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A website owner's right to choose what to publish is a more important application of the first amendment than anyone else's right to force you to publish their

A website owner's right to choose what to publish is a more important application of the first amendment than anyone else's right to force you to publish their speech. If you disagree, I command you to post this post on your twitter. If you don't, you're censoring me.

Navarr 6y ago
100% this. A website is exercising their own freedom of speech when choosing not to publish or carry something. If we oppose this idea then we need to create an alternative to that monopoly. Either in the private, or the public sector.
- hackissimo123 6y ago
  Hypothetically, let's suppose that the entire Internet was controlled by one private company. (This is very plausible - I see no reason why couldn't have developed this way if history had gone slightly differently; in fact I think it's a miracle that it didn't.) Would you be okay with that private company unilaterally deciding which political opinions were worthy of publishing, even if it was their full legal right to do so? I'm not a free speech absolutist and I fully agree that not everything that people publish on (say) Twitter should be allowed to stay on Twitter. The problem is the growing centralisation of power and the lack of democratic oversight. One day everyone who currently works at Twitter will be dead, but Twitter may still exist, staffed by a completely different bunch of people. Can you be so sure that the reins will always remain in hands you approve of? I don't know what the solution is to the problem of centralised private power to control the internet, but it baffles me that anyone could deny that it is a problem.
  - notafraudster 6y ago
    The problem you proposed strikes me as primarily being that one company controls the Internet. That's the problem that needs to be addressed. It might have implications for the speech issue you're suggesting, but I can safely punt on that. Break up the single monopoly in order to reduce the degree to which any one private actor acts as a pseudo-state. A counter-example for you is the following: suppose that a million companies control the internet, and all of them independently decide they don't want to publish white supremacist content. Then the problem is clearly not concentration or monopoly or collusion, but rather companies (via the people who make publishing decisions for the companies) exercising their own free speech. I think the challenge is that in this counter-example, the free speech absolutist -- not saying you are one -- needs to admit that they want to restrain one sort of speech (not wanting to publish white supremacist content) to enable another sort of speech (people publishing white supremacist content). It's an essential tension. Someone has to lose in that exchange. We need only clarify who. It may be the case that the internet is far closer to your example than mine, though I doubt it. Even if market share of social media suggests concentration, it seems to me easier than ever to publish your content. I published my first website in 1995 and surely I have an easier time doing it today than then. Now, I might not have an easier time getting an audience, but I am also not entitled to an audience. If people don't look for me or tune me out, that's not a violation of my rights. That the public has chosen to waste less time seeking out dissenting views is maybe something we should be worried about, but probably not something we solve by legislatively privileging access of dissenting views, no matter how nuts, to platforms. I just wanted to add one final thing. Matthew Lyon was a congressman. When John Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, Lyon attempted to publish a piece calling Adams a dictator and a tyrant for doing so. The local newspaper, the Rutland Herald, would not publish it. So Lyon started his own newspaper. Lyon was subsequently convicted and jailed. In this example, we see three things: (1) the government jailing Lyon is a restraint on free speech and unconstitutional. (2) The Herald not publishing his letter is not a restraint on free speech. (3) Lyon did what we would expect people to do: work to amplify their own voice when others will not. Today it is easier than ever to "start your own newspaper". You might find that no one reads it -- but you are not entitled to their readership, just as Lyon was not.
    - busterarm 6y ago
      > The problem you proposed strikes me as primarily being that one company controls the Internet. That's the problem that needs to be addressed. You don't forego treating someone's symptoms just because you don't yet know how to cure the disease. You need to manage a patient's symptoms and keep them alive. Figuring out how to unravel or limit these huge monopolies is something that will take government years to figure out, if ever, much like finding a cure for a disease. As much as we need to solve that problem, we can't just throw up our hands in the meantime and say "I guess there's nothing we can do."
      - 6510 6y ago
        Good point, it is an unsolved puzzle. Off to the labs!
  - 6510 6y ago
    > Can you be so sure that the reins will always remain in hands you approve of? Actually, when one deliberately obtains the power to design the audience those who helped to establish this are by definition not the design you are looking for. At first the useful idiots must be portrayed as model citizens and as majority opinion (by silencing everyone else) then they too need to be silenced to preserve that illusion. You don't want subjects who have reason to praise you, you want ones who praise you because they are your subjects.
nitrogen 6y ago
This argument has been made back and forth many many times. Private property rights vs. privatization of public spaces. Quantity becoming quality. Etc. Surfice to say that when a corporation controls more "territory" than most state governments, when a very small number of corporations control the vast, vast majority of communication channels, the rules must change to maintain the access of the people to the new public square.
