14 ms·

Facebook and Twitter have portals for the government to request takedowns

203 points by whoooooo123 4y ago

cm_silva 4y ago
Where does the first amendment fit in with this?
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  Misunderstood by Americans as it isn't absolute (FB and Twitter can just take your stuff down) - and nonexistent outside of it.
  - machina_ex_deus 4y ago
    It's specifically talking about the government. In this case, it was the government doing the censorship so first amendment applies.
    - fazfq 4y ago
      It's not the government doing the censorship if the private site can choose to refuse. In this case both were in cahoots, but that was (is?) Twitter's prerogative.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      No, the government is requesting something to be taken down. Short of the exceptions mentioned up above, the platforms are not obligated whatsoever to follow those requests.
      - jtc331 4y ago
        My understanding is that there is already court precedent that the government can’t do this (use private companies to do their censorship even if it’s not strictly guaranteed to happen).
        gsibble 4y ago
        There is, even if the companies can refuse. The government cannot ask companies to censor something. This is a direct violation of the first amendment.
        ethanbond 4y ago
        News to me. What case established it? I would be pretty surprised if this was true but 3rd Party Doctrine is in good standing in 99% of cases. Edit: Yeah, it appears this is not true at all. The government of course cannot coerce a private company to do this (which is obvious since that'd be tantamount to the government itself doing the censorship), but they absolutely can request it. https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-private-entities-to-restrict-others-speech/ https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-p...
  - cm_silva 4y ago
    I'm not an American, so I wouldn't know. The question was: How does it fit in? Because the government is involving itself in actions of censorship, even if it is one step removed. Similar to how I can still be accused and convicted of a crime, if the only thing I did was facilitating it? I'm not a lawyer, but I hope I'm getting my point across here.
    - jcranmer 4y ago
      The First Amendment generally only applies to governments. If companies exert government powers--company towns are the canonical example here--it can apply to them, but only to the extent that they are exerting such powers. The other way you can get state action is if there is some degree of government coercion (essentially, you have to be unable to say "no" to a request). There are some colorable arguments that the government has exerted such coercion over Twitter et al in recent years, but I have never seen a lawsuit alleging such a connection that properly made those arguments, as those people instead prefer to make cockamamie theories such as "§230 makes everybody state actors."
- rrwo 4y ago
  The first amendment means that the government(s) cannot prosecute you for what you say. But there are exceptions: - You can be prosecuted for the effects of speech, e.g. inciting people to riot/commit crimes; - Threats of violence are not protected; - Misleading claims in advertisements are not protected; You can still be sued in civil courts for libel/slander, or the effects of your speech. And people have the right to shun you if they don't like what you say. It does not mean that a publisher is obligated to publish your speech. A newspaper does not have to publish your letter, a blog can delete your comments, and Facebook or Twitter can delete your posts or even suspend your account.
  - cm_silva 4y ago
    Here is what the first amendment says: >Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The main question here is whether the government is abridging the freedom of speech. If they are only requesting for removals and not doing it directly, that may not be against the letter of the law but it certainly goes against the spirit. N.B. I'm not a lawyer. And I'm not going to go into the times that first amendment alone has been trampled, because life is short.
- gsibble 4y ago
  There is court precedent that government cannot use private entities to silence speech, as they are doing in this case. This is a pretty cut and dry violation of the first amendment. Expect lawsuits.
red_Seashell_32 4y ago
While on one hand it makes sense, as there’s tons of law-breaking, we need proper safety measurments to ensure this isn’t abused, to censor something what points out actual mistakes of government rather than hatespeech and alike. And from there, comes another issue - who will moderate it? It’s already terrible on facebook/instagram, and it’s purely report-amount based (talking from my personal and acquaintances experience, from last ~3 years). I’ve personally had case, where I was replying to comment (direct translation, so excuse the french) „All fa*** should be hanged” - reporting it had no effect, yet my reply “want to do it yourself” was worth month-long ban, because it’s against their community guidelines.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  > we need proper safety measurments to ensure this isn’t abused The courts. They can be sued if they abuse it.
  - krapp 4y ago
    But if we don't trust the government, we can't trust the courts.
    - LightG 4y ago
      Don't worry. You can escalate it to the Supreme Court.
  - OrangeMonkey 4y ago
    It seems like you are suggesting the government can restrain speech and then, if the people disagree that the government, that they then can sue the government to allow it. I don't want to live in the world you suggest. This right here is why I am glad we have a constitution in the US and resist efforts to make it easier to change.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      The world I suggest already exists. Some things are illegal to say.
hunglee2 4y ago
separation of Big Tech vs Big Govt needs to the thought of like the separation of Church vs State in Medieval times - two poles must be kept separate, to divide power and avoid absolute control
- concinds 4y ago
  Governments that use corporations as their agents are strongly disincentivized from properly regulating and breaking up these same corporations. Ending lobbying, closing the revolving door, and setting up strong boundaries between governments and corporations will be the key issue of the 21st century, as corporations continue to grow in power.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    Yes. But that's a very tough sell. The Gov gets information and control. The Corporations get immunity and continue to serve the wants and needs of Gov. This relationship makes political chatter about regulating Big Tech a joke. Sure there might be some faux wrist slapping but neither benefits from biting the hand that feds it.
- Dah00n 4y ago
  There are not enough separation of Church vs State in the US - not like in most other countries it is compared to. Religion has a lot of power still. But yes it should be absolute separation.
  - parminya 4y ago
