Ok genuine question there: are companies considered the same as people when it comes to US Constitution? Does a company have free speech and the right to bear arms?
This is such a dangerous line of thought I almost don’t believe it.
Users original comment mentioned impact on society.
- You give up your second amendment rights when you enter a school or hospital.
- You give up privacy rights when you go through security screenings.
- You give up rights to a law suit when you sign a liability release at a climbing gym.
User also modified his original comment from “impact on society” to nothing to “in the interest of others rights”. Also all word for word with the current blitz on constitutional rights.
Interesting
I was interested and tried to google that word for word, only thing that showed up was this thread. So it isn't word for word the same.
I'm not necessarily arguing X/Twitter is in the same league as a power company but this line of thought has many precedents.
This is highly revelational and currently being litigated with the most recent decision that it was in fact unconstitutional.
I guess to anyone who hadn't had experience with moderating a popular social media platform or talked to anyone who has. Was that really so shocking?
> it was in fact unconstitutional
Nice of the government to step up to the plate and give those of us who've been on the corporate side of this some guidance, for once. Most of what companies get from Congress and the Court is radio silence on the topic (ironically, I suspect, so the government isn't credibly accused of violating a corporation's First Amendment rights by telling them how they can and cannot moderate). So it's nice for the courts to step up and tell companies that the thing the executive said they had to do, no, they don't have to do; that'll be helpful moving forward.
Missouri v biden
This is not really what the decision states. The government can request all it wants but it cannot partake in "threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech".
I'm personally OK with the government requesting things to be moderated; I'm not OK with the aforementioned methods if the request isn't backed by law.
Here's a flowchart: https://publichealthlawcenter.org/sites/default/files/resour...
And then you can look up the cases to see the logic behind them.
(More generally, however: there's lots of compelled commercial speech that doesn't fit into this flowchart. Taxes, commercial permits, leases, etc. I think one could make a strong argument that this law is strictly logistical in nature and represents no more of a 1A risk than Twitter's commercial leases do.)
If not, then no...
If you don't they are not a person.
If that discrepancy doesn't feel unjust to you should do some soul searching maybe and maybe look at other places where corporation profit from their "personhood" without ever having to experience the negatives of actually being one.
I didn't come up with the totally bonkers idea of declaring some organizational entity a person, so don't expect me to defend the logical conclusions stemming from it.
X or musk's will? If X has a "say" on a "speech platform" that's a major power imbalance.
Not that X's speech is this or that, but that it shouldn't exist on it's own. Musk or anyone may speak on behalf of X, but if there is no "on behalf of" there should be no speech there.
Speech as in, to put forth opinion, ideology, values or anything beyond simply being silent and letting everyone else (users, which includes those who may speak on behalf of) speak.