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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

#891

Post by throwaway0asd »

xani_ wrote: post #666
throwaway0asd wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If social media wishes to be immune from lawsuits regarding the content it publishes, section 203, then it should not have the ability to censor such content for an explicit commercial revenue model. I understand why people hate that opinion, because they want civil discourse and nearly free access to media online. Uncensored content pushes normal people out. Those things are great, but are ultimately out of alignmen…

> If social media wishes to be immune from lawsuits regarding the content it publishes, section 203, then it should not have the ability to censor such content for an explicit commercial revenue model. It's a bit more insidious than that, as they can still go and say "we don't censor it, see, it is not removed", all while the content is blacklisted from recommendations. Still works essentially as censorship as nobody…

> It pushes ad revenue out.

Same thing. Ad revenue is a result of eyeballs looking at it.

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

#892

Post by kevincox »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #88
netheril96 wrote: post #70

Earlier 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.

This is an interesting model, and there's nothing stopping someone from starting a social media site that works like this. But that doesn't mean that existing ones should be forced to use this model. Let's try them both (and others) and see which ones work best for their users.

This is the model that social media had. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram... they all started of just showing you content from people your followed.

Or course they now all demand to show you "recommended" content and with that take on the responsibly of how "pleasant" that recommended content is.

Where did they do this? I bet few people truly know. My personal guess it's because injected ads and promoted content logged to out of place between your friends posts whereas there is little difference between ads and most popular posts.

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

#893

Post by jquery »

wussboy wrote: post #803
revscat wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It discounts no such thing. Your unfortunate experience (for which I truly feel sympathy) has nothing to do with how evolution or socio-biology work or the significance of our ancestral environments or the statistically significant fact that even you, with your unique and very real burdens, if you went outside and met with other people would probably feel less anxiety.

You appear to be making normative statements based on your own experience. Not everyone benefits from exposure therapy.

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

#894

Post by visarga »

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…

> Twitter can't ban them though.

People should be able to opt into a variety of filters, some even provided by third parties, to clean their feed according to their views. That won't cause an issue with the senders as the receivers are entitled to filter what they read. People can have control but Twitter can't dictate.

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

#895

Post by ddevault »

kybernetyk wrote: post #852
robertwt7 wrote: post #833

I don’t really understand the law, and I agree that big tech shouldn’t be able to regulate online speech. However one thing that I’m confused is, what about some dangerous stuff like radicalisation which then will produce terrorists or extremist? Other than that, I agree that no one should be censored for any reason I guess it is a hard topic to define which one is the limit of freedom of “speech”

>what about some dangerous stuff like radicalisation which then will produce terrorists or extremist? Is this the millennial version of boomers' "3d shooter games create school shooters"? "Tweets with bad words create terrorists"? I thought this BS (both versions) has been disproved countless times. But here we are and the nu-conservatives (who call themselves liberals) are at it again.

Games let you pretend to do a terrorist attack. Twitter lets you plan to do one.

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

#896

Post by lettergram »

likeclockwork wrote: post #867
zarzavat wrote: post #862

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many, many people the internet doesn’t really exist outside of a few FAANG apps. Even for technical users, if you want to post a political video, is there really an alternative to YouTube with any audience for it? Add to that platforms such as Facebook groups and Reddit subreddits, where the individual groups are much more like stalls and the platform is like the mall.

No one's entitled to an audience.

No one disagrees with that.

In a free society you’re free to speak in the commons. That doesn’t mean anyone has to listen. That said you can’t boot everyone you don’t like from the town square.

Social media posts can be made, doesn’t mean you have to follow or read.

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

#897

Post by mojzu »

catiopatio wrote: post #567
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…

They're free to ban bots. That would clearly be a viewpoint-neutral restriction on content/behavior. "Using a bot" isn't a viewpoint, and banning bots is not a viewpoint-based restriction on user expression. This is a very well-explored area of law, and nobody is confused about the definitions of the terms used here. Even the government has reasonable authority to restrict speech based on time, place, or manner (e.g.…

Isn't having access to Twitter similar to the use of a sound amplification system? Being removed from Twitter does not remove your ability to speak, move to another smaller platform or setup your own platform, it just reduces your potential audience/reduces your volume. While I'm not a fan of the concentration of power in a few big companies, this outcome is in alignment with current definitions of free speech (private entities get to choose who can use their property)

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

#898

Post by leereeves »

mhneu wrote: post #694
catiopatio wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It goes into thorough analysis into why this is such a lazy, stupid decision. The author, Mike Masnick, is a tech blogger — not an attorney, as far as I've been able to determine. Even Eugene Volokh — who is both an actual attorney and uniquely qualified to weigh in here — didn't attempt to digest the 113 pages of the opinion, much less immediately produce a reasoned analysis. I'm sure one will be forthcoming. The…

Volokh is a conservative attorney who is intellectually aligned with the 5th circuit judges who wrote this opinion. A few other sources: - Lawrence Tribe, a very senior center-left constitutional lawyer and Harvard prof: https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1562951505451266050 "A disgraceful Fifth Circuit decision" - Reporters' Committee on Freedom of the Press (a deeply centrist/neutral organization) https://twitter.…

> - Lawrence Tribe, a very senior center-left constitutional lawyer and Harvard prof: https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1562951505451266050

That tweet isn't even about this case, it's about voting rights for felons.

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

#899

Post by towaway15463 »

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…

Your scenario makes no sense. The law isn’t a magic shield you can apply to any thing by just mentioning politics. Your bots could still be banned for abusing the platform or sharing links to malicious sites. The law just means that Twitter can’t ban you specifically for political opinions.

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

#900

Post by ThunderSizzle »

Buttons840 wrote: post #593
trimethylpurine wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, all of that's true, so long as you can convince a judge, or a jury of peers selected by a team of attorneys highly paid to make your life a nightmare. The law is subjective, just like your spiteful view of it. And you can bet there are spiteful judges, just like you.

A lot of your comments seem to be in the realm of "it doesn't matter what the law is, judges and juries will do what they want", which I partly agree with, but within the context of this debate we should assume that judges and juries will uphold the law. Otherwise, why are we debating the pros and cons of the law if nobody is going to uphold it?

Because reality is that laws are not enforced regularly, equally, and uniformly.
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