The state of the public's collective mind re censorship by FB and other social media (part 1 of 2)
Prompted by my previous post (see How Facebook violates our freedom of speech, which is enshrined in the US Constitution), by my desire to make sense of what is going on on the legal front, and by what is going on in people's minds re the censorship by the large social networks, as well as by a comment from a friend to my previous post, I decided to put together a summary of all that, which I wanted to do for a long time.
In a comment to my post @ https://www.facebook.com/seva.brodsky.1/posts/10156180700040143, Boris Gutman wrote the following:
Сева, такой прекрасный и развёрнутый ответ - это метание бисера перед свиньями. Полагаю, получивший его в принципе не способен такое воспринять. И насчёт free speech rights я не уверен, если честно. Фейсбук - частная платформа, и они вправе сказать "пользуйтесь на наших условиях, а не нравится - валите". Неприятно, но законно.
I responded:
Это ты, конечно, правильно подметил, Боря. И именно это я и упомянул в своём ответе им. НО ... Но есть нюанс, как в том неприличном анекдоте про Василь Иваныча и Петьку
Вначале давай посмотрим на американскую конституцию и её первую поправку, которая гласит:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Итак, Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ...
Но т.к. мы имеем дело не с Конгрессом, а с частной компанией, то, согласно твоему разумному подходу, частные компании вроде бы как должны иметь право игнорировать свободу слова, так?
Согласно подобной логике и, тем более, при наличии отсутствия текста в конституции, работодатели должны иметь право дискриминировать при найме на работу, так ведь?
Ну хорошо, федеральные и штатные правительства, наверно, не могут дискриминировать, но частные же бизнесы должны иметь такое право, не так ли?
Ан нет. https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/, например, гласит, что "Most employers with at least 15 employees are covered by EEOC laws (20 employees in age discrimination cases)."
See also https://www.sullivan-benefits.com/wp-content/uploads/Federal-Employment-Laws-by-Employer-Size-03.17.171.pdf in general and the two sections in particular, which are titled
"EMPLOYERS WITH 15 OR MORE EMPLOYEES",
"EMPLOYERS WITH 20 OR MORE EMPLOYEES",
"EMPLOYERS WITH 50 OR MORE EMPLOYEES", and
"EMPLOYERS WITH 100 OR MORE EMPLOYEES".
See also https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/ada18.html, which talks about 15 and 25 employee thresholds. See also https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/smallbusiness/faq/do_laws_apply.cfm, https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html, https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/smallbusiness/requirements.cfm, https://www.clarkandassoc.com/2018/07/11/which-federal-employment-laws-apply-to-my-company/, https://www.zenefits.com/blog/compliance-checklist-each-company-size-threshold/, https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/federal-antidiscrimination-laws-29451.html, etc.
Стало быть, правительство имеет право издавать законы, запрещающие разные виды дискриминации, когда размер компании начинает превышать 15, 20, 50 и 100 человек.
ОК, а чем же тогда свобода слова отличается от свободы дискриминации? В конце концов, тут можно привести ту же самую часть первой поправки, которая применима и в этом случае, потому как если я имею право высказывать своё мнение про тех, кто мне не нравится, я должен иметь такое же право не брать их на работу, не так ли?
Так, но до определенной степени, как я показал выше. Тогда должны быть аналогичные законы, касающиеся свободы слова в контексте частных компаний и неправительственных организаций: т.е., если, например, продуктом или сервисом такой компании или организации пользуются меньше, скажем, 15-20-50-100 человек, то они могут дискриминировать против свободы слова, а вот если они больше некоего размера, то тогда уже нельзя.
А пока что см. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/03/6-exceptions-to-freedom-of-speech/ для того, чтобы посмотреть, что и где можно говорить, а что и где нельзя.
Пока что Конгресс не добрался ещё до предложения таких законопроектов или до введения подобных законов (насколько мне известно). Но дело, похоже, не за горами - в конце концов, когда ФБ является, по сути, монополией в своём сегменте социальных сетей, они не должны иметь право вводить произвольную цензуру и "фильтровать базар”.
And now, the state of the law, proposed changes thereto, and what people think about the law:
1. Opinions
Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? It’s complicated.
https://www.vox.com/2018/11/19/18103081/first-amendment-facebook-jameel-jaffer-freedom-speech-alex-jones-decode-podcast-kara-swisher
“The First Amendment is concerned principally with government power, but we resisted the centralization of control over the public square in the government because we didn’t like the idea of centralization of that kind of power,” Jaffer said on the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. “Maybe we should resist the idea of centralizing power in the social media companies for the same reason.”
“Facebook has its own First Amendment rights here,” Jaffer said. “It expresses them by ejecting Alex Jones from the platform. I think none of that would raise difficult questions if it weren’t for Facebook’s scale. It’s the fact that Facebook is so big and that Facebook arguably controls the public square or arguably controls a large segment of the public square.”
“That’s when I think free speech advocates start to get nervous about Facebook excluding people from the platform, especially when there’s an argument that they’re excluding people on the basis of viewpoint,” he added. “You can think whatever you want to about Alex Jones, but I worry not about Alex Jones, but about the next person or the next year. Who is it that Facebook is going to be excluding next year?”
