> At EFF, we’re continuing to fight back on behalf of those censored by government coercion. One recent example: we represent the creator of ICEBlock, an app that allows the public to report immigration enforcement activity in their communities.…
> EFF applauds Senators Cruz and Wyden for taking this critical issue seriously
Credit where it’s due, but I doubt that ICEBlock was the first thing Ted Cruz wanted to benefit from this bill
I wonder if the EFF had something specific to say when various PACs and a former president tried getting Spotify to take Joe Rogan off the air for his Covid opinions?
This is a new allegation Joe Rogan made offhand in a podcast two days ago, and he said while making it that he can't tell us which PACs or which presidents were involved. What specifics could the EFF offer in the absence of any meaningful details about what happened?
It is not that i think all right wing hosts are liars,they love to play the victim, but all I see as a source is "Joe Rogan says...". Quoting yourself is not a source.
My favorite of these has always been the USA PATRIOT Act, or the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act". And that one predates LLMs, so… sheesh.
Huh? We have more free speech than ever online at this moment. The last regime colluded with the major social media companies to censor people they didn't like and it's also recently come to light that they attempted to get the Joe Rogan/Spotify deal nuked, all based on censoring speech they don't like.
The liberal government of the UK is moving toward complete online censorship with their bill to prevent children from going on social media sites. The reality is that they will now be able to identify and will arrest people for posting opinions they don't like. This has already been happening for the last couple of years and will now be even easier. This is exactly how it works in China.
If Democrats come into power again in the US, this will soon be coming to a computer near you.
This should be the #1 story on HN, but the tech community has been strangely silent on the subject....
I just wish the people claiming to be champions of free speech and rights will just admit that this all goes out the window when it applies to speech and people you don't like. It would make everything much easier.
Collusion is the wrong word. Coercion is more appropriate.
> I just wish the people claiming to be champions of free speech and rights will just admit that this all goes out the window when it applies to speech and people you don't like
Try using the word "cis-gender" on Twitter and let us know how that goes.
You are kidding yourself if you think this is a liberal vs conservative issue.
The current FCC chairman threatens the broadcast license and to block deals of networks who air shows the president doesn’t like. These threats appear to have lead directly to the cancellation of shows — a clear violation of the first amendment, though there have been no consequences so far.
If you really care about this issue, get out of your information bubble.
Whichever party is in power, Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, have tried to suppress speech they don’t like when they get in power. If we pretend this is a partisan issue we can’t stop them.
The level of doublethink from the right is completely insane.
Additionally, when I fact check what they're whining about, it is often like, "the White House requested Twitter ban medical misinformation about coronavirus, without threat of consequences, and they did."
I'll give you that Liberals are also antagonistic towards online free speech, but pretending that we have more free speech online right now than ever before is the most insane thing I've ever heard. Just because you can post nazi shit on Twitter now does not mean we have more online freedom.
Larry Bushart was arrested and jailed for more than a month for posting a Charlie Kirk meme.
Douglass Mackey was arrested and convicted for posting satirical Clinton election ads, though this was later overturned after he spent months in prison.
It’s the official position of the US government that posting the number 8647 is a crime. I know this sounds like a crazy thing I made up, but they posted a detailed explainer (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-indicts-fo...): any reasonable person, they argue, would know that this number is a threat to kill the President.
It's also true, I should acknowledge, that the US has a strong system of checks and balances against stupid proclamations like this and a generally oppositional culture around speech restrictions. It's unlikely I'll be arrested for posting 8647, or indeed for pointing you to other illegal numbers like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag, and if I were I'd wear it as a badge of honor. But just because Americans are successfully fighting it doesn't mean there's no issue.
Do people not read the article, or do they just read the clickbait title and comment?
Apparently they missed Ron Wyden (co-sponsor) of the bill is a Democrat and the bill is a bi-partisan effort?
Or the fact the EFF is actually in support of the bill:
EFF applauds Senators Cruz and Wyden for taking this critical issue seriously, and we look forward to working with Congress on this bipartisan bill as it moves through the process. We hope it lands on the right balance to provide additional protections for everyday users around freedom of expression.
> Apparently they missed Ron Wyden (co-sponsor) of the bill is a Democrat and the bill is a bi-partisan effort?
And thank god for that. I hope this is indicative of a larger trend in the opposite direction.
I'm not in the US, but here too free speech and other democratic values have been something the far right could contrast themselves on against the center and left. It pisses me off to no end that the issues I've been harping on about for years are now most effectively championed by a group that is otherwise ideologically opposed to me. I'm not mad at the right for this, I'm mad at the center and left who handed it to them.
Are you sure they are? Probably most people in your country would label you as far right for championing free speech, no other issues considered. Probably you are doing the same for others.
But this assumes that a bill is required to establish fundamental rights. Free speech unfortunately does not exist anywhere. Even the USA has restrictions, such as "speech aimed at inciting quick reaction/violence" or some other restrictions with regards to "offensive" words and minors or similar. Or, even simpler, to talk very loudly in public late at night. So free speech is not unlimited, despite its name.
