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U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
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Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#72Important to note that this 5th Circuit ruling conflicts with the 11th Circuit's ruling. And SCOTUS had previously reinstated an injunction against this very same law. And this 5th Circuit opinion has very idiosyncratic reasoning [0, just the first few pages will blow your hair back]. A sample: "In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of cours…
In one case the corporation is speaking. In the other the corporation is facilitating me speaking to you (like a telephone wire).
That strikes me as a pretty clear distinction.
My hair is not blown back at all here.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#73Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#74As 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…
So as a free-speech absolutist, would you let anyone walk into a Starbucks and start shouting about anything they wanted? Would it be okay for them to write a manifesto on the chalkboard next to the barista? Starbucks is a privately owned location and has the right to enforce behavioral standards or kick people out. Social Media is the same. Privately owned and can set their own standards. The internet has plenty of…
You can ban speech based on non-content criteria such as the volume of sound, but when you ban speech based on the content, it is a violation of the principle of free speech.
Whether private companies should not be able to discriminate speech based on content is still up to debate, but don’t compare this to shouting.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the only reason. Without any moderation, sites would degenerate into cesspools that only cesspool dwellers would want to visit. Few site owners want their properties to be cesspools.
Why not give users the power of moderation? Currently the website owner makes the decision for me about what content I should not be seeing. I want instead all or at least almost all content preserved and the ability to create and subscribe to blocklists. The website can have a default blocklist active to make it palatable for the majority.
There's a weird bias towards "we need a daddy to tell us how to talk". Maybe it's because moderation is too hard for mere crowdsource+algorithms and maybe it isn't. I dunno.
And maybe the owners just want to keep that sweet fascist option open.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how the heck my website is a public square but my home or café isn't, this argument sounds self-contradictory
Yup. This is the exact problem that we’re (as a society/world) wrestling with. The reason it is (not just seems) different is because of the scope. A message on a chalkboard cannot reach millions of people (without the internet), but it can on a website. That by itself distorts the public/private argument, but we as a society aren’t sure how or to what extent yet. These lawsuits are the second step (the first step wa…
So, because any website can potentially reach millions of people, all websites must be considered public spaces and must be coerced to allow all legal speech?
I honestly don't think it distorts the public/private argument, any more than MacDonald's serving billions of customers distorts the question of whether it's a private corporation or whether its scale transforms it into a public service.
But the inevitable endgame of this is going to be the government regulating all speech on the internet, and most of the internet no longer allowing any kind of user content, and I don't think the free speech absolutists so willing to throw the baby of free speech out with the bathwater of consequence are going to like it.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not give users the power of moderation? Currently the website owner makes the decision for me about what content I should not be seeing. I want instead all or at least almost all content preserved and the ability to create and subscribe to blocklists. The website can have a default blocklist active to make it palatable for the majority.
There's a weird bias towards "we need a daddy to tell us how to talk". Maybe it's because moderation is too hard for mere crowdsource+algorithms and maybe it isn't. I dunno. And maybe the owners just want to keep that sweet fascist option open.
IMHO, the deeper aversion is because user-driven moderation goes hand in hand with user-driven ranking.
Which is turn makes it harder to non-obviously put your hand on the scales and insert paid content into high visibility feeds.
If TikTok inserts a well-matched piece of paid content into a feed, who would even recognize?
If HN inserts a piece of paid content onto the front page, people tend to notice.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. This is the exact problem that we’re (as a society/world) wrestling with. The reason it is (not just seems) different is because of the scope. A message on a chalkboard cannot reach millions of people (without the internet), but it can on a website. That by itself distorts the public/private argument, but we as a society aren’t sure how or to what extent yet. These lawsuits are the second step (the first step wa…
So, because any website can potentially reach millions of people, all websites must be considered public spaces and must be coerced to allow all legal speech? I honestly don't think it distorts the public/private argument, any more than MacDonald's serving billions of customers distorts the question of whether it's a private corporation or whether its scale transforms it into a public service. But the inevitable endg…
Yes and no, because we’ve seen society wide effects from this over the last 15-20 years.
But all websites? To my knowledge, the only websites people agree on this are Facebook and Twitter. So probably probably not all websites, but that's one of the things that need to be worked out. When does a site reach a scale where it can no longer be treated solely as a private entity? What should happen then? How should we identify those sites? Then what?
There are tons of people who agree with you, tons who don't, and tons in between. But the majority seem to be on the side that things can't stay the way they’ve been. The effects on society over the last 20 years are not good. I haven't seen much disagreement on that. No one can agree on what to do about it though.
McDonald's is an interesting example because there are debates happening there too, but making people fat doesn't have cause the same visceral reaction as interfering with elections.
Which government? This is a global issue. It's going to be a long painful process of screwing up then trying to fix it.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#79Seeing as the tech companies have no interest in censoring based on "viewpoint" I don't see what difference this makes. Their entire existence relies on being the single point where everyone goes. No Republicans have ever been removed solely for being Republican. People are removed for promoting violence and harassing other users. The fact that Republicans consider violence to be a "viewpoint", and their viewpoint ra…
You should try to get out of your filter bubble more often.
I don't visit a single website that tries to serve me political content dynamically - no Facebook, no Twitter. Except YouTube, but I don't watch anything political there, and the algorithm seems to know it. I don't read the "MSM" news outlets, as they're called. But I observe the same trend the parent describes - in forums, in apparently objective news stories, in the previous US president, and in real life. I'm not saying this as a political cudgel. This personality "flaw" is common across the world and is just one of many on all sides, and it's not a surprise that people with any given personality commonality will bias to one side in any given two-party system, and in the US, this one appears to bias toward the Republican party. It's hard to talk about objectively and not invoke anger, which is reasonable. It is worrying, but there's rarely a time in polite conversation when it is relevant enough to bother pointing out. Content moderation is one of those times, I think. There's plenty of unfair moderation out there, but a lot of what people call a bias against the right in the US seems to usually just be a bias in the tendency of what they say to break seemingly reasonable content/behavior rules.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So as a free-speech absolutist, would you let anyone walk into a Starbucks and start shouting about anything they wanted? Starbucks is on private property. > Would it be okay for them to write a manifesto on the chalkboard next to the barista? The Starbucks chalkboard is privately owned. >Social Media is the same. Privately owned and can set their own standards. No it isn't. Anyone can log into Twitter and Facebook…
I don't see how the heck my website is a public square but my home or café isn't, this argument sounds self-contradictory
Your website isn't a public square because you're the one publishing content to it. We're discussing the public platforms that Facebook, Twitter and Google run, and I don't consider those three companies as publishing the content they host.