In the Age of Social Media, Expand the Reach of the First Amendment
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-ongoing-challenge-to-define-free-speech/in-the-age-of-socia-media-first-amendment/
The First Amendment only limits governmental actors-federal, state, and local-but there are good reasons why this should be changed. Certain powerful private entities-particularly social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and others-can limit, control, and censor speech as much or more than governmental entities. A society that cares for the protection of free expression needs to recognize that the time has come to extend the reach of the First Amendment to cover these powerful, private entities that have ushered in a revolution in terms of communication capabilities.
Speaking of speech, two key justifications for robust protection of the First Amendment right to freedom of expression are the marketplace of ideas and individual self-fulfillment. These justifications don’t require governmental presence. Powerful private actors can infringe on free expression rights just as much as public actors.
This societal development and change in communications capacities require that the antiquated state action doctrine be modified lest the law become ossified. The time has come to recognize that the reach of the First Amendment be expanded.
Google and Facebook don't qualify for first amendment protections
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/09/google-facebook-first-amendment-protections
Put succinctly, the court called cyberspace and social media “the modern public square”. If the court means what it says and sticks with the modern-square analogy, then it’s these companies that become vulnerable to first amendment challenges by users.
So far, the debate over what role the internet giants are playing as they gather, remix, and disseminate information has been playing out in the courts. But with the growing interest in Congress in the way social media companies are shaping public discourse suggests these questions will soon be debated there as well, very possibly with an eye toward new regulations.
Facebook Forgets the First Amendment
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/facebook-advocates-government-regulation-online-speech/
Facebook is under mounting scrutiny for its approach to moderating online speech. Lawmakers and the public alike have serious questions about the decisions Facebook chooses to make about the things you can say and the posts you can see on its platform. Some of those questions will likely be asked this week by the Senate Judiciary Committee when it holds a hearing on technology companies and free speech.SB: А теперь посмотрим на реакцию Цукера, показывающую его во всей красе тем, кто он есть на самом деле -- And now, let's see Zukerberg's reaction, which shows his real mettle and who he really is:
So with this increased focus on Facebook’s decisions, the social-media giant is taking a new approach. Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for the government to police your speech instead of having Facebook do it. He wants governments around the world to adopt rules that would determine what types of speech are and are not allowed online. Unfortunately for his plan, government censorship isn’t just a bad idea; in America, at least, it would violate the First Amendment.
In my experience as a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, large corporations do not call for greater government control as an act of charity. They do it to solidify their positions in the market and insulate themselves from competition. Facebook already employs 30,000 people to perform “content and security review,” and they have an army of lawyers and lobbyists ready to navigate costly new regulations. Startups and would-be competitors do not have those resources. So the rules Facebook wants would operate as an economic moat, insulating it from upstart players. It’s no surprise, then, that Facebook waited until after it established a leading position and a market capitalization of half a trillion dollars before finding religion in regulation.
SB: 30,000 цензоров, Карл!!! А Х У Е Т Ь !!! 30,000 censors, Karl!!! (a nod to a popular Russian film) Phreakin' nuts!!!
And there’s certainly no shortage of regimes around the world that would welcome the chance to shut down political speech or free expression on the grounds that it represents “harmful content.” Quite simply, Facebook’s plan is an invitation for governments worldwide to silence unpopular ideas.
After the op-ed ran, one Facebook official tried to walk back the proposal, saying that Zuckerberg only meant for foreign governments to regulate online speech. In the U.S., the official said, Facebook would set up an internal oversight board that would have binding authority to make decisions about speech that is and is not allowed. This is cold comfort when it comes to online freedom. It shows that Facebook is perfectly willing to join arm and arm with foreign governments to censor online speech, since that pesky First Amendment applies only in the U.S. But we should not geo-fence our commitment to free expression, and we should not bargain it away as a cost of doing business overseas.
SB: Вот как ФБ прогнулся под Китай -- This is how FB is trying to please China and other totalitarian and authoritarian regimes:
For his part, Zuckerberg euphemistically described his position as a call for “a more democratic process” for regulating speech. But the entire purpose of the First Amendment is to insulate speech - particularly unpopular speech - from the democratic process. We do not want a majority of Americans or the government to decide what we may and may not say online.
In the end, Facebook just doesn’t get the First Amendment. And when a powerful corporation proposes censorship regimes that would violate our fundamental rights, it’s important that we call it out.
Facebook doesn't really believe in free speech. What they believe in (and actively practice) is censorship
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/facebook-doesnt-really-believe-in-free-speech-what-they-believe-in-and-actively-practice-is-censorship
Facebook’s embattled founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and its Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg seem determined to make the situation worse. After declaring to Congress their commitment to neutrality, they made end-of-year pronouncements that both promised more censorship, and appeased the far left by vowing to involve them with “new products, features and policies.”
Facebook is now openly antagonistic toward the right. Posts aren’t just blocked by humans who decide what they do or don’t like; they are blocked by computer programs designed by humans to ensure liberal sensibilities are not offended. The New York Times says the company is monitoring “billions of posts per day in over 100 languages.” That makes what Facebook is doing almost impossible to track, until it’s too late.