- vharuck 6y ago
  It's trying to solve the wrong problem. If there's a monopoly, it should be busted. Not declared a new government agency.
  - ufmace 6y ago
    IMO, the problem is that some fields are natural monopolies. This has long been known to include things like electric utilities, water, etc. I don't think anybody but the most crazy extreme libertarians objects to these types of companies being heavily regulated by the Government. The question is, should this apply to internet companies, and how? It is a bit tricky. I think there is a solid case that, once social networking companies get to a certain size, there is a dominating network effect that makes them sort of like natural monopolies. Thus I think there should be some kind of regulation of their behavior. Maybe not as strict as other types of natural monopolies, but I think they have too much power to be allowed to just do whatever their owners feel like.
    - Natsu 6y ago
      One way to solve this would be to regulate only the largest platforms. So maybe this different kind of net neutrality only applies to Twitter/Facebook/YouTube, domain registrars, ISPs, large cloud providers and other significant privately-owned infrastructure, but not to every random bit player with no real market share. Otherwise, what happens if the ISPs decide that, say, Net Neutrality cuts into their profit margins, so they're just not going to route traffic for the sites that are politically antagonistic to them right before the election? Sure would be a shame if something happened to that site of yours, huh?
elliekelly 6y ago
Well said. People seem to forget that freedom of speech includes freedom from speech. The instances where the constitution allows the government to compel speech are generally pretty limited. There was a major Supreme Court case in the 90s when the City of Boston tried to force the group behind South Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade to allow Gay & Lesbian groups to participate. SCOTUS ruled that the requirement infringed on the group’s right to disseminate it’s own message. A discriminatory and distasteful message to be sure but such is the tradeoff of a robust first amendment - even stupid statements are protected. It was only in the last few years that the parade organization relented and allowed LGBTQ+ participants. Largely because public opinion (and corporate partners/advertisers) forced them to. The parade organization’s message of discrimination and exclusion was eventually drowned out with messages of pride and LGBTQ+ support. So the system may not have worked as quickly as most of us would have liked but it did indeed work. And on the flip side, I’m grateful that I don’t have to see hate groups marching at Pride. If the City of Boston had won their case 25 years ago that’s exactly what would have happened.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  The other side's going to win an election someday. The other side's going to file a court case someday. Be careful with what powers you create...
throwaway894345 6y ago
Publishers are responsible for the content they publish. Twitter (and other social networks) is not held responsible. These networks like to claim that they are "dumb pipes" when it suits them and they like to choose who is allowed to see which content when it suits them. In particular, if Twitter is allowed to currate content that whips up frenzied (often violent) mobs, they ought to be held responsible in proportion to their role.
- imustbeevil 6y ago
  > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— > (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or > (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1] [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    That a law is passed is not evidence that the law is constitutional or just. Sometimes large industries will even successfully lobby for laws that promote their own interests at the expense of the interests of the entire nation.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    What is supposed to be your point?
    - imustbeevil 6y ago
      The US Government says that Facebook isn't responsible for things other people post and they're allowed to moderate however they want. What was your point?
centimeter 6y ago
This argument might get more traction if the people who are applying it right now (progressives) hadn't been trampling on business freedom of association for the last 60 years.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  I'm guessing most of the folks you are taking about weren't even alive when civil rights legislation was first passed. And I object to the idea that only progressives can support civil rights.
  - centimeter 6y ago
    Progressives still haven't stopped undermining freedom of association. The "gay wedding cake" saga is a recent high-profile example.
banads 6y ago
Thought experiment: if a single corporation owned a website within which 100% of public speech was conducted, would you still be so eager to defend their "right" to control the thoughts and words of the entire world?
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  I'm very much in the camp of "the site owner sets the policy on their site". But with the Network Effect naturally concentrating communication to a few sites, I'm starting to feel conflicted about that.
- imustbeevil 6y ago
  That sounds like a monopoly problem, not a free speech problem. There's way better explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23576919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23576919
  - banads 6y ago
    >That sounds like a monopoly problem Okay let's follow that logic: precisely at what point does that become a monopoly problem?
kps 6y ago
> the first amendment The article is about freedom of speech, not the First Amendment, and I would like to remind self-centred navel-gazing parochial Americans that they're not the same thing.

