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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

#291

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.

>It is unnatural for an entity to not be liable for what they publish

Since when have paper boys been held liable for what's in the newspapers? Social media is distributing someone else's opinions.

The very forum you're posting in will cease to exist.

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

#292
post #19

It's your right to have an opinion, it's my right not to have to listen to it.

It's my right to be able to hear it. As Frederick Douglass, a former slave and writer, wisely stated, “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”

Nothing stops this. You can hear what you want to hear.

What's funny is, y'all claim you should be able to hear what you want to hear, but when others don't want to hear it - you scream "cancel culture".

You can't have it both ways. Either grow up and run your own businesses/communities and attract revenue to support them or realize your ideas are bad and can't be sustained. This happens to everyone regardless of their beliefs.

You can't take successful companies and force them to be unsuccessful by embracing communities that fail.

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

#293
post #19

It's your right to have an opinion, it's my right not to have to listen to it.

Absolutely. But not your right to ensure that nobody can hear.

> But not your right to ensure that nobody can hear.

Exactly. On social networks, the block button is there for anyone to use if you don't want to hear it.

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

#294
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tensi…

> 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. Sure, but it’s still natural persons who are actually making those decisions, no? After…

If it's a natural person, then they can do it with their own time and money. This is not what we've seen in the post-CU political financing world: we've increasingly seen opaque corporate structures where unknown individuals ply unknown amounts of money (collected from the labor of people who almost certainly wouldn't approve it directly) into races.

CU does nothing to protect the free expression of individuals; it has markedly diminished the expressive power of individuals in the political sphere in favor of opaque and legally established (rather than natural) entities.

> So you are only against Citizens United as applied to big and powerful corporations, but are totally fine with it with less powerful corporations? Say, you totally support the actual plaintiff, the Citizens United organization, in its right to publish the movie that was the subject matter in the case?

I don't know if this is intentional on your part, but you're dropping a key piece of context: Citizens United (the organization) is a PAC, with extraordinarily wealthy corporate financiers. It's not some kind of scrappy outfit with a handful of unpaid undergraduate interns, and it would not exist independent of the corporate interests that use it as a more palatable front for political influence ("Koch Interests Action Campaign" just doesn't have quite the same ring to it, I think).

> Should government also have a right to restrict speech of individuals if they are rich and powerful enough?

Frankly, there should be no private financing of elections at all. But that's not realistic.

Realistically: rich and powerful people have the exact same right to engage in electoral politics as everyone else, and there is no immediately feasible way to stop them from dominating those politics via their wealth and power. What we can do is make those attempts at domination as transparent as possible. Rulings like CU directly stand in the way of electoral transparency.

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

#295
The consequences of this law aren’t very clear, especially in the post Citizens United world where scotus has established that corporations have first amendment rights that are protected by constitution. Now, if a corporation is in some sense required to carry someone’s message due to some law, that gets into (arguably) the realm of forced speech.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Citzens United is a horrible ruling, and this whole fiasco just further shows the “rules for thee but not for me” doctrine the Republican Party has been operating for the past 25 odd years.

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

#296
The article says:

>The largely 2-1 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

And at the end:

>(This story corrects to largely 2-1 ruling in second paragraph)

I don't understand this. What does "largely" mean here? Was it a 2-1 decision or not? Why the qualifier?

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

#297
post #217

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…

I'm not a lawyer but I don't think this would apply to bots. The Texas law text[1] says it only protects 'users' which are defined as people. And even then the law only prohibits censorship for specific reasons. It doesn't say companies can't ban users for running bots. Even if the messages the bot is posting are protected the fact of running the bot itself should still be a bannable offense if it's not allowed in th…

So can I hire someone from a low cost-of-living jurisdiction and get them to behave like a bot for me?

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

#298
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No they aren’t. A discussion about my week or grocery shopping isn’t political. You can make any discussion political, but that’s not at all the same.

You'd be surprised. Folks will pick brands for political reasons, too. More, folks will band against brands for said reasons. I mean, you are correct that there can be neutral discussions. Typically, neutral isn't as neutral as you'd think.

That would be an example of people making something political out of a non-political issue. Both people and companies can be guilty of this.

"Oh, I ran into Lucy at the supermarket today"

"Awesome, did they have that new brand of ice cream?"

"I didn't see it, but they did have a massive sale on strawberries."

"Darn, I guess I'll check Market Cart next time I go."

---

"Oh, I ran into Lucy at the supermarket today"

"Did you hear she voted for Tom?"

"Oh... uh, no?"

"I dont know how people can enable such evil. Did they have that new ice cream?"

"No, but they did have a massive sale on strawberries"

"Oh, I heard they donated to Tom, so I don't want it in my house anyways."

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

#299
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The court isn't saying you can't moderate out the cesspool posts. They are saying that you can't choose political sides.

[flagged]

You get invocations of the reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy.

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

#300

The article says: >The largely 2-1 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals And at the end: >(This story corrects to largely 2-1 ruling in second paragraph) I don't understand this. What does "largely" mean here? Was it a 2-1 decision or not? Why the qualifier?

One of the judges issued a partial concurrence and partial dissent.
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