6 ms·

This is gonna be a weird ruling if it goes in favor of the states. If you run a public bulletin board tearing down fliers is absolutely a form of speech, and if

by Spivak 3y ago

This is gonna be a weird ruling if it goes in favor of the states. If you run a public bulletin board tearing down fliers is absolutely a form of speech, and if you do it to people you disagree with it becomes political speech. I can't imagine even this court ruling that the government is allowed to regulate political speech. That would kick the door open to an easily constitutional broadly applied national hate speech law, and reintroduction of the fairness doctrine. So the unintended consequence I expect will be that censoring people for their political views will be the only strongly protected moderation actions.

zer8k 3y ago
> So the unintended consequence I expect will be that censoring people for their political views will be the only strongly protected moderation actions. That's entirely intended. Look at what happened during COVID, the race riots post George Floyd, the election in 2020 and 2024, etc. Social media platforms are defacto content curation websites and not "free speech zones" in the sense of a soapbox in a public park. It was especially egregious during COVID and the race riots because the platforms made certain that you could not so much as criticize the political zeitgeist even when it was deserved. The law really should make it clear that, illegal activity excluded, if you engage in any form of censorship you are not given section 230 protections. Places like twitter are left-wing content curation websites. It's no problem to have these - except for the fact they are still given section 230 protections. Under no circumstance should social media, engaging in one-sided censorship, be given any protection under the law for their content they curate. This would go for a similarly censored right-wing content curation website. It just so happens those are extremely small in reach by comparison, and thus significantly less important. As always, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The chronically offended, terminally online losers tend to get what they want.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  > The law really should make it clear that, illegal activity excluded, if you engage in any form of censorship you are not given section 230 protections. Say I run a forum for pet fish discussion. Would my removal of content derailing the discussion into a flatearther one constitute my loss of 230? What if only logged in members can see the content? It seems odd that we don't let private property operate as it wants.
  - hackinthebochs 3y ago
    Have a scale or a topic carveout. Your pet fish message board doesn't have the same social relevance as the twitters and facebooks of the world that are intended to be generic communications platforms. Despite what people like to claim, these sites are de facto public squares and should be treated as such. It's clear people resist this idea because they like the fact that these companies censor speech in the direction they prefer.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Have a scale or a topic carveout This (topic) is a sign your framework is flawed. Unless there is a fabulous reason to believe this is the sole legitimate carve-out.
      - hackinthebochs 3y ago
        You know, you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take, instead of whatever this comment is.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take I don't see one. It's DOA. The point is starting with a list of carve-outs to any framework is an early sign it's fucked. I do believe we have a problem with free speech in modern America. But we also have an unprecedentedly broad amount of it. Given the elementary issue of spam, it's unclear we have any consensus around what censorship means on social media.
        hackinthebochs 3y ago