Yeah. On pretty much every other topic important to me, their official positions are either diametrically opposed or lean into another direction far enough that supporting other parties would be a better choice.
what a strange take for a non-US person. one 'side' takes a couple whacks at free speech. the other side calls them on it, gets in power, and then starts taking a chainsaw to it, and you find reason to be angry that's its side A making a fuss now? and not that side B went rogue?
Shouldn't you care more about the actual issue than who is writing the laws around it? Why are you so pissed off about the "who" instead of happy you are getting what you want?
I'm not getting what I want on free speech, because the center left form the ruling parties. And I wouldn't want the right to be in power anyways, though soon they couldn't do much worse to this democracy.
People here are getting police visits and legal mail because they called a politician a name on twitter or get investigated over a sign they held at a political protest.
and in the US we're having serious free speech issues with the right right now. sorry to be confusing, I just wonder why you think there's necessarily a direct equivalence between the left-right politics of two different countries, and not more concerned about actual rights violations instead of who's scoring political points.
What? The far right is against free speech. They only ever screech about free speech when someone is experiencing social consequences.
They whine about actual Nazi rhetoric earning bans on private companies' platforms, then turn around and open investigations on people criticizing their masked police force. Attending protests gets you added to the terrorist watchlist.
The proper response to that is to support free speech values in both circumstances. Otherwise, we’re just going to be fighting about the details of whether particular conduct falls within the letter of the free speech protections.
Nazi rhetoric earning bans on private platforms happens because a large number of people organize in protest against such rhetoric. Advertisers see this and don't want to be associated with it, so the ad-driven platforms make the obvious choice to remove the Nazis. This is an example of people exercising their free speech and their often overlooked freedom of/from association.
Nothing stops the Nazis from creating their own platform or buying out an existing one, which is why we have Gab, Truth Social, and X. They're also free to organize themselves and try convincing people to leave the platforms which banned them and/or convince advertisers to apply pressure to let them stay.
You have to appreciate the absurdity of getting airtime on nearly every right wing media platform to complain about being silenced, though.
Arguing private platforms should be forced to keep Nazi rhetoric around isn't meaningfully different from arguing I shouldn't be able to kick a guest out of my house when they start spouting intolerable bullshit.
The vast majority of the speech was not “nazism.” It was mainstream political opinion that one side tried to shove into the box containing the taboo we have for real nazism. And if your response to argue “distinctions” then you invite the response you get from the other side. Norms are two-way streets and can only be established through cooperation. Norms will only be defended if each side puts up with stuff they detest and trusts the other side will reciprocate. If you care about free speech as a norm you don’t help it by trying to do this line drawing.
My objection to their comment is that the right does not protect these values.
I have zero idea what they're talking about contrasting against. They seem to be suggesting the center and left do not respect these rights and the far right does.
> Apparently they missed Ron Wyden (co-sponsor) of the bill is a Democrat and the bill is a bi-partisan effort?
And why should that matter? Your assumption here is that these two parties are different to one another AND not corrupt. I don't see why these two assumptions should be true intrinsically. Can you explain why, if a Democrat does xyz, one should not be wary anymore?
As for "bi-partisan effort": look at public hearings recently. On simple questions such as was the storm of the capitol an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government, all the clown members of the current clown administration dodged to answer that. Any more questions necessary here?
> Or the fact the EFF is actually in support of the bill
And why would that matter either? The EFF is not a holy shield that has taken away people's ability to think for themselves. I don't need any moral compass given by EFF or anyone else to know where and when and how corruption works.
Who are you referring to? At the time I'm replying to this, there are 4 other top-level comments on this thread, and the only one even implying that it was a partisan effort was someone mentioning the "current regime" in a joking sort of way. Everyone knows that Liberals also want to limit free speech. That's not new.
I am conflicted. On the one hand getting governments to wade into what is fair speech is absolutely a slippery slope. Yet, platform firms are not correctly incenvitived arbiters of speech either.
Square this circle:
1) Big Social Media firms have to make decisions on speech.
2) The ideals of free speech that everyone espouses are from an era where publishing and control of publishing was nascent.
3) As businesses, it is their job to ensure they take care of their shareholders, and thus this means driving engagement.
4) As humans, we respond and engage with certain stimului more actively than others.
5) As of 2026, moderation is still value driven. Private entities must now what is fair speech and moderate according to their values.
6) Platforms, following the incentives that are set out for them, create environments that are as addictive as possible for its users. This is what their job is.
You can make small enclaves for long form content. However, the majority of the voting population is drugged to the gills with enrapturing content.
This is not a recipie for a healthy information economy, this is the opium wars being waged by our own business structures on our own people - a druggie information economy.
Giving governments more power is ... oof... a bad idea. We need more genuine efforts to ensure a healthier content environment that works for society.
Do note, that while US based commenters are concerned, the situation is even worse in other nations, given that Authoritarianism is on an upswing. Figuring this out is not a trivial philosophical issue.
