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I think this is a more nuanced topic than you're giving it credit for. While free speech does not classically apply to corporate enterprises like Facebook, as society shifts into the digital world the nature of communication itself shifts as well.

The 1700s and 1800s version of Twitter was standing in the street square, handing out pamphlets, and screaming your message. You were protected to say what you wanted to say via free speech. The 2018 version of that is online through tools like Twitter. By refusing to acknowledge this, we're actually experiencing a dramatic practical reduction in free speech rights without ever technically violating the Constitution.

It's really the ultimate loophole to the ultimate problem. Want to limit free speech? Simply remold society so that communication patterns across the entire nation change and become controlled by private corporations. Done.

A particularly dystopian and extreme imagining of this would involve the CEO of a company like Facebook running for President and controlling speech and news to an unprecedented extent in favor of his/her candidacy.

It's really not. You aren't entitled to an audience. Such bullshit. Put whatever you want up on your own website.

I can't walk into SirusXMs office and demand that they give me a channel so my voice can be heard. I'm not entitled to my own TV station.

I really wish one of these companies would just do something like ban Trump from Twitter so we can let the courts just put an end to this discussion. Getting banned from Twitter has nothing—nothing—to do with free speech. Nothing. Zero.

I appreciate your viewpoint, but this is largely not a response to anything in my post, just a restatement of your previous post.

It is, because your talking about Twitter as if it's somehow analogous to a town square, and that's bullshit. It's not a public space and you have no rights to it or on it.

I am advancing the notion that there may be a threshold beyond which sites like Twitter are in practice precisely digital public townsquares. I am aware of what the laws are right now -- we are discussing here a hypothetical change of precedent or law in the future to better reflect how Americans communicate in 2018 and beyond.

No, you are wrong.

Using your own malformed analogy: The town square is the internet. Twitter is a private shop above subway station with a bunch of garbage that people like to buy. It's super busy. You can scream whatever you want in there, some people outside can hear you. You'll also probably get kicked out if you become obnoxious.

The “privatising public spaces” issue isn’t just limited to the internet. To understand the point better the above poster is making you might be interested in reading about how private malls became our de facto “public” spaces.

Legalese and dodgy analogies aside the above poster is focussing on the practical effects of these sites being so big and ‘default’.

On the other hand posting a dodgy opinion on facebook et al largely removes you from the social and physical consequences of saying things that are way outside of societal norms. When you're able to hide behind a screen the range of things you're willing to say increases as does your potential reach. I would argue it completely changes the context to which the ideas of free speech have been classically prescribed. Its worthy of discussion to question do the underlying ideals of free speech apply in this brave new world, or do we need to look at tweaking our ideals to fit the contexts in which we live. I don't have answers, nor would I ever suggest restricting free speech more, I'm just questioning does it make sense to apply it in this domain.

> On the other hand posting a dodgy opinion on facebook et al largely removes you from the social and physical consequences of saying things that are way outside of societal norms.

I get what you're saying here, but the sheer number of idiots "fired for saying X on facebook" makes me think it's not true. It lowers the barrier for saying something and increases your audience reach... but also lowers the mental barrier for saying the wrong thing or someone hypersensitive hearing it.

Have you ever investigated how speech is regulated in other countries? I'm Australian and we have a number of restrictions that make speech 'unfree' in the American sense. But I think they're appropriate and on the whole balanced well.

Precisely what was going through my head as I read the reply. Good luck with this one, I'm out.

So what happens when a domain registrar seizes your domain because they don't like your speech? (This has already happened.)

What happens when your host and cdn shut you down? (This has already happened.)

What happens when your isp shuts you down? (Only a matter of time.)

Private companies control the Internet. If we decide social media doesn't constitute a commons, the same argument applies to the rest of the Internet.

And so, like the gp said, your practical right are greatly curtailed.

Moreover, you're giving Mark Zuckerberg immense, uncontrolled power over American discourse. Sure, he has to use his power carefully, but as long as he and other tech ceos do so, they've essentially become the gatekeepers of allowable thoughts.

