14 ms·

This seems to be centered on politics/candidates, which IMO is the wrong motivation. Politicians really should not have special exemptions or privileges when i

• nonethewiser 4y ago
  The law applies to social media sights with > 100,000 monthly active users.
• pessimizer 4y ago
  > This seems to be centered on politics/candidates, which IMO is the wrong motivation. Because political censorship is the worst censorship (you might argue that all censorship is political.) It's like how political prisoners are the easiest sign a place is a dictatorship. If the powerful are censoring the political process, there are no means to make any of the powerful less powerful. It becomes self-perpetuating.
  • marcosdumay 4y ago
    Political speech is not "speech made by politicians".
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      Who are you quoting, and why aren't you replying to them?
  • brk 4y ago
    But at the same time, politicians using social media to continuously publish blatant lies is also not a mechanism for stable government. In the past, this was regulated to a large degree by traditional media outlets being a filter of sorts and not just printing any random direct statement made by a politician. I think there is a balance between "social media must not interfere with blatantly false statements from politicians" and "social media can ban their political detractors without consequence". The ideal reality would be the public actually holding politicians responsible for being deceptive or treasonous, but that does not appear to be on the horizon either.
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      > politicians using social media to continuously publish blatant lies is also not a mechanism for stable government. The solution being proposed is to allow administrations to keep pushing narratives that support the regime. You can't consider yourself a defender of the population against politicians while also granting them the power to suppress speech through proxies. When you find yourself favorably referring to mainstream media in the past for their ability to control the speech of elected officials, you're spiraling towards Zimbabwe.
      • caf 4y ago
        "through proxies" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The alternative being suggested here seems to be to allow the regime to compel media outlet to publish their propaganda, because some don't like media outlets being able to choose the views they promote.
  • scarface74 4y ago
    There is absolutely nothing stopping conservatives from establishing their own social media platform. Conservatives love “the free market” as long as it is working for them. Whose fault is it that Truth Social is an abysmal failure?
    • b800h 4y ago
      I think there's a potential argument against this. 1. Network effects mean that there's only space for one platform in a particular niche. 2. There are reports (are they reliable?) that people who are more left wing are more habitually online and post much more. If the above two are true, then left-wing social networks will naturally dominate.
      • scarface74 4y ago
        There is only space for one platform, yet there are plenty of platforms for discourse. Are you really arguing that for instance Trump or Foxnews don’t have the following to start an alternate social media? As far as #2, why should tgat be an argument for the government to be involved?
        • b800h 4y ago
          Well I'm hedging my bets. If it really is true that the market in a particular area (microblogging for instance) can only be dominated by a single company, and also that left-wing users are more active, then absolutely, I'm arguing that Fox would be unable to maintain a successful rival to Twitter. As far as #2 is concerned, well I don't know if it is an argument for the government to become involved, but if something is driving huge divisions in society which are arguably destabilising the country (again, this is arguably wrong) then should the government not intervene? I'm European by the way, so my philosophical priors might be different to those of an American. It's not as though government doesn't regulated other human behaviours which cause damage if left unregulated. Drink driving, for example.
          • scarface74 4y ago
  • bandyaboot 4y ago
    > It's like how political prisoners are the easiest sign a place is a dictatorship. That’s an easy sign right up until you have to define “political prisoner”. According to some, people convicted of crimes committed during the January 6th insanity are “political prisoners”.
    • Volundr 4y ago
      It'd also not be unreasonable to look at many of the people imprisoned for the US's "war on drugs" that way. Many of those laws were written targeting "undesirable" voters.
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      Political prisoners are people imprisoned for their speech and influence. A Jan 6 person could very well be a political prisoner, and since I'm not a Democrat I can't be sure of their collective guilt without actually reading about their cases.
      • seadan83 4y ago
        > Political prisoners are people imprisoned for their speech and influence. If so, that is the clearest violation of the 1st amendment. A common misunderstanding is that there is no unfettered right to free speech anywhere, anytime, free of any consequence. The 1st amendment only guarantees that the government shall not impose consequences based on speech alone (with the exception of the crowded movie theater example or incitements to imminent violence). That is very different from a movie theater asking someone to leave because they are talking (which the movie theater is perfectly in their right to deny service to anyone) AFAIK, all Jan 6 convictions have been for trespass, obstruction of government, assault, etc.. If you know of any examples that do not fall into similar categories, that would be extremely interesting.
      • bandyaboot 4y ago
        Can you honestly tell yourself that you offer the same charity to people arrested during George Floyd riots? That some of those people may very well be political prisoners? I think not.
• rayiner 4y ago
  The first amendment case law recognizes that protection for political speech is the very core of the First Amendment. It’s the whole point. Indeed, prior to the mid-20th century, it was understood that other kinds of expressive speech (pornography, etc.) did not receive as much, if any, protection.
  • scarface74 4y ago
    First Amendment case law involves the government. If the government of Florida wants a free for all social media platform, it can create one. If they don’t have the technical aptitude, I’ll gladly accept a multi million dollar contract to lead the creation of one. Leading the development of large scale infrastructure and back end development is kind of mg thing.
    • seadan83 4y ago
      100% this. The 1st amendment protects free speech from the government. If you're in a bar, and they don't like what you're saying, they can ask you to leave. Then it all boils down to whether things like Twitter and Facebook are akin to the public square, a public street. That is hard to fathom given you are using their servers, their software, which they pay for and provide as a service (in something of a quid-pro-quo since they advertise to you, but that is beside the point). If the government were paying the bill for the servers, as something as a free fully scaled hosting service - then maybe services operating on those platforms could be considered public (yet the software seems like it still would be proprietary). So, seemingly it would need to be a free and fully government run Twitter clone to then have first amendment protections kick in.
      • rayiner 4y ago
        But is Facebook like a bar? Or is it a pipe for user generated content?
        • scarface74 4y ago
          So is HN. Are you comfortable with the government telling HN that it can’t ban overly political content?
• pGuitar 4y ago
  Motivations don't matter... this is what needs to happen.
• edgyquant 4y ago
  Maybe but I think it’s the right direction. These are not apps they are communications protocols owned by rent seekers