37 ms·

Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

387 points by cm_silva 3y ago

Clubber 3y ago
Good news, now if we can just get rid of all the domestic spying and police overreach, we might resemble a semblance of a free society rather than an analog of it.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - tremon 3y ago
    There have been plenty of free platforms that have not turned out like that. HN, for example.
    - WithinReason 3y ago
      Only thanks to heavy moderation.
      - shitlord 3y ago
        Yes, but the key difference is that White House staffers aren't personally pressuring dang.
        unethical_ban 3y ago
        They don't feel the need to, because HN mods do their job and there aren't millions of people spreading verifiable misinformation here unchecked.
        shitlord 3y ago
        It has nothing to do with the amount of time Dang spends working. It's because the HN userbase is tiny compared to the social media giants. There are many small forums that spread misinformation because they enjoy trolling. The moderators even encourage it. The DOJ and White House do not care about these forums because they collectively have less than 0.1% of Facebook's DAU.
        artificialLimbs 3y ago
        [citation needed]
        unethical_ban 3y ago
        You want me to verify that dang hasn't gotten a message from executive agencies? Don't attack me for that assertion, attack the person I responded to. You want me to verify that there aren't coordinated disinformation campaigns festering all over this site? Well, I can read, so I'm fairly confident.
        RobotToaster 3y ago
        Do we know that for sure?
    - FeteCommuniste 3y ago
      Is HN “free?” How heavy of a hand do the mods have here? (I genuinely don’t know the answer to that question.)
      - giraffe_lady 3y ago
        It's very heavy in terms of tone, less in content. Definitely workable for nazis if they're careful. You can advocate eugenics and genocide-lite if you're polite and abstract enough. You're more likely to get in trouble for calling someone a nazi than you are for promoting nazi policies, as long as you don't use any slurs.
        atlantic 3y ago
        Could you clarify the term "nazis"? Presumably, you don't mean a member of the German National Socialist party, which was dissolved in 1945. But if you mean "people whose views I disagree with", then perhaps you could be a little more specific.
        giraffe_lady 3y ago
        You notice there how I was specific about "nazi policies" right? It's to avoid a discussion like this one. I don't care about party affiliation per se, I am talking about advocating specific policies and worldviews. Things like ethnonationism, eugenics, categorizing certain minorities as inherently criminal, white natalism: things that, if you could present them to a 1945-style straw nazi they'd say "yup that's us." And all that aside, you know that people still self identify as nazis right? It's not preposterous that they show up here. They have jobs and kids and hobbies and professional aspirations, and if a chance to talk about the degeneracy of society re: immigration comes on the tech forum, hey, they know also how to slide into that conversation without saying anything too crass. And yes, you could elide all that as "people I disagree with" if you're devoted to being particularly sloppy. Because I do disagree with them, and don't want them here? Is that not the case for you?
        atlantic 3y ago
    - onion2k 3y ago
      HN, for example. HN isn't really a 'platform'. The reach for a post on HN is tiny. There needs to be a critical mass of people before something can really be called a platform. And HN posts are moderated, both by the mod team using their tools, and by the users using flagging and votes. It's quite far from being 'free'. You can say anything you want in theory by it won't remain visible for very long.
    - Pxtl 3y ago
      Dang works very hard to censor this site quite heavily and maintain the kind of discourse he and his team want. As is his right. HN is not a example of libertarian social media.
      - tremon 3y ago
        The GP didn't ask for examples of libertarian social media. The GP asked for examples of forums/platforms from a "free society" that had not turned into a cesspool.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - plagiarist 3y ago
      Every politicized topic gathers dozens of comments from lunatics who are deliberately ignoring reality. This very week someone on HN told me black people are disproportionately not accepted to colleges because of "genetics." Perhaps HN is on its way.
  - throwbadubadu 3y ago
    Elaborate conclusion and consequence please? (:
  - rvz 3y ago
    How exactly? That's quite an unfounded overreaction and exaggeration as typically found here on HN. Close to conspiracy level. Surely you meant Meta who actually profited from an actual genocide [0]. But other than that, finally there is a real alternative to Twitter but again owned by Meta. It just means the town-hall and outrage will move to on large social network linked to Instagram and Meta. It will degrade into a Nazi hellscape anyway. Just like Facebook once did. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-social-media-violence https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-...
  - tpush 3y ago
    Twitter is not a Nazi hellscape.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      It really kind of is though.
    - retrac 3y ago
      Maybe your slice of Twitter isn't. My take is that we can't actually say whether Twitter is, or isn't, a Nazi hellscape, because of the darn algorithm. It's in the way. Since everyone gets a personalized view, there's no coherent "Twitter" to analyze as to how much fascist content is on it. There's a billion bot posts, but who actually sees them? It's certainly possible to get stuck in a recommendation-algorithm Nazi hellscape, where it's a very weird far-right bubble. (I got some interesting recommendations on both Twitter and Youtube after a few posts and videos about that guy making the UFO claims. Quite suddenly the feed became dark, conspiratorial, and with lots references to "globalists".) It's also, of course, possible to get stuck by the recommendation algorithm in some weird far-left universe, also quite out of step with the mainstream. Nothing wrong with being out of step with the mainstream in itself; the problem is when you don't know that you are. Some of the people in these social media bubbles don't know they're in those bubbles. As far as they're concerned, everyone else agrees with them and they're getting more and more re-enforcement. I think that a growing general ineptitude and inexperience with dealing with the fact that some people have radically different worldviews, social beliefs, and political attitudes, probably explains some of the contemporary derangement. If they're literally the only example of disagreement you run into, then obviously they're insane and/or stupid and/or evil, (Surely they know what you know?! We tend to assume that even when it can't be true.) Maybe related to why we seem to be particularly prone to portraying the political opposition as evil, insane, or stupid these days. The viciousness of the in-group towards the dissenters makes all the sense in the world if they're just evil, insane and stupid. And since we can't comprehend their worldview since we never see the world as they see it, (thanks to the algorithm), it just becomes re-enforcing.
      - jl6 3y ago
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Twitter is not a Nazi hellscape. It's a Nazi-accusation hellscape, but anywhere where "Nazi" is a bad word is not going to be a Nazi hellscape. It's like saying Salem was a witchcraft hellscape. If you were the one saying that, then you were one of the ones creating the actual hellscape.
  - AlchemistCamp 3y ago
    On the contrary, Nazis were very aggressive about suppression of speech they didn’t like. Furthermore, it was one of, possibly the very most, free-speaking societies in the world that played a key role—first economically, then militarily—in stopping them.
    - chasd00 3y ago
      Yes, the censor and safethink crowd at Twitter have more in common with fascist regimes than anyone else.
      - stainablesteel 3y ago
        they have an evolved use of irony where they project with their accusations, luckily more people seem to have become savvy to noticing this the incompatible logical extremes of safety vs freedom is starting to line up with historical precedent again
  - safety1st 3y ago
    The thing is, Nazis are really unpopular, so if we have a free market, Nazi hellscapes will be unpopular, too. This is a case where the free market is good at solving a problem, we know this because Nazis have been writing books for nearly a century, yet you probably haven't heard of any of them other than Mein Kampf. Whether we have a free market in social media is up for debate, certainly the dominant platforms enjoy network effects and go to great lengths to keep their users locked in, even when they have Nazis running around on them and the users don't want to see Nazis. We even have evidence that some platforms will show more Nazis to you if Nazis trigger you and make you want to fight with them! But I think a landscape with more platforms is a good way to try and deal with this. If anything in the Mastodon world you have the exact opposite problem, platforms defederate each other for very small offenses, being a full blown Nazi is definitely not required. And whether people use the Nazi hellscape argument genuinely or as a straw man/proxy for "things I don't like" is an open question as well.
    - JKCalhoun 3y ago
      > Nazis have been writing books for nearly a century Small, basement-run printing press? Sort of like nazi zines? I remember seeing copies of "Soldier of Fortune" in the 1970's (US) but it was relegated to the one weird military-collectible-store-that-also-sold-Avalon-Hill-games. Extreme ideologies need buy-in from a printer, publisher, and distribution network — combined they create quite a series of hurdles, act as gatekeepers of a sort. I suspect that was enough to keep The John Birch Society and others in relative obscurity. Letters to the editor in the local newspaper were of course heavily moderated. The free internet with near zero-cost to print/publish/distribute due to social networks, site comments sections make the fringe voices just as loud as the mainstream ones. Add bots into the equation and possibly determined state actors and it only gets worse.
      - jwells89 3y ago
