7 ms·

This case was about a "company town", where there was very much a blending of public and private. > The Court initially noted that it would be an easy case if

by tedivm 8y ago

This case was about a "company town", where there was very much a blending of public and private. > The Court initially noted that it would be an easy case if the town were a more traditional, publicly administered, municipality. Then, there would be a clear violation of the right to free speech for the government to bar the sidewalk distribution of such material. The question became, therefore, whether or not constitutional freedom of speech protections could be denied simply because a single company held title to the town. It's also not a good idea to bring up this case without bringing up Cyber Promotions v. America Online, in which America Online put up spam filters and Cyber Promotions tried to use the above precedent to say America Online was blocking their right to free speech. You can probably guess by the fact that we still use spam filters how that case came out. As a final note, even that original case has had limitations based off of the type of property- > In Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, the Supreme Court distinguished a private shopping mall from the company town in Marsh and held that the mall had not been sufficiently dedicated to public use for First Amendment free speech rights to apply within it.

basch 8y ago
How about ATT, Verizon, Tmobile/Sprint if they banned certain content from private text messages? On one side, nearly everybody will agree to allow anti spam measures, denying certain unwanted annoying people speech. On the other end, many would object to disallowing private messages based on morality scores of the content.
- tedivm 8y ago
  Are you asking about my personal opinion, or about what the law currently says? Telecoms are regulated, which is why they can't do things like that. If we want to have the same thing apply to social media then we need to regulate social media to do so. Depending on a court precedent that has already been deemed by other cases not to apply to tech companies isn't going to work- legislation needs to happen.
- seankimdesign 8y ago
  Is there an established assumption that Facebook will extend their censorship to private messages also? Otherwise this analogy doesn't hold much ground.
nilkn 8y ago
This is a nuanced topic, but I think the subsequent cases you mentioned all make sense and are consistent with the proposition that certain social media sites actually should obey the "company town" precedent. Malls aren't and have never been the primary space used for public social discourse and commentary. Today, such discourse increasingly happens online, and it's increasingly true that sites like Facebook and Twitter actually are the primary space for public discourse. It's really never before happened in history where a private company has become the mediator and facilitator of discourse involving millions of people simultaneously. Previous forms of media had extremely restricted participation roles in comparison. Newspapers, TV, and radio can all only publish a relatively tiny amount of content, so the idea that millions of people could simultaneously publish content to those platforms was never viable; they were only capable of pushing out content from a few folks to many, but they were never many-to-many. This almost infinitely scalable many-to-many communication property of modern social media makes it feel much more like a public space than newspapers, TV, and radio ever did.
- tedivm 8y ago
  Considering how "corporate friendly" the SOTUS has been, and how often they think that corporations are people who have their own free speech rights (particularly with regard to spending money), I'm guessing they are not going to side with "free speech advocates" on this one.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  >the proposition that certain social media sites actually should obey the "company town" precedent. This only follows if you believe you're under an obligation to use social media. >It's really never before happened in history where a private company has become the mediator and facilitator of discourse involving millions of people simultaneously. This depends on what you mean. On the one hand, up until ~30 years ago, discourse involving millions of people was impossible. So in one way you're correct. On the other hand, media companies of all kinds have historically had a huge level of control over what people see. When the only form of communication was the town crier, he controlled what you heard. When we added printed paper, the people with the press had outsized control over the media. And the barriers to entry were much higher then: I can spin up my own website in an hour. Your average person couldn't afford a printing press. >This almost infinitely scalable many-to-many communication property of modern social media makes it feel much more like a public space than newspapers, TV, and radio ever did. What public space offers infinitely scalable many-to-many communication? Public space is distance limited, these platforms aren't. Just because these platforms chose not to heavily regulate the content doesn't preclude their ability to ever do so in the future, nor does it make a comparison to a theoretical public space that never existed any more valid.
stcredzero 8y ago
> In Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, the Supreme Court distinguished a private shopping mall from the company town in Marsh and held that the mall had not been sufficiently dedicated to public use for First Amendment free speech rights to apply within it. So if a site has a monopoly on video commentary, that would seem to be "sufficiently dedicated to public use" to me.
- tedivm 8y ago
