And the government issues charters private corporations - license or permission to exist - and is responsible for moderating their behavior to ensure they serve the public good. If a private corporation violates rights, the government is precluded from permitting that; it cannot authorize what it itself is not allowed to do. And per the Declaration, the government was established to uphold rights.
When the government fails to uphold rights - or worse, violates rights itself - it fails to justify its own existence.
However, it's worth noting that the Bill of Rights does not guarantee rights to US citizens. That may surprise people, but go back and read them. The First Amendment does not grant the freedom of speech to citizens, but rather prohibits the government from infringing on people's freedom of speech.
Correct. I was aware of this, but many aren't and it's always good to restate it. The Constitution establishes, delegates limited authorities to, and limits government. The role of the People themselves was stated in the Declaration, and its that which recognizes in our system of law the source of the rights of the People.
It actually doesn't say anything about citizens or non-citizens, just people. So yes, people who are US citizens are also protected by the First Amendment.
An interesting nuance. 'We, the People' meant 'We, the People of these united States', and it was only they who were authorizing and establishing a government.
But if the rights are deemed, in our system of law, God-given and unalienable, then those rights would exist for non-citizens as well even if their own government doesn't recognize that. Our government hopefully would, as part of the logical extension of the 'God-given' and 'unalienable' attributes its owners [the People of the U.S.] had ascribed to them.
That not allowing someone to talk to you is a violation of their right to free speech.
There's an important distinction here in that, I'm pretty sure Trump can block people from sending him private messages on a platform like Twitter, or even "block" them in the sense of making it so he doesn't see another user's public posts. However, blocking users from reading his feed is a different thing. Because he uses his Twitter account for official purposes, blocking people means limiting their access to public governmental communications. Worse, if he blocks them from replying to his tweets, then he's denying them access to the public platform that is "responses to Trump's twitter feed".
Right, but the site's 'blocking from reading' only applies - bizarrely - if you're logged into an account that's blocked. Log out and anyone's 'Public' tweets become visible again.
The same is true of making a new account, making what others have called 'censorship' via blocking comparatively trivial. Not what we usually mean when we think of 'government censorship', though it's always good to be careful.
And though the First Amendment does not in any way guarantee people access to a public platform, it does prohibit the government from barring people access to a public platform. Trump is a governmental official, and therefore cannot infringe on free speech.
We tend to forget that these 'open' platforms are privately-owned by corporations which control them. Our presence on them is conditional on their acceptance, and on the terms and conditions in their user contract. These aren't the same as public parks, for example.
It gets more interesting when we remember that corporations are given permission or license ['corporate charters'] by the government to exist if and only if they serve the public good; the government stated that corporate charters exist to be revoked when this is not so, although the actual practice has been increasingly ignored of late. So when you have social media companies violating free speech rights, influencing elections by favoring this or that political position and muffling the rest and so on, you have rights violations and clearly a breach of the public confidence, let alone the public good. Since corporations exist at the discretion and under the authority of the government, it follows that the government is unable to allow corporations to violate rights just as the government itself is not allowed to do that.
Whether that means the government has a responsibility and liability to yank corporate c
Nope, it assumes that the President's Twitter feed is a public forum, and as an American public official, it would be illegal for him to censor access to anybody. It matters less *who* he is blocking than the fact that he is an American public official doing the blocking.
Not 'illegal' [what crime?], but rather the argument being that the People haven't delegated that authority to the office of the Presidency via the Constitution.
Which is an absurd argument. If the office were unable to prevent harassment it could never function. Consider the results of an unregulated press conference full of trolls, for example.
You cannot censor a viewpoint based on political content, especially if that viewpoint is expressed not to you specifically, but to the public at large (which it is on Twitter, and on a public forum like the President's feed).
An odd interpretation of censorship. As though that viewpoint would have no means to express itself if not to that @ account? That's a little different than the alphabet gestapo scrubbing all traces of someone's free speech on an issue.
You honestly believe that literally every person must have access to something in order for it to be considered "public"? There are illiterate people in the US, so when the White House releases a written statement, is that statement no longer public because some people can't read it?
I honestly believe that the inability to access a space on the basis of financial inequality necessarily privatizes it.
There are illiterate people who could become literate; that's not an external constraint. And even the poorest people in the U.S. have the ability to cross the country, though it's not as convenient as flying and takes much longer. Those aren't external barriers, and not to acknowledge even inadvertent gatekeeping in forums, particularly a political context, is disconcerting.
Wow you are really bad at this.... This last one is the most ridiculous.... Get out of here.
Good netiquette and polite, civil discourse make the experience more worthwhile for all involved. I encourage you to try them. They make others want to read you, give their consideration to your views and continue to interact with you, and they cost you nothing.
Seems to assume all Twitter users are U.S. citizens.
That not allowing someone to talk to you is a violation of their right to free speech.
And that digital forums are 'public', despite plenty of homeless and impoverished citizens lacking access to them.
The case for theft is weak at best. It presumes hypothetical revenue losses that companies would have garnered if people had bought the product or subscribed to the service. In most cases I've encountered, people have either been so bad off economically or insufficiently interested in the media that the choice was between viewing it for free or not viewing it. The presumption of theft is antithetical in a society where guilt must be proven rather than just presumed. That's why they use terms like 'the alleged theft' on the news where it hasn't been established, rather than assume legal liability for defamation of character. But corporate media are well aware that if they repeat something long enough, it will get stuck in the minds of their audience.
The presumed theft argument also presupposes fair courts and unbiased copyright laws, of which we have neither. U.S. courts are not courts of law, and copyright has been extended to roughly a century - an unreasonable and rather biased state of affairs in a society where information technology means the duration of media relevance decreases substantially rather than increases.
