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Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

It may be "more effective" to implore the government to crack down on media policies you don't like, but it's also as much a threat to free expression as Facebook's ridiculous and overt censorship of this image.

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Free expression already has limits (No "Fire!" in a crowded theater when no danger exists), I'm absolutely fine with government saying what Facebook isn't allowed to do (remove journalistic posts without due process).

Yes free expression obviously does have limits; It probably doesn't have that silly "Fire in a theater" restriction.

Holmes (the supreme court justice you are quoting) said this with respect to this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States where they prosecuted Schenck for anti-war pamphlets. This is something that would be protected by the constitution today. This quote is a pretty lousy excuse for suppressing free expression considering Holmes's track record of dismissing free speech.

With regards to Facebook removing posts, why should there be a "due process" for a (specific) company to remove posts. What sense does this make?

FB isn't just a specific company. FB has grown to such a size that it has become a large part of the media/press. So it has to be regulated like press.

Er... press isn't supposed to be regulated.

Unless that was your point?

The first amendment says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...

Where do you get that we should regulate the press?

Obviously you could argue that the constitution is wrong, and that's fine with me. It's just a document, but when you say "it has to be regulated..." what is the mechanism you're referring to?

For example, there are laws that restrict defamation, incitement to violence and guarantee the right of reply. They can't put false information out, like "The president of X has said Y", or use a cooked up image as real. They have to keep secret the names of minors when they are involved in police-related stories, they are required not to divulge privileged (state secrets) or private information, such as was the case with Gawker. All of these have their exceptions, but in general press is not quite free to do as they like, and it's better that way.

Freudian slip there.

https://popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-cens...

Asking the government to protect freedom of speech is the exact opposite of a threat to free expression. It's analogous to congress passing a law saying that newspapers cannot edit letters to the editor. Some newspapers might complain about having to publish things they find disagreeable, but nobody is being censored anymore.

Imagine if a paper newspaper were told that they had to publish every letter sent to them or no letters at all. They would stop publishing letters entirely. There are a lot of ways to construct laws such that they have the opposite of their nominal effect. It's important to note that the US First Amendment bars the government from passing laws respecting both freedom of speech and freedom of the press (among other related rights).

Wrong analogy. Newspaper does not offer a service of publishing customer letters. They offer a service of receiving and reading letters on premise that they may choose the letter to be published. It's a different story.

If a newspaper published all letters, then government could act on behalf of citizen to protect freedom of speech, by making sure there's no arbitrary censorship of publications.

The relevant detail is that you can indeed censor a publication by adding a rule that says "you can't censor your publication in the following ways". I don't personally use Facebook at least in part because I don't want to use a centralized, censored system, but the fact of the matter is that it's a bad idea (not to mention likely an unconstitutional one) to tell Facebook what they cannot publish and indeed what they must publish.

Although it's irrelevant to the point, I also don't totally understand the nature of your objection. If you are saying that any publication gets to define what it does and does not publish (i.e. Facebook says "I am a company that publishes non-nude photos" or "I am a company that publishes censored material"), then they merely have to re-define their service in order to censor people while complying with whatever scheme you have in mind.

Facebook is not a newspaper, because it does not produce the content that it makes available - freedom of speech cannot be applied to Facebook itself. FoS applies however to the content producers and limits the terms of contract that Fb may offer to them, by banning the arbitrary censorship (the distinction between artwork and offensive content is arbitrary and decided by Fb moderators). Also, by saying "unconstitutional" which constitution do you apply to it? It's multinational and has the business in many countries - each one can regulate Fb within its sovereignty.

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