Facebook Criticized For 'Arbitrary' Suspension of Trump -- by Its Own Oversight Board (npr.org) 183
"It never occurred to me that a Facebook-appointed panel could avoid a clear decision about Donald Trump's heinous online behavior," writes a New York Times technology reporter. "But that is what it's done..."
They call the board's decision "kind of perfect, actually, since it forces everyone's hand — from the Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to our limp legislators in Congress..."
The editor of the conservative National Review adds: If Facebook had set out to demonstrate that it has awesome power over speech in the United States, including speech at the core of the nation's political debate, and is wielding that power arbitrarily, indeed has no idea what its own rules truly are or should be, it wouldn't have handled the question any differently... The oversight board underlines the astonishing fact that in reaching its most momentous free-speech decision ever in this country, in determining whether a former president of the United States can use its platform or not, Facebook made it up on the fly. "In applying this penalty," the board writes of the suspension, "Facebook did not follow a clear, published procedure." This is like the U.S. Supreme Court handing down decisions in the absence of a written Constitution, or a home-plate umpire calling balls and strikes without an agreed-upon strike zone...
John Samples, a member of the Oversight Board, has even said explicitly that their decision was not about former president Trump — but about Facebook itself. The Washington Post reports: Samples said the board found that Facebook enforced a rule that didn't exist at the time. Trump was suspended indefinitely, rather than permanently or for a specific period of time, as defined by the company's own rules. "In a sense we were being tough with them," Samples said.
Other members said the board's call should reassure anyone concerned that Facebook wields too much control over online speech. "Anyone who's concerned about Mark Zuckerberg's power and his company's power over our speech online should actually praise this decision," Julie Owono, executive director of Internet Sans Frontières, said at a virtual event hosted by the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. "The board refused to support an arbitrary suspension..."
The flurry of media appearances marked a critical moment in the board's existence, as it tries to prove its legitimacy, define its powers and establish its relationship with Facebook.
NPR notes that former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a board co-chair, even called Facebook "a bit lazy" for failing to set a specific penalty in the first place... "What we are telling Facebook is that they can't invent penalties as they go along. They have to stick to their own rules," Thorning-Schmidt said in an interview with Axios. The board's criticism didn't stop at Facebook's imposing what it called a "vague, standardless penalty." It slammed the company for trying to outsource its final verdict on Trump. "Facebook has a responsibility to its users and to its community and to the broader public to make its own decisions," Jamal Greene, another board co-chair and constitutional law professor at Columbia, said Thursday during an Aspen Institute event. "The board's job is to make sure that Facebook is doing its job," he said.
Tensions between the board's view of the scope of its role and Facebook's were also evident in the board's revelation that the company wouldn't answer seven of the 46 questions it asked about the Trump case. The questions Facebook refused to answer included how its own design and algorithms might have amplified the reach of Trump's posts and contributed to the Capitol assault. "The ones that the company refused to answer to are precisely related to what happened before Jan. 6," Julie Owono, an oversight board member and executive director of the digital rights group Internet Sans Frontières, said at the Aspen Institute event.
"Our decision says that you cannot make such an important decision, such a serious decision for freedom of expression, freedom of speech, without the adequate context."
They call the board's decision "kind of perfect, actually, since it forces everyone's hand — from the Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to our limp legislators in Congress..."
The editor of the conservative National Review adds: If Facebook had set out to demonstrate that it has awesome power over speech in the United States, including speech at the core of the nation's political debate, and is wielding that power arbitrarily, indeed has no idea what its own rules truly are or should be, it wouldn't have handled the question any differently... The oversight board underlines the astonishing fact that in reaching its most momentous free-speech decision ever in this country, in determining whether a former president of the United States can use its platform or not, Facebook made it up on the fly. "In applying this penalty," the board writes of the suspension, "Facebook did not follow a clear, published procedure." This is like the U.S. Supreme Court handing down decisions in the absence of a written Constitution, or a home-plate umpire calling balls and strikes without an agreed-upon strike zone...
John Samples, a member of the Oversight Board, has even said explicitly that their decision was not about former president Trump — but about Facebook itself. The Washington Post reports: Samples said the board found that Facebook enforced a rule that didn't exist at the time. Trump was suspended indefinitely, rather than permanently or for a specific period of time, as defined by the company's own rules. "In a sense we were being tough with them," Samples said.
Other members said the board's call should reassure anyone concerned that Facebook wields too much control over online speech. "Anyone who's concerned about Mark Zuckerberg's power and his company's power over our speech online should actually praise this decision," Julie Owono, executive director of Internet Sans Frontières, said at a virtual event hosted by the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. "The board refused to support an arbitrary suspension..."
The flurry of media appearances marked a critical moment in the board's existence, as it tries to prove its legitimacy, define its powers and establish its relationship with Facebook.
NPR notes that former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a board co-chair, even called Facebook "a bit lazy" for failing to set a specific penalty in the first place... "What we are telling Facebook is that they can't invent penalties as they go along. They have to stick to their own rules," Thorning-Schmidt said in an interview with Axios. The board's criticism didn't stop at Facebook's imposing what it called a "vague, standardless penalty." It slammed the company for trying to outsource its final verdict on Trump. "Facebook has a responsibility to its users and to its community and to the broader public to make its own decisions," Jamal Greene, another board co-chair and constitutional law professor at Columbia, said Thursday during an Aspen Institute event. "The board's job is to make sure that Facebook is doing its job," he said.
Tensions between the board's view of the scope of its role and Facebook's were also evident in the board's revelation that the company wouldn't answer seven of the 46 questions it asked about the Trump case. The questions Facebook refused to answer included how its own design and algorithms might have amplified the reach of Trump's posts and contributed to the Capitol assault. "The ones that the company refused to answer to are precisely related to what happened before Jan. 6," Julie Owono, an oversight board member and executive director of the digital rights group Internet Sans Frontières, said at the Aspen Institute event.
"Our decision says that you cannot make such an important decision, such a serious decision for freedom of expression, freedom of speech, without the adequate context."
wat (Score:5, Insightful)
The penalty for violation of AUP has always been suspension or termination.
pish (Score:5, Informative)
The penalty for violation of AUP has always been suspension or termination.
Rules are for the little guy.
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Rules are for the little guy.
Or for arseholes too big for the power they wield. What Facebook has shown is that there's a sliding scale of power relative to how strictly the apply the rules. If you have power you get away with a lot, but you don't get away with everything forever.
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Black Americans are overwhelmingly more likely than white ones to live in a "food desert [learningforjustice.org]", and thus have lesser access to healthy food. Trump can afford to eat anything he wants, but he still eats garbage and is still fat.
I don't know if you can draw any conclusions from that, frankly, but I do know that you making that comparison is disingenuous.
Re:wat (Score:4, Informative)
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And the law allows Facebook to ban you whenever they want for any reason including no reason.
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Frankly, the whole argument from the "advisory board" that Facebook "shouldn't" be banning Trump permanently smacks of an attack on Section 230.
It's arguably in Facebook's best interests for Section 230 to be repealed, because they are big enough to get away with a bogus screening department, and it would hurt their competitors way more than it would hurt them because they're the biggest and can weather the storm most easily.
Re:wat (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't for a second think that social media companies care about "stopping hate" or whatever laughable bs they feed you, it's all about profit, and once Trump stopped being profitable they nixed him for virtue signaling internet points.
FTFY (Score:2, Informative)
The penalty for violation of AUP has always been suspension or termination, unless you aren't conservative.
In which case continue on with your threats, rape, molestation, whatever suits you whether you're in hollywood, new yuck, china...
You can trust facebiik to protect you.
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Go on Twitter, search for the word "coon" or "cooning", and report anyone using it as an insult and see how often Twitter tells you that racist slur is now A-OK.
Re:wat (Score:5, Informative)
We are discussing facebook, where people's accounts are suspended for pictures including nipples.
Re: wat (Score:5, Insightful)
Calling someone you don't agree with a terrorist doesn't make him one, it only shows how fool you are.
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If you're going to engage in whataboutism. [merriam-webster.com]... no, just don't engage in whataboutism.
Re: wat (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that someone is asking "Yes, but what about [X]?" does not automatically imply that he is engaging in "whataboutism". There is more to the concept than that.
The topic under discussion here is "What criteria should be used to ban someone from Facebook?" If you put forth a set of criteria which seems to fit more than one group on Facebook, it is absolutely relevant to ask why it is being applied to one group and not another.
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If you cry "whataboutism" when asked if you have consistent principles, then you have neither consistency nor principles.
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Trump was banned for what Trump personally did.
I'm pretty sure "the BLM protests" don't have a Facebook account that personally engaged in the behaviors being complained of. And if there were particular accounts, identify and suspend/terminate them.
But yes, "the BLM protests" is neither a demand for consistency nor based upon principles. It's pure whataboutism.
