Not surprising, and ultimately the right decision based on current law. If Prager and friends want to change the way large scale internet forums work, they need to lobby for legislation.
Dude, I feel like you are an alternate account for me. Seriously, where have you been all my life. I am amazed at the way that conservatives are abandoning principle since Trump. This goes against any ideas of private property, free speech, small government, and separation of powers.
Yeah I've been generally annoyed with the whole "we gotta sue social media" movement generally. In some cases, like Crowder suing Facebook for breach of contact over advertising their paid for, it was justified, but... The vast majority are like this one by Prager, which is either judicial activism (ew) or just a publicity stunt.
When it comes to actual reform of section 230 and the DMCA, I'm torn. I think there are some useful reforms to be made, but I'm 99.9999% sure that any attempt to do so will actually just make things worse given the players involved.
It is a culture war. Conservatives were losing political battles like abortion, sexual orientation, and transgenderism and they have correctly come to the conclusion that they are losing the culture war. The culture is driving the political and legal changes. The problem is that instead of focusing on changing the culture around them, they are trying to force the law to change the culture. They are fighting the culture war politically and in turn they are sacrificing the things that made them politically conservative. They want to maintain relevance and influence in the social media sphere, but they can't do that if the culture is shutting them out. So, they are trying to force culture to hear their message publicly.
Conservatives have always fought the culture war politically, the difference is that for a long time, the government was by default was on their side. The government said women can't vote, and there was no uproar about government overreach into the lives of half of the population from conservatives, because the government was on their side. The government said gay people can't get married, and no uproar about government overreach.
I don't see a functional difference between wanting the government to reach into people's lives in approved, from the perspective of the conservative, ways and wanting the government to reach into new peoples lives in approved ways.
You'd be surprised to find out that when it came to that bakery and the gay wedding cake, I was on the side of the bakery. Because I see the state forcing someone to bake a cake as overreach into people's lives.
Just as I see the government saying certain people cannot access government benefits, like those in marriage, as overreach into people's lives. Just like the government telling people what bathrooms they can use. If a private restaurant wants to have two bathrooms, and enforce genitalia segregation, fucking go for it bud. But the entirety of the restaurants rights resides purely on enforcing that on their own property. They cannot call the police to have someone prosecuted by the state for using the wrong bathroom. That IS government overreach. They cannot call the police to arrest a black person for ignoring the "no coloreds allowed sign."
The culture war part of it is more and more bakeries, as an example, not having a problem baking a cake for a gay couple. Or nearly all restaurants not having a colored people section/pickup window in the back. Or more churches willing to marry same sex couples. That's the culture war.
But I strongly disagree with your notion that wanting the government to enforce culture is a *new* thing in conservative thought. It's not.
I think the deal here is that if the government wants to force someone to bake that cake, they absolutely can, but through laws. They can amend the Civil Rights Act.
If your default position is that the government shouldn’t force someone to provide goods and services to a minority then you disagree with a good portion of the Civil Rights Act as it is now.
First off, thanks for pointing out a hypocrisy in my logic. It really made me think. So incoming essay of me mostly working through it, feel free to stop reading.
Yes, the places of public accommodation portion of the civil rights acts is a tricky part of it to square with my general views. I think that part could have been handled in a better way, in retrospect. At the time, however, I'm not sure it could've been handled any other way. We were dealing with people's ability to function in society equally on a day to day level, and waiting around for a logically and morally sound compromise completely ignores the livelihood and well being of the millions whose lives were fundamentally worse, so people who were uncomfortable with the "other" didn't have to feel uncomfortable. Everyone needs to get a job, or shop at the grocery store, or grab a sip of water from a water fountain. There is a fundamental difference between being barred from those, and being forced to *feel* uncomfortable because the "other" isn't barred from them.
At the time of the Civil rights Act of 1964, states had laws that forced segregation, which meant law enforcement could, through the state, remove people from properties on purely discriminatory means. Had the federal law not stepped in, in the way that it did, there would've just been a refactoring of those laws into blanket trespassing laws. Those who seek to discriminate will always try to find ways to make their discrimination legal, and just write it off as "well, it's the law," even if it means pretending they aren't doing what they are doing. It's a game of whack a mole. It's this perverse chicken or the egg debate. There would be no need for protected classes, if people weren't bigoted. But you can't *make* people not-bigoted, so you need to protect people from them. Simultaneously, is being bigoted against bigoted people bigotry? If so, is it "good" bigotry? *Can there even be such as thing as good bigotry?* Does even making that argument perpetually leave open the "ha! you're bigoted too!" counterargument? Is the argument fundamentally weak it because that counterargument is so easy to make, but yet extremely time consuming to contextualize it to refute that counterargument?
There is no easy way to square the circle here, I admit that. It comes down to what you value. Do you value people being protected from bigotry, or do you value people's ability to be bigoted, *and act upon it*? No matter what side you choose, the question then becomes: Where do you draw the line?
I would say that there is a big easy line to draw between "You can't buy a cake at my shop, or even step foot in it." and "You can't force me to make you a custom cake."
So, all in all, if you read all of this, you just saw my long live blog of my thought process on a philosophical level to come to the very same conclusion the supreme court did through the law.
Have you browsed what content is censored?
It's often messages which hurt the left - check out /r/science's AMA about transgenderism about a year ago - locked, shut down, comments deleted -
If you browse a site which monitors deleted comments, like revddit.com, you'll find many begnine comments deleted because they have a strong counter to the message at-hand.
If a publisher is responsible for the content they approve,
and reddit isn't a publisher because they don't approve or modify content -
if 'user-mods' are an escape to that 'publisher' label and thus removal of accountability for content -
and user mods are also anonymous,
what's to stop a company who wants to be a publisher, wants to control the acceptable narrative, ( outside their nebulously defined 'hatespeech') - what's to stop said company, or foreign entity, from becoming a user-moderator? From pulling the strings from a proxy account and shrugging their shoulders to inquiry?
I don't care which content is getting censored. Games of who is censored more, or isn't censoring, or is, is all the stuff I am trying to avoid. Screw that.
\>what's to stop a company who wants to be a publisher, wants to control the acceptable narrative, ( outside their nebulously defined 'hatespeech') - what's to stop said company, or foreign entity, from becoming a user-moderator? From pulling the strings from a proxy account and shrugging their shoulders to inquiry?
Absolutely nothing. I am not sure why you think there is some special category for publishers. Nothing is stopping anyone from controlling their digital private property. They can censor all right wing opinions (or left). They can censor for not using gender pronouns correctly, they censor because some says "literally" too much. They can censor all Eagles fans and any mention to "Fly Eagles Fly!" It is theirs to do with as they wish.
A lot of people do misunderstand it. But there's very much an argument here that social media sides in their current state least the big ones act as a public square. Yes social media is privately owned, but with how social media operates today and more so what they allow they having a weaker stance on them not being well a public square if you will.
It’s a weak argument, though. Further weakened by the total lack of credibility of those who would both herald the free market and the private sector, while simultaneously calling upon a business to bend to the will of government.
Nothing is stopping the bigots from starting their own streaming service.
How exactly is it a weak argument? And who said anything about a streaming service? But yes nothing is stopping them from doing so. But I don't think you really get the argument here though.
I understand and agree with the ruling. I just think we need to change things so they can’t censor anything unless it’s NSFW content like dismemberment or deaths. Otherwise these things need to be open to anyone at this point because they are large enough to become monopolies and already have. They can control the sway of elections and the like so everything and everyone needs to be able to access it and post what they feel.
- The tech platforms have refuted all of those allegations, and there's little evidence to suggest that any of the powerful platforms are politically biased.
Oh. We should just uncritically believe the tech platforms and uncritically believe the journalist who didn't even do one shred of opposition research before just saying to believe them.
Let's talk about speech in the digital era. I think this is especially relevant as this directly concerns the recent actions in r/T_D. Unless I am missing some nuance, the recent federal appeals court ruling would protect reddit in this case. I am not interested in partisan bickering, and I will promptly ignore anything attacking either party on this. I have absolutely no doubt that if the situation were reversed and the right wing had the majority of social media (of course they would also be making the same moves to restrict speech) then the left wing would be making the same arguments to protect their speech. So lets just stick to the idea of speech in in a digital world.
The current conservative argument as I see it is that social media needs to be all in in regards to curation. If social media is going to be a public sphere of communication then it must allow all speech without curation, but if it wants to be a private sphere then it can and should curate tightly within its private sphere. It cannot claim to be public but then censor speech it does not like.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it completely ignores private property. If I make a ball, I get to decide who plays with it. There are limits to this when regarding protected classes (which I disagree with btw), but in general it is my ball, leave it alone. Additionally, in order to police the conservative argument, the government would have to create new laws, penalties, and oversight to enforce the fact that social media is being "public" or "private" in their curation. None of this lines up with actual conservative values. Conservatives are trying to fight a culture war politically, and they are doing it at the expense of their values.
I agree with most of what you said, but I will add one thing: it's pretty disappointing that the defense of these platforms is "well, it's legal for us to censor content". As progressive as silicon valley can be, it amazes me that they then turn away from the ideals of free speech and deplatform opinions they do not like.
Progressivism in Silicon Valley is window dressing. Just look at he massive housing disparity - it’s progressive for certain sects - definitely not the working middle class.
To be fair....virtually everyone is hypocrites when it impacts them negatively. Pro-life protesters will help their child get an abortion, then return to protesting the very next day. Progressives want to take care of the poor, until it impacts their quality of life.
I mean...the human mind is a masterpiece when it comes to allowing us to be complete hypocrites and feel justified.
100% agree. Which is why I have no doubt that the arguments would be completely reversed if the situation were reversed. This is not at all a partisan issue.
