15 ms·

Appeals court rules White House likely overstepped 1st Amendment on social media

138 points by perihelions 3y ago

nullifidian 3y ago
Considering there are only few actors (the social media, search, internet infrastructure companies) the coercion is unlikely to stop due to a court decision. The government and the legislature have a lot of leverage, up to an anti-trust action, and instead of threatening emails or public statements they could do it with off the record conversations, which are much harder to sue against -- the public wouldn't even know. The more questionable is the position of a company regarding anti-trust, title VII, {something else I can't think of}, the more leverage the government has.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  I would imagine that making threats through 'off the record conversations' (which can easily become on the record) would look even worse to the courts than their current strategy.
- TheCaptain4815 3y ago
  Considering the censorship is heavily tilted towards one ideology, what incentive does the opposing ideology have to stop this? It worked perfectly fine with no political capital loss in 2020 and 2022 midterms. In fact, most people within that ideology agree with the tech giants and want more censorship.
  - di4na 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 3y ago
      Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. Regardless of how right you are or feel you are, it just makes the threads more predictable, and therefore more tedious and nasty. We're trying for the opposite here, to the extent possible. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    What is likely is that the wheels of censorship will do what they always do and censor that other group. Nobody is immune to censorship for long. Hopefully that will cause enough ruckus that we go back to being anti-censorship. Censorship isn't just impacting one group - it's a whole bunch of smaller subgroups that make up both parties. It also hurts the uncensored groups because instead of responding to their opponents they are now just shadowboxing themselves in a corner.
    - dmix 3y ago
      Was the targeting of Twitter, FB, and YouTube hitting broadly across ideologies and groups? Twitter files released tons of raw emails by gov agency staff with lists of profiles and it was pretty clear whom the executive/federal gov and Twitter's own staff had a hard on for. Its possible it's merely a result of the current administration being in power and yes the risk to everyone is very apparent, but the people fighting the hardest against censorship vs those pushing hardcore social media moderation and top down wrongthink regulation has long had an obvious political divisions in America and here in Canada... For the past decade. The UK and other EU countries is probably more "equally censor everything influential groups don't like" though so the divide is not universal.
  - hackyhacky 3y ago
    > censorship is heavily tilted towards one ideology This is the craziest thing I've read all day.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - redeux 3y ago
    > most people within that ideology agree with the tech giants and want more censorship. I assume you’re talking about the right, since the left keeps talking about using antitrust to break up big tech.
  - callalex 3y ago
    It is seriously unclear to me what ideology you think is promoting censorship the most, from my perspective the cat got out of the bag in the USA and now different kinds of censorship are being advocated for across the political spectrum.
    - pauldenton 3y ago
      https://www.axios.com/2021/01/09/platforms-social-media-ban-restrict-trump https://www.axios.com/2021/01/09/platforms-social-media-ban-... Find me the list of social media platforms that banned Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden
sneak 3y ago
At what point can we finally admit there is a coordinated war on against freedom of expression online? The platforms censor on their own accord, the government pushes the platforms to censor even more, the legislature is talking about ways to make the platforms censor more yet. It seems they're afraid of the situation where anyone can publish to anyone regardless of content. Our efforts should be along these lines, on the most popular of devices. TikTok doesn't even let you access bio links in a normal browser, and you can't copy them. You can get banned from TikTok based on what you have listed in your bio link webpage on a different service. Instagram doesn't linkify URLs in comments or descriptions. Apple doesn't let things in the App Store unless they're firmly PG13. This is what killed Tumblr and ruins the photography site 500px's native app. There are whole domains of URLs that you can't even send in DM on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, or Discord. Personally I delete my accounts on these and use Signal exclusively, but how do we solve for the society-wide censorship problem?
- akerl_ 3y ago
  These don’t really sound like examples of a war on expression, nor are they really related to the government making questionable requests of private companies. Instagram isn’t obligated to render text in their app in a way that you’d prefer.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    Freedom of speech isn't just about what the government does. We can dislike a platform because it's a poor means of expression and urge people to stop using it.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      Dislike away, but don't justify your dislike of a specific UX using the language of human rights abuse. An app kind of sucking is not a humanitarian crisis.
      - User23 3y ago
tiahura 3y ago
[flagged]
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  There is clearly a lot of smoke around the president’s son receiving millions of dollars from Ukraine and China (why would he get that money?) yet all the news is about the orange man. Shouldn’t we be just as concerned about Ukraine collusion considering there’s an actual war we are funding there, and the Russian collusion was totally debunked? We live in clown world.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- lalaland1125 3y ago
  In what way are the criminal charges against Trump "show trials"? All of the charges against Trump are going through the normal court process, backed by substantial evidence (including recordings of Trump himself admitting many of the key facts in several cases)
