It's also ironic and quite frankly terrifying that a news outlet would be lamenting the extensive free speech protections in the US.
This is apparently a part of a series exploring the trendy technopanic of "fake news online", which increasingly looks like a campaign by old media to reclaim their gatekeeping status even if that means thumbing their noses at the first amendment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation
> ... communication of a false statement that harms the reputation ...
Treated very differently from country to country, but universally considered an illegitimate use of speech.
Free speech is one thing. It is rightly protected.
But it is not unlimited, and rightly so.
Libel/Slander, yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theater, and incitement to riot are something different, and are not protected.
Entities such as Google/FB, who serve as editors of what speech/writing/media gets propagated and featured, even though they do it by algorithm, and it might be inconvenient, must also be held to account for properly distinguishing between those types.
As for libel Google isn't the party that wrote that statement so they aren't liable for libel.
The yelling "fire" thing is a WWI era anachronism that wouldn't hold today.
As for incitement, intent must be proven.
Free speech is very well protected in the US.
Eh? Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre is most definitely still a thing you could be prosecuted for, especially if someone died/was seriously injured in the resultant stampede.
> But those who quote Holmes might want to actually read the case where the phrase originated before using it as their main defense. If they did, they'd realize it was never binding law, and the underlying case, U.S. v. Schenck, is not only one of the most odious free speech decisions in the Court's history, but was overturned over 40 years ago.
> First, it's important to note U.S. v. Schenck had nothing to do with fires or theaters or false statements. Instead, the Court was deciding whether Charles Schenck, the Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, could be convicted under the Espionage Act for writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft during World War I. As the ACLU's Gabe Rottman explains, "It did not call for violence. It did not even call for civil disobedience."
> The crowded theater remark that everyone remembers was an analogy Holmes made before issuing the court's holding. He was explaining that the First Amendment is not absolute. It is what lawyers call dictum, a justice's ancillary opinion that doesn't directly involve the facts of the case and has no binding authority. The actual ruling, that the pamphlet posed a "clear and present danger" to a nation at war, landed Schenk in prison and continued to haunt the court for years to come.
In US law, speaking the truth is never punishable, in any way. Making untrue statements that result in demonstrable harm to another may be punished.
In some other countries, truth is not an adequate defense against claims of defamation.
Really? Go try it and report on the results.
Feel free to take it literally, or think of a similar action that could cause a stampede and try that.
(No, I won't pay your defense, fines, or judgements, and I don't think anyone else will either. This is because the very idea that the concept no longer applies is stupid, and that statement should be abandoned.)
Imagine the mirror image scenario, where a man's done something wrong, and he has a $100k budget to stop me from telling people about it. Should he really be able to say "hey Google, I'm not going to prove this, but he's totally defaming me so you have to censor him"?
The thing is, Truth is an absolute defense against libel/slander. If you're telling the truth, you have zero liability.
You argue that these companies should have zero responsibility for selecting for truth.
That is wrong.
These corporations are in fact performing the same functions as editorial boards at newspapers, often actually overriding editorial boards in many cases (choosing to display different stories, sequences, etc.).
These companies are not dumb pipes, and their value is predicated on not being dumb pipes. They select every single line they display by an extensive set of criteria. They need to take responsibility for selecting and displaying according to truth value -- editorial responsibility, since they are exercising editorial discretion.
Yes, it's costly. Yes they have the money (and they'll make even more).
* Is this what you actually want? Would it be proper for Google to say "we've conclusively decided that climate change is real, so from now on we will delist all climate change denial content"?
* What do you think the chances are that a newspaper editorial board would delete an article, just because you wrote them a letter saying it was false?
Current algorithms do exactly the opposite -- prioritize falsehoods. This is because false stories have more surprise value than truth and are more noticed and spread more wildly [1]. The algorithms that value engagement, reading, re-sending, etc. thus raise these stories to the top.
So, on things like climate change, people's reputations, etc., yes, they should behave like the editorial boards that they are, and prioritize content by actual experts in the field and by actual facts. No need to delete everything fake since they can list ~unlimited results, but it should certainly be appropriately down-ranked.
While Google seems to have done a little bit to improve the results for a "flat earth" search, YouTube brings to the top a bunch of videos promoting flat earth BS.
Sorry, but liars, charlitans, scammers, and worse should not be given the same platform and respect as actual experts and professionals.
B that would depend on the content of the letter. It happens much more frequently than you seem to expect. And editorial boards every day exercise exactly this sort of restraint, especially at the more credible outlets: "Are there multiple sources for this?", "Is this actually verifiable?", etc.
In short, to quote Asimov: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
No, ignorance is not just as good as knowledge and our major institutions (even and perhaps especially commercial ones) should not promote it as such.
[1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146.full