Re #2: you’re conflating the First Amendment and free speech. The First Amendment is one particular legal instantation of the idea of free speech, applicable in limited circumstances in one country. Establishing that there is no First Amendment problem does not establish that there is no free speech problem. And although I agree that there are important differences between government censorship and censorship by private actors, the classical liberal argument for free speech supplies reasons why even private censorship is harmful. You need to engage with these pro-free-speech arguments and explain why they don’t apply here.
Fair point re: #2, but the ultimate point is unchanged. For the same reasons that Less Wrong and SSC engage in content moderation, Twitter does the same. Banning Trump, on balance, will not be harmful.
“Content moderation” is not always a bad thing, but you can’t jump directly from “Content moderation can be important” to “Banning Trump, on balance, will not be harmful”.
The important value behind freedom of association is not in conflict with the important value behind freedom of speech, and it’s possible to decline to associate with someone without it being a violation of the latter principle. If LW bans someone because they’re [perceived to be] a spammer that provides no value to the forum, then there’s no freedom of speech issue. If LW starts banning people for proposing ideas that are counter to the beliefs of the moderators because it’s easier to pretend you’re right if you don’t have to address challenging arguments, then that’s bad content moderation and LW would certainly suffer for it.
The question isn’t over whether “it’s possible for moderation to be good”, it’s whether the ban was motivated in part or full by an attempt to avoid having to deal with something that is more persuasive than Twitter would like it to be. If this is the case, then it does change the ultimate point.
What would you expect the world to look like if that weren’t at all part of the motivation?
What would you expect the world to look like if it were a bigger part of the motivation than Twitter et al would like to admit?
Again, Trump wasn’t banned for his ideas. He was banned for actively inciting violence and for a long history of poisoning the well.
Neither of us know what Twitter’s “real” motivations were. Heck, the executives of Twitter might not know what their real motivations were.
The real question is whether it is proper for a major media platform to remove a major political figure for ostensibly breaking the code of conduct associated with the platform and for actively engaging in incitement to violence. That activity ought not to be protected by free speech or society as a whole.
I think Lesswrong and SSC are in a different situation than Twitter. Twitter is a key place for discussion and dissemination of ideas. It could be argued that the scale and function twitter serves (organizing protests etc) means Twitter should be treated of more as a public good than the SSC comment section and that their reach means they have more of a responsibility to be very careful about deplatforming voices .
Re #2: you’re conflating the First Amendment and free speech. The First Amendment is one particular legal instantation of the idea of free speech, applicable in limited circumstances in one country. Establishing that there is no First Amendment problem does not establish that there is no free speech problem. And although I agree that there are important differences between government censorship and censorship by private actors, the classical liberal argument for free speech supplies reasons why even private censorship is harmful. You need to engage with these pro-free-speech arguments and explain why they don’t apply here.
Fair point re: #2, but the ultimate point is unchanged. For the same reasons that Less Wrong and SSC engage in content moderation, Twitter does the same. Banning Trump, on balance, will not be harmful.
“Content moderation” is not always a bad thing, but you can’t jump directly from “Content moderation can be important” to “Banning Trump, on balance, will not be harmful”.
The important value behind freedom of association is not in conflict with the important value behind freedom of speech, and it’s possible to decline to associate with someone without it being a violation of the latter principle. If LW bans someone because they’re [perceived to be] a spammer that provides no value to the forum, then there’s no freedom of speech issue. If LW starts banning people for proposing ideas that are counter to the beliefs of the moderators because it’s easier to pretend you’re right if you don’t have to address challenging arguments, then that’s bad content moderation and LW would certainly suffer for it.
The question isn’t over whether “it’s possible for moderation to be good”, it’s whether the ban was motivated in part or full by an attempt to avoid having to deal with something that is more persuasive than Twitter would like it to be. If this is the case, then it does change the ultimate point.
What would you expect the world to look like if that weren’t at all part of the motivation?
What would you expect the world to look like if it were a bigger part of the motivation than Twitter et al would like to admit?
Again, Trump wasn’t banned for his ideas. He was banned for actively inciting violence and for a long history of poisoning the well.
Neither of us know what Twitter’s “real” motivations were. Heck, the executives of Twitter might not know what their real motivations were.
The real question is whether it is proper for a major media platform to remove a major political figure for ostensibly breaking the code of conduct associated with the platform and for actively engaging in incitement to violence. That activity ought not to be protected by free speech or society as a whole.
I think Lesswrong and SSC are in a different situation than Twitter. Twitter is a key place for discussion and dissemination of ideas. It could be argued that the scale and function twitter serves (organizing protests etc) means Twitter should be treated of more as a public good than the SSC comment section and that their reach means they have more of a responsibility to be very careful about deplatforming voices .