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

#361

Post by themitigating » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

MichaelCollins wrote: post #316

woodruffw wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not charitable, that's obsequious! You have never lost your First Amendment rights in the context of a corporate venture. Citizens United goes substantially beyond affirming that fact: it establishes a separate notion of 1A personhood for the corporation itself .

> You have never lost your First Amendment rights in the context of a corporate venture Hmm. Technically yeah, but corporations tend to gag their own employees more than the government gags corporations. The corporation can say just about anything it wants about politics and faces no repercussions from the government, but if an employee says the wrong thing about politics, they'll be shitcanned very quickly.

That's because it's an employee employer relationship. If say the wrong shit my gf might break up with me, is that censorship on her part?

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

#362

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

unity1001 wrote: post #126

sseagull wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is having the government decide whether or not a private company can block a particular person for a particular reason. Everyone is generally ok with companies blocking content that is irrelevant/off-topic, but there is a very, very large gray area. Do you want the government deciding what is acceptable?

> Do you want the government deciding what is acceptable? Yes. Entire world except the US does. People elect parliaments, who make laws according to their voters' agendas. Then the laws are enforced. What's acceptable and what's not acceptable are decided in the same manner. Like how going out naked in any city in the civilized world constitutes an offense unless you have a mental disorder. You already obey with a zi…

“the people” don’t elect anyone on the national level. If they did, Montana wouldn’t have the same number of Senators as California and the person who was elected President in 2016 would be the person who won the popular vote

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

#363

Post by navigate8310 » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

themitigating wrote: post #341

efitz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Reddit, that follows this model, still manages to engage in suppression of on-topic viewpoints that moderators and/or Reddit employees disagree with.

What evidence do you have of reddit employees censoring information they disagree with?

Obligatory: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/5ektpc/rthe...

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

#364

Post by themitigating » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #109

bradleyjg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a pretty abrupt turnaround from the same legal movement that brought us Citizens United . I’d be interested in a fair (i.e. not overly critical or fawning) book length history of the Federalist Society and how it’s evolved.

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.

And even more censorship

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

#365

Post by kansface » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

anon84873628 wrote: post #281

systemvoltage wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda of want to go back in time when politics was sort of on the back burner. Both left and right wing politics is unrecognizable to me. Everything is politicized and taken into conflict where it need not be. Maybe I was in college and didn’t pay attention to this stuff or maybe the world has really gone mad. Start treating people as people and not some political entity embodied in an activist form. Most of my fri…

Some might say that you and your friends' ability to sit on the sidelines is a form of privilege not available to everyone. Along with this idea that in the past, politics was more polite, or less bothersome or whatever. Maybe for some people, participating in politics has been a matter of life and death - something they don't have the luxury to ignore.

This is a terrible argument - a secular Pascal’s mugging, conveniently invoked to force everyone and everything into politics; a currently un-ironic “think of the children”!

It is not healthy for our society to demand that 100% of things be politicized - to claim that not politicizing stuff is immoral because some issues are profoundly impactful for some people!

I want the good, the equitable, the right, the just and far, far less of the political! Politics deserves the deference due politics in any particular situation - not that derived from catastrophizing the most extreme outcome and then universalizing it into the quotidian!

| Some might say that you and your friends' ability to sit on the sidelines is a form of privilege not available to everyone.

I say the ability and demand to turn everything into politics and require the same of everyone else is itself a form of privilege!

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

#366

Post by infogulch » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #302

coffeeblack wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstood. Don’t require users to build their bubbles, but have providers offer bubbles for a user to choose from. You could even have external bubble providers that offer different technologies and qualities of filters. Just don’t have one centralised overlord.

> providers offer bubbles for a user to choose from How is this different from the current internet?

The platform is tied to the bubble. GP is proposing decoupling them, so the user can choose the platform and choose the bubble separately.

> Tying (informally, product tying) is the practice of selling one product or service as a mandatory addition to the purchase of a different product or service. In legal terms, a tying sale makes the sale of one good (the tying good) to the de facto customer (or de jure customer) conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive good (the tied good). Tying is often illegal when the products are not naturally related.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

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

#367

Post by cpeterso » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

hailwren wrote: post #219

Buttons840 wrote: post #163

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…

In Reamde, Neal Stephenson posits a future where we pay individuals/services to filter and prioritize the unordered deluge of data from the web. It seems like this ruling pushes us along that path.

If "social media" services aren't allow filter posts, could Twitter spin off the "social media" service to a new, wholly owned subsidiary company and retain twitter.com as a web client free to filter the service's posts?

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

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Post by 8note » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #277

root_axis wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

230 is broad. At the time, websites were mostly just hosts of content. The individual is posting on the website but otherwise the website is a tool. This changes with recommendation algorithms. Nearly all social media is based on some kind of recommendation algorithm. Should that be covered by 230? It could be argued that it starts to get closer to an endorsement of certain content (and indeed, some of that recommend…

Chronological is still fits the interface of a recommendation algorithm.

You can take HN as an example of a recommendation service - while they remove things that are off topic, you'd have to argue that YC endorses whatever is in the #1 spot on HN.

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

#369

Post by dpifke » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #335

dpifke wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The decision talks about this. The law does not allow for damages, only injunctive relief. So any negative consequences from enforcement would be fleeting, potentially stayed while the actual case or controversy worked its way through the courts. Quoting from page 14:

This rationale for overbreadth adjudication is wholly inapposite here. First of all, there are no third parties to chill. The plaintiff trade associations represent all the Platforms covered by HB 20. Additionally, unlike individual citizens potentially subject to criminal sanctions—the usual beneficiaries of overbreadth rulings—the entities subject to HB 20 are large, well-heeled corporations that have hired an armada of attorneys from some of the best law firms in the world to protect their censorship rights. And any fear of chilling is made even less credible by HB 20’s remedial scheme. Not only are criminal sanctions unavailable; damages are unavailable. It’s hard to see how the Platforms—which have already shown a willingness to stand on their rights—will be so chilled by the prospect of declaratory and injunctive relief that a facial remedy is justified.

Third, the Platforms principally argue against HB 20 by speculating about the most extreme hypothetical applications of the law. Such whataboutisms further exemplify why it’s inappropriate to hold the law facially unconstitutional in a pre-enforcement posture.

(emphasis in original)

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

#370

Post by MichaelCollins » Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

zosima wrote: post #42

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…

The court and statute in question specifically mention that censorship can happen for a variety of legal reason. This ruling only denies the right to censor based on viewpoint, something which I believe Starbucks is also bound by. You can throw a customer out for being obnoxious and threatening. But probably not for sitting at a table and calmly discussing the pros and cons of various abortion laws, sharing opinions…

> This ruling only denies the right to censor based on viewpoint, something which I believe Starbucks is also bound by.

In California this might be true, I believe political affiliation is a protected class in California. But political affiliation is not a protected class federally, so it should generally be legal for corporations to discriminate against people on the basis of political belief, as long as they don't do that in a way that could be construed as discriminating on the basis of something that is a protected class, like race.