Slashdot Mirror
Particles we're not familiar with emanating from a very remote, secluded location. Stray emissions picked up from a classified base, perhaps?
And the government issues charters private corporations - license or permission to exist - and is responsible for moderating their behavior to ensure they serve the public good. If a private corporation violates rights, the government is precluded from permitting that; it cannot authorize what it itself is not allowed to do. And per the Declaration, the government was established to uphold rights.
When the government fails to uphold rights - or worse, violates rights itself - it fails to justify its own existence.
However, it's worth noting that the Bill of Rights does not guarantee rights to US citizens. That may surprise people, but go back and read them. The First Amendment does not grant the freedom of speech to citizens, but rather prohibits the government from infringing on people's freedom of speech.
Correct. I was aware of this, but many aren't and it's always good to restate it. The Constitution establishes, delegates limited authorities to, and limits government. The role of the People themselves was stated in the Declaration, and its that which recognizes in our system of law the source of the rights of the People.
It actually doesn't say anything about citizens or non-citizens, just people. So yes, people who are US citizens are also protected by the First Amendment.
An interesting nuance. 'We, the People' meant 'We, the People of these united States', and it was only they who were authorizing and establishing a government. But if the rights are deemed, in our system of law, God-given and unalienable, then those rights would exist for non-citizens as well even if their own government doesn't recognize that. Our government hopefully would, as part of the logical extension of the 'God-given' and 'unalienable' attributes its owners [the People of the U.S.] had ascribed to them.
That not allowing someone to talk to you is a violation of their right to free speech.
There's an important distinction here in that, I'm pretty sure Trump can block people from sending him private messages on a platform like Twitter, or even "block" them in the sense of making it so he doesn't see another user's public posts. However, blocking users from reading his feed is a different thing. Because he uses his Twitter account for official purposes, blocking people means limiting their access to public governmental communications. Worse, if he blocks them from replying to his tweets, then he's denying them access to the public platform that is "responses to Trump's twitter feed".
Right, but the site's 'blocking from reading' only applies - bizarrely - if you're logged into an account that's blocked. Log out and anyone's 'Public' tweets become visible again.
The same is true of making a new account, making what others have called 'censorship' via blocking comparatively trivial. Not what we usually mean when we think of 'government censorship', though it's always good to be careful.
And though the First Amendment does not in any way guarantee people access to a public platform, it does prohibit the government from barring people access to a public platform. Trump is a governmental official, and therefore cannot infringe on free speech.
We tend to forget that these 'open' platforms are privately-owned by corporations which control them. Our presence on them is conditional on their acceptance, and on the terms and conditions in their user contract. These aren't the same as public parks, for example.
It gets more interesting when we remember that corporations are given permission or license ['corporate charters'] by the government to exist if and only if they serve the public good; the government stated that corporate charters exist to be revoked when this is not so, although the actual practice has been increasingly ignored of late. So when you have social media companies violating free speech rights, influencing elections by favoring this or that political position and muffling the rest and so on, you have rights violations and clearly a breach of the public confidence, let alone the public good. Since corporations exist at the discretion and under the authority of the government, it follows that the government is unable to allow corporations to violate rights just as the government itself is not allowed to do that.
Whether that means the government has a responsibility and liability to yank corporate c
Nope, it assumes that the President's Twitter feed is a public forum, and as an American public official, it would be illegal for him to censor access to anybody. It matters less *who* he is blocking than the fact that he is an American public official doing the blocking.
Not 'illegal' [what crime?], but rather the argument being that the People haven't delegated that authority to the office of the Presidency via the Constitution.
Which is an absurd argument. If the office were unable to prevent harassment it could never function. Consider the results of an unregulated press conference full of trolls, for example.
You cannot censor a viewpoint based on political content, especially if that viewpoint is expressed not to you specifically, but to the public at large (which it is on Twitter, and on a public forum like the President's feed).
An odd interpretation of censorship. As though that viewpoint would have no means to express itself if not to that @ account? That's a little different than the alphabet gestapo scrubbing all traces of someone's free speech on an issue.
You honestly believe that literally every person must have access to something in order for it to be considered "public"? There are illiterate people in the US, so when the White House releases a written statement, is that statement no longer public because some people can't read it?
I honestly believe that the inability to access a space on the basis of financial inequality necessarily privatizes it.
There are illiterate people who could become literate; that's not an external constraint. And even the poorest people in the U.S. have the ability to cross the country, though it's not as convenient as flying and takes much longer. Those aren't external barriers, and not to acknowledge even inadvertent gatekeeping in forums, particularly a political context, is disconcerting.
Wow you are really bad at this. ... This last one is the most ridiculous. ... Get out of here.
Good netiquette and polite, civil discourse make the experience more worthwhile for all involved. I encourage you to try them. They make others want to read you, give their consideration to your views and continue to interact with you, and they cost you nothing.
Seems to assume all Twitter users are U.S. citizens. That not allowing someone to talk to you is a violation of their right to free speech. And that digital forums are 'public', despite plenty of homeless and impoverished citizens lacking access to them.
The case for theft is weak at best. It presumes hypothetical revenue losses that companies would have garnered if people had bought the product or subscribed to the service. In most cases I've encountered, people have either been so bad off economically or insufficiently interested in the media that the choice was between viewing it for free or not viewing it. The presumption of theft is antithetical in a society where guilt must be proven rather than just presumed. That's why they use terms like 'the alleged theft' on the news where it hasn't been established, rather than assume legal liability for defamation of character. But corporate media are well aware that if they repeat something long enough, it will get stuck in the minds of their audience.
The presumed theft argument also presupposes fair courts and unbiased copyright laws, of which we have neither. U.S. courts are not courts of law, and copyright has been extended to roughly a century - an unreasonable and rather biased state of affairs in a society where information technology means the duration of media relevance decreases substantially rather than increases.