I find absolutely ridiculous every social media / free speech discussion if platform does not have proof of identity. while you and I may have right to free speech the bots etc do not. hence, there is no free speech without proof of identity imo
Of course there is free speech without proof of identity. The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protects anonymous speech. The right to speak anonymously is fundamental to the right to speak freely.
You haven't proven the identity of "bdangubic" to us yet here you are exercising your right to free speech.
They're not saying people do not have the freedom to speak anonymously, they're saying that computer programs, by virtue of not being a person, do not have freedom of speech under the Constitution.
Obviously you can argue that you have First Amendment protections to write programs that then speak for you, which is essentially where the argument should happen. I think a very reasonable concession is: you can write programs that speak for you, so long as they do not masquerade as another person (real or fake). I.e.: you can write a program that speaks as you, or you can write a program that speaks as a program.
What if you were? One has to assume most of the "people" with whom one interacts on the internet are bots or AIs now, anyway. That's just the nature of our post-truth reality, it doesn't matter.
The point is that would have no bearing at all on whether or not you would have the right to free speech if you were a person who chose not to reveal your identity.
One has to assume most of the "people" with whom one interacts on the internet are bots or AIs now, anyway. That's just the nature of our post-truth reality, it doesn't matter.
but “people” do not have right to free speech, PEOPLE do. if as you said most interactions on the internet are bots they are not covered by the bill of rights :) identity-proofing would take care of that…
if you trust social media companies (barf!) you can prove identity and request to stay anonymous. these are not mutually exclusive (of course IF at the beginning of this post is a big IF :) )
I think anonymity is important for some kind of coordination problems (e.g. against an authoritarian government). A better solution is to have a nominal fee, maybe $10/yr to be platformed, that way it's expensive to bot.
Well, the issue with coordination is you need everyone already there to coordinate. If people are only using the network for illegitimate uses, then it will get shut down (think 4chan, Silk Road). Really, it's in the authoritarian government's best interest (not the people's) to make multiple platforms. Most people will choose the free one, so it's 10–100x cheaper to either bot the pay-for-anonymity platform or shut it down when they notice it formenting unrest.
I find absolutely ridiculous every social media / free speech discussion if platform does not have proof of identity. while you and I may have right to free speech the bots etc do not. hence, there is no free speech without proof of identity imo