741–750 of 1001 posts
What's surprising is how often I encounter fellow Americans mistakenly asserting the first amendment extends beyond government and into the private sector. It's like they've never even been to a movie theater where they need to shut the hell up or leave. And here we have a US president signing an executive order in response to being moderated on a web site after years of arguably excessive tolerance of his b.s. I'm n…
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Twitter is not a monopoly therefore every web site would be considered a public web space. And so if I run a knitting forum I am not allowed to restrict people who want to turn it into a pornography one. And how would it work for spam. This could end up in a situation where a large spammer could force websites to not remove spam. It sounds unworkable and over the top just to protect some people who aren't even having…
Twitter is not equivalent to some obscure knitting forum. It is huge. So huge that it gets quoted in nearly every mainstream media article. Twitter matters to political discourse, knitting doesn't.
Currently. Might not be long after this change to Section 230 enforcement.
> Twitter matters to political discourse, knitting doesn't.
I don't follow this logic. There are substitutes for Twitter, even banned users can view publicly posted content on Twitter, and the CDA Section 230 has nothing to do with "political discourse" -- it describes all content.
I'm also fascinated that you used the word "political" and not "policy". All things "political" could vanish tomorrow and the world would be better off. Not being able to discuss policy issues/ideas would be tragic.
The biggest takeaway, looking past the headline: “This week a federal appeals court, ruling in a case brought by conservative activists against social media companies, affirmed that private websites are not public spaces and social media companies don't have First Amendment obligations. Any truly strong limits to Section 230 would almost certainly require action by Congress.”
Perhaps this will end the same way codifying the word “Marriage” in the Defense of Marriage Act did. Nothing like Federalizing a word.
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This is a valid argument, but it seems like the proper government response would be to use the tools that were designed to address issues like this such as antitrust law. We shouldn't be bestowing governmental responsibilities on these companies just because we let them become monopolies.
The legislation (Communications Decency Act of 1996) under discussion flows from EFFECTIVE lobbying by telecom monopolies seeking a liability shield [0]. Monopoly power and market manipulation is a second order issue. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act
Either way, if the root cause is telecom monopolies, let's actually try to fix monopolies rather creating a new category of private company that becomes a public good through its monopoly.
Regardless of ones views pertaining to the current president, does anyone feel comfortable with so called "fact checking"? I do not like anyone acting as the sole arbiter of truth, whether it be the president, the pope, or the random fellow screaming in the park. I prefer that corporations trust their users to make their own choices about what people say instead of making edits or including addendum's to peoples post…
> ... does anyone feel comfortable with so called "fact checking"? This has nothing to do with any real person, but is just a hypothetical situation pertaining to this question in your post: Let's say an account X with many followers calls you a pedophile. You're not, of course, so you responded and said you weren't, but since the followers tend to like X, they don't listen to you. X's followers then dox you, find yo…
You would potentially have legal recourse against the author, and the platform if they didn't act on you reporting the content. I don't know how that would apply were the author in another jurisdiction/country. I don't know if it's universal, but in Australia you'd request identifying information (IP and timestamp) from the platform via lawyer or police, they'd comply and remove the post if appropriate, and then you'd take the information to the owning ISP, get more detailed information and take the author to court.
I would guess that if the content were brought to the platform's attention and they didn't act reasonably, you may have recourse against them.
The debate here as I understand it is about not illegal but misleading, distasteful, harassing behaviour.
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The question was > Where have Fox News editorialised (sic) users content? not > Where have Fox News editorialised (sic) users political speech? so my reply should in no way construe my opinion of what is or is not political speech. Now that we've established that Fox News does in fact editorialize user content, we can move on to the original question of whether or not they should now > be liable for suit for anything…
> pretending content is not often political speech
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As a government official, you cannot take action to try to impede someone's access to your official statements. That is independent of the platform, and independent of how much work someone has to do to still access the information.
But a private company can take action to impede everyone’s access to an official’s statements if they “suppress” those statements... that would mean Twitter has to allow anything any public official, at least in the US, broadcasts via that medium...
Yes, that is their right to control how their website works.
> that would mean Twitter has to allow anything any public official, at least in the US, broadcasts via that medium...
No, they are not part of the US government, and they are not required to host official US government statements.
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>I'm not sure it's authoritarian to remove their liability protections, is it? If the intent is to punish critics and suppress the speech of party opponents, then yes. Any authoritarian can justify their actions in abstract and general terms, but context matters. >nor does it mean we have to ignore that question. We don't have to ignore it, but we also don't have to accept an autocrat's temper tantrum by fiat as an a…
> the President is attempting to use government power to infringe freedom of speech, thats an interestating take, considering trump is trying to stop the selective editorialization of individuals covered by the first amendment. are we really taking twitters side of this because we hate trump so much?
Until the tools, devices and technology needed to access the internet are free and universally available to all without restriction, these sites/services are no more of a public square than a country club is a public park. And no. A public library terminal is not universal access...
Nothing is "free", there are always constraints and opportunity costs. For example if there's a rally in DC, how many people can go there? It costs a lot of money, they have to get time off work, organize transport and lodging, etc. Sure, there are material differences between - let's say local politics, where the bar is showing up at the town hall - and getting on Twitter. But that difference is becoming more and mo…
The origins of both Free Speech and the so-called Public Square are closely tied. In fact, in some nations there is literally a place to go, stand and speak, available to anyone. In the public square. For free, not a penny of cost, not a ounce of censorship.
If Trump felt so strong about this, he could make internet access a universal right and then forced the ISP's and to make it available everywhere for free. He could then subsidize the costs of the devices and assure that there was universal access. But that's not what he wants. He wants attention and to distract you from the horrors of his incompetent failings as a leader.
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This probably has to do with the publisher vs platform debate. That means it is not about expanding government power but removing protections that the government granted to corporations.
I’ve been over this before. Unless if you’re going to eliminate the ability for Twitter to moderate any protected speech, then this is an expansion of government power. This would give someone in the government the ability to determine what protected speech is immune from Twitter moderation, and what protected speech is not. This is a massive expansion of government power, and turns a two tier speech system (protecte…
There is already protected speech. You can say whatever you want as long as its not libel, treason, direct threats, etc.
Twitter has a TOC that is not strictly based on protected speech. They ban people / censor people all the time who violate their TOC but do not violate the law.
Also, it is not going to be certain speech that is protected but certain companies. Its possible Twitter would not have protection but Facebook could.