessible, but one is private property and can be subject to the rules of the property owner.
  Edit: *not applicable to certain behaviors or speech in Californian malls
  
  To your shopping mall example, you got it wrong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins
  
  You should read the link you posted:
  This holding was possible because California's constitution contains an affirmative right of free speech which has been liberally construed by the Supreme Court of California, while the federal constitution's First Amendment contains only a negative command to Congress to not abridge the freedom of speech.
  So my analogy wouldn’t apply to Californian shopping malls, but it would to others, and it would apply federally.
  
  Well damn, I got hasty.
  I still think it really should apply federally, but it doesn't.
  
  It's different because the company built and maintains the space. Same goes for a concert hall, a pub, etc...
  Nobody believes that someone being thrown out of a pub for spouting Nazistic hate speech is their "free speech being trampled". Why should it be any different if it's a website?
  You rarely see the discussion, because there's rarely a good argument here. It boils down to "it's a big website, so I should be allowed to post whatever I want there", which makes little to no sense and opens up a massive quagmire of legal issues.
  
  bad faith argument that companies are allowed to do this because they're allowed to do it.
  So let's get this straight, it's "bad faith" to point out facts but "good faith" to support bigotry and hatred like you're "accidentally" doing with your argument?
  
  It's bad faith to argue that companies should be allowed to do things because they're already allowed to do those things. I see a little bit of that creeping in even here with the concept of "rights", as if corporations were humans. Laws can change.
  It's good faith to ask if companies have too much power over what has become our default mode of communication. It's also good faith to challenge this question with non-circular logic.
  Your assumption that I'm defending racism and bigotry is exactly why I think this stuff is important. You've implied I'm an insidious alt-rightist trying to dog whistle, and now I'm terrified of getting banned or otherwise censored. I'm interested in expressing myself. I do not want to express bigotry. But if one person decides what I said is even linked to bigotry, suddenly I'm a target, and I can lose a decades-old social account and all of its connections. And if that happens I just have to accept it because it's currently legal. It's so fucking stressful to say anything online anymore.
  
  Didn't read this. You already showed your hand
  
  You saw whatever hand you wanted to see. Have you considered that I'm gay and pro-choice, and I have legitimate reasons to worry that some corporations (e.g. Twitter) will try and start censoring support for these through selective enforcement of the current ToS?
  What's more dangerous, your grandma being allowed to say racist things on Facebook, or marginalized groups being systematically silenced? You're missing the forest for the trees.
  
  Sure you are
  
  Here's my (NSFW) e621 tag (notice my username?) where I've commissioned several acts of graphic homosexual intercourse between a representation of myself and other male characters.
  Yes, I very much am.
  
  Alas, you've also shown yours.
- There is a key difference here. Social media companies have some liability with what gets shared on the platform. They also have a financial interest in what gets said and how it gets promoted by algorithms. The fact is, these are not public spaces. These are not streets. They're more akin to newspapers, or really the people printing and publishing leaflets. The Internet itself is the street in your analogy.
  
  Your analogy about Newspapers isn't accurate either. The writers of a newspaper are paid by the company and everyone knows that writers execute the newspaper's agenda. Nothing gets published without review and everything aligns with the company's vision. Information is one way and readers buy it to consume information. They don't expect their voice to be heard and the newspaper don't pretend that the readers have that ability either. This isn't comparable to a social media site at all.
  
  I'm not saying it is identical, there are some key differences, and yet social media platforms are much more like a publishing company than they are a town square. Just because they're choosing to publish your tweets/posts for free and you're choosing to create content without pay doesn't mean it's not a better analogy than saying their the equivalent of a public space. They're very clearly not a public space. Using the street analogy, these are storefronts on the street, not the street itself. Again, the Internet itself is the street. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Mastodon, Lemmy, or whatever social media platform, are not the street or the town square. They are not and should not be considered to be public spaces any more than a mall or a Walmart is.
  
  Again, the Internet itself is the street.
  Internet is a bunch of compters connected together. Social media sites are a part of the internet. If you say internet itself is a street, then social media sites are part of that street as well. If you're just thinking about just the supporting infrastructure like cables, routers and switches, a lot of them belong to private companies as well. So you're talking about a street in a gated community, then you shouldn't expect any attributes of public space there either. Do you see that diiferentiating social media sites from public spaces just because they are owned by companies fail very quickly when you apply the reasoning consistently? Internet is quickly approaching the status of a basic human right, yet most of it is owned by private companies.
  Do you know what's equivalent to malls and Walmart on internet? That's Amazon, eBay and Alibaba.
  What's the analogy to a real world place people go to express themselves, protest and engage with the broader society? The closest I can think of is a town square.
  So a better analogy in my opinion is,
  Cables, satellites, routers and switches: Streets
  Online news websites (Vox.com The Verge etc): Newspapers
  Streaming video and audio sites: TV and radio
  Malls, and supermarkets: Online shopping sites
  Social media: Town square
  
  Companies probably shouldn't be liable then for what individuals share / post then, instead the individuals should. Social media constantly controls their push / promotion of posts currently using algorithms to decide what should be shown / shared and when.
  I hate this so much. I want real, linear feeds from all my friends I'm following, not a personally curated style sanitized feed to consider my interests and sensibilities.
- The Supreme Court is visiting such issues this month. Second block of text:
  https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/10/major-second-and-first-amendment-cases-headline-november-sitting/
- Private company servers are never public space no matter how many people they serve.
  What is wrong with you?
  Sidewalks are literally out in public.
- So we should make a law that says Facebook allows neo Nazi hatred then? Not sure I follow what you're getting at if you wouldn't say yes to this question
  
  I don't trust facebook to decide what is hate speech and what isn't, if thats what you're saying.
  
