Hacker News Reader

Comment by zakk | Hacker News Reader

Free speech does not mean that private and personal data can be made public.

Posting your bank account statement on Twitter is not free speech.

If your bank account statement was publicly available would it be though? Because that's where they are getting the flight records they are rebroadcasting.

No, free speech just means that the government does not restrict your speech, it has nothing to do with what a private corporation does. Twitter can censor anything it wants and it does not impede free speech at all.

Your are mixing up the first amendment with the broader idea of free speech.

The 1A (roughly speaking) limits the scope of the Government as not too limit free speech.

Twitter, as a private company, is not restricted by the first amendment. However, one can note that Twitter does not allow free speech.

This is quite important from a legal standpoint, because since Twitter practices censorship of ideas they don’t like, they are no longer considered a common carrier.

There are huge legal ramifications of this!

No, I am not mixing up anything. The broader idea of free speech is just an idea, it has no legal basis. The only legal basis is the first amendment. The only Justice that seems to think common carrier applies to twitter at all is Thomas and his neutrality appears to be very suspect at best. Twitter was never a common carrier, the Trumps Right wing simply wants to paint it as one. I think it appears you are misunderstanding what a common carrier is, if they are not a common carrier, they have no requirement to enforce free speech. Twitter is not and has never been one.

Yes, you are mixing up two different ideas.

Free speech is a very well defined concept, as done by literally hundreds of political science scholars. The fact that the US Constitution applies it only to the Government does not mean it cannot be discussed in a different context. For instance I would like new regulations to extend free speech outside the scope of the First Amendment. This is an extremely well defined politica stance.

You seem to agree that Twitter is NOT a common carrier, and then it must be treated as an editor. This would imply that they are responsible for the tweet they decide to publish.

These are exactly the far-reaching legal ramifications of free speech (outside Government) that I was mentioning.

What you are discussing in regards to free speech is again, by your admission, just a concept, not a law. All that matters is the law. Until its made law it has no bearing on the actions of a company. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act means that whether you want to call them an editor or whatever, legally they are not responsible. The law is the law until it is changed, everything else is just an opinion.

I sincerely hope you are joking.

People can discuss things that are not law.

One can point out, for instance, that Twitter is not a free speech platform, and this is bad for many reasons.

One can comment on laws, proposing to extend legal protections to different sectors.

I hope your conversations are not solely based on current law, that must be pretty boring.

(You interpretation of Section 230 is shaky at least)

I think we may have a failure to communicate. This entire thread is predicated on you stating that "This is quite important from a legal standpoint, because since Twitter practices censorship of ideas they don’t like, they are no longer considered a common carrier. There are huge legal ramifications of this!" That's the entire central premise of the discussion. You are the one that brought up the legal aspect of it. Anyone can discuss anything in a conversation, it still does not change that its only a conversation, it does not affect the laws that govern how a company can be run.

Edit: Note - I am not blaming you for the communication breakdown, it seems that perhaps we were both coming at this from different sides and may have missed each others points. Either way, wish you all the best.

Elon’s flight records are public, but the account aggregated them and made them available to the public in a different form.

A better example would be: a Twitter account reports your position when you are in a public space every five minutes, including pictures of you at the bar, jogging, on a date at a restaurant, etc…

All of these are public informations, but the way they are aggregated amounts to stalking in my opinion.

I admit this is very borderline, tough!

Publishing distasteful things or things we don't agree with is free speech.

If saying anything wasn't a problem we wouldn't even think of the concept of free speech.

Twitter is not free speech platform and that is okay.

No, it's not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

That was my philosophical take. Wikipedia simply describes how speech is treated today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com