3 ms·
> The Court has also long held that corporations, like social media platforms, have robust First Amendment rights, perhaps most famously in Citizens United v. F
by dane-pgp 4y ago
> The Court has also long held that corporations, like social media platforms, have robust First Amendment rights, perhaps most famously in Citizens United v. FEC (2010).
That's your problem right there. Courts have actually accepted that corporations have lesser First Amendment rights, since corporations can be compelled to be truthful in their advertising and be forced to include health warnings on packaging, etc.
> No one has ever thought that if AT&T lets two Nazis talk on the phone, then Nazism is imputed to the company. For Facebook and other social media companies, however, what content they permit is seen as crucial to the identity of the platform.
Actually maybe this is the problem. If people think that Mark Zuckerberg is a Nazi because he doesn't censor Nazis, then they are accepting that Facebook is responsible for, and thus should be liable for, everything they read on the platform. That sort of thinking leads to Section 230 protections being scrapped, and then no company ever daring to allow user-generated content at all.
> This includes terrorist recruitment material, doxxing, and racial epithets because removing this type of content would qualify as viewpoint discrimination.
Doxxing is a viewpoint? If you publish the address of a politician, that's not an "opinion" about where they live, it's an attempt to cause them harm. Similarly, if you use a racial insult, that may let people infer your opinion of that race, but offensive opinions can still be expressed even if offensive words are banned.
Of course there are going to be difficult lines to draw between what is a "viewpoint" and what is offensive language, or dangerous healthcare advice, or voter suppression, etc.; which is the real reason why such a law might not be viable (and unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect), but let's pick better examples.
- JJMcJ 4y agoThe phone companies are common carriers and are generally not allowed to pick and choose their customers. So the issue is whether Facebook and others are common carriers or not.