>"The legislation compels providers to host speech that violates their standards—speech they otherwise would not host—and forbids providers from speaking as they otherwise would," Hinkle wrote.
Talk about contradictory statements. In other words "we want to be the arbiter of allowed speech and continue our monopolistic conglomerate with other companies to shut down what we don't like in hopes of garnering the favor of the current party in power"
If someone Trump like gets back into office this is going to backfire in the faces of people supporting this stuff.
1st amendment is to prevent the government to punish you (for example jailing) for speaking about something the government doesn't want as well as forcing to say something you don't agree with (for example look at Navalny in Russia or Protasevich in Belarus).
Since corporations are also people as SCOTUS ruled they have similar protections.
Asking them to host content they otherwise don't approve might be like I would require you to say great things about Biden when you're a Trump supporter. It would suppress your freedom of speech, don't you think? It's like Russia requiring to say great things about Putin and Belarus about Lukashenko.
It's their platform they can censor who they want. Same concept if you had a personal blog and deleted certain comments and banned posters for posting things you disagreed with. Sure, some people may complain and say you banned X while allowing Y but at the end of the day its your blog and you can do what you want. The government certainly should not be able to come in and fine you for deleting comments on your blog.
Can government force companies (say, Parlor or Gab) to display posts from a protected class they wouldn't want to host? Forcing a platform to display women or black or other group's posts seems like it'd be equally anti-First Amendment to me.
It is my (layman, not-a-lawyer, possibly incorrect) understanding that, if they were to state that they did not allow a protect class to join and banned all members of that class from joining, they would encounter significant legal issues. Which would most likely be avoided by just enacting the policy silently (risky) or becoming an invite-only service (probably legal).
Its an interesting question, the gay wedding cake case "Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission" was a first test and it seems to say probably not but the final judgement was based on religious freedom. Will probably need another case to determine.
Regarding my personal opinion, I think they should be allowed to deny service to who they want as its a core feature of the business. I think this is different than a say black / white restricted eating areas as the core feature of those business' is to feed people, not to facilitate personal race / sexuality based interactions. Just my opinion though I am sure there are edge cases that would make me pause.
Black and Asian are races. Discrimination based on race violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and is illegal.
Muslims are members of a religion. Discrimination based on religion is illegal, same as above.
In 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that the CRA64 also covered sexual orientation and gender identity, making discrimination based on being homosexual and transgender illegal.
"Opinion, political belief, or political affiliation" is not a protected class, so it is legal to discriminate against people for those reasons. And, in my opinion, it is actually GOOD to discriminate against people for those reasons. It is an expression of ones First Amendment Freedom of Association.
>Black and Asian are races. Discrimination based on race violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and is illegal.
Yes and it wasn't illegal for a long time so what's your point here?
>In 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that the CRA64 also covered sexual orientation and gender identity, making discrimination based on being homosexual and transgender illegal.
Thanks for agreeing that you can add protections to different classes.
> And, in my opinion, it is actually GOOD to discriminate against people for those reasons.
No it's not "good" to discriminate in the way you're referring to it by shutting down what they say. It's good to present your differing opinion and put it out there so people can decide whether they agree. A lot people really thought discriminating based on skin color was "good" too.
You asked.me.if I thought we should be able to discriminate against certain groups. I said no, because it's illegal, and I don't want to get rid of that law.
If someone engages in speech I disagree with, I don't want the government to punish them for it. That does not mean I think bad speech should have no repercussions- I just think those repercussions should be in the private realm, in the hands of private citizens and private organizations.
In case it isn't clear, I'd sooner do away with all protected classes than add "Nazi" to the list.
There is no double standard. You can't ban black people from using your service based on race, but you can ban people who happen to be black for inciting violence with conspiracy theories.
>but you can ban people who happen to be black for inciting violence with conspiracy theories.
You seem to be confused about what the double standard is. They are not being banned and neither are the several dictators using the platforms to promote violence.
You intentionally confused what you mean by saying that blacks should be free to ban. They shouldn't be free to ban based on race.
The platforms are free to ban dictators in the US and other groups in the US that incite violence with conspiracy theories. That is well within their rights, and it is even a public service to do so.
As other have pointed out, you're describing protected classes. If you're advocating that political viewpoint should be a protected class, that's fine.
It's worth noting, though, that while I'm not allowed to ban Muslims from my bible study forum site, I'd be well within my rights to prohibit them (and anyone else) from evangelizing islam there.
Are you suggesting that we should amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include "political opinion, affiliation, or belief" as a new protected class? If so, I think you may not have thought out the potential repercussions of that change.
You don't think people's personal beliefs and allowing speech without repercussions is something that should be protected?
I kinda think you're the one not considering repercussions of allowing these platforms to drive social norms.
If your opinion holds so much water then you should welcome the opportunity to have public discourse with someone who thinks differently.
What I hear when someone supports removing speech is just fear. Fear that their specific opinion won't stand up against someone else's.
