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"If the Supreme Court sides with the 5th Circuit, thereby forcing social media sites to publish or not publish certain types of speech, in effect the government
by krunck 3y ago
"If the Supreme Court sides with the 5th Circuit, thereby forcing social media sites to publish or not publish certain types of speech, in effect the government will ironically be trampling on the First Amendment rights of social media companies. "
Uh, the Bill of Rights does not apply to corporations. It applies to humans. I recognize no other entities with rights.
- _blk 3y agoExactly!
- Finnucane 3y agoYou may not, but the courts have protected the First Amendments rights of 'the press' to have said 'freedom of the press', including publishers and media companies. If that weren't true, the government could freely mandate what publishers could and couldn't print.
- mpalmer 3y agoWhat if you replace the word corporation with "small business" ? do you still feel the same way? There's a significant body of case law establishing that the first amendment constrains government control of corporate speech. the Citizens United case is only the most recent high profile example and arguably the most controversial. Generally, jurists on both the liberal and conservative ends of the spectrum agree that corporate speech is protected in the same way that individual speech is.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> What if you replace the word corporation with "small business" ? Or the EFF. Or the ACLU. Or a political party.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Uh, the Bill of Rights does not apply to corporations. It applies to humans. I recognize no other entities with rights. So, you're saying that this new set of rules can be evaded by people wanting to form social media firms if they get someone to operate it as a sole proprietorship and then build a set of contractual financing, revenue-sharing, and decision-control arrangements around it that approximate (without, for the proprietor, the liability shield) a corporation, since it will then legally be a single human endowed with the rights of a human?
- pohl 3y agoSCOTUS has already brought us to the place where corporations are people with first amendment rights and, moreover, that money (campaign contributions) qualifies as protected speech, hasn’t it? I agree, it’s bonkers.
- euroderf 3y agoAnd yet, in some voodoo-legalistic miracle, corporations excel at evading responsibility for deaths they cause, and avoiding any kind of corporate death penalty. Yup, bonkers. Privatize the gains and socialize the unpleasantness.
- phendrenad2 3y ago> the Bill of Rights does not apply to corporations This has been debated a hundred thousand times before, so just stating your opinion on the matter as a matter of fact seems to indicate that you weren't aware of this, no?