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Such a chaotic world cannot be subject to effective content guidelines such as the defunct fairness doctrine okay, I'll bite. What is the solution then? We got

by akudha 6y ago

Such a chaotic world cannot be subject to effective content guidelines such as the defunct fairness doctrine okay, I'll bite. What is the solution then? We got rid of Fairness Doctrine without putting any other check in place and Fox News successfully argued that no-one in their right mind should take Tucker Carlsen seriously, even though he has the biggest talk show on American TV today. I am guessing they are gonna argue the same in their voter machine cases too. There should be some way to regulate the news media, no?

SllX 6y ago
> There should be some way to regulate the news media, no? To what end? The Fairness Doctrine was little more than a method by which powerful people within the government could service their own vendettas against conservative radio hosts, executed through FCC licensure agreements. Everything is IP-networked now, and there's no FCC licensure for publishing on the internet so a bloody-minded focus on returning to the glory days of the Fairness Doctrine is really just fighting the last war. Oh and it's effectively government-compelled speech, AKA a blatant and egregious violation of the First Amendment without even the paper thin justification of public-owned airwaves.
- leereeves 6y ago
  It can certainly be compatible with the First Amendment; just make "fairness" a requirement for Section 230 immunity. Then no speech would be compelled, but if someone chooses to invoke their free speech right to control the message on a site they own, they would be held responsible for that message. And that's not about "fighting the last war"; it's about correcting for the network effects of the Internet that create natural monopolies with too much influence on public discussion.
  - SllX 6y ago
    Are you serious?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - leereeves 6y ago
      > Are you serious? Absolutely. I'm not saying that's the best possible solution, but it has the advantage of historical precedent for a similar problem: a few companies have too much influence on public discussion. And it addresses the flaw in Section 230: companies that act like publishers but claim the protections of platforms. So is that the best reply you can come up with, or do you have any other reasonable objections besides those I've already addressed?
      - SllX 6y ago
        Your proposal is for Congress to essentially blackmail server owners, note: not just corporations, but server owners with anything that can be called an “interactive computer service” such as a comments section, with an extant statutory liability shield, because the news media, note: not social media, not search engines, we were actually discussing the news media, are not viewpoint neutral. There is no such thing as viewpoint neutrality by the way so enjoy your selective enforcement. Your proposal as to how it could work amounts to while the First Amendment does say “Congress shall make no law etc.”, it doesn’t say anything at all about Congress not weasel around it, engage in political blackmail, and make bad law anyway”, just so you can get away with calling it “not technically compelled speech”. Your motivation appears to be to increase the number of forums in the broadest sense of the term in which people can talk freely as like if they were on government property instead of private property, at the expense of private property rights, that other thing that is integral to a free society and liberty. The mechanism by which you propose to do so would however provide a strong incentive for existing server owners to get out of the forum business thus actually reducing the total number of servers and services connected to the internet on which you can post. There isn’t anything I can say to your position that you haven’t said yourself if this is seriously your position. I mean it’s immoral, antithetical to both free speech as a cultural phenomenon as well as our laws, antithetical to private property rights, and probably also unconstitutional, and at the very least a massive abuse of legislative authority. I guess if you can convince Congress to pass your proposal, the New York Times and Fox News should also be quaking in their boots at the prospect of turning off their comments sections (do they even still have comments sections?). My recommendation instead is to make peace with the idea that there’s a website, podcast, subreddit, Facebook group, IRC, Slack and/or Discord channel for every opinion, every gradation of an opinion, and every type of audience. The web is a big place. Not quite as big as the Universe but from our puny positions with our lack of perspective it might as well be as big.