The Times described a global network with more than 15,000 employees assessing content based on rulebooks more than 1,400 pages long. The rules secretly designate groups as hate organizations and are so specific they even ban certain emoji use. Hate speech mandates alone run “200 jargon-filled, head-spinning pages,” wrote The Times.
The result is chaos. There’s no consistency in what Facebook bans or doesn’t ban - except that conservatives suffer. Pro-life, pro-gun and pro-Trump content all run afoul of Facebook’s eager hate speech censors. Just days before the annual March for Life, Facebook blocked advertising for the new pro-life movie "Roe v. Wade."
Around the Fourth of July, Facebook censored a post for “hate speech.” It was the text of the Declaration of Independence.
Facebook is escalating the problem. In November, Zuckerberg announced a new “Blueprint for Content Governance.” He wrote like he believes in free speech … Two paragraphs later he asked, “What should be the limits to what people can express?” Then he said the site was instituting more content controls that would limit what you see “even if it doesn't actually violate our standards.” That's called shadow banning content.
Sandberg followed with an endorsement of the liberal “civil rights audit” of Facebook that included an ACLU executive and 90 left-wing groups. She called it one of her “top priorities for 2019.” That audit revealed Facebook had worked so closely with the left that it allowed “several civil rights organizations engaged in the civil rights audit to visit [the company’s] election war room.”
The report Sandberg endorsed commits Facebook to work with these left-wing groups on “content moderation,” elections, and the Orwellian-sounding idea of creating a “civil rights accountability infrastructure.”
Facebook's free-speech dilemma is financial, not constitutional
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/business/facebooks-free-speech-dilemma-is-financial-not-constitutional
Despite its base of 1 billion users a day and the limited alternatives to reach an audience of the same size, Facebook risks alienating a sizable portion of its users with such behavior, hurting revenue.
Facebook has no First Amendment obligation to treat conservative and liberal opinions equally. There are, however, ethical and financial reasons for doing so that carry as much weight, if not more, than legal requirements.
While neither the Constitution nor existing law empower the government to require Facebook to treat posts "without regard to ideology," Congress has broad authority to hold hearings on social issues since members are elected to determine what laws the U.S. should have and even whether its founding document should be amended.
If Congress were to try to address censorship concerns by social media platforms, however, a law requiring them to simply display posts and pages regardless of opinion might have a better chance of surviving a constitutional challenge than one requiring them to apply the same philosophy to their own promotion of content.
WHY FREEDOM OF SPEECH SHOULD APPLY TO GOOGLE, FACEBOOK AND THE INTERNET
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273740/why-freedom-speech-should-apply-google-facebook-daniel-greenfield
Americans paid to create the internet; they deserve Freedom of Speech on it.
“But, it’s a private company.”
It’s a familiar argument. Bring up the problem of Google, Facebook and Twitter suppressing conservative speech and many conservatives will retort that it’s a free market. The big dot com monopolies created their own companies, didn’t they? And we wouldn’t want government regulation of business.
The talking point that Google, Facebook and Twitter are private companies that can discriminate as they please on their private platforms, and that the First Amendment doesn’t apply, is in the air everywhere.
But it overlooks two very simple facts.
The second fact is that the internet is not the work of a handful of aspiring entrepreneurs who built it out of thin air using nothing but their talent, brains and nimble fingers.
The internet was the work of DARPA. That stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA is part of the Department of Defense. DARPA had funded the creation of the core technologies that made the internet possible. The origins of the internet go back to DARPA's Arpanet.
Nor did the story end once the internet had entered every home.
Where did Google come from? "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," the original paper by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, reveals support from the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and even NASA.
Harvard’s computer science department, where Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg learned to play with the toys that turned him into a billionaire, has also wallowed in DARPA cash. Not to mention funds from a variety of other DOD and Federal science agencies.
Taxpayer sank a fortune into developing a public marketplace where ideas are exchanged, and political advocacy and economic activity takes place. That marketplace doesn’t belong to Google, Amazon or Facebook. And when those monopolies take a stranglehold on the marketplace, squeezing out conservatives from being able to participate, they’re undermining our rights and freedoms.
"A right of free correspondence between citizen and citizen on their joint interests, whether public or private and under whatsoever laws these interests arise (to wit: of the State, of Congress, of France, Spain, or Turkey), is a natural right," Thomas Jefferson argued.
There should be a high barrier for any company seeking to interfere with the marketplace of ideas in which the right of free correspondence is practiced.
Liberals have abandoned the Public Forum Doctrine, once a popular ACLU theme, while embracing censorship. But if the Doctrine could apply to a shopping mall, it certainly applies to the internet.
When dot com monopolies get so big that being banned from their platforms effectively neutralizes political activity, press activity and political speech, then they’re public forums.
Second, rights are threatened by any sufficiently large organization or entity, not just government. Government has traditionally been the most powerful such organization, but the natural rights that our country was founded on are equally immune to every organization. Governments, as the Declaration of Independence asserts, exist as part of a social contract to secure these rights for its citizens.
A country in which freedom of speech effectively did not exist, even though it remained a technical right, would not be America. A government that allowed such a thing would have no right to exist.