random97531 3y ago
[dead]
0xParlay 3y ago
[flagged]
perihelions 3y ago
pdf opinion: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pd...
RyanAdamas 3y ago
After the fact doesn't matter. If all tyranny requires is an after-the-fact judicial ruling then tyranny will just find a way to win before then. The fact is, there is no such thing as a private company. Infringing speech is happening all over the place; the fact the Constitutions states Congress cannot enact laws against speech is tantamount to the people themselves being unable to enact action against speech and expression. Congress is the people, and the people don't get to privatize tyranny. Period.
- hackyhacky 3y ago
  There are plenty of legal restrictions on free speech. Defamation, for example. We don't consider it laws against defamation to be tyranny, but rather legitimate acts of governance. Moreover, the case in question did not involve an act of Congress, or in fact any express act of governance at all. There's a difference between being legally or illegally compelled by the government and simply being contacted by a government official. The government has freedom of speech, too, and they are allowed to express concern about dissemination of materials counter to the public interest.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    There are exceptions to the rule and this wasnt one of then. This wasnt the government suing Twitter for defamation.
    - hackyhacky 3y ago
      > This wasnt the government suing Twitter for defamation. I never said it was. The point was simply to refute GP's blanket assertion that any restriction on speech is tantamount to tyranny. > There are exceptions to the rule and this wasnt one of then. That's a thornier question which has not been resolved yet, and is certainly not a black-and-white issue.
vorpalhex 3y ago
I don't know why the Whitehouse thought this would fly to begin with. They basically said "Do X or there will be consequences". Every crappy compliance course I have ever sat though points out that behavior as a form of coercion. The Whitehouse clearly knew they weren't supposed to be doing this.
cowpig 3y ago
This isn't a case where people thought the wrong things and it made them vote wrong. It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them. I'm honestly shocked that people think this is a case where the government should not step in. I think they should have been much more aggressive. This judgment and the comments here just baffle me. The scientific consensus is that countries that took a much more proactive, aggressive approach were far more successful in preventing people from dying. And this isn't like a seatbelt issue where people just put themselves at risk. The fact that people are defending the spread of false information that contributed to people literally dying in favor of a hypothetical tyranny problem just leaves me feeling completely lost.
- voidfunc 3y ago
  It's not the governments job to decide what speech is "correct" in the US at least under the current judicial regimes interpretation of the laws. There are some very narrow exceptions but this is not one of those. That people honestly think this is a bad thing is depressing. The government simply cannot be trusted in the wider picture to make these decisions about good vs bad speech.
  - cowpig 3y ago
    > It's not the governments job to decide what speech is "correct" in the US at least under the current judicial regimes interpretation of the laws. There are some very narrow exceptions but this is not one of those. I mean, the court seems to agree with this statement but it makes absolutely no sense to me. The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt. This seems like the same kind of thing but much, much more harmful. EDIT: ok the "yelling fire" thing is not a great example, here are some others to jog your intuition that maybe your understanding of the concept of free speech needs to be fleshed out a bit: What about telling someone that a loaded gun is just an inert replica and giving it to them to use as a prop? What about telling someone that your company has a bunch of clients and tons of revenue when you are raising money as an investor? What about if you put the wrong ingredients on your food product and it kills someone with an allergy?
simple-thoughts 3y ago
It’s great to see not only this ruling but balanced reporting on it from NYT. I’m optimistic that the turn towards accepting tyranny is finally ending.
- nullc 3y ago
  But is it? The opinion NYT is reporting on is clear that the censorship in question went beyond Covid: "Their content touched on a host of divisive topics like the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine side-effects, election fraud, and the Hunter Biden laptop story" ... "Individual Plaintiffs seek to express views—and have been censored for their views—on topics well beyond COVID-19, including allegations of election fraud and the Hunter Biden laptop story." Yet the NYT only mentions covid and the discourse on HN-- which at the moment is substantially making excuses for the administration on the basis of "but covid!"-- is worse off for it.
  - simple-thoughts 3y ago
    I’m reading it a bit differently. Yes the censorship of political speech related to political figures is bad but we’re coming out of a period where much more fundamental rights were violated due to a slightly stronger than usual respiratory virus. The seriousness of the covid reaction is an order of magnitude greater than any alleged biden corruption. Until people are ready to reevaluate what happened, we’re still in danger of a return of extreme restrictions - since there are plenty of other things that have high death rates such as cars, drugs, and obesity.
    - nullc 3y ago
      An important thing here though is that it doesn't matter that the views the government was imposing were right or wrong. 1A prohibits the imposition. The fact that the NYT article only touches on one point has turned the HN thread into a debate over if tweets about masking, vaccine cardiac side effects, or whatever were right or wrong. But that's immaterial to the law here and it's important because there is clear polarization between posters on the underlying facts. But we don't have to agree on the substance of the censored speech to recognize that the state's use of coercion to suppress views it disagreed with is plainly unlawful. The 1A doesn't only apply when we agree with the speech being protected -- in fact it's most important when we don't: Speech almost everyone agrees with is going to get communicated no matter what the government does to censor it, it's unpopular views that are the most in need of 1A protection. So I think NYT does us a disservice by falsely portraying this as being about 'covid misinformation', as it invites everyone to substitute a discussion about the states power to censor here with yet another debate on covid -- a debate itself which has been tainted by politics and censorship.