        > The point is starting with a list of carve-outs to any framework is an early sign it's fucked. While I think this is a fair point in general, in specific cases it can be legitimate. We should not be powerless to legislate unless we're able to articulate some ideal discriminator that picks out only the intended target and nothing else. The world is almost never that tidy. We can probably agree in broad strokes what spam is, even if we can't articulate a sufficient decision criteria to identify it with 100% accuracy. We can also agree that one man's passion project shouldn't be powerless to ensure his forum remains on-topic. We can also agree that mega communications platforms have become so engrained into modern society that being censored or removed from them can have outsized effects on one's ability to effectively engage with society (e.g. losing access to your email, kicked off payment platforms). There are a lot of grey areas in between, and identifying carveouts are one way to handle the messiness while still working towards the overarching goals. It's not perfect, but doing nothing in this case is worse in the sense of how far we are from our ideals.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > if you engage in any form of censorship you are not given section 230 protections. I disagree that governments should punish people who fail to amplify the messages of powerful political parties.
  - hackinthebochs 3y ago
    Selective amplification is editorialization when the decisions are content sensitive. It being algorithmic doesn't change the substance of this.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Selective amplification is editorialization Editorialisation as in the press?
      - tengbretson 3y ago
        Exactly like the press. The press that is held liable for what they publish.
      - hackinthebochs 3y ago
        As in the status that renders a service not subject to section 230 protections.
- amanaplanacanal 3y ago
  The entire purpose of section 230 was to protect platforms from being sued for censorship. You are talking about repealing it, not changing it.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> If you run a public bulletin board tearing down fliers is absolutely a form of speech I'd say where the protection starts is that the board is yours. You can make it as open or restricted or curated or nonsensical as you wish. Other individuals can put up their own boards and they can display whatever they wish. This is what the 1A protects. In a reality where an opinion can be displayed from millions of boards - I suggest that one individual removing it their own board is a fairly poor use of the term censorship.
- thegrim33 3y ago
  You're portraying it as if there's not a small number of de-facto public square "boards" that the vast majority of people get almost all of their information from. Manipulation of those boards has an absolutely massive effect, and saying "well, you could go out in the woods and create your own public forum that a handful of people would ever see" isn't really an acceptable alternative.
  - vacuity 3y ago
    This is why I wish there was a megaforum where anyone can isolate themselves into smaller forums as they wish. Then no one gets deplatformed by the feds or corporations or whatever (unless they call for violence or doxx someone, something like that), and yet no one has to see what they don't want to. Still but a stopgap to foster better communities, alas.
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      Isn't that essentially reddit?
      - vacuity 3y ago
        I suppose, but more general ways to structure the forum, moderation, how to do upvotes or likes, and so on. Maybe decentralized and federated. Make the whole Internet message passing, even!
krapp 3y ago
Unfortunately, I think it's inevitable. Both parties have talked themselves into a justification for regulating speech on the internet. One side wants to force platforms to publish speech against their will, the other wants to force platforms to police speech against their will. Both positions fall afoul of the spirit of the First Amendment, which is that only the people have the right to abridge freedom of speech (and explicitly not the federal government, except in certain narrowly-defined circumstances.) And the Supreme Court is stacked with ideologues who seem dedicated to defederalizing the government and ceding power to the states, whose restrictions on speech would be far more radical than the federal government would be capable of.

