Free speech doesn't need limits.
Inciting violence, endangering someone with false speech, committing fraud: they're already a crime and they're not covered by free speech.
Inciting violence, endangering someone with false speech, committing fraud: they're already a crime and they're not covered by free speech.
edit: it seems people have misunderstood my comment to take a position. I' m taking issue with the idea that "free speech doesn't need limits" followed by a listing of limits applied to free speech. If we can't agree that there even exists such limits and that perhaps they're necessary any discussion below is fruitless.
But I shouldn't be obligated to let someone put a sign saying that on my lawn, nor should I be obligated to remain friends with someone who is pushing that lie.
Most of the people who are complaining about free speech being limited are really arguing for things like the above.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
You running a corner store the way you want is fine, you running the only store in the country the way you want is not.
You know, you don't need AWS to run a website, right? Similarly, newspapers have often been local monopolies, but as far as I know, they've always been able to decline to publish a letter to the editor.
Whoever wants to stick a sign on my lawn is going to come up with some rationale to force me to do it, but that doesn't mean it holds any water.
"You're allowed to talk people into believing that they need to violently rebel, but you're not allowed to actually do the rebelling" is not a particularly reasonable position.
There is a good reason twitter, facebook, youtube does remove certain content. They have the right to remove whatever they want.
If someone publishes fake news about vaccines, it takes a lot of effort then for people to keep explaining to other people how this is not true. It is harmful to society, and unfair - it takes less time to invent a new hoax than to fact-check it.
Just like loitering on the ground is considered an offence, so should be publishing fake news. It doesn't hurt one person, but it hurts society.
There also are objective criteria for determining if something is fake or not - so it is possible to create laws that forbid it and don't limit a freedom of opinion.
What seems to be under attack here is the right of individual companies and people to decide who they wish to work with. Everyone who is criticizing big tech for choosing not to work with certain people is forgetting that that same principle can be applied to them. Do you want to be forced to work with companies you abhor?
It's not irrelevant.
> What seems to be under attack here is the right of individual companies and people to decide who they wish to work with.
To the extent that that is based on expressive preference, that is an aspect of free speech, and the closely-related right of free association.
Limiting that right is limiting free speech.
For example, it’s a form of free speech for Microsoft to decide how they write their own software. One of those decisions was to bundle a free web browser in with their OS and tie the OS function tightly together with that browser. Microsoft Corporation was almost broken up by the government because they did that.
The issue that Greenwald is raising is similarly rooted in anti-trust;
> If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine anything more compelling than how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor.
Freedom of speech is not absolute. Just like individuals’ free speech rights have limits such as incitement to violence, corporations also have limits to their “free speech” rights based in anti-trust law and anti-racketeering laws in how they can attack potential competitors.
That the outcome here is banning a community that was apparently mostly used for hate speech (never actually checked it out) is... maybe a red herring? I mean, they obviously didn't build these massive companies with the primary goal of banning niche hateful websites.
If we were to, say, break up social media and internet infrastructure giants, then this sort of website would probably be able to persist by hopping from host to host until they found one without any morals. But could consider if losing the ability to perform this kind of deplatforming would be worth it, in exchange for a much more competitive marketplace.
I think it is actually a really tricky situation.
Ultimately, if not one of the hundreds of hosting companies out there wants to work with you, that should be a very strong indication that the community is not something we want. But if you really really want this community anyways, just hook up your computer to an internet connection and host the site yourself.
You mention protected classes in your first paragraph, but then act like it's self-evident that it's bad to "force people to work with (and serve) people they abhor". What else is the concept of a protected class if not this?
It's clear that we already don't have full freedom of association, and the question is where the line should be drawn. When people talk about big tech regulation, it's undergirded by many of these platforms' unique amount of market power. This isn't a novel concept; utility companies are an example of a natural monopoly: benefiting from scale, considered critical infrastructure, and legally prohibited from cutting off power to its customers, even if they don't like their politics. The topic under discussion here is whether the "new public square" (or things like payment infrastructure!) are considered critical enough to society that we want to protect access to them.
I'm constitutionally (not "Constitutionally") disinclined against ill-considered regulation, and most of the conversation by government about tech regulation is pants-on-head stupid. But the dissonance between the two paras in your comment are a good indication that this discussion isn't nearly as simple as you're framing it.
