No, The Arguments Against Florida's & Texas' Content Moderation Bills Would Not Block All Internet Regulations
from the let's-not-be-silly dept
Let me be clear upfront: I'm a huge fan and supporter of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. After all, just last week, that organization stepped up to defend my rights after Representative Thomas Massie decided to trample on them. The Knight Institute was also the publisher for my Protocols, Not Platforms paper, and their guidance and editorial support with that paper were tremendously helpful. I've been involved in a few other projects with them as well, and have found every one of them worthwhile.
But, I have to admit that I'm perplexed by an argument the Institute has been putting forth, including in an amicus brief regarding Florida's unconstitutional social media law, and more recently in the pages of the NY Times, arguing that while the laws in both Florida and Texas are clearly unconstitutional, that the 1st Amendment arguments by the internet company trade groups go too far, and would create wider problems for the internet.
I think the argument is incorrect -- and it seems somewhat odd for a "First Amendment Institute" to be arguing that the 1st Amendment does not, in fact, protect editorial discretion. There is, of course, some more nuance to the argument, but the NY Times piece summarizes the argument here:
The companies are correct that the two laws discriminate against certain platforms based on their perceived political views — and two federal district courts have enjoined the laws pending appeal. What’s concerning is that the companies have made arguments that go much further.
For instance, they contend that the courts should extend to social media platforms exactly the same very broad First Amendment protections that have been afforded in the past to newspapers. They also argue that any law that burdens their exercise of “editorial judgment,” however minimally, should be deemed unconstitutional. These arguments are deeply misconceived and would, if the courts agree with them, pre-empt even laws that do not share the Florida and Texas laws’ fundamental defects.
The truth is that social media platforms are like newspapers in some ways but not others. Like other media organizations, social media companies sometimes make decisions about which content to publish, and they sometimes add their own voices to public discourse — as they do when they attach labels to users’ posts. When the companies engage in these activities, they are exercising the kind of editorial discretion that the Supreme Court has protected against government interference again and again.
But social media platforms are different from newspapers in important ways. They are primarily vehicles for others’ speech, rather than their own. They do not exercise close curatorial control over the content they publish. They do not take responsibility for the content they publish in the same way that newspapers do — and the law does not require them to. There is also an incredible disparity in scale between (many) social media platforms and newspapers. Over the course of a day, the newspaper you are reading publishes a couple of hundred articles, but the big platforms publish hundreds of millions of posts.
Everything stated here is clearly true, but it's a garden path kind of argument. It points out an undisputable true point, followed by an undisputable true point, followed by an undisputable true point... and then makes a huge logical leap, but hopes you miss it because you're nodding along with all of the logical points before that.
Whether or not social media platforms are "different" than newspapers in some ways and the "same" as newspapers in some ways is not the issue, and it's weird for the Knight Institute to key in on that. What matters is whether or not the activity itself is protected by the 1st Amendment -- and any sort of moderation of hosted content on a platform (even at scale) is clearly about expressive choices, and thus protected by the 1st Amendment.
It's really the next paragraph that has me the most perplexed:
Florida and Texas contend that these kinds of differences mean that social media companies are outside the protection of the First Amendment. That is clearly wrong. But the First Amendment should apply differently to social media companies than it does to newspapers, because social media companies and newspapers exercise editorial judgment in different ways.
Yes, social media companies and newspapers exercise editorial judgment in different ways. And that's what's so important about the 1st Amendment protections afforded to both. It's because of the 1st Amendment, preventing government from getting involved in such editorial choices that allows things as diverse as newspapers in one area and social media websites in another area to exist. They are exercising their editorial judgment in different ways because the 1st Amendment allows them too -- and suggesting that social media shouldn't qualify for the same level of protection seems totally antithetical to the entire point of the 1st Amendment itself.
And then the argument from Knight takes a big logical leap that I think is just wrong. It argues that the internet companies' argument would prevent all types of other regulations, including privacy regulations:
But the companies’ arguments would make it almost impossible for legislatures to enact carefully drawn laws that protect the integrity of the digital public sphere. They would make it difficult for legislatures to impose even modest transparency requirements on the companies, to require the companies to share data with academic researchers or to require them to provide explanations to users whose posts are removed or whose accounts are suspended. They would also make it difficult for legislatures to pass straightforward privacy laws limiting the information companies can collect and how they can use it.
Of course, whether any particular legislative proposal is constitutional will turn on its specifics. If the courts accept the companies’ arguments, however, many legislative proposals worth considering will be dead on arrival.
But that's almost certainly incorrect. It would only be true if those regulations did, in fact, interfere with the editorial decision making process. And we already have some privacy laws in place that don't seem to do that. The transparency argument also strikes me as a strange one for Knight to be making. While I support Knight's efforts to defend against Facebook's ridiculous threats to academic researchers, mandating transparency does, in fact, raise very real 1st Amendment issues.
