Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped First Amendment on Social Media

Re:Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped First Amendme... by zeckalpha on Saturday September 09, 2023 @09:30AM (#37445174)

How do you balance the free speech of the platform operator relative to the free speech of the members of the platform? There is some zero sum free speech here. If you require platform operators to include all of their member's speech, you are violating the operators speech.

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Re:Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped First Amendme... by Karunamon on Saturday September 09, 2023 @10:18AM (#37445727)

The operators, as corporate entities (that only exist at the government's permission in the first place) rather than human beings, do not have all the same freedoms. Their behavior can be coerced or restricted in many different ways.

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Re:Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped First Amendme... by amadeuspagel on Saturday September 09, 2023 @12:27PM (#37447149)

This is a valid argument when it comes to things like recommendations but there are some simple functions of platforms that in no way constitute the platforms speech:

- When two people privately chat with each other, this is not the chat platforms speech, anymore then a phone call is the phone company's speech, it is something that should fall under common carrier laws, just like phone companies.

- When someone explicitly decides to follow someone else and that person posts something, then relaying that post is not the platforms speech, anymore then delivering a magazine to a subscriber is the postal services speech.

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Re:Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped First Amendme... by zeckalpha on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @08:11PM (#37490457)

That analogy falls down because there is speech you aren't allowed to convey via the telephone or postal service.

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