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U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

• wrinklz 4y ago
  I could get behind any law that results in more people seeking facts and less seeking (or reciting unrequested) opinion. This isn't it.
  • starik36 4y ago
    That's a good goal for sure. The problem is that a private company gets to decide what is fact and what isn't. To me that is a 100 times worse than the problem they are trying to prevent.
• msie 4y ago
  • andrew_ 4y ago
    Political tribalism is a cancerous disease.
• Overtonwindow 4y ago
  As a free-speech absolutist, I got no problem with this. Unless the speech is threatening the direct physical harm of someone, or violating a law, it should be allowed. At the same time, everyone else should have the tools to filter, block, and mute speech they do not like. If a tweet or a social media post has a certain word or phrase in it that I don’t like, I should be able to mute that and never see it. Social media really has become something of a scourge on society.
  • crooked-v 4y ago
    As a free-speech absolutist, the basic problem you should have with this is that as precedent, it would lead right into the legislature being able to force the press to publish certain things because not doing so would be 'censorship'.
    • evandale 4y ago
      How could this set precedent for compelled speech of publishers? Facebook, Twitter, and Google aren't even publishers.
      • treerunner 4y ago
        If filtering is not publishing then what is it? Do we need a new term for this arrangement?
        • MichaelCollins 4y ago
          > Do we need a new term for this arrangement? The term 'filtering' already exists.
    • bpodgursky 4y ago
      I think this is a case where "free speech absolutism" is not perfectly aligned with "first amendment absolutism", but either is a logically consistent framework.
    • imperfect_blue 4y ago
      In the hypothetical world, where press is a natural monopoly, we would be far less likely to allow the press to refuse to publish viewpoints they don't like. Or we would outright nationalize the press and lead to a different sort of problem.
    • xani_ 4y ago
      Press is publishing what their authors write, not what their readers write. It's not a social conversation. Public Television (in countries that have that) would be better example.
  • mmcconnell1618 4y ago
    So as a free-speech absolutist, would you let anyone walk into a Starbucks and start shouting about anything they wanted? Would it be okay for them to write a manifesto on the chalkboard next to the barista? Starbucks is a privately owned location and has the right to enforce behavioral standards or kick people out. Social Media is the same. Privately owned and can set their own standards. The internet has plenty of space for people to post their opinions on their own servers. They are annoyed because if you take away social media, you make it harder for them to get an audience.
    • nonethewiser 4y ago
      Starbucks product is also coffee, not a speech platform.
      • tingletech 4y ago
        social media's product is eyeballs on ads, not a speech platform
        • treerunner 4y ago
          Yet Facebook and Twitter literally base their business model on sorting out what you get to read. These companies manipulate access to speech when their algorithms decide what you like — and yes, this includes ads.
    • evandale 4y ago
      > So as a free-speech absolutist, would you let anyone walk into a Starbucks and start shouting about anything they wanted? Starbucks is on private property. > Would it be okay for them to write a manifesto on the chalkboard next to the barista? The Starbucks chalkboard is privately owned. >Social Media is the same. Privately owned and can set their own standards. No it isn't. Anyone can log into Twitter and Facebook and see tweets and posts. They're public squares that are closely related to a mall rather than a private Starbucks location. > The internet has plenty of space for people to post their opinions on their own servers. Up until other big tech companies like CloudFlare decide they don't want to be associated with you and stop offering you ddos protection. > They are annoyed because if you take away social media, you make it harder for them to get an audience. Exactly! And that's why Twitter, Facebook, and Google should be treated as public squares. It's not fair that one group can access a public resource that others cannot.
  • freen 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • andrew_ 4y ago
      • RunSet 4y ago
        https://web.archive.org/web/20170814002835/https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/896884949634232320 https://web.archive.org/web/20170814002835/https://twitter.c...
      • sofixa 4y ago
        No, because the topic at hand literally includes Nazis. The speech being censored, which is being discussed, includes Nazis and the like being free to spout their shit on Twitter/Facebook or not. (And they should not, I don't know how that's even a debate)
    • nomdep 4y ago
      I doubt your blog has 50 million visitors, so your argument is ridiculous
      • freen 4y ago
        What on earth does the number of visitors have to do with the legal requirement for private enterprises to host spam/nazi content?
        • nomdep 4y ago
          This isn’t a legal requirement to host spam, illegal, hateful or any other content. It says that if your site has more than 50 million visitors AND if you allow red team content, you must also allow blue team content
  • zeta0134 4y ago
    I've been wondering about a technical solution to this problem for a while now. It seems like a properly distributed social media network would still need moderation... but who is to say everyone has to use the same moderators? What if we distributed the task of content moderation and allowed users to subscribe to a moderation team the same way they subscribe to a friend's updates? In this way, users could tune their own bubble rather than being strictly required to adhere to a centralized set of guidelines.
    • colejohnson66 4y ago
      That’s Mastodon
    • LinuxBender 4y ago
      I believe you are describing federated networks such as mastodon [1] and matrix [2] Individual servers/clusters can be moderated by their operators. I've not run either of those, but I have run IRC servers that can work in a similar model. [1] - https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ [2] - https://matrix.org/faq/ https://matrix.org/faq/
    • bombcar 4y ago
      It’s really easy to do if they wanted - allow posts to be classified and allow users to select scores or other methods of ranking classifications.
    • treerunner 4y ago
      Publish all content to blockchain and let the users create their own interfaces as they choose. But first make all content equally and indisputably available? I’d be cool with this.
    • int_19h 4y ago
      https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/ https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/ "When you vote in favour of a person, you are making that person a moderator for yourself, regardless of whether they win the vote or not. In other words, you cannot vote yes for that person in public, and have them disabled as a mod in private. Your vote for a person is you making that person a mod for you. The reverse also applies, if you disable a person from being a mod, that is an impeachment vote. Election makes it so that the people who come into a community, who have not chosen or disabled that particular mod by themselves, will use the mod list shaped by the elections. If a user has explicitly chosen a particular person to be a mod in that community, that takes precedence. Likewise, if a user has disabled a mod, that person will never be a mod for that user, regardless of the results. If a mod you voted against (a mod you disabled / impeached / voted against) takes a mod action, that is ignored by your client, and has no effect. If a mod that you have taken no action on takes a mod action, it is accepted, but only so long as there is no action in reverse from a mod that you have explicitly voted for. If you don’t like actions of a mod you haven’t voted for is bothering you, you can easily disable that mod, and render them ineffectual."
  • philipwhiuk 4y ago
    I'm unclear that this isn't a self referential attempt to redefine the centre rather than a genuinely held view. > threatening the direct physical harm of someone, or violating a law The laws already prevent the first by the way, it's called true threat > At the same time, everyone else should have the tools to filter, block, and mute speech they do not like. If a tweet or a social media post has a certain word or phrase in it that I don’t like, I should be able to mute that and never see it. Should a coffee shop owner be forced to hear words they don't like? Should the New York Times owner be forced to publish opinions they don't like? Why is Facebook's owner and employees different to a coffee shop owner?