        > Add in bots [snip] Also algorithms that signal boost controversial/inflammatory content as well as unearth more of whatever the user has signaled what they believe in/enjoy/etc, not to mention artificial signal boosts via things like Twitter Blue… with all of this, with social media the extreme fringe can be made to appear popular. It’s like viewing the world through a funhouse mirror.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Given Apple and Google have the ability to record every word you say(maybe not store it for 300M people, but they can certainly filter it for specific words that could begin recording once triggered... "Hey Google/Siri/Alexa/Cortana"), the issue is that we don't want the US government doing it, but private companies can? Heck if you buy any IOT device with a mic, you should give up any idea you have privacy. I'm over this illusion of privacy. If you are asking if we should spend less on spying, sure, but that could be my ignorant teens when I was an anarchist talking.
  - beachwood23 3y ago
    This comparison doesn't seem up to snuff. The government has the ability to prosecute crimes, and has a monopoly and the use of force. Private companies have neither. One of the two is clearly more dangerous if they have the ability to control your speech.
  - Clubber 3y ago
    >Given Apple and Google have the ability to record every word you say(maybe not store it for 300M people, but they can certainly filter it for specific words that could begin recording once triggered... "Hey Google/Siri/Alexa/Cortana"), the issue is that we don't want the US government doing it, but private companies can? Heck if you buy any IOT device with a mic, you should give up any idea you have privacy. Isn't all that optional though? If I don't use gmail or apple's services, I'm essentially opting out. Also to this sibling reply, when was the last time Apple broke down someone's door, threatened to kill them, threw them on the ground, beat them up and tased them? >If you are asking if we should spend less on spying, sure, but that could be my ignorant teens when I was an anarchist talking. You're deeming the desire for privacy as anarchism? What a warped sense of perspective that is. When I was in my teens, we actually had privacy, because that time period was before 9/11. Perhaps you're just accustomed to being spied on and you're experiencing Stockholm syndrome.
LatteLazy 3y ago
>But Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee at US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, granted the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction imposing limits... 1. Him being a trump nominee makes me suspicious, but also sad that that is the effect and that papers need to list who nominated a judge. 2. Granting a preliminary injunction is a long way from winning a case. 3. There is pressure and there is pressure. "Social media companies should suppress X" is fine. "if they don't I will audit the fuck out of their taxes" is not. The "bully pulpit" has long been used for this purpose and is the president's only real power beyond bombing things and vetoing stuff... 4. How does this affect executive actions pressuring 101 other companies to do things that are MUCH more questionable (everything from giving the NSA access to private data to bullying companies into censoring movies)? Edit: 5. Plenty of Senators have gone on record demanding platforms make changes or face some or other legislative punishment. I wonder how/if this affects that?
- scarface_74 3y ago
  I’m definitely not a fan of Trump and I was also suspicious. But after reading the article, I don’t see anything objectionable with it especially with the carve outs. But censorship pressure very much happened on “both sides”. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-trump-twitter-files-collusion-biden-censorship-1234675969/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-tru...
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    I don't think the injunction is an issue either. If we were in the run up to an election or the middle of a pandemic then maybe? But now is actually a good time to answer this question imho...
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      So what if social media was spreading a rumor that the “secret Muslim president” was using troops to invade a state to impose marshal law. https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/02/403865824/texas-governor-deploys-state-guard-to-stave-off-obama-takeover https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/02/40386... Should the federal government intervene to keep citizens from attacking their own soldiers?
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
This goes beyond the President using his “bully pulpit” to urge a social action. From the article: >Several of the messages came from Rob Flaherty, former deputy assistant to the president and director of digital strategy, who criticized Facebook over its handling of COVID misinformation. >Doughty said that one Flaherty message in February 2021 accused Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims." Flaherty also wrote in a July 2021 email to Facebook, "Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today." >A February 2021 message in which Flaherty asked Twitter to remove a parody account related to Hunter Biden's daughter said, "Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately. Please remove this account immediately." In my opinion there is a big difference between the President saying in a speech that social media should do something versus what is revealed here.
A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
edit: link to pdf[1] [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/75e9f7a3-da4e-45af-8430-6eeba37eaf9f.pdf?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_30 https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/75e9f7a3-da4e-45af-... The two big pieces that appear to be driving this coverage are, if true, the following: "suppressing negative posts about the economy", "suppressing negative posts about President Biden" and, apparently, parodies There are others, but you could technically claim there is some non-POTUS benefit there so it does not look self-serving. All in all, so far it is pretty damning, but the private-public partnership has been hailed by some as the best thing since sliced bread ( I am absolutely not joking -- it was only a week since I listened to a Canadian official discussing how well it works for their organization ). I am not a Trump supporter and I am glad, but I can't help but wonder how much of that is just laying groundwork for 2024 elections.
- curiousllama 3y ago
  This'll come out in discovery, but I didn't see anything particularly crazy in the complaint. I didn't see any examples of economic posts at issue, despite it being in the summary. And the parody accounts seemed to be focused either on (1) non-public figures, like Biden's granddaughter or (2) have resulted in sincere confusion, such as when Twitter actually asked the CDC if a 'parody' account was Fauci's real handle.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    << This'll come out in discovery, but I didn't see anything particularly crazy in the complaint. You are absolutely right the discovery part and I admit it will likely be something now I will follow more closely ( not completely unlike gems that came out of recent Microsoft/Sony deposition ) despite its political flavor. << I didn't see any examples of economic posts at issue, despite it being in the summary. I disagree here, but I just dislike government overreaching so I also might be overreacting on principle ( and assuming the worst rarely steered me wrong in that realm ). << And the parody accounts seemed to be focused either on (1) non-public figures, like Biden's granddaughter or (2) have resulted in sincere confusion, such as when Twitter actually asked the CDC if a 'parody' account was Fauci's real handle. A parody is a parody is a parody. The backstory is irrelevant for one reason and one reason only. The moment POTUS seemed to implicate himself and his administration in deciding what is kosher, he opened himself to, justifiable, scrutiny and, more importantly, likely eventual mistakes. It can be defended, but the more subtle point is that it should not have happened to begin with. Not if you want to preserve the system that has even a semblance of pretending to adhere to the original founding principles of this nation.
Guthur 3y ago
The problem i believe we are coming to is that all secular governance eventually replaces the role once taken by church and religious philosophy. It starts to become the arbiter of moral truth and with out any real moral center it can only but fail spectacularly. The second and third political theories of racial and social idealogies more rapidly succumb to this due to a more overt desire to place the state at this moral centre. But I feel liberalism is ultimately doomed to the same fate, just more by accident. No matter how individual everyone seems to think they are they still seem to want some sort of collective morality. Maybe because we mostly need to live some sort of relational existence and in the absence of anything else a collective morality will fill that void, but when that reality is so grounded in human will it can get quite corrupted quite quickly.
- nonrepeating 3y ago
  Interesting point, and one that's difficult to dispute. Belief in the supernatural or divine is baked into human nature. There's significant research showing that human capacity for faith is genetic. So, as we're building a secular society, it's worth asking: what happens to that need for the divine? Failing to account for basic human nature drove vast amounts of suffering in the 20th century, I fear that making a similar mistake will do the same.
  - Guthur 3y ago
    There is a concept that we can only BE in relation to something else, indeed even the most basic idea of true and false, 1 and 0 are in and of themselves relations. It permeates everything, a sort of cosmic dichotomy. In the mundane it's our relation to ourselves and the world, but they are very fluid and chaotic. The believe in the metaphysical provides a means to ground a relation outside the chaotic uncertain reality, which can be very comforting and liberating.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    This rings true to me, but it reinforces my existing beliefs, so my awareness of the dangers of confirmation bias demands that I not trust it without some due diligence. Does anybody have any citations to backup this point?
doitLP 3y ago
