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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

#731

Post by mr_toad »

inetknght wrote: post #612
patmcc wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So can I hire someone from a low cost-of-living jurisdiction and get them to behave like a bot for me?

> So can I hire someone from a low cost-of-living jurisdiction and get them to behave like a bot for me? For some definitions of low cost-of-living, sure. In this law specifically: Sec. 120.002. APPLICABILITY OF CHAPTER. (a) This chapter applies only to a user who: (1) resides in this state; (2) does business in this state; or (3) shares or receives content on a social media platform in this state. There are, of cour…

> This chapter applies only to a user who: (1) resides in this state; (2) does business in this state; or (3) shares or receives content on a social media

They forgot (4) can afford a lawyer.

This law will only benefit those with deep pockets.

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

#732

Post by belltaco »

zionic wrote: post #573
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want the owners of those small communities to get sued if someone posts copywrited material?

If they don’t censor, they’re not liable. If they censor, they are liable.

No, repealing Section 230 means every site with user generated content is publishing the information, just like a newspaper or TV channel, which get successfully sued all the time.

In fact, Section 230 was passed explicitly because of successful lawsuits against forums and websites hosting user generated content.

https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/overview-section-23...

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

#733

Post by rayiner »

DannyBee wrote: post #138
mustache_kimono wrote: post #5

Important 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…

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.

The opinion was written by Oldham, who was unanimously rated “well qualified” by the ABA: https://ballotpedia.org/Andrew_Oldham

Now I don’t think the ABA ratings are worth anything, but your assertion is factually untrue.

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

#734

Post by hedora »

Brybry wrote: post #217
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…

I'm not a lawyer but I don't think this would apply to bots. The Texas law text[1] says it only protects 'users' which are defined as people. And even then the law only prohibits censorship for specific reasons. It doesn't say companies can't ban users for running bots. Even if the messages the bot is posting are protected the fact of running the bot itself should still be a bannable offense if it's not allowed in th…

Corporations are people. This clearly defines bots hired by any corporation that is in, does buisness with, or communicates with a person in Texas as a "user".

Edit: Skipped a step: When spent by a corporation, the courts have ruled that money is speech. Therefore, the bot's output is clearly the speech of the corporation, which is definitely a person.

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

#735

Post by trinovantes »

sacrosancty wrote: post #378
taylodl wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple. Shut off Texas. You don’t have a right to use social media. I wouldn’t even appeal the decision. Let Texas lie in the bed they made.

Didn't happen with EU's internet laws. Instead, we get cookie banners all over the world. I don't think exiting a market full of money because of ideology is good business.

There's a few sites (e.g. local city news sites) that return 451 status code for EU IP addresses

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

#736

Post by DangitBobby »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #266

People often want free speech when it favors their side, and they will likewise rationalize against free speech when it doesn't. We should be able to talk and think about laws outside the very specific political context of the day, but Reuters cannot help but remind the reader that free speech online may enable 'violence' and that this ruling is a win for all sorts of people associated with Republicans and Donald Tru…

Free speech online in this context cuts both ways. People are allowed to espouse views online that may lead to "violence", and the people that work and pay to keep online platforms running are allowed to scrub words they don't like from the platform they own. It's absurd that they could be compelled to display the dumb shit some people say.

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

#737

Post by torstenvl »

bradleyjg wrote: post #207
pclmulqdq wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this court case is over a state law, is Citizens United even precedential? That was a ruling about a federal law, and this appears to be a matter of Texas law, adjudicated with Texas court precedent. I assume it's only in federal court due to diversity jurisdiction.

Both state and federal laws have to comport with the constitutional free speech doctrines. Technically they apply to the federal government via the First Amendment and state governments via the Fourteenth Amendment but for a hundred years now the content of the doctrines have been considered identical when applied to either. Citizens United isn’t directly on point. That was a question of positive corporate speech whi…

> this law, if it’s struck down will be struck down under the corporate compelled speech doctrine

That's unlikely, as such an argument is a complete non-starter.

If I were arguing against the law, I suspect (shooting from the hip without researching it) that the most fruitful line of reasoning would be that the federal government has preempted the field of interstate communications transmission by a combination of the FCC's organic statute and the CDA. This is a better argument because, despite what some on HN believe, there is a half-century of Supreme Court precedent that compelled hosting is not compelled speech, and because of the doctrine of constitutional avoidance.

As an interesting aside, Justice Kagan had some involvement in one of the issues underlying one of the cornerstone cases in this area. Though she was not a party and does not appear to have been among the amici, when she was Dean of Harvard Law School she opposed military recruiting on campus due to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. The Solomon Amendment required non-discrimination in hosting speakers for recruiting purposes, under threat of the loss of federal funding. That compelled hosting was challenged and upheld in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, 390 F. 3d 219 (2006).

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

#738

Post by Thorentis »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #339
solarmist wrote: post #60

Copied from a comment thread below. Because I feel this is the root of the issue/problem. > 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…

> reach millions of people I think this is the heart of the problem. These social media companies didn't merely build agoras, they built amphitheaters. They build amphitheaters so large that control over the amphitheater makes you a kingmaker. Now they can't let go of that control, because doing so would risk the wrong people using it. They never should have built amphitheaters this large in the first place. Better i…

The logical solution to this problem then, seems to be breaking up the amphitheatres. If these places are too big that we are forced to treat them as public squares, then we should pass laws that do not allow amphitheatres that large to exist.

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

#739

Post by hedora »

CJefferson wrote: post #240
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.

Having run a mail server, I don't think it's reasonable to expect most people to contain the deluge of spam and phishing attacks they would get if just told them to "sort it out" themselves.

Thunderbird used to have a local spam filter. It was fine.

As for phishing attacks: Education is helpful. It would help if organizations with legitimate flows that are indistinguishable from phishing attacks were made liable. (Mortgage industry: I'm looking at you.)

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

#740

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

belltaco wrote: post #732
zionic wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don’t censor, they’re not liable. If they censor, they are liable.

No, repealing Section 230 means every site with user generated content is publishing the information, just like a newspaper or TV channel, which get successfully sued all the time. In fact, Section 230 was passed explicitly because of successful lawsuits against forums and websites hosting user generated content. https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/overview-section-23...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.

> The court held that although CompuServe did host defamatory content on its forums, CompuServe was merely a distributor, rather than a publisher, of the content. As a distributor, CompuServe could only be held liable for defamation if it knew, or had reason to know, of the defamatory nature of the content.[2] As CompuServe had made no effort to review the large volume of content on its forums, it could not be held liable for the defamatory content.

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