Board 8 > No, libertarians are NOT compelled to support social media censorship [dwmf]

(+) Yeah! (+)

The controversy over social media companies allegedly censoring politically incorrect viewpoints doesnt seem to be going away anytime soon. It seems that every few weeks, we get a new round of accusations, denials, and think-pieces explaining why this sort of thing is perfectly okay and nobody has any right to object to it.

In the course of this conversation, there are two groups of people likely to pop up to implicitly defend the censorship of right-wing viewpoints on social media:

Ill refer to the first group as the Statist Gotchas. These are establishment Democrats and/or Republicans whose only real objective is to smear libertarianism. Their intended purpose is to expose libertarians as unprincipled hypocrites, who cite freedom and liberty as the basis of their belief structure but are actually motivated by pure selfishness (and probably racism). Their argument typically goes something like: You libertarians constantly drone on and on about freedom. You think corporations should be able to do whatever they want. But whenever a corporation does something you dont like, all you do is complain about it! So much for your so-called values! These people are essentially trolling and are typically not worth responding to or engaging with, but I include a description of them here because their argument is incorrect in the same way and can be refuted in the same manner as those of the group below.

The second group shall be referred to as the Especially Woke Libertarians. These are people who identify, at least partially on the occasional issue, as libertarian themselves. They are typically reasonably intelligent and possess some understanding of libertarian political philosophy. Their intent isnt to smear libertarians as hypocritical (which would be self-defeating), but rather to enforce ideological purity a noble goal that I myself participate in from time to time (including right now). Their objection is something to the effect of: Twitter and Facebook are private companies and their networks are private property. They have the right to discriminate against whomever they wish, censor content in whatever manner they deem appropriate, etc. If you dont like their policies, you are free to use a different website, or start your own social network and compete with them.

That statement, taken in isolation, is correct. In a private property society, individuals and groups would have every right to set up social networks that operate according to whatever principles the owners deem appropriate. They have no positive obligation to provide a forum for all individuals, or to allow the equal expression of all ideas.

However, this argument completely and totally ignores a critical component of this debate. The companies in question have repeatedly made public claims that they do not engage in content-based discrimination. If this claim is incorrect, if they are, in fact, engaging in such discrimination, then they are guilty of fraudulently misrepresenting the nature of their product. As far as I know, there is not a single belief system, including private property libertarianism, that condones or endorses outright fraud. Fraud is an act of aggression, and should be called out and punished accordingly.
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Let us use an analogy. Recently, Volkswagen was accused of cheating on emissions testing for their diesel engines, such that the engines appeared to emit low emissions on tests, but would emit much higher quantities in day to day driving. They claimed to be offering low-emissions engines but were actually offering high-emissions engines. This would seem to be a cut-and-dry case of fraud and was publicly decried as such. Throughout all of the discussion of this scandal, I dont recall any Exceptionally Woke Libertarians loudly declaring, ACTUALLY, Volkswagen is a private company and they have the right to sell whatever type of engine they want! Because everyone understood that the violation of the law (and more importantly, of the non-aggression principle) was not the creation of the engines in and of themselves, but the misrepresentation of how the engines actually performed.

Social networks now find themselves in a similar situation. Much like Volkswagen, they have promised the public a certain product that is, a social network free from politically-biased censorship. By making that public declaration, they have themselves voluntarily incurred a positive obligation to deliver such a product. If they cannot, or choose not to, deliver said product, they must publicly recant their promises to do so. But their continued policy of promising an objective product while delivering a heavily biased one is outright fraud, plain and simple. Libertarians have no obligation to defend fraudulent practices.