  - zerocrates 6y ago
    Tying 230 to "fairness" is a content-based restriction that itself probably violates the First Amendment.
    - leereeves 6y ago
      Merely being content-based doesn't imply unconstitutional. The CAN-SPAM Act, for example, is content based. This would be similar to that: allowing immunity for moderation of commercial speech, obscenity, etc while holding companies accountable for moderation of most speech. And that is protecting the free speech rights of users, in an age when the public space is controlled by private corporations, so there's a compelling government interest involved.
Natsu 6y ago
> Fox News successfully argued that no-one in their right mind should take Tucker Carlsen seriously This sounds like another repetition of the same bad legal take on the "rhetorical hyperbole" standard based, probably, on the McDougal case or one similar [1]. That argument is made with respect to particular statements, not that nobody would ever believe anything they say. But don't take my word for it, read how the court in that very case talks about the standard: "In particular, accusations of “extortion,” “blackmail,” and related crimes, such as the statements Mr. Carlson made here, are often construed as merely rhetorical hyperbole when they are not accompanied by additional specifics of the actions purportedly constituting the crime." You will note that it's limited to particular statements in a particular context, not everything the person ever said for any reason, nor to anything ever said on the show. This same standard was used in, e.g. the case vs. Larry Flynt[2]. The media loves to misrepresent this argument as applying very broadly to everything a person says whenever it comes up in contexts with a political opponent, but the claims made are far narrower and rely largely on people not bothering to read legal rulings or knowing what on earth "rhetorical hyperbole" is to begin with. If you take this as some defense of Tucker, it's not, the other side does exactly the same thing whenever rhetorical hyperbole comes up. So basically every time you see the meme "can you believe that X argued in court that nobody would ever believe them" you can be sure that you are seeing this tired misrepresentation of the rhetorical hyperbole standard. Which seems apropos in an article about the media losing trust, as I know from actually reading a lot of court rulings just how uniformly terrible legal reporting is to the point where I actively mistrust all headlines by all outlets and refuse to consider anything but actual court papers off of Pacer. Outlets love to put out headlines with unreasonable billion dollar defamation claims (even if actual awards are a tiny fraction thereof and they have no realistic hope of getting anything but a headline because their prayer for relief doesn't have a prayer), or to headline meaningless procedural motions as somehow dispositive (The Supreme Court denied a hail Mary petition for a writ of certiorari to decide whether suit could even be brought in the first place? Quelle surprise! The case must be almost over!), or to talk about "harsh questions" during oral arguments (the side that gets questioned more wins slightly more often, they may be trying to shore up the arguments for their ruling). There are far, far more tropes than this, but seriously, if you care at all about accuracy, take a course or two on legal procedure so that you understand the different courts and levels of appeal and actually read legal rulings. Granted, that takes at least some small amount of legal education, but honestly, the public has neglected legal literacy for far too long. [1] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2019cv11161/527808/39/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-yor... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt

by akudha 6y ago

SllX 6y ago

> There should be some way to regulate the news media, no? To what end? The Fairness Doctrine was little more than a method by which powerful people within the government could service their own vendettas against conservative radio hosts, executed through FCC licensure agreements. Everything is IP-networked now, and there's no FCC licensure for publishing on the internet so a bloody-minded focus on returning to the glory days of the Fairness Doctrine is really just fighting the last war. Oh and it's effectively government-compelled speech, AKA a blatant and egregious violation of the First Amendment without even the paper thin justification of public-owned airwaves.

leereeves 6y ago
It can certainly be compatible with the First Amendment; just make "fairness" a requirement for Section 230 immunity. Then no speech would be compelled, but if someone chooses to invoke their free speech right to control the message on a site they own, they would be held responsible for that message. And that's not about "fighting the last war"; it's about correcting for the network effects of the Internet that create natural monopolies with too much influence on public discussion.
- SllX 6y ago
  Are you serious?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - leereeves 6y ago
    > Are you serious? Absolutely. I'm not saying that's the best possible solution, but it has the advantage of historical precedent for a similar problem: a few companies have too much influence on public discussion. And it addresses the flaw in Section 230: companies that act like publishers but claim the protections of platforms. So is that the best reply you can come up with, or do you have any other reasonable objections besides those I've already addressed?
    - SllX 6y ago
      Your proposal is for Congress to essentially blackmail server owners, note: not just corporations, but server owners with anything that can be called an “interactive computer service” such as a comments section, with an extant statutory liability shield, because the news media, note: not social media, not search engines, we were actually discussing the news media, are not viewpoint neutral. There is no such thing as viewpoint neutrality by the way so enjoy your selective enforcement. Your proposal as to how it could work amounts to while the First Amendment does say “Congress shall make no law etc.”, it doesn’t say anything at all about Congress not weasel around it, engage in political blackmail, and make bad law anyway”, just so you can get away with calling it “not technically compelled speech”. Your motivation appears to be to increase the number of forums in the broadest sense of the term in which people can talk freely as like if they were on government property instead of private property, at the expense of private property rights, that other thing that is integral to a free society and liberty. The mechanism by which you propose to do so would however provide a strong incentive for existing server owners to get out of the forum business thus actually reducing the total number of servers and services connected to the internet on which you can post. There isn’t anything I can say to your position that you haven’t said yourself if this is seriously your position. I mean it’s immoral, antithetical to both free speech as a cultural phenomenon as well as our laws, antithetical to private property rights, and probably also unconstitutional, and at the very least a massive abuse of legislative authority. I guess if you can convince Congress to pass your proposal, the New York Times and Fox News should also be quaking in their boots at the prospect of turning off their comments sections (do they even still have comments sections?). My recommendation instead is to make peace with the idea that there’s a website, podcast, subreddit, Facebook group, IRC, Slack and/or Discord channel for every opinion, every gradation of an opinion, and every type of audience. The web is a big place. Not quite as big as the Universe but from our puny positions with our lack of perspective it might as well be as big.
- zerocrates 6y ago
  Tying 230 to "fairness" is a content-based restriction that itself probably violates the First Amendment.
  - leereeves 6y ago
    Merely being content-based doesn't imply unconstitutional. The CAN-SPAM Act, for example, is content based. This would be similar to that: allowing immunity for moderation of commercial speech, obscenity, etc while holding companies accountable for moderation of most speech. And that is protecting the free speech rights of users, in an age when the public space is controlled by private corporations, so there's a compelling government interest involved.

Natsu 6y ago

> Fox News successfully argued that no-one in their right mind should take Tucker Carlsen seriously This sounds like another repetition of the same bad legal take on the "rhetorical hyperbole" standard based, probably, on the McDougal case or one similar [1]. That argument is made with respect to particular statements, not that nobody would ever believe anything they say. But don't take my word for it, read how the court in that very case talks about the standard: "In particular, accusations of “extortion,” “blackmail,” and related crimes, such as the statements Mr. Carlson made here, are often construed as merely rhetorical hyperbole when they are not accompanied by additional specifics of the actions purportedly constituting the crime." You will note that it's limited to particular statements in a particular context, not everything the person ever said for any reason, nor to anything ever said on the show. This same standard was used in, e.g. the case vs. Larry Flynt[2]. The media loves to misrepresent this argument as applying very broadly to everything a person says whenever it comes up in contexts with a political opponent, but the claims made are far narrower and rely largely on people not bothering to read legal rulings or knowing what on earth "rhetorical hyperbole" is to begin with. If you take this as some defense of Tucker, it's not, the other side does exactly the same thing whenever rhetorical hyperbole comes up. So basically every time you see the meme "can you believe that X argued in court that nobody would ever believe them" you can be sure that you are seeing this tired misrepresentation of the rhetorical hyperbole standard. Which seems apropos in an article about the media losing trust, as I know from actually reading a lot of court rulings just how uniformly terrible legal reporting is to the point where I actively mistrust all headlines by all outlets and refuse to consider anything but actual court papers off of Pacer. Outlets love to put out headlines with unreasonable billion dollar defamation claims (even if actual awards are a tiny fraction thereof and they have no realistic hope of getting anything but a headline because their prayer for relief doesn't have a prayer), or to headline meaningless procedural motions as somehow dispositive (The Supreme Court denied a hail Mary petition for a writ of certiorari to decide whether suit could even be brought in the first place? Quelle surprise! The case must be almost over!), or to talk about "harsh questions" during oral arguments (the side that gets questioned more wins slightly more often, they may be trying to shore up the arguments for their ruling). There are far, far more tropes than this, but seriously, if you care at all about accuracy, take a course or two on legal procedure so that you understand the different courts and levels of appeal and actually read legal rulings. Granted, that takes at least some small amount of legal education, but honestly, the public has neglected legal literacy for far too long. [1] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2019cv11161/527808/39/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-yor... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt