Arkansas Politician Introduces Bill To Make It Illegal For Social Media Companies To Block Content He Likes
from the bonus-round-of-bad-ideas-immediately-follows dept
Arkansas state rep Johnny Rye is in galaxy mind mode. He’s introduced a bill that aims to stop “censorship” by social media platforms by allowing the government to compel speech. I’m sure the irony is lost on Rye. But it’s probably not the only thing sailing over Rep. Rye’s head. (h/t Sarah McLaughlin)
What Rye is trying to stop is social media companies moderating their own platforms. He appears to feel conservatives are being “censored” by Facebook, Twitter, etc. and thinks rolling over the First Amendment and Section 230 immunity is going to cure this perceived ill.
Holy hell, the bill [PDF] is a mess. I’m going to have to quote from it at length because it’s the only way any discussion of it can achieve semi-coherence. Here’s the gist of it, from David Ramsey of the Arkansas Times:
The bill would allow plaintiffs to seek damages of a minimum of $75,000 “per purposeful deletion or censoring of the social media website user’s speech” plus actual damages and punitive damages if aggravating factors are present. Only social media companies with at least 75 million subscribers would be subject to Rye’s bill.
Slightly more specifically, the “Stop Social Media Censorship Act” says this:
The owner or operator of a social media website who resides in this state is subject to a private right of action by a social media website user if the social media website purposely:
(i) Deletes or censors a social media website user’s religious or political speech; or
(ii) Uses an algorithm to suppress religious or political speech.
How does Rep. Rye get around the fact that private companies can moderate content on their platforms however they’d like without it being “censorship?” Easy. He just unilaterally declares Facebook, et al to be “public utilities.” Problem solved.
A social media website is considered a public utility under this section.
Pretty cool. I didn’t know writing worked that way. Let me see if I’ve got the hang of this…
Rep. Rye is considered a nuisance and threat to public safety under this section.
Now I just need to send the cops around to restore public safety by taking Rep. Rye out of the rotation.
The good news is social media companies can limit the monetary damages by restoring/uncensoring posts a user complains about. (Presumably using an in-court complaint form, rather than the site’s online forms.) There’s your compelled speech, which is just another misshapen cherry on the top of shit sundae.
Here’s Rye’s tiny concession to the First Amendment, which isn’t really a concession, nor even compliant with the First Amendment. This must be Rye’s idea of “narrow crafting.”
A social media website is immune from liability under this section if it deletes or censors a social media website user’s speech or uses an algorithm to disfavor or censure speech that calls for immediate acts of violence, is obscene, or pornographic in nature.
Rye is generously allowing platforms to engage in the sort of moderation they already engage in. They’re free to moderate certain kinds of speech, just not the kind of speech Rye likes. And if users aren’t willing to sue over “censorship” themselves, the state is empowered to draw inferences on their behalf.
The Attorney General may bring a civil cause of action under this section on behalf of social media website users who reside in this state whose religious speech or political speech has been censored by a social media website.
If you’re wondering why Rep. Rye has crafted this monument to his own stupidity, David Ramsey has your answer:
Rye’s bill comes in the same week that Sen. Jason Rapert vociferously complained about being temporarily barred from sending tweets by Twitter. A tweet that Rapert sent out regarding Muslims was found by the company to violate its “hateful conduct policy.” The company imposed a timeout that lasted at least 12 hours, according to a printout of Twitter’s communication that Rapert held up to the camera in a Facebook Live post. The offending tweet has apparently been removed.
Here are a couple other things Rye is pitching this legislative session:
Make it a felony to relocate, alter, remove, rename, rededicate or otherwise disturb historical monuments on public property without the permission of the Arkansas History Commission.
Create a special license plate for members of the Arkansas Masonic Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons.
So, a “no tearing down Confederate war hero statues” bill, and a special license plate for himself. From Rye’s bio:
He is active in the Lions Club and Masonic Lodge.
This wave of proposed legislation follows last year’s failed attempt to repeal the state’s recognition of same-sex marriages.
And he’s looking for even more internet regulation, this time under the guise of fighting sex trafficking. This bill [PDF] would ban anyone from selling any devices that access the internet without pre-installed “blocking software.” This is at least as batshit as his social media censorship proposal.
A distributor shall not in this state manufacture, sell, offer for sale, lease, or distribute a product that makes content accessible on the internet unless the product:
(A) Contains active and properly operating blocking software that renders obscene material inaccessible;
(B) Prohibits access to content that is prohibited under this chapter;
(C) Prohibits access to revenge pornography;
(D) Prohibits access to a website that facilitates prostitution; and
(E) Prohibits access to a website that facilitates human trafficking.
The list of “prohibited content” includes revenge porn, “specified anatomical areas,” and obscene material. The reseller or manufacturer violating this law is subject to a $500 fine… wait for it:
…for each prohibited image, video or audio depiction, or website found to be accessible at the time of the offense.
On top of adding new software to their devices, resellers and manufacturers will also foot the bill for a 24/7 complaint hotline to report overblocking/underblocking.
The good news (I guess) is that Arkansans still have the option to see turgid penises and whatnot. All they have to do is pay $20 and state, in writing, that they’re above the age of 18 and definitely want to see as many “specified anatomical areas” as possible. Proof of age must also be submitted. The bill does not specify whether this will restore access to revenge porn or trafficked humans, but one would assume it’s an all-inclusive fee.