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Trump hasn't done a damn thing [nbcnews.com] his haters haven't done - none of whom have been banned by Twitter and Facebook. Democrats to this day insist the 2016 election was stolen, but none of them have been deplatformed. Alec Baldwin recently deleted [hollywoodreporter.com] his Twitter account, but his tweet [misbar.com] fantasizing about cuffing, beating, pepper spraying, and strangling an elected official was never taken down by Twitter. Yet shitlibs whine about Parlor and comments about Pelosi or AOC.
As
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If you pay attention to TFS, the Oversight Board found that Facebook kicked Trump off for breaking a rule that they added later. And they still let Facebook get away with that. That violates basic rules of fairness and process.
Facebook took down groups like Patriot Prayer in response to Patriot Prayer people being attacked by Antifa rioters -- you may remember that one Antifa member murdered a peaceful protester just before Facebook's decision -- but you can still find Rose City Antifa on Facebook.
No, Fac
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Enforcing rules retroactively is a shitty thing to do, but I repeat myself: Facebook is a private platform and can ban for any reason, including no reason. As much as I would love it for sites to be forced to enforce their rules equally and consistently, it would result in every single forum and platform from monoliths like facebook to a random forum for an obscure multiplayer game having to hire real lawyers to write their rules.
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Re: wat (Score:4, Interesting)
Facebook is mor powerful than the US Supreme Court. In the realm of speech, information, and knowledge, it is more powerful than the Federal government.
It should be held to a higher standard. Due process and fair play should be expected, demanded, and there should be meaningful penalties for not meeting those standards.
Censoring a sitting President should be considered a last desperate reaction to criminal activity, and none is shown in this example. No, none. Trump was not convicted of any such thing, was not actually even charged and tried for such. Impeachments are political acts, not criminal prosecutions. Oh, go on and twist it up, but you're wrong.
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Facebook is mor powerful than the US Supreme Court. In the realm of speech, information, and knowledge, it is more powerful than the Federal government.
That's not saying much. Little Timmy, the orphan late 19th century big city newsboy who yells 'Extra! Extra!' and who is slowly dying of TB is more powerful than the government. Timmy can refuse to sell a paper; he can throw them away, preventing Old Man Hearst or Old Man Pulitzer from getting the word out to people. The government can't go doing that.
Pretty much all private persons and businesses are more powerful than the federal government in this regard. It's deliberate.
It should be held to a higher standard.
And I should get a pony.
Due process and fair play should be expected, demanded, and there should be meaningful penalties for not meeting those standards.
That
Re:wat (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a shitload of things wrong with alex jones, but where does white supremacy play into that? Your link doesn't even make that claim.
This is why I don't take accusations or allegations of racism seriously, just about anything passes for it these days. Even math is white supremacy [equitablemath.org], apparently.
Re: wat (Score:2)
Most people donâ(TM)t reply to you because they fear being targeted by saying the truth. You think you will get something out of it. I lived in Argentina and Mexico. I already know what follows and I am not looking forward to it.
Re: wat (Score:3)
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You are on to something here...
NAZI MATH! (Score:2)
"What is 11 x 8?"
"88."
"Wow, you fucking nazi."
Re: wat (Score:2)
First of all, it's not someone, but multiple someones, second, I didn't say anything about it not existing, you came up with that all by yourself.
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First of all, it's not someone, but multiple someones,
Oh my gosh! You found TWO people who said something stupid.
Look dude the internet is huge and the world is bigger. Out of seven billion people you can usually find a few hundred even thousands who hold almost any point of view no matter how stupid. That's not evidence for anything apart from that you had a bunch of time on your hands and went looking for something to grind your axe with.
I didn't say anything about it not existing,
As so you just don't gi
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Look dude the internet is huge and the world is bigger. Out of seven billion people you can usually find a few hundred even thousands who hold almost any point of view no matter how stupid. That's not evidence for anything apart from that you had a bunch of time on your hands and went looking for something to grind your axe with.
When it dominates the media, and is in every way a de-facto moral panic, it's quite a bit more profound than the way you're characterizing it.
As so you just don't give a shit about it then. Cool, cool.
No, I just don't give a shit about retards like you.
Basically you found a dumbass and used that as an excuse to shut your ears completely to actual problems. Thing is you can ALWAYS find a dumbass if you go looking, we both know that so that means you went out looking for a reason to stop listening.
I found a dumbass alright, but rather than make this conversation about yourself, you might want to actually read what I posted. That wasn't written by one person, and it is being adopted into mainstream education in California and Oregon.
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Has Facebook of Twitter suspended Maxine Waters' account? Does Joe Biden still think antifa is just an "idea"?