Regardless of whether there's a legal way to stop these platforms from their current crusade I don't' see how any one can morally support what they're doing.
I think that the First Amendment, as written, is a good thing. I think the government should be restricted heavily from punishing people for their speech.
I generally think that private organizations and individuals should not be held to that same requirement.
I think the Internet should be a utility, and ISPs should not be able to deny you access to the Internet. I think that Twitter should have the same right to deny service that my local bar does, which is to say, they can discriminate as long as it's not against a protected class.
> I think the government should be restricted heavily from punishing people for their speech.
Ok then explain to me why it's ok for these politicians to celebrate removal and de-platforming of individuals and post about it on social media? I'd also like to know why they're allowed to have hearings asking when certain platforms are going to ban specific rival politicians?
>I think the Internet should be a utility, and ISPs should not be able to deny you access to the Internet. I think that Twitter should have the same right to deny service that my local bar does, which is to say, they can discriminate as long as it's not against a protected class.
Explain? Why one and not the other? ISP's are businesses too. What I'm seeing when you write this is basically that you'd like to hold businesses you dislike to different standards that ones you don't. I assume you're ok with the social media stuff because it's catering to your opinions currently. You need to ask yourself if Trump had a stranglehold on Silicon Valley like the left currently does would you still be ok with your views?
Additionally, once private businesses reach a point where they're too big and they control too much market share they need to be held to different standards. You mentioned ISP's this is exactly what's happened with them. They all start working in coercion just like the handful of big tech companies have. There are no competitors without building a entirely separate infrastructure now.
because they're just speaking (which is protected), the government did not actually remove or de-platform anyone.
> why they're allowed to have hearings
same as above.
> Why one and not the other?
For the same reason I think "roads" and "endpoints on the road" are different. For the same reason I think "electricity" and "water" should be utilities. It's a pipe. I just think they're different things.
>because they're just speaking (which is protected), the government did not actually remove or de-platform anyone.
You're not following what I'm saying. They're explicitly coercing companies into doing things due to the fact they can bring down real repercussions if they do not. The government is using big tech as a middle man to do their bidding and silence "bad" speech. That, is in fact the same as doing it themselves, therefore stomping all over the 1st amendment.
Just because Pablo Escobar uses mules and dealers to peddle his drugs doesn't mean he's not guilty.
I am following what you're saying, I just think you're wrong. They are not "explicitly coercing companies". There is no law forcing the companies to do it, no stated punishment for not doing it, no evidence that the companies would actually receive punishment if they did not do it. I understand you think that is the same as doing it themselves- from a moral standpoint you may be correct, but in my opinion, legally you are completely incorrect, and I am defending the laws.
Although, if you change your statement to "implicitly coercing companies", you may be actually fairly accurate, I just don't think that is a bad thing, it happens all the time.
It's not ironic because they aren't the same thing and that isn't the only difference. In one case, you're banning someone over something they can't change about themselves and didn't choose. In the other case, you're banning someone because of an opinion they hold, that you disagree with. I do not consider those to be the same thing.
(Is the above also an argument that religious affiliation shouldn't be a protected class? Yes. Unpopular opinion that I hold, and I'll take the heat for it.)
You seem to be implying that 45% of the country's voting population who have the free choice to choose whatever political party they want is currently being treated the same as the 12% of the population that is African American (who are not free to choose the color of their skin) during Jim Crow. That is quite the persecution complex and quite a statement. If you are not stating this and I somehow got your intent wrong, my apologies.
Additionally I did not state I want anyone removed from social media, I just stated that private companies are allowed to censor over things that dont fall under a protected status.
I'm not defending the actions of Trump voters or trying to paint them as martyrs. This is more a issue with principle and long term precedent. back after 9/11 Republicans were largely in favor of the patriot act because they thought it would only be used against those Muslims they didn't care for. Fifteen years later those same counter terrorism spying laws were used to spy on and undermine the Republican presidential candidate. That's irony. Decades from now when the political winds change again what do you think will happen the next Bernie Sanders type candidates get close to winning elections? Don't be surprised if all the tech companies use AI to throttle any online communication that is supportive and magnify anything negative of the populist candidate.
Most of these people will completely change their stances the second someone they don't like gets voted in. I think theres a good chance that someone right wing is back in office after 4 years of Biden. When that happens they better hope it's not Trump 2 (or actual Trump).
I just don't understand the inability of people to see what happens when they give so much power away. That power does not disappear when the next POTUS appears.
These tech companies will 100% change with the wind, in fact, they already do it for China. They're only doing these things to garner favor from the current administration in hopes of staying away from any regulation. There's nothing altruistic about their behavior at all.
>You seem to be implying that 45% of the country's voting population who have the free choice to choose whatever political party they want is currently being treated the same as the 12% of the population that is African American (who are not free to choose the color of their skin) during Jim Crow.
So, essentially you're telling people they should stop thinking the way they do and think the way you want them to?
