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Florida will fine social media companies that bar candidates
- N1H1L 5y agoIf a politician's hobby is shouting fire in crowded, dark theaters and a theater chain bans the said politician from their property - whose fault is it?
- saurik 5y agoI am not saying this is the answer, but I want to throw out an option that I am not sure is being considered: "the people who voted for them"?
- jwhitlark 5y agoWinning a vote does not exempt one from other responsibilities, such as obeying the law. There are places that do that, but it just means you're electing a king. Our system was/is explicitly designed to prevent this occurrence.
- JI00912 5y agoGood! The west doesn't need to get any closer to being a corporatocracy.
- ashtonkem 5y agoSo you’re going to hand that power over to politicians instead? What a fantastic way to make everything worse.
- quotemstr 5y agoPoliticians are bound by literal centuries of free speech tradition and precedent. I trust them much more than I trust activists in Bay Area meeting rooms who believe that a company's mission should be promoting a worldview they got from Tumblr and Twitter.
- ashtonkem 5y agoYou don’t get to point to centuries of free speech tradition as a justification while you advocate directly for undoing some of that tradition. That’s not a credible argument.
- quotemstr 5y agoCorporations have never had the same rights as natural persons, sorry.
- ashtonkem 5y agoThat’s completely unrelated to my point. You’re appealing to centuries of free speech jurisprudence that constrains the actions of politicians. But the precise nature of that jurisprudence is to keep politicians as far away from the business of regulating speech as is possible. Your proposal would purposefully involve politicians in the regulation of speech, contrary to that jurisprudence you point to. It is therefore not an internally consistent argument to point at the traditions you’re actively undermining as a reason why your actions will not have unintended consequences.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Politicians are bound by literal centuries of free speech tradition and precedent. I trust them much more than I trust activists in Bay Area meeting rooms who believe that a company's mission should be promoting a worldview they got from Tumblr and Twitter. But...that centuries of tradition means that companies, whether as a result of activists in meeting rooms or otherwise, get to make those decisions, and politicians don’t. By transferring that power from private actors deciding what ideas to use their own resources to transmit and promote to politicians, you would terminate that free speech tradition.
- alexfromapex 5y agoWould love to amend the constitution to not allow censorship of speech by private companies. If it's hate speech, etc. then obviously yes but otherwise censorship is toxic. No private companies should be deciding the public discourse and unfortunately the most common forms of communication in today's age are all routed through private entities.
- ashtonkem 5y agoThis is not possible without a constitutional amendment. Also, the idea of giving politicians control over what speech must be carried on social media strikes me as stark raving mad. There is no chance that won’t be abused.
- alexfromapex 5y agoYeah I think we're on the same page, no one should be able to censor speech that isn't hate speech is really the main point. And definitely no jurisdiction should be given to politicians.
- ashtonkem 5y agoYou’re proposing giving jurisdiction to politicians, you just don’t seem to be aware of it. Someone, somewhere will need to decide what speech is and is not “censorable” (a gross abuse of that word) above and beyond the regular standard of “protected speech”. Basically nobody wants to live on an internet where Twitter cannot moderate some protected speech , as that’s how you end up with 4chan. Hate speech is protected speech, pornography is protected speech, as is all kinds of harassment and bullying. Someone will need to draw the line for what can and cannot be moderated on all platforms, and that is a huge amount of power to hand out. It’s also fundamentally unconstitutional. You cannot do this via legislation alone. The courts have long held that forcing someone to speak is as bad as punishing someone for speaking, and there is no constitutional framework for anything other than protected and unprotected speech. The courts will strike this bill down, it’s pure political theater for the base.
- luke2m 5y agoThat’s like saying you will be fined if you don’t allow politicians into your house.
- suifbwish 5y agoWhile that would probably suck, the troll in me would find this hilarious.
- charwalker 5y agoFreedom of association is an expensive thing to get sued over. Hopefully the state is ready to blow taxpayer dollars on the inevitable loss trying to defend this.
- tolbish 5y ago> A late amendment to the bill exempts companies from the law if they own a theme park or an entertainment venue larger than 25 acres. Opening soon: Zuckerland. Jokes aside, this seems profoundly corrupt.
- zibzab 5y agoOh, my naive friend! Of course that have already thought about that. Note that the theme park must have a certain revenue to qualify.
- fortran77 5y agoHaving done a fair amount of business/commercial real-estate in Florida, I can tell you first-hand that Florida is probably the most fraud-friendly state in the Nation.
- gaspard234 5y agoFlorida senator Rick Scott was one of the largest fraudsters in the state.
- Tehchops 5y agoAlways love seeing the party of "small government" push legislation like this. Of course, everyone knows "Small Government" has a trailing caveat of "...for me, but not for thee"
- loveistheanswer 5y agoBoth parties have ironically forsaken their core values on this issue of censorship. It used to be the religious conservatives pushing for censorship of offensive speech and liberals fighting back against that. Freedom of expression is a fundamental liberal value, but it has become politically practical for many liberals/democrats at this time to forget about that.
