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> As distasteful as this content may be, it is protected by the First Amendment. But that protection only extends to government actors. Amici are private actors

> As distasteful as this content may be, it is protected by the First Amendment. But that protection only extends to government actors. Amici are private actors, and the forums they control are private forums. Those who are censored are free to make their own websites to host their speech. They are not free to hijack amici’s websites. This is the crux of so much happening on the internet right now. Users treat our largest providers like google like public resources similar to roads, and governments want to treat our largest forums like twitter and facebook like government entities beholden to the same rules they are. Neither is true, and to me it points to the massive impact our largest companies have been able to achieve. It seems larger than what the law has words for. I don't know what the answer is.

dingnuts 3y ago
the answer is probably standards and thoughtful regulation to enforce them, but the chances that today's Congress can produce those things are slim to none imho
- vik0 3y ago
  What is thoughtful to you is likely not to be thoughtful to somebody else What is generally accepted as thoughtful in one world region, will likely not be considered to be generally thoughtful in another world region Furthermore, the concept of "thoughtfulness" may not exist in some world regions -in fact, it may be a concept in a minority of world regions Should these thoughtful regulations (whatever they may be) only apply to denizens of a certain region or regions, or everybody in the world?
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Uh, they should apply to the 350 million Americans that this government represents. What is your point? Iran is free to tell Google to take a hike if Google censors their calls to violence. Germany is free to tell id software to remove the swastikas or hit the road. This isn't hard. Don't pretend it is.
    - vik0 3y ago
      >This isn't hard. Don't pretend it is. Funny. What is a thoughtful regulation that would satisfy 50%+1 (democracy, yay!) of the 350 million Americans that the (or, any) government supposedly represents - or however many foolish enough of those 350 million citizens choose to actively participate in federal-level politics? I'm willing to bet that it would be even harder to find any meaningful majority (50%+1) of citizens who are satisfied with such legislation in the second group I mentioned earlier
  - numpad0 3y ago
    Just build a Gestapo this time with proper controls and oversights. That's weird, but if there are multiple mob groups doing the same, some even foreign, that's a threat to any free nation and their power shall be transferred to rightful governments. dc: not a US person
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      > Just build a Gestapo this time with proper controls and oversights Where Poe's and Godwin's laws intersect.
sanity 3y ago
[flagged]
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
The answer is simple: if the USSC would be against nationalizing these services, then they should also be against attempting to restrain their ability to moderate their own content. Nobody with even a pair of brain cells can logically conclude that actors like Google and Facebook have ever been either benign or neutral, nor should courts pretend that an inability to understand those facts should be burdens for said networks. Just because, as Chaya Raichik complained the other day, that she should be able to say what she wants because "there's no law against lying," doesn't mean that platforms have to necessarily allow harmful bullshit either.
- troyvit 3y ago
  I think I'm down for this in the abstract, but that's because I'm not a powerful voice that has been censored by one of these big players, and I also am glad for most of the censorship I've seen them do. But if I step out of my shoes and look at Trump for instance, does he have a legitimate grievance for being kicked off of Twitter if he actually _did_ think that he fairly won the election and was deplatformed because he tried to speak about it? If Twitter at the time was as powerful as a government in regulating speech ... should it have to follow the same rules? If the playing field for social media was more level, it wouldn't be an issue. He can just go to another provider and have his speech. Still, re-reading what you said I have to agree that the end goal should be people understanding that Google and Facebook (and Twitter) are not benign or neutral and never will be.
  - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    Hypotheticals are not reality. Trump should have been kicked off of twitter years before he was. He was a raging asshole and a bully long before he ever made up his grievances about losing the election. There was zero reason to keep him on the platform because he could literally call a press conference any time he wanted. Twitter is NEVER as powerful as the government in regulating speech, because governments have the ability to compel people via fines, jail time, and violence.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
TulliusCicero 3y ago
> I don't know what the answer is. Well, one obvious option would be the government making its own competitors to Twitter/Youtube/et al. Yes yes, I realize there's a bunch of issues there, like how the government would REALLY have to permit virtually any kind of speech, or general technical incompetence from government agencies in running such a site. But it could be done, there's nothing actually stopping it. I actually think a government-run Twitter could work okay and be accepted by people IF they didn't do any kind of algorithmic recommendations, sorting, or even have a search function at all. You could see tweets/content that you got to via external link, you could go onto that person's page to see a chronological list of things they've said, they could have a manually created profile page that links to others, but no curation of any kind by the platform itself. The home page would be mostly blank, or maybe only have a list of official government accounts or something.
ploxiln 3y ago
> Those who are censored are free to make their own websites to host their speech. I'm very sympathetic to this argument. Seems fair to me. But then Cloudflare, and any host big enough to withstand DDoS attacks, is strongly pressured by seemingly most people on the Web and in the US, to kick "bad websites" by "bad people" off their platform. So we can't just let bad people have their own website which we don't visit? I kinda wish we could. If most people hate that bad people can have public websites, just say that this is the best we can do, at least they're not on your parent's facebook/twitter.
- paxys 3y ago
  There is a very valid argument in favor of treating ISPs and hosting providers the same as your electricity and water company, and prevent them from being able to ban users on a whim. However the companies that are currently being targeted are still a few levels removed from that. In fact the party advocating for this is also the one opposed to net neutrality.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  Cloudflare is a weird example to pick here, since kicking i.e. stormfront or kiwifarms off CF doesn't deprive them of the ability to host a website, it just deprives them of obfuscation and a free CDN - effectively, the service CF is offering to them is not hosting but cost reduction and insulation from the consequences of their speech. It's reasonable in an abstract sense to think that it's a good thing if CF offers those Bad People services like that based on philosophical goals or political alignment, but it's very distinct from 'having a public website'. AFAIK it's still possible for anybody to put up a linux box with nginx on it and put any content they want there, other than the fact that a lot of consumer ISPs don't allow you to run servers anymore. But that's a different problem and cloudflare can't fix it.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    > effectively, the service CF is offering to them is not hosting but cost reduction and insulation from the consequences of their speech. This is somewhat tongue-in-cheek on my part, to be clear, but this raises an interesting point about whether orchestrating a DDoS attack is a form of free speech. I'm inclined to say "yes" more than "no." (You could draw a parallel, for example, to counter-protestors who try to drown out Westboro Baptst Church picketers by holding up their own signs....)
makeitdouble 3y ago
We could have a threshold at which the nature of the network changes: if a network get more than half of the voting population it gets bound to the same rules as public carriers. That would also solve a lot of other issues of network effect and disproportionate reach IHMO.
- deathanatos 3y ago
  You're begging the question: your suggestion is the laws under debate, which put thresholds on users/revenue prior to kicking in (see the OP). The amici detail why they think the law in question (and thus, your suggestion) don't practically work. Address or refute the amici's arguments.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    Sorry, this went right out of my head. You're right. 100 million users looked very low to me, but is basically a third of the US population. I think my gut feeling is that a private network with that much of a reach is an issue in the first place, whatever positions we hold (just assume that network is eventually bought by your worse nightmare). Social media as we know it not existing beyond that line doesn't sound outlandish to me (ideally it becomes the same as our real public spaces: they're so limited that nothing much happens on them except when the cops run in and loudly arrest streakers. Otherwise it just disappears). The idealistic view is to let users decide, yet we're in a situation where there's nowhere left acting as a public space.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  To add to this point: Twitter basically gets this treatment in some of the countries it operates, with gov. emergency alerts going straight into people's apps and the network having to disclose data breaches and unvailability incidents depending on the impact they have. Current owner might be giving me the finger those, but that's a rule in place.
lmm 3y ago
The law has dealt with large companies before. We used to understand that companies were unnatural constructs, permitted only to the extent that they serve the public interest. We regulated the railroads, we broke up Bell and Standard Oil. We need to get that spirit back.

