Tyler Cowen Alex Tabarrok writes,
When Facebook and Twitter regulate what can be said on their platforms and Google and Apple regulate who can provide a platform, we have a big problem. It’s as if the NYTimes and the Washington Post were the only major newspapers and the government regulated who could own a printing press.
1. Back in the 1990s, two cliches were “Nobody owns the Internet” and “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
These are no longer applicable. For people who rely on smart phones for access, Google and Apple own the Internet. In addition, Google owns a major domain name server.
Although I do not have a confident understanding of the technology and business environment, it would seem to me that today censorship on the Internet is feasible. I infer that when I hear of web sites being “shut down” because of the hateful thoughts that they convey.
Reversing the company’s previous stance on not censoring content, founder and CEO Matthew Prince wrote in an internal email that he “woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company.”
2. I wonder how there can be overlap between the people and organizations that champion regulations intended to impose “net neutrality” and those that want to see hateful web sites shut down. I believe that such overlap exists, but it is hard to take those as intellectually consistent positions.
3. I would like to see those who provide Internet infrastructure refrain from censorship. But having government enforce non-censorship would not be a very libertarian way of going about it. I would rather see non-censorship as a social norm that has sufficient compliance to make an uncensored Internet available to everyone who wants it.
4. For those of us who don’t like Nazis, jihadists, etc., I recommend expressing solidarity with their intended victims and support for efforts to prevent and punish acts of violence. I do not see shutting down web sites as doing much to prevent violence. I see it as more of a futile gesture, akin to confrontational counter-demonstrations.
5. My generation is aging out, and the “snowflake generation” is coming into its own. Once the anti-censorship social norm starts to break down, my guess is that it will not stop with just a few fringe Nazi sites being shut down.
Alex Tabarrok wrote that post.
Of course the goal is not just to shut down “the Nazis” — the Dem goal is to declare all conservative Reps as “Nazis” and therefore valid targets for all anti-hate-speech sanctions: losing jobs, public shaming, tires slashed, pepper spray in face at “peaceful” demonstrations.
The fact that no conservatives are “national socialists” won’t stop Dems in claiming they are.
We are missing the point. It is all about “Dignity” now.
If you are offering any kind of service to the general public (whoever they are), you can not withhold that service from some (because it impairs their “Dignity” to which they have an inalienable right).
If you bake cakes for wedding celebrations, arrange flowers for wedding services, take photographs of festivities for members of the general public, you can not discriminate, because it may impair individual “Dignity.”
If you offer or provide “internet” or “platform” services to the general public, discrimination by denial of service, you can impair individual “Dignity.”
That throws the issues to questions of whether an individual may be subjected to the denial of “Dignity.” Is their equality of “Dignity?” OR are
Some pigs may be more equal in dignity than other pigs.
I never heard this “dignity” argument made. Did I miss something? I thought the argument was about “public accommodation.”
YEP – you “missed” – SOMETHING (annunciated by Mr. Justice Kennedy).
https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/11/equal-dignity-speaking-its-name/
Good link. Tks.
Black people under Jim Crow faced not being able to secure basic services in their lives (food, housing, etc). Interaction with local government was difficult and they weren’t able to tap into the corporate world easily.
Gays are faced with having to go to the other 99/100 bakers that will gladly service them. Many seem to go out of their way to track down bakers they think might not serve them just to initiate a confrontation on purpose. Everyone who is anyone loudly supports them.
These situations are so beyond comparison its laughable. If anything this nonsense is a validation of those that warned of it being the slippery slope when civil rights were passed.
It just may come to pass that what will be learned (anew?) is that “Dignity,” like respect, in relationships is earned; not owed.
Thinking about one of the technical issues, Google is blocking the Gab application from their application store, but still allowing people to connect to gab.ai from their mobile web browser. While they can keep the product out of their store, we haven’t seen them try to impede their products from connecting to websites. Indeed, even the neo-Nazi website is still accessible. So, the internet is routing around censorship, but it is getting a lot of harder because some of the basic tools to deal with high traffic and prevent denial of service attacks (like Cloudflare) are not free parts of the system, and thus subject to economic pressure if they fail to comply with this new cultural paradigm. Even more disturbing is Apple’s decision to remove VPN software from the application store in China. It seems we are on a path that is largely in that direction.
I guess the simplistic way of looking at it is the 1990’s cliches are still true for the 1990’s internet, but much of the utility is now in layers built on top of that which are not open and subject to censorship.
Maybe the broader lesson about free speech is that most outgroups profess to love it when they are not in power, but are open to limiting it once they gain power. Free Speech is only a fundamental objective for libertarians, and just happened to be a tool of convenience for Leftists in the past, and is a tool of convenience for people on the far right now.
Is it terrible to see an oddly parallel path with racism/sexism? When there was much discrimination, those discriminated against argued that we should not consider these attributes when making decisions (color blind/gender blind). However, when compensating mechanisms were created that benefited those discriminated against as those groups gained power, it became very important to consider these attributes as positives. Now we hear the side that was previously accused of discrimination taking the position of those that were discriminated against, advocating for color blind / gender blind policies.
Power over principle.
It would be the same if, lets say, electrical utilities refused to sell to someone who was a proclaimed Nazi, or if paper companies refused to sell print paper. This isn’t the slippery slope we are on starting to tread out on- we are already well down the hill.