Would you apply this to trans people as well? I'm trying to figure out where your line is. Basically if it's an external physical attribute then discrimination is bad but if it's mental then discrimination is fine and dandy? Does this apply to homosexuality, religion, cultural attitudes etc?
My line is that its not wrong for a private company to censor a politician or entity that calls for violence and attempts to overturn an election without evidence. People claiming that all republicans are being censored are disingenuous. The only people being censored are those spreading unfounded dangerous claims that threaten the very heart of US democracy. Everyone else is still posting and tweeting without a care in the world besides the crosses they choose to bear in order to get clicks and eyeballs. No political party is being widely censored currently despite what certain media figures would have you believe.
Homosexuality and transgenderism, no, because they aren't choices, in my opinion based on the evidence I've seen they are biological/genetic in nature. Religion and cultural attitudes, yes, they're choices. I'll admit I'm in the minority here, but it's the only way I've found to have the view I have and be consistent.
Federal law prohibits discrimination based on:
race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, and handicap. Not political belief or outlook on the absolute state of things.
I asked this above and every response avoided it. OK, do you want to add "political affiliation or belief" to the CRA64? Do you understand the potential negative effects of that on people's Freedom of Association?
"Dislike associating with" is very different from the situation you desire, which would be "forced to associate with people who have advocated for people like me to be killed". And that WILL happen. You are saying that a Jewish bar owner should be forced to serve a guy with a swastika hat on. You can rant about Godwin and edge cases all you want, but if we make political belief and opinion a protected class, you're forcing that bartender to serve a person who wants them dead.
With regards to other protected classes- gender, race, religion, country of origin- the people belonging to those classes are so broad that you cannot make generalizations about them like that. When I see a dude wearing a swastika, I can, in my opinion, make some pretty accurate generalizations about them. Again, complain about the case I picked if you want, but all other political beliefs are just a watered down version of this example. Pick a guy wearing a "kill all the white people" shirt if you want, I refuse to advocate for any law or proposal that would force a white guy to serve him a beer.
>It's their platform they can censor who they want.
No, it's actually unconstitutional when you have Senators like Hirono requesting and goading them into removing people they don't like.
I find it hilarious that years of being against "big business" democrats are now the one's championing monopolies and in bed with everyone in Silicon Valley.
>The government certainly should not be able to come in and fine you for deleting comments on your blog.
But it's ok to threaten action if Trump isn't removed from platforms? Double standards are great!
"it's actually unconstitutional when you have Senators like Hirono requesting and goading them into removing people they don't like".
Maybe its unconstitutional (although if they did not use government power to force it then likely not) for the senator to encourage it, but it is most certainly not for the platform owner to do so.
"But it's ok to threaten action if Trump isn't removed from platforms?" Can you show me where the government threatened action if Trump was not removed from these platforms?
There is no double standards. Governments wield the power of state sanctioned violence and their ability to use that force to demand actions from private entities should be limited where ever possible. You are conflating private and government entities and they are really not comparable under any credible view especially that of the constitution.
Anyone that believes in the first amendment should be very against governments being able to determine content on private platforms.
"I find it hilarious that years of being against "big business" democrats are now the one's championing monopolies and in bed with everyone in Silicon Valley" This is not a political party issue, its a constitutional one.
Oh give me a break this is the lamest excuse for trashing the 1st amendment I've ever heard.
If you have government officials bringing executives and having hearings asking Zuckerberg when they're going to do something about removing speech they find offensive your first amendment is basically gone. Do you think they just invite him in to hear what he has to say? It's all an intimidation tactic to elicit coercion from these companies so they can use these platforms to push their agenda and silence anything else while guaranteeing funding.
>Anyone that believes in the first amendment should be very against governments being able to determine content on private platforms.
Wow? gaslight much? This would have done the opposite by disallowing the platforms to allow you only to see specific things. I don't know what to tell you if you're so confused that you think blocking specific speech is more supportive of the 1st amendment.
>This is not a political party issue, its a constitutional one.
I don't even know what you mean by that. There's one party pushing de-platforming and removal right now.
Having someone in a hearing and "voicing" your opinion all over the internet has real repercussions when it comes from a public institution that can obliterate your business with a few laws if you don't do what they like. It is not simply voicing their opinion, it's an obvious tactic to get away with shutting down dissenting opinions under the guise of questioning.
Why pass laws limiting speech when you can have your lackey friends in SV do it? It's a coercion tactic similar to what police do since they're in a position of power.
Would you be ok if they brought in the local restaurant owner and asked them why they served transgender people and when they were going to stop them from spreading trans culture inside their business?
> No, it's actually unconstitutional when you have Senators like Hirono requesting and goading them into removing people they don't like.
I agree that elected officials shouldn't try to make an end-run around the 1st Amendment by threatening to regulate companies if they don't censor on behalf of those officials.
When they do, shouldn't we should place the blame at the feet of those elected officials, not the companies they're attempting to extort?
