Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government • Hacker News Board

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

#571

Post by aksss » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

HideousKojima wrote: post #379

Brusco_RF wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't under the impression that the 1st amendment protects government speech, are you?

I mean I've seen gun grabbers try and argue that the second amendment was meant to guarantee the right of the government to field an army, so it's certainly possible.

There are a lot of parallels there - people with a very pro-state bent try to invert what is meant by “the people” in the Constitution. It truly is a phenomenon in the gun rights debate. For decades we’ve heard that “the people” in 2A does not refer to individuals but the collective people, i.e. the government, despite such reasoning contradicting how the term is understood literally in every other amendment that uses it. But here we are watching the same rhetoric being applied to 1A. A misc. poster says this injunction infringes on the “rights” of the federal government because they’re people too. It takes a lot of chutzpah to turn this injunction into an argument that the Judiciary is suppressing the rights of the Executive. The humanity!

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

#572

Post by chrisco255 » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

singleshot_ wrote: post #494

leereeves wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, may…

Emergency announcements or orders have to be temporary and limited in scope. They also couldn't target specific channels on talk radio just because they have a made up emergency.

Meanwhile the emergency broadcast rules that were created in early tv and radio era definitely don't apply to social media, given that they are discretionary, asynchronous forms of communication, and there's no lack of bandwidth as there was in the early tv and radio era.

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

#573

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #527

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How coercive? If you're right, the government can still make a court case that takes a good part of a decade and costs you ten million dollars to win. That's just the straightforward stuff. That's without the IRS deciding your corporate profit statements deserve extra scrutiny, and the FCC deciding to question whether you really qualify for section 230, and and and... You can be right. They can still make your life v…

That would imply the person or group doing the asking somehow have unilateral control over those distinct agencies. At what point down the career ladder do you become just another drone who shouldn't be considered to have power over distinct government agencies? Surely Rachel in the Post office can't have you audited. But maybe the president can talk to enough people to encourage that to happen. So where is the limit…

Well, a "White House director of digital strategy" is presumably not Rachel in the post office. He's someone in the White House, which means he's in a position to have a quiet conversation with the president. "They're not playing ball" might be all it would take.

I mean, yes, you're right, the White House director of digital strategy, taken by himself, can go jump in the lake as far as Facebook or Twitter are concerned. Even given all the people under him, that's still true. The question is, to what degree is he speaking for the people over him? How many layers are there between him and the president? I'd guess somewhere from 0 to 2, though I admit that's a guess. Can he cause trouble on his own? No. But the one giving him orders may be able to give orders to others.

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

#574

Post by sangnoir » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

HideousKojima wrote: post #398

commandlinefan wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of - crack downs on "obscenity" always come from the right and rarely if ever from the left. For the most part, everybody seems to agree than "obscenity" should be an exception to freedom of speech, although there's quite a bit of disagreement on what constitutes it.

>crack downs on "obscenity" always come from the right and rarely if ever from the left Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman would like a word.

This just shows how useless a single-dimension left/right axis is. There were plenty of socially conservative Democratic party members then (and now, but moreso then).

This was also a time when the majority (>50%) of Americans disapproved of mixed-race relationships, according to Gallup. That percentage only fell below 50% in 1993, IIRC.

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

#575

Post by iscream26 » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #309

causi wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction? Yes. Restrictions on what teachers are allowed to teach are restrictions on freedom of speech. Restrictions on non-sexual drag performances are restrictions of freedom of speech. Bans on calling for boycotts of Israeli goods and services are restrictions of the freedom of speech.

The restrictions on teachers you speak of are in their functions as employees of the state while performing their duties on the job on the employer's time. Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment issue. That goes double when we are talking about public employees whose conduct is directly the function of law.

> Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment issue.

In other words: you're allowed to restrict the speech of other people as long as you own private property. Turns out that freedom of speech in a liberal "democracy" is not all it's cracked up to be.