> Doughty said that one Flaherty [White House director of digital strategy] message in February 2021 accused Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims." Flaherty also wrote in a July 2021 email to Facebook, "Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today." Sure sounds like a relationship where the power only goes one direction and the Flaherty was very comfortable demanding whatever he wanted.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  which direction are you imagining? the one originating from the dude who used a swear word? or the one originating from the company who felt comfortable ignoring the dude and the request? after all, anyone can feel comfortable demanding anything, what matters is what they get: e.g. TFG felt comfortable demanding that his political rivals be imprisoned, did he get it?
  - tome 3y ago
    FTI, TFG means "that former guy" and refers to Donald Trump: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TFG https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TFG
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - hgsgm 3y ago
    Who did TFG send his demands to? His rally crowds have no power to act, and consented, so there is no coercion.
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      in which direction do you imagine the power dynamic OP mentioned went? the one originating from the dude who used a swear word? or the one originating from the company who felt comfortable ignoring the dude and the request?
hgsgm 3y ago
I don't understand how Missouri and Louisiana have any standing here. 1. They aren't the victims. 2. The individual posters were censored by Facebook et al, not the government, so even they might not have standing. The social networks obviously have standing, but have they complained? "Facebook likes the President" isn't something you should be able to sue the President for.
- dogleash 3y ago
  > I don't understand how Missouri and Louisiana have any standing here. Did you read their legal complaint? It doesn't feel like your statements here are responding to their claims about standing in the complaint.
- fwlr 3y ago
  The judgement itself is worth reading; it is not nearly as polemical as it being made out to be. It goes into detail on the question of how the states of Missouri and Louisiana have standing here; the “letter of the law” answer is that there is extensive precedent for determining whether states have standing in cases like this and the judge determined this case clearly passes the tests set by those precedents, while the “spirit of the law” answer (also given in the ruling) is that millions of citizens of Missouri and Louisiana have had their constitutional rights (both state and federal) interfered with by the plaintiffs, and as states are charged with upholding their citizens’ rights, they have standing to seek injunctions to protect those rights.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Nobody has a right to post on Twitter.
    - fwlr 3y ago
      Again, I encourage you to read the ruling. It addresses this claim quite thoroughly: > Traditionally, the First Amendment imposes limitations only on “state action, not action by private parties.” Lloyd Corp., Ltd. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 567 (1972). > However, plaintiffs “may establish a First Amendment claim based on private conduct if that conduct ‘can fairly be seen as state action.'” Id. (quoting Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 U.S. 830, 838 (1982)). > the Court instructed that “[i]t is axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” Id. (quoting Lee v. Macon Cnty. Bd. of Ed., 267 F.Supp. 458, 475-476 (M.D. Ala.), affd sub nom. Wallace v. U S, 389 U.S. 215 (1967)). Essentially: yes, you do not have a right to post on Twitter, you cannot sue Twitter for violating your First Amendment rights. But the courts have repeatedly affirmed that this does not create a loophole for the government to launder unconstitutional acts through private parties.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
Does this mean I can yell fire in a crowded theater again? Apparently not limiting my free speech is more important than the impact of my disinformation.
- bena 3y ago
  Always could. Because everyone else can see if the theater is on fire or not.
  - SQueeeeeL 3y ago
    Damn, the US is doomed if we have a systematic expectation of individuals validating people telling them to panic
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  It's a myth that it's illegal to yell fire in a crowded theatre, https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
  - hanniabu 3y ago
    What about yelling bomb on an airplane
    - merth 3y ago
      how is that information is useful even if it's true. it's not like you can walk away.
      - hirundo 3y ago
        You can pray, which many people find useful. You might be able to phone home and say goodbye. There might be a bomb squad technician on the plane.
  - 3y ago
craig1f 3y ago
[flagged]
footlose_3815 3y ago
Oh, a planted Louisiana judge
viggity 3y ago
The Hunter Biden laptop story was actively suppressed on Twitter and Facebook specifically because the FBI told them it was Russian information, despite the fact that the FBI had verified it was legit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  What do you think the FBI's goal was with that behavior?
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    That behavior didn't occur, as the Twitter Files themselves indicated. FBI gave a general warning prior to the election around hacked materials, Twitter (and many others) thought the laptop story might be one such example and reacted according to their own corporate policies/scenario planning. There is zero evidence that the government acted on the laptop story in any way, and even the Biden campaign/Biden family (private parties) only made requests specifically on posts sharing images of Hunter's penis, not on articles about the laptop itself.
    - artificialLimbs 3y ago
      James Baker actively pushed heads to have the story censored, which happened.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        James Baker was Deputy General Counsel at Twitter lol. His official job was to be involved in exactly these types of decisions. He left the FBI in 2018. Raise complaints about the revolving door between govt and industry if you want, but this is cut-and-dry not about a government official pressuring a private company. It's about a private company hiring a former government official (years out of service) and then that person doing the job they were hired to do.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
efitz 3y ago
This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing that a particular email isn’t coercive enough, etc. A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. Freedom of speech is literally the first thing in the Bill of Rights. The government did a bad thing. Why defend them?
- freediverx 3y ago
  “Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee…”
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. This is not how a preliminary injunction works. The court has ordered that the governmment stop doing the in-dispute things until the dispute is resolved - in either direction - in court. The standard for such an injunction is not proof, but "they might prevail in court, and there's potentially enough harm from letting it continue in the meantime".
  - lordfrito 3y ago
    Also, a WSJ article suggested the point is that discovery needs to occur here before a judgment is made. [1] Judge Doughty could have dismissed the case without an opportunity for discovery, as another judge did in another NCLA case, Changizi v. HHS, involving the same sort of censorship. Judge Doughty understood, however, that a largely secret censorship system can’t be evaluated under the First Amendment until after discovery. [1] https://archive.is/GCWCr https://archive.is/GCWCr
    - kyrra 3y ago
      While I agree here, I want to add a caveat that the linked article is technically a "commentary" pieces, not a news-side piece (aka: it's published on the opinion pages). But even given that, the opinion pages of the WSJ is just as fact-filled as the news side, but just highlights that the person writing it may not be a disinterested party. The Opinion Pages of the WSJ also tend to lean more conservative, while the news side leans liberal. Though they will happily publish people from the left, such as publishing President Biden: https://www.wsj.com/articles/never-bet-against-the-american-economy-president-inflation-manufacturing-jobs-287a006f https://www.wsj.com/articles/never-bet-against-the-american-...
1970-01-01 3y ago
The free speech misinformation directly led to deaths of citizens. It is no different from any other speech that causes mass panic and confusion. I don't understand why this decision was allowed to become detached from reality.
- s__s 3y ago
  Yelling fire in a crowded theatre is only illegal when you know for sure there is no fire and are intentionally trying to cause panic and death.
  - 1970-01-01 3y ago
    Yes, disinformation is not free speech. Misinformation can be allowed, however amplification of it cannot.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    It's more akin to yelling that there isn't a fire when there is and avoiding all evidence so you can claim ignorance.
- thsksbd 3y ago
  You mean misinformation like the Hunter laptop story, the Wuhan lab origin - both censored and true - or do you mean Russia gate (throughly discredited, but shoved down the electorate's throat for four years?
curiousllama 3y ago
I love HN legal threads because engineers have great (logical) legal analysis, but with a terrible (practical) understanding of the law. And every so often a someone with legal training chimes in like "wtf guys" It's like watching a good software engineer try to build a circuit board without google: I see how you got there, but damn, that's... not gonna work great. Idk the law either, though, so I can't judge
- jjaken 3y ago
  [flagged]
- draw_down 3y ago
  [dead]
- fwlr 3y ago
  Engineers having poor legal analysis seems to stem from a common assumption that lawyers are the programmers, the law is the code, and the judge is the interpreter/compiler who just sort of runs the arguments the lawyers provide and outputs an answer. This leads them to over-weight “rules lawyering” and creative interpretations. It can be fixed by instead viewing lawyers as junior devs making competing PRs and the judge as the senior dev reviewing and approving/denying them: if you find a clever loophole that inverts the law , the judge will say “that is not intended, denied”.
traviswingo 3y ago
There’s a difference between freedom of speech and education. The government did a bad thing. Anyone should be allowed to speak their piece. We need more people to speak up when those speaking the loudest are wrong, uneducated, and unqualified to speak on the topic they’re preaching. I get the incentive here, but it’s not the governments place to decide what we do and don’t say. Society as a whole needs to be better at calling out the lies with hard facts and data. Because right now, it feels like the people with the most effective voices are taking us in the wrong direction.