    • evandale 4y ago
      > Should a coffee shop owner be forced to hear words they don't like? How does forcing Twitter to allow Donald Trump to post translate to forcing you to hear words you don't like? You're free to block him and not read anything he posts. > Should the New York Times owner be forced to publish opinions they don't like? No, NYT is a publisher and has always had full control over what they publish. > Why is Facebook's owner and employees different to a coffee shop owner? Because Facebook's owner decided to offer a platform that anyone can sign up to for free which allows them to share their content with friends and the world. Starbucks sells coffee.
      • themitigating 4y ago
        "How does forcing Twitter to allow Donald Trump to post translate to forcing you to hear words you don't like" Not other users but facebook itself is forced to do this
      • MichaelCollins 4y ago
        I think any newspaper with a classified section seems like a sort of primitive social network, with proactive moderation.
    • unity1001 4y ago
      > Should the New York Times owner be forced to publish opinions they don't like? Yes, if they or their majority shareholders dominate a noticeable part of the press. Otherwise you end up how things are - a minority of the rich consolidating the press, setting the public agenda as they want to.
  • adrr 4y ago
    Controlling what content is rendered on a site is speech itself. Government making rules infringes on my right what my software can and can’t display. It would be like the government telling Wikipedia can’t edit their articles.
    • treerunner 4y ago
      Yes! Absolutely.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • wrinklz 4y ago
      Doesn't Wikipedia fall under the definition of a social media site with over 50M monthly users?
      • adrr 4y ago
        It does. This decision means other people “can’t censor” by reverting changes or overwriting.
        • dane-pgp 4y ago
          No, it means that Wikipedia admins can't ban someone's account just because they disagree with that person's opinions. Wikipedia articles aren't supposed to contain (their user's) opinions anyway, so the admins should have no reason to base a moderation decision on such a criterion.
• swayvil 4y ago
  The social media companies (Facebook, Google, Twitter) want legal permission to censor us based on our "viewpoint". Because if they can't do that, they warn, then "dangerous content" will grow out of control. This seems like a big nope to me.
  • sseagull 4y ago
    The alternative is having the government decide whether or not a private company can block a particular person for a particular reason. Everyone is generally ok with companies blocking content that is irrelevant/off-topic, but there is a very, very large gray area. Do you want the government deciding what is acceptable?
    • swayvil 4y ago
      Have you seen the typical social media censorship (bans, deletions, shadowbans... no explanations... secret forbidden words lists...) and appeals process lately? It makes 1984 look like a church camp. At least the government has checks and balances. And a working appeals process. And is, ostensibly, democratically determined. Yes, I prefer the government here.
      • ceejayoz 4y ago
        I think you may need to re-read 1984.
    • fallingknife 4y ago
      They already are. It came out recently that the FBI leaned on Mark Zuckerberg to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story.
      • ModernMech 4y ago
        Zuckerberg was free not to listen to anything the FBI had to say. No one forced him to do anything.
• mustache_kimono 4y ago
  Important to note that this 5th Circuit ruling conflicts with the 11th Circuit's ruling. And SCOTUS had previously reinstated an injunction against this very same law. And this 5th Circuit opinion has very idiosyncratic reasoning [0, just the first few pages will blow your hair back]. A sample: "In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to 'the freedom of speech.' But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech." How the 1st Amendment might protect a corporation's religious POV but not its exercise of editorial control is a very good question. I'm not saying this very conservative SCOTUS won't adopt the 5th Circuit's reasoning, but it still seems unlikely. In my view -- much more likely is that they resolve the Circuit split by adopting the 11th Circuit's view wholeheartedly. [0]: https://techfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/2022-09-16-Published-Opinion-dckt-.pdf https://techfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/2022-09-1...
  • bluejekyll 4y ago
    The term “conservative” means nothing if you apply it to a court which has overturned years of legal norm across various areas of law.
    • mustache_kimono 4y ago
      Yeah, certainly not what we once thought of as conservative judicial restraint. One comment I remember reading on Twitter which makes sense: "Funny how what the 1st Amendment means seems to align perfectly with currently fashionable conservative (MAGA) social views."
    • epistasis 4y ago
      I think it makes perfect sense if you view the courts as largely a political operation, with a thin veneer of legal language on top. Given the past decades of highly coordinated--and completely politically motivated--court-stacking, it's probably most accurate to put the political definitions ahead of the legal definitions of conservative.
    • 4y ago
• jfengel 4y ago
  Seeing as the tech companies have no interest in censoring based on "viewpoint" I don't see what difference this makes. Their entire existence relies on being the single point where everyone goes. No Republicans have ever been removed solely for being Republican. People are removed for promoting violence and harassing other users. The fact that Republicans consider violence to be a "viewpoint", and their viewpoint rather than that of a few extremists who use their name -- that worries me. A lot.
  • rullelito 4y ago
    You should try to get out of your filter bubble more often.
    • jfengel 4y ago
    • tempie_deleteme 4y ago
      that's not so easy... there are some national bubbles which the internet used to be good as igonring, but not once it became the mainstream internet. now the national barriers exist online too, in addition to the pre-existing language barriers. i.e. the information technology has been deployed as an extra tool to apply national-linguistic barriers between peoples.
    • freen 4y ago
      • jimmygrapes 4y ago
    • happytoexplain 4y ago
      I don't visit a single website that tries to serve me political content dynamically - no Facebook, no Twitter. Except YouTube, but I don't watch anything political there, and the algorithm seems to know it. I don't read the "MSM" news outlets, as they're called. But I observe the same trend the parent describes - in forums, in apparently objective news stories, in the previous US president, and in real life. I'm not saying this as a political cudgel. This personality "flaw" is common across the world and is just one of many on all sides, and it's not a surprise that people with any given personality commonality will bias to one side in any given two-party system, and in the US, this one appears to bias toward the Republican party. It's hard to talk about objectively and not invoke anger, which is reasonable. It is worrying, but there's rarely a time in polite conversation when it is relevant enough to bother pointing out. Content moderation is one of those times, I think. There's plenty of unfair moderation out there, but a lot of what people call a bias against the right in the US seems to usually just be a bias in the tendency of what they say to break seemingly reasonable content/behavior rules.
• fallingknife 4y ago
  On the one hand this clearly violates the 1st amendment. On the other hand, the 1st amendment is already out the window when the FBI is leaning on social media platforms to censor news stories that turn out to be true.
  • mcphage 4y ago
    > when the FBI is leaning on social media platforms to censor news stories that turn out to be true I’m impressed with Mark Zuckerberg… everyone was mad at him for blocking that story, yet with a single vague implication that people stretched into something very different, he managed to deflect all of the anger onto the FBI. Very smooth.
• Victerius 4y ago
  • gruez 4y ago
    So to be clear you're advocating for tech companies to ignore the justice system?
    • Victerius 4y ago
      • gruez 4y ago
        "proactive"... how? By making rulings that you agree with? Is it fair to say that your opinion on this matter boils down to "companies should ignore the courts if it's a ruling I don't like"?
        • Victerius 4y ago
          Where did I say that?