    The UK has one or two state religions, bishops ex officio have seats in (the less powerful house of) parliament, and the upcoming coronation of their king will be a church service (with communion and all). Germany collects taxes on behalf of religious communities. Australia and Canada regularly send public money to religious schools. I don't think the separation of the Church and State in the US is particularly less than normal. The separation of Church and Politics in the US is probably less than normal, but that's an entirely separate matter, which - to the extent that is antidemocratic - can probably only be addressed by democratic reform.
6stringmerc 4y ago
What is the issue? Now there’s a goddamn paper trail of who asked for it and then the entity performed it. Get that shit in discovery if there’s actual harm. Odds are it’s mostly pearl clutching about how somebody’s elephant ballet porn got kicked out or some other dumb stuff. Context: Recently I went through a very toxic workplace gig that caused a severe mental episode, of issues I’ve known and been working to treat, but it damn near killed me and definitely hurt my family a LOT. After consulting with attorneys, the only recourse would be fiscally stupid - it would cost more to use the courts than recoup. These were good attorneys who felt very bad for what I went through. That’s when I had the epiphany that the MSA handcuffs don’t mean shit unless they can prove harm in court. At that point, they are wasting shareholder money and company time on a personal vendetta - as a private company, that can be their choice, but it’s objectively stupid. I’m still on the fence about going full name and shame, but they denied my unemployment claim so I was able to inform the workforce commission about their payments for works performed were more than a week after the law mandates…so I’ll let the professionals look into my claims before I let the whole peanut gallery take a crack at it. My point? There are probably fewer than 10 cases where this will have significant juice to be worth fighting. Those will be worth it. Your elephant ballet pr0n? Plenty of republican message boards that would probably love to be flooded with that content. They might say they want you to stop, but don’t mind that nonsense.
- candiodari 4y ago
  > Now there’s a goddamn paper trail of who asked for it and then the entity performed it. Get that shit in discovery if there’s actual harm. Odds are it’s mostly pearl clutching about how somebody’s elephant ... So governments are going to agree to oversight of these requests then? Because that's what a paper trail is, if it's not public then it's not a paper trail. And if it is public that's true, then why do we only hear about it now?
- incomingpain 4y ago
  >What is the issue? Now there’s a goddamn paper trail of who asked for it and then the entity performed it. Get that shit in discovery if there’s actual harm. Odds are it’s mostly pearl clutching about how somebody’s elephant ballet porn got kicked out or some other dumb stuff. In the USA context, if the government has a portal to prevent your speech without regard to the courts. That's a tremendous violation of your rights and would be an actual harm. The problem is the blame has been on twitter. As if twitter itself has been the one responsible for shutting down the speech. The harmed person can't do anything because twitter is protected by the government. Fundamentally the anti-republican speech reality may or may not have been ordered by the government. Rather than just twitter itself. The big "nightmare" of elon's twitter is the government may be revealed as the one who has been illegally curbing speech. This has been vaguely confirmed by Jack Dorsey. What happens when elon simply reveals this reality? Afterall why continue damaging the reputation of twitter? The reality is that the US government will have a large quantity of 1984 lawsuits paying out to republicans.
valdiorn 4y ago
I always thought this is the only future-proof way of dealing with "censorship". Leave it to the different governments to handle. Social media has been having problems enforcing censorship by different cultural standards for years. In America people are outraged if they see a nipple. In Europe, people are outraged when Facebook takes down a photo of a nursing mom. Let's not get started on political moderation in places like Russia, Iran or Saudi Arabia. Instead of a bunch of silicon valley liberals pushing their perceived standards and values onto the rest of the world, build tools and delegate the task to the local authorities. They don't like the content? They can spend the time to moderate and remove it themselves.
- drukenemo 4y ago
  This is not about a nipple. It is about empowering elected and non-elected forces to determine what is true and what version of a story they want.
- machina_ex_deus 4y ago
  Only illegal content should be moderated away by the platform, and only illegal in the sense of real human danger, not normal pornography or anti gay laws of Saudi Arabia. Everything else, give users the tools to moderate themselves. I wish you could have "filter lists" you can just subscribe to like ad block. You don't want to see something? Subscribe to a filter list. Or a community. Don't want someone to say something that is legal? Too bad.
  - sneak 4y ago
    The issue that people have is not that they can see it. It’s that other people can see it. Filter lists for one’s own experience are not the goal of that outrage. Keeping certain information from spreading to others (controlling what third parties can see) is the desire. The censorship urge is not “I am offended by this”, but more “if my neighbors read things like this, I am afraid”. I think it stems from a low-trust society and the assumption that the median members of society lack critical thinking skills.
    - 4y ago
MikusR 4y ago
"request" to take down.
- whoooooo123 4y ago
  I know, but the full Tweet wouldn't fit within the HN character limit.
  - bertil 4y ago
    That’s a big, big detail to cut.
    - ls15 4y ago
      Not if all/most requests are granted.
roenxi 4y ago
We should be careful to identify the right problem here - there are some standards that more or less everyone agrees should be kept. Someone has to moderate the platforms. But governments are the home of the most politically charged people in society. The moderators should be as distinct from the people who control the military as is humanly possible. It is a critical control of any free society that people can criticise the military freely, and the people who control the military as well. The risks of corruption in the military are off the charts high. Civilisation endingly high. Potential end of humanity high with the weapons we have today. Their flaws must be understood. The people who control Twitter should be free to decide what standards they enforce. The problem with Twitter's censorship was that the standards were stupid and hypocritical, bound to make embarrassing mistakes (there were a lot through COVID) and alienate around 20-30% of the population of the earth. But if they want to sink their own platform that is acceptable. But the problem with a special government portal is that it is corruption of genuinely important free speech principles. They shouldn't have a special portal. They should have multiple layers of indirection dampening their influence.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
