Supreme Court To Decide If State Laws Limiting Social Media Platforms Violate Constitution (apnews.com) 42
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether state laws that seek to regulate Facebook, TikTok, X and other social media platforms violate the Constitution. The justices will review laws enacted by Republican-dominated legislatures and signed by Republican governors in Florida and Texas. While the details vary, both laws aim to prevent the social media companies from censoring users based on their viewpoints. The court's announcement, three days before the start of its new term, comes as the justices continue to grapple with how laws written at the dawn of the digital age, or earlier, apply to the online world.
The justices had already agreed to decide whether public officials can block critics from commenting on their social media accounts [...]. Separately, the high court also could consider a lower-court order limiting executive branch officials' communications with social media companies about controversial online posts. The new social media cases follow conflicting rulings by two appeals courts, one of which upheld the Texas law, while the other struck down Florida's statute. By a 5-4 vote, the justices kept the Texas law on hold while litigation over it continues.
The justices had already agreed to decide whether public officials can block critics from commenting on their social media accounts [...]. Separately, the high court also could consider a lower-court order limiting executive branch officials' communications with social media companies about controversial online posts. The new social media cases follow conflicting rulings by two appeals courts, one of which upheld the Texas law, while the other struck down Florida's statute. By a 5-4 vote, the justices kept the Texas law on hold while litigation over it continues.
Corporations are people, my friend. (Score:2, Interesting)
Hobby Lobby corporation wants to avoid paying for healthcare coverage that includes contraception coverage even if there is no additional charge. Oh yes, here corporations are people, entitled to full freedom of expression and religious belief. Really. yup. true.
A non existent fake corporation wants a precedent allowing businesses to discriminate against gays. Yup, they are people, and their religious belief trumps
Re:Corporations are people, my friend. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Corporations are people, my friend. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mitt Romney said that. But he did not get into when they are people and when they are not.
Simple answer: Apparently, they're people when it comes to rights and not when it comes to responsibility..
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...which is literally what corporations are for: to shield shareholders from responsibility for their actions, specifically funding and subsequently profiting from criminal enterprises.
Re:Corporations are people, my friend. (Score:4, Informative)
The right of MAGA to shout into the megaphones pointing at your home window shall not be abridged.
I see the "if you don't like it start your own social media" smugness of years prior has been replaced by anger, and I am guessing this must be the consequence of Musk opening up Twitter, since the hole that created in the censorship wall is unpluggable.
Your ID shows you must have grown up during the glory days of the libertarian hacker culture and 2600. If you don't care about those views anymore, if you don't understand that, as Chomsky said, with regard to the freedom of speech there are two positions -- you support it for the views you hate or you reject it and choose the Stalinist/Nazi standards -- you should return your membership card.
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Because 99% of users don't want titties on social nedia, even those who consume porn, butat least 25% and probably closer to a half want anti-left (not ultra-right, just anti-left) views.
Also titties aren't a view, in a manner you describe.
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For those who are interested, the definitive ruling that compelled speech is unconstitutional is
Riley v. National Federation of the Blind of North Carolina, Inc. 487 U.S. 781 at 796
The Court stated,
There is certainly some difference between compelled speech and compelled silence, but in the context of protected speech, the difference is without constitutional significance, for the First Amendment guarantees "freedom of speech," a term necessarily comprising the decision of both what to say and what not to say
(emphasis is mine, not the Court's).
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Dammit. Reply fail. That was supposed to be a reply to organgtool [slashdot.org]
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Sure! We'll make your political beliefs a matter of public record that anyone can look up through the Freedom of Information Act.
By making a stink, they've only attracted the attention they claimed to want to avoid.
My property, my choice (Score:3)
If I own a site I can regulate it however I want. Those are my beliefs. Isn't that what this court has held? If you don't like something because of your "beliefs" you can not do business with someone?
Of course the really funny outcome will be that places such as the failing Truth Social or Twitter can't censor people either, such as has been done [imgur.com] and continues to be done [forbes.com].
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Right now, NYC is facing a similar question regarding the rights of property owners vs tenants in the context of rent control laws. It will be interesting to watch - to say the least - and may foreshadow some of the larger debates around how far government regulation can push into controlling private property/entities/people/corporations.
The town square argument i think is valid but should be a requirement for corporations to have protections from what people post. OTOH if you restrict speech to only what
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As long as your behavior is lawful, you should be fine running a personal website as you see fit. If you're operating it as a business, then you also fall under many laws that regulate the function and operation of businesses. If you're a publicly traded company, then you fall under even more regulation.
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But when there's a censorship law, your behavior isn't lawful anymore.
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If I own a site I can regulate it however I want.
This I agree with. However, companies ALSO want to be absolved of responsibility for things posted to their site.
IMO you are either the 'town square' and allow free speech under that context/protection or you are a private site that can restrict at whim and jointly/directly responsible for what's posted.
They Are My Bits. (Score:2)
I payed for them. ALL of them. Not some predetermined selection made for me. If I want to go to a website in then it is my business.
