Chris Edwards · @ArsVampyre
9th Feb 2016 from TwitLonger
Philosophy of filtering, blocking, and twitter
This is far too long to explain with twitter, and I really should devote my time to my employer right now, so I'll try to keep this brief.
The point behind free speech, association, etc. is to benefit the public by allowing the expression of all points of view, allowing the public to select which points of view best suit them in the manner they see fit and for the purpose they most prefer, and to prevent the tyranny of someone else doing that selecting for you, as individuals or groups or a whole.
How does this affect twitter? Traditionally, twitter has to user-controlled filtering options. Mute, which silences content on your TL from someone when not directed at you? (It doesn't always seem to work, IMO) and block, which prevents someone from contacting you directly, following you, reading your tweets, etc.
I am going to make the assumption that all participants are adults, which I know isn't strictly true, and are capable of acting as adults, which I know isn't true either, but it's necessary for this argument. Traditionally, adults converse, discuss, disagree, and even attack each other with speech, but in person, you can walk away. There's a disincentive to be too aggressive with speech as it may result in physical violence. This is sometimes codified into law in ideas like 'fighting words'. Online, this differs because there is no significant possibility of violence.
So let's consider this then. Twitter is a public speech platform. I realize it's privately owned, but it's utilization is as a soapbox in a great park where millions of potential listeners dwell with the intent of being able to listen, and to respond in kind. You come to twitter to speak in public and to hear other public speech. As such, you're supposed to be open to conflicting and diverse ideas. I know that many do not; they come to speak but not to listen, or to only speak and hear what they want to hear, but we'll get to that later.
Many confuse twitter for a 'living room' sort of speech; this place is for them and their friends, you've no right to speak to them or listen to their conversations. The problem with this is that the platform is specifically designed not to facilitate that easily. Facebook is great for communicating with just your friends and family or chosen group. Twitter is not that. Twitter is standing on a soapbox and yelling to everyone who can hear you in a the virtual 'park' where millions do the same thing.
This means, when you use twitter, you accept a public response to any speech you make. Nothing is private (unless you take your account private or use direct messages). You've no reasonable expectation of privacy. If you want that, don't use twitter. A speech plaza is what twitter is, not your comfy living room couch.
That doesn't mean you have to accept abuse. Twitter makes user-controlled filtering systems (mute and block, going private) for a reason. It's perfectly reasonable to block individuals for the speech they make to you (or to someone else, I suppose). Blockbots, on the other hand, are the first step in someone else taking that decision from you.
You can argue that the user volunteers to use the bot, and is selecting to block based on that. All perfectly true. The problem is that no one user knows the content of everyone they're blocking when they use these bots; be it based on some other user's blocklist, some other user's evaluation of a particular account, or based on who that user follows (the most egregious, IMO). blockbots, shared block lists, all discourage discourse, form cult-like shells of avoiding conflicting speech, and make declarations about the blocked that are potentially libelous (i.e. everyone who follows @nero is a harasser). The user doesn't select who's blocked, they let someone else do it for them, and they may (and often are) mislead as to the reason. One user created a blocklist of almost 150k users recently. There's no reasonable way to assume all of those accounts were harassers, or even many of them.
Worse, the users who believe twitter is their living room rather than a public plaza call anyone who talks to them that they didn't invite in a harasser based solely on this (the so called Sea-lioning). This is used to justify censoring and banning the accused simply for using twitter as intended. As twitter's outgoing CEO stated, almost all reports of harassment are actually just political speech the reporter didn't like.
You can, of course, argue that twitter has no responsibility to uphold the first amendment or free speech. It doesn't, but is that the sort of society we want to live in? Where every public speech platform is bullied into preventing the speech of the 'undesirable'? It's easy to say 'Well, of course white supremacists are wrong', but doesn't that make Black Panthers wrong too? How 'wrong' does someone have to be to be denied the right to speak?
You can claim they've no right to be heard, but they do. They have a right, at the minimum to petition the government. The government has an obligation to listen, even if it doesn't like the speech. Moreover, the blockbots/lists/whatever aren't an individual selecting to not listen, but a group selecting who those who use the bot/list cannot listen to. It's the difference between not listening and censorship; one is selecting for oneself, the other is selecting for others, with or without their knowledge.
Finally, I will end with this. If the ultimate goal of free speech is to allow the public to select the best ideas, as a society we need to have open discussions, even in private places, without the filtering of unwanted and uncomfortable ideas. The solution to bad ideas isn't censorship, but information; counter racism/sexism with more speech, not preventing speech. When a platform like twitter writes algorithms to censor based on content, it doesn't matter if they say they're directing it at trolls and harassers. First, how can you trust them to actually be doing that, second, who defines what's a troll and harasser and third, who gave twitter the right to tell me what I can and cannot listen to?
So, when Megan Phelps-Roper says she's in favor of this curated speech, what she's talking about is these blockbots/lists and twitter's 'harassment' filter. These are both tools of censorship, not anti-harassment. When she gives her example of 100k followers, she's talking about public speech, not organized harassment. There is no account sending 100k people to harass another user, not even @nero. There are perhaps a few hundred of them making public responses that get blown out of proportion and taken as harassment because from an individual's perspective, massive public response seems like harassment. But twitter is a public speech platform, and if you invite the public to respond, which you do by using twitter, you accept the possibility of a massive response. It might make your account unusable for a while; that's the consequence of public speech. It's not harassment; harassment is calling your employer to have you fired, sending threats to your children and spouse, hounding you wherever you go to call you sexist or some other epitaph. Harassment is not massive disagreement with what you've said. That's just political speech.
Megan Phelps-Roper talks about how important it was that twitter didn't ban her, that people talked to her and that helped her realize how wrong she was and helped her get out. She now advocates for policies which will lead directly toward bans, and blocking those same sort of conversations.
So no, she's not an advocate for free speech. She only thinks she is. She's an advocate for 'acceptable speech'.
Frankly, acceptable speech doesn't need an advocate.