Conservative judges trampling the constitution because Trump was banned from Twitter

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Patricio Da Silva, Sep 24, 2022.

  1. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    For years, conservatives were very big on protecting First Amendment rights of 'editorial discretion' of large corporations, that is, until Twitter banned Trump.

    Judges Are Playing ‘Calvinball’ With the Constitution Because They’re Mad Trump Was Banned From Twitter
    Conservative Fifth Circuit jurists took a sledgehammer to the First Amendment—using incoherent logic, incorrect law-reading, and fake history.
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge...ause-theyre-mad-trump-was-banned-from-twitter

    A panel of judges in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that “editorial discretion” is no longer a protected right under the First Amendment—because the judges are upset that Donald Trump was removed from Twitter.

    [...]

    SO, SO VERY WRONG

    An astoundingly incomplete list of problems with the majority opinion include: it’s wrong about how the First Amendment works and the extent of what it protects; it gets so twisted up in its own made-up logic that it pretends the First Amendment limits private actors, rather than governments; it is so confused by how Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act actually works that the judge rewrites the law to say something it does not; bizarrely, it pretends that a law the court itself misrepresents (Section 230) is somehow relevant to the interpretation of the Constitution (which is not how anything works); it adds an element to the law it is analyzing that literally does not exist; it wholly ignores vital Supreme Court precedents; it pretends the plaintiffs waived a key argument they explicitly did not; it invents elements of common carrier law that do not exist; and it ignores the dormant commerce clause of the Constitution, which limits states’ ability to regulate interstate commerce.

    And that’s not even getting into the procedural problems of the case, such as the way it completely misunderstands how content moderation works (for example, the judge repeatedly insists that concerns about Nazis and terrorists on social media are entirely “hypothetical” and mocks the plaintiffs for their “obsession” with them). And then there are the many historical inaccuracies littered throughout the opinion.

    The ruling reads like an uninformed social media thread that actual lawyers would mock.


     
  2. Steady Pie

    Steady Pie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    They should be able to have whatever and whoever they want on their servers. Conservatives should fight back with alternate platforms and doing the hard work of forming communities of like minded individuals.

    Since payment processors will probably ban them and seize their funds we should go in hard on cryptocurrencies.

    The Daily Wire is an example of how to do this the right way. No bitching about others, start your own. Don't like woke media? Start your own studio. Start your own book club. Start your own razor company.

    The Free State Project is also a good example. Many like minded individuals move to an area and do the hard work rather than bitching and moaning.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2022
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  3. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Were these ‘Federalist Society’ backed Judges?
     
  4. Rampart

    Rampart Banned

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    if they have been appointed by republicans since reagan they are federalist society. by calling them "conservative judges" the article is saying exactly that.
     
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  5. ShadowX

    ShadowX Well-Known Member

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    But why do that when we can just put activist judges on the bench like the left has done for decades?
     
  6. ShadowX

    ShadowX Well-Known Member

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    By the way this article is ridiculous on its face and doesn’t even address the issue. The issue is not does a company have first amendment rights, the issue is does a company that enjoys protections for being a neutral party then be allowed to restrict speech they disagree with while receiving those protections for being a neutral party.

    The answer is clearly and unequivocally no. You cannot receive protections for being a neutral party that ONLY provides a platform for others to discuss and then use that power to be politically biased and shut down the political oppositions viewpoint.

    The court ruled correctly and it will be affirmed.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2022
  7. Steady Pie

    Steady Pie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Because two wrongs don't make a right.
     
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  8. ShadowX

    ShadowX Well-Known Member

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    No. But it damn sure makes it even.

    We have been doing the “right” thing for years. Trying to appoint judges who by and large are originalists who believe we shouldn’t legislate from the bench and the constitution should be interpreted as it was written. All while the left has taken every opportunity to place political activists on every level of the court including an affirmative action hire black woman on the Supreme Court who is SUCH a political activist she wouldn’t define what a woman is.

    No sir. It’s time to fight fire with fire.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2022
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  9. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The Fifth Circuit’s Social Media Decision: A Dangerous Example of First Amendment Absolutism

    On Sept. 16, the Fifth Circuit issued its opinion in NetChoice v. Paxton, upholding the controversial Texas law that limits the ability of large social media platforms to moderate content and also imposes disclosure and appeal requirements on them. The Fifth Circuit had previously stayed a district court injunction against the law, but the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to vacate the stay. The opinion opens up a stark circuit split with the Eleventh Circuit, which had ruled that a Florida law that also imposed content moderation restrictions on platforms violated the First Amendment. Unless the platforms get another stay pending rehearing en banc by the Fifth Circuit or review by the Supreme Court, the Texas law will go into effect, with potentially massive consequences for how the major social media companies moderate their platforms.

