
April 21, 2021
What’s Wrong with Tech Companies Banning People? (#250) | Julian Sanchez on the Rationally Speaking Podcast with Julia Galef
Check out on the Rationally Speaking Podcast Page and Episode Notes
Key Takeaways
- Julian Sanchez is fine with tech companies de-platforming users using racial slurs or other kinds of harmful speech
- ”I don’t think anyone ought to be forced to republish or amplify content they find loathsome” Julian Sanchez
- Three main factors that affect how concerned we should be about de-platforming
- We should be much more concerned with banning decisions “lower in the stack”
- An Internet Service Provider banning an application is a stronger reason for concern than a social site banning a user
- We should worry more about de-platforming for “misinformation” than for inciting violence
- In general, social media sites should not be arbiters of truth
- There may be exceptions when clearly false information can cause direct harm
- We have fewer reasons to worry if we believe that “the market will solve”
- If platforms start being too strict on speech restriction, they will cause their users to move to other platforms
- We should be much more concerned with banning decisions “lower in the stack”
Intro
- Julian Sanchez (@normative) is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a policy analyst, and a journalist covering the intersection of privacy, technology, and politics
- Julian is a founding editor of the policy blog Just Security
- Check out Julian’s personal website
- Host: Julia Galef (@juliagalef) is a writer, speaker, and the President of the Center for Applied Rationality
- In this chat, Julian Sanchez discusses tech companies banning users and highlights the three factors that affect how concerned we should be about it
Banning Users: a Legal Perspective
- From a legal standpoint, tech companies are private and have the right to decide who to host on their platforms
- Legally, it is not a violation of the First Amendment which only restricts the government
- The ability to legally penalize speech is very low
- Inciting violence and fraud are the few exceptions of criminally penalized speech
- Society uses a variety of mechanisms to push harmful speech to the side
Why Julian is Fine with Social Media’s Ability to Ban Users
- Julian is fine with tech companies de-platforming users using racial slurs or other kinds of harmful speech
- ”I don’t think anyone ought to be forced to republish or amplify content they find loathsome” Julian Sanchez
- These decisions influence the kind of platform the company is creating
- For example, many social media sites do not allow pornographic images
- There can be other sites where you find that content
- Each platform can shape the environment it creates
- For example, many social media sites do not allow pornographic images
- “The barring of a particular individual from a platform is not at all the same thing as the erasure of their ideas from that platform” Julian Sanchez
- Trump may be banned but many of his ideas are still circulating on Twitter
Generally, The Market Will Solve
- De-platforming becomes more problematic when you have one company owning the most market share
- In a sense, it’s difficult to compare market shares among different social media platforms, in terms of the ability to express political claims
- In this sense, Twitter and Facebook are not monopolies
- There are many other ways to express your political preference
- Traditional newspapers, podcasts, youtube all end up on social media feeds
- The percentage of Americans on Twitter is not that high
- The dominance of these platforms is not set in stone
- If platforms start being too strict on speech restriction, they will cause their users to move to other platforms
- People think that network effects are too strong for social media companies to fall
- Friendster and Myspace are both clear examples
- Other platforms for online discourse have been growing tremendously (Parler, Discord, Twitch)
- People think that network effects are too strong for social media companies to fall
- Is there a threshold (say the % of people using a platform) after which the network effects become too hard to displace?
- Looking at the number of users is not necessarily a good metric
- You can have many users who are mostly inactive on a platform
Lower vs. Higher in the OSI Stack
- The OSI model describes the communication functions of computing systems on different layers
- The lowest level is represented by the physical wires that make internet connection possible
- Higher levels are the TCP/IP and HTTP protocols
- The applications you run on your PC are among the highest in the stack
- Julian would be much more concerned with banning decisions “lower in the stack”
- If an Internet Service Provider banned a whole category of applications, it would be a stronger reason for concern
- Changing broadband provider is much more cumbersome than signing up for a new social site
- If an Internet Service Provider banned a whole category of applications, it would be a stronger reason for concern
- Amazon’s Web Service decision to not host Parler is lower in the stack
- It deserves more scrutiny, as it affects every user on the platform
- Even then this decision by Amazon doesn’t prevent Parler from existing
Inciting Violence vs. “False” Speech
- It’s understandable that platforms may want to de-platform users who incite violence
- De-platforming becomes more troublesome when they ban what they deem as “false speech”
- At a time Youtube was going to ban misinformation about COVID vaccines
- They defined misinformation as anything that disagreed with the WHO
- This is dangerous troublesome because we’ve seen evidence of the WHO claiming debatable statements (e.g. ineffectiveness of masks)
- Platforms should be a lot more careful at restaining information based on what’s deemed true
- We often don’t know absolute truths with certainty
- The possibility of raising counter-arguments allows us to test our position
- If all counter-arguments are banned we can’t be as confident of a statement
- There might be instances where it is appropriate for them to ban content that is clearly false and harmful to people
- If someone touted drinking bleach as a cure for COVID, it could cause many people to poison themselves
- We would want platforms to minimize the reach of that kind of content
- The issue of election fraud was certainly more nuanced, but it also incited violence
- People have had the chance to present their evidence for fraud, but ultimately it didn’t turn out to be compelling
- If someone touted drinking bleach as a cure for COVID, it could cause many people to poison themselves
Additional Notes
- Trump’s “meritless claims” about electoral fraud were obviously harmful
- In addition to not being true, they were inciting people to use force
- There are many other ways that Trump can make his voice heard
- Julian thinks about speech and heroin in similar ways
- They ought to be legal, but not necessarily that easily available