          • gruez 4y ago
            If that's not your opinion please explain what you mean by courts being more "proactive"
            • Victerius 4y ago
              By shortening enforcement timelines. In the current system, it would take years for someone to bring a case before a court and even more years before the company would pay any fines. Courts and the government in general should be more proactive by shortening execution timelines. Shorten the time it takes to go from "Maybe tech companies shouldn't censor people" to "We're arresting Mark Zuckerberg today and he's going to jail next week" from a decade to something resembling weeks. I'm tired of slowness. I want events to happen quickly.
• xavor 4y ago
  It's your right to have an opinion, it's my right not to have to listen to it.
  • andrewclunn 4y ago
    That's easy enough, don't read it, turn off your computer, follow the people saying things you want to hear from, etc... Oh you mean you don't want ANYONE to potentially hear those things, so that you might not accidentally come across a position you don't like? Yeah, that's called being fragile, and the sort of people you will empower if you push for that as policy are those who are more than happy to control the flow of information to their own ends / enrichment.
    • vsareto 4y ago
      You can equally make the argument that whining about a post removed is also being fragile, just go to a different website, turn off the computer, start your own blog, etc. The difference now is that corporations have to allow this, and that if you don't want to deal with that content, you essentially have to not start a company because you can't moderate it, so it closes the door to the freedom of running opinionated companies, which is anti-thetical to conservative viewpoints.
      • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
        You're still free to block the people you don't like.
  • houstonn 4y ago
    It's my right to be able to hear it. As Frederick Douglass, a former slave and writer, wisely stated, “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.”
    • AstralStorm 4y ago
• intrasight 4y ago
  Censoring and moderating and content, as it relates to this lawsuit, is very expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if it ranks pretty high in their cost chart. The only reason that social media platforms do content moderation is to manage the financial (advertisers), and the political risk. Well, if the politicians and the courts tell them they can't moderate political stuff, then the political risk has been removed. All that remains is the financial risk. Advertisers aversion to controversy is based on, I assume, their adherence to cultural norms. These norms are fluid. So I actually think these laws will give them the cover they need to stop doing something that they would prefer not to do. I also believe that we'll be litigating this for eons.
  • Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    It's not the only reason. Without any moderation, sites would degenerate into cesspools that only cesspool dwellers would want to visit. Few site owners want their properties to be cesspools.
    • fallingknife 4y ago
      People say this, but not long ago Twitter/Reddit/Youtube were basically a free for all for anything except porn. And their user numbers were skyrocketing at the time.
      • intrasight 4y ago
        Exactly. The court isn't saying you can't moderate out the cesspool posts. They are saying that you can't choose political sides.
        • guipsp 4y ago
          Every decision is inherently "political"
          • andrew_ 4y ago
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Repeal section 230 All of this sounds like an aberration created by giving these companies immunity.
  • belltaco 4y ago
    It will result in way higher moderation, instead of less. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actually https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actua...
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      I want smaller, tighter knit, and moderated communites. Why do we care about outcome anyway? The outcome of section 230 was arbitrary moderation, consolidation, and surveillance capitalism. It is unnatural for an entity to not be liable for what they publish.
      • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
        Do you want the owners of those small communities to get sued if someone posts copywrited material?
        • zionic 4y ago
          If they don’t censor, they’re not liable. If they censor, they are liable.
          • 8note 4y ago
            Sounds like a weird requirement. If they host the content, they should be sued, minus 230 protections
            • 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
              I've read that if you moderate you are acting as an editor even if the content is user generated and that means you are a publisher. Publishers are liable for what they publish. Section 230 basically erased the distinction between publisher and distributor.
• mcphage 4y ago
  What constitutes a “viewpoint” in this law?
  • brighamyoung 4y ago
    Racism, sexism, homophobia, capitalism, etc.
    • sbaiddn 4y ago
      As constitutionally protected, as socialism, desecration of the flag, lese-majeste and smut are.
• solarmist 4y ago
  Copied from a comment thread below. Because I feel this is the root of the issue/problem. > I don't see how the heck my website is a public square but my home or café isn't, this argument sounds self-contradictory. Yup. This is the exact problem that we’re (as a society/world) wrestling with. The reason it is (not just seems) different is because of the scope. A message on a chalkboard cannot reach millions of people (without the internet, ignoring [mass] media because the way it amplified things like this was far more complicated and was intentional), but it can on a website. That by itself distorts the public/private argument, but we as a society aren’t sure how or to what extent yet. These lawsuits are the second step (the first step was arguing about it in public) of figuring that out. (Going back to my side note on media, these arguments will affect media outlets directly/indirectly as well.)
  • dpifke 4y ago
    The decision[0] gives different logic (quoting from page 85): If a firm’s core business is disseminating others’ speech, then that should weaken, not strengthen, the firm’s argument that it has a First Amendment right to censor that speech. In PruneYard, for example, the shopping mall was open to the public—but for the purpose of shopping, not sharing expression. So it was perhaps tenuous for the State to use the public nature of the mall to justify a speech-hosting requirement. Cf. PruneYard, 447 U.S. at 95 (White, J., concurring in part) (noting that California’s hosting requirement involved communication “about subjects having no connection with the shopping centers’ business”). But here, the Platforms are open to the public for the specific purpose of disseminating the public’s speech. It’s rather odd to say that a business has more rights to discriminate when it’s in the speech business than when it’s in some altogether non-speech business (like shopping or legal education). A point a lot of commenters here seem to be missing is that it would be perfectly legal under the law to ban all discussion of politics, regardless of viewpoint. The law just says that if you're a site with more than 50 million users, you cannot dictate which political parties your users are allowed to write favorably about and ban users for having opposing viewpoints. [0] https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pd... (PDF)
    • 4y ago
• robust-cactus 4y ago
  If this passes, basically what's going to happen is a lot of pre-filtering of people entering social networks akin to next doors strategy. I've worked at a civic tech social network that had no rules, and eventually the extremists pushed out all the normal folks - it's just stupid shouting matches. We tore it all down and made isolated communities. It's basically the only way to have real discourse.
  • disruptiveink 4y ago
    No, if this passes, tech companies will just stop operating in Texas outright. It's really as simple as that.
    • fooey 4y ago
      The Texas law makes it illegal to not do business with Texas Which is hilarious, but who the hell knows what the courts will decide these days
  • ajross 4y ago
    It already passed, it's a law on the books in Texas. And now it's been upheld at by both trial and circuit courts. FWIW: there's one last chance at SCOTUS to undo this, but if that doesn't work out what we're almost certain to see instead of "pre-filtering" is just "No Tweeting from Texas".
    • robust-cactus 4y ago
      It's kinda interesting how a world like "no tweeting from Texas" might jive with EU laws which want to restrict IO and data storage to just inside the region or country. Are we about to get more decentralized just because the laws are accidentally forcing us to? Imagine connecting to EU or Texas Twitter to see what's going on there.
      • mwint 4y ago
        Oh, it’s not accidental.
• JimmieMcnulty 4y ago
  What's funny is that none of the big tech firms would need to change their policies or behaviors, should this actually become the law of the land, as there are currently no policies that prohibit political speech from any of their platforms.