Re: wat (Score:2)
You misrepresent. They upheld the ban, but were not able to make it permanent. The only unclear part if the decision is that they were unable to uphold a permanent ban, since a permanent ban was not described as an enforcement action in facebook's rules. Facebook can easily remedy that shortcoming by defining an appeals process similar to a parole board. Or introduce permanent ban as an option. Of course, Trump is free to litigate, but then facebook is free to conduct full discovery, and the terrorust woul
He's not muzzled (Score:4, Insightful)
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The poison spewed by Former, the Lies, etc are all to raise money from his sheep. FB was a very effective way to raise money. He can spew on line with his own website...issue press releases...text his supporters. All that is being done is keeping him off a private platform. If a pipe is putting raw sewage onto a beach where people swim, the result is to stop the flow, not tell the people too bad. You don't have free speech in a shopping mall. This is the same thing.
In short:
- You don't like his speech. We get it.
- You have outsourced the censorship. This is a dodge employed by, hmm, let me see, all early stage totalitarianisms.
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Trump has always been free to use any of the numerous outlets available to him to speak. The fact that he chose Twitter primarily was inertia, vanity and laziness (his signature trait as President).
Notice he is not on Parler or Gab or Telegram or Frank, because he doesn't want to be.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/d... [donaldjtrump.com]
Go ahead and read, he has an entire platform to himself now, just the way he likes it.
You know what else is a signature feature of totalitarianism? Maybe the biggest of all, is sowing discontent
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- You don't like his speech. We get it.
- You have outsourced the censorship. This is a dodge employed by, hmm, let me see, all early stage totalitarianisms.
Free speech has limits. If we can't agree about anything else, can we at least agree that inciting an armed insurrection against the freely elected government of your country exceeds those limits? Because if not, then you and I live in two very different worlds, and worlds like yours tend to end up with a military junta.
Re:He's not muzzled (Score:5, Insightful)
The lies that the election was "stolen" and interrupted the peaceful transfer of power. https://archive.is/HTDea [archive.is]
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What, you flushed the "Russia hacked 39 states voting systems before 2016" and "Assange worked with Trump and Putin to cost Hillary the election" down the shitlib toilet? Russiagate == Birtherism & BlueAnon for liberals.
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Re:He's not muzzled (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, all things are relative but Trump lied aout things from the outset, from big things to small things. The man is mentally incapable of being honest, even for a politician due to his crippling NPD.
- "It didn't rain on my inauguration"
- "My inauguration was bigger than Obama's"
- The "the greatest speech that was ever made to them," allegedly from the Boy Scouts when in fact he's never made a speech to the boy scouts.
- Countless upon countless "Sir" stories about big strong men who break down in tears around him and declare him the greatest man.
- The entire fucking "Sharpiegate" thing with the hurricane track that he hew drew over to cover for his hasty tweet about Alabama. I know that feels like forever ago but jesus christ what petty and bizarre nonsense.
- "I will eliminate the entire national debt as President". You could read that as boasting but he didn't even attempt to reduce it, he practically supercharged it.
- "I'll be too busy working to golf" then spends nearly an entire year on his own golf courses.
- His damn tax returns. Still hasn't released them....
- That he passed Veterans Choice when it was signed by Obama in 2014. He did sign an expansion but that's never the story he tells.
- Windmill noise causes cancer.
- Healthcare plan coming "in two weeks"
- "Michigan's Man of the Year" a prize that does not exist.
- “The ice caps were going to melt. They were going to melt. They were going to be gone by now, but now they’re setting records, so OK, they’re at a record level.”. Sea ice levels are at their smallest ever recorded.
- "Millions if illegals voted in 2016". A lie that was proved wrong by his own Justice Department.
- Continually claimed to want to protect pre-existing conditions in healthcare while simultaneously having his AG try to remove them in federal court while at the same time claiming Biden was the one who wanted to remove them.
And the entire 2020 election fraud conspiracy.
Look I get that "politicians lie" etc but this is just the literal tip of the iceberg of false statements the man cannot stop himself from making.
But go off about Jussie Smollett, you're keeping it to the real important shit I can tell.
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I mean, all things are relative but Trump lied aout things from the outset, from big things to small things. The man is mentally incapable of being honest, even for a politician due to his crippling NPD.
Just for fun I checked Trump's blog [donaldjtrump.com]. There's nothing today but 3 posts yesterday including a post containing several election lies and another lying about why Michael Cohen when to jail.
The man is comically incapable of telling the truth.
Re: He's not muzzled (Score:2)
Stop linking to him. He feeds on publicity.
