Florida asks Supreme Court if it's OK to ban content moderation it doesn't like The State of Florida has asked the US Supreme Court to affirm that its social media law SB 7072, which bars online platforms from removing speech they don't want, meets constitutional free speech guarantees. SB 7072, signed into law on May 24, 2021, prevents internet platforms from booting off political candidates, restricts …
"You can't fix stupid" ... but stupid responses can be very educational, helping the observers get an idea of what is going on even if nobody is discussing it. For example, reading the comments in El Reg articles and observing the upvotes vs the downvotes gives me some ideas about what people are thinking. I'm not upset when I get a few downvotes because I simply see it as showing me how people I don't work with in any way are seeing things - that's very educational.
Look at the original descriptions for the "major advantages" of Brexit and what has happened since then for example - we now need to do a lot of work to get everything running again because the original discussion totally ignored all the downvotes - it would have been very helpful if we had all listened, not just ignored what we didn't like.
Yes, if the law is upheld and foreign company operates in the state where the law is present, they would become subject to it. The state could charge them with violations and issue penalties. The company could get away with ignoring the law if they had nothing available for that state to seize (any money or business assets in U.S. jurisdiction, likely), but if that was the case, the company wouldn't be making any profit from the market and probably wouldn't enter it.
In summary, if this law gets upheld, it's bad news for everyone no matter what country the company's based in. That includes these forums, incidentally.
A foreign government-owned news outlet also wants to take on the burden of running a social media system, including proper moderation, while a different government attempts legal action against them? Good luck finding that. If you do, it's likely a government that wants to push its own propaganda, which means its moderation is probably quite bad.
"foreign company operates in the state where the law is present,"
Has anyone come up with a good definition of just what this means yet?
Does having to use a VPN and pretend to be from a different country count? After all I would be in the state when I did it. What about location of servers?
The government of the state would likely try to include it, but most likely, the bar would end up being higher. If they sell ads, charge users, or otherwise make a profit from activities in the state, have physical property (offices, data centers, CDN endpoints) in the state, or put any corporate entities in the state, the law probably can be applied on them.
Yeah, actually, Social Media companies are a glaring exception there, as their revenue stems from slinging ads AT people, not taking taking cash from them directly.
The only major problems with slinging ads into a region you are non-compliant in are getting blocked, and potentially having trouble getting payments from businesses based in the nation in question. That wouldn't stop local advertisers willing to bend the rules or pay the fines/bribes. Even in the US, the people pushing these laws accept both.
Meta/Face literally did this. All over the world. For years.
There are two issues: does the law apply if upheld and will it be followed. My comment is just whether it applies (yes, though by the votes on this comment, this seems unpopular*). I doubt it would be used as actively as the state governments would want, because it's rather authoritarian. Many companies would probably try to ignore it, and depending on how willing the state government is to annoy the users of the service, they may not put the resources in to prosecutions.
* I'm curious why those who have downvoted my original post. I don't support these laws and I think they should obviously be dismissed by the courts. Do you think I got the hypothetical legal situation if they were upheld wrong? From the replies, I don't see what the disagreement is.
Yes, I don't understand the flurry of downvotes either. While I don't believe the situation is quite that clear-cut, I'm also sure that if the Florida AG, for example, got his knickers in a twist over something a foreign social-media company did, he'd show little restraint in filing suit – regardless of its likelihood of achieving anything beyond perhaps scoring him some political points with the stupider sector of the Florida electorate.
I suspect most foreign-owned companies would ignore it.
That's also what would likely happen if the Florida you-must-print-stupid law came into conflict with local laws. For example, I don't think I could announce to the Reg that I was a candidate for some political office and thereby compel them to let me publish libel here in the comments section.
It's not that there wouldn't be content moderation, some sort of free-for-all. It's that only *Republican* *approved* content moderation rules would be permitted.
Republicans enshrined 3 laws so far in Florida to ban discussion of topics in schools (aka 'Don't say gay', 'don't say racism', 'stop woke act')
So, for example, 'stop woke act' they described as:
"In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida." "By signing this legislation, which is the first in the nation to end corporate wokeness and Critical Race Theory in our schools, we are prioritizing education not indoctrination .."
So you cannot teach about Jim Crow laws, Disney cannot have a black mermaid because its not an authentic mermaid, and they don't even pretend its not a political law, they literally say its an anti-left-wing agenda law.
So, no discussion of abortion rights,
no discussion of Jim Crow laws,
no discussion of evolution,
no discussion of Paleontology,
no discussion of radioactive decay (how dare you suggest the universe is older than the bible!)