by Spivak 3y ago

zer8k 3y ago

> So the unintended consequence I expect will be that censoring people for their political views will be the only strongly protected moderation actions. That's entirely intended. Look at what happened during COVID, the race riots post George Floyd, the election in 2020 and 2024, etc. Social media platforms are defacto content curation websites and not "free speech zones" in the sense of a soapbox in a public park. It was especially egregious during COVID and the race riots because the platforms made certain that you could not so much as criticize the political zeitgeist even when it was deserved. The law really should make it clear that, illegal activity excluded, if you engage in any form of censorship you are not given section 230 protections. Places like twitter are left-wing content curation websites. It's no problem to have these - except for the fact they are still given section 230 protections. Under no circumstance should social media, engaging in one-sided censorship, be given any protection under the law for their content they curate. This would go for a similarly censored right-wing content curation website. It just so happens those are extremely small in reach by comparison, and thus significantly less important. As always, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The chronically offended, terminally online losers tend to get what they want.

hellojesus 3y ago
> The law really should make it clear that, illegal activity excluded, if you engage in any form of censorship you are not given section 230 protections. Say I run a forum for pet fish discussion. Would my removal of content derailing the discussion into a flatearther one constitute my loss of 230? What if only logged in members can see the content? It seems odd that we don't let private property operate as it wants.
- hackinthebochs 3y ago
  Have a scale or a topic carveout. Your pet fish message board doesn't have the same social relevance as the twitters and facebooks of the world that are intended to be generic communications platforms. Despite what people like to claim, these sites are de facto public squares and should be treated as such. It's clear people resist this idea because they like the fact that these companies censor speech in the direction they prefer.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Have a scale or a topic carveout This (topic) is a sign your framework is flawed. Unless there is a fabulous reason to believe this is the sole legitimate carve-out.
    - hackinthebochs 3y ago
      You know, you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take, instead of whatever this comment is.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take I don't see one. It's DOA. The point is starting with a list of carve-outs to any framework is an early sign it's fucked. I do believe we have a problem with free speech in modern America. But we also have an unprecedentedly broad amount of it. Given the elementary issue of spam, it's unclear we have any consensus around what censorship means on social media.
        hackinthebochs 3y ago
        > The point is starting with a list of carve-outs to any framework is an early sign it's fucked. While I think this is a fair point in general, in specific cases it can be legitimate. We should not be powerless to legislate unless we're able to articulate some ideal discriminator that picks out only the intended target and nothing else. The world is almost never that tidy. We can probably agree in broad strokes what spam is, even if we can't articulate a sufficient decision criteria to identify it with 100% accuracy. We can also agree that one man's passion project shouldn't be powerless to ensure his forum remains on-topic. We can also agree that mega communications platforms have become so engrained into modern society that being censored or removed from them can have outsized effects on one's ability to effectively engage with society (e.g. losing access to your email, kicked off payment platforms). There are a lot of grey areas in between, and identifying carveouts are one way to handle the messiness while still working towards the overarching goals. It's not perfect, but doing nothing in this case is worse in the sense of how far we are from our ideals.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> if you engage in any form of censorship you are not given section 230 protections. I disagree that governments should punish people who fail to amplify the messages of powerful political parties.
- hackinthebochs 3y ago
  Selective amplification is editorialization when the decisions are content sensitive. It being algorithmic doesn't change the substance of this.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Selective amplification is editorialization Editorialisation as in the press?
    - tengbretson 3y ago
      Exactly like the press. The press that is held liable for what they publish.
    - hackinthebochs 3y ago
      As in the status that renders a service not subject to section 230 protections.
amanaplanacanal 3y ago
The entire purpose of section 230 was to protect platforms from being sued for censorship. You are talking about repealing it, not changing it.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> If you run a public bulletin board tearing down fliers is absolutely a form of speech I'd say where the protection starts is that the board is yours. You can make it as open or restricted or curated or nonsensical as you wish. Other individuals can put up their own boards and they can display whatever they wish. This is what the 1A protects. In a reality where an opinion can be displayed from millions of boards - I suggest that one individual removing it their own board is a fairly poor use of the term censorship.

thegrim33 3y ago
You're portraying it as if there's not a small number of de-facto public square "boards" that the vast majority of people get almost all of their information from. Manipulation of those boards has an absolutely massive effect, and saying "well, you could go out in the woods and create your own public forum that a handful of people would ever see" isn't really an acceptable alternative.
- vacuity 3y ago
  This is why I wish there was a megaforum where anyone can isolate themselves into smaller forums as they wish. Then no one gets deplatformed by the feds or corporations or whatever (unless they call for violence or doxx someone, something like that), and yet no one has to see what they don't want to. Still but a stopgap to foster better communities, alas.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    Isn't that essentially reddit?
    - vacuity 3y ago
      I suppose, but more general ways to structure the forum, moderation, how to do upvotes or likes, and so on. Maybe decentralized and federated. Make the whole Internet message passing, even!

krapp 3y ago

Unfortunately, I think it's inevitable. Both parties have talked themselves into a justification for regulating speech on the internet. One side wants to force platforms to publish speech against their will, the other wants to force platforms to police speech against their will. Both positions fall afoul of the spirit of the First Amendment, which is that only the people have the right to abridge freedom of speech (and explicitly not the federal government, except in certain narrowly-defined circumstances.) And the Supreme Court is stacked with ideologues who seem dedicated to defederalizing the government and ceding power to the states, whose restrictions on speech would be far more radical than the federal government would be capable of.