> How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech?

I can be deeply disappointed by youtube's moderation decisions without suggesting that the company be compelled to allow certain content. as an aside, I find it frustrating to see people constantly swapping between "free speech" as a legal concept and "free speech" as an abstract ideal in these threads. we talk past each other the same way every time the debate comes up. just because the law is written the way it is doesn't mean that's necessarily the way it should be. and even if we can't write the law "just right", we can still advocate for higher principles to be followed.

anyways, I generally agree with the "companies can manage their properties as they see fit" line of thought. but it becomes problematic when our public spaces are increasingly controlled by a small number of huge companies that mostly share the same politics. I'm not really sure what the solution is, but it sucks to watch it unfold.

> You want the government to start mandating that a company

There is already an established history of requiring certain large communication platforms, to act a certain way.

They are called common carrier laws, and already apply to things like the telephone network.

Sure, they don't currently apply to other things, but the law could be updated, so that they do.

Philosophically, common carrier laws are uncontroversial, and already apply to major communication platforms, so you don't get to pretend like this is unprecedented.

I like the free market. If a store who also likes the free market decided to raise their price significantly because they claim to be better than everyone else then I will still think that is their right in the free market. However, since I value the free market so much I won't buy from them. Similarly, if YouTube wants to exercise their right of freedom of expression to censor content then I, as someone who values freedom of expression will use them less. Unfortunately, while in the first example many people would behave like me and cause the store to lower their price, not that many people value freedom of expression for YouTube to care about loosing those people.

I think discussions of the free market need to include scale. Scale absolutely matters when it comes to "voting with your wallet", or I suppose, in this case, your usage of a platform.

I think our notions on the merits of a free market, and indeed, the very understanding of a free market itself, come from a time before the network effect and the de-facto digital monopolies we see today.

> You want the government to start mandating that a company can't take a stance . . .

I, for one, want less monopolistic media so that the people can exert viewership pressure; they can get their media elsewhere and the ad money will follow. The content being stopped is not the only loss of people's voices happening here.

No church has a monopoly on the public square that is being exploited by one political party or corporate interest.

As Thiel says, (in whatever form it ultimately takes) the free market is a selector for monopolies. At peak capitalism, you still have start ups competing with an increasingly low chance of success excepting scandals...which are inevitable in large organizations.

The biggest companies are basically utilities and that will not change anytime soon. The market has resulted in this condition. The government has to play catchup, as usual.

The problem is that Youtube is big enough, and carries enough of the global conversation, that we think it should be a common carrier. (Think of the phone company back in the day. They didn't care if you were literally the Nazi Party of America, they carried your phone calls just like everybody else's.) People kind of think of Youtube that way, even though, legally, Youtube isn't playing by those rules.

But there's also this two-faced evaluation of Youtube. When Youtube blocks the other side, people say "private company, First Amendment, they can carry what they want". But when Youtube blocks their side, people at least feel the violation of the "common carrier" expectation, and get upset.

So maybe it's time for us as a society to decide: Has Youtube (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Google) gotten big enough and important enough that they should be regulated into some kind of "common carrier" status? Or do we want them to continue as they are?

> "How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech?"

Corporations are not humans (regardless of the "corporate personhood" doctrine) and thus should not be entitled to the full rights of humans. Semi-monopolies like Youtube are especially not entitled to use their dominance to manipulate public opinion, given how easily it can be abused.

Ask yourself, if YouTube were pushing conspiracy content and suppressing pro-vaccination content instead would the parent poster and those like them still be saying what they are saying? Fair-weather friends indeed.

> "You want to the government to tell them they can't take a side?"

The United States government already can and has in the past; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine .

> Corporations are not humans (regardless of the "corporate personhood" doctrine) and thus should not be entitled to the full rights of humans.

True, but corporations are just connections of people with shared goals. Should groups of people lose "fundamental" rights when they organize?

> Fair-weather friends indeed.

Yes, I fully support the rights of platforms to do stupid things. Use rumble or whatever if you want. I'll mock those platforms, but I don't think the government should ban them.

> Semi-monopolies like Youtube are especially not entitled to use their dominance to manipulate public opinion, given how easily it can be abused.

So, you think that we should circumstantially limit constitutionally protected rights, for the greater good? Fair weather friends indeed.

> So, you think that we should circumstantially limit constitutionally protected rights

According to your logic, you should think that common carrier laws should be repealed entirely.

Think, the telephone company blocking certain political groups, or the only water company in town, refusing to deliver water to certain people who say things that they don't like.

It is pretty similar, philosophically. Common carrier laws are pretty uncontroversial.

So it feels weird for you to be making these types of arguments, when it is already established, that there are major counter examples.

So you'd have to either recognize the contradiction, or admit that your position is at odds with other established, and uncontroversial laws.

I didn't take any particular position, I pointed out the incongruence in the one they espoused.

