7 ms·

Freedom of association captures the idea of freedom of speech better than freedom of speech itself, I think. Private parties are (with some number of government

Freedom of association captures the idea of freedom of speech better than freedom of speech itself, I think. Private parties are (with some number of government constraints) free to pick who to work with, who to play with, and who to talk with, and who they don't want to do anything with.

autoexec 4y ago
> Private parties are (with some number of government constraints) free to pick who to work with, who to play with, and who to talk with, and who they don't want to do anything with. This is so true. The problem we have now is that online platforms are preventing us from making those choices for ourselves. We're being told we're not allowed to talk to certain types of people, often for ideological reasons. Online platforms shouldn't limit our choices, they should empower us to find whatever content we want and block/remove content we aren't interested in.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Why doesn’t Twitter, one of your “private parties”, also get to pick “who they don't want to do anything with”?
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    We view certain companies that provide essential services as “common carriers” — who aren’t allowed to discriminate based on how you use their product. Common carrier status for essential services is one of the ways we protect freedoms in the US. Examples: power company, phone company, ISP. People are starting to view Twitter et al as similar to phone companies — and hence think they should be bound by common carrier rules.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Twitter is not a common carrier, and has significant differences from phone companies.
      - gd1 4y ago
      - zmgsabst 4y ago
        Perhaps you could state what you think those differences are.
        nonameiguess 4y ago
        Most people in the world don't have Twitter accounts and get along perfectly fine. You need phone service to apply for most jobs, contact government emergency services, go to school. It's a far more essential service. Although the definition of a common carrier isn't necessarily that it is essential anyway. It's that it is offered explicitly as being available to the general public, not involving any sort of individual contacts between carrier and users. Everybody gets exactly the same deal. In that sense, Twitter arguably qualifies, but being a common carrier doesn't mean you can't ban people. Taxis and airlines are common carriers and can absolutely ban you if you don't follow their rules.
        zmgsabst 4y ago
        I think there’s lots of good reasons to consider Twitter and similar as common carriers: The presidents and major politicians of many nations communicate via Twitter. Major businesses, eg Gooogle and its subsidiary YouTube, only respond to customer service via Twitter, eg improper account bans. There are some businesses, eg YouTube content creators, who you can only contact through Twitter; and some businesses, eg news agencies, which primarily source their content from Twitter. - - - - - > Everybody gets exactly the same deal. In that sense, Twitter arguably qualifies, but being a common carrier doesn't mean you can't ban people. Taxis and airlines are common carriers and can absolutely ban you if you don't follow their rules. The difference comes when Twitter bans the NY Post from receiving the same treatment because they posted a true story that was politically inconvenient for Twitter leadership during an election. There is more to it than a common carrier can “ban you for not following their rules”. Common carriers have limits on their rules: A taxi service can’t refuse to take you to a political rally because they don’t like your politics; nor a phone company disconnect you because they don’t like what you’re saying.
    - nickthegreek 4y ago
      I don’t believe ISP’s are common carriers. And they should be way before Twitter would ever get that designation.
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
        They were, briefly, 2015-2017.
  - pannSun 4y ago
    You are being deliberately obtuse. No matter how one answers your question, most internet users still have unaccountable 3rd parties opaquely choosing who they communicate with [1]. Do you admit this is a problem, but you just don't see a solution compatible with the 1st amendment's freedom of association? Do you support the Civil Rights Act's restriction of freedom based on race and/or think it is constitutionally valid? Why would the same logic not hold for restricting companies such as Twitter then? [1] Spare me rebuttals of "if they really wanted to communicate, they could do so by carrier pigeon!" - 99% of users won't go through with such effort, or even know who they are being herded away from. The remaining motivated 1% is too small to have any political power, and so the censor wins.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      > Do you support the Civil Rights Act's restriction of freedom based on race and/or think it is constitutionally valid? Sure, just as common carrier regulation is constitutionally valid. The Constitution isn't a suicide pact; the Founding Fathers very clearly did not intend it to be one. We've accepted a non-literal wording of the First and other amendments since the beginning. > Why would the same logic not hold for restricting companies such as Twitter then? Because being kicked off Twitter is hardly the same as not being able to dial 911 or purchase critical services. We've passed laws to correct specific, significant harms that are nothing like being unable to tweet. We weighed First Amendment rights against the rights of those being harmed in these situations and had to decide which conflicting rights mattered more. That same process happens here. Different situation, different consequences, different decision. > Spare me rebuttals of "if they really wanted to communicate, they could do so by carrier pigeon!" - 99% of users won't go through with such effort, or even know who they are being herded away from. No need for a rebuttal. That's fine.
      - pannSun 4y ago