- klyrs 3y ago
  > We need more people to speak up when those speaking the loudest are wrong, uneducated, and unqualified to speak on the topic they’re preaching. How, though? It takes a lot more work to develop an educated opinion than an uneducated one. There will always be more educated speakers than uneducated speakers. And do you really think that, during a pandemic, the best use of an epidemiologist's time is wading into the trenches and fighting every single case of "wrong on the internet"?
- codetrotter 3y ago
  > Society as a whole needs to be better at calling out the lies with hard facts and data. It doesn’t work. In the time it takes to refute one lie with facts and data, the world has moved on and uncountable additional lies have been spread in the meantime. Besides which. Both the people that produce the lies, and their supporters, are well aware of the fact that it’s not true. They just choose to ignore that. And any facts and data you are able to compile, will fall on deaf ears.
  - ClarityJones 3y ago
    > It doesn’t work. In the time it takes to refute one lie with facts and data, the world has moved on and uncountable additional lies have been spread in the meantime. Great point, free speech is bad. We should repeal the 1st Amendment. /s
    - 3y ago
neilv 3y ago
I don't yet see an ACLU statement on this, though it seems up their alley, and they have a more recent statement on a different case. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases https://www.aclu.org/press-releases. (Incidentally, the Ars Technica favicon looks very similar to the ACLU's.)
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  The ACLU has become a run-of-the-mill left wing org. For proper 1st amendment protection, you should look at FIRE. Like the EFF, they are willing do defend that which they find objectionable - the ACLU no longer does.
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
These are private platforms. They can censor whatever speech they want. They decide whether to listen to big bad government with an axe over its head or simply get their head cut off, right? I mean, they could have just chosen to be crushed with legal battles from the government, right? Free speech and free will in America, right?
- echelon 3y ago
  I'd rather the platforms be treated as common carriers - unable to censor by themselves. Corporations having the right to censor is no better than the government. It would fix a lot of misalignment in terms of advertiser spend, too. In a common carrier world, the government censoring private individuals would go against our first amendment rights. Pretty clear cut. Ideally we eventually reach p2p social networking protocols. I don't want my interest or attention graph dictated or influenced by a third party. I want to be able to (de)weight and (de)prioritize based off of my own personal preferences.
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago
    I'd rather the platforms be treated as common carriers That's called the internet. Corporations having the right to censor is no better than the government. Yes it is, there are lots of corporations and anyone can start one. There is only one government that applies to someone at any one time and they have a monopoly on violence. In a common carrier world, the government censoring private individuals would go against our first amendment rights. Pretty clear cut. It's clear cut that the internet does that already and corporations do not have to broadcast what they don't want to. If you hate censorship so much why are you on hacker news? This is one of the most censored sites on the internet. Comments are not just deleted and removed but there is no record when they are. There are plenty of sites that let anyone post whatever they want and they turn into people spamming nazi propaganda. You can find these sites and see if you like them better than the mainstream sites of the internet.
    - echelon 3y ago
      > Yes it is, there are lots of corporations and anyone can start one. Please tell me how to start a Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, or Twitter and reach their scale and engagement. Preferably up and running with billions of users by tomorrow. Your suggestion is implausible and denies the reality that these entities are entrenched and more or less here to stay. > If you hate censorship so much why are you on hacker news? You want me to leave because I hate censorship? Same argument as "If you don't like America, then leave." Systems can be improved. Just because we don't like the status quo doesn't mean we want to throw everything out. This is a shallow dismissal of the free speech argument. > There are plenty of sites that let anyone post whatever they want and they turn into people spamming nazi propaganda. You can find these sites and see if you like them better than the mainstream sites of the internet. Again, clearly not what I'm advocating for here. Not all discourse turns to "Nazism" (as liberals say) or "kiddie diddling" (as conservatives say). I operated forums back in their 2000-2010 heydey that had a free speech policy. People behaved, and we all learned a lot. The only reason corporations have the market share now is that they blitzscaled to critical mass. My argument stands. The ideal social media system is a p2p protocol that nobody can exert undue control or influence over. That everyone can tailor as they so please.
entriesfull 3y ago
Just a reminder that Hitler and Stalin would be so jealous at the amount of power these governments have compared to them: 1. Force twitter, fb, blah blah to shadowban anyone that criticizes their lies 2. Backdoor any device made by Google, Apple, etc. 3. Warrantless wiretap 4. Shove out more lies and goto step 1.
darealrealist 3y ago
[flagged]
calgarymicro 3y ago
I wanted to point out several factual issues with this ruling, some of which I mentioned yesterday on another post. For starters, the judge severely misquotes an email: >However, various emails show Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits through evidence that the motivation of the NIAID Defendants was a “take down” of protected free speech. Dr. Francis Collins, in an email to Dr. Fauci told Fauci there needed to be a “quick and devastating take down” of the GBD—the result was exactly that. In reality, the email[0] actually said this: >There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don't see anything like that online yet - is it underway? Notice how he removed the word "published" from his quote, making it seem like an instruction to a social media company rather than a published rebuttal. He also mischaracterizes a WH aide's email to FB, claiming that the aid accused FB "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims", when in actuality he was referring to a WSJ article that detailed actual calls to violence on the platform[1]. He also characterizes Twitter's removal of an account with the handle "AnthonyFauci_" as government-directed censorship of parody: > NIAID and NIH staff sent several messages to social-media platforms asking them to remove content lampooning or criticizing Dr. Fauci . . . An HHS official then asked Twitter if it could “block” similar parody accounts... But in reality, the contact was initiated by Twitter, who asked the CDC whether the account was real or fake[2]. Why were they confused about this? Because the account wasn't a parody at all; its name was "Dr. Anthony Fauci", its bio was "Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases #NIAID", and there was nothing parodic about its tweets[3][4], which purported to be giving out factual info; it was a straight up impersonation. On the subject of Dr. Fauci, there's a particularly egregious section where the judge accuses him and other members of NIAID of 'censoring' the so-called Great Barrington Declaration. To support his claim that Reddit and Google censored the GBD at the government's behest, he cites an article[5] that describes how Reddit mods (not Reddit the company!) took down links to the GBD, and complains about the top Google search results for the GBD were all disparaging it, without providing any evidence that either NIAID instructed Google to change the results, or even any evidence that Google purposely changed the results at all. His accusation is that Fauci made public statements 'in collusion' with another employee >Dr. Fauci testified “it’s possible that” he coordinated with Dr. Collins on his public statements attacking the GBD. Disparaging the GBD, and that Google and these individual mods in turn took independent action against it. So I guess PSAs are censorship? Needless to say, there's a lot of issues with this injunction, and from just the small sections I've looked at, it doesn't seem like the judge has applied the necessary rigor to justify a nationwide injunction restricting the government from nearly all contact with various companies and nonprofits. I kind of wish Ars Technics had done some of this scrutiny (which really didn't take that long) before publishing this article. [0]https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/12/18/23/51969841-10324873-image-a-3_1639871403560.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/12/18/23/51969841-10324873... [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=36619117 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=36619117 [2]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.207.17.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... [3]https://twitter.com/merrymanlab/status/1239321484297998336 https://twitter.com/merrymanlab/status/1239321484297998336 [4]http://web.archive.org/web/20200313170022/https://twitter.com/anthonyfauci_/status/1238507266346831874 http://web.archive.org/web/20200313170022/https://twitter.co... [5]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.207.12.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...
hoten 3y ago
Half the comments here are saber-rattling at the title of the article, without the understanding that the title itself is an egregious mischaracterization. Yeah, the court issued a rule, but the layman's interpretation of "that means they found actual wrong doing" is not correct. It's just a preliminary injunction, apparently based on some flawed misinterpretation of the actual communication that took place [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36619241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36619241
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
[dead]
dragonwriter 3y ago
Headline is factually inaccurate; its a preliminary injunction which includes consideration of likelihood of success on the merits, not a ruling on the merits.

