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Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

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Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#991

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Twitter, the reasons they added the warning to Trump's tweet as as follows: - Trump claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to "a Rigged Election." However, fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud. - Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to "anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there." In fact, only regi…

Turn off the Api Or limit it in a certain way and kill or limit the bot? Let us be human first. Regards the debate of flagging or counter fact stating, it is hard question. Debate on

While the API makes it easier, tools like Selenium mean you don't really need an API to run a Twitter bot.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#992
post #904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except... it is. In their ruling the court _directly_ compares social media to other venues for public gathering. I'm not claiming that they explicitly rule it to be one way or the other (they don't), but they do repeatedly make direct comparisons that would appear to lean that way. Except the text of the case itself literally does not do that. You need to read the actual text and not just the summary. Importantly, e…

A number of serious misunderstandings seem to have developed in our back and forth here and I'm not sure it's worth writing a wall of text to clarify them. Perhaps I didn't previously word things as clearly as would have been ideal. > > I previously pointed out ... > No, you didn't. The ADA ... That isn't what I was referring to. I initially noted that Twitter has very clearly and intentionally positioned themselves…

I initially noted that Twitter has very clearly and intentionally positioned themselves as what I can only think to describe as a public platform. Private malls simply do not do that.

You need to actually read the private mall cases, since the malls actually held themselves out to be replacements for the public square, i.e., to replace Main St and the public park where people used to freely meet and discuss stuff. There is a reason these cases are so important to First Amendment jurisprudence.

The point of the private mall cases is that it doesn't matter if they hold themselves out to be replacements for the traditional public forum, because they're not actually a public forum--they're still just privately owned venues that can withdraw their openness to public expression at any time as a matter of their own first amendment rights.

Twitter is just the new private mall. It may hold itself up to be a public platform, but as a private entity, it can revoke that presentation at any time as a matter of its own first amendment rights.

It is my understanding that factors such as intentions and size of influence are important in cases like this

You would be wrong. This has never been relevant to first amendment cases. Moreover, at the time of the private mall cases, the malls had significantly more customers on an absolute and proportional basis (out of the US population at the time) than Twitter does today in the US.

When the majority opinion goes out of its way to bring such an issue up and makes direct comparisons, I think it is reasonable to assume that they would be open to entertaining such a line of argument.

The ruling does not "go out of its way" to compare social media platforms to public forums. In mentions "public forum" only once, offhand, as one of the ways that social media could be used by the appellant whose civil rights were being violated when the government tried to bar him from using social media. And even then, under the lineage of the private mall cases, it's irrelevant because private websites are still private websites with their own first amendment rights to control the speech that appears on their websites.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#993

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can’t export your data or do “data takeout” from a suspended account, sadly, and you can’t view your DM history either inbound or outbound. This is a big problem.

This is not only a big problem, but it seems to be in flagrant breach of GDPR regulations: https://stiobhart.net/2020-03-18-twittergdpr/

The GDPR simply doesn’t apply to most internet users or most internet companies.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#994
post #509
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're just thinking of ways voting can be corrupted, in-person voting can be coerced too. Boss forces you to take a photo of your ballot as you vote in the booth, etc. In reality, several states have had mail voting for years- Oregon for decades- without coercion being a problem. Millions of votes cast without the problem you suggest. It's not a problem, despite using our imaginations to come up with ways it can b…

> Boss forces you to take a photo of your ballot as you vote in the booth, etc. You can take a picture of the ballot with your boss's choice but then spoil it and get another one. > several states have had mail voting for years without coercion being a problem How do you know this? How could anyone know if a wife voted the same way as her husband because she wanted to or because he just filled out both mail-in ballot…

> Finally even if it hasn't been a problem so far, it is not a "fact" that it cannot and will not be a problem in the future.

Twitter said no such thing, however. Twitter's annotation simply noted that Trump's claim was "unsubstantiated". They did not make an assertion of the inverse of Trump's claim.

> How could anyone know if a wife voted the same way as her husband because she wanted to or because he just filled out both mail-in ballots himself?

This could be easily said about in-person ballots too. 8 states require photo ID, and many people will be covering their faces when they vote in-person anyway.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#995

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the civil rights era, private businesses infringed on people's rights with state government backing. People with the wrong skin color were forbidden from being in certain restaurants or sitting in certain seats, etc. These were private companies infringing on rights. The president sent in the national guard.

