“We have the right to kill people with our lies!”
That’s in the Constitution. Or maybe the Declaration of Independence. Or maybe George Washington said that to Hannity in a Fox interview. I read it on Facebook!
How is Facebook deciding what sort of stuff they want on the site they own “government regulation?”
Even if this were a completely accurate description of the situation… so what? Facebook chose to listen to what the government was saying. They weren’t forced to, they chose to. Even if they were wrong for trusting the government, what’s your proposed remedy here? The government shouldn’t make statements about whether stuff in the news is true or not?
Moderating:
I have a dilemma.
As I review this thread in total and with the benefit of a good night’s sleep, I don’t see how one can discuss this issue as framed by the OP without simultaneously carrying on a discussion about the limits on free speech. With that in mind, I was in error to mod note @wolfpup and @Jackmannii yesterday.
Still, there is a mod note and virtually everyone currently posting in the thread blew right past it. That’s not ok. If I’d been around this morning, I’d have come down pretty hard on everyone who has contributed to the free speech discussion past the mod note. Anyone on the board can talk about anything they like – so long as they remain on topic and respect our rules! Just start a new thread!
Under the specific circumstances of this thread as they unfolded, I’m going to retract the mod notes for @Jackmannii and @wolfpup. Again, I think the OP is impossible to discuss without also discussing free speech limitations, so carry on (obviously, you will).
Going forward, ignore mod notes at your peril.
I think that government web sites refuting misinformation found elsewhere on the internet are totally appropriate. It also is important that the government avoid funding generators of misinformation, such as by Medicare covering health care quackery.
But I am uncomfortable with saying that certain legal free speech is not only wrong, but shouldn’t be published. I hope I wouldn’t say it as a private individual, so I certainly don’t think my tax dollars should be used to send letters to publishers advising they might want to stop publishing lies.
It really does sound to me that Judge Terry Doughty is ruling in a partisan manner, plus, COVID for the first two years ago was a special emergency situation. So I am torn here.
There also is a question as to whether Facebook is a publisher the way a vanity book publisher is. But I’m having a hard time distinguishing them in principle here.
No, @bengangmo is absolutely right, including the part about your uncritical acceptance of the myth of American exceptionalism. Enlightened democracies don’t “claim” to have free speech, they actually have it. It’s written down in their constitutions, which they take a lot more seriously than the obviously partisan ideological bent of many SCOTUS rulings. @bengangmo quoted the right to free speech in New Zealand. In Canada where I live, the Charter of Rights specifically states the following:
- Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.
So how does this comport with your ridiculous implication upthread about “What other countries specifically acknowledge free speech? I can’t think of any off hand”?
As for the snark about “Take the time to drill down and find out what’s what”, I would say it behooves you to “drill down” and find out how free speech actually works in civilized democracies, and why the US is uniquely the epicenter of the kind of disinformation, hate speech, conspiracy theories, and other garbage that Biden was trying to at least mildly curtail on social media. I explained this as best I could in Post #66 which you either didn’t read, didn’t understand, or didn’t believe.
It’s not a coincidence that Judge Doughty, who ruled against Biden, is himself a promulgator of anti-vax conspiracy theories, nor is it a coincidence that Citizens United v FEC (2010) was passed by a SCOTUS majority invested in precisely the interests of a moneyed plutocracy to control American political discourse.
Free speech is a vital human right, but free speech absolutism is no virtue; rather, it’s a symptom of a deeply paranoid distrust of government. You are so immersed in this uniquely American zeitgeist that what you fail to see is that countries like New Zealand, Canada, and indeed most liberal democracies around the world are successful precisely because of both how free speech is valued and simultaneously how the most corrosive and damaging speech can be regulated. Broadly speaking, these countries have good government, elected by a generally fairly well informed populace. What do you have? You have Donald Trump in the Oval Office (or had, and may have again); you have a hotbed of anti-vax, anti-mask, and COVID-related conspiracies that killed millions, your biggest national news network specializes in lies – but, by God, you have free speech absolutism.
Please read the post that I cited, and try to understand how democracies really work. Widely promulgated bad information leads to a badly informed public who vote in shitty governments for all the wrong reasons, and this same public then clings to free speech absolutism because of how shitty their government is.
Dude!
What I’m getting at, I’m at a loss to think of any or very many nations that were predicated or founded on the concept of free speech right there in black and white in a written constitution. It isn’t really necessary to start frothing at the mouth about the orange man bad guy, I’m just speaking to the generalities here.
Free speech historically has not enjoyed a long tradition around the world, as a concept it would even seem “exceptional” as you describe it. Like you, I certainly have issues or problems with the concept, but it seems unworkable without a truly broad definition because it seems to ultimately devolve to a question about “who gets to decide” what is acceptable free speech.
I would certainly agree the United States in recent years has not comported itself very well at all in this regard. I’m old enough to remember “I may disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death your right to say it.” was a common refrain.
It’s not some radical absolutism to oppose the government advising publishers and web sites what it thinks are lies that should be taken down or subject to prior restraint. Two years from now I suspect a different administration will be trying it. I’ll be saying I was against it when the Democratic administration did it, and I’m still against it when a new administration does it.
A good example of government refuting lies by countering it with the truth is VOA.com. So is the Voice of American twitter feed.
But if someone puts up a “Voice of America Lies” twitter feed the administration should not send a letter to Elon Musk, or one of his minions, asking for it to be removed. Neither should any executive branch employee acting in official capacity.
P.S. I’m having a hard time knowing when to mention possible misinformation here. Different Democratic countries have different styles of free speech protection. The UK and New Zealand have parliamentary supremacy, so their constitutions do not control as in the U.S. My opinion is the same regarding what kind of contact with social media firms enhances, and detracts from, freedom of speech and the press regardless.