Navarr 6y ago

100% this. A website is exercising their own freedom of speech when choosing not to publish or carry something. If we oppose this idea then we need to create an alternative to that monopoly. Either in the private, or the public sector.

hackissimo123 6y ago
Hypothetically, let's suppose that the entire Internet was controlled by one private company. (This is very plausible - I see no reason why couldn't have developed this way if history had gone slightly differently; in fact I think it's a miracle that it didn't.) Would you be okay with that private company unilaterally deciding which political opinions were worthy of publishing, even if it was their full legal right to do so? I'm not a free speech absolutist and I fully agree that not everything that people publish on (say) Twitter should be allowed to stay on Twitter. The problem is the growing centralisation of power and the lack of democratic oversight. One day everyone who currently works at Twitter will be dead, but Twitter may still exist, staffed by a completely different bunch of people. Can you be so sure that the reins will always remain in hands you approve of? I don't know what the solution is to the problem of centralised private power to control the internet, but it baffles me that anyone could deny that it is a problem.
- notafraudster 6y ago
  The problem you proposed strikes me as primarily being that one company controls the Internet. That's the problem that needs to be addressed. It might have implications for the speech issue you're suggesting, but I can safely punt on that. Break up the single monopoly in order to reduce the degree to which any one private actor acts as a pseudo-state. A counter-example for you is the following: suppose that a million companies control the internet, and all of them independently decide they don't want to publish white supremacist content. Then the problem is clearly not concentration or monopoly or collusion, but rather companies (via the people who make publishing decisions for the companies) exercising their own free speech. I think the challenge is that in this counter-example, the free speech absolutist -- not saying you are one -- needs to admit that they want to restrain one sort of speech (not wanting to publish white supremacist content) to enable another sort of speech (people publishing white supremacist content). It's an essential tension. Someone has to lose in that exchange. We need only clarify who. It may be the case that the internet is far closer to your example than mine, though I doubt it. Even if market share of social media suggests concentration, it seems to me easier than ever to publish your content. I published my first website in 1995 and surely I have an easier time doing it today than then. Now, I might not have an easier time getting an audience, but I am also not entitled to an audience. If people don't look for me or tune me out, that's not a violation of my rights. That the public has chosen to waste less time seeking out dissenting views is maybe something we should be worried about, but probably not something we solve by legislatively privileging access of dissenting views, no matter how nuts, to platforms. I just wanted to add one final thing. Matthew Lyon was a congressman. When John Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, Lyon attempted to publish a piece calling Adams a dictator and a tyrant for doing so. The local newspaper, the Rutland Herald, would not publish it. So Lyon started his own newspaper. Lyon was subsequently convicted and jailed. In this example, we see three things: (1) the government jailing Lyon is a restraint on free speech and unconstitutional. (2) The Herald not publishing his letter is not a restraint on free speech. (3) Lyon did what we would expect people to do: work to amplify their own voice when others will not. Today it is easier than ever to "start your own newspaper". You might find that no one reads it -- but you are not entitled to their readership, just as Lyon was not.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    > The problem you proposed strikes me as primarily being that one company controls the Internet. That's the problem that needs to be addressed. You don't forego treating someone's symptoms just because you don't yet know how to cure the disease. You need to manage a patient's symptoms and keep them alive. Figuring out how to unravel or limit these huge monopolies is something that will take government years to figure out, if ever, much like finding a cure for a disease. As much as we need to solve that problem, we can't just throw up our hands in the meantime and say "I guess there's nothing we can do."
    - 6510 6y ago
      Good point, it is an unsolved puzzle. Off to the labs!
- 6510 6y ago
  > Can you be so sure that the reins will always remain in hands you approve of? Actually, when one deliberately obtains the power to design the audience those who helped to establish this are by definition not the design you are looking for. At first the useful idiots must be portrayed as model citizens and as majority opinion (by silencing everyone else) then they too need to be silenced to preserve that illusion. You don't want subjects who have reason to praise you, you want ones who praise you because they are your subjects.

nitrogen 6y ago

This argument has been made back and forth many many times. Private property rights vs. privatization of public spaces. Quantity becoming quality. Etc. Surfice to say that when a corporation controls more "territory" than most state governments, when a very small number of corporations control the vast, vast majority of communication channels, the rules must change to maintain the access of the people to the new public square.

