9 ms·
Since the First Amendment acts as a constraint on Government, yeah, it makes sense that YouTube is under no obligation to protect your freedom of speech. This
by gregd 7y ago
Since the First Amendment acts as a constraint on Government, yeah, it makes sense that YouTube is under no obligation to protect your freedom of speech. This isn't a hard concept.
- wpietri 7y agoWell, it's not a hard concept if you believe in rule of law and have read a few Wikipedia pages. But a surprisingly large number of people seem to start from the position, "My actions should never have consequences I don't like," and then backfill from there.
- gregd 7y agoIt never ceases to amaze me how many people cry, "BUT MA FREEDOMS OF SPEECH" and actually have no concept of what that means.
- nostromo 7y agoThe First Amendment is not the same thing as Freedom of Speech. Freedom of Speech is an ideal from Ancient Greece and obviously predates the US Constitution. It’s also much broader in scope. So, yes, people can have their freedom of speech infringed by a private company or employer, even if it’s not protected by the First Amendment.
- shadowgovt 7y agoIdeals from ancient Greece also included how to treat one's slaves and how to tell whether a person was naturally suited for the life of slavery or freedom, so it's important to put more consideration into the nuances of the virtue of such ideals than just "The Greek philosophers were into it."
- _mdpn 7y agoMargaret Sanger unapologetically supported eugenics and sterilizing 'inferior' people. Does that make Planned Parenthood a bad idea?
- shadowgovt 7y agoIt makes Planned Parenthood an organization one should judge in modern context separable from its origins, much like freedom of speech and ownership of other people from Greek philosophy.
- foolinaround 7y agoIt should certainly make you stop and think... Would'nt you be suspicious if Hitler came up with some sort of program?
- Zuider 7y agoThis kind of reasoning opens you up to the genetic fallacy. If you believe the moral status of the origin of a thing is necessarily transmitted to the thing itself, then you are liable to consider Hitler's pernicious concept of Der Volk and the Volkswagen to be equally evil.
- jessaustin 7y agoDid you know that the guy who wrote the First Amendment also owned slaves? It seems like a nuance we might want to consider!
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago...and was a man. And guaranteed freedom only to men.
- foolinaround 7y agogreat reply - calling out another strawman.....
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoAnd that was a null reply, adding nothing at all! Btw a strawman is an invented situation. I called out a real thing. So, maybe, non-sequitur, or no true Scotsman, or something like that. But Strawman? No.
- goldmanballsack 7y agoAnd so we pick and choose which ideals to carry on and which to throw away. Do you see anything wrong with freedom of speech?
- shadowgovt 7y agoThe question is probably too broad to be useful. I see several situations where it is extremely healthy to a society and several situations where it can be harmful and even countries like the United States restrict it. My freedom of speech (under US law) doesn't allow me to go around accusing my neighbor of pedophilia, for example, without opening me up to a hefty lawsuit if they are not, in fact, a pedophile. Even in this forum we're using right now (founded by an organization associated with a man who once wrote an essay titled "What You Can't Say"), there are things I could transmit here which would result in a swift, merciless, and I argue just ban from our benevolent moderators.
- themagician 7y agoThis is the standard response when people find out they are wrong. It is somewhat ironic too, because the actual violation of freedom of speech occurs when a person or company is forced, by the government, to publish someone else’s content that they may not agree with. If you write a letter to the New York Times and they don’t publish it that’s not a violation of freedom of speech. If the government forces them to, it is.
- wpietri 7y agoWell, sort of. The ancient Greeks actually had two concepts, and people confuse them all the time. [1] But people harkening back to the ancient Greek tradition of isegoria are a very small percentage of the "BUT MUH FREEDOMZ" outcry. What they want is not freedom of speech, but freedom from the consequences of their speech. And often they want it in ways that include suppressing other people's rights, like freedom of speech and freedom of association. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-concepts-of-freedom-of-speech/546791/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-con...