So, on the one hand you have Republicans trying to get the power to ban moderation for their stuff, "e.g. FBI planted the documents at Mar-a-Lago", "Trump won 2020", "Cuban immigrants eat diced aborted babies" and other random hate stuff....and on the other you have them passing laws applying their own content moderation to replace it.
"Disney cannot have a black mermaid because its not an authentic mermaid"
1. Mermaids do not exist so making any of them authentic is rather difficult
2. Forget about the colour of the non-existent mermaid what about the total distortion of the tale she came from?
The United States isn't a democracy. İt was founded as a republic, and if you read the Federalist Papers written by Hamilton, Madison and Jay (three of the founding fathers), they clearly stated that it was not to represent the "majority". İt's a weird, paternalistic system that was supposed to be run by a rich elite.
""Republic" is not a useful word, basically meaning anything that is not a monarchy."
On the contrary, "republic" is a very specific and very useful word, derived from the Roman/ Latin "res publica" . It means "for the public good". The modern usage HAS been distorted, and it's very possible for a democracy to not act for the public good. Just as it is possible for a dictator* to act in the public good.
*Incidentally also an excellent Roman concept that has been distorted in modernity, since Roman dictators had term limits to their dictatorship
"Derived from" is not the same as "currently means". For example "derive" is from the latin "rivus", meaning stream, but I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to tell us that "republic" flows from a literal stream.
"Republic" is any form of government where power is derived from and/or held by the people and their representatives, usually as opposed to some hereditary or otherwise exclusive elite. A "democracy" is a form of government where power is assigned by some mechanism of popular vote. As any twelve year old civics student will be able to tell you, these can and often do overlap.
Thus anyone loudly (and it is always loudly) declaring that "the US is not a democracy, it's a republic" is probably a bit dim.
Plenty of Libertarians use the same talking points, and while many do read a a lot, while they may not be "dim" they may not be the sharpest either.
One of the problems is that this stuff gets packaged up by sharp propagandists. Kind of like one of those cakes that looks exactly like a hotdog, but is 75% fondant and frosting by weight.
At the surface, convincing.
Beneath it, disgusting.
Not that that impression will hold once you taste it, by that I mean the Orwellian government those propagandists are trying to build, not the fake hot dog.
Troll away, but if that's what you fear, it is a delusion, easily dispelled by sticking your head out the window.
In truth, the Dems, like the Reps, are too cheap to pay for changing the letterhead.
After years of underwhelming Democats, the pendulum swung back as the nation refused to buy into the idea of the united states of Hilary. Then, having thrown away complete majority rule with nothing to show for it, the current Republican leadership was so committed to running the county into the ground, they have in turn alienated the nation. Not because the US is going socialist, but because the wheels fell of the conservative movement, and it's leadership is filled with fraud, corruption, and graft.
All of this bullshit about the blues turning America socialist is an empty threat. Even when THEY had the majority, the only stuff that got done was cosmetic or the pet project of a millionaire donor. The Democratic leadership is just as eager to cater to wall street at the Republicans, and the loud voices you point to are the lunatic fringe. They are also not in charge. Our (Republican) lunatic fringe is trying very very heard to take over.
The talking point you are recycling is fish bait to reel in idiots. You may not know or care where it came from, but if you make the mistake of eating it, you are going to find out when you get reeled in. The America they are trying to build is nearer and grimmer than anything the Democrats have in store in the next two generations.
Resulting the current democracy that my fellow Republicans keep trying to tear down because they keep losing popular elections.
Extra demerits to be issued for trying to sound smart and or educated while recycling a debunked talking point that has been systematically dismantled exhaustively.
Here's a hint, the people feeding you that talking point aren't your friends. They're selling authoritarian nationalism. Invoking the founders is one of their favorites, but they leave out the fact the founders said alot of things, many of which would be illegal if you attempted to implement them today. Not all of them agreed on the massive restrictions of rights in the early drafts of the US constitution. History has clearly shown that we have been moving towards being more democratic though, not less. As a result the bar for voting only prohibits minors, some criminals, and non-citizens.
Republic/representative government is a bureaucratic structure. That's it. The system of elections isn't mandated, or the basis of citizenship.
Democracy is a system where people (to varying degrees based on implementation) have an equal say or vote on officers, issues and policies. That contrasts with monarchies, tyrants, and anarchy as they are political philosophical systems. Republic are not a political system in the same sense, they are a bureaucratic one. You can have a non-republican democracy and a non-democratic republic. But OUR system is a Democratic Republic. If you change it to something other than a republic, most people in the US might not even notice.