Isn't that sort of hard to separate though? Are they doing this on their own, or to stay in the good graces of the current administration? Would they even admit it if they're being coerced? The would have to go to the government to ask for help and that's certainly not going to work very well if those are the people instigating the problem in the first place.
Sure. That's problematic. But that's no excuse to not place blame where it should rightfully be laid, and instead place it elsewhere just because doing so is easier. There are rights at stake here.
And if a site doesn't? The issue is one of compelled association. The First Amendment isn't just about choosing to be involved with who you want but also choosing not to be involved with who you don't want. This law abridges the rights of Facebook et al and potentially every website on the Internet to disassociate themselves from certain individuals.
This was one of the most blatantly anti first amendment expansion of government power I had seen in a long time. Glad it was rejected by the courts and hope that the new law which is somehow even worse requiring the reporting of student and professors political leanings is blocked very soon as well. MccArthyism should remain dead in the past.
The law wasn't rejected, the judge issued an injunction until the lawsuit is settled. Nor does the judge indicate he thinks this is blatantly a violation of the first amendment.
"That brings us to issues about First Amendment treatment of social-media providers that are not so clearly settled. The plaintiffs say, in effect, that they should be treated like any other speaker. The State says, in contrast, that social-media providers are more like common carriers, transporting information from one person to another much as a train transports people or products from one city to another. The truth is in the middle."
That is disingenuous. The standard for a preliminary injunction is "likelihood of success on the merits." The judge has to find that the law probably violates the First Amendment to issue the injunction. The second-to-last sentence says: "The legislation does not survive strict scrutiny."--in other words, he found that the law violated the First Amendment.
Indeed, the judge clearly believes that this is a blatant violation of the First Amendment. His commentary that you are citing is merely an indication that's it not as hilariously flagrantly violating it as the plaintiffs contended.
Given the general lack of conservative academics, the reporting should stay. The status quo currently protects academic freedom in one way but fails to protect for any other.
I am curious about why people think that this is an attack on first amendment? I thought the point of this legislation to preserve first amendment right of the users.
Maybe this is a choice between first amendment rights of the dominant platform companies vs. first amendment rights of 100s million of their users? If that's the case, wouldn't we want to take the users' side in this issue vs. platforms?
You don't have a first amendment right to star on a TV show on NBC, or to have your book published by the publisher of Harry Potter, or to have a news article you wrote placed on the New York Times front page, or to have a social media company publish your "thoughts" for the world to see. Your desire for a social media company to print what you write is not a first amendment issue at all.
> The California Supreme Court held the individuals had the right, under state law, to engage in the proposed activity. The ruling did not compel the shopping center to say anything at all, and the ruling did not prohibit the center from saying anything it wished, when and how it wished.
And it doesn't apply because:
> FAIR and PruneYard establish that compelling a person to allow a visitor access to the person’s property, for the purpose of speaking, is not a First Amendment violation, so long as the person is not compelled to speak, the person
is not restricted from speaking, and the message of the visitor is not likely to be attributed to the person. The Florida statutes now at issue, unlike the state actions
in FAIR and PruneYard, explicitly forbid social media platforms from appending their own statements to posts by some users. And the statutes compel the platforms
to change their own speech in other respects, including, for example, by dictating how the platforms may arrange speech on their sites. This is a far greater burden on the platforms’ own speech than was involved in FAIR or PruneYard.
The first amendment constrains the government. A social media site censoring your post does not infringe on your first amendment rights. It limits your speech, but the 1A protects your right to be free of government interference with your speech.
Private companies have the ultimate decision of what speech they allow on their platforms. This has always been true. The right of free speech includes also the right to not speak - no private platform can be compelled to publish speech that they don't want to publish; doing so would be a violation of their first amendment right to dictate how they speak and don't speak.
What you choose to repeat or amplify is an aspect of speech. In other words, the first amendment protects both people's ability to say (or not say) whatever they like without governmental restriction, as well as others' ability to host (or not host) whatever speech they'd like without governmental restriction.
In addition, this falls under freedom of association; people (individually and in groups) are free to choose who they associate with, and include or exclude anyone they like based on any criteria they like (with certain specific exceptions regarding protected classes). "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" - for instance, a restaurant or store (or an individual at home) can kick out someone being disruptive, and so can a web host or social media platform.
It's not even just about freedom of speech. It's freedom of a private property owner to do whatever the heck they want with their property. Facebook and Google own their services. The government can't compel them to host content they don't want to host any more than it can compel me to nail a letter to my wall that you send me. I own that wall and can do whatever the heck I want with it.
The 1st Amendment protects people and corporations from government censorship. But private entities are under no responsibility to ensure free speech. For example, a Christian private school is free to ban science teachers from teaching the theory of evolution.
The First Amendment begins "Congress shall make no law" (the Fourteenth Amendment brings in incorporation, so "Congress" should be read any US governmental authority). By definition, no private actor (at least, no one not acting under color of law) is capable of violating your First Amendment rights.
