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The very first amendment of the U.S.'s constitution outlies that the government cannot censor the expression of speech. There's a big difference between a priv

The very first amendment of the U.S.'s constitution outlies that the government cannot censor the expression of speech. There's a big difference between a private company determining what is hosted on their servers vs. the U.S. government forcing a private company to censor speech.

sneak 6y ago
> The very first amendment of the U.S.'s constitution outlies that the government cannot censor the expression of speech. Turns out, they don't need to. Due to the fact that most people do not exercise any real control over the devices they use to read most expression, all they have to do is be able to regulate trade between app publishers and the {App,Play} Store. This is how the US government is presently engaging in censorship of apps published by ByteDance (and soon Tencent). They can prohibit Apple/Google from transacting with the publisher, and because Apple/Google control the phones of the end users, the end users are effectively prohibited from reading the content published by that publisher. It's an end run around the constitution.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  First, only Apple devices have the issue of limited store access, which is a tangential antitrust problem unto itself. Second, despite the claims of the president, the white house does not have the power to block TikTok or Bytedance from the public. The president can only block armed forces from installing apps on their owned devices.
  - realusername 6y ago
    > First, only Apple devices have the issue of limited store access, which is a tangential antitrust problem unto itself. Android is also problematic on that aspect, even Epic Games gave up on distributing Fortnite outside the Play Store. If the most well known game in the world can't make it outside the Play Store, who could?
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      The Epic Games store and Fortnite is precisely the counterexample to anyone saying there's a single store on Android devices. Whatever sweetheart deal Epic worked out with Google in the end doesn't discredit that they successfully sold hundreds of thousands of copies outside of the the Google Play store. This argument also intentionally ignores the existence of the Amazon app store on Android.
      - realusername 6y ago
        > Whatever sweetheart deal Epic worked out with Google in the end doesn't discredit that they successfully sold hundreds of thousands of copies outside of the the Google Play store. They specifically state that they failed due to the constraints and had to back to the store. > This argument also intentionally ignores the existence of the Amazon app store on Android. Yeah sure, there's a few other minor stores but they are nowhere near the size of the Play Store. Additionally we could compare to other markets, if you compare the number of companies which can host your website and the number of companies which can host your app, the numbers are going from hundreds of thousands to less than 10 for apps even by counting almost irrelevant stores.
Natsu 6y ago
What happens when that applies to ISPs determining what goes over their wires? We have a privately owned public square at this point. Further entrenching that power seems unwise.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  You're moving the goalposts.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    From what to what? Both are private ownership of public spaces.
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  Make the internet a public utility. It's been discussed here before. Maybe search "municipal broadband"
- threeseed 6y ago
  So in your hypothetical world there is some conspiracy between the thousands of ISPs which will work together to decide what content peoples see. Even though consumers will simply move to another ISP just like they are free to move to another website.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    Thousands? There are only a handful of ISPs at the top and, oh yeah, the last time they made a plan to collude, it birthed Net Neutrality. So I'm not sure what part of it happening before makes it seem unlikely to happen again.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  Common carrier laws prevent that. The same reason FedEx can't open your box and halt your shipment of UPS swag. And no, Facebook is a website and app(s), not a common carrier.
shripadk 6y ago
> There's a big difference between a private company determining what is hosted on their servers vs. the U.S. government forcing a private company to censor speech. So are media networks like CNN, MSNBC, Fox etc. They are private too. But they are still regulated. They can't post whatever they want and are held liable for any news that they present to their audience. Social media companies aren't regulated in the same way. They have more powers than the Government because they can literally censor anyone's speech they want. They can ban anyone they want. If they are left-leaning they can ban right-leaning content. If they are right-leaning they can ban left-leaning content. They are also not regulated like media networks because they are given immunity from liability through Section 230. They can never be held liable for what is posted on their platform. It is like having the cake and eating it too. Heck, they can even censor the US President's tweets and videos. This makes them extremely powerful. It is surprising to me that US citizens are perfectly fine with this setup.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  I'm sorry, you're wrong. They are not regulated. The standard for a traditional news agent is they cannot publish known lies about a living person, because that exposes them to civil liability. A news program can choose to say whatever they think about anybody - the President, any candidate, whatever, and as long as nobody can prove that they knew it was a lie, they're fine. There's no obligation to show the President's content there either. They can choose not to show right-leaning or left-leaning content. They also have the same protections on the comments section. Any reliability or nonpartisanship in US news media comes solely from a cultural sense of ethics, not any legal framework.
  - shripadk 6y ago
    > They are not regulated They are. It is called "The Communications Act of 1934" in the United States. They are completely regulated by the FCC in US. They are regulated differently in different countries. In US, as an example, they have rules on political advertising. They have "equal time" rules where every political candidate "must" be given equal time and opportunity to air their viewpoints. No such regulations exist for social media companies. They can be held liable for fake news or slander. Social media platforms cannot. Only the content posted in the editorial is considered personal opinion and not the position of the News Organization. That is the only page/section in the newspaper/news that does not expose the News Organization to liability/slander. That is why you have a separate "Editorial Section" in a newspaper where the editor can give his/her opinions without exposing the newspaper to liability. But of late, the news agencies have started using other pages for giving their opinions too (from harmless clickbait to downright slander) which is again a very risky choice to make. This exposes them to liability/slander. This is why regulation is so important. To ensure what is legally allowed and not allowed. News agencies are bound by such regulations. Social media organizations are not. If news agencies publishes a hit piece on me that is obviously false, I can sue the news organization for slander. The news organization cannot claim that it believed the news reporter/agent who passed on wrong information about me and get away with it. The ultimate publisher is the news agency. Period. That is why the organization can be sued. But if a user posts a hit piece on me in a social media platform I cannot sue the platform for allowing the user to post slanderous material. Because the platform shields itself from liability by taking advantage of the provisions of Section 230. This is because it calls itself a "platform" and not a "publisher". This is fine by me as long as it remains a platform. But once it starts censoring opinions (like Twitter/Facebook deleting Trump's tweet) then it no longer is a platform. It is now behaving as a publisher. Then why should it be protected by Section 230? > because that exposes them to civil liability Exactly. They are regulated. Even if a news agent publishes a fake story, the organization is responsible for it. They cannot carry it forward without verification because if they do, they end up becoming liable. Not the news agent. That is the whole point. The recent case that comes to mind is when Nick Sandmann was falsely accused of being racist against a Native American by all left-leaning media organizations (CNN, Washington Post etc). When the fact were completely different (if you watch the video in its entirety). He sued these media organizations and won. They had to settle the 250 million $ lawsuit. Can he sue Facebook/Twitter which carried this story more than any of the media organizations did? Nope. That is the reason why I say that social media organizations enjoys powers that neither the US Government nor the Media enjoys. > There's no obligation to show the President's content there either. They can choose not to show right-leaning or left-leaning content Yes that is right. But when they do show the President, then they have to let him have his say. They cannot either censor him or change what he meant. If they do that then they open themselves up to defamation/liability depending on what they actually did. Social media companies do not have any such issues as they are unregulated. You can read more about Media Regulation in the United States here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/americangovernment/chapter/regulating-the-media/ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/americangovernment/chapter...
ergocoder 6y ago
By your logic In a hypothetical world, Facebook could decide that masks wouldn't work. And there's nothing we can do about it except screaming at facebook? That doesn't sound good.

