7 ms·

Freedom of speech protects you from Government prosecution for expressing your opinions. Google is a private company.

forgotpwtomain 10y ago
Today, Google controls more public discourse than the US government, if they are censoring freedom of speech - it IS a big deal.
- netheril96 10y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree with this. First Amendment was written at the time when government was almost the only organization powerful enough to silence dissenters. Nowadays corporations like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc have more effective control of the venue of speech, and they should be subject to the same scrutiny then, not be given leeway as "private entities".
  - throwaway160303 10y ago
    The government still is the only entity that can silence dissenters. All the entities you listed are limited to merely kicking you off their platform. Facebook can't 404 your posts on Reddit, and none of them and none of them can stop you from standing on the sidewalk with a sandwich board. Saying that social media platforms should be subject to "scrutiny" (which is pretty vague and non-actionable), or are somehow beholden to public opinion, is nonsense. They're beholden to users, at most. And it's not like Google shut down the blog of of someone saying "GOOG's target price should be about $12". Let's see how much backlash they gets from their users over this, ha.
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      The government still is the only entity that can silence dissenters. All the entities you listed are limited to merely kicking you off their platform. From the standpoint of the one being silenced, what's the difference? The fact of the matter is, the Googles and the Facebooks and the Reddits of the world hold a tremendous and frightening amount of control over public discourse and public opinion. I feel less and less comfortable with them wielding that power unaccountably. You know how we hold companies to a higher and more stringent standard when they reach monopoly status in a market? Perhaps it's time to look into something similar for large social media sites.
      - daveFNbuck 10y ago
        The difference is that he can easily get his blog running again on another platform. If the government were silencing him, he couldn't do that.
        emn13 10y ago
        That's plainly false. - There are time (and money) consuming technical issues in migrating to another platform, and with the dominance of software-as-a-service platforms, it's often not even possible. Can you migration comments? Is the date going to be set correctly? Can you keep your current layout and images? So even on a purely technical level, you can't "easily" get your blog running again on another platform. - Access to content: I'm hoping he has backups. Of course, if you developed the content on-platform, it may be nebulous what exactly you need backups of. E.g., did you think to include all the images+comments? If his account was deleted, he may simply not have all the data anymore. - Network effects (this is the big one): a web site isn't just a bunch of bits; it's a place people visit. Being down for any considerable length of time means those visitors will drift away; the attention you've gained will be partially lost permanently. And that's the best-case scenario. In many cases, you cannot keep url intact, in which case even after you restore service, people won't find you. In a very real way, companies like google and especially facebook own your social connections to others - so even if you manage to find another platform, they're not going to give you your contacts back. E.g. if you switch phone provider, you may keep your telefone number (here, at least, even against the will of the original provider). If you migrate from facebook, you cannot keep your profile url. That's probably a bad thing for society; but it's hardly surprising companies aren't dying to prevent lock-in. Even google, which nominally allows extracting your data, the most valuable assets cannot be transferred (not to mention that the data extraction process results can't be trivially imported elsewhere because there is no standard for these types of things). It's absurd to suggest the user has much practical freedom when it comes to switching communication platforms. Any freedom he does have tends to mean he must have had the foresight to use only a small subset of the available features, including onerous restrictions such as limited social interaction or interaction via unusual means. More realistically, if you switch platforms, you're likely to lose readers.