        > Because being kicked off Twitter is hardly the same as not being able to dial 911 The Civil Rights Act also prevents Twitter (or any company) from banning users based on protected characteristics (e.g. race and sex). It is not remotely limited to critical services or common carriers.
  - onetimeusename 4y ago
    To you and the OP's point, if I am understanding where you are going with this, Twitter previously had a right to remove people it didn't like, as they should. That seems fine. Although there is no obligation to provide any reasoning, I think it would have been better for Twitter to just say "yes, if you are ____ please don't come on here". I don't think it would have even had any consequences. It's not even weird given how social media sites tend to self segregate. Instead we got lectures about policies and disinformation and algorithms and moderation teams. Why not just make explicit rules?
    - upsidesinclude 4y ago
      Because the point was to shape public discourse and opinion. Explicitly stating a bias that has been coded into the system somewhat defeats the purpose
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    It does but because it has been purchased by a free speech enthusiast, it choses not to. Twitter has been doing exactly what you pointed out for the last several years, shaping public discourse and directing political narratives
    - watwut 4y ago
      Musk is as much free speech enthusiast as he is astronaut. He is systematically and notoriously punishing any speech he does not like. He did that pretty much anywhere he had power.
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      Musk already made it clear that he's not an absolutist, but picks and chooses what he wants to allow. Most prominently, his public justification for keeping Alex Jones off Twitter is that it's personal for him. Which is just fine with me mind you, but doesn't constitute any kind of "free speech enthusiasm".
      - upsidesinclude 4y ago
        I'm not sure how aware people (you) are, in general, about Twitter and other big tech (fb, ggle) accommodating the government and political parties to amplify their messages and curtail the distribution of certain other messages. I really don't know if that's something you or others might know about or consider deleterious to the operation of a free nation. You might be a proponent of those messages and opposed to the messages that previously had been systematically removed from the platform. The problem is that allowing these things to occur will ultimately be bad for you as well.. I don't give a fuck about Alex Jones
  - njharman 4y ago
    Because they want to keep the protection, I think called sec 240, from being liable for what others say using their service.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      § 230 allows platforms (and individual users with moderation tools provided by platforns) to exercise active moderation based on their own view of standards; in fact, allowing that without it invoking liability as a publisher for the platform or moderating users in order to encourage and protect active private moderation is the whole purpose for which § 230 was included in one of the most sweeping internet censorship laws the US ever passed (most of which, other than § 230, related to government censorship and was struck down for violating the First Amendment.) § 230 does not require neutrality, and such a requirement would defeat its purpose.
curtisblaine 4y ago
Unless you choose to not bake a cake for a gay marriage. Freedom of association applies both ways.
- JetAlone 4y ago
  Not if you don't want to get downvoted lol. The people in the protected categories get to force you to associate with them, it's really simple.
  - mullingitover 4y ago
    Everyone is in a protected category. Everyone has an age, a race, etc.
    - JetAlone 4y ago
      No.
rayiner 4y ago
It’s weird to repeatedly see the argument that a corporation’s moderation of human individual’s speech is itself a form of protected speech, from a group of people who until recently mostly thought corporate speech wasn’t even broad enough to cover a corporation’s production and distribution of its own message in a political movie. Like I think “corporations are people too, my friend” but corporate moderation as a form of protects speech or association takes Citizens United to the next level.
- tptacek 4y ago
  Nobody so far has refuted this weak analysis better than David French did. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/elon-musk-and-tucker-carlson-dont-understand-the-first-amendment/672352/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/elon-musk-... First Amendment lawyers seem mostly† to be dunking on the idea that there is anything controversial about the protection Twitter enjoys. † maybe "entirely" is the right word here
  - rayiner 4y ago
    That article doesn’t address the point I’m making, which is whether content moderation decisions are protected speech. I agree with French’s analysis that the Hunter Biden stuff isn’t a first amendment violation insofar as Biden wasn’t a government actor at the time he made the request. The rationale behind regulating Twitter would be the same as the ones behind campaign finance laws: to keep a big corporation from using its power to influence elections. Except the difference is that producing a political movie is clear political speech, while the decision to delete particular items from a firehose of user generated content doesn’t seem to be expressing any message in the part of Twitter itself. As far as I can tell, the Twitterati are not addressing the implications of the “must carry” line of cases like TBS v. FCC which hold that forcing a corporation that provides a pipe for content to carry particular types of content isn’t a first amendment violation. The Twitter internal emails confirm that folks inside Twitter weren’t treating suppression of the Hunter Biden news as a political statement on the part of Twitter. They were concerned about the potential impact on the election.
quazar 4y ago
You don't have freedom of association in America since the Civil Rights Act.
abigail95 4y ago
I think this comes close to equating capitalist free markets (rules that maximise participation) and anarchy (no rules). What do you mean by some number of government constraints?