I’m not overly concerned that Google operates their Public DNS Service. Note that these are simply resolvers, not root servers. If Google began to censor results, users could easily switch. Meanwhile, their existence provides an alternative to those who are worried about censorship (or snooping) on the servers their ISP provides. With respect to DNS, I’d be more concerned about Google’s role as a domain registrar. They’re a small share of the market right now, AFAIK, but I could see that changing.
At a bare minimum, all you need to be accessible on the internet is an IP address. Anyone who knows that IP address can type it into their browser and get to your server. The ISPs are the ones who provide that address. (Type 172.217.5.100 into your browser URL bar – it will take you to the Google search page).
DNS, domain names, and search engines are all about enabling discoverability, but fundamentally they don’t dictate access.
The most Google will be able to do is push content they don’t like to the fringes, but it will still be there. The damage will still be routed around.
In terms of censorship, I think Matt Pearce has a good series of articles detailing the avenues the alt-right are taking to create internet sources and a lot this crap is go to Russia. So it ain’t disappearing anytime soon.
And in terms of the internet companies, the biggest issue they have is they have a global customers and most global nations hate white supremacy as much as snowflake SJWs. So they lose a small portion of US business to protect their Asian business. Also, they are taking a lot of steps to control the flow of ISIS information too.
For those of us who don’t like Nazis, jihadists, etc., I recommend expressing solidarity with their intended victims and support for efforts to prevent and punish acts of violence.
Tell that to TRUMP!!!! For the life of me, I don’t understand why he did not go to Heather Heyer and give an emotional eulogy. I am sorry but Trump failed on that one.
5. My generation is aging out, and the “snowflake generation” is coming into its own.
No I would so most of the Friday night UVA participants were under 30 and many of them joined Young Republican clubs at their college. (this is not against Young Republicans but a note that they of younger generations) The terrorist killer was 20.
So these Fascism/KKK participants are play acting SJWs even worse than minority SJWs and likely not going away any time soon.
While originally reported, and frequently alleged, it has not been determined that Ms. Heyer was struck by Field’s car. There does not appear to be an official (medical examiner) “cause of death” report publically available.
Videos (under study) show clearly an impact with another vehicle and the acceleration of a third in the crowd at the time of impact.
So, take some care in assertions of “terrorist killer” until the facts are all in.
OH ! and send praises to the City Council members who urged people to come out into the streets to “confront” the bigotry of the authorized protest gathering.
These are no longer applicable. For people who rely on smart phones for access, Google and Apple own the Internet.
It’s really not quite as bad as that. Apple has a very strong grip on which apps run on iPhones. With Google Android phones, there are easier workarounds that will let you get apps from other sources. But even on smart phones, apps aren’t the internet. Browsers and mobile web sites work just fine on phones. So control is really not complete. But it’s enough that being kicked out of Apple’s and Google’s app stores hurts.
My generation is aging out, and the “snowflake generation” is coming into its own. Once the anti-censorship social norm starts to break down, my guess is that it will not stop with just a few fringe Nazi sites being shut down.
I dunno. Knowing my 20-something kids and their friends, I have more faith in them. And remember how much more sensible the children of the 1960s became as they aged.
My biggest worry in all this is that big internet and web providers are giving up their ‘safe harbor’ defense in their recent censorship actions and that will then enable governments to force these companies to engage in state-directed censorship.
They have already given up their safe harbor and become publishers responsible for the content of their services. No good deed goes unpunished.
There are many laws that forbid the federal government from subsidizing or doing any kind of business with organizations that don’t comply with a vast number of onerous requirements.
So, one way to avoid genuine coercion and preserve a right to freedom of association is to say that if these companies do any sort of business whatsoever with the government itself, or even with any entity that gets money from the government, then they must act as common carriers that never discriminate on the basis of expression or political opinion, and must remove such possibilities from their terms of service, license agreements, and employment contracts. (NB: Many American states, e.g., Louisiana, already have laws that prohibit employment termination on the basis of political opinions, expressions, or activities, depending on the context.)
At the same time, this would also give “upstream entities” as easy alibi and excuse to make if the online mob starts demanding they join a boycott and cut off some pariah, “sorry, our hands are tied,” which would reduce the number and intensity of such demands Indeed, several juridictions have done just this with regard to incentivizing local organizations to refrain from participating in anti-Israel BDS activities.
If the company really wants to disasociate from some pariah, they are free to do so, but must say goodbye to dealings with the state of a purportedly free country. If a university does not wish to provide an equal platform for invited speakers of any viewpoint, it is free to do so, so long as it sacrifices its tax exemption and none of its students are eligible for government loans or grants (as is the situation at Hillsdale). The IRS/DoED made a similar threat to Liberty University regarding racial discrimination and it backed down. Congress also threatened to do the same to universities prohibiting military recruitment, and those institutions also backed down.
This is surely no more coercive in actual practice and felt effects than having a handful of private companies agree to effectively boot you off the predominant means of public communication.
“easy alibi and excuse to make if the online mob starts demanding they join a boycott and cut off some pariah,”
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what they may be running from, instead of or in addition to their own policy biases.
The ultimate reputational threat used to be “how would this look on the front page of the WSJ (or NYT LAT)? Now, the threat seems to be a twitter fire-storm of group-think negativity, CEO firing, and economic jeopardy, etc.
If San Francisco can make vendors with whom it does business include SF’s protected class language in their contracts, then the fed gov’t ought to be on fairly safe ground doing something similar, eh?
The important thing is to use that tention establish sound net neutrality principles that will help free speech, and not turn this into a status competition against the left.