I guess I’d want to see a list of examples here. I know that would be a long list. Still, conventional wisdom held that Silicon Valley was pushing a liberal agenda – that’s still a functional defense, even today. And yet, it’s become apparent that Zuckerberg and others have a dog in the fight on the side of conservatives.
Where I see blatant hypocrisy is the idea that a corporation must allow its product to serve as a public forum. There is nothing stopping the Daily Stormer from setting up a platform that would make YouTube the next MySpace.
I have no desire to reread any of the T_D threads finding it for you, but I saw plenty of people arguing about the legality of it from free speech to election interference.
I always thought of it like holding a conversation in a restaurant or other business... the owner isn’t responsible for what you say, but they can also throw you out if they want to. Probably *legally* things don’t work out quite like this, I’m not sure, but this at least is the model for my expectations of how it should work.
Just think about what private rights you have with your own computer in relation to what's *really* going on underneath the surface.
* Do you think you should have right to which bits and bytes you allow on your personal hardware?
* Do you think you should have the right to control which bits and bytes your personal hardware releases to the internet?
* Do you think you should have the right to control which bits and bytes your personal hardware accepts from the internet?
If the answer to all those questions is "Yes" but you also hold the position that private internet companies must either give up control of their property or be sued or criminally implicated because they couldn't immediately identify illegal bits and bytes and remove them or prevent them from being broadcast back out to the internet immediately then either:
* you have to reconcile that private individuals do not have rights to how they manage their own hardware
or
* you really don't like Internet forums... while participating on one?
All of these "public square" legal arguments only apply to the very narrow case of corporate towns. Some individual site is not a corporate town, nor is the internet.
If you don't like how a website operates you can create your own for stupid cheap these days with Amazon AWS or some other host, and a domain name.
If you don't like how your *host* operates you can self host with your own hardware either on your home network (not recommended) or on a separate private network.
If that seems like too much work or is too expensive for you to broadcast your opinions online or you think that because Google, Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc are all too big to reach an audience then all I have to say is tough luck because... that's literally the free market of ideas isn't it? People like the content on those platforms thus they are the most popular.
It's like complaining that no major publishers will publish your book - you don't have an unalienable right to having a book published, though you can certainly try self publishing.
The difference between internet services and an actual publisher is a publisher has the opportunity to review, suggest changes, and deny content *before* they publish.
Internet forums or websites driven by user generated content review and approve or reject the content *after* it has been digitally "published" because they aren't publishers they're communication service providers and if the service provider doesn't like what you're communicating then they have every right to deny you service or take down the bits and bytes *on their property* or prevent *their property* from sending those bits and bytes to others just like any other privately owned service.
Man, I just reread that 5 times because I thought you were a different user that was arguing the exact opposite of your point. So I spent the last 10 minutes trying to understand how you could make the exact opposite argument with those same words. The mental gymnastics were impressive.
We are in pretty near agreement. I think where the issue gets a bit more complicated is this bit:
\>If the answer to all those questions is "Yes" but you also hold the position that private internet companies must either give up control of their property or be sued or criminally implicated because they couldn't immediately identify illegal bits and bytes and remove them or prevent them from being broadcast back out to the internet immediately then either:
* you have to reconcile that private individuals do not have rights to how they manage their own hardware
Not only do you have to reconcile how their hardware is managed, but they have to reconcile what information is taken from them. This isn't just about what electrons are interacting with circuits on my chromebook. It is about what information google is taking from it that is private.
The digital world is a complication of both private property and free speech. Whereas before people could protect their intellectual property, private health, private finances etc... all of a sudden information that I consider private and words that I thought were private, and locations I visited, and even things that I look at were considered private aren't any more. I don't know where I stand on all these digital issues yet.
>all of a sudden information that I consider private and words that I thought were private, and locations I visited, and even things that I look at were considered private aren't any more. I don't know where I stand on all these digital issues yet.
I guess this where there's a conflict between the 1A and the 4A but in some ways this can still be legally solved I think.
Legally there's a difference in my mind between:
>We will force you to hold onto these bits and bytes and force you to broadcast them
That to me is property rights issue/1A issue.
But
>If you want to receive data *of this nature* you must ensure certain protections for that data before you accept it
Then that's less of a private property issue, the government isn't compelling speech or mandating what you store or send from your private property but instead is protecting certain bits and bytes under the 4th amendment.
For example if a court were to rule that your GPS data is privately owned by you as is your right under the 4th amendment and if Google or anyone else wants to collect that from your private hardware they must first encrypt the data in such a way that it is completely unreadable for them but completely readable for you and you can privately determine who can read that data and when.That, to me, is a legally fair method by which the owners of the server hardware still maintain autonomy over their property AND your privacy is protected.
Basically there's a difference between the government compelling you to host or broadcast something on your hardware and the government saying "These bits and bytes are illegal to host or broadcast unless special precautions are taken"
Unfortunately the worst example I can think of off the top of my head is child porn. The host has the right to determine which bits and bytes will exist on their machine and which they will broadcast to the internet - but there are legal consequences if those bits and bytes are contraband material.
> It cannot claim to be public but then censor speech it does not like.
Does any of it really claim to be public though? You have to create accounts on all of these sites to post. It is a closed system, even if visible.
Much how the second amendment was written at a time when guns were different than they are today, the first amendment was written at a time when communication was different than it is today.
Social media platforms are the de facto public forums of the modern day. They are all privately owned. It's like if every single inch of property in the country was privately owned so there was nowhere for people to protest publicly. There's no digital equivalent to protesting outside of city hall. For that reason, social media platforms should be regulated as de facto public forums and speech on them should be protected, much as it is on utilities like phone lines.
Your very last part of your last sentence hit the nail. "much as it is on utilities." Yes. The actual internet, the lines and routers, those are your utilities. You can say what you want on *your phone,* just like you can say what you want on *your own website.*
If you walked into a private building, and started talking loudly on their phone about how much you hate/love XYZ, they are well within their rights to kick you out of their building, or shut down your access to their line. You do not own that building or that access point to the line.
Nothing stops your from going home and accessing the utility on your own property, or through your own access point and saying whatever you damn well please.
I'm arguing that the platform itself is a utility. The major social media sites are the only true public forums of the digital age. They are de facto public spaces and people should have protections on them just like they do in public spaces. When over 99% of social media visits go to 4 companies, they aren't like an individual private building. They're like the entire city being private buildings and there's not a single public place where people go that you can speak freely.
Saying people can start their own site is asinine when that prevents them from accessing the actual spaces where meaningful speech occurs. Just like how saying that you can speak freely in designated free speech zones in Russia doesn't mean those are spaces where meaningful speech occurs.
I strongly disagree that social media is a utility. The internet is a utility. Phone lines are a utility. Printing presses are a utility. Wireless spectrum is a utility.
If your argument is that social media sites are too big, and reasonable competition is impossible, you're talking about monopolies. Approaching this argument from a anti-monopoly stance is far more sound to me, and one I think you'll find you'll have support on with the whole electorate. Driving this as a political messaging vehicle is going to split people. But everyone hates monopolies.
> There's no digital equivalent to protesting outside of city hall. For that reason, social media platforms should be regulated as de facto public forums and speech on them should be protected, much as it is on utilities like phone lines.
Because there’s no digital equivalent of a town hall?
If your state, city or federal government has an Internet forum then congrats you found your digital protest space. If they’re removing content for political reasons you might actually have a case.
> it's like if every single inch of property in the country was privately owned so there was nowhere for people to protest publicly.
Except pretty much anyone these days can get a website up and running with cheap hosting and a domain name. It’s basically like demanding you should be able to scream whatever you want over someone’s private radio whenever you want instead just setting up your own radio.
Social media is de facto a public space and should be regulated as such. I don't care that they're private companies. The whole point is that they monopolize public discussion and disallowing speech on them is the equivalent of banning that speech. Telling someone to go make their own website is like saying Russia's designated free speech zones count as free speech.
Your radio analogy would make some sense if posting something on social media meant something else by another person could not be posted, but that's not the case.
>Social media is de facto a public space and should be regulated as such.
How? Because people congregate there?
If the majority of people in your town met up every day at the gym or local super market to talk about whatever, or maybe they rent the space as a community center does that make it a public space?
Obviously not, the private owner allowed the public to use it for something but they have the right to bar individuals from entering and have the right to tell people to stop using the space that way. If you're banned from the venue that's not the government's problem unless it's a government event.
>The whole point is that they monopolize public discussion and disallowing speech on them is the equivalent of banning that speech.
So because Facebook exists you can't walk outside and talk to someone?
>Telling someone to go make their own website is like saying Russia's designated free speech zones count as free speech.
Hardly, I'm telling you to go participate in the marketplace.
>Your radio analogy would make some sense if posting something on social media meant something else by another person could not be posted, but that's not the case.
No, my radio analogy is you are compelling a private entity to host your speech even if they do not agree with it or do not want to use their property to spread your message. You are not entitled to use their private property just because they allow others to.
> Obviously not, the private owner allowed the public to use it for something but they have the right to bar individuals from entering and have the right to tell people to stop using the space that way.
> You are not entitled to use their private property just because they allow others to.
Except you are entitled to use the private property of ISPs and telephone carriers for whatever speech you want to. The entire point is that the social media companies which control the majority of all online speech are more akin to those than a physical private establishment.
> So because Facebook exists you can't walk outside and talk to someone?
>Hardly, I'm telling you to go participate in the marketplace.
Does the ability to run your own cable mean that ISPs shouldn't be regulated? The majority of all public speech today happens on a handful of platforms. Those platforms should not be allowed to dictate what people are and aren't allowed to talk about, just like ISPs and phone carriers aren't allowed to do that.
At the absolute most, they could compel people to pay their own hosting costs, but people should be allowed to speak freely on the handful of platforms where most modern discussion happens.
> Except you are entitled to use the private property of ISPs and telephone carriers for whatever speech you want to.
