4 ms·

In one case the corporation is speaking. In the other the corporation is facilitating me speaking to you (like a telephone wire). That strikes me as a pretty c

In one case the corporation is speaking. In the other the corporation is facilitating me speaking to you (like a telephone wire). That strikes me as a pretty clear distinction. My hair is not blown back at all here.

guelo 4y ago
> like a telephone wire That's not why people write on social media. There are very many "telephone wires" that have nobody listening on the other side. What every contributor is after is the audience. But there is no legal right to an audience.
belltaco 4y ago
So a Linux User Group cannot kick out someone that's espousing neo-nazi viewpoints during meetings because they're a facilitator of them speaking to you, and because neo-nazism is a political viewpoint?
- BrandonM 4y ago
  Does the LUG have 50M MAU?
  - jlawson 4y ago
    This is really the critical factor. Anti-speech pro-corporate-authority advocates always try to put these monopolistic, unescapable megacorporations in the same category as some local mom-and-pop operation. It's a massive intentional category error; megacorps are not little companies you can just walk awawy from. There is a point where a corporation's influence becomes so unescapable and so capable of greatly degrading your life that it must be treated in some ways like a government, for the same reasons we treat government differently from just another company or citizen. The same reason that the phone company or a company that owns all the local roads or water mains can't decide to "stop serving" you because they don't like your religion.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      You mean corporations have a monopoly on violence like the government has where they can legally take away your property and liberty.
      - jlawson 4y ago
        Yes. A handful of megacorps acting together (and they all act together generally) can take away your property by banning you, which makes it impossible to have a normal career in fields as diverse as academia, creative media, journalism, tech, and many others. If you're running a small business and trying to promote it, being banned from social media is a huge hit as well. They already have taken away your liberty to speak your mind in the common public square of our society - social media - because you know they'll ban you if you say any of a wide variety of things, leading to the consequences described above.
        scarface74 4y ago
        The common public square is just that - paid for and maintained with public money. Trump doesn’t seem to have any issue getting his message out or getting people to come to his rallies. Before the internet existed, the entire civil rights movement was organized by leaders going to churches - even though the locations were actively being bombed, leaders were being arrested, water hosed, lynched, bitten by police dogs, etc. Cry me a river that some conservatives can’t post on Twitter.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      Facebook doesn't own all the local roads or water mains though. They're one website. It's just as easy to go to twitter.com as it is truthsocial.com or mastodon.social. If Comcast owned practically the only ISP in my area then yes they should be considered a common carrier and shouldn't be able to discriminate traffic that isn't trying to break their stuff. In that case they would be the company that owns the roads or the water mains. Facebook isn't like that in the slightest.
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
  - belltaco 4y ago
    Where in the law does it say different rules for 50M MAU vs 50?
    - csande17 4y ago
      From the article: > The Texas law forbids social media companies with at least 50 million monthly active users from acting to "censor" users based on "viewpoint," and allows either users or the Texas attorney general to sue to enforce the law. From the law (https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/872/billtext/html/HB00020F.htm https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/872/billtext/html/HB00020F...): > This chapter applies only to a social media platform that functionally has more than 50 million active users in the United States in a calendar month.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  By some readings of section 230, they may not be able to unless they want to be treated as a publisher of speech. However, almost nobody is going to actually argue that this is the case. Also, IIRC moderation rules are allowed, and if your rule is "no politics on the forum" and someone talks politics, they can be banned. Same with "no racism" or "no antisemitic comments."
