I agree, but then that would be 'government regulation' which people freak out over. You would need a law that says you can't do it, and then, if you delete my post on GAW, I could lodge a complaint. It would be a massive undertaking, pursuing every report of an infringement. If the law put the burden on the site owner, this would potentially damage many smaller operators. Limiting it to companies with a certain number of ... what - users? Posts? threads? market share? Revenue? would be appropriate.
Am I understanding this wrong, or is protection from Section 230 only applicable against content posted (i.e. generated) by users, and therefore not applicable to actions taken by the platform against lawful speech?
Sec 230 simply says a platform is NOT liable for content it allows to appear on it. So if I say 'you are a child eating monster' on FB, you can't sue FB for allowing that.
FB is, completely independent of Sec 230, at liberty to define its own 'Terms of Service' that can say 'you must not call someone a child eating monster'. When you first sign up for an account on these platforms, they present you with their 'terms of service' and you have to check a box saying you have read and agreed to them. So they can ban you because you violated the TOS you actually agreed to.
So FB (and twitter, parler, gab, etc), as private corporations, have no obligation to respect the 1st amendment, as that only pertains to the government, not private corps. Now, where this can get tricky is - even though FB (and others) are private companies, they could not exist without the presence of a vast public infrastructure (the 'internet') (well, its a mix of private and public, but it's certainly some federally funded pieces). So the federal govt. does potentially have some leverage over them. Think about broadcast companies (Fox, CNN, etc); they use a scarce public commodity (frequency bandwidth) that is licensed by the FCC (they are granted a limited form of monopoly), and thus, under their control. That's why the FCC can and do stop broadcasters from broadcasting 'undesirable' content.
I agree FB can and shall delete content and eventually ban you should you break TOS.
Maybe my question then should be rephrased: should social media platform be able to delete content and ban people for TOS-compliant speech? I.e. there is nowhere in the TOS that forbids you from saying "abortion is murder" or "Lynch a cracka on your way to work". Yet one will get banned, the other won't, which appears as politically motivated "moderation".
You mention that the Constitution only applies against the government, and as such not on big tech (which are about to get a beating, as a lot of Biden's appointees are Big Tech agents).
The 2nd Amendment applies against the government too, yet the now famous 2008 case DC v. Heller has made precedent the spirit of the 2nd Amendment, that is the use of firearms for self-preservation against other citizens close to harming you to death.
What would it take to bring a 1st Amendment case against Big Tech to the Supreme Court to make precedent the spirit of the 1st Amendment? Is there any recourse?
Honestly the easy way or the hard way, something needs to stop this anti-free speech bullshit from Big Tech.
American companies should be totally beholden to the individual's liberties from the Constitution, period.
If you serve, say, 50M users, at that point you should be considered something different than "muh private company (btw Twitter ACTUALLY isn't)
I agree, but then that would be 'government regulation' which people freak out over. You would need a law that says you can't do it, and then, if you delete my post on GAW, I could lodge a complaint. It would be a massive undertaking, pursuing every report of an infringement. If the law put the burden on the site owner, this would potentially damage many smaller operators. Limiting it to companies with a certain number of ... what - users? Posts? threads? market share? Revenue? would be appropriate.
Am I understanding this wrong, or is protection from Section 230 only applicable against content posted (i.e. generated) by users, and therefore not applicable to actions taken by the platform against lawful speech?
Sec 230 simply says a platform is NOT liable for content it allows to appear on it. So if I say 'you are a child eating monster' on FB, you can't sue FB for allowing that.
FB is, completely independent of Sec 230, at liberty to define its own 'Terms of Service' that can say 'you must not call someone a child eating monster'. When you first sign up for an account on these platforms, they present you with their 'terms of service' and you have to check a box saying you have read and agreed to them. So they can ban you because you violated the TOS you actually agreed to.
So FB (and twitter, parler, gab, etc), as private corporations, have no obligation to respect the 1st amendment, as that only pertains to the government, not private corps. Now, where this can get tricky is - even though FB (and others) are private companies, they could not exist without the presence of a vast public infrastructure (the 'internet') (well, its a mix of private and public, but it's certainly some federally funded pieces). So the federal govt. does potentially have some leverage over them. Think about broadcast companies (Fox, CNN, etc); they use a scarce public commodity (frequency bandwidth) that is licensed by the FCC (they are granted a limited form of monopoly), and thus, under their control. That's why the FCC can and do stop broadcasters from broadcasting 'undesirable' content.
I agree FB can and shall delete content and eventually ban you should you break TOS.
Maybe my question then should be rephrased: should social media platform be able to delete content and ban people for TOS-compliant speech? I.e. there is nowhere in the TOS that forbids you from saying "abortion is murder" or "Lynch a cracka on your way to work". Yet one will get banned, the other won't, which appears as politically motivated "moderation".
You mention that the Constitution only applies against the government, and as such not on big tech (which are about to get a beating, as a lot of Biden's appointees are Big Tech agents).
The 2nd Amendment applies against the government too, yet the now famous 2008 case DC v. Heller has made precedent the spirit of the 2nd Amendment, that is the use of firearms for self-preservation against other citizens close to harming you to death.
What would it take to bring a 1st Amendment case against Big Tech to the Supreme Court to make precedent the spirit of the 1st Amendment? Is there any recourse?
I don't know that's the same thing the leftists are saying