The First Amendment in the US constitution protects free speech, the freedom of press and the right of people to peaceably assemble. Well and good so far. But there are some restrictions too. “The categories of unprotected speech include obscenity, child pornography, defamatory speech, false advertising, true threats, and fighting words. Deciding what is and is not protected speech is reserved to courts of law.” (ALA). In these days as we have come to know the courts of law are very much prone to abide to the interpretations of the law by the new president and his team.
Allow me a look to the northeast of the map: Putin started rather early in his presidency to curb the (already minute) freedom of speech and then went on to declare media and organisations not completely aligned to his perspective as “foreign agents”. They were stripped of any support, were harassed by police, financial prosecutors on so on. Those involved who did not manage to escape into exile found themselves convicted to long-term imprisonment.
So back to the US again: imagine one of the Musk youths comes across the SDMB, reads through the comments, finds that talk about the president in many cases is not really favourable, he might find obscenity or fighting words. Would it be possible that the SDMB is declared an enemy of America and the president? He who does everything in his power to make America great again? Could the SDMB be declared a lunatic fringe? Could it be harassed and persecuted? What if Trump repeatedly uses the whole arsenal of the IRS or the OSHA against the SDMB or its parent company?
On the background of the new political system in the US this does not seem as completely out of the question to me.
Elon can’t even keep anti-Trump talk off of the website he owns.
There are about 4,000 social media platforms to go through before you get to “fan website for a defunct column from a print newspaper owned by a nonprofit”.
I don’t think he’ll use the government itself against any such opposition. Even for him, that might be too much of a stretch. The US has “First Amendment! Free Speech, Baby!” too deeply burned into its brain to officially go after people like this.
But we have seen him already do what he will do: sue everyone for slander and libel. 10 million here, 10 billon there. Pay up and shut up, or it will get worse. And being the president, if you fight it, you’ll lose to him (fair and square!) because the judges will know that the fix is in.
“See? He’s not 'destroying free speech in America! He’s just exercising his god given right as an American to “have his day in court”! Why do you hate freedom?!?”
It’s a self-funding process. All he has to do is hire a few lawyers, tell them they get 10% of whatever they pull, and turn them loose. Even if they catch a few innocents in the net, why would he care? He still got paid, after all.
The new fascist authorities don’t have the energy or bandwidth (or, frankly, the competence) to laboriously go through thousands of discussion platforms, reviewing content, and issuing takedown orders or otherwise making direct attempts to shutter the sites.
However, there is a much more realistic risk — pre-emptive compliance by cowardly ownership. If some sort of blanket directive is issued, many portals and platforms will simply shutter themselves, not out of obedience, but because they don’t want the hassle of trying to obfuscate their content or fighting more direct takedown efforts in the future. They’ll just fold.
I cannot speculate as to whether the site’s current ownership does or does not have a backbone.
The NYT and Washington Post already show their preemptive compliance. I’m afraid many will choose this way just as a means to survive.
So does the GOP, no open resistance to Trump, everybody tiptoeing around Mr President, nobody dares to openly mention his nonsense talk about Zelensky being a dictator.
It’s really not that complicated; declare a handful of platforms they control permissible and outlaw everything else. No news but Fox News, no social media but Twitter and maybe Facebook, and so on.
AI bots, and the E M data breach can now indentify each one of us and find what each and everyone is saying about them and also ‘punish’ undesirable behavior. Perhaps little annoyances like your phone won’t connect, Your supermarket orders won’t get any discounts, you get audited, your payment arrives late or is lost, your car registration disappears from the system, making it a nightmare of red tape to exist and making life easy for those who do. As such to speak out, I do feel most will be in a ‘code’ where those who share like thoughts should understand.
True. I can’t find the poll, but I believe a few years ago, in IMHO, the poll was that very few Dopers were under age 30 or 40 and the vast majority were elderly.
this is the reality. How many active users are there on here, maybe a couple hundred? How many new users are joining? Not too many as far as I can tell…
For the future of the SDMB, I’d figure if it is shut down, it’s far more likely because some legacy media company discovers they own it. I haven’t kept up on this over the years as far as who actually owns it.
Personally, I think it’s lucky that the SDMB was able to survive the software change a few years ago as the old version was unusable.
Or, as others have mentioned, we’re an older bunch and those of use who have stuck it out through the pay to post era as well as the rise of other social media will eventually die off. We’ve lost so many members over the years to death or bannings.