4 ms·

You aren't getting it. Free speech and subsequent limitations of such free speech must and must be decided by elected representatives. Not by private companies.

You aren't getting it. Free speech and subsequent limitations of such free speech must and must be decided by elected representatives. Not by private companies. In this case Germany has every damn right to frame such laws. They are a Sovereign Nation. The people of Germany have empowered their Government through their constitution. Twitter/Facebook/Google et all are not Sovereign States. They haven't been elected by anyone. Their rules cannot override the laws of the State. They cannot frame rules that go against the laws of the State. They have to work within the ambit of the laws defined by the State. The power to frame such laws is in the hands of the legislature given by the people of the State. I never gave any powers to Facebook/Twitter/Google et all to regulate my speech as guaranteed by my Constitution (which is the Constitution of India). They cannot bring in First Amendment arguments of the United States to counter the Free Speech as defined in the Indian Constitution. It simply does not work that way. ---- Rate limited so replying to qwytw as s/he raises a very important point: > I don't see how this would be fundamentally different from, for example, requiring newspapers to publish every letter their receive irregardless of their editorial stance. You are talking about curation not about banning/removal. Billions of tweets are sent to Twitter every day. But only few make it to the top of the trends. No one has a problem with curation. We have a problem with banning of our content just because Twitter feels it is problematic. Not because it is explicitly defined in the Constitution as being problematic. Let us assume that you send a letter to a Newspaper to publish in editorial and you include swear words in it (Let us assume "orange haired buffoon" is a swear word. Because you are upset with Trump you call him an "orange haired buffoon" in your letter). The Newspaper won't publish it. That is perfectly fine. They won't punish you for it. Probably will make a paper rocket out of your letter and throw it around in the office. But if you send a violent threat in the letter (calling for assassination of Trump), they'll contact Police/FBI/CIA and hand them over your letter. Easy to grok? Now let us compare that to Twitter. Twitter will read your tweet with swear words in it (Trump is a orange haired buffoon). It will immediately remove it and warn you of consequences of tweeting something like that again else face a 7 day suspension (with a subsequent warning of 30 day, 1 year and permanent suspension if you repeat it again and again). Already there is a big difference between how the Newspaper company handled your letter vs how Twitter handled your tweet. Twitter is regulating speech here. It has decided that "orange haired buffoon" constitutes a violation of someone else's rights. You might have said "orange haired buffoon" in jest. The person receiving your tweet might also have gotten a good chuckle out of it. But Twitter decides nope. You do not have the right to use "orange haired buffoon" on our platform else you'll be kicked out. Even if you and your friend whom you are tweeting at swear at each other in real life, you can't do that on Twitter. Do you see how quickly this degenerates to suspending/banning for ridiculous things? Which is why content removal/moderation must be only for those things that are clearly defined as illegal by the State. For everything else, the platform already has Section 230. They can enjoy not being liable for anything that is posted on their platforms. If I am a social media platform, why would I go out of my way to provide an imperfect implementation of speech regulation and waste my time on that aspect when I already have safeguards of Section 230? Wouldn't it be better if this is legally defined in the Constitution of the country where the user is from? That way there is consistency between platforms. If I go to Parler, Facebook, Twitter, Google or any other platform I will be following the same rules (as defined by law) instead of reading the fine print of every service to see if I am in violation of any of their ridiculous rules/regulations.

sampo 6y ago
> Twitter/Facebook/Google et all are not Sovereign States. In the cyberpunk future, megacorps are sovereign. If the next wave of demonstrations was aimed at the HQs of these corporations instead of US govt buildings, the corporations might feel a need to start building their own security forces, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacorporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacorporation "Megacorps are so powerful that they can ignore the law, possess their own heavily armed (often military-sized) private armies, be the operator of a privatized police force, hold "sovereign" territory, and even act as outright governments."
qwytw 6y ago
So you're basically implying that private companies shouldn't have a right to moderate content or ban users on their websites without a court order? I don't see how this would be fundamentally different from, for example, requiring newspapers to publish every letter their receive irregardless of their editorial stance. The real problem is that the market is dominated by a couple of huge companies that have disproportionate power and can pretty much do whatever they want without the risk of losing significant numbers of users. I don't see how legally requiring them to be content neutral can fix that, even if Twitter can't just remove your posts or ban you I'm sure they'll manage to find legal ways to make your content virtually invisible if they want to without directly removing it.
qwytw 6y ago
Replying to the edit: "Which is why content removal/moderation must be only for those things that are clearly defined as illegal by the State" Twitter can't decide what is illegal only a court can do that. Irregardless of how clear the law is, there will have to be an appeal process and anyone unhappy with Twitter's moderation decisions will be be able to sue them. So in practice content moderation will have to be handled by a government agency. IMHO that would be much worse than the current situation because (besides being huge waste of resources) now when you're unhappy with what Twitter is doing you can still (at least theoretically) move to a different platform. "Wouldn't it be better if this is legally defined in the Constitution of the country where the user is from" So if someone in (for example) Thailand posts something negative about Thailand's king Twitter would be required to remove that post, while if someone in the US does that they would take no action. Do you really think this is a good idea?

sampo 6y ago

> Twitter/Facebook/Google et all are not Sovereign States. In the cyberpunk future, megacorps are sovereign. If the next wave of demonstrations was aimed at the HQs of these corporations instead of US govt buildings, the corporations might feel a need to start building their own security forces, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacorporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacorporation "Megacorps are so powerful that they can ignore the law, possess their own heavily armed (often military-sized) private armies, be the operator of a privatized police force, hold "sovereign" territory, and even act as outright governments."

qwytw 6y ago

So you're basically implying that private companies shouldn't have a right to moderate content or ban users on their websites without a court order? I don't see how this would be fundamentally different from, for example, requiring newspapers to publish every letter their receive irregardless of their editorial stance. The real problem is that the market is dominated by a couple of huge companies that have disproportionate power and can pretty much do whatever they want without the risk of losing significant numbers of users. I don't see how legally requiring them to be content neutral can fix that, even if Twitter can't just remove your posts or ban you I'm sure they'll manage to find legal ways to make your content virtually invisible if they want to without directly removing it.

qwytw 6y ago

Replying to the edit: "Which is why content removal/moderation must be only for those things that are clearly defined as illegal by the State" Twitter can't decide what is illegal only a court can do that. Irregardless of how clear the law is, there will have to be an appeal process and anyone unhappy with Twitter's moderation decisions will be be able to sue them. So in practice content moderation will have to be handled by a government agency. IMHO that would be much worse than the current situation because (besides being huge waste of resources) now when you're unhappy with what Twitter is doing you can still (at least theoretically) move to a different platform. "Wouldn't it be better if this is legally defined in the Constitution of the country where the user is from" So if someone in (for example) Thailand posts something negative about Thailand's king Twitter would be required to remove that post, while if someone in the US does that they would take no action. Do you really think this is a good idea?