If you try to remove or diminish the Democracy, you will have a fight on your hands.
>Defenders of the law hope they can get a different result from the Supreme Court, which is not as far-fetched as it may seem given that the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently
Though in the interests of transparency it is important to stress that the Fifth Circuit's opinion was drafted in crayon.
Basically an artifact of the judicial system set up in 1879 after the US Constitution was ratified. Small population, large area. Travel was difficult and time consuming -- especially in the interior prior to the construction of canals in the 1820s and railroads a few decades later. While trials and hearings were held at fixed locations, the next level of courts -- the appeals courts "rode circuit" showing up at the fixed locations a few times a year to hear any appeals that needed to be dealt with by a more senior court. Less inconvenient overall to move the court around than move the plaintiffs, lawyers, witnesses, etc,etc.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_riding
In the modern context this has a few consequences that really matter, and will blow the minds of most non-Americans. The first is that organisations, who are now all national in scope, will regularly shop around for a circuit they feel best suited to getting them a "good" outcome. Judges are effectively for-life appointees, circuits have their own procedural rules (to a degree) and so each takes on its own character. Through contractual clauses and sheer force of lawyers large orgs can, in effect, pick their court of choice.
The other big one is that the rulings of these circuit courts only hold in their circuit jurisdiction. For example a ruling issued in the Fifth circuit may not apply to or even conflict with a ruling in the Ninth.
And perhaps the most egregious consequence is the combination of these two. If you're trying to force a case to SCOTUS, the only real, sure-fire way to get that to happen is to get two (or more) conflicting rulings in different circuits (a "circuit split").
So you farm out cases to the circuits you like until you get lucky with some idiot judge and then wait for the fireworks as the Trump-packed court issues a nationally-binding ruling.
So each 'circuit' is a specific territory within which a group of appeals judges preside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Fifth_Circuit
And as another post mentions, it is possible to some extent to 'shop around' for appeal decisions from lower courts. I get the idea. With 17 judges available in various combinations it sounds like a bit of a dice roll though.
Thanks for trouble taken.
There are extremists on both sides. From afar,it seems unbalanced in favour of the Rep side. But if these laws effectively make those extreme views protected, it can only get worse. For both sides. You reap what you sow, and it seems these Reps have either not hear of the Law of Unintended Consequences or are dim enough to think it either doesn't apply to them or they can repeal it.
They will have planned for this. I'm not sure who can use these laws, but I would guess that it's limited to the state governments, meaning that, as long as they stay in power, they can bring actions against companies they don't like and completely ignore similar actions by companies they do. For this and other reasons, they're already taking steps to ensure they aren't removed as state governments.
Has'Troof' social for 50 million fools to sign up then?
Another though here is this: doesn't the minimum 50 million subscribers bit fall afoul of the equal protection amendment thing? ("We're treating you differently to these other folks because, all else being equal, this arbitrary number means we want to")
Uh, no …
The First Amendment merely — and wisely — disallows governmental suppression of speech. Independent entities such as you, me, Facebook, or your local newspaper are perfectly free to present, support, or champion any ideas that they — we — may wish to stand behind or they — we — may refuse to offer them a platform. Compelling you, me, Twitter, or Truth Social to provide a platform for ideas they deem dangerous or utter bollocks is intellectual tyranny.
To many in the US Twitter and FaceBook have attained the status of being a "Public Space"- on this side of the pond "Speakers Corner".
And so get v. upset if that cant say what they want on FB/TWTR.
I may not agree with their politics but recognise it is a milestone in the development of the internet that a good number of people now see some private platforms (that have spent years trying to become universally used and ubiquitous) as public spaces.
No-one is thinks that of 4chan, which never strove to be used by the entire world and their dogs/cats.
I do think that there is a case to be made that FB/TWTR should be viewed as a "town square" and so cannot moderate speech. However the USAians are v. keen on copyright control...
As the current Supreme court are aparrently quite inventive,
suggest we all order Popcorn.
This, exactly. These companies even sell themselves as the electronic version of the town square. The problem for them with this is, if you want to be the town square then you are a public place and may not discriminate. That means that yes, you must allow people to post that you may not agree with. If you as a business don't like that idea, then stop selling yourself as a public place. This doesn't mean you can't clamp down on lawbreaking, but it does mean clamping down on all lawbreaking. You can't shut down a right wing poster calling for a boycott while allowing a left wing poster calling for a riot.
