People in the west are so used to freedom of speech and so focused on problems with social media. They miss the fact, that many authoritarian governments in Asia see freedom of speech in social media as a threat. They are not banning Facebook to improve quality of life, they want to limit freedom of speech.
People in the west are also incredibly naive about issues around speech, and even more naive about the effects of propaganda, which ironically is what dominates most western media these days.
For example, if you can say a thing, but someone with more money or influence can say the opposite thing so loud that no one can hear you, do you really have a voice? Yes, you have free speech in that you don't get retribution from the government, but you surely don't have fair speech. Effectively you have no voice.
If only your local independent reporter carries a story, and none of the major players do because they coordinate to limit what you see, do you have free speech in practice? When maybe 1% of the population hears the independent reporters, and 99% just listen to the propaganda?
Also as others have said, letting people have free reign to spread both home grown and foreign propaganda is pretty naive and as we've seen in the last several years, has a huge impact.
This is not to advocate for banning speech like you see in many authoritarian governments, but the west needs to be smarter and think deeper about what free speech actually means. At what volume do you get to speak? What consequences to your speech are allowed vs forbidden? Who gets a voice, citizens, everyone in the world including foreign adversaries? Who gets to speak anonymously? Everyone? Just citizens
People who have never seen propaganda in action don't understand: it cannot work (the way these states want it to work) in the presence of real information channels, even if that's just private conversation. That's why socialist states arrest people for just talking privately to an agent about the government.
So yes, you have free speech if major news players coordinate whatever. If on social networks you get banned. Absolutely. That's problem 1 for authoritarian regimes. This is not something any authoritarian nation will relent on even slightly.
Second they have a problem with there being any "players" at all. Because you do get different perspectives, most of which don't match the governments. Compare the news in Israel with the "news" in Russia, or with Al Jazeera and you will see the difference. In Israel, there's maybe 5 major channels. But they hate each other. Pro and contra the war perspectives are represented. In Russia, there is no anti-war perspective. In Al Jazeera there is no one questioning how the government is spending money, there is no discussion on viewpoints, on anything in the middle east. There is no discussion of corruption either, in either Russia or Qatar. None.
This illustrates the problem of propaganda: everyone knows it's bullshit. Every Russian knows Russia is less democratic than a US TSA inspection. Everyone knows everything in Qatar is entirely, 100%, corrupt.
Propaganda will fail, certainly in the eyes of the government, if there is some, any way to get real information. And it doesn't matter if it's not easy. This is how it's always been in the US, because now people have some seriously rose colored glasses on how "true" US newspapers were in the early parts of the 20th century. Reality is that in the US bullshit always dominated the news cycle. This is not new.
Yes, and it's shocking to see people cheer it on. An oft-heard refrain is about the legal right of the first amendment of the US constitution preventing the government from blocking speech, but that is based on the natural right of freedom of speech, as Hobbes and Locke would differentiate. Social media platforms are at such a scale in the modern day that they are essentially the public square, so the government blocking them is akin to blocking free speech in the legal right itself.
Some might say, you can publish elsewhere on your own domain, but again, it's like barricading the public square and only allowing one to speak in the middle of a forest; if no one but the trees listen, what is the point of the natural right to free speech?
I don’t really think of social media companies as being the public square. They are more like private clubs, just with really low standards for membership.
IMO the bigger problem is the total lack of a public square these days.
The internet is more pseudonymous than we’re used to dealing with, compared to the in-person public square. People behave in ways that would normally cause their acquiescences to use their freedom of association, and avoid them. Online attempts at a public square tend to be pretty annoying, as a result.
These private clubs are the de-facto quasi-public square, is my point. In virtual space, the government is not hosting some sort of public social media so people are forced to use private corporations' services to voice their thoughts.
> Social media platforms are at such a scale in the modern day that they are essentially the public square
This is a ridiculous assertion.
The local Costco is "at such a scale in the modern day" that it, too, is essentially a public square. It's still private property, though. If you show up in Aisle 6 trying to convert people to Mormonism, a Costco employee will ask you to leave and stop harassing their customers. Yes, the same principle applies to Twitter, Facebook, X, Truth Social and Instagram.