I'm admittedly mixed on common carrier laws, I think that they are "impure" in a sense, but I also think the benefits are greater than the costs, even taking into account the potential theoretical erosion of our rights.

I absolutely agree that there are major counterexamples, and I'm overall fine with that, but I'll also freely admit that I'm not a free speech absolutist of any form.

> "So, you think that we should circumstantially limit constitutionally protected rights, for the greater good?"

Why, yes, I do. Ask yourself: what was the various civil rights victories and legislation for minorities, women, LGBTQ other than saying "We are circumscribing your rights, including ones formerly interpreted as constitutionally protected, so that these protected classes may be treated equally, for the greater good"? Sounds like you'd argue against that.

I mean, yes. I think that's fine. But that goes in both directions: if you're willing to sacrifice the speech of some for the speech of others, clearly either you aren't a free speech maximalist, or there is some inherent contradiction in what free speech is. Because if my free speech requires limiting yours, well...how do we decide whose speech is more important?

I think a modern formulation of freedom of speech, like Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, is clearer about what freedom of speech is: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Note that this formulation doesn't have to descend into some sort of free speech maximalist apocalypse; spam is unprotected because it's not something anyone wants to receive, incitements to imminent violence are violations of other human rights and laws, etc. so moderation is still possible. There is a difference between interfering with parties who are mutually voluntarily communicating and helping parties not receive communications they voluntarily have decided that they don't want to receive.

(I was about to say that free speech maximalists are a myth but I do recall seeing at least one person on HN advocate such a view.)

And I agree there's a tension between the rights of different individuals/entities but the same tension exists for other civil and human rights. The compromise used for other civil rights seems reasonable here: everyone should be treated evenhandedly and impartially and, the larger the corporation/organization, the greater the responsibility to do so.

> Note that this formulation doesn't have to descend into some sort of free speech maximalist apocalypse; spam is unprotected because it's not something anyone wants to receive, incitements to imminent violence are violations of other human rights and laws, etc. so moderation is still possible. There is a difference between interfering with parties who are mutually voluntarily communicating and helping parties not receive communications they voluntarily have decided that they don't want to receive.

Sure I accept this (note though, that the UDHR definition is incompatible with the US constitutional definition, but let's work with this one because I prefer it anyway).

You mention mutually voluntary communication. So the vital question is then: is you posting a video on youtube a voluntary communication with me? I don't see how it is. I can see this argument for email, but I don't see how you can claim that this is the case for Youtube without an apparent contradiction in that even if you and I want to communicate via youtube, Fred over there thinks that the video you posted is spam/inappropriate and should be blocked. That is, if you need mutual consent from all parties, there will always be people who don't want to watch a video, but it is shown to. Therefore I don't think your framing works either way. Either You and I aren't the mutual parties to the communication, in which case Youtube can withdraw its consent, or everyone is party to the communication, in which case Youtube has a responsibility to block the content on behalf of those other people.

> everyone should be treated evenhandedly and impartially

Are you claiming that people aren't? Who is being treated differently? As far as I can tell, the discrimination, insofar as it exists, is based on an idea that isn't specifically called out elsewhere in the UDHR (such as religion or race, in Article 18 or 2).

I'm sorry but I'm not sure I follow the reasoning here. If we say that I posted the video (which falls under "imparting") and you intentionally searched for that video and viewed it (which falls under "seeking and receiving"), that seems like voluntary communication between us I would think. Fred may not want to see that video but that's a separate interaction between myself and him; I would wholeheartedly support Fred being offered tools to prevent my hypothetical video from being shown or offered to him. But blocking/removing the video so nobody can see it based on Fred's preference (or even the preferences of many like Fred or YouTube's preferences), how is that fair to you, who wanted to see it, and how is that fair to I who wanted my audience to find it if they looked for it? Fred might judge the video harmful but that gives Fred no standing to interfere any more than a stranger has a right to interfere with you purchasing a book from a bookstore because it's harmful.

Well but did I intentionally search for that video, or did I search for, say, content about vaccines?

If you're saying the video is unlisted/private and sent to people on a mailing list over email, that's one thing, but I think you're arguing that YT should act as a distributor as well, and there's no way to "impartially" order search results.

Nobody is forcing the searcher to view any of the content presented as search results and I think it's hard to make the case that mere exposure to unwanted search results is anything other than a minor irritation.

I think we would be in agreement that improvements in search and algorithmic identification of content would be a great thing so that people who don't want to see fringe content can be helped to avoid receiving it in their search results?

Let me rephrase: what, in your opinion, is wrong with Youtube's search algorithm making antivaxx content appear "last"?

This is "just" a choice about how they order search results, but is functionally equivalent to delisting the content. Is that okay? If not, what makes today's ordering "more okay", and broadly, how do we delineate between acceptable search algorithms, and unacceptable ones?