Mmmm no, this is not quite right. As a business owner, you can legally refuse service to any person for any *goofy* reason (because you don't like the color of their shirt, etc.). But you definitely cannot legally refuse service for *every* reason. Per the Civil Rights Act, "All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin." (https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ii-civil-rights-act-public-accommodations)

You're talking about the breaking up and deregulation of companies that had monopolistic power to suppress competition (they're still private companies). Governments can't buy up media companies because they dislike what they publish. That is literal censorship, and it's what the USA's first amendment exists to prevent.


But some people are arguing that this right of ours no longer exists if it's done on a platform that is too large (by whatever definition of "large" they mean). They are literally arguing for bigger government control over these private spaces.


I've never heard one person argue for *absolute* free speech. Everyone agrees there should be limits. The national dialogue is in shambles because everybody wants to argue their point while glossing over what words actually mean.


It's the small government advocates who are also the largest advocates of government intervention in these cases. It's not logically consistent and points to only wanting to control the dialogue, not wanting true free speech.


But what would you, personally, bring to vote? What size would a company have to be? What metrics would you consider that would make you vote to strip a private company of its 1st amendment rights and go under government moderatorship? How would that not be actual government censorship? These are not hypothetical. These are real questions that I have to think about, and I'm interested to hear your specific ideas, for example, what would UMD have to do to make you think politicians should intervene? And not just that we're talking about things you don't want to hear--what hard metrics should you impose in a court of law to argue your case that their speech needs to be regulated? By the way this is a very interesting conversation. Thank you for keeping it civil.

Trust me, you don't have to quote the civil rights act to me You can't apply civil rights in cases of freedom of speech. A business can't refuse to service you for these reasons, but they CAN kick you out simply because they don't like what you're saying. You have Freedom of Speech, not freedom of a place to speak. You cannot force any web site to publish what you say, and you can't use civil rights to force your opinion onto a site.

Go re-read the constitution again. Private entities cannot shield behind the private excuse when they are arms of the US govt.


You're still not getting it, this is not about controlling private companies which is the status quo today (Twitter was controlled the US govt whether you want to acknowledge it or not, Facebook and Google IS still controlled by the govt). This is about setting limits to what private companies CANNOT do, it's not about what they CAN do.

Until you accept the fact the US govt is censoring half this country, and then using the infrastructure to persecute and attack Americans, there's no further point in discussion because you're not living in reality.


Let's cut to the chase, I already propose DAU as a metric. It's on you to tell me why it's flawed and propose a better one.

Huh? "Deregulation" *definitely* does not mean "nationalization." Maybe you meant regulation? That's closer, even if it's still not really the same thing.

And no, I'm not interested in a public health care system because the existing one is monopolistic. For one thing, the existing one is not monopolistic (where I live, anyway). I can go to any number of different doctors across a reasonable number of networks without suffering a drastic drop in quality. I may have to pay somewhat more if I go outside of the network that my insurance company wants me to use, but, first of all, I can always choose another insurer; and, second, paying somewhat more in order to use a competitor is still not what a monopoly is.

So, like... no. This is not remotely my train of thought. My train of thought is basically what I said it was: because the government can do it better.


Again, I didn't say "because the government dislikes what Twitter publishes." I said "because the government can do it better." I mean, I guess I agree with you? If for no other reason than because it'd be kinda stupid to buy a media outlet just to shut it down when you could simply shut it down directly instead? But that really is beside the point I was making. You asked why anyone would want the government to take over Twitter, and I said because they could do it better. That's all it is.


I don't see how this is contrary to what I said? Okay, sure, some people are saying that we don't have free speech anymore. So? Some people say the Earth is flat (still, even in 2022). Some people say it makes no difference whether you stay or switch in the Monty Hall problem. Some people say Kobe is the greatest basketball player of all time. Why should I care? Just because someone says something doesn't make it true.

And, yeah, people are now calling for more government control. Like I said, that's the answer to your question: What ever happened to small government? Well, we tried it and it turns out a lot of us don't like it very much. So, quite rationally, many of us have decided that we don't want small government anymore. Seems straightforward enough to me.


Yyyyyyeah I don't know about that. I mean, I agree that establishing definitions is an important step in a dialectical process, but, again, ~1/3 of adults in the US believe that a de-worming drug is an effective treatment for COVID. I would be very surprised if their (totally false) belief somehow stemmed from a misunderstanding about the definitions of words. I think we are, unfortunately, way past the point where our national disagreements can be repaired by just understanding each other better.


Sorry, between all the back-and-forth I've lost the thread on this one. Which cases are we talking about?


No, I mean, that's my point - to ask for metrics is to ask the wrong question. The vote would just be, I dunno, "Shall the US government pay $X to the owners of Twitter Corp. in order to take sole control over its operations blah blah blah." There doesn't need to be, like, an umbrella law that says, "Once any company achieves Metric A and Metric B, the US government shall buy it." It can just happen on a case-by-case basis. Likewise, I would have to guess that anyone who supported such an idea would support it for their own individual reasons and not because of one specific set of, like, influence metrics or whatever.

