I genuinely believe that free speech should have limits in order to maintain the cohesion of our societies and protect people from mobs. I don't think I've been brainwashed into it, I've just seen what unbridled and unchecked hate speech can lead to.

Of course there's the problem of where the line should be drawn and who should draw it, but in order to have this discussion we need to move away from these strawmen (strawpersons?) and accept that maybe people just have convictions they haven't been brainwashed into.

After all, I'm sure you wouldn't be very happy if I erected billboards along the highway featuring hardcore pedopornography with your faced photoshopped in. One way or an other we all have limits to what we consider acceptable expression, it's all about figuring out how this should be codified and enforced.

And I want to add that having taboo topics and forms of expression is probably a good thing overall. For our lives to have meaning we need "sacred" things to protect, things to fight against, things to think about. We need to be able to shock, we need to be able to be transgressive, to make revolutions and counter-revolutions, to express frustration.

Maybe this belief about most people being stupid is correct, therefore free speech must indeed be limited, but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell what they really think in the face of those whom they want to protect.

> ... In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

...as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise...

It's only when the other side has abandoned discourse and is interested in meeting you with force that tolerance is to be abandoned.

By analogy, imagine if someone commits murder. Would putting them to death as punishment also be murder? No. You have the right to life as long as you respect other people's right to the same.

This is the most unfortunate consequence of the idea that free speech must be limited.

If it is accepted that a part of the people cannot be trusted to not do wrong things when others tell them to do so, then an unavoidable consequence is that to that part of the people the right to vote must also be denied, because if they may be convinced by lies to do very wrong things, like violence, then it is even more certain that they will be easily convinced by lies to do a minor mistake, like casting a wrong vote.

Any proposal to deny the right of voting to stupid people, or to give different weight to the votes, depending on the "intelligence" of the voters, would rightly generate huge protests.

However, any proposal to restrict the free speech without also restricting the right to vote is logically inconsistent, even if many seem to not notice this.

Do you trust people who live in an echo chamber overrun with disinformation to deduce the truth about the outcome of the US election? If so, can you speak to the mechanism by which such people can determine the truth? And could you speak to the empirical failure of this population to discover the truth?

So are countries that have more limits on free speech than what the US has, less democratic than the US?

Many European countries have more restrictions on free speech than USA, so yes, they are less democratic by this criterion.

By other criteria, e.g. by evaluating how many abusive laws they have that favor a few rich individuals that own some large companies against the majority of the citizens, most European countries are more democratic than USA.

The same conclusion comes from other criteria, like how easy is for most citizens to access education or health services.

You're leaving out some very well-established restrictions on free speech, including slander, libel, copyright infringement, obscenity, privacy violation... in short, absolutism hasn't been a prevailing philosophy for centuries. This sudden resurgence of it feels like a refusal to engage with the very real, very difficult debate on what speech deserves censorship.

It doesn't have anything at all to do with intelligence, but the observed consequences of certain kinds of speech. Lies, for example, that manipulate peoples' emotions. This is not unique to "stupid people."

There is a huge difference between punishing someone for something already done, e.g. slander or libel, and denying him access to publication media because you believe that in the future that person might say something that might have who knows what effect on other people, who might do some crimes.

I completely agree that whoever abuses the free speech right to do something punishable by law must be judged and punished if found guilty.

On the other hand, I do not agree with any of these "deplatforming" actions based on vague beliefs about the future actions of some people.

If Trump or anyone else is expected to do a speech crime, then watch him and, as soon as he does that, fine him or arrest him.

If he already did such a crime, then also fine him or arrest him.

Otherwise, "deplatforming" him has no basis in facts.

Is this the case here?

The statements in question are already made. Typically, the deplatforming happens after a violation has already been made. Which seems to be the case here, unless I am misunderstanding.

However, this discussion thread started about the actions done against Parler.

I had not previously heard about Parler, but I understand that the efforts to stop its activity are based on claims that it does not perform adequate censorship of the content published there, unlike Facebook or Twitter.

If there are people that have published there things that are punishable by law, they should be punished. If Parler itself has done something illegal, then they should be punished.

However, if some private companies sabotage Parler based on the fact that Parler does not have the same censorship rules as themselves, then that is clearly wrong.

From what I have heard here, it might be good if Parler disappears, but I cannot accept that the end justifies the means.

I don't know about this part. the narrative seems to be more about protecting the vulnerable from the stupid, not so much protecting the stupid from themselves.

It's not them I want to protect (though I don't have any explicit desire for them to _not_ be protected). It's me I want to protect. Your right to swing your fists ends at the tip of my nose, and your right to yell "Fire!" or "Stop the steal" or "Storm the Bastille!" are likewise constrained when they infringe on my rights.

The practical implementation and realisation of rights is always a trade-off of rights vs rights. What is under discussion is where the balance of those trade-offs lay.

Having said that, there is a very strong case to be made that we need to address people's propensity to listen to, invest in, and act on, obvious bullshit (e.g. flat-earthers, reptilians etc). More than education is required. My brother-in-law - a highly functioning, tertiary educated small business owner and nice guy - is a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracist, believing the most outrageous things. Having a rational discussion with him has not budged him from his beliefs one iota. I believe it's a psychological condition as common as depression or anxiety.

There are no easy answers nor quick fixes for this problem.

I don't see why this is true; intelligent people can be harmed by speech just as much as stupid people can. Everyone can certainly be harmed by the immediate follow-on effects of speech. Some words can harm in a way it is unreasonable to expect guard against, or those for which it is impossible to guard against.

The scholarly literature on speech, harm, and legality has dozens of such examples.

>but I do not see any of the advocates of limiting free speech having the courage to tell

I can courageously say now that I'm not in favor of restrictions on speech for reasons of "stupidity" but rather the demonstrable harm speech can cause.

But if you did, how is that different from worker protections or consumer protections or environmental protections or mandatory seatbelt or million other laws?

Inciting violence, endangering someone with false speech, committing fraud: they're already a crime and they're not covered by free speech.

edit: it seems people have misunderstood my comment to take a position. I' m taking issue with the idea that "free speech doesn't need limits" followed by a listing of limits applied to free speech. If we can't agree that there even exists such limits and that perhaps they're necessary any discussion below is fruitless.

I'm skeptical that such a line can ever be truly "settled." Sure, it can be settled in a particular social and technological context, but when those latter things change, the line may need to be adjusted.

TLDR: yeah, the law can change, but it's highly unlikely because "the United States Supreme Court has been more consistently protective of free speech than of any other right, especially in the face of media sensibilities about "harmful" words"

[1] https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-...

It's worth noting that no legally forbidden censorship has been happening with regards to the recent insurrection against congress.

> TLDR: yeah, the law can change, but it's highly unlikely because "the United States Supreme Court has been more consistently protective of free speech than of any other right, especially in the face of media sensibilities about "harmful" words"

But that's not a fixed fact of nature, it's a reaction to a particular social and technological context.