In fact, I would go even farther. I would say that libertarians have an obligation to explicitly reject such practices. To do otherwise is to play directly into the hands of the Statist Gotchas, who regularly insist that, were libertarians to have their way, evil corporations would be selling us all exploding toasters and meat tainted with rat poison. The typical libertarian response to such arguments is, No way! That wouldnt happen, because fraud would still be punished! It would not be permissible for companies to promise untainted meat, but sell tainted meat. Even in the absence of state authority, consumers would rise up and refuse to purchase products from any company or individual who tried to pull off such a dastardly scheme! And yet, in the case of social media, we see the Exceptionally Woke Libertarians doing the exact opposite. They turn their nose and ignore fraudulent corporate practices, without realizing that such behavior essentially proves correct one of the primary statist objections to a free society. Why should anyone believe that those who refuse to denounce a fraudulent social network would denounce fraudulent meat? Do the EWLs really believe that private companies can do whatever they want? up to and including fraud?

Both statists and libertarians who focus on the supposed rights of private companies are deliberately obfuscating the issue at hand. Social networks have a right to discriminate, but they do not have a right to fraudulently misrepresent the nature of their product. They do not have the right to promise one thing and deliver another. Such acts are fraud, and are illegal under current US law, as well as clear violations of the non-aggression principle. There is no excuse for condoning such behavior, and I call on libertarians of all stripes to join me in publicly rejecting such practices as illegal, unethical, and immoral.
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Answering common objections to the allegation of fraud on the part of social media companies:

When Ive made these arguments in the past, I have received two common objections which I will deal with here.

Objection #1: To accuse these companies of committing fraud, you must adequately prove that they are, in fact, discriminating against certain viewpoints. What evidence do you have to make such an accusation?

Response: I do not claim to possess sufficient evidence to file a criminal or civil complaint against any particular social network, but that is irrelevant to my greater argument. I am responding specifically to the notion that these companies have the right to discriminate. Given that they have made public claims of non-discrimination, this is no longer true. By making such claims, they have waived that right. We can argue over whether they actually are or are not discriminating, but that is a separate argument entirely. Making the case that the companies are not discriminating is an entirely different argument from suggesting that they are entitled, under libertarian philosophy, to discriminate. That would only be true if they did not make any public statements promising a discrimination-free service.

Objection #2: Mainstream social networks, even with discrimination, are highly successful. Nothing is stopping you or anyone else from offering a free-speech social network and competing with them. To the extent that such networks have already been tried, they have largely failed. The market has spoken.

Response: A market-based test requires competition within the bounds of the non-aggression principle. Fraud is an act of aggression. It may be that free-speech based social networks have failed largely because mainstream social networks fraudulently proclaim themselves to be tolerant of free speech, and thus, the public does not recognize the need for a niche alternative. It is difficult for a legitimate product to compete with a fraudulent one. Much like how Volkswagen received an unfair advantage by cheating on emissions tests, mainstream social networks achieve an unfair advantage by committing fraud as it regards their censorship policies. If the public understood the true nature of the services being offered, they might very well turn to alternatives in greater number, and the incentive for entrepreneurs to invest in creating such networks would dramatically increase. Given the fraudulent nature of existing products, it is not correct to conclude that a fair market test has already been conducted.

https://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/2018/08/01/no-libertarians-are-not-compelled-to-support-social-media-censorship/
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Ok
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These are interesting arguments.

To repeat to make sure I'm understanding (correct me if I'm wrong), your only issue is that social media networks have advertised themselves as "say anything you want safety zones" but don't actually follow through with that promise.

Which instances of censorship are you railing against in particular?

I do think there is some room for case-by-case judgment, the most extreme and often used example is 'shouting fire in a movie theater'.

I guess I'd be interested to see where you would draw that line between appropriate and inappropriate censorship
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Oh, and I should note that I'm responding mostly because this seems like an earnest, reasonable and high effort post
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Id argue that the situation between a company providing fraudulent data for engine performance and moderating the content on a social media platform is different, at least in part because the user agreements in a social media network tend to indicate that once you put things up there, theyre theirs. That youre sacrificing the right to say just anything by using their service.