Like I said in the original post, we aren't talking about ICANN or domains. That's a different discussion—one worth having.

Why is it different? How is it different? The behavior and impact isn't, is it? Can you give us something more than "it's not the same" because this response isn't wholly convincing.

How is it similar? I mean, we aren't even talking apples and oranges here. We are talking apples and toilet paper. One is public infrastructure run by a pseudo independent non-profit, the other a page on a private website. It's like the difference being banned from a city vs being banned from shitposting on the bulletin board in a Starbucks. Which, when we talk about free speech on FB and Twitter is really what we are talking about. Is there a constitutional right to shitposting and trolling on someone else's website? Like, really? Smh.

> It's like the difference being banned from a city vs being banned from shitposting on the bulletin board in a Starbucks.

The problem is that Facebook isn't the size of a Starbucks. It isn't even the size of a city. It's the size of a hundred cities. There are more users of Facebook than citizens of the United States.

It's like saying the US Congress can't impose censorship because you can just go to the EU and speak there instead. And if the EU censors the same things then you can just start your own country on a ship in international waters.

And who is going to come to your ship, or even find out about it, if linking to it is prohibited in the places where people actually congregate?

There is no town square equivalent where people have to walk past and can see you on their way to Facebook.

> We are talking apples and toilet paper. One is public infrastructure run by a pseudo independent non-profit, the other a page on a private website.

ICANN may be the top-level administrator, but the actual domain registrars are normal private corporations like GoDaddy and Google. What makes Google's domain registration service public infrastructure but not their video sharing service?

The scale point the sibling commenter made also drives to the heart of the issue - we can agree that I should be free to ban whoever I want on my private forum, but Facebook exists at a completely different scale that makes a qualitative difference in their impact on speech and society. The practical effect of banning someone or some type of speech on my forum is negligible. The practical effect of banning someone or some type of speech on Facebook is enormous. By giving Facebook that power (which they technically have, even if they aren't using it much now), you are handing them incredible power, maybe more power than any organization has ever had in history.

as I understand it, the Domain Name Registrars operate under government licences for all the various country-specific TLD's, and under a US government licence for the rest (for historical reasons). Some governments do operate very strict laws about what can be said on websites that operate under their country TLD, and use their ability to grant/deny a domain as a method of controlling speech on the internet.

That makes it protected under US free speech laws, because the authority to grant/deny a domain ultimately derives from a government mandate.

The ability to post random shit on Facebook does not derive from a government mandate, so therefore isn't covered by free speech laws.

That isn't true. Domain registrars in the US are free to terminate service or even seize your domain for any reason they like. Domain registrars are not bound by US free speech protections.

This is, for example, what happened to the contemptible Daily Stormer. There is no practical difference between a major domain registrar like GoDaddy or Google and a social media website like Facebook in terms of speech, except that at least if Google Domains shuts you down you can hypothetically (unless they seize/freeze the domain, which they have done) move to another registrar and the process is "transparent" for your viewers relative to being banned from Facebook...at least until they all run you off, with the most notorious example being The Daily Stormer again.

Thanks for the clarification. I was mistaken. I'm not sure why free speech laws don't apply, though. The registrars are operating under a government licence, so would seem to be covered by this? Anyone know why they're not?

Hold up.

Somewhere between "handing out pamphlets in Hyde Park" and Twitter there were plenty of other shifts in communication patterns as well. There was a good 100 years or so where if you wanted to be heard you had to get your message into a newspaper, and then another 50 years where you also had the alternatives of TV and radio. All of these were controlled by corporate interests, and it's not like there was ever a right to have your Letter To The Editor published.

And this wasn’t a good thing. Presidents could literally intimidate journalists with exhibitionistic displays, confident that the matter would not be made public. (Lyndon famously flashed his Johnson at journalists demanding to know the rationale for the Vietnam War, saying, “this is why!”)

I don't think Twitter is analogous to yelling in a town square.