  These are separate issues though- having a monopoly doesn't automatically make you a "public use" company. The fact is that Facebook already has rules that restrict it far more than "public use" would. Facebook blocks people for bullying, nudity, discussions about drugs and violence, age, and probably many other types of things. You can't even access many of the site unless you register. It's very much different from a town that allows everyone access to its streets (which is the original case we're all talking about here).
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    having a monopoly doesn't automatically make you a "public use" company. Having a monopoly on a form of speech does.
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      Facebook does not have a monopoly on internet speech. Facebook does not even have a monopoly on internet speech for its users; people who have Facebook accounts can also have Twitters or Tumblrs or blogs or what have you.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Facebook does not have a monopoly on internet speech. Being able to dole out the potent combination of virality/discovery+monetization to only one particular ideological group basically is a monopoly on Internet speech in 2019. Facebook doesn't control all of it, but a rather small group of people in the circles adjacent to SV CEOs basically does control all of it for the entire English speaking world. That is way too much unaccountable power in too few hands, particularly because it effectively drowns out the 1990's and prior conception of Freedom of Speech.
solotronics 8y ago
I would think a massive online platform spanning multiple types of media would be analogous to a digital "company town".
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  In a town, the only way for people to physically hear your speech is to be present in the town itself. Facebook users are not restricted to only using Facebook. If they want to go to your blog they can.
  - PHGamer 8y ago
    twitter, facebook,youtube all banned alex jones at the same time. you can use say oh go host it youself if all the tech companies conspire together on the same damn day. Plus they are the only ones who can truly allow your words to get heard. you cant ddos youtube but you damn can get ddos'd on your puny server.
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      Freedom of speech and freedom to publish are not the same thing. The latter does not exist; newspapers and book publishers are not required to publish every opinion.
smsm42 8y ago
> This case was about a "company town", where there was very much a blending of public and private. With the pervasiveness of regulation in modern United States, pretty much everything worth mentioning now is "a blending of public and private". Any business has restrictions of how it can hire and choose their clientele. A person with minarchist political bent could consider this wrong but it is undeniably the reality today. > You can probably guess by the fact that we still use spam filters how that case came out. I don't think this decision means what you think it means. Of course, AOL was found to be right to block spam. But was it because spam is repugnant, not because AOL rights are absolute. Consider what would happen if AOL blocked communications by a competitor, or say political speech by a popular group? I can not guarantee it, but I ascribe very high probability to the outcome being very different. If so, the conclusion is not that the provider can do whatever they want, but they can do whatever they want as long as they serve public interest. Which means, the current politics defines what they can do and what they can't.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Consider what would happen if AOL blocked communications by a competitor, or say political speech by a popular group? I can not guarantee it, but I ascribe very high probability to the outcome being very different. If so, the conclusion is not that the provider can do whatever they want, but they can do whatever they want as long as they serve public interest. Which means, the current politics defines what they can do and what they can't. AOL would have still won. That case didn't turn on the content of the spam. It absolutely was predicated on AOL's rights to control its own software/community. Companies block competitor ads all the time. Companies frequently refuse to air or display political ads.
Rapzid 8y ago
I'm convinced a lot of people do not understand "free speech" as it applies to the First Amendment and as a fundamental principal of democratic systems of government. The First Amendment puts limits on congress. It's a check against government oppression, full stop. The Fourteenth Amendment extends that all the way down to local governments. I feel like many people are then trying to bend its scope past the breaking point to fit their worldview.
- T-hawk 8y ago
  This is true, that the First Amendment only refers to government action. But its underlying spirit is often taken to be that no entity with power should seek to use it to suppress free discourse.
  - jshowa3 8y ago
    This would invalidate all speech policies provided by corporations and corporate person hood. The underlying spirit is irrelevant when there's clear reference in the Constitution. It's not ambiguous where "spirit" can come into place, ie. Second Amendments "right to bear arms"
  - Rapzid 8y ago
    AFAIK its underlying spirit has pretty much always been in regards to government with origins in ancient Greece as it pertains to democracy(the system of government).
- chrisco255 8y ago
  It's also a cultural principle, right? The whole idea of freedom of speech precedes its enshrinement in the Constitution. It's very important to put it there. But it would be meaningless words on paper if our society didn't generally tolerate and respect the idea of free speech. Book stores tend to carry both religious and anti-religious material, for example. Nobody tends to boycott the book store and force their hand, because we believe in that sort of discussion and debate about things.
  - 8y ago

