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Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

> everyone wants to moderate

For a privately owned website, moderation is not a violation of anyone's freedom of speech. Your freedom of speech does not give you the right to insist that you can post on a website that I own. If I don't like what you say on my website, I can ban you. You can go get your own website if you want a place to say what you want.

These cases are specifically about government officials and how they manage their accounts on social media platforms. What I find disappointing is that nobody appears to be talking about the obvious solution: an official's personal account should only be for personal posts. If the government they are officials of wants an official account to post official statements on, they should set up a separate one solely for that purpose. Then the whole issue the court is trying to deal with here would evaporate.

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> For a privately owned website, moderation is not a violation of anyone's freedom of speech

It’s not a violation of the First Amendment. It is a curtailment of someone’s freedom of speech.

> an official's personal account should only be for personal posts. If the government they are officials of wants an official account to post official statements on, they should set up a separate one solely for that purpose

These rulings effectively say that if you taint your personal account with official business, you have to treat it like an official account. That should lead to a best practice as you describe.

> It is a curtailment of someone’s freedom of speech.

The right to a venue and the right to speak are two entirely different things.

> right to a venue and the right to speak are two entirely different things

They’re both components of the freedom of speech.

The origin of our modern tradition of free speech is tied to Parliament, where the right to speak and venue were inextricably intertwined [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Right,_1689 No. 9

You don't have the right to speak from my porch. You don't have the right to speak on my website.

They are not components of the freedom of speech when talking about private property.

> don't have the right to speak from my porch

I agree.

> not components of the freedom of speech when talking about private property

Of course it is. We don’t have an absolute right to freedom of speech. That doesn’t change the fact that we are curtailing one person’s freedom of speech in favour of your property rights.

You never had the freedom. You can't curtail something that never existed.

The Declaration of Right, No. 9, said that members of Parliament have freedom of speech in Parliament--i.e., in the meeting place of the public body they are members of. That is very different from claiming the right to speak in a private venue you don't own.

> very different from claiming the right to speak in a private venue you don't own

Sure, I wasn’t taking it to say that. My point was just that venue has been at the heart of freedom of speech since its modern invention.

The philosophy of freedom of speech applies to both public and private spheres. The First Amendment does not.

> These rulings effectively say that if you taint your personal account with official business, you have to treat it like an official account.

I didn't gather a rule that simple from the rulings; to me the rule they described looked more like "if you are a government official and you have an account, and anyone sues you for deleting their posts or banning them, courts will have to do a complicated analysis of what you posted that the person suing you was responding to, to see whether it counts as official or not--and oh by the way, Ninth/Sixth Circuit, you are now on the hook to do that".

Also, even if we take the rule as you state it, it still is not what I was describing. What I was describing is: don't taint your personal account with official business in the first place. The government you work for should establish separate official accounts for official business.

> For a privately owned website, moderation is not a violation of anyone's freedom of speech. Your freedom of speech does not give you the right to insist that you can post on a website that I own. If I don't like what you say on my website, I can ban you. You can go get your own website if you want a place to say what you want.

Precisely this! Posting something to Facebook is not like talking on the telephone. It is like writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper. In both cases, a moderator reviews the content and decides what to publish. In the newspaper’s case, it takes a long time plus manual review, and in Facebook’s case, it’s automated and nearly instant (with follow-up automatic or manual moderation). But the mechanic is the same.

Same on HN. When I hit the “reply” button now, I am requesting HN to please post this comment, but if they don’t want it here, they are well within their rights to nuke it.

I agree with everything you wrote here, but the reality is, a lot of people don't care about freedom of speech for website owners.

I also agree with your point about officials using social media, but the post I was responding to was reflecting on the philosophy of free speech on the internet in general.

> Your freedom of speech does not give you the right to insist that you can post on a website that I own

Thats depends.

For example, in california, private shopping malls are required by law to allow political speech and protest.

This is the case even though they are a private company.

There are absolutely all sorts of ways that private companies can be forced by the government to allow certain speech.

Go look up robin vs pruneyards.

And we can make even more laws that are similar to that existing one that forces private companies to not ban certain speech.

If you don’t mention that PruneYard 1) interpreted the California constitution, not the First Amendment and 2) does not have any relationship to a coherent speech product you are either being intentionally misleading or you lack sufficient context to make sense of the law in this area.

I was quite clear.

This was my main statement:

"There are absolutely all sorts of ways that private companies can be forced by the government to allow certain speech.".

This point stands and is absolutely true.

I never mentioned anything about the first amendment. So whatever you think about that is completely made up in your head, and if anything that is you being disingenuous.

Instead, I quite clearly was talking about the free speech rights in California that were covered by that court case.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the first amendment, other than the implicit statement that yes the government can force private companies to host certain speech in certain circumstances.

So my original statement stands and you have not directly disagreed with it in any way.

> interpreted the California constitution

I am not sure if you even read my post now.

I literally said "in California".

Why not explain why you're talking about a shopping mall in a thread about online social media platforms?

You could have just read my post to get the answer to this question.

I put the details right in there.

But here is the reason from my original comment: "This is the case even though they are a private company.".

It is because shopping malls are a private company.

Therefore, there are cases where it can be legal for the government to force private companies to allow certain speech.

Also, please directly acknowledge that I mentioned California in my original comment and that you just ignored that part for some reason in an incorrect attempt at a disagreement.

I expect you are just going to jump to another unrelated question or disagreement and not acknowledge that now both of your questions could have been answered by just reading my comment, instead of intentionally misunderstanding it.

Finally, you didn't directly say whether you agreed or disagreed with my central point which was this:

"There are absolutely all sorts of ways that private companies can be forced by the government to allow certain speech.".

I will assume this means that you have no disagreement with me in any way on this point because you just ignored it.

I disagree with the proposition that a person should be mis-citing irrelevant cases. My position that private companies can make editorial decisions to craft a coherent speech product in the commercial marketplace is well-staked.

> My position that private companies can make editorial decisions

Since you just ignored my content without a quote anything, does that mean that yes you agree that private companies can be forced to host certain speech in some circumstances? (Circumstances, like for example what was in pruneyard, or similar?)

You ignored this point again, so it seems like you agree with it but don't want to admit it.

> mis-citing irrelevant cases

It's not a miscite.

The purpose of referencing that case is to prove that yes private companies, in some circumstances can be forced to host certain speech.

Which you have not disagreed with yet. Therefore it's not a mis cite.

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