Ironic that this news from Poland comes a day after activists go on trial for replacing halos with rainbows in a picture in Poland: <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9142821/Poland-trial-starts-LGBT-symbol-revered-icon-posters.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9142821/Poland-tria...</a>
All I see lately is people conflating <i>the right to free speech</i> with <i>the right to be heard</i>.<p>Free speech means that you can't be put in jail for something you say. That's <i>it</i>.<p>But nobody has an entitlement to be <i>amplified</i>. That's not a right. Nobody has the right to unfettered access to someone else's platform. That's never, ever been the case. You never had the right to edit the front page of a newspaper that you don't own, you don't have the right to set up a platform in the middle of some company's office to talk about your crazy ass theory, and you don't have the right to spew malicious, bad-faith shit into a twitter thread.<p>/rant
If you wonder what exactly they want to protect, [1] is the recent ruling of a Polish court. As of Jan 12th, publicly saying that "gay people are perverts" is fine as far as Polish law is concerned.<p>[0] Background in English: <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/polish-activist-refuses-to-apologise-for-remarks-on-varadkar-s-perversion-1.3661768" rel="nofollow">https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/polish-activis...</a><p>[1]The ruling (Polish only): <a href="https://oko.press/kaja-godek-wygrala-w-sadzie-zboczency/" rel="nofollow">https://oko.press/kaja-godek-wygrala-w-sadzie-zboczency/</a>
This is absurd. Twitter etc are private companies and can do what they want wrt their user's accounts. If they don't want their far-right politicians getting censored, then they can ban those platforms from the country completely. As the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Good. Social media sites have for far too long avoided liability for the content on their site by saying they're just platforms, whilst selectively censoring like a publisher. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
While I strongly disagree with social media censorship and I think a lot it is politically motivated, I do recognise that they probably should have the legal right to censor content.<p>Where I personally get far more uncomfortable is with the payment processors. When you have a companies like MasterCard banning donations from all republicans who take a certain political positions (objecting to the electoral vote in this case) then something needs to be done.<p>If Twitter censors you it is possible to move to another platform, or even create your own, but if Visa and Master card ban you, what exactly do you do?<p>To some extent I feel similar about core AWS services. I think people probably should have a some legal right to basic internet services. I understand it's possible to build your own internet infrastructure as Gab has proven, but it's very difficult for the average person to do what Gab did. As an individual I could move to another social media platform, but if my web hosts bans me I wouldn't have the resources to host my own website which seems wrong given how important the internet is to us as a utility today.<p>IMO social media censorship, while an important conversation to have, isn't the primary conservation. This would be far less of an issue if alternative platforms like Gab and Parler weren't constantly under attack by monopolies which provide core services like payment processing and core internet services. The fact a company like Gab has had resort to accepting cash in the post for PRO membership for simply trying to protect its users right to free speech online is a complete failure of regulation IMO.
> Censorship of free speech, which is the domain of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is now returning in the form of a new, commercial mechanism to combat those who think differently.<p>As terrible as PiS are for other reasons, Morawiecki has a point here, although I don't see he is standing by this point consistently when it comes to, <i>e.g.</i>, those who "think differently" about sexuality.
I guess Poland can start make a progress by no longer requesting content removal from twitter: <a href="https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/removal-requests.html" rel="nofollow">https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/removal-requests...</a>
Let's not act surprised here, it was only natural it would come to this, and I expect other countries to follow suit.<p>If the (still current) president of the world's largest power can be silenced, then just how easily can Jack Dorsey silence a president of a country like let's say Moldavia... I'm not arguing if someone is a bad person or good person, just stating the obvious POV one might get looking at the status quo.<p>And for the classical comments here on HN about how it is "their platform" and they can choose what they want to, do not forget that the platform needs to play by the government's rule, not the other way...
Well farewell to any hacker news readers in Poland. That is, unless the administrators are willing to restore any comment here at the whim of a foreign court.
By bringing national law to bear on Facebook, Twitter, etc. in such a vivid way, it sets a precedent that other countries will follow (like EU members). Now, because contradictions b/w any two bodies of law may come into existence, this will lead to blocks of countries that share a similar body of laws regarding speech meaning greater accommodation and less censorship. If there is a high degree of disagreement, however, there may be a good number of such blocks which means decentralization of social media. So either these companies face increased regulation, or they will be force to retreat from global dominance.
So I've been reading everybody's comments as this comes up about five times a day now and did a little research [1] and the following is what I've come up with for these platforms:<p>- They must censor what's illegal<p>- They may censor what violates TOS<p>- They may not censor what is not illegal and does not violate TOS<p>I think breaking these rules would automatically convert you from a platform to a publisher and you'd have to follow whatever those rules are. Spam handling would have to be part of the TOS. I'm looking for feedback. What would be the problem with this? Doesn't it seem fair?<p>I haven't thought about it much but I wonder if this would also work for cancelling contracts/refusal of service but that's a whole other topic.<p>1. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/" rel="nofollow">https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-speech/</a>
Politics aside this is an interesting situation in that social media companies have forever sought special protections based on the claimed impossibility of their moderating user content - turns out they can moderate content just fine when they want to, so maybe it’s time for their special protections to end, and for them to be responsible for their content.<p>You can blame Twitter for shattering the myth since they keep broadcasting the number of accounts they are suspending and hash tags they are banning, at this point it’s impossible to backtrack and say it’s too hard to do - and if Twitter can do it then it’s hard for any of the other giants to say they can not.<p>I’m betting in future we’ll see these companies held to the same standards that newspapers, tv, and radio are held to today.
Say what you want, but I'm not a fan of what the Polish government is doing overall. Feels like they are moving away from democracy. When will the EU say enough is enough?
The funny thing is, who would Twitter care more about? Polish government anti-censorship, or wider corporate governance issues vis-a-vis its shareholders and US regulators? I know where I'd put my money.<p>Plus, who is to decide what content is violating the country's laws? Surely not courts - they would be inundated with every little petty hate comment or reference to Nazis. So it will have to be the platform anyway. And incitement to violence, hate, racial discrimination etc. are already illegal in Poland, so Twitter could go on banning whatever they like.<p>The government would like the enforcement of these laws to be very selective, but as said, in practice, it won't be the up to the government to say what is and what isn't legal content.
I'm not sure this is a right move considering Poland's gov is among the most authoritarian in the West. On the other hand Merkel have said that Trumps Twitter ban is problematic. There is no silver bullet here.
Unless you believe so strongly about FOS that you'd object to it in all counts, eg ISIL recruitment material and propeganda, then your argument is really about whether these Trump accounts have crossed a line of legitimacy, not FOS. If they're involved in pushing for armed, violent insurrection against the US government, then give one credible argument for why you'd defend them, but not ISIL doing the same.
"Following Trump’s Twitter ban, Polish government wants to protect posts that do not break nation’s laws"<p>This wouldn't have affected Twitter at all, who banned Trump for posting illegal incitements to violence.<p>Ironically, this would have hit Parler, the site that moderated lefties and people who posted pictures of poop, the hardest.