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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

#911

Post by NayamAmarshe »

legacynl wrote: post #887
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy doesn't work. Social Media is not newspaper, they're a printing machine letting you publish your own newspaper. You can't just register with a newspaper and post opinions for free. Social Media websites and platforms are acting as common carriers. They provide you an audience, without upfront cost. If they discriminate against you for an opinion their 'experts' do not like, they should suffer the consequ…

Social media isn't a common carrier. The internet is the common carrier. The analogy of the printing press doesn't work, because the printing press symbolizes a big clunky piece of machinery that a regular user can't build, maintain, run or afford. With the internet it's not like that is it? There are literally thousands of options for a regular user to create their own 'newspaper' without having to pay large sums up…

> There are literally thousands of options for a regular user to create their own 'newspaper' without having to pay large sums up front or anything at all.

That's like saying censorship is not censorship because the banned users can just write their opinions in a text editor.

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

#912

Post by BlueTemplar »

spamizbad wrote: post #729
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…

The term "bot" doesn't necessarily suggest something automated in the context of social media. I could pay a bunch of people overseas to do the same thing manually as well. They are all technically "users".

Since when ? I'm pretty sure that's called astroturfing - the difficulty of separating some of real people from bots doesn't change that legally there's a pretty big difference...

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

#913

Post by MandieD »

aliasxneo wrote: post #186
ajross wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already passed, it's a law on the books in Texas. And now it's been upheld at by both trial and circuit courts. FWIW: there's one last chance at SCOTUS to undo this, but if that doesn't work out what we're almost certain to see instead of "pre-filtering" is just "No Tweeting from Texas".

The apparent disdain for Texas in this thread is bizarre.

I am a Texan, and I think we deserve the disdain in this case - we elected those politicians who want to force the main platforms people use for all sorts of communications to allow themselves to become /pol/.

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

#914

Post by BlueTemplar »

hedora wrote: post #739
CJefferson wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having run a mail server, I don't think it's reasonable to expect most people to contain the deluge of spam and phishing attacks they would get if just told them to "sort it out" themselves.

Thunderbird used to have a local spam filter. It was fine. As for phishing attacks: Education is helpful. It would help if organizations with legitimate flows that are indistinguishable from phishing attacks were made liable. (Mortgage industry: I'm looking at you.)

It still does ?

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

#915

Post by sbaiddn »

wvenable wrote: post #808
sbaiddn wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paper boy isnt knowingly distributing, say, child porn magazine. If he were, the. he'd be an accessory. Big Tech does knowingly transport illegal things. If the paper that the paper boy distributing has the occasional libel, then the paper boy is not liable because he cannot have a criminal state of mind for something he doesn't know is in contained within his cargo. Finally, the paper boy is a boy, that is a chi…

Your analogy doesn't work because social media companies are liable for hosting illegal things just like your paper boy.

Tell that to MindGeek.

Child porn was an example of something that obviously would get even a paper boy in trouble (as long as he's old enough).

There are a lot of things that are illegal, including libel. Section 230 just picked and choose which crimes to shield Big Tech from.

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

#916

Post by Kamq »

zarzavat wrote: post #843
Kamq wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept is a "legal person", which means there's a whole host of things corporations can do. The big ones being that they can be sued and charged for breaking the law, you can't do either of those things with, say, a rock or a dog. They can also sue you back which is, admittedly, less fun.

All very true, but at the risk of laboring the point, a legal person is not a person, just like a sperm bank is not a bank. A noun phrase is not necessarily a sub-category of the original noun. This is underlined by the use of the plural “legal persons”, rather “legal people” which is usually reserved for meat sacks with law degrees.

> A noun phrase is not necessarily a sub-category of the original noun.

This is actually something I had not fully considered. I had always considered odd modifiers to create a non-central example of the category, rather than creating a new category.

To take your example of a sperm bank, I had always considered that to be a kind of generalized version of a bank. A general "place you can deposit things for future use".

Do you have any other good examples? I'm gonna have to let this roll around in my head for a bit to see what the implications are.

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

#917

Post by [deleted] »

leereeves wrote: post #727
scarface74 wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your edit: broadcast TV wasn’t under FCC jurisdiction because they paid to broadcast. The public over the air spectrum are considered to be owned by the government and licensed to the broadcast networks

I agree it's not an exact match for many reasons (including because TV didn't let many people broadcast). Phones are a much closer precedent - both phones and social media are tools for person to person communication.

[deleted]

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

#918

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

netheril96 wrote: post #783
yibg wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or, its analogous to a newspaper receiving a bunch of write-in opinions and only deciding to print a select few of them in the paper.

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

#919

Post by [deleted] »

catiopatio wrote: post #624
judge2020 wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What is 'botting'? It's whatever your acceptable-use policy defines "botting" to be, as long as that definition is viewpoint-neutral. A restriction against "paying a bunch of college kids $50 to spam reply this message to people for 3 hours a day" is clearly a viewpoint-neutral one, and so, yes, it would be obviously legal.

[deleted]

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

#920

Post by AstralStorm »

legacynl wrote: post #887
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy doesn't work. Social Media is not newspaper, they're a printing machine letting you publish your own newspaper. You can't just register with a newspaper and post opinions for free. Social Media websites and platforms are acting as common carriers. They provide you an audience, without upfront cost. If they discriminate against you for an opinion their 'experts' do not like, they should suffer the consequ…

Social media isn't a common carrier. The internet is the common carrier. The analogy of the printing press doesn't work, because the printing press symbolizes a big clunky piece of machinery that a regular user can't build, maintain, run or afford. With the internet it's not like that is it? There are literally thousands of options for a regular user to create their own 'newspaper' without having to pay large sums up…

Well, running a website is cheap, but not free.

The analogy is clunkier than expected, but it mostly works.

However, you are still not prevented from building your own printing press or copy machine. There were regimes that attempted similar controls...

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