vharuck 6y ago
It's trying to solve the wrong problem. If there's a monopoly, it should be busted. Not declared a new government agency.
- ufmace 6y ago
  IMO, the problem is that some fields are natural monopolies. This has long been known to include things like electric utilities, water, etc. I don't think anybody but the most crazy extreme libertarians objects to these types of companies being heavily regulated by the Government. The question is, should this apply to internet companies, and how? It is a bit tricky. I think there is a solid case that, once social networking companies get to a certain size, there is a dominating network effect that makes them sort of like natural monopolies. Thus I think there should be some kind of regulation of their behavior. Maybe not as strict as other types of natural monopolies, but I think they have too much power to be allowed to just do whatever their owners feel like.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    One way to solve this would be to regulate only the largest platforms. So maybe this different kind of net neutrality only applies to Twitter/Facebook/YouTube, domain registrars, ISPs, large cloud providers and other significant privately-owned infrastructure, but not to every random bit player with no real market share. Otherwise, what happens if the ISPs decide that, say, Net Neutrality cuts into their profit margins, so they're just not going to route traffic for the sites that are politically antagonistic to them right before the election? Sure would be a shame if something happened to that site of yours, huh?

elliekelly 6y ago

Well said. People seem to forget that freedom of speech includes freedom from speech. The instances where the constitution allows the government to compel speech are generally pretty limited. There was a major Supreme Court case in the 90s when the City of Boston tried to force the group behind South Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade to allow Gay & Lesbian groups to participate. SCOTUS ruled that the requirement infringed on the group’s right to disseminate it’s own message. A discriminatory and distasteful message to be sure but such is the tradeoff of a robust first amendment - even stupid statements are protected. It was only in the last few years that the parade organization relented and allowed LGBTQ+ participants. Largely because public opinion (and corporate partners/advertisers) forced them to. The parade organization’s message of discrimination and exclusion was eventually drowned out with messages of pride and LGBTQ+ support. So the system may not have worked as quickly as most of us would have liked but it did indeed work. And on the flip side, I’m grateful that I don’t have to see hate groups marching at Pride. If the City of Boston had won their case 25 years ago that’s exactly what would have happened.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
The other side's going to win an election someday. The other side's going to file a court case someday. Be careful with what powers you create...

throwaway894345 6y ago

Publishers are responsible for the content they publish. Twitter (and other social networks) is not held responsible. These networks like to claim that they are "dumb pipes" when it suits them and they like to choose who is allowed to see which content when it suits them. In particular, if Twitter is allowed to currate content that whips up frenzied (often violent) mobs, they ought to be held responsible in proportion to their role.

imustbeevil 6y ago
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— > (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or > (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1] [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  That a law is passed is not evidence that the law is constitutional or just. Sometimes large industries will even successfully lobby for laws that promote their own interests at the expense of the interests of the entire nation.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  What is supposed to be your point?
  - imustbeevil 6y ago
    The US Government says that Facebook isn't responsible for things other people post and they're allowed to moderate however they want. What was your point?

centimeter 6y ago

This argument might get more traction if the people who are applying it right now (progressives) hadn't been trampling on business freedom of association for the last 60 years.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
I'm guessing most of the folks you are taking about weren't even alive when civil rights legislation was first passed. And I object to the idea that only progressives can support civil rights.
- centimeter 6y ago
  Progressives still haven't stopped undermining freedom of association. The "gay wedding cake" saga is a recent high-profile example.

banads 6y ago

Thought experiment: if a single corporation owned a website within which 100% of public speech was conducted, would you still be so eager to defend their "right" to control the thoughts and words of the entire world?

BurningFrog 6y ago
I'm very much in the camp of "the site owner sets the policy on their site". But with the Network Effect naturally concentrating communication to a few sites, I'm starting to feel conflicted about that.
imustbeevil 6y ago
That sounds like a monopoly problem, not a free speech problem. There's way better explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23576919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23576919
- banads 6y ago
  >That sounds like a monopoly problem Okay let's follow that logic: precisely at what point does that become a monopoly problem?

kps 6y ago

> the first amendment The article is about freedom of speech, not the First Amendment, and I would like to remind self-centred navel-gazing parochial Americans that they're not the same thing.