- thu2111 7y agoObviously people want freedom from consequences of their speech. That's what freedom of speech means. What kind of "freedom of speech" would it be if you were instantly killed upon uttering any criticism of the great leader? Obviously you wouldn't have freedom of speech in that situation because the consequences would be so dire nobody would speak up. Who, exactly, in this case is trying to suppress other people's freedom of speech, or freedom of association? Is PragerU trying to get liberal channels shut down? I don't believe they are; this is a non-sequiteur used try and cast victims of oppression as oppressors themselves.
- rodgerd 7y ago> Who, exactly, in this case is trying to suppress other people's freedom of speech, or freedom of association? The case is trying to force YouTube to associate with PraegerU.
- shadowgovt 7y agoIt doesn't take a lot of consideration to conclude that total freedom from consequences of speech is akin to all parties pretending that the offending speech was simply never said, which defeats the purpose of speech itself in the first place. So we can conclude that people want freedom from specific consequences of speech, not all consequences. Once that distinction is made, one can argue about which consequences one should be free of. US law, for example, strictly ties the government's right to censor (i.e. being killed upon uttering any criticism of great leader is out-of-bounds) but the also-present freedom of the press and freedom of association implies private individuals' rights to refrain from sharing information or associating with various entities, and there is a, perhaps questionable, expedient that extends those rights from individuals to corporations in the US (being fired upon uttering public criticism of dear CEO is, except for specific carve-outs mostly paid for in blood during union strikes, acceptable; a corporation is not the government and has no obligation to continue to serve an employee at odds with the corporation and what it stands for, while governments have no such luxury and must serve even their "malcontents").
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- themagician 7y agoIt’s worse than that. They go on to sue—to try use the government to force someone else to publish their content—and fail to see the irony.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoWell, there is a different way of looking at it. As real flesh and bones individuals, the first amendment protections should apply. For companies (aka: fictitious entities), are granted corporate charters by the government. They are extensions of the government allowing a bubble of state/federal government of what we call a company. Freedom of speech makes sense when its my body - but who's body does the speech come out of with a corporation? In that light, companies should have a requirement to uphold the bill of rights. They are created legal entities, not at all like a person. ------------------------ The glaring problem with not applying 1FA to a company means the mega-companies that wish to deplatform you leads you to no recourse. Do you have a right to use a monopolistic service? The issue with that course of actions is that the rules to the megacorps (FAANG) also apply to the small companies with 1 or more. More regulation does tend to kill tiny companies.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago> Freedom of speech makes sense when its my body - but who's body does the speech come out of with a corporation? PragerU is a corporation as well, so I'm not sure what you're getting at here. But this decision is absolutely consistent with applying the First Amendment to corporations. Compulsory speech is not free speech. Why should YouTube be forced to spend their time and money to disseminate PragerU's content on their platform — i.e. to "speak" against their will?
- _-david-_ 7y agoIf a video on YouTube constitutes YouTube's speech then does that mean if somebody posts a video containing something illegal YouTube should be held responsible?
- shadowgovt 7y agoIt's not the video that YouTube creates; it's the metadata of recommendations, classification, and advertising association. PragerU attempted to argue YouTube infringed PragerU's freedom by arranging that metadata in a way PragerU didn't like.
- AdamJacobMuller 7y agoSee Marsh V Alabama. I hope Prager appeals, this could easily reach the SC and potentially be an even more influential case than Marsh.
- creaghpatr 7y agoIt's true they would have a more favorable shot in the SC than in the 9th circuit.
- xxpor 7y agoOne of the judges on the panel was Jay Bybee. You might know him from signing the Torture Memos authored by John Yoo. If they can't convince that level of hack, they don't have a chance in the SC.
- magicalist 7y ago> I hope Prager appeals, this could easily reach the SC and potentially be an even more influential case than Marsh. Or as pointed out in the article, probably not: > Appeals court judges were not convinced. They pointed to a Supreme Court case[1] from last year in which plaintiffs unsuccessfully "tested a theory that resembled PragerU's approach, claiming that a private entity becomes a state actor through its 'operation' of the private property as 'a public forum for speech.'" The case involved public access channels on a cable TV system. [1] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/manhattan-community-access-corp-v-halleck/ https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/manhattan-commun...