  - themartorana 10y ago
    To play Devil's advocate, these platforms help people engage in discourse, but much like HN, has its own set of rules. HN shadow-bans and moderates with gusto, but I suppose it doesn't qualify as big enough? Google provides more walls for people to hang their art, but they aren't required to hang yours and I'm not sure compelling them to is a good thing. The same voices calling foul on Google raise hell when Reddit shows what truly unmoderated platforms look like. Just because you (the colloquial "you") call yourself an artist doesn't compel the Met to hang your art and neither does it compel Google.
    - Joof 10y ago
      It's more like Google says 'yeah, you can hang your art here' then once the walls fill up, burns your artwork, moves out of the house and wont answer your texts. At minimum, artists and other specialty individuals need extra allowances and certainties. Were they a corporate entity, this wouldn't have happened. Personally, I value culture at least as highly as most businesses.
    - netheril96 10y ago
      > HN shadow-bans and moderates with gusto, but I suppose it doesn't qualify as big enough? Actually, I do think the current moderation model of most forums are wrong. The users should be the ultimate arbiter of what they see or not. The power to block certain users should be in the hands of those who browse it, and the moderators simply give a recommendation that most users follow. Similar to how spam folder works, in that you can always override the recommendation by moving the spam into your inbox. > but they aren't required to hang yours and I'm not sure compelling them to is a good thing. If not all opinions are allowed on their platform, then those they allow come with a stamp of approval from them. The logical conclusion is that they should be held liable for any libelous claims made by the users, since the users' opinion actually reflect the platform's own. They cannot have it both ways by claiming to be independent from users' opinions while simultaneously influencing and filtering them. They are, in my imaginary world, to deny me only for reasons not related to my content. For example, they can reject me if the pictures are too large or not in a specific format, but not if it expresses any views they dislike. > The same voices calling foul on Google raise hell when Reddit shows what truly unmoderated platforms look like. You give no evidence that it is the same voices. I am, for one, consistently opposed to Reddit's policy on banning subreddits and to Google and Facebook's manual interference on public discourse.
jordanlev 10y ago
This line is getting way over-used. Please notice the last sentence in grandparent's comment: "This is not a Google issue; this is a law enforcement issue".
- foota 10y ago
  This comment doesn't make sense. Parent is commenting that it's _not_ a law enforcement issue since writing is generally protected speech.
  - function_seven 10y ago
    Your parent meant 'grandparent'
hjdivad 10y ago
The first amendment protects Americans from Government prosecution for expression their opinions. Freedom of speech is a principle that extends beyond the US Constitution.
aaron695 10y ago
> Freedom of speech protects you from Government prosecution for expressing your opinions. Google is a private company. This is a tired comment. Could we please stop saying it. We are aware of this. Yes your ISP has the right to cut off your internet access because you vote Democrats. They are a private company. But that doesn't make it right and doesn't mean we can't be angry about it!
- probably_wrong 10y ago
  I don't think we are as aware of what that comment means as you'd think. Yes, we know that Google can delete whatever they want whenever they want. And yet we might get angry as hell... buy we keep hosting our content with them. You want to get angry? Sure, go for it. You want to get change, though? Then I suggest we stop giving them money to keep doing what they are doing. That, I believe, is the spirit of the parent comment .
  - joering2 10y ago
