[Spivak]

This is gonna be a weird ruling if it goes in favor of the states. If you run a public bulletin board tearing down fliers is absolutely a form of speech, and if you do it to people you disagree with it becomes political speech. I can't imagine even this court ruling that the government is allowed to regulate political speech. That would kick the door open to an easily constitutional broadly applied national hate speech law, and reintroduction of the fairness doctrine.

So the unintended consequence I expect will be that censoring people for their political views will be the only strongly protected moderation actions.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> If you run a public bulletin board tearing down fliers is absolutely a form of speech

I'd say where the protection starts is that the board is yours. You can make it as open or restricted or curated or nonsensical as you wish. Other individuals can put up their own boards and they can display whatever they wish.

This is what the 1A protects.

In a reality where an opinion can be displayed from millions of boards - I suggest that one individual removing it their own board is a fairly poor use of the term censorship.

[thegrim33]

You're portraying it as if there's not a small number of de-facto public square "boards" that the vast majority of people get almost all of their information from. Manipulation of those boards has an absolutely massive effect, and saying "well, you could go out in the woods and create your own public forum that a handful of people would ever see" isn't really an acceptable alternative.

[WWLink]

You're assuming that the vast majority of people want to hear your message. Maybe they like that site because it doesn't allow messages like that.

[vacuity]

This is why I wish there was a megaforum where anyone can isolate themselves into smaller forums as they wish. Then no one gets deplatformed by the feds or corporations or whatever (unless they call for violence or doxx someone, something like that), and yet no one has to see what they don't want to. Still but a stopgap to foster better communities, alas.

[hellojesus]

Isn't that essentially reddit?

[vacuity]

I suppose, but more general ways to structure the forum, moderation, how to do upvotes or likes, and so on. Maybe decentralized and federated. Make the whole Internet message passing, even!

[krapp]

Isn't that Mastodon?

[barbacoa]

>I'd say where the protection starts is that the board is yours. You can make it as open or restricted or curated or nonsensical as you wish. Other individuals can put up their own boards and they can display whatever they wish.

As mentioned in the article, Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins ruling rejected that logic. The government can regulate your conduct. The speech in your bulletin board is that of those who wrote it, not your's. Thus not 1A issue.

The underlying issue is if social media is a platform (like a bulletin board) or a publisher (like a newspaper).

[JumpCrisscross]

> Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins ruling rejected that logic. The government can regulate your conduct

Pruneyard “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” [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v....

[krapp]

Unfortunately, I think it's inevitable. Both parties have talked themselves into a justification for regulating speech on the internet. One side wants to force platforms to publish speech against their will, the other wants to force platforms to police speech against their will. Both positions fall afoul of the spirit of the First Amendment, which is that only the people have the right to abridge freedom of speech (and explicitly not the federal government, except in certain narrowly-defined circumstances.) And the Supreme Court is stacked with ideologues who seem dedicated to defederalizing the government and ceding power to the states, whose restrictions on speech would be far more radical than the federal government would be capable of.

[zer8k]

> So the unintended consequence I expect will be that censoring people for their political views will be the only strongly protected moderation actions.

That's entirely intended. Look at what happened during COVID, the race riots post George Floyd, the election in 2020 and 2024, etc. Social media platforms are defacto content curation websites and not "free speech zones" in the sense of a soapbox in a public park. It was especially egregious during COVID and the race riots because the platforms made certain that you could not so much as criticize the political zeitgeist even when it was deserved.

The law really should make it clear that, illegal activity excluded, if you engage in any form of censorship you are not given section 230 protections. Places like twitter are left-wing content curation websites. It's no problem to have these - except for the fact they are still given section 230 protections. Under no circumstance should social media, engaging in one-sided censorship, be given any protection under the law for their content they curate. This would go for a similarly censored right-wing content curation website. It just so happens those are extremely small in reach by comparison, and thus significantly less important.

As always, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The chronically offended, terminally online losers tend to get what they want.

[hellojesus]

> The law really should make it clear that, illegal activity excluded, if you engage in any form of censorship you are not given section 230 protections.

Say I run a forum for pet fish discussion. Would my removal of content derailing the discussion into a flatearther one constitute my loss of 230? What if only logged in members can see the content?

It seems odd that we don't let private property operate as it wants.

[hackinthebochs]

Have a scale or a topic carveout. Your pet fish message board doesn't have the same social relevance as the twitters and facebooks of the world that are intended to be generic communications platforms. Despite what people like to claim, these sites are de facto public squares and should be treated as such. It's clear people resist this idea because they like the fact that these companies censor speech in the direction they prefer.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Have a scale or a topic carveout

This (topic) is a sign your framework is flawed. Unless there is a fabulous reason to believe this is the sole legitimate carve-out.

[hackinthebochs]

You know, you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take, instead of whatever this comment is.

[JumpCrisscross]

> you could just offer additions to the list of carveouts, or give your alternative take

I don't see one. It's DOA. The point is starting with a list of carve-outs to any framework is an early sign it's fucked.

I do believe we have a problem with free speech in modern America. But we also have an unprecedentedly broad amount of it. Given the elementary issue of spam, it's unclear we have any consensus around what censorship means on social media.

[squigz]

> public squares and should be treated as such.

What does this mean?

[hackinthebochs]

It means the principles that constrain how governments engage with society (e.g. free speech in the public square) should also constrain how these new government-sized institutions engage with society. We've got to the point where so much of governance is pushed off to the private sector that these entities should be bound by the same rules. E.g. private companies shouldn't be able to do widespread content scanning of private data that would be illegal for the government to do.

[hellojesus]

> It means the principles that constrain how governments engage with society (e.g. free speech in the public square) should also constrain how these new government-sized institutions engage with society

I think you're missing the distinction between public and private entities.

We constrain governments because they have a defacto monoploy by law and by definition. This means there are no alternatives. Additionally, our government is granted power through its citizens, not vise versa. Rights are negative meaning the government doesn't let us say what we want, the government isn't allowed to prevent us from saying what we want.

The fact that a company is large in employees or has many users shouldn't impact its ability to moderate. Forcing private companies to not moderate in the name of the public good would be a 5A violation: seizure of private property for public use. It is different if you uniformly rescind 230, but then you kill all third party commentary on the web in general. Look at Craigslist's response to fosta/sosta, for example.

> e.g. private companies shouldn't be able to do widespread content scanning of private data that would be illegal for the government to

The government isn't allowed to do this because the Constitution forbids it. Private companies can only get your data if you transact with them.

That transact line is usually blured on the web, but there are defensive measures one can take to help evade them. The simplest of them is to choose not to use a business or service.

I don't have a meta account. I don't have a tiktok or X. In fact, I have a HN, lobsters, and Blur Dwarf account. That's it. So easy to opt out of what concerns you. Additionally, I run both clearnet domains and hidden services. While what I say on the clearnet may get me kicked off a domain registrar, that can't happen on the government-invented-and-implemented tor.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> if you engage in any form of censorship you are not given section 230 protections.

I disagree that governments should punish people who fail to amplify the messages of powerful political parties.

[hackinthebochs]

Selective amplification is editorialization when the decisions are content sensitive. It being algorithmic doesn't change the substance of this.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Selective amplification is editorialization

Editorialisation as in the press?

[hackinthebochs]

As in the status that renders a service not subject to section 230 protections.

[tengbretson]

Exactly like the press. The press that is held liable for what they publish.

[amanaplanacanal]

The entire purpose of section 230 was to protect platforms from being sued for censorship. You are talking about repealing it, not changing it.