throwaway13337 4y ago
We need to accept that tech companies that control the modern means of communications and commerce are defacto governments. And treat them as such. Communication on these platforms is public, protected speech just as it was on your street corner. And commerce on these platforms should be protected in the same way as commerce on the street. Government is government and needs to be restrained in all of its forms or it will become a force of authoritarianism that either works on it's own or within the machinations of current government. The EU is going the right direction with the Digital Markets Act. This act implicitly suggests that these gatekeepers have a special status though it does not outright call them what they are - governments. Speech protection should also be there as it is in all functional, modern governments. As should transparent legal process. Governments should have representation from their constituency. Big tech is government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act
- astrange 4y ago
  You definitely should not treat them as the government. For one thing, that'd mean the government would have the personal info behind everyone's social media accounts. For another, you can't sue the government unless it lets you do it. There's a reason NCMEC (the agency social media sites are required to report CSAM to) is a private organization and not "the government"; it's to protect your privacy rights via the 4th Amendment.
  - Ptchd 4y ago
    They do get that info from them already... Didn't you see Snowden's leak 10 years ago?
    - astrange 4y ago
      I actually know how these things work and you don’t need to lecture me with what you thought you understood someone bragging in a PowerPoint to mean. They get that info through legal processes like subpoenas that Twitter is entitled to fight because they’re private. And they put lots of legally unnecessary effort and their own money into fighting them; other platforms don’t try nearly as hard to stop it. See the DevinCow case. Of course Elon just fired the exec who did this.
concinds 4y ago
The problem is that the U.S.'s overgrown intelligence superstructure was in charge of these efforts. The leading agency, the Department of Homeland Security, was established to fight terrorism abroad, and is now trying to regulate public discourse in America. Since U.S. intelligence is completely out of control, it's practically guaranteed that they wouldn't comply with any laws passed by Congress to shut this program down; they'd just shift it to another agency, and fund it from black budgets, the same way they deal with other intelligence programs like PRISM. That's the real threat. People who support reasonable government regulation shouldn't be fooled into lumping in this "fight against disinformation" along with FDA rules or other normal government processes. You really want spooks being able to label things as "foreign disinformation"?
astrange 4y ago
Internet service providers are required to accept such law enforcement requests so of course they have portals for them. They're not required to act on the requests, just to accept them - only subpoenas are required but there are non-mandatory kinds of legal requests in emergency situations. In fact Twitter is one of the most aggressive platforms at spending their own money to protect your rights by fighting subpoenas. The people who most need their rights protected don't appreciate this and have mostly been complaining they get banned too often.
Yoric 4y ago
I'm going to comment on the portals themselves, not how they are used. Having portals makes very good sense. In all Western countries and probably pretty much all over the world, the law requires FB, Twitter and others, small and large, to be able to take down content and/or help in investigations. Having a portal to submit requests makes it easier for the relevant teams at FB, Twitter, etc. to: 1. Check that the person submitting the request is indeed a LEO from the expected country. 2. Route the request to the relevant team to confirm that the request is legal in the country from which the request issues. 3. Route the request to the relevant team to actually take down content (or aid with investigation, etc.) 4. Ensure some degree of both auditability and confidentiality during the process. 5. Be sure that you respond to the same person who handed out the request (or at least someone with the same credentials). The alternative being having LEO deliver subpoenas to the closest office and frantically looking for someone who can handle that subpoena. Or worse, somebody claiming to be a LEO requesting action through phone or e-mail, without any means to confirm identity. Note that having a portal doesn't mean that the request gets carried out automatically. It just improves communication.
- nfgivivu 4y ago
  You have an argument if it was purely for court issued warrants and subpoenas. But it's not for that. These portals are specifically for the government to censor people and infringe on the first amendment. These portals are evil and I hope these people go to jail.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    How do you know what these portals were for?
    - nfgivivu 4y ago
      It's in the article this twitter thread is discussing. https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/ https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformat...
  - 4y ago
senectus1 4y ago
Note this is not just about over reaching gov's I work for a Billionaire/Businessman/Philanthropist and he's currently taking FB to court over the fact they are running adverts featuring him advertising shit like bitcoin scams and obviously multiple fake accounts. FB can do better, and should be held accountable (in particular for taking money to advertise bitcoin scams)
- themitigating 4y ago
  So you want them to censor ads?
  - senectus1 4y ago
    I dont think its unreasonable to expect them to hold to a minimum ethical standard. Taking money for an obvious scam, that obviously misrepresents the person in the advert... not to mention the obviously fake accounts pretending to be that person. Do you really think this situation is "ok" ?
    - themitigating 4y ago
      No, I agree with censorship along with vaccine misinformation and election fraud lies. I'm not being sarcastic. I think misinformation will be the downfall of democracy
      - raxxorraxor 4y ago
        What if someone disagrees with that and wants to include potential or alleged misinformation? Should it be censored because it is your wish to do so? I would heavily dislike that approach and would not like to accommodate your wishes. We could just use different platforms and be fine with that. Maybe you could use a platform provided by government? Revival of the old times perhaps?
        themitigating 4y ago
roody15 4y ago