Only a government whose citizens enjoy the rights of free men legally justifies is existence.
If a private company took control of all the roads and closed them to conservatives every Election Day, elections would become a mockery and the resulting government would be an illegitimate tyranny.
Protecting freedom of speech does not abandon conservative principles, it secures them. There are no conservative principles without freedom of speech. A free market nation without freedom of speech isn’t a conservative country. It’s an oligarchy. That’s the state of affairs on the internet.
As the internet has devolved from its origins in academia to a set of handheld devices controlled by one of two companies, and then to a set of smart assistants controlled by one of two companies, it has become far less open.
We have an existing useful toolset to draw on, from anti-trust laws to civil rights investigations to the Public Forum Doctrine. This will be a challenging process, but we must remember through it all, that we have a right to freedom of speech on the internet. Our tax dollars, invested over generations, built this system. It does not belong to the Left. Or, for that matter, the Right. It belongs to all of us.
Facebook’s New ‘Supreme Court’ Could Revolutionize Online Speech
https://www.lawfareblog.com/facebooks-new-supreme-court-could-revolutionize-online-speechSB: Вместо того, чтобы просто следовать принципу свободы слова, они придумывают сложные схемы, которые не будут работать -- Instead of simply following the simple freedom of speech principle, "the gurus" come up with impossible schemes.
Regulating free speech on social media is dangerous and futile
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2018/09/21/regulating-free-speech-on-social-media-is-dangerous-and-futile/
SB: The author raises a valid argument:
The second argument that supporters of regulating social media companies make is that these companies have created monopolies and therefore antitrust laws should be used to break them down and allow smaller competitors to emerge. While it is true that these companies have created very large monopolies, we should not neglect the unique nature of social media in which users will benefit the most only if they are a member of a dominant platform. The value of a platform for its users grows with the number of other users. After all, what is the use of Facebook if your friends are not there?
SB: But he fails to offer the best and simplest solution: no censorship at all, none.
Here’s How Facebook Should Really Handle Alex Jones
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/03/facebook-alex-jones-226795
There are ways to limit extreme ideas on the platform while still protecting free speech.
Free speech took a whacking Thursday as Facebook cited its policies against “dangerous individuals and organizations” to ban such figures as Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos and several other extremists from the site.
Facebook was within its rights to evict the accounts, even if they’ve done nothing criminal. It’s Facebook’s house, after all, and because the government isn’t involved it’s not a First Amendment issue. But the absolutism of Mark Zuckerberg’s rash housecleaning this week leaves a scrape and a dent in our strong free speech traditions. Facebook, like other social media organizations, has taken the narrow position that ideas and expressions that don’t violate the law can be too dangerous for dissemination-and must be suppressed instead of debated or debunked.
Free speech’s health has traditionally been measured in America not by what we will allow speakers to say, although that is important, but what listeners will tolerate. If enough of us stomach the dissemination of wicked conspiracy theories, race hatred, radicalism, blasphemy, poisonous lies, militancy, fearmongering and ugliness, that’s a good sign that free speech has found a safe harbor. But if the government censors the bounders and miscreants who spew these ideas-or if corporations, churches and other organizations work to strangle their expressions-then free speech is in trouble.
I won’t characterize the United States as a free speech paradise, but for the better part of a half-century free expression has thrived here. If you wanted to publish an inflammatory book or pamphlet or newspaper, you could almost always find a printer who would take the job (although you might have to drive to the next city), a newsstand or outlet to sell it, and a postman to deliver it. But as social media became a dominant platform for ideas, spreading them farther and wider and at greater volume than ever before, our free speech paradise is starting to look a little weedy. Surely there are better ways for Facebook to deal with belligerents like Jones and Farrakhan than throwing the site’s master switch from “on” to “off,” both silencing them and casting them into social media darkness.
The worst thing about Facebook’s ban is that runs counter to the long-running American tradition of trusting the public with knowledge, even knowledge that is potentially “dangerous,” to use the Facebook formulation. Even more disturbing, much of the media is buying it: It’s telling that none of the stories about the Facebook ban in the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal located any critics of the social media giant’s actions for quotation (other than the banned users, like Jones). Instead, they recorded applause for the ban from Media Matters, the Anti-Defamation League, Muslim Advocates and Paul Barrett of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, who seem to find victory in exterminating extreme expression. If the press can’t sense the injury inflicted upon free speech by Facebook, we’re in bigger trouble than I thought.
2. A view from an insider
Facebook engineer quits after attacking company's 'intolerant' culture
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/11/facebook-engineer-quits-attacking-companys-intolerant-culture/
A Facebook engineer has quit the US technology company after claiming it had developed a liberal political monoculture that was intolerant of more conservative views.
He left the company on grounds of “free expression and intellectual diversity”, adding that he would be setting up his own technology company.
His departure follows remarks Mr Amerige made in August attacking Facebook, which is headed up by US tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. He accused the company of being intolerant of anyone who had an “opposition to left-leaning ideology".
Many US technology companies have been regularly accused of being too liberal, with Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey admitting to CNN that his employees share a largely left-leaning bias.
Social media companies have also been accused of censoring right wing politicians on their sites, with Twitter having to admit that its algorithms unfairly filtered 600,000 accounts, including some used by Republican members of Congress.
