[acallan]

Do you have any examples of Twitter arresting or imprisoning people for speech, or acquiescing to government censorship? Perhaps you are instead to moderating their private platform and enforcing community guidelines? I understand the latter can be annoying, but it is a mistake to conflate the two, as free speech is something very special and important and in the US is in fact codified into the Bill of Rights.

TL;DR free speech is between you and the government, not between you and someone else or some other company.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Free speech in terms of the first amendment is about government censorship, but in todays society with only a handful of giant media and tech companies controlling the vast majority of information flow, then free speech takes on a the second meaning about corporate or private censorship. It may not be illegal, but that doesn't mean its ok. And for the record, I do no support completely unmoderated media - that would be a nightmare. Free speech in both forms are, and will always be, very tricky things to deal with.

[ascendantlogic]

> then free speech takes on a the second meaning about corporate or private censorship

Then the government should pass laws stating that these private corporations are no longer able to moderate their own platforms as they see fit. There is no "second meaning" without concrete legal precedent.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

In effect, large corporations are like secondary governments in how their actions, policies, and decisions affect our lives. That's what the second meaning is about - its not a legal concept, but rather how things work and feel in practice.

[Jcowell]

Should it? Should free speech be extended beyond the bounds of government and if so doesn’t that contradict its original meaning by making the government restrict who should and shouldn’t provide uncensored free speech?

[HereIGoAgain]

Free speech never began with governments. The 1st is a prohibition on government interfering with the freedom of speech. That's the problem with this whole debate, most people have everything backwards. Free speech is a concept, an ideal that underpins the entire concept of a healthy, free, fair and open society.

[acallan]

> there could be stronger laws against media which contains objectively provable lies

this is a clear violation of the First Amendment, which makes it legal to publish lies.

[acallan]

> What about slander and libel laws or laws about claims made in advertisements?

Yep — here we're getting into Prior Restraint. It's both against the law to restrain free speech such as lies, but as you rightly point out, this speech can have other legal consequences.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Well there we go, an established framework for how this could work. Legal consequences are good enough.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

What about slander and libel laws or laws about claims made in advertisements?

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

I said it was tricky. But, for example, there could be stronger laws against media which contains objectively provable lies.

[aaaaaaaaata]

This is not only repetitive, but anti-human pedantry.

Tell them to call it freedom of expression if you're so inclined, and keep supporting their fight for it.

Anything less is detracting from their point, seemingly intentionally.

[acallan]

My position is that the moderation and content policies ("community guidelines") that private companies and individuals have is also a form of expression. For example, this explains the legality of op/ed pages of newspapers publishing the viewpoints which they choose to, and omitting others. You could sue Fox News or Twitter for censoring or omitting your viewpoint, but this case would not and, in my opinion, should not, be successful.

[HereIGoAgain]

But how much, if at all, should a public company, without a single owner actually have. And if so, who should decide what the stances are? I mean the very people that now suddenly defend "private" property rights are generally the same who argue against personhood for corporations outright and in total.

[namelessoracle]

When major corporations stop receiving billions of dollars of my taxes and special legislation and other carve outs and also don't openly court being agents of political parties then i can start treating the difference seriously.

[pjc50]

Twitter complies with e.g. German government censorship of Nazis: https://twitter.com/antumbral/status/876843545100824576?lang...

(the term gets thrown around a lot, and has been devalued into meaninglessness by the Russian government, but it does have a legal meaning in Germany and France)

[throwaway0x7E6]

>by the Russian government

really now?

[pjc50]

Yes, their "denazification of Ukraine" propaganda, expanding from the presence of some far-right militia activity in some places to justifying the mass murder of civilians.

That and its excessive use on social media renders "Nazi" mostly useless as a descriptor, outside of those groups that explicitly and deliberately reference Nazi symbology and ideology.

[dragonwriter]

> expanding from the presence of some far-right militia activity in some places

Note: smaller than that of the same ideological but different geopolitical alignment that Russia has been sponsoring for years (Azov exists, but it's smaller than Sparta) in the same conflict.

[throwaway0x7E6]

I didn't mean the russian propaganda. I meant the western media that had branded anyone with the most milquetoast traditional views as nazis for the past 7 years. The fucking canadian truckers were branded as fascists, for fuck's sake. did NSDAP protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates too?

>some far-right militia activity in some places

FYI, those guy with wolfsangel and black sun insignias and swastika tattoos are not a militia but a legitimate unit of Ukraine's national guard

https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/sonnen...

https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/wolfsa...

[rmbyrro]

They claim to be a platform, not publishers, so they shouldn't be able to invoke publisher rights and be the judge of what can or cannot be published. Let the government do this mediation. Twitter should let people ask a judge to issue content take downs based on the law and just comply with it.

[pjc50]

"Twitter is _not allowed_ to remove porn, spam, doxxing, or death threats without a court order (of what jurisdiction?)" would immediately collapse into goatse chaos.

[kylecordes]

It's shocking how many otherwise smart people are naïve about this. Even those who have been around the Internet long enough to know full well what happens with any text box (or worse, image upload) offered.

[rmbyrro]

These are real issues, but I don't think we need to give Twitter full power as arbiter of society's speech in order to curb them.

[acallan]

There is simply no meaningful legal distinction between the two in this context. See https://twitter.com/badsec230takes

[ramblerman]

> but it is a mistake to conflate the two

That's up for debate. Modern communication is so monopolized by twitter/FB that the argument of "they are a private company" no longer holds.

We can bemoan Russian interference in the elections all we want. But the power Twitter/FB hold is far more impactful on domestic and international democracy than any russian agent every could be.

[throwaway0x7E6]

nobody is accusing twitter of violating the 1A

[LewisVerstappen]

> TL;DR free speech is between you and the government, not between you and someone else or some other company.

Yes, everyone knows that.

It's a bit different though when you have massive social media platforms that have monopolies over public discourse.

[acallan]

Imagine a scenario where Twitter and Facebook lose their ability to unconditionally moderate the content of their platforms. Presumably they would need to check with government censors first? Again, I understand how annoying moderation can be! I just don't understand the alternative and I do not see how this alternative is not a huge violation of the First Amendment — this would precisely be the government telling private companies what they can and cannot publish.

[LewisVerstappen]

> I just don't understand the alternative

Well, one alternative would be that they have to decouple their front-end and back-end and provide open APIs to their backend (posts/tweets, friends lists, etc.).

Facebook/Twitter can moderate/censor whatever they want on their own front-ends, but they can't remove anything from the backend.

People/companies can build alternative front-end apps that access the fb/twitter graphs and censor in a different way - so that users have an alternative.

[pjc50]

See above: _not allowed_ to remove porn, spam, doxxing, or death threats without a court order (of what jurisdiction?) => immediate chaos

(Note that FOSTA/SESTA already imposes a proactive legal obligation to censor within the US, and overrides s230)

[root_axis]

They don't have a monopoly over public discourse though, not even remotely close.

[ascendantlogic]

> It's a bit different though

No, it's not. If you want corporations to be beholden to the first amendment then pass laws saying that private companies can no longer moderate their platforms, full stop.