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

#576

Post by dvt » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

staticman2 wrote: post #569

dvt wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? That's not what GP argued, and you're being quite uncharitable. Their argument goes something like this: 1) Free speech is meant to protect those that don't have a monopoly on speech 2) The government has a monopoly on—o…

" 1) Free speech is meant to protect those that don't have a monopoly on speech " You lost me here. How can the government have a monopoly on speech if we're talking about the government being prevented from saying things by a judge?

> How can the government have a monopoly on speech if we're talking about the government being prevented from saying things by a judge?

The judicial branch is supposed to be independent by design[1], so it's of the government, but not quite the government.

[1] https://judiciallearningcenter.org/judicial-independence/

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

#577

Post by revelio » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 7:03 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #338

stcroixx wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech for citizens is important to me and I'm on no political side. This seems like a great thing to me. I don't want the government doing what they're been doing or doing it again in the future, regardless of who that government is. Ideally, these losers would have enough morals to police themselves or not do this in the first place, but here we are. Might not be a perfect ruling, but in spirit it's against go…

If the government says vaccine misinformation is killing thousands of people on air on the evening news and Facebook agrees and starts banning people posting it and those folks have to share their misinformation on their own sites rather than Facebook how has your freedom been infringed? Likewise if the communique takes place via a memo. You have a right to communicate what you please you don't have a right to have y…

Yeah that works great up until the people who distribute memos act like Facebook, and then the people who sell you ink, and then the phone companies, and then ....

Really why is this so hard to understand. There's nothing special about tech firms in this story except the naivety of their executives, who have ended up looking like utter tools in this whole sorry charade. These idiots systematically suppressed discussion of the lab leak hypothesis for over a year and then once the Biden admin started taking it seriously decided, whoops, maybe it wasn't misinformation after all and stopped banning it. Twitter was systematically banning stuff even whilst expressing serious reservations internally because they knew the claims were true. Yet these firms are nonetheless still doing better than Google, at least Facebook and Twitter realized they were wrong in the end.

This thread seems to be full of FAANG employees desperately trying to come up with some reason why their employers are not in fact easily duped rubes who would sew the mouths of their own mothers shut if a 100% conflicted mid-level nobody at the CDC suggested it.

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

#578

Post by DannyBee » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 7:04 PM UTC

ndr wrote: post #509

DannyBee wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, because this is just a preliminary injunction, not a decision on the merits and evidence?

"The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition" https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

I'm not sure what you think this changes about what I said. It's literally not a merits decision.

There are even plenty of times they get issued and dissolved days later.

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

#579

Post by staticman2 » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

tdehnel wrote: post #542

staticman2 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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…

From a constitutional perspective (which is the perspective Supreme Court Justices swear to have), the ability of the government to limit speech is not allowed. Full stop. Sources below. First Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peace…

"From a constitutional perspective (which is the perspective Supreme Court Justices swear to have), the ability of the government to limit speech is not allowed. Full stop. Sources below."

The Supreme court has never said anything like what you just typed in 200+ years of american history. Do you type this every day, constantly knashing you teeth at the existence of trade secret laws, copyright laws, libel laws, and the like, or does the rheteric come out in service of special goals?

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

#580

Post by Karunamon » Thu, Jul 06, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

iscream26 wrote: post #575

Karunamon wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The restrictions on teachers you speak of are in their functions as employees of the state while performing their duties on the job on the employer's time. Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment issue. That goes double when we are talking about public employees whose conduct is directly the function of law.

> Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment issue. In other words: you're allowed to restrict the speech of other people as long as you own private property. Turns out that freedom of speech in a liberal "democracy" is not all it's cracked up to be.

You skipped the rather pertinent bit where these restrictions apply only to people who chose of their own volition to take them on.

You are, of course, free to not take on the burden of employment from a particular organization if you find their demands on your conduct while they are compensating you for your time to be unacceptable.

This relationship is purely transactional. And, sorry, the idea that this is actually a bona fide problem is facile.