See the 2nd part here: View from inside the beast and state of the law re the freedom of speech at FB et al. (part 2 of 2)
In a comment to my post @ https://www.facebook.com/seva.brodsky.1/posts/10156180700040143, Boris Gutman wrote the following:
Сева, такой прекрасный и развёрнутый ответ - это метание бисера перед свиньями. Полагаю, получивший его в принципе не способен такое воспринять. И насчёт free speech rights я не уверен, если честно. Фейсбук - частная платформа, и они вправе сказать "пользуйтесь на наших условиях, а не нравится - валите". Неприятно, но законно.
I responded:
Это ты, конечно, правильно подметил, Боря. И именно это я и упомянул в своём ответе им. НО ... Но есть нюанс, как в том неприличном анекдоте про Василь Иваныча и Петьку
Вначале давай посмотрим на американскую конституцию и её первую поправку, которая гласит:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Итак, Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ...
Но т.к. мы имеем дело не с Конгрессом, а с частной компанией, то, согласно твоему разумному подходу, частные компании вроде бы как должны иметь право игнорировать свободу слова, так?
Согласно подобной логике и, тем более, при наличии отсутствия текста в конституции, работодатели должны иметь право дискриминировать при найме на работу, так ведь?
Ну хорошо, федеральные и штатные правительства, наверно, не могут дискриминировать, но частные же бизнесы должны иметь такое право, не так ли?
Ан нет. https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/, например, гласит, что "Most employers with at least 15 employees are covered by EEOC laws (20 employees in age discrimination cases)."
See also https://www.sullivan-benefits.com/wp-content/uploads/Federal-Employment-Laws-by-Employer-Size-03.17.171.pdf in general and the two sections in particular, which are titled
"EMPLOYERS WITH 15 OR MORE EMPLOYEES",
"EMPLOYERS WITH 20 OR MORE EMPLOYEES",
"EMPLOYERS WITH 50 OR MORE EMPLOYEES", and
"EMPLOYERS WITH 100 OR MORE EMPLOYEES".
See also https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/ada18.html, which talks about 15 and 25 employee thresholds. See also https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/smallbusiness/faq/do_laws_apply.cfm, https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html, https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/smallbusiness/requirements.cfm, https://www.clarkandassoc.com/2018/07/11/which-federal-employment-laws-apply-to-my-company/, https://www.zenefits.com/blog/compliance-checklist-each-company-size-threshold/, https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/federal-antidiscrimination-laws-29451.html, etc.
Стало быть, правительство имеет право издавать законы, запрещающие разные виды дискриминации, когда размер компании начинает превышать 15, 20, 50 и 100 человек.
ОК, а чем же тогда свобода слова отличается от свободы дискриминации? В конце концов, тут можно привести ту же самую часть первой поправки, которая применима и в этом случае, потому как если я имею право высказывать своё мнение про тех, кто мне не нравится, я должен иметь такое же право не брать их на работу, не так ли?
Так, но до определенной степени, как я показал выше. Тогда должны быть аналогичные законы, касающиеся свободы слова в контексте частных компаний и неправительственных организаций: т.е., если, например, продуктом или сервисом такой компании или организации пользуются меньше, скажем, 15-20-50-100 человек, то они могут дискриминировать против свободы слова, а вот если они больше некоего размера, то тогда уже нельзя.
А пока что см. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/03/6-exceptions-to-freedom-of-speech/ для того, чтобы посмотреть, что и где можно говорить, а что и где нельзя.
Пока что Конгресс не добрался ещё до предложения таких законопроектов или до введения подобных законов (насколько мне известно). Но дело, похоже, не за горами - в конце концов, когда ФБ является, по сути, монополией в своём сегменте социальных сетей, они не должны иметь право вводить произвольную цензуру и "фильтровать базар”.
And now, the state of the law, proposed changes thereto, and what people think about the law:
1. Opinions
Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? It’s complicated.
https://www.vox.com/2018/11/19/18103081/first-amendment-facebook-jameel-jaffer-freedom-speech-alex-jones-decode-podcast-kara-swisher
“The First Amendment is concerned principally with government power, but we resisted the centralization of control over the public square in the government because we didn’t like the idea of centralization of that kind of power,” Jaffer said on the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. “Maybe we should resist the idea of centralizing power in the social media companies for the same reason.”
“Facebook has its own First Amendment rights here,” Jaffer said. “It expresses them by ejecting Alex Jones from the platform. I think none of that would raise difficult questions if it weren’t for Facebook’s scale. It’s the fact that Facebook is so big and that Facebook arguably controls the public square or arguably controls a large segment of the public square.”
“That’s when I think free speech advocates start to get nervous about Facebook excluding people from the platform, especially when there’s an argument that they’re excluding people on the basis of viewpoint,” he added. “You can think whatever you want to about Alex Jones, but I worry not about Alex Jones, but about the next person or the next year. Who is it that Facebook is going to be excluding next year?”
