> not the government breaking up peaceful and legal assemblies

But the government is breaking up peaceful and legal assemblies. While I don't have the article handy, there have been arrests over the past few days for refusing to leave.

As for "legal" - the First Amendment is very clear on this matter. The federal government (and through the incorporation doctrine, the governments of the several states) is specifically denied the power to prohibit this.

> But the government is breaking up peaceful and legal assemblies

First let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right: it still doesn't matter, Facebook is not the government. Facebook can tell stupid people to shut up and stop putting innocent people at risk and that is not breaking up "peaceful and legal assemblies" as you put it.

Now, going back to the government breaking up "peaceful and legal assemblies" (which these are not), it still doesn't matter: you are not guaranteed every right in the constitution at all times equally. A good example of this is time, place and manner restrictions: the government can't tell you that you're not allowed to advocate for a candidate for office, that would violate the first amendment. However, they are allowed to tell you that you can't advocate for a candidate for office at 1AM with a loudspeaker in a residential neighborhood. That's effectively what these people are doing: there is a pandemic, their actions could hurt a lot of people, so their stupid assembly is not legal. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and nothing I say constitutes legal advice)

The Federal Government is granted these powers through federal statute, the Commerce Clause within the Constitution, and executive order of POTUS.

Also:

> In addition to serving as medical functions, isolation and quarantine also are “police power” functions, derived from the right of the state to take action affecting individuals for the benefit of society.

https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/specificlawsregulations.html

https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...

How is this different than shouting fire in a crowded theatre?

We had a thread about this yesterday actually. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22914333

People always think they are serving the greater good when they curtail someone’s rights.

It’s not generally people sitting around maliciously wanting to oppress other people.

It’s more often someone who thinks they are doing good, and that “right” is just in the way.

You don't have the right to post on Facebook unless they want you to. They paid for the servers, not you. If you want to organize a protest, find another host or buy your own servers.

"People always think they are serving the greater good when they curtail someone’s rights."

always - really? Corporations lobbying government to curtail people's rights are driven by the desire for the greater good? Why am I in big doubt.

This would only be true if coronavirus was more deadly than the dramatic increase in poverty that the resulting economic destruction of the shutdown will cause, which is extremely doubtful.

Unemployment is deadly. The mortality rate while in poverty is over 2.5x.

Unemployment is only deadly where incompetent government doesn't put policies in place to cushion businesses and individuals from the closedown. If your government isn't putting these policies in place, you should ask why

I'm not sure how many tens of trillions of dollars we'd need to cushion every business from closing but it'd be substantially more than we are now, and we'd likely never pay off that debt. The US doesn't have the borrowing power to prop up that many companies and people for 18 months. That much printing is deep in hyperinflation territory.

I suppose we can eat tanks then.

That's an impossible claim to backup. A traditional unemployment rate may result in a 2.5x increase in mortality rate, but this isn't a normal period of unemployment -- congress just injected an unimaginably large amount of money into the economy with the deliberate goal of keeping the unemployed afloat until things can re-open.

You can't really look at a past study of unemployment effects and expect it to be anything like what we're about to experience; we literally have no idea.

You're correct that we have no idea, but it's likely to be worse. Some communities won't come back from this.

The economy cannot be paused without massive stimulus to keep it afloat (and no, the current stimulus isn't keeping it afloat). Some companies are entering bankruptcy as we speak. They aren't coming back.

I have it on good authority, that's a feature of capitalism. Someone will come along and open buy anything valuable.

Good system, eh?

You need to account for positive second order effects, e.g. reduced deaths from pollution. That pushes "extremely doubtful" firmly into "we can't even guess if quarantine will be a net plus or minus" in the 2020 death rate. It also heavily depends on how long quarantine goes on for -- would the mortality rates be changed from a 1 year recession? Or would it take many years?

People don't just drop dead upon becoming unemployed. It's just a higher per year mortality rate. Also, economic destruction is not necessarily temporary.

A very large number of industries, companies and communities will be permanently wiped out from this.

How do we know the higher per year mortality rate from poverty will exceed the lower death rate from reduced pollution, reduced car accidents, etc? It's not clear how these balance.

There are also industries growing, and industries that will be created. And some of the industries that may be permanently eliminated may be a net positive -- cruise lines are a complete blight.

I don't know what the net-net will look like, but it's important to push back on the assumption that economic downfall will be all negative in terms of lives lost.

Source?

Apologies, I thought it would be obvious that poverty causes higher mortality.

http://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap-...

https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/how-...

2.5x was a little too specific to be obvious.

This is the government suppressing speech by proxy.

Even if it survives legal review, this harms the spirit of the Bill of Rights, which is incorporated against the States.

Voters should reply in November with their ballots as appropriate.

Where's the government in this? The government isn't forcing Facebook's hand.

The government can be forcing Facebook's hand by making Facebook fearful of being investigated, fined, broken up, etc if they are found to have allowed manipulation of the 2020 election in any way, and the coronavirus and related topics have become unfortunately intertwined in that.

Huh? If any forcing is going on -- which there isn't -- they would presumably be forced to toe the Trump party line, not to suppress or censor it. Wouldn't the present Federal government be happy if Facebook were to encourage protests and general disrespect for warnings from health authorities? If anything, Facebook's actions here are courageous.

It takes a lot to get me to defend Facebook, but the arguments popping up in this thread are proving to be more than sufficient.

Well, the official Trump party line is indeed that social distancing and other restrictions are still necessary. This is a very confusing situation since the protesters against the protective measures seem to be almost exclusively from Trump's base.

And forcing Facebook to publish points of view they disagree with doesn't harm the Bill of Rights?

Of course not. Facebook is a corporation; people are what have rights.

As assemblies of people, corporations have rights. In fact, the right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition the Government for redress of grievances is explicitly protected in the First Amendment of the Constitution.

So Facebook is an organization of what, robots?

Are you OK with similar rights being stripped from your hometown newspaper on the grounds that they are a "corporation", despite the explicit specification of the press as a protected entity in the First Amendment?

In America, corporations are people.

Citizens United v. FEC

This doesn't mean what you think it means. Not all rights that attach to people attach to corporations. The bill of rights doesn't uniformly apply to corporations, and different rights may or may not attach under certain circumstances.

More importantly, the government declaring something doesn't make true. See anything from the entire Soviet Union to the various attempts to legislate that π = 3.