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I have struggled with both points of the argument for a while now. In general, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment that this would be a glaring overreach

by 0x5002 6y ago

I have struggled with both points of the argument for a while now. In general, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment that this would be a glaring overreach on the side of the feds. It's also apparent that social networks have a tendency to cater massively to one side of the increasingly divided political spectrum, as proven with experiments like Gab. I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that bases their philosophy on the 1st amendment, but in reality, all it did was to attract the polar opposite of the /r/politics subreddit (to put it lightly), rather than to facilitate free and open discourse. On the other hand, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al are undoubtedly massively influential on the public opinion and their corporate position on political topics - Yoel Roth's recent tweets serve as a decent example, showing clearly that this person cannot be an objective "fact checker" - essentially create a public forum where I am not able to exercise my first amendment rights (and, legally speaking, rightfully so). I cannot help but to find this very concerning. YouTube (despite numerous issues with their interpretation of free speech), for instance, starting linking Wiki articles under videos that cover certain topics or are uploaded by certain channels. Videos by the BBC show a notice that the BBC is a British public broadcast service, simply informing the viewer about the fact that any bias they might encounter can be easily identified (feel free to switch "BBC" with "RT"). I've found that to be a decent middle ground between outright suppressing views by a corporation pretending to be the authority on certain topics and broadcasting everything without any context.