In the Age of Social Media, Expand the Reach of the First Amendment
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-ongoing-challenge-to-define-free-speech/in-the-age-of-socia-media-first-amendment/
The First Amendment only limits governmental actors-federal, state, and local-but there are good reasons why this should be changed. Certain powerful private entities-particularly social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and others-can limit, control, and censor speech as much or more than governmental entities. A society that cares for the protection of free expression needs to recognize that the time has come to extend the reach of the First Amendment to cover these powerful, private entities that have ushered in a revolution in terms of communication capabilities.
Speaking of speech, two key justifications for robust protection of the First Amendment right to freedom of expression are the marketplace of ideas and individual self-fulfillment. These justifications don’t require governmental presence. Powerful private actors can infringe on free expression rights just as much as public actors.
This societal development and change in communications capacities require that the antiquated state action doctrine be modified lest the law become ossified. The time has come to recognize that the reach of the First Amendment be expanded.
Google and Facebook don't qualify for first amendment protections
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/09/google-facebook-first-amendment-protections
Put succinctly, the court called cyberspace and social media “the modern public square”. If the court means what it says and sticks with the modern-square analogy, then it’s these companies that become vulnerable to first amendment challenges by users.
So far, the debate over what role the internet giants are playing as they gather, remix, and disseminate information has been playing out in the courts. But with the growing interest in Congress in the way social media companies are shaping public discourse suggests these questions will soon be debated there as well, very possibly with an eye toward new regulations.
Facebook Forgets the First Amendment
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/facebook-advocates-government-regulation-online-speech/
Facebook is under mounting scrutiny for its approach to moderating online speech. Lawmakers and the public alike have serious questions about the decisions Facebook chooses to make about the things you can say and the posts you can see on its platform. Some of those questions will likely be asked this week by the Senate Judiciary Committee when it holds a hearing on technology companies and free speech.SB: А теперь посмотрим на реакцию Цукера, показывающую его во всей красе тем, кто он есть на самом деле -- And now, let's see Zukerberg's reaction, which shows his real mettle and who he really is:
So with this increased focus on Facebook’s decisions, the social-media giant is taking a new approach. Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for the government to police your speech instead of having Facebook do it. He wants governments around the world to adopt rules that would determine what types of speech are and are not allowed online. Unfortunately for his plan, government censorship isn’t just a bad idea; in America, at least, it would violate the First Amendment.
In my experience as a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, large corporations do not call for greater government control as an act of charity. They do it to solidify their positions in the market and insulate themselves from competition. Facebook already employs 30,000 people to perform “content and security review,” and they have an army of lawyers and lobbyists ready to navigate costly new regulations. Startups and would-be competitors do not have those resources. So the rules Facebook wants would operate as an economic moat, insulating it from upstart players. It’s no surprise, then, that Facebook waited until after it established a leading position and a market capitalization of half a trillion dollars before finding religion in regulation.
SB: 30,000 цензоров, Карл!!! А Х У Е Т Ь !!! 30,000 censors, Karl!!! (a nod to a popular Russian film) Phreakin' nuts!!!
And there’s certainly no shortage of regimes around the world that would welcome the chance to shut down political speech or free expression on the grounds that it represents “harmful content.” Quite simply, Facebook’s plan is an invitation for governments worldwide to silence unpopular ideas.
After the op-ed ran, one Facebook official tried to walk back the proposal, saying that Zuckerberg only meant for foreign governments to regulate online speech. In the U.S., the official said, Facebook would set up an internal oversight board that would have binding authority to make decisions about speech that is and is not allowed. This is cold comfort when it comes to online freedom. It shows that Facebook is perfectly willing to join arm and arm with foreign governments to censor online speech, since that pesky First Amendment applies only in the U.S. But we should not geo-fence our commitment to free expression, and we should not bargain it away as a cost of doing business overseas.
SB: Вот как ФБ прогнулся под Китай -- This is how FB is trying to please China and other totalitarian and authoritarian regimes:
For his part, Zuckerberg euphemistically described his position as a call for “a more democratic process” for regulating speech. But the entire purpose of the First Amendment is to insulate speech - particularly unpopular speech - from the democratic process. We do not want a majority of Americans or the government to decide what we may and may not say online.
In the end, Facebook just doesn’t get the First Amendment. And when a powerful corporation proposes censorship regimes that would violate our fundamental rights, it’s important that we call it out.
Facebook doesn't really believe in free speech. What they believe in (and actively practice) is censorship
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/facebook-doesnt-really-believe-in-free-speech-what-they-believe-in-and-actively-practice-is-censorship
Facebook’s embattled founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and its Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg seem determined to make the situation worse. After declaring to Congress their commitment to neutrality, they made end-of-year pronouncements that both promised more censorship, and appeased the far left by vowing to involve them with “new products, features and policies.”
Facebook is now openly antagonistic toward the right. Posts aren’t just blocked by humans who decide what they do or don’t like; they are blocked by computer programs designed by humans to ensure liberal sensibilities are not offended. The New York Times says the company is monitoring “billions of posts per day in over 100 languages.” That makes what Facebook is doing almost impossible to track, until it’s too late.
The Times described a global network with more than 15,000 employees assessing content based on rulebooks more than 1,400 pages long. The rules secretly designate groups as hate organizations and are so specific they even ban certain emoji use. Hate speech mandates alone run “200 jargon-filled, head-spinning pages,” wrote The Times.