GeekyBear 3y ago
Here's why silencing critics is problematic. The powers that be decided that Covid was a virus with a droplet based spread, like the flu, and they silenced domain experts who asserted that Covid was a fully airborne virus, like the measles. The mitigations that were put in place targeted a droplet based spread (washing hands, wiping down surfaces, putting up sneeze guards, staying six feet apart) and were ineffective against a virus you contract by inhaling it as it floats in the air. Unfortunately, it took two years for the truth about Covid to be begrudgingly accepted. > Two years of COVID: The battle to accept airborne transmission https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/11/two-years-of-covid-the-battle-to-accept-airborne-transmission https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/11/two-years-of-co...
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  Why was it such a politically-driven determination? Why is droplet-based culturally more expedient than airbourne?
  - exegete 3y ago
    Different types of mitigations which have different levels of social acceptance. Washing hands is a more socially acceptable mitigation than wearing high quality masks, for example.
  - edrxty 3y ago
    I don't think it would be if it wasn't for a bunch of people who decided to start an unrelated holy war against any mitigation of the virus. They caused everyone to become hyper alert for any signs of dissent which has made this whole thing measurably harder to manage.
    - Enginerrrd 3y ago
      A huge component of that was outright lies from the CDC in the beginning. "No one needs a mask" "They might even be harmful" "they require special training" all of which directly contradicted studies they had funded and published from doing contract tracing with SARS, while simultaneously stating they were essential for healthcare workers. All instead of saying "hey look we have a shortage of masks due to some previous mistakes we made which make us look incompetent now, and our healthcare workers need them more." Public health management 101 in any textbook will tell you that maintaining public trust during an epidemic is THE most important thing they could do. Don't blame the people that were paying attention and realized they were full of it. I bought my masks in January because it was clear this was coming. They also silenced any debate about the costs/benefits of various mitigations. Don't even get me started on that one. With an R0 as high as it was, even in the beginning, it was clear to me that even with mitigations you were going to see cases surge beyond hospital capacities. (Bringing the R0 down from 4 to 2.1 would have been a great success, and yet... not that effective in a lot of ways.) Flattening the curve also prolongs the pandemic and deaths of despair were inevitable. This made some sense in the beginning to try and stall for time with the vaccine, but must be weighed against the costs, and there was no reasonable discussion of that at the policy level.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped First Amendment on Social Media No, the appeals court did not. This headline is inaccurate. It found that the Administration likely did so in a narrower set of cases than the trial court had, in upholding in part and striking down in part a preliminary injunction placed by the trial court (likelihood of success on the merits is one of several considerations in issuing a preliminary injunction, but it is distinct from an actual ruling on the merits.) Trial and an actual decision on the merits will happen later.
- krapp 3y ago
  [flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Ok, I've made the title say likely above.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
linusg789 3y ago
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/QA9Q8 https://ghostarchive.org/archive/QA9Q8
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
[flagged]
rosmax_1337 3y ago
I think history will be quite harsh on the censors in the west once we regain our footing, but not only the activists who pushed for these ideas through various means, but also to technicians (looking at a lot of people who might be reading this comment) who enabled their arguably obviously ill behavior. Naturally, one can only demand so much of the average citizen in terms of civil courage to say no when tyrants try to dictate the direction of society, but for the sake of your own clean conscience I ask you humbly to simply quit your job if you work for and enable people who push policies like this. It would be honorable to make a fuss, whistleblow etcetera, but there are clear drawbacks to your private life in general to this. But you can choose to not enable their ill activism, by not working for them. And if you decide not to, how will you argue that you did the right thing when all the chips fall down, as they do for all of us eventually. In the end not everything in our lives is an economic calculation. Are you happy with what you've accomplished, proud even?
- yladiz 3y ago
  This is what the article says the government did: > urging the major social media platforms to remove misleading or false content about the Covid-19 pandemic They didn’t tell them what they had to do, and didn’t censor anything specifically from these companies, so can you explain what exactly you mean by “censors in the west”?
  - rosmax_1337 3y ago
    I am afraid a too candid discussion about what is being censored on these plattforms is a discussion that easily leads to flames. I also certainly don't mean to just talk about censorship performed at the request of governments. (a request without explicit threat of coercion, but a request nonetheless) I also highlight the censorship which these same social media companies perform on society at large on a variety of contentious political topics. I hold the belief that these social media companies have become new types of a public square, and the freedom of expression must be guaranteed on these platforms just as well as freedom of expression is guaranteed on a irl public square in most western countries. They should be required to carry and broadcast ideas which they themselves do not subscribe to, just as well as telecom companies are required to transmit phonecalls between people they dislike.