Now are you saying that such agreements are buried in legalese and need to be made more clearly upfront? Perhaps a case could be made there. Are you suggesting as it seems might be the case, that once a social media platform becomes large enough in society that it has a greater responsibility to society to allow people to discuss the issues of the day free from constraint and that in your experience, this hasnt been happening?

That could be interesting. What specific sorts of speech is being restricted here, other than the general right wing you suggested? Because I certainly dont think you wrote this large intellectual sounding essay because they didnt let you call black people the n word or something. What is the deep discourse theyve been keeping from you?
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banananor posted...

These are interesting arguments.

To repeat to make sure I'm understanding (correct me if I'm wrong), your only issue is that social media networks have advertised themselves as "say anything you want safety zones" but don't actually follow through with that promise.

Which instances of censorship are you railing against in particular?

I do think there is some room for case-by-case judgment, the most extreme and often used example is 'shouting fire in a movie theater'.

I guess I'd be interested to see where you would draw that line between appropriate and inappropriate censorship

I also wonder about this last point. Any service would also want to keep outright harassment of its users off itself Id imagine. They are a business and users chasing each other off like that isnt profitable.
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your only issue is that social media networks have advertised themselves as "say anything you want safety zones" but don't actually follow through with that promise.

Not quite.

If you go to my webpage I've included some hyperlinks. The Twitter statement on shadowbanning is a typical example. They claim not to engage in restricting content based on politics (the accusation is that conservative voices are being de-indexed from common search features, and that conservative accounts one chooses to follow will mysteriously not show up in your feed, while none of this happens to liberal accounts.)

This claim means that they now have a positive obligation to ensure that claim is accurate.

They haven't promised "free speech" as such, they've always reserved the right to remove things that "are not in accordance with community standards." But what they have claimed is that the standards are objective and not politically motivated. If one could prove (as is frequently alleged) that their "community standards" disproportional punish right-wing views and rarely punish left-wing ones, that would prove that their standards are, in fact, politically based.
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SmartMuffin posted...

none of this happens to liberal accounts.

lol
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I also wonder about this last point. Any service would also want to keep outright harassment of its users off itself Id imagine.

It's trivially easy to block people.

That said, a lot of what they're being accused of doing is well beyond "not letting people harass others." It's deliberately hiding or removing "politically incorrect" content in general. The biggest complaint is not "My opponents aren't forced to listen to my views," but rather "My supporters aren't allowed to hear my views because Twitter thinks they're offensive!"
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What opinions specifically are being banned?

Or are they ones you cant express here either?

I have difficulty getting up in arms about a shadow conspiracy about hypothetical people being banned by a hypothetical website for hypothetical opinions.

But its not hypothetical you say; then give me an example, work with me here.
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But its not hypothetical you say; then give me an example, work with me here.

I'm really not prepared to go into the details here, but see my response to objection #1.

My main point here is not to prove this is, in fact, occurring. It is to say that "they have the right to do this" is not correct. Nobody has the right to promise a certain product and deliver a different product.
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I dont need evidence that will hold up in court. Court of public opinion is fine with me. Just something you saw or read about that made you go gosh these social media sites are doing this and it makes me mad.

I mean, we can both agree the CEO of Twitter shouldnt vehicularly manslaughter small children but I wont yell at him for it if he isnt doing it.
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I mean, at the most basic level, I follow a Meme page and group on FB where people regularly get banned for edgy memes. Getting "the zucc" or spending 30 days in "facebook jail" is taken as a badge of honor.

The specific allegation on Twitter is that many prominent right-wing personalities are having their posts mostly hidden from followers timelines. Scott Adams has been making this claim for years.

I recently saw someone on Twitter claim that immediately after following two right-leaning libertarians, their account was locked for "suspicious activity" until they manually verified certain info.

