this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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That brings up another thing. At what point does it become a "public space"?
Theres an old supreme court case on a company town that claimed someone was trespassing on a sidewalk. The supreme court ruled it was a public space, and thus they could pass out leaflets.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/marsh-v-alabama-1946/
Imo, a lot of big sites have gotten to that stage, and should be treated as such.
I think this is an underrated point. A lot of people are quick to say "private companies aren't covered by free speech", but I'm sure everyone agrees legal ≠ moral. We rely on these platforms so much that they've effectively become our public squares. Our government even uses them in official capacities, e.g. the president announcing things on Twitter.
When being censored on a private platform is effectively social and informational murder, I think it's time for us to revisit our centuries-old definitions. Whether you agree or disagree that these instances should be covered by free speech laws, this is becoming an important discussion that I never see brought up, but instead I keep seeing the same bad faith argument that companies are allowed to do this because they're allowed to do it.
This is an argument for a publicly-funded “digital public square”, not an argument for stripping private companies of their rights.
Why not both?
While I agree that punishing companies for success isn't a good idea, we aren't talking about small startups or local business ran by individual entrepreneurs or members of the community here. We're talking about absurdly huge corporations with reach and influence the likes that few businesses ever reach. I don't think it's unreasonable to apply a different set of rules to them, as they are distinctly different situations.
Because one is violating the first amendment rights of a private company, the other isn’t. Punishing a private company for how an individual uses their platform isn’t constitutional. It would be like holding car manufacturers liable for drunk drivers.
I fully agree. Small groups have limited resources. But google and facebook have a ton of resources, they can handle more oversight.
That's a good idea, but I still think big sites are public spaces at this point.
“Publicly-accessible private space” and “public space” are two legally-distinct things. In a public town square, you have first amendment rights. In a shopping mall*, your speech and behavior are restricted. This is similar in that regard. Both are publicly-accessible, but one is private property and can be subject to the rules of the property owner.
Edit: *not applicable to certain behaviors or speech in Californian malls
To your shopping mall example, you got it wrong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins
You should read the link you posted:
So my analogy wouldn’t apply to Californian shopping malls, but it would to others, and it would apply federally.
Well damn, I got hasty.
I still think it really should apply federally, but it doesn't.
It's different because the company built and maintains the space. Same goes for a concert hall, a pub, etc...
Nobody believes that someone being thrown out of a pub for spouting Nazistic hate speech is their "free speech being trampled". Why should it be any different if it's a website?
You rarely see the discussion, because there's rarely a good argument here. It boils down to "it's a big website, so I should be allowed to post whatever I want there", which makes little to no sense and opens up a massive quagmire of legal issues.
So let's get this straight, it's "bad faith" to point out facts but "good faith" to support bigotry and hatred like you're "accidentally" doing with your argument?
It's bad faith to argue that companies should be allowed to do things because they're already allowed to do those things. I see a little bit of that creeping in even here with the concept of "rights", as if corporations were humans. Laws can change.
It's good faith to ask if companies have too much power over what has become our default mode of communication. It's also good faith to challenge this question with non-circular logic.
Your assumption that I'm defending racism and bigotry is exactly why I think this stuff is important. You've implied I'm an insidious alt-rightist trying to dog whistle, and now I'm terrified of getting banned or otherwise censored. I'm interested in expressing myself. I do not want to express bigotry. But if one person decides what I said is even linked to bigotry, suddenly I'm a target, and I can lose a decades-old social account and all of its connections. And if that happens I just have to accept it because it's currently legal. It's so fucking stressful to say anything online anymore.
Didn't read this. You already showed your hand
You saw whatever hand you wanted to see. Have you considered that I'm gay and pro-choice, and I have legitimate reasons to worry that some corporations (e.g. Twitter) will try and start censoring support for these through selective enforcement of the current ToS?
What's more dangerous, your grandma being allowed to say racist things on Facebook, or marginalized groups being systematically silenced? You're missing the forest for the trees.
Sure you are
Here's my (NSFW) e621 tag (notice my username?) where I've commissioned several acts of graphic homosexual intercourse between a representation of myself and other male characters.
Yes, I very much am.
Alas, you've also shown yours.
There is a key difference here. Social media companies have some liability with what gets shared on the platform. They also have a financial interest in what gets said and how it gets promoted by algorithms. The fact is, these are not public spaces. These are not streets. They're more akin to newspapers, or really the people printing and publishing leaflets. The Internet itself is the street in your analogy.
Your analogy about Newspapers isn't accurate either. The writers of a newspaper are paid by the company and everyone knows that writers execute the newspaper's agenda. Nothing gets published without review and everything aligns with the company's vision. Information is one way and readers buy it to consume information. They don't expect their voice to be heard and the newspaper don't pretend that the readers have that ability either. This isn't comparable to a social media site at all.
I'm not saying it is identical, there are some key differences, and yet social media platforms are much more like a publishing company than they are a town square. Just because they're choosing to publish your tweets/posts for free and you're choosing to create content without pay doesn't mean it's not a better analogy than saying their the equivalent of a public space. They're very clearly not a public space. Using the street analogy, these are storefronts on the street, not the street itself. Again, the Internet itself is the street. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Mastodon, Lemmy, or whatever social media platform, are not the street or the town square. They are not and should not be considered to be public spaces any more than a mall or a Walmart is.
Internet is a bunch of compters connected together. Social media sites are a part of the internet. If you say internet itself is a street, then social media sites are part of that street as well. If you're just thinking about just the supporting infrastructure like cables, routers and switches, a lot of them belong to private companies as well. So you're talking about a street in a gated community, then you shouldn't expect any attributes of public space there either. Do you see that diiferentiating social media sites from public spaces just because they are owned by companies fail very quickly when you apply the reasoning consistently? Internet is quickly approaching the status of a basic human right, yet most of it is owned by private companies.
Do you know what's equivalent to malls and Walmart on internet? That's Amazon, eBay and Alibaba.
What's the analogy to a real world place people go to express themselves, protest and engage with the broader society? The closest I can think of is a town square.
So a better analogy in my opinion is,
Companies probably shouldn't be liable then for what individuals share / post then, instead the individuals should. Social media constantly controls their push / promotion of posts currently using algorithms to decide what should be shown / shared and when.
I hate this so much. I want real, linear feeds from all my friends I'm following, not a personally curated style sanitized feed to consider my interests and sensibilities.
The Supreme Court is visiting such issues this month. Second block of text:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/10/major-second-and-first-amendment-cases-headline-november-sitting/
Private company servers are never public space no matter how many people they serve.
What is wrong with you?
Sidewalks are literally out in public.
So we should make a law that says Facebook allows neo Nazi hatred then? Not sure I follow what you're getting at if you wouldn't say yes to this question
I don't trust facebook to decide what is hate speech and what isn't, if thats what you're saying.
Are you suggesting that large online spaces should have laws and police to investigate and enforce the laws? Of course this is already in place, but not at all enforced in the same manner as a public place.
No, I don't trust anyone to do that. Everyone should be able to judge for themselves.
Except that, clearly, they can't. Look at the republican base.
Careful now, your about to say the quiet part (we think certain people are too deficient to think for themselves, so we enlightened should do their thinking for them) out loud. Humans don't have a great track record of dragging the "unenlightened savages" out of their ignorance, kicking and screaming if needs be, and North Americans in particular.
We did fight, and win, a world war about this. Those people got into hateful group think just like the republicans and we ended up doing something about it and saved the world from fascism.
No, you don't trust lIbRuLs, though Fox News can lie every second of every day and you'll never criticize them