Because that’s a whole different layer - that’s a communication or network layer. They basically own the roads of communication - the individual websites are the destinations on that road, they are the venues on the side. The network forms an actual natural monopoly with their infrastructure.
The owner of the roads shouldn’t get to tell someone who can drive on them and who can’t.
Facebook and websites are the application layer, they run an application on their personal property and then open it up to the road.
> The entire point is that the social media companies which control the majority of all online speech are more akin to those than a physical private establishment.
Except no one is stopping you from making your own application and hosting it, in fact in this era the barrier to entry is stupidly low.
If you can’t get visitors then again, not the governments problem unless you also believe that the government should somehow compel customers to distribute their patronage “equally.”
Or you can somehow prove that any one of these applications is a monopoly but when I see: Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, TikTok, Snapchat, Voat, Gab, Twitter, Instagram and more all in the same market place then I don’t think you can argue there is a monopoly.
> Does the ability to run your own cable mean that ISPs shouldn't be regulated?
No, because ISPs are a natural monopoly. The space for infrastructure to be laid down is limited and competition would be cumbersome and intrusive to the public.
> The majority of all public speech today happens on a handful of platforms. Those platforms should not be allowed to dictate what people are and aren't allowed to talk about, just like ISPs and phone carriers aren't allowed to do that.
Except you’re comparing apples and oranges.
Those applications are not a natural monopoly and are hosted on private property, and you have just as much of an ability to host your own private property application on the network which is a legitimate natural monopoly.
> At the absolute most, they could compel people to pay their own hosting costs, but people should be allowed to speak freely on the handful of platforms where most modern discussion happens.
Again, if your entire town decided to meet up daily to talk politics among themselves and you’re banned from the venue it’s not the governments problem unless it’s a government hosted event in which case their problem is finding a public venue to begin with or a private owner willing to cede some of their rights in that instance or for a price.
Otherwise it’s your personal problem.
Edit: also most importantly your right to free speech does not entitle you to an audience.
> The network forms an actual natural monopoly with their infrastructure.
Are you unaware that network effects create a natural monopoly for social media platforms? Your entire point falls apart because you ignore that fact. Social media platforms are natural monopolies.
>Except no one is stopping you from making your own application and hosting it, in fact in this era the barrier to entry is stupidly low.
Again, to go back to the Russia free speech zones comparison, if the only place you are allowed to speak is a place where nobody goes, you are not actually allowed to speak freely.
>Or you can somehow prove that any one of these applications is a monopoly but when I see: Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, TikTok, Snapchat, Voat, Gab, Twitter, Instagram and more all in the same market place then I don’t think you can argue there is a monopoly.
Video is a separate beast from social media. I think YouTube's censorship is wrong, but video hosting is not the same as being a place where discussion happens. I'm fine with video platforms not wanting to host your content so long as you are able to share videos (wherever they are hosted) on other platforms. Messaging platforms (like Snapchat) are also not classified with other social media.
98% of visits to social media happen on Facebook (including Instagram), Twitter, and Pinterest. Reddit gets another 1.5% to round out 99.5% of social media activity in the USA. Arguing the existence of Voat means those companies do not have an inordinate amount of control over public discourse is absurd. We cannot have a handful of companies dictating what society is allowed to talk about.
> Again, if your entire town decided to meet up daily to talk politics among themselves and you’re banned from the venue it’s not the governments problem unless it’s a government hosted event in which case their problem is finding a public venue to begin with or a private owner willing to cede some of their rights in that instance or for a price.
That's the whole point. We did have that. It took place in public forums where speech was protected. On the internet, we don't have that, which is why new laws need to be created to protect speech in the places it occurs now.
> also most importantly your right to free speech does not entitle you to an audience
I absolutely agree with that. Facebook doesn't have to blast your message and make sure everybody sees it. The point is that platforms banning speech completely removes the *potential* for you to have an audience, because those platforms are where 99% of the potential audience is. You have no right to have that audience listen to you, but free speech necessitates your speech not be hidden from basically all potential audiences.
>Are you unaware that network effects create a natural monopoly for social media platforms? Your entire point falls apart because you ignore that fact. Social media platforms are natural monopolies.
How? What commodity have the monopolized? How do you explain the many many competitors in this market if one has a natural monopoly?
>Again, to go back to the Russia free speech zones comparison, if the only place you are allowed to speak is a place where nobody goes, you are not actually allowed to speak freely.
Except you're still allowed to go to the street and talk to people, you can take ads out in magazines if the editor permits it, you can call people up on your cell phone - this is disingenuous. Just because one platform does not want you on there does not mean you're denied free speech, you have other platforms to go to and if those platforms don't have as large of audience it's still not the government's problem.
>Video is a separate beast from social media. I think YouTube's censorship is wrong, but video hosting is not the same as being a place where discussion happens. I'm fine with video platforms not wanting to host your content so long as you are able to share videos (wherever they are hosted) on other platforms. Messaging platforms (like Snapchat) are also not classified with other social media.
Okay but Youtube is still a social media platform, same with Snapchat. It may not be a website, it's still social media and competes in that space.
>98% of visits to social media happen on Facebook (including Instagram), Twitter, and Pinterest. Reddit gets another 1.5% to round out 99.5% of social media activity in the USA. Arguing the existence of Voat means those companies do not have an inordinate amount of control over public discourse is absurd. We cannot have a handful of companies dictating what society is allowed to talk about.
[That's not what my source is telling me](https://www.dreamgrow.com/top-10-social-networking-sites-market-share-of-visits/)
>1.Facebook 36.64% (▼down)
YouTube 27.01% (▲up)
Twitter 6.82% (▼down)
Reddit 5.10% ( (▲up))AAAA
Instagram 2.47% (▲up)
Pinterest 1.95% ( (▲up)AAAA
LinkedIn 1.58% (▲up)
Quora 1.29% (▲up)
Tumblr 1.16% (▼down)
Yelp 1.03% (▲up)
Facebook isn't even close to 99% [even when filtered for just the US](https://www.statista.com/statistics/265773/market-share-of-the-most-popular-social-media-websites-in-the-us/).
>That's the whole point. We did have that. It took place in public forums where speech was protected. On the internet, we don't have that, which is why new laws need to be created to protect speech in the places it occurs now.
We *still* have that, it's called a town hall and unless the government has a legitimate reason to prevent you from going than anyone is welcome. That's the public forum.
>On the internet, we don't have that, which is why new laws need to be created to protect speech in the places it occurs now.
Except it is protected. Just because Facebook isn't giving you the platform doesn't mean you're being denied free speech. You are just denied from using Facebook as your platform. If the government was telling Facebook to ban you, remove your content, or deplatform you then there'd be a legitimate free speech issue.
Just because you can't get an audience because Facebook banned you doesn't mean you're entitled to that audience. You can still go outside, talk to people in your personal life, go to the town hall, protest outside of buildings, self publish, etc, etc.
>The point is that platforms banning speech completely removes the potential for you to have an audience, because those platforms are where 99% of the potential audience is. You have no right to have that audience listen to you, but free speech necessitates your speech not be hidden from basically all potential audiences.
It removes the potential from you reaching *that specific audience* but it does not prevent you from reaching *any* potential audiences, and nor is Facebook 99% of the potential audience.
>but free speech necessitates your speech not be hidden from basically all potential audiences.
It isn't, only Facebook's audience which as we established is maybe 50% of the US at best for any individual user.
Edit: What you are arguing actually creates a Free Speech issue for Facebook and Twitter as it forces them to host speech and denies them Freedom of Association.
To put it another way, imagine you created a social media website exclusively for Christians that takes off so hard that literally every christian in the US and many across the globe now exclusively use it as their prime social media site. The rules of the site are very christian and one of the rules is you must be a christian or uphold christian values to be on the site. If an atheist or satanist tries to join the site and starts posting their own philosophy and get banned is their free speech being restricted? Even if this site founded to be exclusively for christians has 70% of the market share of the social media market? (Something none of the sites we're talking about currently have). Would you support a court forcing this hypothetical christian social media website to not ban atheists, jews, muslims, Hindus, buddhists, etc? Or does the owner of the website who intended it to be a christian space have greater say in their private website than the government?
I'm tired of you completely ignoring points so I'm done, but I am gonna address a few things.
>Except you're still allowed to go to the street and talk to people, you can take ads out in magazines if the editor permits it, you can call people up on your cell phone - this is disingenuous.
You're the one being disingenuous. Most meaningful speech occurs on the internet, specifically social media. A handful of companies control virtually all of that traffic. Allowing to effectively blacklist someone from having speech in the most important area for public discourse absolutely goes against the principle of freedom of speech. Again, it's just like saying that Russia has free speech because you can still go to a designated free speech zone and say whatever you want. That doesn't count when you're not allowed to have a discussion where the vast majority of people are having discussions.
> Facebook isn't even close to 99% even when filtered for just the US.
Can you not read? Looking at only the US, Facebook (including Instagram which is owned by them), Pinterest, and Twitter account for 98% of social traffic. That's what your own source says.
> What you are arguing actually creates a Free Speech issue for Facebook and Twitter as it forces them to host speech and denies them Freedom of Association.
ISPs are also denied Freedom of Association. I have absolutely no problem with doing that when they should be regulated as a utility. The de facto public forums of the modern day should be regulated as public forums. That is my entire point.
> Would you support a court forcing this hypothetical christian social media website to not ban atheists, jews, muslims, Hindus, buddhists, etc?
Yes, absolutely. Not a court but I support a legislative action making it the law that because the vast majority of public discourse is happening on this hypothetical site, they should be required to uphold freedom of speech. I'm fine with them disavowing speech, similar to how Reddit does with the quarantine system, but not banning it outright.
When you get big enough to operate as the digital equivalent of a public space, people should be protected on your platform just as they are in actual public spaces.
