I’m not personally concerned with the rights of private businesses as much as I’m concerned about the unintended consequences of expanding government power.
And yes, that is a new position for me. These past few years have been quite the education about the downsides of federal power as a liberal.
I’ve been over this before. Unless if you’re going to eliminate the ability for Twitter to moderate any protected speech, then this is an expansion of government power. This would give someone in the government the ability to determine what protected speech is immune from Twitter moderation, and what protected speech is not. This is a massive expansion of government power, and turns a two tier speech system (protected or not) into a three tier one.
There is already protected speech. You can say whatever you want as long as its not libel, treason, direct threats, etc.
Twitter has a TOC that is not strictly based on protected speech. They ban people / censor people all the time who violate their TOC but do not violate the law.
Also, it is not going to be certain speech that is protected but certain companies. Its possible Twitter would not have protection but Facebook could.
The core premise of the arguments being raised is that Twitter is being politically biased (citation needed), and that something should be done to make Twitter politically neutral since Twitter is such an important faux public square.
The problem is enforcement. How exactly will we make Twitter be politically neutral? There are two basic ways: you either eliminate Twitter’s ability to moderate at all, or someone has to define what speech is immune from moderation in the name of political neutrality.
The former is disastrous for the quality of these platforms. All kinds of anti-social and unpleasant behavior is protected speech, as is pornography and violent material. I think we can all agree that Twitter is within its rights to say “no porn here”, so we don’t want to set the bar at protected speech.
If we decide that twitter can moderate some but not all protected speech, then someone must legally define what protected speech is immune from moderation, and what protected speech is not. This represents an expansion of government power, as you’re giving the government the power to decide what types of protected speech is more important than other types of protected speech.
I think you are making a poor argument. Somebody could take your exact argument and say that you cannot have anti-discrimination laws for hiring or renting.
We would also handle abuses / accusations of abuses in the same way as anti discrimination laws.
I think what conservatives tend to see are a few examples where there appears to be bias. Liberals say something that violates the TOC and it doesn't get censored or when it does it takes longer for it to be censored. When a conservative says the same thing it get censored much faster.
For example an Asian who is liberal saying "white people are bs" is perfectly acceptable but a black conservative person saying "Jewish people are bs" with explicit notice that it is a parody of the first is not acceptable.
There are many examples where this happens but most publicly know cases appears to be against conservative.
This is of course possibly anecdotal but its understandable to come to the conclusion when Jack Dorsey admitted that most of the moderators are liberal.
Its hard to know if there is actual bias since people who don't have a large following don't make the news when they are censored.
I think a way to solve this would be:
1. Have more people with a variety of views on the moderation team.
2. Require multiple people to accept that something should be censored. Ideally people with different views.
3. Have a moderation log that allows watch groups review if they want.
I am not sure if Twitter could ask for political views prior to hiring a moderator so that could be an issue.
> Somebody could take your exact argument and say that you cannot have anti-discrimination laws for hiring or renting.
Only if you’re willing to argue that speech and race are the same thing, or that access to Twitter and housing are the same thing.
You can try this argument, just don’t expect it to persuade many people.
> I think what conservatives tend to see are a few examples where there appears to be bias.
You can spend your whole day trying to prove that Twitter is biased, and you will have completely ignored my actual point. You don’t need to prove that Twitter is biased, you need to prove that Twitter’s supposed biases justifies the government regulating protected speech.
I genuinely couldn’t care less if Twitter is biased if you don’t meet that second, higher bar. Use a different platform, petition twitter, complain here, just don’t ask the government to regulate speech.
> I get what your saying now.
Given that you did not address my core concern, I do not believe this.
And yes, that is a new position for me. These past few years have been quite the education about the downsides of federal power as a liberal.