Again, you are conflating rights granted by the constitution with legislation that dictates how businesses must operate. Racial discrimination in public accommodations, like those that you mentioned, was outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964[1]. In that case, those private companies were explicitly breaking federal law. Rights granted in the constitution are separate and are only intended to protect citizens from…

The constitution does not grant rights It merely enumerates some of the rights we have.

The civil rights act did not make up any rights - it created law to enable enforcement and protection of rights people already had, but which were being infringed - both by states and by private businesses.

The social media monopolies are infringing on our rights. There may not as yet be a legal remedy for that, but it seems likely that there will be, as in many ways these companies are more powerful and wield more influence over people than governments do.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#996

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what if I say that your restaurant serves old chicken and gives food poisoning? What if too many users each take a tiny stab, repeating the false empirical claim they heard?

The restaurant can sue you for libel. The restaurant can sue all of the other users for libel, and if it's a coordinated effort or the apparent facts behind each libelous act are sufficiently similar, they can get them joined into a class action imposing joint and several liability imposed on the named defendants (i.e. the few they are able to reasonably identify), meaning that it is now the named defendants' respons…

> Believe it or not, all of these hypothetical that techies keep bringing up on HN in this thread as if they were magical logical bullets have long been addressed by courts and/or legislators.

Are you sure you're not engaging in some magical thinking when you imagine Yelp users enjoined as a defendant class? When is the last high profile case where something like this happened?

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#997
post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is a company limited to only one role? Can Facebook not publish a blog and be a platform?

No, not like this. This is like Google or Apple prioritizing their own pages and items in their searches.

Which they are legally allowed to do

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#998

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you are conflating rights granted by the constitution with legislation that dictates how businesses must operate. Racial discrimination in public accommodations, like those that you mentioned, was outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964[1]. In that case, those private companies were explicitly breaking federal law. Rights granted in the constitution are separate and are only intended to protect citizens from…

The constitution does not grant rights It merely enumerates some of the rights we have. The civil rights act did not make up any rights - it created law to enable enforcement and protection of rights people already had, but which were being infringed - both by states and by private businesses. The social media monopolies are infringing on our rights. There may not as yet be a legal remedy for that, but it seems likel…

I think that you have a general misunderstanding on what a "right" is in the eyes of the law[1]. Furthermore, you appear to also have a misunderstanding of the differences between natural rights and legal rights[2].

> The social media monopolies are infringing on our rights

The right to free speech is not a natural right; nor does it apply to anything but freedom from government persecution on the basis of speech. Freedom of speech is a right that is granted by the constitution and has been further defined by case law over the past 250 years. The Supreme Court has pointed out that private companies are not subject to protections enumerated in the constitution, which, again, only apply to the government[3].

[1]: https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Right

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights_and_legal_right...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Community_Access_Cor...

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#999

I don't know why everyone here is upset by this. Isn't this what we wanted? An actual policy debate, decided by the three branches of government - the executive, congress, the Courts - about what kinds of regulations these super powerful social media companies should have to submit to. Don't fool yourselves, if Facebook or Twitter wanted to swing an election they absolutely have the power to do that . Isn't that a pr…

I think some people are upset because he’s not going the proper route. He’s doing an end run around Congress using Executive Orders in an attempt to get what he wants now . Because he knows that something like this would be held up in Congress by the Democrats. Others are upset because, as the Constitution is written, he cannot force a private website to carry his speech (the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected “co…

The headline looks a little repulsive to start but I agree with you that this would be beneficial to start holding companies accountable for the content on their platforms.

That said, I'm not quite sure why Trump would call for it. Doesn't seem like something that would help him.

Re: Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies

#1000

https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative-history > The Cox-Wyden Amendment: Section 230 > Worried about the future of free speech online and responding directly to Stratton Oakmont, Representatives Chris Cox (R-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced an amendment to the Communications Decency Act that would end up becoming Section 230. The amendment specifically made sure that "providers of an interactive computer s…

What's interesting is we're both reading "encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet," and my take on it is that yes, section 230 is there to explicitly protect Twitter under this circumstance, and you take it as giving Trump the ability to censor them. Thankfully, one of the authors of the section in question has actually stated exactly what it means: https://twitter.com/RonW…

Why did you ignore the part that the amendment was written by 2 people - Chris Cox (R-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR)

Somehow you only quoted what the Democrat says but not what the Republican says. Quite dishonest of you.

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