melindajb 3y ago
I find it fascinating how angry people on HN get about this particular issue; but rarely seem as concerned about the fundamental human rights violation of banning medications and medical procedures for one half the population. Yes, this is relevant; and I say this as a former life long libertarian: I wanted the government out of my life in most ways; and that included laws on abortion, marijuana and others. What I learned with life experience was that I benefitted from being part of a society, and I have to both give as well as take. sometimes, I get less...a lot less to be honest. and sometimes i get more. and hopefully the balance works out over a lifetime. Watching the foaming rage about words; but remaining silent when actual people are dying due to the actually tyrannical governments in the southern united states, belies the real motivation of a great many people.
- cvccvroomvroom 3y ago
  Religious bikeshedding as a proxy for tribal membership.
  - melindajb 3y ago
    I get to say what I observe. When I read the comment history of the angriest folks on this thread, it’s never anger on anyone else’s behalf but their own.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jadamson 3y ago
  I'm sure you'd be even more upset if those tyrannical governments worked to ban pro-choice messages/people from social media, removing the ability for those people to organize and thus any hope of challenging the laws you're talking about. Perhaps that will have to happen for you to see how bad it is.
  - melindajb 3y ago
    As you know the most brutally totalitarian regimes suppress speech that contradicts the views of those in power(edit). The Comparison of the American government’s decision to tamp down on the algorithmic reach of misinformation during a pandemic to a totalitarian regime is neither fair not an accurate; and frankly is hyperbolic.
hackyhacky 3y ago
Just to be clear, this appeals ruling mostly reversed the original decision of the original court. The original court's decision applied 10 different restrictions on government officials. The 5th circuit (itself widely known to be conservative) overturned nine of those ten restrictions, and also overturned many of the agencies they apply to. The appeals ruling, therefore, is being interpreted here (and, in many cases, intentionally spun) in a way exactly opposite to what it actually found, which is the government largely acted correctly.
- catiopatio 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - hackyhacky 3y ago
    > Did you actually read the article or the decision itself? I read the decision. Did you read my comment? Your citation is correct, but you're ignoring the parts where the appeals court disagrees with the trial court. In short, the trial court wildly overshot the mark. The actual violation as found by the appeals court is much more modest. My opinion is that even this version goes too far and will be overturned as well. "Significant encouragement" is likely protected speech and does not constitute a violation.
    - catiopatio 3y ago
      An appeals court overturning portions of a preliminary injunction does not indicate that “the government largely acted correctly” — the appeals court itself says the exact opposite. You stated that “The appeals ruling, therefore, is being interpreted here (and, in many cases, intentionally spun) in a way exactly opposite to what it actually found”, but that’s literally what you’re doing — blatantly in bad faith, contrary to the headline, the article in a major newspaper, and the actual decision itself.
      - hackyhacky 3y ago
        Well, that's your opinion. My opinion is that striking down 9 out of the 10 restrictions placed by the trial court indicates precisely what I said. You're entitled to your opinion, but you have no basis to accuse me of acting in bad faith.
DoItToMe81 3y ago
I can almost understand the Covid censorship, considering that there were lunatics going around telling people to poison themselves or drink bleach. But the laptop story was purely cynical, as that contained both evidence of severe corruption and implications of child molestation.
- acdha 3y ago
  Please be precise in what you think “the laptop story” was and what hard evidence is available for any of those claims.
  - DoItToMe81 3y ago
    He has topless photographs of his underaged niece, he had to hush his psychiatrist because her parents to her implied he molested her, he has chat messages about her "thinking I raped her" and openly admitted to showing her his naked body. You can go read the leaks right now if you want a source. Or you can read this highly editorialized version that takes some innocent things out of context, while openly displaying the worst with it (https://bidenlaptopreport.marcopolousa.org/report_viewer/#p=363 https://bidenlaptopreport.marcopolousa.org/report_viewer/#p=...)
    - acdha 3y ago
      Ignoring the reliability of those claims, this thread is about allegations that government authority was misused. Do you have any links to examples of that?
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  It contains neithet and If people wanted it to be evidence of anything it wouldn't have come from the hands of a known liar who betrayed his country. Chain of custody is a factor.
- krapp 3y ago
  Stop trying to make "Hunter Biden's laptop" happen. It isn't going to happen.
Gartent 3y ago
What's the big deal about the 1st Amendment and "Freeze Peach" anyway? The majority of anti-vaxxer neo-Nazis are spreading disinformation and literally killing people with their bad ideas. 1. You can't shout fire in a crowded theater. 2. Paradox of tolerance anyone? 3. We already limit "frees peach" 4. Freedom of Speech is not Freedom from Consequences (freedom after speech) 5. Twitter-Facebook-Insta-Snap-Google-Apple are private companies. It's exactly the same as if you owned a mom-and-pop store and I said you couldn't tell the guy screaming "KILL ALL N-------" to leave. If everyone were banned from expressing false information on social media, as defined by trustworthy fact checkers, the world would be a better place.