It's more like talking at a bar, where others can overhear you. Twitter can of course start throwing people out, but then it turns into a clique and will probably be eventually subsumed by the larger society that it ignores.

Pretty interesting point. One thing that pops out to me is scale, not just of output from these systems but also input into them.

For instance, newspaper, radio, and TV all reached unprecedented numbers of people, but they didn't bring the same scale to the number of folks contributing content. To use your Letter to the Editor example, a newspaper only has so much space, of which only a certain portion is allocated to displaying such letters. This means the vast majority of the country could never have their letter published just due to space limitations alone.

Modern social media like Twitter is notably different because it has scaled the input just as much as the output. Every consumer can now be a producer as well. The idea that anyone can be a producer is very powerful and is what makes it feel more like a public space than, say, a newspaper.

Free speech in America isn't just valued as a legal right before the government, but as a general principle. Most people think that free speech in most situations (not just before the government, and with a few restrictions) benefit everyone.

All good communities practice some level of moderation, or else they just get worse and worse.

Moderation is usually applied as having people direct their free speech back at you, not by taking away your free speech.

It is far superior to have bad ideas met with good ideas, than to have bad ideas circulate unopposed within unpopular groups.

Not really.

HN will ban you if you are unreasonable.

The best subreddits (askhistorians, etc.) will instantly delete low quality posts.

Reddit as a whole banning bad subreddits (fatpeoplehate, coontown) made reddit a better place for everyone, and the trash moved to voat which is barely active now.

Most big sites will now ban you for for threatening or very hateful speech.

Etc.

Free speech is not the issue. No one is taking away free speech by banning you on Twitter.

Your free speech is taken away when something you say lands you in prison. Getting banned from a shitty private website doesn't violate your free speech rights in any way, full stop.

Freedom of association is also an important general principle. For instance, I don't think many place any value whatsoever on the freedom of other people to speak in their own home. I certainly wouldn't let someone stay in my house while saying the kinds of things I regularly see on Facebook, and that's my right. I think this is quite an important property of our system, and I think most agree.

As a private commercial enterprise, Facebook itself is, for the people who own it, much like my home; they are free to set whatever policy they like regarding what goes on there, as long as they aren't discriminating against certain specifically protected classes of people. It's shortly tricky, it's not unreasonable to argue that a platform the size of Facebook should be treated more like a public space than a private one. But I personally think the bar for overriding freedom of association should be extremely high, and I don't think Facebook is over it. Those who have been disallowed to associate with Facebook remain free to associate with other very similar platforms.

> Those who have been disallowed to associate with Facebook remain free to associate with other very similar platforms.

Facebook has been abusing it's massive size to block access to competitors using their Facebook Zero program : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Zero

From the page :

> In 2015, researchers evaluating how Facebook Zero shapes information and communication technology use in the developing world found that 11% of Indonesians who said they used Facebook also said they did not use the Internet. 65% of Nigerians, 61% of Indonesians, and 58% of Indians agree with the statement that "Facebook is the Internet".

Yeah I think that's awful that they do that. I was specifically talking about in the US, where it is easy to use a competitor. (The comment I replied to was also talking specifically about the US: "Free speech in America...")

Facebook has pulled similar tactics in the US also : https://www.wired.com/2010/11/google-facebook-data/

It's a principle most people don't understand. You have the right to say what you want, in public, and not be put in prison. You don't have the right to an audience or to accessing private infrastructure. There's a whole public Internet that you can do whatever you want on. Say whatever you want. Build your own Twitter, spout whatever nonsense you want. No one will censor you!

>divisive hate speech

All of the people who are so vocally anti-free speech always fall back to "hate speech", but there is literally no such thing. There is no robust definition of what "hate speech" is, and whenever it is invoked, it invariably turns into "whatever I disagree with". The truth is that "hate speech" is entirely in the eye of the beholder, it is exactly the same as "offensive speech". The listener/reader is the person who decides whether or not they perceive something to be hateful in exactly the same way as they perceive something to be offensive. You can come up with entirely contrived examples that most people will agree is hateful, but that's not what you're trying to stop. Saying that a country should have borders is considered hateful by many, saying that there are only two genders is considered very hateful by many, promoting national sovereignty or pride is considered hateful by many, and this is what you're talking about when you refer to "hate speech".