Sex trafficking will somehow be prevented by the state AG dumping collected fines into a strongbox marked “for the children,” because nothing’s too on the nose for Johnny Rye:
Fines levied by a court under subdivision (a)(2)(A) of this section shall be deposited into the Safe Harbor Fund for Sexually Exploited Children.
Whew. What a time to be alive. And in Arkansas. And knowing you still have two more years before you can unceremoniously return Johnny Rye to the private sector he so very badly wants to harm.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, arkansas, censorship, free speech, johnny rye, section 230
Comments on “Arkansas Politician Introduces Bill To Make It Illegal For Social Media Companies To Block Content He Likes”
r way it fails
I wonder how many social media companies with at least 75 million subscribers reside in the state of Arkansas?
Re: r way it fails
That should be ‘Another way it fails’.
Re: r way it fails
Thank you Arkansas. This is literally the test case for having national net neutrality laws.
Re: Re: r way it fails
Well, provided they aren’t written by people like this guy.
Re: r way it fails
Your giving this lawmaker too much credit. The text implies that the “owner or operator” would have to reside in AR, not necessarily the company. My guess with respect to how many “owners or operators” of social media companies that have 75M+ “subscribers”, and that also happen to live w/in the borders of AR, would be a big fat 0.
Re: Re: r way it fails
#DoingSomething
Re: Re: r way it fails
On the off chance that there number is higher than zero and this trainwreck gets passed and successfully defended in court(possible, but unlikely I’d say), I imagine it certainly wouldn’t stay above zero for very long.
Re: r way it fails
The only thing sites, any sites, should be able legally allowed to remove is content that is either spam or actual illegal content such as child porn, warez (don’t agree with the illegality of the second one, but as it stands now warez are unfortunately illegal) and so on. The rest should be free for all, let marketplace of ideas solve it (to people unfamiliar with the term, it means that bad ideas are eventually removed from human consciousness just like bad products flop on real marketplace).
It would do a lot of good – Trump wouldn’t be a president if large companies wouldn’t fuel persecution complex of the far-right by removing their insane tirades. People would just laugh it off and move on, like it was up until, say 2006.
But when you remove their insanity-filled posts you make people think: Maybe that idiot (replace “idiot” by Alex Jones or David Icke, depending on the side of the pond you live on) was right, what they want to hide by removing his tirades? Even if it’s just pure insanity that people would laugh off otherwise.
They’re turning far-rights bumbbells into living martyrs and now they reap what they sow with Trump being elected and having high chance of re-election unless democrats get their shit together and put Bernie as their candidate.
Re: Re: Blues balls
Donny’s still not gonna touch it.
Re: Re: thought u left
Bro your bullshit makes David Ickes look plausible. So cry all you want, no ones going to be forced to host your brain drool.
Soooo
What happens when the blocking runs afoul of FOSTA and DCMA?
also, how are they defining social media websites? And will subscribers count bots and at what time frame?
It is becoming increasingly apparent just how out of touch Silicon Valley is with the rest of the world.
Actions from the likes of Google, Face Book, and others is beginning to raise the dander of people to such a degree that it is not be surprising that the Europeans and others have had enough and decided to start regulating the internet.
Today I attempted to search for transmitter frequency data on European radio stations. Finally I obtained such only after tricking the search engines into believing that I am in Europe.
In short auto complete, auto search, intelligent search et are being used by the search engines and browsers as a intended or unintended method of limiting search only as to what some computer program decides you can see which always decides that anything to the right of Trotsky is not allowed including Stalin.
That is another one can can be added to the tons of issues with Silicon Valley’s dominance of computers.
Re: Re:
Nice victim blaming non sequitur you have there, you backward, moronic result of generations of inbreeding and bestiality. Google and Facebook are not the ones putting up the material this congressional bozo dislikes. At worst they’re cutting off access to people the rest of the world dislikes.
Now fuck off back to whatever rock you crawled out from beneath.
Re: Re:
Or, it is becoming increasingly apparent just how out of touch politicians are with how technology works.
Re: Re:
“What the governments of the world did the internet was perfectly reasonable because JUST LOOK AT HOW PROVACTIVELY DRESSED IT IS!”
Re: Re: Re:
The Internet asked for it, I read it on the Internet.
Re: Re:
It is becoming increasingly apparent just how out of touch Conservatives are with the rest of the world.
Actions like Arkansas state rep Johnny Rye demanding a law to force publication of his point of view is just one of many instances where tin pot dictator wannabes whine and moan about how they are being discriminated against. This has been and continues to “raise the dander” of most everyone to a degree that they seem very pissed off about it.
Today I attempted a search and did not get the info I wanted so I went to a different search engine.
In short,I do not use auto complete, auto search, intelligent search – although I do occasionally find them to be humorous.
Silicon Valley dominance of computers – LOL, really?
Re: Re: Re:
Indeed… I’ve been to the Valley a grand total of once, and yet have been involved with the Internet and related technology for roughly 30 years.
What I’ve been seeing is conservative populations in the US (and elsewhere) becoming increasingly insular and lacking in basic education and critical thinking skills.
Oh, and this would also be the appropriate place to note that the Masons are, from a logical standpoint, incompatible with conservative Evangelical Christianity. This guy’s a Mason. If you support him and are a conservative Evangelical, you’re supporting a heretic.
