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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35574 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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The actual order of Musk’s tweets implies that he thinks withdrawing advertising dollars is suppressing free speech, which is a perverse concept of “free speech”, wherein a private company is compelled to put their ad dollars towards another company. And let’s put aside it could be something to do with Musk firing a huge percentage of the ad sales and marketing teams, and Apple doesn’t want to throw money into some black hole where they aren’t getting analytics back.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1597285572699074560

implies that he thinks withdrawing advertising dollars is suppressing free speech, which is a perverse concept of “free speech”, wherein a private company is compelled to put their ad dollars towards another company.

It's not what they do, it's why they do it.

If the reason for Apple's withdrawal of advertising dollars is "I'm knowingly and nefariously trying to use my money to pressure you into silence" then I'd say it would take a perverse concept of free speech to not see that as violating it.

This has really jumped the shark.

It’s not “pressure into silence” to say that a firm doesn’t want their brand advertising shown alongside content they don’t like.

I don’t see lots of firms advertising on PornHub or DraftKings, that doesn’t imply they don’t believe PH l/DK can do their thing.

What is the evidence that the motivation is silencing Musk or Twitter rather than, say, that Musk's recent wave of unbannings includes many accounts that violate Apple's objectionable content policy for apps?

You mean... the public list of speech they want to suppress? That makes Apple even more obviously an enemy of Free Speech. They already strong-armed Tumblr into banning porn.

When the major advertisers, including competitors, get together and decide they won't advertise on platforms which don't agree to their political censorship, is that somehow offensive to "free speech"?

No, it is not. Freedom of speech does not oblige companies to give money to any particular platform for any particular reason.

Historically, no. America is the country of tar and feathers, riding muck-raking newspapermen out of town on a rail, and mobs smashing up printing offices.

wherein a private company is compelled to put their ad dollars towards another company

"compelled" is a nice choice of words there. Is saying "you'd better not advertise with this company because we don't like what they say" compelling anyone? Is organizing a cartel with ink companies to deny a publisher ink if they print books you don't like compelling anyone?

Something seems perverse there to me, but it's not the concept of free speech.

Is organizing a cartel with ink companies to deny a publisher ink if they print books you don't like compelling anyone?

This analogy precisely reverses the relationship between Apple and Twitter. Apple is a customer of Twitter, not a supplier. Apple pays Twitter for the privilege of advertising on their platform. Am I hostile to freedom of speech because I don't buy a book because of its ideological content?

Not only that, but the advertising necessarily appears alongside the content to which they object. How could you convince them that consumers don’t see and associate the as to the content that’s directly next to it.

If you buy 200,000 books a year, have a history of using your ogliopsony power to control the content of books, and your decision is coincident to an avowed campaign to impede the distribution of ideologically-disfavored books by coordinating book buyers... yes, obviously yes.

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