Two thoughts: 1) the Twitter-Elon debate is really interesting to think about in contrast to the net neutrality debate from a few years ago, and 2) the mindset arguing for more aggressive content moderation bears a concerning similarity to the change in mindset on college campuses that Haidt and Lukianoff talk about in “Coddling of the American Mind.”
On point 1. Net neutrality proponents argued (amongst other reasons) that it was critical in order to have the free flow of information and not have some content privileged over others. The Venn diagram of people who supported net neutrality but now want more social media content moderation is pretty close to a single circle. Those two positions seem to be in conflict.
On point 2. Haidt and Lukianoff note that younger generations respond to conflict and speech they don’t like by going to an authority and seeking punishment for the other person rather than engaging with the person or simply removing themselves from the situation. Ex., if there was an objectionable campus speaker, the response wasn’t to personally skip the event but to try and get the administration to cancel it. I’m always amazed the clarion call is for more moderation from the top rather than a more liberal use of the block and mute buttons. Blocking/muting accounts you find objectionable in combination with light-touch moderation to get rid of bots and such seems better than the report-and-suspend/ban regime currently in place.
I would say the difference is that “the internet” writ large is just a protocol for transferring data between computers and is easy to analogize to a telephone line while social media platforms need to make content moderation decisions to function. Requiring neutrality in the former while rejecting compulsion to carry speech by the latter does not strike me as contradictory
That is fair enough, but I'd take it another way: the people who were catastrophizing about the end of network neutrality a few years ago were pretty straightforwardly wrong, as it turns out, and seem pretty likely to be wrong about Elon Musk running Twitter too.
I agree with the idea that less moderation than we have is better. I think outright harassment and vulgarity could still be banned if it offers no argument but just an attack. As long as users can control access by blocking and muting I will be fine. Why not let users control the algorithms? Some might prefer one approach over another. Maybe allow people to weight the value of those they follow.
I would argue that Twitter, with its character limits and built-in mob summoning function (QT) is a poor platform for “arguing through our differences” and is a better tool for harassment and intimidation. I can’t really see how spamming Jews with photoshops of them in gas chambers, despite being within the bounds of the law, is helpful to our discourse or something that can be “argued through”
This succinctly puts the problem into focus. Some of the terms seen here - hate speech, hateful words, vulgarity, harassment (even when modified by “outright”) - are themselves the source of much debate. Thus I’d argue for not trying to moderate on those bases. In general I’d favor as close to zero moderation as possible.
I don't accept the premise that words can never hurt people. Words have power and can be used in an abusive manner. Twitter is not governed by the Constitution. Considering the racist history of the N word, I do consider it to be hate speech.
Words can be used in an abusive manner. So what? Instead of limiting the rights of others because you feel offended, remove yourself from the situation or ignore the words. There is no right not be offended.
“Censoring certain views doesn’t make them go away; it just makes them go underground. It’s better to have them out there, in the light of day, so we can see them—and defeat them.”
This is a moral axiom, I suppose but it doesn’t seem borne out by history. Removing anti-democratic ideologies from the bounds of acceptable discourse and marginalizing them before they can gain traction and overthrow liberal democracy seems quite effective in practice (see the postwar German constitutional order compared to the tolerance for groups like the Freikorps in prewar Germany — Germany is now significantly above the US in the V-Dem index). Is there any evidence that marginalizing ideologies makes them more powerful?
I totally see where you're coming from, and I agree with some of your points. I think we can all agree that censoring neo-Nazis isn't any great loss for speech. But who decides what is "anti-democratic"? There are many on the left who view, say, the Republican Party as anti-democratic, based on policies pushed by Republicans on issues like voter access.
