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Comment by russell_h | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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!

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...

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.

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