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It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. The legal the

It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. The legal theory at stake here is that all government speech is inherently coercive. But this is not necessarily true, or aligned with free speech as a principle of society. Any time someone says “we must protect free speech by legally enjoining the following people from speaking,” I am suspicious.

ETH_start 3y ago
The government has no First Amendment rights.
GeekyBear 3y ago
> It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. If the speech the government officials are engaging in is a demand to censor the political speech of citizens, then we are looking at a violation of the First Amendment. Nobody is saying that government officials can't engage in other kinds of speech that don't violate the Bill of Rights.
- snowwrestler 3y ago
  Demands are free speech, even if unreasonable. The First Amendment constrains the application of the power of law, like prosecution and imprisonment. Which is not what happened in these cases.
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    > Demands are free speech When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech. If you recall, Trump wasn't allowed to block citizens who were critical of him on Twitter for the same reason. > In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-rules-trump-violated-first-amendment-by-blocking-twitter-follo https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r...
    - snowwrestler 3y ago
      > When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech. In other words, you’re happy to censor speech you disagree with, while waving the flag of free speech.
      - GeekyBear 3y ago
        The First Amendment is doing the demanding here. Not all speech is protected, and Government officials are not allowed to censor political speech.
        snowwrestler 3y ago
        Speech does not censor speech; this is an essential core of the concept of free speech. If I tell you to take down your comments, I am not censoring you. I’m speaking. It’s only censorship if I can force you to take them down. The same is true for federal officials; just telling someone to shut up is not censorship. Without an actual threat of force, it’s not censorship or intimidation. Note that I’m not arguing that intimidation cannot and does not happen. But intimidation requires an actual threat. Not just an angry email. The ironic thing is that federal officials can speak freely because of the First Amendment. It gives them license to speak because actual legal protections exist for citizen speech. The power of federal officials is well constrained under U.S. law. They can tell a media company to change their content, and the company can say “no.” Because of the First Amendment.
        GeekyBear 3y ago
        > Speech does not censor speech We know from the Twitter document dumps that government officials on both sides of the aisle have been demanding that speech (and speakers) critical of them, their preferred policies and/or their political party be censored. > intimidation requires an actual threat Threatening to yank section 230 of the Communications Decency Act if platforms don't ramp up their censorship is an actual threat. > You may have never heard of it, but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the internet. The law was created almost 30 years ago to protect internet platforms from liability for many of the things third parties say or do on them. Decades later, it’s never been more controversial. People from both political parties and all three branches of government have threatened to reform or even repeal it. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-explained-supreme-court-social-media https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-ex...
- curiousllama 3y ago
  > If the speech the government officials are engaging in is a demand to censor the political speech of citizens, then we are looking at a violation of the First Amendment "Censor" is doing a lot of work here. It's important for the government to engage in public speech that may lead another person to self-censor. E.g., a press release saying "FYI: publishing your how-to-build-a-nuke guide is gonna help crazy people bomb US cities, please don't do that." If gov speech is inherently coercive, then the gov is NOT allowed to make that request. (which feels dumb to me) In reality, it's more likely a court would hold they can say that; they just can't imprison the publisher (or audit their taxes more aggressively) as a result. So the gov can def say things that would lead to self-censorship. They just can't be dicks about it.
