Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
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Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
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Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#2Is there a law? Or are the platforms in question voluntarily using guidelines as guidance? Are platforms punished in the courts for failing to follow guidelines or implement moderation? As far as I know, the answers to the above are a resounding "no," and it follows that this isn't state censorship. It's the freedom of association, and freedom of speech, exercised by corporation-persons.
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#3Betteridge's Law of Headlines points to "no".
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#4Is there a law? Or are the platforms in question voluntarily using guidelines as guidance? Are platforms punished in the courts for failing to follow guidelines or implement moderation? As far as I know, the answers to the above are a resounding "no," and it follows that this isn't state censorship. It's the freedom of association, and freedom of speech, exercised by corporation-persons.
Corporation-persons. Is there a more dystopian concept in existence?
Corporations are NOT PEOPLE. They're made up of people, but the entity itself is NOT A PERSON.
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#5Related: Under India's new IT Rules, govt determines (of-course, arbitrarily) what is anti-national and intermediaries like Twitter and Facebook have to comply with deletion requests for such content.
Govt is also asking WhatsApp, Signal and other messaging platforms to store information about the "originator" of message (which defies the concept of encryption).
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#6Is there a law? Or are the platforms in question voluntarily using guidelines as guidance? Are platforms punished in the courts for failing to follow guidelines or implement moderation? As far as I know, the answers to the above are a resounding "no," and it follows that this isn't state censorship. It's the freedom of association, and freedom of speech, exercised by corporation-persons.
Corporation-persons. Is there a more dystopian concept in existence? Corporations are NOT PEOPLE. They're made up of people, but the entity itself is NOT A PERSON.
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Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#7Is there a law? Or are the platforms in question voluntarily using guidelines as guidance? Are platforms punished in the courts for failing to follow guidelines or implement moderation? As far as I know, the answers to the above are a resounding "no," and it follows that this isn't state censorship. It's the freedom of association, and freedom of speech, exercised by corporation-persons.
The article suggests that government employees may be consulting with YouTube in these censorship decisions.
And that consultation would seem to be prohibited by the first amendment, just as police aren't allowed to consult with PIs to violate people's rights, even if the PIs volunteer to do so.
(In other words, it's the gov employees, not YouTube, who would be violating people's rights by doing this.)
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#8Is there a law? Or are the platforms in question voluntarily using guidelines as guidance? Are platforms punished in the courts for failing to follow guidelines or implement moderation? As far as I know, the answers to the above are a resounding "no," and it follows that this isn't state censorship. It's the freedom of association, and freedom of speech, exercised by corporation-persons.
Corporation-persons. Is there a more dystopian concept in existence? Corporations are NOT PEOPLE. They're made up of people, but the entity itself is NOT A PERSON.
While I agree with you, that's how the supreme court has interpreted the constitution.
Let's take the strawman out of the picture and accept the fiction that corporations are not people. But, they are still not the state. They do not replace government services in any meaningful way -- choice of what to publish, and what not to publish, is firmly the role of private persons and commerce. Maintaining social media sites is not the role of government. Ergo, this is not state censorship.
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#9It absolutely can be, and it's absolutely something to watch out for, but I'm not sure that it is government censorship in this case. YouTube is choosing who to ask ostensibly due to their expertise, not because of government threats or enforcement.
That said, a few years ago one of things that kicked off the change from being relatively hands-off to more active content censorship by all of these platforms was being dragged before Congress and lectured and threatened that, if they didn't start voluntarily censoring content, the government would force them to. Those government threats, though they lacked immediate legal force, really do constitute government censorship. So there's an argument to be made that this whole new world of "voluntary" censorship by platform providers really is at its core government censorship.
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#10Is there a law? Or are the platforms in question voluntarily using guidelines as guidance? Are platforms punished in the courts for failing to follow guidelines or implement moderation? As far as I know, the answers to the above are a resounding "no," and it follows that this isn't state censorship. It's the freedom of association, and freedom of speech, exercised by corporation-persons.
The article suggests that government employees may be consulting with YouTube in these censorship decisions. And that consultation would seem to be prohibited by the first amendment, just as police aren't allowed to consult with PIs to violate people's rights, even if the PIs volunteer to do so. (In other words, it's the gov employees, not YouTube, who would be violating people's rights by doing this.)
Is YouTube doing that voluntarily, or is that consultation required by law?