While I understand that people try to frame this as protecting First Amendment rights, this is actually very literally the government requiring the companies to publish certain kinds of speech. There is a provision in the law that would require any covered social media provider to carry all posts from any declared candidate. Turns out, though, there's a handy SCOTUS case that says that requiring a newspaper to publish replies from elected officials is unconstitutional abrogation of the newspaper's free speech.
Just as the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, it also protects the freedom from compelled speech.
Courts have generally held that the paramount first-amendment right is the right NOT to speak. The government can't force Facebook to let other people commandeer its megaphone. This has been clearly decided in caselaw that the judge quoted amply in his decision. This also isn't new to social media - just because a newspaper has a "letters to the editor" section, doesn't obligate them to publish every letter they receive, or even to be fair and unbalanced in the choice of letters that they do publish.
San Jose has just made it illegal to promote on social media side shows/street races. While intention of the law is good - nobody makes bad intentioned laws after all - one can wonder about what get under "promotion". It sounds pretty similar to the laws in Russia against unpermitted protests - you mention date/time on social media or forward such a post, and you're a toast.
Odd, they should be grateful for the tips on where to prominently station traffic safety officers complete with notice the parked car lights turned on. Though I would prefer if they didn't blep the sirens and crap and thus avoid more of a public nusience than the race would have been.
I would also prefer the elimination of all traffic cameras as taxation devices; require an officer there for judgement and to be close by in case other civic issues arise. These matters should be about public safety, not trying to entrap people in poorly marked speed traps nor lights that are timed to encourage unsafe driving.
The explicit exception for Disney was pretty brazen, but I guess the legislators knew this law had no chance of actually standing anyway. Just more grandstanding to whip everyone's current favorite whipping boys.
I have no love of Facebook and Google. Don't use their services. But for better or worse, they own their data centers. Your account is a set of files on servers they can burn to the ground if they so choose. The rights of property owners have always been first and foremost the most sacrosanct of all rights enshrined in American tradition. Whether you agree with that or not, it's the way our Constitution works. You can't compel private property owners to host content on their property. They can ban, at will, for any reason. It doesn't have to be fair. It doesn't have to balanced. They're allowed to be politically motivated. They're allowed to be wrong.
If you think we need a public digital square, then it needs to actually be public. These are legislators. They can propose a publicly funded alternative to private social media that would have to respect free speech rights because it would be part of the government.
This is an interesting discussion with many different opinions debating where first amendment lines are drawn. Personally, I am not sure what makes regulation of social media companies any different from regulation of utilities. Your electric company cannot cut off your power and deplatform you because of what you're posting online. Why should a social media provider, who is ultimately a dumb conduit for the public town square like any other telecom service, be able to do so? We regularly regulate companies for all sorts of purposes. For example, businesses are forced to not discriminate between customers based on certain protected traits. That is also a form of controlling the speech of companies but we don't call it out as a first amendment violation. Why not just treat political opinion as a protected trait as well?
But leaving the 'technical' aspects of the debate aside, the Florida law ultimately protects the free speech of individuals which makes me think it is preferable to protecting the free speech of the companies. This is especially true when the companies are incredibly huge and influential, with more users than most countries. They are effectively governments when it comes to their ability to shut down speech, and we've seen their power in action when they banned Trump in unison. That kind of power should have limitations - the same limitations we place on our government's ability to control speech.
> Why should a social media provider, who is ultimately a dumb conduit for the public town square like any other telecom service, be able to do so?
Do you think that Hacker News is really a "dumb conduit" for the public town square? Or how about your internal company Slack or message board? Review comments on your local retailer's website? Your local newspaper's comments section? These are all examples that would absolutely be classified as social media per Florida's law (modulo size requirements). If you're going to argue they're not social media, then what is the basis for drawing the distinction?
The problem with the law is--especially as the commentary of the legislators and De Santis make clear--it's really about punishing Facebook and Twitter, and not about protecting users at all. Indeed, if you followed the actual hearing itself, the state effectively tried to defend the absurdities of the law by basically saying that the only sane way to interpret it is that the only way for Facebook et al to violate the law is to not follow their own defined policies.
> Why should a social media provider, who is ultimately a dumb conduit for the public town square like any other telecom service, be able to do so?
I think you're begging the question here. It's not clear they're conduits - they're arguably at one end of the conduit. They arguably abut the town square (the internet at large), but that's not the same as being the town square.
> Why not just treat political opinion as a protected trait as well?
Lots of reasons. If you think about it for a minute or two, you can probably think of several.
> They are effectively governments when it comes to their ability to shut down speech
You mean "their ability to shut down speech on their own property, and nowhere else", which is different. So, yes, they're effectively governments on their own turf, much like the owner of a popular bar. Even if the bar is the the de-facto "town square" of some isolated hamlet where the townsfolk routinely gather to discuss the issues of the day.
If Facebook drops you, you go to any of ten thousand alternative social media sites.
