Liberal Malaysia wrote:Spirit of Hope wrote:
Nation States is a bastion of free speech.
See what you appear to be misunderstanding about free speech is that it includes freedom of association, that people can choose who they talk with, listen to, and associate with. I for one don't want to go to an online community where you can spew hatred and misinformation to your heart content, where you can flame and troll people because you feel like it. That is why I have chosen to be on Nation States. I may not agree with every moderation decision, but I agree with the general tenure of moderation. The great thing about this is it applies to you to, if you don't want to be here, if you don't want to "spend literal hours proofreading" your posts to make sure they meet with the rules of this community you don't have to, you can choose to post elsewhere.
By demanding that places follow the rules of moderation and association that you want you are undercutting the very purpose of freedom of speech. You aren't asking to be allowed to speak, you are asking for others to be forced to listen to you.
As a fun note here, Twitters user base has decreased, because people are using their freedom of association to not be associated with it. Advertisers used their freedom of association to no longer be associated with the spewing of hateful posts on Twitter. How did Musk, the free speech absolutist respond? He sued them, attempting to force people to have to associate with him. That violates the very core of freedom of speech.
It is even funnier to me that you cheer Facebook's decision to change moderation policies, because Facebook is transparently doing this to try and appease Trump as the head of the government for fear of reprisal from the government if they continued to fact check. This is again a violation of the very principle of free speech that you shout from the rooftops that you are championing. A private organization is changing its speech to appease the government, and instead of looking on in horror at this you are cheering it. You are cheering the threat of government action against a private organization to get the organization to change its speech.
I find it funny that you denounce "far-left extremists" while referencing George Orwell, a devoted Democratic Socialist who fought in the Spanish Civil War in opposition to totalitarianism.
You aren't championing free speech you are championing the government punishing organizations for questioning it, you are championing your ability to say hateful things and forcing others to listen to you, you are championing the suppression of free speech.It's free speech, so I can post whatever I like here, right?
Ahahahaha! Hahaha! Free speech! No, it's not. I run this web site, see, so you have to play by my rules. It's like my own Father Knows Best state.
NS is, in Max Barry's own words, not a bastion of free speech.
This is what people were saying before Musk bought Twitter and fixed the site. "It's a private website. If you don't like it, move elsewhere." After the purchase was finalized, liberals and leftists suddenly cared about freedom of speech. If Elon Musk ever bought NS, you'd be singing a very different tune.
Nobody's forcing you to listen to me. Foe-list me if you can't stand me. That's what I do all the time on X. I routinely block left-wing or pro-Islamist terrorist accounts that spew the most disgusting shit imaginable, which is not the same as reporting them to try to get them banned. Freedom of association preserved. Freedom of speech preserved.
Bear in mind that advertisers have, in the past, caved to demands from a tiny minority of woke activists to disassociate themselves from certain companies and individuals or else. This is what may have triggered the exodus in the first place. But now, with Donald Trump on the cusp of regaining office, they no longer have anything to fear by associating with Musk, and have flocked back to X. As for leftists leaving X, nobody forced them to leave. That's the difference between the old Twitter and X.
The censorship-industrial complex is a very real thing as the X Files have shown. Tech companies colluded with the Biden administration and a pliant mainstream media to censor, shadowban and suspend predominantly right-leaning accounts whose opinions contradicted approved Democrat narratives at the time. Direct your horror toward the Biden administration, the FBI and the widely panned "Disinformation Governance Board" AKA Ministry of Truth.
Journalist Matt Taibbi has done more than pretty much anyone else to expose just how deep the rot goes. He was a major contributor to the X Files.
When you demand "freedom of association", you're admitting that Twitter ought to be an exclusive liberal playground and echo chamber like Bluesky currently is, instead of a neutral town square. You want total and exclusive control over all mainstream and social media outlets and you want to marginalize and censor your political opponents wholesale.
Nation States is as much a bastion of free speech as Twitter. Both are private organizations that have their own moderation rules, you may prefer one's rules over the others but they are both private organizations and they both have moderation rules. I would say Nation States is more a bastion of free speech because it isn't a multi billion dollar algorithmically driven social media company, thus reducing both the incentive for, and the means by which, it can manipulate the information sphere on it.
Musk is welcome to do whatever he wants with Twitter, he is after all the owner. I have no problem with him being a dumb ass who doesn't understand how social media works and burning the business down around him. I think the things he is doing are dumb, counter productive, and harmful to both individuals and society, but I also think Musk is the owner and can do whatever he wants with his company. I don't currently use Twitter, have never used Twitter, and never plan on using Twitter. I'm quite happy to not associate with it. If Nation States changed its moderation rules to be more like Twitter I would leave Nation States. Some of my interactions that used to happen on Nation states already moved off site years ago.
Ignore or block features are certainly useful, but they don't replace moderation. There equivalent to waders when dealing with bullshit, great if you only have to with the occasional shit, rather useless if I have to wade through 3 feet of bullshit to find the nuggets you're interested in.
Advertisers didn't leave because of a tiny minority of woke activists, but because they didn't want to be associated with the metric tone of shit that was happening on Twitter. Nor are they flocking back, while some companies are returning to advertise on Twitter their add buys are dramatically lower than what they were before they left. Nor are they returning because Trump got elected, they are returning because Twitter has improved content moderation. This may shock you but multi billion dollar companies don't generally give a shit about wokeness, they give a shit about profitability. Including Twitter. So Twitter has wanted to get some money back they improved their moderation and outreach, while major corporations are happy to be back on Twitter where they can advertise to people so long as they won't get hit with things like there adds next to racial slurs. Because being associated with racism tends to hurt companies bottom line so they try and avoid it.
Twitter has continued to moderate content and kick people off of the platform, which is their right to do since they are a private organization. Twitter is not a neutral town square, and if you believe it is you have bought into the propaganda of a multi billion dollar corporation. It can't be. First because it is a algorithmically driven social media platform, which by definition can not be neutral. The job of the algorithm is to drive interactions with the platform, not to neutrally serve you information. Second because it is a for profit corporation, it needs to make money to survive and it does that by serving a product to a customer base. In the case of Twitter, and other free to use social media, the product is the user base and the customer is advertisers. To be clear what I am saying is that you are not the customer of Twitter, you are the product.
As others have noted the Twitter files are largely misunderstandings of, or lies about, what was actually going on. Meanwhile actual US government contact with social media companies has been brought up in court with regards to freedom of speech and the Supreme Court of the United States said that it was legally permissible. Note that Justice Barrett who wrote the opinion was appointed by Trump, as was Justice Kavanaugh who joined the opinion. Chief Justice Roberts who also joined the opinion was appointed by Bush jr.
I demand freedom of association because that is an important part of freedom of speech, I can use my freedom of association to not go on Twitter. Which I do. Twitter can also use its freedom of association to ban users from it if it so chooses. Which it does. As previously noted I don't use Twitter, or Bluesky, I don't particularly care how they moderate content outside of laughing at Musk for how badly he has run Twitter since he bought it. My problem is with your assertion that Twitters moderation policy is the best moderation policy and the desire to implement it elsewhere. As I have already noted, Twitter isn't a neutral town square. The idea that it is is propaganda by a multi billion dollar company to get you to invest your time on their system so they can make money off of selling your presence on their system to advertisers.
