Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Consti
My apologies for mixing you up with the original AC, but you missed the first comment in this thread, which is actually amazing, since it’s the title of the thread. Here:
UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Constitutional rights
Yes, I did rephrase “utilities / hosts” as “corporations”, but since utilities and hosts are run by corporations, and there is no case law or words in the Constitution that make a distinction there, the disproving my rewording of the statement would also disprove the original. That is the statement I was arguing against, not the one about corporations not appearing in the Constitution, which is true but immaterial because, as far as the law is concerned, corporations are people just as much as humans are. That is also why I was not interested in answering the question posed by the OP. My only reason for joining in the discussion was to offer facts, not opinions. That would be a separate discussion.
Also, the original post was about statements of facts. The only opinion asked is whether I think corporations should exist outside of the People’s benefit. Considering that they are supposed to be for-profit entities, I don’t have any argument that they should not do so, within reason. One could make that argument about nonprofit NGOs, and certainly about government-run organizations, but for-profit corporations are specifically meant to not be constrained by what is “good for the public”. Combined with the fact that reasonable people can disagree about what is or isn’t good for the public, and you can see why I’m not keen on restraining any NGO or corporation to such ideals.
That covers a substantial amount of your response. Here’s a few more things I’ll address.
Corporate rights are mostly a construct of legal precedent and court opinion. With the occasional law passed by Congress.
Sort of. See, again, under the law, corporations are legally indistinguishable from human persons. That’s what the laws passed by Congress say. The legal precedent is based on that.
Corporate rights are used as a common justification for the current application of the law. You yourself have done so in this thread already. In your example alone, the privately-owned bulletin board is one of the most frequent recipients of the First Amendment justification. Regardless, the courts, as of this posting, do have to consider corporate rights when applying the law, and as such they are important to the discussion.
I think there’s some confusion here. Courts don’t get to decide what the law should be. That is solely up to the legislatures and, to an extent, the executive branch. Courts don’t decide what is or isn’t good policy. They can only rule based on what the law is, and corporate rights are an important consideration when deciding what the law is. In a discussion of what the law should be, however, it’s a bit more complicated. When people bring up the 1A into a §230 discussion, it’s to refute a commonly given reason to repeal §230 and point out that removing that law wouldn’t remove the right to moderate. Discussing what Constitutional rights a corporation should have doesn’t further the discussion with regards to what to do about
§230. I agree that discussing what rights a corporation does or would have is important, but not what it should have.
Furthermore, the bulletin board analogy, while it works with regards to the 1A rights as well, was meant more about property rights. And since no one was disputing that corporations should have property rights, that means that corporations should have the right to moderate their property as they see fit the same way the owner of a publicly accessible bulletin board should have the right to control content on that bulletin board.
No, the rights of the humans running the corporation are not limited by considering corporations property instead of "people." Unless you consider forcing those humans to be legally responsible for their actions, instead of being able to shift blame and liability to some inanimate object, as a "limitation." Those humans can just as easily sign their own names on the contract they wrote as they can the name of a company. The difference between the two is who is ultimately responsible in court: The humans who designed the contract and it's terms vs. the corporate liability shield meant to execute the contract.
This one I’m most interested in addressing. Here’s the thing: the “protection” corporations get from §230, property rights, and the Constitution are no different than the protections a person running a publicly accessible bulletin board has with regards to their property. Also, in order to allow corporations to sue, own property, and pay people, corporations can’t just be considered property. Property can’t do those things.
Furthermore, consider corporations run by a board rather than a single person. The corporation speaking is then distinct from the individuals speaking.
Then there’s my previous analogy about the bulletin board. See, a corporation doesn’t just separate the legal liabilities of the owner(s) from the business; it also separates the funds and property. So, instead of a single person owning that bulletin board, let’s say it was the property of McDonald’s, which decides to have a specific group of employees be tasked with maintenance and moderation of the bulletin board, which still is open to content from the public posting things there. Can you see how the speech of the people who run McDonald’s are distinct from that of McDonald’s, and yet the two are inextricably linked? If we restricted the rights of McDonald’s, that would restrict the rights of the people running the board.
There are, of course, restrictions on commercial speech that don’t apply to noncommercial speech, but those apply to individuals and corporations equally, as they should.