138 points by perihelions 3y ago

Considering there are only few actors (the social media, search, internet infrastructure companies) the coercion is unlikely to stop due to a court decision. The government and the legislature have a lot of leverage, up to an anti-trust action, and instead of threatening emails or public statements they could do it with off the record conversations, which are much harder to sue against -- the public wouldn't even know. The more questionable is the position of a company regarding anti-trust, title VII, {something else I can't think of}, the more leverage the government has.

sebzim4500 3y ago
I would imagine that making threats through 'off the record conversations' (which can easily become on the record) would look even worse to the courts than their current strategy.
TheCaptain4815 3y ago
Considering the censorship is heavily tilted towards one ideology, what incentive does the opposing ideology have to stop this? It worked perfectly fine with no political capital loss in 2020 and 2022 midterms. In fact, most people within that ideology agree with the tech giants and want more censorship.
- di4na 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 3y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. Regardless of how right you are or feel you are, it just makes the threads more predictable, and therefore more tedious and nasty. We're trying for the opposite here, to the extent possible. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  What is likely is that the wheels of censorship will do what they always do and censor that other group. Nobody is immune to censorship for long. Hopefully that will cause enough ruckus that we go back to being anti-censorship. Censorship isn't just impacting one group - it's a whole bunch of smaller subgroups that make up both parties. It also hurts the uncensored groups because instead of responding to their opponents they are now just shadowboxing themselves in a corner.
  - dmix 3y ago
    Was the targeting of Twitter, FB, and YouTube hitting broadly across ideologies and groups? Twitter files released tons of raw emails by gov agency staff with lists of profiles and it was pretty clear whom the executive/federal gov and Twitter's own staff had a hard on for. Its possible it's merely a result of the current administration being in power and yes the risk to everyone is very apparent, but the people fighting the hardest against censorship vs those pushing hardcore social media moderation and top down wrongthink regulation has long had an obvious political divisions in America and here in Canada... For the past decade. The UK and other EU countries is probably more "equally censor everything influential groups don't like" though so the divide is not universal.
- hackyhacky 3y ago
  > censorship is heavily tilted towards one ideology This is the craziest thing I've read all day.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- redeux 3y ago
  > most people within that ideology agree with the tech giants and want more censorship. I assume you’re talking about the right, since the left keeps talking about using antitrust to break up big tech.
- callalex 3y ago
  It is seriously unclear to me what ideology you think is promoting censorship the most, from my perspective the cat got out of the bag in the USA and now different kinds of censorship are being advocated for across the political spectrum.
  - pauldenton 3y ago
    https://www.axios.com/2021/01/09/platforms-social-media-ban-restrict-trump https://www.axios.com/2021/01/09/platforms-social-media-ban-... Find me the list of social media platforms that banned Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden

sneak 3y ago

At what point can we finally admit there is a coordinated war on against freedom of expression online? The platforms censor on their own accord, the government pushes the platforms to censor even more, the legislature is talking about ways to make the platforms censor more yet. It seems they're afraid of the situation where anyone can publish to anyone regardless of content. Our efforts should be along these lines, on the most popular of devices. TikTok doesn't even let you access bio links in a normal browser, and you can't copy them. You can get banned from TikTok based on what you have listed in your bio link webpage on a different service. Instagram doesn't linkify URLs in comments or descriptions. Apple doesn't let things in the App Store unless they're firmly PG13. This is what killed Tumblr and ruins the photography site 500px's native app. There are whole domains of URLs that you can't even send in DM on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, or Discord. Personally I delete my accounts on these and use Signal exclusively, but how do we solve for the society-wide censorship problem?

akerl_ 3y ago
These don’t really sound like examples of a war on expression, nor are they really related to the government making questionable requests of private companies. Instagram isn’t obligated to render text in their app in a way that you’d prefer.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  Freedom of speech isn't just about what the government does. We can dislike a platform because it's a poor means of expression and urge people to stop using it.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Dislike away, but don't justify your dislike of a specific UX using the language of human rights abuse. An app kind of sucking is not a humanitarian crisis.
    - User23 3y ago

tiahura 3y ago

[flagged]

monero-xmr 3y ago
There is clearly a lot of smoke around the president’s son receiving millions of dollars from Ukraine and China (why would he get that money?) yet all the news is about the orange man. Shouldn’t we be just as concerned about Ukraine collusion considering there’s an actual war we are funding there, and the Russian collusion was totally debunked? We live in clown world.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lalaland1125 3y ago
In what way are the criminal charges against Trump "show trials"? All of the charges against Trump are going through the normal court process, backed by substantial evidence (including recordings of Trump himself admitting many of the key facts in several cases)

random97531 3y ago

[dead]

0xParlay 3y ago

[flagged]

perihelions 3y ago

pdf opinion: https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pd...