This is quite alarming when you look at some of the topics that were flagged as “misinformation”. For example in Norway the vaccine recommendations are quite different than the US in terms of children and covid. https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/vaccination-of-children-and-adolescents-against-covid-19/id2895513/ https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/vaccination-of-childre... It’s fine to agree or disagree but content like this was routinely flagged as “misleading”. Nothing misleading … other developed democratic nations have different viewpoints and different recommendations. The withdrawal of Afghanistan was a disaster. DHS recommendation of flagging of material related to the withdrawal again is not healthy for a democracy. Who watches the watchers? Who determines what content and topics need to flagged and removed? Just my two cents (having worked in government for over a decade) way too much trust is given to this type of government activity.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Can you show examples of the content that was flagged as misinformation? Did the post only contain a link to the study and/or snippets? Did the person mispresent the results to push a different opinion? I'm not saying that happened but I'd like to see a post that was flagged. EDIT: I also see you posted a link to the study not any censored comment? Why?
  - roody15 4y ago
    Try posting this link on Facebook or twitter and add a caption like "Not so sure children need to vaccinated for Covid" For fun I will post this on Reddit on /r/news or /r/health. Will see what happens.
    - themitigating 4y ago
      That's misinformation, it's an opinion based on nothing
      - roody15 4y ago
        It is an opinion but it is not based on nothing. For example Norway has determined that they do not believe children ages 0-11 should be vaccinated against covid. Sharing an opinion supported by some evidence (even if many may disagree) is not misinformation.
vintermann 4y ago
Not just for takedowns, but for throttling and suppression too. A very insidious form of censorship.
aslak 4y ago
I love to see the inside of the machine that manufactures democracy :)
UltraViolence 4y ago
What government are we talking about? The U.S. Federal government? And which parts? FBI? CIA? NSA? Or the State government? Or the Winchester County government? Or all of them?! And what about foreign nations? Can they access these portals as well?
- bertil 4y ago
  Any government can submit a request or a subpoena to any commercial company in any country. That company might comply, demand a formal subpoena, or oppose the subpoena in court. An international company can choose to leave a country if it thinks that its presence poses a legal risk. That portal is just to smooth things out when many requests are coming in and avoid confusion. This leak is about DHS, but every law enforcement agency in the US (including local sheriffs) has access to a secure interface to ask for certain things — access to the account of a missing teenager is a classic case for local LEO. Company lawyers use that portal to push back against excessive requests. It’s just more secure than email accounts that are the best tech too many police departments have and that were spoofed a couple of years ago as part of a wider security scandal.
EnKopVand 4y ago
I worked in digitalisation in the Danish public sector for a decade. It was at municipality level, but I did some work on the national strategies, and I'm sometimes just dumbfounded with how HN reacts to these sort of things. Of course SoMe networks have these sorts of portals... How did you expect they were allowed to operate in the sense they are? Obviously it's very 1984, but even in the West it's not like the secret police agencies aren't using every bit of privacy data they can get their hands on, they just do it differently than they would in an autocracy because we still have some rule of law protecting western citizens. Here in Denmark we've had a silly amount of "scandals" going back to echelon, where our government works with the US government to share danish citizen data in a way where our PET and FE (police and defence secret services) also benefit from it. In fact we're currently in the middle of a scandal where the former head of FE is possibly being charged with espionage because he may have told his mother about the US getting raw access to all Danish internet data at some family dinner. I say possibly and may because it's so locked down that we basically only know about it because he was arrested and things got leaked. But we do know that our secret police called every editor of every major news paper in for a little "talk" where they tried to scare our editors into not printing the story. Like I mentioned, it goes way back, back to before echelon really, and the Internet is fundamentally autocratic because we all need an ISP to get on it. I don't think there is really a big difference between the ISP and other "monopoly" companies in the sense that they all work with the governments in the areas in which they operate. It's obviously a dance of diplomacy, law and business. As you can see with the GDPR and how the EU is dealing with US tech companies, or how Facebook complies with autocracies around the world. It's no different in western countries, I mean, why do you think Condoleezza Rice got on the board of directors of Dropbox? In a post Snowden world it's not even tinfoil anymore, but most of us just don't really care.
thakoppno 4y ago
Anyone have thoughts about how these portal services are developed, deployed and operated? It seems like it’d require a clandestine set of employees within the companies. These repos wouldn’t be visible to the regular engineering employees. The infrastructure still needs to access the company’s production services. It seems to me like if one looked in the right places there would be evidence of something that looked a lot like a vulnerability.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
I want a portal to request take downs…
throwayyy479087 4y ago
There is absolutely no potential for abuse here. We have always been at war with Ba Sing Se.
piggybox 4y ago
On one hand the US government has been complaining about too much misinformation on FB and on the other hand it has a portal to control misinformation on social network? There must be some link broken in these two?
ck2 4y ago
Pretty sure gmail has government portals which is far more serious. But maybe Twitter fractionating into a dozen sites like BlueSky and Mastodon and completely independent networks is the best thing to happen, everyone runs their own brain-fart message site just like their own blog.
mushbino 4y ago
I have noticed a lot of accounts being banned who post things counter to the current US foreign policy narrative, whatever it may be at the time. Obviously not all of them, but a lot of popular ones.
remarkEon 4y ago
What I'm finding really fascinating about this saga is that there's an "Earth II" scenario, where Trump eeks out a victory in 2020 and this story that The Intercept broke is the setup for him to be impeached again. I fundamentally do not follow the arguments that people are putting forward for why these "committees" are needed. Imagine a Trump appointed DHS secretary using (or abusing) this portal for requesting takedowns of information about everything from 2020 to the current goings on in the Ukraine war. These tools shouldn't exist.
nora-puchreiner 4y ago
Even Rapidshare had that
monsecchris 4y ago
Zuckerberg failed to mention this in his interview with Rogan. Did the DHS force him to keep this secret?