It's certainly feasible that such a problem exists - as the companies ultimately admit that the content you see is determined by proprietary algorithms specifically designed to "ensure a quality user experience." What do these companies define as a "quality experience?" One in which nobody ever questions certain mainstream political beliefs? These sites are now designed - by nature - to be a black box. You manually choose to follow a bunch of things, all the posts from those things go into a black box, and some of them come out in some order that FB/Twitter thinks is best. There's tons of room in there for manipulation, and the more they talk about "community standards" and the more emphasis is placed on "trust and safety" the more that signals politically-based decisions.
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SmartMuffin posted...

If one could prove (as is frequently alleged) that their "community standards" disproportional punish right-wing views and rarely punish left-wing ones,

You've left out a key detail here. You also have to prove that the motivation behind creating such a set of standards is political in nature and not due to reasons such as ethics/morality or creating a healthy environment for their users (for example).

If some non-political method has been used to generate a reasonable set of community standards and then it turns out that right-wing political views are systematically more often in violation of those standards than left-wing ones, then that shouldn't be Twitter's problem.
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If some non-political method has been used to generate a reasonable set of community standards and then it turns out that right-wing political views are systematically more often in violation of those standards than left-wing ones, then that shouldn't be Twitter's problem.

Legally speaking, isn't that "disparate impact?"

If we stipulate that right-wing views are held by about half the country, then how could standards that punish right-wing views significantly more severely than left-wing views possibly be politically neutral?
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SmartMuffin posted...

If we stipulate that right-wing views are held by about half the country, then how could standards that punish right-wing views significantly more severely than left-wing views possibly be politically neutral?

...What does being held by half the country have to do with it?
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okay, i don't feel like my post was really responded to. i understand you don't want to go into details here, and that's fine, but i'm out
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...What does being held by half the country have to do with it?

Because otherwise, Twitter could plausibly claim that it was simply creating community standards based on some sort of democratic process.

If 90% of people think that right-wing politics are offensive, and only 10% think they're good, it wouldn't be unreasonable for Twitter to create a community standard that heavily censors right-wing politics.

But if the breakdown is 50-50, the claim of "we're just creating standards that reflect our community values" becomes implausible.
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I'm not saying these hypothetical standards would be politically neutral. (And you're right, by definition they would not be.) I'm saying that they wouldn't be motivated by politics.

Of course if what the websites have promised is "political neutrality" in the positive sense and not something like "lack of political discrimination", then yes your argument as written is logically sound as best I can tell.
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I'm saying that they wouldn't be motivated by politics.

Once again though, disparate impact is legal precedent in the US.

If you create an employment test that dramatically favors whites over blacks, the test is considered to be de facto racial discrimination, regardless of whether you intended it to be so or not.
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I mean, if Twitter is lying in its user agreement, you can get them on that. If a Twitter official misrepresented them in specific tweets, that's evidence there too. You may say alternate social networks have been tried and failed due to some kind of unfair advantage, and that may or may not be the case. You do have a link there, so you did some kind of research.

I'd say that making a new social network is still a viable strategy though. Networks rise and fall as the times and the political climate changes. Myspace is dead. Facebook is losing a lot of money. A LOT of money right now. Their stock plummeted.

If you think the world needs it, build it and they will come to borrow a phrase. Or, if if the situation is as perverse as you think it is, maybe it's coming anyway.

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if we did get a Right Wing social network at some point.
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SmartMuffin posted...

I'm saying that they wouldn't be motivated by politics.

Once again though, disparate impact is legal precedent in the US.

If you create an employment test that dramatically favors whites over blacks, the test is considered to be de facto racial discrimination, regardless of whether you intended it to be so or not.

Has disparate impact been used in cases of things determined by choice, like political alignment or ice cream flavor? You're not going to be able to prosecute an ice cream parlor for favoring vanilla over chocolate ice cream the same way as race.
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Facebook is losing a lot of money. A LOT of money right now. Their stock plummeted.

I know. I shorted them when all of this nonsense "russian bots!" stuff started.

I wouldn't be surprised if we did get a Right Wing social network at some point.