As for how it would hold up in court, hell if I know, I'm not a lawyer. Check the records, I guess, and see if anything leaps out at you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nationalizations_by_country#United_States I mean, me personally, I obviously don't think Congress should (or would) even deign to notice the UMD under any but the most outlandish of circumstances. But if somehow the UMD began to serve a vital civic role, established itself as a reliable institution, and then showed signs of cratering, then I guess that'd be the time.

(edited to fix formatting and add...)

Yeah, for sure. I'm just sayin, it's not *literally any* reason. There are reasons that are prohibited.

But also, though, now that we're here... I'll be sneaky and ask again: if you have freedom of speech but not freedom of a place to speak, why do you care if the government kicks people off Twitter? Surely that counts as "freedom of a place to speak" and not "freedom of speech" per se...?

If your argument is that the First Amendment gives the government permission to buy Twitter then that's really a stretch. Sorry if I misunderstood?


That's a form of speech control by the government, is it not? To force a private company to publish speech they do not want to publish?


Then we should fight against the government doing THAT. Vote. Become aware of the crooked politicians and their agendas. It doesn't make much sense to force private companies to give the government *even more* control over them.


Yeah but you can't say that without actually offering what the 2nd criterium actually is. If we continue to grow, at what point would you want to give up your 1st amendment rights? If your UMD account is deemed to have outsized influence, when does the government get to step in and claim your account under their control?


Where would you personally draw the line? How many visitors per day to UMD would you say merits it to suddenly be under government control, and who gets access to this metric from a private company to even be able to evaluate that? I am making a point here: That if you were to define this limit yourself, then you are saying that speech on this site, and your account on it, at some point should be regulated by the government, simply because it's winning a popularity contest. Smaller sites are okay until they get too big, at which point it's automatically government controlled. Am I understanding wrong? Do you also think that mainstream media that gets far more reach than Twitter should also be controlled by the government? Should Biden regulate the content of CNN and Fox News?

You were talking about corporations that had been deregulated for having monopolies, which didn't seem to fit an argument for letting government infringe on Free Speech.


I agree that the government can do lots of things better than individuals or companies, like provide a military, or provide more cost-efficient healthcare due to things like economies of scale. And they can enforce the protection of our right to express ourselves in a public space. But these politicians should never be given the power to moderate the content of private spaces because of the ideals their users espouse. They cannot do this any better than we can, on our own sites!


Still, the government can't just buy a private company. They can deregulate a monopoly but they can't take it over because they think they can moderate it better. If you think politicians will try to be fair and not leverage it for their own biases, then you probably also don't understand the point of keeping government OUT in the first place. The government can't do this better. Their jurisdiction is confined to public spaces for good reason.


I wish more people like yourself would say this part more loudly. If you no longer want small government, and people are doing things you don't like, then call for larger government to exercise more censorship and control over our conversations. Don't still say you're small government while advocating for more regulation into the most private of places.


That's exactly *because* of disinformation, much of it disseminated by the same politicians who would leverage the takeover of a social network to further the lies even more. The solution isn't to give them more editorial control. The solution is in public competition for other networks that serve the client base better, not the privatization of the company itself.


I'm speaking on the idealogical inconsistency that I see where the largest complainers about Free Speech also are also advocating for the most governmental control over it... apparently not you though.


It's exactly the right question. If a company would have to stay underneath some metric, lest it get usurped by the government for being too big, then that's a real thing we have to worry about. People and politicians are out there saying exactly this, but they never lay down any ideas of where exactly to draw the line. They seem to just want to give the government the power to arbitrarily force their moderation, with no idealogical picture of where the line should be tripped. That's dangerous.
Can't you see the foothold that this gives to the politicians to arbitrary target any company that is espousing ideas that it wants censored? What happens when new people are voted in that have a completely distorted agenda, and we've already given them the power over our private networks.


Now we're talking nuts and bolts! These metrics then need to be quantified and debated over, and an actual constitutional amendment would need to be passed so they can be effective. The government can't just bully its way into public debate spaces for undefined arbitrary reasons. We're a country of laws.


I would absolutely care if the government kicked people off Twitter, but not if Twitter itself kicked them off because it's their platform. Social networks have the right to publish any material that is legal, without the chilling effect of worrying about a government takeover because of what they said or how influential they are. On the other hand, social networks have every right to boot people or remove messages for any reason they wish.

Again, that's not what "deregulated" means. To deregulate is to remove regulations or restrictions from something. So if you're deregulating a company, you're allowing it to operate more independently and with less government oversight. Nationalizing a company is the exact polar opposite of that. And, again, it's not because they have monopolies. It's because they serve a government-type function that the government can do better. They may also happen to have monopolies or they may not. Either way, that's incidental.


Ah - but what if it's not the ideals that are the problem? What if people are posting known misinformation? "Ivermectin cures COVID" is not an ideal, it's just a lie.


It definitely can. Again, check the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nationalizations_by_country#United_States It can also just seize a private company, but in most cases I think it should probably be an exchange.


Yeah, no, I just straight-up think you're wrong about this. At least in a democracy, government is what you make it. We've made our government a cynical mess, but there are state-owned news organizations all over the world that do a perfectly respectable job of staying reasonably objective. I don't see any reason why we couldn't have something similar, at least in theory.