Biden's lies dwarf Trump's (Score:2)
Biden told so many lies he had to drop out of his first presidential campaign because of it. Lies about his crime bills, his Iraq vote, his decades-long obsession with cutting Social Security, arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela, etc etc. Like attacking Trump over his sexual assault [businessinsider.com] allegations to family corruption [politico.com] to racism, [businessinsider.com] Biden was the worst candidate the Democrats possibly could have run against Orange Bad Man. Without Trump's incompetence and covid, Biden would have been annihilated.
Re: He's not muzzled (Score:2)
Trump's an habitual liar. We should stop listening to him.
We should stop listening generally to people that knowingly lie.
Like you: "Trump never made a speech to the boy Scouts"
Yes he did.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25... [cnn.com]
Took me 1 Google to find.
So we get to kick you indefinitely from Slashdot? Just checking.
Re:He's not muzzled (Score:4, Insightful)
The Russia collusion hoax
Trump and his people privately and publically welcomed and solicited Russia to help him cheat. They obliged within hours of the president himself asking in front of the whole world.
Manafort (whom Trump pardoned) shared non-public campaign data with RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE to help Trump.
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It amazes me that you're still so enamored with Former-president Trump that you'll completely ignore the undeniable fact that his supporters raided the U.S. Capitol in a failed coup, egged on by the sitting president, and scream "fake news" solely because one news outlet incorrectly reported one minor incorrect detail that had little to no bearing on the overall seriousness of the events in question. That boggles the mind.
It amazes me that people still call January 6th protests a “insurrection” or “coup” when none of the protesters were armed. How can a few thousand unarmed people overthrow the US government?
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How can a few thousand unarmed people overthrow the US government?
Attempted coup, obviously. Competence isn't relevant for attempts as a rule. If you try to rob a bank by giving the teller a note that says "I have a gub" but it's really a lie, you're still going to get in a lot of trouble.
Besides, it makes sense. Incompetent President, incompetent supporters.
Times have changed (Score:2)
I was taught by some of the finest democrats in the 1990s that ALL speech must be allowed boy how times have changed
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"All Speech" =/= "All Platforms"
Trump can still stand on his soapbox on the public sidewalk holding his upside-down Bible and rant with the rest of the prophets. He just can't use other people's soapboxes on private property in violation of the owners rules.
He can still issue press releases from "The Desk" as is protected by the 1st Amendment. Nothing has changed from a constitutional protection point of view.
But you already knew that.
Re: Times have changed (Score:2)
The question is whether Facebook is the virtual equivalent of a public sidewalk.
If they want to get Section 230 protections then yes, they are supposed to be pro-free speech, otherwise they are editorializing content, which is perfectly legal, if you want to be held responsible for your content.
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Considering the amount of tax they don't pay, I'd say yes.
The same is true of all American corporations. Look at how much money they save via the public university system. There is no "Facebook University" or "Microsoft Coding Apprenticeship" like there have historically been for other trades. Instead, their workers acquire the needed marketable skills at their own expense through government-subsidised public universities, mainly through money borrowed at interest.
We also need to talk about how these companies abuse the intellectual property system to foist the
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"Section 230 [cornell.edu]" =/= "Public Sidewalk"
(c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material
(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access
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+1, Informative.
Thank you for helping to correct the rampant legal illiteracy on /.
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FTFY. Online communications == public square. The public also paid for the internet in the first place so your argument is invalid.
Read the much longer [substack.com] list of cases of SCOTUS ruling that threats from govern
Re: Times have changed (Score:2)
God, save us from these dipshits.
Online communications == public square.
Well, here's what the Supreme Court said about this the other year. I dunno, maybe you're some random dipshit on the Internet that is a higher legal authority, and your posts overrule the Supreme Court, but I suspect their opinion is the law and yours isn't worth two cents.
[T]he Free Speech Clause prohibits only governmental abridgment of speech. The Free Speech Clause does not prohibit private abridgment of speech. ...
[The] Court's state-action doctrine distinguishes the government from individuals and private entities. By enforcing that constitutional boundary between the governmental and the private, the state-action doctrine protects a robust sphere of individual liberty. ...
[A] private entity can qualify as a state actor in a few limited circumstances -- including, for example, (i) when the private entity performs a traditional, exclusive public function; (ii) when the government compels the private entity to take a particular action; or (iii) when the government acts jointly with the private entity. ...
[A] private entity may qualify as a state actor when it exercises "powers traditionally exclusively reserved to the State." It is not enough that the federal, state, or local government exercised the function in the past, or still does. And it is not enough that the function serves the public good or the public interest in some way. Rather, to qualify as a traditional, exclusive public function within the meaning of our state-action precedents, the government must have traditionally and exclusively performed the function. ...