> Big Social Media firms have to make decisions on speech.
The fiction underlying their section 230 liability shield is that they don’t have to make those decisions. They’re just “dumb pipes” for user generated content. The Supreme Court punted on this issue in Twitter v. Taamneh but it’s going to get resolved eventually.
This is a common but backwards misconception. Section 230 was written to ensure that online platforms could make decisions on speech and did not have to just be dumb pipes. Congress was worried that a "dumb pipe only" regulatory regime was taking shape through court decisions, which would have forced platforms to choose between letting users post obscene rants and accepting liability for anything defamatory users might say.
This bill is about enhancing the protections of lawful free-speech under the US constitution.
Generally speaking, we deem various kinds of speech that harms people as NOT protected under the first amendment, and that kind of speech would not be protected here.
Yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, libel and slander, speech calling for violence, and fraudulent advertising are some typical examples of speech not protected by the first amendment.
It would be tricky, but we could reasonably categorize engagement algorithms with certain properties as harmful to people and not subject to first amendment protections. This would be consumer protection, like laws against fraudulent advertising and other misleading claims.
The exceptions you're listing are mostly real but much more narrow than you're thinking. Only threats of imminent violence are excepted; it's completely protected by the First Amendment to say things like "it's getting to a point where we might have to be violent" or "I would commit violence if suchandsuch were to happen to me", even if other people reasonably find those statements to be stressful and alarming. Similarly, while defamation as such is illegal, it's not defamatory to say something like "John is a stupid fool who can't be trusted", even if I know many people think he's smart and trustworthy and even if his reputation is ruined by my statement.
There's simply no general principle that speech which harms people can be restricted.
The video is educational. It uses an extreme scenario to make its point, but that's because it's being illustrative.
Okay, so maybe you don't believe a lawyer. Let's try a different lawyer that's more famous.
> So, there you have it: obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, and speech integral to criminal conduct. Throw in true threats - which was left out of this list for some reason - and child pornography, and you’ve got the categories. Note that the Court specifically identifies them as well-known and historic, not as in flux.
> we could reasonably categorize engagement algorithms with certain properties as harmful to people and not subject to first amendment protections
This is a hope, however I have not seen any effort that wasn't scuppered, until recently.
The social media bans are a lurch in that direction.
I could separate them out into different strands:
1) Society saying that the engagement algorithms is not what we want to have in our lives or the lives of our children
2) Problematic technical implementations, or benign technical implementations that invade privacy and support government gaining more powers over speech.
Any regulation shaping algorithms is perilously close to shaping speech. Now if you say algorithms are speech or editorial decisions that platforms have their own freedom to choose, then you essentially strip them of their protections.
This would force a form of moderation that would have most people up in arms on HN.
I fully admit, I am being rough in my cuts; the point I am attempting to make is that any decision to decide what constitutes protected and unprotected speech is going to be government interference.
It may even be likely that the firms such as Meta or Tik Tok would end up as untenable under such rules.
> Generally speaking, we deem various kinds of speech that harms people as NOT protected under the first amendment, and that kind of speech would not be protected here.
That is not a general principle. Consider the following: it is now illegal to say the word “election” because it would harm the President.
Ultimtately, though, while the billionaires running the show are ruthless, their puppets in the current administration are really so incompetent that they will literally ruin everything, including their own corrupt ambitions.
So the EFF and ACLU seem to support this bill. I'm skeptical given one of the sponsors is Ted Cruz who famously said [1]:
> After earlier stating he first ran for Congress in 2012 “with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate,”
Texas has laws that government contractors must promise not to boycott the state of Israel [2]. 35+ US states have similar laws [3]. This on its face seems like a government restriction on speech, squarely violating the First Amendment. The Supreme Court, who otherwise love to pay lip service to the First Amendment, go out of their way to avoid anti-BDS challenges [4]. Courts have generally split hairs here saying anti-BDS impacts commerce and is speec-neutral. That's a complete cop out.
So do I think that Ted Cruz really cares about free speech? Not for a second. I suspect that if this passes, it'll only ever be applied in cases where governments officials attack conservative misinformation (eg stolen elections, anti-vaxxer anything). Any speech contradicting US foreign policy will be labelled as domestic terrorism so First Amendment freedoms don't seem to apply (I suspect).
US tech platforms already have incredible conservative bias. Meta's policy chief, Jordana Cutler (who worked in Benjamin Netanyahu's office), boasts about taking down pro-Palestinian content [5]. Twitter is a Nazi shithole [6]. And worse [7]. The whole manosphere, which is an alt-right entry point, flourishes on every platform.
So, no, I have no confidence in anything Ted Cruz supports.
I think "government pressure" needs to be defined. If vaccination misinformation is spreading like wildfire on social media, and measles and other deadly diseases are getting out of control, and the government urges social media to control the spread of misinformation, is that "government pressure" and should it be illegal?
Now you can argue that the right way to counter misinformation is by countering it with legit information, and that's certainly a valid argument.