For instance, if someone discovers an idea instantly turns 10% those who hear it into murderous zealots (sort of like the poem in "The Tyranny of Heaven" by Stephen Baxter), that idea is going to censored hard and the Supreme Court will be like "yup, ban it."

Likewise, if some social change or technology renders the legal regime that the Supreme Court has created a cause of serious dysfunction, then Supreme Court is going to have to change that regime to accommodate. Idealism's great, but not when it doesn't work.

Yes, this is true as far as I am aware as well. But I find myself in a conundrum; had this "inciting" speech taken place in the town square or a public park, much of it likely could not have been censored because it would have been protected by the 1st amendment and the last 100 years of case law. Where, then, is the town square and public park of 2021?

Despite the fact that the legal protections of public speech haven't changed much in decades, the practical protections of public speech (as I discuss in greater detail in [1]) have indeed been eroded, because social media platforms and, apparently, web hosting and device makers are now the arbiters of the vast majority of speech. Free speech that only applies where virtually noone can hear you is a very limited free speech indeed.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662466

The existence of Twitter, Facebook, etc. have accustomed people to the ability to air their opinions globally free of charge, however that is a very novel phenomenon. It's hard for me, having come of age in the 1980s/1990s, to see this as an inalienable right.

You have a right to speak, but not a right to reach.

The majority of speech always took place in areas with some kind of limits. For instance: in some guy's tavern or in the pages of a local newspaper.

Furthermore, what's happening to Parler could also be conceived as a kind of self-defense exception: the factions it embraced have recently attempted to literally attack (in the name of a selfish demagogue) the heart of the liberal order that enables free speech, and they cannot be tolerated if toleration is to survive.

The majority of conversation in democracies has always taken place in private venues that were free to control who had access and did absolutely do so based on political viewpoint.

That these private spaces are now virtual rather than physical doesn't change the essence of that fact.

I think it should at least be a line open to challenge without being accused of being brainwashed. If that line cannot be questioned, we're skating on dogmatism. There are very few good reasons for a special guarantee of free speech (versus, say, a special guarantee to be able to eat fries) which stand up to closer scrutiny.

The only convincing reason for a constitutional guarantee to freedom of speech is mistrust in the government, but again, that depends where you draw the line. Food regulation is arguably just as important in our lives, but few mistrust the FDA as to call for its abolition, or propose a constitutional amendment banning all regulation of foods.

This isn't a matter of what the law is, it's a matter of what the law should be - whether it's a constitutional law or not.

But I shouldn't be obligated to let someone put a sign saying that on my lawn, nor should I be obligated to remain friends with someone who is pushing that lie.

Most of the people who are complaining about free speech being limited are really arguing for things like the above.

You running a corner store the way you want is fine, you running the only store in the country the way you want is not.

You know, you don't need AWS to run a website, right? Similarly, newspapers have often been local monopolies, but as far as I know, they've always been able to decline to publish a letter to the editor.

Whoever wants to stick a sign on my lawn is going to come up with some rationale to force me to do it, but that doesn't mean it holds any water.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

"You're allowed to talk people into believing that they need to violently rebel, but you're not allowed to actually do the rebelling" is not a particularly reasonable position.

There is a good reason twitter, facebook, youtube does remove certain content. They have the right to remove whatever they want.

If someone publishes fake news about vaccines, it takes a lot of effort then for people to keep explaining to other people how this is not true. It is harmful to society, and unfair - it takes less time to invent a new hoax than to fact-check it.

Just like loitering on the ground is considered an offence, so should be publishing fake news. It doesn't hurt one person, but it hurts society.

There also are objective criteria for determining if something is fake or not - so it is possible to create laws that forbid it and don't limit a freedom of opinion.

What seems to be under attack here is the right of individual companies and people to decide who they wish to work with. Everyone who is criticizing big tech for choosing not to work with certain people is forgetting that that same principle can be applied to them. Do you want to be forced to work with companies you abhor?

You mention protected classes in your first paragraph, but then act like it's self-evident that it's bad to "force people to work with (and serve) people they abhor". What else is the concept of a protected class if not this?

It's clear that we already don't have full freedom of association, and the question is where the line should be drawn. When people talk about big tech regulation, it's undergirded by many of these platforms' unique amount of market power. This isn't a novel concept; utility companies are an example of a natural monopoly: benefiting from scale, considered critical infrastructure, and legally prohibited from cutting off power to its customers, even if they don't like their politics. The topic under discussion here is whether the "new public square" (or things like payment infrastructure!) are considered critical enough to society that we want to protect access to them.

I'm constitutionally (not "Constitutionally") disinclined against ill-considered regulation, and most of the conversation by government about tech regulation is pants-on-head stupid. But the dissonance between the two paras in your comment are a good indication that this discussion isn't nearly as simple as you're framing it.

There are important differences, but the parallels between the Rwandan genocide and the growth of talk radio in the US in the 90's have always struck me as interesting.

That being said, I think that the new public square argument is strong, and if we're going to have internet monopolies, then they probably need to be regulated similarly to the utilities.

Alternatively, they can be broken up. I don't think the current state is sustainable over the longer term.

It's not irrelevant.

> What seems to be under attack here is the right of individual companies and people to decide who they wish to work with.

To the extent that that is based on expressive preference, that is an aspect of free speech, and the closely-related right of free association.

Limiting that right is limiting free speech.

For example, it’s a form of free speech for Microsoft to decide how they write their own software. One of those decisions was to bundle a free web browser in with their OS and tie the OS function tightly together with that browser. Microsoft Corporation was almost broken up by the government because they did that.

The issue that Greenwald is raising is similarly rooted in anti-trust;

> If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine anything more compelling than how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor.

Freedom of speech is not absolute. Just like individuals’ free speech rights have limits such as incitement to violence, corporations also have limits to their “free speech” rights based in anti-trust law and anti-racketeering laws in how they can attack potential competitors.

That the outcome here is banning a community that was apparently mostly used for hate speech (never actually checked it out) is... maybe a red herring? I mean, they obviously didn't build these massive companies with the primary goal of banning niche hateful websites.

If we were to, say, break up social media and internet infrastructure giants, then this sort of website would probably be able to persist by hopping from host to host until they found one without any morals. But could consider if losing the ability to perform this kind of deplatforming would be worth it, in exchange for a much more competitive marketplace.

I think it is actually a really tricky situation.

Ultimately, if not one of the hundreds of hosting companies out there wants to work with you, that should be a very strong indication that the community is not something we want. But if you really really want this community anyways, just hook up your computer to an internet connection and host the site yourself.

However, I want to repeat what I have already replied to another similar post.

All these speech crimes should be punished according to the law, as soon as they are committed.

Restricting the speech of someone, by denying access to publication media, just because it is believed that they might commit some speech crime in the future, that is clearly an arbitrary and baseless restriction of the free speech right.

If I threaten to kill you, or commit fraud, in person, you call the police, give them what information you have about me, and ideally I get a knock on the door. If I do it online, well, you don't have much recourse.

