Re: <nettime> Sign the BAN X in EUROPE petition and join the campaign

[Cade Diehm via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Hi nettime,

In the years to come, the digital rights community will need to answer 
for the conflation of free speech of a democratic society with the 
formats and operations of the private platforms for which we interact on.

Indeed, the US-borne legal stance enshrined by Section 230 — that the 
platform is (within reason) not broadly responsible for the content of 
what its users post — is something that should be heeded by the wider 
democratic world. But what continues to be missed is the interface as it 
relates to speech: the editorialised algorithmic timeline, the scaffolds 
that dictate and shape platform speech (be it short form video, 200 
characters, or pictures with filters), or what one must give up in order 
to participate.

Turns out, all of these properties are just as important in the context 
of speech, and how they shape what is said, who gets to say it, and how 
they say it. And yet, beyond meandering gestures towards 
interoperability by the EU, or the endless protest by NGOs against 
endless social-media accelerated genocides, we widely continue to equate 
the platform with the speech. The two could not be further from each other.

Put simply, the democratic enshrinement of free speech is the cloak that 
has successfully kept these controllers of discourse firmly in the seats 
of power. That has been the mantra, to attack the platform is to attack 
speech itself, what a convenient reality for these now-juggernaughts!

Forgive me, but in 2024 this kind of free speech discourse rings as 
hollow as Musks' facile speech absolutism. A digitalised democracy must 
evolve beyond the infantile technolibertariancore EFF understanding of 
free speech, where the platform and its designed constraints and rules 
are invisible to the demands of a free press. There is a very real 
accelerationist attack underway that leverages this very flaw in the 30+ 
years of digital discourse, driven by a flaw we have all perpetuated to 
varying degrees. Killing a platform for being run by a Epstein-adjacent 
hyper-criminal who once flashed a woman on an aeroplane and then offered 
to buy her a horse is not the same as kicking in the doors of citizens 
who post on the platform owned by Epstein-adjacent hyper-criminal who 
once flashed a woman on an aeroplane and then offered to buy her a 
horse. Frankly I'm tired of the claims that these are one and the same.

I am not an authoritarian, I don't give a fuck about the Nazis on X. 
What I care about is that, after 40 years of fighting for internet 
freedoms, the Nazis are now freely flowing into the timelines of 
everyone you care about. To continue to parrot this 20th century idea of 
free speech without considering the infrastructure actor is to be in 
denial as this information warfare submerges us. It is exactly the 
belief here, cloaking the corpo platform in the dream of the democratic 
voice, that has kept us from the nuance needed to navigate these 
pathetic implementations of mass media we are still just beginning to 
grapple with.

Thanks for reading.

Cade

~

Founder, New Design Congress
https://newdesigncongress.org/en/join

On 11.10.24 18:55, Harv Stanic Staalman via nettime-l wrote:
> Oh, how democratic and advanced. Asking for a censorship in a 21st century, after 40 years of fighting for internet freedoms certainly brings memories of the
> //Reichsministerium//// für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda//.
> I wonder which EU funding scheme sponsors this?
> Geert should know better.
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