Then there’s this:
Except the First Amendment directly forbids the government enforcing a particular view on a person's speech. If the law considers a corporation equal to a person, then by definition the First Amendment applies. The reason §230 is brought up is because of the legal fiction created by bureaucrats wanting to illegally silence the people, and using the potential repeal of §230 as the leverage by which to force companies into compliance. An act which should be illegal in and of itself. It's effectively saying "That's a nice business ya got there, be a shame if somethin happened to it. Hows about you silence ya people for us and we'll make sure ya business keeps runnin?" The government is attempting an illegal end run around the First Amendment using businesses as forced accomplices under penalty of death. That alone should entitle the businesses to compensation, and the potential repeal of §230 blocked by the courts. The repeal of "corporate personhood" would make that argument more difficult to make. As it would need to be shown that the rights of the people running the company were being infringed on by the government. Instead of the company itself which would lack such rights in that case. So no, our opinions on corporate rights do matter in discussions about §230. If anything, my opinion gives the bureaucrats more wiggle room, whereas yours does not.
Huh? I agree with the first two sentences, but the rest seems odd. I explicitly said that, by legal definition, corporations are persons. They have to be to operate as intended, which I consider a necessary evil. Additionally, we have to consider what to do about §230 in the context of what the law currently is and what it would be without §230 and no changes made outside of §230. After all, there is absolutely no way corporate personhood would be stripped at the same time §230 is repealed. In that sense, our opinions about corporate rights are immaterial to the specific discussion about what to do about corporate rights. Really, though, that last sentence makes no sense to me.
There are multiple stories on this very site that disprove Facebook is not using it's platform for lobbying purposes, but that is irrelevant to this conversation.
I agree that it’s irrelevant to this conversation, but I’m going to need examples of Facebook using its platform for lobbying purposes, because then you say this:
My point was that the law is ineffective. It does ban these practices, but in reality the law has so many loopholes that such bans are unenforceable. The reason why corporate voting rights are relevant to this discussion, is because you brought it up.
First off, I only brought up the corporate voting rights to point out that no one is saying that corporations are or should be treated as citizens. Second, I agree that lobbying restrictions are often ineffective, but a) that is not the same as voting in an election, which is what is actually restricted to being guaranteed to citizens, not anything you could remotely call “voting” in general, and b) I’m going to need evidence of Facebook lobbying using its platform. And I mean actually lobbying just using their platform. Not just controlling what info is available and to what degree to the general public that happens to include lawmakers or general advertising. Not just having an employee of Facebook lobbying outside of Facebook. I mean actually using the Facebook platform itself to lobby Congress. Because I have not seen any articles of Facebook doing that.
No one’s complaining about the bans themselves. They’re just saying that Parler isn’t any better than Twitter when it comes to moderating lawful speech.
What the hell are you even talking about? The Biden laptop thing was complete crap, and there is no convincing evidence that Twitter or Facebook moderate conservatives more than liberals for the same things (you don’t even give examples of liberals getting away with lies), but even granting you those, you can always just go to another platform like Parler, so there is no need for anything to be done to Twitter or Facebook. Furthermore, Big Tech companies can do whatever they want with their platforms as long as it isn’t illegal or anti-competitive (which they haven’t yet) thanks to basic property rights, and moderation can’t be made illegal thanks to the 1A.
And for the record, I’d feel the same about their rights if the situation was reversed from what you think it is and I thought that liberals were being treated worse than conservatives for the same behavior… and I know that because that’s technically what’s actually happening! It has been confirmed that conservatives who break the ToS tend to be less likely to be banned than liberals who break the ToS. I’m not happy about that, but I respect Twitter and Facebook’s rights to do so.
Also, I find it extremely hard to believe that there were any voters undecided and gullible enough to actually take the laptop story seriously and change their vote because of it that weren’t already aware of the story. It wasn’t exactly hard to find even if you weren’t looking. But, again, that story was highly suspect from the start, so I doubt anyone’s minds were changed after learning about it.
Plus, in case you hadn’t noticed, Trump was the least popular candidate. His approval rating has been consistently lower than any previous president, and a lot of people voted for Biden just because they hated Trump. And of course Trump got more votes on Election Night; most people who voted for Biden voted by mail-in ballots because of the pandemic.
Also, the plaintiff gave no evidence of fraud, so their allegations of fraud must be dismissed.
