I've only just got back in the studio for the new calendar year, and there's already yet another online mob forming against freedom of expression, this time targeting SubStack. I agree with #ElleGriffin;
"Substack shouldn’t decide what we read.
We should."
https://www.elysian.press/p/substack-writers-for-community-moderation
The SubStack founders agree, and that's why I have the new Disintermedia and BridgeSeat.nz newsletters hosted there.
@strypey Substack does get to decide what to offer on their platform, and who to do business with.
And the rest of us get to decide if we want to boycott those who choose to profit from Nazis.
Both are examples of freedom of expression in action.
@LouisIngenthron
I agree with all of this.
Except the inference that SubStack...
> choose to profit from Nazis
They have a policy against incitement to violence. Anyone who isn't inciting violence isn't a "Nazi" in any truly concerning sense of the word.
Focusing on the real problem (violence), rather than on the symptoms (labels and symbols), is a radical approach. One that protects authors on their platform from attempts to stretch the definition of "Nazis" for other censorship purposes.
@strypey The authors of the platform don't need to stretch definitions. They can remove whoever they want for any reason. And that's not censorship (only the government can truly censor), because it doesn't extend past the bounds of their private property; rather it's their 1A right to disassociation.
They already chose not to associate with pornography and nobody complains about that. Yet despite having clear rules, they choose to continue to associate with and profit from known white supremacists. That's their right, sure, but it unmasks their values and the rest of us are free to choose not to do business with them as a result.
@LouisIngenthron
> only the government can truly censor
This is sophistry. In the print age, only the government could censor, because printing presses were decentralised (anyone with enough money could get one), and censors had to have the power to seize your presses and confiscate printed material.
In the era of digital platforms, readerships are highly consolidated, so platforms can censor on their own behalf, and on behalf of government (eg Christchurch Call).
@strypey The reason "only the government can censor" is because the government can shut down your speech *everywhere*. Private actors can only set rules for their own property. Facebook "censors" you? Go to Twitter or TikTok or YouTube. The wide variety of competing services (and your freedom to self-host) that allow you to easily broadcast your speech make the maxim *more* true, not less.
@LouisIngenthron
Also you're ignoring my reference to the Christchurch Call and the way governments use the censorship apparatus of the major platforms as part of their means of censoring everywhere.
Why is that I wonder? Because it completely demolishes the imaginary fence you've erected between moderation and government censorship?
@strypey I hadn't heard of it before. It doesn't matter here, where our free speech protections are robust.
@strypey Lmao, that's such nonsense. You have a right to speech, not amplification, and especially not amplification with a megaphone owned by someone else. You can still hand out pamphlets or give speeches. You can even create your own website and audience.
But you don't have a free speech right to a Facebook account, and nobody is violating your rights by asking you to leave their property.
@LouisIngenthron
> But you don't have a free speech right to a Facebook account, and nobody is violating your rights by asking you to leave their property
You're moving the goalposts. We're debating whether SubStack et al are allowed to moderate their platform. But whether it's legitimate for cancel mobs, or governments (eg via Christchurch Call) to bully or force them to moderate on their behalf. Which is clearly censorship.
(1/2)
@strypey Any government forcing them to moderate (or not to moderate) would absolutely violate their free speech rights.
But public pressure (or "cancel mobs") is just more free speech. They can choose to bow to it or not, as their own free speech.
@LouisIngenthron
> But public pressure (or "cancel mobs") is just more free speech.
Again with the sophistry. The fact that their right to free speech protects their attempt to suppress the speech of others doesn't change the fact that systematic suppression of free speech is censorship.
> They can choose to bow to it or not, as their own free speech
Now you're really reaching. Bowing to intense coercion is not "free speech" any more than votes cast under duress make a free and fair election.
@strypey You keep equating criticism with coercion. These things are not the same.
Believe it or not, you can just ignore criticism and go on with your day.
@strypey Nobody is forcing or coercing anyone to fire their employees. Nobody is forcing or coercing anyone to silence.
They're criticizing them, and those people are (sometimes) bowing to criticism. They don't have to, and some don't!
That's the free marketplace of ideas in action.
"Free speech" doesn't mean that you don't have to face any consequences for what you choose to say. It just means you won't be imprisoned or physically harmed for them.
@LouisIngenthron
To dodge this point, you engaged in the usual sophistry of censorship apologists. Putting forward a definition of censorship so narrow that most real world censorship would not be fit it. I pointed out why that definition isn't useful.
Censorship is the suppression of speech. If the pressure to moderate a particular way is coming from civil society or government, and being applied to all platforms, it's clearly an attempt at censorship.
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@strypey The difference between the two is that government can force you to do something, at threat of jail or violence.
All the "cancel mobs" can do is criticize and threaten to take their business elsewhere (which is their free speech right).
@LouisIngenthron
> All the "cancel mobs" can do is criticize and threaten to take their business elsewhere (which is their free speech right).
They can destroy someone's livelihood, eg by getting them fired from their job. Which in a capitalist society can lead to extreme suffering and even death. So this is just as bad as the threats states are capable of.
But this isn't really the point. Systematic suppression of speech is censorship, regardless of the particular style or consequences.
@strypey No, they can't. All they can do is criticize. Only the person's employer can fire them from their job, if they agree with the criticism. Again, all free speech.
That welfare here sucks doesn't make speech less free.
Grassroots is not systemic.
@LouisIngenthron
More sophistry. Which again suggests that you know the censorship you're making excuses for isn't defensible, and that you'd be fighting it just as vigorously as you're defending it, if it didn't align with your ideology.
I think we're done here.
@strypey When your argument is just repeating the word "sophistry" over and over (do you even know what that word means?) instead of actually engaging with the ideas presented, yeah, I think we are done here.
@LouisIngenthron
"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."
Friedrich Nietzsche
@LouisIngenthron
If you really think censorship is the lesser evil here, then defend it. Replying with hairsplitting sophistry about whether or not it's really censorship suggests that you're not convinced it is really defensible.
(3/3)
@strypey True censorship is bad. But what you're calling censorship is just another exercise of free speech that ought to be protected.
@LouisIngenthron
> The wide variety of competing services (and your freedom to self-host) that allow you to easily broadcast your speech
Again, this is sophistry.
In the print age, you could always evade censorship by handling out handwritten samizdat pamphlets or giving speeches at philosophical salons. But you couldn't reach outside your existing networks in the way you can with publishing.
The same is true of being systematically hounded off the handful of major digital platforms.