If the author can be identified, which is frequently true, then it should be the same for online as for in person.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25752536

Saying things like "I support Nazis" could be considered a valid political opinion protected by free speech in some countries and illegal hate speech in others.

Imagine saying this in June 2020

When you block traffic? When you enter a secured space? When you break into a federal building? When you set fire to a federal building? When you set fire to cop cars? When you break windows of local businesses? When you loot local businesses? When you spray paint hate speech? When you threaten cops families with death? When you throw fireworks at people? When you throw Molotov cocktails at people?

These all occurred in large numbers during between the death of George Floyd and the Capitol Riot. How many times did big tech step and and stop the coordinating efforts for those protests/riots?

People will praise the Arab Spring organizing on Twitter without considering the implications for the events at the Capital on Jan 6th.

People are fine with Parler getting banned by all their vendors for not moderating violence and threats. But people would loose their minds if the same thing happened to Facebook for their failure to moderate violence around the Rohingyan genocide.

The reason why someone might hold these competing beliefs is simple: they strongly value democratic institutions. Violence, in the name of promoting democratic institutions, and ideally expanding human rights, is justifiable. Violence in the name of authoritarian insurrection is not.

Now, of course this gets really tricky, because many people on Parler, and in the capitol riots, fully believed that they were protecting democracy from massive voter-fraud. No clear answer to address that issue, but it is something that democratic societies will need to reckon with. How does one preserve democratic ideals (including promoting free speech, to whatever extent possible), while still maintaining a healthy society that doesn't tear itself apart?

This is a great point. It's also key to consider that some of the groups that praised the Arab Spring were the Obama State Department which was led by Hillary Clinton at the time.

It appears the threshold is "support violent insurrection in other countries but stamp out the discussion of it here".

(The United States had an election, right? One with no more than the usual, minor, issues, right? One where legal actions were taken and weighed appropriately, right? One where one specific loser seems only to be complaining about losing, right? One where all of the other contemporaneous votes were not objected to, right? One that will be revisited in 2 to 4 years, right?)

"In this case, the district court issued an emergency temporary restraining order at the plaintiffs’ request, worked at a breakneck pace to provide them an opportunity for broader relief, and was ready to enter an appealable order on the merits of their claims immediately after its expedited hearing on December 4, 2020. But the plaintiffs would not take the district court’s “yes” for an answer. They appealed instead. And, because they appealed , the evidentiary hearing has been stayed and the case considerably delayed. For our part, the law requires that we dismiss the appeal and return the case to the district court for further proceedings."

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.284055...

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/voting-ri... does have links, but not always to the court filings. (There's a crap-ton of lawsuits in Georgia.)

And then there's https://healthyelections-case-tracker.stanford.edu/cases.

Many of the court records can apparently be found on democracydocket.com, but my browser is complaining about the site. Sorry.

Trump v. Kemp, 1:20-cv-5310 (N.D. Ga.) (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.285271...) (from https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/voting-ri...) is interesting, though. The plaintiff's first claim is that the election was not conducted in accord with election laws established by the GA legislature. The court decides "Therefore, Plaintiffs Electors Clause claim belongs, if it belongs to anyone, only to the Georgia General Assembly" and since none of the plaintiffs are members of the assembly, they don't have standing. (That's rather fine logic chopping, but....)

The rest of the ruling seems to be that the governor and secretary of state of the state are not the ones legally responsible for verification of ballots, so the second claim cannot apply to them.

It sounds like a good example, massive allegations of fraud and what-not. But it was voluntarily dismissed. After a Trump/Raffensperger phone conference. Yes, that conference (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/04/trumps-phone...). The Trump team accepted the terms of the settlement from R., that Georgia share information about the election outside the court process in return for Trump, et al, dismissing the suits. (https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/...).

I can hear the smug smiles.

For example, Bowyer et al. v. Ducey et al., which has a currently unresolved (https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-azd-2_20-cv-023... is the latest federal dismissal) but the dismissal refers to Ward, CV 2020-015285 (Ariz. 2020); (Doc. 81-1) (and has a short explanation of the ruling that goes into the evidence).

So, that brings me to Ward v. Jackson et al (CV2020-015285) (https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/records/election-2020/...). https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=1... is the minutes of the first evidentiary hearing and https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=1... is the minutes of the second evidentiary hearing and ruling. (The minutes don't include the evidence, just who gave testimony and what the evidence is.) The ruling is 1) Background, 2) The Burden Of Proof In An Election Contest ("The Plaintiff in an election contest has a high burden of proof and the actions of election officials are presumed to be free from fraud and misconduct."), 3) The Evidence Does Not Show Fraud Or Misconduct (see below), 4) The Evidence Does Not Show Illegal Votes, 5) The Evidence Does Not Show An Erroneous Vote Count, and 6) Orders.

P: "A.R.S. § 16-672(A)(1) permits an election contest “[f]or misconduct on the part of election boards or any members thereof in any of the counties of the state, or on the part of any officer making or participating in a canvass for a state election.” Plaintiff alleges misconduct in three respects. First is that insufficient opportunity was given to observe the actions of election officials."

C: "The observation procedures for the November general election were materially the same as for the August primary election, and any objection to them should have been brought at a time when any legal deficiencies could have been cured."

P: "Second, Plaintiff alleges that election officials overcounted mail-in ballots by not being sufficiently skeptical in their comparison of signatures on the mail-in envelope/affidavits with signatures on file."

C: "Maricopa County election officials followed [the Secretary of State’s Election Procedures Manual, with multiple verification steps] process faithfully in 2020. Approximately 1.9 million mail-in ballots were cast and, of these, approximately 20,000 were identified that required contacting the voter. Of those, only 587 ultimately could not be validated.[...] The Court ordered that counsel and their forensic document examiners could review 100 randomly selected envelope/affidavits to do a signature comparison. [...] Of the 100 envelope/affidavits reviewed, Plaintiff’s forensic document examiner found 6 signatures to be “inconclusive,” meaning she could not testify that the signature on the envelope/affidavit matched the signature on file. She found no sign of forgery or simulation as to any of these ballots. Defendants’ expert testified that 11 of the 100 envelopes were inconclusive, mostly because there were insufficient specimens to which to compare them. He too found no sign of forgery or simulation, and found no basis for rejecting any of the signatures. [...] None of them shows an abuse of discretion on the part of the reviewer. Every one of them listed a phone number that matched a phone number already on file, either through voter registration records or from a prior ballot. The evidence does not show that these affidavits are fraudulent, or that someone other than the voter signed them. There is no evidence that the manner in which signatures were reviewed was designed to benefit one candidate or another, or that there was any misconduct, impropriety, or violation of Arizona law with respect to the review of mail-in ballots."

P: "Third, Plaintiff alleges errors in the duplication of ballots. Arizona law requires election officials to duplicate a ballot under a number of circumstances. One is where the voter is overseas and submits a ballot under UOCAVA, the Uniformed And Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Another is where the ballot is damaged or otherwise cannot be machine-tabulated."