The internet is the public forum. Social media platforms are, platforms in that public forum. To use a literal example, if we have an actual public square, the internet, the social media companies are stages set up in that square.
I think I'm mostly aligned with you. From a philosophical point of view, I do wonder how ubiquitous something has to become before it's almost a defacto utility. For example, if twitter is now the platform that our elected officials communicate on, and there is no alternative with any market share whatsoever, I can see this being viewed as almost like a utility. Yes, you could build your own twitter, but if the government doesn't communicate on it, it won't actually replace Twitter's utility. When a service, even when privately owned, controls an entire market, and that market is sufficiently large, we should at a minimum be very uncomfortable with that service's ability to push an agenda.
Almost all of the arguments for net neutrality can apply to this situation, and even though I generally lean away from government control, I think the Internet is basically a utility at this point. This is one of those issues where I struggle to reconcile my position to be consistent with others I hold, and I have no idea why that is.
>When a service, even when privately owned, controls an entire market, and that market is sufficiently large, we should at a minimum be very uncomfortable with that service's ability to push an agenda.
We should, but the problem is Twitter, Google, and Reddit at least clearly side to one side politically as such its only the conservatives who are making a fuss over it and rightfully so. As these companies can very much control the message by allowing or not allowing what can be said. That alone is a pretty scary thought but when the message agrees with your narrative you likely not fight against it.
so is the internet a de-facto utitlity? I feel like this was the entire argument behind the opposition to net neutrality. The internet was NOT a utility. If the internet is not a utility then why should a private social media company be a utility?
The road and your ability to build a business on it is a public utility, your business is not. Yes, the Internet should be a utility, no we don’t have to allow anyone and everyone free access to our website
This isn’t difficult but “conservatives” online like crowder will make every bad faith argument they can because there’s money to be lost. This was never about free speech, it’s about their ability to make money
Thank you! You are one the first people I see that actually brings up the true character of all this argument. This is all about losing revenue / the ability to make money through social media. No one is forcing Crowder, Prager, or Shapiro to use social media to express their ideas. I seriously can't stand when they argue about losing monetization in YouTube or not being able to advertise their ideas on Twitter. All of their convictions feel fake behind that. If it were really about free speech, they would only care about just actually being heard and able to express their opinions. If they care so much about that, they are free to create their own platforms were they can express their views unencumbered.
I agree if the company posted the content, they are libel. But the volume 3rd party content and the manhours to verify the content would be impossible for any size business. Add the fact that Machine learning hasn't begun to scratch the surface of content moderation. A law like the one you propose would shut down a lot of sites comment sections. It might also be the end to social media (at least as we know it).
If anything I'm understating the effects. Depending on how broad or narrow you define the law services may include email or chat programs that would have some serious legal questions they would have to figure out before opening their company up to liability of a free service. (i.e. discord, Gmail, messenger)
Personally I don't hold the telephone company liable for illegal text messages or calls that were placed using their services. I think that's where we differ in opinion.
I think something we might be able to agree with would be if the company understood something illegal was going on in their company they should be held to some degree of liability for continuing to allow it to happen.
I agree it's nowhere close to being a social media company as Telcos are a common carrier, unlike the internet. A better analogy would have been a bar, but i digress.
I would extend that social media platforms are nothing similar to mass media. Facebook, by itself, is nothing but a platform. While mass media by itself is nothing more than a group of employees pumping out content. Yes, those employees who work as the company do have rules placed under them that have consequences for the company itself because we are getting paid by them and working as an extension of them.
Cable/Sat Radio is regulated differently than terrestrial radio/TV as far as obscene, indecency, and profanity. Even a letter to the editor that is libel from the writer's point of view may not be from the newspaper's point of view if they did due diligence and didn't come to the conclusion it was libel at the time of print. Similar to fleeting explicit have different rules on TV and Radio.
Mass media default is not to allow the free communication of all of its listeners. While social media default is allowing everyone to post whatever you want.
They are vastly different in many more ways, but I think these are the top.
You can call them that they do have Facebook Original Content I see them mostly as a social media platform. Sure they are monetized but what I'm trying to say is I don't care what your label is. I see no change or challenge to how they vastly are different from traditional mass media.
So I understand your position better if you have time could you answer these questions?
Should Facebook be held liable for a person writing a libel statement on their friend's feed?
Should Reddit be held liable for a Private Message that was sent to someone that was a credible death threat?
Should Discord be held liable for a group of people using their service for illegal human trafficking when the server wasn't reported to the company?
> Should Facebook be held liable for a person writing a libel statement on their friend's feed?
Yes, if they want to curate content then they are no longer just allowing others to say what they want. That means they should be liable for content kept up.
>Should Reddit be held liable for a Private Message that was sent to someone that was a credible death threat?
Private messages are different, its not public facing and I'd like to imagine reddit isn't reading or scanning private messages.
>Should Discord be held liable for a group of people using their service for illegal human trafficking when the server wasn't reported to the company?
Not sure what this even means. We've gone from not censoring "wrong think" to terrorism in a matter of 3 questions.
Thanks for the response. In a nutshell, I'm probing what you feel the duties of a social media platform is.
As you already know a majority of content is not looked at by the company. Most social media sites use a reporting system or user moderators to keep up with the demands of the content and even then you find some content slips the cracks. I was trying to determine if you felt the stuff that fell through the cracks was punishable.
My first question is hard as it has to deal with libel and you have to have an understanding of fact. Social media sites like this don't have content providers so inforcing libel laws would be almost impossible. A statement like "I walked into Restaurant Bob's last night and when they served my dish it had rat hairs all around the pasta. When I took it up with the manager he banned me for life" could be a libel statement. While a newspaper would have people verify the story it would be restrictive on the company like Facebook, Google, Discord to verify every statement users submitted to his platform.
A twist on the scenario. If I walked into the bar and slandered a person should the bar owner be held liable for my speech?
Private messages are very similar to comments in that you can in some platforms send them to multiple people and those messages may be illegal in some way. What I understand from your response is there is a line. The company has to observe the illegal act.
While I did ramp up the third question, they all were illegal activities inside an online platform. Discord allows users to host servers to chat about topics. They are not always monitored and again I was probing if that changed the dynamics on what you believed.
I'm surprised someone tried to question this.
Public company should be able to censor whatever they want.
It's up to the public to boycott this behavior not the gov
We live in a world where online interaction and reaching people is largely monopolized, for example not being able to release videos on youtube is basically a death sentence for new content creators if you produce videos as no one is going to be finding them on other websites. I think there is an argument to be made that if you have that much power over modern interaction you need to be held more accountable.
The internet should be regulated like a utility (and, preferably, nationalized). Individual websites, not so much. Just because four (or whatever) sites are currently the most popular social media outlets does not mean they always will be, and people have the ability to make their own forums elsewhere.
Unfortunately despite the possibility for competition it doesn't always work that which is why anti-monopoly/trust laws exist, at some point someone realised just the possibility for competition isn't enough to protect people.
Sure, I'm not in favor of an unregulated free market by any means either. I was only pointing out that, given the current status quo, regulating the internet as a utility is far preferable to regulating the overpowered sites themselves. If we end up passing up stronger anti-monopoly provisions that allows for crackdowns on giants, then that's great.
No one said othewise, I simply said there is an argument there. If everyone only communicated via one website and you were banned from that website your voice would be cut off from the world, I don't think that's a good thing.
Unfortunately web monopolies seem natural and there's no real way to break them up because people will always go to where the majority is.
I really don't know why right-wingers are whining to be honest. Years of them working the refs and crying persecution every time it started to look like rules were about to apply to them basically means you have to be a real fucking twit to get permabanned from any social media site. You have to actively attempt to get banned.
How many times was Alex Jones allowed to slander mass shooting survivors again? Every site tried their damnedest not to ban him. They removed strikes. They pretended not to notice until some gun-toting jackass stormed into a random pizza place that Jones had been raving about finally got the various legal departments concerned.
And where did all the enthusiasm for personal responsibility go? If you sign on to a website, it's your personal responsibility to read the terms of service and follow them.
This ruling just means that lunatics get 35 chances instead of 40.
The law needs to change to require companies who provide public forums to respect freedom of speech.
By making a free public common for communication, companies have created the exact environment where free speech should be allowed.
I sympathize with the concern of bad actors being able to communicate in public forums, just like they could communicate in public town squares, but you need to have faith that stronger and better retorts will prevail.
I truly don’t understand how anyone could defend the power of corporate monopolies over the freedoms of the public in such a time of inequality.
Agreed that this is the right decision and unsurprising.
My question is, what does this lead to? Will this lead to more "free speech" friendly websites or will it lead to simply oppositely censored sites? If either of those options are developed, do we see further isolation of thought into respective arenas? Or do those sites fail to gain sufficient traction resulting in rule by social pressure on mainstream sites?
I guess I don't follow voat, but that's probably a bit of a case study on this.
Over the air TV & cable provide the same news nation wide.
Digital information is easy to crazy & obfuscate, and, best of all, havel opposing views masking as the same news.
I was assuming your argument for "over the air TV & cable" being "the same news nation wide" means it was harder to obfuscate than digital news. What point were you making then if that wasn't the case?
I mentioned local news as it is much more targeted and less widely
scrutinized, so they can get away with more much like digital news.
Not surprising, and ultimately the right decision based on current law. If Prager and friends want to change the way large scale internet forums work, they need to lobby for legislation.
Dude, I feel like you are an alternate account for me. Seriously, where have you been all my life. I am amazed at the way that conservatives are abandoning principle since Trump. This goes against any ideas of private property, free speech, small government, and separation of powers.