by tedivm 8y ago

basch 8y ago

How about ATT, Verizon, Tmobile/Sprint if they banned certain content from private text messages? On one side, nearly everybody will agree to allow anti spam measures, denying certain unwanted annoying people speech. On the other end, many would object to disallowing private messages based on morality scores of the content.

tedivm 8y ago
Are you asking about my personal opinion, or about what the law currently says? Telecoms are regulated, which is why they can't do things like that. If we want to have the same thing apply to social media then we need to regulate social media to do so. Depending on a court precedent that has already been deemed by other cases not to apply to tech companies isn't going to work- legislation needs to happen.
seankimdesign 8y ago
Is there an established assumption that Facebook will extend their censorship to private messages also? Otherwise this analogy doesn't hold much ground.

nilkn 8y ago

This is a nuanced topic, but I think the subsequent cases you mentioned all make sense and are consistent with the proposition that certain social media sites actually should obey the "company town" precedent. Malls aren't and have never been the primary space used for public social discourse and commentary. Today, such discourse increasingly happens online, and it's increasingly true that sites like Facebook and Twitter actually are the primary space for public discourse. It's really never before happened in history where a private company has become the mediator and facilitator of discourse involving millions of people simultaneously. Previous forms of media had extremely restricted participation roles in comparison. Newspapers, TV, and radio can all only publish a relatively tiny amount of content, so the idea that millions of people could simultaneously publish content to those platforms was never viable; they were only capable of pushing out content from a few folks to many, but they were never many-to-many. This almost infinitely scalable many-to-many communication property of modern social media makes it feel much more like a public space than newspapers, TV, and radio ever did.

tedivm 8y ago
Considering how "corporate friendly" the SOTUS has been, and how often they think that corporations are people who have their own free speech rights (particularly with regard to spending money), I'm guessing they are not going to side with "free speech advocates" on this one.
joshuamorton 8y ago
>the proposition that certain social media sites actually should obey the "company town" precedent. This only follows if you believe you're under an obligation to use social media. >It's really never before happened in history where a private company has become the mediator and facilitator of discourse involving millions of people simultaneously. This depends on what you mean. On the one hand, up until ~30 years ago, discourse involving millions of people was impossible. So in one way you're correct. On the other hand, media companies of all kinds have historically had a huge level of control over what people see. When the only form of communication was the town crier, he controlled what you heard. When we added printed paper, the people with the press had outsized control over the media. And the barriers to entry were much higher then: I can spin up my own website in an hour. Your average person couldn't afford a printing press. >This almost infinitely scalable many-to-many communication property of modern social media makes it feel much more like a public space than newspapers, TV, and radio ever did. What public space offers infinitely scalable many-to-many communication? Public space is distance limited, these platforms aren't. Just because these platforms chose not to heavily regulate the content doesn't preclude their ability to ever do so in the future, nor does it make a comparison to a theoretical public space that never existed any more valid.

stcredzero 8y ago

> In Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, the Supreme Court distinguished a private shopping mall from the company town in Marsh and held that the mall had not been sufficiently dedicated to public use for First Amendment free speech rights to apply within it. So if a site has a monopoly on video commentary, that would seem to be "sufficiently dedicated to public use" to me.