• mikkergp 4y ago
  Hacker News avoids political discussion, would this mean a site like hacker news(assuming it’s big enough) couldn’t moderate heated political discussion as off topic? Im curious how this would apply to Reddit, will there just be constant brigading of the political forums? Ironically as others have pointed out this will probably have a severe chilling effect on speech.
  • efitz 4y ago
    There’s political discussion all over hacker news, in the comments.
    • mikkergp 4y ago
      Yes but new posts are often closed as overly heated/off topic.
    • encryptluks2 4y ago
      It is often one sided. As soon as you say something that doesn't fall into line, like against the monarchy, then you get censored.
      • mikkergp 4y ago
        On hacker news the overwhelmingly hardcore libertarian forum? I could see that. I don’t see a lot of progressive discussion here
        • disgruntledphd2 4y ago
          The political views of HN vary wildly depending on both the subject and the thread. People tend to notice either their own opinions or the opposite much more though.
      • rvz 4y ago
        > As soon as you say something that doesn't fall into line, like against the monarchy, then you get censored. Or anything crypto-related. The HN 'anti-crypto squad' will flag, downvote and censor anyone that talks about it or attempts to defend it.
• a_shovel 4y ago
  There's discussion over what exactly a "political view" is here. I find this quote from a previous article [1] enlightening: > "No one—not lawyers, not judges, not experts in the field, not even the law's own sponsors—knows what compliance with this law looks like." [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/texas-law-banning-social-media-censorship-reinstated-by-appeals-court/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/texas-law-bannin...
  • MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
    Well the difficult thing is that apparently every day mundane activities can be "political" depending on who is doing them and in what context. Even a character in a show or video game suddenly becomes a political statement (to some people) just by being female, or brown, or gay, etc.
    • philippejara 4y ago
      Well, yes, everything is political whether we like it or not. Even not having a character in a videogame that represents a minority can be a political statement. It's far too broad a brush to paint to be useful for anything
      • nomdep 4y ago
        No, like you said, everything CAN be a political statement but, more often than not, everything is not, by default, a political statement
        • philippejara 4y ago
          I agree actually, that's fair. Assuming a default position to not be a political statement does complicate things when you try to classify what is political due to giving the status quo a bit to much leeway, but honestly this classification is a waste of time.
        • judge2020 4y ago
• Buttons840 4y ago
  Will this apply to bots? What if I have a big list of a complaints about a certain politician (use your imagination, there's more than one politician to complain about), but the "other party" doesn't follow me, in fact, I have very few followers overall. So I create a bot that spreads my opinions by replying to millions of other Tweets. Anyone who mentions the politician of interest will receive a reply from "me" (my bot) within 2 minutes. Now I will be heard by millions, and my lawyer is ready should I be banned from the entire site. Now imagine many people doing this, what a cesspool, you make a Tweet and the bot flood gates open. You Tweet about your grandchild and 30 seconds later you have 400 replies expressing "political opinions" about shady websites with cheap Viagra. Twitter can't ban them though. Welcome to truly free speech. You better learn to code if you want to be heard. We're already at the point where websites can't control bots. AI that can write better than most humans is knocking on the door, and it can run on my personal computer. This law will only make it worse by adding real legal risk to banning suspected bots. Am I exaggerating here, or is this actually possible? This feels like a loss in the humans vs bots battle more than a political one.
  • TobyTheDog123 4y ago
    > Users cannot have their speech limited on these platforms "Will this also apply to [completely unrelated issue]? Bet they didn't think of that." What?
    • Nursie 4y ago
      You’re being downvotes, but that is basically a classic tech-guy retort to most things that affect any sort of service they like. “I can draw a vague parallel with this other thing, so clearly it’s basically like the nazis and/or stalin”
  • hot_gril 4y ago
    > Will this apply to bots? Most likely it'll apply in whatever cases Texas's govt wants. That is, the vague law will be basis for selective enforcement, like GDPR. There's no other way this can work.
  • 4y ago
• fdye 4y ago
  Seems like this is gonna get overruled, but who knows with this supreme court nowadays. Aside from that issue, I'd like to discuss why social media always seems so impotent in their response to misinformation. Seems Youtube, Facebook, etc, are all letting people post misinformation, it gains traction through whatever means and is shared to millions of people. Then after the damage is done they swoop in and block it after the damage has been done. I think they could instead limit the possible exposure by building tiers/gates a post has to move through to truly go to a mass audience. First it would start with a mass audience of 10^1, mostly direct connections. If no keywords were triggered for misinformation, and none of the eyeballs on that post marked it as misinformation or offensive, then send it to 10^2 people outside their immediate social circle. Repeat until it hits 10^4, 10^5 or whatever and then it hits a tier of truly mass audience. Perhaps here it requires a real review by a moderator if it has keyword matches or isn't from a trusted source. Then it is let out to reach everyone because its just a kitty cat video, or about the best way to stain a table, or all the community content we actually want. This approach is closer to an A/B test for a social post. If it is posted and highly offensive within a small group of close connections, then it never ripples out of those echo chambers. Again it's about uniqueness of the post, so grandma can click reshare or whatever, when she looks at her history she see's it in her timeline, but it's never massively put on others feed until its gone through above. Ironically, the social platform killing it right now works somewhat close to this in terms of showing you others posts. My feed shows me a lot of big posters, but like 10% of the time I am reached by people i've never viewed, with a post with like 5-10 views. Then they measure engagement (how long did you watch, did you like, etc), before they decide to push it to more people. (My summary of their algorithm, not theirs). I'm advocating for similar but to gate for offensive/misinformation. Seems like it would work like a sieve where good/unoffensive content would rise to the top "in general" and the bad stuff would stay with a small amount of eyeballs.
  • throwawayacc2 4y ago
    What you have described is nothing short of a horror dystopian hell scape. My God, listen to your self man! > If no keywords were triggered for misinformation, and none of the eyeballs on that post marked it as misinformation or offensive Keywords? Who decides the keywords? What are you going to do when normal words get a coded meaning. Remember “milk” and the “ok” sign. 4chan is going to have a field day with this! What about the ((( echos ))). You gonna write a regex for potential use of non letter characters? Marked as misinformation. What, you’re going to ask the ministry of truth for input? Do you think this will achieve anything except build an echo chamber and increase division? The same for offensive. What’s going to happen when all posts by trans people are marked as offensive? Or that doesn’t count cause you’re ok with it. Should we establish a Ministry of Morality, perhaps with a morality police like the saudis to tell us what’s offensive and what’s not? Everything you wrote is, I don’t even know how to call it. It’s evil. It’s evil, that’s what it is. You have though up an evil system whose only outcome will be oppression, division and resentment.