C: "The Court ordered that counsel could review 100 duplicate ballots. Maricopa County voluntarily made another 1,526 duplicate ballots available for review. [...] Of the 1,626 ballots reviewed, 9 had an error in the duplication of the vote for president. Plaintiff called a number of witnesses who observed the duplication process as credentialed election observers. There was credible testimony that they saw errors in which the duplicated ballot did not accurately reflect the voter’s apparent intent as reflected on the original ballot. This testimony is corroborated by the review of the 1,626 duplicate ballots in this case, and it confirms both that there were mistakes in the duplication process, and that the mistakes were few. When mistakes were brought to the attention of election workers, they were fixed. The duplication process prescribed by the Legislature necessarily requires manual action and human judgment, which entail a risk of human error. Despite that, the duplication process for the presidential election was 99.45% accurate. And there is no evidence that the inaccuracies were intentional or part of a fraudulent scheme. They were mistakes. And given both the small number of duplicate ballots and the low error rate, the evidence does not show any impact on the outcome."

The Arizona Supreme Court decision (https://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/Home/ShowDocument?id=1...) makes for good reading. It's pretty clear, with a summary of the evidence (for the parts that were appealed). Weirdly, it takes the three claims in reverse order. I particularly liked the statements that the Secretary [of State, of Arizona] represented an error of 0.37%, while the appellants say it represented an error of 0.55%; the trial court accepted the appellants' number but it and the Supreme Court note that extrapolated to the total number of duplicated ballots, that doesn't come close to what would be required for a recount. The appellant offered no evidence that 1626 ballot sample was inadequate. The court accepts that there were irregularities, but that they did not even render the result uncertain.

So, there's one. I'll go fishing for more.

From what I know about law (NOT A LAWYER!), they're probably all in state courts---elections are state procedures---and thus not reported like the federal cases (which seem to fall into two classes: appeals, which deal with laws and procedures, not evidence, and them as were dismissed due to lack of standing since state procedures are a matter for state laws.

Nevada! Law v. Whitmer, No. 20 OC 00163 1B (Dist. Ct., Carson City, Nevada), No. 82178 (Nev. Sup. Ct.) (https://healthyelections-case-tracker.stanford.edu/detail?id...) Complaint: https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/..., Order granting dismissal: https://www.8newsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2020/12....

Let's talk AI. In this case, Clark county used a machine to sort mail-in ballots and to do a first pass validation of signatures. For 453,248 ballots. For reasons, including that the signature exemplars from the DMV were less than 200DPI, 70% of the ballots were viewed as sketchy, while 30% were found machine-okey-dokey and passed on without further review. The complaint wants those 130,000 votes invalidated.

The interesting thing is that the 70% that required manual review, 1-1.5% were initially rejected due to signature mismatch. Most were "cured" by voters (presumably by officials actually contacting the voters), leaving 0.3% to be completely rejected. The court notes that Washoe county (not using the magic machine) had a pre-cure reject rate of 1.53%. [So, if I have my sums right, the complaint wants 130,000 (30% of mail-in votes) plus some unknown number (greater than 1%) of the remainder invalidated, full stop, because between 1,400 and 6,900 were invalid. Or something.]

The complaint also includes Nevada's electronic voting machines ("not less than 1000 illegal and improper votes" counted and "not less than 1000 legal and proper votes" not counted). And no less than 15,000 illegal and improper mail-in votes from out-of-state. And the USPS, which was "directed" to deliver mail-in ballots where the addressee was deceased, moved, or had no known affiliation with the address. No less than 500 votes from dead people. There are also allegations of fraud in vote counting and observation. (It's a laundry list.)

According to the court, the Agilis sorting machines were determined to be ok in a previous case, Klaus v. Cegavske (which I have yet to look up).

As far as evidence, the court ordered the contestants to disclose all witnesses and evidence they intended to use by 5:00 pm Nov. 25. The contestants did not issue their first deposition notices until Nov. 27. Therefore the contestants' evidence consists of non-deposition witness declarations, with no cross-examination. The court considered these hearsay.

Michael Baselice offered expert evidence on the incidence of illegal voting based on a phone survey. He was unable to identify the source of his data and conducted no quality control. Similar questions faced Jesse Kamzol's analysis of various databases of voters. Scott Gessler's report lacked citations of facts and evidence and did not include any exhibits in support of his conclusions; his conclusions are based on a handful of affidavits. The complainants' experts were found to be of little or no value, but were not excluded from consideration, although given little weight.

The defendants provided a stack of testimony that court judged credible (including Dr. Michael Herron and the president of the company manufacturing Agilis).

Based on Herron's testimony, the court finds no evidence of a higher rate of voter fraud associated with mail-in voting. He also found that an illegal vote rate of 0.00054 percent between 2012 and prior to the 2020 general election. Herron testified that the contestant's implied double voting rate was 89 times larger than a conservative academic estimate. He finally testified that the contestants provided no persuasive evidence that fraudulent votes affected the presidential margin of 33,596 votes. (Gessler also testified that he had no personal knowledge of any voter fraud.)

The court found that the record does not support allegations of problems with provisional ballots.

The court found that the Agilis machine did not accept any signatures that should have been rejected and that the record did not support a finding that ballots with improper signatures were counted.

And on, and on. The court finds that the record does not support the allegations of the complainants, hearsay declarations included, under "any standards of evidence". The contestants failed to meet their burden and the case was dismissed.

I'm going to bed.

Here's one from Michigan based on affidavits from eye-witnesses, trying for an injunction forcing an independent audit of the election: https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/... (Love the URL. But no cut-n-paste.)

J claims that election workers coached voters and was instructed not to ask for photo ID from voters. However J does not name the location, provide the number of incidents, or name the employees. J never told a supervisor of the incidents nor took steps to address them. (J only came forward after reports of Biden winning.) J also claims, at the TCF center, she was directed not to compare signatures and to "pre-date" absentee ballots received at TCF on Dec. 4. The State Elections Director, CT, answers that signatures were previously verified at the Detroit Election Headquarters and that the "pre-dating" involved completing a data field inadvertently left blank during that earlier process. (I wonder if Michigan use the envelope/affidavit and anonymous ballot approach like Arizona, which ideally would have stripped off the signature part before vote counting for privacy. Michigan may need to do some work, if vote counters can match signatures with ballots.)

State Senator RJ wasn't there and makes claims based on other affidavits.

AS was a Republican challenger that didn't attend the training. AS claims out-of-state license plates brought "tens of thousands" of ballots in at 4:30 am, and that every ballot after that was for Biden. CT responds that rental trucks with out-of-state plates were used, all ballots were brought in the same way, the number of ballots he claims is speculation, and that 220,000 more votes were made for Biden.

DG claims large numbers of ballots were delivered in unsealed containers. Plaintiffs never supplied any legal requirement that sealed containers were required.