  - magicalist 4y ago
    > By some readings of section 230 No, only by a reading of a made up text that some people wish was in section 230. If you're bringing it up I'm sure you've had pointed out before that there is no publisher/platform distinction in it. > Also, IIRC moderation rules are allowed, and if your rule is "no politics on the forum" and someone talks politics, they can be banned. The first person you ban is going to argue with you about the definition of "politics". So many people have been through this idea before, and it always leads right back to "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone".
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      It turns out that there actually are several subjects that are pretty well defined to be "politics," and there are lots of subjects of conversation that are definitely not "politics." There is a gray area, and as a forum moderator you can choose where the line is as long as you apply the rule consistently. Most of the discussion about this right now is about the consistent application of those rules: people point out one side getting moderated more heavily on certain forums than the other side.
  - mijoharas 4y ago
    Section 230 (c) 3. Seems pretty clear that they can moderate for anything the provider finds objectionable. Do you think this is unclear? > No provider or user of an interactive com- puter 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, exces- sively violent, harassing, or otherwise objec- tionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;
- swayvil 4y ago
  Is it a free forum or isn't it? Is it a transparent window between you and me or isn't it? To pretend that it is when it actually isn't is a lie. So trim the conversation all you like, just don't pretend that you aren't doing it. An "accounting of all trimming" might be appropriate here, right up front. Or, alternatively, some kind of "untrimmed" certification.
DannyBee 4y ago
The first amendment does not protect you against anything but the government. Full stop. Between people and people, corporations and corporations, and corporations and people it does nothing. The opinion fails at this very basic fact because they want it to be false. Not because there's any law suggesting it is false, nor has there been in a hundred years, but because they dont like it they just decided to make it up. The states do not get to change this. If you want something else pass an amendment, don't try to get a bunch of crazy unqualified judges to make a mess.
- eduction 4y ago
  > The first amendment does not protect you against anything but the government. Full stop. Even setting aside this opinion, this is false, at least according to the Supreme Court. See the PruneYard case that this court repeatedly cites https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v....
  - sangreal 4y ago
    That decision does not dispute what you quoted at all. That case is not even about the first amendment, it is based on California’s state constitution. In fact your link makes the exact claim as the one you say is false. > the federal constitution's First Amendment contains only a negative command to Congress to not abridge the freedom of speech
    - eduction 4y ago
      Touché! But the bit I quoted is something of a non sequitur as this case, like PruneYard, concerns a state law extending additional speech protections into the private sector, so PruneYard does seem relevant, as PruneYard affirmed a state’s ability to do this. Further, it doesn’t seem much rebuttal of this ruling about a state law to argue the First Amendment offers no protection to those censored by Facebook (as the part I quoted was doing). The First Amendment enters the case in terms of whether it protects Facebook from this law, not whether it protects users from censorship corporate censorship.
mustache_kimono 4y ago
I'm not sure telephone companies or shipping services are a good analogy here, though, yes, that's an example the opinion uses. One key difference is that telephones are generally one to one or one to few communications, whereas social media platforms are a megaphone to speak to many people? Do other forms of mass communication require you deliver any and all speech? If you're going to say social media is like a telephone, I think you have to at least consider in what ways it actually isn't like a telephone.

