Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 1001 posts

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

#451

Post by ugjka »

kelnos wrote: post #409

> "Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say," Judge Andrew Oldham, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the ruling. I don't really understand this; from my perspective, it sounds like this judge doesn't really understand the first amendment (hopefully this is not the case, and the quote is taken out of context). Corporations are…

>Also, this is a Texas law; if Facebook closed down all of their offices in Texas, presumably they could just ignore it, as then Texas wouldn't have jurisdiction over them?

AFAIK the law specifically forbids that kind of move, somehow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#452

Post by tcgv »

coffeeblack wrote: post #218
Buttons840 wrote: post #163

Will this apply to bots? What if I have a big list of a complaints about a certain politician (use your imagination, there's more than one politician to complain about), but the "other party" doesn't follow me, in fact, I have very few followers overall. So I create a bot that spreads my opinions by replying to millions of other Tweets. Anyone who mentions the politician of interest will receive a reply from "me" (my…

Let each user block what they don’t want to see. With filters, ai, etc. Don’t have a centralized “overlord” decide what an individual is allowed to see. That should be obvious and not controversial.

This is a great answer, and I think it would be relatively straightforward to create filters for potential bot/spammer accounts that used this strategy (ex: high comment frequency, using similar text patterns and engaging mostly in an unidirectional way) and make it available for users to enable it.

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

#453

Post by fennecfoxen »

woodruffw wrote: post #177
CamperBob2 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizens United determined that corporations have some of the same natural rights that people do. In particular, First Amendment right, which in turn means that corporations can do the same politicking (and political funding) that natural persons do. A more charitable way to put this: you don't lose your First Amendment rights just because you joined with other people for commercial or other purposes.

That's not charitable, that's obsequious! You have never lost your First Amendment rights in the context of a corporate venture. Citizens United goes substantially beyond affirming that fact: it establishes a separate notion of 1A personhood for the corporation itself .

It’s the same old “personhood” fiction for doing things in groups that’s been around since Dartmouth College vs Woodward, which is over 200 years at this point.

Corporations are also entitled to other rights that can be exercised by groups, like not having their property searched without a warrant or seized without just compensation, or their contracts broken. They are presumed innocent in court unless demonstrated guilty.

The actual Citizens in question were getting together (uniting, if you will) to spend money and engage in overtly political speech in a tradition that goes back to Thomas Paine. They used a non-charitable not-for-profit corporation to make and to show a stupid movie about Hillary Clinton. They used a corporation because that’s what you’re supposed to use for things like this and the alternative is sending the money to one private person’s individual bank account and that’s got all sorts of problems. And the court found that was a valid way for the people who contributed to exercise their rights to free speech, because of course it is.

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

#454

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

dpifke wrote: post #369
matthewdgreen wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you're proposing is that major providers should have either obeyed the law (with all the claimed negative consequences taking place instantly through that compliance) or they should have disobeyed the law and waited for a "case or controversy" to emerge from that decision. I don't think the court actually wants appellants to disobey the law, so I find it hard to take this argument seriously.

The decision talks about this. The law does not allow for damages, only injunctive relief. So any negative consequences from enforcement would be fleeting, potentially stayed while the actual case or controversy worked its way through the courts. Quoting from page 14: This rationale for overbreadth adjudication is wholly inapposite here. First of all, there are no third parties to chill. The plaintiff trade associati…

    (c)  If a social media platform fails to promptly comply with
    a court order in an action brought under this section, the court
    shall hold the social media platform in contempt and shall use all
    lawful measures to secure immediate compliance with the order,
    including daily penalties sufficient to secure immediate
    compliance.
It does appear to allow for something akin to damages. Would an appeal preclude contempt charges?

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

#455

Post by themitigating »

14 wrote: post #304
smt88 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube comments used to be that bad. People still read them.

Well you kind of need to ever since the dislike count was removed.

You checked the dislike count before reading the comment? That's almost a superpower of visual focus since they are next to each other

Edit -Didn't realize he meant video counts

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

#456

Post by slavak »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #299
slavak wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You get invocations of the reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy.

Firstly, that is _not_ what reductio ad Hitlerum means.

More importantly, it's not a fallacy. It's pretty well documented by now that what you get when you have a social network with very little moderation is, almost inevitably, a social network for Nazis:

https://www.newsweek.com/nazis-free-speech-hate-crime-jews-s...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/voat-the-alt-right-r...

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/456415-founder-i-wish-...

Just because people like bringing up Nazis a little too often doesn't mean every reference to Nazis is fallacious. Sometimes, it really is about [neo-]Nazis.

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

#457

Post by NayamAmarshe »

AstralStorm wrote: post #200
houstonn wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my right to be able to hear it. As Frederick Douglass, a former slave and writer, wisely stated, “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”

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 consequences for it because social media websites, let me publish my own newspaper.

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

#458

Post by dpifke »

themitigating wrote: post #383
dpifke wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need for a government-sponsored forum, when smaller forums are explicitly exempted from the Texas law. The law at issue still allows forums with 49,999,999 or fewer users to discriminate based on political viewpoint. It only says sites larger than that need to allow all political viewpoints (but only if they allow any political viewpoints, and only if they have users in Texas). Legal: Message board with 49 million…

Why the cutoff? Is it because all the companies it would apply to agents conservative, like Truth Social?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

I think moderation gets exponentially more difficult, the larger a community is.

There's probably something in the legislative history[0] as to why that particular number was chosen, but I keep getting 404s and certificate errors when I try to click on links to the remarks.

[0] https://capitol.texas.gov/billlookup/History.aspx?LegSess=87...

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

#459

Post by ineptech »

coffeeblack wrote: post #218
Buttons840 wrote: post #163

Will this apply to bots? What if I have a big list of a complaints about a certain politician (use your imagination, there's more than one politician to complain about), but the "other party" doesn't follow me, in fact, I have very few followers overall. So I create a bot that spreads my opinions by replying to millions of other Tweets. Anyone who mentions the politician of interest will receive a reply from "me" (my…

Let each user block what they don’t want to see. With filters, ai, etc. Don’t have a centralized “overlord” decide what an individual is allowed to see. That should be obvious and not controversial.

"Hey Twitter, please block this crap" is users trying to block what they don't want to see.

Blocking unpopular content doesn't become a political act just because one side produces more of it than the other.

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

#460

Post by richbell »

themitigating wrote: post #404
navigate8310 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/5ektpc/rthe...

This says an admin was accused of editing posts, it doesn't provide proof. It then says users down voted him not employees of reddit. Also subbit reddit admins aren't employees , I believe most people can create a subreddit and be an admin

> This says an admin was accused of editing posts, it doesn't provide proof. It then says users down voted him not employees of reddit.

SubredditDrama is a meta-subreddit. They linked to the post by Spez where he admitted to editing the comment — unfortunately, it's no longer available due to Reddit banning r/the_donald, but you can find numerous news articles that include his original comment. E.g., https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-38088712

> Also subbit reddit admins aren't employees , I believe most people can create a subreddit and be an admin

In Reddit terminology those are moderators. Administrators are site-wide and employed by Reddit.

Post reply on HN