Posted on 08/01/2021 11:29:44 AM PDT by karpov
Does the Constitution require Americans to accept Big Tech censorship? The claim is counterintuitive but the logic is clear: If you submit a letter to this newspaper, the editors have no legal obligation to publish it, and a statute requiring them to do so would be struck down as a violation of the Journal’s First Amendment rights. Facebook and Twitter, the argument goes, have the same right not to provide a platform to views they find objectionable.
Big Tech censorship has provoked interest in new civil-rights statutes—state laws that would bar the companies from viewpoint discrimination on their platforms and services. The First Amendment defense of this private censorship arose in a recent federal district court opinion expressing skepticism about a Florida anticensorship statute. It will come up again when other states, such as Texas, consider civil-rights statutes that focus more tightly on viewpoint discrimination.
With the possibility of multiple state statutes barring Big Tech viewpoint discrimination, it will be essential to understand the extent of the tech companies’ freedom of speech. For this, it is important to consider whether they are common carriers.
A statute limiting the ability of a Big Tech company to express its own views would almost certainly be unconstitutional. What about a law limiting viewpoint discrimination where the companies serve as a publicly accessible conduit for the speech of others?
This sort of distinction has long been ingrained in federal law—including Section 230(c)(1) of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which distinguishes between information provided by an interactive computer service and “information provided by another information content provider.” Whatever the shortcomings of that statute, it draws a common and reasonable distinction between a company’s own speech and the speech of others for which it provides a conduit.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
If they receive money from the govt they possible shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate against some of the taxpayers.
Congress does
What if the telephone company decides to censor your conversations?
I believe this is all going to lead to classification of the Internet as a utility, thus making it subject to regulation.
I don’t see how the first amendment protects the narrative and agenda driven press either.
Facebook and Twitter, the argument goes, have the same right not to provide a platform to views they find objectionable.
True.
But they do not have a right to the protections we grant common carriers, with respect to the content they carry.
The phone company cannot be sued for the content they carry, because they're a common carrier, and have no control or responsibility for the content.
If Facebook is going to take control of the content they carry - and they have - they should be responsible for the content, and they should have their common carrier protections removed.
At some point they may be considered public utilities. Some regulations could apply then, perhaps.
There needs to be a distinction between forums which are de facto public squares and forums which are private clubs.
a better analogy would be.
what if the telephone company canceled your service because of your opinion.
I think Big Tech does all of this on purpose because they are desperately seeking to become regulated and become utilities.
If any of that happens it’s game over. We conservatives will be censored for the rest of our lives. They want us mad, really mad, so mad we can’t think straight anymore and so mad we can’t see the constitution anymore. They want reason thrown completely out and the need us to embrace big government solutions.
We cannot allow them to achieve their stated goals of increased regulation.
Good point. What if we don’t regulate them but rather take away their section 230 protection status if they continue censoring no violent, no pedophilic political free speech and opinions (like they are currently doing).
If we can’t do this, I would then still be in favor of regulation as the alternative.
I like to go back to the original areas of antitrust laws, monopoly and public common carriers. A common carrier, like a shipping line, bus company, train, or airline is required to not discriminate in anyway in allowing for the shipping of people or goods. Usually its rates are regulated and need to make sense and be logical and not penalize some groups out of favor with the management.
Long ago, Railroad either banned (or priced out of the market) certain farmers from using their railroads to get goods to market. One could argue that it was just free enterprise at work. What happened was that it was realized that the railroads were given right of way and/or franchises by the federal government and in turn, the government expected them to provide certain services to the public.
The question with big tech has now become, “are they a monopoly (sanctioned by government) and do they have a franchise from some government agency to operate in the public good?” If so then perhaps their degree of free-market choices should be limited.
1) If we look toward the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist papers, we learn that the First Amendment protects our right to free speech rather than grant our right to free speech. The Founding Fathers believed that “We are endowed by our creator” with our fundamental rights including the right to free speech, and that the reason why we founded the US government was to secure the rights we already had. Thus, the government has the obligation to protect our rights from whatever it is that is threatening them.
2) I’m very leery of the proposal to add political affiliation to the list of protected characteristics for two reasons. First, California already has this law. Show me a single case where a conservative fired or banned for being conservative succeeded in a discrimination lawsuit in California. Second, when I am evaluating job candidates, I want to be able to toss the woke danger hair candidate into the trash without fear of being sued for unlawful discrimination.
Amen!
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