But that idealistic approach quickly runs into a wall. As Bill Gates said on Oprah's show, "We were a bit naive: we thought the internet, with the availability of information, would make us all a lot more factual. The fact that people would seek out—kind of a niche of misinformation—we were a bit naive."
So yes, people seek out misinformation, because of some inherent belief that there is a vast conspiracy going on that they aren't aware of, and the more conspiratorial some news sounds, the more likely they are to believe it. So you can't necessarily fight misinformation with legit information, unfortunately. As a result, a public health crisis is likely if social media companies do nothing to control the spread of misinformation.
> and the government urges social media to control the spread of misinformation, is that "government pressure" and should it be illegal?
Honestly, yeah. The government can counterprogram. But it shouldn’t be allowed to pressure anyone to take that content down (or limit its visibility).
Half the reason this anti-vax nonsense gained staying power is as a backlash to such government interventions.
The proper solution to misinformation is standard liability. If you say measles vaccines are useless and cause autism, neither of which is true, and someone’s kid dies of measles after listening to you, you cut them a cheque. (But don’t go to jail.)
There is an important difference between government persuasion and government coercion. The government should not be allowed to threaten platforms with punishment unless they remove lawful speech. But public-health officials should be allowed to tell platforms, "This claim is false, it is contributing to real-world harm, and we urge you to reduce its reach."
Just like you and I have a right to free speech, so does the government. The government can urge, warn, criticize, request, and share public-health information.
> public-health officials should be allowed to tell platforms, "This claim is false, it is contributing to real-world harm, and we urge you to reduce its reach."
I think the line between that and Brendan Carr calling ABC and saying “Jimmy Kimmel is lying, he is contributing to real-world harm, and I urge you to reduce his reach” while e.g. a merger is under review or licenses up for renewal is impossible to delineate.
And again, in any case, it didn’t work. It probably threw fuel on the fire. Government shouldn’t be saying what political speech is and isn’t said. That’s what the First Amendment ensconces.
Agree, it is hard to delineate, especially when the government is run by people that are thin-skinned and retaliatory. That's what makes this issue so challenging.
But everyone here loves jawboning and agrees the government should suppress speech. Well, at least when their team is in office. Whether it's ICE Block or IVM Block, you can probably find a reason why you too think speech freedom is just a little too free for your tastes.
> But everyone here loves jawboning and agrees the government should suppress speech.
That sure is quite an assumption you're making.
Governments should have zero control over speech and zero ability to impose consequences on speech. Individuals and most groups should have absolute freedom of association, which is precisely what they're exercising when choosing not to associate with some speech and some speakers
> Perhaps you are an "absolute" free speech absolutist
Emphatically not, in the sense it's commonly used, but I think the distinction between "shunned by private individuals/groups/companies" and "prosecuted" is critically important.
I'm not going to go through all of these point-by-point, but as a couple of examples:
> - Swatting?
Inciting an action should be charged on the basis of the action and the probability of having incited it. Charge them with attempted murder. Also, fix the mechanisms that make it feasible for a person to too-easily call down excessive force on someone's home or office.
> - Yelling "Fire!" in the proverbial crowded theater?
Inciting a predictable panic that gets people injured should get you charged over the injuries. But also, the original version of that phrase was used as part of an abominably bad ruling restricting people speaking out against a military draft, so it's a bad example.
See also laws about fraud: the speech isn't the issue, the deception leading to swindling people out of something is.
Similarly, credible threats to commit a crime should be charged accordingly, not because of the speech but as prevention of an intended/planned crime. (With a great deal of caution, due to the balance between preventing it and the hazards of charging a crime that hasn't happened yet; Minority Report is not a blueprint.)
I suspect it goes to explain why this new bill is bipartisan. That case failed because the plaintiffs did not have a legal standing to sue.
"In a dissent that detailed emails, press conferences, and past decisions, Justice Alito painted the "jawboning" as "blatantly unconstitutional".
Wednesday's ruling, he wrote, "permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think"."
Regardless if one agree with them, it do demonstrate that conservative side think that there is a risk that governments will attempt to persuade platforms to moderate content, and that this is a risk. This new bill seem to make it much easier to give people a legal standing to sue, thus allowing the supreme court to give a different verdict if a similar situation happen again.
ICE Block is the app mentioned in the article which the Trump administration pressured Apple to remove from the app store. It allowed you to notify people in the area when you see ICE (presumably to give illegal aliens an opportunity to evade ICE enforcement).
IVM Block is my tongue in cheek reference to the Biden administration doing everything in their power to block discussion of a safe and effective treatment for Covid which would eliminate the legal justification for the EUA on Covid vaccines and spoil their giant investments in those pharma companies.
IIRC any FB post claiming that the Wuhan coronavirus originated in the Wuhan coronavirus lab, would be removed and could result in user ban, at request of the federal government.
The revolving door of corruption between the FDA and Pharma industry is pretty well documented. But it looks like my speech freedom is going to cost me some more karma. Darned consequences of speech freedom are at it again.