That last bit was for those who lack critical thinking skills but still depend on tribalism when making their decisions.
Re: Re: Re:
There may be a good reason for that: Conservative media is structured so differently from (ostensibly) liberal media that it seems to lack a corrective mechanism for debunking mistruths and lies.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
almost 🙂
Conservative minds . . . seem to lack a corrective mechanism for debunking mistruths and lies.
!/s
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Uh, guys? I see this in partisans of every stripe, so don’t get too smug about being in the “right” one.
Basically, being too zealous in toeing the party line can dull your ability to think clearly or critically. People who think for themselves aren’t beholden to a particular group and aren’t obliged to believe everything they’re told by the people the choose to associate with.
Re: Re: Re:
Conservative here.
You’ve misspelled “authoritarians.” Why? Too many syllables? I’m sick and tired of being lumped in with right wing political hacks.
While I’ve got issues with using the internet to abuse, censorship, and similar I’m not of the opinion that blocking All The Things is the answer.
Platforms can moderate at will as far as I’m concerned and if you find your speech isn’t welcome on one, go find another. Eventually you will either find a home with a platform where speech the other platforms find contentious is welcome. However, be careful of the company you keep. Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas, and all that. Speech should be free but it should not be without consequence, that’s not the way the real world works.
When platforms moderate speech it’s a market thing, i.e. the market has demanded it. So, then, insisting that a private enterprise’s service is a public utility… really? How socialist!
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You’re in the UK if I remember right? Your definition of conservative is probably to the left of the more liberal political party in the US.
Re: Re:
“I don’t know how to use web search terms effectively, it must be a conspiracy!”
Re: Re:
Today I did a search for poetry and wondered why 1560s poetry wasn’t automatically first on the list.
I had to trick the search engine into thinking that I was using it in the year 1560.
OR
I could have just used better search terms and search operators to properly specify what I wanted to look for and excluded things not relevant to my search. Instead of blaming the tool for trying to show me things based on the popularity of my searched item in relation to my geolocation, prior searches, and web surfing habits.
Re: Re: Re:
That said, a lot of information I could easily find in the 1990s and 2000s on search engines no longer shows up in the first few pages of search results unless my geolocation and search preferences are configured correctly.
But this isn’t the search engine attempting to hide stuff from me: it’s a symptom of much more data being available and the engines attempting to narrow the search domain to things I may actually be interested in.
I don’t really want to go back to the days of Hotbot and AltaVista.
Re: Re:
Was it the style of your day to wear an onion on your belt?
I don’t disagree with Techdirt editor often, but this time I do.
I’m sick to rage of political deplatforming, and I absolutely zero charity to extend to anyone who supports it.
I want this to pass. With teeth.
Re: Re:
Sweet, then sites like Breitbart will be paying a lot of fines for all the voices of reason silenced on their platform.
Re: Re: Re:
Yes.
I’m against censorship, full stop.
I’m against censorship of the right by the left (and I believe it happens).
I’m against censorship of the left by the right (and I believe it happens).
If you want to be a content creator, go for it. Create what you will, with no constraints from me.
If you want to be a platform, where others
If you want to be a censor, **** you (Irony noted).
Censoring has never changed anyone’s mind; if someone says something offensive to you, don’t censor them, don’t ignore them. Engage with them. Communicate with them. Argue and disagree with them. It’s the only way to fix the problem.
For Mr Cushing:
Its ironic: Unless I am much mistaken() you and I agree that European government decision to censor the internet (via Article 13) is; An American government decides to block people from censoring the internet…that’s also bad?
Also: I don’t think the bill is a mess, at least not stylistically which is what I took the statement to mean. Have you read a better formatted bill? Note that it’s not active independently, but modifying an existing law (hence why it is all underlined, see the note at the top, which is standard, at least in bills that I have seen).
For example: “A social media website is considered a public utility under this section.” That’s the style in which laws are written. It is commonly referred to legalize. What does it mean? The section which this bill amends has legal effects on things it classifies as “public utilities”. The bill, among other things, would add a social media website to that category. That’s why it uses the term “considered”. It would be considered a “public utility”, and thus be subject to the rules and restrictions set out within the law it is added to that apply to public utilities.
Re: Re: Re:
For what reason should Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Breitbart, or even goddamned Stormfront be forced to host speech which their respective administrators do not want to host?
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
I think when you start Centering, it seems to be OK to ignore what is being said on the left that is so far worse and breaking the so-called rules, that you have become a publisher and so the current laws already come into effect.
You’re no longer free to just center. First amendment now comes into effect.
Re: Re: Re:3 Too obtuse?
Will squaring the circle still be allowed? Or is Pythagoras too left-wing for your taste?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
So you are okay with someone standing on your front porch screaming obscenities at people passing by?
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Not the person you’ve asked, but yes, I would be. And he should be also be okay with me (and people passing by) screaming obscenities back at him.
If you behave like an asshole, be prepared to be treated like one.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
That’s funny coming from the thinnest skinned asshole in the planet.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Except that the a-hole is on your porch shouting at people. Those people will think you agree with him because you are leaving him on your property causing a problem.
Or consider this example. That person on your porch starts to expose themselves to the world while on your property. According to you that is fine as long as you and others can expose yourself to them. Also by letting the person stay on the property you are signalling that you condone the practice and are now complicit in the crime.
Thats why arbitrarily making web site public utilities and forcing them to host speech is problematic.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Percy On A Porch would not last very long in most neighborhoods.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Its ironic: Unless I am much mistaken() you and I agree that European government decision to censor the internet (via Article 13) is; An American government decides to block people from censoring the internet…that’s also bad?
You obviously don’t know the definition of irony. These stances are not at odds with each other. Both efforts will harm the internet and its users by mandating how platforms perform content moderation. Both efforts will result in less speech, not more, because platforms will no longer find it tenable (especially the smaller ones) to comply with these regulations.
The bill is a mess content-wise. The thought process guiding it is a wreck. But you know that. Did you really think I was criticizing the formatting? I don’t mind having a discussion with people who disagree with me, but you’re not going to get much from anyone if you start with blatantly disingenuous contentions.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“A social media website is considered a public utility under this section.”
A utility may provide a website, but a website is not a utility.
An ISP is a utility regardless of whether they like it or not.
Re: Re:
You believe the government should be allowed to compel private companies to host political speech?
Re: Re: "Thad" the Grease Monkey private censor:
You believe corporations should be allowed to arbitrarily prohibit political speech that YOU don’t approve of. — Note this is NOT a question, as your commenting history makes clear that you approve of selective censorship.
You, "Thad", on your laughable little web-site offer a Grease Monkey script to keep you from viewing little bits of text that you can’t handle. So it’s clear that you want to remove the speech that this would protect.
Re: Re: Re: You’re still a stupid motherfucker
Or you who’s still butthurt to the point of incandescent rage about an offhand comment he made at your expense years ago?
Re: Re: Re:
So long as those corporations pull that prohibition on their services only? Yes, absolutely, Twitter admins should have every right to kick White supremacists, Nazis, and Bill Maher off its platform for their politics alone. We can argue about whether hosting providers have a more stringent responsibility in that regard (e.g., Stormfront and Gab being knocked offline), but when it comes to platforms like Stormfront and Gab, they deserve the right to decide what is and is not “acceptable” speech.
Or it is, you know, a way for him to curate his own private Internet experience without preventing you from speaking your mind. You have the right to free expression, not to a captive audience for that expression.
Re: Re: Re: "Thad" the Grease Monkey private censor:
You believe corporations should be allowed to arbitrarily prohibit political speech that YOU don’t approve of.
Take the same path that a gay couple needing a wedding cake is supposed to take when their lifestyle hurts the baker’s feelz and they can’t get what they want – fuck off and go somewhere else.
It’s so simple for them – why isn’t it that simple for you?
Re: Re: Re:
They also need to public hate speech under their logic. Which essentially means platforms can’t do anything about users who decide to harass other people with their platform with hate speech against the ‘right’ groups who a bunch of other people hate.
Re: Re:
A private business has every right to proclaim:
.. No Shirt, No Shoes – No Service.
Why should they not be allowed this? Because you have a chip on your shoulder?
Re: Re: Re:
Cake, gay couple.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I believe private business should be able to deny service to anyone the law allows. If the law has deemed homosexuals a protected class then it would seem private business can’t refuse them.
If I was gay and getting married I would much rather the cake shop refused service to me than made a cake with hate. Who knows what was added to it? Even if nothing was added it likely won’t be a quality cake if the baker disliked the person it was baked for, for whatever reason.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Because it’s a public facing business they have to comply with public accomodation laws which in the state of Colorado includes sexual orientation.
Re: Re: Re: Herring, red
Because a a physical business demonstrating their bigotry by refusing to sell to a member of the public for no other reason than of what someone was(not what they choose to be), is absolutely comparable to a freely available platform deciding that someone posting what they find objectionable isn’t welcome.
Get back to me when facebook shifts to charging people for accounts and posting such that they are more like your ‘traditional’ brick and mortar store and the comparison between the two might be more apt.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“Cake, gay couple.”
Lame, very much
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
A private business has every right to say “No shirt, no shoes, no service.”
Does anyone disagree with this?
A private business does not have the right to say, “No Negroes or Irish welcome.”
Does anyone disagree with this?
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Perhaps William does – just a guess.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
The supreme court ruled in their favor.
Re: Re:
Their platform, their rules. If they don’t want someone on their platform for whatever reason it’s their choice to refuse to provide use of it.
You could I suppose argue that businesses can’t just give the boot to anyone they feel like, which would be both right and wrong, in that they can refuse service to anyone they feel like(hell, they quite often make it explicitly clear) other than narrow protected classes like race/gender, of which neither ‘political party’ nor ‘bigot’ is included.
Re: Re: Re:
Soon as you start censoring people, you’ve become a publisher and so the rules no longer apply. Now you have to follow the laws of being a publisher.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
… what.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Bro no matter how many times you post. You’re still an ignorant ass. Just stop while you’re behind.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“Soon as you start censoring people, you’ve become a publisher”
Please explain how this works.
If I duct tape someone’s mouth shut all of a sudden I get a printing press? … Awesome man!
Re: Re:
But are you sick to rage of gay couples being denied a wedding cake because they are gay?
Re: "Mark Atwood"! 6 comments in 4 years!
I’ll say ya don’t!