If your electric company drops you, you don't go to any social media sites, because the power is off and there's nobody else.
Utilities are regulated because they're the only option. It's impractical to build alternatives because of the limited space for infrastructure. Often, in fact, local governments helped build that "last mile" infrastructure in the first place.
Facebook is the largest social media site, but there are tons of others. You aren't being literally frozen out if they decide not to serve you. Go meet your friends on some other site.
86 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadTalk about contradictory statements. In other words "we want to be the arbiter of allowed speech and continue our monopolistic conglomerate with other companies to shut down what we don't like in hopes of garnering the favor of the current party in power"
If someone Trump like gets back into office this is going to backfire in the faces of people supporting this stuff.
https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/933/compelled-speec...
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/f...
Since corporations are also people as SCOTUS ruled they have similar protections.
Asking them to host content they otherwise don't approve might be like I would require you to say great things about Biden when you're a Trump supporter. It would suppress your freedom of speech, don't you think? It's like Russia requiring to say great things about Putin and Belarus about Lukashenko.
Feel free to read my multiple other comments. The government can restrict your speech by means other than passing laws.
Regarding my personal opinion, I think they should be allowed to deny service to who they want as its a core feature of the business. I think this is different than a say black / white restricted eating areas as the core feature of those business' is to feed people, not to facilitate personal race / sexuality based interactions. Just my opinion though I am sure there are edge cases that would make me pause.
Just to get a better understanding.... homosexuals, trans, black, muslim, asian etc. All free to ban too right?
Muslims are members of a religion. Discrimination based on religion is illegal, same as above.
In 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that the CRA64 also covered sexual orientation and gender identity, making discrimination based on being homosexual and transgender illegal.
"Opinion, political belief, or political affiliation" is not a protected class, so it is legal to discriminate against people for those reasons. And, in my opinion, it is actually GOOD to discriminate against people for those reasons. It is an expression of ones First Amendment Freedom of Association.
Yes and it wasn't illegal for a long time so what's your point here?
>In 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that the CRA64 also covered sexual orientation and gender identity, making discrimination based on being homosexual and transgender illegal.
Thanks for agreeing that you can add protections to different classes.
> And, in my opinion, it is actually GOOD to discriminate against people for those reasons.
No it's not "good" to discriminate in the way you're referring to it by shutting down what they say. It's good to present your differing opinion and put it out there so people can decide whether they agree. A lot people really thought discriminating based on skin color was "good" too.
If someone engages in speech I disagree with, I don't want the government to punish them for it. That does not mean I think bad speech should have no repercussions- I just think those repercussions should be in the private realm, in the hands of private citizens and private organizations.
In case it isn't clear, I'd sooner do away with all protected classes than add "Nazi" to the list.
You seem to be confused about what the double standard is. They are not being banned and neither are the several dictators using the platforms to promote violence.
The platforms are free to ban dictators in the US and other groups in the US that incite violence with conspiracy theories. That is well within their rights, and it is even a public service to do so.
It's worth noting, though, that while I'm not allowed to ban Muslims from my bible study forum site, I'd be well within my rights to prohibit them (and anyone else) from evangelizing islam there.
I kinda think you're the one not considering repercussions of allowing these platforms to drive social norms.
If your opinion holds so much water then you should welcome the opportunity to have public discourse with someone who thinks differently.
What I hear when someone supports removing speech is just fear. Fear that their specific opinion won't stand up against someone else's.
Regardless of whether there's a legal way to stop these platforms from their current crusade I don't' see how any one can morally support what they're doing.
I generally think that private organizations and individuals should not be held to that same requirement.
I think the Internet should be a utility, and ISPs should not be able to deny you access to the Internet. I think that Twitter should have the same right to deny service that my local bar does, which is to say, they can discriminate as long as it's not against a protected class.
Ok then explain to me why it's ok for these politicians to celebrate removal and de-platforming of individuals and post about it on social media? I'd also like to know why they're allowed to have hearings asking when certain platforms are going to ban specific rival politicians?
>I think the Internet should be a utility, and ISPs should not be able to deny you access to the Internet. I think that Twitter should have the same right to deny service that my local bar does, which is to say, they can discriminate as long as it's not against a protected class.
Explain? Why one and not the other? ISP's are businesses too. What I'm seeing when you write this is basically that you'd like to hold businesses you dislike to different standards that ones you don't. I assume you're ok with the social media stuff because it's catering to your opinions currently. You need to ask yourself if Trump had a stranglehold on Silicon Valley like the left currently does would you still be ok with your views?
Additionally, once private businesses reach a point where they're too big and they control too much market share they need to be held to different standards. You mentioned ISP's this is exactly what's happened with them. They all start working in coercion just like the handful of big tech companies have. There are no competitors without building a entirely separate infrastructure now.
because they're just speaking (which is protected), the government did not actually remove or de-platform anyone.
> why they're allowed to have hearings
same as above.
> Why one and not the other?
