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How are we violating the spirt of the law? Freedom of speech means freedom from government intervention. The founding fathers never said or intended that: new

by tw04 5y ago

How are we violating the spirt of the law? Freedom of speech means freedom from government intervention. The founding fathers never said or intended that: newspapers must publish anything a private citizen wants to put in the paper. You are saying the equivalent of: if this were 150 years ago, and your crazy uncle thought that the moon was made of cheese, the New York Times would legally be required to put that on the front page of the paper. That's insane.

jdavis703 5y ago
This is the problem with invoking “spirt of the law.” US lawyers can barely agree on what basic constitutional laws mean. We should only invoke the spirit of a law when it’s a decision of last resort. But we’ve been talking about public vs. private speech for decades now. If Congress had a different spirit in mind, the constitution would’ve been amended or the Supreme Court would’ve issued a definitive decision.
tehjoker 5y ago
NYT has hiring process and editorial standards, FB/Twitter is a town message board. I think people pick on the government/private distinction too much. When the government is leaning on private monopolies to implement public policy that would be illegal to do directly, I don't think this traditional analysis holds up. Tech CEOs are getting hauled before congress constantly these days, there's a revolving door of government officials. The public/private separation is very superficial. Under conditions of monopoly, the private companies act much like a government, but unaccountable and undemocratic. It violates the spirit of 1776 to be subjected to the will of an unelected minority and be silenced. That said, I find the opinions being suppressed despicable, but that doesn't mean I'm going to line up behind government censorship and private monopoly.
- poszlem 5y ago
  That is essentially my point and you expressed it much better that I could (sorry, English as a second language). Facebook is not a newspaper. Twitter is not a newspaper. In this example Facebok/Twitter ARE PAPER. They are part of the infrastructure of the internet.
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    Sorry if I misunderstood you!
- mcguire 5y ago
  If FB/Twitter is a town message board, then why are you concerned with what they do?
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    I was told that civil society needs the freedom to discuss things in order to have a functioning society, but you do you. I'm a communist, so I'm no friend of the right wing, but the Hunter Biden story that was censored before the election is now confirmed. You're seeing the knock on effects of that.
lp0_on_fire 5y ago
That is not the argument being made and it's disingenuous to paint it that way. Freedom of speech is a philosophical concept that's been around _long before_ 1789.
hartator 5y ago
> newspapers must publish anything a private citizen wants to put in the paper. The thing is social media have been treated so far more like a Fedex/UPS service than a newspaper. If they do want to open up all messages to place their own inserts, they should become as sueable as a newspaper.
gorwell 5y ago
In our internet age, the freedom of speech that truly matters is all digital.
harshreality 5y ago
That is not at all equivalent, because the NYT was and is about publishing their own content, and very carefully curated reader letters. That is not what twitter or facebook or youtube are about. They are platforms for people to share whatever they want with no preemptive filtering. Because of that open access, they have become the de-facto public square, at least except for adult material and violence/gore. Now the companies want to censor increasing amounts of material that are neither illegal nor fall into the clear adult/violence categories. Why? They claim advertisers don't like certain content, but that's easily solved by having tags associated with various categories. They could even do it for adult and violent content. Allow advertisers to opt out of advertising on material with any particular tag(s). Another reason is purely political: they want to shape public politics and discussion, or they are afraid the government will retaliate against their platform for hosting certain kinds of legal but dubious content. This is especially the case for covid-related stuff. They don't crack down on false information on other subjects nearly as hard. They also probably believe that if they don't outright ban certain content, and create a tagging system instead, the mere presence of that content on their platform will change the audience in ways that are bad for their profitability. That may be true, but the net result is still that they're filtering and manipulating public, person-to-person communication and sentiment in the new public square. Corporations should not have that power. Note: I separated out adult and violence because they're obvious "but what about" categories. "You want Facebook, Twitter, Youtube to allow all legal content? What about porn and violence?" I don't know if I have a good answer to that question, but there's plenty of legal history about community standards, and porn and gore are usually outside what most communities consider "public square" speech. There is, however, an argument that they're no longer excludable. If SFO parades are an indication of what's tolerable in the modern public square, what rationale does youtube have for restricting anything equivalent? And terrorist killing videos, while they're obviously gory, have educational value. Personally I'd say unban all of it and have thorough tagging, but I think legally and from a corporate perspective there's a middle ground that has to be found, which is: restrict porn and gore, leave everything else alone (subject to tags). It's worth noting that Twitter takes a different tack on adult content: they allow most porn, it just has to be on an 18+ flagged account. I don't see why all social media companies couldn't do that.
- 5y ago
commandlinefan 5y ago
> Freedom of speech means freedom from government intervention No, the first amendment of the US constitution means freedom from government intervention. Freedom of speech means exactly what it says - violating it isn't illegal if you're a private company, but that doesn't change what it means.
fighterpilot 5y ago
Social media companies can censor whoever or whatever they want to. What I have a problem with is when government is indirectly influencing these decisions due to threats of regulation (e.g being lectured in a congressional hearing), direct collaboration (e.g Psaki announcing that the executive branch is directly telling FB which posts to take down), or a revolving door (e.g a former Dem operative who is now employed by FB deciding to censor the Hunter Biden story). I am strongly in favor of social media companies voluntarily censoring hate speech. But the roundabout way that 1A is being bypassed is concerning.