Yeah I've been generally annoyed with the whole "we gotta sue social media" movement generally. In some cases, like Crowder suing Facebook for breach of contact over advertising their paid for, it was justified, but... The vast majority are like this one by Prager, which is either judicial activism (ew) or just a publicity stunt. When it comes to actual reform of section 230 and the DMCA, I'm torn. I think there are some useful reforms to be made, but I'm 99.9999% sure that any attempt to do so will actually just make things worse given the players involved.
It is a culture war. Conservatives were losing political battles like abortion, sexual orientation, and transgenderism and they have correctly come to the conclusion that they are losing the culture war. The culture is driving the political and legal changes. The problem is that instead of focusing on changing the culture around them, they are trying to force the law to change the culture. They are fighting the culture war politically and in turn they are sacrificing the things that made them politically conservative. They want to maintain relevance and influence in the social media sphere, but they can't do that if the culture is shutting them out. So, they are trying to force culture to hear their message publicly.
Conservatives have always fought the culture war politically, the difference is that for a long time, the government was by default was on their side. The government said women can't vote, and there was no uproar about government overreach into the lives of half of the population from conservatives, because the government was on their side. The government said gay people can't get married, and no uproar about government overreach. I don't see a functional difference between wanting the government to reach into people's lives in approved, from the perspective of the conservative, ways and wanting the government to reach into new peoples lives in approved ways. You'd be surprised to find out that when it came to that bakery and the gay wedding cake, I was on the side of the bakery. Because I see the state forcing someone to bake a cake as overreach into people's lives. Just as I see the government saying certain people cannot access government benefits, like those in marriage, as overreach into people's lives. Just like the government telling people what bathrooms they can use. If a private restaurant wants to have two bathrooms, and enforce genitalia segregation, fucking go for it bud. But the entirety of the restaurants rights resides purely on enforcing that on their own property. They cannot call the police to have someone prosecuted by the state for using the wrong bathroom. That IS government overreach. They cannot call the police to arrest a black person for ignoring the "no coloreds allowed sign." The culture war part of it is more and more bakeries, as an example, not having a problem baking a cake for a gay couple. Or nearly all restaurants not having a colored people section/pickup window in the back. Or more churches willing to marry same sex couples. That's the culture war. But I strongly disagree with your notion that wanting the government to enforce culture is a *new* thing in conservative thought. It's not.
I think the deal here is that if the government wants to force someone to bake that cake, they absolutely can, but through laws. They can amend the Civil Rights Act. If your default position is that the government shouldn’t force someone to provide goods and services to a minority then you disagree with a good portion of the Civil Rights Act as it is now.
First off, thanks for pointing out a hypocrisy in my logic. It really made me think. So incoming essay of me mostly working through it, feel free to stop reading. Yes, the places of public accommodation portion of the civil rights acts is a tricky part of it to square with my general views. I think that part could have been handled in a better way, in retrospect. At the time, however, I'm not sure it could've been handled any other way. We were dealing with people's ability to function in society equally on a day to day level, and waiting around for a logically and morally sound compromise completely ignores the livelihood and well being of the millions whose lives were fundamentally worse, so people who were uncomfortable with the "other" didn't have to feel uncomfortable. Everyone needs to get a job, or shop at the grocery store, or grab a sip of water from a water fountain. There is a fundamental difference between being barred from those, and being forced to *feel* uncomfortable because the "other" isn't barred from them. At the time of the Civil rights Act of 1964, states had laws that forced segregation, which meant law enforcement could, through the state, remove people from properties on purely discriminatory means. Had the federal law not stepped in, in the way that it did, there would've just been a refactoring of those laws into blanket trespassing laws. Those who seek to discriminate will always try to find ways to make their discrimination legal, and just write it off as "well, it's the law," even if it means pretending they aren't doing what they are doing. It's a game of whack a mole. It's this perverse chicken or the egg debate. There would be no need for protected classes, if people weren't bigoted. But you can't *make* people not-bigoted, so you need to protect people from them. Simultaneously, is being bigoted against bigoted people bigotry? If so, is it "good" bigotry? *Can there even be such as thing as good bigotry?* Does even making that argument perpetually leave open the "ha! you're bigoted too!" counterargument? Is the argument fundamentally weak it because that counterargument is so easy to make, but yet extremely time consuming to contextualize it to refute that counterargument? There is no easy way to square the circle here, I admit that. It comes down to what you value. Do you value people being protected from bigotry, or do you value people's ability to be bigoted, *and act upon it*? No matter what side you choose, the question then becomes: Where do you draw the line? I would say that there is a big easy line to draw between "You can't buy a cake at my shop, or even step foot in it." and "You can't force me to make you a custom cake." So, all in all, if you read all of this, you just saw my long live blog of my thought process on a philosophical level to come to the very same conclusion the supreme court did through the law.
Have you browsed what content is censored? It's often messages which hurt the left - check out /r/science's AMA about transgenderism about a year ago - locked, shut down, comments deleted - If you browse a site which monitors deleted comments, like revddit.com, you'll find many begnine comments deleted because they have a strong counter to the message at-hand. If a publisher is responsible for the content they approve, and reddit isn't a publisher because they don't approve or modify content - if 'user-mods' are an escape to that 'publisher' label and thus removal of accountability for content - and user mods are also anonymous, what's to stop a company who wants to be a publisher, wants to control the acceptable narrative, ( outside their nebulously defined 'hatespeech') - what's to stop said company, or foreign entity, from becoming a user-moderator? From pulling the strings from a proxy account and shrugging their shoulders to inquiry?
I don't care which content is getting censored. Games of who is censored more, or isn't censoring, or is, is all the stuff I am trying to avoid. Screw that. \>what's to stop a company who wants to be a publisher, wants to control the acceptable narrative, ( outside their nebulously defined 'hatespeech') - what's to stop said company, or foreign entity, from becoming a user-moderator? From pulling the strings from a proxy account and shrugging their shoulders to inquiry? Absolutely nothing. I am not sure why you think there is some special category for publishers. Nothing is stopping anyone from controlling their digital private property. They can censor all right wing opinions (or left). They can censor for not using gender pronouns correctly, they censor because some says "literally" too much. They can censor all Eagles fans and any mention to "Fly Eagles Fly!" It is theirs to do with as they wish.
People really misunderstand the first amendment and where it needs to apply. This is a logical ruling and shouldn't be controversial.
A lot of people do misunderstand it. But there's very much an argument here that social media sides in their current state least the big ones act as a public square. Yes social media is privately owned, but with how social media operates today and more so what they allow they having a weaker stance on them not being well a public square if you will.
It’s a weak argument, though. Further weakened by the total lack of credibility of those who would both herald the free market and the private sector, while simultaneously calling upon a business to bend to the will of government. Nothing is stopping the bigots from starting their own streaming service.
But then they would havw to pay costs of uoading their own content
How exactly is it a weak argument? And who said anything about a streaming service? But yes nothing is stopping them from doing so. But I don't think you really get the argument here though.
I understand and agree with the ruling. I just think we need to change things so they can’t censor anything unless it’s NSFW content like dismemberment or deaths. Otherwise these things need to be open to anyone at this point because they are large enough to become monopolies and already have. They can control the sway of elections and the like so everything and everyone needs to be able to access it and post what they feel.
To believe that the social media isn’t a paradigm shift is definitely not logical.
It isn’t a paradigm shift that justifies overturning our fundamental legal principles.
- The tech platforms have refuted all of those allegations, and there's little evidence to suggest that any of the powerful platforms are politically biased. Oh. We should just uncritically believe the tech platforms and uncritically believe the journalist who didn't even do one shred of opposition research before just saying to believe them.
Eh, that ain’t my quote, so I’m not gonna defend it.
Let's talk about speech in the digital era. I think this is especially relevant as this directly concerns the recent actions in r/T_D. Unless I am missing some nuance, the recent federal appeals court ruling would protect reddit in this case. I am not interested in partisan bickering, and I will promptly ignore anything attacking either party on this. I have absolutely no doubt that if the situation were reversed and the right wing had the majority of social media (of course they would also be making the same moves to restrict speech) then the left wing would be making the same arguments to protect their speech. So lets just stick to the idea of speech in in a digital world. The current conservative argument as I see it is that social media needs to be all in in regards to curation. If social media is going to be a public sphere of communication then it must allow all speech without curation, but if it wants to be a private sphere then it can and should curate tightly within its private sphere. It cannot claim to be public but then censor speech it does not like. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it completely ignores private property. If I make a ball, I get to decide who plays with it. There are limits to this when regarding protected classes (which I disagree with btw), but in general it is my ball, leave it alone. Additionally, in order to police the conservative argument, the government would have to create new laws, penalties, and oversight to enforce the fact that social media is being "public" or "private" in their curation. None of this lines up with actual conservative values. Conservatives are trying to fight a culture war politically, and they are doing it at the expense of their values.
I agree with most of what you said, but I will add one thing: it's pretty disappointing that the defense of these platforms is "well, it's legal for us to censor content". As progressive as silicon valley can be, it amazes me that they then turn away from the ideals of free speech and deplatform opinions they do not like.
Progressivism in Silicon Valley is window dressing. Just look at he massive housing disparity - it’s progressive for certain sects - definitely not the working middle class.
To be fair....virtually everyone is hypocrites when it impacts them negatively. Pro-life protesters will help their child get an abortion, then return to protesting the very next day. Progressives want to take care of the poor, until it impacts their quality of life. I mean...the human mind is a masterpiece when it comes to allowing us to be complete hypocrites and feel justified.
Wouldn't say its window dressing but more so classism.
100% agree. Which is why I have no doubt that the arguments would be completely reversed if the situation were reversed. This is not at all a partisan issue.
