| HN Mirror

Sorry, you had spent some ink saying I was being conspiratorial rather than brief.

Here again, you say:

> The discussion here is whether republican government officials can compel me to speak because I own or operate a company (corporation or not), or because I volunteer to moderate a subreddit, or because I am an operator of an IRC channel, or otherwise operate some sort of online service on which people can post to each other.

But the 5th circuit points out, correctly in my opinion, that circumstantially conveying the message of a user in an open platform with privileges regarding liability is not compelled speech:

> The Fifth Circuit noted in its decision that the First Amendment protects the “‘right to refrain from speaking,’” and publishers cannot be compelled to publish specific articles or viewpoints. Yet the Fifth Circuit did not recognize “editorial discretion”—the right of private organizations to control the dissemination of third-party content—as an independent right. Instead, the Fifth Circuit explained that such discretion arises only where a law compels or restricts the speech of the private party itself—whereas the Texas law concerns not platforms’ own speech, but how platforms treat users' speech.

These platforms benefit from section 230, they can abandon that, accept responsibility as publishers, and do whatever they want outside some other asinine law controlling free expression.

...

I'm struck by how your stance seems to perfectly reflect a belief in guilt by association or representation since you're suggesting that it is as if the message was your own were you to moderate the forum, etc. and disagreeable content was outside your power to prevent.

I think it's a shame that there are so many angry and easily influenced people out there but the root causes aren't the mean words on the internets from other actual humans, as sad as that may also be.