People on HN and in this thread in particular have such a one sided view of this issue. For some reason people here only think the left is attacking free speech when the truth is that free speech is under attack from both the left and right. One of those two has been much more effective translating these attacks into laws which I would expect to be the most concerning for proponents of free speech and yet it is always "what is happening on college campuses" that scares people more than "what is happening in state legislatures".
While I agree-ish, I can list a litany of people deplatformed. All of them are on the right. It could just be only the left has power at the moment.
A common question is why the Ayatollah is on Twitter (and I think Facebook) calling for death, but Alex Jones isn’t allowed to question events.
We can argue both are reprehensible, but only one is banned.
Beyond that I haven’t seen anyone on the right truly call for limitation of speech. I’ve only seen them get upset when something is particularly targeting them (say the push for LGBT in elementary schools)
Book banning is the right's equivalent of deplatforming, with the bonus that they are getting the government to do it, not just a private company. They do take it further though, with banning of talking about how to get an abortion, banning of talking about LGBT topics in school.
I can't say that allowing those topics, or even pushing them, is targeting the right. By definition it's about some other group being supported. Maybe you meant triggering them, not targeting them?
It always surprises me the right wants to ban books. After all they want minors to read a book with beastiality in it. It will be fun to see what the courts say on banning the bible from elementary schools in Florida on the grounds that beastiality is not age appropriate.
Pretty sure the Bible also isn’t taught in public schools.
This is why I strongly support school choice. Let the parents decide how to raise their children.
Also that said, those sections of the Bible typically aren’t highlighted, aren’t graphic, don’t appear in all bibles and kids will get abridged versions.
You are wrong. I grew up in the south and we absolutely talked about things that were basically biblical in nature. The source of morals, right and wrong. We are way past that now, with cons in florida openly passing a law that says you can put up "in god we trust" in the school. https://www.foxnews.com/us/all-florida-public-schools-to-dis...
Similar things going on in the other new state determined to make laws against things that hurt their feelings, texas.
I haven’t seen any book banning per-se. I’ve seen removal of offering them for free using public funds or using certain material to education children.. So, libraries or curriculums, which are not a first amendment issue.
> banning of talking about LGBT topics in school.
I saw Florida law stopped discussing it AND not telling parents, prior to 10 or 12 (forget final age). Again, limitations on educators are not the same thing.
We always limit access of information to children as they develop. We don’t show them death or sex at a young age because it’s been shown to have some negative effects.
That’s fundamentally different than banning people from using the public square to discuss topics.
Neither of these restrict speech, and I'm not sure how one could construe the text of the laws toward that conclusion.
The first looks like regulation on social media activities, which is well within the boundaries of government - state or otherwise. Perhaps ill-advised, but "how to regulate the digital town square" is a pretty open and fluid debate, no? I don't see anything in there that says "this kind of speech is banned".
The second[1] looks like a workplace and education regulation, which is again well within the boundaries of things the government is charged with regulating. Honestly the text of the law looks pretty benign to me.
Both cited laws were blocked by judges for violating the first amendment. So you’ll have to provide a better argument than they seem to you to be benign, or well within the bounds of government regulation powers. Because the courts disagree with you.
The first is really the first attempt that I'm aware of to regulate social media companies, so it's not surprising that the legal arguments are not that robust or are clumsy at this stage. Surely social media companies are not considered "unregulatable" solely because speech occurs on those platforms. For the second, the article states that only "part of" the law was blocked, and leaves it up to the reader to guess which part. Unfortunately I can't find the actual court opinions, and journalists generally don't link to the primary sources when they have a specific opinion they would like their readers to have, which appears to have worked here.
>The first looks like regulation on social media activities, which is well within the boundaries of government - state or otherwise. Perhaps ill-advised, but "how to regulate the digital town square" is a pretty open and fluid debate, no? I don't see anything in there that says "this kind of speech is banned".
The law prevents private social media companies from adding a warning to posts for things like misinformation. That is banning a speech for these companies.
>The second[1] looks like a workplace and education regulation, which is again well within the boundaries of things the government is charged with regulating.
Except when those regulations violate the first amendment. This law dictates what private businesses can say while training their employees. How is that not an issue of speech?
It's interesting to me that implicit in your argument is that the corporation has some sort of "prime" speech right that users do not, but I understand how you could think that with regard to telling these companies they can't arbitrarily apply a speech to a user's speech (which is what adding a "misinformation" "warning" is doing) based on viewpoint.
We already have tons of laws that restrict what businesses can do, that would obviously restrict speech - like banning discrimination. The law does not, in fact, dictate what private businesses can say. It gives them a list of things they cannot say (e.g. certain races are morally superior). I don't see how that's different.
I found the law that this (Canadian) article is referencing, and the words "gay" or "homosexual" don't even appear in the text. How does this prevent gay and lesbian teachers from discussing their partners? I see a paragraph that says instruction on sexuality and sexual orientation can't begin before the third grade which seems pretty reasonable. I didn't get that until I was in, I think, fifth grade.
>I found the law that this (Canadian) article is referencing, and the words "gay" or "homosexual" don't even appear in the text.
You could try search for other words or phrases like sexual orientation? You will find passages like this:
>Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.
No one knows what those "state standards" are which creates a chilling effect around all discussions. Does this hypothetical conversation qualify?
First Grader: What do you do over Christmas Mrs. Smith?
Mrs. Smith: I went to visit my wife's family in Miami.
First Grader: But you are a woman, how do you have a wife?
Mrs. Smith: Not all women marry men. Some women marry other women.
Yes that's the paragraph I was referring to, and seems to be the only one that's relevant to what you're saying.
