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

reuters.com

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

#681

Post by eduction »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #553
DannyBee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This opinion is just badly written and badly reasoned. It's not even well written enough that it is worth trying to debate. Of course the judges in question were rated unqualified by the ABA (which is a really low bar) so not surprising.

eduction's comment asserts the exact opposite of what you are saying. Who is lying here?

I think it’s likely OP made an honest mistake of some sort (as opposed to an intentional deception) but I do wish he’d correct it. It was a pretty broad and dismissive statement and personally maligning the judges involved in decisions we don’t like distracts from what should be the focus of the discussion, the actual legal principles and other ideas in play here. Sometimes I worry that we may be losing the ability or willingness in this country to separate the ideas we don’t like from the people who embrace them. I think making that distinction is critical for building a rational, humane, and effective society.

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

#682

Post by xani_ »

crooked-v wrote: post #7
Overtonwindow wrote: post #3

As a free-speech absolutist, I got no problem with this. Unless the speech is threatening the direct physical harm of someone, or violating a law, it should be allowed. At the same time, everyone else should have the tools to filter, block, and mute speech they do not like. If a tweet or a social media post has a certain word or phrase in it that I don’t like, I should be able to mute that and never see it. Social me…

As a free-speech absolutist, the basic problem you should have with this is that as precedent, it would lead right into the legislature being able to force the press to publish certain things because not doing so would be 'censorship'.

Press is publishing what their authors write, not what their readers write. It's not a social conversation.

Public Television (in countries that have that) would be better example.

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

#683

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #652
8note wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This solution would run into the same problem. X moderator doesn't give preferential enough treatment to conservatives, and therefore must be stopped

On the contrary, moderation feeds would almost certainly be completely protected by free speech laws, as they would essentially be the expressed opinions of individual people.

What free speech laws? Conservatives keep screeching free speech in the realm of a private entity and it simply doesn't apply.

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

#684

Post by slumpt_ »

fny wrote: post #660

Texas is setting itself up to be a huge regulatory counterweight to California. 1. We had the finance ruling related to fossil fuels. 2. We had the abortion ruling. 3. We now have this. This is going to be a huge shift politically. California, given the size of its economy, has often been a defacto regulatory power across the US. Given California's energy issues and high debt levels, their influence may wane even fur…

Regulatory counterweight I think may attribute outsized influence to the regressive state. I can't imagine the abortion ruling is going to have any impact on how California ever conducts itself, e.g. Even in the event of a federal ban California would likely protest and protect women's autonomy.

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

#686

Post by fluidcruft »

rocqua wrote: post #537
coffeeblack wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have argued similarly, based on comparisons with editorial decisions of newspapers in the days of yore. You could pick which opinions were amplified or shunned by picking your newspaper. On Twitter, you are stuck with the decisions made by Twitter. Saying 'just start Twitter competitors' would lose us the universal platform of Twitter and create more walled gardens. Instead, let people pick their moderators / edito…

I thought the sites need to not have editorial control so that they are not responsible for user's content.

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

#687

Post by hot_gril »

aliasxneo wrote: post #186
ajross wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already passed, it's a law on the books in Texas. And now it's been upheld at by both trial and circuit courts. FWIW: there's one last chance at SCOTUS to undo this, but if that doesn't work out what we're almost certain to see instead of "pre-filtering" is just "No Tweeting from Texas".

The apparent disdain for Texas in this thread is bizarre.

I've got nothing against Texas except for this weird law.

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

#688

Post by tolmasky »

chaps wrote: post #637
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…

One thing you can do, though it would take a lot of energy, is to add a "submit" button to your bot that you would have to click in order to tweet each tweet. That way it would be you who tweets it, though a bot did the hard work.

Then, as an optimization, you change the text to “submit 100 times”, and now it’s you that posted 100 of those tweets. Also, a little timer field where you tell it how long to wait until it tweets it. Perfect.

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

#689

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

supernovae wrote: post #288
seydor wrote: post #211

It is weird that there is no country that allows such freedoms in the world. There is clearly a gap in regulation and constitutions when it comes to the internet because they could have never imagined it 400 years ago. But this needs to be settled in the positive direction and in an egalitarian way: speech that is legal should be free everywhere. and that's the basis upon which every tech business should be built . T…

Reddit is highly moderated and censored. You can't even post facts in /r/conservative without being banned. Reddit also has a Terms of Service and it has banned hate groups under such terms of service. With a large bias towards far right hate groups because there really is no existence of far left hate groups. So of course moderation seems biased when your views are hateful to begin with. Advertisers generally want n…

>Reddit also has a Terms of Service and it has banned hate groups under such terms of service.

>So of course moderation seems biased when your views are hateful to begin with.

It doesn't seem biased, it is biased. Reddit's policy on "hate groups" is both sexist and racist, according to one of their employees, and their actual practices.

"Our rule1 protects groups that are attacked based on a vulnerability, which doesn't pertain to white people or men as a group." Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/NgOxEg0.png

What is rule 1?

"Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned." (https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy)

So in practice, the policy is actually:

"Remember the non-white male human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking non-white people or women. Everyone except white people and men have a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate against non-white people or women will be banned."

These days I automatically assume that anything reddit bans as a "hate group" was nothing of the sort. Hate groups are perfectly allowed on reddit, if you hate the correct people. Here's a sample of currently active ones:

* https://old.reddit.com/r/FragileWhiteRedditor/

* https://old.reddit.com/r/FragileMaleRedditor/

* https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/

* https://old.reddit.com/r/AreTheStraightsOK/

There are a bunch of fragile$GROUP subs that redirect to FragileWhiteRedditor or FragileMaleRedditor too, here's a fun example: https://old.reddit.com/r/fragileblackpeople/ The sole post says "Nope. Nice try /r/FragileWhiteRedditor." These subs all make it really obvious that the real policy is not the one in the official policy, but the one that exempts men and white people as a group from any protections.

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

#690

Post by scarface74 »

catiopatio wrote: post #586
ineptech wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being kicked off Twitter isn't the same as being silenced.

What would you call it?

Is Twitter the only way to communicate over the Internet?

Why is a “social media” company headed by the most popular “conservative” in America failing?

Why can’t FoxNews create its own social media company?

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