When does it become a violation of freedom of speech to censor expressions, and why should private companies of such a nature and size of FB be exempt from having that imposed on them, they have their own freedoms as a private company, but at what point do the scales start to tip towards a violation of the first amendment by these private corporations, where their rights begin to infringe on those of citizens in a substantial way? Why risk having people radicalized behind closed doors?
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I need a drink
A corporation having rules about what can and can’t be said on their platform has nothing to do with the first amendment. You’re free (legally allowed) to say what you want and they are free (legally allowed) to ban you. The first amendment guarantees you a voice, not a platform.
If you read the constitution you will see that the amendments don’t apply to facebook in how it treats you, a private citizen.
Private companies can do what they want. When politicians use social media to interact with their constituents, the rules get a bit murky.
We’ve seen communities that have little to no rules on speech and, coincidentally enough, they’re all racist, sexist cesspools.
Private corporations cannot be obligated to protect freedom of speech. The first amendment is to protect the people against the government intrusion on speech.
That said, when social media platforms determine which articles are “true,” and control the narrative, they should not receive the broad immunity from liability as an interactive computer service.
Section 230(c)(2) provides immunity from civil liabilities for information service providers that remove or restrict content from their services they deem “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”
Removing viewpoints they disagree with is perfectly legal, but let’s not pretend that they are objective.
The scales start to tip when Facebook is purchased by the US government. Until then, maybe just don’t be a Nazi on social media.
No, they’re private companies they literally can not violate your first amendment rights. If someone comes into your house and starts exposing racist or Nazi ideology I’m sure you want to kick them out wouldn’t you?
Mandating freedom of speech in every context would be unworkable. You can’t just let the KKK lecture a 2nd grade classroom because you don’t want to censor people.
You can’t just let a mad prophet interrupt the movie theater because free speech.
If you want to hold a Marxist reading night you don’t also have to allow in someone from ExxonMobil to lecture in the glories of capitalism.
Freedom of Speech protects you from the government silencing criticism and opposing ideas. That’s a valuable protection but about as far as it goes.
I think it absolutely should if you ascribe to the idea that the internet should be a utility. The truth is the internet is a weird thing that’s run mostly by private companies, yet is vitally important where we can voice our opinion. It’s a weird spot and compromises might have to be made from all perspectives.
The mental gymnastics of being “oppressed” by not being able to be a complete fuckwad online and being radicalized by that is gold medal worthy.
No. Your question is wrongly premised, because nobody has a “right” to act out as they wish in a private facility. Social media platforms are privately owned resources. The First Amendment does not give you the right to hijack the front page of the privately owned New York Times, or storm into the studio at CNN, and say whatever you want. Nor do you have the “right” to storm into a privately owned shop or restaurant and defecate on the floor.
It is not “censorship” to edit and manage a private information platform. Indeed, lack of editing results in an unreadable toxic mess most of the time — and the country has suffered greatly because Facebook and YouTube enable distribution of maniacal, insane disinformation. We need more thoughtful, professional editing to community standards, not less.
I worked my way through college at the daily newspaper. One of my jobs was to cull through Letters to the Editor and choose ones that would actually go into the paper. This was because we had a lot of cranks and halfwits mail their thoughts in. Same thing.
I don’t see anything wrong with a individual website having its own rules on what’s acceptable. They are a private company and you can always go to a different one. The internet isn’t real life.
The (“The”) First (“First”) Amendment (“Amendment”) applies (“applies”) to government institutions (“to anyone I say it does!”).
someone (on this sub i think) once said: “if the second amendment applies only to muskets and cannons, then the first amendment applies only to paper and quill”
I’d prefer to live in a world where people weren’t afraid of letting assholes have their say and get shouted down by non-assholes, but what are you gonna do?
Social Media functions like a modern Public Square, so it should be regulated in a manner similar to the actual physical city/town square and that in turn requires at least some freedom of speech protections. In addition if they choose to censor more than what is explicitly illegal they have become a publisher in my opinion, which means they should lose their special protections and be able to be sued for what is on their platform just like a newspaper can be sued for what it prints.
The 1st amendment protects citizens from the government. Let’s say Elon decided to implement a rule saying that you can’t mention Azerbaijan under any circumstances. The 1st amendment technically does not protect you from that.
Freedom of speech implies freedom from government censorship. Social media is not run by the government, and shouldn’t be. The point at which the scales will tip is when a social media platform gets nationalized – again, not something I’d want to happen.
Freedom of speech just means you aren’t going to jail for speech that someone else doesn’t like. It has nothing to do with social media and getting banned
No, same way free speech shouldn’t be imposed in the course of private employment in an NFL stadium. If you don’t like a company’s policies you can buy the company and set your own.
you agreed to terms and conditions when you made a facebook account. you probably didn’t read them, but that’s your business.
When the government tells private businesses what kind of speech is allowed on their own platforms, that would be a violation of freedom of speech. There is no point where the scales tip, either the government does that or it doesn’t.
Good lord no.
That’s what fascists and communists do.
Would you like it if the government regulated what you said in your own home or business. Do you believe that a company shouldn’t be able to fire someone that said super racist shit to customers?
The internet the public square, websites are platforms, no one owes you a spot on their platform. Why is this so hard to understand?
It isn’t, deplorables just want to be able to bully people on Twitter because it’s where most people are and they aren’t content playing n their own right-wing ballpit with no one to harass.
Questions like these tend to get fairly boring fairly quickly as people seem to just make odd assumptions. There seems to be a belief that not allowing moderation of content on Twitter will make it a conservative utopia instead of a cesspit of 14 year olds posting shock gore pics as comments to everything just because they can.
The conversation also rarely seems to cover well algorithms and the serving of new or suggested content to users. Even if you allowed all content to technically exist somewhere on Twitter, if you don’t really show it to other users does that tick the box for you on “freedom of speech?” Algorithms are how these platforms charge higher premiums for ad space, so you clearly cannot just come in and say that they need to treat all user-created content equally.