Protests on the social platform have entered a new phase, with users shirking the platform’s NSFW content rules en masse. The development has some media buyers on high alert, experts say.
Protests on the social platform have entered a new phase, with users shirking the platform’s NSFW content rules en masse. The development has some media buyers on high alert, experts say.
This conversation wasn’t about free speech, it was about companies fiddling with speech.
Companies fiddling with speech is perfectly legal. No one is obliged to give a soapbox to anyone. Companies curbing speech they don’t want to host is not an infringment on speech, legally (in the US, at least).
An anaolgy might be: You offer your front yard for people to put signs in. Someone decides to put a Nazi flag sign in your yard. You are within your rights to remove that sign, even though you made a general offer for anyone to put signs in your yard.
People (again, in the US) very often conflate this kind of situation - a private entity curbing speech that they don’t want to be associated with - with the First Amendment of the US Constitution (my emphasis):
Free speech, in the US, is about whether Congress, and as has been interpreted by the courts, the government generally, may abridge the freedom of speech. The government may not.
Even so, free speech is not absolute. It remains against the law for individuals to use speech to incite violence, or to incite an emergency reaction where no emergency exists (“Fire!” in a crowded theater), for two examples. Another example would be communicating classified information to people who are not authorized to have said information.
There remains a real conflict about free speech, and it’s the elmination of the commons. When the Constitution was written and ratified, the First Amendment protection of speech was more effective, because the way you would get your speech to a large number of people was via distribution of pamphlets and just speaking aloud in public spaces, where passers-by were walking. The landscape is very different today, where “public” messaging happens on the conduits provided by private companies - who, as we’ve learned, are not legally obliged to carry that speech. In fact, those private companies operating “open forums” can be held responsible for failing to moderate speech which runs afoul of legal limitations on speech.
The internet is definitely a huge change around speech, but the degradation of public spaces brought on by shopping malls - which are private property - had the same kind of effect. The fact that we tend to spend more time in our private homes, travel in the bubbles of our private vehicles, and do our personal business entirely on private property effectively reduces the public space available to exercise our own free speech effectively, or be exposed to others’ speech similarly.
demonitization means taking money away… that doesn’t have anything to do with speech. Posting on YouTube is not “speech” in the traditional sense. Posting on YouTube is content creation.
Tf is “speech” then if not communicating lol
“Speech” in terms of the context in which you’ve been trying to use it means that you’re free in an open forum. Speech would be going out on to the sidewalk and saying things to people. Speech would be your ability to make a platform like YouTube for others to make videos and say whatever they want.
Just as you do not have the right to demand air-time on ABC news to rant about whatever you want; you do not get the right to demand space on YouTube to rant about whatever you want either. When you post on YouTube (or Lemmy / Kbin / reddit) those things you say are not “speech.” The posts you make are content for someone else’s platform.
I really don’t know where you got that from. And I’m not freaking demanding anything. Just pointing out things that corporates be doing. Can’t we fucking have conversation about how corporations can use their power to influence and direct conversation to be more “ad friendly” without people butting in with “aCtUally it’S wElL witHin thEiR righTS”. I know that. I think most people do. Doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it or shit on the company.
You are free to understand me any which way you want but “speech” exists also on non-public or self-owned platforms. That’s just dumb to argue otherwise. I’m right here, “speeching” away, on someone else’s platform.