I... didn't? I mean, quote me back to me if I'm wrong, but I've been a big-government liberal for like twenty years now, so I'd be surprised if you saw me saying that I was in favor of small government.


Er, but we have competition right now and it isn't helping. So that can't possibly be the answer, right?

Like, I understand why you think that right-wing politicians at the federal level would fuck up anything that the US government tried to do with a resource like Twitter, but there are two problems with the way you're approaching it. The first, as I've already said, is that we know for an absolute fact that your proposed alternative doesn't work. So right now you have a choice between (1) a plan that you know for a fact doesn't work because you can see it falling apart around you and (2) a plan that you think probably won't work because of a reasonable theory of yours. It seems pretty irrational to me to prefer (1) to (2). Personally, even if I believed what you believe, I'd want to take a chance on an untried hypothetical rather than continue to bang my head against a wall.

Second, I think you've misunderstood how government agencies work. It's true that elected representatives exercise some degree of legitimate control over what an agency does, and it's also true that they could exercise a whole lot of illegitimate control over what an agency does, but most agencies typically operate according to their own internal oversight most of the time. This is why someone like Anthony Fauci can continue to work with the NIH and publicly contradict the president even while that same president tries to, like, overturn elections and shit. So I think you're wrong about this one, too.


Sorry, I'm not sure I get this. People are saying that Twitter is too big but they're also not saying what "big" means? Can you give me a source? (A real source - like, not chris?)


Presumably the same thing that's happening now, I guess? People would leave those companies and scatter to other platforms, society would lose those companies as valued public resources, and we would debate using politics to solve the problem. But, again, that's what's happening right now. So, I dunno, why do you ask? What do you think would happen?


Why? Who says?


Nope. To reiterate, federal and state governments have already done this in the US without needing to update the Constitution first. It's not a theory; I'm not guessing. This has already happened. It's precedent. You don't need to have some statistical rule of thumb that's enshrined in a single, overarching law somewhere.


Okay, so this is now a third thing that you're including in your concern? Right? (1) No jail + (2) no censorship + (3) no chilling effect? Anything else you'd like to add?

I'm thinking you're right, and I'm just as guilty for using deregulation as a generic term. I did indeed mean regulation, as in to introduce more regulation on companies that had monopolies.


Nope, it's your right to lie too. The government can't decide what the truth is and just take over your platform. That's North Korea. The limitation is the fire in a crowded theater scenario, or attempts at mass incitement, and I think this is what the whole debate should be about--what the limitations of Free Speech are, and when exactly does the government have a right to inject itself into a private space. The COVID situation is a good example and right for debate.



I see, you're talking about the nationalization of some nation-wide private utilities like electric and phone companies, and this should be precedent for the government to be able to also nationalize UMD and Twitter and other private web sites should they get too big, citing them as being like a public utility? Are you OK with this government takeover for reasons of speech instead of monopoly, and do you advocate for those precedents to apply here if we get to a certain arbitrary size?


You have way more trust in politicians because I believe most of them are corrupt. We may not like our media right now because they seem to be arms of the political establishment, but at least they are our media (private). What do you think happens when we actually *give* the political establishment control over the actual media? Do you think Democrats would moderate a better Twitter? Republicans a better UMD? How do you not think these things would become yet another mouthpiece for their agendas?


Sorry if I misunderstood!


Sure it's helping. Nobody is forced to use Twitter the way they would have to use a telco or energy monopoly. There are a lot of social networks, some of which are getting more momentum during the turmoil over at Twitter. The bar is low. Who knows what will be out in 5 years. Politicians controlling it will only set us back.


I think any of them would fuck it up. Right wing, left wing, chicken wing. It's the government. They all have their own agendas and influences which don't align with that of a private company. Inviting them in would bring more problems than it would solve.


What was my proposed alternative? Making the USA government adhere to its own principles of Free Speech? It's working for me so far.



The "theory" that there are horrible consequences of letting politicians dictate speech is not a theory; History was the reason for the whole 1st Amendment in the first place. The Freedom of Speech is what has allowed us to have UMD with its fetishistic material against the wishes and actions of many politicians over many years. It's not perfect but it works. If we let the cat out of the bag of letting politicians intrude for arbitrary reasons of expression, that's gutting the 1st Amendment right there.


The First Amendment is all of the time. It's not subject to oversight agencies or internal oversight. We are the oversight. Government keeps its hands off!


Well, it's people who have his mindset who I'm talking about. He mentioned Daily Active Users as a metric to define a big site, and ostensibly that's what people mean since they really never say. Since I actually have some people engaged, and they think there is a point at which a private company should come under government moderation, I'm interested in where they think that point should be.


What happens when the government also seizes those other platforms, also citing vague and arbitrary reasons for doing so? If you leave Twitter, Twitter can't then lock you out of Facebook and Instagram and Twitch and Post. The government could do exactly that. They have unlimited money and they ultimately control the laws and enforcement. Let's not turn over what little power we have to regulate our own speech.