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    > So the gov can def say things that would lead to self-censorship. They just can't be dicks about it. The government is going to have a hard time claiming they didn't engage in coercion when they've been actively threatening to yank the Section 230 protections of the Communications Decency Act if the platforms don't step up the censorship. >You may have never heard of it, but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the internet. The law was created almost 30 years ago to protect internet platforms from liability for many of the things third parties say or do on them. Decades later, it’s never been more controversial. People from both political parties and all three branches of government have threatened to reform or even repeal it. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-explained-supreme-court-social-media https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-ex...
  - revelio 3y ago
    The threat of more aggressive tax audits or regulations or whatever is always there. It doesn't have to be spelled out. Piss off the government and they have a billion ways to make you feel pain. It would be absurd if the government could "suggest" you do something and this was considered not an abuse because they didn't literally, at that exact moment, spell out the penalties they would impose for non-compliance. Of course in a theoretically ideal system laws are precise enough that governments can't simply make your life worse for getting on the wrong side of them. But nobody seems willing to stomach the level of rigor that would require from lawmakers. Three Felonies A Day and such.
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
Hiding regulatory threats behind “simple, optional requests” is so far beyond the pale that I can’t imagine letting them get away with it. Especially when the counter argument is that the government has inalienable rights to free speech. The federal government is not some downtrodden dissident in need of protecting.
chipsa 3y ago
The government does not have a "right" to speech, because the government doesn't have rights. Employees for the government generally have the right to speak, unless they are speaking for the government. If they are speaking for the government, that is not their speech, but rather is government speech. Government speech isn't inherently coercive, but government speech telling one party to muzzle another, or else, is coercive.
akira2501 3y ago
> the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. They are. They're not allowed to speak on _behalf_ of the government without limit, though. In this case, it's pretty clear, that's what they did. They weren't _personally_ reaching out to Twitter as a citizen and asking for posts to be removed. They were asking as _agents_ of the government, through official communications channels established precisely for this purpose, and they did it on taxpayer paid time. > Any time someone says “we must protect free speech by legally enjoining the following people from speaking,” I am suspicious. The purpose of their speech is to remove the ability for others to access platforms. They are not making any legal claims or starting any legal cases, they are simply using their power to remove speech from American citizens. They have no _natural right_ to do this.
ndr 3y ago
That's not at all what the injunction says. See point 5 at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36618822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36618822
mrangle 3y ago
LOL at the "censorship requests are free speech of the government" argument. You are trying to assign Constitutional Rights to the government in its relationship with citizens. As if the government was an individual whose rights are covered under the First Amendment and it is the citizens who are restricted from limiting the government's freedoms. Very specifically, the First Amendment protects Freedom of Speech of US citizens by restricting what the government can do. Under the First Amendment and its case law, the government is widely restricted from censoring citizens. Your sole rhetorical strategy was to invert that relationship in a manner that does not exist. Beyond that, it has long been established in case law that government requests for censorship are tantamount to demands that have the threat of force behind them.