PC claims that computers were connected to the internet, based on an icon on one of the computers, but provides no other evidence. CT asserts that only the computers that needed to be connected were. (The Court notes that CT, in a Facebook post prior to the election, claims that Democrats were using COVID to commit election fraud (They see you when you're sleeping, they know when you're awake. (I'm getting punchy here.)) and that the predilection to see fraud undermines his claims.

MC was an IT consultant from Dominion Voting Services at TCF. MC claims witnessing "nothing but fraudulent events take place" including tabulating machines that jammed a lot (?) and a cover-up of the loss of vast amounts of data. No one else corroborates MC's claims, and by no one the court says the other complaintants.

Ex-Assistant Attorney General ZL claims that he was mistreated, that ballots were processed without confirmation of eligibility, that he was unable to observe because he was required to stand 6 feet away, and that he was excluded from the room after leaving to get something to eat because he was a Republican. However, two Democratic observers were also excluded, with the reason being the maximum occupancy of the room. Further, as mentioned above, voting eligibility was determined elsewhere. A large monitor was provided to allow observation at a safe distance. ZL also did not file any complaints at the time.

There's a bit about injunctive relief, irreparable harm, and legal remedy. (Michigan law provides for the Secretary of State and county clerks to audit races, but that doesn't seem satisfactory for the plaintiffs.)

The court finds that the plaintiffs have legal remedies and suffer no harm without an injunction, but that the defendants would be harmed by an injunction, as well as the public interest. The plaintiff's affidavits are contradicted by the State Election Director, whose account is corroborated by five other affidavits. An injunction and independent audit is denied.

This one is kind of interesting, even though the "independent audit" thing seems only like some kind of delaying tactic, rather than trying to get the election discarded.

On one hand, there's the assumption that election procedures and officials are legal and fair, and the further consideration that a ruling for the plaintiffs would be a big deal. (Judges apparently don't like to be backed into a corner and forced to make rulings that result in big deals, particularly on short notice. The phrase "judicial activism" shows up, for example.) On the other, these are serious accusations that are being considered seriously.

In this case, the court decided that the plaintiffs had other options they could use, and that the affidavits were not credible enough to override other considerations.

Compare that to the Capitol insurrection, where the goal was to overturn the results of an election. To overturn the government. Where the people inciting the violence were in the same tent.

There was never good intent on the side of the insurrection it’s, and they escalated to violence on their own.

If that was really the goal you'd think they would have gunned up a little more than they did. Instead, very few people were actually armed, so that seems rather disorganized for an actual coup.

> A lot of people supported BLMs pre-violence protests because they wanted police held accountable.

So protesting for police violence makes it OK to loot stores and burn cars that have nothing to do with it? How is that EVER ok? If you condemn violence you need to condemn violence no matter who instigates it, not only when it's very convenient for one to do so. because this is exactly what was happening 6 months ago, people cheer-leading the violence on Twitter if it was BLM related.

I have no idea about what has really happened last year in USA, because the truth cannot be discovered just from video transmissions at TV or on the Internet.

Nevertheless, I have seen much more closely a large number of peaceful protests in other countries, which eventually became riots.

However it became clear later, that in most or in all cases, the transformation of the protests into riots was done by undercover police agents or secret service agents, who had infiltrated the protests and who had done this in order to discredit the protests so that their demands could be ignored and their organizers punished.

I haven't actually seen any proof that the Capitol riot was anything other than a protest that got out of hand (like what was described every time there was violence and riots after BLM protests across the country). It only takes a few dozen agitators to get a mob mentality going.

Facebook suspended #WalkAway, a group of 500K people that joined to support leaving the Democrats because they were being alienated by their policies (their words, not mine). No threats, no violence. Straight up deleted the group with no recourse by the organizers. All Facebook said was that the page allegedly ran afoul of “hateful, threatening, or obscene” content, but no proof was actually given.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/8/brandon-stra...

"On September 17, 2020 we will lay siege to The @WhiteHouse for exactly fifty days.

We need your wisdom and expertise to pull off a radically democratic toneshift in our politics.

Are you ready for #revolution?

This is the #WhiteHouseSiege"

1k retweets

Doesn't seem they were advocating for violence.

https://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/whitehousesiege-tactical...

the stuff that parler was leaving up was outright sedition and calls for violence.

If your stated intent explicitly calls for ‘non-violence’, I expect this doesn’t violate ToS despite potential inferences from the sensational branding.

I never heard of this before so I don’t even know what happened on Sept. 17. Was it violent?

Still, it's not relevant because they weren't exercising freedom of speech, just incitement of violence. Same as the people at the Capitol.

The large Black Lives Matter protests all over the country were overwhelmingly lawful and peaceful. The main exceptions were the scenes in many places of cops beating the shit out of people, etc. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/style/police-protests-vid...

In various cities a small number of people acted violently. These were opportunists without apparent link to the Black Lives Matter organizers who took advantage of the situation to smash things up. Some were likely sympathetic to the BLM message, but others have been identified as far-right agitators. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-cause... https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-infiltrators-an...

I don't mind the people protesting peacefully, I'm talking about the violent ones.

Your fact checker doesn't report a number, some people counted 36. Wikipedia reports 19+ deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_dur...

It's irrelevant.

There was looting from stores, burning of buildings and killings, surrounding people in restaurants and forcing them to comply.

You can call it a peaceful protest as much as you want and you can link biased sources all day, but you won't change facts.

This list does not at all support the thesis that organized BLM protests were intentionally violent.

* * *

Yeah, there was a time that a group of white BLM sympathizers heckled another white BLM sympathizer who was eating at a restaurant table on the sidewalk, and the heckling was caught on video. The people involved are obnoxious jerks (organizers and most others in the BLM movement also agree they are jerks).

Similar heckling by all sorts of groups of jerks happens all over the country on a regular basis. For example a bunch of MAGA folks were following and heckling Lindsay Graham at an airport a few days ago.

But you really think heckling at a restaurant should be compared to an armed mob breaking into the Capitol building, chanting for the Vice President's execution and for the overthrow of the US government, beating cops to death, ransacking offices, stealing sensitive national security materials, and literally shitting all over?

Are you really claiming there was never any incitement?

This popped up with one search: https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/blm-leader-if-change-doesnt-ha...

“If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation,”

https://blacklivesmatter.com/for-immediate-release-statement...

> Hawk Newsome has no relation to the Black Lives Matter Global Network (“BLM”) founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi — and is not the “president” of BLM or any of its chapters. Only BLM chapters who adhere to BLM’s principles and code of ethics are permitted to use the BLM name. The reason for this is simple: unaffiliated uses of BLM’s name are confusing to people who may wrongly associate the unsanctioned group and its views and actions with BLM. As BLM has told Mr. Newsome in the past, and as is still true today, Mr. Newsome’s group is not a chapter of BLM and has not entered into any agreement with BLM agreeing to adhere to BLM’s core principles.