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Googoole says we aren't allowed to discuss m
Yeah. You can see why Grimmer called it “an embarrassing and basic error in statistical reasoning”.
Incidentally, there is another possibility for the flaw, which is an assumption that votes are counted completely randomly, regardless of where, when, or how they were cast, which is equally untrue. After all, in PA, votes cast in person on Election Day get counted first as they come in, followed by early votes cast in person, then mail-in ballots, then absentee ballots, so when and how affects when votes get counted. And since each county counts their own ballots simultaneously with each other and have different population sizes, the “where” part isn’t random either. This lack of randomness is only irrelevant if the statewide distribution between the candidates is evenly spread across counties and across voting methods/times, which, as mentioned, it absolutely isn’t.
There are a lot of flawed statistical arguments that fail because it assumes randomness/even distribution where we don’t know that’s the case or where it’s probably nonexistent, but it’s rare for an argument to come up that’s this far off base to be brought up by an actual statistician.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Constitutional
Go to DC, stand on the senate floor for a a day, and tell me that again with a straight face.
That corporations have influence on Congress doesn’t change the accuracy of what I said. They can’t vote in elections, run for office, or hold a public office.
There are plenty of ways for corporations to side step those few limitations, and they have, and continue to, abuse every single loophole they can find.
Sure. I never said the law was foolproof. However, that has nothing to do with this discussion, which has nothing to do with sidestepping limitations or abusing loopholes at all. It also has nothing to do with corruption or the outsized influence of corporations on elected officials while they’re in office. Facebook doesn’t use its platform to lobby or petition public officials, after all, and its ability to moderate its own platform is a directly intended result of the law as it is.
The parent is making the argument that Corporations should NOT be given those protections. Your response is the equivalent of whining: "It already is so, therefore it can never be changed. Nor should my opinion or anyone else's be considered."
I don’t see why they shouldn’t be given those protections. Corporations are ultimately run by humans, so how would one regulate corporations’ speech without infringing on the free speech rights of the individuals running that corporation?
Furthermore, this position on corporations’ constitutional rights is a culmination of multiple Supreme Court decisions—some pretty recent—on the Constitution. To overturn that, you would either have to convince the Supreme Court to overturn a significant amount of precedent—which is incredibly unlikely—or amend the constitution to expressly exclude corporations from constitutional protections—which is also unlikely to happen. In other words, what the law is in this case is unlikely to change regardless of what you or I think it should be. I’m just being realistic here.
Ultimately, our opinions on whether or not corporations should have constitutional rights doesn’t really mean anything in regards to what should be done about §230. Remember, we’re not talking about whether or not the Constitution should be changed or whether or not a specific Supreme Court decision should be overturned; we’re talking about whether or not §230 should be repealed or amended. While what constitutional law is in this area is important, what constitutional law should be tells us nothing about what to do about §230.
"The law" in your case is being used as an excuse not as a reason for why things should remain the same.
You have not provided a compelling reason to overturn the status quo. Your justification for changing it is just that you don’t like corporations having power over the platforms that they own and run. Most find that idea antithetical to capitalism and basic human rights to property.
Again, you cannot limit the rights of corporations without also limiting the rights of the individuals who run them (other than things like voting in a public election or running for or holding public office).
At any rate, my point in this discussion was to refute your claims that corporations don’t have any constitutional rights at all (without any reason given why they shouldn’t) by pointing out that they do. You were not simply saying that corporations shouldn’t have constitutional rights; you were saying that they don’t. My or your opinion on the question of whether or not they should have rights does not change what the law currently is. For the purposes of this discussion, I am not arguing about what the law should be but what the law is.
If you had said, “Corporations should not have constitutional rights,” then I would have been more interested in discussing whether or not I agree with what the law is, though I’d still point out that the law in this area is unlikely to change anytime soon. But you did not. You said, “Corporations do NOT have constitutional rights.” That’s a very different claim altogether, one that should be supported with facts rather than personal opinions. It’s also easily refuted.
Besides, the reason Techdirt bring up the 1A in these discussions and articles regarding §230 is to show that repealing §230 won’t actually make corporations unable to lawfully moderate their platforms. It’s not an argument about what the law should be but an argument against certain (false) claims about what the law is (and what §230 actually does). A discussion on what the law should be won’t make that point invalid.