    The initial reaction to the decision among policy experts and legal scholars has been, to put it mildly, harsh. It’s been called “legally bonkers,” a “troll to get SCOTUS to grant cert,” an “angrily incoherent First Amendment decision,” and “the single dumbest court ruling I’ve seen in a long, long time.” As someone who has argued for the constitutionality (and indeed desirability) of some government regulation of platform content moderation, I was hoping that the first judicial decision upholding such regulation would be a thoughtful and measured approach to what is indisputably a hard, even wicked, problem.

    https://www.lawfareblog.com/fifth-c...-dangerous-example-first-amendment-absolutism

    Patricio,

    You may find this interesting.
     
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  10. Melb_muser

    Melb_muser Well-Known Member Donor

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    Conservatives increasingly advocating gov control. Fascinating :)
     
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  11. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    I support a platform right to ban a user if their speech violates terms of service, and that should not have anything to do with subject matter, but things like, courteousness, no violent speech, hate speech, that sort of thing.

    But, who is denying speech based on 'disagreement?' I don't know of that going on.
     
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  12. Zorro

    Zorro Well-Known Member

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    Fake News.

    Look for this decision to cement Judge Oldham as President DeSantis’ First Supreme Court Nominee.

    'Judge Oldham's (and Justice Thomas') common carrier argument may turn out to be the most powerful argument in the case when it reaches the Court.'

    'The Left worries that the platforms will be less able to stifle views it finds undesirable. (Commenters on the Left have yet to square this view to their hostility to corporate First Amendment rights in Citizens United.)'

    'Judge Oldham's opinion stands on firm ground. The First Amendment protects only expressive acts—a point made clear in the two Supreme Court cases: Miami Herald v. Tornillo and Hurley v. Irish American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston.

    'In Miami Herald, the Supreme Court held that when newspaper editors decide to include a particular op-ed in their pages, they convey the editors' message that the article is insightful or otherwise valuable. Similarly, the St. Patrick Day's Parade organizers in Hurley, expressed a message, attributable to them, of general support for each group it approved to march, communicating with the various groups a discrete set of ideas and positions.'

    'In contrast, most platform acts of content moderation are not expressive under the Supreme Court tests. Most obviously, they are not expressive because most are never communicated and therefore cannot convey a message. For instance, shadow banning, by which a platform renders a user's posts invisible to all but that user, cannot convey a message because no one knows, except the platform, that it is happening.'

    'Indeed, all other types of invisible content prioritizations lack the required expressiveness because users don't know when content is promoted or hidden. Instead, invisible prioritization only communicates by reference to other speech—and as the Court recognized in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, protected speech must convey a message itself, without extraneous explanation. Finally, content moderation as a whole cannot convey a message because the platforms keep their decisions private, and users lack access to representative samplings of edited material to infer any message.'

    'Just as the First Amendment does not protect lunch counters in their "expressive" refusals to serve individuals belonging to a particular race or religious groups, so the First Amendment does not protect the platforms in their discriminatory refusal to serve the public even if the platforms consider their refusals expressive. Indeed, state and local civil rights laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of political belief or affiliation—and have survived for decades without successful First Amendment challenge. H.B. 20 stands firmly on the rationale that undergirds all of our civil rights law.'

    THEY CANNOT HAVE THEIR FREE LUNCH AND EAT IT TOO

    Future Justice Oldham Continues: 'just as telephone companies do not express their customers' conversations which they transmit, a social media platform's transmission of a message does not express its own editorial decisions or speech. The platforms themselves maintain this position vociferously. In countless section 230 cases, the social media firms argue that they should have no liability for their users' speech because it is speech, as section 230 states, of "another." Now, the platforms claim users' speech as their own for First Amendment purposes. But, they cannot have their section 230 free lunch—and eat it too.'

    The PROGRESSIVE PURITANS argue 'that the First Amendment gives private businesses and entities control over opinions expressed within their premises. But, precedent rejects that view. Cable systems must carry local broadcast stations; telephone companies must carry messages expressing all viewpoints; and, airlines must carry passengers regardless of their views of the 2020 election. Similarly, courts, like the Supreme Court in Pruneyard, have long upheld state laws that require shopping centers to allow political expression, prohibit neighborhood associations from banning political lawn signs, and limit employer's ability to control their employees' political speech and expression on the job. This precedent upholds H.B.20.'
     
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2022
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  13. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  14. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    "Fake news" = thought-terminating cliché. TTCs are used by demagogues to curtail critical thinking in subjects, and to kill conversation.

    thoughtterminatingcliche.jpg

    No judge worth his or her salt, when ruling, uses loaded terms such as 'leftists' or 'progressive puritans' or tosses off rant styled statements littered with vague weasel words.

    Moreover, you offered no source citations for what you are pushing off as actual quotes.

    However, your primary failure is to rebut the premise yourself. Quotations are supplements to arguments, they are never supposed to be used as doing the work of debating for you. However, if you have offered a counter argument, you've done a horrible job of separating your words from quotes, and it's too chaotic to review as it's not clear which is yours or someone else's, words.