203 points by whoooooo123 4y ago

cm_silva 4y ago

Where does the first amendment fit in with this?

Broken_Hippo 4y ago
Misunderstood by Americans as it isn't absolute (FB and Twitter can just take your stuff down) - and nonexistent outside of it.
- machina_ex_deus 4y ago
  It's specifically talking about the government. In this case, it was the government doing the censorship so first amendment applies.
  - fazfq 4y ago
    It's not the government doing the censorship if the private site can choose to refuse. In this case both were in cahoots, but that was (is?) Twitter's prerogative.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    No, the government is requesting something to be taken down. Short of the exceptions mentioned up above, the platforms are not obligated whatsoever to follow those requests.
    - jtc331 4y ago
      My understanding is that there is already court precedent that the government can’t do this (use private companies to do their censorship even if it’s not strictly guaranteed to happen).
      - gsibble 4y ago
        There is, even if the companies can refuse. The government cannot ask companies to censor something. This is a direct violation of the first amendment.
        ethanbond 4y ago
        News to me. What case established it? I would be pretty surprised if this was true but 3rd Party Doctrine is in good standing in 99% of cases. Edit: Yeah, it appears this is not true at all. The government of course cannot coerce a private company to do this (which is obvious since that'd be tantamount to the government itself doing the censorship), but they absolutely can request it. https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-private-entities-to-restrict-others-speech/ https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-p...
- cm_silva 4y ago
  I'm not an American, so I wouldn't know. The question was: How does it fit in? Because the government is involving itself in actions of censorship, even if it is one step removed. Similar to how I can still be accused and convicted of a crime, if the only thing I did was facilitating it? I'm not a lawyer, but I hope I'm getting my point across here.
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    The First Amendment generally only applies to governments. If companies exert government powers--company towns are the canonical example here--it can apply to them, but only to the extent that they are exerting such powers. The other way you can get state action is if there is some degree of government coercion (essentially, you have to be unable to say "no" to a request). There are some colorable arguments that the government has exerted such coercion over Twitter et al in recent years, but I have never seen a lawsuit alleging such a connection that properly made those arguments, as those people instead prefer to make cockamamie theories such as "§230 makes everybody state actors."
rrwo 4y ago
The first amendment means that the government(s) cannot prosecute you for what you say. But there are exceptions: - You can be prosecuted for the effects of speech, e.g. inciting people to riot/commit crimes; - Threats of violence are not protected; - Misleading claims in advertisements are not protected; You can still be sued in civil courts for libel/slander, or the effects of your speech. And people have the right to shun you if they don't like what you say. It does not mean that a publisher is obligated to publish your speech. A newspaper does not have to publish your letter, a blog can delete your comments, and Facebook or Twitter can delete your posts or even suspend your account.
- cm_silva 4y ago
  Here is what the first amendment says: >Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The main question here is whether the government is abridging the freedom of speech. If they are only requesting for removals and not doing it directly, that may not be against the letter of the law but it certainly goes against the spirit. N.B. I'm not a lawyer. And I'm not going to go into the times that first amendment alone has been trampled, because life is short.
gsibble 4y ago
There is court precedent that government cannot use private entities to silence speech, as they are doing in this case. This is a pretty cut and dry violation of the first amendment. Expect lawsuits.

red_Seashell_32 4y ago

While on one hand it makes sense, as there’s tons of law-breaking, we need proper safety measurments to ensure this isn’t abused, to censor something what points out actual mistakes of government rather than hatespeech and alike. And from there, comes another issue - who will moderate it? It’s already terrible on facebook/instagram, and it’s purely report-amount based (talking from my personal and acquaintances experience, from last ~3 years). I’ve personally had case, where I was replying to comment (direct translation, so excuse the french) „All fa*** should be hanged” - reporting it had no effect, yet my reply “want to do it yourself” was worth month-long ban, because it’s against their community guidelines.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
> we need proper safety measurments to ensure this isn’t abused The courts. They can be sued if they abuse it.
- krapp 4y ago
  But if we don't trust the government, we can't trust the courts.
  - LightG 4y ago
    Don't worry. You can escalate it to the Supreme Court.
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  It seems like you are suggesting the government can restrain speech and then, if the people disagree that the government, that they then can sue the government to allow it. I don't want to live in the world you suggest. This right here is why I am glad we have a constitution in the US and resist efforts to make it easier to change.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    The world I suggest already exists. Some things are illegal to say.

hunglee2 4y ago

separation of Big Tech vs Big Govt needs to the thought of like the separation of Church vs State in Medieval times - two poles must be kept separate, to divide power and avoid absolute control

concinds 4y ago
Governments that use corporations as their agents are strongly disincentivized from properly regulating and breaking up these same corporations. Ending lobbying, closing the revolving door, and setting up strong boundaries between governments and corporations will be the key issue of the 21st century, as corporations continue to grow in power.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  Yes. But that's a very tough sell. The Gov gets information and control. The Corporations get immunity and continue to serve the wants and needs of Gov. This relationship makes political chatter about regulating Big Tech a joke. Sure there might be some faux wrist slapping but neither benefits from biting the hand that feds it.
Dah00n 4y ago
There are not enough separation of Church vs State in the US - not like in most other countries it is compared to. Religion has a lot of power still. But yes it should be absolute separation.
- parminya 4y ago
  The UK has one or two state religions, bishops ex officio have seats in (the less powerful house of) parliament, and the upcoming coronation of their king will be a church service (with communion and all). Germany collects taxes on behalf of religious communities. Australia and Canada regularly send public money to religious schools. I don't think the separation of the Church and State in the US is particularly less than normal. The separation of Church and Politics in the US is probably less than normal, but that's an entirely separate matter, which - to the extent that is antidemocratic - can probably only be addressed by democratic reform.