autoexec 4y ago

> Private parties are (with some number of government constraints) free to pick who to work with, who to play with, and who to talk with, and who they don't want to do anything with. This is so true. The problem we have now is that online platforms are preventing us from making those choices for ourselves. We're being told we're not allowed to talk to certain types of people, often for ideological reasons. Online platforms shouldn't limit our choices, they should empower us to find whatever content we want and block/remove content we aren't interested in.

ceejayoz 4y ago
Why doesn’t Twitter, one of your “private parties”, also get to pick “who they don't want to do anything with”?
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  We view certain companies that provide essential services as “common carriers” — who aren’t allowed to discriminate based on how you use their product. Common carrier status for essential services is one of the ways we protect freedoms in the US. Examples: power company, phone company, ISP. People are starting to view Twitter et al as similar to phone companies — and hence think they should be bound by common carrier rules.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Twitter is not a common carrier, and has significant differences from phone companies.
    - gd1 4y ago
    - zmgsabst 4y ago
      Perhaps you could state what you think those differences are.
      - nonameiguess 4y ago
        Most people in the world don't have Twitter accounts and get along perfectly fine. You need phone service to apply for most jobs, contact government emergency services, go to school. It's a far more essential service. Although the definition of a common carrier isn't necessarily that it is essential anyway. It's that it is offered explicitly as being available to the general public, not involving any sort of individual contacts between carrier and users. Everybody gets exactly the same deal. In that sense, Twitter arguably qualifies, but being a common carrier doesn't mean you can't ban people. Taxis and airlines are common carriers and can absolutely ban you if you don't follow their rules.
        zmgsabst 4y ago
        I think there’s lots of good reasons to consider Twitter and similar as common carriers: The presidents and major politicians of many nations communicate via Twitter. Major businesses, eg Gooogle and its subsidiary YouTube, only respond to customer service via Twitter, eg improper account bans. There are some businesses, eg YouTube content creators, who you can only contact through Twitter; and some businesses, eg news agencies, which primarily source their content from Twitter. - - - - - > Everybody gets exactly the same deal. In that sense, Twitter arguably qualifies, but being a common carrier doesn't mean you can't ban people. Taxis and airlines are common carriers and can absolutely ban you if you don't follow their rules. The difference comes when Twitter bans the NY Post from receiving the same treatment because they posted a true story that was politically inconvenient for Twitter leadership during an election. There is more to it than a common carrier can “ban you for not following their rules”. Common carriers have limits on their rules: A taxi service can’t refuse to take you to a political rally because they don’t like your politics; nor a phone company disconnect you because they don’t like what you’re saying.
  - nickthegreek 4y ago
    I don’t believe ISP’s are common carriers. And they should be way before Twitter would ever get that designation.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      They were, briefly, 2015-2017.
- pannSun 4y ago
  You are being deliberately obtuse. No matter how one answers your question, most internet users still have unaccountable 3rd parties opaquely choosing who they communicate with [1]. Do you admit this is a problem, but you just don't see a solution compatible with the 1st amendment's freedom of association? Do you support the Civil Rights Act's restriction of freedom based on race and/or think it is constitutionally valid? Why would the same logic not hold for restricting companies such as Twitter then? [1] Spare me rebuttals of "if they really wanted to communicate, they could do so by carrier pigeon!" - 99% of users won't go through with such effort, or even know who they are being herded away from. The remaining motivated 1% is too small to have any political power, and so the censor wins.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > Do you support the Civil Rights Act's restriction of freedom based on race and/or think it is constitutionally valid? Sure, just as common carrier regulation is constitutionally valid. The Constitution isn't a suicide pact; the Founding Fathers very clearly did not intend it to be one. We've accepted a non-literal wording of the First and other amendments since the beginning. > Why would the same logic not hold for restricting companies such as Twitter then? Because being kicked off Twitter is hardly the same as not being able to dial 911 or purchase critical services. We've passed laws to correct specific, significant harms that are nothing like being unable to tweet. We weighed First Amendment rights against the rights of those being harmed in these situations and had to decide which conflicting rights mattered more. That same process happens here. Different situation, different consequences, different decision. > Spare me rebuttals of "if they really wanted to communicate, they could do so by carrier pigeon!" - 99% of users won't go through with such effort, or even know who they are being herded away from. No need for a rebuttal. That's fine.
    - pannSun 4y ago
      > Because being kicked off Twitter is hardly the same as not being able to dial 911 The Civil Rights Act also prevents Twitter (or any company) from banning users based on protected characteristics (e.g. race and sex). It is not remotely limited to critical services or common carriers.
- onetimeusename 4y ago
  To you and the OP's point, if I am understanding where you are going with this, Twitter previously had a right to remove people it didn't like, as they should. That seems fine. Although there is no obligation to provide any reasoning, I think it would have been better for Twitter to just say "yes, if you are ____ please don't come on here". I don't think it would have even had any consequences. It's not even weird given how social media sites tend to self segregate. Instead we got lectures about policies and disinformation and algorithms and moderation teams. Why not just make explicit rules?
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    Because the point was to shape public discourse and opinion. Explicitly stating a bias that has been coded into the system somewhat defeats the purpose
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  It does but because it has been purchased by a free speech enthusiast, it choses not to. Twitter has been doing exactly what you pointed out for the last several years, shaping public discourse and directing political narratives
  - watwut 4y ago
    Musk is as much free speech enthusiast as he is astronaut. He is systematically and notoriously punishing any speech he does not like. He did that pretty much anywhere he had power.
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    Musk already made it clear that he's not an absolutist, but picks and chooses what he wants to allow. Most prominently, his public justification for keeping Alex Jones off Twitter is that it's personal for him. Which is just fine with me mind you, but doesn't constitute any kind of "free speech enthusiasm".
    - upsidesinclude 4y ago
      I'm not sure how aware people (you) are, in general, about Twitter and other big tech (fb, ggle) accommodating the government and political parties to amplify their messages and curtail the distribution of certain other messages. I really don't know if that's something you or others might know about or consider deleterious to the operation of a free nation. You might be a proponent of those messages and opposed to the messages that previously had been systematically removed from the platform. The problem is that allowing these things to occur will ultimately be bad for you as well.. I don't give a fuck about Alex Jones
- njharman 4y ago
  Because they want to keep the protection, I think called sec 240, from being liable for what others say using their service.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    § 230 allows platforms (and individual users with moderation tools provided by platforns) to exercise active moderation based on their own view of standards; in fact, allowing that without it invoking liability as a publisher for the platform or moderating users in order to encourage and protect active private moderation is the whole purpose for which § 230 was included in one of the most sweeping internet censorship laws the US ever passed (most of which, other than § 230, related to government censorship and was struck down for violating the First Amendment.) § 230 does not require neutrality, and such a requirement would defeat its purpose.