    Well why do you think DuckDuck Go continues to thrive in the first place? Even Google itself said that their "don't be evil" motto is quite stupid. I personally try to ban them from my life as much as possible. Just recently in Google Maps a window popup with history of all the places I drove to. That was a shocker but how naive was I thinking they don't keep this data. Since then I bought TomTom for cash and said goodbye to Google Maps. You should do the same!
- knorker 10y ago
  Child porn is not protected speech though, and Google is not allowed to facilitate it. Your ISP is allowed to let Democrats use the Internet. You may be making a general point I agree with, but it doesn't apply here, assuming it indeed is child porn.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Actual child pornography is not protected, but literary accounts (which seem to be the case here) are.
knorker 10y ago
A private company that is legally mandated to take certain actions in presence of child porn. Free speech does not apply. (assuming the hypothesis that this is child porn is correct)
syshum 10y ago
No in the US the 1st amendment protects you from Government Prosecution, codifing the Concept of Freedom of Speech into the very foundation of our Legal System Freedom of Speech however is a concept that applies to everyone, and everything including Google Companies that proclaim the desire to respect Freedom of Speech, that claim to operate platforms in the promotion of Freedom of Speech, and make a profit doing so, should be HEAVILY criticized when they violate that principle
DavidWanjiru 10y ago
My guess is that the reason why freedom of speech only protects you from being made to shut up by govt through prosecution, and not being made to shut up by a private company due to the space it occupies in the world's technology and information zeitgeist, is because when the freedom of speech laws were formulated, the govt threat to your speech is the only major threat that existed. A Google kind of threat to freedom of speech didn't exist. The question then becomes, is Google stifling freedom of speech? Can their impact on your freedom of speech by deleting your blog or posts be compared to the govt's impact on your freedom of speech through prosecution? I say yes. Freedom of speech and similar laws seek to give you an immunity against govt, not because govt is evil, but because govt is powerful, and you are not. Google is powerful, and they were alive to just how powerful they were going to be when they came out with that don't be evil admonition. Whereas Google took it upon themselves to not be evil, the writers of freedom of speech and similar laws tool it upon themselves to tell govt to not be evil. Should our societies protect individuals against entities who have power beyond some kind of threshhold? I'd say yes.
- dalke 10y ago
  If you make the argument that a private company, by shutting down a user's account, is like government restriction on free speech, then how do you determine the balance between the right of free speech and the right of free association? Remember, freedom of speech is only one part of the First Amendment. Those same writers also included the freedom of association. An organization like Google, Fox News, Amazon, or the Wall Street Journal is not obligated to associate with everyone. We can change things. We can pass laws which mandate that certain things are public spaces. For example, the rise of the malls means that the migration from public shopping streets to private shopping areas, where mall owners like the Mall of the Americas can shut down protest much more readily than the police could do in a truly public area. We can pass laws which force malls to be public areas. The Supreme Court decided that in Pruneyard v. Robins. But only a handful of states have done so. We can similarly pass laws which say that any content hosting site must be content neutral. Eg, if you want to use Stack Overflow to post your diatribes against whale hunting, SO cannot shut you down. That doesn't make sense. Okay, so we only require that of "powerful" sites, which you suggest. Which is defined as .... what? Who gets to decide? Who gets to challenge that? If Yahoo was once powerful but is no longer so, who gets to decide when the transition occurs? One possibility is to set up a common carrier status, where a company offers its services without discrimination to the general public. This is how the phone system works. But why would a company want to do this?

