Seems to me that would not survive a SCOTUS challenge, even with this SCOTUS as it is so absurd.

Are they also then extending significantly more legal liability protections because if the law says 'I cannot moderate my site' then it seems they must then protect you legally from any lawsuits that follow due to the lack of moderation.

What about guaranteed shareholder returns if the sites lose popularity and die off if forced to be more like 4chan or 8chan? If the gov't is going to 'set' their business model should they not 'guarantee ROI?'



Considering the way the EU is going with laws, it may require two entirely different approaches from the same companies.

Not specifically, but I don't see how a company could be deemed to have been negligent or reckless for failing to screen content that it was statutorily prohibited from screening.

I understand the equitable point you are making, but I don't think this would constitute a government taking.

It is an interesting conundrum for the modern type of conservative firebrand politician.

On one hand they gain a lot of support by claiming persecution on social media.

On the other hand what they actually don't want is these kind of completely free platforms, which almost inevitably devolve into Nazism and / or extreme pornography. Nor do they want "conservative" platforms that censor opposing views, ala "Truth Social".

What they need is an open platform where they can recruit new members. Twitter and Facebook has largely been perfect for them. Changes in direction or regulation which changes that landscape could be politically catastrophic for them if it drives those potential recruits away.

Cite or ban?

As i always say the 'Free Speech' argument is complete BS. No one is truly arguing for moderation based on Free Speech restrictions only.

So then it must involve TOS and that is the issue.

The right says 'we don't like owners of these sites using their discretion as to what is appropriate of not... we don't trust them'. 'Thus what we want to do is use gov't to impose our view of TOS and our discretion'.


And that is the entire argument. Not should moderation happen or not. Not should discretion be part of TOS. But whom should be able to dictate TOS. The right thinks it should not be the site owners and should be them.

This seems like some evil moderator catch-22.

I'm an extremely strong free speech proponent and I really have absolutely hated the way the web has been devolving since around 2013 but especially so around 2020.

I think your point of view while not entirely false is mostly false. But there are great solutions to your problem/question regardless since it is a problem.

I personally believe what's needed for society at large with media is a censorship-proof platform with identity maintenance. Such that on the base protocol level, no one can be stripped of their ability to post anything of any sort and can never be deplatformed/banned since they own their own identity.

And then many, yourself included, will be quick to point out that people can post objectively bad or illegal content. My response to this is to have competing front-ends of this protocol that filter out whatever they are trying to filter out. This way, companies can take all of the user data and compete on the merits of UI/UX, performance but also morality and ethics as for what to display. And if people post illegal content on the base protocol, it's still illegal for them to do this which is against the law which is at their own risk. And the vast majority of users around the world would not interact with such layers anyway but would instead be using the fancier and easier front-ends.

This, in my opinion, is the best of all worlds. People can maintain their identity. They can own their own content. A Big Tech monopoly cartel will now face free market competition from anyone that wants to develop on this protocol. Etc.

Places for absolute free speech with no censorship exist on the web already. These sites exist within sub-sections of the deep web (the non-mapped portion of the World Wide Web) called "darknets". The total sum of these darknets is colloquially referred to as the "dark web".

All you need to access them is a correctly configured web browser and an address, from there on in it will function as the web you know, except for the conveniences granted by big data collection and search engines.

Contrary to popular perception, there are places there for people who aren't necessarily plotting crimes or looking for illegal content. There are actual free speech idealists in the world after all, but good luck upholding those ideals without any kind of moderation at all. Free speech idealists often forget that it is perfectly possible to shut down speech with speech, you can do that merely with volume and quantity.

What you can't really do is use an identifier tied to your own connection or person. Identifiers make signal intelligence much easier, and thus using them will have consequences ranging from "ruining the idea of unhindered free speech" to "will get you killed".

Filters can do a tiny bit, but they really aren't that effective. Even the big tech-giants have filters that are ignored or bypassed in enormous numbers. A 2017 report found Facebook to have 20 million incidents of "child sexual abuse material" per year. A later report by Facebook themselves in 2019 revealed that they removed some 10+ million pictures of such nature in the span of only a few months. We can accuse Facebook of many bad things, but they probably aren't letting that kind of material initially slip by their filters on purpose.

Even if we presume a future filter, much more perfect than our current technology allows, a filter still carries the inherent bias of those who configured it and is thus a de facto form of moderation.