6stringmerc 4y ago

What is the issue? Now there’s a goddamn paper trail of who asked for it and then the entity performed it. Get that shit in discovery if there’s actual harm. Odds are it’s mostly pearl clutching about how somebody’s elephant ballet porn got kicked out or some other dumb stuff. Context: Recently I went through a very toxic workplace gig that caused a severe mental episode, of issues I’ve known and been working to treat, but it damn near killed me and definitely hurt my family a LOT. After consulting with attorneys, the only recourse would be fiscally stupid - it would cost more to use the courts than recoup. These were good attorneys who felt very bad for what I went through. That’s when I had the epiphany that the MSA handcuffs don’t mean shit unless they can prove harm in court. At that point, they are wasting shareholder money and company time on a personal vendetta - as a private company, that can be their choice, but it’s objectively stupid. I’m still on the fence about going full name and shame, but they denied my unemployment claim so I was able to inform the workforce commission about their payments for works performed were more than a week after the law mandates…so I’ll let the professionals look into my claims before I let the whole peanut gallery take a crack at it. My point? There are probably fewer than 10 cases where this will have significant juice to be worth fighting. Those will be worth it. Your elephant ballet pr0n? Plenty of republican message boards that would probably love to be flooded with that content. They might say they want you to stop, but don’t mind that nonsense.

candiodari 4y ago
> Now there’s a goddamn paper trail of who asked for it and then the entity performed it. Get that shit in discovery if there’s actual harm. Odds are it’s mostly pearl clutching about how somebody’s elephant ... So governments are going to agree to oversight of these requests then? Because that's what a paper trail is, if it's not public then it's not a paper trail. And if it is public that's true, then why do we only hear about it now?
incomingpain 4y ago
>What is the issue? Now there’s a goddamn paper trail of who asked for it and then the entity performed it. Get that shit in discovery if there’s actual harm. Odds are it’s mostly pearl clutching about how somebody’s elephant ballet porn got kicked out or some other dumb stuff. In the USA context, if the government has a portal to prevent your speech without regard to the courts. That's a tremendous violation of your rights and would be an actual harm. The problem is the blame has been on twitter. As if twitter itself has been the one responsible for shutting down the speech. The harmed person can't do anything because twitter is protected by the government. Fundamentally the anti-republican speech reality may or may not have been ordered by the government. Rather than just twitter itself. The big "nightmare" of elon's twitter is the government may be revealed as the one who has been illegally curbing speech. This has been vaguely confirmed by Jack Dorsey. What happens when elon simply reveals this reality? Afterall why continue damaging the reputation of twitter? The reality is that the US government will have a large quantity of 1984 lawsuits paying out to republicans.

valdiorn 4y ago

I always thought this is the only future-proof way of dealing with "censorship". Leave it to the different governments to handle. Social media has been having problems enforcing censorship by different cultural standards for years. In America people are outraged if they see a nipple. In Europe, people are outraged when Facebook takes down a photo of a nursing mom. Let's not get started on political moderation in places like Russia, Iran or Saudi Arabia. Instead of a bunch of silicon valley liberals pushing their perceived standards and values onto the rest of the world, build tools and delegate the task to the local authorities. They don't like the content? They can spend the time to moderate and remove it themselves.

drukenemo 4y ago
This is not about a nipple. It is about empowering elected and non-elected forces to determine what is true and what version of a story they want.
machina_ex_deus 4y ago
Only illegal content should be moderated away by the platform, and only illegal in the sense of real human danger, not normal pornography or anti gay laws of Saudi Arabia. Everything else, give users the tools to moderate themselves. I wish you could have "filter lists" you can just subscribe to like ad block. You don't want to see something? Subscribe to a filter list. Or a community. Don't want someone to say something that is legal? Too bad.
- sneak 4y ago
  The issue that people have is not that they can see it. It’s that other people can see it. Filter lists for one’s own experience are not the goal of that outrage. Keeping certain information from spreading to others (controlling what third parties can see) is the desire. The censorship urge is not “I am offended by this”, but more “if my neighbors read things like this, I am afraid”. I think it stems from a low-trust society and the assumption that the median members of society lack critical thinking skills.
  - 4y ago

MikusR 4y ago

"request" to take down.

whoooooo123 4y ago
I know, but the full Tweet wouldn't fit within the HN character limit.
- bertil 4y ago
  That’s a big, big detail to cut.
  - ls15 4y ago
    Not if all/most requests are granted.