If you look hard enough you can find unaffiliated yahoos of every ideological persuasion and self-proclaimed identity (libertarians, stoics, Christians, vegans, Canadians, chess players, computer programmers, stamp collectors, minivan owners, ...) spouting militant nonsense. Such statements should be condemned (and have been by those nonviolently protesting police brutality), but cannot be taken as sweeping evidence that everyone with similar self-proclaimed ideology or identity is a supporter of hateful violence.

If you intend to apply this kind of standard, then surely every organization that calls itself "conservative" should be similarly held responsible for the actions of the MAGA insurrectionists, right?

That's not "a problem", that's the only problem.

Of course hatred and bigotry and false scientific claims and calls to violence, etc., are negative and of course we wish they would vanish.

But a Ministry of Truth would be worse.

I am willing to build and maintain mental, emotional and psychological armor against very negative, harmful speech if it helps avoid erecting a Ministry of Truth.

I think you should be free to say what you want and to think what you want, I also think a privately owned space has the right to remove people who are saying things they don't want in that space.

Here are three examples:

(1) You own a bar and someone comes in and starts calling your patrons racial slurs, can you throw them out?

(2) You start a social media company and somehow a large contingent of your initial user group turns out to be a hate group. Shouldn't you be allowed to remove the group and their hateful content? Do you really want to be REQUIRED to leave it on the site unless it is breaking a law?

(3) You start a social media company and it grows to the size of twitter. Your site is one of the most visited sites on the internet, and is getting overrun with hate speech. Don't you want to be able to remove that?

Are you fine with one and two but not three? Where's the line? If you want to argue that Facebook and Twitter are utilities and should be regulated as such, what do they get in return? Don't forget, utilities are often government sanctioned monopolies or near-monopolies in "exchange" for all of their regulation.

When you rent space to someone, and they start using it in a way you don't like, maybe even specificially violating their lease, you can throw them out, but it becomes a legal process called eviction. You can't just put their stuff on the sidewalk and change the locks without going through that process. This is how the game is played when you get into that business.

Maybe that is the part that's missing with the AWS/Parler situation. AWS doesn't want them, but they leased space and services to them and there is a contract. Breach of contract is not something that either party to the contract can determine, because they both have conflicts of interest. If we had a judge review the contract, and approve the eviction, at least there would be a lot less basis to claim that are acting capriciously or out of bias.

Maybe in the long-term we'll look at hosting more like real-estate and it will have more laws and regulations about what the providers can and cannot do, but I doubt it and I'm willing to bet the trade offs that come with that are truly terrible. Imagine how many things wouldn't get off the ground if hosting contracting was even 1/3 of the real estate process.

More importantly, hosting isn't a monopoly. There's no government provided moat that justifies that level of regulation. The way I see it there are only two things that are in utilities in the internet space, ISPs (both consumer facing and interconnects) and DNS, and DNS is arguable.

Parler wanted to open a new platform and attract its own users. Only incidentally was it (like everything else these days) dependent on a number of other services to work.

https://aws.amazon.com/service-terms/

https://aws.amazon.com/aup/

I suspect Amazon is not the one to breach the lease.

Yes, that was my point

> of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler

No, and I didn't suggest that.

> electric company

Regulated. The electric company is a regulated monopoly. Hosting companies aren't. If an ISP had banned traffic from Parler, that would be an issue, it is a regulated monopoly. If Amazon shuts them down, there's no issue, it is an unregulated service provider.

I don't understand the shock and surprise. No US company is going to choose anything over their own bottom line. Certainly not for a site as small and niche and literally riddled with hate speech as Parler.

Parler and it's customers can say whatever they want to whoever they want. Can they force Amazon to take their money? Absolutely not. Should they be able to? No: forcing Amazon to host Parler would be a violation of Amazon's own right to free speech.[0]

From Parler's point-of-view it would be unfortunate if they tied themselves to AWS specific infrastructure. There's absolutely no way that they now have some kind of "right" to be hosted by Amazon. Also, it's just poor planning on their part.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

I have yet to see any evidence that the capitol protest was planned primarily on Parler. I have seen plenty of evidence that it was planned primarily on Facebook (that has since been deleted/hidden by Facebook). You'd think if the goal was to punish or curtail such events Facebook would be getting at least similar treatment as Parler.

Their counter argument is that if you bring up conservative view points, the liberal echo chambers ban you. So they should be able to do it in their free speech spaces.

This also unfortunately hides the fact that hate speech, dog whistles, saying that COVID is a hoax, pushing for falsehoods and getting upset about not being able to do so, is why you get banned.

There are plenty of individuals claiming they were banned for posting left content or disagreeing with right wing content. Hard to know how much is trolling or not, but I think that's kind of the point. If it is the home of free speech, who is Parler to determine their intent?

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/parler-safe-space-fo...

> Still, there is a set of community guidelines and a user agreement, which prohibits deliberately obscene usernames, pornography, and threats to kill others. Meaning even Parler’s free speech absolutists have some vague rules for what they deem as too offensive. “When you disagree with someone, posting pictures of your fecal matter in the comment section WILL NOT BE TOLERATED,” wrote Matze during a consequential exchange on his site, shattering the hopes of conservatives and libertarians everywhere who dream of a social media site with a completely laissez-faire ToS.

Because all of the people who defended Twitter from suppressing conservative voices told them if they don't like it, they can start their own network.

Which is exactly what they did.

Now THOSE people who told them to start their own network so they could do as they please, are up in arms because they didn't moderate their content enough for their liking?

Seriously, that's asinine.

A closer analogy would be private roads. If Amazon owned a series of private highways used solely for shipping goods, would we care if they stopped transporting items they didn't agree with on those Amazon owned highways?

Forgive me if I'm repeating a common refrain here, but the words we say on Twitter, Parler, Facebook, and even HN aren't "free", spoken in a public place. They're owned by Twitter, Parler, Facebook and HN. Those companies can choose to do whatever they want, for better or worse.

Roads encourage bank-robbers. Honestly who would rob a bank if you could only flee on foot? It's ok though that it encourages and facilitates bank robbers. We should not close the roads because of it.

We need to be OK that certain things (free speech) can have huge negative effects and criminal elements.

From the experimentation side of things, you have Canada, Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom (I'm probably missing some) where they impose restrictions on free speech while still having mostly free speech rights. You can even include the US as well, since it does have restrictions, they're just more relaxed, and seem to only be enforced if financial damage can be proven from libel.

Now very broadly looking at that list, it seems that countries that take a most speech is free (especially speech that criticizes the government and ruling class), but some speech is restricted (especially hate related speech, speech that imply violence to others, speech that targets minority groups, and diffamation and libel speech) seem to work pretty well in practice. At least, those countries have had stable social and economic environments, and seem to allow for good opportunity to its citizen and give them a good standard of living in general.

So from the experimentation side of "truth seeking", it seems to me I'm not seeing an argument for absolutely all speech should be free always no matter the circumstances or the intent of the speech.