For the same reason I think "roads" and "endpoints on the road" are different. For the same reason I think "electricity" and "water" should be utilities. It's a pipe. I just think they're different things.
You're not following what I'm saying. They're explicitly coercing companies into doing things due to the fact they can bring down real repercussions if they do not. The government is using big tech as a middle man to do their bidding and silence "bad" speech. That, is in fact the same as doing it themselves, therefore stomping all over the 1st amendment.
Just because Pablo Escobar uses mules and dealers to peddle his drugs doesn't mean he's not guilty.
Although, if you change your statement to "implicitly coercing companies", you may be actually fairly accurate, I just don't think that is a bad thing, it happens all the time.
Not that the Florida law holds merit. Just that the irony here is lost to most people.
(Is the above also an argument that religious affiliation shouldn't be a protected class? Yes. Unpopular opinion that I hold, and I'll take the heat for it.)
Additionally I did not state I want anyone removed from social media, I just stated that private companies are allowed to censor over things that dont fall under a protected status.
I just don't understand the inability of people to see what happens when they give so much power away. That power does not disappear when the next POTUS appears.
These tech companies will 100% change with the wind, in fact, they already do it for China. They're only doing these things to garner favor from the current administration in hopes of staying away from any regulation. There's nothing altruistic about their behavior at all.
So, essentially you're telling people they should stop thinking the way they do and think the way you want them to?
Would you apply this to trans people as well? I'm trying to figure out where your line is. Basically if it's an external physical attribute then discrimination is bad but if it's mental then discrimination is fine and dandy? Does this apply to homosexuality, religion, cultural attitudes etc?
I'm sure plenty of people dislike associating with lgbtq people and people of different race, religion etc.
With regards to other protected classes- gender, race, religion, country of origin- the people belonging to those classes are so broad that you cannot make generalizations about them like that. When I see a dude wearing a swastika, I can, in my opinion, make some pretty accurate generalizations about them. Again, complain about the case I picked if you want, but all other political beliefs are just a watered down version of this example. Pick a guy wearing a "kill all the white people" shirt if you want, I refuse to advocate for any law or proposal that would force a white guy to serve him a beer.
No, it's actually unconstitutional when you have Senators like Hirono requesting and goading them into removing people they don't like.
I find it hilarious that years of being against "big business" democrats are now the one's championing monopolies and in bed with everyone in Silicon Valley.
>The government certainly should not be able to come in and fine you for deleting comments on your blog.
But it's ok to threaten action if Trump isn't removed from platforms? Double standards are great!
"But it's ok to threaten action if Trump isn't removed from platforms?" Can you show me where the government threatened action if Trump was not removed from these platforms?
There is no double standards. Governments wield the power of state sanctioned violence and their ability to use that force to demand actions from private entities should be limited where ever possible. You are conflating private and government entities and they are really not comparable under any credible view especially that of the constitution.
Anyone that believes in the first amendment should be very against governments being able to determine content on private platforms.
"I find it hilarious that years of being against "big business" democrats are now the one's championing monopolies and in bed with everyone in Silicon Valley" This is not a political party issue, its a constitutional one.
If you have government officials bringing executives and having hearings asking Zuckerberg when they're going to do something about removing speech they find offensive your first amendment is basically gone. Do you think they just invite him in to hear what he has to say? It's all an intimidation tactic to elicit coercion from these companies so they can use these platforms to push their agenda and silence anything else while guaranteeing funding.
>Anyone that believes in the first amendment should be very against governments being able to determine content on private platforms.
Wow? gaslight much? This would have done the opposite by disallowing the platforms to allow you only to see specific things. I don't know what to tell you if you're so confused that you think blocking specific speech is more supportive of the 1st amendment.
>This is not a political party issue, its a constitutional one.
I don't even know what you mean by that. There's one party pushing de-platforming and removal right now.
No, it's not unconstitutional. Government officials are allowed to voice their opinion.
Why pass laws limiting speech when you can have your lackey friends in SV do it? It's a coercion tactic similar to what police do since they're in a position of power.
Would you be ok if they brought in the local restaurant owner and asked them why they served transgender people and when they were going to stop them from spreading trans culture inside their business?
I agree that elected officials shouldn't try to make an end-run around the 1st Amendment by threatening to regulate companies if they don't censor on behalf of those officials.
When they do, shouldn't we should place the blame at the feet of those elected officials, not the companies they're attempting to extort?
- The legislation compels providers to host speech that violates their standards—speech they otherwise would not host
- and forbids providers from speaking as they otherwise would
These aren't contradictory. If a site does want to host a politician's speech then they can?
"That brings us to issues about First Amendment treatment of social-media providers that are not so clearly settled. The plaintiffs say, in effect, that they should be treated like any other speaker. The State says, in contrast, that social-media providers are more like common carriers, transporting information from one person to another much as a train transports people or products from one city to another. The truth is in the middle."
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flnd.37...
