Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 1001 posts

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

#481

Post by judge2020 »

eternityforest wrote: post #472
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…

Can't they just ban all mass-botting? That doesn't have anything to do with speech, it's just banning what amounts to spambots.

What law makes spambotting illegal?

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

#482

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #461
galaxyLogic wrote: post #425

I don't get it. Restaurants can choose their customers based on how they behave or even how they are dressed. Why shouldn't online businesses be able to reject some of their customers?

> Why shouldn't online businesses be able to reject some of their customers? If they were advertising it as "a website for everyone except these opinions: ...", your point would have been valid. That's why.

It's right there in the T&C and content guidelines isn't it?

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

#483

Post by judge2020 »

nomdep wrote: post #311
philippejara wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, everything is political whether we like it or not. Even not having a character in a videogame that represents a minority can be a political statement. It's far too broad a brush to paint to be useful for anything

No, like you said, everything CAN be a political statement but, more often than not, everything is not, by default, a political statement

I imagine you could assume that everything is, indeed, a political statement, to at least one person in the US.

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

#484

Post by didibus »

ryeights wrote: post #188
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…

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

There are many various alien statuses, so I would guess it depends, but that's fine, whoever it legally applies too, just you need to prove it applies to you first.

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

#485

Post by judge2020 »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #263
Buttons840 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The very fact that you made this comment implies that you expect the public to understand what it means. Therefore, so would a jury of your peers. In other words, if you get that this behavior is just a twist on botting, it's safe to assume the courts will too.

What is 'botting'? Would it include paying a bunch of college kids $50 to spam reply this message to people for 3 hours a day?

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

#486

Post by guelo »

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…

> That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to 'the freedom of speech.'

Wow that's just made up! All the amendment says is "Congress shall make no law...".

These are supposedly originalist judges but really they're just culture warriors.

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

#487

Post by judge2020 »

netheril96 wrote: post #70
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the only reason. Without any moderation, sites would degenerate into cesspools that only cesspool dwellers would want to visit. Few site owners want their properties to be cesspools.

Why not give users the power of moderation? Currently the website owner makes the decision for me about what content I should not be seeing. I want instead all or at least almost all content preserved and the ability to create and subscribe to blocklists. The website can have a default blocklist active to make it palatable for the majority.

Even if it proved successful, this definitely won't appease the ruling to not censor speech.

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

#488

Post by enraged_camel »

kyrra wrote: post #475
DannyBee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This opinion is just badly written and badly reasoned. It's not even well written enough that it is worth trying to debate. Of course the judges in question were rated unqualified by the ABA (which is a really low bar) so not surprising.

The ABA at this point is a partisan institution. Go read into some of their politics and realize that they are very much left-leaning. Edit: example https://www.wsj.com/articles/anticompetitive-woke-law-school...

Maybe instead of telling people to “go read into some of their politics” you can provide some examples and make the argument yourself?

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

#490

Post by judge2020 »

ugjka wrote: post #451
kelnos wrote: post #409

> "Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say," Judge Andrew Oldham, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the ruling. I don't really understand this; from my perspective, it sounds like this judge doesn't really understand the first amendment (hopefully this is not the case, and the quote is taken out of context). Corporations are…

>Also, this is a Texas law; if Facebook closed down all of their offices in Texas, presumably they could just ignore it, as then Texas wouldn't have jurisdiction over them? AFAIK the law specifically forbids that kind of move, somehow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Presumably Texas can represent themselves as long as anyone within TX was using a service by a company violating the law. Now, if FB banned anyone with a geoip resolving to Texas, that'd be quite the firepower to claim that TX has no jurisdiction.

However, congress' ability to regulate interstate commerce might change this to something TX can rule on but can't enforce.

Post reply on HN