sneak 6y ago

> The very first amendment of the U.S.'s constitution outlies that the government cannot censor the expression of speech. Turns out, they don't need to. Due to the fact that most people do not exercise any real control over the devices they use to read most expression, all they have to do is be able to regulate trade between app publishers and the {App,Play} Store. This is how the US government is presently engaging in censorship of apps published by ByteDance (and soon Tencent). They can prohibit Apple/Google from transacting with the publisher, and because Apple/Google control the phones of the end users, the end users are effectively prohibited from reading the content published by that publisher. It's an end run around the constitution.

three_seagrass 6y ago
First, only Apple devices have the issue of limited store access, which is a tangential antitrust problem unto itself. Second, despite the claims of the president, the white house does not have the power to block TikTok or Bytedance from the public. The president can only block armed forces from installing apps on their owned devices.
- realusername 6y ago
  > First, only Apple devices have the issue of limited store access, which is a tangential antitrust problem unto itself. Android is also problematic on that aspect, even Epic Games gave up on distributing Fortnite outside the Play Store. If the most well known game in the world can't make it outside the Play Store, who could?
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    The Epic Games store and Fortnite is precisely the counterexample to anyone saying there's a single store on Android devices. Whatever sweetheart deal Epic worked out with Google in the end doesn't discredit that they successfully sold hundreds of thousands of copies outside of the the Google Play store. This argument also intentionally ignores the existence of the Amazon app store on Android.
    - realusername 6y ago
      > Whatever sweetheart deal Epic worked out with Google in the end doesn't discredit that they successfully sold hundreds of thousands of copies outside of the the Google Play store. They specifically state that they failed due to the constraints and had to back to the store. > This argument also intentionally ignores the existence of the Amazon app store on Android. Yeah sure, there's a few other minor stores but they are nowhere near the size of the Play Store. Additionally we could compare to other markets, if you compare the number of companies which can host your website and the number of companies which can host your app, the numbers are going from hundreds of thousands to less than 10 for apps even by counting almost irrelevant stores.

Natsu 6y ago

What happens when that applies to ISPs determining what goes over their wires? We have a privately owned public square at this point. Further entrenching that power seems unwise.