RyanAdamas 3y ago

After the fact doesn't matter. If all tyranny requires is an after-the-fact judicial ruling then tyranny will just find a way to win before then. The fact is, there is no such thing as a private company. Infringing speech is happening all over the place; the fact the Constitutions states Congress cannot enact laws against speech is tantamount to the people themselves being unable to enact action against speech and expression. Congress is the people, and the people don't get to privatize tyranny. Period.

hackyhacky 3y ago
There are plenty of legal restrictions on free speech. Defamation, for example. We don't consider it laws against defamation to be tyranny, but rather legitimate acts of governance. Moreover, the case in question did not involve an act of Congress, or in fact any express act of governance at all. There's a difference between being legally or illegally compelled by the government and simply being contacted by a government official. The government has freedom of speech, too, and they are allowed to express concern about dissemination of materials counter to the public interest.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  There are exceptions to the rule and this wasnt one of then. This wasnt the government suing Twitter for defamation.
  - hackyhacky 3y ago
    > This wasnt the government suing Twitter for defamation. I never said it was. The point was simply to refute GP's blanket assertion that any restriction on speech is tantamount to tyranny. > There are exceptions to the rule and this wasnt one of then. That's a thornier question which has not been resolved yet, and is certainly not a black-and-white issue.

vorpalhex 3y ago

I don't know why the Whitehouse thought this would fly to begin with. They basically said "Do X or there will be consequences". Every crappy compliance course I have ever sat though points out that behavior as a form of coercion. The Whitehouse clearly knew they weren't supposed to be doing this.

cowpig 3y ago

This isn't a case where people thought the wrong things and it made them vote wrong. It caused them to spread diseases to other people and kill them. I'm honestly shocked that people think this is a case where the government should not step in. I think they should have been much more aggressive. This judgment and the comments here just baffle me. The scientific consensus is that countries that took a much more proactive, aggressive approach were far more successful in preventing people from dying. And this isn't like a seatbelt issue where people just put themselves at risk. The fact that people are defending the spread of false information that contributed to people literally dying in favor of a hypothetical tyranny problem just leaves me feeling completely lost.

voidfunc 3y ago
It's not the governments job to decide what speech is "correct" in the US at least under the current judicial regimes interpretation of the laws. There are some very narrow exceptions but this is not one of those. That people honestly think this is a bad thing is depressing. The government simply cannot be trusted in the wider picture to make these decisions about good vs bad speech.
- cowpig 3y ago
  > It's not the governments job to decide what speech is "correct" in the US at least under the current judicial regimes interpretation of the laws. There are some very narrow exceptions but this is not one of those. I mean, the court seems to agree with this statement but it makes absolutely no sense to me. The classic example is yelling "fire!" in a movie theater because people might get hurt. This seems like the same kind of thing but much, much more harmful. EDIT: ok the "yelling fire" thing is not a great example, here are some others to jog your intuition that maybe your understanding of the concept of free speech needs to be fleshed out a bit: What about telling someone that a loaded gun is just an inert replica and giving it to them to use as a prop? What about telling someone that your company has a bunch of clients and tons of revenue when you are raising money as an investor? What about if you put the wrong ingredients on your food product and it kills someone with an allergy?

simple-thoughts 3y ago

It’s great to see not only this ruling but balanced reporting on it from NYT. I’m optimistic that the turn towards accepting tyranny is finally ending.

nullc 3y ago
But is it? The opinion NYT is reporting on is clear that the censorship in question went beyond Covid: "Their content touched on a host of divisive topics like the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine side-effects, election fraud, and the Hunter Biden laptop story" ... "Individual Plaintiffs seek to express views—and have been censored for their views—on topics well beyond COVID-19, including allegations of election fraud and the Hunter Biden laptop story." Yet the NYT only mentions covid and the discourse on HN-- which at the moment is substantially making excuses for the administration on the basis of "but covid!"-- is worse off for it.
- simple-thoughts 3y ago
  I’m reading it a bit differently. Yes the censorship of political speech related to political figures is bad but we’re coming out of a period where much more fundamental rights were violated due to a slightly stronger than usual respiratory virus. The seriousness of the covid reaction is an order of magnitude greater than any alleged biden corruption. Until people are ready to reevaluate what happened, we’re still in danger of a return of extreme restrictions - since there are plenty of other things that have high death rates such as cars, drugs, and obesity.
  - nullc 3y ago
    An important thing here though is that it doesn't matter that the views the government was imposing were right or wrong. 1A prohibits the imposition. The fact that the NYT article only touches on one point has turned the HN thread into a debate over if tweets about masking, vaccine cardiac side effects, or whatever were right or wrong. But that's immaterial to the law here and it's important because there is clear polarization between posters on the underlying facts. But we don't have to agree on the substance of the censored speech to recognize that the state's use of coercion to suppress views it disagreed with is plainly unlawful. The 1A doesn't only apply when we agree with the speech being protected -- in fact it's most important when we don't: Speech almost everyone agrees with is going to get communicated no matter what the government does to censor it, it's unpopular views that are the most in need of 1A protection. So I think NYT does us a disservice by falsely portraying this as being about 'covid misinformation', as it invites everyone to substitute a discussion about the states power to censor here with yet another debate on covid -- a debate itself which has been tainted by politics and censorship.