The result is chaos. There’s no consistency in what Facebook bans or doesn’t ban - except that conservatives suffer. Pro-life, pro-gun and pro-Trump content all run afoul of Facebook’s eager hate speech censors. Just days before the annual March for Life, Facebook blocked advertising for the new pro-life movie "Roe v. Wade."
Around the Fourth of July, Facebook censored a post for “hate speech.” It was the text of the Declaration of Independence.
Facebook is escalating the problem. In November, Zuckerberg announced a new “Blueprint for Content Governance.” He wrote like he believes in free speech … Two paragraphs later he asked, “What should be the limits to what people can express?” Then he said the site was instituting more content controls that would limit what you see “even if it doesn't actually violate our standards.” That's called shadow banning content.
Sandberg followed with an endorsement of the liberal “civil rights audit” of Facebook that included an ACLU executive and 90 left-wing groups. She called it one of her “top priorities for 2019.” That audit revealed Facebook had worked so closely with the left that it allowed “several civil rights organizations engaged in the civil rights audit to visit [the company’s] election war room.”
The report Sandberg endorsed commits Facebook to work with these left-wing groups on “content moderation,” elections, and the Orwellian-sounding idea of creating a “civil rights accountability infrastructure.”
Facebook's free-speech dilemma is financial, not constitutional
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/business/facebooks-free-speech-dilemma-is-financial-not-constitutional
Despite its base of 1 billion users a day and the limited alternatives to reach an audience of the same size, Facebook risks alienating a sizable portion of its users with such behavior, hurting revenue.
Facebook has no First Amendment obligation to treat conservative and liberal opinions equally. There are, however, ethical and financial reasons for doing so that carry as much weight, if not more, than legal requirements.
While neither the Constitution nor existing law empower the government to require Facebook to treat posts "without regard to ideology," Congress has broad authority to hold hearings on social issues since members are elected to determine what laws the U.S. should have and even whether its founding document should be amended.
If Congress were to try to address censorship concerns by social media platforms, however, a law requiring them to simply display posts and pages regardless of opinion might have a better chance of surviving a constitutional challenge than one requiring them to apply the same philosophy to their own promotion of content.
WHY FREEDOM OF SPEECH SHOULD APPLY TO GOOGLE, FACEBOOK AND THE INTERNET
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273740/why-freedom-speech-should-apply-google-facebook-daniel-greenfield
Americans paid to create the internet; they deserve Freedom of Speech on it.
“But, it’s a private company.”
It’s a familiar argument. Bring up the problem of Google, Facebook and Twitter suppressing conservative speech and many conservatives will retort that it’s a free market. The big dot com monopolies created their own companies, didn’t they? And we wouldn’t want government regulation of business.
The talking point that Google, Facebook and Twitter are private companies that can discriminate as they please on their private platforms, and that the First Amendment doesn’t apply, is in the air everywhere.
But it overlooks two very simple facts.
The second fact is that the internet is not the work of a handful of aspiring entrepreneurs who built it out of thin air using nothing but their talent, brains and nimble fingers.
The internet was the work of DARPA. That stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA is part of the Department of Defense. DARPA had funded the creation of the core technologies that made the internet possible. The origins of the internet go back to DARPA's Arpanet.
Nor did the story end once the internet had entered every home.
Where did Google come from? "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," the original paper by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, reveals support from the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and even NASA.
Harvard’s computer science department, where Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg learned to play with the toys that turned him into a billionaire, has also wallowed in DARPA cash. Not to mention funds from a variety of other DOD and Federal science agencies.
Taxpayer sank a fortune into developing a public marketplace where ideas are exchanged, and political advocacy and economic activity takes place. That marketplace doesn’t belong to Google, Amazon or Facebook. And when those monopolies take a stranglehold on the marketplace, squeezing out conservatives from being able to participate, they’re undermining our rights and freedoms.
"A right of free correspondence between citizen and citizen on their joint interests, whether public or private and under whatsoever laws these interests arise (to wit: of the State, of Congress, of France, Spain, or Turkey), is a natural right," Thomas Jefferson argued.
There should be a high barrier for any company seeking to interfere with the marketplace of ideas in which the right of free correspondence is practiced.
Liberals have abandoned the Public Forum Doctrine, once a popular ACLU theme, while embracing censorship. But if the Doctrine could apply to a shopping mall, it certainly applies to the internet.
When dot com monopolies get so big that being banned from their platforms effectively neutralizes political activity, press activity and political speech, then they’re public forums.
Second, rights are threatened by any sufficiently large organization or entity, not just government. Government has traditionally been the most powerful such organization, but the natural rights that our country was founded on are equally immune to every organization. Governments, as the Declaration of Independence asserts, exist as part of a social contract to secure these rights for its citizens.
A country in which freedom of speech effectively did not exist, even though it remained a technical right, would not be America. A government that allowed such a thing would have no right to exist.
Only a government whose citizens enjoy the rights of free men legally justifies is existence.
If a private company took control of all the roads and closed them to conservatives every Election Day, elections would become a mockery and the resulting government would be an illegitimate tyranny.
