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Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

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Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#351

Post by trafficante »

seadan83 wrote: post #219
scarface74 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First Amendment case law involves the government. If the government of Florida wants a free for all social media platform, it can create one. If they don’t have the technical aptitude, I’ll gladly accept a multi million dollar contract to lead the creation of one. Leading the development of large scale infrastructure and back end development is kind of mg thing.

100% this. The 1st amendment protects free speech from the government. If you're in a bar, and they don't like what you're saying, they can ask you to leave. Then it all boils down to whether things like Twitter and Facebook are akin to the public square, a public street. That is hard to fathom given you are using their servers, their software, which they pay for and provide as a service (in something of a quid-pro-q…

This argument, much like the “just make your own x” meme, is one of the many hypotheticals that actually saw real world testing in the past two years.

These days, the ”private company so this isn’t 1A” argument oddly reminds me of the omnipresent 200x-era GOP claim that running a federal budget is akin to balancing a household checkbook. Designed to be convincingly simple to state and yet extremely obnoxious to refute to a layperson.

Facebook in particular probably wouldn’t even exist without backing from DARPA, the “defunct” TIA program, and a host of other spooky agencies, corporations, and individuals (Palantir and Thiel for instance).

Skip over 18 years of also-damning stuff to when the public/private mask started to blatantly slip in 2020: Since then, we’ve had multiple leaks, whistleblowers, etc demonstrating overt collaboration between the government and social media companies to censor, ban, and shape narratives.

Not a lawyer, don’t know how you’d frame a 1A lawsuit, but it is absolutely unacceptable that our digital public square is being operated by companies that clearly serve as “Bill of Rights Avoidance” shell corporations for the intelligence agencies and now the Executive Branch writ large.

It’s like everyone forgot about Snowden. This sort of highly suspicious take should be everyone’s default position at this point, particularly in tech.

And no, you absolutely cannot “just build your own Project Lifelog if you don’t like it”.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#352

Post by fwip »

patmcc wrote: post #338
uup wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue at hand is whether or not you can spend unlimited amounts of money on that speech via a corporation. Individuals cannot spend unlimited money donating to political campaigns, for instance. Ultimately, we value free speech because it leads to a more fair and just society. It's not a rule that is followed by blind faith. Personally, I think allowing unlimited corporate spending on political speech amplifies t…

>>The issue at hand is whether or not you can spend unlimited amounts of money on that speech via a corporation. Individuals cannot spend unlimited money donating to political campaigns, for instance. Corporations cannot donate to (federal) political campaigns, period. See https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate... Now, both individuals and corporations can donate to Super PACs an unlimited amoun…

Because corporations have funds disproportionate to the people, and because corporate donations are overwhelmingly controlled by the kind of people who run corporations.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#353

Post by anon291 »

As much as I dislike facebook. Florida is going about this the wrong way. States should simply ban social media, especially for children. It should simply be illegal or highly restricted.

Sounds harsh, but the world would be a better place. Also, government agencies and political candidates should be banned from interacting on social media that is not federated. That is it.

Unfortunately, politicians don't understand the meaning of federated.

This should be done as an anti-trust action, and facebook should be broken up. Twitter should also be broken up, but it is an utterly useless product, so probably just liquidated.

Social media should be for trashy pursuits, not serious discourse. Those should be done on open fora. Hacker news as well ought to be federated.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#354

Post by anon291 »

colinmhayes wrote: post #178
anon291 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find that if you talk with technically literate Republicans you'll find a lot of support for net neutrality. Unfortunately, my party's base is made up of people who are not super into tech unlike the Democratic party whose base is increasingly rich tech workers. On the other hand, my fellow Republicans do jobs you may think unimportant,like farming, plumbing, construction, etc. Perhaps, when you think…

> jobs you may think unimportant,like farming, plumbing, construction, > Perhaps try explaining instead of dismissing?

I've not dismissed his core concern about lack of net neutrality. In fact, i agree with him and encouraging him to not give up..

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#355

Post by fwip »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #334
keyme wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right.. Are cloudflare CDN nodes "the network"? Or a computer? Because they're "stopping me" already, as of late.

Are the website owners asking Cloudflare to stop you?

