News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Gatekeepers or Censors? How Tech Manages Online Speech. Parent comment

Re:Gatekeepers or Censors? How Tech Manages Online Speech by tptacek on Wednesday August 08, 2018 @04:14PM (#17719043)
You can want the Bill of Rights to be "restrictions on power", but as a positive description of reality and of law, they are not that. In fact: the Constitution had to be amended to make those rights binding on State governments, and it's not perfectly legally clear that all of those rights have been so incorporated.

The idea that they bind on Facebook is... aspirational.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Gatekeepers or Censors? How Tech Manages Online Speech by dctoedt on Wednesday August 08, 2018 @05:31PM (#17719682)
> is ... aspirational.

I'm going to steal that phrase.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Gatekeepers or Censors? How Tech Manages Online Speech by brandmeyer on Wednesday August 08, 2018 @08:32PM (#17720845)
Its not a matter of what their legal status is. Its a matter of what drives our sense of whether some behavior is right or wrong.

The Bill of Rights and later amendments enshrines the ideal that power should have limitations. Just because this ideal was first applied to government doesn't mean that we must stop there.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Gatekeepers or Censors? How Tech Manages Online Speech by tptacek on Wednesday August 08, 2018 @08:41PM (#17720889)
I understand the point you're making, but the Bill of Rights is an odd document to use as your moral lodestar. It was designed for a particular purpose: to structure and constrain a new government. It isn't a manual on how people should conduct themselves, nor did its authors intend it as one. It leaves out things that manual would certainly include, and includes things it wouldn't.
[ Parent | on HN ]