Most of the arguments about what the law should be from Techdirt have little to do with constitutional rights of corporations, anyways. For those arguments, we turn to other things like property rights, the free speech rights of users (which gets a bit complicated and has to do with how platforms would react to changes in the law), the fact that you always have other alternative platforms you can use, etc. We might also use analogies, like a privately-owned bulletin board on privately owned property viewable from a major street that the owner allows anyone to post things on. Note that that has nothing to do with corporations having or not having constitutional rights at all.
Basically, I’m saying that on this specific discussion with regards to corporations and §230, our opinions on what the law should be with regards to corporations having or not having constitutional rights are ultimately irrelevant to this particular discussion. I’m also saying that the law in this specific area is highly unlikely to change in the specific way you want, but that’s not my main point. My main point is that your claims about what the law is are incorrect.
Re: Re: The Googoole says we aren't allowed to discuss math.
Here’s the basic flaw: the calculations involved assume that the distribution of votes for each candidate is exactly equal among cities and counties and between in-person and mail-in or absentee votes. None of that is remotely true. Some counties leaned heavily towards Biden; others leaned heavily towards Trump. On top of that, mail-in votes have always leaned Democrat, and it was expected that this trend would be greater this election.
I don’t think you know what communism actually is, what Biden does/doesn’t support, or what leftism actually is. You’re just spouting conservative buzzwords.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Except... book publisher is not a host or co
I'm sure you're not wrong, I'm just intrigued as an outsider.
To be honest, I’m not exactly an expert on these matters. I’m just basing this on my understanding of constitutional law, specifically that public schools and other publicly run institutions count as part of the government for constitutional purposes. As such, I’d imagine that content-based restrictions on books in libraries would have to survive at least some level of legal scrutiny to be valid.
Again, though, this is just speculation on my part; an educated guess, if you will. It’s a grayer area of law that I’m not as familiar with as I am with how private libraries and bookstores work. I might have to look this up to see if I have any better info to give you.
Re: Re: Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Constitutional rights
The Supreme Court stated that corporations have the exact same protections from the First Amendment as human persons do. Those are constitutional rights, and corporations have them. And the Constitution doesn’t say it applies only to citizens but to “persons”, and corporations are legally persons.
Now, the absolute clincher: corporations CANNOT be citizens. They are not born in any "natural" way nor can be "naturalized"! They're just an arbitrary grouping of "natural" persons.
No one said that corporations are citizens. Here’s the thing, though: citizenship only matters for voting, number of representatives, running in an election, holding public office, and residency. Residency is technically taken care of by the application for a corporation, and no one counts corporations in a census, so that just means that corporations can’t vote in an election, run in an election, or hold any public office. Everything else, including 1A rights, is guaranteed for all persons, not just all citizens.
Re: Re: Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Constitutional rights
And do YOU support that notion?
My opinion on the matter is irrelevant, but I’d say that there isn’t any way for both corporations to exist and for people who run corporations to have rights without corporations having rights.
Do YOU believe that corporations are PERSONS in more than a similar sense, having been granted such by various statutes?
Legally, they are persons. Outside the right to vote, they are treated no differently than citizens by the law. They own property, make declarations, buy and sell things, pay taxes, sue, get sued, etc.
Do you disagree that corporations don't exist at all until AFTER have requested permission from The Public to exist, having agree to SERVE us?
The permission part, yes. The serve part, no. I would prefer otherwise, but the law pretty much says that there is no such obligation.
And, again, my opinion doesn’t have any bearing on what the law is. The Supreme Court has made it clear multiple times that corporations get constitutional protections, too, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. My opinion that they should receive at least some of them is based purely on logic, but even if I felt differently, that would make absolutely no difference in the long run, and I don’t see any reason to try to overturn it. I’ve no interest in appeals from emotion when it comes to this sort of thing.
Re: Oh, and of course it's removing IMMUNITY that worries Maz.
They have explained many times about how §230 benefits the public. But I’m going to set that aside and point out that §230 also protects users from things other users post.
Re: Re: The Googoole says we aren't allowed to discuss math.
The filter is always up. That sometimes certain things get through and others don’t means nothing other than that the filter is unreliable.
As for releasing things from moderation, you do know this is a small site run by people who have lives outside this site and doesn’t have a team dedicated solely to checking the filter to see what’s stuck in it.
Re: The Googoole says we aren't allowed to discuss math.
