6 ms·
I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government. Why on earth would I? The government is already massively constrained in what it can sa
by AbrahamParangi 3y ago
I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government. Why on earth would I? The government is already massively constrained in what it can say and that’s entirely appropriate because the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them.
You may disagree with the ruling but if you’re on the side of free speech, you should definitely cheer it.
- roflyear 3y agoYou can't think of a scenario where the government should be able to express a thought about something? ;)
- Auracle 3y agoThey have plenty of ways to do so without using intermediaries at social media companies.
- roflyear 3y agoThat's implying compelling speech which is not the discussion.
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoThe rights apply to people not the govt lol Edit: Amazing, a perfect factual comment is downvoted.
- roflyear 3y agoI'm just saying there are times where you may want the government to be able to express opinions....
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoYeah, and no one is preventing that. There is a diff between opinion and force/blackmail disguised as opinion. "You have a fine shop here, would be a shame if it burned down". Syntactically, it is an opinion. But it is not just an opinion if comes from a mobster.
- caseysoftware 3y agoA government doesn't "express opinions" they "enact policy."
- evandale 3y agoNo? What!? Name a scenario in which the government would put forth an opinion on something.. governments, like corporations, can't have opinions.
- roflyear 3y agoSure. "We think that info may put someone on our security team at risk, can you please take it down?"
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoThat is not an opinion. It is a request at the best or a command when read pragmatically. Edit: Think about this. If it is just an opinion, they can say that in press releases and not communicate that in secret to social media companies.
- roflyear 3y agoIt's obviously not something they can say in press releases, but it also may not be factual (or provable). There are "we think" situations which are important.
- JackFr 3y agoThe daily White House press briefing is an excellent venue.
- roflyear 3y agoI don't think that gives them all the avenues to express things that may be important.
- AbrahamParangi 3y agoI am satisfied for the space of the government’s unenforceable opinions to be circumscribed.
- roflyear 3y agoWhich restrictions are you cool with?
- uLogMicheal 3y agoThe government has plenty of ways to express thoughts. Almost every agency has a podium with a room full of reporters waiting whenever they want to make a statement.
- Brusco_RF 3y agoThey don't have enough channels to do that? They have to do it via veiled threat to a speech platform to delete users posts? How can anyone defend this behavior? Just because it's your guy doing it? If Trump was telling Twitter to delete posts that hurt his re-election chances would you feel this same way?
- artificialLimbs 3y agoUnbelievable that you're being downvoted at all. The authoritarian minded have definitely increased substantially as this site has become more popular and drawn increasingly larger crowds. When it was dominated by those capable of logic and reasoning and having some knowledge of the world, authoritarianism would get smacked down hard and rightfully so.
- roflyear 3y agoI am sure you are just as illogical as other people - and it would be good for you to realize that! Never did I say that I support governments. I was only asking what I thought (and was wrong about) was a positive provoking question.
- roflyear 3y agoNot the context I was replying to.
- mc32 3y agoSure, in addition to all of their organs of dissemination, of which they have plenty of options, they can also have their own Twitter and Facebook accounts. What they can’t do is ring up Twitter and Facebook and say, hey, that’s misinformation, do something about it. Or have government embeds giving guidance. That’s hilariously very ayatollesque behavior!
- JackFr 3y agoFor instance, if you're the FAA, you should express opinions about airline operations, air safety, etc. That is your role. If you are the FDA, you should express opinions about food and drug safety. And in both those cases note that you are a regulator, and within your domain, it is your role to regulate the players. If you are the White House, you are not a regulator of anything. It is fine to express your opinion. In fact the White House has a daily press briefing for specifically that purpose. It is fine to call out people with whom you disagree. Perfectly OK to call them dangerous charlatans and liars. It is not OK to censor their speech. It is not OK use the implicit coercive force of the executive branch to encourage third parties to censor them. It's not hard to understand.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> If you are the White House, you are not a regulator of anything If you are the White House, you are the ur-regulator of anything any part of the executive branch is a regulator of, as well as the things that the Executive Office of the President is the actual direct regulator of (which are mostly internal to government operations.)
- roflyear 3y agoMan, people are being really rude here just for me asking a question.
- evandale 3y agolol I gotta say I've been trying to read the defenders of this and take them seriously but your incredulity matches mine... .. and people are replying to you and _still_ defending the government and think they should have unilateral power over their people I'm kind of speechless about how many people think this ruling is a bad thing.. like who in the hell out there believes the government should have OPINIONS? Can one of you reply to me? It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no idea how you could come up with an argument to change my mind on that.
- afavour 3y ago> It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no idea how you could come up with an argument to change my mind on that. I guess I don’t understand your point here unless we’re being ultra-literal and saying a corporation can’t have an opinion because it doesn’t have a physical brain developing individual thought. An example of “corporate opinion” off the top of my head: Facebook is in favour of advertising. I guess it's just a shorthand for "the executive board and shareholders of Facebook share the collective view that advertising is good" but I don't think anyone is particularly confused about what is meant when someone says Facebook is favour of something.
- ipaddr 3y agoFacebook is made up of many parts. Some parts find advertising to be directly opposite of their goals. The react team may not like ads being force in their docs for example. If own shares through a pension I may not like advertising. The CEO decides who manages which roles and divides authority. Opinions comes from these power structures. They could be divided on issues or unified. They speak for the company. Google is so big you often have conflicting goals from different power structures.
- afavour 3y ago> Google is so big you often have conflicting goals from different power structures. In that situation I'd say Google is conflicted on the topic. It's still not all that different from a human being, IMO, I can be internally conflicted on a topic and find it difficult to find an opinion that encompasses all of my thoughts. I get that it's shorthand and euphemism but I don't think it's all that confusing.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoThe platforms had a preexisting way to report ToS violations. The government made statements of fact about posts that violated those ToS. The platforms were free to act or not act on those reports.
- staticman2 3y ago" I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government...the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them." That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right? Out of curiosity I pulled up an article in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. One principle put out by John Stewart Mill is that free speech is valuable because it leads to the truth. If this is correct you should arguably be concerned if the government can't engage in it because we will all be lead away from the truth. The article says "... arguments show that one of the main reasons for justifying free speech (political speech) is important, not for it's own sake but because it lets us exercise another important value (democracy)." So if we accept this then if censoring the strong undermines democracy it could be bad, especially if they became strong because the weak elected them into office to represent them. The article quotes someone who says "Speech, in short, is never a value in and of itself but is always produced with the precincts of some assumed conception of good." In other words, don't argue free speech is good because free speech is good.
- jonny_eh 3y agoIt's also not free speech if it's only for some. The government is a very important player in our society, we depend on them being able to speak freely!
- aksss 3y agoTo be clear we’re not talking about the government speaking freely. They do so and with seeming impunity for bs relative to their position of authority. We’re talking about the government coercively censoring speech of citizens in/on the media, not under emergency orders or commandeering, but as a matter of routine. Yes they’ve always done this even with the major news networks thirty or forty years ago (pre-Internet). It was wrong then just like it’s wrong now. It’s more visible and obvious now to more people, the evidence is right in front of us through leaks and email disclosures from efforts like the Twitter files.
- tdehnel 3y ago