First: the only editor here is Masnick and the re-writers are seen as separate, so that’s unusual phrasing…
Anyhoo. After two comments two days apart just over four years ago, you skipped 2015 and 2016 entirely! ODD.
So even though you appear to disagree with Techdirt, your sparse history of short bland comments makes you appear one of the many Zombies. Your unusual vehemence actually supports that, to deflect suspicion and try to prove dissent is okay here. — IF your comment is NOT "hidden" by the now rabid fanboys, that’ll make it near certain. — Indeed, it’s triggered them to a burst of comments where was none before. SO I conclude that this is astro-turfing.
User name "fallenpegasus" doesn’t match the plain screen name, either.
Re: Re: Re:
@Mark Atwood – I would like to apologize for our resident village idiot who thinks that if you don’t comment on a regular basis you’re astroturfing. I also believe he thinks the dust bunnies under his couch are a Google plot to take over his thoughts.
Dissenting views are always welcome here as long as they are respectful. Most here believe in countering speech they disagree with their own speech, but have little tolerance for ranting fools who keep repeating the same stupid stuff over and over no matter how many times they are rebutted.
Re: Re: Re: Logic fail, "Gwiz"! IF "Mark Atwood" were a frequent reader,
you wouldn’t have to inform!
You clowns out-number only on THIS ONE TINY LITTLE SITE, yet believe that you speak for all of society.
You kids (with sneaky Administrator control) have to HIDE all dissent, too weak to bear a little text even when supposedly a “free speech forum”! And you think that shows your strength!
That my opinions are more common than yours is easily supported by reading the much larger site The Register (for tech), the again larger What Really Happened, and the yet larger site you think rightly banned but still appears often on Drudge Report: Infowars.
By the real numbers, YOU are seen as an idiot, thief, and kookily supporting a woozy globalist / corporatism that’ll one day turn “useless eaters” like you into Soylent Green.
You are a couple dozen muckworms in this tiny little cesspit that shrinks by the day, has to astro-turf to appear still active.
Masnick’s every notion has been roundly defeated. This TINY web-site doesn’t even pay for itself! (His ideas, that is, except the corporatism that he tries to hide! Because if stated his views on that and globalism openly, even you would shun him.)
YOU can’t even afford entertainment, but have to steal! You’re here because a pirate.
You rarely even comment over last year except to ad hom me. And yet think you have substance. State your own on topic views (not quote from some law source so you look learned, but your own views), kid, and readers will see what a kook you really are.
They can take this link where you make up “natural” law to suit your pirating:
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130116/09224321702/just-as-many-musicians-say-file-sharing-helps-them-as-those-who-say-it-hurts.shtml#c2063
But enjoy your “winning” here! Copyright holders and Populism are doing fine. The recent riots in France show that most people have had enough of YOUR notions, not mine.
Re: Re: Re:2
You seem upset. Maybe look into buying and smoking some pot so you can calm down for a few hours.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
I guess I must have struck pretty close to the mark in order to receive a response that’s all full of insults and close to defamatory (or in your own words: NOT "within common law").
I will address a couple of items from your word salad up there:
I did not make up anything concerning copying in the thread you referenced. Copying IS a natural right which has existed from the beginning of man. For example, Joe Caveman traded a fur for a newfangled spearhead made from flint and had every right to copy the design and make his own. That is how early man advanced. The restrictions on copying and building on the works of others is a relatively new concept in the history of mankind.
Yes, I have not commented a lot this year because I have a life, but your special kind of stupid tends to annoy me greatly.
As a response to some of your other silliness, I will say that I am not the one who claims conspiracies where there are none. I am not the one who thinks their intelligence is so advanced that rebuttals to their arguments are dismissed out of hand. And lastly, I am not the one who thinks they are changing the world by engaging in some weird, off-the-wall PSYOP campaign against a website they detest, when the reality is that the only opinions you have actually changed are those concerning your sanity.
Re: Re: Re:2 Logic fail, "Gwiz"why are you still on this puny site?
Me thinks thou doth protest too much good sir.
Re: Re:
Please express the contents of the deleted tweet and than please defend the tweet as valid politically-based speech, then show how it was the political nature of the speech, and not the racial content of the speech that was at issue.
I recognize that Twitter fails hard like most social media at moderation. Your commentary states that the moderation is based on general political view points, and not specific instances of speech.
Of course stating that Muslim Americans are a ‘them’, and that the ethno-religious voting block can’t be allowed to ‘rule’ this country in response to the idea that there was high turnout for legal voters in this block is a hateful position. If he said it about Blacks or Jews or women or Mormons it would be understood as such. He talks about Muslims behind 9/11, but ignores that most other mass casualty events in the US have been committed by Christians. I don’t blame Christians in general for the actions of a clear minority.
Re: Re:
The nature of your statement makes a whole lot of assumptions. The first of which is that whatever you’re talking about was taken down for political, rather than other, reasons. Secondly, that whomever took down whatever, had some political agenda, which could go either way, right? And third, that whomever did the taking down has a political agenda contrary to whatever was taken down, which might not actually be the case as there could be other reasons for the take down.
Got any citations with some verifiable fact based backup that the take downs you refer to are in fact political in nature, and not something else?
From the bill:
and
So this guy is apparently looking to make it so that religious and/or political hate speech can’t be taken down by the site admins. I wonder how many pro-ISIS posts it would take (it’s religious speech!) to get him to change his mind…
Re: Re:
What if my personal moral code finds everything offensive?