thebouv 6y ago
> essentially create a public(1) forum where I am not able to exercise my first amendment rights(2) (and, legally speaking, rightfully so(3)). I cannot help but to find this very concerning. (1) Private forum, displayed in the public. (2) Those rights protect your speech from being suppressed BY THE GOVERNMENT. (3) Correct if you meant legally as a private company running a private forum, they can manage the content as they see fit, including fact checking the POTUS. Or incorrect if you meant you have a legal right to exercise your speech on their platform free of their rules.
- anewdirection 6y ago
  Privately owned areas are still often public (as opposed to publicly owned) spaces in the physical relam. While the digital is indeed different, you seem overly dismissive of this fact by omission and unnessarry capitolization.
  - awinder 6y ago
    capitalization, if we must nit, we must nit it right.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
koheripbal 6y ago
The obvious way around both of these arguments is to offer consumers more choices. If someone is censored from a particular platform, there needs to be another that they can use. There are a tiiiiny number of companies that are controlling global communications, and that should make us all uncomfortable. Being banned from one restaurant in town, should not mean you're banned from all restaurants in the world.
- jasonlotito 6y ago
  There are other platforms. The issue isn't the platforms, they want the audience from one platform on other platforms as well. Consumers have the choice to use those other platforms, and people do actively use those other platforms. They just don't necessarily bring the same audience. > Being banned from one restaurant in town, should not mean you're banned from all restaurants in the world. So is the suggestion that I should be forced to serve people I don't want to serve?
  - Stranger43 6y ago
    The current US law regarding restaurants is in fact that an commercial establishment have very little freedom to refuse to save people based on who they are. The problem with social media is that the big platforms, like the post office or your ISP often ends up as an natural monopoly that can be just as dangerous to your political freedoms as any out of control government department by virtue of being just as powerful in the real world.
    - dlp211 6y ago
      > The current US law regarding restaurants is in fact that an commercial establishment have very little freedom to refuse to save people based on who they are. To be clear, current US law protects things that one can not change about themselves eg: race --and even this is a bit of an oversimplification (see being gay or a woman)-- but it in no way prevents a restaurant from serving someone because of the attire they are wearing or the speech they are speaking.
localhost 6y ago
Here is the entire text of the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Note that it says that CONGRESS cannot make a law that abridges freedom of speech. It says nothing about individuals or companies abridging freedom of speech for others.
- stale2002 6y ago
  You are missing other laws that already enforce standards on certain platforms, that are similar to the concept of free speech. Those laws are called common carrier laws. It is already illegal for many communication platforms, that a subject to certain classifications, to discriminate on the basis of the content of the speech that they distribute. Common carrier laws are not controversial. Few people would argue that we should get rid of common carrier laws.
  - localhost 6y ago
    IANAL but common carrier laws are there to protect the carrier. e.g., people can use a telephone to plan a crime, but you cannot hold the phone company responsible for that crime. So the phone company does not discriminate otherwise they lose common carrier protections. Regardless, I was responding to the 1st amendment claim by the GP.
    - stale2002 6y ago
      > but you cannot hold the phone company responsible for that crime Sure. But now imagine if we applied the same provisions to twitter or facebook. We could say that if they don't follow common carrier status, then we can hold them responsible for any crime done on their platform. This is would almost effectively the same thing as forcing them to follow common carrier laws. And it would have the same effect as requiring them to follow the 1st amendment, but doing it in a round about way. It is not exactly the same as using the 1st amendment. But it is close enough. Because, TBH, we already use these laws for commication platforms, such as phone companies.
kitd 6y ago
FWIW, the BBC World Service podcast "The Compass" [1] has an excellent series on free speech by the veteran BBC journalist Robin Lustig. I highly recommend it. He covers tech companies, universities, blasphemy laws, etc. [1] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035w97h/episodes/downloads https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035w97h/episodes/downloads For me, free speech is fundamentally about trying to rectify the injustice of an imbalance of power between those in authority and the ordinary citizen. During the Enlightenment, the authorities were monarchs, but even before that, the origins of free speech can be seen in the Reformation, the authorities being the established Church and the battles being eg the right to a Bible in your own language or the right to worship without priests. In modern times, authorities can be just straightforward, well, authoritarian. Global leaders & business people who tweet or post on FB carry an authority ex officio that make their proclamations much more acceptable to the neutral reader. That in itself is a dangerous situation and Twitter or FB absolutely need to take control. If these companies want us to take them seriously as champions of free speech, they have to play their role to help restore that balance of power, by being far more stringent about fact-checking the tweets of those global leaders than they would be for ordinary posters. Those right-wingers who love to proclaim themselves champions of free speech are really objecting to the Tyranny of the Majority. That is not an authority that requires a rebalance of power. It is just an established opinion.
- Veen 6y ago
  > Those right-wingers who love to proclaim themselves champions of free speech are really objecting to the Tyranny of the Majority. That is not an authority that requires a rebalancing of power. It is just an established opinion. A tyranny of the majority—which you appear not to understand is a bad thing[0]—is a disaster and precisely what modern democratic institutions seek to avoid. It always leads to the repression of minorities, whether that's ethnic minorities, religious minorities, or political minorities. I doubt you would be much in favor of tyranny by a majority of a different political persuasion. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
  - kitd 6y ago
    You're right that I worded it wrong. I was trying to say that they see it as a tyranny of the majority, whereas it is it is just a majority opinion.
tootie 6y ago
Even if you take the most libertarian view of free speech, the proper recourse would be to sue and let the courts decide and/or work with Congress on explicit legislation on the responsibilities of content hosters. Declaring that he would use his executive authority to punish a private company for personal injury is dangerously authoritarian in my view.
arminiusreturns 6y ago
What bugs me is that so many people always jump straight to the most base and rudimentary catch phrase arguments on the topic. It's always "private companies != free speech for others, just for them" or the opposite "we should be able to say whatever whenever", inevitably followed up by a "but you don't have a right to consequence/response free speech"... it's tiring and shallow thinking on the subject. I just ctrl+f'd for "public forum" and yours was the first hit. One thing in particular I would like to comment on is that post-Trump's election I started listening to some of my SO's legal field podcasts because I wanted less sensational analysis. I very distinctly remember a series on the Opening Arguments one where they went into some depth about why Twitter should be legally considered a limited public-forum (this was in response to some other Trump-Twitter hubbub at the time). So, just granting that, how does potentially being a "limited public forum" change it's rights and responsibilities to it's users? What about the heavy US government involvement in these companies, how could that change the analysis? What about the fact that dominate platforms are able to control the narrative due to that domination? Doesn't that completely fuck up the free speech concept? "Everyone uses X, but you can't because we don't like you, so you can have your free speech over there in that corner where nobody is." What kind of dangers in the long run does this present? Why do these companies so easily fall into models of censorship, and what kind of future would that mean for the public? (not looking to actually get into the convo necessarily, I'm commenting on the meta of the discussion and wish these kinds of questions were being asked more) I personally hate youtubes banner for controversial shit. It always links to some shitty ass Wikipedia thats been heavily controlled/edited. Wikipedia is just not a good source of info on controversial topics, (though looking through revision history certainly can add context of what is "missing").
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  It's further complicated by the people who sued Trump for blocking them. They won, he had to unblock them. Considering they could log out (or open a private tab) and view the content, obviously it wasn't access to the information that was fundamental but the act of the President taking a step to reduce someone's access. With that in mind, the underlying host taking a similar action is either a) Okay because it's their system? or b) Bad because they're blocking or altering the message? We're in this really weird spot of free speech vs private property vs public forum vs free access vs..
ip26 6y ago
On the other hand, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al are undoubtedly massively influential on the public opinion You could have said the same thing about the press fifty or sixty years ago.
bosswipe 6y ago
Yoel Roth who? Oh, after some googling it looks like Fox News has picked the target for the latest Two Minutes Hate.
SkyBelow 6y ago
>I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that bases their philosophy on the 1st amendment, but in reality, all it did was to attract the polar opposite of the /r/politics subreddit (to put it lightly) Well, a few other crowds did move to it but were quickly banned under the argument that their speech did not count as speech and thus wasn't protected. I remember it being quite a humorous (ironic?) twist for a company claiming to champion free speech.

