"How many of your subscribers tuned in to Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN on U-verse, DirecTV, and AT&T TV for each of the four weeks preceding the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol? Please specify the number of subscribers that tuned in to each channel."
Does this strike anyone else as a nakedly partisan move?
It pretty much is and is a chilling attempt at limiting speech. Free press, is free press. CNN and MSNBC both spread their share of misinformation. You need to be able to watch multiple news sources with different takes in a free society, to determine whose wrong or whose omitting key facts in an attempt to frame the news.
It's a legislative body which is trying to limit speech not through legislation but through intimidation. They could pass a law and have it struck down nearly immediately, or they could flog CEO's in public for their own amusement.
> It's a legislative body which is trying to limit speech not through legislation but through intimidation
Bingo!
When these CEO's enact new policies that censors "Right-Think", it'll be totally okay because it's not the Government limiting Free Speech - private companies are allowed to limit Free Speech, don't you see!
That isn't what "free speech" means. Free Speech means the government won't imprison or execute you. Private companies operate private services, they can kick you off for saying "bread" if they want and it's not "limiting free speech".
Government cannot limit your Free Speech, for the reason I (and you) pointed out.
So... short of any alternative tools, the Government sets out to intimidate private companies into censoring on the Government's behalf.
What more... it's not "The Government" - it's a political party that happens to be in power right now and is seeking to censor the other political party through means of intimidation and coercion of private companies.
That doesn't sit very well with me.. regardless of which party is attempting to censor which.
You're deliberately mixing "Twitter bans me" with "Government imprisons me" and pretending they are the same thing so you can describe it as "private companies are allowed to limit free speech don't you see!" which is a misleading and incorrect description. You said "When these CEO's enact new policies that censors "Right-Think", it'll be totally okay because it's not the Government limiting Free Speech - private companies are allowed to limit Free Speech, don't you see!" and that is explicitly /not/ what limiting free speech means; a) that's not the Government limiting Free Speech, that's the Government doing something else, and b) a private company limiting your speech isn't a private company limiting Free Speech, it's a private company doing something else.
And Free Speech is too important for that equivocation to pass uncontested.
> "Government cannot limit your Free Speech, for the reason I (and you) pointed out."
I didn't point out a reason the Government cannot limit free speech, I pointed out that Twitter banning you is not anyone limiting Free Speech. The Government absolutely /can/ limit your Free Speech, that's why it's important and scary - of all organizations which exist only the Government can make it illegal for you to publish a book or imprison you for writing a critical newspaper article. Jeff Bezos cannot lock you up for writing a blog post critical of Amazon or making a credible bomb threat, but a government could (potentially) lock you up for writing a blog post critical of the government and can do so for making a credible bomb threat.
Your reason appears to be "the Government doesn't want to limit your Free Speech because it would make them look bad, so they lean on Twitter to ban people instead" - well I would far far prefer that, because having your Twitter account banned is less bad than being imprisoned, and more easily recovered from by posting somewhere else. You trying to claim this is limiting your Free Speech trivialises what it means for people in other countries to be imprisoned for being critical of the party in power (whether you call that a government or not).
> "What more... it's not "The Government" - it's a political party that happens to be in power right now"
That's what a government is.
> "and is seeking to censor the other political party through means of intimidation and coercion of private companies.
Again no; Twitter banning your account is a kind of censorship but not the same kind of censorship, even if they were paid by the President himself. You being arrested for having a Twitter account would be censorship, but it wouldn't be Twitter doing the arresting. The reason it's not (the same kind of / as bad) censorship is that you can make your own Twitter with blackjack and hookers and say "I love $politicalParty" all you like on it, and if everyone does that then Twitter fades into irrelevance. Just because Twitter is large and popular doesn't mean Twitter is obliged to provide service to everyone - subject to discrimination laws. If you phone up your local talk radio and they don't air your phonecall, that's not censorship.
You seem to be stuffing a lot of straw men into your response. That, or you think I'm making an argument that I have yet to write.
I have no idea where Twitter came into all this, nor does it matter what people in other countries consider "Free Speech" or not.
> The Government absolutely /can/ limit your Free Speech, that's why it's important and scary - of all organizations which exist only the Government can make it illegal for you to publish a book or imprison you for writing a critical newspaper article.
Perhaps you are not familiar with the US Constitution and the US Government (we often forget HN is an international community) - but no, the Government here cannot make it illegal to publish a book or imprison you for writing a critical newspaper article.
