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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

#751

Post by int_19h »

zionic wrote: post #571
kelnos wrote: post #409

> "Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say," Judge Andrew Oldham, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the ruling. I don't really understand this; from my perspective, it sounds like this judge doesn't really understand the first amendment (hopefully this is not the case, and the quote is taken out of context). Corporations are…

> Corporations are not bound by the restrictions laid out in the first amendment; only the government is. I think that is no longer the consensus. We have corporations that rival governments now.

It is most certainly the judicial consensus. You might argue that it's not a social consensus, but that doesn't magically override existing constitutional protections. Much the same as social consensus on guns doesn't override the Second Amendment.

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

#752

Post by tremarley »

osigurdson wrote: post #750

Maybe there should just be a way to for people to opt in to censorship in their feeds. For example, one could click on a "no racism checkbox" in order to have racist content removed from their feeds. This way, platforms would be responsible for detection instead of curation. It seems like it would be better for the platforms as well.

This sounds like a genuinely excellent idea

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

#753

Post by dexwiz »

osigurdson wrote: post #750

Maybe there should just be a way to for people to opt in to censorship in their feeds. For example, one could click on a "no racism checkbox" in order to have racist content removed from their feeds. This way, platforms would be responsible for detection instead of curation. It seems like it would be better for the platforms as well.

This just moves the goalposts. Should they be determining what is racist and what is “acceptable” speech?

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

#754

Post by int_19h »

croes wrote: post #436
nomdep wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a private place has 50 million users it clears that has become a “public place”. Think as if the subway was privately owned

"In 2018, a Nielsen Scarborough survey found that over 37.8 million Americans visited a Starbucks (Statista, 2021) within the last 30 days." So Starbucks is now a public place? I don't think so.

How many other people does an average Starbucks visitor interact with?

Now consider the same for Facebook.

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

#755

Post by int_19h »

unity1001 wrote: post #126
sseagull wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is having the government decide whether or not a private company can block a particular person for a particular reason. Everyone is generally ok with companies blocking content that is irrelevant/off-topic, but there is a very, very large gray area. Do you want the government deciding what is acceptable?

> Do you want the government deciding what is acceptable? Yes. Entire world except the US does. People elect parliaments, who make laws according to their voters' agendas. Then the laws are enforced. What's acceptable and what's not acceptable are decided in the same manner. Like how going out naked in any city in the civilized world constitutes an offense unless you have a mental disorder. You already obey with a zi…

> Entire world except the US does.

US does that too; it has obscenity laws, copyright laws, state secret laws, and plenty more laws that restrict what you cannot say.

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

#756

Post by int_19h »

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…

> there really is no existence of far left hate groups

Tankies also organize, and "liberals get the bullet, too" is a real thing.

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

#757

Post by mpalmer »

catiopatio wrote: post #614
mpalmer wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using "actively" as emphasis is so, so tired. You're implying without evidence that they're doing it as part of some pro-Biden strategy. Why? Also, corporations either have personhood or they don't. Do you support the Citizens United decision?

> Also, corporations either have personhood or they don't. I'm fine with allowing them to censor speech if they also are liable for the speech they do choose to publish, just like any other individual, newspaper, or publisher would be. Platforms cannot simultaneously claim that: (1) They are mere conduits for other people's speech, and thus, deserve to be shielded from any liability for what they publish (2) What the…

I was under the impression that the law isn't quite settled on this point. I certainly am not going to pretend to understand the legal interests at play in this question. Why exactly should I be suing YouTube for hosting someone else's libel?

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

#758

Post by osigurdson »

dexwiz wrote: post #753
osigurdson wrote: post #750

Maybe there should just be a way to for people to opt in to censorship in their feeds. For example, one could click on a "no racism checkbox" in order to have racist content removed from their feeds. This way, platforms would be responsible for detection instead of curation. It seems like it would be better for the platforms as well.

This just moves the goalposts. Should they be determining what is racist and what is “acceptable” speech?

You could always un-click all filters and get all views (including bots, etc). If the censorship selections are filtering more or less than what you want, it could be flagged to help train the algorithms.

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

#759

Post by hedora »

lanstin wrote: post #518
programmarchy wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this makes the most sense. There’s probably enough local compute power to run these filters on the client. But that’s a huge power shift and the change is likely more political than technological.

Doubtful. With the rise of natural language spam, you have to analyze it in terms of networks or social graphs of bots reinforcing each other. E.g. a lot of bots will comment positively on other bots spam posts, in a manner very similar to my agreeing with some human. It is data bounded, not compute bounded. Will Twitter be forced to open their full internal conversation graph, including using real IPs probably for a…

Yelp's not recommended reviews are a great example of why this is data bounded (assuming Yelp's filter is halfway decent).

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

#760

Post by revscat »

wussboy wrote: post #645
nyuszika7h wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people have social anxiety.

They have social anxiety because they never went outside. “Outside” and “with other people” are our ancestral environment. Social media is abnormal and makes abnormal people.

I have social anxiety because of a lifetime of psychological and physical abuse from everyone I have ever considered “family”, with only two exceptions. It has nothing to do with “outside”, and your idiotic hot take discounts the lives and experiences of thousands who have been through similar situations and worse.
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