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The problem with Twitter and Facebook is that the lines are getting blurry with regards to public vs private. Like it or not, a couple tech platforms are the de

• slg 6y ago
  This is a valid argument, but it seems like the proper government response would be to use the tools that were designed to address issues like this such as antitrust law. We shouldn't be bestowing governmental responsibilities on these companies just because we let them become monopolies.
  • caminante 6y ago
    The legislation (Communications Decency Act of 1996) under discussion flows from EFFECTIVE lobbying by telecom monopolies seeking a liability shield [0]. Monopoly power and market manipulation is a second order issue. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act
    • slg 6y ago
      I legitimately don't understand your point here. You seem to be implying that this specific legislation is a form of regulatory capture. Meanwhile nothing in the Wikipedia article you linked seems to support that. It even notes that groups like the ACLU are strongly in support of Sec 230. I don't think the ACLU normally does the bidding of big telecom. Either way, if the root cause is telecom monopolies, let's actually try to fix monopolies rather creating a new category of private company that becomes a public good through its monopoly.
      • caminante 6y ago
        My point is that an anti-trust lens isn't adequate if legislation keeps getting passed that rolls back regulation [0] and promotes formation of trusts. The CDA and §230 was part of the broader Telecommunications Act of 1996. Look at the outcome, which sure seems like "regulatory capture" to me: > Before the 1996 Act was passed, the largest four [Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers] owned less than half of all the lines in the country while, five years later, the largest four local telephone companies owned about 85% of all the lines in the country. It's also possible that the ACLU's interests will conveniently align with a subset of interests for third parties when the third party's liability is reduced. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996#Claims_made_in_opposition_to_the_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996...
        • slg 6y ago
          But the current discussion is specifically about this one small aspect of that overall bill. Whether the overall bill is regulatory capture or not is irrelevant to the discussion of the merits of this specific section.
          • caminante 6y ago
            I appreciate your nuance. I'm skeptical about claims that the overall bill (i.e. de-regulation) and §230 (i.e. liability shields) weren't intertwined. My lay understanding is that §230 came about because (i) telecom providers and ISPs were getting sued for trafficking third-party content; and (ii) they started running to pro-business legislators for protection.[0] Again, my initial reaction was to the claim that the anti-trust controls would be effective in order to police things. That seems like a last resort; and requires first UNWINDING a lot of other legislation that appears to shield the formation of trusts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
• bosswipe 6y ago
  Never thought I'd see the day when conservatives are arguing for nationalization of private corporations.
  • theduder99 6y ago
    never thought I'd see the day when "liberals" stopped supporting "free speech" but that ship sailed long ago
    • 2019-nCoV 6y ago
      Exactly. Politics is the mind killer. Would they have the same opinion if Twitter was a right-leaning Trump-mouthpiece that was disproportionately quelling left-leaning voices? Take a step back and recognise you can agree with Trump's action and not necessarily admire the man.
      • sixstringtheory 6y ago
        We don't have to speak in hypotheticals here. There are plenty of examples: voat, gab, TD, etc. What laws are/were being pushed by liberal politicians to use the force of law to shut them up? Please do link to government documents or quotes from elected officials.
        • username90 6y ago
          If tech companies instead shut down people clamoring for unions and worker rights then you'd see the left rushing to introduce measures like the one signed by Donald Trump right now. So this is really a bipartisan issue and not just a right wing one, we should all work together to regulate the power of big tech. They might be mostly well-intentioned today, but it is best we regulate them before they have a chance to turn bad.
          • deleted 6y ago
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• vannevar 6y ago
  Like it or not, a couple tech platforms are the de facto new town squares. I'd agree, but de facto is not de jure. And if we're going to make them into public spaces legally, it's certainly not going to happen through an executive order. It would require an act of Congress, similar to the restrictions and obligations placed on broadcasters.
  • dnautics 6y ago
    By the same token though, as per the tweets assertion (I have not read the EO personally) it looks like a good chunk of the teeth of this bill is "preventing the government from advertising on a platform that doesn't X", not "creating legal consequences for a company that doesn't X", which is... Not at all the same.
    • gowld 6y ago
      They are in part the same, as the Supreme Court has ruled. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Ag... As HN is fond of saying, judges are smart enough to see through attempts to hack the law.
      • dnautics 6y ago
        And yet taking a person across state lines to kill them in a different jurisdiction is federal crime thanks to the interstate commerce clause.
  • Reelin 6y ago
    Except that SCOTUS has already at least flirted with the idea (see Packingham v. North Carolina, 2017). Also the executive order in question doesn't have anything to do with public spaces but rather Section 230 protections; the argument is that fact checking is a form of editorializing.
