It’s not just about facts: Democrats and Republicans have sharply different attitudes about removing misinformation from social media::One person’s content moderation is another’s censorship when it comes to Democrats’ and Republicans’ views on handling misinformation.
Part of the problem is who decides what is misinformation. As soon as the state gets to decide what is and isn’t true, and thus what can and cannot be said, you no longer have free speech.
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Don’t worry, the person you responded to is conservative so they’re doing their damnedest to finish off education
What makes you say that I, specifically, am against education?
The same reason we know you are racist.
You do not have free speech on social media today, private platforms decide what they want to have.
The state does not have to be the one to decide these things, nor is it a case of “deciding” what is true, we have a long history of using proofs to solidify something as fact, or propaganda, or somewhere in between. This is functionally what history studies are about.
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.
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.
This is an argument for a publicly-funded “digital public square”, not an argument for stripping private companies of their rights.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Uh, you know that happens regularly in courtrooms right? Like, almost every court battle hinges on what’s true and what’s not. And courts are an arm of the state.
In some cases it’s directly about the truth of speech. Fraud, defamation, perjury, filing a false report, etc. are all cases where a court will be deciding whether a statement made publicly is true and punishing a party if it was not. Ask a CEO involved in a merger how much “free speech” they have.
Except there have always been limits on speech, centered mainly on truth. Your freedom of speech doesn’t extend to yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater when there is no fire, for instance.
But we live in an age of alternative facts now, where science isn’t trusted if it comes up with conclusions that conflict with your world view. Do you get a pass if you are yelling “Fire” because you are certain there are cell phone jammers in the theater that are setting your brain on fire because you got the COVID shot and now the 5G nanoparticles can’t transmit back to Fauci’s mind control lair?
Yes. Anyone in good faith attempting to warn others of any potential harm that they believe to be true to the best of their abilities should have their speech protected.
But what if their beliefs are verifiably false? I don’t mean that in a sense of a religious belief, which cannot be proven and must be taken on faith. I mean that the facts are clear that there are no 5G nanoparticles in the vaccine for cell phone jammers to interfere with in the first place. That isn’t even a thing.
It’s one thing to allow for tolerance of different opinions in public. It’s another thing entirely to misrepent things that can be objectively disproven as true, just because you’ve tied it to a political movement. Can that really still be considered to be in good faith?
But where do you draw the line? Sure, microchips in vaccines is one thing, but what about simply warning people the vaccine doesn’t stop the spread of disease? During the pandemic, that would get you crucified, except now it turns out it isn’t as effective at stopping transmission as we were first told.
I was and am pro vax. It saves lives. But I’m also not going to pretend there wasn’t a weird animosity towards anyone saying anything contrary to the official, government sponsored, talking points during the pandemic. People were vilified for suggesting the virus came from a lab. Or that masks weren’t as effective as we were making it out to be. Or that the tests were producing false results.
It’s all well and good to say people shouldn’t spread falsehoods, but sometimes the lines of what’s true are blurred through the lens of hindsight when they seemed so clear in the moment.
One is the insidious things about misinformation is that it always starts with pieces that can’t be proven one way or the other. The Lab Leak theory is a perfect example, since there happens to be a lab in the same city as where the virus was first found. But many of the people who were pushing the theory were then extending it to “The Chinese made a bioweapon on purpose”, which was not supported by any facts at all, and was serving a political agenda.
Later, when some studies came out that couldn’t disprove the lab leak theory in its entirety, some used that as justification in saying that the Chinese bioengineered it, when that’s not at all what those studies said. But they use that kernel to try and prove the whole corny premise.
Yes. Because those with perverse incentives in power will falsify the truth to punish critics.
So there is no objective truth anymore, and any fact you don’t like can be dismissed by saying the Deep State is at fault? Is there a (((conspiracy))) to hide the fact that the Moon is really an egg?
There are objective truths, the issue lays in the deciding of them. Not to step on your cloak and dagger but I’m not saying we’ve got a ‘deep state’ or there’s some massive ((((conspiracy with too many parentheses)))).
The Earth may be round but I don’t want to have to worry about a flat earther judge ruling otherwise each time I say it.
Seek therapy
Technically, it’s causing a panic that’s illegal. Yelling fire is not. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/28853/is-it-illegal-to-yell-fire-in-a-crowded-theatre
Different states have different laws, of course, and I am not a lawyer, I just googled if it was actually illegal. Don’t actually go yelling fire in a crowded theater.
Right, it’s perfectly fine to alert people to a fire if there actually is one. Yelling “fire” when there isn’t one will be generally interpreted as causing a panic.
Nobody (besides maybe extreme conservatives) is advocating for “the state” to decide what “is and isn’t true”. That’s not what this is about.
Furthermore, “misinformation” and “disinformation” refer to things that can be true! Propogansists don’t always need to invent false facts for them to be used in deceptive ways. To suggest that the goverment should stay out of the matter unless they utilze a perfectly foolproof fact-o-meter is IMO, shortsighted. “The state” makes policy decisions all the time with imperfect facts.
If you want to deal with misinformation, at some point someone has to say what misinformation is. Someone has to make a judgement on every fact, every event, every story.
And holy fuck my dude! “Furthermore, “misinformation” and “disinformation” refer to things that can be true!”
Thats some shit straight out of 1984. Censoring true facts? Wtf is wrong with you?
Doing some subtle straw man arguments there, huh? Or just missed the rest of the comment?
If I use a true fact and blatantly ignore other facts and context to try to start an ethnic cleansing, should I be censored or not? The most dangerous lies are the ones that have bits of truth in them to gloss over the bad bits.
Don’t pretend that intent isn’t important, or that the world is black and white. Ignoring nuance is the most egregious underlying issue with conservatives.
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Oh weird, you coincidentally are a conservative mod lol
Gee so surprising you’re mad about cEnSoRsHiP
Well yeah, did you read the article?
Fucking tankies thinking inalienable rights are bad things.
Isnt a grand jury enough to deal with this kinda thing? Like before damage is done but I don’t see why that mechanism can’t be useful here too?
Imo, not really. Juries are still problematic, in much the same way
Section 230 gets the state involved from the get go. Remove liability protections from the state and everything else will shake out. Make little tweaks from there as necessary. The broad protection of 230 is causing this issue.