This is going to be an important thread. We need to talk about YouTube, and private media operations in generalThis thread was prompted by YouTube’s shadow ban of my new video, but that’s really just a minor inconvenience. The whole story involves YouTube, the DHS, and the CIA— JT Chapman (@_SecondThought) November 28, 2020
Ehh. Free Speech is a meme. It was never about whether legal protections for speech were absolute or not. It was never about mitigating a slippery slope scenario caused by the persecution of arch-reactionaries for genocide denial or hate speech. It always has been about who wields power and who threatens it. No amount of free speech protections has ever been capable of protecting the journalists, muckrakers, dissidents and activists who threaten that power.
You're right insofar as no curtailment of civil liberties dictated by the bourgeoisie will ever be beneficial to the proletariat. They will always have an ulterior motive. But I will not shed a tear when reactionaries like Bill Maher are sent to the camps crying about being cancelled.
I don't really agree. While obviously it is the case that who holds power in the state is more important than the form of the law, that doesn't make the latter inconsequential. Leftists in America, despite COINTELPRO and everything else, do have appreciably more freedom of expression than in many other countries. It would be idiotic to give up any ground there just to own some annoying nazi youtubers. Remember that the Smith Act was originally directed against Fascists.
Right. I wouldn't rush to give up any ground under the current circumstances. As long as we do not wield power, we hold no power to influence any changes in a positive direction. Primarily, I just find the paradigm of "free speech" as we (US subjects) understand it to be obsolete. We understand free speech as a constitutional right. As a negative right, defined by what they state may not do. Beyond that, there are already minimal protections.
Speech requires media, and most media being privately owned ensures that we end up in a scenario that state censorship is made irrelevant by the censorship of corporate media empires. If we take the materialist view and consider these corporations and the state to already be one, the current paradigm is the perfect loophole to make the first amendment as we understand it irrelevant.
If you dig a bit deeper into this, the "free speech" framing leads to a dead end. Publishers, broadcasters, and communications platforms have (de facto) editorial control. They have the right to moderate their platforms and decide what they want and what they don't want to host. The state doesn't have the right to compel them to publish things they don't wish to be published. So you run into a scenario where I want to publish an edgy meme on Reddit, but Reddit does not wish for my edgy meme to be published. If the state were to intervene on my behalf, it would be compelled speech. I don't thing there is any way to get around this just by maximizing our interpretation of free speech.
The solution to me isn't tweaking the legal landscape, or trying to use the law to damage our enemies. If we had the force of law on our side, things would be much better off all around. The solution is to build counter-hegemonic media platforms. To decentralize the consolidated media ecosystem. To build a well grounded material foundation to project our point of view. While this works towards achieving the "diversity of opinions" free speech advocates celebrate, it has little to do with legal regimes or constitutional rights.
Ehh. Free Speech is a meme. It was never about whether legal protections for speech were absolute or not. It was never about mitigating a slippery slope scenario caused by the persecution of arch-reactionaries for genocide denial or hate speech. It always has been about who wields power and who threatens it. No amount of free speech protections has ever been capable of protecting the journalists, muckrakers, dissidents and activists who threaten that power.
You're right insofar as no curtailment of civil liberties dictated by the bourgeoisie will ever be beneficial to the proletariat. They will always have an ulterior motive. But I will not shed a tear when reactionaries like Bill Maher are sent to the camps crying about being cancelled.
I don't really agree. While obviously it is the case that who holds power in the state is more important than the form of the law, that doesn't make the latter inconsequential. Leftists in America, despite COINTELPRO and everything else, do have appreciably more freedom of expression than in many other countries. It would be idiotic to give up any ground there just to own some annoying nazi youtubers. Remember that the Smith Act was originally directed against Fascists.
Right. I wouldn't rush to give up any ground under the current circumstances. As long as we do not wield power, we hold no power to influence any changes in a positive direction. Primarily, I just find the paradigm of "free speech" as we (US subjects) understand it to be obsolete. We understand free speech as a constitutional right. As a negative right, defined by what they state may not do. Beyond that, there are already minimal protections.
Speech requires media, and most media being privately owned ensures that we end up in a scenario that state censorship is made irrelevant by the censorship of corporate media empires. If we take the materialist view and consider these corporations and the state to already be one, the current paradigm is the perfect loophole to make the first amendment as we understand it irrelevant.
If you dig a bit deeper into this, the "free speech" framing leads to a dead end. Publishers, broadcasters, and communications platforms have (de facto) editorial control. They have the right to moderate their platforms and decide what they want and what they don't want to host. The state doesn't have the right to compel them to publish things they don't wish to be published. So you run into a scenario where I want to publish an edgy meme on Reddit, but Reddit does not wish for my edgy meme to be published. If the state were to intervene on my behalf, it would be compelled speech. I don't thing there is any way to get around this just by maximizing our interpretation of free speech.
The solution to me isn't tweaking the legal landscape, or trying to use the law to damage our enemies. If we had the force of law on our side, things would be much better off all around. The solution is to build counter-hegemonic media platforms. To decentralize the consolidated media ecosystem. To build a well grounded material foundation to project our point of view. While this works towards achieving the "diversity of opinions" free speech advocates celebrate, it has little to do with legal regimes or constitutional rights.
I don't disagree for the most part. Formal, constitutional free speech obviously only goes so far. I just think it has more than zero importance.
I think we're on the same page more or less. I'm just a contrarian edgelord.
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