Sure. As long as they become legally co-responsible for the speech they are choosing to amplify, i.e. as long as they accept they are no longer just a platform.
Holding people legally responsible for speech means censoring speech the Government doesn't like. Holding people legally responsible for relaying other people's speech as long as they don't relay all speech, is essentially the same thing as banning the selective relaying of speech. For example, it would be impossible for Twitter to determine if any factual claim about a person or company would be considered defamation before they relay it, so they would essentially be forced to leave the US if they didn't want to relay genocide advocacy or whatever else they may have a moral objection to help spread.
That's what I find so frustrating about this debate. The people who claim to support free speech actually support more censorship by the Government. They seem to want the Government to be the sole judge of what is acceptable to say. That's the exact opposite of what I want. I want for nobody to be prevented from saying anything and for nobody to be forced to help anyone say anything. Both of those rights are equally important parts of freedom of speech.
> That's what I find so frustrating about this debate. The people who claim to support free speech actually support more censorship by the Government.
You have mis-interpreted.
People are saying that they should be treated like the telephone companies.
Do you think that the telephone companies are some massive apparatis of censorship and anti-free speech?
I don't think most people would say that. I think that would people would say that the laws that force the telephone company to do certain things, results in very little censorship of the phone network.
> Both of those rights are equally important parts of freedom of speech.
So then, telephone companies.
Do you think that the laws regarding telephone companies are some massive infringement on free speech? Because I think most people would say the opposite, that are laws regarding them help prevent censorship.
Everyone claiming that Twitter and other social media companies are infringing on their free speech are arguing that these companies must allow broadcast messages.
Telephone companies do not allow normal customers to broadcast messages. A telephone call is a targeted communication. You are calling one person, or perhaps a handful of people. Additionally, there are laws that (at least attempt to) prevent spamming and robocalling. Telephone users also have the right to be taken off of companies call lists.
> Telephone companies do not allow normal customers to broadcast messages. A telephone call is a targeted communication.
> there are laws that (at least attempt to) prevent spamming and robocalling. Telephone users also have the right to be taken off of companies call lists.
None of what you just said changes the idea that it is pretty silly to claim that these types of laws that force telephone companies to send certain messages are some huge infringement on free speech.
The laws that apply to phone companies are well accepted in society. And they could be expanded to other large communication networks, as they currently are well accepted and are not considered huge infringements on free speech, nor do people say that they support censorship.
> This would be a violation of freedom of association
No, actually. We force public businesses to not discriminate based on race, and we have laws that for the telephone company to send almost all calls on its network.
Nobody would say that those laws break our rights to freedom of association.
Similar laws could be place on social media companies that we already put on telephone companies, even if they wouldn't be exactly the same.
Telephone companies exchange legal liability for the content of what they carry, for not changing fee or pricing structures based on the use of their lines. However, they also charge fees for the use of their service to their end users.
People do not pay for the services in question here, so the idea they have a right to them is on shaky ground to begin with - i.e. if I give away free lemonade, I'm under no obligations to give it away to any specific persons.
But more importantly, there's a big difference between a transactive exchange between two parties, and a broadcast one: the telephone company is not obligated to advertise who uses their services or how they use them, whereas Facebook is a publishing platform that does - which goes to the question of association. You can discreetly use a telephone line: you cant discreetly use Facebook without Facebook branding.
So what does the proposed law then look like? Facebook is obligated to host your content next to the "Facebook" logo? Does the logo have to be there? Does the service have to be similar? What if Facebook decide your content just doesn't qualify for their branded tier, and instead will be hosted on "QuietBook.com", which they don't SEO optimize? Suppose you have a comment section on a personal website - why are you now allowed to remove comments there but Facebook isn't allowed to remove comments from it's service?
You have once again not contracted anything that I said. What I said was that we have laws that force businesses to do certain things, and very few people would say that these businesses are having their rights infringed on.
> So what does the proposed law then look like?
Well, what we could do, is take existing laws and extend them to social media companies. Such as the existing common carrier laws, or anti-discrimination laws.
> if I give away free lemonade, I'm under no obligations to give it away to any specific persons.
If you had a lemonade store, in a mall, and you were giving away free lemonade, but you refused to give away lemonade to black people, then you absolutely would get in trouble with the law.
Like c'mon. How did you not think of that immediately? I even referenced this in a previous comment.
> Facebook is obligated to host your content next to the "Facebook" logo? Does the logo have to be there?
Well, just take every single question that you asked, and apply them to if a store wanted to treat black people differently, and then you have your answer.
So whatever hypothetical you have, imagine if it was about a company being forced to follow certain laws, that prevent them from discriminating against black people.
And the answer to these hypothetical, is that if a company attempted to do these things to black people, then it would likely be disallowed.
And very few people would say that there is some large infringement on these companies rights in that situation.
So again: if I have a comment section on my personal blog - can I remove abusive comments? Ban abusive users? Can HackerNews ban or downvote comments so they're not seen? Can TalkBack radio screen which callers it puts on the air?
You can write a law to do whatever you want, but the reason rights like freedom of association are enumerated is because things will go very, very wrong quickly when you undermine them. Freedom of speech is protection from government sanction for voicing your ideas, but freedom of
association is protection of your being compelled to act due to the arbitrary desires of others.
> If you had a lemonade store, in a mall, and you were giving away free lemonade, but you refused to give away lemonade to black people, then you absolutely would get in trouble with the law.
No you wouldn't. You'd be in trouble if you ejected people from the premises on the basis of race, but there is no case-law which requires you to give away goods and services to anyone. But this comparison is completely irrelevant because "your opinions" are not a protected class, nor would they ever be.