curtisblaine 4y ago

Unless you choose to not bake a cake for a gay marriage. Freedom of association applies both ways.

JetAlone 4y ago
Not if you don't want to get downvoted lol. The people in the protected categories get to force you to associate with them, it's really simple.
- mullingitover 4y ago
  Everyone is in a protected category. Everyone has an age, a race, etc.
  - JetAlone 4y ago
    No.

rayiner 4y ago

It’s weird to repeatedly see the argument that a corporation’s moderation of human individual’s speech is itself a form of protected speech, from a group of people who until recently mostly thought corporate speech wasn’t even broad enough to cover a corporation’s production and distribution of its own message in a political movie. Like I think “corporations are people too, my friend” but corporate moderation as a form of protects speech or association takes Citizens United to the next level.

tptacek 4y ago
Nobody so far has refuted this weak analysis better than David French did. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/elon-musk-and-tucker-carlson-dont-understand-the-first-amendment/672352/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/elon-musk-... First Amendment lawyers seem mostly† to be dunking on the idea that there is anything controversial about the protection Twitter enjoys. † maybe "entirely" is the right word here
- rayiner 4y ago
  That article doesn’t address the point I’m making, which is whether content moderation decisions are protected speech. I agree with French’s analysis that the Hunter Biden stuff isn’t a first amendment violation insofar as Biden wasn’t a government actor at the time he made the request. The rationale behind regulating Twitter would be the same as the ones behind campaign finance laws: to keep a big corporation from using its power to influence elections. Except the difference is that producing a political movie is clear political speech, while the decision to delete particular items from a firehose of user generated content doesn’t seem to be expressing any message in the part of Twitter itself. As far as I can tell, the Twitterati are not addressing the implications of the “must carry” line of cases like TBS v. FCC which hold that forcing a corporation that provides a pipe for content to carry particular types of content isn’t a first amendment violation. The Twitter internal emails confirm that folks inside Twitter weren’t treating suppression of the Hunter Biden news as a political statement on the part of Twitter. They were concerned about the potential impact on the election.

quazar 4y ago

You don't have freedom of association in America since the Civil Rights Act.

abigail95 4y ago

I think this comes close to equating capitalist free markets (rules that maximise participation) and anarchy (no rules). What do you mean by some number of government constraints?