Protecting freedom of speech does not abandon conservative principles, it secures them. There are no conservative principles without freedom of speech. A free market nation without freedom of speech isn’t a conservative country. It’s an oligarchy. That’s the state of affairs on the internet.
As the internet has devolved from its origins in academia to a set of handheld devices controlled by one of two companies, and then to a set of smart assistants controlled by one of two companies, it has become far less open.
We have an existing useful toolset to draw on, from anti-trust laws to civil rights investigations to the Public Forum Doctrine. This will be a challenging process, but we must remember through it all, that we have a right to freedom of speech on the internet. Our tax dollars, invested over generations, built this system. It does not belong to the Left. Or, for that matter, the Right. It belongs to all of us.
Facebook’s New ‘Supreme Court’ Could Revolutionize Online Speech
https://www.lawfareblog.com/facebooks-new-supreme-court-could-revolutionize-online-speechSB: Вместо того, чтобы просто следовать принципу свободы слова, они придумывают сложные схемы, которые не будут работать -- Instead of simply following the simple freedom of speech principle, "the gurus" come up with impossible schemes.
Regulating free speech on social media is dangerous and futile
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2018/09/21/regulating-free-speech-on-social-media-is-dangerous-and-futile/
SB: The author raises a valid argument:
The second argument that supporters of regulating social media companies make is that these companies have created monopolies and therefore antitrust laws should be used to break them down and allow smaller competitors to emerge. While it is true that these companies have created very large monopolies, we should not neglect the unique nature of social media in which users will benefit the most only if they are a member of a dominant platform. The value of a platform for its users grows with the number of other users. After all, what is the use of Facebook if your friends are not there?
SB: But he fails to offer the best and simplest solution: no censorship at all, none.
Here’s How Facebook Should Really Handle Alex Jones
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/03/facebook-alex-jones-226795
There are ways to limit extreme ideas on the platform while still protecting free speech.
Free speech took a whacking Thursday as Facebook cited its policies against “dangerous individuals and organizations” to ban such figures as Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos and several other extremists from the site.
Facebook was within its rights to evict the accounts, even if they’ve done nothing criminal. It’s Facebook’s house, after all, and because the government isn’t involved it’s not a First Amendment issue. But the absolutism of Mark Zuckerberg’s rash housecleaning this week leaves a scrape and a dent in our strong free speech traditions. Facebook, like other social media organizations, has taken the narrow position that ideas and expressions that don’t violate the law can be too dangerous for dissemination-and must be suppressed instead of debated or debunked.
Free speech’s health has traditionally been measured in America not by what we will allow speakers to say, although that is important, but what listeners will tolerate. If enough of us stomach the dissemination of wicked conspiracy theories, race hatred, radicalism, blasphemy, poisonous lies, militancy, fearmongering and ugliness, that’s a good sign that free speech has found a safe harbor. But if the government censors the bounders and miscreants who spew these ideas-or if corporations, churches and other organizations work to strangle their expressions-then free speech is in trouble.
I won’t characterize the United States as a free speech paradise, but for the better part of a half-century free expression has thrived here. If you wanted to publish an inflammatory book or pamphlet or newspaper, you could almost always find a printer who would take the job (although you might have to drive to the next city), a newsstand or outlet to sell it, and a postman to deliver it. But as social media became a dominant platform for ideas, spreading them farther and wider and at greater volume than ever before, our free speech paradise is starting to look a little weedy. Surely there are better ways for Facebook to deal with belligerents like Jones and Farrakhan than throwing the site’s master switch from “on” to “off,” both silencing them and casting them into social media darkness.
The worst thing about Facebook’s ban is that runs counter to the long-running American tradition of trusting the public with knowledge, even knowledge that is potentially “dangerous,” to use the Facebook formulation. Even more disturbing, much of the media is buying it: It’s telling that none of the stories about the Facebook ban in the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal located any critics of the social media giant’s actions for quotation (other than the banned users, like Jones). Instead, they recorded applause for the ban from Media Matters, the Anti-Defamation League, Muslim Advocates and Paul Barrett of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, who seem to find victory in exterminating extreme expression. If the press can’t sense the injury inflicted upon free speech by Facebook, we’re in bigger trouble than I thought.
2. A view from an insider
Facebook engineer quits after attacking company's 'intolerant' culture
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/11/facebook-engineer-quits-attacking-companys-intolerant-culture/
A Facebook engineer has quit the US technology company after claiming it had developed a liberal political monoculture that was intolerant of more conservative views.
He left the company on grounds of “free expression and intellectual diversity”, adding that he would be setting up his own technology company.
His departure follows remarks Mr Amerige made in August attacking Facebook, which is headed up by US tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. He accused the company of being intolerant of anyone who had an “opposition to left-leaning ideology".
Many US technology companies have been regularly accused of being too liberal, with Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey admitting to CNN that his employees share a largely left-leaning bias.
Social media companies have also been accused of censoring right wing politicians on their sites, with Twitter having to admit that its algorithms unfairly filtered 600,000 accounts, including some used by Republican members of Congress.
See the 2nd part here: View from inside the beast and state of the law re the freedom of speech at FB et al. (part 2 of 2)