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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

The same. If he is seditious you can get a court to issue an injunction very quickly, and if he isn't a private entity has no issue determining what a politician can say.

As a German one thinks different about free speech than do most Americans. We know all too well where too much free speech leads and when in doubt let the courts decide because we love public peace.

Putting a muzzle on someone is interfering with political expression, which is a constitutional right. A monopolist like Twitter has no business interpreting the constitution, the issue would have to see its day in court.

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Twitter is not a monopoly by any stretch. Regulating how sites handle speech just adds an additional hurdle for new, better platforms to enter. I should not have to have an expensive lawyer on retainer to read injunction requests just for running a <$2/month IRC server because some random important/popular people decided to use publish their manifesto on it.

This has already been tested in court in the Prager University vs Google, LLC [1] trial and was resolved very quickly. Freedom of speech does not mean another individual has to assist you in publishing or advertising your speech. You are free to shout from a soap box but no one has to provide you that soap box.

I really think people over emphasize the power that social media sites have. They own a lot of eyeball market share but they do not have the power to prevent you from publishing your opinions. Anyone can make their own website, their own Mastadon instance (see Gab if you want proof), their own Peertube instance, a lot of work is done by the open source community to make it easy to publish content not reliant on large corporations.

>I really think people over emphasize the power that social media sites have.

You say, in the midst of a discussion amongst an international userbase on the political ramifications of a policy decision.

Let's be real about this. Social media, when you really look at it, propagates signal that makes remote events local in terms of sphere of influence. Any content can touch anyone, the globe over assuming an internet connection.

Frankly, and I apologize if this is out of turn, but I think you underestimate the power behind choosing what conversations won't take place.

Just look at the big difference that a U.S. Senate Majority leader can have in terms of the realistic chance of something being discussed.

Never, ever, underestimate the power of negation or deprioritization. In fact, it's a little funny, because being in the position to make those decisions at all is really the common definition of power/authority.

> Twitter is not a monopoly by any stretch.

Considering that Parler was curbstomped by Google/Apple/AWS last week, it's safe to say that Twitter doesn't operate in a naturally competitive market.

Parlor was incredibly lazy and opportunistic. The massive data leak and slamming by one of the most notorious sites on the internet, The Pirate Bay, suggests strongly that Parlor was not pursued in the most competent manor. [1] [2]

There are dozens of webhosts other than Google/Apple/AWS and plenty of ways to collocate directly. Even if you wanted to host something no provider could touch, you could publish a front

Picking some of the most recognizable and PR influenced companies in the world to host your publicly and deliberately controversial content is just plain stupid. They could have just seen how the pirate bay responded and copied them. Heck, since Parlor didn't host anything actually illegal, they could have potentially used the .swiss or .ch TLD since Switzerland has pretty strong anti-censorship laws.

[1] https://archive.vn/yrlwA [2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/14/pirate_bay_cofounder_...

They're not a monopoly in the strictest sense, but they are extremely powerful. People go to Twitter to see what their representatives are saying. Journalists use it almost exclusively to discover what's relevant. Yes, they're a private company, but when a private company reaches a certain level of influence they become a government of sorts, just not one that owns a standing army.

I think you underestimate the power that social media has. The mass 80% doesn't give a fuck about Mastodon or even leave the domains of Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Amazon. This isn't the year 2004 - getting anyone to use a shitty knockoff of Twitter or the like is always going to be an uphill battle. It's due to a few things, namely an accumulation of wealth and confluence with the mainstream media apparatus that wants access to that wealth by proxy. Go ahead and make your own competitor to Twitter and report back to us in a year. Don't be surprised when the MSM labels it in a way that scares off the 80-90%.

To be clear, there is no serious interpretation of the US Constitution required here: Twitter absolutely has the right to determine what shows up on their website. For the government to require Twitter to publish the opinions of the president would be a very clear violation of Twitter’s own first amendment rights.

There could be more nuance involved if, for example, there were a credible claim of racial discrimination involved, but that’s obviously not the case here.

The problem with this argument is that it completely sidesteps the issue of how much platforms like Twitter and FB possess quasi-monopolies in their respective niches. In fact, perhaps Twitter's biggest competitor just got shut down by Amazon.

This effectively means that we are back to the old days of newspapers first, then radio, and finally TV, where a small number of media companies control what people read, hear, and see. Except, this time the power is concentrated in even fewer hands.

This raises the question of whether something should be done to turn a service like Twitter into content-agnostic platforms that can no longer decide at their own discretion what even the world's highest elected officials can and cannot say.