"[V]ery few" functions fall into that category ... for example, running elections and operating a company town. ...
[W]hen a private entity provides a forum for speech, the private entity is not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment because the private entity is not a state actor. The private entity may thus exercise editorial discretion over the speech and speakers in the forum. This Court so ruled in its 1976 decision in Hudgens v. NLRB. There, the Court held that a shopping center owner is not a state actor subject to First Amendment requirements such as the public forum doctrine.
The Hudgens decision reflects a commonsense principle: Providing some kind of forum for speech is not an activity that only governmental entities have traditionally performed. Therefore, a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor. After all, private property owners and private lessees often open their property for speech. Grocery stores put up community bulletin boards. Comedy clubs host open mic nights. As Judge Jacobs persuasively explained, it "is not at all a near-exclusive function of the state to provide the forums for public expression, politics, information, or entertainment."
In short, merely hosting speech by others is not a traditional, exclusive public function and does not alone transform private entities into state actors subject to First Amendment constraints.
If the rule were otherwise, all private property owners and private lessees who open their property for speech would be subject to First Amendment constraints and would lose the ability to exercise what they deem to be appropriate editorial discretion within that open forum. Private property owners and private lessees would face the unappetizing choice of allowing all comers or closing the platform altogether. "The Constitution by no means requires such an attenuated doctrine of dedication of private property to public use." Benjamin Franklin did not have to operate his newspaper as "a stagecoach, with seats for everyone." That principle still holds true. As the Court said in Hudgens, to hold that private property owners providing a forum for speech are constrained by the First Amendment would be "to create a court-made law wholly disregarding the constitutional basis on which private ownership of property rests in this country." The Constitution does not disable private property owners and private lessees from exercising editorial discretion over speech and speakers on their property.
The public also paid for the internet in the first place so your argument is invalid.
The Internet is not some blue box with a blinking red light on it, dipshit! The government paid for people to invent the protocols by which it operates, and to build some prototype routers and to lease lin
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the one thing that the media hates more than trump (Score:2)
Well, based on the stories coming out now, it appears the one thing that the media hates more than Trump is Facebook :)
Facebook = Dumpster Fire (Score:4)
I don't use Facebook. I actively fight to stop every public service I know of from using it. It is insidious. Every time I turn around, someone else starts a new page.
One of these journalists talks about Facebook's "Awesome power over speech." To this, I'd say, come to my house and I'll show you "Awesome power over speech." Just ask my kids.
Facebook is a private company. The Internet is a public space. Facebook sells advertising thought pieces to the highest bidder so as to influence the masses. The Internet is an open portal where anyone can start their own site.
Facebook, Nextdoor and the like are nothing but gossip rooms hyper charged on advertising propaganda. These sites should be avoided at all costs, all of the times.
--
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. - Louis D. Brandeis
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Facebook is a private company. The Internet is a public space.
Your post would feel more relevant if you put it up on your own domain rather than as a comment on on story on a privately owned news aggregator.
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True.
--
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. - Paul Valery
No Free Speech Violations Here... (Score:3)
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Wrong. When a platform represents a set of rules as its rules, users have a reasonable expectation that those rules will be applied. Facebook's review board found that Facebook didn't apply its own rules in this case. But that was okay, because Orange Man Bad, Facebook just needs to change the rules again in the next six months to excuse themselves for breaking their own rules.
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Sooner or later all of us learn the difference between a reasonable expectation and a guarantee.
Trump has benefitted his entire life from pushing rules to the breaking point and then hoping that the difficulty of defining that breaking point discourages meaningful enforcement. A good example of this is the wholesale tax fraud that occurred when his father died (Trump's sister gave up her lifetime federal judgeship to end the investigation https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]).
Trump correctly gambled that his
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There are no guarantees in life, even when they are promised.
The rich and powerful get double standards. Take, for example, a crack-addicted, stripper-impregnating, sister-in-law-two-timing son of a former vice president. He can commit perjury to illegally buy and possess a handgun, and fail to register as a foreign agent, and not only will the lying media cover up for him, corrupt companies like Facebook will bury the truth so that his father wins an election. If you want to complain about pushing the b
Re:No Free Speech Violations Here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Think this through. Do you think Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg should have a veto power over who you vote, what opinions you can discuss and so on? Because that is logical conclusion of your stance on free speech.
Re: No Free Speech Violations Here... (Score:2)
Your definition of free speech is ridiculous. Yes, First Amendment does not protect you from private censorship, but how can you say that your free speech is not violated when nearly all speech is digital?