Now, we don't have a good experiment example of "all speech goes" unfortunately. Maybe the US is the closest to it, and that seems to be causing quite a lot of social and economic instability for now at least. But I'd say it's too soon to conclude anything on that front.

The other approach to "truth seeking" would be from first principle. The theory around free speech comes from the liberal progressive thinkers of the enlightenment. So turning to them for first principle makes sense. From my research into it (and I welcome you do your own), there seem to be no winning theory around it. All agree that speech against government should be free, but how far to take other speech in other circumstances is not clear. Also debatable if the government should be free to criticize groups of citizens or not, because that can enable top down propaganda and repression, which free speech is trying to protect against. Most theory seem to recognize the "risks" with unrestricted free speech, but some believe that the benefits of free speech against authoritarianism and majority's rule is worth it, while others think it is possible to draw a line that protects against this and mitigates the risk of unrestricted free speech.

It seems some of the thinkers that are pro unrestricted free speech also assume the system provides people with an education that allows them to identify and rationalize fake and manipulative ideas and thoughts from legitimate ideas and thoughts.

So the first principle outlook also seems inconclusive in my opinion.

That personally leaves me to conclude that mostly free speech is good, and fully free speech might also be good but that's not yet been demonstrated to really know, with keeping in mind that this uncertainty about fully free speech could resolve in it being worse or better than mostly free speech.

I'm afraid you're misinformed.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

> > If you said "Once a company like that starts moderating content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher"

> I regret to inform you that you are wrong. I know that you've likely heard this from someone else -- perhaps even someone respected -- but it's just not true. The law says no such thing. Again, I encourage you to read it. The law does distinguish between "interactive computer services" and "information content providers," but that is not, as some imply, a fancy legalistic ways of saying "platform" or "publisher." There is no "certification" or "decision" that a website needs to make to get 230 protections. It protects all websites and all users of websites when there is content posted on the sites by someone else.

> To be a bit more explicit: at no point in any court case regarding Section 230 is there a need to determine whether or not a particular website is a "platform" or a "publisher." What matters is solely the content in question. If that content is created by someone else, the website hosting it cannot be sued over it.

Edit: BTW, I'd suggest reading that whole article. Section 230 has been misrepresented by politicians and the media fairly regularly, and this piece does a nice job of laying out the current state of the law and its interpretation and application.

But right now, it doesn't matter if I disagree or not. US law makes it very clear what responsibilities and rights publishers have.

Title 47 U.S. Code § 230 explicitly states that publishers are not liable for the content that their users post, with some minor exceptions related to sex trafficking.

They are also allowed to restrict whatever they like, whether it's constitutionally protected or not.

No, it doesn't.

It states that online systems with user generated content (and other users on such systems) aren't treated as publishers of what their users post, with some major exceptions related to civil liability related to sex trafficking and all criminal liability regardless of subject matter. Civil liability not deriving from status as a “publisher” is also not on its face, affected, though some courts have also applied 230, controversially, to immunize against notice-based civil liability that would apply to them as distributors, even if they aren't considered publishers.

To be accurate, it certainly does.

> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

It also says other things that I neglected to state, most importantly, that section 230 does nothing to change criminal law, so it's also fair to call me out on that.

No, it doesn't say they won't be liable for user content, it says they won't be considered the publisher. There is liability for content that is tied to being a publisher, and there is liability that has other bases. On its face, 230 says nothing about liability on other bases (as noted in GP, some courts have also used it to provide immunity from liability as a distributor, but that is controversial and not stated in the text.)

Then there is the acceptable use policy of the hosting provider(s). dns, server, cdn, app store This is entirely outside of 230. If the provider gets enough complaints, they may eventually see your site as a risk and may choose to terminate your account in order to protect the image of their business. They do not want their reputation tarnished as it will affect their profits. I think that is totally fair. If you want to run a site that may likely provoke emotional response from the public, then in my opinion it would be best to find a hosting provider that accepts the risk in a contract. The contract should state what is expected of you and what you expect of them and what happens if the contract is to be terminated, such as off-boarding timelines. Smaller startups are at higher risk as they provider has less to lose by booting them off their infrastructure.

Where I believe this issue has gone sideways is what the industry believes to be considered an appropriate method of moderation. The big platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Apple are using automated systems to block or shadow-ban things they consider a risk to their company or their hosting providers. This leads to people fleeing those systems and going to the smaller startups that do not yet have these automated moderation and shadow-banning systems and that is what happened with Parler and a handful of other newer platforms that wanted to capture all the refuges of the big platforms. A similar thing is happening with that alternate to Youtube, but I can not remember what it is called. Bitchute?

Another potential problem that may confuse the 230 discussion could be that many powerful politicians and corporate leaders use the big platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They and big lobbyists and investors may have some influence over the behavior of these platforms and may be able to tell them to squash the sites that do not follow the automated version of banning and shadow-banning. Does that create echo chambers? Is that what is happening here? Not sure. If so, I predict it will push many people under ground and that is probably not great for agents that would like to keep an eye on certain people.

No, that's one of his unsubstantiated claims that conveniently fits the ideological tirade he's been on since long before the events in question.

Other journalists have pointed to planning on Parler, including citing specific posts.

Sure.

And that may indicate problems with those platforms. At a minimum, though, those platforms reacted against continued use by the same terrorists once it was unmistakably, publicly, concretely clear that they were a deadly serious threat.

The highway has a crapton of regulations around how you can use it. Speed limits, rules against drunk driving, driving only in 1 direction, requiring your lights be on (in some places during the daytime).

Nobody (almost) complains about limits on "free driving."

If you start doing crazy stuff on the highway you will not only be stopped, but potentially fined and imprisoned.

With AWS, Google Play store, iOS store as toll roads (Pennsylvania Turnpike, Golden Gate Bridge etc...) and Parler, Facebook, HN etc... as car brands?

Manufacturers can be forced to take all of their cars off the road for repair. Take Toyota or Waze.

You might have an argument about iOS taking Parler off the store as an issue because you can't sideload, but you can directly install APKs onto Android. You can self-host Parler with physical servers. I guess I'm less bothered by this than a lot of folks cause one of my rules is basically "Be nice around other people's things and ask before you touch". AWS and the Android + iOS stores are other people's things. And Parler poked at a sore spot: being used to plan attacks

If you're promoting armed, violent protests and insurrection - that is also a crime.

And sure, this is happening to a small degree on Twitter and FB - but they make some attempts to stop it, and it's not the main value proposition of the platforms.

The problem with Parler is that this was always where it was headed. It was built to serve people who would use it for this, and a significant portion of the content created and consumed was about this.

There is also legitimate content available on Kick Ass Torrents. But the majority of the consumption is for things that are illegal in the US. So it gets the same treatment as Parler.

You are conflating Parler with it's users

> this is happening to a small degree on Twitter and FB - but they make some attempts to stop it

From the article:

> And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform.

