"Now that the show is over, and we have jointly exercised our constitutional rights, we would like to leave you with one very important thought: Some time in the future, you may have the opportunity to serve as a juror in a so-called obscenity case. It would be wise to remember that the same people who would stop you from viewing an adult film may be back next year to complain about a book, or even a TV program. If you can be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you can be told what to say or think. Defend your constitutionally protected rights - no one else will do it for you. Thank you."
One thing I really liked about their show, even when I disagreed with their conclusions, they explained how they came to them rather than call people stupid for not believing as they did.
I mean they definitely called a bunch of college students stupid in the environmentalism episode for falling for the old dihydrogen monoxide bit and then used that to imply that environmentalism was stupid.
Its a valid criticism though... many many people say things like 'believe science' while themselves having a very thin grasp on fundamental scientific principles and knowledge. Not that DiHydrogen Monoxide is critical knowledge, but just that scientific literacy is shockingly lower than scientific evangelism
That's something they've acknowledged too, and had planned on a "Bullshit of Bullshit" finale:
"We promised to do a Penn & Teller: Bullshit of Bullshit! show as our last show in the series, but we walked away for a better deal and didn’t know when we did our last show that it was our last show. We still have hopes of going back and fixing some stuff about climate change, weight loss, secondhand smoke, and other things..."
A website owner's right to choose what to publish is a more important application of the first amendment than anyone else's right to force you to publish their speech.
If you disagree, I command you to post this post on your twitter. If you don't, you're censoring me.
This argument has been made back and forth many many times. Private property rights vs. privatization of public spaces. Quantity becoming quality. Etc.
Surfice to say that when a corporation controls more "territory" than most state governments, when a very small number of corporations control the vast, vast majority of communication channels, the rules must change to maintain the access of the people to the new public square.
The difficulty is that communication networks form natural monopolies due to Metcalfe's law, unless we legislate APIs for open connection and federation. Which is probably above regulators' capabilities, and definitely above our political capabilities.
The most straightforward way would be to mandate that web services had to allow API access for everything the web interface does, so users could use client software to aggregate multiple services. But this would undermine websites ability to make money off adspam, which while great, means it's politically a non-starter.
IMO, the problem is that some fields are natural monopolies. This has long been known to include things like electric utilities, water, etc. I don't think anybody but the most crazy extreme libertarians objects to these types of companies being heavily regulated by the Government. The question is, should this apply to internet companies, and how?
It is a bit tricky. I think there is a solid case that, once social networking companies get to a certain size, there is a dominating network effect that makes them sort of like natural monopolies. Thus I think there should be some kind of regulation of their behavior. Maybe not as strict as other types of natural monopolies, but I think they have too much power to be allowed to just do whatever their owners feel like.
One way to solve this would be to regulate only the largest platforms. So maybe this different kind of net neutrality only applies to Twitter/Facebook/YouTube, ___domain registrars, ISPs, large cloud providers and other significant privately-owned infrastructure, but not to every random bit player with no real market share.
Otherwise, what happens if the ISPs decide that, say, Net Neutrality cuts into their profit margins, so they're just not going to route traffic for the sites that are politically antagonistic to them right before the election?
Sure would be a shame if something happened to that site of yours, huh?
You're misunderstanding the causality. These are private spaces. Just because lots of people show up doesn't make it public. Yankee Stadium isn't a public utility.
You're asking to make these private spaces public. That's something you have to change in the existing laws. The first amendment has nothing to do with that.
I would also argue that the government creating its own public space would be the best because then there wouldn't be this perverse idea that anything anyone creates can be taken from them by the government whenever it becomes convenient.
I've been arguing since the 90's that governments around the world failed us terribly by not creating public spaces. I imagined all kinds of terrible implications, some came true others I couldn't have imagined.
The simplest example is that we have businesses seeking consumers and people seeking products. You could boost the economy enormously by forcing both though a government funnel. (with reasonable exception)
Well over 95% of all web traffic consumes either Google Search, Google Chrome, Google Ads or uses an Android. You almost cannot avoid Google and still use the internet.
Similarly, Facebook controls over 80% of Social Media traffic and you will find it difficult to meaningfully use your identity online to communicate.
The FAANGs aren't the destination, they're the roadways to get to virtually all online content. They literally are the utility.
Your argument is more like if Yankee Stadium got to choose who was allowed to get off the 6 train at their stop, and I think everyone would agree that would be bonkers.
Publishers are responsible for the content they publish. Twitter (and other social networks) is not held responsible. These networks like to claim that they are "dumb pipes" when it suits them and they like to choose who is allowed to see which content when it suits them. In particular, if Twitter is allowed to currate content that whips up frenzied (often violent) mobs, they ought to be held responsible in proportion to their role.
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
> (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
> (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1]
That a law is passed is not evidence that the law is constitutional or just. Sometimes large industries will even successfully lobby for laws that promote their own interests at the expense of the interests of the entire nation.