    • SilasX 6y ago
      See also this HN discussion about a case[1], where a judge ruled that Trump can't block people on Twitter. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135945 [1] Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, 17-cv-5205, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
• ghaff 6y ago
  Furthermore (IANAL) there's a long history of conflict around the boundaries of private vs. public. "Private" clubs (as with companies) are subject to civil rights and other equal protection legislation (sometimes) for example in a way that your outdoor BBQ isn't.
• viscanti 6y ago
  Seems like having the president attack Twitter for their speech (adding extra speech that suggests that some shared information is disputed) is the actual violation of Free Speech. The First Amendment says that the federal government can't stifle free speech, which seems like what is happening here.
  • newacct583 6y ago
    That's exactly it. Twitter disseminated the president's words as he wrote them to everyone that wanted to see it. They also said it was wrong. Fundamentally the whole exercise is an attempt to conflate Twitters (first amendment!) right to speak its own opinions with somehow "restricting" the rights of their subscribers. And that's insane. Just look at how many people in this very thread are buying into the frame by discussing what big companies should be allowed to censor, when of course nothing of the sort occurred at all.
    • username90 6y ago
      Personally I think that Twitter inserting their own articles is overstepping their own role. Nobody goes there to view what Twitter writes, nobody goes there to care about Twitter opinions. Them doing this forfeits their status as a public square, now they are publishing their own editorialized content, and not as Tweets but as privileged inserts in others Tweets.
      • tibbon 6y ago
        Where is a company limited to only one role? Can Facebook not publish a blog and be a platform?
        • username90 6y ago
          No, not like this. This is like Google or Apple prioritizing their own pages and items in their searches.
          • 6y ago
• derefr 6y ago
  Now I'm curious what the historical precedent is for this. What happens (first-amendment-wise) when a company town has a literal private-property town square? Could the company control speech in "its" town square? For that matter: what about malls? Or university campuses? Or public transit infrastructure provided by private government contractors? What are your free-speech rights when in one of these (privately-owned, public use) places? I feel like a very extreme edge-case situation could be constructed to test the law here: incorporate a town; and then, as your first act as mayor, sell the whole of the town's incorporated territory to a private corporation. Have the corporation declare that anyone engaging in democratic actions on "its property" (e.g. holding a municipal election) is trespassing. Are you now the town's autocratic mayor-for-life, however-many people may move in?
  • kaikai 6y ago
    In the University of California system they set up "free speech zones" for protestors and activists. They're often complete surrounded by chain link fencing with one entrance/exit.
    • derefr 6y ago
      That's a way to avoid having to test the law, certainly. What happens if you don't do that, though—if you have a public-use area, and none of it is a "free-speech zone"?
  • ascagnel_ 6y ago
    > What happens (first-amendment-wise) when a company town has a literal private-property town square? Could the company control speech in "its" town square? Thankfully, we don’t need to imagine what happens: the Disney Corporation has a modern company town (Celebration, FL)[0]; they control a pair of HOAs (one each for residential and non-residential owners). Lexin Capital manages the literal town square, and while I can’t find anything on the topic, I would imagine standard private property rights would apply to the land they own. [0]: https://celebration.fl.us/celebration-community-governance/ https://celebration.fl.us/celebration-community-governance/
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• SllX 6y ago
  Someone that spends too much time at the bar might mistake that for the town square, as might someone who spends too much time on Twitter. The more foolish aspect of this is that the President doesn’t have a direct means of striking back against what Twitter actually did (post a Get the Facts link), so he’s trying to punish them by reinterpreting Section 230. This EO definitely has some teeth, but there are provisions in it that I can’t wait to see in court.
  • nautilus12 6y ago
    Is he reinterpreting 230? I've seen both sides of the spectrum say that social media companies have been interpreting 230 too broadly
    • SllX 6y ago
      Yes.[1] Section 230 is not a new law, but this order is directing his Administration how they are to interpret certain provisions of it going forward with some actions they are to take. It’s important to remember that an Executive Order is not law by decree, it is an official government communication directing the government how to act under the law, as is the President’s prerogative. No matter how you come down on the issue of how social media companies interpret Section 230, a new EO is effectively a new interpretation either narrowing, expanding or changing the scope under which enforcement action is to be taken by the government. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...
    • epakai 6y ago
      He's continuing a push from Republicans to reframe section 230 immunity as only applying to "neutral" platforms [1]. The problem is this then gives the government a big stick to control them on relatively subjective grounds. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act#Platform_neutrality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
• 0xEFF 6y ago
  The first amendment only protects from limits placed by the government, not if it’s a public or private setting.
• kgin 6y ago
  Thats true it’s becoming unclear, but only sociologically. Legally, it doesn’t matter if people think of Twitter as a public space. No amount of perception turns twitter into a governmental organization or subjects it to laws that only pertain to the government. This case is even further from the first amendment because Twitter didn’t prevent any speech. It just exercised its own right to free speech alongside the president’s free speech. Nobody has the right to uncontested or un-responded-to speech.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]