No, the US Government (local, state, federal) cannot put you in prison for voicing opinions, no matter how unpopular they may be.
Yes, private organization can deplatform, censor, and silence any opinions they disagree with.
What we clearly have here is a case of a political party, in control of Congress, seeking a way to circumvent the US Constitution (specifically the 1st Amendment) by nakedly intimidating private organizations into enacting censorship on their behalf, to be perpetrated against said political party's political enemies.
That is flatly wrong, and should be viewed as Government attempting to censor political enemies... because that is what it is!
Point out the straw men, please. I think I argued against sentences you actually wrote. I introduced Twitter into all this so I could make specific examples that aren't as loaded as Amazon/Parler, because I think your position is relying on being politically loaded and falls apart easily without that component. It does matter what people in other countries think Free Speech is, because the comparison with countries where Free Speech is actually missing makes the distinction between that, and this, clear. That distinction is a point I have made at least twice and you have refused to engage with.
> "No, the US Government (local, state, federal) cannot put you in prison for voicing opinions, no matter how unpopular they may be.
I think you are trying to make the point that the US Constitution says the Government may not do that. I am trying to make the point that the Government has the power to do that, and is the only organization with the power to do that, and that they actually do do that in certain circumstances - e.g. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-teenage-isis-supporter-sentence... - imprisoned for running a pro-ISIS Twitter account. Given that the Government has the power to imprison you where private organizations don't, and that the Government will do so for certain (e.g. pro-terrorism) speeches now, it is important to make the distinction that a Congressperson asking AT&T if they intend to carry Fox News in future is different to the Government arresting a Fox News journalist, CEO, or AT&T CEO, and that the difference is large.
> "Yes, private organization can deplatform, censor, and silence any opinions they disagree with."
Yes they can, I haven't denied it. What I have said is that you can use your freedoms to start new private organizations where you can post opinions you agree with and silence opinions you disagree with, or walk about with a billboard in the town square. You have the right to speak, you don't have the right to a large audience on a popular platform. That's why private organizations deplatforming you is different even if the Government is leaning (which I don't agree they are), and the difference matters.
> "What we clearly have here is a case of a political party, in control of Congress, seeking a way to circumvent the US Constitution (specifically the 1st Amendment) by nakedly intimidating private organizations into enacting censorship on their behalf, to be perpetrated against said political party's political enemies."
No we don't clearly have that. We clearly have a couple (two) members of Congress sending a form letter to a dozen media companies asking 7 fairly trivial questions. If you're going to claim "nakedly intimidating" please point out the intimidating wording in the letter. Since there isn't any, you can't, so I predict you're not going to respond to this bit in good faith either.
> "That is flatly wrong, and should be viewed as Government attempting to censor political enemies... because that is what it is!"
I am not going to copy-paste the entire letter here, but following up on an event which happened by writing a letter asking if Roku did anything to support or stop carrying media about the event, is not flatly wrong, it's a normal and expected kind of investigation. It seems very likely that the media companies in question will send back lawerly responses saying "we do not filter content, we have a fair use policy, we were monitoring events and took (some/no) actions" and that will be all that comes of it.
Twitter banning an account at the behest of the government is absolutely censorship. Sure Twitter is free to ban me. But Twitter is free to allow me to speak without retribution from the government.
The government has no business threatening companies to silence people.
Trying to head off this response is why I added "(the same kind of / as bad) censorship". The government has no business threatening companies to silence people, but if they do threaten companies to silence people that's not the same as arresting you for criticising the government, it's not the same thing as limiting Free Speech(tm). Twitter is free to allow you to speak without retribution from the government, but compelling Twitter to let you speak, to provide you a service you aren't paying for, is another matter again.
Where the lines fall on that is up for debate, in arguments about whether large enough sites are like public services, or should be public services, whether websites are blind conduits for information or responsible for the content on them, and the fact that all that is being argued is evidence that it hasn't been settled in a dystopian way.
If I threw $10 to ICQ to delete your account that you haven't used in a decade, you could still argue "censorship! you have no business doing that!" and be correct, but any point about it being a limit on your free speech would be much much more obviously weak.
Huh? How is this intimidation? It's not like spreading information to its viewers is something Fox was doing illegally or surreptitiously; it's their whole business. However many people they reached, I would think they'd be proud of the answer?
