I live in the UK and we already have hate speech laws making certain speech illegal, e.g. extreme racist speech. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the encouragement of suicide was also illegal under such laws. Do we really think that people should have the right to encourage suicide? Surely the right of others to live is more important.

I dunno, I’m just suggesting it, I’m not saying the law should definitely be changed in this way.

If it was just one occurrence then maybe a large fine or some community service. If someone does it multiple times then maybe prison time. I’m just guessing really. People who are more knowledgeable about the justice system than I am could probably answer this better.

The problem isn’t that there is pro suicide content, the problem is that people are listening to it. If your society is so gullible and fragile that they will kill themselves because some asshole online says to, you have a much much bigger problem than online speech.

I get why you don’t want to restrict free speech. Maybe we should just agree to disagree.

I think I would probably be okay with the encouragement of suicide being illegal. Imagine a child or young teenager committing suicide because people online encouraged them. Some young people might brush off any such encouragement, but some young people might not. I think the young person’s right to life is more important than some online person’s right to encourage somebody to commit suicide.

It seems they’re not being removed because they’re Russian, but instead because they work for specific companies who are subject to US sanctions:

If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file.

Fair points. I guess I happen to think Linus’s action is fair since I think the sanctioned companies are thought to be supporting Russia’s invasion in some way.

He probably isn’t too bothered by the sanctions given his comments about his Finnish nationality being a reason why he opposes Russian aggression. But still, it seems at the moment he’s just trying to follow the law.

It seems though that Linus didn’t make this decision for political reasons, but instead because he doesn’t want to get in trouble with the US government. He indicated that he was advised by lawyers to do this:

I’m not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.

Certain speech is criminal like inciting violence.

Therefore I would say that there is no such thing as completely free speech, even in the US which has the First Amendment. There are always some restrictions on speech.

With the example of pro-suicide content, you could argue “making pro-suicide speech illegal would start a slippery slope”. But on the other hand, if you have people committing suicide because they were encouraged to do so, then maybe it makes sense to make pro-suicide speech illegal. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be a slippery slope. Other forms of speech don’t have to be banned.

Maybe. I think it might be okay if the government bans those things though, because people would still have political freedom to voice whatever political view they like, as long as they’re not promoting violence or harm to particular people in pursuit of political aims.

Perhaps it’s not easy to decide where the line of legality should go though, which is why this topic is controversial.

it’s all good to call Twitter the public square, but that’s a lot harder to take seriously when the guy in charge of policing the square is heavily biased

I agree. A public town square is good but like you say, it should be neutral, and Xitter is not that.

On the censorship thing, maybe it is okay if an online messaging website bans certain content, like pro-suicide content, or pro-terrorism content, etc. You could call that censorship but you could also call it safety. I don’t think anybody really believes in 100% free speech anyway, because if a person shouts “FIRE!” in a crowded theatre, when there is actually no fire, and it causes a stampede which kills people, should we not punish their speech because they’re free to say it?

Freedom of political speech is important, but maybe there should be some fundamental rules about certain types of speech.

As Elon himself said in the early days of the Twitter takeover, “free speech does not mean free reach”.

I understood that to mean “I want to claim I’m a ‘free speech absolutist’ while actually only promoting things I agree with”

Businesses might pay big money for LLMs to do specific tasks. And if chip makers invest more in NPUs then maybe LLMs will become cheaper to train. But I am just speculating because I don’t have any special knowledge of this area whatsoever.

Maybe it’s like the dotcom bubble: there is genuinely useful tech that has recently emerged, but too many companies are trying to jump on the bandwagon.

LLMs do seem genuinely useful to me, but of course they have limitations.

I think reducing the visibility of some kinds of content can be good, especially for those under 18. E.g. when it comes to content around suicide, I think it is better if children/teenagers see “there is support for you, please speak to a charity for free on this phone number” instead of pro-suicide content.

I hate to sound so salty, but its mind boggling that they would fight this so vehemently, instead of just… filtering abusive content?

I guess it’s just enshittification. Profits are their first priority.

Fuck Spez

You mean Amazon is bad to their workers?

Ah thanks those links do work. Some of that stuff is interesting, like this graph from the Cambridge link, with middle income people carrying the GOP:

Every one of those links gives me 404: not found… do they work for you? I am in the UK but that shouldn’t be a problem because I can normally access stuff from Pew, NYT, and WaPo.