I think the closer parallel is prohibiting methamphetamine.

multiple, disgusting derailments and a banning/deletion in a thread about freedom of speech

a terrifying, question-begging notion...

Showing you don't really understand the 1st Amendment.

Oh look, Face Book closed a left wing page, Telesur, and refused to explain why, even after it relented and returned the page. The Intercept's Sam Biddle comments:



If free discussion is going to remain healthy, social media needs to be held to the same standards of free speech as its smaller cousins: governments.

You seem to have missed the point of the question.

It's a bit like if I asked "should we change the constitution to ban handguns?" and you responded by pointing out that the constitution protects the right to bear arms, therefore the answer is no, and that to answer yes would be to deprive the people of that right to bear arms.

To which I would respond... yes? That's what the question is asking about.

“Changing the constitution” because Facebook is too incompetent to write and enforce sensible ToCs is pretty lol.

the fundamental purpose of the BOR is to limit the powers of government

in no respect does any part of the BOR limit private action


1A already has multiple carve-outs enabling government intervention in various types of speech, including speech inciting violence, defamatory speech, threats, and various categories of fraud. Is it not possible to work within the BOR's existing framework in lieu of eradicating its central raison d'etre?



It is rather like if you asked "should we change the constitution to prohibit businesses from banning handguns".

Probably. I said a few times it was more a thought experiment than a real proposal. I thought it was interesting enough to think about. I'm closer to actually believing the ideas I proposed related to (1) than to (2).

I'm aware of all that.

This sounds more like my (1) (see here)

But re: (2), given what you wrote above (BoR only limits powers of government) the answer to your question here would seem to be no, at least in relation to the question I was asking. That question is about whether or not is the case now, or could become the case in the future, that large corporations like Facebook have so much power over speech as to justify stricter scrutiny of their user policies.

edit: actually it's not clear to me that (2) requires constitutional changes at all. The analogy to 2A might be more confusing than anything, but I guess I'm just following along with what you wrote. The fundamental question is just as I wrote above. I wasn't too fussed about specific implementations.

That’s the point. I don’t think any new bills or even court precedents on who Facebook can ban are needed. But an actual constitutional amendment is lol.

I needed more coffee before writing my initial response to ianaww, but I was just annoyed :P I should have left off at "you missed the point"

Create two levels of offense:

Reckless reporting --> Public censure, causing reputational harm (assuming the process is regarded as legitimate, which I think we must do given the type of solution being proposed), seems the most fitting penalty.

Knowing/willful falsehood --> Fines/Levies/Injunctions


repeat offenders receive increasing penalties, perhaps upgrading Reckless offenders to Willful status after a few judgments against them

Is it more than logistical limitations dissuading you from applying the law to individuals?

Perhaps include the scale of the publication as a penalty aggravation consideration rather than as a threshold liability issue.

the Sullivan decision afaiu/ianae deals with the culpable mens rea (see re: to 1., above) of the speaker, not with the category of content of the speech

I think delimiting the content-categories of this proposed law's application will be by far the most difficult task wrt conceiving the law's propriety.

Perhaps invite would-be publishers to hold themselves out as "news providers" or whatever term when they intend their audiences to understand that the publication conveys fact-reporting - allow the limitations to be self-applied to increase the public's assurance that the presented information is vetted to some extent.

I think the clear potential for conflict of interest requires private standing to bring claims under this proposed law, but I would chill potentially frivolous (and judicially crippling) litigation by imposing cost- and fee-shifting rules, and perhaps liquidated/statutory damages for entities who repeatedly prosecute and lose these cases.

sorry if I got too touchy/bogged-down on the "constitutional amendment" issue...

Hey any thoughts on how both with Barrett Brown and Van Buren the posts you made to rub in libtard faces both included obviously deceptive framing, framing so deceptive the response to both of them was immediate exposure of your lying?

Do you think that is healthy for the discourse? Like I'm not going to click through the TeleSUR story because of your track record of shameless lying, I know now that I can't rely on your summary so it's gonna take like, independent factchecking to make sure I have all the context. Healthy?

Everyone here knows that.

More fundamentally, the Bill of Rights considers free inquiry to be invaluable. Our point is that if you want liberty in the digital age, then guarantees on free expression need to be extended, by one way or another, to private governments (the corporations).

We now live in a world unimagined by the framers: corporations are far, far bigger and more powerful than anything they encountered back then. Face Book is now the town square. So we need either a constitutional amendment guaranteeing free speech on social media, or, better, define corporations as governments and subject them to constitutional limitations.

Even in a dictatorship, you are free to denounce tyranny during a walk in the woods. In our society, what good is it to have the right to pass out leaflets on an empty square while everyone is home on their phones twitting?

Free inquiry is the desired social good -- so we pursue it on whatever venue.