Would you feel the same way if house republicans sent letters to twitter asking how many users used the #blm hashtag last summer? It seems to me that we'd get lots of headlines declaring that they were attempting to silence anyone in favor of police reform.
You should see how upset people were when you told them you think Trump is a great president. At my last job, the IT admin was so upset that he told me that he will not do any of my incidents.
That's unfortunate that he chose to respond that way.
I might disagree with you on Trump but I think we probably have far more in common than we disagree on. I don't know how anyone thinks we're going to solve our real problems if we can't have constructive conversations about where we agree and disagree, and how we can both compromise to work toward what is probably a shared goal.
I believe most Americans have the same basic goals: good health, prosperity, security, and strong community. Most of where we disagree is around how to achieve those goals. Unfortunately, too many people get caught up in the "how" and that it makes it so much harder to get anything done.
It may be. The key is whether the misinformation present directed others to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action, and I think it hinges on how people reacted to the misinformation.
CNN/MSNBC may also have misinformation, but their misinformation may not be in the same class, specifically something that could motivate some subset of their viewers to commit insurrection by attempting to detain and possibly murder elected representatives.
In either case, it'll be interesting to see where this goes.
> To me, it could also be the modern day version of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and I think it hinges on how people reacted to the misinformation.
> In this case, is the misinformation present directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action?
We have several Supreme Court decisions that can help answer this question. First of all, misinformation was established to be protected speech in NYTimes vs Sullivan, where the SCOTUS unanimously found that the New York Times was within its rights to publish an advertisement containing factual inaccuracies[1].
Brandenburg v Ohio (also unanimous[2]) explicitly established the "imminent lawless action" test as overriding the "clear and present danger" test; which was further reinforced by Hess v Indiana in which the court found that Hess's words were protected by the First Amendment because his speech amounted to "nothing more than the advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time"; i.e. failing the "imminence" portion of the "imminent lawless action" test [3].
> While it's not the best, people are familiar with it. The replacement is certainly more accurate.
The entire point is that what people are familiar with is incorrect and should no longer be considered a valid argument. In fact, the irony of this logic is that one could argue that advocating for limiting speech by falsely citing an overturned precedent as currently relevant is itself misinformation that can be legally regulated even under the First Amendment; we would both agree that that is nonsense.
The New York Times vs Sullivan precedent pretty specifically addressed that issue: organizations (like the NYT) are protected by the First Amendment.
Also, just taking a step back, the Constitution makes no mention of a difference between individuals and groups. If you and I were to group together to advocate for something, our rights to advocate for that thing don't magically disappear.
In fact, by this logic, we don't actually have a free press, because journalistic outlets aren't individuals, they are organizations that the Constitution doesn't protect.
The New York Times is a corporation with a government-granted charter that grants it things like limited liability. It's fallacious to characterize it as just some ad-hoc "group" of individuals joining together to individually exercise their rights.
And yes, I agree that we don't actually have a free press. Given our microkernel government, institutions like the New York Times are better seen as part of the de facto government than independent organizations speaking truth to power - eg marketing the Iraq war. This relationship is easier to see with say Equifax than NYT, but the dynamic is similar.
> It's fallacious to characterize it as just some ad-hoc "group" of individuals joining together to individually exercise their rights.
Nobody is arguing that the New York Times is some ad-hoc group of individuals; it certainly has its structure. The argument is that the same principles that afford an ad-hoc group of individuals the freedom of association (and expression) is what also affords a structured corporation like the New York Times the same protections. This isn't conjecture, it's the philosophy behind the landmark decisions of New York Times Co vs Sullivan, as well as Citizens United vs FEC (Citizens United was a 501(c)4 non-profit corporation).
At the end of the day, the New York Times doesn't have a mind of its own; the articles it publishes and advertisements it chooses to sell are the output of the individuals that work there, including the journalists and the editors.
If you and I want to join together and start a corporation for the purpose of advancing an issue, the First Amendment prohibits the government from enacting any law that may abridge that.
> And yes, I agree that we don't actually have a free press.
The Supreme Court has an established track record of aggressively protecting the rights of the organized press (NYT v Sullivan, Hustler Magazine v Falwell), group-speech (Citizens United), hate speech (Brandenburg) and even violent speech (Hess v Indiana). If that doesn't register as "press freedom", then I may as well lobby for legislation outlawing comments like yours on account of being misinformation.
