What about shadow regulation where government regulators censor information they legally cannot censor for 1st amendment issues but de facto can by increasing their regulatory levers on companies to stand up to state level censorship
There's a tremendous difference between private companies deciding what to do with their own platforms, and the government dictating what all companies must do with their platforms.
Imagine a scenario if Facebook decides to censor content based on their political stance. That potentially impacts 2B people. The worst case impact of Chinese censoring 1.4B. Again, I am comparing worst cases, I know.
And as we know Facebook was actively doing exactly that.
Well, the difference is still there. You can switch to a different social network without too much difficulty (you miss out on that platform, but that's as far as the cost goes); You can't just declare yourself as part of a different country without actually up and moving there, changing your job, getting the new place, and rebuilding most of your connections, and potentially learn a new language depending on where you move.
Except that people can just leave facebook and go use something else if they don't like it.
Don't get me wrong, I am deeply disturbed by the level on control facebook (and google) exhibit over news, information, the internet. But it's a fundamentally different thing then the government doing it.
I remember one of the wiki leaks releases from last year implied that google/Facebook had the capability to shift political opinion by selecting what people are exposed to.
When the government does this I think it's actually less harmful because people are aware the government wants to manipulate opinion.
The capability to individually tailor propaganda like is already done with advertising is much worse I think.
Not as much as you'd think. Companies like Google and Facebook have government contracts and even if they didn't it would be trivially easy for the administrative state to attack them with tax or anti-trust law.
They'll do what the government wants them to do, as long as it doesn't threaten the bottom line.
In the US, if you don't like some company's content policies, you can, with a bit of effort, start your own company. (Whether it can generate revenue enough to support itself is a separate problem.)
In China, if you don't like the government's policies, you can try starting your own government. Good luck.
Youtube/facebook won't throw you in jail for creating a competitor. The government will usually take exception to you trying to start your own government on their land.
In the US if you don't like your internet provider you can shut up and keep paying because the government helped them get a localized monopoly. Google can swing regulators from "anti-trust" to "it's all good they said they would fix it". Lobbyists write legislation.
The level of corporate control in the US is disturbingly high. Ultimately they are weaker than the federal government.
When the government blames you for "spreading terrorism" without explicitly telling you what to delete, what happens then?
How about when they tell you to play ball or they're cancelling their contracts with you, which will ultimately destroy your company? (Similarly, when they insinuate that you'll receive contracts if you're compliant -- and your rival might if they're compliant instead.)
It's not (and has never been) do whatever you want with your company, once you reach a certain size. In fact, I don't think most of us actually want that. (Also, arguably, your comment section is a public accommodation and you're legally requires not to discriminate on certain bases.)
I'm not implying that the US is the same as China in this regard -- I'm pointing out that they US does regulate content in an authoritarian way, they simply vest that authority in private lobbying groups and exercise it via back-channel deals.
I find that worse than the open authoritarianism with an obvious source of blame, even if it's a "milder" authoritarianism in terms of effects.
If you were to put Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech on your website, the government can force you to take it down under copyright law. Both the US and China censor free speech, they just do it differently.
Dr. Kings descendents are free to publish it as much as they want. I can say Donald Trump is an asshole without a shred of honesty or character and not risk arrest.
It remains that in a country which brags of its freedom of speech you could be arrested for replaying the words of a civil rights activist who was assasinated 50 years ago.
"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
Unless, of course, you host an opinion that is so unpopular it has been declared unlawful (say, with regards to child porn or advertising assasination services or something). In that case you would soon discover that any society censors certain opinions. It's just that the Chinese government has a different opinion than most westerners about which opinions are intolerable.
Not if your hosting company or ISP takes you down. Same as when Youtube/Facebook remove your content.
It is in their right to bow to pressure from outside, from players bigger than you. After all, they are companies, they can do whatever they want, right?
Does that argument fly anymore when corporations are so much more powerful than most nations?
FB and google both have a larger population than china. Censorship by FB or Google is far more harmful/effective than whatever the chinese government does.