The government didn’t tell Facebook (or Twitter, or whatever) what to publish or not publish. Facebook has its terms of service and the government said, Hey, it looks like this user is violating those terms of service – take a look.
This ruling is ludicrous.
I predict that if and when Trump II tries to intimidate web sites it doesn’t like, it will also use some such excuse – all we are doing is asking you to live up to your stated policy. I asked so nicely!
As a practical matter, Biden administration contact with social media firms hasn’t prevented the false narratives they are trying to suppress from being believed. Democrats don’t know how to intimidate in a way that works, and (just like Republicans) shouldn’t try.
How was this intimidation? Facebook decided they didn’t want this content on there. Facebook put un place policies about removing this sort of content. Facebook solicited input from users in identifying this material so they could remove it from their site. At no point were they intimidated into anything: if they were, they’ve got lawyers aplenty to fight for their first amendment rights. Where’s the complaint from Facebook about government intimidation? As near as I can tell, they appear to have welcomed the governments help in finding this crap.
Can a private company ask the government to help them identify misinformation? Or is that still “intimidation” somehow?
I shall also win all of my debates with unprovable future hypotheticals.
Isn’t this fact, by itself, proof that the plaintiffs in the suit are not just not guilty, but innocent? That is, the speech they are accused of preventing was, in fact, widely broadcast, in many instances by the same players. It was not, therefore prevented.
Oh, I get it. The suit is not about preventing anybody from expressing their opinions, however misguided and harmful they may be, only that the Democratic Administration assisted specific private companies from spreading misguided and harmful information.
You know, if they push this hard enough, it will force a repeal, or at least heavy modification, of Section 230. Enacted in 1996, long before Facebook, Twitter, or even the idea of “social media” had evolved. The people of the US really should have some protection from the widespread dissemination of information intended to harm specific groups.
I’m not here to legally adjudicate cases. I’m just saying that the government shouldn’t be sending letters to social media companies about taking down legal content. The better approach to mistaken speech is more speech.
Here we have the most fundamental disagreement. Since the U.S. system effectively gives us rotation in office, roughly half the time the opinion group being protected from will likely be your own. But even if we lived in some bubble where progressivism was guaranteed to have majority status generation after generation, I would, as a free speech liberal, still be against the government trying to get Facebook to live up to the principle of silencing liars.
We are not talking about political opinions. We are talking about egregious lies that harm people through deliberate misinformation and go against private company policies. Can you not see the difference here?
Should private social media companies be obliged to carry anti-vax lies?
I think this is what happened.
I responded to the one sentence in excavating_for_a_mind’s post that segued into a different topic from that of this thread. And you are responding here to that possible violation, of SDMB policy, on my part.
So – much as I would like to answer your yes-no question, it could be a topic for another thread (although it might be a very short one with everyone agreeing).
I’ll put my position different way. Elected Republican states attorney generals filed a lawsuit against “JOSEPH R BIDEN JR., ET AL.” because they thought they had caught out the administration doing something that would look, to the average voter, as being wasteful as best, and probably just plain wrong. I disagree with the Republicans are many issues, but, morally, I think they are correct here. Now, legally, they may be wrong, with the judge reversed on appeal. I still ask the administration to stop it.
This is starting to sound like:
“We shouldn’t tell companies to take down scam postings off their sites because the people who would otherwise acquire beautiful Ukrainian women as obedient sex slaves would get really mad at you for denying them that opportunity. It’s really dangerous trying to protect people from themselves. Next stop on that train is the CCP sanitizing WeChat in real time!!! Wake up sheeple!”
Where are these Ukrainian wimmins and nuclear wessels? Asking for a friend.
I see that this is one of the problems with both this case and civil discourse in general. Way too many people (as Judge Doughty does) looks at everything, particularly any discourse, as being either Red or Blue. To illustrate, Judge Doughty categorizes speech about “the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns” and “the efficiency of
COVID-19 vaccines” as well as “the security of voting by mail” as all being “conservative-leaning” when the classical “Conservative” points on these issues would be the opposite of the current take of the Right-Wing.
The classical Conservative approach to masks, for example, would seem to be “they cause little or no harm, are easy to implement, and very well may reduce the spread of this unknown disease.” Clearly, the liberal or progressive approach would be one where people are allowed to do whatever they want unless it can be proven to adversely affect others.
Similar comments could be made for lockdowns, vaccines, and voting by mail. Now, there may be some legitimate discourse on these issues that needs free speech protection, but Judge Doughty does not seem to want to identify how the alleged infringement of free speech has stifled this discourse. Laughably, Judge Doughty does not seem to even demonstrate that the Defendants have even engaged in infringement of free speech. But, by viewing this issue as Republican v. Democratic, it seems that he is trying to decide this case based on politics rather than law.
I do have to wonder how far being a “free speech liberal” goes. Does it give the government the ability to stop or deter doxxing, for example? How about internet bullying? In the pre-social media times, this was largely handled by holding the publisher of liable for damages caused by such speech. This allowed society, that is, the government through its judiciary, to exercise control of this type of speech by imposing penalties. This is where my conclusion that you selectively quoted was coming from.
While I agree the government should not be controlling specific content, either electronic or in print, I do believe they should be able to provide guidelines to those who reproduce content as to what should not be amplified. This holds true particularly when national security is at stake, as it was during the Covid pandemic and the days following the attack of the US Capitol. Such guidelines should provide protection for the nation, not any specific political group. Of course, it’s hard to apply that protection to a specific political group who are trying to undermine the nation.
So the Biden administration should have as much contact as they want with social media firms. I’m glad we got that cleared up.