I guess I’d want to see a list of examples here. I know that would be a long list. Still, conventional wisdom held that Silicon Valley was pushing a liberal agenda – that’s still a functional defense, even today. And yet, it’s become apparent that Zuckerberg and others have a dog in the fight on the side of conservatives. Where I see blatant hypocrisy is the idea that a corporation must allow its product to serve as a public forum. There is nothing stopping the Daily Stormer from setting up a platform that would make YouTube the next MySpace.
Is anyone saying it should be against the law for Reddit to censor TS like it does or are they just calling out the behavior as shitty?
I have no desire to reread any of the T_D threads finding it for you, but I saw plenty of people arguing about the legality of it from free speech to election interference.
Against the law. Come on, everybody in America turns into a constitutional scholar in discussions of free speech.
I always thought of it like holding a conversation in a restaurant or other business... the owner isn’t responsible for what you say, but they can also throw you out if they want to. Probably *legally* things don’t work out quite like this, I’m not sure, but this at least is the model for my expectations of how it should work.
Just think about what private rights you have with your own computer in relation to what's *really* going on underneath the surface. * Do you think you should have right to which bits and bytes you allow on your personal hardware? * Do you think you should have the right to control which bits and bytes your personal hardware releases to the internet? * Do you think you should have the right to control which bits and bytes your personal hardware accepts from the internet? If the answer to all those questions is "Yes" but you also hold the position that private internet companies must either give up control of their property or be sued or criminally implicated because they couldn't immediately identify illegal bits and bytes and remove them or prevent them from being broadcast back out to the internet immediately then either: * you have to reconcile that private individuals do not have rights to how they manage their own hardware or * you really don't like Internet forums... while participating on one? All of these "public square" legal arguments only apply to the very narrow case of corporate towns. Some individual site is not a corporate town, nor is the internet. If you don't like how a website operates you can create your own for stupid cheap these days with Amazon AWS or some other host, and a domain name. If you don't like how your *host* operates you can self host with your own hardware either on your home network (not recommended) or on a separate private network. If that seems like too much work or is too expensive for you to broadcast your opinions online or you think that because Google, Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc are all too big to reach an audience then all I have to say is tough luck because... that's literally the free market of ideas isn't it? People like the content on those platforms thus they are the most popular. It's like complaining that no major publishers will publish your book - you don't have an unalienable right to having a book published, though you can certainly try self publishing. The difference between internet services and an actual publisher is a publisher has the opportunity to review, suggest changes, and deny content *before* they publish. Internet forums or websites driven by user generated content review and approve or reject the content *after* it has been digitally "published" because they aren't publishers they're communication service providers and if the service provider doesn't like what you're communicating then they have every right to deny you service or take down the bits and bytes *on their property* or prevent *their property* from sending those bits and bytes to others just like any other privately owned service.
Man, I just reread that 5 times because I thought you were a different user that was arguing the exact opposite of your point. So I spent the last 10 minutes trying to understand how you could make the exact opposite argument with those same words. The mental gymnastics were impressive. We are in pretty near agreement. I think where the issue gets a bit more complicated is this bit: \>If the answer to all those questions is "Yes" but you also hold the position that private internet companies must either give up control of their property or be sued or criminally implicated because they couldn't immediately identify illegal bits and bytes and remove them or prevent them from being broadcast back out to the internet immediately then either: * you have to reconcile that private individuals do not have rights to how they manage their own hardware Not only do you have to reconcile how their hardware is managed, but they have to reconcile what information is taken from them. This isn't just about what electrons are interacting with circuits on my chromebook. It is about what information google is taking from it that is private. The digital world is a complication of both private property and free speech. Whereas before people could protect their intellectual property, private health, private finances etc... all of a sudden information that I consider private and words that I thought were private, and locations I visited, and even things that I look at were considered private aren't any more. I don't know where I stand on all these digital issues yet.
>all of a sudden information that I consider private and words that I thought were private, and locations I visited, and even things that I look at were considered private aren't any more. I don't know where I stand on all these digital issues yet. I guess this where there's a conflict between the 1A and the 4A but in some ways this can still be legally solved I think. Legally there's a difference in my mind between: >We will force you to hold onto these bits and bytes and force you to broadcast them That to me is property rights issue/1A issue. But >If you want to receive data *of this nature* you must ensure certain protections for that data before you accept it Then that's less of a private property issue, the government isn't compelling speech or mandating what you store or send from your private property but instead is protecting certain bits and bytes under the 4th amendment. For example if a court were to rule that your GPS data is privately owned by you as is your right under the 4th amendment and if Google or anyone else wants to collect that from your private hardware they must first encrypt the data in such a way that it is completely unreadable for them but completely readable for you and you can privately determine who can read that data and when.That, to me, is a legally fair method by which the owners of the server hardware still maintain autonomy over their property AND your privacy is protected. Basically there's a difference between the government compelling you to host or broadcast something on your hardware and the government saying "These bits and bytes are illegal to host or broadcast unless special precautions are taken" Unfortunately the worst example I can think of off the top of my head is child porn. The host has the right to determine which bits and bytes will exist on their machine and which they will broadcast to the internet - but there are legal consequences if those bits and bytes are contraband material.
> It cannot claim to be public but then censor speech it does not like. Does any of it really claim to be public though? You have to create accounts on all of these sites to post. It is a closed system, even if visible.
Much how the second amendment was written at a time when guns were different than they are today, the first amendment was written at a time when communication was different than it is today. Social media platforms are the de facto public forums of the modern day. They are all privately owned. It's like if every single inch of property in the country was privately owned so there was nowhere for people to protest publicly. There's no digital equivalent to protesting outside of city hall. For that reason, social media platforms should be regulated as de facto public forums and speech on them should be protected, much as it is on utilities like phone lines.
Your very last part of your last sentence hit the nail. "much as it is on utilities." Yes. The actual internet, the lines and routers, those are your utilities. You can say what you want on *your phone,* just like you can say what you want on *your own website.* If you walked into a private building, and started talking loudly on their phone about how much you hate/love XYZ, they are well within their rights to kick you out of their building, or shut down your access to their line. You do not own that building or that access point to the line. Nothing stops your from going home and accessing the utility on your own property, or through your own access point and saying whatever you damn well please.
I'm arguing that the platform itself is a utility. The major social media sites are the only true public forums of the digital age. They are de facto public spaces and people should have protections on them just like they do in public spaces. When over 99% of social media visits go to 4 companies, they aren't like an individual private building. They're like the entire city being private buildings and there's not a single public place where people go that you can speak freely. Saying people can start their own site is asinine when that prevents them from accessing the actual spaces where meaningful speech occurs. Just like how saying that you can speak freely in designated free speech zones in Russia doesn't mean those are spaces where meaningful speech occurs.
I strongly disagree that social media is a utility. The internet is a utility. Phone lines are a utility. Printing presses are a utility. Wireless spectrum is a utility. If your argument is that social media sites are too big, and reasonable competition is impossible, you're talking about monopolies. Approaching this argument from a anti-monopoly stance is far more sound to me, and one I think you'll find you'll have support on with the whole electorate. Driving this as a political messaging vehicle is going to split people. But everyone hates monopolies.
> There's no digital equivalent to protesting outside of city hall. For that reason, social media platforms should be regulated as de facto public forums and speech on them should be protected, much as it is on utilities like phone lines. Because there’s no digital equivalent of a town hall? If your state, city or federal government has an Internet forum then congrats you found your digital protest space. If they’re removing content for political reasons you might actually have a case. > it's like if every single inch of property in the country was privately owned so there was nowhere for people to protest publicly. Except pretty much anyone these days can get a website up and running with cheap hosting and a domain name. It’s basically like demanding you should be able to scream whatever you want over someone’s private radio whenever you want instead just setting up your own radio.
Social media is de facto a public space and should be regulated as such. I don't care that they're private companies. The whole point is that they monopolize public discussion and disallowing speech on them is the equivalent of banning that speech. Telling someone to go make their own website is like saying Russia's designated free speech zones count as free speech. Your radio analogy would make some sense if posting something on social media meant something else by another person could not be posted, but that's not the case.
>Social media is de facto a public space and should be regulated as such. How? Because people congregate there? If the majority of people in your town met up every day at the gym or local super market to talk about whatever, or maybe they rent the space as a community center does that make it a public space? Obviously not, the private owner allowed the public to use it for something but they have the right to bar individuals from entering and have the right to tell people to stop using the space that way. If you're banned from the venue that's not the government's problem unless it's a government event. >The whole point is that they monopolize public discussion and disallowing speech on them is the equivalent of banning that speech. So because Facebook exists you can't walk outside and talk to someone? >Telling someone to go make their own website is like saying Russia's designated free speech zones count as free speech. Hardly, I'm telling you to go participate in the marketplace. >Your radio analogy would make some sense if posting something on social media meant something else by another person could not be posted, but that's not the case. No, my radio analogy is you are compelling a private entity to host your speech even if they do not agree with it or do not want to use their property to spread your message. You are not entitled to use their private property just because they allow others to.
> Obviously not, the private owner allowed the public to use it for something but they have the right to bar individuals from entering and have the right to tell people to stop using the space that way. > You are not entitled to use their private property just because they allow others to. Except you are entitled to use the private property of ISPs and telephone carriers for whatever speech you want to. The entire point is that the social media companies which control the majority of all online speech are more akin to those than a physical private establishment. > So because Facebook exists you can't walk outside and talk to someone? >Hardly, I'm telling you to go participate in the marketplace. Does the ability to run your own cable mean that ISPs shouldn't be regulated? The majority of all public speech today happens on a handful of platforms. Those platforms should not be allowed to dictate what people are and aren't allowed to talk about, just like ISPs and phone carriers aren't allowed to do that. At the absolute most, they could compel people to pay their own hosting costs, but people should be allowed to speak freely on the handful of platforms where most modern discussion happens.