What gives you the right to leverage their private property as your soapbox? Because people on the sidewalk won't listen, and that hurts your feelings? They have a business, if you are using your speech in any way to obstruct the conduct of their thoroughfare then they can have you ejected. The cops will not listen to your tirade against multinational burger tyrants, they'll drop you off at the drunk tank. Your speech will never be unconditionally protected, not online or in real life.
It's not McDonald's either, a singular location does not serve billions. The difference between a physical and virtual location is one of scale. As for your other paragraph, the point is that these corporations have gotten so large and people depend on them so much that being banned on them is essentially akin to being exiled from the ability to have free speech in modern society, whatever restrictions you want to reasonably put on them. What is the alternative you want people to use if, like Nepal, the government bans social media platforms, that I have not already addressed?
With your linking of that xkcd, it's clear you're misunderstanding my point about legal vs natural rights, as I stated initially.
Many places in the USA, but not everywhere, have sidewalks around the parking lot that are going to be publicly owned so you can set up with signs and a megaphone there.
One thing the "west" ie the USA needs to understand (well they'll know very shortly) is that the right to consume propaganda from your countries enemies is not the same as being able to criticise your government for doing a bad job/breaking the law/killing it's own citizens.
Facebook et al is not a neutral platform, it is a vector for other states, and non state actors to whip up outrage and division.
> many authoritarian governments in Asia see freedom of speech in social media as a threat
Yup, because it is a threat.
see Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia to name just a few. all have had large scale unrest transmitted and amplfied by facebook. Now are they nice governments? no. did facebook help bring democracy? also no, they helped pinpoint activists and let the government(s) kidnap them.
The indian anti-muslim movement is properly being whipped up by the BJP and others, using facebook to get to the people that don't have TVs. Facebook is a big part in why they are still in power.
> Facebook et al is not a neutral platform, it is a vector for other states, and non state actors to whip up outrage and division.
I would feel better about this type of activity being regulated. There is quite a bit of room for facebook to live up to higher standards and regulation to prevent that sort of behavior with out banning.
Might also be more a of a hassle to write and enforce the laws though than out right banning though.
The result of that for a country with a small market though might be facebook/similar voluntarily leaving the country/market though.
my general impression is that the greatest concern for china is people getting riled up about anything, and that leading to civil unrest. like what's happening in indonesia right now for example. therefore any kind of content that could get people upset is restricted. so effectively this means no doomscrolling. wechat has something that works like tiktok, and the content there is all positive, uplifting, educational or entertaining. probably just a addictive, mind you, but never once i have seen something that i would want to keep away from my kids.
If free speech in America goes away, the rest of the world will suffer for it as well.
People get worked up about "hate speech" a very arbitrary thing, that changes over time, but they don't realize the slippery slope that creates if you try to police speech.
The things I've seen Australians and even British people arrested for posting or commenting on online is absurd. The people who support it are fine with it, until they're the ones being reported and getting into trouble, and handcuffed for making a one off remark that otherwise seemed innocent at the time.
Remember, these governments eventually can and will use AI models to monitor your speech. People around the world should seriously advocate for free speech more now than ever.
Also remember, the key thing in America about free speech is that the government has no say in what speech is allowed. You still have consequences for your speech from others.
Ref. the UK ('British people'), there's currently a thing where peacfully protesting a ban will get you arrested (I have a lot of sympathy for the police in this case, whatever they do will be wrong in the eyes of one side or the other).
One thing that annoys me is when a police officer, even here in the US clearly does not agree with a law. I was under the impression in one of my government classes in college that police officers could in fact choose not to arrest someone, but a lot of the time they opt-out of making that decision for whatever reason. I never looked if in the UK it's similar, but it always bothers me more when a police officer is "just following orders" especially when at least here in the US, they can just not charge someone at their discretion, because sometimes the law is just wild.
We also see it with judges. Our system isn't perfect, but it allows for people who strongly believe a law is unjust to step in.
What part of the President threatening financial sanctions and jail time for speech makes you think we have this?
To the degree the American experiment has shown anything about free speech, it’s that it may not work uncensored broadly. At the end of the day, we voted against it.
It should be valued now more than ever. We are the only country that has it to the extent that we do. Unfortunately, that's not the only amendment we blindly violated.
> should be valued now more than ever. We are the only country that has it to the extent that we do
And it’s causing lots of problems with questionable benefit. Millions of people with no medical training and the critical thinking skills of a first generation LLM debating vaccines online is not productive.