387 points by cm_silva 3y ago

Good news, now if we can just get rid of all the domestic spying and police overreach, we might resemble a semblance of a free society rather than an analog of it.

mschuster91 3y ago
[flagged]
- tremon 3y ago
  There have been plenty of free platforms that have not turned out like that. HN, for example.
  - WithinReason 3y ago
    Only thanks to heavy moderation.
    - shitlord 3y ago
      Yes, but the key difference is that White House staffers aren't personally pressuring dang.
      - unethical_ban 3y ago
        They don't feel the need to, because HN mods do their job and there aren't millions of people spreading verifiable misinformation here unchecked.
        shitlord 3y ago
        It has nothing to do with the amount of time Dang spends working. It's because the HN userbase is tiny compared to the social media giants. There are many small forums that spread misinformation because they enjoy trolling. The moderators even encourage it. The DOJ and White House do not care about these forums because they collectively have less than 0.1% of Facebook's DAU.
        artificialLimbs 3y ago
        [citation needed]
        unethical_ban 3y ago
        You want me to verify that dang hasn't gotten a message from executive agencies? Don't attack me for that assertion, attack the person I responded to. You want me to verify that there aren't coordinated disinformation campaigns festering all over this site? Well, I can read, so I'm fairly confident.
      - RobotToaster 3y ago
        Do we know that for sure?
  - FeteCommuniste 3y ago
    Is HN “free?” How heavy of a hand do the mods have here? (I genuinely don’t know the answer to that question.)
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      It's very heavy in terms of tone, less in content. Definitely workable for nazis if they're careful. You can advocate eugenics and genocide-lite if you're polite and abstract enough. You're more likely to get in trouble for calling someone a nazi than you are for promoting nazi policies, as long as you don't use any slurs.
      - atlantic 3y ago
        Could you clarify the term "nazis"? Presumably, you don't mean a member of the German National Socialist party, which was dissolved in 1945. But if you mean "people whose views I disagree with", then perhaps you could be a little more specific.
        giraffe_lady 3y ago
        You notice there how I was specific about "nazi policies" right? It's to avoid a discussion like this one. I don't care about party affiliation per se, I am talking about advocating specific policies and worldviews. Things like ethnonationism, eugenics, categorizing certain minorities as inherently criminal, white natalism: things that, if you could present them to a 1945-style straw nazi they'd say "yup that's us." And all that aside, you know that people still self identify as nazis right? It's not preposterous that they show up here. They have jobs and kids and hobbies and professional aspirations, and if a chance to talk about the degeneracy of society re: immigration comes on the tech forum, hey, they know also how to slide into that conversation without saying anything too crass. And yes, you could elide all that as "people I disagree with" if you're devoted to being particularly sloppy. Because I do disagree with them, and don't want them here? Is that not the case for you?
        atlantic 3y ago
  - onion2k 3y ago
    HN, for example. HN isn't really a 'platform'. The reach for a post on HN is tiny. There needs to be a critical mass of people before something can really be called a platform. And HN posts are moderated, both by the mod team using their tools, and by the users using flagging and votes. It's quite far from being 'free'. You can say anything you want in theory by it won't remain visible for very long.
  - Pxtl 3y ago
    Dang works very hard to censor this site quite heavily and maintain the kind of discourse he and his team want. As is his right. HN is not a example of libertarian social media.
    - tremon 3y ago
      The GP didn't ask for examples of libertarian social media. The GP asked for examples of forums/platforms from a "free society" that had not turned into a cesspool.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    Every politicized topic gathers dozens of comments from lunatics who are deliberately ignoring reality. This very week someone on HN told me black people are disproportionately not accepted to colleges because of "genetics." Perhaps HN is on its way.
- throwbadubadu 3y ago
  Elaborate conclusion and consequence please? (:
- rvz 3y ago
  How exactly? That's quite an unfounded overreaction and exaggeration as typically found here on HN. Close to conspiracy level. Surely you meant Meta who actually profited from an actual genocide [0]. But other than that, finally there is a real alternative to Twitter but again owned by Meta. It just means the town-hall and outrage will move to on large social network linked to Instagram and Meta. It will degrade into a Nazi hellscape anyway. Just like Facebook once did. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-social-media-violence https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-...
- tpush 3y ago
  Twitter is not a Nazi hellscape.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    It really kind of is though.
  - retrac 3y ago
    Maybe your slice of Twitter isn't. My take is that we can't actually say whether Twitter is, or isn't, a Nazi hellscape, because of the darn algorithm. It's in the way. Since everyone gets a personalized view, there's no coherent "Twitter" to analyze as to how much fascist content is on it. There's a billion bot posts, but who actually sees them? It's certainly possible to get stuck in a recommendation-algorithm Nazi hellscape, where it's a very weird far-right bubble. (I got some interesting recommendations on both Twitter and Youtube after a few posts and videos about that guy making the UFO claims. Quite suddenly the feed became dark, conspiratorial, and with lots references to "globalists".) It's also, of course, possible to get stuck by the recommendation algorithm in some weird far-left universe, also quite out of step with the mainstream. Nothing wrong with being out of step with the mainstream in itself; the problem is when you don't know that you are. Some of the people in these social media bubbles don't know they're in those bubbles. As far as they're concerned, everyone else agrees with them and they're getting more and more re-enforcement. I think that a growing general ineptitude and inexperience with dealing with the fact that some people have radically different worldviews, social beliefs, and political attitudes, probably explains some of the contemporary derangement. If they're literally the only example of disagreement you run into, then obviously they're insane and/or stupid and/or evil, (Surely they know what you know?! We tend to assume that even when it can't be true.) Maybe related to why we seem to be particularly prone to portraying the political opposition as evil, insane, or stupid these days. The viciousness of the in-group towards the dissenters makes all the sense in the world if they're just evil, insane and stupid. And since we can't comprehend their worldview since we never see the world as they see it, (thanks to the algorithm), it just becomes re-enforcing.
    - jl6 3y ago
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Twitter is not a Nazi hellscape. It's a Nazi-accusation hellscape, but anywhere where "Nazi" is a bad word is not going to be a Nazi hellscape. It's like saying Salem was a witchcraft hellscape. If you were the one saying that, then you were one of the ones creating the actual hellscape.
- AlchemistCamp 3y ago
  On the contrary, Nazis were very aggressive about suppression of speech they didn’t like. Furthermore, it was one of, possibly the very most, free-speaking societies in the world that played a key role—first economically, then militarily—in stopping them.
  - chasd00 3y ago
    Yes, the censor and safethink crowd at Twitter have more in common with fascist regimes than anyone else.
    - stainablesteel 3y ago
      they have an evolved use of irony where they project with their accusations, luckily more people seem to have become savvy to noticing this the incompatible logical extremes of safety vs freedom is starting to line up with historical precedent again
- safety1st 3y ago
  The thing is, Nazis are really unpopular, so if we have a free market, Nazi hellscapes will be unpopular, too. This is a case where the free market is good at solving a problem, we know this because Nazis have been writing books for nearly a century, yet you probably haven't heard of any of them other than Mein Kampf. Whether we have a free market in social media is up for debate, certainly the dominant platforms enjoy network effects and go to great lengths to keep their users locked in, even when they have Nazis running around on them and the users don't want to see Nazis. We even have evidence that some platforms will show more Nazis to you if Nazis trigger you and make you want to fight with them! But I think a landscape with more platforms is a good way to try and deal with this. If anything in the Mastodon world you have the exact opposite problem, platforms defederate each other for very small offenses, being a full blown Nazi is definitely not required. And whether people use the Nazi hellscape argument genuinely or as a straw man/proxy for "things I don't like" is an open question as well.
  - JKCalhoun 3y ago
    > Nazis have been writing books for nearly a century Small, basement-run printing press? Sort of like nazi zines? I remember seeing copies of "Soldier of Fortune" in the 1970's (US) but it was relegated to the one weird military-collectible-store-that-also-sold-Avalon-Hill-games. Extreme ideologies need buy-in from a printer, publisher, and distribution network — combined they create quite a series of hurdles, act as gatekeepers of a sort. I suspect that was enough to keep The John Birch Society and others in relative obscurity. Letters to the editor in the local newspaper were of course heavily moderated. The free internet with near zero-cost to print/publish/distribute due to social networks, site comments sections make the fringe voices just as loud as the mainstream ones. Add bots into the equation and possibly determined state actors and it only gets worse.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      > Add in bots [snip] Also algorithms that signal boost controversial/inflammatory content as well as unearth more of whatever the user has signaled what they believe in/enjoy/etc, not to mention artificial signal boosts via things like Twitter Blue… with all of this, with social media the extreme fringe can be made to appear popular. It’s like viewing the world through a funhouse mirror.
hospitalJail 3y ago
Given Apple and Google have the ability to record every word you say(maybe not store it for 300M people, but they can certainly filter it for specific words that could begin recording once triggered... "Hey Google/Siri/Alexa/Cortana"), the issue is that we don't want the US government doing it, but private companies can? Heck if you buy any IOT device with a mic, you should give up any idea you have privacy. I'm over this illusion of privacy. If you are asking if we should spend less on spying, sure, but that could be my ignorant teens when I was an anarchist talking.
- beachwood23 3y ago
  This comparison doesn't seem up to snuff. The government has the ability to prosecute crimes, and has a monopoly and the use of force. Private companies have neither. One of the two is clearly more dangerous if they have the ability to control your speech.
- Clubber 3y ago
  >Given Apple and Google have the ability to record every word you say(maybe not store it for 300M people, but they can certainly filter it for specific words that could begin recording once triggered... "Hey Google/Siri/Alexa/Cortana"), the issue is that we don't want the US government doing it, but private companies can? Heck if you buy any IOT device with a mic, you should give up any idea you have privacy. Isn't all that optional though? If I don't use gmail or apple's services, I'm essentially opting out. Also to this sibling reply, when was the last time Apple broke down someone's door, threatened to kill them, threw them on the ground, beat them up and tased them? >If you are asking if we should spend less on spying, sure, but that could be my ignorant teens when I was an anarchist talking. You're deeming the desire for privacy as anarchism? What a warped sense of perspective that is. When I was in my teens, we actually had privacy, because that time period was before 9/11. Perhaps you're just accustomed to being spied on and you're experiencing Stockholm syndrome.