Today, Google controls more public discourse than the US government, if they are censoring freedom of speech - it IS a big deal.

netheril96 10y ago
I wholeheartedly agree with this. First Amendment was written at the time when government was almost the only organization powerful enough to silence dissenters. Nowadays corporations like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc have more effective control of the venue of speech, and they should be subject to the same scrutiny then, not be given leeway as "private entities".
- throwaway160303 10y ago
  The government still is the only entity that can silence dissenters. All the entities you listed are limited to merely kicking you off their platform. Facebook can't 404 your posts on Reddit, and none of them and none of them can stop you from standing on the sidewalk with a sandwich board. Saying that social media platforms should be subject to "scrutiny" (which is pretty vague and non-actionable), or are somehow beholden to public opinion, is nonsense. They're beholden to users, at most. And it's not like Google shut down the blog of of someone saying "GOOG's target price should be about $12". Let's see how much backlash they gets from their users over this, ha.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    The government still is the only entity that can silence dissenters. All the entities you listed are limited to merely kicking you off their platform. From the standpoint of the one being silenced, what's the difference? The fact of the matter is, the Googles and the Facebooks and the Reddits of the world hold a tremendous and frightening amount of control over public discourse and public opinion. I feel less and less comfortable with them wielding that power unaccountably. You know how we hold companies to a higher and more stringent standard when they reach monopoly status in a market? Perhaps it's time to look into something similar for large social media sites.
    - daveFNbuck 10y ago
      The difference is that he can easily get his blog running again on another platform. If the government were silencing him, he couldn't do that.
      - emn13 10y ago
        That's plainly false. - There are time (and money) consuming technical issues in migrating to another platform, and with the dominance of software-as-a-service platforms, it's often not even possible. Can you migration comments? Is the date going to be set correctly? Can you keep your current layout and images? So even on a purely technical level, you can't "easily" get your blog running again on another platform. - Access to content: I'm hoping he has backups. Of course, if you developed the content on-platform, it may be nebulous what exactly you need backups of. E.g., did you think to include all the images+comments? If his account was deleted, he may simply not have all the data anymore. - Network effects (this is the big one): a web site isn't just a bunch of bits; it's a place people visit. Being down for any considerable length of time means those visitors will drift away; the attention you've gained will be partially lost permanently. And that's the best-case scenario. In many cases, you cannot keep url intact, in which case even after you restore service, people won't find you. In a very real way, companies like google and especially facebook own your social connections to others - so even if you manage to find another platform, they're not going to give you your contacts back. E.g. if you switch phone provider, you may keep your telefone number (here, at least, even against the will of the original provider). If you migrate from facebook, you cannot keep your profile url. That's probably a bad thing for society; but it's hardly surprising companies aren't dying to prevent lock-in. Even google, which nominally allows extracting your data, the most valuable assets cannot be transferred (not to mention that the data extraction process results can't be trivially imported elsewhere because there is no standard for these types of things). It's absurd to suggest the user has much practical freedom when it comes to switching communication platforms. Any freedom he does have tends to mean he must have had the foresight to use only a small subset of the available features, including onerous restrictions such as limited social interaction or interaction via unusual means. More realistically, if you switch platforms, you're likely to lose readers.
- themartorana 10y ago
  To play Devil's advocate, these platforms help people engage in discourse, but much like HN, has its own set of rules. HN shadow-bans and moderates with gusto, but I suppose it doesn't qualify as big enough? Google provides more walls for people to hang their art, but they aren't required to hang yours and I'm not sure compelling them to is a good thing. The same voices calling foul on Google raise hell when Reddit shows what truly unmoderated platforms look like. Just because you (the colloquial "you") call yourself an artist doesn't compel the Met to hang your art and neither does it compel Google.
  - Joof 10y ago
    It's more like Google says 'yeah, you can hang your art here' then once the walls fill up, burns your artwork, moves out of the house and wont answer your texts. At minimum, artists and other specialty individuals need extra allowances and certainties. Were they a corporate entity, this wouldn't have happened. Personally, I value culture at least as highly as most businesses.
  - netheril96 10y ago
    > HN shadow-bans and moderates with gusto, but I suppose it doesn't qualify as big enough? Actually, I do think the current moderation model of most forums are wrong. The users should be the ultimate arbiter of what they see or not. The power to block certain users should be in the hands of those who browse it, and the moderators simply give a recommendation that most users follow. Similar to how spam folder works, in that you can always override the recommendation by moving the spam into your inbox. > but they aren't required to hang yours and I'm not sure compelling them to is a good thing. If not all opinions are allowed on their platform, then those they allow come with a stamp of approval from them. The logical conclusion is that they should be held liable for any libelous claims made by the users, since the users' opinion actually reflect the platform's own. They cannot have it both ways by claiming to be independent from users' opinions while simultaneously influencing and filtering them. They are, in my imaginary world, to deny me only for reasons not related to my content. For example, they can reject me if the pictures are too large or not in a specific format, but not if it expresses any views they dislike. > The same voices calling foul on Google raise hell when Reddit shows what truly unmoderated platforms look like. You give no evidence that it is the same voices. I am, for one, consistently opposed to Reddit's policy on banning subreddits and to Google and Facebook's manual interference on public discourse.

jordanlev 10y ago

This line is getting way over-used. Please notice the last sentence in grandparent's comment: "This is not a Google issue; this is a law enforcement issue".

foota 10y ago
This comment doesn't make sense. Parent is commenting that it's _not_ a law enforcement issue since writing is generally protected speech.
- function_seven 10y ago
  Your parent meant 'grandparent'

hjdivad 10y ago

The first amendment protects Americans from Government prosecution for expression their opinions. Freedom of speech is a principle that extends beyond the US Constitution.

aaron695 10y ago

> Freedom of speech protects you from Government prosecution for expressing your opinions. Google is a private company. This is a tired comment. Could we please stop saying it. We are aware of this. Yes your ISP has the right to cut off your internet access because you vote Democrats. They are a private company. But that doesn't make it right and doesn't mean we can't be angry about it!