If twitter was hoarding ip addresses so that parlor couldn't be hosted, or somehow preventing competitors from entering the space... ? I just don't see it. DT could put together one of the most popular websites on the internet in a day or two if he put a single user microblog up. All the media would eat it up. Better pick a swiss host though!

Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey has repeatedly been summoned before Congress to be dressed-down by legislators, who regularly threaten to "do something" that increases Twitter's liabilities or otherwise encumbers their business, if Twitter doesn't change their internal policies. In some cases, it's been suggested that discretionary government powers under existing laws could be used to reward or punish Twitter. Twitter's been the topic of executive orders & criticism from the FCC chair.

If Twitter'd been left to do anything it thought legal and wise, and only challenged via formal lawsuits or prosecutions that courts could rule on, then sure, Twitter can do whatever they want.

But now that politicians, elected officeholders, & appointed regulators have all piled-on with their opinions of what Twitter should do, "or else", might there be some government-restricting-expression issues to consider? Is it a coincidence that they only took strong action against Trump once he became a "lame duck", and the action they took will specifically please the incoming administrations' coalition?

Has the government found the perfect 1st Amendment loophole, by laundering their speech-restricting preferences through threats – "because of the implication" – while maintaining a facade of non-involvement in this "private" decision?

I wonder how he has handled the shutdowns, at a personal level (photo from november):

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/jack-d...

Twitter also has the right to avoid scrutiny as a publisher by being a public forum. They are not acting as a public forum, however. This isn't going to be straightforward. Laws (or regullations), or Twitter's behavior, will have to change.

Agree with how you put this.

Just a reminder to readers that the First Amendment prevents govt (Congress, and the States) from making laws that abridge freedom of speech.

It governs the government, state actors, not Twitter or other private companies or individuals. If you are not a state actor and you want to limit speech, go bananas.

For example, think back to the Google memo, and misconception of free speech at work. This 2017 article calls the misunderstanding “tremendous”:

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/08...

Outlined: https://outline.com/2udPxF

Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20200125155407/https://www.washi...

His speech has not been restricted in any real way. He can call a press conference and communicate with every American within minutes.

I am not from US, but would like to point you are wrong about that.

He can call a conference, but the press is not obliged to show up.

https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/cnn-white-house-press-confe...

And since that in 2017, when they figured they could skip his press conferences, it has becoming more and more normal, if I remember correctly he announced a press conference only some days ago and it was ignored by almost all major media corporations with a few exceptions (Fox for example aired him).

The lack of press coverage of the Trump Administration may also be attributed to the administration reducing the frequency and value of press briefings. This is an article from 2018 and I would put money on it having only gotten worse since.

https://qz.com/1503024/2018-was-the-year-the-white-house-pre...

He can publish video or any content he wants on whitehouse.gov; I'm sure he would get millions of views overnight.

The White House needs to build a healthy relationship with the press.

Why would you expect them to come the moment you want them after blasting them as fake news, and kicking them out when you dislike their questions?

Good for them, no point going to a press conference where a rude orange man just insults you screaming Lügenpresse.

I don't think I'm the only one who switches channels whenever that man is on.

Rightfully so. A free press is at the core of America’s values. Free thinking, free to ask questions, free to investigate. If an administration wants to deny the press, blast them as fakes, ignore their questions, personally attack journalists, then I’m all for those journalists to skip whatever he has to say.

All Trump has to do in order to gain a press audience is pause while walking to his helicopter.

Your link says that one agency (CNN) declined to broadcast one press conference. What about all the other statements and speeches? What about all the other media outlets?

People keep saying this, but how would that work? We've seen major broadcasting networks refuse to air his press conferences before. Aren't most big platforms with the ability to reach "every American" private companies that can do the same?

This is a genuine question - I do not watch a lot of news. Is there a government owned platform that I don't know about? I just looked into CSPAN a bit and it is a private organization, so couldn't they also just decide to not air things?

edit: I am referring to the claim that "He can call a press conference and communicate with every American within minutes." How?

Are presidents entitled to be broadcast on private networks?

You seem to conflate the right to speech with the right to be heard.

No one in America has the latter.

While those might be private companies and therefore not required to air anything from anyone, the same goes for the people that would watch/read it: even if someone were to post something on twitter, nobody is required to then actually read it.

Well the one lie we like to tell ourselves (I am an American) is that if Twitter/Facebook/Amazon/Google takes action against someone we don't like we don't run afoul of pesky First Amendment and other issues.