- AdamJacobMuller 7y ago"Manhattan Community Access Corp" doesn't seem to have the same market power as Google/Youtube. I still think this will be a novel SC case. Interestingly Manhattan Community Access Corp is definitely in some regards closer to a state actor, being authorized by NYC to operate.
- cvwright 7y agoThis is a fascinating example, particularly in comparison to the "wedding cake" cases from a couple of years ago. The question of trading off between the customer's speech and the service provider's freedom seems to be nearly the same in both cases. But the people following along at home have almost all traded sides! Those who were for the customer before are now cheering for the provider. Those who supported the old provider are now supporting the new customer. And they're using many of the same arguments to do it. People are weird.
- jessaustin 7y agoThe problem with that comparison is that we eat cakes. I think a better example would be that of the long-lamented "Fairness Doctrine". The explosion of right-wing AM radio would never have occurred without Reagan's repeal of that FCC policy in 1987. So naturally conservatives think the Fairness Doctrine was terrible. Imagine, having to play the same number of liberal radio programs as conservative radio programs on your AM station! Online, it's different, for reasons. Of course, no one remembers what happened in the 1980s, although Limbaugh is still around.
- jaywalk 7y agoI don't see how this case and the wedding cake case are even remotely similar beyond the fact that both of the defendants are businesses.
- wpietri 7y agoNot at all. One important difference here is that people are free to discriminate on almost any grounds except a narrow set that have proven to be irrational and historically devastating. Race, gender, religion, and a few other things depending on jurisdiction. The same rules apply to YouTube. If they had been arbitrarily banning the accounts of black people, they would have lost.
- cvwright 7y agoOk, I did some digging. The wedding cake case in Oregon was much closer to what you describe. The one in Colorado was more like the Youtube case. He offered to sell them a cake off the shelf, but refused to create a custom cake for something he didn't support.
- saterHater 7y agoJudging by their content, it seems like anything that isn't self-serving is difficult for PragerU to understand.
- prostheticvamp 7y agoI think it’s a little more nuanced than that, in a way the bill of rights never had reason to consider. The freedom of speech prohibits government control of speech in government (read: public) spaces, in order to conserve public right of criticism of the government. These massive platforms, as a matter of business, attempt to replace and own “the public square.” Google/YouTube, directly or indirectly, controls an enormous fraction of the public conversation. Their interests, as corporations constantly lobbying for favorable regulatory treatment, tend to align along the “appease the government as long as it doesn’t hurt our revenue” axis. You can with some validity argue that an entity that monopolizes control of the public square is obligated to protect the rights intrinsic in that square, all the more so when their interests align with the government’s. You can, with some validity, argue that a company doesn’t have to have a monopoly on the public square to be forced to recognize those rights, but as a continuous function, as they subsume more of the public square they should undergo increasing burden for conserving the functions of that square. It used to be “the public square” was a distinct geographic entity. We are now faced with the fact that it was, maybe, a set of functions attached to that geographic entity, and it’s those functions that must be protected.
- themagician 7y agoThese platforms don’t replace the public square. The internet is the “public square” and you can buy your own domain and do whatever you want. These platforms are the giant retail shops that line the square in a capitalist world. They come and go. You don’t have to go into them and they can kick you out whenever they want.
- vanniv 7y agoWell, you could, except that if cloudflare doesn't like your content, your site isn't actually on the internet.
- themagician 7y agoNever used Cloudflare. The internet has existed without it for quite some time. I’m not even sure what they do, to be honest. Aren’t they just another CDN? I’ve used AWS and Cloudfront for years, never had a problem. And that’s only for high traffic applications.
- zoonosis 7y agoAnd the 14th Amendment was meant to act as a constraint on the general government but that hasn't stopped it from being used to constrain state governments.
- lanternslight 7y agoThought experiment: what would happen if Alphabet banned homosexual positive speech on all it's platforms?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]