Hey Fly, you still haven't listened to the WORDS to the Lou Reed Song:

If anyone real thinks any of Fly's accusations are even 10% true, then specify the "lie" in detail and I'll address it.

Bill, I think more people would take you seriously if you stopped being hyperbolic to the point of dishonesty.

there are just so many factual inaccuracies there, Bill


- the framers were familiar with the guild system, which was arguably much stronger / more impactful than a smattering of loosely affiliated corporations in mutual competition

- there are still town squares, and people still gather on them and talk to each other

- if the constitution only applies to the gov't, we don't need to amend it in order for it to apply to non-gov't actors

- in tyrannies, you are not permitted to denounce the regime anywhere, whether in the woods or not



it's also hard to understand where you're coming from wrt "corporations = private governments"

Corporations are merely property-holding liability shells, created with the permission of governments. Other than the disposition of their own property (and their influence on other property holders), they have no direct power over anybody, and they are generally not permitted to exert their influence with force.

Governments are fiat sovereigns with nearly absolute power (importantly, subject to constitutional restraints) and the general availability of legitimized/uncontested violence.

The two concepts are almost completely distinct, with the exception that they are both modern-day institutions of human organization.


Why not demand that the government pay taxes?

You're doing some pretty ****ty hit and run posting ITT, and the fact that you refuse to address your criticisms doesn't seem that great for THE DISCOURSE.

Dude is the new Foldn.

Wolfy,

Stop being pedantic. Of course governments and corps share and differ in many qualities. The issue at hand is protecting and extending free inquiry. If you value liberty, then find ways to support it. If you don't like the "private government" formulation, fine, come up with another rationale and mechanism for keeping the internet open. If you hate freedom, then argue that, but don't derail into the quibbleville siding. Nothing in your comment addressed the main points: open expression is valuable; corporations can hinder it; and how do we proceed.

More people can still see the point even if the font is hyper.

You would be better off arguing for transparency and consistency in corporate policies regarding acceptable use of their products than painting them as freedom hating. At the end of day you'll have a hard time convincing people that views found abhorrent to a majority of people deserve to protected by companies like facebook or 2+2.

Specifically wrt Facebook, I think the question is not one of "free inquiry" but of "property rights".

This is partially why the government/corporation distinction is so important.


In the public space - on the downtown square not privately owned - free inquiry is generally protected. It is everyone's, and everyone has the (revocable) right to reap its benefits.

In a private space, however, the property holder gets to decide who benefits and how. This is one of the fundamental rights of property - the right to exclude.

Your suggestion, that the popularity of an otherwise private object renders that object public, is probably not a line you want to pursue...

Thinking about the issue in these terms, maybe the best solution to the Net Neutrality debate is the exercise of eminent domain.


edit: No, that's needlessly complicated when we can simply use the existing licensing framework.

I am genuinely perplexed, even shocked by how common this sentiment is. I grew up learning that free speech means you tolerate views you disagree with. Even Vlad the Impaler believed in free speech for those who agreed with him.

A rhetoric of "transparency and consistency" sugar coats the ugly reality, which is that free expression has to apply to your opponents or it is not free. A yuppie administrative policy like you suggest will not even work, because you can have a consistent and transparent policy against all sorts of views. People in China certainly know what they cannot say. Censorship on such massive scale has to be formalized.

The fundamental truth people are missing is that the state's extensive power to limit expression is now mimicked by social media. The same logic of free discourse and limits on power apply.

Sure, let's not force the New York Times to print views it considers odious. But social media is different. It's essence is as a platform for individuals. It IS the town square.

Analogy: Paper is leased instead of sold by the pulp mills. Now you cannot hand out objectionable leaflets on the town square on the corporations' paper. Still happy?

The point is that like the Werewolf guy, you can make formalist arguments why property law and the Bill of Rights are not being violated, but completely lose the practice of free discourse.

There's no easy road around Alex what's-his-ass.

Yeah, and it’s not like Facebook or lol 2+2 were created to be platforms for any sort of viewpoints, popular or not. Seems perfectly reasonable for the owners of the websites to be able to draw the line on what they allow for people who choose to use it that way. Maybe there would be more competent calls for government intervention if internet service providers were blocking alexjones.com. But that’s a far cry from not being able to have an account on Facebook.

Oh, but I do.

With a corporation, the suggestion that there is a "property holder" of a "private space" is a legal conceit. The corporation is a social entity, not a citizen. This abstraction has had individual rights only since the late Nineteenth Century. I fully understand that property law has sdefined corporations as individuals, but that formulation is messing up politics and the internet.

If you want to value corporate property law over open discourse, fine. But if free expression has value, then you have to look for ways to protect it in the age of corporate social media. Address that point, dude. Do you want a wide variety of views available on the internet? If so, how?