• didibus 4y ago
  I do think there's a rationale middle of the road here. Hear me out. I think if you provide a service that basically creates a free public sphere, and you don't charge for it, it makes sense to consider what you're offering a public sphere and that just mean it has to be treated like one, where you should be free to speak up and mobilize peacefully. If social platforms charge a fee, or subscription, then it is a private sphere, and I think platforms should be allowed to do whatever they want in that case. Finally, the constitution only applies to lawful citizens of the US, which means that in order for platforms that would provide a free sphere of discourse, to be excluded from their enforcements, you would need to have performed full know your customers, and proven to the platform you are a real citizen of the US, with regularly having to re-proove that your account is still owned and used only by real citizen of the US. If you didn't provide this info and proved your status, the platform should be allowed to apply enforcement, because you could very well be a bot, or a foreigner. Lastly, you should also have to speak non-anonymously, if you don't reveal your true identity to others in the public sphere, enforcement would still apply to you, because in a real-life public sphere people are not anonymous either, you should be able to know who is speaking. Lastly, you shouldn't be allowed to make it look like you are more than one person, so use of multiple accounts and various pseudonyms if found should also make you eligible for enforcement again. I think with these, it's reasonable on both front, prove you're a real US citizen, have a single public account that's not hiding your identity, go ahead and say what you want unrestricted, you're right to free speech applies. Otherwise, it's not clear you're someone who has a right to free speech, and therefore enforcement should be taking place.
  • ryeights 4y ago
    The 1st Amendment applies to aliens. https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/sites/default/files/Are%20Immigrants%20Covered%20By%20the%20US%20Const%20PPT%201-12-2017.pptx https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/sites/default/files/Are%20Immig...
    • didibus 4y ago
      There are many various alien statuses, so I would guess it depends, but that's fine, whoever it legally applies too, just you need to prove it applies to you first.
• ChoGGi 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/t6LtL https://archive.ph/t6LtL
  • ccrush 4y ago
    I had to scroll way too far for this. You're a hero we don't deserve, but desperately need. One of the most infuriating things about the discussions here is the seemingly never ending supply of people with a passionate opinion on the subject of an article they didn't read because of a pay wall. It's likely due to how certain browsers / clients had the ability to hit the free trial by opening each link as a new session, and how that's not working like it used to, so people take what they can get. Thanks for archiving so people can access the original page and not overload the site because some sites sneak edit their content while others can't handle the amount of traffic HN generates. You're doing work in the name of goodness.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• seydor 4y ago
  It is weird that there is no country that allows such freedoms in the world. There is clearly a gap in regulation and constitutions when it comes to the internet because they could have never imagined it 400 years ago. But this needs to be settled in the positive direction and in an egalitarian way: speech that is legal should be free everywhere. and that's the basis upon which every tech business should be built . The fact that they were able to get away with censoring the public for so many years was the aberration. I wonder what s the role of advertisers here, since they effectively demonetize platforms that are not strictly censoring (e.g. reddit)
  • supernovae 4y ago
    Reddit is highly moderated and censored. You can't even post facts in /r/conservative without being banned. Reddit also has a Terms of Service and it has banned hate groups under such terms of service. With a large bias towards far right hate groups because there really is no existence of far left hate groups. So of course moderation seems biased when your views are hateful to begin with. Advertisers generally want nothing to do with advertising on low quality networks unless those advertisers are targeting people because they profit from their misery.
    • seydor 4y ago
      Moderated by unpaid users = shit moderation, you get what you pay for. Moderators get rewarded with the rush of 'power'
      • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
        It is fun getting the "punch a Nazi" edgelords banned for inciting violence.
      • richbell 4y ago
        > Moderators get rewarded with the rush of 'power' Powermods have been detrimental to Reddit's health. There are some great communities with unpaid moderators who care about and foster their subreddits, but most of the prominent moderators don't care about their subreddits beyond the 'power'.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• mattwilsonn888 4y ago
  People often want free speech when it favors their side, and they will likewise rationalize against free speech when it doesn't. We should be able to talk and think about laws outside the very specific political context of the day, but Reuters cannot help but remind the reader that free speech online may enable 'violence' and that this ruling is a win for all sorts of people associated with Republicans and Donald Trump - as if to say you are somehow associated with such viewpoints because you have libertarian views on what thoughts people are allowed to be exposed to. It reads very biased.
  • DangitBobby 4y ago
    Free speech online in this context cuts both ways. People are allowed to espouse views online that may lead to "violence", and the people that work and pay to keep online platforms running are allowed to scrub words they don't like from the platform they own. It's absurd that they could be compelled to display the dumb shit some people say.
• stall84 4y ago
  ooooohhh muahahahaah spooky "dangerous content" !!!!
  • dang 4y ago
    Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You've been doing it a lot and we ban that sort of account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• pmalynin 4y ago
  The consequences of this law aren’t very clear, especially in the post Citizens United world where scotus has established that corporations have first amendment rights that are protected by constitution. Now, if a corporation is in some sense required to carry someone’s message due to some law, that gets into (arguably) the realm of forced speech. Don’t get me wrong, I think Citzens United is a horrible ruling, and this whole fiasco just further shows the “rules for thee but not for me” doctrine the Republican Party has been operating for the past 25 odd years.
  • leereeves 4y ago
    It's been done before. See: the Fairness Doctrine for TV, or common carrier laws for phones.
    • scarface74 4y ago
      Broadcast TV was using public airwaves. That never applied to cable or satellite TV.
      • leereeves 4y ago
        And the Internet was created by the US government, so it's also a public resource. Ok, it's been privatized, but can the government abdicate it's responsibility to protect freedom of speech by privatizing? Edit because I'm "posting too fast": Paying for most of the infrastructure didn't make TV stations or phone companies exempt from similar regulation. I don't see why it would make social networks exempt.
        • scarface74 4y ago
          The internet may have been “created” by the federal government. But most of the investment and infrastructure is very much done by private companies. If the government of Texas wants a free for all social platform, they can create one.
          • 4y ago
• anon84873628 4y ago
  The article says: >The largely 2-1 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals And at the end: >(This story corrects to largely 2-1 ruling in second paragraph) I don't understand this. What does "largely" mean here? Was it a 2-1 decision or not? Why the qualifier?
  • BCM43 4y ago
    One of the judges issued a partial concurrence and partial dissent.
  • eduction 4y ago
    Full opinions here: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pd... Each judge wrote their own opinion. You can see the first two judges are in agreement, the last writes, “ I concur with the judgment in Part IV of the majority’s opinion. I respectfully dissent from the remainder.” So they were 2-1, except for part IV, where they were 3-0. (I am confused about this part as I’ve read each section IV several times and it seems like they disagree here, one side arguing that the platforms are, and they other that they are not, entitled to pre enforcement relief. But IANAL.)
• 14 4y ago
  The thought police over at Reddit are going to have some issues after this.
• kgwxd 4y ago
  Will Truth Social be complying?
  • fells 4y ago
    They'd have to hit 50 million users first, or whatever arbitrary bar Texas will make so they don't have to.
  • blisterpeanuts 4y ago
    Does Truth Social take down liberal or anti-Trumpian posts? There are a lot of them, so I believe they don't.
• themitigating 4y ago
  Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say," Judge Andrew Oldham, 1st amendment Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, ... This doesn't apply to people or busineeses making their own rules
  • dionian 4y ago
    so is it ok for a telephone company to cut your line if you support the resistance?
    • scarface74 4y ago
      Yes because the phone company is a natural monopoly. Twitter isn’t.
