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Entirely, 100% disagree. The Internet is now our primary form of communication. It is the information highway. Sticking to the whole "free speech only applies t

Entirely, 100% disagree. The Internet is now our primary form of communication. It is the information highway. Sticking to the whole "free speech only applies to the government" is adhering to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. Posting on Twitter is now the equivalent of standing in a public square and yelling your protest. Allowing private companies to shut this down because we made the terrible mistake of handing over our primary means of communication to private companies, doesn't mean it has to always be that way. EDIT: Imagine if we allowed phone companies to listen to all calls and then censor the ones they didn't like. People would be outraged. This is what is happening on the Internet.

ryanlol 6y ago
> Posting on Twitter is now the equivalent of standing in a public square and yelling your protest Don’t you think it’s more akin to standing in a privately owned square and yelling your protest?
- Thorentis 6y ago
  Not all at. The legal fact that it is privately owned goes against the spirit of the law in terms of freedom of speech. How many people used to stand in private squares and protest? Nobody sees Twitter as a private square. They see it as the Internet. I am taking issue with the fact that we have allowed private companies to be the gate-keepers of what should be public spaces.
- missosoup 6y ago
  100% of the popular internet is a 'private square'. That's the problem. There doesn't exist any platform right now where one can share an idea and have that idea go viral, unless the idea is first gated through private censorship. Sure one could make their own blog or website to express their idea, but the chance of it spreading is then pretty much 0, because again any means for links or ideas to spread are all 'private squares' with their own censorship. This is how the internet broke free speech. This is where the law needs to catch up with technology.
SllX 6y ago
This whole hokey spirit of the law BS is really irritating. Here’s the real spirit of the First Amendment: it is an explicit limitation on the authority of Congress over certain freedoms spelled out within the First Amendment. Go read the First Amendment, just the first five words. Here, I’ll spell them out for you: “Congress shall make no law...” Now here’s the thing about the Constitution: it means what it says. There’s no spirit in there that you need a law degree and 10 years on the Federal bar to really draw out and interpret at some courtroom seance. It’s words with the force of law, and we are a nation of laws. Now if you read the rest of the Amendment, you’ll note that it says nothing about the President, it says nothing about the Courts, and it says nothing about any kind of exceptions, like if the speech is exceptionally hurtful. It also says nothing about the States, that came later post-14th Amendment, but not in the manner that the drafters of the 14th Amendment who had nothing on Madison intended. Rather than the Privileges or Immunities clause, not to be confused with the Privileges and Immunities clause, it came about by the due process clause through a process called incorporation, wherein individual rights in the Bill of Rights began to apply to the States. Oh, and most importantly, it says nothing about the Internet! Now there is a way to get the result that you intended, and it is really rather simple. It turns out that if you want to make changes to the law, you pass a law. You build a consensus, and a coalition around that consensus, and you use the powers vested in lawmakers to get your result. So what about the President? Well he doesn’t really have any power to regulate speech either, other than the powers that Congress gives him, which it can’t grant because it doesn’t have the lawful authority to make those laws. That happened once, at least once, with the Alien and Seditions Act not long after the ink on the Bill of Rights dried. This would later come to be understood as “unconstitutional”. My point is the President has no more power than that which is listed in Article II and which the Congress in its lawful capacity vested in him, that is to say statutory powers, some of which only exist in specific circumstances. It’s still a lot of power, more so than it should be in my opinion since Congress has abdicated much of its responsibility, but it isn’t enough to do anything more than his Article II powers plus whatever Congress has granted under its Article I authority plus amendments. So where do private companies fall in here? Welp, they’re still private companies, not public. They’re not governed by the First Amendment. If they were nationalized, they would effectively fall under the First Amendment because Congress is the supreme branch of the government no matter how much they sell themselves short with that coequal horseshit. You don’t have to agree with the decisions that private companies engage in, just like I don’t agree with you, a private citizen, invoking the “spirit of the law” rather than deferring to the actual text. If the law can mean whatever you want it to mean, then it effectively means nothing and our entire conception of the Rule of Law falls apart. It’s not perfect, it is not always just, but it is the basis for the form and authority of the Federal Government. Lasting changes to the law come about by passing more laws and anything below that standard is ephemeral. As for Twitter? It can do whatever it wants. They have been undermining their credibility as a useful platform for communication for 10 years and I see no reason why they would stop now, but either way the First Amendment exists to protect Twitter from the Government, not for the Government to be protected from Twitter. The President has a level of speech that goes beyond free speech because his speech has the force of a government order to his subordinates no matter how stupid or asinine and regardless of the medium. I don’t like it, but that’s the world we live in.

ryanlol 6y ago

> Posting on Twitter is now the equivalent of standing in a public square and yelling your protest Don’t you think it’s more akin to standing in a privately owned square and yelling your protest?