Indeed, the judge clearly believes that this is a blatant violation of the First Amendment. His commentary that you are citing is merely an indication that's it not as hilariously flagrantly violating it as the plaintiffs contended.
Maybe this is a choice between first amendment rights of the dominant platform companies vs. first amendment rights of 100s million of their users? If that's the case, wouldn't we want to take the users' side in this issue vs. platforms?
https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/583/pruneyard-shopp...
> The California Supreme Court held the individuals had the right, under state law, to engage in the proposed activity. The ruling did not compel the shopping center to say anything at all, and the ruling did not prohibit the center from saying anything it wished, when and how it wished.
And it doesn't apply because:
> FAIR and PruneYard establish that compelling a person to allow a visitor access to the person’s property, for the purpose of speaking, is not a First Amendment violation, so long as the person is not compelled to speak, the person is not restricted from speaking, and the message of the visitor is not likely to be attributed to the person. The Florida statutes now at issue, unlike the state actions in FAIR and PruneYard, explicitly forbid social media platforms from appending their own statements to posts by some users. And the statutes compel the platforms to change their own speech in other respects, including, for example, by dictating how the platforms may arrange speech on their sites. This is a far greater burden on the platforms’ own speech than was involved in FAIR or PruneYard.
In addition, this falls under freedom of association; people (individually and in groups) are free to choose who they associate with, and include or exclude anyone they like based on any criteria they like (with certain specific exceptions regarding protected classes). "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" - for instance, a restaurant or store (or an individual at home) can kick out someone being disruptive, and so can a web host or social media platform.
It only specifically constrains Congress. It does not mention state governments.
While I understand that people try to frame this as protecting First Amendment rights, this is actually very literally the government requiring the companies to publish certain kinds of speech. There is a provision in the law that would require any covered social media provider to carry all posts from any declared candidate. Turns out, though, there's a handy SCOTUS case that says that requiring a newspaper to publish replies from elected officials is unconstitutional abrogation of the newspaper's free speech.
Just as the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, it also protects the freedom from compelled speech.
I would also prefer the elimination of all traffic cameras as taxation devices; require an officer there for judgement and to be close by in case other civic issues arise. These matters should be about public safety, not trying to entrap people in poorly marked speed traps nor lights that are timed to encourage unsafe driving.
I have no love of Facebook and Google. Don't use their services. But for better or worse, they own their data centers. Your account is a set of files on servers they can burn to the ground if they so choose. The rights of property owners have always been first and foremost the most sacrosanct of all rights enshrined in American tradition. Whether you agree with that or not, it's the way our Constitution works. You can't compel private property owners to host content on their property. They can ban, at will, for any reason. It doesn't have to be fair. It doesn't have to balanced. They're allowed to be politically motivated. They're allowed to be wrong.
If you think we need a public digital square, then it needs to actually be public. These are legislators. They can propose a publicly funded alternative to private social media that would have to respect free speech rights because it would be part of the government.
But leaving the 'technical' aspects of the debate aside, the Florida law ultimately protects the free speech of individuals which makes me think it is preferable to protecting the free speech of the companies. This is especially true when the companies are incredibly huge and influential, with more users than most countries. They are effectively governments when it comes to their ability to shut down speech, and we've seen their power in action when they banned Trump in unison. That kind of power should have limitations - the same limitations we place on our government's ability to control speech.
Do you think that Hacker News is really a "dumb conduit" for the public town square? Or how about your internal company Slack or message board? Review comments on your local retailer's website? Your local newspaper's comments section? These are all examples that would absolutely be classified as social media per Florida's law (modulo size requirements). If you're going to argue they're not social media, then what is the basis for drawing the distinction?
The problem with the law is--especially as the commentary of the legislators and De Santis make clear--it's really about punishing Facebook and Twitter, and not about protecting users at all. Indeed, if you followed the actual hearing itself, the state effectively tried to defend the absurdities of the law by basically saying that the only sane way to interpret it is that the only way for Facebook et al to violate the law is to not follow their own defined policies.
I think you're begging the question here. It's not clear they're conduits - they're arguably at one end of the conduit. They arguably abut the town square (the internet at large), but that's not the same as being the town square.
> Why not just treat political opinion as a protected trait as well?
Lots of reasons. If you think about it for a minute or two, you can probably think of several.
> They are effectively governments when it comes to their ability to shut down speech
You mean "their ability to shut down speech on their own property, and nowhere else", which is different. So, yes, they're effectively governments on their own turf, much like the owner of a popular bar. Even if the bar is the the de-facto "town square" of some isolated hamlet where the townsfolk routinely gather to discuss the issues of the day.
If your electric company drops you, you don't go to any social media sites, because the power is off and there's nobody else.
Utilities are regulated because they're the only option. It's impractical to build alternatives because of the limited space for infrastructure. Often, in fact, local governments helped build that "last mile" infrastructure in the first place.
Facebook is the largest social media site, but there are tons of others. You aren't being literally frozen out if they decide not to serve you. Go meet your friends on some other site.