dingnuts 3y ago

the answer is probably standards and thoughtful regulation to enforce them, but the chances that today's Congress can produce those things are slim to none imho

vik0 3y ago
What is thoughtful to you is likely not to be thoughtful to somebody else What is generally accepted as thoughtful in one world region, will likely not be considered to be generally thoughtful in another world region Furthermore, the concept of "thoughtfulness" may not exist in some world regions -in fact, it may be a concept in a minority of world regions Should these thoughtful regulations (whatever they may be) only apply to denizens of a certain region or regions, or everybody in the world?
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Uh, they should apply to the 350 million Americans that this government represents. What is your point? Iran is free to tell Google to take a hike if Google censors their calls to violence. Germany is free to tell id software to remove the swastikas or hit the road. This isn't hard. Don't pretend it is.
  - vik0 3y ago
    >This isn't hard. Don't pretend it is. Funny. What is a thoughtful regulation that would satisfy 50%+1 (democracy, yay!) of the 350 million Americans that the (or, any) government supposedly represents - or however many foolish enough of those 350 million citizens choose to actively participate in federal-level politics? I'm willing to bet that it would be even harder to find any meaningful majority (50%+1) of citizens who are satisfied with such legislation in the second group I mentioned earlier
- numpad0 3y ago
  Just build a Gestapo this time with proper controls and oversights. That's weird, but if there are multiple mob groups doing the same, some even foreign, that's a threat to any free nation and their power shall be transferred to rightful governments. dc: not a US person
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > Just build a Gestapo this time with proper controls and oversights Where Poe's and Godwin's laws intersect.

sanity 3y ago

[flagged]

MisterBastahrd 3y ago

The answer is simple: if the USSC would be against nationalizing these services, then they should also be against attempting to restrain their ability to moderate their own content. Nobody with even a pair of brain cells can logically conclude that actors like Google and Facebook have ever been either benign or neutral, nor should courts pretend that an inability to understand those facts should be burdens for said networks. Just because, as Chaya Raichik complained the other day, that she should be able to say what she wants because "there's no law against lying," doesn't mean that platforms have to necessarily allow harmful bullshit either.