The law. We are debating laws, right? If you propose that trucks can't be too "big" for highways, you cite a weight or size limit that people can understand. You don't just point a a truck and say, "BIG." Even if you can't debate on a specific number, then at least you should be able to state your ideals of a size or weight limit being considered. At least lchris001 stated some metrics he'd consider. Even if I think he's wrong, at least he's saying something that can be debated around.


For utilities and things like that which needed to be split up. There is no precedent of them taking over a newspaper or a media company, far as I know. Either way this is just a wrong way to argue for government power to take over a web site. You could correctly say that they could *possibly* force their way like this illegally, but that's not constitutional and it's definitely not a debate position that I'd believe anybody would take.


It's ALL my concern or I wouldn't be up on here talking about it! Back to the original point: Free Speech = private, not government.

No, I never said 1A gave the govt permission to buy Twitter it was a hypothetical. You're getting caught up in the details. OK let's do a new one, FTX launders money for Ukraine to buy Twitter and FTX install a puppet board and CEO and controls Twitter on behest of the US govt. According to you, you would say FTX-controlled Twitter is still private because the govt doesn't directly control it. I say that laundering control is not an excuse.

It's clear you have not read anything on this. There is a reason why the govt decide to launder their censorship through govt-funded NGO "fact checkers". It's precisely because they know it's illegal so they are trying to twist the rules. Americans are not dumb and we can see the govt intent to skirt around the rules and operate in this "grey zone". Hence, I said Supreme Court needs to rule on this.


Uhm... Twitter is brainwashing people. Voting only works in free and fair elections. Election hasn't been free or fair since Trump lost, because big tech promote leftist content. Hunter Biden laptop remember? Don't get me started on the Chinese tiktok psyops as well. Also, we do not live in pure democracy but a constitutional republic. Majority wins does not override constitutional protections. Majority of this country are white people, if they voted to enslave non-whites does that make it right? 1A is a constitutional right, it just needs to be updated for the social media age.


I already said previously, DAU numbers circa 2015 Twitter is the threshold when new rules apply. Is it perfect? No. And this is for social media not the news. The news is not the public town square. And for the record the media has far less influence than Twitter.

I wish for this discussion not to be saddled with pure left and right politics. The point is the dissolution of the term "Free Speech" in the USA and what motives people might have for doing that.

I also wish for people who use this "left and right" stuff to realize you're feeding into a proxy war. You think you're shitting on the politicians, but really you're shitting on like half American citizens who identify with the left or right for their own reasons, and there are real consequences. My mother is a democrat. Are you saying she supports child porn? Of course you're not, but that's literally what you just said, and that's the influence of your rhetoric in a nonzero number of people's minds. Political games are for politicians. Why play their game? As soon as you adopt their tactics, you're not better than they are.

You have good intentions, but this country is past that point now because of what happened in the last 2 years. Maybe in 2019, I would have agreed with you, but IMO there is no peaceful coexistence between left/right anymore.

Put it this way, where we are today in this country, is analogous to Germany after the nazis fell and were removed from power. Do you expect those who were brutalized by the nazis to simply "forgive and forget"? Maybe in the next generation, but never in my lifetime.

To be reasonable, we can follow the WW2 denazification model: https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/survival-and-legacy/postwar-trials-and-denazification/

Aight, I just wanted to make sure. I know English has some words like that, where, like, "flammable" and "inflammable" look like they're opposite but they mean the same thing. But yeah.


Yeah, I thought you'd say that. I was just wondering because the other time you specifically said "ideals," so I just wanted to check.


That's only sort of what I'm talking about. Some of those companies were truly nationwide (airport security, I guess?), but others were just regional (the Tennessee electrical thing, which may even have been localized to a single state) and in other cases it's weird to describe them as "nationwide" because they're just companies (like Merck). The full list (that I know of) includes postal roads, railways, pharma, telephones, electricity, banks, security, and auto manufacturing. So it's not even like we're just talking about utilities. So... sort of.


I still don't think that "big" is the right criterion, nor is "like a public utility," nor is "monopoly." It's really just "does this company play a vital public role and would that role be jeopardized without state intervention." If so, the state should intervene, yes.


Uh, whereas business magnates aren't? I mean, no disrespect to you personally, but you run a much smaller shop than a Musk or a Bezos or a Zuckerberg (or a Murdoch or a Walton or...). Whether politicians are corrupt or not, they are at least minimally accountable to the people because we can vote them out. We can't do that for corporate owners, at least in our current system.


lol that's a really weird fucking thing to say, man! CNN and Fox and Twitter being private specifically means that they *aren't* your media. That's what "private" means in this context: it means "not yours." It means "belonging to someone else who is not you." If they were owned by the state, *that's* when they would be our media. I don't understand what you're saying here at all.


Better than Musk? Yes. No qualifiers, no hedging, no conditions. Yes, that's what I think.


I wouldn't trust the Republican party to run a Borders book store, and Borders doesn't even fucking exist anymore.


I explained that already in my previous comment. It's just not how most government agencies work most of the time.


And that's going to help us achieve a more reasonable national dialogue how...? Like, aren't you just describing the same echo-chamber, information-bubble stuff that's been happening for the past twenty years, where people become more and more segregated in terms of where they get their news and our common ground gets smaller and smaller?


