[ellen364]

> A private company should not be making decisions on essentially freedom of speech.

This comes up a lot and makes me think I’ve misunderstood US free speech dynamics. I thought the USA traditionally limited the government’s ability to regulate free speech, leaving it to private / social regulation. In other words, it was up to individuals, communities, companies and so on to decide what was acceptable.

But perhaps that’s a misunderstanding. Can anyone recommend books or papers to better understand the history of free speech in the USA? I guess The Federalist Papers are often a good place to start?

[HL33tibCe7]

You’re confusing the First Amendment — a particular law about the government’s requirement to uphold the principle of freedom of speech — with the principle of freedom of speech more generally.

In this context, the First Amendment is irrelevant - it doesn’t apply here; it says nothing about the actions of private companies. Instead, people are discussing the principle of freedom of speech, and in particular the extent to which private companies should be able to limit speech.

[ghaff]

A problem arises when those private companies--especially in the aggregate--elect not to do business with you. At some level I suppose you don't need to do business with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon... But most would find it difficult. Maybe add the one ISP you have available.

[XorNot]

> and in particular the extent to which private companies should be able to limit speech.

This is incoherent with the idea it's not a government matter. If it's not a government matter, then there's nothing to talk about - Cloudflare can do whatever they like because the law does not bind them otherwise.

[HL33tibCe7]

We’re not talking about law, we’re talking about morality.

[ellen364]

You might be right. I interpreted the parent comment as saying the government should do more and started thinking about the government’s role in free speech.

[chris_acree]

I don't think it's confusion; the two are inherently connected. How can a law (and it's consequent enforcement) dictating some types of speech not play into freedom of speech more generally?

Freedom of speech is rightly often characterized as a core American principle; it's emphasized in civic education, and most of the country will, if anything, overstate what is actually allowed by it. Generally though, I think it does follow the common interpretation; people can say what they want is the default, and courts have carved out specific exceptions over the centuries (libel, public endangerment, etc). Looking at the history of these laws, all the examples I know of started off to be assumed legal, and in specific cases those scenarios were deemed sufficiently bad to now be illegal.

In recent years, we've seen increasing amounts of misinformation that are hard to track down thanks to social media, and so there is now increasing debate about how to combat this. I think there are two parts to this question:

- Does (or how much of) this misinformation constitute a necessary legal response? Put another way, in the context of social media, which depending on platform and settings might not even be fully public, what defines whether something is serious enough of libel or a danger to the public to require legal action against its perpetrators? Explicitly calling for a lynch mob against someone probably breaches current laws, but claiming that Trump should have won the 2020 election probably doesn't (even if the person saying it knows its false; lying isn't normally a crime!).

- In an online world, how do we enforce these laws? Social media is often anonymous. Should public profiles be required to have verified contact information? How can we track and police international actors? Does liking a criminal post count as a crime? What about a retweet to millions of followers? Given these challenges, there is a push to have platforms take a role in this enforcement, whether through account verification, removal of potentially criminal speech, or other methods.

Both these questions are unsettled. The common person probably isn't thinking too much about the first question, and the courts will mostly hash it out over time. The second one is what gets more public debate.

Personally, I'd say the American enthusiasm for free speech, and wariness of business regulation more generally, make it unlikely to take significant action there, particularly since the big platforms themselves are clearly putting a lot of time into trying to address these things. If Europe creates a legal framework around platform responsibility, the US might follow, but otherwise will probably let the platforms keep working at it. That's just my guess though!

[rnk]

Another parallel to these tensions between free speech, commercial responsibilities and rights is a kind of tension between the ability to be anonymous on the internet (on social networks especially) and the inability to track down dangerous things on social networks and/or prevent them. But - it's not just about anonymity in lies or persuasiveness on the internet.

I love being able to be anonymous or pseudo-anonymous on the internet. At the same time, the ability of people to persuade others of dangerous, destructive lies on social networks is terrible for society. It's not just the us of course, there have been multiple other countries where people were persuaded to attack the 'other' minority group or religion or whatever because they were secretly attacking them.

I'm in the us and social media has destroyed the ability to have some basic agreement on what has happened in the world (such as the issues of the election in 2020). But it's not just social media. It's certain conservative news outlets that push these lies, persuasively!

And I don't know what to do about these problems. I honestly don't see how we as humans will develop a better ability to study what happens and get to a basic understanding of reality - even in the face of conflicting information. My own dad was an EE and a cfo of a billion dollar a year company and now he's fallen into the sway of a certain american network's lies and racial animus. Maybe he was always sympathetic to these views.

[JeremyNT]

This is a modern reappropriation of the phrase, really. There are two issues: what should the government be allowed to do to limit speech (historically, this was called "free speech") versus how companies should be compelled to police or host objectionable content (this is the "new" connotation).

It's unfortunate that these two concepts are often lumped together in online discussions, because they are obviously very different, and many people who would agree with the First Amendment and the classical notion of "free speech" as a restriction on the government could have diverse opinions on the regulation of platforms and how they display content.

[rmbyrro]

I'm also not very familiar, but I understood it differently:

The government did not let it for private sector to regulate when it explicitly guaranteed the right in the constitution...

[maxbond]

The text better supports GP's understanding:

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is explicitly about what sorts of laws Congress may not pass, and not about the conduct of private citizens or institutions.

[krapp]

Further, the Tenth Amendment:

    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Because the Constitution doesn't delegate the power to regulate speech to the US, but rather prohibits it, by definition the power to regulate speech is reserved by the States and the people.

[ellen364]

That’s interesting. Would the Tenth Amendment prevent the federal government regulating free speech in the opposite direction, e.g. a law saying “companies can’t do anything to limit free speech”?