U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by woodruffw » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #239

woodruffw wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizens United determined that corporations have some of the same natural rights that people do. In particular, First Amendment right, which in turn means that corporations can do the same politicking (and political funding) that natural persons do. This ruling countermands that: the (implicit) right to not be compelled to speak would seemingly no longer apply to corporations or, more accurately, the people within t…

> which in turn means that corporations can do the same politicking (and political funding) that natural persons do. How can a corporation do any of these without natural persons being actually the ones deciding on and performing these actions? Corporation is, after all, just a form of organization of natural persons, and cannot do anything on its own. In Citizens United, government argued that the government can ban…

> Corporation is, after all, just a form of organization of natural persons, and cannot do anything on its own.

A corporation is a synthetic legal object: beyond basic restrictions on its form, it's allowed to legislate itself internally according to whatever bylaws and structure it pleases. There is no requirement (and no particular precedent) for them having a democratic structure.

This produces a fundamental tension between the people who comprise the corporation and the decisions that the corporation makes: the corporation can choose to do things that are overwhelmingly unpopular with its employees without significant recourse, since the corporation does not operate according to the will of its members.

In other words: corporations are naturally susceptible to undemocratic power concentrations, where a small number of executives or board members use the financial heft of the corporate body to achieve their personal goals. Allowing those concentrations to then seep into our democratic system is fundamentally corrosive.

> Are you also supporting this position, that government can suppress your speech if any at any point corporate funds are used?

No. I'm not obliged to defend whatever argument the USG's lawyers presented during the particulars of the CU case.

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

#252

Post by Buttons840 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

a_shovel wrote: post #157

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, I know my political opinion is that you should check out my new product, and I'm going to express this political opinion a lot. If necessary I'll include a sentence about a US President.

I'm half serious here. I would love to tell people about a new game I have on Steam (let's say), so I code a WebDriver "tool". It searches out gaming related Tweets and then expresses my political opinion. I have to press enter once for each post it makes. It's not a bot, since it only responds to user input from a genuine Texan. I even do a captcha by hand every once in a while.

I guess it goes back to your excellent quote, nobody know what compliance with this law looks like.

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

#253

Post by solarmist » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

anotherOneSound wrote: post #232

solarmist wrote: post #60

Copied from a comment thread below. Because I feel this is the root of the issue/problem. > I don't see how the heck my website is a public square but my home or café isn't, this argument sounds self-contradictory. Yup. This is the exact problem that we’re (as a society/world) wrestling with. The reason it is (not just seems) different is because of the scope. A message on a chalkboard cannot reach millions of people…

i don’t think the crux of the issue is determining how to legislate the priv/publ dichotomy, but rather how can we enable as many people as desire an ability to establish their own chalkboard. legislation as its proceeding is serving to entrench big tech platforms, its disabling the common person from having their own chalkboard with its own moderation preferences. let the market decide. this, in my opinion, is not t…

That may be a better ideal solution, but that’s not the world we live in.

I have no interest in establishing my own chalk board, nor do most people.

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

#254

Post by taeric » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 6:21 PM UTC

dpifke wrote: post #137

solarmist wrote: post #60

Copied from a comment thread below. Because I feel this is the root of the issue/problem. > I don't see how the heck my website is a public square but my home or café isn't, this argument sounds self-contradictory. Yup. This is the exact problem that we’re (as a society/world) wrestling with. The reason it is (not just seems) different is because of the scope. A message on a chalkboard cannot reach millions of people…

The decision[0] gives different logic (quoting from page 85): If a firm’s core business is disseminating others’ speech, then that should weaken, not strengthen, the firm’s argument that it has a First Amendment right to censor that speech. In PruneYard, for example, the shopping mall was open to the public—but for the purpose of shopping, not sharing expression. So it was perhaps tenuous for the State to use the pub…

That seems like a silly distinction. At a broad level, all discussion can be seen as political. And it is natural for events to be dominated by actions from a side for a time, such that it would be natural for more criticisms of a political party over others at any time.

This gets dangerously into the "whataboutisms" of toxic discourse. Especially when they are not presented in at all an even or good faith manner.

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

#255

Post by variadix » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 6:21 PM UTC

didibus wrote: post #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 priv…

I agree. I also think the ‘free to use’ model of most big social media websites undermines competition.