They already exist. They just aren't popular enough to be socially relevant to all but fringe right-wingers (and a few lefties who like to mock them, like foolmo)
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I still think there needs to be some kind of standards on a social media platform, and it's hard to judge exactly what is or isn't being done and if they are going too far without seeing anything. Obviously, secretly blocking people from seeing tweets from users who aren't banned is a bad thing. However, what exactly constitutes an "edgy meme"? Twitter sure seems to allow a lot of offensive things considering all the crap James Gunn was found to have posted.
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so if Twitter just went ahead and said "yeah we shadowbanned Cernovich because he's a conservative, conservatives suck ass. We'll ban all you suck asses if we feel like it" would you support that because they wouldn't be doing fraud anymore
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Tomba42 posted...

I still think there needs to be some kind of standards on a social media platform, and it's hard to judge exactly what is or isn't being done and if they are going too far without seeing anything. Obviously, secretly blocking people from seeing tweets from users who aren't banned is a bad thing. However, what exactly constitutes an "edgy meme"? Twitter sure seems to allow a lot of offensive things considering all the crap James Gunn was found to have posted.

twitter has a way higher threshold for what they consider content offensive enough for them to delete. They pretty much only delete stuff if it's directly attacking another user or threatening violence or pretending to be Elon Musk.

I'd bet some of James Gunn's stuff would have been deleted if it was posted in meme-form on Facebook
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MoogleKupo141 posted...

so if Twitter just went ahead and said "yeah we shadowbanned Cernovich because he's a conservative, conservatives suck ass. We'll ban all you suck asses if we feel like it" would you support that because they wouldn't be doing fraud anymore

I would denounce it as a business practice I disagree with, but would defend their legal right to do so.
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James Gunn is, notably, not a prominent right-winger.
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SmartMuffin posted...

I mean, at the most basic level, I follow a Meme page and group on FB where people regularly get banned for edgy memes. Getting "the zucc" or spending 30 days in "facebook jail" is taken as a badge of honor.

This is a good example of the anti-market rigidity of your public-statement-centric philosophy.

Tons of people go on FB just to post dumb shit and get banned. It's meaningless to them if they don't get banned. So how is this fraud, when it's specifically the service these users are seeking from FB?

It's the contradiction of customer service. There will always be people who use a service for opposite reasons. That's why the market is necessary to decide these things. Public claims are just a marketing tactic for your service. If that marketing is fraudulent, then that's wrong but it needs an actual complaint with evidence and judgment to determine that. You can't just point at something you don't think matches the marketing (banning shitposters), because there are a ton of people who DO think it matches the marketing.
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SmartMuffin posted...

I'm saying that they wouldn't be motivated by politics.

Once again though, disparate impact is legal precedent in the US.

If you create an employment test that dramatically favors whites over blacks, the test is considered to be de facto racial discrimination, regardless of whether you intended it to be so or not.

Sorry I did not realize you were referencing a specifically defined legal precedent when you first used the phrase (which is my fault moreso than yours--i am trying to make these posts during small breaks at work)

So you're saying that lack of political neutrality is necessarily political discrimination, by definition ? Philosophically that is not a statement I agree with but legally speaking it seems you might be correct based on an initial glance.

There are various reasons why I think it makes sense to apply the resulting legal policies to things like race in employment but not to political affiliation in social media websites, but at this point we're entering into a separate discussion, I think. (Also to clarify I would not call it "discrimination" in either case, or would perhaps give some label like "unintentional discrimination" in both cases)
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ugh containment broken.

Also I didn't read this but i saw libertarian, intelligent, and values thrown together to describe the same thing. I laughed.
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What else do you laugh at?
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red13n posted...

ugh containment broken.