troyvit 3y ago
I think I'm down for this in the abstract, but that's because I'm not a powerful voice that has been censored by one of these big players, and I also am glad for most of the censorship I've seen them do. But if I step out of my shoes and look at Trump for instance, does he have a legitimate grievance for being kicked off of Twitter if he actually _did_ think that he fairly won the election and was deplatformed because he tried to speak about it? If Twitter at the time was as powerful as a government in regulating speech ... should it have to follow the same rules? If the playing field for social media was more level, it wouldn't be an issue. He can just go to another provider and have his speech. Still, re-reading what you said I have to agree that the end goal should be people understanding that Google and Facebook (and Twitter) are not benign or neutral and never will be.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Hypotheticals are not reality. Trump should have been kicked off of twitter years before he was. He was a raging asshole and a bully long before he ever made up his grievances about losing the election. There was zero reason to keep him on the platform because he could literally call a press conference any time he wanted. Twitter is NEVER as powerful as the government in regulating speech, because governments have the ability to compel people via fines, jail time, and violence.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

TulliusCicero 3y ago

> I don't know what the answer is. Well, one obvious option would be the government making its own competitors to Twitter/Youtube/et al. Yes yes, I realize there's a bunch of issues there, like how the government would REALLY have to permit virtually any kind of speech, or general technical incompetence from government agencies in running such a site. But it could be done, there's nothing actually stopping it. I actually think a government-run Twitter could work okay and be accepted by people IF they didn't do any kind of algorithmic recommendations, sorting, or even have a search function at all. You could see tweets/content that you got to via external link, you could go onto that person's page to see a chronological list of things they've said, they could have a manually created profile page that links to others, but no curation of any kind by the platform itself. The home page would be mostly blank, or maybe only have a list of official government accounts or something.

ploxiln 3y ago

> Those who are censored are free to make their own websites to host their speech. I'm very sympathetic to this argument. Seems fair to me. But then Cloudflare, and any host big enough to withstand DDoS attacks, is strongly pressured by seemingly most people on the Web and in the US, to kick "bad websites" by "bad people" off their platform. So we can't just let bad people have their own website which we don't visit? I kinda wish we could. If most people hate that bad people can have public websites, just say that this is the best we can do, at least they're not on your parent's facebook/twitter.

paxys 3y ago
There is a very valid argument in favor of treating ISPs and hosting providers the same as your electricity and water company, and prevent them from being able to ban users on a whim. However the companies that are currently being targeted are still a few levels removed from that. In fact the party advocating for this is also the one opposed to net neutrality.
kevingadd 3y ago
Cloudflare is a weird example to pick here, since kicking i.e. stormfront or kiwifarms off CF doesn't deprive them of the ability to host a website, it just deprives them of obfuscation and a free CDN - effectively, the service CF is offering to them is not hosting but cost reduction and insulation from the consequences of their speech. It's reasonable in an abstract sense to think that it's a good thing if CF offers those Bad People services like that based on philosophical goals or political alignment, but it's very distinct from 'having a public website'. AFAIK it's still possible for anybody to put up a linux box with nginx on it and put any content they want there, other than the fact that a lot of consumer ISPs don't allow you to run servers anymore. But that's a different problem and cloudflare can't fix it.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  > effectively, the service CF is offering to them is not hosting but cost reduction and insulation from the consequences of their speech. This is somewhat tongue-in-cheek on my part, to be clear, but this raises an interesting point about whether orchestrating a DDoS attack is a form of free speech. I'm inclined to say "yes" more than "no." (You could draw a parallel, for example, to counter-protestors who try to drown out Westboro Baptst Church picketers by holding up their own signs....)

makeitdouble 3y ago

We could have a threshold at which the nature of the network changes: if a network get more than half of the voting population it gets bound to the same rules as public carriers. That would also solve a lot of other issues of network effect and disproportionate reach IHMO.

deathanatos 3y ago
You're begging the question: your suggestion is the laws under debate, which put thresholds on users/revenue prior to kicking in (see the OP). The amici detail why they think the law in question (and thus, your suggestion) don't practically work. Address or refute the amici's arguments.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Sorry, this went right out of my head. You're right. 100 million users looked very low to me, but is basically a third of the US population. I think my gut feeling is that a private network with that much of a reach is an issue in the first place, whatever positions we hold (just assume that network is eventually bought by your worse nightmare). Social media as we know it not existing beyond that line doesn't sound outlandish to me (ideally it becomes the same as our real public spaces: they're so limited that nothing much happens on them except when the cops run in and loudly arrest streakers. Otherwise it just disappears). The idealistic view is to let users decide, yet we're in a situation where there's nowhere left acting as a public space.
makeitdouble 3y ago
To add to this point: Twitter basically gets this treatment in some of the countries it operates, with gov. emergency alerts going straight into people's apps and the network having to disclose data breaches and unvailability incidents depending on the impact they have. Current owner might be giving me the finger those, but that's a rule in place.

lmm 3y ago

The law has dealt with large companies before. We used to understand that companies were unnatural constructs, permitted only to the extent that they serve the public interest. We regulated the railroads, we broke up Bell and Standard Oil. We need to get that spirit back.