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Comment by tunesmith | Hacker News Reader

I can't even have a strong opinion on this one, it seems like one of the central wedge issues of the internet age. I just hope the Supreme Court wrestles with this responsibly and looks past whatever automatic biases they have, because this one is hard. Trolling and harrassment is weaponized and automated in a way that was never possible before, and it still seems just about impossible to reliably define what is critique vs what is abuse. I suppose the only path is the one that looks at it in terms of behavior rather than content.

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> I suppose the only path is the one that looks at it in terms of behavior rather than content.

This is a key point that I hope they recognize and carefully consider. The difference between speech and behavior. In meatspace, these are different things, so the government can punish someone for their behavior but cannot punish someone for their speech. Online, speech and behavior are the same thing. So when someone gets blocked for, say, spamming the n-word over and over, are you blocking them for their speech or for their behavior? The blocker will claim it's for their behavior, and the blockee will claim he was censored because of his speech. Who's right?

It's clearly speech. Were the content of their speech different, there would be no ban. Or is there some means of behaving where they could relay that message to their governmental twitter account without a block?

At the extreme end of the spectrum, if every hour I repeatedly posted to Barack Obama's twitter: "NI---R NI---R NI---R NI---R NI---R NI---R NI---R NI---R NI---R NI---R NI---R NI---R NI---R" over and over, would that be speech or misbehavior? At some point, online conduct crosses the line from criticism (speech) to disruption/DOS (behavior).

> At some point, online conduct crosses the line from criticism (speech) to disruption/DOS (behavior).

Then it's up to the social media company to decide what to do about it. Twitter has a First Amendment of association. Twitter can ban the comments, or leave them up, or do anything in between. If Barack Obama were currently a government official, Obama would have latitude to ask Twitter to restrict N-word comments on his posts, but the First Amendment would prohibit him from coercing Twitter to restrict N-word comments, and would also prohibit him from blocking the commenters.

Note: Twitter has a First Amendment right to ban speech, not only conduct. "Has a right" doesn't mean "should", but in the first place the featured article is about a legal issue, not an ethical issue.

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