7 ms·

It depends if Twitter's censors agree with the views expressed or not.

mountainb 5y ago
There should be a federal law that requires that these moderation teams keep extensive records of their censorship work product in order to maintain their immunity. This censorship work product would then be have to be made available in discovery. Lawsuits challenging a censorship action or account suspension relating to censorship should be granted an exception to the otherwise binding arbitration agreement. The purpose of this would be to deter ad hoc political censorship, and to instead encourage these companies to move towards a more procedure driven censorship system in which they simply respond to court orders and leave everything else up. So, for example, if I sued the John Doe operating this account for copyright infringement or if a law enforcement agency won a court order to get the account taken down for posting illegal pornography, that's fine, that's how things are supposed to work. If instead the service is just arbitrarily censoring people, they have to keep strict records of their work products and produce those records in discovery. The companies would also have a hard time deflecting responsibility onto individual censors because almost anything that they could possibly do would be within the scope of their employment. Yes, this would make what most of these companies do with their censorship teams economically impractical. That's the point.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  Under what claim would you file a lawsuit against a private company about censorship? Or are you asking for the first amendment to be repealed?
  - ttybird 5y ago
    I thought that the first amendment was about people rather than companies. In addition to that there are many products where companies have to display certain information, such as age rating for games, health warrnings on cigaretts, food content, allergy warning, nutrition labels, medicine side-effects, etc It is hard to classify censorship as speech for a site that it is all about user-content.
    - josefx 5y ago
      > I thought that the first amendment was about people rather than companies. Any amendment written before slavery was abolished probably had a rather flexible view on the whole "people" issue. If an African American can be property then a corporation can be a person.
      - xanaxagoras 5y ago
        This discussion has nothing to do with race. You're obsessed.
        josefx 5y ago
        > You're obsessed. I made one comment on this and that makes me obsessed? > This discussion has nothing to do with race. The claim was that it applied to people, I merely mentioned that what the law considers people is a rather flexible thing.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      Companies are just people as far as the constitution is concerned (or really they're groups of people, but assembly is also protected by the first amendment!) The food safety labels is an interesting point, but I'm not even talking about gov regulations here. Just, let's say Twitter deletes your post. What do you sue them for? The 1a allows twitters employees to express themselves as they wish, even through the company, so their removal of your post is simply their own protected expression.
    - nradov 5y ago
      From a legal perspective, corporations are people too. Age ratings for games are voluntary, not legally required. The Supreme Court has held that governments can impose some limits and requirements on purely commercial speech, but those precedents don't apply to censorship decisions made by private companies. The fact that a site contains mostly user generated content is legally irrelevant. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/900/commercial-speech https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/900/commercial-... I understand that some people don't like this situation but that is the reality of US federal law today. It won't change without a Constitutional amendment, or a major realignment of the Supreme Court.
  - mountainb 5y ago
    I meant under the new fantasy legislation, probably different from some of the recent badly drafted / silly state laws trying to do the same thing. This would be what they would have to do to keep their Section 230 immunity.
- mdoms 5y ago
  What you're describing would be a ridiculously massive government overreach into a private company. I'm not American and I'm not some loony libertarian but you have to understand that private companies are and should be free to decide who they allow to use their service and under what conditions (within the bounds of anti discrimination laws).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- errcorrectcode 5y ago
  There's several problems with centralized web service corporations maintaining effectively public commons on for-profit "private property" and being regulated by one government or another: they can do anything they want if they don't offend the government structures, they're also at the behest and service of a particular government who can tell them what they can and can't do, they're not classified or regulated as utilities, and can censor any idea or push whatever agendas they like (or whoever pays them enough). Only a nonprofit out-of-reach of any particular governments' jurisdiction can remain neutral, but they also need minimal, clear, healthy, and conscientious moderation to not be springboards for harmful activities.

There should be a federal law that requires that these moderation teams keep extensive records of their censorship work product in order to maintain their immunity. This censorship work product would then be have to be made available in discovery. Lawsuits challenging a censorship action or account suspension relating to censorship should be granted an exception to the otherwise binding arbitration agreement. The purpose of this would be to deter ad hoc political censorship, and to instead encourage these companies to move towards a more procedure driven censorship system in which they simply respond to court orders and leave everything else up. So, for example, if I sued the John Doe operating this account for copyright infringement or if a law enforcement agency won a court order to get the account taken down for posting illegal pornography, that's fine, that's how things are supposed to work. If instead the service is just arbitrarily censoring people, they have to keep strict records of their work products and produce those records in discovery. The companies would also have a hard time deflecting responsibility onto individual censors because almost anything that they could possibly do would be within the scope of their employment. Yes, this would make what most of these companies do with their censorship teams economically impractical. That's the point.

joshuamorton 5y ago
Under what claim would you file a lawsuit against a private company about censorship? Or are you asking for the first amendment to be repealed?
- ttybird 5y ago
  I thought that the first amendment was about people rather than companies. In addition to that there are many products where companies have to display certain information, such as age rating for games, health warrnings on cigaretts, food content, allergy warning, nutrition labels, medicine side-effects, etc It is hard to classify censorship as speech for a site that it is all about user-content.
  - josefx 5y ago
    > I thought that the first amendment was about people rather than companies. Any amendment written before slavery was abolished probably had a rather flexible view on the whole "people" issue. If an African American can be property then a corporation can be a person.
    - xanaxagoras 5y ago
      This discussion has nothing to do with race. You're obsessed.
      - josefx 5y ago
        > You're obsessed. I made one comment on this and that makes me obsessed? > This discussion has nothing to do with race. The claim was that it applied to people, I merely mentioned that what the law considers people is a rather flexible thing.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    Companies are just people as far as the constitution is concerned (or really they're groups of people, but assembly is also protected by the first amendment!) The food safety labels is an interesting point, but I'm not even talking about gov regulations here. Just, let's say Twitter deletes your post. What do you sue them for? The 1a allows twitters employees to express themselves as they wish, even through the company, so their removal of your post is simply their own protected expression.
  - nradov 5y ago
    From a legal perspective, corporations are people too. Age ratings for games are voluntary, not legally required. The Supreme Court has held that governments can impose some limits and requirements on purely commercial speech, but those precedents don't apply to censorship decisions made by private companies. The fact that a site contains mostly user generated content is legally irrelevant. https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/900/commercial-speech https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/900/commercial-... I understand that some people don't like this situation but that is the reality of US federal law today. It won't change without a Constitutional amendment, or a major realignment of the Supreme Court.
- mountainb 5y ago
  I meant under the new fantasy legislation, probably different from some of the recent badly drafted / silly state laws trying to do the same thing. This would be what they would have to do to keep their Section 230 immunity.
mdoms 5y ago
What you're describing would be a ridiculously massive government overreach into a private company. I'm not American and I'm not some loony libertarian but you have to understand that private companies are and should be free to decide who they allow to use their service and under what conditions (within the bounds of anti discrimination laws).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
errcorrectcode 5y ago
There's several problems with centralized web service corporations maintaining effectively public commons on for-profit "private property" and being regulated by one government or another: they can do anything they want if they don't offend the government structures, they're also at the behest and service of a particular government who can tell them what they can and can't do, they're not classified or regulated as utilities, and can censor any idea or push whatever agendas they like (or whoever pays them enough). Only a nonprofit out-of-reach of any particular governments' jurisdiction can remain neutral, but they also need minimal, clear, healthy, and conscientious moderation to not be springboards for harmful activities.