Firstly, freedom of speech does not guarantee you freedom from consequences of your speech. The government can't stop you from saying stupid shit, however it also can't stop other people from telling you you're stupid.
Second, horse dewormer doesn't cure COVID. Censoring dangerous misinformation from fools like yourself who will believe it because it's given to them via the right mouthpiece is a good idea, because if you don't, then you end up with fools like yourself, years after the fact, still regurgitating it.
There are multiple hypotheses for methods of action for IVM against covid that were plausible and deserved serious funding and investigation by governments. This did not happen. What did happen is the two people who brought it to the attention of congress got slandered the next day in the press and then got their careers destroyed. Anyone else who ever mentioned it also got dumped on by the press.
There are over 100 studies now, many of which showed positive results. Most of the studies were small.
There have been questions of the quality of many of the studies both the ones showing benefit and the ones showing no benefit. There is one well known fraudulent study and the press loves to extrapolate that to every study.
The FDA has admitted to not looking at the data.
The CDC and WHO did not write up any kind of analysis. They looked at a couple bigger studies that showed no result and said it’s inconclusive. No government has bothered to look into the RCTs that showed positive results. I don’t know if it works or not. It seems clear to me that profits, politics, power structures, got in the way of finding the answer. IVM is a very safe drug with the proper dosing. 300 to 500 million people in Africa take it yearly for parasites.
> Firstly, freedom of speech does not guarantee you freedom from consequences of your speech.
It really does, that's the entire point. If you go find somebody and physically attack them for what they've written on HN about for example medicine, that makes you the law-breaker.
I understand from the way you write that you might consider it your right to do such things to other people who don't have the same opinions as you, but freedom of speech protects them against retribution from you or anybody else, including from the government.
> It really does, that's the entire point. If you go find somebody and physically attack them for what they've written on HN about for example medicine, that makes you the law-breaker.
Yeah if I did this thing you completely made up, that would be illegal. Just like if the parent commenter was imprisoned for the post he made, that would also be illegal. Have you considered basing your politics on real things?
> I understand from the way you write that you might consider it your right to do such things to other people who don't have the same opinions as you,
Oh don't flatter yourselves. I have no interest at all in going to prison for slapping the shit out of COVID deniers. I'll happily tell you you're wrong though.
> but freedom of speech protects them against retribution from you or anybody else, including from the government.
Correct, but it doesn't protect them from social consequences, in this case getting downvoted, which is what they were pissing and moaning about.
I wouldn't say that a hacker down vote is much of a social consequence, and the other poster wasn't pissing and moaning, he was joking about it. But you were already so full of hate against "the others", that you couldn't see the humour.
Although I agree that ICE block and its various sibling apps and spinoffs are important and do accomplish something meaningful, it's certainly not a "fake thing" that many of the world's foremost experts on the relevant topics were censored with regard to epidemic response.
Facebook's treatment of the BMJ investigation of the unblinding of the Pfizer trial (which of course, turned out to be spot-on) was absolutely shocking, and is just one of the many instances of "ICE block-level" censorship.
Obviously censorship of both the location of ICE agents (or other terrorist threats bearing state decals) and censorship of discourse over the science of respiratory pathogens has been awful; I don't recall anyone here on HN cheerleading either of them.
In fact, it seems to me that you've chosen precisely two areas between which a palpable bridge exists, contradicting the two-party zeitgeist.
HN, for all its many flaws, is one of the few places where important evidence such as the diamond princess dataset and the cochrane review of evidence of mask (in)efficacy received robust discussion and, seemingly, resulted in changed minds.
Likewise, I don't recall anyone but a few trolls suggesting that Apple's assistance to ICE in covering its tracks was a legitimate exercise of state (to the extent that pressure was a factor) or corporate (to the extent that it created market esteem) pressure.
> EFF applauds Senators Cruz and Wyden for taking this critical issue seriously
Credit where it’s due, but I doubt that ICEBlock was the first thing Ted Cruz wanted to benefit from this bill
It is not that i think all right wing hosts are liars,they love to play the victim, but all I see as a source is "Joe Rogan says...". Quoting yourself is not a source.
The liberal government of the UK is moving toward complete online censorship with their bill to prevent children from going on social media sites. The reality is that they will now be able to identify and will arrest people for posting opinions they don't like. This has already been happening for the last couple of years and will now be even easier. This is exactly how it works in China.
If Democrats come into power again in the US, this will soon be coming to a computer near you.
This should be the #1 story on HN, but the tech community has been strangely silent on the subject....
I just wish the people claiming to be champions of free speech and rights will just admit that this all goes out the window when it applies to speech and people you don't like. It would make everything much easier.
> I just wish the people claiming to be champions of free speech and rights will just admit that this all goes out the window when it applies to speech and people you don't like
Try using the word "cis-gender" on Twitter and let us know how that goes.
The current FCC chairman threatens the broadcast license and to block deals of networks who air shows the president doesn’t like. These threats appear to have lead directly to the cancellation of shows — a clear violation of the first amendment, though there have been no consequences so far.