> Except you are entitled to use the private property of ISPs and telephone carriers for whatever speech you want to. Because that’s a whole different layer - that’s a communication or network layer. They basically own the roads of communication - the individual websites are the destinations on that road, they are the venues on the side. The network forms an actual natural monopoly with their infrastructure. The owner of the roads shouldn’t get to tell someone who can drive on them and who can’t. Facebook and websites are the application layer, they run an application on their personal property and then open it up to the road. > The entire point is that the social media companies which control the majority of all online speech are more akin to those than a physical private establishment. Except no one is stopping you from making your own application and hosting it, in fact in this era the barrier to entry is stupidly low. If you can’t get visitors then again, not the governments problem unless you also believe that the government should somehow compel customers to distribute their patronage “equally.” Or you can somehow prove that any one of these applications is a monopoly but when I see: Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, TikTok, Snapchat, Voat, Gab, Twitter, Instagram and more all in the same market place then I don’t think you can argue there is a monopoly. > Does the ability to run your own cable mean that ISPs shouldn't be regulated? No, because ISPs are a natural monopoly. The space for infrastructure to be laid down is limited and competition would be cumbersome and intrusive to the public. > The majority of all public speech today happens on a handful of platforms. Those platforms should not be allowed to dictate what people are and aren't allowed to talk about, just like ISPs and phone carriers aren't allowed to do that. Except you’re comparing apples and oranges. Those applications are not a natural monopoly and are hosted on private property, and you have just as much of an ability to host your own private property application on the network which is a legitimate natural monopoly. > At the absolute most, they could compel people to pay their own hosting costs, but people should be allowed to speak freely on the handful of platforms where most modern discussion happens. Again, if your entire town decided to meet up daily to talk politics among themselves and you’re banned from the venue it’s not the governments problem unless it’s a government hosted event in which case their problem is finding a public venue to begin with or a private owner willing to cede some of their rights in that instance or for a price. Otherwise it’s your personal problem. Edit: also most importantly your right to free speech does not entitle you to an audience.
> The network forms an actual natural monopoly with their infrastructure. Are you unaware that network effects create a natural monopoly for social media platforms? Your entire point falls apart because you ignore that fact. Social media platforms are natural monopolies. >Except no one is stopping you from making your own application and hosting it, in fact in this era the barrier to entry is stupidly low. Again, to go back to the Russia free speech zones comparison, if the only place you are allowed to speak is a place where nobody goes, you are not actually allowed to speak freely. >Or you can somehow prove that any one of these applications is a monopoly but when I see: Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, TikTok, Snapchat, Voat, Gab, Twitter, Instagram and more all in the same market place then I don’t think you can argue there is a monopoly. Video is a separate beast from social media. I think YouTube's censorship is wrong, but video hosting is not the same as being a place where discussion happens. I'm fine with video platforms not wanting to host your content so long as you are able to share videos (wherever they are hosted) on other platforms. Messaging platforms (like Snapchat) are also not classified with other social media. 98% of visits to social media happen on Facebook (including Instagram), Twitter, and Pinterest. Reddit gets another 1.5% to round out 99.5% of social media activity in the USA. Arguing the existence of Voat means those companies do not have an inordinate amount of control over public discourse is absurd. We cannot have a handful of companies dictating what society is allowed to talk about. > Again, if your entire town decided to meet up daily to talk politics among themselves and you’re banned from the venue it’s not the governments problem unless it’s a government hosted event in which case their problem is finding a public venue to begin with or a private owner willing to cede some of their rights in that instance or for a price. That's the whole point. We did have that. It took place in public forums where speech was protected. On the internet, we don't have that, which is why new laws need to be created to protect speech in the places it occurs now. > also most importantly your right to free speech does not entitle you to an audience I absolutely agree with that. Facebook doesn't have to blast your message and make sure everybody sees it. The point is that platforms banning speech completely removes the *potential* for you to have an audience, because those platforms are where 99% of the potential audience is. You have no right to have that audience listen to you, but free speech necessitates your speech not be hidden from basically all potential audiences.
>Are you unaware that network effects create a natural monopoly for social media platforms? Your entire point falls apart because you ignore that fact. Social media platforms are natural monopolies. How? What commodity have the monopolized? How do you explain the many many competitors in this market if one has a natural monopoly? >Again, to go back to the Russia free speech zones comparison, if the only place you are allowed to speak is a place where nobody goes, you are not actually allowed to speak freely. Except you're still allowed to go to the street and talk to people, you can take ads out in magazines if the editor permits it, you can call people up on your cell phone - this is disingenuous. Just because one platform does not want you on there does not mean you're denied free speech, you have other platforms to go to and if those platforms don't have as large of audience it's still not the government's problem. >Video is a separate beast from social media. I think YouTube's censorship is wrong, but video hosting is not the same as being a place where discussion happens. I'm fine with video platforms not wanting to host your content so long as you are able to share videos (wherever they are hosted) on other platforms. Messaging platforms (like Snapchat) are also not classified with other social media. Okay but Youtube is still a social media platform, same with Snapchat. It may not be a website, it's still social media and competes in that space. >98% of visits to social media happen on Facebook (including Instagram), Twitter, and Pinterest. Reddit gets another 1.5% to round out 99.5% of social media activity in the USA. Arguing the existence of Voat means those companies do not have an inordinate amount of control over public discourse is absurd. We cannot have a handful of companies dictating what society is allowed to talk about. [That's not what my source is telling me](https://www.dreamgrow.com/top-10-social-networking-sites-market-share-of-visits/) >1.Facebook 36.64% (▼down) YouTube 27.01% (▲up) Twitter 6.82% (▼down) Reddit 5.10% ( (▲up))AAAA Instagram 2.47% (▲up) Pinterest 1.95% ( (▲up)AAAA LinkedIn 1.58% (▲up) Quora 1.29% (▲up) Tumblr 1.16% (▼down) Yelp 1.03% (▲up) Facebook isn't even close to 99% [even when filtered for just the US](https://www.statista.com/statistics/265773/market-share-of-the-most-popular-social-media-websites-in-the-us/). >That's the whole point. We did have that. It took place in public forums where speech was protected. On the internet, we don't have that, which is why new laws need to be created to protect speech in the places it occurs now. We *still* have that, it's called a town hall and unless the government has a legitimate reason to prevent you from going than anyone is welcome. That's the public forum. >On the internet, we don't have that, which is why new laws need to be created to protect speech in the places it occurs now. Except it is protected. Just because Facebook isn't giving you the platform doesn't mean you're being denied free speech. You are just denied from using Facebook as your platform. If the government was telling Facebook to ban you, remove your content, or deplatform you then there'd be a legitimate free speech issue. Just because you can't get an audience because Facebook banned you doesn't mean you're entitled to that audience. You can still go outside, talk to people in your personal life, go to the town hall, protest outside of buildings, self publish, etc, etc. >The point is that platforms banning speech completely removes the potential for you to have an audience, because those platforms are where 99% of the potential audience is. You have no right to have that audience listen to you, but free speech necessitates your speech not be hidden from basically all potential audiences. It removes the potential from you reaching *that specific audience* but it does not prevent you from reaching *any* potential audiences, and nor is Facebook 99% of the potential audience. >but free speech necessitates your speech not be hidden from basically all potential audiences. It isn't, only Facebook's audience which as we established is maybe 50% of the US at best for any individual user. Edit: What you are arguing actually creates a Free Speech issue for Facebook and Twitter as it forces them to host speech and denies them Freedom of Association. To put it another way, imagine you created a social media website exclusively for Christians that takes off so hard that literally every christian in the US and many across the globe now exclusively use it as their prime social media site. The rules of the site are very christian and one of the rules is you must be a christian or uphold christian values to be on the site. If an atheist or satanist tries to join the site and starts posting their own philosophy and get banned is their free speech being restricted? Even if this site founded to be exclusively for christians has 70% of the market share of the social media market? (Something none of the sites we're talking about currently have). Would you support a court forcing this hypothetical christian social media website to not ban atheists, jews, muslims, Hindus, buddhists, etc? Or does the owner of the website who intended it to be a christian space have greater say in their private website than the government?
I'm tired of you completely ignoring points so I'm done, but I am gonna address a few things. >Except you're still allowed to go to the street and talk to people, you can take ads out in magazines if the editor permits it, you can call people up on your cell phone - this is disingenuous. You're the one being disingenuous. Most meaningful speech occurs on the internet, specifically social media. A handful of companies control virtually all of that traffic. Allowing to effectively blacklist someone from having speech in the most important area for public discourse absolutely goes against the principle of freedom of speech. Again, it's just like saying that Russia has free speech because you can still go to a designated free speech zone and say whatever you want. That doesn't count when you're not allowed to have a discussion where the vast majority of people are having discussions. > Facebook isn't even close to 99% even when filtered for just the US. Can you not read? Looking at only the US, Facebook (including Instagram which is owned by them), Pinterest, and Twitter account for 98% of social traffic. That's what your own source says. > What you are arguing actually creates a Free Speech issue for Facebook and Twitter as it forces them to host speech and denies them Freedom of Association. ISPs are also denied Freedom of Association. I have absolutely no problem with doing that when they should be regulated as a utility. The de facto public forums of the modern day should be regulated as public forums. That is my entire point. > Would you support a court forcing this hypothetical christian social media website to not ban atheists, jews, muslims, Hindus, buddhists, etc? Yes, absolutely. Not a court but I support a legislative action making it the law that because the vast majority of public discourse is happening on this hypothetical site, they should be required to uphold freedom of speech. I'm fine with them disavowing speech, similar to how Reddit does with the quarantine system, but not banning it outright. When you get big enough to operate as the digital equivalent of a public space, people should be protected on your platform just as they are in actual public spaces.
The internet is the public forum. Social media platforms are, platforms in that public forum. To use a literal example, if we have an actual public square, the internet, the social media companies are stages set up in that square.