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
You're moving the goalposts.
- Natsu 6y ago
  From what to what? Both are private ownership of public spaces.
BrianOnHN 6y ago
Make the internet a public utility. It's been discussed here before. Maybe search "municipal broadband"
threeseed 6y ago
So in your hypothetical world there is some conspiracy between the thousands of ISPs which will work together to decide what content peoples see. Even though consumers will simply move to another ISP just like they are free to move to another website.
- Natsu 6y ago
  Thousands? There are only a handful of ISPs at the top and, oh yeah, the last time they made a plan to collude, it birthed Net Neutrality. So I'm not sure what part of it happening before makes it seem unlikely to happen again.
three_seagrass 6y ago
Common carrier laws prevent that. The same reason FedEx can't open your box and halt your shipment of UPS swag. And no, Facebook is a website and app(s), not a common carrier.

shripadk 6y ago

> There's a big difference between a private company determining what is hosted on their servers vs. the U.S. government forcing a private company to censor speech. So are media networks like CNN, MSNBC, Fox etc. They are private too. But they are still regulated. They can't post whatever they want and are held liable for any news that they present to their audience. Social media companies aren't regulated in the same way. They have more powers than the Government because they can literally censor anyone's speech they want. They can ban anyone they want. If they are left-leaning they can ban right-leaning content. If they are right-leaning they can ban left-leaning content. They are also not regulated like media networks because they are given immunity from liability through Section 230. They can never be held liable for what is posted on their platform. It is like having the cake and eating it too. Heck, they can even censor the US President's tweets and videos. This makes them extremely powerful. It is surprising to me that US citizens are perfectly fine with this setup.

freeone3000 6y ago
I'm sorry, you're wrong. They are not regulated. The standard for a traditional news agent is they cannot publish known lies about a living person, because that exposes them to civil liability. A news program can choose to say whatever they think about anybody - the President, any candidate, whatever, and as long as nobody can prove that they knew it was a lie, they're fine. There's no obligation to show the President's content there either. They can choose not to show right-leaning or left-leaning content. They also have the same protections on the comments section. Any reliability or nonpartisanship in US news media comes solely from a cultural sense of ethics, not any legal framework.
- shripadk 6y ago
  > They are not regulated They are. It is called "The Communications Act of 1934" in the United States. They are completely regulated by the FCC in US. They are regulated differently in different countries. In US, as an example, they have rules on political advertising. They have "equal time" rules where every political candidate "must" be given equal time and opportunity to air their viewpoints. No such regulations exist for social media companies. They can be held liable for fake news or slander. Social media platforms cannot. Only the content posted in the editorial is considered personal opinion and not the position of the News Organization. That is the only page/section in the newspaper/news that does not expose the News Organization to liability/slander. That is why you have a separate "Editorial Section" in a newspaper where the editor can give his/her opinions without exposing the newspaper to liability. But of late, the news agencies have started using other pages for giving their opinions too (from harmless clickbait to downright slander) which is again a very risky choice to make. This exposes them to liability/slander. This is why regulation is so important. To ensure what is legally allowed and not allowed. News agencies are bound by such regulations. Social media organizations are not. If news agencies publishes a hit piece on me that is obviously false, I can sue the news organization for slander. The news organization cannot claim that it believed the news reporter/agent who passed on wrong information about me and get away with it. The ultimate publisher is the news agency. Period. That is why the organization can be sued. But if a user posts a hit piece on me in a social media platform I cannot sue the platform for allowing the user to post slanderous material. Because the platform shields itself from liability by taking advantage of the provisions of Section 230. This is because it calls itself a "platform" and not a "publisher". This is fine by me as long as it remains a platform. But once it starts censoring opinions (like Twitter/Facebook deleting Trump's tweet) then it no longer is a platform. It is now behaving as a publisher. Then why should it be protected by Section 230? > because that exposes them to civil liability Exactly. They are regulated. Even if a news agent publishes a fake story, the organization is responsible for it. They cannot carry it forward without verification because if they do, they end up becoming liable. Not the news agent. That is the whole point. The recent case that comes to mind is when Nick Sandmann was falsely accused of being racist against a Native American by all left-leaning media organizations (CNN, Washington Post etc). When the fact were completely different (if you watch the video in its entirety). He sued these media organizations and won. They had to settle the 250 million $ lawsuit. Can he sue Facebook/Twitter which carried this story more than any of the media organizations did? Nope. That is the reason why I say that social media organizations enjoys powers that neither the US Government nor the Media enjoys. > There's no obligation to show the President's content there either. They can choose not to show right-leaning or left-leaning content Yes that is right. But when they do show the President, then they have to let him have his say. They cannot either censor him or change what he meant. If they do that then they open themselves up to defamation/liability depending on what they actually did. Social media companies do not have any such issues as they are unregulated. You can read more about Media Regulation in the United States here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/americangovernment/chapter/regulating-the-media/ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/americangovernment/chapter...

ergocoder 6y ago

By your logic In a hypothetical world, Facebook could decide that masks wouldn't work. And there's nothing we can do about it except screaming at facebook? That doesn't sound good.