Re: Re:
Classy(and massively hypocritical).
Define hate speech, and then make it a rule that sites are not allowed to remove hate speech or those that post it, as if they do they are not allowed to use ‘it/they violated our rules on hate speech’ as a defense in trial nor justification for removal.
Might as well rename this ‘The Reprehensible Person Protection Bill’.
Re: Re:
Speech supporting ISIS is legal if it doesn’t amount to death threats or incitng imminent violence. Not sure how much speech IDIS has left after that.
This is not confusing at all except to people looking to censor speech they don’t like by creating a category of speech they call hate speech.
Re: Re: Re:
I’m not confused, just pointing out that I don’t think Rep. Rye really thought about the implications of the bill. If the conclusion of the article is correct that the bill is in response to another Ark. politician being Twitter-blocked, then it would seem that Rye defined hate speech and then disallowed it in order to ensure his particular brand of hate couldn’t be removed without consequence. In doing so, however, I don’t think he realizes that the same law that protects the hate he approves of would also protect the hate that he doesn’t.
That bill has a major deficiency. It doesn’t consider that there are many other types of providers other than social media sites that have been cracking down on politically-incorrect speech. Sure, anyone who gets kicked out for WrongThink can start their own site, but there’s that troubling fact that so many different internet entities, by their lone decision, can essentially cast a veto over it.
Banking has has had to operate under a regime of anti-discrimination laws, rules, and regulations for over half a century. Yet online “banking” is dominated by two companies, Paypal and Stripe, that act as 3rd party processors to a wide variety of sites, including crowd-funding. Paypal and Stripe openly discriminate and apply their own moral litmus tests to customers, including for things customers do in their private lives that have nothing to do with the service, and have pulled the plug and killed off numerous crowd funding sites that don’t believe in censorship. SubscribeStar.com will be next to die from such strangulation (as did Makersupport, Hatreon, and others before) as the crowdfunding site just received an exodus of people protesting Patreon’s latest round of Wrongthink bans, and the ideologues who control Silicon Valley are not going to just sit back and allow a free-speech competitor like SubscribeStar to prosper.
At least Facebook and Twitter, for the most part, only ban people for what they say and do on Facebook and Twitter. That may not last, as it seems to be the growing trend of Tech companies to sit in judgement on everything a person does and has ever done, anywhere, online and offline.
Re: Re:
Private entities such as Twitter have every right to enforce their own rules as to what is “acceptable” on their platforms. To say otherwise is to undo a large chunk of First Amendment precedent. It would be no better than arguing that Twitter must display all speech, even speech with which its owners/operators do not want associated with the platform, against the will of said owners/operators.
How would you feel if you started a social interaction network akin to Twitter and were told you could not, under penalty of law, remove anything that is considered “legally protected speech”? What would you do if you were told that you could not moderate your service to remove, say, White supremacist propaganda even if you really, really wanted to do so?
Re: Re: Re:
The problem is, they seem to only enforce their rules to those on the right, while the left that is actually breaking rules far worse and left alone because these leftest companies agree with them.
Once you start censoring like that, you’ve in effect have become a publisher. You now have to follow the federal laws in this country. 1st amendment, Free Speech comes into play. When you talk about being an open platform and the town square and then you ban someone for whatever leftest reason, no way to respond back, or defend yourself, that’s just B.S.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You were wrong the first time. Repeating yourself doesn’t change the fact that you are completely wrong. Please take a civics class so that when you argue on the internet pleope at least will have to respond to the merits of your arguement, rather than like me, making fun of your gross ignorance of basic middle school level facts about the laws you live under.
Re: Re: Re:
Funny thing: You did not answer my questions. But I can overlook that because I know you were never going to answer them directly/honestly.
Hi, ostensible leftist here! I have been dinged by Twitter for posting “fuck” in tweets aimed at verified profiles of right-wing/conservative/Republican users before. I also know of people who were dinged by Twitter for similar speech, as well as posting “trebuchet TERFS” and other such exaggerated nonsense. And there exist plenty of Twitter users, current and former, who will tell you about how they reported harassment and threats and such but were themselves dinged by Twitter for having the audacity to fight back with a little cussing. Your bias towards right-wing/conservative/Republican personalities blinds you to the truth, and you would do well to examine your bias. What makes you so willing to believe Twitter does not enforce its rules against leftist/progressive/Democrat users—is it your own narrow experience, your continual listening to a conservative media echo chamber that does not know how to correct for mistruths, or some other reason that only you know of?
I enjoy dismantling shit like this. It almost feels like a sport—only, you know, where one side is a “team” on par with the Sixty-Whiners from Mutant League Football.
Even if your assertion is true—i.e., even if politics-based moderation of a social interaction network turns that service into a “publisher”—you fail to understand a key point: Publishers are not legally bound to print anyone’s speech. The New York Times has no legal obligation to print every letter to the editor, every opinion column pitched its way, every news story that crosses over the wire. If a SIN’s moderation decisions count as editorial control and makes that SIN a publisher, we can flip that around to interpret editorial control as a publisher “moderating” what appears on the material it publishes. The First Amendment and its long-standing protections for publishers would still apply to that SIN.