    • plandis 4y ago
      Telephone companies are common carriers (AFAIK) and have additional rules they must follow. Twitter is not.
      • yesco 4y ago
        Looks like it does now
      • starik36 4y ago
        What about grocery stores? What if they declare that they won't sell you anything because your viewpoint is different from theirs? Surely groceries are not common carriers?
        • themitigating 4y ago
          What if a baker doesn't like your view...oh
    • themitigating 4y ago
• oh_my_goodness 4y ago
  Transparently, part of the intent here is to expand protection for those who incite political violence in the USA. Among other things, increased political violence in the US will enable foreign states to more effectively intimidate US politicians and voters. "Some conservatives have labeled the social media companies' practices abusive, pointing to Twitter's permanent suspension of Trump from the platform shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Twitter had cited "the risk of further incitement of violence" as a reason." If you don't like this logic, there are two ways to proceed: (1) Downvote this message, or (2) consider expressing your concern to the politicians and pundits who have publicly supported exactly this logic.
• LinkLink 4y ago
  God forbid people have to think about whether the idea being communicated to them on the internet is true, after all, everything on the internet was true before this decision.
  • Flankk 4y ago
• nequo 4y ago
  Would this outlaw for example Gmail's spam filter, too? Or only if the spam is wrapped up as a political viewpoint?
  • giaour 4y ago
    Not related to the Texas law, but the RNC has already filed FEC complaints accusing the GMail spam filter of censorship. So I imagine a creative Texas lawyer will probably try to make the case you're describing. https://www.axios.com/2022/06/29/gops-gmail-feud-escalates https://www.axios.com/2022/06/29/gops-gmail-feud-escalates
  • saurik 4y ago
    I would think that users could be allowed to choose to have a spam filter on their own account--in the same way that I can choose to screen calls on my telephone service--but, if Google unilaterally decides that I am not allowed to receive the call even if I am interested (giving me no way to opt out of their spam filter or allow people I consider not spam), then that could be a problem.
    • themitigating 4y ago
      You can already block specific email addresses. With the amount of spam this will be a daily problem for you. Note -, I think spam is filtered before it even hits your account and goes to the spam folder however correct me if I'm wrong
      • saurik 4y ago
        I don't understand your point or what you are responding to :(. The issue at hand is whether the concept of a spam filter violates the position of these laws, and I do not think it does as long as the spam filter is not a universal configuration that is forced on everyone. As long as you can either deactivate the spam filter entirely or whitelist specific senders (though I can make more elaborate arguments where this isn't quite sufficient due to bias) / specific content (which should be sufficient), then I believe that Google's spam filter is not the same thing as "moderation" which deletes or blocks the content for everyone, whether they wanted to see it or not.
• throwawayacc2 4y ago
  Good. This is especially welcome news in the context of the unprecedented attack on kiwi farms. As I said in a different thread, we have laws preventing businesses from discriminating. We do not allow shops to put up “no blacks here” signs. Why do we allow infrastructure providers from doing essentially the same thing? Censorship, of any kind from anyone, government or corporation is an abomination that must be stamped out. We cannot have a civilised society as long as censorship is accepted.
  • IntelMiner 4y ago
    Do you filter "spam" from your email inbox? If so, why? By your...train of thought. "Censorship of any kind" means that rejecting those leagues of boner pills and overseas wives ready to marry you is rejection of their right to speak freely to you
    • throwawayacc2 4y ago
      You can’t be serious. Are you serious? Spam is not censored. You have access to it. You click on the spam folder and you can read the spam email in all it’s glory! And before you even mention auto deletion, you can disable that. I think that should be opt in not opt out but, yeah, spam in not being censored.
      • IntelMiner 4y ago
        You have to click a spam folder. You have to make a conscious effort to interact with the free speech being sent to you. Therefore it's not free
        • throwawayacc2 4y ago
          We have different definitions of censorship. To me that is not censorship. Censorship is making information functionality unavailable or altering it. Delete it or deliberately make it very hard to access or change it’s contents. If you click a button or even add a message ( apart from the content ) that is not censorship. That’s why for example I don’t consider it censorship when youtube added covid messages to certain videos.
• kelnos 4y ago
  > "Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say," Judge Andrew Oldham, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the ruling. I don't really understand this; from my perspective, it sounds like this judge doesn't really understand the first amendment (hopefully this is not the case, and the quote is taken out of context). Corporations are not bound by the restrictions laid out in the first amendment; only the government is. And it seems like this Texas law is an infringement upon the corporation's free speech rights. > The Texas law forbids social media companies with at least 50 million monthly active users from acting to "censor" users based on "viewpoint" What does "viewpoint" mean? I assume it's written that way to be vague and enforceable whenever the state feels like it. Is it a "viewpoint" to spread false information? Is it a "viewpoint" to spam? I do agree that social media companies need some sort of regulation, as they have (unfortunately) become the only place where some groups of people communicate and get their news and information. But this does not seem like the right call, or the right law. Also, this is a Texas law; if Facebook closed down all of their offices in Texas, presumably they could just ignore it, as then Texas wouldn't have jurisdiction over them?
  • ugjka 4y ago
    >Also, this is a Texas law; if Facebook closed down all of their offices in Texas, presumably they could just ignore it, as then Texas wouldn't have jurisdiction over them? AFAIK the law specifically forbids that kind of move, somehow ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    • judge2020 4y ago
      Presumably Texas can represent themselves as long as anyone within TX was using a service by a company violating the law. Now, if FB banned anyone with a geoip resolving to Texas, that'd be quite the firepower to claim that TX has no jurisdiction. However, congress' ability to regulate interstate commerce might change this to something TX can rule on but can't enforce.
  • blisterpeanuts 4y ago
    If a corporation does any business with the government, they have to abide by the same First Amendment strictures as any government agency.
• galaxyLogic 4y ago
  I don't get it. Restaurants can choose their customers based on how they behave or even how they are dressed. Why shouldn't online businesses be able to reject some of their customers?
  • NayamAmarshe 4y ago
    > Why shouldn't online businesses be able to reject some of their customers? If they were advertising it as "a website for everyone except these opinions: ...", your point would have been valid. That's why.
    • MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
      It's right there in the T&C and content guidelines isn't it?
      • NayamAmarshe 4y ago
        That's the thing, it's not. If they specifically said that I'd be banned for having certain opinions different from Zuckerberg, I'd have never complained but they didn't. They are vague, they are disingenuous and I honestly cannot believe so many people are defending them for censoring others. Politics aside, Facebook bans people for smallest of things. I got banned for 30 days for quoting someone's comment. It's a censorship dystopia that only people with short-sighted vision of the future could support.
        • galaxyLogic 4y ago
          I think the concern here is that the new ruling could make it mandatory for Facebook etc. to distribute hate-speech. Who wants such an outcome? The haters.
          • exodust 4y ago
            No. Hate-speech is illegal, not a "viewpoint we don't agree with". Your restaurant analogy falls short too. Dress-code is the equivalent of "civility" in discussion, and is a neutral bar that is set. It doesn't favor cotton shirts over linen shirts, which is what censoring a viewpoint would be.
