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Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

arstechnica.com

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Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#491

Post by ponow »

staticman2 wrote: post #474
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government . Why on earth would I? The government is already massively constrained in what it can say and that’s entirely appropriate because the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them. You may disagree with the ruling but if you’re on the side of free speech, you should definitely cheer i…

" I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government...the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them." That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right? Out of curiosity I pulled up an…

> Why should free speech be a right?

You cannot be serious.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#492

Post by afavour »

evandale wrote: post #475
afavour wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no idea how you could come up with an argument to change my mind on that. I guess I don’t understand your point here unless we’re being ultra-literal and saying a corporation can’t have an opinion because it doesn’t have a physical brain developing individual thought. An example of “corporate opinion” off th…

> because it doesn’t have a physical brain developing individual thought. You summed up my point with a single sentence I can agree with, can't argue there! In your scenario what's the opinion Facebook has about advertising? I'm in favour of more bike lanes in my city but I don't consider that an opinion. Describing _why_ I'm in favour has an element of opinion but voting yes/no is not an opinion to me. Plus, any old…

OK, I guess we are being ultra-literal. Which is fine!

> I'm in favour of more bike lanes in my city but I don't consider that an opinion

...I do not understand why not. To my perception that is very much the definition of an opinion.

But anyway, we clearly have a bunch of different definitions in play here. I think we can safely agree to disagree.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#493

Post by mc32 »

evandale wrote: post #401
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government . Why on earth would I? The government is already massively constrained in what it can say and that’s entirely appropriate because the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them. You may disagree with the ruling but if you’re on the side of free speech, you should definitely cheer i…

lol I gotta say I've been trying to read the defenders of this and take them seriously but your incredulity matches mine... .. and people are replying to you and _still_ defending the government and think they should have unilateral power over their people I'm kind of speechless about how many people think this ruling is a bad thing.. like who in the hell out there believes the government should have OPINIONS? Can on…

All that needs to happen for those loyalists to change their mind, is to have the party governing to change to someone they disagree with. Then you will hear how the gov't is killing free speech (that would be a rightful complaint). But we all know what happened to Qwest communications when they declined the gov'ts offer to spy on citizens.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#494

Post by singleshot_ »

leereeves wrote: post #462
judge2020 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In particular, they need to find if there was any actual coercion or threat made by the gov't agencies to remove the speech they asked to. For example, when the FBI was asking Twitter to take down videos (of content that violated Twitter's own TOS), Twitter could've told them to go pound sand. But it would be a different story if the FBI indicated that Twitter "ought to" do it or face increased scrutiny, perhaps.

I don't see why there needs to be any coercion. The offense here is not against the social networks, it's against the people whose speech was suppressed. Whether that suppression was done with threats, requests, subtle hints, or an automated system, if the government's intent was to suppress speech, the means employed make no difference. Edit: imagine an extreme case in which a social network independently created an…

Well, that’s definitely not true. The government can suppress speech when it sends an emergency action alert to commandeer tv and radio stations during an emergency, for one example.

The fact is that the means employed make every bit of difference when it comes to whether or not the content based speech restriction is tailored as narrowly as possible to achieve a compelling government interest.

On the other hand, maybe it makes not difference to your feelings, which is fair.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#495

Post by megaman821 »

elishah wrote: post #422
causi wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend speech they don't agree with, and rarer still any speech they find repugnant. It isn't liberty vs authority anymore; it's just team red and team blue. One might be wrong-er than the other but neither think people they hate should be able to open their mouths in anything but agreement.

> It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend speech they don't agree with ... I think framing this as being about speech with which one disagrees, or finds repugnant, is a bit disingenuous. It omits consideration of the possibility of speech that is genuinely harmful. For a few examples: - My friends and I decide it'd be cool to put you in jail, so we report you as committing a serious crime that you didn…

Absolutely nothing you stated is legal now. The government would not have to intervene asking for censorship in any of these cases. They would press charges and have a court order to remove the non-protected speech.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#496

Post by jtbayly »

brasic wrote: post #167
efitz wrote: post #131

This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing that a particular email isn’t coercive enough, etc. A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. Freedom of speech…

Read the entire injunction. It’s only seven pages. Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization” I’m not defending the behavior alleged here but…

No way.

The government is still entirely free to post its news, including on social media.

What it’s not allowed to do (at least temporarily) is tell to those organizations what speech it deems unacceptable from US citizens.

This is the entire purpose of the first amendment. This is a huge win for freedom of speech.

The government must not be doing this.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#497

Post by afavour »

ipaddr wrote: post #470
afavour wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no idea how you could come up with an argument to change my mind on that. I guess I don’t understand your point here unless we’re being ultra-literal and saying a corporation can’t have an opinion because it doesn’t have a physical brain developing individual thought. An example of “corporate opinion” off th…

Facebook is made up of many parts. Some parts find advertising to be directly opposite of their goals. The react team may not like ads being force in their docs for example. If own shares through a pension I may not like advertising. The CEO decides who manages which roles and divides authority. Opinions comes from these power structures. They could be divided on issues or unified. They speak for the company. Google…

> Google is so big you often have conflicting goals from different power structures.

In that situation I'd say Google is conflicted on the topic. It's still not all that different from a human being, IMO, I can be internally conflicted on a topic and find it difficult to find an opinion that encompasses all of my thoughts.

I get that it's shorthand and euphemism but I don't think it's all that confusing.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#498

Post by ndr »

brasic wrote: post #167
efitz wrote: post #131

This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing that a particular email isn’t coercive enough, etc. A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. Freedom of speech…

Read the entire injunction. It’s only seven pages. Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization” I’m not defending the behavior alleged here but…

> It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization”

That's plain false. From middle of page 5 there's the list of things explicitly not banned, it starts with "IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this Preliminary Injunction:".

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#499

Post by mrguyorama »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #154
plagiarist wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think because Obama didn't extort a foreign country, commit an insurrection, or sell top secret information to US adversaries.

Trump should have been impeached and convicted for those things, which have nothing to do with the judges he appointed.

Surely the guy who literally sold pardons for a few million a pop has broad respect for the role of Justice in society.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#500

Post by DropInIn »

evandale wrote: post #475
afavour wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no idea how you could come up with an argument to change my mind on that. I guess I don’t understand your point here unless we’re being ultra-literal and saying a corporation can’t have an opinion because it doesn’t have a physical brain developing individual thought. An example of “corporate opinion” off th…

> because it doesn’t have a physical brain developing individual thought. You summed up my point with a single sentence I can agree with, can't argue there! In your scenario what's the opinion Facebook has about advertising? I'm in favour of more bike lanes in my city but I don't consider that an opinion. Describing _why_ I'm in favour has an element of opinion but voting yes/no is not an opinion to me. Plus, any old…

It's pretty clear that your "reasoning" is based not in any logic but almost exclusively in your "feels"...

You just dislike corps and it's undermining every thought you have on this topic.

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