> Finally, and perhaps most importantly, private companies making editorial decisions about what content they allow on their own private property is not (and cannot be!) taking away First Amendment rights. The First Amendment restricts the government, not private property owners from making their own editorial decisions.
That's really the whole debate when it comes to social media. Is it ok that they are governed like private property where the owners can make whatever moderation decisions they want or is it more like a modern "public square" where it should be possible to say anything you can shout on the street without being moderated for it.
Personally, I don't know if there's a right answer. Perhaps the best approach is encouraging more competition among social media companies so there are alternatives to the dominant platforms - but the network effects of something like Facebook are very strong even if competitors existed.
Treating social media like a private space is the status quo, but it rubs me the wrong way that there's not really an equivalent of public spaces in the online world.
Edit: I find it weird how many people are happy to defend unchecked corporate power when it comes to this issue. The lack of any guardrails on moderation is why YouTube has slowly transformed into a baby-talk version of itself. Now people talk about "unaliving yourself" and "PDF files" instead of using the normal English words for these concepts.
I always thought this scotus case was interesting and relevant to the question of “can a private space count as a public square?”. Clearly in some way it can. Curious what a real lawyer or constitutional scholar has to say about this.
One of Masnick's best columns in years. As I've said many times before (although most people rejected my message), the phrase 'free speech' is often deployed to shut down discussion rather than open it up. When you inquire into the speech sort of speech thet people claim is being suppressed, it frequently turns out to be about banning pornography, curtailing the organic spread of unwelcome ideas, or proposals for the suppression of people making the unwelcome speech, by means ranging from deportation to elimination.
We saw your observations on the phrase "free speech" in action when Mr Musk purchased Twitter. One of his stated goals as a "free speech absolutist" was to bring "free speech" back to Twitter. Now, Mr Musk boosts his own tweets, sells blue checks to bots, which boosts their tweets. All to virtually "shout down" any opposing opinions
At what point will it be universally understood that "free speech" is only legally binding when a person is speaking with the government. The government cannot limit a person from speaking outside of libel and slander. (Note the successful Dominion lawsuits against Fox News, you can't say _anything_ you want if it materially harms a person or a legal entity).
A private corporation like Twitter/X, Facebook, and now Bluesky can implement any moderation policies they want, and it will never violate "free speech" laws. Elon Musk can filter and restrain the speech he doesn't like (mostly liberal speech and external links that he can't monetize) and Zuck can do the same. Bluesky only moderates illegal activity itself like CSAM. All other moderation is done by the community, and each person chooses who to follow, block, or mute who they wish.
The government could enact regulation to limit corporate moderation (debatable, but a given with the current SC) but it would be a very extreme step to restrict the individual from moderating their own timelines on Bluesky.
It's hinted that Carr might try to regulate Bluesky, but the outcome wouldn't match his expectations. You see, Bluesky is an open network. It would be simple for every user to implement their own data server and only communicate on the open network. The government would have no way to control that network outside of radical national firewall filtering like China's Great Firewall.
> private corporation like Twitter/X, Facebook, and now Bluesky can implement any moderation policies they want, and it will never violate "free speech" laws
Simply not true in the state of California where most of these companies are based.
According to the CA supreme Court, you have a right to free speech on private property that is regularly available for public use.
By that metric all of these companies are blatantly violating the constitution of their home state.
Given the media manipulation that’s come to light over the past year, you’d think folks would take a break before firing the ole regime propaganda engine back up.
No it's not boring at all. Trump is not an unknown. He was president 2016-2020. Not a single corporation was strong armed as evidenced by the fact that every single major social media platform and 2/3 major cable networks actively worked against him without any repercussions other than ever lowering viewership.
What that shows is that Trump's rhetoric is just that.
By contrast, the Biden administration said they would protect speech and instead worked actively to censor regular Americans, de-banked political opponents, and strong armed social media into enforcing their COVID policy.
I'd rather have the big talk guy that does nothing than the nice guy that behaved like a dictator.
This was my first thought. It's rich to see the media magically switch gears and be concerned about censorship when it's been happening for years under the Biden administration.
There are certainly some good points about some statements Carr has made that seem to be pushing at the limits of what the FCC actually has purview over, but the contention that Carr is "the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience" is on its face absurd to anyone that follows Carr's work.
Even the examples in this article fail to come close to making this case. In each one, he's advocating for more speech, for increased access to publishing platforms. No ordinary person would possibly see that as "censorship." He's not seeking to eliminate "speech he dislikes" by making statements against NewsGuard's heavy involvement in social media "disinformation" moderation, he's making the point that moderation on political speech has been unfairly applied in many cases, and that's largely the fault of activist groups that push social networks to censor speech they don't like (and label "disinformation").
The article starts out by accusing the Trump camp of projection, by lauding Carr as a champion of free speech. It's ironic that the author is guilty of that very thing (projecting) by accusing Carr of being not only pro-censorship, but the biggest threat to free speech in the country? Where have you been for the past 15 years? Come on
Oh please. The Biden administration worked with social media to shut down user accounts and according to Marc Andersen de-banked political opponents and hardly a peep from this forum.
Now the pearl clutching begins.
As for social media being private companies.... Perhaps
However, many jobs are posted on social media and being banned from sites like reddit means you can be punished in the labor market. The government must take action, especially when sites like reddit regularly ban users for saying men are not women, a religious belief.
The government has every right to regulate especially after years of telling us that what their administration did was totally normal
Andreesen is a former Democrat donor and endorsed Hillary and a well respected VC. I have no reason to disbelieve him. Supporting trump is not popular (or wasn't) in silicon valley. For them to endorse him would indicate something happened...
Remember, no one is actually in favor of free speech. Everyone, and I mean everyone, regardless of their personal political views, wants to silence people they disagree with. I suspect this is some kind of trait inherent to human psychology.
Often, they’ll do so hiding behind complex philosophical rationales, but in the end the result is the same.
Filtering out trolls, passive aggressive jerkoffs, and outright verbal abuse is everyone's right. Musk (and Dorsey) believe those people have a "right" to do those things without being muted.
> Finally, and perhaps most importantly, private companies making editorial decisions about what content they allow on their own private property is not (and cannot be!) taking away First Amendment rights. The First Amendment restricts the government, not private property owners from making their own editorial decisions.
That's really the whole debate when it comes to social media. Is it ok that they are governed like private property where the owners can make whatever moderation decisions they want or is it more like a modern "public square" where it should be possible to say anything you can shout on the street without being moderated for it.
Personally, I don't know if there's a right answer. Perhaps the best approach is encouraging more competition among social media companies so there are alternatives to the dominant platforms - but the network effects of something like Facebook are very strong even if competitors existed.
Treating social media like a private space is the status quo, but it rubs me the wrong way that there's not really an equivalent of public spaces in the online world.
Edit: I find it weird how many people are happy to defend unchecked corporate power when it comes to this issue. The lack of any guardrails on moderation is why YouTube has slowly transformed into a baby-talk version of itself. Now people talk about "unaliving yourself" and "PDF files" instead of using the normal English words for these concepts.
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