LatteLazy 3y ago

>But Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee at US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, granted the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction imposing limits... 1. Him being a trump nominee makes me suspicious, but also sad that that is the effect and that papers need to list who nominated a judge. 2. Granting a preliminary injunction is a long way from winning a case. 3. There is pressure and there is pressure. "Social media companies should suppress X" is fine. "if they don't I will audit the fuck out of their taxes" is not. The "bully pulpit" has long been used for this purpose and is the president's only real power beyond bombing things and vetoing stuff... 4. How does this affect executive actions pressuring 101 other companies to do things that are MUCH more questionable (everything from giving the NSA access to private data to bullying companies into censoring movies)? Edit: 5. Plenty of Senators have gone on record demanding platforms make changes or face some or other legislative punishment. I wonder how/if this affects that?

scarface_74 3y ago
I’m definitely not a fan of Trump and I was also suspicious. But after reading the article, I don’t see anything objectionable with it especially with the carve outs. But censorship pressure very much happened on “both sides”. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-trump-twitter-files-collusion-biden-censorship-1234675969/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-tru...
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  I don't think the injunction is an issue either. If we were in the run up to an election or the middle of a pandemic then maybe? But now is actually a good time to answer this question imho...
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    So what if social media was spreading a rumor that the “secret Muslim president” was using troops to invade a state to impose marshal law. https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/02/403865824/texas-governor-deploys-state-guard-to-stave-off-obama-takeover https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/02/40386... Should the federal government intervene to keep citizens from attacking their own soldiers?

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

This goes beyond the President using his “bully pulpit” to urge a social action. From the article: >Several of the messages came from Rob Flaherty, former deputy assistant to the president and director of digital strategy, who criticized Facebook over its handling of COVID misinformation. >Doughty said that one Flaherty message in February 2021 accused Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims." Flaherty also wrote in a July 2021 email to Facebook, "Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today." >A February 2021 message in which Flaherty asked Twitter to remove a parody account related to Hunter Biden's daughter said, "Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately. Please remove this account immediately." In my opinion there is a big difference between the President saying in a speech that social media should do something versus what is revealed here.

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago

edit: link to pdf[1] [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/75e9f7a3-da4e-45af-8430-6eeba37eaf9f.pdf?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_30 https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/75e9f7a3-da4e-45af-... The two big pieces that appear to be driving this coverage are, if true, the following: "suppressing negative posts about the economy", "suppressing negative posts about President Biden" and, apparently, parodies There are others, but you could technically claim there is some non-POTUS benefit there so it does not look self-serving. All in all, so far it is pretty damning, but the private-public partnership has been hailed by some as the best thing since sliced bread ( I am absolutely not joking -- it was only a week since I listened to a Canadian official discussing how well it works for their organization ). I am not a Trump supporter and I am glad, but I can't help but wonder how much of that is just laying groundwork for 2024 elections.

curiousllama 3y ago
This'll come out in discovery, but I didn't see anything particularly crazy in the complaint. I didn't see any examples of economic posts at issue, despite it being in the summary. And the parody accounts seemed to be focused either on (1) non-public figures, like Biden's granddaughter or (2) have resulted in sincere confusion, such as when Twitter actually asked the CDC if a 'parody' account was Fauci's real handle.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  << This'll come out in discovery, but I didn't see anything particularly crazy in the complaint. You are absolutely right the discovery part and I admit it will likely be something now I will follow more closely ( not completely unlike gems that came out of recent Microsoft/Sony deposition ) despite its political flavor. << I didn't see any examples of economic posts at issue, despite it being in the summary. I disagree here, but I just dislike government overreaching so I also might be overreacting on principle ( and assuming the worst rarely steered me wrong in that realm ). << And the parody accounts seemed to be focused either on (1) non-public figures, like Biden's granddaughter or (2) have resulted in sincere confusion, such as when Twitter actually asked the CDC if a 'parody' account was Fauci's real handle. A parody is a parody is a parody. The backstory is irrelevant for one reason and one reason only. The moment POTUS seemed to implicate himself and his administration in deciding what is kosher, he opened himself to, justifiable, scrutiny and, more importantly, likely eventual mistakes. It can be defended, but the more subtle point is that it should not have happened to begin with. Not if you want to preserve the system that has even a semblance of pretending to adhere to the original founding principles of this nation.

Guthur 3y ago

The problem i believe we are coming to is that all secular governance eventually replaces the role once taken by church and religious philosophy. It starts to become the arbiter of moral truth and with out any real moral center it can only but fail spectacularly. The second and third political theories of racial and social idealogies more rapidly succumb to this due to a more overt desire to place the state at this moral centre. But I feel liberalism is ultimately doomed to the same fate, just more by accident. No matter how individual everyone seems to think they are they still seem to want some sort of collective morality. Maybe because we mostly need to live some sort of relational existence and in the absence of anything else a collective morality will fill that void, but when that reality is so grounded in human will it can get quite corrupted quite quickly.

nonrepeating 3y ago
Interesting point, and one that's difficult to dispute. Belief in the supernatural or divine is baked into human nature. There's significant research showing that human capacity for faith is genetic. So, as we're building a secular society, it's worth asking: what happens to that need for the divine? Failing to account for basic human nature drove vast amounts of suffering in the 20th century, I fear that making a similar mistake will do the same.
- Guthur 3y ago
  There is a concept that we can only BE in relation to something else, indeed even the most basic idea of true and false, 1 and 0 are in and of themselves relations. It permeates everything, a sort of cosmic dichotomy. In the mundane it's our relation to ourselves and the world, but they are very fluid and chaotic. The believe in the metaphysical provides a means to ground a relation outside the chaotic uncertain reality, which can be very comforting and liberating.
- freedomben 3y ago
  This rings true to me, but it reinforces my existing beliefs, so my awareness of the dangers of confirmation bias demands that I not trust it without some due diligence. Does anybody have any citations to backup this point?