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

#256

Post by solarmist » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

dpifke wrote: post #137

solarmist wrote: post #60

Copied from a comment thread below. Because I feel this is the root of the issue/problem. > I don't see how the heck my website is a public square but my home or café isn't, this argument sounds self-contradictory. Yup. This is the exact problem that we’re (as a society/world) wrestling with. The reason it is (not just seems) different is because of the scope. A message on a chalkboard cannot reach millions of people…

The decision[0] gives different logic (quoting from page 85): If a firm’s core business is disseminating others’ speech, then that should weaken, not strengthen, the firm’s argument that it has a First Amendment right to censor that speech. In PruneYard, for example, the shopping mall was open to the public—but for the purpose of shopping, not sharing expression. So it was perhaps tenuous for the State to use the pub…

Current law doesn’t have machinery to represent this idea, so it makes sense their arguments won’t match.

But at the core of all the arguments this is the idea that’s trying to be settled.

And really it’s more complicated than all that because it boils down to the algorithm deciding who to show the posts too.

An unbiased algorithm is impossible.

Show all political messages to all people, now you’ve just incentivized politicians to have multiple people full time jobs be to produce more messages.

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

#257

Post by trimethylpurine » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #180

mikkergp wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only research that has been done on this found that on Twitter the conservative voices were amplified more than progressive voices: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/10/27/twitter-am...

The opinion of three journalists working for the same retail tech conglomerate is hardly "research." WaPo has suffered a Pulitzer Prize revocation in 1981 for fabricating stories, has continuously circulated advertisements from China Watch (operated by the CCP), repeatedly settled on libelous claims made for profit, and on numerous occasions assisted in providing platforms for anti-Western and anti-Semitic groups supported by Iran. It's a joke to imagine they would do research in hopes of drawing any conclusion but the one that makes them the most money.

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

#258

Post by ajvs » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

CJefferson wrote: post #240

coffeeblack wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let each user block what they don’t want to see. With filters, ai, etc. Don’t have a centralized “overlord” decide what an individual is allowed to see. That should be obvious and not controversial.

Having run a mail server, I don't think it's reasonable to expect most people to contain the deluge of spam and phishing attacks they would get if just told them to "sort it out" themselves.

Or following the mail example, adopt a spam control mechanism that doesn't require coding it yourself.

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

#259

Post by root_axis » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

throwaway0asd wrote: post #227

mustache_kimono wrote: post #5

Important to note that this 5th Circuit ruling conflicts with the 11th Circuit's ruling. And SCOTUS had previously reinstated an injunction against this very same law. And this 5th Circuit opinion has very idiosyncratic reasoning [0, just the first few pages will blow your hair back]. A sample: "In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of cours…

If social media wishes to be immune from lawsuits regarding the content it publishes, section 203, then it should not have the ability to censor such content for an explicit commercial revenue model. I understand why people hate that opinion, because they want civil discourse and nearly free access to media online. Uncensored content pushes normal people out. Those things are great, but are ultimately out of alignmen…

> If social media wishes to be immune from lawsuits regarding the content it publishes, section 203, then it should not have the ability to censor such content for an explicit commercial revenue model.

Why? This is seems like a total non-sequitur. It's pretty obvious that the individual posting illegal content is the person responsible for it and not the platform it's posted to, unless the platform is soliciting or refusing to remove said content. The anti-230 reasoning seems purely motivated by punitive thinking rather than what actually makes sense in reality.

> Those things are great, but are ultimately out of alignment with a commercial revenue model.

I would say it's out of alignment with the ad model specifically. Currently, there exists a financial incentive to curate content in a manner that pleases advertisers and the internet mobs that patronize their businesses. However, if social media companies were somehow forced into a subscription model, they would have a financial incentive to avoid banning users because it would hurt the bottom line, it would also eliminate the incentive to curate content to the prerogative of advertisers, and it would make the user experience much better due to lack of ads and the need to create better user experiences to maintain retention.

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

#260

Post by fzeroracer » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #107

belltaco wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will result in way higher moderation, instead of less. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actua...

I want smaller, tighter knit, and moderated communites. Why do we care about outcome anyway? The outcome of section 230 was arbitrary moderation, consolidation, and surveillance capitalism. It is unnatural for an entity to not be liable for what they publish.

When Section 230 goes every forum and smaller community becomes the legal wild west, open to being sued by any jackass claiming libel and to drag site owners into a years long legal battle.