> At the end of the day, the New York Times doesn't have a mind of its own; the articles it publishes are the output of the individuals that work there, including the journalists and the editors.
The Chinese room argument says otherwise, and it behooves us as homo sapiens to pay attention. How many individual reporters at the NYT wanted to give support the Iraq war? And yet that's what the entity itself ended up doing, using their contributions.
> Supreme Court has an established track record of aggressively protecting the rights of the organized press
You totally ignored my argument. The point is that most of what constitutes de facto government in the US is actually outside of what we call "the government", and resides in corporations. Hence pointing to Equifax, which explicitly promulgates constraints on our individual behavior, and yet has escaped all sort of democratic accountability.
> The Chinese room argument says otherwise, and it behooves us as homo sapiens to pay attention.
I'm not sure what this sentence means.
> > How many individual reporters at the NYT wanted to give support the Iraq war? And yet that's what the entity itself ended up doing, using their contributions.
I'm sure that individual NYT reporters disagreed with support for the Iraq War; but as a protected association, they are free to determine how they settle internal disagreements however they see fit. Every organization, group, corporation, and association has their set of internal rules, and the Constitution protects those associations specifically as it relates to speech and expression.
> Hence pointing to Equifax, which explicitly promulgates constraints on our individual behavior, and yet has escaped all sort of democratic accountability.
Not sure how Equifax is relevant. First of all, it isn't in the business of publishing speech; that's what we're talking about here. If Equifax wrote a blog post about how it should be free from legislation, it is well within its rights to do that. Second of all, if you're talking about Equifax's business practices, the user has no control over whether they interact with Equifax or not — THAT is the problem with Equifax. That's simply not true for Fox News or CNN or The New York Times where there's a direct relationship between seller and buyer. I'm not sure what Equifax has to do with any of this...
Important to remember that corporations, like all groups, have no mouths, no hands, and cannot act.
All corporate actions, all corporate speech, is carried out by individual humans. Group rights are individual human rights, as groups have no brain and cannot act.
Except that there is a distinction between an individual performing an action of their own volition, and an individual performing an action to obtain income. The first represents the true will of the individual, while the latter only requires their desire to have a roof over their head.
And as I said, the entity of the NYT is afforded protections that individuals are not. If individual rights are supremely important to the individuals making up the NYT, the individuals involved are still free to act outside of their corporate shell.
New York Times employees are employed at-will. We're not talking about minimum wage workers publishing content under duress here, we're talking about journalists and editors who generally join organizations they believe in.
Tucker Carlson doesn't go on air and say the things he says because he's forced to, he does it because he wants to.
Full disclosure: my wife works for the New York Times.
So your wife never complains that work is pushing her to do something that she does not want to do, and she's bargaining with management to try to do the right thing? And the transaction costs to her quitting and finding a new job are zero? IMO "at will" is only 99% correct, and the integral of its remainder builds up into some gross misbehavior.
My wife has never been forced to publish anything against her will. That being said, she has disagreed with the editorial decisions of the paper on a number of occasions. This is not at odds with the freedom of association; every single organization is comprised of individuals that don't always agree with one another, but work together to overcome their disagreements. Nowhere has there ever been a guarantee that the freedom of association presupposes that every individual has the freedom to confer the exact same set of opinions to everyone in their association. Importantly, my wife doesn't feel like she's entitled to the power to censure other journalists or employees in her company. I know that I don't have the power to do that in my own company, nor should I.
There's disagreement within every group, that doesn't render the concept of free association invalid. The Catholic Church has its disagreements, but that doesn't mean that they lose the freedom to congregate because they're somehow no longer a bona fide association on account of that internal disagreement. The Democratic Party has its disagreements (heaven knows), the Republican Party is essentially at war with itself, the Libertarian Party can never agree on what it stands for because it's a motley crew of weirdos. None of this matters, they are all protected by the First Amendment, as associations. Whether they are traded on the NYSE, or they are 501(c)4 non-profit corporations, or they are just an amateur club, they are protected by the same First Amendment, and are subject to the same narrow limits on speech established by Brandenburg v Ohio (and all other relevant precedents).
Obviously the transaction cost to quitting and finding a new job is not zero; the Constitution's protection of the freedom of association has no guarantees on what the transaction cost to associate are. Just like free speech, you're free to say whatever you want, but you're not entitled to a free platform; promulgating speech costs money. You're free to keep and bear arms, but you're not entitled to a free rifle; guns cost money.