I would say that, in the Twitter context, Twitter would have the prerogative to decide what is anti-democratic (as nobody else should have the authority to compel them to publish speech they don’t want to). Twitter is an organization with values that it is allowed to uphold. It might be a good business idea for them to explain their moderation decisions more transparently to persuade users that such decisions are made fairly although given the huge number of decisions that have to be made algorithmically, it’s an impossible task. In general, the first amendment as construed in Brandenburg wouldn’t allow anybody with state power to decide such a thing, but that doesn’t compel private actors to tolerate such views or center them within society.
When I launch my Substack, one of the key points I will mention from a non-partisan point of view - even though this next sentence phrase sounds like left-wing drivel - is the way that people in power maintain the status quo is through the “perfect being the enemy of the good” rationalization. “Who decides what is anti-democratic?” A group of highly fallible board members and managerial employees, who hopefully are constantly refining, repealing and revising transparent by-laws to keep them up-to-date with an ever-changing reality. That’s how any set of rules and regulations work. Mistakes and errors in judgment are made all the time; Facebook once removed a photo of an arm folded by the elbow because they mistook it for a pair of breasts. Does that mean they therefore should abandon all forms of moderation? I am fascinated by this phenomenon of clichéd talking points, memes and refrains by relatively educated and well-to-do Americans being passed off as arguments. Who gets to decide whether Casey Anthony was guilty? A group of 12 jurors who look like they were persuaded by the fact that she was able to afford a highly expensive private attorney rather than a public defender. I don’t agree with their decision, but does that mean we abolish the jury system? I enjoy your weekly columns, but this particular argument you’re making comes across as knee-jerk and intellectually lazy.
I'd offer a slightly different phrasing to support David's argument: Who do you trust to make the judgment? Is any speech sufficiently anti-democratic that it would be less anti-democratic to empower censors to decide what can be said and, more importantly, what can be heard?
Andrew's invocation of Germany is not convincing to me. Neo-Nazis aren't discredited because they've been excluded from public discussion. Neo-Nazis are discredited because Nazism was discredited; it was discredited because it used monstrous means to pursue monstrous objectives, bringing unprecedented suffering and destruction not just to other countries and innocent minorities, but to the German population itself.
This is not exactly what you’re looking for, but I saw it in the paper this morning and was reminded of your comment.
*********
Adam Sohn [is the] chief executive of the Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies the spread of ideological content online…. His group’s research suggests that attempts to punish bad actors on social media are misguided. When people were barred, they simply migrated to platforms like Gab, where extremist content proliferates among a more determined population. “Our research consistently shows that deplatforming people pushes them underground and only radicalizes them more,” Mr. Sohn said.
A Network Contagion Research Institute analysis of Gab showed that after certain high-profile banning events on Twitter — ridding the platform of accounts that belonged to Proud Boys, the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his website InfoWars in the summer and fall of 2018, for instance — Gab saw significant spikes in its membership growth.
My biggest concern is shifting an important platform for news and information, as well as friendship and community-building, from being governed by a corporate structure which is more accountable to stakeholders, to a single individual, one who has shown through past actions that he is not the free-speech advocate he claims. Musk is fine with "free speech" when it's not criticism directed at him or his companies, see e.g. Cooley lawyer issue, Thailand cave rescue. Musk strikes me as a very thin-skinned individual who is quick to retaliation. I am concerned at someone with such an attitude being in sole control over "the public town square", as he calls Twitter.
Nobody is more thin-skinned than a progressive, especially a contemporary college student. This whole argument is silly. Only elites know what the plebs should be allowed to read, correct? Ordinary people are too stupid to read, analyze what they read and come with their own conclusions. We need Gen Z snowflakes to protect us from alternative view points-like acknowledging Covid treatments other than vaccines or the decision not to allow Hunter Biden laptop information on the platform. Or misgendering people-OMG, isn’t this the worst abuse? After living in the US for the past 32 years I believe we are in a place that is worse that Soviet controlled nations before the Berlin Wall fell. It’s so Orwellian but only the masses seem to see it while the illiberal “Elites” are forming “Ministry of Truth” within the US government. Did anyone ever envisioned that it would happen here? I guess, Orwell in his wisdom. All these people mentioning Nazis in the comments don’t seem to mind using Goebbels’s propaganda tricks.