Very easily. Just because I find it convenient to use someone else's site to post things doesn't mean I have a right to. Ultimately if I want to rely on my freedom of speech I need to either speak on my property or on public property. Nothing else will suffice.
in 2021 if you do not have access to social media you can't be a politician, artist, journalist, public intellectual and so on.
Yes you can.
Think this through. Do you think Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg should have a veto power over who you vote, what opinions you can discuss and so on? Because that is logical conclusion of your stance on free speech.
If I'm using Facebook or Twitter? They should have control over what I could post there (not that I use either). It certainly doesn't prevent me from discussing my opinions elsewhere nor does it keep me from voting. Are you stupid or somet
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in 2021 if you do not have access to social media you can't be a politician, artist, journalist, public intellectual and so on.
Yes you can.
Not a very successful one, and that's the point. These companies hold an undue level of influence over the democratic process, and can manipulate it for their own purposes.
Total free speech violation here (Score:2)
The government has spent more than a year threatening [substack.com] tech companies with regulation if they don't engage in censorship, and threats from government officials have long been ruled by the Supreme Court to be a 1st Amendment violation. Not only that, the government is telling FaceTwitOogle whom to censor via government-funded think tanks:
https://about.fb.com/news/2018... [fb.com]
Democracy must have a strong opposition (Score:2)
Misleading about "arbitrary" (Score:2)
The news articles I've read -- not (Conservative) opinion pieces -- seem to indicate that the "arbitrary" part was more about the suspension being "indefinite" and that the board recommended Facebook either make it permanent or set an expiration date. Anyone have anything more?
Oh, shut up (Score:5, Insightful)
At the same time, Trump is free to pool his money and start a new website to post his thoughts to. There are plenty of programmers who are disciples of his movement and would happily help build a website for him.
YOU shut up (Score:2)
If the Facebook monopoly wants to be a publisher, they can give up their section 230 protections. And the government is not only demanding that tech companies engage in more censorship, they are also telling tech companies who to censor via government funded think tanks like the Atlantic Council. Straight from the horses ass:
https://about.fb.com/news/2018... [fb.com]
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If the Facebook monopoly wants to be a publisher, they can give up their section 230 protections.
Well, you're lying. Section 230 says that pretty much no matter what they do, they're not to be treated as a publisher. That is the Section 230 protection.
And the government is not only demanding that tech companies engage in more censorship, they are also telling tech companies who to censor
Unlikely they're doing either, ass.
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You're lying about lying. 230, like the DMCA, is to protect platforms from being sued when Joe Random shitposts online, because they are a platform. If they are outright censoring views, not just taking down speech inciting violence or defamatory posts, they are a publisher and don't deserve 230 protections. Pick one.
I just gave you a link straight from the horse's mouth, asser.
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230, like the DMCA, is to protect platforms from being sued when Joe Random shitposts online, because they are a platform
No. (Also 47 USC 230 and 17 USC 512 are not very similar in any respect, other than that they both concern things online and establish safe harbors. Structurally, procedurally, substantively, pretty dissimilar.)
Here's what Senator Wyden, one of the authors of Section 230 said:
Section 230 is not about neutrality. Period. Full stop. 230 is all about letting private companies make their own decisions to leave up some content and take other content down.
Here's what former Representative Chris Cox, the other author of Section 230 said:
We named our bill the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act, to describe its two main components: protecting speech and privacy on the Internet from government regulation, and incentivizing blocking and filtering technologies that individuals could use to become their own censors in their own households. Pornographers illegally targeting minors would not be let off the hook: They would be liable for compliance with all laws, both civil and criminal, in connection with any content they created.
To avoid interfering with the essential functioning of the Internet, the law would not shift that responsibility to Internet platforms, for whom the burden of screening billions of digital messages, documents, images, and sounds would be unreasonable -- not to mention a potential invasion of privacy. Instead, Internet platforms would be allowed to act as âoeGood Samaritansâ by reviewing at least some of the content if they chose to do so in the course of enforcing rules against âoeobscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionableâ content.
