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Comment by AzzieElbab | Hacker News Reader

wonder how this is going to play out if Trump decides to run again and more states adopt Florida style regulations against banning political candidates

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Such regulations are flagrantly violating First Amendment rights of freedom of association and freedom from compelled speech.

The white elephant in the room here is section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If that was to be repealed things like the possibility of being liable for defamation on the site would level the playing field.

The way it currently is, there is not a check and balance in the system and it has allowed one side to gain a lot more power which is a bad thing. While those on that side feel they are on the "right" side, that power imbalance has corrupted that side like any form of absolute power tends to do.

> If that was to be repealed things like the possibility of being liable for defamation on the site would level the playing field.

Giving the platforms still more reasons to ban people they deem liabilities? Not sure what your argument is.

Is it unconstitutional for the government to tell tobacco companies they can't advertise to children?

There are laws that the phone company can't discriminate who can use their service. Is that unconstitutional too?

People have had very broad interpretations for what constitutes corporate first amendment protections recently.

I agree that they are unconstitutional, but public accommodation laws are theoretically unconstitutional in the same way, by the same amendment, and provide precedent. So their flagrancy is no guarantee that they will be overruled.

Here's a current Supreme Court justice making that argument:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/040521zor_32...

“Even if digital platforms are not close enough to common carriers, legislatures might still be able to treat digital platforms like places of public accommodation. Although definitions between jurisdictions vary, a company ordinarily is a place of public accommodation if it provides ‘lodging, food, entertainment, or other services to the public … in general ... Twitter and other digital platforms bear resemblance to that definition.” -- Clarence Thomas

And Clarence Thomas also believes that the doctrine of incorporation is incorrect, so the Bill of Rights doesn't actually encumber state or local governments in any way. The other 8 justices on the Supreme Court and pretty much the rest of the legal profession disagrees. Note that no other justice signed onto Thomas's opinion here.

Even if you were to agree with his opinion in full, you'd still find these state laws to be in violation, since they would be preempted by §230 in federal law, and the Constitution affirms that federal law supersedes state law wherever the two conflict.

Depends if you see organizations as persons with rights or not. I'd hardly say that anyone's rights were trampled on if an "association" with almost 3 billion people sharing content like Facebook is regulated a bit.

as far as I know these regulations have not been legally contested

I expect those regulations to be found unconstitutional.

Florida doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning in court.

They will let Trump back on and breathe a big sigh of relief because now it's out of their hands.

or pay the fines to make political statement. Going to get interesting

I wonder if I am getting downvoted by the FB oversight board :)

I'll bite, I down voted because you seem excited about the inevitable clash between laws that are almost certainly unconstitutional/ill conceived/partisan, and social media companies.

It seems like a gigantic waste of time, at best, to try and enact and enforce those laws. Also, it's going to open a gnarly can of worms when someone weaponizes them by running for office to get themselves unbanned from a platform.

One could argue that the spirit of the first amendment is being violated given a) digital speech is the most(only) form of speech that matters today, and b) digital speech is monopolized. However, to me personally, the most interesting aspect of this whole thing is what will happen next

It is instructive to remember that the first five words of the First Amendment are "Congress shall make no law"

IMHO, the first five words make no sense without rest of the sentence. It is like Knuth quote about "root of all evil".

"The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".

The full text is:

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Note that "abridging the freedom of speech" is preceded by "or", so consequently, "Congress shall make no law" also must apply to "abridging the freedom of speech" or else the sentence makes no grammatical sense. To interpret it as you do would be to violate one of the canons of construction.

I pasted it from the US Congress site. Anyway, no matter how you cut it, it does not say Congress shall outsource all freedom of speech decisions to a private monopoly and its highly partisan oversight board.

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