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A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

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Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#131

Post by CM30 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #103
rayiner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I would absolutely draw a distinction between government enforced censorship and private platforms censoring content. Where it becomes a larger problem is if the private platform is an effective monopoly; using monopoly power to censor viewpoints would be a bad. Normally we would call a monopoly platform a common carrier and outlaw censorship by them.

The issue is that there are plenty of large companies that are effectively censoring legal views, and making it harder for people to setup alternative platforms that support them. For example, Visa and Mastercard control much of the payment infrastructure used online, and have far stricter rules about the type of content they allow payments for than what many countries actually allow. Same with Paypal to some extent, or Cloudflare, or cloud hosting platforms like AWS.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#132

Post by panny »

jMyles wrote: post #8
panny wrote: post #2

But everyone here loves jawboning and agrees the government should suppress speech. Well, at least when their team is in office. Whether it's ICE Block or IVM Block, you can probably find a reason why you too think speech freedom is just a little too free for your tastes.

Obviously censorship of both the location of ICE agents (or other terrorist threats bearing state decals) and censorship of discourse over the science of respiratory pathogens has been awful; I don't recall anyone here on HN cheerleading either of them. In fact, it seems to me that you've chosen precisely two areas between which a palpable bridge exists, contradicting the two-party zeitgeist. HN, for all its many fla…

>HN, for all its many flaws, is one of the few places where important evidence such as the diamond princess dataset and the cochrane review of evidence of mask (in)efficacy received robust discussion and, seemingly, resulted in changed minds.

I get the feeling we're not discussing this submission on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48605139

I get the feeling it's going to be flagged/dead in short order.

edit: Subarashi! How elegant. HN has flagged it less than 30 minutes after I made this comment. So much for the bastion of enlightenment and free speech known as HN, right?

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#133

Post by anematode »

smalltorch wrote: post #90
staticshock wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite of these has always been the USA PATRIOT Act, or the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act". And that one predates LLMs, so… sheesh.

I always think of this when someone mentions the patriot act. The single senator who opposed it. http://www.archipelago.org/vol6-2/feingold.htm

Thanks for the link, a good read

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#134

Post by smalltorch »

anematode wrote: post #133
smalltorch wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always think of this when someone mentions the patriot act. The single senator who opposed it. http://www.archipelago.org/vol6-2/feingold.htm

Thanks for the link, a good read

Its a great little snapshot in time.

Some parts that really standout to me and still relevant today.

>And, of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live.

And

>Preserving our freedom is the reason that we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without firing a shot if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people.

And, this one. Which leaves me feeling heavyhearted.

>In the end, the high water mark for my three amendments was 13 votes – that was on the amendment to the computer trespass provision. Prior to that vote the majority leader of the Senate stood up and implored the Senate to vote down all of my amendments, not on their merits, but because a deal had been struck on this bill. This was not, in my view, the finest hour for the United States Senate. The debate on a bill that may have the most far reaching consequences on the civil liberties of the American people in a generation was a non-debate. The merits took a back seat to the deal.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#135

Post by hn_acker »

belorn wrote: post #53
cookingrobot wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those things? Googling didn’t help.

The later is the case that then supreme court ruled on in 2024 ( https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c100l6jrjvno ). I suspect it goes to explain why this new bill is bipartisan. That case failed because the plaintiffs did not have a legal standing to sue. "In a dissent that detailed emails, press conferences, and past decisions, Justice Alito painted the "jawboning" as "blatantly unconstitutional". Wednesday's ruling,…

> The later is the case that then supreme court ruled on in 2024 (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c100l6jrjvno).

> I suspect it goes to explain why this new bill is bipartisan. That case failed because the plaintiffs did not have a legal standing to sue.

In that case (Murthy v. Missouri), Missouri and Louisiana did not have standing to sue because they did not demonstrate a minimum of evidence that the government coerced (as opposed to requested) platforms to remove speech.

> This new bill seem to make it much easier to give people a legal standing to sue, thus allowing the supreme court to give a different verdict if a similar situation happen again.

