Hacker News Reader

Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

There has to be some sort of US free speech legal action that could be taken to stop this crack down by an internet platform company on free speech. I'm not sure how many people actually take FB seriously as a 'news' platform, but it can be useful to discuss the way corporate entities such as CNN present information on their specific home pages on Facebook.

View on HN

Freedom of speech is only enforced by the courts w.r.t government entities. Private companies can censor speech for any reason, including "I feel like it."

Actually you're not entirely correct. Private property rights have been ignored in court cases before where that property was the "public square".

This has come up in cases of corporation-owned/built towns meant to house workers that then violated their residents (i.e, employees and their families) free speech rights in said towns. Constitutionally protected speech was upheld vs Private Property rights.

There have been very good arguments made that the same should be applied to Facebook, et. al.

Exactly what I was thinking when I wrote my down voted comment. FB et al are enabling a public forum. If a town is built with a public town square the city can't subsequently decide who to ban from it based on their views, only if they are drunk and disorderly, a public nuisance etc.

This is super interesting. What was the specific argument for company towns? I'm not a lawyer, but I could imagine an argument where since the company town took on government functions, then it therefore should be treated as such with regards to constitutional protections. Am I close?

I don't exactly recall but I think they focussed just on private property rights since extraterritoriality isn't a thing (really that would make the government panic).

I for one would prefer that constraints on fundamentals like speech be kept only between the government and citizens. Not between citizens.

Legitimate question, is free speech guaranteed on Facebook's platform? Or do they get to decide what content is okay and what isn't?

Not guaranteed by the Constitution

They get to decide. Legally they are like a bar or a restaurant or a mall, it's their property, they can kick you out for practically any reason, protected classes aside, and political belief is not a protected class in the US.

"Free speech" doesn't apply to private entities at all. They have full rights to refuse service to someone for whatever reason they want to, same as any other business.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/

I don't agree at all. What about an energy company denying you connection to the grid because they don't like you? Or the telephone company doing the same? And what if these companies are monopolies in the area, or if there is only a handful of companies and they all make the same decision- perhaps out of fear of losing other customers to the competition?

Facebook is a de facto monopoly in the social networks space, and it's deciding to deny service to specific individuals based on their political opinions. It's not something I'm willing to shrug off as unimportant.

And I have to disagree with xkcd too on this one. Protecting the freedom of speech means setting limits to the freedom of others to harm you when they don't like what you say. People are free to disagree and switch channel/ unfollow/ stop buying a newspaper/ etc. But harassment and mobbing are a different matter.

It's a companies private platform, free speech does not apply, facebook can do any sort of censorship they wish.

Most the responses here revolve around Facebook's autonomy as a private platform. Meanwhile, Facebook's autonomy is called into question when it comes to fake news on the site that influences politics, or their ability to use the data on their platform as they see fit.

That would amount to “forced speech”, which is an even bigger no-no than restricting free speech, both legally and morally. It’s the reason warrant canaries are a thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com