The other premise that all free speech detractors completely fail to understand, is that free speech is not just a law, it is a foundational value of the nation. You can't dismiss free speech in any situation where the 1A doesn't provide protection, because people are often talking about values, not laws.

>The only thing they really stand to lose by banning blatant conspiracy theory whack jobs and divisive hate speech is some ad revenue associated with that stuff

Facebook is at or near monopoly status and as such the largest risk to their business is regulation. That's why this is such a sensitive issue for them.

No they aren't. Monopoly status for what? It's just a shitty website. Take a step back and think about what Facebook is. It's no different than the forums of old. It's the same recycled technology with a new interface.

For a while you might have said that they were approaching some kind of weird monopoly status because you had to use FB to login to third party sites/services, but that didn't last long.

There are developing countries where FB is so much a monopoly that huge percentages of people don't even know that anything else exists on the Internet. To them, FB is the Internet.

But anyway, that's an argument for encouraging competition and computer literacy, not for or against free speech.

It's actually reversed. People in developing countries are actually more savvy in many ways, as they entered into the Internet during an era where there was no Facebook or Facebook wasn't the dominate player. It's really only in the US where people are so illiterate that FB is a primary destination. But that doesn't make it a monopoly.

I'm sure different countries are different. Myanmar is the one I'm familiar with and FB is definitely a monopoly there.

This site gives FB 88.11% currently. Interesting that its trending down slightly:

http://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats/all/myanmar

Without anything [obvious] to indicate what is wrapped up in "Other," that would seem to be a ranking of US-based, primarily-English language sites.

What makes you think the social media landscape of almost any country in the world isn't dominated by US-based services? They only need to provide a localized version to get into a market, which they then end up dominating through international network effects.

The only country I'm aware of where domestic services are dominant is China, and the statcounter data does reflect that. They are conspicuously missing WeChat and QQ, though (which are messaging applications and probably hard to track for a third party), so maybe there's some local service in Myanmar that similarly falls through the cracks.

OK, so, a monopoly on social media. But so what? You don't HAVE to use social media. It's not like having a monopoly on energy, banking or telecommunications, for example, where you can really put people over a barrel.

You don't HAVE to use energy, banking or telecommunications either. It's not like having a monopoly on food or water. The line you drew here is completely arbitary.

Fake news.

Not from what I've read. There are literally places in the developing world where FB fake news has caused the death of people. This example was from Asia. I don't remember the country, but it was news a few months ago.

You're probably thinking of Myanmar https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43385677

WhatsApp lynchings in India?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44897714

You didn't answer the parent's question: monopoly on what?

If they are an actual monopoly, their biggest risk is not being involved in writing those regulations. Eventually the public will force legislators to act and they're not know for taking measured responses once the public outrage reaches a certain threshold. That's why telecom companies like Comcast are so successful at forming local/regional monopolies - they have relationships with people from the city planners up to mayors and governors so whenever new regulations are written, they're very involved.

> Facebook is at or near monopoly status

Monopoly status for what?

Ads? No.

Online ads? No.

Communication amongst friends? No.

Reading news? No.

They have a monopoly on what?

Misused image macros and pyramid schemes.

> pyramid schemes.

What? Did Herbalife and Amway went out of business and nobody told me so I could celebrate?

Pyramid scheme incubator

I think they have a monopoly on social media.

Except they don’t? Twitter is pretty big too. Facebook is just the biggest player.

And that's before you even get into the issue of defining the market (a necessary step for any analysis of monopoly power): what is social media?

