Jeff Sessions to discuss whether tech corps are stifling free exchange of ideas - Polidicks

https://www.axios.com/jeff-sessions-casts-a-shadow-over-twitter-and-facebooks-good-day-in-dc-1536189506-44102b89-6ce1-432f-8868-a84b937310ac.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stayed out of trouble on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, with fewer-than-expected heated exchanges with lawmakers over content bias and election interference issues. Yes, but: Between the two hearings, the Justice Department dropped a surprise announcement: Attorney General Jeff Sessions will meet with state attorneys general this month "to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms." The big picture: A boring day in Washington is a good one for Silicon Valley. Despite hearing statements, lawmakers aren’t anywhere close to taking action to address their frustrations with the social media platforms. Several even acknowledged the work the platforms have done to address the problems they've encountered over the past year. Lawmakers did, however, make a point to note the absence of Google, which declined to send a top-ranking executive. Despite the relative calm of the hearings, the unexpected DOJ statement raises the prospect of antitrust action against the companies. The Washington Post reported that the September 25 meeting was planned before Wednesday. House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden declined to comment on the announcement, but said he had questions about the “enormous market share and power” of web giants. “I’m not going to speak to the Justice Department angle but it is something we’re serious about and we’re trying to work our way through to see what’s the appropriate balance here,” he said shortly after the five-hour House hearing with Twitter's Jack Dorsey. The combination of policy concerns about competition with the politically contentious allegations of online censorship — not long after President Trump spent a week hammering them — is already raising alarm bells for some. “This is an enormous assertion of investigatory powers, in a highly charged political environment,” said Public Knowledge’s Gene Kimmelman, who served in the Justice Department’s antitrust division during the Obama administration. “I worry that this takes legitimate competition concerns into a dangerous realm of excessive governmental intrusion in the marketplace of ideas.”

Is this because they banned Alex Jones and now the GOP is pissy because one of their brainwashing borgs got shutdown?

I agree with the expansion of free speech but this will not be used for anyone other than their own

Gotta enjoy watching a party, which generally favors decreased government intervention in business, suddenly have interest in poking at these social media giants. They're capable of plugging holes where generally perceived necessary, and that scares them. Alex Jones needed to go, and quite interestingly we finally watched that happen.

The Chamber of Commerce, the biggest conservative lobby, recently gave their position on the privacy debate. -The group thinks federal regulations should supersede state laws, a move that’s become more appealing to industry thanks to California's data privacy bill going into effect in 2020. -Their proposal calls for rules to be applied across industries, to tech companies like Google and Facebook, plus competitors including telecom giants. -It also calls for Congress to "encourage collaboration as opposed to an adversarial enforcement system.” Companies dislike that the California law lets individuals sue companies over certain privacy violations.

"the law holding us accountable for our disrespect of human rights is stifling our profit margins, pls fix"

Trump's USA Boasts about protecting the Freedom of Speech, only if its their speech. But if you speak out against bigotry or racism. Kill yourself faggot.

something tells me that within a decade right-wing, conservative, nazi, white supremacist beliefs will be "protected free speech" online and anything to the left of Reagan will be terrorist sympathizing and get you locked up

Where's this attitude for big oil, big pharma, or big telecom? Oh so now we're not only ditching state's rights, but pro-regulation? The GOP can go to hell with their hypocrisy.

Pure schizofascism. Modern fascists implying that their own political enemies are fascists, even as they themselves pursue blatantly fascist politics.

I can say "burn Wall Street, seize the means of production" and it's fine, the US's unique parameters of free speech is a blessing and a curse.

that something is paranoia

If you had told me six years ago that our next president was going to be a fringe right lunatic that shitposts on Twitter, locks immigrant children away in camps, personally insults and belittles both foreign nationals and his own people, and would single-handedly dismantle every progressive act by Barack Obama, I would have called you paranoid. I would have thought there was no way we could vote for something so ridiculous. No. We've crossed the crazy line. Nothing is off the table anymore. The people in power are desperate to stay in power, and they're going to go to great lengths to make sure they do.

You can't exactly kill the 1st Amendment like an executive policy.

I saw conservatives on reddit literally propose abolishing private property in response to the youtube ban. https://i.imgur.com/oK7KBdC.png

Good lord apparently horseshoe theory is bs but that's ridiculous.

and this was on the front page of T_D recently https://i.redd.it/1jdql3nc7ak11.jpg

donald trump got elected president, literally anything can happen at this point

that's silly to think, a conman winning a presidential race isn't anywhere near comparable to what one needs to do to actually repeal the 1st

becoming a leftist to own the libs?