If you really care about this issue, get out of your information bubble.
Whichever party is in power, Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, have tried to suppress speech they don’t like when they get in power. If we pretend this is a partisan issue we can’t stop them.
Additionally, when I fact check what they're whining about, it is often like, "the White House requested Twitter ban medical misinformation about coronavirus, without threat of consequences, and they did."
https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/when-complaining-about...
https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-of...
https://www.rcfp.org/supreme-court-throws-out-1876-criminal-...
https://www.fire.org/cases/larry-bushart-v-perry-county
There's a lot more.
Douglass Mackey was arrested and convicted for posting satirical Clinton election ads, though this was later overturned after he spent months in prison.
It's also true, I should acknowledge, that the US has a strong system of checks and balances against stupid proclamations like this and a generally oppositional culture around speech restrictions. It's unlikely I'll be arrested for posting 8647, or indeed for pointing you to other illegal numbers like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag, and if I were I'd wear it as a badge of honor. But just because Americans are successfully fighting it doesn't mean there's no issue.
Apparently they missed Ron Wyden (co-sponsor) of the bill is a Democrat and the bill is a bi-partisan effort?
Or the fact the EFF is actually in support of the bill:
EFF applauds Senators Cruz and Wyden for taking this critical issue seriously, and we look forward to working with Congress on this bipartisan bill as it moves through the process. We hope it lands on the right balance to provide additional protections for everyday users around freedom of expression.
And thank god for that. I hope this is indicative of a larger trend in the opposite direction.
I'm not in the US, but here too free speech and other democratic values have been something the far right could contrast themselves on against the center and left. It pisses me off to no end that the issues I've been harping on about for years are now most effectively championed by a group that is otherwise ideologically opposed to me. I'm not mad at the right for this, I'm mad at the center and left who handed it to them.
Are you sure they are? Probably most people in your country would label you as far right for championing free speech, no other issues considered. Probably you are doing the same for others.
No, it assumes a bill is required to establish consequences for fundamental rights being denied.
People here are getting police visits and legal mail because they called a politician a name on twitter or get investigated over a sign they held at a political protest.
Thousands of cases at this point.
They whine about actual Nazi rhetoric earning bans on private companies' platforms, then turn around and open investigations on people criticizing their masked police force. Attending protests gets you added to the terrorist watchlist.
Nazi rhetoric earning bans on private platforms happens because a large number of people organize in protest against such rhetoric. Advertisers see this and don't want to be associated with it, so the ad-driven platforms make the obvious choice to remove the Nazis. This is an example of people exercising their free speech and their often overlooked freedom of/from association.
Nothing stops the Nazis from creating their own platform or buying out an existing one, which is why we have Gab, Truth Social, and X. They're also free to organize themselves and try convincing people to leave the platforms which banned them and/or convince advertisers to apply pressure to let them stay.
You have to appreciate the absurdity of getting airtime on nearly every right wing media platform to complain about being silenced, though.
Arguing private platforms should be forced to keep Nazi rhetoric around isn't meaningfully different from arguing I shouldn't be able to kick a guest out of my house when they start spouting intolerable bullshit.
I have zero idea what they're talking about contrasting against. They seem to be suggesting the center and left do not respect these rights and the far right does.
And why should that matter? Your assumption here is that these two parties are different to one another AND not corrupt. I don't see why these two assumptions should be true intrinsically. Can you explain why, if a Democrat does xyz, one should not be wary anymore?
As for "bi-partisan effort": look at public hearings recently. On simple questions such as was the storm of the capitol an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government, all the clown members of the current clown administration dodged to answer that. Any more questions necessary here?
> Or the fact the EFF is actually in support of the bill
And why would that matter either? The EFF is not a holy shield that has taken away people's ability to think for themselves. I don't need any moral compass given by EFF or anyone else to know where and when and how corruption works.
Square this circle:
1) Big Social Media firms have to make decisions on speech.
2) The ideals of free speech that everyone espouses are from an era where publishing and control of publishing was nascent.
3) As businesses, it is their job to ensure they take care of their shareholders, and thus this means driving engagement.
4) As humans, we respond and engage with certain stimului more actively than others.
5) As of 2026, moderation is still value driven. Private entities must now what is fair speech and moderate according to their values.
6) Platforms, following the incentives that are set out for them, create environments that are as addictive as possible for its users. This is what their job is.
You can make small enclaves for long form content. However, the majority of the voting population is drugged to the gills with enrapturing content.
This is not a recipie for a healthy information economy, this is the opium wars being waged by our own business structures on our own people - a druggie information economy.
Giving governments more power is ... oof... a bad idea. We need more genuine efforts to ensure a healthier content environment that works for society.
Do note, that while US based commenters are concerned, the situation is even worse in other nations, given that Authoritarianism is on an upswing. Figuring this out is not a trivial philosophical issue.
The fiction underlying their section 230 liability shield is that they don’t have to make those decisions. They’re just “dumb pipes” for user generated content. The Supreme Court punted on this issue in Twitter v. Taamneh but it’s going to get resolved eventually.