That's one core question. Another is whether it should be up to these companies to police their own platforms. Inciting violence is illegal. They're banning people and platforms inciting violence.
"Repeal section 230" seems to be about making these companies responsible for policing their own platforms. When people incited violence/genocide on Facebook in Myanmar, some people held Facebook partially responsible. Now, there are people are inciting violence on Facebook in the US, and it's still an open question whether Facebook should be held liable.
There are important differences, but the parallels between the Rwandan genocide and the growth of talk radio in the US in the 90's have always struck me as interesting.
That being said, I think that the new public square argument is strong, and if we're going to have internet monopolies, then they probably need to be regulated similarly to the utilities.
Alternatively, they can be broken up. I don't think the current state is sustainable over the longer term.
It is not provided by the government. Congress is prohibited from passing laws that abridge freedom of speech; Congress is not the fountain that free speech springs from.
It is perfectly relevant to discuss freedom of speech in contexts where someone else might be doing the abridging besides the U.S. Congress.
I'm skeptical that such a line can ever be truly "settled." Sure, it can be settled in a particular social and technological context, but when those latter things change, the line may need to be adjusted.
TLDR: yeah, the law can change, but it's highly unlikely because "the United States Supreme Court has been more consistently protective of free speech than of any other right, especially in the face of media sensibilities about "harmful" words"
[1] https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-...
It's worth noting that no legally forbidden censorship has been happening with regards to the recent insurrection against congress.
> TLDR: yeah, the law can change, but it's highly unlikely because "the United States Supreme Court has been more consistently protective of free speech than of any other right, especially in the face of media sensibilities about "harmful" words"
But that's not a fixed fact of nature, it's a reaction to a particular social and technological context.
For instance, if someone discovers an idea instantly turns 10% those who hear it into murderous zealots (sort of like the poem in "The Tyranny of Heaven" by Stephen Baxter), that idea is going to censored hard and the Supreme Court will be like "yup, ban it."
Likewise, if some social change or technology renders the legal regime that the Supreme Court has created a cause of serious dysfunction, then Supreme Court is going to have to change that regime to accommodate. Idealism's great, but not when it doesn't work.
Yes, this is true as far as I am aware as well. But I find myself in a conundrum; had this "inciting" speech taken place in the town square or a public park, much of it likely could not have been censored because it would have been protected by the 1st amendment and the last 100 years of case law. Where, then, is the town square and public park of 2021?
Despite the fact that the legal protections of public speech haven't changed much in decades, the practical protections of public speech (as I discuss in greater detail in [1]) have indeed been eroded, because social media platforms and, apparently, web hosting and device makers are now the arbiters of the vast majority of speech. Free speech that only applies where virtually noone can hear you is a very limited free speech indeed.
The existence of Twitter, Facebook, etc. have accustomed people to the ability to air their opinions globally free of charge, however that is a very novel phenomenon. It's hard for me, having come of age in the 1980s/1990s, to see this as an inalienable right.
I think it should at least be a line open to challenge without being accused of being brainwashed. If that line cannot be questioned, we're skating on dogmatism. There are very few good reasons for a special guarantee of free speech (versus, say, a special guarantee to be able to eat fries) which stand up to closer scrutiny.
The only convincing reason for a constitutional guarantee to freedom of speech is mistrust in the government, but again, that depends where you draw the line. Food regulation is arguably just as important in our lives, but few mistrust the FDA as to call for its abolition, or propose a constitutional amendment banning all regulation of foods.
This isn't a matter of what the law is, it's a matter of what the law should be - whether it's a constitutional law or not.
However, I want to repeat what I have already replied to another similar post.
All these speech crimes should be punished according to the law, as soon as they are committed.
Restricting the speech of someone, by denying access to publication media, just because it is believed that they might commit some speech crime in the future, that is clearly an arbitrary and baseless restriction of the free speech right.
If I threaten to kill you, or commit fraud, in person, you call the police, give them what information you have about me, and ideally I get a knock on the door. If I do it online, well, you don't have much recourse.
If the author can be identified, which is frequently true, then it should be the same for online as for in person.
Saying things like "I support Nazis" could be considered a valid political opinion protected by free speech in some countries and illegal hate speech in others.