Also I didn't read this but i saw libertarian, intelligent, and values thrown together to describe the same thing. I laughed.

the containment topic isn't to stop people from making topics like this, it's supposed to keep posts like yours out of topics like this. can't believe that you guys still haven't figured this out.
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Well, I mean

It's both

I don't think one topic warrants "ugh, containment broken" though
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i think it's supposed to be both. we had a problem in 2016 where 90% of the front page was politics

speaking of which, it's pretty lame that this topic doesn't have the politics tag.
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"ugh containment broken" is usually said when corrik makes a topic about something we've already discussed at length in the containment topic or whatever. personally i don't mind this topic.
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Yeah as someone who avoids the containment topic like the plague these days the closest thing to approaching the reason I do that in this topic was that post by red13n, so think Maria had it spot on.
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I don't think one topic warrants "ugh, containment broken" though

I also explicitly tag any of my blog posts so that people who want to avoid them easily can.

No way to make it easy to keep out people who just want to troll me tho
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I mean this topic is objectively cleaner than the other politics topics so gtfo with your complaining
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Here's one:

http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/31/austin-petersen-twitter-ban/

A prominent libertarian, currently running for Senate in Missouri as a Republican, was banned from Twitter for mocking a "verified" "journalist" who accused him of being a russian agent because he accepts bitcoin donations (and THE EVIL RUSSIANS used bitcoin to steal the election from Hillary!)
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MariaTaylor posted...

red13n posted...

ugh containment broken.

Also I didn't read this but i saw libertarian, intelligent, and values thrown together to describe the same thing. I laughed.

the containment topic isn't to stop people from making topics like this, it's supposed to keep posts like yours out of topics like this. can't believe that you guys still haven't figured this out.

k but u wrong doe
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This one isn't explicitly right-wing, but is clearly an example of politically based censorship

http://reason.com/blog/2018/08/02/facebook-blocks-searches-for-pages-that

There are, in fact, many pages on Facebook that have the word "marijuana" in the name. Some of them are activist organizations, media outlets, and even government agencies. But last night, Marijuana Moment writer Chris Roberts noticed that these pages are not showing up when you search on Facebook. The pages still exist, and if you have the URL for them, you can still visit them. But if you don't know where they are, Facebook is not going to tell you.

This is what's called "shadow banning." Rather than deleting or censoring pages, Facebook is making them hard or impossible to find. Marijuana Moment is itself affected by the shadow ban. Here's their Facebook page. But if you type "marijuana moment" into Facebook's search engine, it was not coming up this morning. No groups, posts, or events with "marijuana" in the name come up on searches. News stories about marijuana do, but only video stories.

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Why not just create your own social network, and let the free market solve the problem?

ShadowYosuke posted...

Why not just create your own social network, and let the free market solve the problem?

Why not just read the post wherein I answer that exact question?
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You didn't answer the question satisfactorily though.

I mean pay-day loans are fraudulent by definition, yet I seriously doubt you have any problem with those. It's only when it directly effects you that you seem bothered by it. In which case I fail to see why I should care.

I mean pay-day loans are fraudulent by definition

lolwut

payday loans are accompanied by paperwork that discloses the exact terms of the loan
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And what does FB's terms of service say?
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SmartMuffin posted...

This one isn't explicitly right-wing, but is clearly an example of politically based censorship

http://reason.com/blog/2018/08/02/facebook-blocks-searches-for-pages-that

There are, in fact, many pages on Facebook that have the word "marijuana" in the name. Some of them are activist organizations, media outlets, and even government agencies. But last night, Marijuana Moment writer Chris Roberts noticed that these pages are not showing up when you search on Facebook. The pages still exist, and if you have the URL for them, you can still visit them. But if you don't know where they are, Facebook is not going to tell you.

This is what's called "shadow banning." Rather than deleting or censoring pages, Facebook is making them hard or impossible to find. Marijuana Moment is itself affected by the shadow ban. Here's their Facebook page. But if you type "marijuana moment" into Facebook's search engine, it was not coming up this morning. No groups, posts, or events with "marijuana" in the name come up on searches. News stories about marijuana do, but only video stories.

marijuana is still federally illegal, so this still could be apolitical... maybe Facebook just doesn't show pages about doing crimes
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