This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
To steelman the government and KBJ’s point a bit:
Imagine that shoplifting became memeified. I know that there are niche shoplifting communities in existence right now, but what if they got BIG? What if all the 17-year-old zoomers in your neighborhood were getting pro-shoplifting content shoveled into their feeds? What if the shoplifting epidemic spread beyond isolated city centers and became an existential threat to the whole economy? Nobody can sell anything. Delivery services pick up the slack, but then “porch pirating is shoplifting too,” becomes the meme and everything falls apart.
“Shoplifting is cool,” is protected speech, so is “those big corporations deserve it.” Imagine it’s clear as day that this is a social contagion mediated by online social media, but the tech companies refuse to take moderator action against shoplifting content. Does the government have to send in the troops and declare martial law before it can send a series of strongly worded emails to social media companies asking them to stop the madness?
If the government is powerful enough to stop people talking about shoplifting, it's powerful enough to stop the shoplifting itself. Just do the latter. For an analogy where society is already rife with pro crime messages that can't be censored, consider all use of illegal drugs and their widespread promotion in various forms of media. That's the test case. Should the government get social media to censor discussion of that?
We've already seen the risks of government control of speech. 2020 happened. Hypothetical risks are not a good reason to grant license for 2020 to keep happening in the unlikely chance it prevents some other nebulous problem that could already be dealt with within the bounds of the law.
I mean, I hate the analogy we're on, but given it, I don't think this is automatically true. Speech for 95%+ of the population goes through ~6 companies. Because of how centralized computer services end up being, this is the rough equivalent of all shopping happening in 6 physical stores.
I think the federal government could prevent shoplifting from 6 physical stores, but not thousands of them distributed across the country.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The answer to your hypothetical is already in the constitution under Article V.
The governance issue is choosing the venue for public policy debates. Perhaps the policy issue is whether to have an exception to the first amendment for anti-social speech. The trade-off is that if the government gets to decide what is "anti-social speech" the ruling party will attempt to consolidate power by declaring that the opposing party's talking points are "anti-social speech" and banning them.
The constitution currently goes 100% on not letting the government consolidate power by limiting speech, and 0% on banning novels and films that celebrate degenerate anti-heroes. Is that the right trade off? Maybe. I'm not sure about the policy issue. But the governance issue seems clear enough, the public policy discussion takes place in a constitutional convention, not the Supreme Court. That might seem obvious. If the Supreme Court balances public policy trade-offs themselves, that replaces the Republic with a Kritarchy.
But there is a second, more subtle issue. Contemplate the likely arguments in a constitutional convention. There will be those who are sick of the mass media pushing degenerate narratives and wish to grant the government broad powers against "anti-social speech". There will be those who are terrified of the dangers of such powers and want a narrow amendment that only grants congress the power to ban speech that advocates shoplifting and porch-piracy.
Let us suppose that it is the narrow amendment that is passed. Congress decides that calls for reparations are in really just a nudge and a wink for shoplifting and bans it also. Those who advocate for reparations sue, claiming that there remaining free speech right are being violated. Do they get to have their case heard by an independent tribunal? The traditional idea is that the Supreme Court is that independent tribunal. The constitutional convention thrashed out a deal. Yes to restricting speech, but narrowly. Who upholds the deal? The Supreme Court.
What is supposed to happen if the Supreme Court is debating and making the trade-off? One idea is to have a Super-Supreme-Court. Once the Supreme Court has decided that some speech restriction are permitted, who hears cases claiming that speech restrictions are too restrictive? The Super-Supreme-Court! But this is getting silly. On the other hand, if the case is hear by the Supreme Court itself, does it hear the case as though its previous ruling were carved in stone, or does it revisiting the issue, acting as free-wheeling kritarchy that makes it up as it goes along. What a mess!
More options
Context Copy link
I’ll bite the bullet on this one!
If the government’s requests were limited to an open request or series of requests in full view of the public, then I’d have no issue.
However, if a wide reaching collection of disparate government agencies funnelled their requests in secret through a formal task force set up by the intelligence agencies in partnership with former intelligence agency officials now working at the social media firms and then denied that any such actions were being taken, I would be against it.
In other words, it’s not necessarily the request but the manner in which the requests were processed; the latter being too open to the abuses that we now know unfolded.
Having said that, there’s a principled difference between the kind of speech you’re referring to here and the kind of speech that is under question: yours is not political; whilst theirs is.
The government were specifically requesting that speech critical of them should be removed or deprioritised by the algorithm.
We’re talking speech critical of the government’s response to COVID; speech critical of how elections were handled; speech promoting true information that is harmful to the government bureaucracy’s favoured candidate.
Even speech promoting vaccine hesitancy should be viewed as political in this context given the government’s heavy handed advocacy, and often enforcement, of it.
So yes, there possibly are exceptions where the government can request that 1st amendment protected speech is better managed by private institutions that host that speech. However, they should not be setting up formal, secret networks to monitor speech in general, due to the potential for abuse, and should not be requesting political speech, critical of the government or promoting candidates or policies contrary to the government’s own, in particular.
More options
Context Copy link
And moreover, if the social media companies decided that they were going to tweak the algorithms solely to make it so that shoplifting content could not go viral, but still could be viewed by your friends and by direct link, is that really that much censorship?
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think very many people would object to the government reaching out to say, "please stop people from advocating illegal activity". I will grant that there's a principled very strong form of speech rights that someone could adhere to that would go this far, but it doesn't seem like all that tough of a test to draw a line between viewpoint discrimination and advocating illegal activity. There is probably somewhere that this gets fuzzy (what about telling people that jaywalking isn't dangerous?) but seems pretty far from where the government is asking that line to be drawn.
I suppose the steelman version of the strong form of speech rights in that case would be saying, "the government can't suppress the speech, but you absolutely can inform people that thieves will be dealt with harshly and then prove it with your actions". That seems suboptimal to me, but realistically, it probably would handle the problem without needing to have private backchannels to social media companies.
More options
Context Copy link
Generally, if the government wants to compel a private company to do something, it can file suit or obtain a court order. For all the flaws and abuses of that system, it is, at least, a system, and a check. In this case, government officials were running around "asking" social media companies to censor without any checks whatsoever.
The flip side is that they didn't have the power of a court order to enforce their ask either. No checks on the issuance, but no heft behind compliance either.
More options
Context Copy link
You’re kind of dodging the hypothetical. Petty criminals influenced by social media are destroying society. It’s protected speech so no court orders against the platform are available. How many, “in the department’s opinion, these memes are existentially damaging to the fabric of the national economy,” e-mails is the government allowed to send before it becomes illegal?
Why not simply bring down the force of law on these petty criminals for the crimes they are actually committing, rather than this chicanery about nudging social media?
More options
Context Copy link
How do you propose pro-crime posts "become illegal" if you imagine that they're protected speech, and that court orders can't be used? It seems, in fact, that if these posts are protected speech then it's exactly when we would want a court involved -- only the courts could stand up to government overreach against Constitutional rights.
I think your scenario breaks down far before the government has to censor it -- the government has lots of tools at its disposal before resorting to censorship. (Just as in the real example of Corona, the government had lots of tools available to induce vaccines without resorting to etc.) But in this hypothetical, if people are making protected speech: then no, the government can't censor it, or ordered it censored by third parties. Both sides in this case, in fact, acknowledge that it would be illegal for the government to do directly what it's asking third-parties to do on its behalf.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And by "asking" it was much in the way of Don Corleone... "Nice social media company you have here. Shame if we were to have to...regulate it".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link