- Tehchops 5y agoIf we're talking irony, it's that the only free speech in danger here(corporations are people per Citizen's United) is that of the social platforms. Private entities have no legal obligation(thin "town hall" argument or not) to respect free speech, and are absolutely empowered to police content as they see fit. The ever relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ For an elected legislative body to come in and say it's "illegal" to post content(and they are by making the inverse equally illegal), they are explicitly treading on the free speech rights and Section 230 legal protections of companies like Facebook and Twitter.
- loveistheanswer 5y ago>Private entities have no legal obligation(thin "town hall" argument or not) to respect free speech, and are absolutely empowered to police content as they see fit. Indeed, thats what this whole discussion is about: creating laws to protect individuals speech from corporations. Laws are not static. Private entities also had no legal obligation to serve black people or gay people not long ago, but we changed that too. As your XKCD comic is merely arguing from a position of conservative legal authority, it could have applied just as well to blocking black and gay people when that was not protected by law.
- SigmundA 5y agoGotta love the Disney carve out in the bill, ok for them to do it.
- kelnos 5y agoIs this even enforceable? Do Facebook, Twitter, etc. have any legal entities in Florida? If they do, would it be a big deal to dissolve them? Can a state still fine a company that has no legal presence in their state and force the company to pay? Could this even escalate to FB/Twitter banning all users from Florida? That would be a delightful twist. (Ok, sure, I know, it wouldn't go that far.)
- DeonPenny 5y agoThat would just entice other states especially states who side is being banned to enforce it too. I couldn't imagine this going over well.
- colechristensen 5y agoAny chance of this sticking? If another state had a law requiring companies to block users for certain behavior there would obviously be a conflict. Seems like this would be knocked down with the commerce clause, a state not being allowed to regulate interstate commerce in this way.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ashtonkem 5y agoAlso, it’s a serious violation of the right of both free association and free speech.
- loveistheanswer 5y agoThat was the excuse private business owners used to refuse service to people based on their race or sexual orientation
- ashtonkem 5y agoAh, this argument. Generally speaking, we’ve held as a society that the rights of free association are very strong, but not absolute. We only allow the government to abridge these rights when the state has a compelling interest in doing so. Obviously you’re aware that we have decided as a society that there are certain “protected characteristics” that cannot be the deciding factor for free association, including race, religion, sex, among other things. These are selected due to their immutable nature (religion is a special case I’m not going to explain here), and we’ve decided that it’s worse for society that people be excluded from economic or social participation based on who they are than it is for the government to override the free association rights of those who wish to discriminate. Political affiliation and speech is not a protected characteristic, because it is a choice. You can choose to not only change parties, but also change how you communicate such things. In fact, many institutions fundamentally demand the ability to exclude people based on their political affiliation, including primaries and political groups. We literally could not run a primary, caucus, or PAC without the ability to discriminate based on political affiliation. To continue the metaphor, this is less like someone getting kicked out of a shop because of their race or gender, and more like getting kicked out for refusing to wear pants.
- mvzvm 5y agoIt's nice to see when a government has its priorities straight. . . . /s
- mardifoufs 5y agoA government can do multiple things at once.
- redis_mlc 5y agoAllowing elected representatives to talk to their constituents makes sense to me. Are you against freedom of speech? Why exactly? Would you feel the same if Democrats/Marxists were deplatformed after the next election?
- dang 5y agoRecent and related: The Florida Deplatforming Law Is Unconstitutional - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27064221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27064221 - May 2021 (37 comments) Florida bill will fine social media sites for banning politicians- except Disney - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27010054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27010054 - May 2021 (5 comments) Florida plans to fine social media for banning politicians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27006912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27006912 - May 2021 (11 comments) Disney gets special “theme park” exception to Florida’s anti-tech bill - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27002543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27002543 - May 2021 (23 comments) Florida bill to fine social media for banning politicians - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001610 - May 2021 (51 comments)
- charlesdaniels 5y agoDiscussion thread for the NY Times article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27268418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27268418
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hpoe 5y agoWhat defines what is a "politician". Seems like it would be easy to abuse.
- heyitsguay 5y agoRight? If someone runs for some local position with no requirements to get on the ballot, can they start posting incitements to violence against DeSantis or whoever? Writing "go shoot this guy" might run afoul of other laws, but if you just post about how a lot of people are saying so-and-so has a child sex dungeon and somebody ought to do something about it, that's still free speech right? Or can you still get kicked off for, say, posting objectively false information or roundabout encouragements of violence? That was basically where the "deplatforming" controversy started in the first place.
