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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

#631

Post by themitigating »

NeverFade wrote: post #615
themitigating wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no protection for free speech in the US only that the government can't make laws restricting it

Freedom of Expression is a core value in the US: > Freedom of speech, of the press, of association, of assembly and petition -- this set of guarantees, protected by the First Amendment, comprises what we refer to as freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has written that this freedom is "the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom." Without it, other fundamental rights, like the ri…

This is not in the constitution, you just pasted the opinions of others.

Core american values? There's massive censorship of pornography, there are noise laws, library books are being challanged and removed. A town voted to defund a library because they wouldn't remove a book. Explain to me how it's a core value?

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

#632

Post by themitigating »

LegitShady wrote: post #620
themitigating wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes so change that then come back and make your argument. The 1st amendment can also be undone but I'm not making arguments as if that had happened

It sounds like texas already has legislation that regulates that, and so doesn't need to go and come back

Being challenged and could be overturned.

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

#633

Post by mrshadowgoose »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #26
intrasight wrote: post #20

Censoring and moderating and content, as it relates to this lawsuit, is very expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if it ranks pretty high in their cost chart. The only reason that social media platforms do content moderation is to manage the financial (advertisers), and the political risk. Well, if the politicians and the courts tell them they can't moderate political stuff, then the political risk has been removed. Al…

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.

A possible solution to this is to allow any user to be a moderator, and to allow other users who want moderation to subscribe to one or moderation "feeds" from other users.

If one wants to wade through the degenerate cesspool of content, they'd have that option. If one wants to only see fluffy non-hateful things, they could subscribe to moderation feeds that achieve that.

The notion that we can impose a single perspective of "good content" and "bad content" onto millions of people, with different perspectives, is simply asinine.

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

#635

Post by Consultant32452 »

DannyBee wrote: post #143
swayvil wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In one case the corporation is speaking. In the other the corporation is facilitating me speaking to you (like a telephone wire). That strikes me as a pretty clear distinction. My hair is not blown back at all here.

The first amendment does not protect you against anything but the government. Full stop. Between people and people, corporations and corporations, and corporations and people it does nothing. The opinion fails at this very basic fact because they want it to be false. Not because there's any law suggesting it is false, nor has there been in a hundred years, but because they dont like it they just decided to make it up…

What personal consequences do you think should come to federal officials who explicitly requested social media companies to censor specific people and certain categories of speech?

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

#636

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

xwowsersx wrote: post #613
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.

"This opinion is badly reasoned so it's not even worth debating" strikes me as a very poor way of engaging in dialectic. I mean, maybe it is poorly written and poorly reasoned, but best to demonstrate that to us, otherwise we're just kind of taking your word for it...

This is the other article that made it to the front page of HN on this topic:

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/16/5th-circuit-rewrites-a-c...

It goes into thorough analysis into why this is such a lazy, stupid decision. This is the quote I agree with:

> Frankly, Oldham’s arguments sound much more like the arguments made by ignorant trolls in our comments than anyone with any knowledge or experience with 1st Amendment law.

This "judge" is an unqualified political hack.

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

#637

Post by chaps »

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…

One thing you can do, though it would take a lot of energy, is to add a "submit" button to your bot that you would have to click in order to tweet each tweet. That way it would be you who tweets it, though a bot did the hard work.

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

#638

Post by xyzzyz »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #602
rayiner wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction the court is drawing isn’t about corporations versus non-corporations, but speech versus moderation. You say moderation is about “editorial control” but that’s exactly the debate. Is Facebook moderation equivalent to the NYT deciding what to publish and not publish? When someone reads a Facebook post, does anyone think that Facebook is the speaker? That legal fiction is attractive for various reasons,…

The NYT doesn’t write content. They hire writers. Is that the difference? NYT publishes content for which they pay? What happens when writers start getting paid ad revenue through Facebook or Twitter, etc?

It’s not so much about getting paid by NYT, but rather about NYT going through every word they paid for, and deciding whether to publish it or not after all. Facebook and Twitter do not do that: while they do have some very basic automated filters, they are extremely hands off with the large majority of the content on their platform, only reviewing maybe a single digit percentage of published stuff, and only after a fact. Because of this, they claim that they shouldn’t be legally liable on content published on their platform, as they weren’t making any decisions whether to publish it or not. This is the major difference with NYT: NYT does not claim that it’s just random writers publishing in it, and they don’t pay much attention to what is inside.

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

#639

Post by 8note »

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #633
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.

A possible solution to this is to allow any user to be a moderator, and to allow other users who want moderation to subscribe to one or moderation "feeds" from other users. If one wants to wade through the degenerate cesspool of content, they'd have that option. If one wants to only see fluffy non-hateful things, they could subscribe to moderation feeds that achieve that. The notion that we can impose a single perspe…

This solution would run into the same problem. X moderator doesn't give preferential enough treatment to conservatives, and therefore must be stopped

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

#640

Post by cronix »

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…

I assume so, from reading this (posted in a deeper reply)

Sec. 120.002. APPLICABILITY OF CHAPTER. (a) This chapter applies only to a user who: (3) shares or receives content on a social media platform in this state.

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