From the article:
Justin Grimmer, a professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, says the claim “is based on an embarrassing and basic error in statistical reasoning.”
On the post: As A Parting Shot, Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up With Paul Gosar To Introduce Yet Another Unconstitutional Attack On Section 230
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Consti
My apologies for mixing you up with the original AC, but you missed the first comment in this thread, which is actually amazing, since it’s the title of the thread. Here:
Yes, I did rephrase “utilities / hosts” as “corporations”, but since utilities and hosts are run by corporations, and there is no case law or words in the Constitution that make a distinction there, the disproving my rewording of the statement would also disprove the original. That is the statement I was arguing against, not the one about corporations not appearing in the Constitution, which is true but immaterial because, as far as the law is concerned, corporations are people just as much as humans are. That is also why I was not interested in answering the question posed by the OP. My only reason for joining in the discussion was to offer facts, not opinions. That would be a separate discussion.
Also, the original post was about statements of facts. The only opinion asked is whether I think corporations should exist outside of the People’s benefit. Considering that they are supposed to be for-profit entities, I don’t have any argument that they should not do so, within reason. One could make that argument about nonprofit NGOs, and certainly about government-run organizations, but for-profit corporations are specifically meant to not be constrained by what is “good for the public”. Combined with the fact that reasonable people can disagree about what is or isn’t good for the public, and you can see why I’m not keen on restraining any NGO or corporation to such ideals.
That covers a substantial amount of your response. Here’s a few more things I’ll address.
Sort of. See, again, under the law, corporations are legally indistinguishable from human persons. That’s what the laws passed by Congress say. The legal precedent is based on that.
I think there’s some confusion here. Courts don’t get to decide what the law should be. That is solely up to the legislatures and, to an extent, the executive branch. Courts don’t decide what is or isn’t good policy. They can only rule based on what the law is, and corporate rights are an important consideration when deciding what the law is. In a discussion of what the law should be, however, it’s a bit more complicated. When people bring up the 1A into a §230 discussion, it’s to refute a commonly given reason to repeal §230 and point out that removing that law wouldn’t remove the right to moderate. Discussing what Constitutional rights a corporation should have doesn’t further the discussion with regards to what to do about
§230. I agree that discussing what rights a corporation does or would have is important, but not what it should have.
Furthermore, the bulletin board analogy, while it works with regards to the 1A rights as well, was meant more about property rights. And since no one was disputing that corporations should have property rights, that means that corporations should have the right to moderate their property as they see fit the same way the owner of a publicly accessible bulletin board should have the right to control content on that bulletin board.
This one I’m most interested in addressing. Here’s the thing: the “protection” corporations get from §230, property rights, and the Constitution are no different than the protections a person running a publicly accessible bulletin board has with regards to their property. Also, in order to allow corporations to sue, own property, and pay people, corporations can’t just be considered property. Property can’t do those things.
Furthermore, consider corporations run by a board rather than a single person. The corporation speaking is then distinct from the individuals speaking.
Then there’s my previous analogy about the bulletin board. See, a corporation doesn’t just separate the legal liabilities of the owner(s) from the business; it also separates the funds and property. So, instead of a single person owning that bulletin board, let’s say it was the property of McDonald’s, which decides to have a specific group of employees be tasked with maintenance and moderation of the bulletin board, which still is open to content from the public posting things there. Can you see how the speech of the people who run McDonald’s are distinct from that of McDonald’s, and yet the two are inextricably linked? If we restricted the rights of McDonald’s, that would restrict the rights of the people running the board.
There are, of course, restrictions on commercial speech that don’t apply to noncommercial speech, but those apply to individuals and corporations equally, as they should.
Then there’s this:
Huh? I agree with the first two sentences, but the rest seems odd. I explicitly said that, by legal definition, corporations are persons. They have to be to operate as intended, which I consider a necessary evil. Additionally, we have to consider what to do about §230 in the context of what the law currently is and what it would be without §230 and no changes made outside of §230. After all, there is absolutely no way corporate personhood would be stripped at the same time §230 is repealed. In that sense, our opinions about corporate rights are immaterial to the specific discussion about what to do about corporate rights. Really, though, that last sentence makes no sense to me.