• oneplane 4y ago
  At some point it's going to be too hard and too negative to be an online 'speech' company. If anything big enough to have to deal with this were to disappear (bankrupt, pivot to other business, shrink to a smaller niche, or just disband), that would be nice and quiet for everyone. At least there is no law requiring a business to continue to exist just so a screaming cesspool that depends on it can also exist.
  • themitigating 4y ago
    It will create echo chambers of similar views.
    • daemoens 4y ago
      Which will speed up issues with extremism greatly.
      • themitigating 4y ago
        Which is bad. Are you adding to my assessment or is this a counter that I'm not getting?
        • daemoens 4y ago
          Just adding.
      • zionic 4y ago
        As opposed to the centralized extremism export machine we have now.
        • daemoens 4y ago
          Which is why I said it’ll speed it up.
• cabaalis 4y ago
  Naming who appointed judges when writing articles about their decisions is a dog whistle. Change my mind.
  • bglazer 4y ago
    Its not a dog whistle, its just a whistle. Judges have the politics of the politicians who appoint them; why else would the politicians appoint them? Frankly, it’s extremely naive to assume that judges are apolitical.
    • foolfoolz 4y ago
      it’s extremely naive to assume politics are the only reason to appoint a judge
• concinds 4y ago
  I don't like the frame of "big tech's rights." Sure, corporations have free speech rights in America. But the pressure to ban "bad people" comes from below; organized campaigns pressure Twitter/Facebook et al to ban certain people, and they oblige in order to protect their brand. That's a problem when we live under a "platform oligopoly" where high-profile people banned from one platform get banned everywhere at once. It's strange that people conflate corporations' free, voluntary actions, with corporations being pressured by an intolerant minority[0]. And before you respond with "we shouldn't be tolerant of intolerance", read this thread: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1037273239347703808 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1037273239347703808 [0]: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
• _hcuq 4y ago
  “Congress shall make no law… …abridging the freedom of speech”. Certainly doesn’t guarantee anyone a right to be published on any platform they want….
  • junofan 4y ago
    It also doesn’t say anything about corporations. We strike a balance regardless.
• westurner 4y ago
  Does this mean that newspaper Information Service Providers are now obligated to must-carry opinion pieces from political viewpoints that oppose those of the editors in the given district? Does this mean that newspapers in Texas are now obligated to carry liberal opinion pieces? Equal time in Texas at last. Must-carry provision of a contract for service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry
  • soup10 4y ago
    no
    • westurner 4y ago
      How limited is the given district court of appeals case law precedent in regards to must-carry and Equal time rules for non-licensed spectrum Information Service providers? Are they now common carrier liability, too? Equal time rules and American media history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule Who pays for all of this? > "Give me my free water!"
      • westurner 4y ago
        From "FCC fairness doctrine" (1949-1987) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine : > The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited as a contributing factor in the rising level of party polarization in the United States. [5][6]
        • westurner 4y ago
          Because the free flow of information is essential to democracy, it is in the Public Interest to support a market of new and established flourishing information service providers, not a market of exploited must-carry'ers subject to district-level criteria for ejection or free water for life. Shouldn't all publications, all information services be subject to any and all such Equal Time and Must-Carry interpretations? Your newspaper may not regulate viewpoints: in its editorial section or otherwise. Must carry. Equal time. The wall of one's business, perhaps. You must keep that up there on your business's wall. ** In this instance, is there a contract for future performance? How does Statute of Frauds apply to contracts worth over $500?
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• rdxm 4y ago
• anotherevan 4y ago
  Them: “You must censor hate speech on the internet!” Also them: “I didn’t mean you should censor my hate speech!”
  • sbaiddn 4y ago
    Who's "them"?
• mkl95 4y ago
  > A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld a Texas law that bars large social media companies from banning or censoring users based on "viewpoint," a setback for technology industry groups that say the measure would turn platforms into bastions of dangerous content There are many reasons why those companies censor content and they usually have nothing to do with "viewpoints". If some partner demands I shut some content down, should I be forced to refuse and ruin that partnership? Let's not forget that public facing sections of social networks are just fronts for huge B2B operations.
• whywhywhydude 4y ago
  People should be free to speak their mind. Bigots, supremacists, terrorists, racists people should be able to speak freely. It’s not as if these people don’t exist. Keeping their anger pent up is bad, and can lead to insurrection. I know foxnews and even youtube let them speak freely in the comments section. Twitter should just follow the same model.
• littlestymaar 4y ago
  Surprisingly, I see no mention of DMCA in the comments here, even though the same company are actually mandated by DMCA to effectively regulate content. (And yes, the right or not to share cultural content freely on the internet is a political topic…)
• karmasimida 4y ago
  Long overdue. Just let people say what the want, by censoring them, you are validating their perspective.
  • 8note 4y ago
    Aight. You now have to repeat every thing i say to your loved ones, as if you were the one saying it.
    • hunterb123 4y ago
      Your post is a great example of analogies not being HN users strong point.
    • NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
• fny 4y ago
  Texas is setting itself up to be a huge regulatory counterweight to California. 1. We had the finance ruling related to fossil fuels. 2. We had the abortion ruling. 3. We now have this. This is going to be a huge shift politically. California, given the size of its economy, has often been a defacto regulatory power across the US. Given California's energy issues and high debt levels, their influence may wane even further. What I find even more fascinating is that Texas has a heavy libertarian bent coupled with cultural conservatism while California is the opposite. Neither, in my opinion, are bastions for freedom proper. May you live in interesting times they say...
  • slumpt_ 4y ago
    Regulatory counterweight I think may attribute outsized influence to the regressive state. I can't imagine the abortion ruling is going to have any impact on how California ever conducts itself, e.g. Even in the event of a federal ban California would likely protest and protect women's autonomy.
    • Spivak 4y ago
      I find this particularly relevant because in a recent public debate in my state the pro-life proponent actually argued that an abortion ban wasn’t taking any rights away from women since they could just go to California. It was a irl selfawarewolves.
      • slumpt_ 4y ago
        Ah yeah, interesting point. The old “everyone can move freely because it’s evidently trivially cheap to do so” imaginary tale they like to weave. Hadn’t considered how that’d change the discourse for abortion but I can see it now.
• zhxshen 4y ago
  I am not a lawyer, but if this puts the screws to social media, it is a beautiful thing.
• hot_gril 4y ago
  I'll believe there's compliance with this when I see it. Just looks like a stunt.
• afrcnc 4y ago
  US right-wing politicians are literally one step removed from neo-nazis and they're literally ruining the internet for everyone now.
• CharlesW 4y ago
  Neat, so Stormfront loses the power to delete posts supporting Critical Race Theory?
  • lettergram 4y ago
    I think the actual Texas law states that after your a certain size you’re considered the commons and then yes, you cannot ban people based on beliefs. That doesn’t mean you have to promote them, so you can probably create a “only see if you follow this person” or something.
  • rib3ye 4y ago
    Does it have more than 50m “users” (I guess this means registered accounts)?
    • starik36 4y ago
      I bet if you remove the bots and boot the inactive account, Twitter might come close to that.