Well, yeah, that's kinda the point. The agenda of a private company is to make as much money as possible for its owners by any means necessary, even if that includes lying to the public, fomenting rage and violence, lobbying the government for special favors, overthrowing foreign governments (this is a real example), stealing from workers... For a while there, mass American journalism had remained reasonably free from these agendas. That's not the case anymore. Like I've been saying, the whole point of getting the government involved is that it could do a better job, in large part precisely *because* it wouldn't be aligned with the agendas and influences of your average mega-corporation.


But is it working for, like, anyone else? Not that I don't care about you as a person or anything, but "it works for me" isn't usually the type of reason that has a lot of weight in political conversations.


Okay, *now* we can bring back Sure. (Sure! Come back!) I don't really know if you want to get into a real discussion about this, but the short version is that you're wildly oversimplifying matters. If you really want to get more into it, I guess tell me (and also find a way to summon Sure), but for now suffice it to say that there's a whole lot more to the story.


But it wouldn't be arbitrary, any more than the other nationalized companies were arbitrary. It's not like someone just woke up one day and was like, "Gee, I wonder what it'd be like if we owned some railroad track." Also, again, it wouldn't be politicians, it would be agency administrators. And, again again, the government is what you make it. If you don't want people to shut down porn sites, don't elect people who will shut down porn sites.


Listen, you know I don't ask this kind of thing lightly, but: are you really that naive? Do you really think the First Amendment is, like, some kind of magical shield that can never be broken by government hands? We already talked about it once, but just as a reminder, the First Amendment also guarantees the right to assemble and the right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. Right? So now google "peaceful protesters tear-gassed to make way for trump" or "minneapolis police clear uptown protest zone" or "seattle police clear chop protest zone."

My guy, of course our Constitutional rights are subject to oversight! And of course they don't achieve actual protections for us all of the time! It's a nice dream to think of the First Amendment (or, y'know, your favorite law of choice) as being the one big thing that's pure and distinct, but that's not the truth. I agree that the fantasy of Free Speech is more attractive than the relatively ugly idea of nationalizing Twitter (or, less drastically, requiring social media websites to enforce anti-harassment policies and label misinformation, or whatever). But the fantasy of Free Speech is also more attractive than the reality that we currently live in.


Okay, well, if he's a representative example, then I think you're barking up the wrong tree for multiple reasons, but, hey, different strokes for different folks.


Ah, so here's the negative fantasy to counterbalance the positive fantasy above. The government does not have unlimited money or enforcement power. (In fact, this was just the subject of a recent Supreme Court ruling - go figure! Read more here: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/united-states-v-texas-5/) And it doesn't have unlimited desire to mess around with private companies of any particular sector. (And, seriously, if you think the Democratic party is anywhere *near* competent or organized enough to pull this off, you haven't been paying attention.) They're just people, man. You're not electing an Eldritch Force Of The Universe to be your senator.


Ooooookay, but which law? I am, ah, not familiar with any law that says anything like what you're suggesting.


Are you seriously saying that you can't debate something without falling back on numbers? If I tell you that Twitter serves a vital public role and Twitch doesn't, are you really going to start measuring their unique daily users or whatever? That seems a little absurd, if I'm being honest.


There was also no precedent for the government to take over a railroad before the first time it did so. Did that require an amendment? (No.) There was also no precedent for the government to take over an electrical company before the first time it did so. Did that require an amendment? (No.) There was also no precedent for the government to take over a bank before the first time it did so. Did that...

You get the point. This is just not how legal precedent works at all.


Maaaaaan, don't let go of the rope like that. You already said (quite accurately and intelligently) that it's not "ALL" your concern. You don't want people to be free to post child pornography. (Which is good!) You don't want people to be free to incite violence. (Which is good!) So don't now try to act like there's a simple, one-word answer that describes your position. It's not honest and, at least with me, it's not believable.

But are you saying the hypothetical is possible and even warranted? The details are what this is all about. It's times like these that we should explain exactly what we meant.


If any private entity owns twitter, then it's government hands off. Especially if it's out of the entire USA jurisdiction. The ownership structure doesn't have any bearing at all, and certainly xenophobia can't rule our decisions.


It's pretty clear you've never run a social networking site, but this line of discourse is derogatory, assumptive, and argumentative and I choose not to keep going that path. It's lazy.


Then why give them even more control over the social networks if you distrust them so much? Any how does this change the definition of Free Speech in the USA? Being mad at the government doesn't change the constitution.


Spouting right-wing talking points doesn't really work here. Not when we're talking underlying principles like Free Speech itself. Even if these companies are evil, then curtailing their speech is not a big government solution. We should be allowed to debate these things just like we're doing here, but you're advocating for government moderation of it without speaking on what the limits should be.


How would you suggest we vote on such a thing if not by majority rule? Also, please be careful about using slavery to try and teach a black man about the American constitution.