This last feature of the bill resolved a conflict that then existed in the courts. In New York, a judge had held that one of the then-two leading Internet platforms, Prodigy, was liable for defamation because an anonymous user of its site had claimed that an investment bank and its founder, Jordan Belfort, had committed securities fraud. ... In holding Prodigy responsible for content it didnâ(TM)t create, the court effectively overruled a prior New York decision involving the other major U.S. Internet platform at the time, CompuServe. The previous case held that online service providers would not be held liable as publishers. In distinguishing Prodigy from the prior precedent, the court cited the fact that Prodigy, unlike CompuServe, had adopted content guidelines. ... CompuServe, in contrast, made no such effort. On its platform, the rule was indeed âoeanything goes.â As a user of both services, I well understood the difference. I appreciated the fact that there was some minimal level of moderation on the Prodigy site. While CompuServe was a splendid service and serious users predominated, the lack of any controls whatsoever was occasionally noticeable and, I could easily envision, bound to get worse.
If allowed to stand, this jurisprudence would have created a powerful and perverse incentive for platforms to abandon any attempt to maintain civility on their sites. And a legal standard that protected only websites where âoeanything goesâ from unlimited liability for user-generated content would have been a body blow to the Internet itself. Ron and I were determined that good faith content moderation should not be punished, and so the Good Samaritan provision in the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act was born.
And here's what the law says:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
This means that no matter how much filtering or moderation a site does, it's still never the publisher. It can go wild
Ding dong, Trump is gone... (Score:2)
Everybody loved the social media deplatforming superpowers when they were being used against Trump and his followers. What's going to happen if Biden gets uppity and proposes something like a tax on global corporate income that reaches into those hyperspatial wormholes where Big Tech has been stashing its money?
The White House may already be prepared to fall back to specialty political comment sites if it loses Twitface access, but what if Slate.com and Salon.com suddenly find whole sections of the Internet
Re:We're being trolled by /. editors (Score:5, Informative)
<CHECKS TFA>
npr.org
nytimes.com
politico.com
axios.com
msn.com
Yeah, I see what you mean, just a bunch of right-wing whack-jobs.
Except that the whole thing started (Score:2)
You left that part out.
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Uh, yeah, they are. NPR hasn't been called National Pentagon Radio/Nice Polite Republicans for decades without reason. Like most other rags, they are heavily partisan towards the Democrats - but the Democrats are a right wing party.
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Re: "The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:2)
Keep trying little guy, if you keep posting this on every thread eventually someone will give it points. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but some day.
Also active military voted for Biden in 2020, so just stew on that you silly goose.
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Thinking about those big manly marines makes his pee pee hard.
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If one thing's clear in the wake of President-elect Joe Biden's presumptive victory over President Donald Trump
When did you write this? Last November?
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When did you write this? Last November?
Yes. It would have been easier and faster to simply look at the reference he posted (dated Nov9) than to actually type out your question.
Re: Show empathy to SORE LOSERS. (Score:2)
Keep rocking back and forth in a fetal position while telling yourself that. It'll be nappy-time soon.
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only banned him after his presidency was over and they would lose less money from doing so.
Don't be silly. His banning even during the presidency wouldn't even budge the needle on their profit. They very clearly banned him when there was no more time left for republicans to draft legislation forcing their hand, and for the administration to drag them through a potentially damaging court case up through the supreme court.
so despite their hatred for him they kept him on their sites for profit.
No they kept him on their sites for self preservation. Say what you want about Trump, one undeniable thing is that he was both powerful and demonstrated repeatedly that he used hi
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Twitter's revenue was actually on an exponential incline *until* Trump actually became a relevant name, then it plateaued.
As for your 99% number, I see you're talking with your heart and not with your head. Twitter sees 500million tweets per day. Trump and everything associated with him, including retweets, replies, makes up a tiny fraction of their feed. The only number I could find is 1000 Trump related tweets (including Trump's tweets, retweets, replies, and also includes mentions and tags related to tru
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I think most Democrats are mad at Facebook, and have been for awhile, is because it's been a haven for conspiracy theorists and the worst types of reactionaries to propagate and organize with little to inconsistent oversight, as well as being allowed to swallow up competitors and engage in anti-competitive practices. But please do keep whipping that man made of straw.
While the midterms are going to be a tossup the idea that the conservatives are getting "less Trumpy" is not the case at all. Anyone note loy
Right wing outlets (Score:2)
Democrats are a right wing party, not left wing. Your average corporate democrat is well to the right of Republican voters, who actually want higher minimum wages & taxes on the rich, to gtfo of Afghanistan, legalize marijuana, etc etc.
Because they worked harder to lose to Trump than they did to win with Bernie. Suppressing the left is the entire purpose of the DNC. But then covid and Tr
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A major problem with that ruling is that it directly contradicts nearly every TOS that basically says "You don't own this account, it remains property of the company. You are only granted exclusive access to it". So is he blocking the account or the person, because the person can simply view his twitter while logged out.
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So do I own the account or not?