Generally speaking, we deem various kinds of speech that harms people as NOT protected under the first amendment, and that kind of speech would not be protected here.
Yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, libel and slander, speech calling for violence, and fraudulent advertising are some typical examples of speech not protected by the first amendment.
It would be tricky, but we could reasonably categorize engagement algorithms with certain properties as harmful to people and not subject to first amendment protections. This would be consumer protection, like laws against fraudulent advertising and other misleading claims.
There's simply no general principle that speech which harms people can be restricted.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/14/setting-1st-amendment-my...
I'm just stating facts.
https://www.popehat.com/p/the-first-amendment-isnt-absolute
Yet, what’s the point of pedantic digressions that distract and muddy rather than clarify and communicate?
Okay, so maybe you don't believe a lawyer. Let's try a different lawyer that's more famous.
> So, there you have it: obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, and speech integral to criminal conduct. Throw in true threats - which was left out of this list for some reason - and child pornography, and you’ve got the categories. Note that the Court specifically identifies them as well-known and historic, not as in flux.
https://www.popehat.com/p/the-first-amendment-isnt-absolute
This is a hope, however I have not seen any effort that wasn't scuppered, until recently.
The social media bans are a lurch in that direction.
I could separate them out into different strands:
1) Society saying that the engagement algorithms is not what we want to have in our lives or the lives of our children
2) Problematic technical implementations, or benign technical implementations that invade privacy and support government gaining more powers over speech.
Any regulation shaping algorithms is perilously close to shaping speech. Now if you say algorithms are speech or editorial decisions that platforms have their own freedom to choose, then you essentially strip them of their protections.
This would force a form of moderation that would have most people up in arms on HN.
I fully admit, I am being rough in my cuts; the point I am attempting to make is that any decision to decide what constitutes protected and unprotected speech is going to be government interference.
It may even be likely that the firms such as Meta or Tik Tok would end up as untenable under such rules.
That is not a general principle. Consider the following: it is now illegal to say the word “election” because it would harm the President.
We ban a subset of harmful speech with a direct link to clear harms, usually criminal.
On the not so bright side: this is literally KGB textbook 101. Yuri explained this in the 1980s already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apDnRRSOCk
Ultimtately, though, while the billionaires running the show are ruthless, their puppets in the current administration are really so incompetent that they will literally ruin everything, including their own corrupt ambitions.
> After earlier stating he first ran for Congress in 2012 “with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate,”
Texas has laws that government contractors must promise not to boycott the state of Israel [2]. 35+ US states have similar laws [3]. This on its face seems like a government restriction on speech, squarely violating the First Amendment. The Supreme Court, who otherwise love to pay lip service to the First Amendment, go out of their way to avoid anti-BDS challenges [4]. Courts have generally split hairs here saying anti-BDS impacts commerce and is speec-neutral. That's a complete cop out.
So do I think that Ted Cruz really cares about free speech? Not for a second. I suspect that if this passes, it'll only ever be applied in cases where governments officials attack conservative misinformation (eg stolen elections, anti-vaxxer anything). Any speech contradicting US foreign policy will be labelled as domestic terrorism so First Amendment freedoms don't seem to apply (I suspect).
US tech platforms already have incredible conservative bias. Meta's policy chief, Jordana Cutler (who worked in Benjamin Netanyahu's office), boasts about taking down pro-Palestinian content [5]. Twitter is a Nazi shithole [6]. And worse [7]. The whole manosphere, which is an alt-right entry point, flourishes on every platform.
So, no, I have no confidence in anything Ted Cruz supports.
[1]: https://www.christianpost.com/news/ted-cruz-cites-genesis-12...
[2]: https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/anti-israel-policies-are-ant...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
[4]: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/supreme-court-declines-t...
[5]: https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti...
[6]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-mus...
[7]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/07/27/twitter-...
Now you can argue that the right way to counter misinformation is by countering it with legit information, and that's certainly a valid argument.
But that idealistic approach quickly runs into a wall. As Bill Gates said on Oprah's show, "We were a bit naive: we thought the internet, with the availability of information, would make us all a lot more factual. The fact that people would seek out—kind of a niche of misinformation—we were a bit naive."
So yes, people seek out misinformation, because of some inherent belief that there is a vast conspiracy going on that they aren't aware of, and the more conspiratorial some news sounds, the more likely they are to believe it. So you can't necessarily fight misinformation with legit information, unfortunately. As a result, a public health crisis is likely if social media companies do nothing to control the spread of misinformation.
Honestly, yeah. The government can counterprogram. But it shouldn’t be allowed to pressure anyone to take that content down (or limit its visibility).
Half the reason this anti-vax nonsense gained staying power is as a backlash to such government interventions.
The proper solution to misinformation is standard liability. If you say measles vaccines are useless and cause autism, neither of which is true, and someone’s kid dies of measles after listening to you, you cut them a cheque. (But don’t go to jail.)
