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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

#921

Post by AstralStorm »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #457
AstralStorm wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't your right to have a particular newspaper publish your particular opinion. It is your right to publish your own newspaper.

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…

Sure you can ask a newspaper to publish an opinion for free. It's called "letter to the editor". Very old institution.

That said, analogies are just that, and social media are just not common carriers. By their design, they are selective about information they show you, whether by algorithm, your choice or the operator's choice. Especially since they use user submitted data including social network structure to manage your feed, it's editorializing by design.

A common carrier version would have to make the algorithms public, well described, remove moderation and other more undesirable features that increase income. This is not what these private companies run.

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

#922

Post by AstralStorm »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #911
legacynl wrote: post #887

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They literally can write their opinions in a text editor and publish it on the internet for cost of ISP and a PC, and a public internet address. You can skip the public address part potentially with more complex censorship resistant tech like Freenet.

Even the software is free. Now, the problem with social media is the network effects creating popularity and visibility, which cannot be replicated.

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

#923

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

solarmist wrote: post #60

Copied from a comment thread below. Because I feel this is the root of the issue/problem. > I don't see how the heck my website is a public square but my home or café isn't, this argument sounds self-contradictory. Yup. This is the exact problem that we’re (as a society/world) wrestling with. The reason it is (not just seems) different is because of the scope. A message on a chalkboard cannot reach millions of people…

When you can cram 50 million people into your local cafe, come talk to me.

This law is limited to platforms with > 50 million MONTHLY active users.

People talk about 2nd order effects all the time, here's the really interesting part.

These companies will suddenly be incentivized to clearly identify bots as not-real-people due to this law. Imagine how much power this will take away from those with the platform to scale bots.

You can disagree with the specifics, but the spirit is in the right place.

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

#924

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

dpifke wrote: post #137
solarmist wrote: post #60

Copied from a comment thread below. Because I feel this is the root of the issue/problem. > I don't see how the heck my website is a public square but my home or café isn't, this argument sounds self-contradictory. Yup. This is the exact problem that we’re (as a society/world) wrestling with. The reason it is (not just seems) different is because of the scope. A message on a chalkboard cannot reach millions of people…

The decision[0] gives different logic (quoting from page 85): If a firm’s core business is disseminating others’ speech, then that should weaken, not strengthen, the firm’s argument that it has a First Amendment right to censor that speech. In PruneYard, for example, the shopping mall was open to the public—but for the purpose of shopping, not sharing expression. So it was perhaps tenuous for the State to use the pub…

One other thing I'd like to point out.

This is a very classic "the good of society balanced against the rights of the private citizen/organization".

This isn't about private corporate rights, it's about the good of society against those private corporate rights.

You may disagree with where exactly this lands, but I doubt you disagree with the premise that personal rights must be balanced against the greater good (queue hotfuzz reference).

If you think you do, ask yourself if you feel the very idea of hate speech shouldn't exist. There are those who do, but more typically, people just disagree with where that idea lands rather than the idea itself.

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

#925

Post by osigurdson »

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.

For the downvoters, do you want platform controlled censorship, no censorship at all or something else?

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

#926

Post by malloci »

Two things:

1) Is there anything stopping them from simply blocking all of Texas from visiting their sites? Keeps them from violating both texas law as well as federal law

2) Does this translate to any business operating in the state of Texas or is it simply online companies?

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

#927

Post by zrail »

ekianjo wrote: post #718
zrail wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A better comparison would be if Gmail placed emails you really want to receive in the spam for you. Actually, they wouldn't even put it in the spam folder; they'd just delete it permanently before you can read it Gmail regularly does both of these things to me despite explicit filter rules to the contrary.

And is that desirable?

No of course not.

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

#928

Post by [deleted] »

boopmaster wrote: post #570
throwawayacc2 wrote: post #401

Good. This is especially welcome news in the context of the unprecedented attack on kiwi farms. As I said in a different thread, we have laws preventing businesses from discriminating. We do not allow shops to put up “no blacks here” signs. Why do we allow infrastructure providers from doing essentially the same thing? Censorship, of any kind from anyone, government or corporation is an abomination that must be stamp…

This wouldn’t be my first choice of examples. Unmoderated swatting forums (as I understand that it was) goes beyond free speech. The first amendment does not protect death threats.

[deleted]

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

#929

Post by mindslight »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #675
mindslight wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop miscategorizing reactionary regressivism as "conservatism" ? There is nothing conservative about it. They're essentially trying to drag us back at least a few decades and destroy longstanding institutions, including things like separation of church and state and the right to access medical care.

>...Can we stop miscategorizing reactionary regressivism as "conservatism" But that is conservatism though. I can't help but see the whole attempt at renaming it "regressivism" is to avoid "conservatism" from taking the fall when people look at it's outcomes. No one that would be "regressive" today was not a conservative yesterday.

That is not my intent, but I see where you're coming from. Today's reactionaries were conservatives yesterday because that is what the politicians constrained their viewpoint into. To me, the only peacefully-resolving course is to hope there are enough actual conservatives (ie people who respect institutions and want to slow change, and would therefore be against the recent bans on fundamental medical care, the Republican party's disruption of the pandemic response, etc) that will distance themselves from the reactionaries and not continue to blindly vote Republican.

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

#930

Post by hailwren »

inhumantsar wrote: post #765
hailwren wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Reamde, Neal Stephenson posits a future where we pay individuals/services to filter and prioritize the unordered deluge of data from the web. It seems like this ruling pushes us along that path.

That's actually in Fall, the sequel to Reamde but yeah

Ha, whoops -- this is a very HN moment (and I'm glad for it).
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