However we are fooling ourselves because these companies very much are bending to political pressure and acting on the behalf of that. You can pretty much try to throw up all the exceptions to that claim you want but in the end you a few issues which show it, first being they don't want to invite further regulatory control over their industry, second they don't want legal liability for actions of those who use their platforms, third they respond to the whims of their management and to a certain point their employees on who they let use their systems.

People must recognize that politicians exert undo influence over all businesses simply because they can change the law and regulatory structure they operate under. It easily explains why so many politicians move into cushy business jobs in not slot their friends and family into the same. Its the cost of doing business. Established political players simply have too much power.

Why would Twitter request a court to issue an injunction to remove him from the platform that they own and control? They're fully able to do some without an injunction so I'm not sure any court would even deal with the case. IANAL

It's not about Twitter's ability to ban users it's about enabling them avoid a substantial expansion of their moderation responsibilities. Twitter considers it a positive thing to have transparent and relatively equitably-applied rules, and this is an obvious positive for its users, and society in general (given how central Twitter has become to national discourse). Capricious one-off expansions that are difficult to justify generally (or that would require massive increases in moderation that pretty much everyone would hate) are the last thing Twitter wants.

Well our laws and legal traditions are a bit different than Germany’s Basic Law and Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch.

In our case Twitter’s private property rights trump the President’s rights. The President is the President and the President can always get a message out if he wants; Twitter on the other hand is not obligated to serve as a medium of Government communications and if they had IP banned the White House and Capitol at any point in their history, and maybe IP banned the equivalents in other countries, who would be able to say they couldn’t?

Yes, but I think the problem is more that we have a massively connected society but are relying on the good will of corporations to provide that connectivity.

Repubs always hated public broadcasting, championing the free market to take care of journalism. Companies think Trump is toxic for their brand- surprised pikachu.

I'm not really championing public broadcasting here either.

But in an internet-enabled world, in a country that values the right to free speech, there should be wholly unbiased platform that allows anyone to promote their speech to anyone else who wants to listen, as long as it is not speech that is already considered illegal (as decided by the courts, not unnamed corporate arbiters of truth).

People keep making the argument that "free speech isn't the same as right to have a platform / be signal boosted" or whatever, and I think that was true in the past. When the most you could do to broadcast was stand on the street corner and yell out your speech, that idea applied. But in this day and age, information flow is so strong that someone who has their broadcasting ability cut off effectively has their speech cut off.

Imagine trying to exercise your free speech in a world where, whenever you tried to say something, there was someone there to just yell 1000x louder than you so that you were totally drowned out. In a world where so much of our communication is happening over internet channels, this is essentially what we're talking about when we "deplatform" someone.

It is still possible to register a domain name, run a web host, and present your speech to the unbiased, (nearly) global, public internet.

If you will indulge a bit of doomsaying, three recent trends should be more worrying to you:

- The current administration's actions against net neutrality

- ISP terms of use clauses against running any kind of server on "residential" connections

- "unlimited [insert streaming service] included!" data plans

Debate over where twitter should ban any users is wasteful bike-shedding in the conversation around modern communication.

Are you familiar with the comedy of horrors that late night public access broadcast was? Not saying it shouldn't be done, but let's set realistic expectations: nobody is going to want to use a government website to exercise their speech, especially because of the types of speech it will be used by. (Unappealing, basically.)

Part of life is that unless you live miles from others and hunt, forage and fish, you are pretty much always relying on the goodwill of others. I don’t want to start designating some corporations as special just because we happen to like their service a lot, and part of just how unspecial they are is they remain mere private entities carrying out their own activities including enforcing their own property rights.

As an American, I respect the German perspective on what these liberties mean to civilization. We cannot bend the protections based on our personal beliefs. The structure and what it protects is more important than the specific case. When we subvert it, even from righteous causes, we break the system for everyone.

Any company can ban anyone from their platform if they violate their ToS.

If you don't agree, then you can go to court.

Eg. Otherwise Twitter would have to go to court to remove potential bots. Which would result in millions of lawsuits across countries.

That's not realistic

I absolutely agree with this line of reasoning. Thank you.

Twitter isn't deciding what Donald Trump says, it's deciding what he says on their website.

I wouldn't allow Donald Trump to give a speech from my backyard -- that's not an impingement on his rights.

> If he is seditious you can get a court to issue an injunction very quickly

Maybe courts work differently in Germany, but one word I would absolutely never use to describe them is "quick".

Furthermore, courts in the US tend to be extremely skeptical of what is called "prior restrain". And describing what ought to be proscribed is especially complicated by Trumps use of innuendo and circumspection. He almost never says anything directly, even when it's pretty much apolitical - see for instance him explaining what Uranium is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCnKtzQpCSs

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