4 ms·

This seems like a silly post on first reading, but actually thinking about it, that would mean the first amendment actually applies to Twitter right? In which c

This seems like a silly post on first reading, but actually thinking about it, that would mean the first amendment actually applies to Twitter right? In which case it would actually mean government can't interfere with it? It's an interesting mind exercise. What happens with blatant spamming, or bots, is the government allowed to interfere with those? Or does the 1st amendment block that too?

spsful 5y ago
So many people compare twitter to the national government (even Elon) and make the case that their censorship is akin to a violation of free speech. I would say they need a civics class more than anything. But in terms of a nationalized social media network, I can't imagine it going well. The lack of innovation in the government would probably mean the site gets overwhelmed and taken down shortly after it was made.
robbedpeter 5y ago
Nuisance on public infrastructure - like loitering and littering, some trolling and all spam could become misdemeanors subject to enforcement. Twitter officers lol. Imagine joining the fbi and ending up manning the Twitter troll patrol. Absurd idea, but amusing consequences if you ignore the obvious roadblocks.
incomingpain 5y ago
>This seems like a silly post on first reading, but actually thinking about it, that would mean the first amendment actually applies to Twitter right? Without Section 230 Twitter would be liable for every evil thing that is said on their platform. What Section 230 does is create a category in which you are not liable for the content on the platform but they specifically setup limited rules for what can be censored. All censorship must be done in good faith. Lewd, obscene, harassment etc is censorable. But again good faith, you cant just say everything is harassment or obscene so you can censor speech. So absolutely, twitter is legally obligated to allow free speech. The big controversy is that they are clearly in violation of this but nobody is punishing them. They just get away with it. >It's an interesting mind exercise. What happens with blatant spamming, or bots, is the government allowed to interfere with those? Or does the 1st amendment block that too? No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of- (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or So twitter could ban porn under lewd category but they choose not to do. Same with gore and obscenity in general. You dont have to censor these things, but you can if you please. Censoring political speech under any of those categories is going to be virtually impossible to justify that they are doing this in good faith.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  You seem slightly confused about what 230 does. What it does is allow companies to do some moderation without legally liable as publishers for all content they host. Without section 230 companies have a choice to either do no moderation or to assume full liability as publishers. Section 230 was created to encorage online moderation by removing the liability that moderation would bring in an offline context.
  - incomingpain 5y ago
    >You seem slightly confused about what 230 does. What it does is allow companies to do some moderation without legally liable as publishers for all content they host. I did copy and paste the law. It's clear to me what is says and the free speech that is required. Censorship must be done in good faith. >Without section 230 companies have a choice to either do no moderation or to assume full liability as publishers. Without section 230 they would assume full liability as publisher. >Section 230 was created to encorage online moderation by removing the liability that moderation would bring in an offline context. Section 230 was created to allow entities like twitter to exist. Without section 230 twitter stops existing. Let's be realistic, Elon just put $9 billion down because his poll showed significant problem with censorship. Fixing this will take twitter from $40 billion to much higher.
    - pmyteh 5y ago
      There was case law before s.230 was passed, which said what parent claimed: if you moderated your content you carried liability as a publisher, if you were careful not to look at what went up on your service then you didn't. s.230 was added to the Communications Decency Act specifically to remove that perverse incentive in order to encourage 'family friendly' moderation. That's it. It doesn't anywhere require good faith. The entire legislative history is on record. And it long predates Twitter.
      - incomingpain 5y ago
        >There was case law before s.230 was passed, The CDA was from 1996. What social media predated 1996? Even ICQ does not predate the CDA. > It doesn't anywhere require good faith. I literally copy and pasted the law. It literally has the words good faith in it. >The entire legislative history is on record. And it long predates Twitter. Section 230 long predated all of the things. It is how they function today.
barelysapient 5y ago
I think that's a solid read. The social media platforms need some sort of speech regulation enforced on them. Imagine if AT&T cut off your phone call because you started talking about Donald Trump or Hunter Biden's laptop. Social media companies enjoy immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act[1] but then editorialize their platform to allow only conversations socially acceptable. Enforcing free speech on the platforms, as its accepted today by the courts[2], with criminal penalties for noncompliance, is the only solution. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 [2] https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-re...
nonameiguess 5y ago
The government already owns a support foundation for publicly-owned broadcasters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadcasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadca...). Nothing about the 1st Amendment seems to prevent these broadcasters from restricting access to their airwaves. Anyone with a camera or mic can't just walk into a PBS studio and start transmitting whatever message they want. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1972 that created the CPB does stipulate that it has to be objective and balanced when dealing with controversial subjects, but it doesn't say every single person with a voice, no matter what they want to say, needs to be allowed to speak. I aint no lawyer, of course, but this doesn't seem inconsistent with other arenas of free speech. Even literal public squares don't have infinite space. If some group tried to go occupy a government-owned park with a few thousand people more or less permanently, preventing anyone else from ever getting access, that would be illegal. Rationing and rate-limiting are not censorship, though presumably at least some people subject to it will probably try to say they are.
- jdrc 5y ago
  But twitter isn't inherently limited by airtime or bandwidth, it's in principle infinite.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  PBS is a publisher, not a platform, and is legally liable for the content they publish in a way that Twitter is not. > Rationing and rate-limiting are not censorship, though presumably at least some people subject to it will probably try to say they are. When rationing and rate-limiting are applied on the basis of the content of the speech, then yes is is absolutely censorship and there are supreme court cases to back that up.

