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The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

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Re: The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

#21

Post by squigz »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #9
hellojesus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The law really should make it clear that, illegal activity excluded, if you engage in any form of censorship you are not given section 230 protections. Say I run a forum for pet fish discussion. Would my removal of content derailing the discussion into a flatearther one constitute my loss of 230? What if only logged in members can see the content? It seems odd that we don't let private property operate as it wants.

Have a scale or a topic carveout. Your pet fish message board doesn't have the same social relevance as the twitters and facebooks of the world that are intended to be generic communications platforms. Despite what people like to claim, these sites are de facto public squares and should be treated as such. It's clear people resist this idea because they like the fact that these companies censor speech in the directio…

> public squares and should be treated as such.

What does this mean?

Re: The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

#22

Post by hackinthebochs »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15
hackinthebochs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a scale or a topic carveout. Your pet fish message board doesn't have the same social relevance as the twitters and facebooks of the world that are intended to be generic communications platforms. Despite what people like to claim, these sites are de facto public squares and should be treated as such. It's clear people resist this idea because they like the fact that these companies censor speech in the directio…

> Have a scale or a topic carveout This (topic) is a sign your framework is flawed. Unless there is a fabulous reason to believe this is the sole legitimate carve-out.

You know, you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take, instead of whatever this comment is.

Re: The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

#23

Post by hackinthebochs »

squigz wrote: post #21
hackinthebochs wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a scale or a topic carveout. Your pet fish message board doesn't have the same social relevance as the twitters and facebooks of the world that are intended to be generic communications platforms. Despite what people like to claim, these sites are de facto public squares and should be treated as such. It's clear people resist this idea because they like the fact that these companies censor speech in the directio…

> public squares and should be treated as such. What does this mean?

It means the principles that constrain how governments engage with society (e.g. free speech in the public square) should also constrain how these new government-sized institutions engage with society. We've got to the point where so much of governance is pushed off to the private sector that these entities should be bound by the same rules. E.g. private companies shouldn't be able to do widespread content scanning of private data that would be illegal for the government to do.

Re: The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

#24

Post by hackinthebochs »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #17
hackinthebochs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selective amplification is editorialization when the decisions are content sensitive. It being algorithmic doesn't change the substance of this.

> Selective amplification is editorialization Editorialisation as in the press?

As in the status that renders a service not subject to section 230 protections.

Re: The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

#25

Post by amanaplanacanal »

tengbretson wrote: post #19
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #5

Ordering people to say things the government likes is compelled speech. The First Amendment broadly prohibits it and that broadly benefits us . It's in our interest to safeguard and preserve rights that protect our speech.

Is the content hosted on social media platforms considered to be the speech of the companies that own said platforms? If yes, wouldn't that undermine the case for their immunity from liability from that content?

Section 230 explicitly makes them not liable.

Re: The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

#26

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #22
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have a scale or a topic carveout This (topic) is a sign your framework is flawed. Unless there is a fabulous reason to believe this is the sole legitimate carve-out.

You know, you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take, instead of whatever this comment is.

> you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take

I don't see one. It's DOA. The point is starting with a list of carve-outs to any framework is an early sign it's fucked.

I do believe we have a problem with free speech in modern America. But we also have an unprecedentedly broad amount of it. Given the elementary issue of spam, it's unclear we have any consensus around what censorship means on social media.

Re: The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

#27

Post by hackinthebochs »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
hackinthebochs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take, instead of whatever this comment is.

> you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take I don't see one. It's DOA. The point is starting with a list of carve-outs to any framework is an early sign it's fucked. I do believe we have a problem with free speech in modern America. But we also have an unprecedentedly broad amount of it. Given the elementary issue of spam, it's unclear we have any consensus around what cen…

> The point is starting with a list of carve-outs to any framework is an early sign it's fucked.

While I think this is a fair point in general, in specific cases it can be legitimate. We should not be powerless to legislate unless we're able to articulate some ideal discriminator that picks out only the intended target and nothing else. The world is almost never that tidy. We can probably agree in broad strokes what spam is, even if we can't articulate a sufficient decision criteria to identify it with 100% accuracy. We can also agree that one man's passion project shouldn't be powerless to ensure his forum remains on-topic. We can also agree that mega communications platforms have become so engrained into modern society that being censored or removed from them can have outsized effects on one's ability to effectively engage with society (e.g. losing access to your email, kicked off payment platforms).

There are a lot of grey areas in between, and identifying carveouts are one way to handle the messiness while still working towards the overarching goals. It's not perfect, but doing nothing in this case is worse in the sense of how far we are from our ideals.

Re: The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

#28

Post by vacuity »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #12
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #5

Ordering people to say things the government likes is compelled speech. The First Amendment broadly prohibits it and that broadly benefits us . It's in our interest to safeguard and preserve rights that protect our speech.

> It's in our interest to safeguard and preserve rights that protect our speech. In this context, 'our' includes people who (I fervently believe) use their speech to make the world a worse place. Because that's what it means. It also means that I do not have to carry, parrot, amplify or provide a space for their speech.

Freedom comes with a cost, but using a bludgeon like the US Supreme Court to outlaw "bad speech" today may have severe repercussions tomorrow. We should look for other solutions. Social solutions for social problems.

Re: The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

#29

Post by vacuity »

thegrim33 wrote: post #11
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you run a public bulletin board tearing down fliers is absolutely a form of speech I'd say where the protection starts is that the board is yours. You can make it as open or restricted or curated or nonsensical as you wish. Other individuals can put up their own boards and they can display whatever they wish. This is what the 1A protects. In a reality where an opinion can be displayed from millions of boards - I…

You're portraying it as if there's not a small number of de-facto public square "boards" that the vast majority of people get almost all of their information from. Manipulation of those boards has an absolutely massive effect, and saying "well, you could go out in the woods and create your own public forum that a handful of people would ever see" isn't really an acceptable alternative.

This is why I wish there was a megaforum where anyone can isolate themselves into smaller forums as they wish. Then no one gets deplatformed by the feds or corporations or whatever (unless they call for violence or doxx someone, something like that), and yet no one has to see what they don't want to. Still but a stopgap to foster better communities, alas.

Re: The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech

#30

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #27
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take I don't see one. It's DOA. The point is starting with a list of carve-outs to any framework is an early sign it's fucked. I do believe we have a problem with free speech in modern America. But we also have an unprecedentedly broad amount of it. Given the elementary issue of spam, it's unclear we have any consensus around what cen…

> The point is starting with a list of carve-outs to any framework is an early sign it's fucked. While I think this is a fair point in general, in specific cases it can be legitimate. We should not be powerless to legislate unless we're able to articulate some ideal discriminator that picks out only the intended target and nothing else. The world is almost never that tidy. We can probably agree in broad strokes what…

> in specific cases it can be legitimate. We should not be powerless to legislate unless we're able to articulate some ideal discriminator that picks out only the intended target and nothing else

Sure, but there should be a guiding principle. The point isn't we're powerless to act. It's that we should act thoughtfuly. Defaulting to carve-outs indicates the idea is inchoate.

Even in this thread, we've expanded from major social media platforms to e-mail providers and payment platforms. We're still brainstorming the general scope of the idea.

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