  Are you suggesting that large online spaces should have laws and police to investigate and enforce the laws? Of course this is already in place, but not at all enforced in the same manner as a public place.
  
  No, I don't trust anyone to do that. Everyone should be able to judge for themselves.
  
  Except that, clearly, they can't. Look at the republican base.
  
  Careful now, your about to say the quiet part (we think certain people are too deficient to think for themselves, so we enlightened should do their thinking for them) out loud. Humans don't have a great track record of dragging the "unenlightened savages" out of their ignorance, kicking and screaming if needs be, and North Americans in particular.
  
  We did fight, and win, a world war about this. Those people got into hateful group think just like the republicans and we ended up doing something about it and saved the world from fascism.
  
  No, you don't trust lIbRuLs, though Fox News can lie every second of every day and you'll never criticize them

Nobody (besides maybe extreme conservatives) is advocating for "the state" to decide what "is and isn't true". That's not what this is about.

Furthermore, "misinformation" and "disinformation" refer to things that can be true! Propogansists don't always need to invent false facts for them to be used in deceptive ways. To suggest that the goverment should stay out of the matter unless they utilze a perfectly foolproof fact-o-meter is IMO, shortsighted. "The state" makes policy decisions all the time with imperfect facts.

If you want to deal with misinformation, at some point someone has to say what misinformation is. Someone has to make a judgement on every fact, every event, every story.
And holy fuck my dude! "Furthermore, "misinformation" and "disinformation" refer to things that can be true!"
Thats some shit straight out of 1984. Censoring true facts? Wtf is wrong with you?
- propagandists don't always need to invent false facts to use them in deceptive ways
  Doing some subtle straw man arguments there, huh? Or just missed the rest of the comment?
  If I use a true fact and blatantly ignore other facts and context to try to start an ethnic cleansing, should I be censored or not? The most dangerous lies are the ones that have bits of truth in them to gloss over the bad bits.
  Don't pretend that intent isn't important, or that the world is black and white. Ignoring nuance is the most egregious underlying issue with conservatives.

Except there have always been limits on speech, centered mainly on truth. Your freedom of speech doesn't extend to yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire, for instance.

But we live in an age of alternative facts now, where science isn't trusted if it comes up with conclusions that conflict with your world view. Do you get a pass if you are yelling "Fire" because you are certain there are cell phone jammers in the theater that are setting your brain on fire because you got the COVID shot and now the 5G nanoparticles can't transmit back to Fauci's mind control lair?

Do you get a pass if you are yelling "Fire" because you are certain there are cell phone jammers in the theater that are setting your brain on fire
Yes. Anyone in good faith attempting to warn others of any potential harm that they believe to be true to the best of their abilities should have their speech protected.
- Anyone in good faith attempting to warn others of any potential harm that they believe to be true to the best of their abilities
  But what if their beliefs are verifiably false? I don't mean that in a sense of a religious belief, which cannot be proven and must be taken on faith. I mean that the facts are clear that there are no 5G nanoparticles in the vaccine for cell phone jammers to interfere with in the first place. That isn't even a thing.
  It's one thing to allow for tolerance of different opinions in public. It's another thing entirely to misrepent things that can be objectively disproven as true, just because you've tied it to a political movement. Can that really still be considered to be in good faith?
  
  But what if their beliefs are verifiably false?
  Yes. Because those with perverse incentives in power will falsify the truth to punish critics.
  
  So there is no objective truth anymore, and any fact you don't like can be dismissed by saying the Deep State is at fault? Is there a (((conspiracy))) to hide the fact that the Moon is really an egg?
  
  There are objective truths, the issue lays in the deciding of them. Not to step on your cloak and dagger but I'm not saying we've got a 'deep state' or there's some massive ((((conspiracy with too many parentheses)))).
  The Earth may be round but I don't want to have to worry about a flat earther judge ruling otherwise each time I say it.
  
  Seek therapy
- I wrote a comment about this earlier today. People who have been brainwashed to believe total nonsense often act in ways that are rational to them, but irrational to people who see the world through different eyes.
  That's fine until it's violent action.
  The alcoholic who thinks he's "fine to drive" believes he's perfectly rational. He's drunk all the time and no accidents. That's wonderful until he kills a family some night.
Technically, it's causing a panic that's illegal. Yelling fire is not. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/28853/is-it-illegal-to-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre
Different states have different laws, of course, and I am not a lawyer, I just googled if it was actually illegal. Don't actually go yelling fire in a crowded theater.
- Right, it's perfectly fine to alert people to a fire if there actually is one. Yelling "fire" when there isn't one will be generally interpreted as causing a panic.

Uh, you know that happens regularly in courtrooms right? Like, almost every court battle hinges on what's true and what's not. And courts are an arm of the state.

In some cases it's directly about the truth of speech. Fraud, defamation, perjury, filing a false report, etc. are all cases where a court will be deciding whether a statement made publicly is true and punishing a party if it was not. Ask a CEO involved in a merger how much "free speech" they have.

Oh weird, you coincidentally are a conservative mod lol

Gee so surprising you're mad about cEnSoRsHiP

Well yeah, did you read the article?
Fucking tankies thinking inalienable rights are bad things.

Well, here’s how that was framed for participants of this study:

identified as misinformation based on a bipartisan fact check

And even with this, Republicans didn’t care if it was true or not.

We’re actually past the point of anyone being able to be considered truthful by Republicans. It either tickles their feelings right or it doesn’t and that is all.

Section 230 gets the state involved from the get go. Remove liability protections from the state and everything else will shake out. Make little tweaks from there as necessary. The broad protection of 230 is causing this issue.

Isnt a grand jury enough to deal with this kinda thing? Like before damage is done but I don't see why that mechanism can't be useful here too?

Imo, not really. Juries are still problematic, in much the same way