tedivm 8y ago
These are separate issues though- having a monopoly doesn't automatically make you a "public use" company. The fact is that Facebook already has rules that restrict it far more than "public use" would. Facebook blocks people for bullying, nudity, discussions about drugs and violence, age, and probably many other types of things. You can't even access many of the site unless you register. It's very much different from a town that allows everyone access to its streets (which is the original case we're all talking about here).
- stcredzero 8y ago
  having a monopoly doesn't automatically make you a "public use" company. Having a monopoly on a form of speech does.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    Facebook does not have a monopoly on internet speech. Facebook does not even have a monopoly on internet speech for its users; people who have Facebook accounts can also have Twitters or Tumblrs or blogs or what have you.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Facebook does not have a monopoly on internet speech. Being able to dole out the potent combination of virality/discovery+monetization to only one particular ideological group basically is a monopoly on Internet speech in 2019. Facebook doesn't control all of it, but a rather small group of people in the circles adjacent to SV CEOs basically does control all of it for the entire English speaking world. That is way too much unaccountable power in too few hands, particularly because it effectively drowns out the 1990's and prior conception of Freedom of Speech.

solotronics 8y ago

I would think a massive online platform spanning multiple types of media would be analogous to a digital "company town".

bobthepanda 8y ago
In a town, the only way for people to physically hear your speech is to be present in the town itself. Facebook users are not restricted to only using Facebook. If they want to go to your blog they can.
- PHGamer 8y ago
  twitter, facebook,youtube all banned alex jones at the same time. you can use say oh go host it youself if all the tech companies conspire together on the same damn day. Plus they are the only ones who can truly allow your words to get heard. you cant ddos youtube but you damn can get ddos'd on your puny server.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    Freedom of speech and freedom to publish are not the same thing. The latter does not exist; newspapers and book publishers are not required to publish every opinion.

smsm42 8y ago

> This case was about a "company town", where there was very much a blending of public and private. With the pervasiveness of regulation in modern United States, pretty much everything worth mentioning now is "a blending of public and private". Any business has restrictions of how it can hire and choose their clientele. A person with minarchist political bent could consider this wrong but it is undeniably the reality today. > You can probably guess by the fact that we still use spam filters how that case came out. I don't think this decision means what you think it means. Of course, AOL was found to be right to block spam. But was it because spam is repugnant, not because AOL rights are absolute. Consider what would happen if AOL blocked communications by a competitor, or say political speech by a popular group? I can not guarantee it, but I ascribe very high probability to the outcome being very different. If so, the conclusion is not that the provider can do whatever they want, but they can do whatever they want as long as they serve public interest. Which means, the current politics defines what they can do and what they can't.

gamblor956 8y ago
Consider what would happen if AOL blocked communications by a competitor, or say political speech by a popular group? I can not guarantee it, but I ascribe very high probability to the outcome being very different. If so, the conclusion is not that the provider can do whatever they want, but they can do whatever they want as long as they serve public interest. Which means, the current politics defines what they can do and what they can't. AOL would have still won. That case didn't turn on the content of the spam. It absolutely was predicated on AOL's rights to control its own software/community. Companies block competitor ads all the time. Companies frequently refuse to air or display political ads.

Rapzid 8y ago

I'm convinced a lot of people do not understand "free speech" as it applies to the First Amendment and as a fundamental principal of democratic systems of government. The First Amendment puts limits on congress. It's a check against government oppression, full stop. The Fourteenth Amendment extends that all the way down to local governments. I feel like many people are then trying to bend its scope past the breaking point to fit their worldview.

T-hawk 8y ago
This is true, that the First Amendment only refers to government action. But its underlying spirit is often taken to be that no entity with power should seek to use it to suppress free discourse.
- jshowa3 8y ago
  This would invalidate all speech policies provided by corporations and corporate person hood. The underlying spirit is irrelevant when there's clear reference in the Constitution. It's not ambiguous where "spirit" can come into place, ie. Second Amendments "right to bear arms"
- Rapzid 8y ago
  AFAIK its underlying spirit has pretty much always been in regards to government with origins in ancient Greece as it pertains to democracy(the system of government).
chrisco255 8y ago
It's also a cultural principle, right? The whole idea of freedom of speech precedes its enshrinement in the Constitution. It's very important to put it there. But it would be meaningless words on paper if our society didn't generally tolerate and respect the idea of free speech. Book stores tend to carry both religious and anti-religious material, for example. Nobody tends to boycott the book store and force their hand, because we believe in that sort of discussion and debate about things.
- 8y ago