471–480 of 1001 posts
The problem with Twitter and Facebook is that the lines are getting blurry with regards to public vs private. Like it or not, a couple tech platforms are the de facto new town squares. Not saying I have any answers, just saying it's definitely not a clear issue anymore.
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Its an interesting thought experiment to assess in what ways Twitter is a "private website". It really is a public web space that is operated by a private company, but I can't help but feel that the nuances and similarities of what Twitter really is and what responsibility they truly hold in society is above the courts comprehension.
Do you have the right to stand in your community's biggest mall screaming racist things or does the property owner/operator have the right to remove you from the premise?
Web publishers do not need any special protection from well established jurisprudence governing other publishers. It made some sense in the early days when it was unclear how things would turn out, now those protections should be rolled backed or adjusted.
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A private company being able to ban/shadowban people is part of their own free speech. Not to mention free speech doesn't extend into the private sector.
Twitter is not private, at least from the platform discussion point of view, anyone can see Tweets even without having an account. It's more akin to modern day digital town square.
Laws pertaining to free speech do not apply here, as has been established time and again, partly because, like I said, it is their free speech in the wider gamut to remove things they don't want. Twitter's right to free speech exists in the public space, but your right to speech extends as far as Twitter's terms of service.
This all seems mostly disingenuous anyway -- the bias is very exaggerated. The right is mostly backed by armies of bots (a violation) and generally people who flaunt the rules more (anecdotally). Just something else to be outraged at.
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Its an interesting thought experiment to assess in what ways Twitter is a "private website". It really is a public web space that is operated by a private company, but I can't help but feel that the nuances and similarities of what Twitter really is and what responsibility they truly hold in society is above the courts comprehension.
>It really is a public web space that is operated by a private company No, it isn't, any more than a store is a public space because it has windows the public can see into. You have to sign up for a Twitter account and accept their terms of service to post on the site. It's a private platform run by a private company for its own private business interests.
It is absolutely the case in the USA that private properties which are open to the public are regulated as "places of public accommodation" under, notably, the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. That includes privately-owned hotels, schools, restaurants, retail, and more.
You're correct that this is directly analogous to a privately-owned website that is primarily geared toward accommodating the general public (like Twitter), but it makes the opposite point of what you intended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations_in_the_U...
Of course this is being handled ham-handedly, but it seems to me that section 230 is a ludicrous piece of legislative malfeasance that allows content publishers to duck the legal responsibilities of publishing while profiting from behavior that is obviously publishing. I can't see how a Twitter/FB feed is substantively different from a curated "letters to the editor" section in a newspaper and I cannot for the life o…
Both companies offer non-algorithmic feeds where users are 100% in control of what they see. Even with an algorithmic feed, users are still doing far more curation than any "curation" that an algorithm does, which is random at best in terms of intention by these companies at a political level.
I don't see how we interpret that as publishing any more than posts on a forum. The only "editorial" stances these companies take is to moderate content - not delete or edit, only flag and delete. This case is only really interesting because it's a new type of flagging that has not been broadly applied yet against a president.
I'm not sure how we got the question reversed - how in the world is Twitter/Facebook considered a publisher? They have millions and millions of users that write whatever they want without any editorial help, only moderation like that of most all internet forums.
This begs the question - what is "publishing" defined as, and what are the relevant features? I'm hard pressed to think of a useful definition of publishing that includes Twitter/Facebook.
The biggest takeaway, looking past the headline: “This week a federal appeals court, ruling in a case brought by conservative activists against social media companies, affirmed that private websites are not public spaces and social media companies don't have First Amendment obligations. Any truly strong limits to Section 230 would almost certainly require action by Congress.”
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1194_08l1.pdf
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I'm not sure this is the case anymore. McConnell and Trump have been rapidly filling the courts with young, right leaning justices. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/02/28/thanks-tru...
From my observations left leaning means apply liberal criteria to decisions. Right leaning means adhere to the Constitution and law of the United States of America.
Whilst it might be, but is the left in us is already right (like Obama use Romey Insuranve not single payer). Or are we in mix economy some are left some are right. Or left right actually many different things like large and small Gov,liberty, ownership, ...
Or is there something like open source which is beyond left and right but community, not gov vs market etc.
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A private company being able to ban/shadowban people is part of their own free speech. Not to mention free speech doesn't extend into the private sector.
Twitter is not private, at least from the platform discussion point of view, anyone can see Tweets even without having an account. It's more akin to modern day digital town square.
Here is the text of the executive order (draft): https://www.scribd.com/document/463379849/Draft-Executive-Or... Here is the audio version: https://playthis.link/https://pastebin.com/0mzv8heR
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> This is about the President being angry that Twitter fact checked him and using executive power to create a chilling effect against any platform doing so in the future. That is the impetus in this case, but that doesn't mean it doesn't border on questions we've been slowly grappling with for some time now, nor does it mean we have to ignore that question. > the basis for authoritarian laws meant to stamp out that m…
>I'm not sure it's authoritarian to remove their liability protections, is it? If the intent is to punish critics and suppress the speech of party opponents, then yes. Any authoritarian can justify their actions in abstract and general terms, but context matters. >nor does it mean we have to ignore that question. We don't have to ignore it, but we also don't have to accept an autocrat's temper tantrum by fiat as an a…
thats an interestating take, considering trump is trying to stop the selective editorialization of individuals covered by the first amendment.
are we really taking twitters side of this because we hate trump so much?