That logic also outlines the key difference between a publisher and a SIN: A publisher picks and chooses what it will print before it goes out to the world, whereas a SIN generally does not. Millions of millions of posts go through Twitter every day; the only way to properly exert editorial control over all of those posts is to assign an individual editor to every individual Twitter account, create an absolutely objective set of “publishing standards” for the platform, and hold back every post until it can be “cleared for publication”. Not only is such a proposition absurd on its face for the fact that hiring millions of people to become “editors” could not ever happen, it presumes that holding back millions of posts every day until they can be “cleared” would not somehow destroy the usability of the service.
And as for the “open platform”/“town square” stuff: Look, I understand that being booted off Twitter for ostensibly political reasons can feel like a bullshit situation. But until Twitter is a legitimate “public square” that is owned and operated by the public/the government, it remains a privately-owned platform (wherein the owners are the overlords behind the Twitter corporation) that said owners can choose to moderate any way they so wish (within the boundaries of the law). Hell, Twitter’s owners could shut the service down right this moment if they wanted to do so—no prior warning, no chance to back up accounts—and the government could not legally prevent it from happening.
Your propositions assume that a SIN must provide both a platform and an audience to anyone who wants one. In your zeal to turn Twitter into a space “free of censorship”, however, you forget two simple facts:
No moderation decision by Twitter, no matter how politically biased it may seem to you, changes those two facts. If you know of any laws, statutes, or court rulings that do, now would be the time to break out those citations.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“The problem is, they seem to only enforce their rules to those on the right, while the left that is actually breaking rules far worse and left alone because these leftest companies agree with them.”
Operative word here is “seem”.
It “seems” this way to you, however have you explored the reasoning of others in an attempt to further understand that which you want to change?
In addition, have you explored why you want to see this changed and would that change actually make the situation worse?
Major business in cahoots with the general public in an attempt to take over the media world – this sounds like the next Austin Powers movie – shagadelic man! Oh Behave!
Re: Re: Re: Re:
The problem is, they seem to only enforce their rules to those on the right, while the left that is actually breaking rules far worse and left alone because these leftest companies agree with them.
Yeah! Fuck those leftist companies!
You guys should quit whining like the little bitches that you are and just go make your own shit. Just take a big dose of Alex Jones’ super-duper conservative taint spray, put pen-to-paper and design a new site – owned by righties and for righties! You’d not only be owners, but clients as well! (Just like the Hair-Club-for-Men guy! Don’t tell me he’s some leftist pond-scum…only real right-wingers go bald. Hair is for hippies!)
I mean, if it’s good enough for a gay couple wanting a cake, it should be good enough for you. Amirite?
Re: Re: Re:
Then Twitter is a publisher who controls their content and is responsible for it. Slander and defamation rules apply. Fine by me.
What isn’t then fine is the safe harbor exemption from liabilty they also want to claim even as they exert editorial control.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You might want to talk to your Congress critter about that. Though seeing as that law is 20 years old and is designed to explicitly allow what you don’t like about it, I’m guessing they won’t give half a piss stained penny for your opinion on the matter.
Re:
Yes how dare privately owned internet sites decide who their customers are based on those customers own actions!
White Supremacy website advocating [politician name here]: “We’ve been blocked by Facebook!”
Sen Rye: Complain, and your stuff will be restored or hell hath a fury of $75k per instance!
WS website: “Awesome!”
Politicians hell bent on removing hate speech from the internet: “What the ever loving hell, Rye? Now ISIS is going to…”
ISIS: “Put our shit back up.”
Rye: “Tell Facebook to do it.”
America: “WHAT THE EVER LOVING HELL, RYE?!”
Trump: “Nothing wrong with Rye’s proposal. Allows websites and news adoring me back at top of searches.
Admiration of me will knock those other nasty pages down in search so no one sees. Win-win.”
Me: *turns off the computer*
always wondered..
HOW in hell can a person be a politician, if they cant look and see the other side. Understand the opinions of others..
How can they be a politician in this country and not KNOW the persons that elected him..
I would love to check this persons wallet, as I think I will find a certain Card in there..
Oh!…he has only been in office since 2016…
https://www.conservapedia.com/Johnny_Rye
Interesting…he is one of those people that Just POPS up with very little history.. Working for the State since 1991.. not much before that..
Re: always wondered..
Re: Re: always wondered..
then let them start their OWN religion…and sit in a small building Waiting for followers..
Re: Re: always wondered..
Political parties are sort of like religion in that they both exhibit the traits of of a cult.
I guess that’s one way to plug the government budget. For all of the planet’s governments. For the next thousand years. Per reseller/manufacturer.
I don’t think this dude’s ever actually opened a browser.
Re: Re:
So his proposal is to ‘tax’ the porn sites then?
How are snowflakes made?
By telling a right-winger to pound sand.
“Safe Harbor Fund for Sexually Exploited Children”
Call me a pessimist but am I the only one that thinks this is his defense fund for when he gets caught exploiting children?
If the platform is not in the US, then Arkansas law does not apply to them, as long as none of their servers are in the United States.
Re: Re:
Arkansas law does not apply if none of their servers are in Arkansas. Even then, there is a national constitution to deal with.
FTFY
I didn’t think the world contained this much stupid.
Re: Re:
Oh man, where have you been? The world is primarily composed of stupid and always has been. The human gene pool leans heavily in favor of stupid. The only reason it’s so much more obvious now is that we’re not just exposed to the stupid around us but to that of the whole world all at once via the internet.
