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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

#781

Post by xwowsersx »

catiopatio wrote: post #655
joe_the_user wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This opinion is badly reasoned so it's not even worth debating" strikes me as a very poor way of engaging in dialectic. It's not a way of engaging in dialectic/dialogue. It's saying it's so bad you won't engage in dialogue. That's a legitimate position in some circumstances. That this is a court decision, however, might mean that in these circumstance one does need to directly challenge despite it's qualities.

> That's a legitimate position in some circumstances. If someone doesn't want to discuss a topic, all they have to do is not discuss the topic. Expressing such a position isn't a legitimate contribution to public discourse; it's a tactic that inhibits the process of building mutual understanding through discourse.

Exactly. That's my point. It is true that sometimes an idea is too stupid to even deserve a reply. But simply stating here that 'this is so dumb, I'm not going to respond to it' doesn't contribute anything nor is it in line with the spirit of HN, per https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#782

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #733
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 opinion was written by Oldham, who was unanimously rated “well qualified” by the ABA: https://ballotpedia.org/Andrew_Oldham Now I don’t think the ABA ratings are worth anything, but your assertion is factually untrue.

[deleted]

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

#783

Post by netheril96 »

yibg wrote: post #779
netheril96 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn’t that email before decent spam filters? I much prefer my inbox with spam filters.

The current model of social media is analogous to an email host DELETING all emails that are sent to you but it considers to be spam.

What I propose is that the email host preserves all emails sent to you, but puts them in your spam folder if it considers so. Moreover, I should be able to disable that and let my email client to do spam filtering on the rules I make.

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

#784

Post by Spivak »

dexwiz wrote: post #753
osigurdson wrote: post #750

Maybe there should just be a way to for people to opt in to censorship in their feeds. For example, one could click on a "no racism checkbox" in order to have racist content removed from their feeds. This way, platforms would be responsible for detection instead of curation. It seems like it would be better for the platforms as well.

This just moves the goalposts. Should they be determining what is racist and what is “acceptable” speech?

I mean if I specifically ask Twitter’s moderation team to do this by turning on the filter then… yes? That’s kinda the whole point.

Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr are borderline unusable without blocklists / recursive blockers.

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

#785

Post by seadan83 »

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…

1st amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

Note, it does not say anything about corporations. It simply says the government cannot put you in jail for freedom of expression. Ergo, it's totally within any establishments rights to ask you to leave if they don't like what you have to say. That is very different from the police coming in and arresting you.

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

#786

Post by haswell »

catiopatio wrote: post #719
mhneu wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Volokh is a conservative attorney who is intellectually aligned with the 5th circuit judges who wrote this opinion. A few other sources: - Lawrence Tribe, a very senior center-left constitutional lawyer and Harvard prof: https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1562951505451266050 "A disgraceful Fifth Circuit decision" - Reporters' Committee on Freedom of the Press (a deeply centrist/neutral organization) https://twitter.…

> Volokh is a conservative attorney who is intellectually aligned with the 5th circuit judges who wrote this opinion. Volokh is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA, uniquely qualified to weigh in on first amendment law, wrote a column on first amendment and speech issues for the Washington Post for years, and frankly, I imagine would be pretty disappointed (but not surprised, in these illibera…

The way I read the parent comment, they dismissed Volokh for stated reasons, but then provided three other sources to bolster the idea that early analysis is generally all against this ruling.

They mentioned they cited sources across the ideological spectrum. In theory, that's good.

It sounds like the primary issue here is mischaracterization of Volokh, but that doesn't necessarily change or invalidate the other sources mentioned.

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

#787

Post by hackerlight »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #437
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.

> a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech .. That is clearly not based on facts. Corporations simply have a right to choose which speech they will AMPLIFY. That is not the same as muzzling anybody. They don't knock on your door and say you better stop expressing these views or we will harm you. They don't even harass people online. They just simply choose which speech they will pass on and which not. If y…

One nuance these judges don't understand is that picking one person to amplify is often de facto muzzling another because bandwidth is finite in the age of zero friction social media. These dinosaurs are trapped in a 20th century paradigm.

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

#788

Post by jupp0r »

I wonder who will draw the line between right wing hate speech and islamic terrorist propaganda, for example. You have to draw the line somewhere, who's going to draw it? Who is going to enforce it? The current system is arguably not great but I fear that its replacement will be worse.

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

#790

Post by rufus_foreman »

eduction wrote: post #681
rufus_foreman wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eduction's comment asserts the exact opposite of what you are saying. Who is lying here?

I think it’s likely OP made an honest mistake of some sort (as opposed to an intentional deception) but I do wish he’d correct it. It was a pretty broad and dismissive statement and personally maligning the judges involved in decisions we don’t like distracts from what should be the focus of the discussion, the actual legal principles and other ideas in play here. Sometimes I worry that we may be losing the ability o…

>> I think making that distinction is critical for building a rational, humane, and effective society.

Good luck with that I guess. I'm going to go blow up the Do Lung bridge.

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