roenxi 4y ago

We should be careful to identify the right problem here - there are some standards that more or less everyone agrees should be kept. Someone has to moderate the platforms. But governments are the home of the most politically charged people in society. The moderators should be as distinct from the people who control the military as is humanly possible. It is a critical control of any free society that people can criticise the military freely, and the people who control the military as well. The risks of corruption in the military are off the charts high. Civilisation endingly high. Potential end of humanity high with the weapons we have today. Their flaws must be understood. The people who control Twitter should be free to decide what standards they enforce. The problem with Twitter's censorship was that the standards were stupid and hypocritical, bound to make embarrassing mistakes (there were a lot through COVID) and alienate around 20-30% of the population of the earth. But if they want to sink their own platform that is acceptable. But the problem with a special government portal is that it is corruption of genuinely important free speech principles. They shouldn't have a special portal. They should have multiple layers of indirection dampening their influence.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

throwaway13337 4y ago

We need to accept that tech companies that control the modern means of communications and commerce are defacto governments. And treat them as such. Communication on these platforms is public, protected speech just as it was on your street corner. And commerce on these platforms should be protected in the same way as commerce on the street. Government is government and needs to be restrained in all of its forms or it will become a force of authoritarianism that either works on it's own or within the machinations of current government. The EU is going the right direction with the Digital Markets Act. This act implicitly suggests that these gatekeepers have a special status though it does not outright call them what they are - governments. Speech protection should also be there as it is in all functional, modern governments. As should transparent legal process. Governments should have representation from their constituency. Big tech is government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act

astrange 4y ago
You definitely should not treat them as the government. For one thing, that'd mean the government would have the personal info behind everyone's social media accounts. For another, you can't sue the government unless it lets you do it. There's a reason NCMEC (the agency social media sites are required to report CSAM to) is a private organization and not "the government"; it's to protect your privacy rights via the 4th Amendment.
- Ptchd 4y ago
  They do get that info from them already... Didn't you see Snowden's leak 10 years ago?
  - astrange 4y ago
    I actually know how these things work and you don’t need to lecture me with what you thought you understood someone bragging in a PowerPoint to mean. They get that info through legal processes like subpoenas that Twitter is entitled to fight because they’re private. And they put lots of legally unnecessary effort and their own money into fighting them; other platforms don’t try nearly as hard to stop it. See the DevinCow case. Of course Elon just fired the exec who did this.

concinds 4y ago

The problem is that the U.S.'s overgrown intelligence superstructure was in charge of these efforts. The leading agency, the Department of Homeland Security, was established to fight terrorism abroad, and is now trying to regulate public discourse in America. Since U.S. intelligence is completely out of control, it's practically guaranteed that they wouldn't comply with any laws passed by Congress to shut this program down; they'd just shift it to another agency, and fund it from black budgets, the same way they deal with other intelligence programs like PRISM. That's the real threat. People who support reasonable government regulation shouldn't be fooled into lumping in this "fight against disinformation" along with FDA rules or other normal government processes. You really want spooks being able to label things as "foreign disinformation"?

astrange 4y ago

Internet service providers are required to accept such law enforcement requests so of course they have portals for them. They're not required to act on the requests, just to accept them - only subpoenas are required but there are non-mandatory kinds of legal requests in emergency situations. In fact Twitter is one of the most aggressive platforms at spending their own money to protect your rights by fighting subpoenas. The people who most need their rights protected don't appreciate this and have mostly been complaining they get banned too often.

Yoric 4y ago

I'm going to comment on the portals themselves, not how they are used. Having portals makes very good sense. In all Western countries and probably pretty much all over the world, the law requires FB, Twitter and others, small and large, to be able to take down content and/or help in investigations. Having a portal to submit requests makes it easier for the relevant teams at FB, Twitter, etc. to: 1. Check that the person submitting the request is indeed a LEO from the expected country. 2. Route the request to the relevant team to confirm that the request is legal in the country from which the request issues. 3. Route the request to the relevant team to actually take down content (or aid with investigation, etc.) 4. Ensure some degree of both auditability and confidentiality during the process. 5. Be sure that you respond to the same person who handed out the request (or at least someone with the same credentials). The alternative being having LEO deliver subpoenas to the closest office and frantically looking for someone who can handle that subpoena. Or worse, somebody claiming to be a LEO requesting action through phone or e-mail, without any means to confirm identity. Note that having a portal doesn't mean that the request gets carried out automatically. It just improves communication.

nfgivivu 4y ago
You have an argument if it was purely for court issued warrants and subpoenas. But it's not for that. These portals are specifically for the government to censor people and infringe on the first amendment. These portals are evil and I hope these people go to jail.
- themitigating 4y ago
  How do you know what these portals were for?
  - nfgivivu 4y ago
    It's in the article this twitter thread is discussing. https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/ https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformat...
- 4y ago

senectus1 4y ago

Note this is not just about over reaching gov's I work for a Billionaire/Businessman/Philanthropist and he's currently taking FB to court over the fact they are running adverts featuring him advertising shit like bitcoin scams and obviously multiple fake accounts. FB can do better, and should be held accountable (in particular for taking money to advertise bitcoin scams)

themitigating 4y ago
So you want them to censor ads?
- senectus1 4y ago
  I dont think its unreasonable to expect them to hold to a minimum ethical standard. Taking money for an obvious scam, that obviously misrepresents the person in the advert... not to mention the obviously fake accounts pretending to be that person. Do you really think this situation is "ok" ?
  - themitigating 4y ago
    No, I agree with censorship along with vaccine misinformation and election fraud lies. I'm not being sarcastic. I think misinformation will be the downfall of democracy
    - raxxorraxor 4y ago
      What if someone disagrees with that and wants to include potential or alleged misinformation? Should it be censored because it is your wish to do so? I would heavily dislike that approach and would not like to accommodate your wishes. We could just use different platforms and be fine with that. Maybe you could use a platform provided by government? Revival of the old times perhaps?
      - themitigating 4y ago

roody15 4y ago

This is quite alarming when you look at some of the topics that were flagged as “misinformation”. For example in Norway the vaccine recommendations are quite different than the US in terms of children and covid. https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/vaccination-of-children-and-adolescents-against-covid-19/id2895513/ https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/vaccination-of-childre... It’s fine to agree or disagree but content like this was routinely flagged as “misleading”. Nothing misleading … other developed democratic nations have different viewpoints and different recommendations. The withdrawal of Afghanistan was a disaster. DHS recommendation of flagging of material related to the withdrawal again is not healthy for a democracy. Who watches the watchers? Who determines what content and topics need to flagged and removed? Just my two cents (having worked in government for over a decade) way too much trust is given to this type of government activity.