• user3939382 4y ago
  I made a comment that a lot of people are opposed to this because these platforms are censoring their political enemies and my comment was flagged/censored. Bravo.
• osigurdson 4y ago
  Maybe there should just be a way to for people to opt in to censorship in their feeds. For example, one could click on a "no racism checkbox" in order to have racist content removed from their feeds. This way, platforms would be responsible for detection instead of curation. It seems like it would be better for the platforms as well.
  • tremarley 4y ago
    This sounds like a genuinely excellent idea
  • dexwiz 4y ago
    This just moves the goalposts. Should they be determining what is racist and what is “acceptable” speech?
    • osigurdson 4y ago
      You could always un-click all filters and get all views (including bots, etc). If the censorship selections are filtering more or less than what you want, it could be flagged to help train the algorithms.
    • Spivak 4y ago
      I mean if I specifically ask Twitter’s moderation team to do this by turning on the filter then… yes? That’s kinda the whole point. Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr are borderline unusable without blocklists / recursive blockers.
  • osigurdson 4y ago
    For the downvoters, do you want platform controlled censorship, no censorship at all or something else?
• jupp0r 4y ago
  I wonder who will draw the line between right wing hate speech and islamic terrorist propaganda, for example. You have to draw the line somewhere, who's going to draw it? Who is going to enforce it? The current system is arguably not great but I fear that its replacement will be worse.
• gentleman11 4y ago
  This is all a distraction. This is only a problem because we live in monopoly/oligopoly world. If the platforms weren’t so centralized, this is a non issue.
• pstuart 4y ago
  To the free speech absolutists here: would you not consider HN a "public square"? Would you care to engage in some of that speech that you feel is suppressed elsewhere? Would you be surprised if you were admonished and ultimately "censored"? Would your rights have been violated?
• pyuser583 4y ago
  One part I agree with is that Twitter marketed itself as free speech, only to change tune when it became market dominant. That’s false advertising, or at least bait and switch.
• jollybean 4y ago
  Companies web sites are private property, they should be able to do as they please as long as their policies are consistent. At some point, some services cross into the threshold of 'public good' - in which case probably a hint more regulation should apply. But otherwise, the '1st Amendment' which basically indicates the government should 'stay out of it' is on the side of Big Corp. not government.
• etchalon 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• robertwt7 4y ago
  I don’t really understand the law, and I agree that big tech shouldn’t be able to regulate online speech. However one thing that I’m confused is, what about some dangerous stuff like radicalisation which then will produce terrorists or extremist? Other than that, I agree that no one should be censored for any reason I guess it is a hard topic to define which one is the limit of freedom of “speech”
  • bheadmaster 4y ago
    > However one thing that I’m confused is, what about some dangerous stuff like radicalisation which then will produce terrorists or extremist? It is questionable whether or not censoring such views actually brings any benefit at all. One counterargument would be that people who are censored actually feel empowered to pursue their ideals more strongly, since it reinforces their belief that there is some conspiracy that they're fighting against. I believe that a similar effect has happened during Covid censorship. On the other hand, censoring everyone else has many negative consequences on a free society, making it less free. One example would be the skewed image of the public opinion. If you go on Reddit, a majority of all (US) political posts seem to be blues. I'm fairly sure that reds are not a minority in the US (since they managed to win the election 2017), yet their public image is being distorted. And Reddit is big enough to actually influence masses' opinions. The question is just whether or not the global censorship is a reasonable tradeoff. To me, personally, it doesn't seem so.
    • eh5q3y34t 4y ago
      I think the most reasonable argument against "What about radicalization?" is that we already allow radicalizing content. Both sides of the political spectrum, the lgbt communit, blm, everyone and their dog uses radicalizing content.
    • hackerlight 4y ago
      I think psychology and history is quite clear that sunlight isn't the best disinfectant. Ideas are like viruses, the more exposure they get the more they spread, irrespective of their truth value. Repetition and social proof directly cause idea contagion. "negative consequences on a free society, making it less free" This is an overly myopic and ideological view of freedom, in many respects. It privileges negative freedoms (right to spew hatred) at the expense of positive freedoms (right to not be genocided when hate speech consumes a society). And it ignores that bandwidth is limited, so kicking off crackpots can actually improve the negative freedom of everyone else to communicate.
• kybernetyk 4y ago
  >In May, the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, found that most of a similar Florida law violates the companies' free speech rights and cannot be enforced Why should a _company_ have free speech guaranteed by the constitution? It's a company - not a person.
  • c3534l 4y ago
    A company is just a group of people.
    • junofan 4y ago
      But limited liability companies are definitely more than just a group of people.
      • c3534l 4y ago
        Okay, but its still a group of people.
  • barry-cotter 4y ago
    People do not generally lose rights by coming together to do something.
    • junofan 4y ago
      What if the state limits their liability? Can extra rules apply to balance the lack of liability?
      • barry-cotter 4y ago
        Depends on the state involved. I’m sure that would be perfectly fine in Austria, or other countries with nominal free speech rights like Germany. In the US the First Amendment is generally interpreted maximally.
• that_guy_iain 4y ago
  Does this mean Mr Trump is heading back to Twitter with his millions of followers reinstated?
• devwastaken 4y ago
  Because section 230 says content posted to online services is not the services speech - first ammendment cannot apply. Therefore what is and isn't allowed to be posted can be regulated. Same idea as what the FCC did for media. States and feds have the power, the problem is what we do with it. If tech doesn't like it, blacklist states. There's going to be chaos one way or another. This is a very long time coming.
  • philjohn 4y ago
    the Texas law states you can't geofence TX or not operate in the state, which is forcing service.
• IYasha 4y ago
  Holy shivers, guys! I've read about this on arstechnica.com and what surprised me the most is the amount of negative sentiment towards the absence of censoring. I highly doubt those are ordinary people writing comments. Most likely hired commenters or bots. ( I hope world's majority still appreciates freedom of communication.
  • rightbyte 4y ago
    Dunno if bots. Commenting when there is ranking votes quickly turns into a cesspool if there is a culture of "downvote to disagree".
  • tux3 4y ago
    I can't tell if this is supposed to be taken literally, but I like that it's a sort of self-demonstrating comment. The decision seems like it makes it easier for bots who pretend to be humans to be protected as a side-effect, but in the same paragraph you suspect people of being bots. Damn bots, they're everywhere! :) (Full disclaimer: I've actually no strong opinion on the decision. I like freedom of speech, and I also like clean forum spaces free of manufactured consensus. Seems complex to predict the impact.)
  • hot_gril 4y ago
    They aren't bots. Don't make an accusation like that without a reason for it. (And I also disagree with the Texas law.)
• rangersanger 4y ago
  So does this mean the conservative baker has to make me a cake for my gay wedding?
  • dane-pgp 4y ago
    Only if the baker makes 50 million active cakes per month.
• malloci 4y ago
  Two things: 1) Is there anything stopping them from simply blocking all of Texas from visiting their sites? Keeps them from violating both texas law as well as federal law 2) Does this translate to any business operating in the state of Texas or is it simply online companies?