GeekyBear 3y ago

Here's why silencing critics is problematic. The powers that be decided that Covid was a virus with a droplet based spread, like the flu, and they silenced domain experts who asserted that Covid was a fully airborne virus, like the measles. The mitigations that were put in place targeted a droplet based spread (washing hands, wiping down surfaces, putting up sneeze guards, staying six feet apart) and were ineffective against a virus you contract by inhaling it as it floats in the air. Unfortunately, it took two years for the truth about Covid to be begrudgingly accepted. > Two years of COVID: The battle to accept airborne transmission https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/11/two-years-of-covid-the-battle-to-accept-airborne-transmission https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/11/two-years-of-co...

Obscurity4340 3y ago
Why was it such a politically-driven determination? Why is droplet-based culturally more expedient than airbourne?
- exegete 3y ago
  Different types of mitigations which have different levels of social acceptance. Washing hands is a more socially acceptable mitigation than wearing high quality masks, for example.
- edrxty 3y ago
  I don't think it would be if it wasn't for a bunch of people who decided to start an unrelated holy war against any mitigation of the virus. They caused everyone to become hyper alert for any signs of dissent which has made this whole thing measurably harder to manage.
  - Enginerrrd 3y ago
    A huge component of that was outright lies from the CDC in the beginning. "No one needs a mask" "They might even be harmful" "they require special training" all of which directly contradicted studies they had funded and published from doing contract tracing with SARS, while simultaneously stating they were essential for healthcare workers. All instead of saying "hey look we have a shortage of masks due to some previous mistakes we made which make us look incompetent now, and our healthcare workers need them more." Public health management 101 in any textbook will tell you that maintaining public trust during an epidemic is THE most important thing they could do. Don't blame the people that were paying attention and realized they were full of it. I bought my masks in January because it was clear this was coming. They also silenced any debate about the costs/benefits of various mitigations. Don't even get me started on that one. With an R0 as high as it was, even in the beginning, it was clear to me that even with mitigations you were going to see cases surge beyond hospital capacities. (Bringing the R0 down from 4 to 2.1 would have been a great success, and yet... not that effective in a lot of ways.) Flattening the curve also prolongs the pandemic and deaths of despair were inevitable. This made some sense in the beginning to try and stall for time with the vaccine, but must be weighed against the costs, and there was no reasonable discussion of that at the policy level.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped First Amendment on Social Media No, the appeals court did not. This headline is inaccurate. It found that the Administration likely did so in a narrower set of cases than the trial court had, in upholding in part and striking down in part a preliminary injunction placed by the trial court (likelihood of success on the merits is one of several considerations in issuing a preliminary injunction, but it is distinct from an actual ruling on the merits.) Trial and an actual decision on the merits will happen later.

krapp 3y ago
[flagged]
dang 3y ago
Ok, I've made the title say likely above.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

linusg789 3y ago

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/QA9Q8 https://ghostarchive.org/archive/QA9Q8

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

[flagged]

rosmax_1337 3y ago

I think history will be quite harsh on the censors in the west once we regain our footing, but not only the activists who pushed for these ideas through various means, but also to technicians (looking at a lot of people who might be reading this comment) who enabled their arguably obviously ill behavior. Naturally, one can only demand so much of the average citizen in terms of civil courage to say no when tyrants try to dictate the direction of society, but for the sake of your own clean conscience I ask you humbly to simply quit your job if you work for and enable people who push policies like this. It would be honorable to make a fuss, whistleblow etcetera, but there are clear drawbacks to your private life in general to this. But you can choose to not enable their ill activism, by not working for them. And if you decide not to, how will you argue that you did the right thing when all the chips fall down, as they do for all of us eventually. In the end not everything in our lives is an economic calculation. Are you happy with what you've accomplished, proud even?

yladiz 3y ago
This is what the article says the government did: > urging the major social media platforms to remove misleading or false content about the Covid-19 pandemic They didn’t tell them what they had to do, and didn’t censor anything specifically from these companies, so can you explain what exactly you mean by “censors in the west”?
- rosmax_1337 3y ago
  I am afraid a too candid discussion about what is being censored on these plattforms is a discussion that easily leads to flames. I also certainly don't mean to just talk about censorship performed at the request of governments. (a request without explicit threat of coercion, but a request nonetheless) I also highlight the censorship which these same social media companies perform on society at large on a variety of contentious political topics. I hold the belief that these social media companies have become new types of a public square, and the freedom of expression must be guaranteed on these platforms just as well as freedom of expression is guaranteed on a irl public square in most western countries. They should be required to carry and broadcast ideas which they themselves do not subscribe to, just as well as telecom companies are required to transmit phonecalls between people they dislike.