Twitter is an order of magnitude smaller than FB

Just because there isn't a free speech argument doesn't mean a communication company would benefit by going on a politically driven "banfest".
>Americans LOVE to pretend like they are morally superior, but the moral code and values built into todays companies are completely bonkers. Free speech is constantly invoked when it doesn't even apply, and it's applied so inconsistently it doesn't even make sense.
^^this doesn't make sense.

It does to me.
The US constitutional right to Free Speech only applies to government actions, not to private individuals or companies. To use someone else's analogy: if you come into my house and talk shit, I have every right to ask you to leave, and you don't have constitutional protection for that. Yet, "Free Speech" is constantly invoked when people are banned from privately-owned sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It doesn't even apply to these sites.
Free Speech is also applied inconsistently. Pornography is protected Free Speech under the US Constitution. Yet Facebook's Nipple Ban is usually not even mentioned when people talk about Free Speech on Facebook. Their right to remove pornographic content from their site is not questioned, but their right to remove someone's hate-filled rant is. This is clearly inconsistent.

If you advertise your house as a wau for people to meet and communicate with their friends, then kick out all your conservative guests, then yes, you've done something morally wrong. Free speech laws don't stop this, it's your property , but they also don't make it right.

Since ISP's are not government enterprises should they be able to ban users they don't like?
Legally, maybe you're right, but socially I don't think the argument is as clear cut as you make it sound.

I mean, that actually IS a good question. ISPs are pseudo government enterprises—that is, they become government enterprises when they need to be.
It's really on a whole different level though. ISPs are access to infrastructure. Should ISPs be able to ban people? I'm not sure. It's a valid question though. I tend to think that they shouldn't, but I'm not sure it would be a violation of free speech if they did. Good question though mate.
It's also worth nothing that they DO ban people. If you don't pay an ISP can ban you, outright, permanently.

Question about that, if it's something that takes us too far into the weeds I'll stuff it and save it for later in the interest of keeping us on topic:
When people make the argument of-wrt suppression or censorship of speech "Legally no but socially/in the court of public opinion yes", I often want to fire back "But...are not our laws a distilled and concentrated output of what we value in social publics? If we start allowing exemptions and exceptions to that value system to get an outcome that takes away liberties in social publics, are we unwittingly creating the 'case' to erode those values in (the grander) legal establishment-given enough time?"
(This might be a long winded argument of 'slipper slope', unsure. Someone call me out on this if so)
Maybe it's a question of ethics versus law, or perhaps ethics in the context of buffers between person/individual and state/government?

I think you're right. My suspicion is that if FB/TWTR go totally ban-happy, the social discussion will evolve into a legal one and move towards overt regulation a la utilities.
EDIT: IANAL, but if these platforms start favoring one political group over others, it seems potentially illegal, as it could be considered in-kind political donations.

> Facebook already enforces some weird moral code where a nipple gets you instantly banned, but when it comes to politics somehow it's a "free speech" argument and they don't want to take sides. It's 100% bullshit.
That just comes down to the bottom line. People are on Facebook at work, in the grocery checkout line, in the park while their kids play on the jungle gym. People tap Facebook on their phones when they have 30 seconds to kill.
If there were the possibility of nudity popping up on their devices, they wouldn't feel comfortable using it in those settings and would see fewer FB ads.

> Facebook, Twitter, YouTube et al. should go on outright banfests. There is no free speech argument to be made. None. Zero
Not true. These are CA corporations.
The CA supreme court has already stated that businesses that hold themselves open to the public must allow lawful speech.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/447/74/

Super narrow scope. Doesn't apply here. Read your own source. Smh.

NB: That's SCOTUS, not SCOCA.

So if they go that way, and you get banned, would you be ok with that?

The implication in that is that the OP would be engaging in behaviour that warrants a ban, so at a guess their answer would be "my opinion wouldn't matter", which can probably be distilled down to "yes".

Yes.
༼ つ ◕ ◕ ༽つ GIVE BAN ༼ つ ◕ ◕ ༽つ
These are free websites on the internet that cater to the lowest common denominator of media we have today. Being banned is not a big deal.