I can't believe this is even an issue. Bunch a control freaks. Get bent.
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...in wherever. Slashdot doesn't like side arrow thingies.
Wat (Score:2)
I don't see how fascist censorship could ever be construed as Constitutional.
You can't tell people which apps they can and can't use in the United States. It's not fucking Britain where Big Mommy bans things and puts porn filters on everyone's internet.
OTOH, states can't possibly get into micromanaging protected and unprotected speech of commercial apps. While there are plenty of platforms heaving with polarized, biased, unforgiving, humorless, bitchy, infantile, unreasonable zealot mods but that's not
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I put this in the same category as States trying to implement gun control. They need to step away. Both the First and Second Amendments need to be left alone by the States. They are both well defined by the Constitution. That's not to say that Tik-Tok isn't dangerous. I am all for letting people know of the dangers of using such an ap. However, Caveat Emptor.
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Second Amendments need to be left alone by the States. They are both well defined by the Constitution.
They are not, though. The current attitude from the supreme court is mostly an invention in the last 50-70 years or so. In the 1800s the legal theory that arms (which used to be defined as weapons of war) were for self defense was called "absurd".
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In the 1800s the legal theory that arms (which used to be defined as weapons of war) were for self defense was called "absurd".
Indeed, the US government would pay private warships to attack enemy trade [battlefields.org]. Of course that meant private ownership of warships was legal and "arms" indeed meant weapons of any kind.
If you were to apply that principle to today, we'd have private carrier battle groups and private nuclear missile silos.
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That does not follow. The US government allowing some people to own warships doesn't imply that all ownership was unrestricted.
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At the time there just weren't laws prohibiting it, and anything not prohibited is permitted.
The only way the US legally restricted who could own a cannon or indeed a warship was that in order to amass enough money you had to be a member of a privileged class.
The unwritten but most important law, then as now, was that if you are a person of privilege, you can do what you want, and the more dollars you have the more privilege... as long as you put enough of them in the right pockets. Which is why Feinstein c
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The US government allowing some people to own warships
This is where you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the US government in the 1800's. The government doesn't "allow" people to do things, people have a fundamental right to do things. The government is granted limited powers to regulate certain things. These limited powers are enumerated in the Constitution, and arms control is not one of those (you can read the entire list in section 8, it's not very long).
The US government being able to do anything it wants arose in the mid-1900's as a result of 2 Wor
Re: Wat (Score:2)
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We should also get ride of fire fighters as a public service. We can each buy fire protection service, put a tag on our house. And hope that when it is needed, the company that services us has people available. More likely it will be like trying to get a washing machine delivered and you have to wait between 12pm-4pm next Wednesday.
This One Is Going to Be Interesting (Score:3)
Then you have the fact that Section 230 seems to provide protection to the corporations at the federal level. The Republicans will probably claim that States' Rights gives precedence to the state laws, but you could also argue that these services are designed to operate across state lines, and therefore the Interstate Commerce Clause overrides the state laws, and Section 230 prevails. I'm obviously not a lawyer, but I could imagine the arguments playing out like this.
Of course, the judges should rule with impartiality based on their best-faith efforts at interpreting all state and federal laws and their respective priorities and precedence, but my cynical side thinks we've regressed too far into partisanship to honestly expect that to happen.
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In addition to the Commerce clause, the Supremacy clause would seem to apply here as well.
Such a conondrum (Score:3)
I have no problem with unfettered media, except that it’s not “news”. I’m not allowed to package any old crap in a bottle and call it “medicine”. I can’t bottle up a bunch of pond water and sell it as “vodka”. Those words have legal standing. “News” should be the same. News sources should be held to factual reporting. Fox and NBC should not be allowed to call themselves “news”. Performance art? Sure. Entertainment? For some, yes. But they arent news and they shouldnt be allowed to claim it.
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Both sides, am I right folks? Hardly. Fox had to argue in court that what they play is entertainment and people shouldn't think it's news.
She wrote: "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
So in Fox's own words Tucker Carlson's show is a work of fiction. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29... [npr.org]
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Didn't really help Fox and Newscorp when Dominion took their asses to the cleaner, and while there was more than one person at Fox News responsible for it, Tucker's public and private statements stood out so prominently during discovery and trial that it does appear that claiming "hey it's all fiction", may not cut it if you ended up having to defend yourself against defamation.
1st amendment should apply here (Score:3)
The 1st amendment prevents private entities form being compelled to speak. There are exceptions but none that would compel a web site to run political content it chooses not to run.
If a politician wanted to stick up a billboard on the side of a Wal-Mart expressing his option and Wal-Mart said no, the politician would have no right to force Wal-Mart to host the billboard. Why should it be any different because it's digital?
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Yet...
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This is a formal statement that I do not give politicians the right to use my telephone to call me or text me on political matters. Misuse of my service will be dealt with to the maximum extent of the law. (which is not at all)
Pruneyard decision (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Well, that was interesting.