Hypothetically, let's suppose that the entire Internet was controlled by one private company. (This is very plausible - I see no reason why couldn't have developed this way if history had gone slightly differently; in fact I think it's a miracle that it didn't.) Would you be okay with that private company unilaterally deciding which political opinions were worthy of publishing, even if it was their full legal right to do so?
I'm not a free speech absolutist and I fully agree that not everything that people publish on (say) Twitter should be allowed to stay on Twitter. The problem is the growing centralisation of power and the lack of democratic oversight. One day everyone who currently works at Twitter will be dead, but Twitter may still exist, staffed by a completely different bunch of people. Can you be so sure that the reins will always remain in hands you approve of?
I don't know what the solution is to the problem of centralised private power to control the internet, but it baffles me that anyone could deny that it is a problem.
The problem you proposed strikes me as primarily being that one company controls the Internet. That's the problem that needs to be addressed. It might have implications for the speech issue you're suggesting, but I can safely punt on that. Break up the single monopoly in order to reduce the degree to which any one private actor acts as a pseudo-state.
A counter-example for you is the following: suppose that a million companies control the internet, and all of them independently decide they don't want to publish white supremacist content. Then the problem is clearly not concentration or monopoly or collusion, but rather companies (via the people who make publishing decisions for the companies) exercising their own free speech. I think the challenge is that in this counter-example, the free speech absolutist -- not saying you are one -- needs to admit that they want to restrain one sort of speech (not wanting to publish white supremacist content) to enable another sort of speech (people publishing white supremacist content). It's an essential tension. Someone has to lose in that exchange. We need only clarify who.
It may be the case that the internet is far closer to your example than mine, though I doubt it. Even if market share of social media suggests concentration, it seems to me easier than ever to publish your content. I published my first website in 1995 and surely I have an easier time doing it today than then. Now, I might not have an easier time getting an audience, but I am also not entitled to an audience. If people don't look for me or tune me out, that's not a violation of my rights. That the public has chosen to waste less time seeking out dissenting views is maybe something we should be worried about, but probably not something we solve by legislatively privileging access of dissenting views, no matter how nuts, to platforms.
I just wanted to add one final thing. Matthew Lyon was a congressman. When John Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, Lyon attempted to publish a piece calling Adams a dictator and a tyrant for doing so. The local newspaper, the Rutland Herald, would not publish it. So Lyon started his own newspaper. Lyon was subsequently convicted and jailed. In this example, we see three things: (1) the government jailing Lyon is a restraint on free speech and unconstitutional. (2) The Herald not publishing his letter is not a restraint on free speech. (3) Lyon did what we would expect people to do: work to amplify their own voice when others will not.
Today it is easier than ever to "start your own newspaper". You might find that no one reads it -- but you are not entitled to their readership, just as Lyon was not.
> The problem you proposed strikes me as primarily being that one company controls the Internet. That's the problem that needs to be addressed.
You don't forego treating someone's symptoms just because you don't yet know how to cure the disease. You need to manage a patient's symptoms and keep them alive.
Figuring out how to unravel or limit these huge monopolies is something that will take government years to figure out, if ever, much like finding a cure for a disease. As much as we need to solve that problem, we can't just throw up our hands in the meantime and say "I guess there's nothing we can do."
> Can you be so sure that the reins will always remain in hands you approve of?
Actually, when one deliberately obtains the power to design the audience those who helped to establish this are by definition not the design you are looking for. At first the useful idiots must be portrayed as model citizens and as majority opinion (by silencing everyone else) then they too need to be silenced to preserve that illusion. You don't want subjects who have reason to praise you, you want ones who praise you because they are your subjects.
Well said. People seem to forget that freedom of speech includes freedom from speech. The instances where the constitution allows the government to compel speech are generally pretty limited. There was a major Supreme Court case in the 90s when the City of Boston tried to force the group behind South Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade to allow Gay & Lesbian groups to participate. SCOTUS ruled that the requirement infringed on the group’s right to disseminate it’s own message.
A discriminatory and distasteful message to be sure but such is the tradeoff of a robust first amendment - even stupid statements are protected.
It was only in the last few years that the parade organization relented and allowed LGBTQ+ participants. Largely because public opinion (and corporate partners/advertisers) forced them to. The parade organization’s message of discrimination and exclusion was eventually drowned out with messages of pride and LGBTQ+ support. So the system may not have worked as quickly as most of us would have liked but it did indeed work.
And on the flip side, I’m grateful that I don’t have to see hate groups marching at Pride. If the City of Boston had won their case 25 years ago that’s exactly what would have happened.
I'm guessing most of the folks you are taking about weren't even alive when civil rights legislation was first passed. And I object to the idea that only progressives can support civil rights.
Thought experiment: if a single corporation owned a website within which 100% of public speech was conducted, would you still be so eager to defend their "right" to control the thoughts and words of the entire world?
The article is about freedom of speech, not the First Amendment, and I would like to remind self-centred navel-gazing parochial Americans that they're not the same thing.