by 0x5002 6y ago

thebouv 6y ago

> essentially create a public(1) forum where I am not able to exercise my first amendment rights(2) (and, legally speaking, rightfully so(3)). I cannot help but to find this very concerning. (1) Private forum, displayed in the public. (2) Those rights protect your speech from being suppressed BY THE GOVERNMENT. (3) Correct if you meant legally as a private company running a private forum, they can manage the content as they see fit, including fact checking the POTUS. Or incorrect if you meant you have a legal right to exercise your speech on their platform free of their rules.

anewdirection 6y ago
Privately owned areas are still often public (as opposed to publicly owned) spaces in the physical relam. While the digital is indeed different, you seem overly dismissive of this fact by omission and unnessarry capitolization.
- awinder 6y ago
  capitalization, if we must nit, we must nit it right.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

koheripbal 6y ago

The obvious way around both of these arguments is to offer consumers more choices. If someone is censored from a particular platform, there needs to be another that they can use. There are a tiiiiny number of companies that are controlling global communications, and that should make us all uncomfortable. Being banned from one restaurant in town, should not mean you're banned from all restaurants in the world.

jasonlotito 6y ago
There are other platforms. The issue isn't the platforms, they want the audience from one platform on other platforms as well. Consumers have the choice to use those other platforms, and people do actively use those other platforms. They just don't necessarily bring the same audience. > Being banned from one restaurant in town, should not mean you're banned from all restaurants in the world. So is the suggestion that I should be forced to serve people I don't want to serve?
- Stranger43 6y ago
  The current US law regarding restaurants is in fact that an commercial establishment have very little freedom to refuse to save people based on who they are. The problem with social media is that the big platforms, like the post office or your ISP often ends up as an natural monopoly that can be just as dangerous to your political freedoms as any out of control government department by virtue of being just as powerful in the real world.
  - dlp211 6y ago
    > The current US law regarding restaurants is in fact that an commercial establishment have very little freedom to refuse to save people based on who they are. To be clear, current US law protects things that one can not change about themselves eg: race --and even this is a bit of an oversimplification (see being gay or a woman)-- but it in no way prevents a restaurant from serving someone because of the attire they are wearing or the speech they are speaking.

localhost 6y ago

Here is the entire text of the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Note that it says that CONGRESS cannot make a law that abridges freedom of speech. It says nothing about individuals or companies abridging freedom of speech for others.

stale2002 6y ago
You are missing other laws that already enforce standards on certain platforms, that are similar to the concept of free speech. Those laws are called common carrier laws. It is already illegal for many communication platforms, that a subject to certain classifications, to discriminate on the basis of the content of the speech that they distribute. Common carrier laws are not controversial. Few people would argue that we should get rid of common carrier laws.
- localhost 6y ago
  IANAL but common carrier laws are there to protect the carrier. e.g., people can use a telephone to plan a crime, but you cannot hold the phone company responsible for that crime. So the phone company does not discriminate otherwise they lose common carrier protections. Regardless, I was responding to the 1st amendment claim by the GP.
  - stale2002 6y ago
    > but you cannot hold the phone company responsible for that crime Sure. But now imagine if we applied the same provisions to twitter or facebook. We could say that if they don't follow common carrier status, then we can hold them responsible for any crime done on their platform. This is would almost effectively the same thing as forcing them to follow common carrier laws. And it would have the same effect as requiring them to follow the 1st amendment, but doing it in a round about way. It is not exactly the same as using the 1st amendment. But it is close enough. Because, TBH, we already use these laws for commication platforms, such as phone companies.