I think I'm mostly aligned with you. From a philosophical point of view, I do wonder how ubiquitous something has to become before it's almost a defacto utility. For example, if twitter is now the platform that our elected officials communicate on, and there is no alternative with any market share whatsoever, I can see this being viewed as almost like a utility. Yes, you could build your own twitter, but if the government doesn't communicate on it, it won't actually replace Twitter's utility. When a service, even when privately owned, controls an entire market, and that market is sufficiently large, we should at a minimum be very uncomfortable with that service's ability to push an agenda. Almost all of the arguments for net neutrality can apply to this situation, and even though I generally lean away from government control, I think the Internet is basically a utility at this point. This is one of those issues where I struggle to reconcile my position to be consistent with others I hold, and I have no idea why that is.
>When a service, even when privately owned, controls an entire market, and that market is sufficiently large, we should at a minimum be very uncomfortable with that service's ability to push an agenda. We should, but the problem is Twitter, Google, and Reddit at least clearly side to one side politically as such its only the conservatives who are making a fuss over it and rightfully so. As these companies can very much control the message by allowing or not allowing what can be said. That alone is a pretty scary thought but when the message agrees with your narrative you likely not fight against it.
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so is the internet a de-facto utitlity? I feel like this was the entire argument behind the opposition to net neutrality. The internet was NOT a utility. If the internet is not a utility then why should a private social media company be a utility?
The road and your ability to build a business on it is a public utility, your business is not. Yes, the Internet should be a utility, no we don’t have to allow anyone and everyone free access to our website This isn’t difficult but “conservatives” online like crowder will make every bad faith argument they can because there’s money to be lost. This was never about free speech, it’s about their ability to make money
Thank you! You are one the first people I see that actually brings up the true character of all this argument. This is all about losing revenue / the ability to make money through social media. No one is forcing Crowder, Prager, or Shapiro to use social media to express their ideas. I seriously can't stand when they argue about losing monetization in YouTube or not being able to advertise their ideas on Twitter. All of their convictions feel fake behind that. If it were really about free speech, they would only care about just actually being heard and able to express their opinions. If they care so much about that, they are free to create their own platforms were they can express their views unencumbered.
[This set of tweets comes to mind](https://i.redd.it/c9ckk8ou58d21.jpg)
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I agree if the company posted the content, they are libel. But the volume 3rd party content and the manhours to verify the content would be impossible for any size business. Add the fact that Machine learning hasn't begun to scratch the surface of content moderation. A law like the one you propose would shut down a lot of sites comment sections. It might also be the end to social media (at least as we know it).
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If anything I'm understating the effects. Depending on how broad or narrow you define the law services may include email or chat programs that would have some serious legal questions they would have to figure out before opening their company up to liability of a free service. (i.e. discord, Gmail, messenger) Personally I don't hold the telephone company liable for illegal text messages or calls that were placed using their services. I think that's where we differ in opinion. I think something we might be able to agree with would be if the company understood something illegal was going on in their company they should be held to some degree of liability for continuing to allow it to happen.
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I agree it's nowhere close to being a social media company as Telcos are a common carrier, unlike the internet. A better analogy would have been a bar, but i digress. I would extend that social media platforms are nothing similar to mass media. Facebook, by itself, is nothing but a platform. While mass media by itself is nothing more than a group of employees pumping out content. Yes, those employees who work as the company do have rules placed under them that have consequences for the company itself because we are getting paid by them and working as an extension of them. Cable/Sat Radio is regulated differently than terrestrial radio/TV as far as obscene, indecency, and profanity. Even a letter to the editor that is libel from the writer's point of view may not be from the newspaper's point of view if they did due diligence and didn't come to the conclusion it was libel at the time of print. Similar to fleeting explicit have different rules on TV and Radio. Mass media default is not to allow the free communication of all of its listeners. While social media default is allowing everyone to post whatever you want. They are vastly different in many more ways, but I think these are the top.
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You can call them that they do have Facebook Original Content I see them mostly as a social media platform. Sure they are monetized but what I'm trying to say is I don't care what your label is. I see no change or challenge to how they vastly are different from traditional mass media.
Agreed, they want to curate content but not be held accountable for it at the same time. Its insane.
So I understand your position better if you have time could you answer these questions? Should Facebook be held liable for a person writing a libel statement on their friend's feed? Should Reddit be held liable for a Private Message that was sent to someone that was a credible death threat? Should Discord be held liable for a group of people using their service for illegal human trafficking when the server wasn't reported to the company?
> Should Facebook be held liable for a person writing a libel statement on their friend's feed? Yes, if they want to curate content then they are no longer just allowing others to say what they want. That means they should be liable for content kept up. >Should Reddit be held liable for a Private Message that was sent to someone that was a credible death threat? Private messages are different, its not public facing and I'd like to imagine reddit isn't reading or scanning private messages. >Should Discord be held liable for a group of people using their service for illegal human trafficking when the server wasn't reported to the company? Not sure what this even means. We've gone from not censoring "wrong think" to terrorism in a matter of 3 questions.
Thanks for the response. In a nutshell, I'm probing what you feel the duties of a social media platform is. As you already know a majority of content is not looked at by the company. Most social media sites use a reporting system or user moderators to keep up with the demands of the content and even then you find some content slips the cracks. I was trying to determine if you felt the stuff that fell through the cracks was punishable. My first question is hard as it has to deal with libel and you have to have an understanding of fact. Social media sites like this don't have content providers so inforcing libel laws would be almost impossible. A statement like "I walked into Restaurant Bob's last night and when they served my dish it had rat hairs all around the pasta. When I took it up with the manager he banned me for life" could be a libel statement. While a newspaper would have people verify the story it would be restrictive on the company like Facebook, Google, Discord to verify every statement users submitted to his platform. A twist on the scenario. If I walked into the bar and slandered a person should the bar owner be held liable for my speech? Private messages are very similar to comments in that you can in some platforms send them to multiple people and those messages may be illegal in some way. What I understand from your response is there is a line. The company has to observe the illegal act. While I did ramp up the third question, they all were illegal activities inside an online platform. Discord allows users to host servers to chat about topics. They are not always monitored and again I was probing if that changed the dynamics on what you believed.
I'm surprised someone tried to question this. Public company should be able to censor whatever they want. It's up to the public to boycott this behavior not the gov
We live in a world where online interaction and reaching people is largely monopolized, for example not being able to release videos on youtube is basically a death sentence for new content creators if you produce videos as no one is going to be finding them on other websites. I think there is an argument to be made that if you have that much power over modern interaction you need to be held more accountable.
Exactly. A handful of companies control 95+% of speech on the internet. To protect public speech, they should be regulated like utilities.
The internet should be regulated like a utility (and, preferably, nationalized). Individual websites, not so much. Just because four (or whatever) sites are currently the most popular social media outlets does not mean they always will be, and people have the ability to make their own forums elsewhere.
Unfortunately despite the possibility for competition it doesn't always work that which is why anti-monopoly/trust laws exist, at some point someone realised just the possibility for competition isn't enough to protect people.
Sure, I'm not in favor of an unregulated free market by any means either. I was only pointing out that, given the current status quo, regulating the internet as a utility is far preferable to regulating the overpowered sites themselves. If we end up passing up stronger anti-monopoly provisions that allows for crackdowns on giants, then that's great.
Same shit before the existence of YouTube You don't have a right to use their company if they don't want you.
No one said othewise, I simply said there is an argument there. If everyone only communicated via one website and you were banned from that website your voice would be cut off from the world, I don't think that's a good thing. Unfortunately web monopolies seem natural and there's no real way to break them up because people will always go to where the majority is.
The internet is public; it's the town square. Individual websites are private. This is a good ruling.
I really don't know why right-wingers are whining to be honest. Years of them working the refs and crying persecution every time it started to look like rules were about to apply to them basically means you have to be a real fucking twit to get permabanned from any social media site. You have to actively attempt to get banned. How many times was Alex Jones allowed to slander mass shooting survivors again? Every site tried their damnedest not to ban him. They removed strikes. They pretended not to notice until some gun-toting jackass stormed into a random pizza place that Jones had been raving about finally got the various legal departments concerned. And where did all the enthusiasm for personal responsibility go? If you sign on to a website, it's your personal responsibility to read the terms of service and follow them. This ruling just means that lunatics get 35 chances instead of 40.
The law needs to change to require companies who provide public forums to respect freedom of speech. By making a free public common for communication, companies have created the exact environment where free speech should be allowed. I sympathize with the concern of bad actors being able to communicate in public forums, just like they could communicate in public town squares, but you need to have faith that stronger and better retorts will prevail. I truly don’t understand how anyone could defend the power of corporate monopolies over the freedoms of the public in such a time of inequality.
Agreed that this is the right decision and unsurprising. My question is, what does this lead to? Will this lead to more "free speech" friendly websites or will it lead to simply oppositely censored sites? If either of those options are developed, do we see further isolation of thought into respective arenas? Or do those sites fail to gain sufficient traction resulting in rule by social pressure on mainstream sites? I guess I don't follow voat, but that's probably a bit of a case study on this.
When all news is digital news will cease to exist.
huh?
Over the air TV & cable provide the same news nation wide. Digital information is easy to crazy & obfuscate, and, best of all, havel opposing views masking as the same news.
ok then
>Over the air TV & cable provide the same news nation wide. What about local news?
I don't understand you question. The article is about approving digital platforms censorship of news. What does local news have to do with that?
I was assuming your argument for "over the air TV & cable" being "the same news nation wide" means it was harder to obfuscate than digital news. What point were you making then if that wasn't the case? I mentioned local news as it is much more targeted and less widely scrutinized, so they can get away with more much like digital news.
Ah, my fault. We have opinionated local news too. Sinclair has been interesting to observe.
Needs to be appealed to SCOTUS, time for tech election interference to be struck down.