    Given that you have offered no counter argument, Or your comment is too chaotic to review, your comment is dismissed. To make it more readable, separate the quotes all in one section or dominant sections, and either use the quote tags or italicize them (That's what I do, anyway) and then I will give it a better look. Thank you
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022
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  15. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I agree this was wrong and sets a very bad precedent.

    Perhaps instead, when a company like Twitter deletes a post or account, there should be an obvious notice that a post was removed or an account was deleted.
    The most insidious form of censorship is censorship that people do not even know is going on. I think it could even be said that a company like Twitter is creating a dishonest public perception by making people think what they are seeing is comments from other random people that are not censored due to the opinion they contain.

    That being said, it seems these days that the majority of the Left only holds to a principle (like free speech, for example) when it benefits them, in particular situations at a particular time. (You can look for example at many proposals for "Net Neutrality" concepts that the Left would have passed if they could)
    It does seem to me to be a little hypocritical holding the other side to account when such a large swath of your side does not hold itself to those same standards.
    This doesn't excuse it in any way, but I think it is only fair to point that out.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022
  16. Lee Atwater

    Lee Atwater Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Principles like free speech do not apply to privately held social media platforms.

    Many people are complaining about being kicked off social media platforms, either because of particular posts or because of a series of posts. And the question arises, do you have a right not to be kicked off Facebook, Twitter, etc.? My name is Nadine Strossen. I am a professor of law at New York Law School, and for many years, I was the head of the American Civil Liberties Union.

    So the answer to the question, "Do you have a right not to be kicked off a social media platform?" is no! You have no such right. Many people are shocked to learn that the First Amendment free speech guarantee, along with all constitutional rights, only protects us against the government. So, if the government interferes with your freedom of speech, you can bring a First Amendment lawsuit to challenge that. And that's true whether we're talking about a federal government official or a state or local government official. But guess what? Facebook, Twitter, the other social media platforms are not the government. They are private sector entities, and therefore, they have no First Amendment obligation to protect your freedom of speech. To the contrary, they have their own First Amendment rights—their media right. So, just as the New York Times or CNN or any other traditional media platform has no obligation to host your particular message, the same is true for social media.

    https://www.talksonlaw.com/briefs/d...-media-platforms-to-grant-access-to-all-users

    So when folks like Trump tell lies or incite violence platfrom owners are well withing their rights to flag posts, delete them, or ban the poster. Unless of course the SC decides to redefine free speech and turn social media platforms in to the kind of shyte show that allowed Russian bots to spread disinformation in 2016.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022
  17. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Libertarians would agree with you.

    But why should conservative Libertarians go out of their way to fight for rights for a group of people whom they know do even really support those rights, and would get rid of some of those rights if it were left up to them?

    Like I was saying before, there may be some sort of way to allow private platforms to delete comments but still let viewers have an awareness of the extent to which comments are being deleted. To avoid giving the false impression that they host all comments regardless of political opinion.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022
  18. Pro_Line_FL

    Pro_Line_FL Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Wouldn't that knock RW social media out of business?

    Of course they can moderate their own platform any way they want. The Constitution restricts the GOVERNMENT, not private entities.

    RW authoritarianism is taking us to a dark path.

    Yep. Now the government can force these companies to let trolls and propagandists to use their resources to push their nonsense.

    Private property rights is the foundation of capitalism, but this ruling throws it in the trash-can.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022
  19. ShadowX

    ShadowX Well-Known Member

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    What are the requirements for businesses receiving those protections which they must adhere to in order to maintain said protection?
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022
  20. Pro_Line_FL

    Pro_Line_FL Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A requirement for Constitutional rights? I guess you'll have to share those requirements. Why are you asking me?
     
  21. ShadowX

    ShadowX Well-Known Member

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    Receiving protections under section 230 is not a constitutional right. They can control every single word that comes out of their platform. They certainly have that right. But when they do, they cease to be an open forum and engage in publishing and editing which disqualifies them as an open forum which is a requirement for section 230

    “The Internet and other interactive computer servicesoffer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.”

    When they becomes publishers and editors of information they become a publisher and should be treated with the same liabilities as any other news org while losing protections under 230

    230 protects them from being liable for what people say on their forum. However if they’re editing posts for issues other than criminal activity or such then they are publishing their thoughts and editing others. That makes them a publisher and there are absolutely no grounds whatsoever to justify why they should remain protected from liability of peoples statements when they’re editing those statements themselves for “truth”.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022
  22. Pro_Line_FL

    Pro_Line_FL Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Nonsense. Your mindset of having government controlled social media belongs in North Korea or Cuba.

    Social media does not publish content, they allow users to post on their platform, but YOU want the government involved in how they run their platforms.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022
  23. ShadowX

    ShadowX Well-Known Member

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    No they can run their platform however they wish. They simply cannot receive protections under 230 for doing so
     
  24. Pro_Line_FL

    Pro_Line_FL Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yea they can and do.

    "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider"
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022
  25. ShadowX

    ShadowX Well-Known Member

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    Lol that’s correct but an interactive computer service doesn’t edit posts for “truth”, publishers do.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2022

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