How do you draw a distinction when the news itself is all trending toward using websites and social media? Will it only be for "news" that broadcasts over traditional TV networks, which are itself is piped into our computers over the same IP connection and use the same media content protocols? Everything is mixing all together. I don't want legit journalists to be subject to government moderation control just because their articles get more traction than Twitter did in 2015 (or whatever arbitrary metric you decide on). That seems like a really shaky way to run a government and it's why we don't allow them to use shaky metrics like that to excuse control over our Free Speech. But credit where due in that you at least put a number up.

We're going in circles, here's where you and I stay stand and we will agree to disagree.
You: Unless the US govt is not in direct control of private companies, 1A does not apply
Me: Laundered control of private companies by the US govt is an attempt to skirt around the law, 1A still applies.


Again, in circles. You are missing the fact that online speech is already being censored by the govt. We are NOT allowed to debate things on Twitter (pre Elon). You keep harping on govt control is wrong... when the govt already controls social media.


I literally said "1A is a constitutional right, it just needs to be updated for the social media age". That is the solution.


You're still not getting it. I'm asking for LESS moderation and censorship. Journalist will no longer be banned and censored under my proposal, which btw they have in the last 2 years.

I don't know why you can't understand this simple proposal, I want the govt to pass laws to ensure our 1A rights in social media, just as we have 1A rights in real life. This is not about censorship and control, it is about removing censorship and egregious control.

That's how I understood government regulation--taking on those huge companies that could not have been competed against in any way. If a phone company is using its physical landline ownership to keep the competition out, then it's time to bust it up. That doesn't mean that the government should start taking over web sites that get a lot of visitors


Fair enough, but I think that such a set of criteria is almost impossible to define. If it's not being a monopoly or a public utility, and we aren't using any actual numbers as our criteria, then how exactly do we determine the public importance of a thing? Just because somebody says so? I happen to think UMD plays a vital public role of sorts. Do we qualify for government control?


Of course they are, but they are just powerful people, not the government. They still don't have unlimited money, or the ability to create actual laws or skirt accountability like the government has. The government has *actual power* over us and our lives in a way that business magnates just don't. Even in an oligopoly.


Begs the question of what is "big," and does it really matter if the principle we're trying to unearth is who ultimately has control over us. Should Twitter in 2014 be allowed to do whatever it wanted but in 2015 the government takes it out of their hands because it crossed some visitorship threshold? All web sites are affected by the same laws.


That's a fair statement about the politicians themselves. And really a true Democratic government is not its representatives but the people they represent. But still, none of it has anything to do with government control over a private space. If you want more accountability of the people then that's something we need to argue about as citizens, and not an excuse to change the definition of Free Speech to get what we want.

I don't think I disagree with you on the laundered control thing, or at least the possibility of it. But that's not an argument to give the government even more control is it? We should be working to remove this government control, not bolstering it. Because as soon as a party you totally disagree with comes into office, you would not be wishing for government moderation anymore. (I'm not quite sure how to read your interpretation of my point lol.)


That's your reason for giving the government even more moderating control though? Applicable to all large sites? Because your conspiracy theory says the government is already in control of Twitter? To me, that means we should take action to counter what the government is doing, not give in to them.


How so? What would you change? I'm genuinely interested because not many people IMO have gone even this far in their explanation of how they think the 1st amendment is too restrictive of the government. Never even heard someone take that position before.


You're advocating to let the government force privately held web sites to publish content against their will for having too much control or being too popular. That's not Freedom of Speech. That's fascism.

I think this is a great and productive debate by the way. Thanks everybody for keeping it civil. How many places on Earth do you know that we can debate these intense topics without killing each other? On my way out the door to drive around and look at Christmas lights with Messmistress, but I'll pick this debate up tomorrow!

Thanks

I mean, okay, but that understanding is misguided for at least three reasons. The simplest reason is that antitrust (i.e., anti-monopoly behavior by governments) usually doesn't involve nationalizing a company. Usually it involves fines or other sanctions, forcibly breaking large companies into smaller ones, and/or enforcing certain new behavioral rules regarding competition. So, like, if antitrust is what you're thinking of, then you're kinda off in a different part of the map.

The second reason is that regulation mostly happens without being targeted at monopolies or even potential monopolies. The minimum wage is a regulation. The Civil Rights Act is a regulation. OSHA rules are regulations. The EPA does regulation. Basically, regulation is a broad term that covers any type of restriction or requirement that a state would impose on a corporation for any reason and in any context.

Third, separately, the history of nationalizing companies in the US is not strictly based in antitrust stuff *or* regulation. We seized Merck during WW1 because it was involved with Germany, which was our enemy. We nationalized airport security because we wanted to give the government the authority to (supposedly) protect our air system, not because one company was monopolizing the industry. Our semi-nationalizations of Citigroup and General Motors happened because the government wanted those companies to survive and become stronger, which is the opposite of what an antitrust action would have done. So, yeah, antitrust/anti-monopoly/regulation and nationalization are really very different things.


Okay, yes - I totally agree with you that this gets weird. But this is how the law works here and in every other country I know of. It's not all hard evidence and sharp lines. One of my personal favorites (i.e., things I hate) is the "reasonable person" standard, which basically means fuck-all but is used in US law all the time. The same thing would happen with nationalizing something like Twitter: some group of legislators and/or judges would have to be persuaded by lobbyists and lawyers that Twitter is important enough (in some sense of "important") to grab. That's it. That's all it would be.

