It’s quite ironic that people think this is a first amendment or censorship issue when the real first amendment issue would be if Twitter were not allowed to do this.
"Censorship" by a private party is a modern extension of the meaning of the term and it is not universally accepted.
And there has been no further news, so the news media moved on to other news, like the siege of the U.S. Capitol building.
No it doesn't. In the U.S., the law is explicitly clear that censorship by the government is subject to strict limitations, but censorship by private parties is part of those parties' exercise of their own rights to free speech. Compelling one person to spread the speech of another person is a form of censorship that censors the former's opposition to the latter's speech.
There are only a handful of cases that compel private parties to tolerate speech they disagree with on their own property (basically, malls), and the scope has been narrowed over time. (See Pruneyard and subsequent cases.)
Things like "private parties", property rights, I'd say that even the idea of "government", come after that fear has been dealt with.
Private property, private rights, and government, have all existed before the "fear" (whatever it is you mean by that) was dealt with.
I'm talking about the basis of the US Constitution, its "spirit", so to speak. My reading of the Federalist Papers is that one of the main reasons-to-be of the Constitution was to avoid tyranny, the men that wrote that thing down put things like respecting private property or even what form of government to use after that. I admit, maybe I'm wrong on that interpretation (I've read them about three years ago), but I've recently started reading a selection of Anti-federalist Papers and I stand by my opinion.
> FB's and Twitter's constitutional rights
Again, there was nothing in the Federalist Papers (nor in the Constitution) about respecting the rights of private, abstract, soulless entities. Yes, I know about the relatively recent decision that gave those corporations a "political soul" (so to speak), but that decision had nothing to do with the original spirit of the basic law on which the USA was founded.
I mean, if conversations on twitter are akin to conversations in a public park in the USA, then you would expect the same social / legal conventions to hold on twitter as in public spaces. If I incited violence in the local park, there are norms and laws that come into play. Arguably the same laws should hold on twitter. From that perspective, its weird that a tech company acts as the judge and jury - rather than the police and the courts. And complaints about censorship make total sense.
But if you think of twitter, google, facebook etc as corporate serfdoms, then there's no problem with twitter's enforcement. Twitter is a space owned and ruled by a tech company. You rent your twitter account, but own nothing. Twitter can set any rules they like, or set no rules and act entirely capriciously. The interesting question is whether or not we want the internet to work like a weird echo of the middle ages. And what (if anything) we should do about it.
EDIT another good take, reversion to feudalism:
„Twitter & Facebook act as
a) De facto spaces of prominent public debate b) De facto news content (press)
De jure, they pretend they're in private tech business (to escape legal responsibility of a +b)“
https://twitter.com/_benoux_/status/1347155317516365826?s=21
I suspect — and feel free to call me naive, but I don’t think I’m wrong— that the majority of people working on Uber’s technology would prefer to build a system whose social impact they could be proud of. Based on my admittedly limited sample size of people I know in the tech industry, I feel like lots of people working at companies like Uber are there because they want to solve interesting technical challenges and deploy useful innovations in the world. I believe that if given the choice, most would prefer to build a system that makes the world a fairer and more equitable place. The problem is that this choice is, for the most part, withheld from them, and whatever individual intentions they may have are inevitably co-opted by the capitalist structure in which they make their living. By working together to counteract these prevailing systematic forces, though, they may be able to open up a space in which to envision alternatives." [1]
-- Wendy Liu
[1] https://medium.com/@dellsystem/dont-put-your-faith-in-uber-7...
Public squares do not have corporate policies. Twitter has never been a public square they've always enforced speech rules from the beginnings.
Why do you conflate any discussion of censorship and freedom of speech with the First Amendment of the US’s constitution?
It's constant to read opinions like that in threads like this. We used to have this argument in the 60s where private businesses argued they didn't have to serve blacks since they were a private business. Political speech/activity is protected when it comes to labor law. It's not hard to see the law updated at some figure point. Discrimination is discrimination in my book, and free speech is paramount even the most repugnant opinions.
Is there? Who's making it? Can you give examples?
I mean unless you are logging this and charting it I'm going to assume people are seeing whatever is confirming their priors on this one.
Exactly.
Forcing twitter to quote trump would be coerced speach rather than free speech.
Otherwise, I'm censoring trump right now my not putting his tweet content in this comment, and so are you because you didn't put it in yours
Are you under the impression that the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations is a private entity?
230 grants platforms both freedom from liability and gives them the ability to moderate. They do not need to pick.
Nope. User-generated content can be moderated and Section 230 protections still apply:
> With that done, we can discuss the various ways you might have been wrong about Section 230. If you said "Once a company like that starts moderating content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher" […]
* https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
I don't know the exact wording of section 230. Even if I knew it, it wouldn't help, because I'm not a lawyer.
That's why I don't understand where the line is drawn and why. If the idea is to "protect open platforms from liability from user content", why is it okay to have policies that remove child porn, but not those that remove incitement to hate crimes?
IANAL: prior approval prior to posting.
If an employee of the publisher is in the 'chain of command' and hits a "Publish" or "Approved" button in the CMS, then it is editorial authority.
If any random yahoo can post something without moderation beforehand, then it is user generated. But the CMS operator could then remove the content after the fact per ToS.
There still are significant distinctions. NYT and CNN have a much smaller number of people publishing news, who are hired and paid for their work. Twitter is just a host with a block button. For example Twitter doesn't have a sign-up hiring interview so anyone could have an account. Another distinction is that Twitter is publish first, ban later while newspapers are filtering before publishing.
Demanding a rule that works for few people to scale to hundreds of millions is wishful thinking. It's a different situation requiring different treatment.