The lack of standing was not due to something like "no law says you can sue for such a violation". This law solves a problem that courts did not consider in Murthy v. Missouri.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#136

Post by amanaplanacanal »

carlosjobim wrote: post #129
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Assault is against the law regardless of why you do it. People are totally free to shun you if they don't like what you are saying though, and that seems totally fine to me. If you insult my family members, you won't be welcome on my house. How could it be otherwise?

Shunning is meaningless unless it is backed up by real consequences. By itself it isn't a consequence, at least not in discussions about freedom of speech, where consequences usually are things like being executed, imprisoned, tortured, put in a camp, put to slave labour, fined, publicly humiliated, exiled, banned from working in your sector, fired, banned from employment, and so on. Freedom of speech doesn't mean ev…

Public humiliation is also free speech. Calling out somebody for racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc, is free speech.

Being fired is certainly a consequence, but at will employment pretty much means you can be fired for anything.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#137

Post by iamnothere »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #136
carlosjobim wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shunning is meaningless unless it is backed up by real consequences. By itself it isn't a consequence, at least not in discussions about freedom of speech, where consequences usually are things like being executed, imprisoned, tortured, put in a camp, put to slave labour, fined, publicly humiliated, exiled, banned from working in your sector, fired, banned from employment, and so on. Freedom of speech doesn't mean ev…

Public humiliation is also free speech. Calling out somebody for racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc, is free speech. Being fired is certainly a consequence, but at will employment pretty much means you can be fired for anything.

Public humiliation is free speech, true. Actively attempting to interfere with someone’s business relationships due to their speech is a civil tort, sending threatening messages to someone due to their speech is a crime, swatting is an even bigger crime, stalking is a crime, conspiring with people in a Discord to do most of this stuff is a felony thanks to laws regarding conspiracy.

There’s a certain motte-and-bailey that goes on with the “speech has consequences” crowd, where the frontline people just say their people are only engaging in legal counterspeech, while all this horrible stuff goes on behind the scenes. And then they laugh about the horrible stuff when it happens and say things like “FAFO.”

I almost never see would-be cancellers (regardless of political affiliation) call out people on their side for encouraging or engaging in blatantly illegal conduct in order to “own” their opponents. Often they hang out in the same group chats!

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#138

Post by seattle_spring »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #123
seattle_spring wrote: post #120

A good reminder in the article about something a lot of folks here tend to forget: > Finally, contrary to what many in Congress have been saying, social media platforms and other internet intermediaries have their own First Amendment rights to decide how they moderate users’ speech. They are not “state actors” and do not have an obligation under the First Amendment to allow all user speech on their platforms. Private…

They ought to be regulated as common carriers above a certain size IMO justified by network effects. Which is too say I agree with you that they don't currently have a legal obligation but I think we should change that.

Completely disagree, given algorithms artificially boost content. The comparison to being an "online town square" is inapt, and I think a lot of people pushing that particular narrative actually know it too.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#139

Post by atmavatar »

CM30 wrote: post #131
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would absolutely draw a distinction between government enforced censorship and private platforms censoring content. Where it becomes a larger problem is if the private platform is an effective monopoly; using monopoly power to censor viewpoints would be a bad. Normally we would call a monopoly platform a common carrier and outlaw censorship by them.

The issue is that there are plenty of large companies that are effectively censoring legal views, and making it harder for people to setup alternative platforms that support them. For example, Visa and Mastercard control much of the payment infrastructure used online, and have far stricter rules about the type of content they allow payments for than what many countries actually allow. Same with Paypal to some extent,…

The problem you're describing isn't so much that private companies are allowed to choose who they do business with, but rather that the US has allowed far too much consolidation of markets to occur.

Regarding your example: I fully agree that Visa and Mastercard have way too much control over payment infrastructure. Before doing anything else, I'd break up their de facto duopoly. I'd focus on Visa in particular, as they control nearly 2/3 the market by themselves.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#140

Post by [deleted] »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #124
infinite_spin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was pretty easy to find examples of. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/when-complaining-about... https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-of... https://www.rcfp.org/supreme-court-throws-out-1876-criminal-... https://www.fire.org/cases/larry-bushart-v-perry-county There's a lot more.

Well sure. The police can arrest you whenever they want, we rely on the courts to sort it out. Qualified immunity is terrible law, but that doesn't have anything to do with free speech.

[deleted]
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