3 ms·

Not just popular, ubiquitous. The competitors you mention are promptly bought out by the big players, or they are massive companies themselves whos policies are

Not just popular, ubiquitous. The competitors you mention are promptly bought out by the big players, or they are massive companies themselves whos policies are indistinguishable from their competition. It's unfortunate but the network effect means everyone will coalesce to where everyone else already is, forming what is in my opinion a de-facto 'public square'. Public discourse in general becomes shaped by corporate editorial policy, to such a degree that these policies could decide the outcome of elections. On paper its a private company exercising their prerogative, in practice its corporate power being used to shape public opinion and control narratives on a scale never before seen, and its effect on our general discourse has been chilling to say the least As for the government starting its own public forum, it would meet the same fate as every other big tech competitor. I wouldn't be surprised if they got bought out.

TulliusCicero 3y ago
> forming what is in my opinion a de-facto 'public square' There is nothing in the Constitution about a "de facto public square". The first amendment concerns how the government can manage speech, and Facebook isn't the government, no matter how popular they are. If you want to make a legal argument, it needs to be grounded in reality, not something you just made up. Now if you want to argue that the current situation is fucked up and unhealthy for a society, sure, I'd probably agree. But that's not the same topic. The topic is whether these laws are Constitutional, and they very clearly are not.
- cheeseomlit 3y ago
  The concept of a public square or public forum is what we're trying to articulate here, most of us are aware it's not provided for in constitutional language. It's only somewhat recently that it's become relevant, the amount of speech that happens on privately controlled platforms is not something that was predicted or prepared for, it's a massive paradigm shift in human relations. While the proposed laws may be unconstitutional, the grievances that motivated them are legitimate and should be addressed. I just don't think it's helpful to shut down every conversation on the topic on the grounds of constitutionality, particularly in a case like this where the 'spirit' of the constitution is IMO clearly being violated even if the literal words of it are not.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    I don't think the spirit of the Constitution is being violated here at all. As you say, the Constitution didn't account for private speech making it so easy to reach a wide audience, so it doesn't really have anything to say here, one way or the other. Personally, I think having a government Twitter as a "digital public square of last resort" is fine as a solution, as long as it has no curation abilities whatsoever: no recommended pages, no default feed or algorithmic timeline, not even a search function. Any pages you get to come via external links, or internal links placed manually by whichever page you're looking at. This way, you avoid any issue of bias, and while there may be Nazi pages somewhere there, you wouldn't be able to get to them except by getting linked elsewhere to Nazis, it wouldn't be the platform actually recommending Nazis to you (because it wouldn't recommend anything).

TulliusCicero 3y ago

> forming what is in my opinion a de-facto 'public square' There is nothing in the Constitution about a "de facto public square". The first amendment concerns how the government can manage speech, and Facebook isn't the government, no matter how popular they are. If you want to make a legal argument, it needs to be grounded in reality, not something you just made up. Now if you want to argue that the current situation is fucked up and unhealthy for a society, sure, I'd probably agree. But that's not the same topic. The topic is whether these laws are Constitutional, and they very clearly are not.

cheeseomlit 3y ago
The concept of a public square or public forum is what we're trying to articulate here, most of us are aware it's not provided for in constitutional language. It's only somewhat recently that it's become relevant, the amount of speech that happens on privately controlled platforms is not something that was predicted or prepared for, it's a massive paradigm shift in human relations. While the proposed laws may be unconstitutional, the grievances that motivated them are legitimate and should be addressed. I just don't think it's helpful to shut down every conversation on the topic on the grounds of constitutionality, particularly in a case like this where the 'spirit' of the constitution is IMO clearly being violated even if the literal words of it are not.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  I don't think the spirit of the Constitution is being violated here at all. As you say, the Constitution didn't account for private speech making it so easy to reach a wide audience, so it doesn't really have anything to say here, one way or the other. Personally, I think having a government Twitter as a "digital public square of last resort" is fine as a solution, as long as it has no curation abilities whatsoever: no recommended pages, no default feed or algorithmic timeline, not even a search function. Any pages you get to come via external links, or internal links placed manually by whichever page you're looking at. This way, you avoid any issue of bias, and while there may be Nazi pages somewhere there, you wouldn't be able to get to them except by getting linked elsewhere to Nazis, it wouldn't be the platform actually recommending Nazis to you (because it wouldn't recommend anything).