kitd 6y ago

FWIW, the BBC World Service podcast "The Compass" [1] has an excellent series on free speech by the veteran BBC journalist Robin Lustig. I highly recommend it. He covers tech companies, universities, blasphemy laws, etc. [1] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035w97h/episodes/downloads https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035w97h/episodes/downloads For me, free speech is fundamentally about trying to rectify the injustice of an imbalance of power between those in authority and the ordinary citizen. During the Enlightenment, the authorities were monarchs, but even before that, the origins of free speech can be seen in the Reformation, the authorities being the established Church and the battles being eg the right to a Bible in your own language or the right to worship without priests. In modern times, authorities can be just straightforward, well, authoritarian. Global leaders & business people who tweet or post on FB carry an authority ex officio that make their proclamations much more acceptable to the neutral reader. That in itself is a dangerous situation and Twitter or FB absolutely need to take control. If these companies want us to take them seriously as champions of free speech, they have to play their role to help restore that balance of power, by being far more stringent about fact-checking the tweets of those global leaders than they would be for ordinary posters. Those right-wingers who love to proclaim themselves champions of free speech are really objecting to the Tyranny of the Majority. That is not an authority that requires a rebalance of power. It is just an established opinion.

Veen 6y ago
> Those right-wingers who love to proclaim themselves champions of free speech are really objecting to the Tyranny of the Majority. That is not an authority that requires a rebalancing of power. It is just an established opinion. A tyranny of the majority—which you appear not to understand is a bad thing[0]—is a disaster and precisely what modern democratic institutions seek to avoid. It always leads to the repression of minorities, whether that's ethnic minorities, religious minorities, or political minorities. I doubt you would be much in favor of tyranny by a majority of a different political persuasion. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
- kitd 6y ago
  You're right that I worded it wrong. I was trying to say that they see it as a tyranny of the majority, whereas it is it is just a majority opinion.

tootie 6y ago

Even if you take the most libertarian view of free speech, the proper recourse would be to sue and let the courts decide and/or work with Congress on explicit legislation on the responsibilities of content hosters. Declaring that he would use his executive authority to punish a private company for personal injury is dangerously authoritarian in my view.

arminiusreturns 6y ago

What bugs me is that so many people always jump straight to the most base and rudimentary catch phrase arguments on the topic. It's always "private companies != free speech for others, just for them" or the opposite "we should be able to say whatever whenever", inevitably followed up by a "but you don't have a right to consequence/response free speech"... it's tiring and shallow thinking on the subject. I just ctrl+f'd for "public forum" and yours was the first hit. One thing in particular I would like to comment on is that post-Trump's election I started listening to some of my SO's legal field podcasts because I wanted less sensational analysis. I very distinctly remember a series on the Opening Arguments one where they went into some depth about why Twitter should be legally considered a limited public-forum (this was in response to some other Trump-Twitter hubbub at the time). So, just granting that, how does potentially being a "limited public forum" change it's rights and responsibilities to it's users? What about the heavy US government involvement in these companies, how could that change the analysis? What about the fact that dominate platforms are able to control the narrative due to that domination? Doesn't that completely fuck up the free speech concept? "Everyone uses X, but you can't because we don't like you, so you can have your free speech over there in that corner where nobody is." What kind of dangers in the long run does this present? Why do these companies so easily fall into models of censorship, and what kind of future would that mean for the public? (not looking to actually get into the convo necessarily, I'm commenting on the meta of the discussion and wish these kinds of questions were being asked more) I personally hate youtubes banner for controversial shit. It always links to some shitty ass Wikipedia thats been heavily controlled/edited. Wikipedia is just not a good source of info on controversial topics, (though looking through revision history certainly can add context of what is "missing").

caseysoftware 6y ago
It's further complicated by the people who sued Trump for blocking them. They won, he had to unblock them. Considering they could log out (or open a private tab) and view the content, obviously it wasn't access to the information that was fundamental but the act of the President taking a step to reduce someone's access. With that in mind, the underlying host taking a similar action is either a) Okay because it's their system? or b) Bad because they're blocking or altering the message? We're in this really weird spot of free speech vs private property vs public forum vs free access vs..

ip26 6y ago

On the other hand, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al are undoubtedly massively influential on the public opinion You could have said the same thing about the press fifty or sixty years ago.

bosswipe 6y ago

Yoel Roth who? Oh, after some googling it looks like Fox News has picked the target for the latest Two Minutes Hate.

SkyBelow 6y ago

>I've always liked the idea of having a Twitter clone that bases their philosophy on the 1st amendment, but in reality, all it did was to attract the polar opposite of the /r/politics subreddit (to put it lightly) Well, a few other crowds did move to it but were quickly banned under the argument that their speech did not count as speech and thus wasn't protected. I remember it being quite a humorous (ironic?) twist for a company claiming to champion free speech.