My first thought in any discussion of Twitter is "Why?" Why would anyone try to make a public argument in 280 characters? Why would anyone read one? If, as I perceive, the only people who read and write tweets spend hours of each day trying to get each other's attention, why should the other 95% of the world care?
Having said that, I think less onerous moderation would be good - good for users and good for the platform. Maybe even good for the public.
I am pretty close to a free speech absolutist, but I recognize that some level of moderation is necessary to keep the platform from devolving into a cesspool that repels most of the people it wants to attract. But it's a bad idea for moderators to imagine they are better able to assess "truth" than writers or users. It would be even worse if the moderators see their role as promoting their preferred agenda.
I find it hard to get riled up about all this. It all strikes me as a teacup sized tempest.
And to be fair, I think the idea of more transparency in Twitter in terms of the algorithms is probably a good thing. It will not cure conspiracy - in fact it will probably spawn plenty of news ones on the left, the right, and the zany. Not that I am expecting we will get any actual improvements. Indeed I suspect the only people who will materially benefit from all of this are the lawyers :)
I don’t think it particularly matters whether Trump is allowed to resume his Twitter account, or whether he accepts such an offer. That’s because - if nothing else - Musk seems prepared to stop what I call the unpersonning approach to content moderation. Remember, as things stand today not only is Trump banned, but linking to anything he posts on another service is banned. Even if that post is innocuous.
All Musk really needs to do is stop this unpersonning and allow other users to post links to whatever Trump says on Truth (unless that specific statement violates Twitter rules) and anything halfway interesting Trump says will spread far and wide on Twitter.
Two thoughts: 1) the Twitter-Elon debate is really interesting to think about in contrast to the net neutrality debate from a few years ago, and 2) the mindset arguing for more aggressive content moderation bears a concerning similarity to the change in mindset on college campuses that Haidt and Lukianoff talk about in “Coddling of the American Mind.”
On point 1. Net neutrality proponents argued (amongst other reasons) that it was critical in order to have the free flow of information and not have some content privileged over others. The Venn diagram of people who supported net neutrality but now want more social media content moderation is pretty close to a single circle. Those two positions seem to be in conflict.
On point 2. Haidt and Lukianoff note that younger generations respond to conflict and speech they don’t like by going to an authority and seeking punishment for the other person rather than engaging with the person or simply removing themselves from the situation. Ex., if there was an objectionable campus speaker, the response wasn’t to personally skip the event but to try and get the administration to cancel it. I’m always amazed the clarion call is for more moderation from the top rather than a more liberal use of the block and mute buttons. Blocking/muting accounts you find objectionable in combination with light-touch moderation to get rid of bots and such seems better than the report-and-suspend/ban regime currently in place.
I would say the difference is that “the internet” writ large is just a protocol for transferring data between computers and is easy to analogize to a telephone line while social media platforms need to make content moderation decisions to function. Requiring neutrality in the former while rejecting compulsion to carry speech by the latter does not strike me as contradictory
That is fair enough, but I'd take it another way: the people who were catastrophizing about the end of network neutrality a few years ago were pretty straightforwardly wrong, as it turns out, and seem pretty likely to be wrong about Elon Musk running Twitter too.
I agree with the idea that less moderation than we have is better. I think outright harassment and vulgarity could still be banned if it offers no argument but just an attack. As long as users can control access by blocking and muting I will be fine. Why not let users control the algorithms? Some might prefer one approach over another. Maybe allow people to weight the value of those they follow.
I would argue that Twitter, with its character limits and built-in mob summoning function (QT) is a poor platform for “arguing through our differences” and is a better tool for harassment and intimidation. I can’t really see how spamming Jews with photoshops of them in gas chambers, despite being within the bounds of the law, is helpful to our discourse or something that can be “argued through”
^^^What he said.