themitigating 4y ago
Can you show examples of the content that was flagged as misinformation? Did the post only contain a link to the study and/or snippets? Did the person mispresent the results to push a different opinion? I'm not saying that happened but I'd like to see a post that was flagged. EDIT: I also see you posted a link to the study not any censored comment? Why?
- roody15 4y ago
  Try posting this link on Facebook or twitter and add a caption like "Not so sure children need to vaccinated for Covid" For fun I will post this on Reddit on /r/news or /r/health. Will see what happens.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    That's misinformation, it's an opinion based on nothing
    - roody15 4y ago
      It is an opinion but it is not based on nothing. For example Norway has determined that they do not believe children ages 0-11 should be vaccinated against covid. Sharing an opinion supported by some evidence (even if many may disagree) is not misinformation.

vintermann 4y ago

Not just for takedowns, but for throttling and suppression too. A very insidious form of censorship.

aslak 4y ago

I love to see the inside of the machine that manufactures democracy :)

UltraViolence 4y ago

What government are we talking about? The U.S. Federal government? And which parts? FBI? CIA? NSA? Or the State government? Or the Winchester County government? Or all of them?! And what about foreign nations? Can they access these portals as well?

bertil 4y ago
Any government can submit a request or a subpoena to any commercial company in any country. That company might comply, demand a formal subpoena, or oppose the subpoena in court. An international company can choose to leave a country if it thinks that its presence poses a legal risk. That portal is just to smooth things out when many requests are coming in and avoid confusion. This leak is about DHS, but every law enforcement agency in the US (including local sheriffs) has access to a secure interface to ask for certain things — access to the account of a missing teenager is a classic case for local LEO. Company lawyers use that portal to push back against excessive requests. It’s just more secure than email accounts that are the best tech too many police departments have and that were spoofed a couple of years ago as part of a wider security scandal.

EnKopVand 4y ago

I worked in digitalisation in the Danish public sector for a decade. It was at municipality level, but I did some work on the national strategies, and I'm sometimes just dumbfounded with how HN reacts to these sort of things. Of course SoMe networks have these sorts of portals... How did you expect they were allowed to operate in the sense they are? Obviously it's very 1984, but even in the West it's not like the secret police agencies aren't using every bit of privacy data they can get their hands on, they just do it differently than they would in an autocracy because we still have some rule of law protecting western citizens. Here in Denmark we've had a silly amount of "scandals" going back to echelon, where our government works with the US government to share danish citizen data in a way where our PET and FE (police and defence secret services) also benefit from it. In fact we're currently in the middle of a scandal where the former head of FE is possibly being charged with espionage because he may have told his mother about the US getting raw access to all Danish internet data at some family dinner. I say possibly and may because it's so locked down that we basically only know about it because he was arrested and things got leaked. But we do know that our secret police called every editor of every major news paper in for a little "talk" where they tried to scare our editors into not printing the story. Like I mentioned, it goes way back, back to before echelon really, and the Internet is fundamentally autocratic because we all need an ISP to get on it. I don't think there is really a big difference between the ISP and other "monopoly" companies in the sense that they all work with the governments in the areas in which they operate. It's obviously a dance of diplomacy, law and business. As you can see with the GDPR and how the EU is dealing with US tech companies, or how Facebook complies with autocracies around the world. It's no different in western countries, I mean, why do you think Condoleezza Rice got on the board of directors of Dropbox? In a post Snowden world it's not even tinfoil anymore, but most of us just don't really care.

thakoppno 4y ago

Anyone have thoughts about how these portal services are developed, deployed and operated? It seems like it’d require a clandestine set of employees within the companies. These repos wouldn’t be visible to the regular engineering employees. The infrastructure still needs to access the company’s production services. It seems to me like if one looked in the right places there would be evidence of something that looked a lot like a vulnerability.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

I want a portal to request take downs…

throwayyy479087 4y ago

There is absolutely no potential for abuse here. We have always been at war with Ba Sing Se.

piggybox 4y ago

On one hand the US government has been complaining about too much misinformation on FB and on the other hand it has a portal to control misinformation on social network? There must be some link broken in these two?

ck2 4y ago

Pretty sure gmail has government portals which is far more serious. But maybe Twitter fractionating into a dozen sites like BlueSky and Mastodon and completely independent networks is the best thing to happen, everyone runs their own brain-fart message site just like their own blog.

mushbino 4y ago

I have noticed a lot of accounts being banned who post things counter to the current US foreign policy narrative, whatever it may be at the time. Obviously not all of them, but a lot of popular ones.

remarkEon 4y ago

What I'm finding really fascinating about this saga is that there's an "Earth II" scenario, where Trump eeks out a victory in 2020 and this story that The Intercept broke is the setup for him to be impeached again. I fundamentally do not follow the arguments that people are putting forward for why these "committees" are needed. Imagine a Trump appointed DHS secretary using (or abusing) this portal for requesting takedowns of information about everything from 2020 to the current goings on in the Ukraine war. These tools shouldn't exist.

nora-puchreiner 4y ago

Even Rapidshare had that

monsecchris 4y ago

Zuckerberg failed to mention this in his interview with Rogan. Did the DHS force him to keep this secret?