We've discussed this before, in noting that transparency is super important, but mandating transparency is dangerous. Just to put this in context, if the government sought to pass a law that "mandated" transparency for newsrooms regarding their editorial choices, people (including the Knight Institute, I imagine) would be up in arms over a clear intrusion on 1st Amendment rights. Part of the 1st Amendment's protections means that those making the editorial decisions shouldn't have to disclose their reasons for every possible decision -- as that can only serve as a method of intimidating such newsrooms.
Having spent a lot of time with people who work in trust and safety and content moderation, such mandated transparency would be incredibly detrimental to the jobs they do as well. I'm all for figuring out more ways to encourage companies to be transparent about certain aspects of their decision making, but when the government is demanding it, it can and will be abused. It will be used to pressure companies according to the whims of whoever is in power. And if it's not carefully calibrated, such transparency will be abused. I've noted before that the only times anyone has demanded "transparency" about our own moderation here at Techdirt are trolls who are mad and who want to game the system -- and want better insight into how to troll better. Now imagine how that works when the "trolls" are running the government. It wasn't that long ago that we had exactly that.
This is why the 1st Amendment must protect against such laws -- not because "social media is different," but because this is how the 1st Amendment works.
The argument about privacy laws seems confusing as well. Obviously, there could be some privacy laws that have a serious impact on the 1st Amendment. In the EU, obviously, we've seen the rollout of the GDPR with its "right to be forgotten," which would never pass 1st Amendment scrutiny in the US. But, not every privacy law would include such restrictions on speech, and none of this means that it would be effectively impossible to pass privacy laws in the US. It would only do so if those privacy laws clearly intruded on 1st Amendment protected editorial discretion and rights.
In other words, nothing in the arguments for the social media companies against the Florida and Texas laws is expanding 1st Amendment doctrine, as the team at Knight implies, but rather just asking that the 1st Amendment continue to be applied in the same way it always has been -- protecting editorial discretion.
Now, it is true that some companies have tried to abuse the 1st Amendment to protect against certain legislation. Famously, Verizon has argued that net neutrality violated its 1st Amendment rights. But that claim was rejected, showing that the courts have little problem distinguishing actual 1st Amendment issues with ones that may be cooked up to protect business models.
The Knight Institute does amazing work most of the time, but I think it's gone somewhat off the reservation here, and in doing so is making an argument that would actively weaken, not strengthen the 1st Amendment and our free speech rights.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: 1st amendment, content moderation, privacy, regulation, social media, transparency
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Kind Of A Big Difference
It sounds like even the Knight Institute is starting to become concerned about the difference between platforms and publishers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Kind Of A Big Difference
Remember that freedom of speech and freedom of the press only mean that the government will not stop you publishing your own words. If that means you have to pay for your own printing press, or web site to do so, you freedom of speech has not been infringed. Also if you cannot attract your own audience, your freedom of speech has not been infringed.
However, as soon as you say that somebody must carry your speech, your are infringing their rights of free speech and association. Hint, not everybody wants to associate with, or listen to the KKK.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Kind Of A Big Difference
And what is that difference w.r.t. §230 and the 1st amendment?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Kind Of A Big Difference
Oh I thought there someone took a giant shit here but it was just Koby.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Kind Of A Big Difference
Oh I thought there someone took a giant shit here but it was just Koby.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Kind Of A Big Difference
[Hallucinates difference not in law]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If that is so, then it must be because Techdirt is not big enough for it's moderation to be of interest to people. Or perhaps you believe that the act of asking about it makes those people trolls?
Either way, I assure you there are a lot of non-troll people who are very interested in the moderation of the giant platforms that for better or worse control the speech of the whole world.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Ah, and which "giant platform that controls the speech of the whole world" allowed you to post this?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
No, we commenters can (generally) assure you, they are trolls in many other ways.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Ah, the idiots and the grandstanding politicians then...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Now, now, let's not call Evelyn Douek and Casey Newton idiots...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
"Or perhaps you believe that the act of asking about it makes those people trolls?"
The term "trolls" in this case refers to a small group of people who seem to revel in either making false claims about the way community flagging works or have no idea how automated spam filters work (usually resulting in hilarious conversations with themselves when the spam they posted gets displayed). It's not often that an honest opposing opinion gets posted, but I don't think I've ever seen one of those get treated as something else.
"the moderation of the giant platforms that for better or worse control the speech of the whole world"
I can understand someone whose posts have resulted in them being banned from mainstream sites being angry, but this really isn't true. There's plenty of room for discussion on many topics that happen even on the major sites, and there's a huge number of other venues to speak if whatever handful of sites you choose to focus on don't accept you.
Usually, if you're claiming that you were banned from a site for "unacceptable" speech, the first question is what that speech was. Quite often, at least in my experience, it turns out that it's "most of humanity" rejecting that speech rather than the platforms, but I'll admit I haven't encountered a person complaining about that yet whose speech wasn't racist, homophobic, or otherwise abhorrent. If you or anyone else can give me an example of someone banned in such a way whose speech wasn't fundamentally rooted in hatred, I might be willing to discuss the other issues you have.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Moderation at scale is impossible. Heard that somewhere, repeatedly, and lots of discussions on it, but i am not sure where... Maybe i'll figure it out and get back on that.
