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this was an article written in the "digital liberty" section of philosophy now by nevin chellappah who discusses how the definition and use of free speech has differed greatly since its conception. he compares this change to the static works of john mill.
the article shows how social media contradicts mill's definition of free speech in 3 seperate areas. my personal favorite of which was how there is "no true free marketplace of ideas". diversity and challenging of opinion is usually villified or attacked rather than celebrated (contrary to what mill proposes) which we can see very present in social media (such as through cancel culture, etc.). additionally, social media functions on algorithms which push content toward the audience that they inherently agree with or support rather than challenge in order to keep the audience hooked, so these ideas are affirmed even more as audiences are segmented into groups that become their own echochamber ,,
as a result, those presenting a differing view are more likely to be attacked rather than listened to. to quote, "consequently, social media can easily collapse into a marketplace filled not with ideas, but with intellectual thuggery." this disapprobation of a difference in ideas leads to its OWN form of censorship, in which people are otherwise too afraid to practise free speech due to the worry of being socially shunned.
in a way, free speech somehow causes its own censorship. i thought that idea was pretty cool
its a lot less present on smaller social medias such as spacehey, but i can slowly start to see it crop up as the site grows in popularity
the article shows how social media contradicts mill's definition of free speech in 3 seperate areas. my personal favorite of which was how there is "no true free marketplace of ideas". diversity and challenging of opinion is usually villified or attacked rather than celebrated (contrary to what mill proposes) which we can see very present in social media (such as through cancel culture, etc.). additionally, social media functions on algorithms which push content toward the audience that they inherently agree with or support rather than challenge in order to keep the audience hooked, so these ideas are affirmed even more as audiences are segmented into groups that become their own echochamber ,,
as a result, those presenting a differing view are more likely to be attacked rather than listened to. to quote, "consequently, social media can easily collapse into a marketplace filled not with ideas, but with intellectual thuggery." this disapprobation of a difference in ideas leads to its OWN form of censorship, in which people are otherwise too afraid to practise free speech due to the worry of being socially shunned.
in a way, free speech somehow causes its own censorship. i thought that idea was pretty cool
its a lot less present on smaller social medias such as spacehey, but i can slowly start to see it crop up as the site grows in popularity
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Red Monaca
I found the most likely article (the author has another paper with the same topic) if anyone is curious or wants to read the whole thing: https://philosophynow.org/issues/151/Mill_Free_Speech_and_Social_Media
Personally, I am suspicious of the ideal of "free speech" that is trotted about by most people on the Internet., but I couldn't yet express this suspicion into words... until now. Thank you for bringing this article into light; this will greatly help me formulate my thoughts and arguments better.
Now, for my two cents: the main thrust of the article is that Mill's liberal definition and advocacy for free speech is outdated, since the creation of social media has engendered new variables that is unaccounted for by Mill's original argument. I agree with the general assessment of the author regarding this, although this could be further helped if the text is augmented by an assessment from an historical and materialist perspective.
Simply put, the fact of the matter is that social media is a business (and we must never forget this). It is not in the best interest of Zuckerberg to steer the algorithms and mechanisms of social media towards the fostering of healthy debate and deliberation of ideas. From a business perspective, the point of social media isn't just to enable long-distance communication or a "marketplace of ideas". The point of social media, in its core, is to make its users stay on the platform as long as possible. This continuous engagement with the platform generates data, which is then used to curate and tailor the stream of content to their liking (and hence encourage them to use the platform longer). Alongside this, their data is compiled with other users' data to create what is now called "Big Data"; this commodity is then sold to advertisers who want to help their clients sell their products as efficiently as possible.
The ideals of Mill's free speech is against this, for Mill's ultimate aim is truth, not profit.
Fawkes
I can only try and react so much without access to the original article, but I'd say that while many social platforms do not practice truly free speech, that the nature of social media is not inherently stifling of speech, as just as in real life, ostracized groups can branch off to their own corners of platforms or independent platforms without facing personal, professional, or political persecution.
Also I'd argue that the enforcement of a homogeneous culture is actually far more common on a smaller site like spacehey where there isn't enough of a population for separate circles to form. While I'm not saying this is a bad thing,, something like vocal homophobia would likely be shut down much faster here than say twitter. Here,, a homophobe would be spotted in the browse tab by a plethora of users who would report them and encourage others to do the same, on twitter, a homophobe would be filtered into a social pocket where that behavior is acceptable.
i do agree that homophobia, and forms of hate speech would be more quickly shunned from a platform than, say, twitter or instagram, etc. however for less black-and-white discussions i see people much less likely to take to a specific side and respond with hostility.
for example, if someone were to blog about a movie they disliked on spacehey that was otherwise well-recieved, i think that they wouldn't recieve nearly as much backlash as they would on a larger platform, if not at all. i feel that the feedback that individual would recieve would be more discussive rather than accusitory or hostile, as you said on smaller platforms the audience isn't big enough to filter out these people into seperate groups
essentially, i see the "homogeneous culture" a lot more prevalently in larger communities when it comes to more trivial topics at least, but with more clear-cut ones such as hate speech i can definitely agree with you
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