I thought this [1] New Yorker profile of the chief justice of Brazil's Supreme Court was a fascinating and thoughtful analysis of how tech giants interact with less-powerful countries. Surely we all agree that free speech is not absolute (e.g. we could probably agree that there should exist some boundary with respect to libel, threats/violent speech acts, national security, corporations as legal persons with free speech rights, the right or duty of platforms to regulate content, influence of money in politics...) and that therefore states have a legitimate interest in regulating free speech.
The "free speech" of tech platforms also comes with colonial power structures in which the tech company makes these decisions and imposes them on countries.
and the governments of the west are most supportive of authoritarian and military regimes. Why are they silent over what is happening in Pakistan? Pakistan election was stollen by Pakistan army in day light robbery. And what happened before the election is another story. Pakistan is going through worst form of its human right/freedom of speech/democratic abuses since its independence and west seems to be careless. Just because people of Pakistan support a person who is nationalist. So, for them a dictator is better than him.
Democracy/free speech/human rights are tools for west, not a moral high ground. Hypocrisy at its peak. :)
What freedom of speech? The "first world countries" in Europe are slowly turning up the surveillance state to not let people online if they don't provide their IDs, they want to surveil every private conversation you have at home, if it uses the internet in any way, they'd love banning encryption, VPNs, etc... but you have freedom of speech? Except when talking about thinks that are deemed "pro enemy" (Russia or whoever it is this time around).
Come on, we're living in extremely authoritian governments that pretend to be something else.
Democracy cannot survive unless we find a way to ensure we know when are listening to the people that are part of our demos and NOT people that are outside of it, actively trying to destroy it.
We had freedom of speech in the west before the Internet. That speech was not anonymous.
I did. Your point puts national security of a boogeyman us vs them as paramount.
Your point gives the authoritian the ability to use "the red scare" as tactic to ensure no subversives appear. No one to challenge their power. We must monitor all to find "the infiltrated enemy".
Your bullshit is not new. It's been done all throughout history and it's always just an excuse to suppress threats to individual power. Political parties are proscribed because "they're working for foreign actors and we deem them to be treasonous".
> Anonymity is not a prerequisite to freedom of speech.
I couldn't disagree more. The vast majority of papers the founders of the US published to argue against tyrannical government were written anonymously.
> Broken lives of people harassed by anonymous trolls on social media are the dark side of anonymity.
This is a cliche "think of the children" argument. Stripping away anonymity is a gargantuan problem, and enables authoritarian regimes to punish dissent. Trolls are a very minor problem comparatively.
> Freedom must be accompanied by responsibility and accountability.
This is essentially saying "freedom needs to come with punishments and restrictions when you do things I don't like". It's an oxymoron. The responsibilities a free populace have are moral and civil, they aren't about giving away anonymity to governments.
> This is a cliche "think of the children" argument. Stripping away anonymity is a gargantuan problem, and enables authoritarian regimes to punish dissent.
So we agree: authoritarian regimes are a gargantuan problem, not stripping away anonymity.
> Trolls are a very minor problem comparatively.
Online predator almost killed my child - this is not a "very minor problem". At least not for me.
> This is essentially saying "freedom needs to come with punishments and restrictions when you do things I don't like". It's an oxymoron.
It is not bout things _I_ don't like but things that _we (society)_ don't like. In my country nazi symbols are forbidden in public space and I think it is a good thing.
So yes - "freedom needs to come with punishments and restrictions".
> The responsibilities a free populace have are moral and civil, they aren't about giving away anonymity to governments.
Why not? There are countries which governments are elected by citizens and are _trusted_ by citizens. Why would I want to be anonymous if I _trust_ people I elected?
Almost killed your one child. Authoritarian governments have murdered many more.
At some point the disingenous concerned parents need to start dealing with their own parenting instead of pretending we need to live in 1984 just because your bad parenting requires it.
Your way has many more deaths of government dissenters. Stop using "death" as a scare tactic. Much like the "war on terror" supporters, it's a fraud.
I don’t know about any deaths (or imprisonment) of government dissenters in Poland (where I come from). Do you know any?
Maybe oppressive government and lack of freedom of speech is a problem in your country, I don’t know that and I’m sorry for you. My suggestion would be though, that you try to fix your government instead of anonymously requiring online anonymity because you’re afraid of your own government.