Wouldn't be surprised if they mean Cloudflare's decision to stop hosting a harassment and doxxing website (kiwi farms)

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#356

Post by pyuser583 »

munk-a wrote: post #123
scarface74 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same Florida that passed a law specifically to punish Disney because they spoke out against the “Don’t Say Gay” law and passed the “Stop Woke” act?

I suppose I should've added some more overt humor markers on the above statement.

Lack of humor markers is a downside of text communication.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#357

Post by buildbot »

brobinson wrote: post #337
buildbot wrote: post #51

I’ll ask the same question I asked on the other threads to all those cheering this - do you think HN will be the same without moderation? Or just another 4chan? Will r/conservative stop banning users who dare suggest trump was maybe not such a good person, even if they are otherwise extremely conservative?

Why do people associate 4chan with not having moderation? It's always had moderators ("jannies"), and they are a common target of disdain. /g/ is far more entertaining than HN.

I would say it is less moderated, but to be frank I really don’t have any data and I don’t spend time there.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#358

Post by amaranth »

specialist wrote: post #324
bastawhiz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Net neutrality was about bandwith, not content This is not true. Net neutrality is about service providers not getting to choose which services you connect with. If your ISP decided you can use Hulu but have to pay $10/mo extra for Netflix, that's a net neutrality issue. It's not about the volume of bytes. It's about who the bytes are coming from and going to, which is a content issue.

One challenge with "net neutrality" is everyone has their own working definition. My bro is the head tech guy for a cable company. He opposes "net neutrality". For B2B reasons. For him, it's about interconnect fees and fairness. Something like they build the pipes and someone, let's say TikTok, hogs all the bandwidth without paying their fair share. I have no idea if my bro's narrative makes any sense. My bro also be…

TikTok is paying their ISP, that's who you'd look at to fund upgrades to the interconnect. Wanting to charge TikTok or the users of TikTok is just looking for a way to double dip. Or, more likely, a way for them to deprioritize YouTube TV so their own streaming live TV service looks better.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#359

Post by akomtu »

ajross wrote: post #340
_skel wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Florida is asking for is not different than what many on the left have been asking for. The motivation is different, but the powers they want are the same. People on the left need to remember that if they give the government more power to regulate speech online, whether it is to fight disinformation or hate speech or whatever else, the right wing will have the same power the next time they win office. It's so sh…

> many on the left have been asking [to] give the government more power to regulate speech online No one on the left wants the government to do this. What happens is that "many on the left" tend to yell loudly about stuff to the extent that people in power feel they need to moderate their own speech and actions. Virtually no one on the left wants "the government" to do this. The left, in fact, is extremely dependent…

WH went as far as creating a Disinformation Board. It got quickly labeled as Ministry of Truth, and the Board got disbanded shortly after, but the message was clear.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#360

Post by seadan83 »

trafficante wrote: post #351
seadan83 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. The 1st amendment protects free speech from the government. If you're in a bar, and they don't like what you're saying, they can ask you to leave. Then it all boils down to whether things like Twitter and Facebook are akin to the public square, a public street. That is hard to fathom given you are using their servers, their software, which they pay for and provide as a service (in something of a quid-pro-q…

This argument, much like the “just make your own x” meme, is one of the many hypotheticals that actually saw real world testing in the past two years. These days, the ”private company so this isn’t 1A” argument oddly reminds me of the omnipresent 200x-era GOP claim that running a federal budget is akin to balancing a household checkbook. Designed to be convincingly simple to state and yet extremely obnoxious to refut…

I don't know if I'm saying, just "build your own if you don't like it". More, if you don't like it, don't use it (eg: if you don't like Arby's, don't go there). Though, I do concede that these platforms/apps/companies are very monopoly-like and that certainly creates its own gravitational pull and challenges to competitors.

Do you have any references for further information about how the government supported Facebook? If Facebook received some support from the government, does that make their platform a public square? What would that threshold be?

I'm really suggesting that "open to the public" does not mean "public". Hence, while anyone can sign on to 'Facebook', the nature that they pay for their servers, to develop software, have a business model, etc.. does not make it a public square even if it might feel like that at times (it's a private corporation, which means nobody has a first amendment right to do whatever they want with that software - there actually is no freedom of expression in the US, just freedom from government persecution to express what you want - that is what is written in the constitution)

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