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

#331

Post by mikkergp » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:15 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...

Interesting point, I guess I’m making the assertion that conservative ideas can spread better in small groups then liberal ideas since liberal ideas are trying to change the status quo they just have to plant a seed. Conservative ideas have to be fought for since “everyone already know them” (quotes for broad generalizations without data, but leaning into the fact that conservative ideas should be inherently more well known since they’ve been practiced in the past.)

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

#332

Post by analog31 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

robust-cactus wrote: post #97

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.

Is there anything to prevent a platform from categorizing content without censoring it?

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

#333

Post by themitigating » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:16 PM UTC

evandale wrote: post #81

philipwhiuk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unclear that this isn't a self referential attempt to redefine the centre rather than a genuinely held view. > threatening the direct physical harm of someone, or violating a law The laws already prevent the first by the way, it's called true threat > At the same time, everyone else should have the tools to filter, block, and mute speech they do not like. If a tweet or a social media post has a certain word or ph…

> Should a coffee shop owner be forced to hear words they don't like? How does forcing Twitter to allow Donald Trump to post translate to forcing you to hear words you don't like? You're free to block him and not read anything he posts. > Should the New York Times owner be forced to publish opinions they don't like? No, NYT is a publisher and has always had full control over what they publish. > Why is Facebook's own…

"How does forcing Twitter to allow Donald Trump to post translate to forcing you to hear words you don't like"

Not other users but facebook itself is forced to do this

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

#334

Post by xyzzyz » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:16 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #314

xyzzyz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies to every court in this country, and even more so to some. If 5th circuit is “corrupt, incoherent activism”, I’m lacking words to even describe the 9th.

No, the great majority of judges and courts – even the majority of e.g. Trump-appointed district-court judges – have internally consistent legal philosophies and prejudices which happen to differ from one to another. Sometimes judges talk past each-other or fundamentally disagree, but that is not the same as corruption. For the most part judges take their job seriously and do it carefully and in more or less good fai…

> What we are talking about here is judges ignoring the constitution, the law, past precedent, the will of the people, and the facts of the case, in order to make up a logically incoherent "argument" that happens to promote the judges’ pre-decided zany partisan outcome. Such rulings are profoundly corrosive to the rule of law and the legitimacy of the court system.

Yes, and this in fact happens in every court, that's my entire point. I can provide endless examples of outcome-oriented rulings from every single appeals circuit, and from SCOTUS too.

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

#335

Post by matthewdgreen » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

dpifke wrote: post #237

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...

The Court talks about this in the decision[0]. It makes a strong argument that striking down the Texas law before it's ever been enforced makes no sense, because all discussions of its benefits or harms are in the hypothetical realm. Quoting from pages 9-10: First, the judicial power vested in us by Article III does not include the power to veto statutes. And that omission is no accident: The Founders expressly consi…

I think what you're proposing is that major providers should have either obeyed the law (with all the claimed negative consequences taking place instantly through that compliance) or they should have disobeyed the law and waited for a "case or controversy" to emerge from that decision.

I don't think the court actually wants appellants to disobey the law, so I find it hard to take this argument seriously.

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

#336

Post by Kloversight2 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:18 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…

What's most interesting about this is that, as far as I can tell, no current "big tech" company violates this law.

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

#337

Post by themitigating » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

andrew_ wrote: post #47

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So as a free-speech absolutist, would you let anyone walk into a Starbucks and start shouting about anything they wanted? Would it be okay for them to write a manifesto on the chalkboard next to the barista? Starbucks is a privately owned location and has the right to enforce behavioral standards or kick people out. Social Media is the same. Privately owned and can set their own standards. The internet has plenty of…

poor examples. a disruptive patron on private physical property can be removed on numerous other grounds such as trespassing, just as damaging private property has its own legal stipulations. as it is now, virtual private property doesn't have parity with laws governing physical private property.

Servers are privately-owned and on private property

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

#338

Post by eduction » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

anon84873628 wrote: post #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?

Full opinions here: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pd...

Each judge wrote their own opinion. You can see the first two judges are in agreement, the last writes, “ I concur with the judgment in Part IV of the majority’s opinion. I respectfully dissent from the remainder.” So they were 2-1, except for part IV, where they were 3-0. (I am confused about this part as I’ve read each section IV several times and it seems like they disagree here, one side arguing that the platforms are, and they other that they are not, entitled to pre enforcement relief. But IANAL.)

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

#339

Post by MichaelCollins » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

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…

> reach millions of people

I think this is the heart of the problem. These social media companies didn't merely build agoras, they built amphitheaters. They build amphitheaters so large that control over the amphitheater makes you a kingmaker. Now they can't let go of that control, because doing so would risk the wrong people using it.

They never should have built amphitheaters this large in the first place. Better if they had built thousands of smaller amphitheaters, or none at all. Stop giving anybody bullhorns that can reach millions of people. Let ideas reach millions of people the natural way. One person tells a few hundred people their ideas, using the un-amplified power of their own voice. If what they say has any sense, each of those hundreds can tell hundreds more, and each of those can tell hundreds more again. That's how one person can reach millions, without the existence of massive kingmaker amphitheaters.

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

#340

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:22 PM UTC

jlawson wrote: post #124

BrandonM wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the LUG have 50M MAU?

This is really the critical factor. Anti-speech pro-corporate-authority advocates always try to put these monopolistic, unescapable megacorporations in the same category as some local mom-and-pop operation. It's a massive intentional category error; megacorps are not little companies you can just walk awawy from. There is a point where a corporation's influence becomes so unescapable and so capable of greatly degradi…

You mean corporations have a monopoly on violence like the government has where they can legally take away your property and liberty.