guelo 4y ago

> like a telephone wire That's not why people write on social media. There are very many "telephone wires" that have nobody listening on the other side. What every contributor is after is the audience. But there is no legal right to an audience.

belltaco 4y ago

So a Linux User Group cannot kick out someone that's espousing neo-nazi viewpoints during meetings because they're a facilitator of them speaking to you, and because neo-nazism is a political viewpoint?

BrandonM 4y ago
Does the LUG have 50M MAU?
- jlawson 4y ago
  This is really the critical factor. Anti-speech pro-corporate-authority advocates always try to put these monopolistic, unescapable megacorporations in the same category as some local mom-and-pop operation. It's a massive intentional category error; megacorps are not little companies you can just walk awawy from. There is a point where a corporation's influence becomes so unescapable and so capable of greatly degrading your life that it must be treated in some ways like a government, for the same reasons we treat government differently from just another company or citizen. The same reason that the phone company or a company that owns all the local roads or water mains can't decide to "stop serving" you because they don't like your religion.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    You mean corporations have a monopoly on violence like the government has where they can legally take away your property and liberty.
    - jlawson 4y ago
      Yes. A handful of megacorps acting together (and they all act together generally) can take away your property by banning you, which makes it impossible to have a normal career in fields as diverse as academia, creative media, journalism, tech, and many others. If you're running a small business and trying to promote it, being banned from social media is a huge hit as well. They already have taken away your liberty to speak your mind in the common public square of our society - social media - because you know they'll ban you if you say any of a wide variety of things, leading to the consequences described above.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        The common public square is just that - paid for and maintained with public money. Trump doesn’t seem to have any issue getting his message out or getting people to come to his rallies. Before the internet existed, the entire civil rights movement was organized by leaders going to churches - even though the locations were actively being bombed, leaders were being arrested, water hosed, lynched, bitten by police dogs, etc. Cry me a river that some conservatives can’t post on Twitter.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    Facebook doesn't own all the local roads or water mains though. They're one website. It's just as easy to go to twitter.com as it is truthsocial.com or mastodon.social. If Comcast owned practically the only ISP in my area then yes they should be considered a common carrier and shouldn't be able to discriminate traffic that isn't trying to break their stuff. In that case they would be the company that owns the roads or the water mains. Facebook isn't like that in the slightest.
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
- belltaco 4y ago
  Where in the law does it say different rules for 50M MAU vs 50?
  - csande17 4y ago
    From the article: > The Texas law forbids social media companies with at least 50 million monthly active users from acting to "censor" users based on "viewpoint," and allows either users or the Texas attorney general to sue to enforce the law. From the law (https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/872/billtext/html/HB00020F.htm https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/872/billtext/html/HB00020F...): > This chapter applies only to a social media platform that functionally has more than 50 million active users in the United States in a calendar month.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
By some readings of section 230, they may not be able to unless they want to be treated as a publisher of speech. However, almost nobody is going to actually argue that this is the case. Also, IIRC moderation rules are allowed, and if your rule is "no politics on the forum" and someone talks politics, they can be banned. Same with "no racism" or "no antisemitic comments."
- magicalist 4y ago
  > By some readings of section 230 No, only by a reading of a made up text that some people wish was in section 230. If you're bringing it up I'm sure you've had pointed out before that there is no publisher/platform distinction in it. > Also, IIRC moderation rules are allowed, and if your rule is "no politics on the forum" and someone talks politics, they can be banned. The first person you ban is going to argue with you about the definition of "politics". So many people have been through this idea before, and it always leads right back to "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone".
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    It turns out that there actually are several subjects that are pretty well defined to be "politics," and there are lots of subjects of conversation that are definitely not "politics." There is a gray area, and as a forum moderator you can choose where the line is as long as you apply the rule consistently. Most of the discussion about this right now is about the consistent application of those rules: people point out one side getting moderated more heavily on certain forums than the other side.
- mijoharas 4y ago
  Section 230 (c) 3. Seems pretty clear that they can moderate for anything the provider finds objectionable. Do you think this is unclear? > No provider or user of an interactive com- puter 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, exces- sively violent, harassing, or otherwise objec- tionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;
swayvil 4y ago
Is it a free forum or isn't it? Is it a transparent window between you and me or isn't it? To pretend that it is when it actually isn't is a lie. So trim the conversation all you like, just don't pretend that you aren't doing it. An "accounting of all trimming" might be appropriate here, right up front. Or, alternatively, some kind of "untrimmed" certification.

DannyBee 4y ago

The first amendment does not protect you against anything but the government. Full stop. Between people and people, corporations and corporations, and corporations and people it does nothing. The opinion fails at this very basic fact because they want it to be false. Not because there's any law suggesting it is false, nor has there been in a hundred years, but because they dont like it they just decided to make it up. The states do not get to change this. If you want something else pass an amendment, don't try to get a bunch of crazy unqualified judges to make a mess.

eduction 4y ago
> The first amendment does not protect you against anything but the government. Full stop. Even setting aside this opinion, this is false, at least according to the Supreme Court. See the PruneYard case that this court repeatedly cites https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v....
- sangreal 4y ago
  That decision does not dispute what you quoted at all. That case is not even about the first amendment, it is based on California’s state constitution. In fact your link makes the exact claim as the one you say is false. > the federal constitution's First Amendment contains only a negative command to Congress to not abridge the freedom of speech
  - eduction 4y ago
    Touché! But the bit I quoted is something of a non sequitur as this case, like PruneYard, concerns a state law extending additional speech protections into the private sector, so PruneYard does seem relevant, as PruneYard affirmed a state’s ability to do this. Further, it doesn’t seem much rebuttal of this ruling about a state law to argue the First Amendment offers no protection to those censored by Facebook (as the part I quoted was doing). The First Amendment enters the case in terms of whether it protects Facebook from this law, not whether it protects users from censorship corporate censorship.

mustache_kimono 4y ago

I'm not sure telephone companies or shipping services are a good analogy here, though, yes, that's an example the opinion uses. One key difference is that telephones are generally one to one or one to few communications, whereas social media platforms are a megaphone to speak to many people? Do other forms of mass communication require you deliver any and all speech? If you're going to say social media is like a telephone, I think you have to at least consider in what ways it actually isn't like a telephone.