Associations are more than capable of gross misbehavior; but in manners related specifically to the publishing of speech and expression, they enjoy outsized protection, at least in the United States.
>> The Chinese room argument says otherwise, and it behooves us as homo sapiens to pay attention.
> I'm not sure what this sentence means.
I really should have said the implication of the Chinese Room thought experiment - intelligence arises from the constructive behavior of systems, distinct from their mechanical execution. As a (presumed) homo sapien, you should be interested in maintaining the existence of our own species versus entities that could subjugate us.
You keep asserting that organizations are no different from individuals, while completely ignoring every way I've pointed out how organizations differ from individuals. So I don't see how it's particularly productive to continue - you've seemingly made up your mind that desirable small-scale behavior implies desirable large-scale behavior by construction, and ignoring emergent behavior that arises out of scale.
> You keep asserting that organizations are no different from individuals, while completely ignoring every way I've pointed out how organizations differ from individuals.
I'm asserting that organizations are no different from individuals in the eyes of the law. That's what we're talking about here. The law explicitly protects the freedom to associate, and has no point of view on what the size of a valid association should be.
> you've seemingly made up your mind that desirable small-scale behavior implies desirable large-scale behavior by construction, and ignoring emergent behavior that arises out of scale.
If you go back and read my comments, I've not once made any prescriptions of what is "desirable" or what "should" be; I am strictly making descriptive statements about what currently "is" based on the (very accessible) text of the Constitution and the relevant precedents. You might be correct that large-scale group behavior is somehow undesirable — I don't have an opinion about that and might even agree with you! My point is that it doesn't matter, under the law. A group of 10 is protected the same way a group of 1000 or 10,000,000 are. As it currently stands, if you or I were a part of an organization, neither you nor I have any entitlement over how that organization chooses to officially express itself to the public, unless that organization explicitly empowered us to be able to do so.
If you think that the law should afford us the power to prevent the organization that we are a part of from expressing itself (even if we are in the minority within that organization) or if you think that the law should have carve-outs for different sized groups, that's a separate argument and discussion, and your best course of action there is to amend the US Constitution. We are currently talking about the legal merits of the Federal Legislature intimidating or hypothetically legislating news outlets for the content of their published speech under the status quo of the US Constitution.
> If you go back and read my comments, I've not once made any prescriptions of what is "desirable" or what "should" be; I am strictly making descriptive statements about what currently "is"
When talking about ideals and values, the wider context is what should be. Explaining the current law and its current application is straightforward, and isn't particularly worthwhile without a larger point. I don't see where your comments disclaim that you're only describing the current legal interpretation as opposed to physical reality or how things ought to be, which means that you're advocating for the status quo.
But sure, taking your comments as pure factual description of the legal situation - thanks for explaining the rationale leading to part of the problem of corporate entities becoming emergently unaccountable to us humans. If you'd care to discuss the problems with this, please go back and read my previous comments in their intended framework.
> which means that you're advocating for the status quo
I’m actually not advocating for anything. I'm using this conversation to understand what you're advocating for so that I can form my own opinion about what I should believe.
Looking back at this conversation, you said "I agree that we don't actually have a free press". It's clear from this conversation that you understand that in the status quo, we actually do have a free press, it's just that you find the implications of that to be undesirable; and you've made your best case for why that is.
My goal is to get you to be up front about the ramifications of your own proposal by admitting on the public record that you don't think that we ought to have a "free press". That helps me not only understand the implications of your proposal but also establish that you actually do believe in what you're advocating for despite the implications (the honesty is refreshing). It also allows me to understand what it really means to deviate from the status quo. In that regard, this was an illuminating exchange.
To the extent that I'm advocating for anything, it's that if you want to make any fundamental changes to the nature of press freedom in the US, the best way to do that is via the Constitutional Amendment process, and not by Legislative bullying. Even if one were to agree with the ends for which you are advocating (not saying that I do), I definitely disagree with the current means of achieving them.
> you said "I agree that we don't actually have a free press". It's clear from this conversation that you understand that in the status quo, we actually do have a free press
No, the status quo is to assert that we have a free press, as a tenet of our national beliefs. But looking at the actual governance of the US, much of the power structure resides outside of the de jure government. And that de facto government owns or supports most of the press.