spsful 5y ago

So many people compare twitter to the national government (even Elon) and make the case that their censorship is akin to a violation of free speech. I would say they need a civics class more than anything. But in terms of a nationalized social media network, I can't imagine it going well. The lack of innovation in the government would probably mean the site gets overwhelmed and taken down shortly after it was made.

robbedpeter 5y ago

Nuisance on public infrastructure - like loitering and littering, some trolling and all spam could become misdemeanors subject to enforcement. Twitter officers lol. Imagine joining the fbi and ending up manning the Twitter troll patrol. Absurd idea, but amusing consequences if you ignore the obvious roadblocks.

incomingpain 5y ago

>This seems like a silly post on first reading, but actually thinking about it, that would mean the first amendment actually applies to Twitter right? Without Section 230 Twitter would be liable for every evil thing that is said on their platform. What Section 230 does is create a category in which you are not liable for the content on the platform but they specifically setup limited rules for what can be censored. All censorship must be done in good faith. Lewd, obscene, harassment etc is censorable. But again good faith, you cant just say everything is harassment or obscene so you can censor speech. So absolutely, twitter is legally obligated to allow free speech. The big controversy is that they are clearly in violation of this but nobody is punishing them. They just get away with it. >It's an interesting mind exercise. What happens with blatant spamming, or bots, is the government allowed to interfere with those? Or does the 1st amendment block that too? No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of- (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or So twitter could ban porn under lewd category but they choose not to do. Same with gore and obscenity in general. You dont have to censor these things, but you can if you please. Censoring political speech under any of those categories is going to be virtually impossible to justify that they are doing this in good faith.

shkkmo 5y ago
You seem slightly confused about what 230 does. What it does is allow companies to do some moderation without legally liable as publishers for all content they host. Without section 230 companies have a choice to either do no moderation or to assume full liability as publishers. Section 230 was created to encorage online moderation by removing the liability that moderation would bring in an offline context.
- incomingpain 5y ago
  >You seem slightly confused about what 230 does. What it does is allow companies to do some moderation without legally liable as publishers for all content they host. I did copy and paste the law. It's clear to me what is says and the free speech that is required. Censorship must be done in good faith. >Without section 230 companies have a choice to either do no moderation or to assume full liability as publishers. Without section 230 they would assume full liability as publisher. >Section 230 was created to encorage online moderation by removing the liability that moderation would bring in an offline context. Section 230 was created to allow entities like twitter to exist. Without section 230 twitter stops existing. Let's be realistic, Elon just put $9 billion down because his poll showed significant problem with censorship. Fixing this will take twitter from $40 billion to much higher.
  - pmyteh 5y ago
    There was case law before s.230 was passed, which said what parent claimed: if you moderated your content you carried liability as a publisher, if you were careful not to look at what went up on your service then you didn't. s.230 was added to the Communications Decency Act specifically to remove that perverse incentive in order to encourage 'family friendly' moderation. That's it. It doesn't anywhere require good faith. The entire legislative history is on record. And it long predates Twitter.
    - incomingpain 5y ago
      >There was case law before s.230 was passed, The CDA was from 1996. What social media predated 1996? Even ICQ does not predate the CDA. > It doesn't anywhere require good faith. I literally copy and pasted the law. It literally has the words good faith in it. >The entire legislative history is on record. And it long predates Twitter. Section 230 long predated all of the things. It is how they function today.

barelysapient 5y ago

I think that's a solid read. The social media platforms need some sort of speech regulation enforced on them. Imagine if AT&T cut off your phone call because you started talking about Donald Trump or Hunter Biden's laptop. Social media companies enjoy immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act[1] but then editorialize their platform to allow only conversations socially acceptable. Enforcing free speech on the platforms, as its accepted today by the courts[2], with criminal penalties for noncompliance, is the only solution. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 [2] https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-re...

nonameiguess 5y ago

The government already owns a support foundation for publicly-owned broadcasters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadcasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadca...). Nothing about the 1st Amendment seems to prevent these broadcasters from restricting access to their airwaves. Anyone with a camera or mic can't just walk into a PBS studio and start transmitting whatever message they want. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1972 that created the CPB does stipulate that it has to be objective and balanced when dealing with controversial subjects, but it doesn't say every single person with a voice, no matter what they want to say, needs to be allowed to speak. I aint no lawyer, of course, but this doesn't seem inconsistent with other arenas of free speech. Even literal public squares don't have infinite space. If some group tried to go occupy a government-owned park with a few thousand people more or less permanently, preventing anyone else from ever getting access, that would be illegal. Rationing and rate-limiting are not censorship, though presumably at least some people subject to it will probably try to say they are.

jdrc 5y ago
But twitter isn't inherently limited by airtime or bandwidth, it's in principle infinite.
shkkmo 5y ago
PBS is a publisher, not a platform, and is legally liable for the content they publish in a way that Twitter is not. > Rationing and rate-limiting are not censorship, though presumably at least some people subject to it will probably try to say they are. When rationing and rate-limiting are applied on the basis of the content of the speech, then yes is is absolutely censorship and there are supreme court cases to back that up.