doitLP 3y ago

> Doughty said that one Flaherty [White House director of digital strategy] message in February 2021 accused Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims." Flaherty also wrote in a July 2021 email to Facebook, "Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today." Sure sounds like a relationship where the power only goes one direction and the Flaherty was very comfortable demanding whatever he wanted.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
which direction are you imagining? the one originating from the dude who used a swear word? or the one originating from the company who felt comfortable ignoring the dude and the request? after all, anyone can feel comfortable demanding anything, what matters is what they get: e.g. TFG felt comfortable demanding that his political rivals be imprisoned, did he get it?
- tome 3y ago
  FTI, TFG means "that former guy" and refers to Donald Trump: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TFG https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TFG
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- hgsgm 3y ago
  Who did TFG send his demands to? His rally crowds have no power to act, and consented, so there is no coercion.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    in which direction do you imagine the power dynamic OP mentioned went? the one originating from the dude who used a swear word? or the one originating from the company who felt comfortable ignoring the dude and the request?

hgsgm 3y ago

I don't understand how Missouri and Louisiana have any standing here. 1. They aren't the victims. 2. The individual posters were censored by Facebook et al, not the government, so even they might not have standing. The social networks obviously have standing, but have they complained? "Facebook likes the President" isn't something you should be able to sue the President for.

dogleash 3y ago
> I don't understand how Missouri and Louisiana have any standing here. Did you read their legal complaint? It doesn't feel like your statements here are responding to their claims about standing in the complaint.
fwlr 3y ago
The judgement itself is worth reading; it is not nearly as polemical as it being made out to be. It goes into detail on the question of how the states of Missouri and Louisiana have standing here; the “letter of the law” answer is that there is extensive precedent for determining whether states have standing in cases like this and the judge determined this case clearly passes the tests set by those precedents, while the “spirit of the law” answer (also given in the ruling) is that millions of citizens of Missouri and Louisiana have had their constitutional rights (both state and federal) interfered with by the plaintiffs, and as states are charged with upholding their citizens’ rights, they have standing to seek injunctions to protect those rights.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Nobody has a right to post on Twitter.
  - fwlr 3y ago
    Again, I encourage you to read the ruling. It addresses this claim quite thoroughly: > Traditionally, the First Amendment imposes limitations only on “state action, not action by private parties.” Lloyd Corp., Ltd. v. Tanner, 407 U.S. 551, 567 (1972). > However, plaintiffs “may establish a First Amendment claim based on private conduct if that conduct ‘can fairly be seen as state action.'” Id. (quoting Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 U.S. 830, 838 (1982)). > the Court instructed that “[i]t is axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” Id. (quoting Lee v. Macon Cnty. Bd. of Ed., 267 F.Supp. 458, 475-476 (M.D. Ala.), affd sub nom. Wallace v. U S, 389 U.S. 215 (1967)). Essentially: yes, you do not have a right to post on Twitter, you cannot sue Twitter for violating your First Amendment rights. But the courts have repeatedly affirmed that this does not create a loophole for the government to launder unconstitutional acts through private parties.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

Does this mean I can yell fire in a crowded theater again? Apparently not limiting my free speech is more important than the impact of my disinformation.

bena 3y ago
Always could. Because everyone else can see if the theater is on fire or not.
- SQueeeeeL 3y ago
  Damn, the US is doomed if we have a systematic expectation of individuals validating people telling them to panic
RobotToaster 3y ago
It's a myth that it's illegal to yell fire in a crowded theatre, https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
- hanniabu 3y ago
  What about yelling bomb on an airplane
  - merth 3y ago
    how is that information is useful even if it's true. it's not like you can walk away.
    - hirundo 3y ago
      You can pray, which many people find useful. You might be able to phone home and say goodbye. There might be a bomb squad technician on the plane.
- 3y ago

craig1f 3y ago

[flagged]

footlose_3815 3y ago

Oh, a planted Louisiana judge

viggity 3y ago

The Hunter Biden laptop story was actively suppressed on Twitter and Facebook specifically because the FBI told them it was Russian information, despite the fact that the FBI had verified it was legit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files

hotpotamus 3y ago
What do you think the FBI's goal was with that behavior?
- ethanbond 3y ago
  That behavior didn't occur, as the Twitter Files themselves indicated. FBI gave a general warning prior to the election around hacked materials, Twitter (and many others) thought the laptop story might be one such example and reacted according to their own corporate policies/scenario planning. There is zero evidence that the government acted on the laptop story in any way, and even the Biden campaign/Biden family (private parties) only made requests specifically on posts sharing images of Hunter's penis, not on articles about the laptop itself.
  - artificialLimbs 3y ago
    James Baker actively pushed heads to have the story censored, which happened.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      James Baker was Deputy General Counsel at Twitter lol. His official job was to be involved in exactly these types of decisions. He left the FBI in 2018. Raise complaints about the revolving door between govt and industry if you want, but this is cut-and-dry not about a government official pressuring a private company. It's about a private company hiring a former government official (years out of service) and then that person doing the job they were hired to do.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

efitz 3y ago

This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing that a particular email isn’t coercive enough, etc. A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. Freedom of speech is literally the first thing in the Bill of Rights. The government did a bad thing. Why defend them?

freediverx 3y ago
“Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee…”
ceejayoz 3y ago
> A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. This is not how a preliminary injunction works. The court has ordered that the governmment stop doing the in-dispute things until the dispute is resolved - in either direction - in court. The standard for such an injunction is not proof, but "they might prevail in court, and there's potentially enough harm from letting it continue in the meantime".
- lordfrito 3y ago
  Also, a WSJ article suggested the point is that discovery needs to occur here before a judgment is made. [1] Judge Doughty could have dismissed the case without an opportunity for discovery, as another judge did in another NCLA case, Changizi v. HHS, involving the same sort of censorship. Judge Doughty understood, however, that a largely secret censorship system can’t be evaluated under the First Amendment until after discovery. [1] https://archive.is/GCWCr https://archive.is/GCWCr
  - kyrra 3y ago
    While I agree here, I want to add a caveat that the linked article is technically a "commentary" pieces, not a news-side piece (aka: it's published on the opinion pages). But even given that, the opinion pages of the WSJ is just as fact-filled as the news side, but just highlights that the person writing it may not be a disinterested party. The Opinion Pages of the WSJ also tend to lean more conservative, while the news side leans liberal. Though they will happily publish people from the left, such as publishing President Biden: https://www.wsj.com/articles/never-bet-against-the-american-economy-president-inflation-manufacturing-jobs-287a006f https://www.wsj.com/articles/never-bet-against-the-american-...

1970-01-01 3y ago

The free speech misinformation directly led to deaths of citizens. It is no different from any other speech that causes mass panic and confusion. I don't understand why this decision was allowed to become detached from reality.

s__s 3y ago
Yelling fire in a crowded theatre is only illegal when you know for sure there is no fire and are intentionally trying to cause panic and death.
- 1970-01-01 3y ago
  Yes, disinformation is not free speech. Misinformation can be allowed, however amplification of it cannot.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  It's more akin to yelling that there isn't a fire when there is and avoiding all evidence so you can claim ignorance.
thsksbd 3y ago
You mean misinformation like the Hunter laptop story, the Wuhan lab origin - both censored and true - or do you mean Russia gate (throughly discredited, but shoved down the electorate's throat for four years?

curiousllama 3y ago

I love HN legal threads because engineers have great (logical) legal analysis, but with a terrible (practical) understanding of the law. And every so often a someone with legal training chimes in like "wtf guys" It's like watching a good software engineer try to build a circuit board without google: I see how you got there, but damn, that's... not gonna work great. Idk the law either, though, so I can't judge

jjaken 3y ago
[flagged]
draw_down 3y ago
[dead]
fwlr 3y ago
Engineers having poor legal analysis seems to stem from a common assumption that lawyers are the programmers, the law is the code, and the judge is the interpreter/compiler who just sort of runs the arguments the lawyers provide and outputs an answer. This leads them to over-weight “rules lawyering” and creative interpretations. It can be fixed by instead viewing lawyers as junior devs making competing PRs and the judge as the senior dev reviewing and approving/denying them: if you find a clever loophole that inverts the law , the judge will say “that is not intended, denied”.

