site banner
felipec  unbelief  2d ago (felipec.substack.com)   1084 thread views

Freedom of speech has been poisoned and we need to reframe it

felipec.substack.com

I've written about freedom of speech extensively in all manner of forums, but the one thing that has become clear to me lately, is that people are genuinely uninterested in the philosophical underpinnings of freedom of speech. Today they would rather quote an XKCD comic, than John Stuart Mill's seminar work On Liberty.

Because of this, I've decided to try to reframe the original notion of freedom of speech, into a term I coined: Open Ideas.

Open Ideas is nothing more than what freedom of speech has always been historically: a philosophical declaration that the open contestation of ideas is the engine of progress that keeps moving society forward.

Today the tyranny of the majority believes freedom of speech is anything but that. They believe that "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", despite the fact that such term came from nowhere, has no author, and in addition all great free speech thinkers argued precisely the opposite. The great thinkers argued that if people are afraid of expressing unpopular opinions, that is functionally the same as government censorship: ideas are suppressed, society stagnates, and progress is halted.

So far I have not yet heard any sound refutation of any of these ideas. All people do is repeat the aforementioned dogmatic slogan with zero philosophical foundation, or mention First Amendment details, which obviously is not equal to freedom of speech.

How is anything I've stated in any way an inaccurate assessment of what is happening?

-4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Some people seem to equate “freedom of speech” with “freedom of reach”. You can say whatever you want. That doesn’t mean what whatever you say must be published by loudspeaker media institutions and promoted by social media algorithms.

Why put so much effort into pretending you're not exercising power?

You can say whatever you want. That doesn’t mean what whatever you say must be published by loudspeaker media institutions and promoted by social media algorithms.

Megaphone media has the excuse of limited resources, but SocMeds have no justification for manipulating the kind of content their users will see. Technologically it's perfectly possible to let every user write their own algorithm, but at the very least people should be given the option to switch to a basic "people who liked X also liked Y" algorithm.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to not allowing social media to have their cake and eat it too. It's perfectly valid of them to only allow what they want to allow on their platform. But then you cannot claim that you are unable to block content you can be liable for.

if your algo is making opinionated editorial decisions, you are fully responsible for what it shows as a publisher. If it's only making technical editorial decisions or no editorial decisions, then you can enjoy the protections that currently exist. I think it's the only way to thread the needle between freedom of association and freedom of speech.

I deactivated twitter/x a few months ago. Got tempted back in last week and went through the ordeal of solving 10 visual puzzles (weirdly cryptic and very difficult) to prove I was human. Within three minutes, and WITHOUT A SINGLE POINT OF PREFERENCE FROM ME (no likes, no comments, no follows…) I was being shown loathsome racist material. Somebody somewhere wants this to happen, and set it up precisely this way. The base algorithm of X is racist, bigoted, hateful, angry and divisive, and it’s radicalizing people’s opinions every second of every day. And I say this as someone who thought Jack’s original app, from ~2010 and right up to the way it introduced dissenting voices during COVID-19, provided an indispensable service to humanity. There was obvious censorship and bias that Elon set out to fix. But he’s made it 100 times worse in the opposite direction.

And I say this as someone who thought Jack’s original app, from ~2010 and right up to the way it introduced dissenting voices during COVID-19, provided an indispensable service to humanity.

I'm not seeing how this particular belief would increase your credibility on the issue.

Bad phrasing. Basically:

  1. Old Twitter was almost always additive and became almost indispensable over many years.
  2. New X (and lots of the other platforms have gone the same way) has followed the style of building the most addicting experience fuelled by extreme emotional response. Fairly sure TikTok started this c. 2019/20 and it was so successful all the others thought they had to follow.

This has been ongoing for far longer than that. Tristan Harris's TED talk outlining how he as a google employee explicitly aimed to manipulate you to maximize your "Time On Site", came out in 2016, and his original internal talk on the subject dates back to 2013.

A few additional data points:

  • Twitter started phasing out the chronological timeline in favor of the engagement algorithm in February of 2016.
  • Instagram switched from chronological feeds to "best posts first" in the summer of 2015.
  • Facebook as of 06/15/15 acknowledged that news feeds action on how long a user reads a feed item, as well as how likely they are to engage with it.

Zvi Mowshovitz published his delenda est post on the Facebook algorithm in 2017. So the situation was bad enough to provoke a generally mild-mannered New York Jewish quant into making a public delenda est post by then.

Fair points. My point is it’s got a lot LOT worse since ~2021/22. This was absolutely influenced by TikTok’s algorithm which meant it didn’t matter who you followed, they were giving you what your behaviour told it you wanted. The others followed suit and the consequences are / will be disastrous.

I largely agree with you. I think the difference is probably (and we may never know for sure) what are they optimizing for now more than how they are going about it.

I think 2015/2016 social media companies were really optimizing for maximizing the attention as their one true goal. Whereas by the time we were deep in the covid years, they were seeking to metacognitively reflect their understanding of you back to you, while continuing to optimize for attention.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats