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Facebook, Google, Twitter To Face US Lawmakers About Tech 'Censorship' (cnet.com)
Facebook, Google and Twitter are headed back to Washington next week to testify at a congressional hearing about alleged tech censorship. From a report: Tech companies have faced accusations that they're censoring conservative speech on their platforms. The companies have denied the allegations in the past. The hearing before the Senate Judiciary's subcommittee on the Constitution is scheduled for April 10 and is titled "Stifling Free Speech: Technological Censorship and the Public Discourse." A Facebook spokesperson said Neil Potts, its public policy director, will be testifying. Twitter and Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. A source familiar with the Senate hearing said Twitter and Google officials will also be attending. The hearing will likely mark Potts' second congressional appearance next week. Facebook and Google officials are expected to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on April 9 to answer questions about the spread of white nationalism on their platforms.
The problem is, they are either a platform or a publisher.
The difference is in responsibility. If they are a platform, then they have a wide range of latitude on content on that platform. They aren't responsible. The moment they start picking an choosing, they start to become a publisher, and the content protection narrows substantially.
Censorship is a natural tendency, and we all ought to fight against it in all its forms. The idea that some ideas are just "too dangerous" is a slippery slope that we don't want to ride down.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
here we go again.
Just because one has a right to express one's opinion in this country doesn't mean that any corporation has the obligation to carry/post/air your opinion on the platform they own.
Just break them up and stop letting them promote Nazis on their sites.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It can be politically awkward to admit it, but there's a very plausible explanation for this: Maybe political views just correlate with things which violate the usage policy? Check out a few conservative sites and you don't need to go far to find 'gays are plotting to rape your children' conspiracy theories, people calling for illegal immigrants to be treated as hostile invaders and shot at the border, and rumors of an Islamic takeover. Hardly surprising that they would sometimes get caught crossing the AUP line.
And that's before you read the comments sections. Never read the comments sections. It's not healthy.
Google/Facebook/Twitter all want freedom from any liability for what gets posted on THEIR sites.
They got that from the government in return for ensuring freedom of speech on their sites.
If they don't want to support true freedom of speech, let them be liable for everything posted.
Three companies that need to be smashed into a thousand pieces.
Sorry Microsoft, you were 1990's evil.
Corporatism != Free Market
Conservative speech is reprehensible to any patriotic freedom-loving American. They have become the same people their ancestors fought against in WWII, fascists.
Fascists are the enemy of the state.
While I'm no constitutional scholar, I'm not sure that Marsh v. Alabama applies here. I'm not sure that it doesn't, either.
An attempt was made to use Marsh v. Alabama as a precedent in Cyber Promotions v. America Online, but that attempt wasn't successful.
The problem is, they are either a platform or a publisher.
Yep, and that is what Congress is grilling them about - why should they remain classified as a platform when they are heavily shaping the views being published? As it stands Twitter is at this point just a really terrible newspaper.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here's the first sentence (emphasis mine):
The public forum doctrine is an analytical tool used in First Amendment jurisprudence to determine the constitutionality of speech restrictions implemented on government property.
Wrong libtard, wrong again... Listened to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) lately... You all are hypocritical douchelords..
but they don't have "a right" to spreading fakedick inbred failed ideologies that the FBI rightly calls domestic terrorist faggot shit if the corpos say no.
Yes, they do, if the corporations are deemed to be operating public spaces. The idea of a privately owned or operated public space is well established.
I'm not sure that "well established", when it comes to electronic communications, is quite accurate.
Check out Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck and Cyber Promotions v. America Online. At the moment, I think it would be more accurate to say "unclear".
Yes, they do, if the corporations are deemed to be operating public spaces.
If they are? They aren't.
I wouldn't say "aren't". They haven't been thus deemed so far. It doesn't mean they will or won't be in future cases. But I agree, so far, they have not been deemed to be operating public spaces.
So one week, they're grilled over "allowing" far-right hate speech in the name of preventing terrorism. The next, they're grilled over "supressing" right-leaning speech in the name of censorship. So which is it? Do you want them to censor, or do you not? Who draws the line?
Remember Covington kids. The ones liberals were saying to throw in a wood chipper head first because they wore a red hat?
That wasn't censored.
Fuck liberals and their fucking double standards. They are literally calling for the violent killing of kids because of the color of their hats and saying other people are the violent ones.
Fuck off you piece of shit.
The following is current US law.
The phone company is not responsible for the content of any phone call, because they don't control the content of the communication. They don't even know what you're saying on the phone, so they aren't responsible for what you say using their phone network. That probably makes sense intuitively. This is long-standing law.
If a magazine, such as US News and World Report, publishes libelous articles falsely accusing you of all kinds of things, with reckless disregard for the truth, they are responsible. You can sue them. Their writer and editor decided to publish those lies about you. This is also long-standing law.
In essence, if they control what is said, they become responsible for their decisions. The term is "editorial control".
Wise management of a platform, therefore, has been to refrain from editorial control. Don't decide what gets posted - or you will be responsible for what you decided to publish. Slashdot found a good way to do that. Nobody at Slashdot decides to remove "bad" posts. Rather, the readers decide how prominent a post should be. Slashdot gets the benefits of moderation (crap tends to become invisible fairly quickly) without the legal liability of Slashdot picking and choosing.
> How , if they become a publisher, do they become liable for an opinion piece any more so than a newspaper?
A newspaper is liable (responsible) for what they publish. Their editors decide what to publish and not publish. Because of freedom of the press protected by the first amendment, they are allowed to say pretty much anything that is either true or purely opinion. Libel will get them in trouble, and certain other things that aren't protected.
Practical effects were that widely-distributed communications (broadcast) were controlled by media companies, which were responsible for their content; person-to-person communications such as phone calls and letters were only carried, not controlled, by large companies. Individuals were responsible for what they wrote, but they could only write to a few people at a time.
Speaking of freedom of the press, for about thirty-five years there has been a push from the big government party to force publishers to publish whatever the Congressionally appointed bureacracy at the moment thinks is "fair". Relevant search terms include "fairness doctrine" and "equal time". Basically Reagan was good on television (he was a movie star), and the opposing party was trying to legistlate themselves more air time. The courts and the "limited government" party have pushed back on this, of course.
More recently, as the web has become more popular, we've had more and more instances of individual speakers reaching large audiences, such as popular blogs, Twitter accounts, and YouTube channels. That means that an individual can reach a large audience. The company simply carries the communication, without editorial control. No longer do you have to be a large media company in order to have a sizeable audience.
With that change, the long-standing separation between carriers and publishers (authors) has led to some uncomfortable situations. Does Facebook really have no responsibility for what is posted there? Well, is the postal service responsible for what is sent through the mail?
With the new ability for individual speakers to reach significant audiences, compromise is sometimes used. Remember the phone company or the USPS isn't liable in part because they don't even know whether the content of the communication is lawful or not. In some cases, once the platform has been NOTIFIED of unlawful content, they can then follow a specified procedure to protect themselves from liability.
One example of a specified procedure is a procedure available in instances of a claim of copyright violation. The copyright holder notifies the platform that they are hosting infringing material. The person who posted it can then notify the platform that they disagree, they say it's NOT infringing. If person w
Slashdot isn’t Facebook. Facebook would delete it.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Waste more time on shit that will never really matter. Uncle Sam has no reason to poke at any of these companies. American people can choose not to use them. I hate all forms of censorship, but at the end of the day, I'll kick you outta my house for using offensive hate speech. You're welcome to go spout bullshit anywhere else, but not in my place. It's MINE.
How is this different?
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
You say a general idea is not good, because a lunatic got away with bad behavior under its umberella, so...
Apparently the regulation/restriction of communications "for the public good", or for societal morals, or cultural cleanliness is also "NOT good for society" as you put it. Take a look at the NAZIs as a prime example. [it's fun when you can go all-in on Godwin for a good cause]
Hell's bells, All Marxist thought is bad. with over a hundred million corpses in the 20th century alone as a punctuation, when you consider the regimes of National Socialist Hitler, Soviet Socialist Stalin, and Communists Chariman Mao and Pol Pot as [as you say] "prime example[s]" examples of a unification of Marxism and controlled public speech "for the public good".
The founders of the USA had a much better idea: Let everybofy speak freely and let everybody wisely discern for him/her self whether a particular speaker is right or wrong, good or bad.
which isn't much of an issue. DMCA protects them one way or another, same as it does for YouTube.
/. all the time. Everytime an AC shit poster gets modded down until you can't see them that's censorship.
Mega corps long since protected themselves from other mega corps.
Censorship has it's place. We censor on
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
the DMCA has plenty of Safe Harbor provisions for them. There's no issue there. Facebook can ban whoever and still be safe. They are not and have never been a dumb carrier. They don't want to be. Their current process works just fine. Send some DMCA take downs and they pull the content and they're safe. Period.
This is grandstanding by the GOP. Don't fall for it. It's got nothing to do with Freedom of Speech. The same old white dudes that'll be grilling Facebook fought to keep sex and violence out of comics, tv and music in the 80s and supported the PMRC (google it if you're too young to know). These people are not your friend. They are the establishment. They're the folks who crashed the economy in 2008 and used your tax dollars to bail their donors out. They are not your friend, and you should not be siding with them. It's trap and a trick.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No, Facebook is not gov't property. If you want to have the government make a public Facebook and/or YouTube go right ahead. Just like Public Access anything goes. But that would of course be Socialism. Not sure if you're cool with that or not, or with your tax dollars paying for a public Facebook & YouTube.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I mean, I can point to Pat Robertson as an example of the homosexuality stuff and the President of the United States for the immigrant shooting.
Can you provide a single prominent member of the left who advocated violence and bigotry of some kind?
You've got the SJWs I suppose. So lets see. On the right we have a religious leader with millions of followers and the POTUS openly advocating violence on national TV. On the left you've got a handful of annoying blue haired college girls that nobody listens to except the guys trying to get down their pants.
Then again, and I hate to admit this, if you're trying to get down the pants of a blue haired college girl she seems like she's got a lot more power over your life than Robertson or POTUS...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It is most extremely obvious that they are operating public spaces.
What's unclear now is whether a few discreet suitcases full of cash can persuade a judge to ignore the reality right in front of his face.
Those platforms have been warned to stop the bullshit trolling posts.
Most of those come from anti-immigration, anti-refugee, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ civil rights, #2A batshit cray cray Rambos, white nationalists, undereducated white Evangelical Christian right wing motherfuckers.
The hate groups want to sit with the grownups.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Its fine when his side covers for actual violent groups.
to be thrown in a wood chipper. I _do_ recall the kid's wealthy parents hiring a well known PR firm and the mass media coming to their defense after the initial clicks from that picture were used up.
I also recall hearing the full story, which was that the kids got into a shouting match with a bunch of radical black activists (who themselves were being asshats, to be fair, but they were also very clearly nut jobs of the sort decent people ignore) so they went and got all their friends together to _hopefully_ just scare/intimidate the black guys.
The Native American guy defused the situation. If he hadn't there's a good chance those kids would have beaten the black guys to an inch of life (or worse). In high school I didn't quite have the strength of an adult but I had plenty to take two or three of 'em on if I'd had 10-20 of my buds there.
The story that wasn't covered was WHERE THE FUCK WERE THOSE KID'S CHAPERONES?
Seriously, rich punk kids let loose in mass during a political protest. WTF. These are kids who are used to zero consequences for their actions and you let them loose in a playground like that?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's clear to you because you want it to be true but it's not legally meaningful.
True, by the grace of God I am not a lawyer. I will not attempt to predict the actions of our kangaroo courts. Most likely they will weigh the suitcases full of cash to decide.
However it is glaringly obvious - to all but the very dimmest or most willfully obtuse observers - that open-to-the-public, free-to-use, everyone-can-join web properties with billions of users are in fact public spaces.
Please get a copy of the Bill Of Rights. The 1st Amendment refers to Government censorship. If a company, say Fox refuses to publish the Trump lies, that is not a violation of the 1st Amendment. If the mayor of Brighton Beach were to prevent any speech about Trumps lies about "WikiLeaks", We have a1st Amendment violation. Google facebook etc are coming to Congressional hearings to prevent the government to act against their corporations by claiming ignorantly that private businesses and citizens do not have1st Amendment rights..