What the majority of these posts and discussions didn't include were a bunch of claims and conspiracy theories without anything to back them up. Those were from the loud and repetitive troll minority.
There are also people who seem to have varying concerns without any clear thinking or facts, and really bad ideas on what they think should be done about their proposed problem. Although i am pretty sure that a large portion of this contingent are basically being trolls as well.
So, huh, weird that so many people who do have complaints about moderation are not labeled as trolls, but only some are. It's almost like "asking about" moderation isn't the determining criterion.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Such as, for example:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Aye, that's it in the broad strokes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
... and there is an incredible disparity in scale between newspapers and the street-corner preacher. Should the preacher's first amendment rights w.r.t. editing and curation be treated differently because of scale?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
It's more like Kolby and friends want the preacher to be able to insist that the newspapers catty his sermons, (well so long as they agree with his words).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I doubt the preacher would be editing anyone's speech but his own.
But yes, scale matters. Because as this site keeps reminding us, it's impossible to do content moderation well at scale.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
And a newspaper has what, maybe a dozen reporters, and takes letters from maybe 100 people a day, while social media has millions of users producing many posts a day. The preacher and newspapers are very similar, one person can keep up with their output, and have plenty of time for other things, while with social an individual see a grain of sand from a very large pile of sand.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Its in the NYT's, give it 3 days for the correction where they publish the actual editorial that isn't insane and offbase.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So, Knight Non-Sequitur Institute what? This is seriously disappointing. There is litereally zero reasoning and/or evidence for their claim here. Literally nothing between observation/assumption A, and conclusion B.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"They do not exercise close curatorial control over the content they publish."
Isn't this the same paper where no one approved an editorial that ran that was completely insane?
"They do not take responsibility for the content they publish in the same way that newspapers do — and the law does not require them to."
Umm because they aren't newspapers, they aren't soliciting articles for publication, the just provide a forum.
You know... like those silly forums newspapers once had but then removed because engaging with the public was the wrong image & some people said mean things.
"almost impossible for legislatures to enact carefully drawn laws that protect the integrity of the digital public sphere."
[Citation Needed] Having read many proposed laws that were "carefully drawn up" I have yet to see one that doesn't screw up the digital public sphere to appease some small faction and given their track record of the crap they pass & the untold harms they were warned would happen and then DID happen... the word carefully isn't in the lexicon.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
They are common carrier news publishers. How hard is this to understand?
/s just in case.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I think what the article is hinting at is that the 1st Amendment would look a lot different if it had been drafted with social media in mind.
But this does limit the policy options available, such as the "right to be forgotten" that you just mentioned. I'm sure this is not your intention, but once again it makes the 1st Amendment sound like a burden, as if it is a constitutional obligation rather than a good thing in itself.
Ultimately, from a user perspective, I think it comes down to who you trust more to represent your interests. Yes, the laws are unconstitutional, but in their arguments, both the states of Florida and Texas and the internet company trade groups that oppose them portray themselves as standing up for regular social media users. As most people here would argue (and which I completely agree), the governments of Florida and Texas certainly aren't standing up for users. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the platforms are.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Ultimately, from a user perspective, I think it comes down to who you trust more to represent your interests.
Social media are businesses, they're not there to represent your interests they are there to represent their own. If you walked into a Walmart thinking that their priority is you first and then the store you'd only be fooling yourself, and it's the same thing with online platforms.
But this doesn't necessarily mean that the platforms are.
As I noted just above social media are businesses, and as such their first concern is going to be 'will X be good for us?' This has the side effect that generally speaking their primary goal is going to be to make and keep their platform 'user friendly' for the majority of users so in a way their self-interest is what ensures that they will stand up for their users, because if they don't then they're likely to start losing them.
This isn't to say that they won't screw up at times, whether false positives or making changes that end up being something that makes things worse for users but for the most part they're going to try to keep the majority of users happy or at least content with what's on offer.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
"As most people here would argue (and which I completely agree), the governments of Florida and Texas certainly aren't standing up for users. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the platforms are."
I'd be very concerned about the future of a company which didn't first and foremost represent itself.
But as That One Guy had it, the interests of a social media platform do align with keeping that platform user-friendly to as many possible customers as possible. And having to meet the lowest common denominator of the crowd does mean to have to cater to the general interests of said crowd.
The same can not be said about lawmakers who ultimately represent the interests of their base. Which in the case of the GOP consists of a minority so repugnant in policy the only reason they retain power is by extensive gerrymandering and disenfranchisement.
In this specific example it's pretty clear that the major social media at least represent the interests of everyone. The lawmakers in Texas and Florida, otoh, represent the minority which wants to feel free to shit on the floor in other people's houses.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Newspapers
I don't remember where the word "newspapers" appears in the first amendment, did I miss it?
You may want to reconsider that idiom.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/06/29/326690947/should-saying-someone-is-off-the -reservation-be-off-limits
[ link to this | view in chronology ]