Also, would we support corporations right to censor if they were censoring content we disagreed with? Imagine if FB/Youtube/Verizon/etc started censoring lgbt content. Would we still use the "private companies" can do whatever they want argument?
Given how powerful many companies are ( especially monopolistic companies like FB/GOOG ) maybe it's time corporations are required to protect free speech like corporations are required to protect the rights of minorities/disabled/etc.
> Does that argument fly anymore when corporations are so much more powerful than most nations?
Anymore? Corporations were radically more powerful in the past than they are today.
US Steel, the railroads, Standard Oil, JP Morgan they were all more powerful than the US Government a little over a century ago. Rockefeller all by himself was financially more powerful than the US Government; he actually bailed out the government, a concept entirely impossible today. Contrast that with Gates or Bezos, they're not even pikers by comparison to the US Govt and Federal Reserve. Just one month of the recent QE program from the Fed is about equal to the richest person in the US.
Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are all a joke compared to the power of the Federal Government in all possible regards. Alibaba, Baidu etc are a joke compared to the power of the Communist Party in China; the CCP can destroy or seize those corporations any day of the week.
Even mighty Samsung isn't more powerful than the South Korean Government - as recently demonstrated - and it's a rather extreme example. Turns out the guns give you a very solid upper-hand, even when you're equivalent in size to 13% of your nation's GDP.
> I disagree that corporations are more powerful than nations, because FB and google can't compel you to do anything.
Not directly but they could get the government to act on their behalf. Also, I'd say FB, GOOGL are more powerful than most nations. I don't think monaco or luxemburg are more powerful than FB or GOOGL.
> If I opt out of google, then I miss out on google's services. If I "opt out" of my country's laws, I go to prison.
But if corporations can get the government to make the laws. Also, if your job requires you to have a facebook account or an internet connection and FB or AT&T "ban" you, that could be damaging to you.
> Google censorship only controls what people say on google. Government censorship can control what their citizens say anywhere.
In another way. Google censorship censors you on google on earth. Government censorship only controls you within a nation's borders. You could argue that google's censorship is global while a government's censorship is local.
When it comes to large transnational monopolies like GOOG and FB, in many ways their censorship is far more damaging and dangerous. Even more so when you consider the influence large monopolies have over governments and laws.
>> Does that argument fly anymore when corporations are so much more powerful than most nations?
They're not. The government has the power to stop them at any time and if they don't want to go that far can easily put pressure on them. Just look at the whole 'fake news' thing in the last year and the fact that companies have had to respond to that in quite a major way.
> Would we still use the "private companies" can do whatever they want argument?
At some point I would think you would run into anti-discrimination laws, but short of that sure do what you want.
I'm free to say to those users "hey, come post here my lgbt brothers/sisters/anything in between. Come post here liberals who are pissed off about the actions of facebook/google".
Whereas if I said something against the government of china they would just toss me in prison or have me killed.
It's not tremendous at all. If a PAC gives millions to a social network to minimize opposition viewpoints, then there isn't much difference at all with what China is doing. The only variance is economic.
Yes but that's irrelevant for this article. You're trying to move the discussion away from the authoritarianism of the Chinese government and distract by discussing Western corporations.
I'd disagree. I find it relevant. Both countries are censoring, but use different means to achieve that. It's a global problem that needs a global solution.
It is a bad trend, and thoughtful American writers like Glenn Greenwald have written strongly against it. But the idea a government censoring the internet is a more extreme, less arguable perversion of human cooperation...
These are private sites. That's not censorship. Use a competitor or create your own site if you don't like their policies. Current cloud pricing makes hosting a pretty high volume site cost less than 25 dollars a month.
I think we can all assume that threats of violence and bodily harm are not and should not be covered by the 1st amendment. Only using the US eccentric amendment as an example.
There's a pretty large difference in response to non-credible threats against POTUS Vs very credible threats against even ex-wives.
One sees huge amounts of state power used to investigate and prosecute; the other not so much, even though a significant number of people are murdered by current of former partners.