ETH_start 3y ago

The government has no First Amendment rights.

GeekyBear 3y ago

> It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. If the speech the government officials are engaging in is a demand to censor the political speech of citizens, then we are looking at a violation of the First Amendment. Nobody is saying that government officials can't engage in other kinds of speech that don't violate the Bill of Rights.

snowwrestler 3y ago
Demands are free speech, even if unreasonable. The First Amendment constrains the application of the power of law, like prosecution and imprisonment. Which is not what happened in these cases.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > Demands are free speech When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech. If you recall, Trump wasn't allowed to block citizens who were critical of him on Twitter for the same reason. > In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-rules-trump-violated-first-amendment-by-blocking-twitter-follo https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r...
  - snowwrestler 3y ago
    > When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech. In other words, you’re happy to censor speech you disagree with, while waving the flag of free speech.
    - GeekyBear 3y ago
      The First Amendment is doing the demanding here. Not all speech is protected, and Government officials are not allowed to censor political speech.
      - snowwrestler 3y ago
        Speech does not censor speech; this is an essential core of the concept of free speech. If I tell you to take down your comments, I am not censoring you. I’m speaking. It’s only censorship if I can force you to take them down. The same is true for federal officials; just telling someone to shut up is not censorship. Without an actual threat of force, it’s not censorship or intimidation. Note that I’m not arguing that intimidation cannot and does not happen. But intimidation requires an actual threat. Not just an angry email. The ironic thing is that federal officials can speak freely because of the First Amendment. It gives them license to speak because actual legal protections exist for citizen speech. The power of federal officials is well constrained under U.S. law. They can tell a media company to change their content, and the company can say “no.” Because of the First Amendment.
        GeekyBear 3y ago
        > Speech does not censor speech We know from the Twitter document dumps that government officials on both sides of the aisle have been demanding that speech (and speakers) critical of them, their preferred policies and/or their political party be censored. > intimidation requires an actual threat Threatening to yank section 230 of the Communications Decency Act if platforms don't ramp up their censorship is an actual threat. > You may have never heard of it, but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the internet. The law was created almost 30 years ago to protect internet platforms from liability for many of the things third parties say or do on them. Decades later, it’s never been more controversial. People from both political parties and all three branches of government have threatened to reform or even repeal it. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-explained-supreme-court-social-media https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-ex...
curiousllama 3y ago
> If the speech the government officials are engaging in is a demand to censor the political speech of citizens, then we are looking at a violation of the First Amendment "Censor" is doing a lot of work here. It's important for the government to engage in public speech that may lead another person to self-censor. E.g., a press release saying "FYI: publishing your how-to-build-a-nuke guide is gonna help crazy people bomb US cities, please don't do that." If gov speech is inherently coercive, then the gov is NOT allowed to make that request. (which feels dumb to me) In reality, it's more likely a court would hold they can say that; they just can't imprison the publisher (or audit their taxes more aggressively) as a result. So the gov can def say things that would lead to self-censorship. They just can't be dicks about it.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > So the gov can def say things that would lead to self-censorship. They just can't be dicks about it. The government is going to have a hard time claiming they didn't engage in coercion when they've been actively threatening to yank the Section 230 protections of the Communications Decency Act if the platforms don't step up the censorship. >You may have never heard of it, but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the internet. The law was created almost 30 years ago to protect internet platforms from liability for many of the things third parties say or do on them. Decades later, it’s never been more controversial. People from both political parties and all three branches of government have threatened to reform or even repeal it. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-explained-supreme-court-social-media https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-ex...
- revelio 3y ago
  The threat of more aggressive tax audits or regulations or whatever is always there. It doesn't have to be spelled out. Piss off the government and they have a billion ways to make you feel pain. It would be absurd if the government could "suggest" you do something and this was considered not an abuse because they didn't literally, at that exact moment, spell out the penalties they would impose for non-compliance. Of course in a theoretically ideal system laws are precise enough that governments can't simply make your life worse for getting on the wrong side of them. But nobody seems willing to stomach the level of rigor that would require from lawmakers. Three Felonies A Day and such.

AbrahamParangi 3y ago

Hiding regulatory threats behind “simple, optional requests” is so far beyond the pale that I can’t imagine letting them get away with it. Especially when the counter argument is that the government has inalienable rights to free speech. The federal government is not some downtrodden dissident in need of protecting.

chipsa 3y ago

The government does not have a "right" to speech, because the government doesn't have rights. Employees for the government generally have the right to speak, unless they are speaking for the government. If they are speaking for the government, that is not their speech, but rather is government speech. Government speech isn't inherently coercive, but government speech telling one party to muzzle another, or else, is coercive.

akira2501 3y ago

> the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. They are. They're not allowed to speak on _behalf_ of the government without limit, though. In this case, it's pretty clear, that's what they did. They weren't _personally_ reaching out to Twitter as a citizen and asking for posts to be removed. They were asking as _agents_ of the government, through official communications channels established precisely for this purpose, and they did it on taxpayer paid time. > Any time someone says “we must protect free speech by legally enjoining the following people from speaking,” I am suspicious. The purpose of their speech is to remove the ability for others to access platforms. They are not making any legal claims or starting any legal cases, they are simply using their power to remove speech from American citizens. They have no _natural right_ to do this.

ndr 3y ago

That's not at all what the injunction says. See point 5 at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36618822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36618822

mrangle 3y ago

LOL at the "censorship requests are free speech of the government" argument. You are trying to assign Constitutional Rights to the government in its relationship with citizens. As if the government was an individual whose rights are covered under the First Amendment and it is the citizens who are restricted from limiting the government's freedoms. Very specifically, the First Amendment protects Freedom of Speech of US citizens by restricting what the government can do. Under the First Amendment and its case law, the government is widely restricted from censoring citizens. Your sole rhetorical strategy was to invert that relationship in a manner that does not exist. Beyond that, it has long been established in case law that government requests for censorship are tantamount to demands that have the threat of force behind them.