And, like, do I think that's a perfect system? No, no I do not (although I'm not really convinced that reducing everything to numbers would be better, if for no other reason than because numbers can be manipulated). But if you're asking me how it *would* work, then that's how.


Oh, dear. Rich people don't have the power to skirt accountability? They don't have the power to get laws passed? Do you really need me to cite sources on this? Because I will.

Which, okay, Charles Koch doesn't literally own an army. So, yeah, there are powers that governments have that individual rich people don't have. But you didn't ask me who had more guns. You asked me who I trusted to run Twitter. The fact that the government has more guns doesn't change my mind on that.


No? If I tell you that Chris Paul is bigger than Nathan Robinson, that doesn't imply that either of them are big or that "big" is a concept that matters. And, I mean, I still don't think that size is the right metric, nor do I believe that "all X are affected by the same laws" is true. Again: when the US government replaced the CEO of General Motors, did it also replace the CEO of every other domestic car company? No. So I'm still not sure why it would have to be all-or-nothing with Twitter.


I mean, I'm not proposing that we change the definition. I'm proposing that we use a better concept altogether. That's what I said to Potatoman, right? And, uh, how exactly do you propose "more accountability" for billionaires...?

What is wrong with pride parades? There is nothing sexual about them. It is a celebration. Don't confuse it with religion who enslave simple minded people to do nothing while they molest children. For someone shouting the left does this and the left does that, they sure do forget that the right has the people with criminal charges against them for molestation. The right defend religious organizations that prey on children. But they sure will cry sex trafficking if it is someone on the left. Just never when it is people or organizations they support.

Ultimately, "Free Speech" will be whatever those in power determines it to be, and it will be judged arbitrarily on a case by case basis. The courts already determined the rights are not inherent human rights, but government rights, and therefore can be overturned by congress, or rejudged by a later supreme court. I mean, look at Roe v Wade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions

False statement of facts are listed as exceptions and yet that's the primary language everyone in Washington speaks.

"Obscenity"

Telling someone to kill themselves in the USA will now get you sent to prison, but if you tell someone in Canada you're helping the government.

Before 1917 it wasn't illegal to threaten the President of the United State. The Wilson Administration put the kabatch on that not long after irreparably fucking our treasury and currency 4 years prior. Hell, Jefferson himself would have defended this as free speech, especially if whatever president was a tyrant, etc.

So ultimately, free speech is whatever you want it to be...until someone with more money, power, and/or authority tells you otherwise and enforces it with threats of violence.

I think that's what I've been trying to say all along. Let's use more precise language to say what we really want instead of redefining what the Free Speech (caps) means. It's not an academic exercise because we need to be aware of the verbal sleight of hand that the pros use to keep us fighting each other over where boundaries lie.

Got a busy day ahead, so I'll leave things here. I'll respond to the finer points if you ask, but I think I've said everything I wanted to say.

Peace!

Apparently, you folks are a bunch of snowflakes so my post got removed. Most people didn't have a problem with LGBTQ people, but then you started attacking society. So yeah, you're damn sure people will be fighting back against your tyranny.

And the only religion I see is from the woke cult trying to subjugate or destroy everyone. The religious right has left me alone, the worst thing they did was to leave their flyers at my door.

I removed your post, so no need to disparage the whole community. This is the last straw. You have more people blocking you than anyone else here. People have literally deleted their UMD accounts, citing you specifically as a reason they're leaving. Producers, too. Mostly because of your performance over on the MostWam threads. Even so, I've let you keep posting because I think you actually believe in what you're saying and not exactly trolling, but you've consistently taken conversations of substance and hijacked them as your own platform to rage and slag people off.

We should listen to strong and unpopular opinions, but the value is lost if they are mean and insulting, calling people stupid and LGBTQ folks pedos and whatnot. We hold this site to a higher standard than that. I wish you much peace and serenity in life.

[Edit: To be clear, lChris001 has been permanently banned from posting. His latest message left up for context of the ban but would otherwise have been also removed.]

I am talking about America, insofar as America is involved with a substantial enlightenment concept -- and hence is capable of redefinition by members of a culture. This matters, since your original post was about freedom of speech and its definition; it isn't under threat of being redefined if all we are talking about is the first amendment and caselaw. Unless you have a specific case in mind that is headed for the Supreme Court?

To put it another way: since I hold that the first amendment isn't especially interesting, my comments here must seem like an nonsequitur, or deviously uncooperative. But that's absurd. The threat of private governance in a democracy, and the encroachment of corporate ownership upon public goods like the communal discourse, are absolutely central to any reasoning about a scheme of ordered liberty that justifies the reasoning of the court in its own reasoning directed to the first amendment. That's not a big coincidence.


How about we start with this: how many government agencies use the UMD as a tool to promulgate their laws? None, so far as I know. Now ask the same question to Twitter.


Sorry my friend, but Elon Musk is not someone you are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with. You're just a garden variety capitalist. He's a billionaire kleptocrat. UMD doesn't serve anything like the quasi-public function that Twitter does.