I hate this discussion as it so misses the point. Not a slight at you theskillz, just a more general comment.


Short of some deep web hovels not open to the general public without doing some things to get access there is NO TALK of free speech on the Web generally.

You won't see any Trump supporters create a Free Speech Site nor anyone on the far right, if they want it to be even minimally commercially successful.

People saying Elon was all about free speech, and acting for free speech, are just gaslite. This discussion is SOLEY about who gets the keys to moderation, and sets the TOS, and which groups perceive those TOS as good and which groups bad. Elon would ONLY be shifting TOS to a side he favors but has been clear it will not be a free speech zone.

"Darknets" is not a mainstream idea and never will be. And I think your argument is kind of weird. You are saying illicit material exists on Facebook therefore we can't have front-ends of a censorship-proof protocol because it will have illicit material.

I'd argue the opposite. If there were many competing providers, there would be, for the first time in history, free market competition to provide the best possible services of the display of this data. Right now, to take Facebook for example of that domain, it's just them in that domain. No serious innovation. No serious competition. Just them. If people were competing for eyeballs and could take their data from one site to the other via an identical log-in, I think some of these issues could get sorted very quickly relatively speaking.

Have a base protocol that most people don't actually interact with but theoretically could if they wanted to (i.e. the full Bitcoin blockchain) and then have many easy front-ends that people do interact with based on their preferences (Trezor or Coinbase or [insert front-end]).



@Cuepee, I'm an advocate for all kinds of displays. Take a base protocol layer where you have identity and content maintenance since it's all owned by the individual. I would like to see a world where people create Trump front-ends. They create progressive front-ends. They create vanilla all-around mainstream Facebook front ends with the data. And if you are dissatisfied with one particular platform, you can take your exact same credentials and give your business to a different provider with the click of a finger. Whereas right now you are stuck with any platform, hope they don't deplatform you and you can't leave because if you go anywhere else you lose your followers, friends, content, etc.

Let people do what they want with the data. With Facebook, Facebook get to choose everything. Why not let the free market choose multiple pathways? Wouldn't that be better for the end consumer and help disrupt Big Tech's monopoly?

If you went back to 1980 and described your ideal system, it’s DNS with IP networks ie the internet. That Facebook or one particular platform isn’t run how you would like them to be really has little to do with free speech.

The problem is that the far right garbage is something that can only exist in tiny niche ways within a few echo chambers as it is so dishonest and uninteresting generally that it cannot draw in others.

That is why the far right, just as with conspiracy theorists require to find healthy 'other' discussion sites that will allow them (or not block them) from spamming in their garbage, where they can get engagement from people who object to their material and them generally. I call it a very parasitic relationship. Generally they are not looking for debate or to be challenged on their ideas and just to spam them and people fighting them, allows for that.

THat is why the far right was so excited for Elon to get Twitter and let them in to rip against the Libz, as time and time and time again they have tried to create their own platforms and failed. They need a healthy host.

"Far right garbage"

If it's garbage, let the free market place of ideas sort it out.

We are. Republicans are trying to pass laws that regulate social media companies and force twitter or Facebook to platform Trump, Alex Jones etc.

Fox News is the highest-rated news show on Earth right now and it’s not even close. The #1 podcaster out there routinely platforms far-right idiots. What are you talking about.

Yeah that is exactly what happens but the GOP and their supporters are trying to change with legislation.


The free market lets Companies and Forums and Users all make decision in dynamic ways, based on what providers want to give and consumers want to consume.

That means some sites can choose to be Poker only sites and use their TOS to say 'no discussion of Aliens or UFO's on our site' and that is fine. And if people consume the content and participate the Free market will see that site survive and maybe thrive.

Another forum can say in TOS, they are for UFO and Alien talk and no poker.

Trump's Truth Social can set TOS allowing certain things while banning certain others and that is the Free Market.

IF any platform wants to ban CT's and Lies, that is the Free Market.


What IS NOT the Free Market is gov't stepping in and dictating how the relationship will work.

You are correct in a way that I need to distinguish more as Fox News largely changed things.