Twitter also doesn't delete posts that use the N-word and doesn't deem it as "hate speech" or objectionable content.
Whatever happened to “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words etc”? Hate speech concept is unconstitutional and often abused.
This succinctly puts the problem into focus. Some of the terms seen here - hate speech, hateful words, vulgarity, harassment (even when modified by “outright”) - are themselves the source of much debate. Thus I’d argue for not trying to moderate on those bases. In general I’d favor as close to zero moderation as possible.
I don't accept the premise that words can never hurt people. Words have power and can be used in an abusive manner. Twitter is not governed by the Constitution. Considering the racist history of the N word, I do consider it to be hate speech.
Words can be used in an abusive manner. So what? Instead of limiting the rights of others because you feel offended, remove yourself from the situation or ignore the words. There is no right not be offended.
And soon, Twitter will be governed by Elon.
I'm sure you're right.
“Censoring certain views doesn’t make them go away; it just makes them go underground. It’s better to have them out there, in the light of day, so we can see them—and defeat them.”
This is a moral axiom, I suppose but it doesn’t seem borne out by history. Removing anti-democratic ideologies from the bounds of acceptable discourse and marginalizing them before they can gain traction and overthrow liberal democracy seems quite effective in practice (see the postwar German constitutional order compared to the tolerance for groups like the Freikorps in prewar Germany — Germany is now significantly above the US in the V-Dem index). Is there any evidence that marginalizing ideologies makes them more powerful?
I totally see where you're coming from, and I agree with some of your points. I think we can all agree that censoring neo-Nazis isn't any great loss for speech. But who decides what is "anti-democratic"? There are many on the left who view, say, the Republican Party as anti-democratic, based on policies pushed by Republicans on issues like voter access.
I would say that, in the Twitter context, Twitter would have the prerogative to decide what is anti-democratic (as nobody else should have the authority to compel them to publish speech they don’t want to). Twitter is an organization with values that it is allowed to uphold. It might be a good business idea for them to explain their moderation decisions more transparently to persuade users that such decisions are made fairly although given the huge number of decisions that have to be made algorithmically, it’s an impossible task. In general, the first amendment as construed in Brandenburg wouldn’t allow anybody with state power to decide such a thing, but that doesn’t compel private actors to tolerate such views or center them within society.
When I launch my Substack, one of the key points I will mention from a non-partisan point of view - even though this next sentence phrase sounds like left-wing drivel - is the way that people in power maintain the status quo is through the “perfect being the enemy of the good” rationalization. “Who decides what is anti-democratic?” A group of highly fallible board members and managerial employees, who hopefully are constantly refining, repealing and revising transparent by-laws to keep them up-to-date with an ever-changing reality. That’s how any set of rules and regulations work. Mistakes and errors in judgment are made all the time; Facebook once removed a photo of an arm folded by the elbow because they mistook it for a pair of breasts. Does that mean they therefore should abandon all forms of moderation? I am fascinated by this phenomenon of clichéd talking points, memes and refrains by relatively educated and well-to-do Americans being passed off as arguments. Who gets to decide whether Casey Anthony was guilty? A group of 12 jurors who look like they were persuaded by the fact that she was able to afford a highly expensive private attorney rather than a public defender. I don’t agree with their decision, but does that mean we abolish the jury system? I enjoy your weekly columns, but this particular argument you’re making comes across as knee-jerk and intellectually lazy.
I'd offer a slightly different phrasing to support David's argument: Who do you trust to make the judgment? Is any speech sufficiently anti-democratic that it would be less anti-democratic to empower censors to decide what can be said and, more importantly, what can be heard?
Andrew's invocation of Germany is not convincing to me. Neo-Nazis aren't discredited because they've been excluded from public discussion. Neo-Nazis are discredited because Nazism was discredited; it was discredited because it used monstrous means to pursue monstrous objectives, bringing unprecedented suffering and destruction not just to other countries and innocent minorities, but to the German population itself.
