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It's Twitter's own servers and they can choose who can use them or not. Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses.

by memer 6y ago

stale2002 6y ago
> Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses. Sure it matters. It matters because a bunch of people want businesses to allow all legal speech on their platform. And this group of people is growing in support, and they might eventually get enough support to force these business to do so, using legislative changes such as required these major companies to follow common carrier laws.
- splistud 6y ago
  It also matters in the sense that one can't avoid certain regulation by claiming to be a public forum rather than a publisher while not being a public forum at all
markus_zhang 6y ago
I'd argue once X amount of users use your service you are sort of public service company already. You can't use "oh we are a business so we can do anything we want" to defend yourself about that.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  It's a little more subtle than that - more strength of network effects than mere number of users - but pretty much.
baggy_trough 6y ago
Yes they can, but they shouldn't.
john_moscow 6y ago
>It's Twitter's own servers That are offered to the customers below cost of running them in order to stifle competition, which is only possible as long as the government antitrust body is looking the other way.
- eganist 6y ago
  > That are offered to the customers below cost of running them in order to stifle competition, which is only possible as long as the government antitrust body is looking the other way. Twitter as best as we can tell is not offering services below cost to customers. The free users are not the customers. The paying users purchasing ads are using the services to derive value from the population of free users on the platform. If you want to reform this, target how companies convince people to give up their data in exchange for functionality rather than for money.
madeofpalk 6y ago
I don't think many are saying Twitter's decision was illegal. They're just saying they don't think they should have made it.
insickness 6y ago
> "Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it." This from Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama
- tptacek 6y ago
  Everything the court has done since Marsh v Alabama has walked that decision back, and I think you'll have a hard time finding legal experts to back the interpretation that Twitter owns the obligations of a public square. We've had threads about it on HN, but it's also (for obvious reasons) come up recently, and here's Ken White citing a recent SCOTUS decision knocking this idea down: https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1141766582382678016 https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1141766582382678016 (The whole thread is good).
  - sthnblllII 6y ago
    Laws can, do and need to change as technology changes the political reality. No one elected twitter. Building a pretty website should not give a private entity the power to control political speech.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      I was going to rebut this, but thought better of it. My point is just, there's not much you can do with the jurisprudence as it exists, despite what you might think Marsh means.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    There's another thing that I think is often glossed over in discussions of Marsh v. Alabama (I'm not a lawyer though, and Ken is probably smarter than me anyhow). But that is that Marsh v. Alabama had the company wanting to use a state law to kick people out (and this was repeated with the California case Pruneyard). "The state doesn't need to actively help you kick people exercising their 1A rights in a place you don't want them to" is very, very different from "The state can prevent you from exercising your own autonomy to prevent someone from re-accessing your property". If the company town put up a fence and a gate, they wouldn't be forced to let anyone in.
devmunchies 6y ago
Twitter's freedom to boot anyone off their platform doesn't mean they are free from consequences. Same argument used towards hate speech but this is more serious IMO because big tech is the new Standard Oil or Big Tobacco.

It's Twitter's own servers and they can choose who can use them or not. Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses.

by memer 6y ago

It's Twitter's own servers and they can choose who can use them or not. Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses.

stale2002 6y ago

> Permitted speech on the legal scope does not matter when talking about businesses. Sure it matters. It matters because a bunch of people want businesses to allow all legal speech on their platform. And this group of people is growing in support, and they might eventually get enough support to force these business to do so, using legislative changes such as required these major companies to follow common carrier laws.

splistud 6y ago
It also matters in the sense that one can't avoid certain regulation by claiming to be a public forum rather than a publisher while not being a public forum at all

markus_zhang 6y ago

I'd argue once X amount of users use your service you are sort of public service company already. You can't use "oh we are a business so we can do anything we want" to defend yourself about that.

a1369209993 6y ago
It's a little more subtle than that - more strength of network effects than mere number of users - but pretty much.

baggy_trough 6y ago

Yes they can, but they shouldn't.

john_moscow 6y ago

>It's Twitter's own servers That are offered to the customers below cost of running them in order to stifle competition, which is only possible as long as the government antitrust body is looking the other way.

eganist 6y ago
> That are offered to the customers below cost of running them in order to stifle competition, which is only possible as long as the government antitrust body is looking the other way. Twitter as best as we can tell is not offering services below cost to customers. The free users are not the customers. The paying users purchasing ads are using the services to derive value from the population of free users on the platform. If you want to reform this, target how companies convince people to give up their data in exchange for functionality rather than for money.

madeofpalk 6y ago

I don't think many are saying Twitter's decision was illegal. They're just saying they don't think they should have made it.

insickness 6y ago

> "Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it." This from Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

tptacek 6y ago
Everything the court has done since Marsh v Alabama has walked that decision back, and I think you'll have a hard time finding legal experts to back the interpretation that Twitter owns the obligations of a public square. We've had threads about it on HN, but it's also (for obvious reasons) come up recently, and here's Ken White citing a recent SCOTUS decision knocking this idea down: https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1141766582382678016 https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1141766582382678016 (The whole thread is good).
- sthnblllII 6y ago
  Laws can, do and need to change as technology changes the political reality. No one elected twitter. Building a pretty website should not give a private entity the power to control political speech.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    I was going to rebut this, but thought better of it. My point is just, there's not much you can do with the jurisprudence as it exists, despite what you might think Marsh means.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  There's another thing that I think is often glossed over in discussions of Marsh v. Alabama (I'm not a lawyer though, and Ken is probably smarter than me anyhow). But that is that Marsh v. Alabama had the company wanting to use a state law to kick people out (and this was repeated with the California case Pruneyard). "The state doesn't need to actively help you kick people exercising their 1A rights in a place you don't want them to" is very, very different from "The state can prevent you from exercising your own autonomy to prevent someone from re-accessing your property". If the company town put up a fence and a gate, they wouldn't be forced to let anyone in.

devmunchies 6y ago

Twitter's freedom to boot anyone off their platform doesn't mean they are free from consequences. Same argument used towards hate speech but this is more serious IMO because big tech is the new Standard Oil or Big Tobacco.