- g00gler 5y ago> but if you just post about how a lot of people are saying so-and-so has a child sex dungeon and somebody ought to do something about it, that's still free speech right? That’d be libel / defamation.
- shkkmo 5y agoThat depends on a number of things. Is the subect a Public figure or not? Do you know that claim you are repeating is false? Do you have a reasonable belief that the rumor ia true? How many people are you talking to? Are you repeating the claim out of malice?
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoIt's virtually impossible for a politician to win a defamation suit in the US. The bar is incredibly high.
- shkkmo 5y agoA politician is defined (for these purposes) as anyone who has officially registered their candidancy for an election that has not happened yet. It is also worth pointing out that unser this law you still must inform your social networks of your candidacy so they know they can't deplaform you.
- mfkp 5y ago“Social media platforms have morphed into the town square” - sounds like they want government-run social media instead of privately-operated social media. Maybe Ron DeSantis should start his own social media platform instead of attempting to force private businesses to give up their freedoms. Edit: this comment was originally posted in comments for this link: https://www.flgov.com/2021/05/24/governor-ron-desantis-signs-bill-to-stop-the-censorship-of-floridians-by-big-tech/ https://www.flgov.com/2021/05/24/governor-ron-desantis-signs... (got merged into the NYT article) Edit 2: I guess this is HN's way of censoring political content. Mark hot/upcoming article as "dupe" of old article that has way less traction and does not even show up on the front page (or on any following pages as well).
- madengr 5y agoThe private business are using public right-of-ways and spectrum to carry their data, so they ought to be held to the same standard that makes cable television provide public access channels. If Google censors me, maybe I’ll dig up their cable that runs through the right-of-way on my private property.
- ABeeSea 5y agoCable television does not have to provide public access channels. Broadcast providers do since they have formal leases with the FCC for spectrum which is a finite public good. It isn’t formal regulations; it’s basically terms in the lease agreement. The internet is a not scarce like TV spectrum was.
- Taniwha 5y agobut cable TV's cables do use public streets and right of ways, negotiation of those franchise often include lease agreement terms that require the cable company to carry a city's public access channels .....
- lupire 5y agoGoogle (not counting Fiber, which is separate) doesn't have a cable on your property.
- smitty1110 5y agoDisclaimer Edit: I’m not a lawyer, Supreme Court predictions and cases are just a hobby of mine. Well, there’s a lot of interesting things to unpack here. First amendment questions, the Commerce Clause, and the 10th amendment all come to mind. Sec. 230 is being directly challenged, but I don’t think this was the way to do it. This will probably fail in circuit court, be denied an appeal, and fail to be granted certiorari. I can see Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh voting to hear it, but nobody else. But ultimately this is going to waste a lot of the Florida AG’s time on a very lengthy legal procedure.
- basementcat 5y agoFacebook's Menlo Park campus is arguably a sort of theme park.
- w0de0 5y agoIf they built a roller coaster would it serve as a big enough loop(hole)?
- ronsor 5y agoThey'd have to sell tickets too
- basementcat 5y agoJust buy one share of stock on Robinhood and attend a shareholder meeting on the roof of one of the Frank Gehry designed buildings.
- basementcat 5y agoThe Infinite Loop would be a perfect name for Apple's roller coaster.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoIt didn't actually sound so bad until this part: > Big Tech is prohibited from de-platforming Floridian political candidates. > Any Floridian can block any candidate they don’t want to hear from, and that is a right that belongs to each citizen — it’s not for Big Tech companies to decide. What nonsense. Why are politicians some special class of people?
- gsich 5y agoMaybe it's not the person per se, more like the position/institution.
- giantg2 5y agoI thing the question is whether they deserve this extra protection. Why not other high profile people? Why not ordinary people?
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYeah. If they're going down this route, why not forbid blocking anyone at all unless a court mandates it?
- wmil 5y agoPoliticians already have special rights and restrictions. Here's the argument. Democracy requires that politicians have the ability to contact potential voters. There are contribution limits as well as spending limits. In politics most of the money is spent trying to contact voters. So tech companies banning some politicians but not others is a contribution in kind to a campaign. The value of a verified Twitter account is far more than the direct contribution limit. Therefore either all politicians should be allowed, or all must be banned from Twitter. The FEC is unable to do its job because the Senate hasn't been confirming appointments. So now states are trying to pass laws to fill the gap.
- giantg2 5y agoTelevision and radio have the right to decline political ads from non candidates and if they think the content is inappropriate or violates the legal rights of another. Are there protections like that in this bill? Are there protections for other protected groups? It seems like it's just piecemealing special privileges rather than creating a good framework.
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- content_sesh 5y agoToday I'm proud to announce my candidacy for Dog Catcher of Sarasota, FL, and that I am suing this website for its communist deplatforming of my many troll accounts.
- basementcat 5y agoYou should run as a Muslim communist LGBTQ dog catcher in FL and sue Parler and Gab for deplatforming you.