So if you can compel social media sites to carry the speech of an arbitrary company, that sets a pretty loud precedent. It would completely overturn Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, aka the gay wedding cake case - after all, if you can compel speech for an unprotected class, you certainly can for a protected one. It would tear up and burn the entire concept of user license agreements, and I actually wouldn't be too mad about that. And I don't see how it couldn't put net neutrality back into effect - after all, what's the good of keeping Infowars on Youtube if Comcast can just block or slow to the point of unusability youtube.com/infowars (or whatever the URL looks like)? The obvious question is, where does it end? Alright, so you can't kick off Alex Jones. Can you kick off people who are worse? Can you kick off ISIS recruiters? What about blatant fraudsters? Criminals, even - can you kick someone off Facebook for selling drugs? Will this stop Youtube from banning me for uploading the entire Marvel movie series? Can you ban someone who just tweets the n-word at a random account every hour? What if it's a bot? Can spambots be banned, or is FR33 C|AL|S speech that absolutely must be protected at all costs? And consider all the ways one could try to work around this theoretical law, from both sides - ways social networks can find ways to make undesirables into an unprotected class, or for bad actors to masquerade as a protected class. For instance, if the law allows bots to be banned, Twitter could just say "all human-authored posts must be audited by a human before going public", hire one part-time intern to audit manual posts, make a one-click bot constructor that makes a bot to post one message and then shut itself down, and now everyone is technically posting as a bot. At the same time, if you say political commentary can't be censored, what's to stop me from posting illegal porn (I'll let you imagine how illegal) with a brief remark on recent poll numbers beneath it, and say the image is a metaphor. Anything that's a strict, no-interpretation law can be cheated - that's why any site that bans people, has a bunch of people who seem to have been banned arbitrarily and capriciously. For that matter, what is social media? Obviously Twitter and Facebook count. Tumblr describes itself as a blog host, does that count? Youtube is primarily video upload, not very social at all. Is the Nintendo Network a social media network? Are you going to prevent game companies from banning pirates? Hell, does Facepunch count? Does any site with a comments section count? Or any site that runs public content? Can I force the New York Times to post an op-ed I wrote? Only online, or in the print edition too? Can I force Fox News to have me on as a guest? Can I force a school to have me on as a speaker? I know there's butthurt conservatives whining about snowflake college students not wanting to listen to Nazis, but I would totally go on a fifty-state tour of religious schools and seminaries, giving a talk entitled "God is a Lie and You're All Fucking Idiots". (No I wouldn't, I hate public speaking... but someone would.) How does it interact with foreign laws? If Germany classes someone as hate speech, and says they must be banned, but America says they're a persecuted patriot who must be kept online, who wins? Do you satisfy American law if you ban their posts from appearing in Germany? I can imagine a lot of Americans faking GeoIP or using a foreign VPN if things get bad enough. I'm not normally a fan of slippery-slope arguments, but I'm not even looking at what laws might get passed later on if this sort of thing is accepted, this all could potentially be a result of trying to put Alex Jones back on Twitter. I can see what they intend to do and I just can't see a way to accomplish that without fucking up a hell of a lot more. There is a reason the body of law allowing the government to compel speech is so limited - you can force some types of emergency broadcast, and that's about it. There is probably room for some sensible regulation of social media networks. This entire issue is not part of it. Trust me, they are not banning too many people. Go to any Elon Musk tweet, and in the first few replies you'll find a fake account pretending to be a Bitcoin giveaway. Been a problem for months, they've even supposedly made it impossible to change your name to Elon Musk, but it still happens every single time. (Or at least it did up until I unfollowed Elon, jfc he needs to get his shit together) The probable result, if they do anything at all, is to make some vague committee that can "investigate" cases. That's the only way they could conceivably accomplish their goal without huge secondary effects. But what happens when they lose some elections? A bipartisan committee will basically never do anything. A full Democrat-controlled one could turn things the other way, protect any liberal-flavored nutjobs while allowing or even mandating bans of as many conservatives as they can get away with. Or they might just shut the whole thing down as stupid. But I'd think twice before building a gun my enemies will hold at some point.

lmao private company fucker if they don't want your shit on there that's the bottom line. They don't have an obligation to host your shit. If I was in charge I wouldn't remove people from my site for holding bizarre beliefs necessarily, but well... it's NOT my company. You can't claim free markets are the way and then get upset when the free market doesn't turn out in your favor 100% of the time.

>Conservatives don't see the irony that they bought Nike shit despite all of this and were totally cool with it until FOOTBALL MAN NO STAND

I don't think removal is entirely the way to go because if left wing ideas were being removed on the same grounds we'd be screaming bloody murder. There has to be some kind of adjustment that says hate speech isn't protected. Huge amount of countries in the EU do it, but America seems to think spreading this idea that "all niggerfaggots must be purged" should somehow be protected.