The best part is that the stupid believe they are part of the non-stupid group (note I didn’t say “smart”). The closer a stupid person is to the “not stupid” line the further over that line that person believes they are. The marginally stupid believe they are geniuses; This is the most dangerous group because they’re the ones who get elected to office and they’re still stupid.
Re: Re: Re:
Most who claim to be experts are not.
Only if you have more than 75 million subscribers.
So that lets Yahoo/AOL/Oath or whatever they’re called this week off the hook by around 74 million.
Well it is nice that he is getting all of this attention from people who are willing to not believe what they can see for themselves.
If you are against these bills, you support child trafficking!
If you are against these bills, you hate freedom!
If you are against these bills, you are UnAmerican!
Dimwit wastes time & resources on getting great sound bites for his reelection campaign, proposing laws that have no hope of withstanding the lightest judicial review because the founding principles of the country forbid this kind of jackassery.
Ooooh we got censored for expressing conservative thoughts!!!
So the 15th time you suggested that all blacks are violent criminals & that all immigrants are baby murdering psychos you got a time out & its totes an attack on your ‘rights’.
Yet when you are offended by one of those libtards you scream about how they should be silenced.
Dear Google, FB, Twitter… all ya all are fucking morons but use this to your advantage. Arkansas wants to make you a public utility… please send them your bandwidth and data center bills for reimbursement. They can start with garnishing this asshats salary, perhaps it will encourage him to stop wasting public resources on personal crusades.
phone companies vs social media
Should phone companies be allowed to censor conversations?
You’re either a publisher or a carrier. Publishers ate liable for content they publish. Carriers are exempt.
Which one is social media?
They want to be exempt,yet exert censorship over legal speech they donlt like.
Fuck that shit.
Re: phone companies vs social media
If you drive on a public road you follow the rules of the road, but because you have to do so does not make the government responsible for your bad driving.
Re: phone companies vs social media
You are making my head hurt.
Let me put this in different terms.
No one but the Government is forbidden from stopping you speaking.
A local mall (for you millennials imagine Amazon was a bunch of different stores you had to walk through and pay at each one) is completely within their rights to tell anyone who enters the property and starts exercising their “legal speech” to GTFO and can’t be sued. (Well you can sue over anything, but your case will be tossed.)
While you have a right to say what you like, they have a right to deny you use of their property.
CDA 230 protects the platform from being sued for stupid shit other people post. As we’ve seen over and over, peopel love to sue when bad things happen… but they prefer to sue those with the deepest pockets. (See also: Texting Teen kills someone with her car, victims relatives sue… Apple. Apple hold a patent on some mythical system that disables texting while the phone is in a car moving. They never released it, never promised it, but this allegedly made them responsible for the crash…)
There is nothing in the law that says any platform has to allow everyone to use it. It’s their property and they set the rules. (And I agree the current vague rules are stupid but their platform, their rules.)
I don’t have a right to force NRA-TV to allow me on camera to say whatever I want & broadcast it to their members… but demanding that all platforms be subject to laws so they can’t ban people opens a door I don’t think you would enjoy when it started working against you.
The social media platforms can set whatever stupid policy they want, and everyone screaming my 1st Amendment Rights really needs to take a class on civics.
I think Alex Jones and his followers are idiots, but I didn’t applaud when the platforms cut him off. I’m a grownup and if I dislike them that much, I can mute/block them easily. I don’t want to encourage platforms to try and cover everything in nerf to protect peoples feels because the subset with power changes and eventually they will end up trying to get me booted off. (I also hate the idea that the platforms allowed Jones to declare himself a martyr for the ’cause’ of being able to spew lies & bs while cashing in on gullible followers.)
Content moderation like this, at this scale, is impossible.
This is why they created, mute, block, etc… but the idiotic zero sum thinking made people not just be happy to not have to see it themselves but they have a right to decide no one should see these people. While the ‘libtards’ seem to be winning this, there is history between both sides calling on their tribe to mass report people to silence them, then they discovered they could get people banned this way and tit for tat made it suck. Now add in the people who have no understanding of civics screaming about their rights and this issue has a life of its own with everyone screaming they are being oppressed, their rights are trampled, and they should have a right to be on the platform, say whatever they want, and get rid of those people they disagree with.
Y’all suck.
This issue is flawed & is being used to rile the tribes up for war. If we were smart the tribes would rise up together & stop allowing these leaders to get away with this bullshit & focus on real problems.
But then I talk to righties and lefties on the regular. We have a simple understanding that sometimes our views on a topic are so different we won’t make any progress so we stop talking about it. None of this keep screaming till they believe exactly what you believe, because that wastes so much time and energy winning a ‘war’ that accomplishes nothing.
Missing from his bio is the sentence: “At age seven, after reading the tale of Aladdin, Johnny Rye deciced to become a politician, so that all his wishes would be granted.”
What's good for the goose...
I assume this law will also apply to super-conservative sites that delete any comments from liberals? Will the state of Arkansas fine Brietbart if I post a comment saying how great Hillary Clinton is, and then the admins delete it? Isn’t that what the law says?
Consider This
“Rep. Rye is considered a nuisance and threat to public safety under this section.”
Let’s just consider him an “unlawful enemy combatant” and loose the drones.