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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

#871

Post by philjohn »

devwastaken wrote: post #861

Because section 230 says content posted to online services is not the services speech - first ammendment cannot apply. Therefore what is and isn't allowed to be posted can be regulated. Same idea as what the FCC did for media. States and feds have the power, the problem is what we do with it. If tech doesn't like it, blacklist states. There's going to be chaos one way or another. This is a very long time coming.

the Texas law states you can't geofence TX or not operate in the state, which is forcing service.

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

#872

Post by rightbyte »

IYasha wrote: post #869

Holy shivers, guys! I've read about this on arstechnica.com and what surprised me the most is the amount of negative sentiment towards the absence of censoring. I highly doubt those are ordinary people writing comments. Most likely hired commenters or bots. ( I hope world's majority still appreciates freedom of communication.

Dunno if bots. Commenting when there is ranking votes quickly turns into a cesspool if there is a culture of "downvote to disagree".

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

#873

Post by tux3 »

IYasha wrote: post #869

Holy shivers, guys! I've read about this on arstechnica.com and what surprised me the most is the amount of negative sentiment towards the absence of censoring. I highly doubt those are ordinary people writing comments. Most likely hired commenters or bots. ( I hope world's majority still appreciates freedom of communication.

I can't tell if this is supposed to be taken literally, but I like that it's a sort of self-demonstrating comment.

The decision seems like it makes it easier for bots who pretend to be humans to be protected as a side-effect, but in the same paragraph you suspect people of being bots. Damn bots, they're everywhere! :)

(Full disclaimer: I've actually no strong opinion on the decision. I like freedom of speech, and I also like clean forum spaces free of manufactured consensus. Seems complex to predict the impact.)

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

#874

Post by robertwt7 »

bheadmaster wrote: post #842
hackerlight wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think psychology and history is quite clear that sunlight isn't the best disinfectant. Ideas are like viruses, the more exposure they get the more they spread, irrespective of their truth value. Repetition and social proof directly cause idea contagion. "negative consequences on a free society, making it less free" This is an overly myopic and ideological view of freedom, in many respects. It privileges negative fr…

> I think psychology and history is quite clear that sunlight isn't the best disinfectant It doesn't seem quite clear to me. Would you care to provide some more information on the topic? > And it ignores that bandwidth is limited, so kicking off crackpots can actually improve the negative freedom of everyone else to communicate. And who exactly should have the authority to decide which ideas are allowed and which are…

I agree with what you said mostly

> And who exactly should have the authority to decide which ideas are allowed and which are not?

This is the scariest part, because in the end everyone has their own bias.

However, don’t you agree that things like speech can soon become an ideology at some point? Which we already blocked anyway i.e communism, nazism

It is indeed a hard problem to solve and hard decision for the leader of big tech companies tbh

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

#875

Post by LudwigNagasena »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #628
axpy906 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain to me how corporations are protected by the first in America? I’ve never understood this.

Corporations are entities that exist as contracts between people. The theory is that the speech of a corporation is thus the speech of the people involved in the contract.

It is a murky argument in the context of limited financial liability and the de facto absence of criminal liability.

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

#876

Post by hackerlight »

bheadmaster wrote: post #842
hackerlight wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think psychology and history is quite clear that sunlight isn't the best disinfectant. Ideas are like viruses, the more exposure they get the more they spread, irrespective of their truth value. Repetition and social proof directly cause idea contagion. "negative consequences on a free society, making it less free" This is an overly myopic and ideological view of freedom, in many respects. It privileges negative fr…

> I think psychology and history is quite clear that sunlight isn't the best disinfectant It doesn't seem quite clear to me. Would you care to provide some more information on the topic? > And it ignores that bandwidth is limited, so kicking off crackpots can actually improve the negative freedom of everyone else to communicate. And who exactly should have the authority to decide which ideas are allowed and which are…

  "It doesn't seem quite clear to me. Would you care to provide some more information on the topic?"
There are a few areas of study that tease this out. The study of social contagion primarily. Studies of memetics. Studies of influence and persuasion that show the impact of social proof and repetition. Cultural histories that look at how fact-free mind viruses (such as nationalism or antisemitism) shaped societies. Studies about the neurological underpinnings of what kind of content people seek out (it's a part of the brain that's involved in pain). Studies into human tribalism and how our beliefs just mimic that of our in group.

  "And who exactly should have the authority to decide which ideas are allowed and which are not?"
There's no easy risk free way to draw a line, but at the same time drawing no line poses incredibly large downsides, so I'd say something like Canada's approach where democratically elected people decide is the best.

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

#877

Post by LudwigNagasena »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #222
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.

The Federalist Society is very poorly named, with aims nearly diametrically opposed to the Federalists it is named after.

It's all about the context. Federalists wanted a stronger government compared to Anti-Federalists who wanted something akin to a confederation. Nowadays the debate is not between federalists and confederalists, that ship has sailed, it is between federalists and unitarists.

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

#878

Post by jrockway »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #814
Brybry wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a lawyer but I don't think this would apply to bots. The Texas law text[1] says it only protects 'users' which are defined as people. And even then the law only prohibits censorship for specific reasons. It doesn't say companies can't ban users for running bots. Even if the messages the bot is posting are protected the fact of running the bot itself should still be a bannable offense if it's not allowed in th…

So can I post AI generated underage pictures of Doland Trump as an 8-year old having sex with a boar without censorship?

Someone else is way ahead of you there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit.... The underage part seems to be in the clear. Fucking a boar is less clear (plain old obscenity, the first amendment's greatest weakness).

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

#879

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #671
rainsford wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you subscribe to the viewpoint that Facebook is a "pipe" rather than the speaker, it seems hard to avoid the idea that Facebook's choice of which speech it is a pipe for constitutes free speech by Facebook. Nobody should be confused as to whether a newspaper is the author of letters to the editor, but it has a 1st amendment right to choose which letters to publish.

It doesn’t seem that hard to me to say that what Facebook does with millions of messages flowing through its pipes every day is “conduct” not “speech.” A better foundation for this seems to be property rights—it’s facebook’s pipes, and their business what they do with it.

[deleted]

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

#880

Post by inkblotuniverse »

rayiner wrote: post #671
rainsford wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you subscribe to the viewpoint that Facebook is a "pipe" rather than the speaker, it seems hard to avoid the idea that Facebook's choice of which speech it is a pipe for constitutes free speech by Facebook. Nobody should be confused as to whether a newspaper is the author of letters to the editor, but it has a 1st amendment right to choose which letters to publish.

It doesn’t seem that hard to me to say that what Facebook does with millions of messages flowing through its pipes every day is “conduct” not “speech.” A better foundation for this seems to be property rights—it’s facebook’s pipes, and their business what they do with it.

The water company owns their pipes, and they're not allowed to shut off my supply because of something offensive I said.
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