If your company doesn't want to allow the freedom of a town square, ie freedom for all, put in your charter that you are a site for X only and those who do not support X are not welcome which, of course, cuts down on your slurping victims. These companies also know that the leftist viewpoint is not really that popular in the US, proven by the boycott attempts of the last few years. Boycotts of right-leaning organizations (example Chik Fil A) usually results in record sales, boycotts of left-leaning organizaions (example, JC Penneys) runs towards bankruptcy. Wise companies refuse to take a stand in either direction.
Quite frankly, it's no surprise to me that left wing companies don't want to allow right wing opinions in public. In the 1950s they were putting "No Blacks Allowed" signs up. They're still putting the signs up, only now they're discriminating against a different group.
1) What you say about them being "the town square" wouldn't work because you literally don't automatically have unlimited rights in the town square. You might, depending on the jurisdiction have some individual speech protections limiting viewpoint, but many of these literal spaces have been cordoned off with restrictions like "free speech zones", permits, and access restrictions. That is for _publicly_ owned spaces.
2) On private land, no such right is guaranteed beyond what is granted by the owner. Facebook isn't an unincorporated lot off main street, or the online equivalent. It is a for profit private service.
3) Compelled speech is broadly prohibited in Constitutional case law. Forcing a digital service to to publish and amplify political or hate speech is going to fail at MANY levels. For the same reasons you can't just walk into a newspaper or book publisher and force them to publish your text. Even if they have published other works of yours, and even if YOU pay THEM to print it.
4) Your post about boycotts and rioters is backwards, and also irrelevant. Calls to riot(incitement) are already handled in law, and aren't based on political outlook, or even based in political action. Calls for boycott are different, as the trigger for censorship is rarely the boycott itself, but the statement of why it should be boycotted. If that is hate speech, censorship will be triggered by that and not on a bare statement, or one based on another appeal. Your post does shine a spotlight on another facet, which are companies courting extremist or polarizing viewpoints as a marketing gimmick. Not a fan personally, as it tends to backfire spectacularly and only succeed marginally, but private companies can make those choices.
At a certain point, companies have to be willing to stand up for what the people in them believe is right. Not on every single issue, but on major a specific ones. Like a free press, that is on of the foundations modern civilizations rely on to hold an out of control government, faction, or religion to account. In healthier times it is a tool of last resort, but we are in trying times.
5) Trying to hang the actions of conservative Dixiecrats during the Kim Crow era on the Democrats is laughable. The same people hanging those signs switched parties, and kept trying to hang them as Republicans. The same toxic political movement is jeopardizing the south, and trying to export it to other states. The only point where conservative political censorship became a major talking point is when my party ignored it's own political analysis and built its whole election operation and fundraising off spreading outrageous lies on social media. Up to that point conservatives will still trying to milk moral outrage to censor non-conservative speech. They still are, but they also want to play the victim.
All of these issues, on top of the incompetence and naked corruption are why I am voting down members of the MAGA movement at every turn. I try to support sane conservatives in the primaries when I can find them, but I have to try to shut down the rest of the angry mob where I can.
The "public space" argument is complete and utter bullshit. It has no history in American jurisprudence prior to its recent invention by a handful of butthurt demagogues. It is incompatible with the "freedom of the press" clause of the First Amendment. And it has no basis in fact: no one is compelled, by law or circumstance, to use Facebook or Twitter or any of the other "media giants" as their sole or primary source of information.
> The First Amendment...
It's very common to confuse the concept of Free Speech with the text of the First Amendment.
The First Amendment is indeed a protection of Free Speech, but it is not sufficient to completely protect Free Speech in practice, and there are other ways Free Speech can be protected. It is certainly not the definition of Free Speech itself.
> Compelling you, me, Twitter, or Truth Social to provide a platform for ideas they deem dangerous or utter bollocks is intellectual tyranny.
I would suggest that conflating natural human beings, who have senses, emotions, ideas, and (in some cases) intellect, with businesses, leads to flawed reasoning. Corporations are, fundamentally, a government-endorsed legal fiction, not natural persons, so need not be treated similarly.
>> "... conflating natural human beings... with business... corporations are... not natural persons"
In law - on both sides of the pond - a corporation/company is indeed a legal person and as such is far from "a legal fiction". Which makes perfect sense given that people and companies can both be libelled/defamed, sued, sign contracts, etc.
Sounds like a Friday afternoon hack. What do you mean we can't sue a company? Well, okay, treat it as a person and then we can...
Just seems to me that rather than having a specific legal status for companies (to enter into contracts, be responsible, etc), the "treating them as people" answer was a really lazy patch.
"It's very common to confuse the concept of Free Speech with the text of the First Amendment."