melindajb 3y ago

I find it fascinating how angry people on HN get about this particular issue; but rarely seem as concerned about the fundamental human rights violation of banning medications and medical procedures for one half the population. Yes, this is relevant; and I say this as a former life long libertarian: I wanted the government out of my life in most ways; and that included laws on abortion, marijuana and others. What I learned with life experience was that I benefitted from being part of a society, and I have to both give as well as take. sometimes, I get less...a lot less to be honest. and sometimes i get more. and hopefully the balance works out over a lifetime. Watching the foaming rage about words; but remaining silent when actual people are dying due to the actually tyrannical governments in the southern united states, belies the real motivation of a great many people.

cvccvroomvroom 3y ago
Religious bikeshedding as a proxy for tribal membership.
- melindajb 3y ago
  I get to say what I observe. When I read the comment history of the angriest folks on this thread, it’s never anger on anyone else’s behalf but their own.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jadamson 3y ago
I'm sure you'd be even more upset if those tyrannical governments worked to ban pro-choice messages/people from social media, removing the ability for those people to organize and thus any hope of challenging the laws you're talking about. Perhaps that will have to happen for you to see how bad it is.
- melindajb 3y ago
  As you know the most brutally totalitarian regimes suppress speech that contradicts the views of those in power(edit). The Comparison of the American government’s decision to tamp down on the algorithmic reach of misinformation during a pandemic to a totalitarian regime is neither fair not an accurate; and frankly is hyperbolic.

hackyhacky 3y ago

Just to be clear, this appeals ruling mostly reversed the original decision of the original court. The original court's decision applied 10 different restrictions on government officials. The 5th circuit (itself widely known to be conservative) overturned nine of those ten restrictions, and also overturned many of the agencies they apply to. The appeals ruling, therefore, is being interpreted here (and, in many cases, intentionally spun) in a way exactly opposite to what it actually found, which is the government largely acted correctly.

catiopatio 3y ago
[flagged]
- hackyhacky 3y ago
  > Did you actually read the article or the decision itself? I read the decision. Did you read my comment? Your citation is correct, but you're ignoring the parts where the appeals court disagrees with the trial court. In short, the trial court wildly overshot the mark. The actual violation as found by the appeals court is much more modest. My opinion is that even this version goes too far and will be overturned as well. "Significant encouragement" is likely protected speech and does not constitute a violation.
  - catiopatio 3y ago
    An appeals court overturning portions of a preliminary injunction does not indicate that “the government largely acted correctly” — the appeals court itself says the exact opposite. You stated that “The appeals ruling, therefore, is being interpreted here (and, in many cases, intentionally spun) in a way exactly opposite to what it actually found”, but that’s literally what you’re doing — blatantly in bad faith, contrary to the headline, the article in a major newspaper, and the actual decision itself.
    - hackyhacky 3y ago
      Well, that's your opinion. My opinion is that striking down 9 out of the 10 restrictions placed by the trial court indicates precisely what I said. You're entitled to your opinion, but you have no basis to accuse me of acting in bad faith.

DoItToMe81 3y ago

I can almost understand the Covid censorship, considering that there were lunatics going around telling people to poison themselves or drink bleach. But the laptop story was purely cynical, as that contained both evidence of severe corruption and implications of child molestation.

acdha 3y ago
Please be precise in what you think “the laptop story” was and what hard evidence is available for any of those claims.
- DoItToMe81 3y ago
  He has topless photographs of his underaged niece, he had to hush his psychiatrist because her parents to her implied he molested her, he has chat messages about her "thinking I raped her" and openly admitted to showing her his naked body. You can go read the leaks right now if you want a source. Or you can read this highly editorialized version that takes some innocent things out of context, while openly displaying the worst with it (https://bidenlaptopreport.marcopolousa.org/report_viewer/#p=363 https://bidenlaptopreport.marcopolousa.org/report_viewer/#p=...)
  - acdha 3y ago
    Ignoring the reliability of those claims, this thread is about allegations that government authority was misused. Do you have any links to examples of that?
michaelmrose 3y ago
It contains neithet and If people wanted it to be evidence of anything it wouldn't have come from the hands of a known liar who betrayed his country. Chain of custody is a factor.
krapp 3y ago
Stop trying to make "Hunter Biden's laptop" happen. It isn't going to happen.

Gartent 3y ago

What's the big deal about the 1st Amendment and "Freeze Peach" anyway? The majority of anti-vaxxer neo-Nazis are spreading disinformation and literally killing people with their bad ideas. 1. You can't shout fire in a crowded theater. 2. Paradox of tolerance anyone? 3. We already limit "frees peach" 4. Freedom of Speech is not Freedom from Consequences (freedom after speech) 5. Twitter-Facebook-Insta-Snap-Google-Apple are private companies. It's exactly the same as if you owned a mom-and-pop store and I said you couldn't tell the guy screaming "KILL ALL N-------" to leave. If everyone were banned from expressing false information on social media, as defined by trustworthy fact checkers, the world would be a better place.