Just like you and I have a right to free speech, so does the government. The government can urge, warn, criticize, request, and share public-health information.
I think the line between that and Brendan Carr calling ABC and saying “Jimmy Kimmel is lying, he is contributing to real-world harm, and I urge you to reduce his reach” while e.g. a merger is under review or licenses up for renewal is impossible to delineate.
And again, in any case, it didn’t work. It probably threw fuel on the fire. Government shouldn’t be saying what political speech is and isn’t said. That’s what the First Amendment ensconces.
That sure is quite an assumption you're making.
Governments should have zero control over speech and zero ability to impose consequences on speech. Individuals and most groups should have absolute freedom of association, which is precisely what they're exercising when choosing not to associate with some speech and some speakers
Perhaps you are an "absolute" free speech absolutist, but does that include:
- Swatting?
- Doxxing?
- Yelling "Fire!" in the proverbial crowded theater?
- Liable and Slander?
- Spreading nude pictures (real or faked) or personal medical information without consent?
- Threatening (relatively) defenseless individuals with physical harm?
- Impersonation?
- Blackmail?
Emphatically not, in the sense it's commonly used, but I think the distinction between "shunned by private individuals/groups/companies" and "prosecuted" is critically important.
I'm not going to go through all of these point-by-point, but as a couple of examples:
> - Swatting?
Inciting an action should be charged on the basis of the action and the probability of having incited it. Charge them with attempted murder. Also, fix the mechanisms that make it feasible for a person to too-easily call down excessive force on someone's home or office.
> - Yelling "Fire!" in the proverbial crowded theater?
Inciting a predictable panic that gets people injured should get you charged over the injuries. But also, the original version of that phrase was used as part of an abominably bad ruling restricting people speaking out against a military draft, so it's a bad example.
See also laws about fraud: the speech isn't the issue, the deception leading to swindling people out of something is.
Similarly, credible threats to commit a crime should be charged accordingly, not because of the speech but as prevention of an intended/planned crime. (With a great deal of caution, due to the balance between preventing it and the hazards of charging a crime that hasn't happened yet; Minority Report is not a blueprint.)
I suspect it goes to explain why this new bill is bipartisan. That case failed because the plaintiffs did not have a legal standing to sue.
"In a dissent that detailed emails, press conferences, and past decisions, Justice Alito painted the "jawboning" as "blatantly unconstitutional".
Wednesday's ruling, he wrote, "permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think"."
Regardless if one agree with them, it do demonstrate that conservative side think that there is a risk that governments will attempt to persuade platforms to moderate content, and that this is a risk. This new bill seem to make it much easier to give people a legal standing to sue, thus allowing the supreme court to give a different verdict if a similar situation happen again.
IVM Block is my tongue in cheek reference to the Biden administration doing everything in their power to block discussion of a safe and effective treatment for Covid which would eliminate the legal justification for the EUA on Covid vaccines and spoil their giant investments in those pharma companies.
I've seen it discussed half a million times.
> spoil their giant investments in those pharma companies.
Whose investments?
Second, horse dewormer doesn't cure COVID. Censoring dangerous misinformation from fools like yourself who will believe it because it's given to them via the right mouthpiece is a good idea, because if you don't, then you end up with fools like yourself, years after the fact, still regurgitating it.
It really does, that's the entire point. If you go find somebody and physically attack them for what they've written on HN about for example medicine, that makes you the law-breaker.
I understand from the way you write that you might consider it your right to do such things to other people who don't have the same opinions as you, but freedom of speech protects them against retribution from you or anybody else, including from the government.
Yeah if I did this thing you completely made up, that would be illegal. Just like if the parent commenter was imprisoned for the post he made, that would also be illegal. Have you considered basing your politics on real things?
> I understand from the way you write that you might consider it your right to do such things to other people who don't have the same opinions as you,
Oh don't flatter yourselves. I have no interest at all in going to prison for slapping the shit out of COVID deniers. I'll happily tell you you're wrong though.
> but freedom of speech protects them against retribution from you or anybody else, including from the government.
Correct, but it doesn't protect them from social consequences, in this case getting downvoted, which is what they were pissing and moaning about.
Facebook's treatment of the BMJ investigation of the unblinding of the Pfizer trial (which of course, turned out to be spot-on) was absolutely shocking, and is just one of the many instances of "ICE block-level" censorship.
(In case you need a refresher on the Facebook-censors-BMJ drama, I summarized it a few months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232902 )
In fact, it seems to me that you've chosen precisely two areas between which a palpable bridge exists, contradicting the two-party zeitgeist.
HN, for all its many flaws, is one of the few places where important evidence such as the diamond princess dataset and the cochrane review of evidence of mask (in)efficacy received robust discussion and, seemingly, resulted in changed minds.
Likewise, I don't recall anyone but a few trolls suggesting that Apple's assistance to ICE in covering its tracks was a legitimate exercise of state (to the extent that pressure was a factor) or corporate (to the extent that it created market esteem) pressure.