I agree that it’s irrelevant to this conversation, but I’m going to need examples of Facebook using its platform for lobbying purposes, because then you say this:
First off, I only brought up the corporate voting rights to point out that no one is saying that corporations are or should be treated as citizens. Second, I agree that lobbying restrictions are often ineffective, but a) that is not the same as voting in an election, which is what is actually restricted to being guaranteed to citizens, not anything you could remotely call “voting” in general, and b) I’m going to need evidence of Facebook lobbying using its platform. And I mean actually lobbying just using their platform. Not just controlling what info is available and to what degree to the general public that happens to include lawmakers or general advertising. Not just having an employee of Facebook lobbying outside of Facebook. I mean actually using the Facebook platform itself to lobby Congress. Because I have not seen any articles of Facebook doing that.
On the post: As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
Re: Parler Censorship
No one’s complaining about the bans themselves. They’re just saying that Parler isn’t any better than Twitter when it comes to moderating lawful speech.
On the post: As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
Re: Re: "we know they are wrong"
I don’t know any liberals who are against those things fundamentally.
On the post: As A Parting Shot, Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up With Paul Gosar To Introduce Yet Another Unconstitutional Attack On Section 230
Re: Screw your censorship
What the hell are you even talking about? The Biden laptop thing was complete crap, and there is no convincing evidence that Twitter or Facebook moderate conservatives more than liberals for the same things (you don’t even give examples of liberals getting away with lies), but even granting you those, you can always just go to another platform like Parler, so there is no need for anything to be done to Twitter or Facebook. Furthermore, Big Tech companies can do whatever they want with their platforms as long as it isn’t illegal or anti-competitive (which they haven’t yet) thanks to basic property rights, and moderation can’t be made illegal thanks to the 1A.
And for the record, I’d feel the same about their rights if the situation was reversed from what you think it is and I thought that liberals were being treated worse than conservatives for the same behavior… and I know that because that’s technically what’s actually happening! It has been confirmed that conservatives who break the ToS tend to be less likely to be banned than liberals who break the ToS. I’m not happy about that, but I respect Twitter and Facebook’s rights to do so.
Also, I find it extremely hard to believe that there were any voters undecided and gullible enough to actually take the laptop story seriously and change their vote because of it that weren’t already aware of the story. It wasn’t exactly hard to find even if you weren’t looking. But, again, that story was highly suspect from the start, so I doubt anyone’s minds were changed after learning about it.
Plus, in case you hadn’t noticed, Trump was the least popular candidate. His approval rating has been consistently lower than any previous president, and a lot of people voted for Biden just because they hated Trump. And of course Trump got more votes on Election Night; most people who voted for Biden voted by mail-in ballots because of the pandemic.
Also, the plaintiff gave no evidence of fraud, so their allegations of fraud must be dismissed.
On the post: Biden's Top Tech Advisor Trots Out Dangerous Ideas For 'Reforming' Section 230
Re: Re: Re: Re: Except... book publisher is not a host or condui
Thanks for the info! I thought there might be something like that, but I wasn’t sure.
On the post: Biden's Top Tech Advisor Trots Out Dangerous Ideas For 'Reforming' Section 230
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Googoole says we aren't allowed to discuss m
Yeah. You can see why Grimmer called it “an embarrassing and basic error in statistical reasoning”.
Incidentally, there is another possibility for the flaw, which is an assumption that votes are counted completely randomly, regardless of where, when, or how they were cast, which is equally untrue. After all, in PA, votes cast in person on Election Day get counted first as they come in, followed by early votes cast in person, then mail-in ballots, then absentee ballots, so when and how affects when votes get counted. And since each county counts their own ballots simultaneously with each other and have different population sizes, the “where” part isn’t random either. This lack of randomness is only irrelevant if the statewide distribution between the candidates is evenly spread across counties and across voting methods/times, which, as mentioned, it absolutely isn’t.
There are a lot of flawed statistical arguments that fail because it assumes randomness/even distribution where we don’t know that’s the case or where it’s probably nonexistent, but it’s rare for an argument to come up that’s this far off base to be brought up by an actual statistician.
On the post: As A Parting Shot, Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up With Paul Gosar To Introduce Yet Another Unconstitutional Attack On Section 230
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Constitutional
That corporations have influence on Congress doesn’t change the accuracy of what I said. They can’t vote in elections, run for office, or hold a public office.