This is not exactly what you’re looking for, but I saw it in the paper this morning and was reminded of your comment.
*********
Adam Sohn [is the] chief executive of the Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies the spread of ideological content online…. His group’s research suggests that attempts to punish bad actors on social media are misguided. When people were barred, they simply migrated to platforms like Gab, where extremist content proliferates among a more determined population. “Our research consistently shows that deplatforming people pushes them underground and only radicalizes them more,” Mr. Sohn said.
A Network Contagion Research Institute analysis of Gab showed that after certain high-profile banning events on Twitter — ridding the platform of accounts that belonged to Proud Boys, the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his website InfoWars in the summer and fall of 2018, for instance — Gab saw significant spikes in its membership growth.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/business/twitter-free-speech-musk.html
My biggest concern is shifting an important platform for news and information, as well as friendship and community-building, from being governed by a corporate structure which is more accountable to stakeholders, to a single individual, one who has shown through past actions that he is not the free-speech advocate he claims. Musk is fine with "free speech" when it's not criticism directed at him or his companies, see e.g. Cooley lawyer issue, Thailand cave rescue. Musk strikes me as a very thin-skinned individual who is quick to retaliation. I am concerned at someone with such an attitude being in sole control over "the public town square", as he calls Twitter.
Nobody is more thin-skinned than a progressive, especially a contemporary college student. This whole argument is silly. Only elites know what the plebs should be allowed to read, correct? Ordinary people are too stupid to read, analyze what they read and come with their own conclusions. We need Gen Z snowflakes to protect us from alternative view points-like acknowledging Covid treatments other than vaccines or the decision not to allow Hunter Biden laptop information on the platform. Or misgendering people-OMG, isn’t this the worst abuse? After living in the US for the past 32 years I believe we are in a place that is worse that Soviet controlled nations before the Berlin Wall fell. It’s so Orwellian but only the masses seem to see it while the illiberal “Elites” are forming “Ministry of Truth” within the US government. Did anyone ever envisioned that it would happen here? I guess, Orwell in his wisdom. All these people mentioning Nazis in the comments don’t seem to mind using Goebbels’s propaganda tricks.
My first thought in any discussion of Twitter is "Why?" Why would anyone try to make a public argument in 280 characters? Why would anyone read one? If, as I perceive, the only people who read and write tweets spend hours of each day trying to get each other's attention, why should the other 95% of the world care?
Having said that, I think less onerous moderation would be good - good for users and good for the platform. Maybe even good for the public.
I am pretty close to a free speech absolutist, but I recognize that some level of moderation is necessary to keep the platform from devolving into a cesspool that repels most of the people it wants to attract. But it's a bad idea for moderators to imagine they are better able to assess "truth" than writers or users. It would be even worse if the moderators see their role as promoting their preferred agenda.
We need more free speech not less-the current regime at Twitter is strangling the First Amendment
I find it hard to get riled up about all this. It all strikes me as a teacup sized tempest.
And to be fair, I think the idea of more transparency in Twitter in terms of the algorithms is probably a good thing. It will not cure conspiracy - in fact it will probably spawn plenty of news ones on the left, the right, and the zany. Not that I am expecting we will get any actual improvements. Indeed I suspect the only people who will materially benefit from all of this are the lawyers :)
I don’t think it particularly matters whether Trump is allowed to resume his Twitter account, or whether he accepts such an offer. That’s because - if nothing else - Musk seems prepared to stop what I call the unpersonning approach to content moderation. Remember, as things stand today not only is Trump banned, but linking to anything he posts on another service is banned. Even if that post is innocuous.
All Musk really needs to do is stop this unpersonning and allow other users to post links to whatever Trump says on Truth (unless that specific statement violates Twitter rules) and anything halfway interesting Trump says will spread far and wide on Twitter.