> My goal is to get you to be up front about the ramifications of your own proposal
I've proposed nothing. I'm disputing assertions that backstop the status quo, chiefly that corporations should be viewed as plain groups of regular individuals coming together by voluntary association.
Regarding speech, a straightforward proposal one could create from this is that corporations' speech would be regulated as a condition of their government-approved incorporation (and groups of individuals would be free to avoid this by not incorporating). But I'm not proposing this, because I think the motivation behind this problem-narrative is mostly power coalescing, and an inevitable reaction to the fracturing of institutional authority.
Rather I'm making the general argument to point out that the interests of individuals are distinct from this battle of corporate versus government power - both "sides" are steamrollers to individually held rights. My own favored proposal is to move to Free p2p comms and leave both arms of the incumbent structure in the dust.
The New York Times vs Sullivan precedent does, in terms of defamation. That may not apply in other situations, specifically in federal crimes.
The Constitution may not differentiate between individuals and other entities, but the courts have differentiated between them. They may not in this case, but I wouldn't assume they would either.
They also differentiate based on other facts, which may differentiate any future cases. We definitely have freedom of the press, as it relates to defamation, and parody, but the precedent established in those cases may not apply to a case involving criminal acts.
> The Constitution may not differentiate between individuals and other entities, but the courts have differentiated between them.
When? To my knowledge, there are no major landmark decisions which hold that an association of individuals may be treated differently from individuals; especially as it relates to the First Amendment. We even have a precedent in Citizens United v FEC which reinforces the consistency between individuals and organizations under First Amendment jurisprudence.
> We definitely have freedom of the press, as it relates to defamation, and parody, but the precedent established in those cases may not apply to a case involving criminal acts.
The established cases also include criminal acts, as was the case when the Ku Klux Klan advocated for (criminal) violence. The courts have held that even advocating for illegal acts at some time in the future is protected (Hess).
There's nothing I know of that applies to the First Amendment, but there are many examples where individuals and organizations, or even organizations in different levels of government, are held to different standards under the law. The standards for HOAs versus local government is a good example. Some states require that HOAs enforce code equally, but will permit local government to enforce it unequally because local government has relatively limited resources.
The court may consider a media corporation to be identical to an individual in terms of First Amendment cases, but I wouldn't be certain about that.
The established cases do include criminal acts, but those were challenged based on the unconstitutionality of state law, and were in different crcumstances. If DT were charged with inciting a riot by the District of Columbia, then Hess is great precedent, but I don't think it would be great in a government case against a media corporation. The government likely wouldn't bring criminal charges against a specific individual either, which changes things. If they seek monetary damages and an injunction, or even just an injunction, the precedent used in Hess may not apply.
> There's nothing I know of that applies to the First Amendment
Citizens United. It ruled that a law banning corporations (and other kinds of associations such as non-profits and labor unions) from making campaign contributions was an unconstitutional abrogation of their First Amendment rights.
When people fulminate against the idea of corporate personhood, what they're really fulminating against is the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights. Which should tell you just how likely SCOTUS is to distinguish between private individuals and corporations when it comes to First Amendment rights: not at all.
I'm not so sure about that. There's a big difference between whether corporations have a first amendment rights and can make campaign contributions and whether their speech is protected in the same ways as the speech of individuals.
To be fair, even individual speech may or may not be protected depending on the circumstances, so corporate speech may also not be protected in certain circumstances even if SCOTUS always treats speech by individuals and by corporations the same.
They are narrowly interpreted as it relates to individuals, but I'm not sure that same interpretation would be applied to media outlets.
In terms of liability, as a property owner I have a much lower standards for care, custody, and control of an empty piece of property I have with a no trespassing sign than a corporation has for a sports stadium they run. I'm not certain that the standards for free speech by an individual in a single instance would be the same as the standards for a large media corporation across multiple instances.
How narrowly the court interprets "incitement" and "imminent lawless action" may be a function of the entity making them. An individual who is making political speech could say something that is considered protected, while a large corporation saying the same thing repeatedly, in a different context, may not be protected in the same way.
While the Supreme Court has not specifically ruled on incitement in the context of media outlets, it's clear from cases like New York Times v. Sullivan and Hustler Magazine v. Falwell that the Supreme Court is extremely protective of speech by media outlets.
They are, in civil cases involving defamation and parody. I don't think a case involving any of the media outlets who are spreading misinformation about the election that could be related to federal crimes would be based on either of those.