I guess here in Poland trying to protect people from theft and violence is more pressing issue than freedom of speech.
My suggestion is that you learn about history. Because suppressing the ability to write anonymously and have private unmonitored conversations is paramount for political dissent. I'm sure you can find a moment in the history of Poland where having to look over your shoulders when you said something against government policies was a thing. Or are you blind to your own history?
> I guess here in Poland trying to protect people from theft and violence is more pressing issue than freedom of speech
I guess you're the kind that learned from the tactics of your oppressors from both sides and want to implement those in the guise of safety.
You don't need to remove civil rights to prevent theft and violence the same way you don't need to nuke a city to combat rape.
Tackle the real problem instead of removing the most fundamental of rights so you can suppress speech and dissent you dislike, which is all this is.
Very easily it becomes, you can't say this about party B or party A, you can't have this political position.
Give me a break.
Again, all these things posted by people who don't share their full name and address. Do it, the government will share yours anyway, voluntarily or not.
> Tackle the real problem instead of removing the most fundamental of rights so you can suppress speech and dissent you dislike, which is all this is.
But the real problem is oppressive government. My government is not oppressive - my government is here to help me and help the society to maintain civil rights.
The view that it is the government that is against civil rights is anarchistic and... wrong. In reality it is the opposite: the only way to maintain civil rights is to have the rule of law and the government that protects them.
What's more: anonymity itself has to be guarded by... the government (and that's what you require). So your logic is twisted: you trust your government to protect anonymity while at the same time you don't trust it to protect freedom of speech.
"trusted government officials" is such a funny line. Clearly you haven't seen how government workers work. Hint, they're usually not paid all that well and are not to be trusted.
In any case, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about, dude. Isn't that the line?
Clearly you can't live up by the standards you want to impose on others.
> Anonymity is not a prerequisite to freedom of speech.
That's disingenous bullshit. From the likes of people who use their power imbalance to pretend their propaganda is truth and dissent is dangerous.
"Freedom of speech is ok but what you're doing is different" is the first step
> Broken lives of people harassed by anonymous trolls on social media are the dark side of anonymity.
You only need to pay attention to history to see what political totalitarianism means when there's no anonymity.
It's way worse than online trolls.
> Freedom must be accompanied by responsibility and accountability.
Said the dictator, who was accountable to no one. Those who hold the power shield themselves from accountability and want to use it as an excuse to prevent dissent.
Democracy for quite some time thrived in US (and for some shorter time in other western countries) even though there was no anonymity while free speech was guaranteed by the state.
In other words: anonymity is not a solution for lack of free speech. I should be free to say whatever I want without being forced to hide behind a nickname.
Secondly: I think you are happy to not being the target of online violence. I have experience with teens on the brink of suicide caused by it.
Ah. This is it, folks. You're a liar and you project your lies. Incapable of realising how people have lived shit in history.
Go google "disappeared people in military dictatorships" and maybe, just maybe, you'll learn something about authoritians and how they dealt with "subversives".
Not everyone here lives in the US.
Your account is 17 hours old and you want to find the "enemy within". Aren't you the enemy within?
Demosntate you're not a foreign actor, according to your own rules, post your full name and address. Or maybe that's a stupid thing to do and anonymity is valuable?
I actually am a foreign actor (effectively like your own president). I'm British.
Jones is a rabble rouser, as is most of the "right" in the US. You'd do well to learn how to spot them, and like your president, he's only interested with stuffing his pockets with money.
Enjoy your fascism - comes with a free side of disappearing people. I'm sure you'll be Pinchoeted in no time at all based on your narrative once it's all locked in.
And equally, we in the west are so used to genuine free expression of ideas we assume everyone who speaks is real and genuine. Meanwhile, outside actors are weaponising social media to divide us, errode trust and spread conspiracies. There are worse things that banning American media platforms - look at what they are doing to America.
Inside actors are also spreading misinfo, rage bait, propaganda and general degeneracy of culture. They're blaming outsiders while doing the same or even worse.
>They are not banning Facebook to improve quality of life, they want to limit freedom of speech.
Please post your evidence of this regarding Nepal. Also, are you suggesting that Nepal has an authoritarian government? Picking up a book may be helpful, as they literally abolished their authoritarian government in 1990 and their monarchy in 2008.