probably_wrong 10y ago
I don't think we are as aware of what that comment means as you'd think. Yes, we know that Google can delete whatever they want whenever they want. And yet we might get angry as hell... buy we keep hosting our content with them. You want to get angry? Sure, go for it. You want to get change, though? Then I suggest we stop giving them money to keep doing what they are doing. That, I believe, is the spirit of the parent comment .
- joering2 10y ago
  Well why do you think DuckDuck Go continues to thrive in the first place? Even Google itself said that their "don't be evil" motto is quite stupid. I personally try to ban them from my life as much as possible. Just recently in Google Maps a window popup with history of all the places I drove to. That was a shocker but how naive was I thinking they don't keep this data. Since then I bought TomTom for cash and said goodbye to Google Maps. You should do the same!
knorker 10y ago
Child porn is not protected speech though, and Google is not allowed to facilitate it. Your ISP is allowed to let Democrats use the Internet. You may be making a general point I agree with, but it doesn't apply here, assuming it indeed is child porn.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Actual child pornography is not protected, but literary accounts (which seem to be the case here) are.

knorker 10y ago

A private company that is legally mandated to take certain actions in presence of child porn. Free speech does not apply. (assuming the hypothesis that this is child porn is correct)

syshum 10y ago

No in the US the 1st amendment protects you from Government Prosecution, codifing the Concept of Freedom of Speech into the very foundation of our Legal System Freedom of Speech however is a concept that applies to everyone, and everything including Google Companies that proclaim the desire to respect Freedom of Speech, that claim to operate platforms in the promotion of Freedom of Speech, and make a profit doing so, should be HEAVILY criticized when they violate that principle

DavidWanjiru 10y ago

My guess is that the reason why freedom of speech only protects you from being made to shut up by govt through prosecution, and not being made to shut up by a private company due to the space it occupies in the world's technology and information zeitgeist, is because when the freedom of speech laws were formulated, the govt threat to your speech is the only major threat that existed. A Google kind of threat to freedom of speech didn't exist. The question then becomes, is Google stifling freedom of speech? Can their impact on your freedom of speech by deleting your blog or posts be compared to the govt's impact on your freedom of speech through prosecution? I say yes. Freedom of speech and similar laws seek to give you an immunity against govt, not because govt is evil, but because govt is powerful, and you are not. Google is powerful, and they were alive to just how powerful they were going to be when they came out with that don't be evil admonition. Whereas Google took it upon themselves to not be evil, the writers of freedom of speech and similar laws tool it upon themselves to tell govt to not be evil. Should our societies protect individuals against entities who have power beyond some kind of threshhold? I'd say yes.

dalke 10y ago
If you make the argument that a private company, by shutting down a user's account, is like government restriction on free speech, then how do you determine the balance between the right of free speech and the right of free association? Remember, freedom of speech is only one part of the First Amendment. Those same writers also included the freedom of association. An organization like Google, Fox News, Amazon, or the Wall Street Journal is not obligated to associate with everyone. We can change things. We can pass laws which mandate that certain things are public spaces. For example, the rise of the malls means that the migration from public shopping streets to private shopping areas, where mall owners like the Mall of the Americas can shut down protest much more readily than the police could do in a truly public area. We can pass laws which force malls to be public areas. The Supreme Court decided that in Pruneyard v. Robins. But only a handful of states have done so. We can similarly pass laws which say that any content hosting site must be content neutral. Eg, if you want to use Stack Overflow to post your diatribes against whale hunting, SO cannot shut you down. That doesn't make sense. Okay, so we only require that of "powerful" sites, which you suggest. Which is defined as .... what? Who gets to decide? Who gets to challenge that? If Yahoo was once powerful but is no longer so, who gets to decide when the transition occurs? One possibility is to set up a common carrier status, where a company offers its services without discrimination to the general public. This is how the phone system works. But why would a company want to do this?