You can compare yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre to a lot of speech, for example, speech that is against a military draft. This was the original comparison.
Luckily we (the United States) prevent our government from restricting this type of speech.
Like bhupy pointed out above, is the misinformation present directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action?
If a speech against the draft incites some subset of those who were present to insurrection, with the intent to detain and possibly murder elected officials, then it may not be protected as free speech.
Worse than that, it is an attempt at intimidation. Given today's climate, it would not surprise me if it works.
Look at it this way. The capital riot on 6-Jan was planned and discussed on Youtube, facebook, and twitter. Apparently, barely a mention on Parler. Yet Parler was excoriated and deplatformed for it, and for not policing its comment sections. Yet Youtube, facebook, and twitter have faced no consequences for their ... whats the word I heard used about Parler ... complicity?
I think this is a slippery slope fallacy. Asking a media outlet the size of their audience is a common figure, something they include in every ad sales presentation. Its relevant to understand the reach of these messages, especially when they have direct ties to foreign adversaries such as in the case of OANN: https://www.thedailybeast.com/oan-trumps-new-favorite-channe... This is not a censorship dragnet, its a wide-ranging set of inquiries to a diverse set of media (keep scrolling if you just saw the AT&T letter) in response to an attempted insurrection.
Facebook was regularly kicking people off for problematic comments (it certainly didn't get all of them).
That was many people's motivation for going to Parler in the first place - frustrated with what they believed being tagged as "false", frustrated with repeated bouts in Facebook Jail, etc.
There's a dichotomy that one of the major motivations for Parler uptick is because of something you imply never really ever happened on Facebook.
No, it really wasn't dis/mis information. You can't just label facts you don't like, that go against a narrative that you wish to be true, as disinformation. Twitter, Facebook, and many others do this. They specifically stifle discussion that runs counter to the narratives they wish to promote.
That's their choice as private companies. But holding them to account for this, when they claim they wish to be "fair" definitely begs the question of what their definition of "fair" is. It makes for a rather Clintonian discussion.
I don't see how we can recover and heal until the truth is admitted to. Everyone knows it to be true, but they can't admit it. Time to come clean, or continue to inflame the situation.
Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Parler are all bars. The gang members (insurrectionists) went to the Facebook, Twitter and Youtube bars and got into fights. The Methodist (non-insurrectionists) went to Parler and did not get into bar fights.
According to you the solution is not to ban the bars where the bar fights took place but the place where there were no bar fights. It really makes no sense.
It was a power play. One (ideologically uniform, and quite likely coordinating) group asserting raw power over another. Because it could. And in doing so, making sure this was public and messy. As a warning to others.
It's political censorship disguised at fact checking. If they were really concerned about "fake news", they would apply the same standards to the other side. Remember how just a couple years ago almost all of the major media outlets were pushing a conspiracy theory about "Russian Collusion"? Yet nobody is talking about shutting ABC, CBS, NBC, or MSNBC down, kicking them off cable, or banning them from the internet.
> It's political censorship disguised at fact checking. If they were really concerned about "fake news", they would apply the same standards to the other side. Remember how just a couple years ago almost all of the major media outlets were pushing a conspiracy theory about "Russian Collusion"? Yet nobody is talking about shutting ABC, CBS, NBC, or MSNBC down, kicking them off cable, or banning them from the internet.
You're misremembering. Russian collusion was an allegation that needed to be investigated because of 1) the actions of Russian intelligence agencies to influence the election in ways advantageous to Trump, and 2) weird things members of the Trump campaign did that were suspicious. However, the major media outlets only reported on that, and it didn't go on to claim that there was actual collusion.
For instance, here's the first page of results from major media outlet search for "Russian collusion" (ending the day before the Mueller report):
> POLITICS Trump Says There Was ‘No Collusion’ With the Russians
> OPINION The Russians Were Involved. But It Wasn’t About Collusion.
> POLITICS Indictment Details Collusion Between Cyberthief and 2 Russian Spies
> OPINION How Will ‘Collusion’ Play in the Midterms?
> OPINION Can We Please Stop Talking About ‘Collusion’?
> OPINION Oh, Wait. Maybe It Was Collusion.
That last piece sounds like it's the closest to saying there was collusion, lets see what it says:
> What remains to be determined is whether the Russians also attempted to suborn members of the Trump team in an effort to gain their cooperation. This is why the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is so important.
That's not pushing a conspiracy theory.