traviswingo 3y ago

There’s a difference between freedom of speech and education. The government did a bad thing. Anyone should be allowed to speak their piece. We need more people to speak up when those speaking the loudest are wrong, uneducated, and unqualified to speak on the topic they’re preaching. I get the incentive here, but it’s not the governments place to decide what we do and don’t say. Society as a whole needs to be better at calling out the lies with hard facts and data. Because right now, it feels like the people with the most effective voices are taking us in the wrong direction.

klyrs 3y ago
> We need more people to speak up when those speaking the loudest are wrong, uneducated, and unqualified to speak on the topic they’re preaching. How, though? It takes a lot more work to develop an educated opinion than an uneducated one. There will always be more educated speakers than uneducated speakers. And do you really think that, during a pandemic, the best use of an epidemiologist's time is wading into the trenches and fighting every single case of "wrong on the internet"?
codetrotter 3y ago
> Society as a whole needs to be better at calling out the lies with hard facts and data. It doesn’t work. In the time it takes to refute one lie with facts and data, the world has moved on and uncountable additional lies have been spread in the meantime. Besides which. Both the people that produce the lies, and their supporters, are well aware of the fact that it’s not true. They just choose to ignore that. And any facts and data you are able to compile, will fall on deaf ears.
- ClarityJones 3y ago
  > It doesn’t work. In the time it takes to refute one lie with facts and data, the world has moved on and uncountable additional lies have been spread in the meantime. Great point, free speech is bad. We should repeal the 1st Amendment. /s
  - 3y ago

neilv 3y ago

I don't yet see an ACLU statement on this, though it seems up their alley, and they have a more recent statement on a different case. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases https://www.aclu.org/press-releases. (Incidentally, the Ars Technica favicon looks very similar to the ACLU's.)

local_crmdgeon 3y ago
The ACLU has become a run-of-the-mill left wing org. For proper 1st amendment protection, you should look at FIRE. Like the EFF, they are willing do defend that which they find objectionable - the ACLU no longer does.

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

These are private platforms. They can censor whatever speech they want. They decide whether to listen to big bad government with an axe over its head or simply get their head cut off, right? I mean, they could have just chosen to be crushed with legal battles from the government, right? Free speech and free will in America, right?

echelon 3y ago
I'd rather the platforms be treated as common carriers - unable to censor by themselves. Corporations having the right to censor is no better than the government. It would fix a lot of misalignment in terms of advertiser spend, too. In a common carrier world, the government censoring private individuals would go against our first amendment rights. Pretty clear cut. Ideally we eventually reach p2p social networking protocols. I don't want my interest or attention graph dictated or influenced by a third party. I want to be able to (de)weight and (de)prioritize based off of my own personal preferences.
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
  I'd rather the platforms be treated as common carriers That's called the internet. Corporations having the right to censor is no better than the government. Yes it is, there are lots of corporations and anyone can start one. There is only one government that applies to someone at any one time and they have a monopoly on violence. In a common carrier world, the government censoring private individuals would go against our first amendment rights. Pretty clear cut. It's clear cut that the internet does that already and corporations do not have to broadcast what they don't want to. If you hate censorship so much why are you on hacker news? This is one of the most censored sites on the internet. Comments are not just deleted and removed but there is no record when they are. There are plenty of sites that let anyone post whatever they want and they turn into people spamming nazi propaganda. You can find these sites and see if you like them better than the mainstream sites of the internet.
  - echelon 3y ago
    > Yes it is, there are lots of corporations and anyone can start one. Please tell me how to start a Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, or Twitter and reach their scale and engagement. Preferably up and running with billions of users by tomorrow. Your suggestion is implausible and denies the reality that these entities are entrenched and more or less here to stay. > If you hate censorship so much why are you on hacker news? You want me to leave because I hate censorship? Same argument as "If you don't like America, then leave." Systems can be improved. Just because we don't like the status quo doesn't mean we want to throw everything out. This is a shallow dismissal of the free speech argument. > There are plenty of sites that let anyone post whatever they want and they turn into people spamming nazi propaganda. You can find these sites and see if you like them better than the mainstream sites of the internet. Again, clearly not what I'm advocating for here. Not all discourse turns to "Nazism" (as liberals say) or "kiddie diddling" (as conservatives say). I operated forums back in their 2000-2010 heydey that had a free speech policy. People behaved, and we all learned a lot. The only reason corporations have the market share now is that they blitzscaled to critical mass. My argument stands. The ideal social media system is a p2p protocol that nobody can exert undue control or influence over. That everyone can tailor as they so please.

entriesfull 3y ago

Just a reminder that Hitler and Stalin would be so jealous at the amount of power these governments have compared to them: 1. Force twitter, fb, blah blah to shadowban anyone that criticizes their lies 2. Backdoor any device made by Google, Apple, etc. 3. Warrantless wiretap 4. Shove out more lies and goto step 1.

darealrealist 3y ago

[flagged]

calgarymicro 3y ago

I wanted to point out several factual issues with this ruling, some of which I mentioned yesterday on another post. For starters, the judge severely misquotes an email: >However, various emails show Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits through evidence that the motivation of the NIAID Defendants was a “take down” of protected free speech. Dr. Francis Collins, in an email to Dr. Fauci told Fauci there needed to be a “quick and devastating take down” of the GBD—the result was exactly that. In reality, the email[0] actually said this: >There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don't see anything like that online yet - is it underway? Notice how he removed the word "published" from his quote, making it seem like an instruction to a social media company rather than a published rebuttal. He also mischaracterizes a WH aide's email to FB, claiming that the aid accused FB "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims", when in actuality he was referring to a WSJ article that detailed actual calls to violence on the platform[1]. He also characterizes Twitter's removal of an account with the handle "AnthonyFauci_" as government-directed censorship of parody: > NIAID and NIH staff sent several messages to social-media platforms asking them to remove content lampooning or criticizing Dr. Fauci . . . An HHS official then asked Twitter if it could “block” similar parody accounts... But in reality, the contact was initiated by Twitter, who asked the CDC whether the account was real or fake[2]. Why were they confused about this? Because the account wasn't a parody at all; its name was "Dr. Anthony Fauci", its bio was "Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases #NIAID", and there was nothing parodic about its tweets[3][4], which purported to be giving out factual info; it was a straight up impersonation. On the subject of Dr. Fauci, there's a particularly egregious section where the judge accuses him and other members of NIAID of 'censoring' the so-called Great Barrington Declaration. To support his claim that Reddit and Google censored the GBD at the government's behest, he cites an article[5] that describes how Reddit mods (not Reddit the company!) took down links to the GBD, and complains about the top Google search results for the GBD were all disparaging it, without providing any evidence that either NIAID instructed Google to change the results, or even any evidence that Google purposely changed the results at all. His accusation is that Fauci made public statements 'in collusion' with another employee >Dr. Fauci testified “it’s possible that” he coordinated with Dr. Collins on his public statements attacking the GBD. Disparaging the GBD, and that Google and these individual mods in turn took independent action against it. So I guess PSAs are censorship? Needless to say, there's a lot of issues with this injunction, and from just the small sections I've looked at, it doesn't seem like the judge has applied the necessary rigor to justify a nationwide injunction restricting the government from nearly all contact with various companies and nonprofits. I kind of wish Ars Technics had done some of this scrutiny (which really didn't take that long) before publishing this article. [0]https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/12/18/23/51969841-10324873-image-a-3_1639871403560.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/12/18/23/51969841-10324873... [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=36619117 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=36619117 [2]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.207.17.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... [3]https://twitter.com/merrymanlab/status/1239321484297998336 https://twitter.com/merrymanlab/status/1239321484297998336 [4]http://web.archive.org/web/20200313170022/https://twitter.com/anthonyfauci_/status/1238507266346831874 http://web.archive.org/web/20200313170022/https://twitter.co... [5]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.207.12.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

hoten 3y ago

Half the comments here are saber-rattling at the title of the article, without the understanding that the title itself is an egregious mischaracterization. Yeah, the court issued a rule, but the layman's interpretation of "that means they found actual wrong doing" is not correct. It's just a preliminary injunction, apparently based on some flawed misinterpretation of the actual communication that took place [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36619241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36619241

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

[dead]

dragonwriter 3y ago

Headline is factually inaccurate; its a preliminary injunction which includes consideration of likelihood of success on the merits, not a ruling on the merits.