Sure. I never said the law was foolproof. However, that has nothing to do with this discussion, which has nothing to do with sidestepping limitations or abusing loopholes at all. It also has nothing to do with corruption or the outsized influence of corporations on elected officials while they’re in office. Facebook doesn’t use its platform to lobby or petition public officials, after all, and its ability to moderate its own platform is a directly intended result of the law as it is.
I don’t see why they shouldn’t be given those protections. Corporations are ultimately run by humans, so how would one regulate corporations’ speech without infringing on the free speech rights of the individuals running that corporation?
Furthermore, this position on corporations’ constitutional rights is a culmination of multiple Supreme Court decisions—some pretty recent—on the Constitution. To overturn that, you would either have to convince the Supreme Court to overturn a significant amount of precedent—which is incredibly unlikely—or amend the constitution to expressly exclude corporations from constitutional protections—which is also unlikely to happen. In other words, what the law is in this case is unlikely to change regardless of what you or I think it should be. I’m just being realistic here.
Ultimately, our opinions on whether or not corporations should have constitutional rights doesn’t really mean anything in regards to what should be done about §230. Remember, we’re not talking about whether or not the Constitution should be changed or whether or not a specific Supreme Court decision should be overturned; we’re talking about whether or not §230 should be repealed or amended. While what constitutional law is in this area is important, what constitutional law should be tells us nothing about what to do about §230.
You have not provided a compelling reason to overturn the status quo. Your justification for changing it is just that you don’t like corporations having power over the platforms that they own and run. Most find that idea antithetical to capitalism and basic human rights to property.
Again, you cannot limit the rights of corporations without also limiting the rights of the individuals who run them (other than things like voting in a public election or running for or holding public office).
At any rate, my point in this discussion was to refute your claims that corporations don’t have any constitutional rights at all (without any reason given why they shouldn’t) by pointing out that they do. You were not simply saying that corporations shouldn’t have constitutional rights; you were saying that they don’t. My or your opinion on the question of whether or not they should have rights does not change what the law currently is. For the purposes of this discussion, I am not arguing about what the law should be but what the law is.
If you had said, “Corporations should not have constitutional rights,” then I would have been more interested in discussing whether or not I agree with what the law is, though I’d still point out that the law in this area is unlikely to change anytime soon. But you did not. You said, “Corporations do NOT have constitutional rights.” That’s a very different claim altogether, one that should be supported with facts rather than personal opinions. It’s also easily refuted.
Besides, the reason Techdirt bring up the 1A in these discussions and articles regarding §230 is to show that repealing §230 won’t actually make corporations unable to lawfully moderate their platforms. It’s not an argument about what the law should be but an argument against certain (false) claims about what the law is (and what §230 actually does). A discussion on what the law should be won’t make that point invalid.
Most of the arguments about what the law should be from Techdirt have little to do with constitutional rights of corporations, anyways. For those arguments, we turn to other things like property rights, the free speech rights of users (which gets a bit complicated and has to do with how platforms would react to changes in the law), the fact that you always have other alternative platforms you can use, etc. We might also use analogies, like a privately-owned bulletin board on privately owned property viewable from a major street that the owner allows anyone to post things on. Note that that has nothing to do with corporations having or not having constitutional rights at all.
Basically, I’m saying that on this specific discussion with regards to corporations and §230, our opinions on what the law should be with regards to corporations having or not having constitutional rights are ultimately irrelevant to this particular discussion. I’m also saying that the law in this specific area is highly unlikely to change in the specific way you want, but that’s not my main point. My main point is that your claims about what the law is are incorrect.
On the post: As A Parting Shot, Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up With Paul Gosar To Introduce Yet Another Unconstitutional Attack On Section 230
Re: How deep does stupid goes to cover crime?
What a word salad
On the post: Biden's Top Tech Advisor Trots Out Dangerous Ideas For 'Reforming' Section 230
Re: Re: The Googoole says we aren't allowed to discuss math.
Here’s the basic flaw: the calculations involved assume that the distribution of votes for each candidate is exactly equal among cities and counties and between in-person and mail-in or absentee votes. None of that is remotely true. Some counties leaned heavily towards Biden; others leaned heavily towards Trump. On top of that, mail-in votes have always leaned Democrat, and it was expected that this trend would be greater this election.