by tw04 5y ago

jdavis703 5y ago

This is the problem with invoking “spirt of the law.” US lawyers can barely agree on what basic constitutional laws mean. We should only invoke the spirit of a law when it’s a decision of last resort. But we’ve been talking about public vs. private speech for decades now. If Congress had a different spirit in mind, the constitution would’ve been amended or the Supreme Court would’ve issued a definitive decision.

tehjoker 5y ago

NYT has hiring process and editorial standards, FB/Twitter is a town message board. I think people pick on the government/private distinction too much. When the government is leaning on private monopolies to implement public policy that would be illegal to do directly, I don't think this traditional analysis holds up. Tech CEOs are getting hauled before congress constantly these days, there's a revolving door of government officials. The public/private separation is very superficial. Under conditions of monopoly, the private companies act much like a government, but unaccountable and undemocratic. It violates the spirit of 1776 to be subjected to the will of an unelected minority and be silenced. That said, I find the opinions being suppressed despicable, but that doesn't mean I'm going to line up behind government censorship and private monopoly.

poszlem 5y ago
That is essentially my point and you expressed it much better that I could (sorry, English as a second language). Facebook is not a newspaper. Twitter is not a newspaper. In this example Facebok/Twitter ARE PAPER. They are part of the infrastructure of the internet.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  Sorry if I misunderstood you!
mcguire 5y ago
If FB/Twitter is a town message board, then why are you concerned with what they do?
- tehjoker 5y ago
  I was told that civil society needs the freedom to discuss things in order to have a functioning society, but you do you. I'm a communist, so I'm no friend of the right wing, but the Hunter Biden story that was censored before the election is now confirmed. You're seeing the knock on effects of that.

lp0_on_fire 5y ago

That is not the argument being made and it's disingenuous to paint it that way. Freedom of speech is a philosophical concept that's been around _long before_ 1789.

hartator 5y ago

> newspapers must publish anything a private citizen wants to put in the paper. The thing is social media have been treated so far more like a Fedex/UPS service than a newspaper. If they do want to open up all messages to place their own inserts, they should become as sueable as a newspaper.

gorwell 5y ago

In our internet age, the freedom of speech that truly matters is all digital.

harshreality 5y ago

That is not at all equivalent, because the NYT was and is about publishing their own content, and very carefully curated reader letters. That is not what twitter or facebook or youtube are about. They are platforms for people to share whatever they want with no preemptive filtering. Because of that open access, they have become the de-facto public square, at least except for adult material and violence/gore. Now the companies want to censor increasing amounts of material that are neither illegal nor fall into the clear adult/violence categories. Why? They claim advertisers don't like certain content, but that's easily solved by having tags associated with various categories. They could even do it for adult and violent content. Allow advertisers to opt out of advertising on material with any particular tag(s). Another reason is purely political: they want to shape public politics and discussion, or they are afraid the government will retaliate against their platform for hosting certain kinds of legal but dubious content. This is especially the case for covid-related stuff. They don't crack down on false information on other subjects nearly as hard. They also probably believe that if they don't outright ban certain content, and create a tagging system instead, the mere presence of that content on their platform will change the audience in ways that are bad for their profitability. That may be true, but the net result is still that they're filtering and manipulating public, person-to-person communication and sentiment in the new public square. Corporations should not have that power. Note: I separated out adult and violence because they're obvious "but what about" categories. "You want Facebook, Twitter, Youtube to allow all legal content? What about porn and violence?" I don't know if I have a good answer to that question, but there's plenty of legal history about community standards, and porn and gore are usually outside what most communities consider "public square" speech. There is, however, an argument that they're no longer excludable. If SFO parades are an indication of what's tolerable in the modern public square, what rationale does youtube have for restricting anything equivalent? And terrorist killing videos, while they're obviously gory, have educational value. Personally I'd say unban all of it and have thorough tagging, but I think legally and from a corporate perspective there's a middle ground that has to be found, which is: restrict porn and gore, leave everything else alone (subject to tags). It's worth noting that Twitter takes a different tack on adult content: they allow most porn, it just has to be on an 18+ flagged account. I don't see why all social media companies couldn't do that.

5y ago

commandlinefan 5y ago

> Freedom of speech means freedom from government intervention No, the first amendment of the US constitution means freedom from government intervention. Freedom of speech means exactly what it says - violating it isn't illegal if you're a private company, but that doesn't change what it means.

fighterpilot 5y ago

Social media companies can censor whoever or whatever they want to. What I have a problem with is when government is indirectly influencing these decisions due to threats of regulation (e.g being lectured in a congressional hearing), direct collaboration (e.g Psaki announcing that the executive branch is directly telling FB which posts to take down), or a revolving door (e.g a former Dem operative who is now employed by FB deciding to censor the Hunter Biden story). I am strongly in favor of social media companies voluntarily censoring hate speech. But the roundabout way that 1A is being bypassed is concerning.