No one knows what the state standards are? They're all listed right here on their website[1]. Do you think your hypothetical conversation qualifies as "classroom instruction"? I don't think so.
There are many cases of not being allowed to say certain things as an employee or representative of an entity but I don't consider them infringements on "free speech" in general.
I'm sure after work these teachers can say whatever they like.
So it's okay that teachers are allowed to discuss their heterosexual partners but not homosexual? And you consider this not to be a violation of free speech?
I don’t see how this is inconsistent with what they’re saying. These people are asking their colleges to not provide a platform, not that the speakers should not be allowed to speak anywhere.
I’m so tired of this argument. Who cares if it’s the government, private business, or other citizens who do the censorship? The result is the same: censorship. Next you’re gonna tell me to go build my own university/social media platform/payment processor/ISP/etc. if I don’t like it.
If the alternative is to force someone else to host and reproduce your views who doesn’t want to, then I’d say that’s acceptable. I’d you want a large platform on which to spout your views, you should secure that yourself. Your 1st amendment right is to stand on a soapbox in the town square and yell as loud as you want, and that’s all.
That that is a very limited view of the concept / principle of free speech,
While it may be technically correct in the context of US Constitutional law, people that make this claim expose their opposition to the wider concept of free expression and likely would be the first ones to support an amendment to weaken the 1st amendment
I simply stated that no one should be forced to reproduce your speech, and you came back stating that's a limited view (why? no evidence or reasoning) and then made an ad-hominem attack on me, insinuating I'm someone who secretly has some agenda to destroy free expression. Maybe you're the one with the agenda here, and I'm just stating my simple opinions and views?
I'm not going to engage further with someone who acts like that.
It's not limited and it's not merely "technically correct". The only thing that has been exposed here is your lack of understanding of how all this works.
No, it limits the concept of free expression to be governmental only. It is closely adjacent to the idea that government grants our rights and with out government we have no rights
it is rejection of the idea of Natural Rights for which the US was founded on, this rejection of natural rights is growing in the population is is very dangerous to those very rights
Believing that only governments can censor is a rejection of the principle of free expression which is "I may disagree with you but I support your right to say it"
Society should not embrace the idea that businesses, employers, etc should choose who they transact with based on peoples opinions and views. Society that embraces these kinds of virtue tests have no liberty, and have no free expression
Especially considering recently it was brought to light that during discovery when Alex Berenson sued Twitter it was revealed that Twitter was pressured by the White House to deplatform him.
This becomes de facto censorship hidden within the corporate works and was only brought to light because he complained enough and was granted discovery by a judge. IANAL Being advised to censor someone by the government vs the government doing it directly is legally a distinction without a difference.
Did you read what the actual ruling held? This wasn't a 1st Amendment case.
---
In American constitutional law, this case established two important rules:
* under the California Constitution, individuals may peacefully exercise their right to free speech in parts of private shopping centers regularly held open to the public, subject to reasonable regulations adopted by the shopping centers
* under the U.S. Constitution, states can provide their citizens with broader rights in their constitutions than under the federal Constitution, so long as those rights do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights
This holding was possible because California's constitution contains an affirmative right of free speech which has been liberally construed by the Supreme Court of California, while the federal constitution's First Amendment contains only a negative command to Congress to not abridge the freedom of speech. This distinction was significant because the U.S. Supreme Court had already held that under the federal First Amendment, there was no implied right of free speech within a private shopping center.
Sure, but the impact is negligible because I’m just some guy on the internet, not a platform with billions of users and almost monopolistic control on information sharing colluding with all the other similar platforms to censor certain kinds of speech and amplify others.
I don’t know what the best solution is for dealing with these platforms, and I understand it is a complicated issue, but saying “it’s not censorship because they’re not the government” is simply disingenuous.
The government/private line is useful because it's a very bright, clearly defined line, and also ideologically consistent. It seems to me that saying that to protect free speech, some private entities must be forced to carry speech is a contradiction that actually degrades free speech, rather than protects it. It also moves the question to "Which private individuals must be forced to carry speech?"
You've made an argument that you're too small and insignificant, but that seems to be a matter of opinion to me. How small is too small? Consider a forum for you and your friends. How many friends are allowed on your forum before you are forced to carry any and all content that others wish to post there, and who makes that decision? Will you be forced to let Nazis on your forum? Ads? Porn? Will you be able to moderate anything at all?
Keeping the line at government/private protects Twitter, but it also protects you.
This is a slippery slope argument. Yes, the line becomes harder to define, but we can agree that there is a huge difference between the internet's public square and my small private forum.
If many of the functions that a government fulfills are now implemented by private entities, I want these private entities to inherit the limitations of power we place on governments. Is that ideologically inconsistent?
Maybe under perfect competitive capitalism, this wouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately this is not the world that we live in. I could cite many examples of free speech oriented social media apps that were shut down by their hosting provider, their payment processors, the two app stores, cloudflare, etc. Is it that different from a government shutting down a newspaper or preventing a group of citizens from assembling?
I would much prefer a technological solution rather than more government intervention (perhaps a move towards decentralized censorship-resistant hosting of content), but the first step towards a solution is to recognize that we have a censorship problem, even if the government is not directly censoring anything.
Any collage or institution receiving government funding must not censor speech in any form, as they are government institutions via proxy. Also, in my opinion, all publicly traded companies should not be allowed to censor speech as they are essentially "owned" by share holders, not the management team.
It’s not. If another form of government were to take over and decide that progressivism is dirty and society takes the cue, that’s not freedom of speech. It’s insidious censorship none the less