Historically Qanon and other CT type nonsense really only could survive in very small echo box communities as they could not generate enough interest to engage otherwise. In the very earliest days of Chat forums, when there were few TOS directing what specific talk could be engaged CT's (like 9/11 Truthers, Flat Earthers) etc, found that even though they could not grow a big community in a CT specific forum, that if they took their CT's into already existing and vibrant forums (like Rotten Tomatoes i was on) that they CT's would get engagement from, maybe, about 10-15% of posters there which would allow them post and keep at the top of chats their CT nonsense while just 'talking past' respondents trying to refute them.

The entire intent was to use engagement not to get to the truth but to spam.

So that is why I said CT and these lies (Truth Social friendly lies) cannot draw a big audience.


But Fox has been doing a great job in socializing that nonsense and polishing those turds up just enough where they find the messaging that works and pump it out to the masses in a way they do not believe it is a CT or lie. They are surmounting that hurdle by giving it a shine of 'credibility' (for many) it could never get on its own and that, now, a few alternative Right media can utilize and expand upon.

So you are correct, that there is now a scrubbing system in place on the Right for what was prior to far right (derp right or pure lies and CT's) that did not really exist prior but outside the right, that far right derp stuff cannot really exist.

So that is why the far right is so eager to have gov't force FB and Twitter and few other big platforms that reach the non echo box chamber they have expanded to allow them to spam the rest of the people who just do not want to engage with that garbage (as they could go on Truth Social and other if they did), because there simply is no appetite for it, in those quarters (again why Truth Social, etc only get niche engagement) outside the Derposphere.

Basically, right-wing racist idiocy is extraordinarily popular in America, and has been for decades. A free market will definitely produce things like the Tucker Carlson White Power Hour and alt-right YouTube stars. There’s definitely a niche market for Qanon that online communities cater to.

I'm pretty sure the social media pundits who were early into the Qanon-train made bundles of money.

Of course, a lot of pundits make a lot of money from various zeitgeists and ideologies, so that is not unique.

Fixed your post.

We will probably have to agree to disagree. But human history has been one long mostly unbroken chain of xenophobia and bigotry, that was surely pro-adaptive and heavily selected for for most of human history. And I dont think pretending something that has been around forever is some unique problem to the American right leads towards any advancement of the species.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/sta...80942232846338

He is talking about a different topic, but the point and ultimate reasoning remains the same. If you really want to move humanity forward towards some new paradigm shift, it isn't going to be through playing the same xenophobic tribalism game, we have been playing the last 200,00 years, which is exactly what the neoliberal left is doing.

Edit: Havent figured out how to directly put in tweets yet I guess. This forum really has the least intuitive software I have ever experienced in the last 15 years or so.

No disagreement.

My point is that what is Right Wing Political fodder has changed recently.

Broadly the Qanon derp CT stuff could not find any home in any of the bigger right wing platforms, nor the rest of media (Social media, etc) and they were relegated to a very narrow fringe.

Whether it was Qanon JFK and Trump as Christ figures or the types of CT's Lucky ascribes too, you had very few places to push that nonsense.. They were reliant on the parasitic relationship of entering a general forum (like this one or Rotten Tomato's prior) and trying to introduce and then argue their CT's until the moderators and TOS told them they could not or they would get banned.

Thus my comment, they had no places outside their Derp holes to push it.

Yes Fox has changed that mainlining Derp political CT's mainly and socializing them as credible so they can appeal to a wider 'right' audience.

the difference it that the Right wing has largely broke with any semblance that reality or truth matters and this is from the top down and not only an accepted approach but the most supported approach.

It is absolutely true that more nutty, divorced from reality, extreme things a candidate is willing to say, the more likely they are to advance through todays GOP primaries. It is a race to be more the nutty and tell the biggest lies, to not leave room for the opponent to flank you with bigger lies.

That is not the dynamic on the left. Not saying Dem politicians do not lie (to a much smaller extent) as they do, but not in the ways the GOP candidates now are forced to lie, to remain relevant.

Trying to paint an equivalence between right and left wing "racism" is just someone on the right talking basically **** because they dont want to own that their broader political tent contains a high degree of bigotry and racism.

Also I have never seen a link provide less substance to an argument than the twitter TN2G linked to, its at an absolute and total tangent to what he is arguing.

Also neo liberal left is an oxymoron.

Neo liberalism is the anti thesis of leftist politics.

Instead the term should be neo liberal centre, which is off course still to the left of the anti technocratic, anti intellectual and populist right, but is still to the right of the left.