- stakkur 5y agoNo analysis needed: it's symbolic. It won't do anything at all--except, of course, make many lawyers richer. DeSantis is doing this as a favor to certain folks.
- jghefner 5y agoI'm sure it won't happen but I really want to see twitter refuse to operate in Florida, effectively blocking the entire state due to this law.
- tidydata 5y agoIs there any meaningful change to curtail the amount of power these companies have? Legislation like this seems like show and does nothing to control the fact that a handful of social media companies can make enormous editorial decisions not just on political candidacy... but basically everything else. Seems like another one of those stories that will likely go nowhere and turned into a partisan divide, but maybe I’m just bitter.
- hooande 5y agoMy favorite part of this bill is that it specifically excludes companies that operate amusement parks: "Interestingly, two companies that will not be affected by the law are two of the biggest, most uncompromising corporations in the world: Disney and Comcast. Why, you ask? Because the law has a special exemption for any company "that owns and operates a theme park or entertainment complex" of a certain size." the definition of "theme park" is specified in another law. In theory, all the major social media companies could buy a stake in a park that meets the criteria, or start their own. but this law is so flimsy that it will probably be struck down pretty quickly.
- userbinator 5y agoDisney is well-known for its theme parks, but I wasn't aware that Comcast has any?
- mhuffman 5y agoUniversal
- slater 5y ago"Universal Parks & Resorts, also known as Universal Studios Theme Parks or solely Universal Theme Parks, is the theme park unit of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast"
- userbinator 5y agoLooks like that happened relatively recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBCUniversal#Comcast_era_(2011-present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBCUniversal#Comcast_era_(2011...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- shkkmo 5y agoSo the real goal of this law is to spur theme park investments?
- tibbydudeza 5y agoJust build a themepark :).
- adammunich 5y agoThis seems unenforceable. What are they going to do, build a Great Firewall of Florida?
- mfkp 5y agoThe Florida Election Commission will impose fines of $250,000 per day on any social media company that de-platforms any candidate for statewide office, and $25,000 per day for de-platforming candidates for non-statewide offices.
- adammunich 5y agoAnd what if they don’t pay?
- mfkp 5y agoEdit: I guess it would be a battle of Corporate Lawyers vs. State Lawyers. Everyone ends up wasting money all around.
- stale2002 5y agoWell, then you arrest people, or seize their assets. I am sure that some bank, that has any presence in Florida, will go along with it. What, are you going to convince the banks to pull out from Florida as well? Sounds unlikely to me. The banks will just follow the government order.
- imglorp 5y agoCan we have a law that forces congresses to making only constitutional laws? This trash costs a bunch of time and money.
- subculture 5y agoCould Twitter change its ToS to say something like "If you're a politician from FL you can't use Twitter" and see who blinks?
- belatw 5y agoMy assumption is Theme parks are exempt because it is perfectly valid for Disneyland to prevent pedophile politicians from being too close to that many children?
- heavyset_go 5y agoHere's the bill's text[1]. If a business has a company blog and a local BOE member decides to post spam in their blog's comment section, then there's nothing they can do about it if they have $100 million in revenue or 100 million users. Unless, of course, they're an amusement park or entertainment complex. Then they can block whoever they want. > (g) “Social media platform” means any information service, system, Internet search engine, or access software provider that: > 1. Provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including an Internet platform or a social media site; > 2. Operates as a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company, corporation, association, or other legal entity; > 3. Does business in the state; and > 4. Satisfies at least one of the following thresholds: > a. Has annual gross revenues in excess of $100 million, as adjusted in January of each odd-numbered year to reflect any increase in the Consumer Price Index. > b. Has at least 100 million monthly individual platform participants globally. > The term does not include any information service, system, Internet search engine, or access software provider operated by a company that owns and operates a theme park or entertainment complex as defined in s. 509.013. [1] https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/7072/BillText/er/HTML https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/7072/BillText/er/...
- shkkmo 5y agoYou appear to have it backwards. As long as your blog has less than 100 mil in revenue and less that 100 million monthly participants, you aren't a social network and can deplaform at will. It is only once you cross one of those thresholds that you qualify as a social network for the purposes of this law (at least until you open a small themepark.)
- Whatarethese 5y agoSmall government I guess. Idiots.
- busymom0 5y agoConsidering just last year "Trump cannot block his critics on Twitter, federal appeals court rules", the same thing should be reciprocal - social media companies should not be allowed to block/throttle politicians: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/supreme-court-vacates-ruling-barring-trump-from-blocking-twitter-critics-saying-case-is-moot/ar-BB1fjIj2 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/supreme-court-vacate...
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/Y3VAR https://archive.is/Y3VAR
- tzs 5y agoAt one point, it also prohibited social media companies from adding fact checking to posts of candidates. Did that make it into the final version?