But as this is a legal case in the United States, where the question is specifically whether the law conflicts with the text of that amendment, maybe the text is somewhat relevant to the discussion? Your idea of what free speech is or should be isn't what the court's thinking about.
If you think there should be more protections for those freedoms, and you live in the United States, feel free to suggest laws enacting those extra freedoms. If you feel that the existing protections are misaimed or excessive, for example by granting those rights to corporations (which is clearly supported), then you'll need to make a significantly larger change to remove them. This case is about the latter, so the text is more important.
.. in the press, belongs to those who own the presses. In the Internet Age, nearly anyone can afford a computer, run a website on it, and present their opinions. But they can't effectively do that if ISPs all decide the opinions presented are "unacceptable" and refuse service to that person.
Even self declared loud and proud Nazi sites like the Daily Stormer still have relationships with mainstream companies like Cloudflare. You have to literally be worse than Nazis to be in a situation where no one wants to do business with you.
This has nothing to do with that, it has to do with conservatives upset that open calls for violence caused them to be kicked off social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and when they took their ball and went home, no one will come to Gab and "Truth" Social in large numbers.
The funny thing is those conservative sites censor much worse than the mainstream ones, because simply speaking out against Trump gets people banned from those, whereas no one is getting removed from the mainstream sites for speaking out against Biden or Pelosi. Until you suggest they should be hung or something like that (saying you personally will hang the president will get you a visit from the FBI, saying "he should be hung" will not) That's the speech of theirs they think is being infringed upon, and a third party should be forced by the government to disseminate.
"Who should be the arbitrator of what speech is banned ?"
You're not getting the idea. There isn't an arbitrator and speech isn't banned. Each person decides on their own what they will and will not assist. If someone I don't like asks me to provide them a platform for getting a message out, I say no. It doesn't matter what it is they want to say; if I don't like people talking about rabbits, that's good enough. This doesn't prevent them from finding someone else who will provide them a platform. It just means I'm not doing it for them. If they can't find anyone who's willing to work for them, they haven't been banned. They just can't find assistance and will have to do the work themselves.
One side of free speech is making sure that, if I want to say something, I'm not going to be dragged off to prison just for saying it (if saying it is related to another crime, then I could be imprisoned for that crime). Another side is making sure I don't have to say things I don't like. The government can't force me to include praise of their actions every time I comment on them, for example.
Who should be the arbitrator of what speech is banned ?
Certainly not social-media companies. Fortunately, they're in no position to do so, because they are not the sole medium of expression.
Nor should the government of Florida be, since they've amply demonstrated they can't be trusted with the job.
Free speech does not include a free audience. It is not about providing a means to effectively present your opinions. It means you are free to express your opinions without censorship, interference, or restraint by the government.
It's to provide protection from the government, it's not to provide free and equal access to a platform to express your opinions.
You're confusing the First Amendment with the very concept of Free Speech. The First Amendment is necessary, but not sufficient to fully protect a person's Free Speech.
> you are free to express your opinions without censorship, interference, or restraint
= Free Speech
> by the government.
= First Amendment
> It's to provide protection from the government, it's not to provide free and equal access to a platform to express your opinions.
This is indeed true of the First Amendment. However, it seems many people are now seeking to also add protections for natural persons' Free Speech when mediums of mass communication are controlled by private corporations.
However, it seems many people are now seeking to also add protections for natural persons' Free Speech when mediums of mass communication are controlled by private corporations.
No. A few loudmouth politicians and their robots want to pass laws that compel private corporations to host messages that will cause their clients to leave and their advertising revenue to plummet. This is very specifically a first amendment issue because the governments of Florida and Texas are passing laws to deny freedom of association.
You still have the right to shout out of your window your opinions, without government interference (your HOA may disagree and fine you).
But when you use any service provided by a commercial entity, you are bound by terms of use.
If you don't agree with them, you are free no to use the service.
If you find no ISP that allows you to disseminate your propaganda on the Internet because of their terms & conditions, you are free to create your own (unless ISP are classified as common carriers under FTC rules now?).
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Step 1. get list of ALL internet companies in Florida
step 2. vague accusations of anti-trust. even for small mom n pop stores (include facebook, google, bing, twitter, microsoft, apple etc)
step 3. Automate filing of several hundred million URLS/IP Addresses to Florida government
step 4. Florida government can't use ANY of these services
Honestly, I wish Google or Microsoft would just completely close shop here and refuse to reopen until the law is removed.
Fine we cant mod our platform (terribly modded, but modded none then less), we don't have to do business with you.
This isn't what is going to happen. Google and Microsoft will comply. They want everyone on their platform to be the same pile of grey goop anyways.
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