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U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#181
I do think there's a rationale middle of the road here. Hear me out.

I think if you provide a service that basically creates a free public sphere, and you don't charge for it, it makes sense to consider what you're offering a public sphere and that just mean it has to be treated like one, where you should be free to speak up and mobilize peacefully.

If social platforms charge a fee, or subscription, then it is a private sphere, and I think platforms should be allowed to do whatever they want in that case.

Finally, the constitution only applies to lawful citizens of the US, which means that in order for platforms that would provide a free sphere of discourse, to be excluded from their enforcements, you would need to have performed full know your customers, and proven to the platform you are a real citizen of the US, with regularly having to re-proove that your account is still owned and used only by real citizen of the US. If you didn't provide this info and proved your status, the platform should be allowed to apply enforcement, because you could very well be a bot, or a foreigner.

Lastly, you should also have to speak non-anonymously, if you don't reveal your true identity to others in the public sphere, enforcement would still apply to you, because in a real-life public sphere people are not anonymous either, you should be able to know who is speaking.

Lastly, you shouldn't be allowed to make it look like you are more than one person, so use of multiple accounts and various pseudonyms if found should also make you eligible for enforcement again.

I think with these, it's reasonable on both front, prove you're a real US citizen, have a single public account that's not hiding your identity, go ahead and say what you want unrestricted, you're right to free speech applies. Otherwise, it's not clear you're someone who has a right to free speech, and therefore enforcement should be taking place.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#182

If this passes, basically what's going to happen is a lot of pre-filtering of people entering social networks akin to next doors strategy. I've worked at a civic tech social network that had no rules, and eventually the extremists pushed out all the normal folks - it's just stupid shouting matches. We tore it all down and made isolated communities. It's basically the only way to have real discourse.

I wonder if the underlying goal of all this is actually classic authoritarian restriction of freedoms. The big public platforms are much better for spreading progressive ideas than conservative ideas. Maybe this was the underlying reason they wanted to repeal section 230. It wasn’t a misunderstanding it was strategic.

Are you sure? Seems like Twitter&FB and the like were more likely to promote the reactions to conservative ideas, which by necessity gives more airtime to those.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#183

Will this apply to bots? What if I have a big list of a complaints about a certain politician (use your imagination, there's more than one politician to complain about), but the "other party" doesn't follow me, in fact, I have very few followers overall. So I create a bot that spreads my opinions by replying to millions of other Tweets. Anyone who mentions the politician of interest will receive a reply from "me" (my…

Once they figure it out they'll write a special case against using bots, but troll farms will be alive and well. At which point the site will switch to more stringent sign up requirements, as another post said.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure, since section 230's safe harbor is involved. If section 230's protections were dropped for social media, I am sure that most courts would adopt the Citizens United standard. However, that would mean a ton of lawsuits for all the defamation and harassment that happens on those platforms.

Section 230 is a federal law, it cannot make a state law that would otherwise violate the First Amendment as incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment somehow okay. That’s not how the relationship between state, federal, and constitutional law works.

If this court case is over a state law, is Citizens United even precedential? That was a ruling about a federal law, and this appears to be a matter of Texas law, adjudicated with Texas court precedent. I assume it's only in federal court due to diversity jurisdiction.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#185
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already passed, it's a law on the books in Texas. And now it's been upheld at by both trial and circuit courts. FWIW: there's one last chance at SCOTUS to undo this, but if that doesn't work out what we're almost certain to see instead of "pre-filtering" is just "No Tweeting from Texas".

No tweeting from Texas sounds like a great idea! We can expand it to no tweeting from anywhere after we see the effects on Texans. Then I bknow the popular nexts step would be to get rid of FB and Instagram, but I'm in favor of dissolving Pinterest first. It is like charlie and the football everytime I follow a link from an image search looking for something only to notice it was Pinterest right afterwards but before…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#186
post #104

If this passes, basically what's going to happen is a lot of pre-filtering of people entering social networks akin to next doors strategy. I've worked at a civic tech social network that had no rules, and eventually the extremists pushed out all the normal folks - it's just stupid shouting matches. We tore it all down and made isolated communities. It's basically the only way to have real discourse.

It already passed, it's a law on the books in Texas. And now it's been upheld at by both trial and circuit courts. FWIW: there's one last chance at SCOTUS to undo this, but if that doesn't work out what we're almost certain to see instead of "pre-filtering" is just "No Tweeting from Texas".

The apparent disdain for Texas in this thread is bizarre.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#188

I do think there's a rationale middle of the road here. Hear me out. I think if you provide a service that basically creates a free public sphere, and you don't charge for it, it makes sense to consider what you're offering a public sphere and that just mean it has to be treated like one, where you should be free to speak up and mobilize peacefully. If social platforms charge a fee, or subscription, then it is a priv…

The 1st Amendment applies to aliens. https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/sites/default/files/Are%20Immig...

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#189
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple. Shut off Texas. You don’t have a right to use social media. I wouldn’t even appeal the decision. Let Texas lie in the bed they made.

Quoted post unavailable.

For there to be a parallel in that specific case, that community would’ve had to have had the power to prosecute and enforce judgments against any organisation that published blood libels.

They didn’t, so it isn’t.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#190

There's discussion over what exactly a "political view" is here. I find this quote from a previous article [1] enlightening: > "No one—not lawyers, not judges, not experts in the field, not even the law's own sponsors—knows what compliance with this law looks like." [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/texas-law-bannin...

Well the difficult thing is that apparently every day mundane activities can be "political" depending on who is doing them and in what context. Even a character in a show or video game suddenly becomes a political statement (to some people) just by being female, or brown, or gay, etc.
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