On the other hand, Fox News, OANN, NewsMax, etc. lied to the extent that they're legitimately worried about the conspiracy theories they were pushing costing them a lot of money from defamation lawsuits:
However, I don't fault you too much for this confusion. There are a lot of liars out there who've found a lot of success "arguing" with false equivalencies to keep their followers loyal to the cause.
It is -very- partisan, and equivalent to poking a wasp nest with a stick.
The country is very, very divided, not just between D vs R but also progressive vs...everyone else.
I wish I had the answers(surprise, I don't), but I feel we should find some commonality, some give and take, and get on a path toward a semblance of unity. Trying to silence your opposition is what I'd call the complete opposite of that approach.
I think the only way to handle this is to stand up for common sense, and call out those attempting to use 1984 as a playbook. To shine the disinfecting light of day upon things like this. To vote the idiots who push this crap, out.
This could be making sure you primary them, recall them, or elect other persons. Seriously, allegiance to political parties is not what I am looking for in my elected reps. I want them to work on behalf of me. Not their particular party label.
The damage that the two parties fighting for political power have done to this country is ... staggering.
I agree it had a part in it, but its not the whole story. Its the citizens being unable to elect people not beholden to political parties, with party obligations. These obligations appear to be more important than their obligations to the people who put them there.
This isn't a Citizen's United issue as much as it is a set of political parties that have evolved to control their captive populations. Some people vote D|R precisely to stick it to the others. They don't care about representation. They care about tribalism. The parties foster and encourage that thinking. The various "news" channels have their own opinions and often align with a particular party. Which means they are in the propaganda and red meat business. Not the news business.
CU is a part of this, in terms of providing fuel for the fire, but its been going on much longer than CU, and will continue regardless of whether or not CU gets struck down going forward.
Why do people get so defensive when 'their side' is questioned? Is your solution to forever go back and forth silencing each other because the other guys did it first?
I am not picking sides. I think it's unprofessional for the president to constantly call things like 'Fake News', but I don't remember them going to cable companies to try and get them canceled. And if they did, I oppose that just the same.
Personally, I got so sick of all news being all Trump all the time, I question any claim that media was in any way silenced.
Obama did far more to silence opposing viewpoints than Trump did. But you probably don't know about what Obama did, because his administration's intimidation and jailing of reporters worked.
How many reporters did the Trump administration throw in jail?
I know I'll be downvoted for this, but fundamentally this definition[1] includes "and forcible suppression of opposition". In what way is this letter not the first step in this direction?
I'm no fan of the previous president. Really didn't like him. But this ... this attempt at shutting down of opposition communication, is the hallmark, the signature of nascent oppression. And a slide into fascism/socialism/etc.
In what way /is/ this letter the first step in this direction?
> "But this ... this attempt at shutting down of opposition communication"
... is completely imaginary? A member of Congress writing a letter to Tyson Chicken asking what steps they took after the COVID incident of placing bets on how many workers would get infected, is not something you can reasonably turn into "this attempt at shutting down food production". It's not like these are secret backroom letters with threatening content released by whistleblowers to embarrass the senders, these letters were announced by official press release[1].
There is no attempt at shutting down of opposition communication in writing a letter that asks questions to which the media company can reply "we don't censor content". Do Anna Eshoo or Jerry McNerny have any unusual influence over funding or licensing (etc.) decisions for Cox, Alphabet, AT&T, Dish, than any other Congressperson, in a way that would make the letters carry more weight than their content suggests?
Until we confront this, without fabricating fever swamp fiction to frighten captive tribal masses, we are going to be stuck in this dystopia. Teetering on the edge of {fasc,Democratic|National social}ism who all seek to control the narrative and suppress dissent.
> Does this strike anyone else as a nakedly partisan move?
Of course, this entire letter is published by two democratic representatives from highly liberal districts (silicon valley and stockton) who want to pander to their base. There's nothing actionable or productive about this letter.
Somehow we still have reactions in this thread on the scale of "we're on our way to a one-party state". This is just Congress doing what they do most every day (setting up for reelection)
Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. Admittedly the GP pointed that way, but there's a difference between pointing and going there—and there are other reasons besides outright battle why one might want to talk about partisanship in this context.
The goal of HN threads is to be curious conversation; that tends to require not burning alive. So far this thread is mostly managing to stay on the good side of the line.
Does this strike anyone else as a nakedly partisan move?