Here is your answer which I recently stumpled across. This is Attorney Josh Smith’s Social Media Anti-Censorship Act (#SMACA) proposal. Firstly, things you could ban for or not allow on major social media platforms child pornography no explicit, credible threats of physical violence doxing porn copyright Has Alex Jones done anything of those things? Advocating terrorism? probably illegal. Fraud? probably illegal. Criminal Activity? probably illegal. Copyright Infringement? probably illegal. Racism? context required. Bots? allowed at the discretion of sites. About Germany, If people use VPN's then that is for Germany to handle, not America. Companies cannot be held liable for these foreign influences. About "Slippery Slope", If you think the constitution is a slippery slope then you should move to China, k thx bye. About "Trust me, they are not banning too many people.", You are not so smart, they literally banned around 300 thousand users within a single ban wave a few days ago for spouting racism i.e. muh trump neo nazi muh antifa About "vague committee that can "investigate" cases", Not sure if you've heard about a think called suing in America, its quite popular.

All of those are things that are legally required to be banned, except for porn. The question is, will a law be authored that forbids sites from banning for other reasons? SMACA essentially says that all speech other than this is legally protected. And that includes quite a bit of stuff that is generally bannable. Harassment? Perfectly fine, unless it's doxing or "explicit, credible threat of violence". Flaming? Go for it. Fraud? According to the summary of SMACA I could find, that's not explicitly excluded from the classification of "protected speech" and is thus un-bannable, even though it's criminal in ipse. Even spambots would, by a strict reading, be protected speech. I hope that sounds as dumb to you as it does to me. That obviously ends with the destruction of any social media site large enough to meet SMACA's undefined threshold. Remind me where in the Constitution is says that the government can force a private company to carry the speech of a private individual? The First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech". Courts have ruled it applies to states as well, and have carved out only very narrow exceptions. The courts have also ruled that freedom of speech includes freedom of silence - the government may not compel you to say something, except in extremely narrow circumstances involving companies using broadcast radio spectrum and emergency warnings, i.e. an urgent public good and use of common property. Forcing Twitter, Reddit, Youtube and Facebook to host the private writings of a private citizen is obviously compelled speech, and it meets absolutely none of the criteria for it. SMACA is unconstitutional prima facie.

Well of course we must include the anything from the most blatantly illegal to the most obscure offence within a cohesive piece of legislation. For example of "explicit, credible threat of violence", this in fact requires much explanation, as common place within laws, pages and pages. Not everyone understands threat of violence as I interpret it, much like arriving refugees apparently. I can provide some clarity: If the threat is anonymous, it can most likely be disregarded. If it is a meme, or unrealistic, it is not credible. Likely it requires a case by case evaluation. My only knowledge of this proposal is from this video, Be warned, JFG is a massively intellectual neural scientist (high iq), he is very reliable and trustworthy, he is a white nationalist who promotes the vision of a white ethnostate. I suggest you watch this video in its entirety to grasp the very new ideas of social media anti-censorship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwtM9YDMZGA A private company does have duties. This is a grey area. If the only access to clean drinking water is by purchase from a private vendor. And then this vendor were to act irresponsibly, they should accept consequence.

When your piece of legislation says "anything except this is protected speech, any removal or prevention of it is a $500K fine per instance", you damn well better have a good list. The bottom line is that the whole approach is flawed. You cannot declare everything not explicitly illegal to be "protected speech" in the sense of "every large carrier must carry this speech". ("Everything not explicitly illegal is protected speech" under the definition "protected from government censorship", but that is not at all the definition being used here, do not mistake them) The rational approach is to require large carriers to ban for illegal speech, maybe have a much shorter list of protected speech (eg. "may not ban on the basis of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation"), and then leave everything else to the discretion of the free market. And then treat it as an anti-monopoly problem - don't let networks make it too difficult to leave, don't let them conspire against newcomers, etc. We are in agreement on this point of philosophy. However, I fail to see the relevance to the topic at hand, because if anything, the large social networks have acted irresponsibly only in that they have not more strictly regulated the content on their platforms.

The proposed law, according to a summary I found on Twitter because that's apparently the only part of it that exists right now, would make it illegal for any "sufficiently large social network" to remove a post or ban a poster for anything except the certain narrow cases it describes, ie. child porn, porn, doxing, DMCA violations and "credible explicit threats of violence". It doesn't even have a "any speech that is itself illegal" clause. Under it, Twitter would be fined half a million dollars for taking down a single scammer tweet. It would likewise protect non-violent threats (eg. rape threats), terrorist recruiting, and all manner of other actually-illegal things, as well as plenty of stuff that's legal to say but normally not permitted by networks, like spamming or flaming. There are things that are forbidden by government. There are things that are forbidden by the social network, which is normally a superset of the former. There are things that are allowed by both. This law would completely get rid of the second category, and in practice would erode a good chunk of the first. That is not good.