Thanks, he was clogging up the thread with garbage. Makes it hard to have a serious conversation when somebody like that is around.

Or even: how often have UMD activities caused stock-price crashes for major US corporations like Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin?

Or: how often have other governments used UMD as a platform for disinformation campaigns against the US?

Again, buying/seizing the site might not end up being the right answer (and almost certainly won't happen even if it is the right answer), but there are plenty of opportunities to use the law to make Twitter take this stuff seriously, thereby cleaning up the public discourse without sacrificing any valuable speech liberties.

Been following this, was kind of put off replying by the ranting, good to know that's been resolved.

In response to the general principles, I suspect this is an entirely new area of law that still needs to be thrashed out.

I'm also not entirely sure the only division is government vs private, there can also be non-government but not private. Example here in the UK would be the BBC. While it is the "state broadcaster" it is effectively at "arms length" from the government, it operates under a Royal Charter and its income comes from a license fee paid by every television owner, which is separate and ring-fenced from general taxation, and hence out of the control of the Treasury. Which means that a government can't apply direct pressure by threatening to cut funding, as they could if it was a direct government agency.

Broadcast media here has, by law, to be impartial. Newspapers can and do have biases and political agendas. But broadcast media, because of the directness with which it enters people's homes, has always been tightly regulated. Now to an extent the state broadcaster will always have a slight bias towards whoever is in government at any given time, but given the never-ending complaints of bias from all sides of the political divides, it seems to manage a reasonable job of being mostly impartial.

There are also private broadcasters funded by advertising, but those also are required, by law, to be impartial. Mostly it works.

Now, as to the Twitter question - the issue isn't specifically to do with size or page views or suchlike, but rather with "power in the community". And I've no idea how one would attempt to measure that. By the time random posts on a network are affecting billion dollar share movements it's a bit late to realise that something needs regulating.

The Internet has changed the entire nature of media and idea consumption and use. In the days of TV and print media only a relatively few people could control information flow, now, anyone can literally say anything - even in China there are limits to how effective censorship can be, as the recent anti-lockdown protests have proved. They can effectively suppress all mention of what happened in 1989, because that's a specific event with specific terms and words that can be blocked / auto-deleted. But when something entirely new erupts, tens of thousands, possibly millions of people will have seen it before anyone has reacted fast enough to shut it down.

If Twitter really is a town square, then I suppose the real question is who should be allowed in, and who should be banned from it - and of course how do you even attempt to enforce that. I'm sure security-minded people could come up with all kinds of ways to register and verify people based on passports or other ID documents, but try and impose that and all that will happen is everyone will jump ship to a no-ID-required alternative that's hosted in South Korea or the Falkland Islands, and run out of Bermuda, or Lagos, or Finland, or Vietnam - far beyond the reach of US law. Or the Chinese fund the development of some new super-Twitter-killer run out of nations in Africa.

So at the moment, I'm not sure there is a solution.

Yeah, I think National Public Radio here in the states is similar. The details are different, but I think it's the same general principle.


Yeah, this is the type of thing I was referring to earlier. I don't know why so many people seem to think that things must always be terrible (partisan media, profiteering health care, etc. etc. etc.) when there are other places in the world that have proven otherwise.


Right. But, still, better late than never.


So I'm not actually terribly worried about alternatives popping up, for the same reason that I'm not convinced that "competition" will solve any problems with moderation. That idea sounds good in theory and works well on paper, but it doesn't tend to work in practice. Twitter is (was?) Twitter not because of its format or its code but because of the people who happened to use it in the specific ways that they did. You could develop an exact replica of the software, but unless you can also transplant the same user base, it won't be the same. As soon as Group A moves to Competitor X and Group B moves to Competitor Y, the magic is gone, both competitors are likely to go under, and both groups are likely to become digitally homeless.

For the same reasons, I wouldn't expect most users to abandon Twitter even if Twitter started to enforce stricter ID rules. As a comparative case in point, note that Facebook did not experience any kind of mass exodus after it required people to use their real names. I mean, if you got really draconian, then I guess people might leave. But it'd have to be really extreme.

Still, that leaves the question of how it could actually work. My honest answer is that I don't know, because I'm not a security expert. But Twitter already does (...or did, anyway) make efforts to delete accounts that they identified as being state-sponsored disinformation outlets, not to mention people guilty of harassment and the like. So they must have had some methods for doing so. And whatever those methods are, presumably they can be codified and refined over time.

Freedom of Speech is one of the most important freedoms of all.
Daily, we read of dozens of countries where you will be jailed, tortured, or worse if you speak out against authority.
But, all freedoms also carry a responsibility.
Freedom of speech carries with it a responsibility to remain within the law, to be truthful, to be factual, and to be considerate towards others.
When these responsibilities are ignored, then the value of Free Speech is diminished.
I agree completely that websites should curtail those who abuse their freedom.
I live in Europe, so I am not completely familiar with all the arguments posted here.
But I fear for the future of democracy in America if people there can not agree on what is lawful, on what is truthful or factual, and where abuse of others seems to count for more than good manners.
Peter