On the post: Florida State Police Raid Home Of COVID Whistleblower, Point Guns At Her & Her Family, Seize All Her Computer Equipment
Re: The Password Is Freely Available To Anyone
So, literally anyone with an internet connection…
On the post: Trump Makes It Official: He's Going To Pull Military Funding, Because Congress Won't Kill The Open Internet
Re:
I’m sorry, but are you opposed to renaming military bases?
On the post: GOP Confirms Unqualified Simington to FCC With Eye On Crippling Biden FCC
Re:
I don’t think you know what communism actually is, what Biden does/doesn’t support, or what leftism actually is. You’re just spouting conservative buzzwords.
On the post: Biden's Top Tech Advisor Trots Out Dangerous Ideas For 'Reforming' Section 230
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Except... book publisher is not a host or co
To be honest, I’m not exactly an expert on these matters. I’m just basing this on my understanding of constitutional law, specifically that public schools and other publicly run institutions count as part of the government for constitutional purposes. As such, I’d imagine that content-based restrictions on books in libraries would have to survive at least some level of legal scrutiny to be valid.
Again, though, this is just speculation on my part; an educated guess, if you will. It’s a grayer area of law that I’m not as familiar with as I am with how private libraries and bookstores work. I might have to look this up to see if I have any better info to give you.
On the post: As A Parting Shot, Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up With Paul Gosar To Introduce Yet Another Unconstitutional Attack On Section 230
Re: Re: Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Constitutional rights
The Supreme Court stated that corporations have the exact same protections from the First Amendment as human persons do. Those are constitutional rights, and corporations have them. And the Constitution doesn’t say it applies only to citizens but to “persons”, and corporations are legally persons.
No one said that corporations are citizens. Here’s the thing, though: citizenship only matters for voting, number of representatives, running in an election, holding public office, and residency. Residency is technically taken care of by the application for a corporation, and no one counts corporations in a census, so that just means that corporations can’t vote in an election, run in an election, or hold any public office. Everything else, including 1A rights, is guaranteed for all persons, not just all citizens.
On the post: As A Parting Shot, Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up With Paul Gosar To Introduce Yet Another Unconstitutional Attack On Section 230
Re: Re: Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Constitutional rights
My opinion on the matter is irrelevant, but I’d say that there isn’t any way for both corporations to exist and for people who run corporations to have rights without corporations having rights.
Legally, they are persons. Outside the right to vote, they are treated no differently than citizens by the law. They own property, make declarations, buy and sell things, pay taxes, sue, get sued, etc.
The permission part, yes. The serve part, no. I would prefer otherwise, but the law pretty much says that there is no such obligation.
And, again, my opinion doesn’t have any bearing on what the law is. The Supreme Court has made it clear multiple times that corporations get constitutional protections, too, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. My opinion that they should receive at least some of them is based purely on logic, but even if I felt differently, that would make absolutely no difference in the long run, and I don’t see any reason to try to overturn it. I’ve no interest in appeals from emotion when it comes to this sort of thing.
On the post: As A Parting Shot, Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up With Paul Gosar To Introduce Yet Another Unconstitutional Attack On Section 230
Re: Oh, and of course it's removing IMMUNITY that worries Maz.
They have explained many times about how §230 benefits the public. But I’m going to set that aside and point out that §230 also protects users from things other users post.
On the post: As A Parting Shot, Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up With Paul Gosar To Introduce Yet Another Unconstitutional Attack On Section 230
Re: UTILITIES / HOSTS do NOT have Constitutional rights at all.
The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that corporations have rights.
On the post: Biden's Top Tech Advisor Trots Out Dangerous Ideas For 'Reforming' Section 230
Re: Re: Re: Except... book publisher is not a host or conduit fo
It depends on the library, I guess. I’m just saying public libraries may not have full discretion like privately owned libraries and bookstores do.
Plus, a lot of what’s available in libraries comes from donations.
On the post: Biden's Top Tech Advisor Trots Out Dangerous Ideas For 'Reforming' Section 230
Re: Re: The Googoole says we aren't allowed to discuss math.
The filter is always up. That sometimes certain things get through and others don’t means nothing other than that the filter is unreliable.
As for releasing things from moderation, you do know this is a small site run by people who have lives outside this site and doesn’t have a team dedicated solely to checking the filter to see what’s stuck in it.
On the post: Biden's Top Tech Advisor Trots Out Dangerous Ideas For 'Reforming' Section 230
Re: The Googoole says we aren't allowed to discuss math.
From the article:
And it really is.
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