Thorentis 6y ago
Not all at. The legal fact that it is privately owned goes against the spirit of the law in terms of freedom of speech. How many people used to stand in private squares and protest? Nobody sees Twitter as a private square. They see it as the Internet. I am taking issue with the fact that we have allowed private companies to be the gate-keepers of what should be public spaces.
missosoup 6y ago
100% of the popular internet is a 'private square'. That's the problem. There doesn't exist any platform right now where one can share an idea and have that idea go viral, unless the idea is first gated through private censorship. Sure one could make their own blog or website to express their idea, but the chance of it spreading is then pretty much 0, because again any means for links or ideas to spread are all 'private squares' with their own censorship. This is how the internet broke free speech. This is where the law needs to catch up with technology.

SllX 6y ago

This whole hokey spirit of the law BS is really irritating. Here’s the real spirit of the First Amendment: it is an explicit limitation on the authority of Congress over certain freedoms spelled out within the First Amendment. Go read the First Amendment, just the first five words. Here, I’ll spell them out for you: “Congress shall make no law...” Now here’s the thing about the Constitution: it means what it says. There’s no spirit in there that you need a law degree and 10 years on the Federal bar to really draw out and interpret at some courtroom seance. It’s words with the force of law, and we are a nation of laws. Now if you read the rest of the Amendment, you’ll note that it says nothing about the President, it says nothing about the Courts, and it says nothing about any kind of exceptions, like if the speech is exceptionally hurtful. It also says nothing about the States, that came later post-14th Amendment, but not in the manner that the drafters of the 14th Amendment who had nothing on Madison intended. Rather than the Privileges or Immunities clause, not to be confused with the Privileges and Immunities clause, it came about by the due process clause through a process called incorporation, wherein individual rights in the Bill of Rights began to apply to the States. Oh, and most importantly, it says nothing about the Internet! Now there is a way to get the result that you intended, and it is really rather simple. It turns out that if you want to make changes to the law, you pass a law. You build a consensus, and a coalition around that consensus, and you use the powers vested in lawmakers to get your result. So what about the President? Well he doesn’t really have any power to regulate speech either, other than the powers that Congress gives him, which it can’t grant because it doesn’t have the lawful authority to make those laws. That happened once, at least once, with the Alien and Seditions Act not long after the ink on the Bill of Rights dried. This would later come to be understood as “unconstitutional”. My point is the President has no more power than that which is listed in Article II and which the Congress in its lawful capacity vested in him, that is to say statutory powers, some of which only exist in specific circumstances. It’s still a lot of power, more so than it should be in my opinion since Congress has abdicated much of its responsibility, but it isn’t enough to do anything more than his Article II powers plus whatever Congress has granted under its Article I authority plus amendments. So where do private companies fall in here? Welp, they’re still private companies, not public. They’re not governed by the First Amendment. If they were nationalized, they would effectively fall under the First Amendment because Congress is the supreme branch of the government no matter how much they sell themselves short with that coequal horseshit. You don’t have to agree with the decisions that private companies engage in, just like I don’t agree with you, a private citizen, invoking the “spirit of the law” rather than deferring to the actual text. If the law can mean whatever you want it to mean, then it effectively means nothing and our entire conception of the Rule of Law falls apart. It’s not perfect, it is not always just, but it is the basis for the form and authority of the Federal Government. Lasting changes to the law come about by passing more laws and anything below that standard is ephemeral. As for Twitter? It can do whatever it wants. They have been undermining their credibility as a useful platform for communication for 10 years and I see no reason why they would stop now, but either way the First Amendment exists to protect Twitter from the Government, not for the Government to be protected from Twitter. The President has a level of speech that goes beyond free speech because his speech has the force of a government order to his subordinates no matter how stupid or asinine and regardless of the medium. I don’t like it, but that’s the world we live in.