1. You either are unaware of the meaning of the word "disingenuous", or you know my own intentions better than I do.

2. Did Parler express suprise that some of its users attempted to (and in some cases succeeded) incite violence on their platform?

3. Again your tendency towards superlative undermines the discussion, but "everybody knows it" and "the damage has been done"? This is a very strong statement indeed, claiming that you have knowledge that Parler's moderation has been so ineffectual that every user on their platform is able to view all inciting content before it is taken down.

I'm simply crediting you with the intelligence and experience to understand that what someone says publicly is not always in line with their actual goal. Therefore, by pretending that Parler's terms of service represent their actual intentions despite evidence to the contrary, I believe you are being disingenuous.

> Did Parler express suprise that some of its users attempted to (and in some cases succeeded) incite violence on their platform?

I have no idea. It doesn't matter. "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face!" is not a credible expression of surprise when you invite a bunch of leopards into your home and set them loose.

> Again your tendency towards superlative undermines the discussion, but "everybody knows it" and "the damage has been done"?

I don't think it's undermining the discussion to assume a certain level of conversational and contextual shorthand. "Everybody" does not mean literally every person on earth, it means "people with interest and experience in these matters". I apologise if English is your second language or similar - I'll try to be clearer in future.

> This is a very strong statement indeed, claiming that you have knowledge that Parler's moderation has been so ineffectual that every user on their platform is able to view all inciting content before it is taken down.

Not every user needs to have viewed content for that content to be damaging. However, the more people that see damaging content the more damaging it is. Most social media platforms expose more recent content to more users, so damaging content will do most of the potential damage within a short time. Therefore, platforms with actual intent to reduce damage will need to remove problematic users from that platform while also employing a highly effective moderation team to identify new damaging content as quickly as possible.

It stands to reason that a platform that only wanted to look like they were reducing damage could employ an ineffectual moderation team to remove content only after the majority of the damage was done. I suggest that's what happened here - it seems clear that large amounts of inciting content were available for long periods of time (hours/days).

I very much disagree. Hate speech is just one example. "Speech" designed to terrorize, threaten, and incite action should not be "free".

> Of course any crimes that derive from it are and will always been fully enforceable.

By this logic no one who is purposely inciting anything is even liable for the actions that they cause. "Leaders" will never face punishment, because they only say things, right?

The line (or at least one of the lines) comes when speech is no longer an expression, but an instruction. It may be a tough line to draw, but that doesn't mean that the line shouldn't exist somewhere.

Americans have been struggling with hate speech and censorship for well over a century. The most obvious example is the censoring of the film The Birth of a Nation back in the late 1910s, but there are examples even further back in US history.

Our interpretation of "freedom of speech" (both philosophically and as protected by the First Amendment) isn't immutable and has changed since the Bill of Rights was adopted. Prior to the 1950s, the supreme court upheld the censorship of books and film for reasons that we now interpret as unconstitutional, and censorship remained the law in many states for decades after.

I would argue that our current expectation for "free speech" and this idea that it is "nearly absolute" is far more liberal than what we've seen through most of American history.

In no way does it even reflect the possibility of something like Parler being used to amplify the sort of messaging it does.

You're missing a part in this line that's very important, it should be "nearly absolute and protect unpopular opinions from the government."

(This is not an endorsement of the delusional presidential behavior that created the leadership vacuum filled by the corporations.)

It would be government overreach to tell the platforms that they're required to host whatever speech is posted to them, not the other way around. As I've mentioned in other comments, there are more ways to communicate now than at any other time in history. Facebook and Twitter do not have monopolies on speech, nothing on the internet does.

See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25750501

Where would you draw the line?

In your linked comment, all of these governments recognize (3) as a scenario that should be governed by laws (which vary between countries).

So why not 2? When does 2 become 3?

> As you noted, Germany restricts speech more than the US for obvious historical reasons. So the fact that even their government objects to this behavior is evidence against your position, not mine.

The German and French government objects to the US not having laws that require this behavior and leaving it in the hands of private companies, sure, and I object to the US having censorship laws and would rather private entities be able to make the decision for themselves, the direction of MORE freedom of speech.

To elaborate on the other user, Germany and France both ban holocaust denial and "hate speech", which would include much of the content on Parler. Mexico's speech laws are less clear, but if my reading is correct the constitution allows regulation of hate speech. And in practice, speech in Mexico isn't protected from the government or cartels.

So France and Germany could be seen as asking the US government to take a stronger stance on hate speech. This would, of course, require a constitutional amendment, at which point anything goes. Excluding that, what you see (and will continue to see) is corporations stepping in to ban hate speech because the government is restricted from doing so.

> He said it's right not to "stand back" when such content is posted, for example by flagging it, but qualified that the freedom of opinion is a fundamental right of "elementary significance."

> Seibert said the U.S. ought to follow Germany’s example in how it handles online incitement. Rather than leaving it up to tech companies to make their own rules, German law compels these companies to remove possibly illegal material within 24 hours of being notified or face up to $60.8 million in fines. [0]

You mean verified to be correct as confirmed by her spokesperson who released the initial statement. (Seibert released the initial statement, as can be seen here[1])

So yes, the statement can be seen as saying two things

1. Twitter is too powerful and needs to be regulated

2. The US needs stronger regulations on hate speech.

[0]: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/angela-merkel-rips-twitters...

[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-...

"Seibert said the U.S. ought to follow Germany’s example in how it handles online incitement. Rather than leaving it up to tech companies to make their own rules, German law compels these companies to remove possibly illegal material within 24 hours of being notified or face up to $60.8 million in fines.

""This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms," he told reporters in Berlin. "Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked.""

> So France and Germany could be seen as asking the US government to take a stronger stance on hate speech.

Which was, and continues to be, supported by Merkel's statement.

Your original comment was in support of/elaborating on "It would be governmental overreach [to set the rules]." That original comment had an overly permissive rule in place of what I've bracketed, but that's beside the point since all of these governments are specifically objecting that the recent actions are problematically restrictive.

Yes, and one reason for that, as stated by Merkel, is that the US doesn't have a democratic framework for managing hate speech. Because such a framework is illegal under the first amendment. And her statement suggests that the US adopt a more German framework for adjudicating such speech, so that corporations don't need to make their own rules.

Your claim is that Twitter is "effectively" acting as the government. That's not true under a significant amount of law and precedent. (There are cases where private entities are acting as a government, and importantly, trying to use government force to suppress speech, Marsh v. Alabama).

In fact, one could argue that by censoring speech, Twitter is explicitly not acting like the government, because Twitter is taking action the government cannot.

Hate speech was very much an issue even before 1947.

Libel laws alone put paid to your second sentence.

Free speech is not meant to be nearly absolute - it is not even meant to be largely absolute, copy right alone would be incompatible with such a strength of freedom.

That case gave rise to the "fighting words" doctrine or test which has (thus far) only been applied (successfully) to speech that is so vulgar or offensive as to provoke violence. A good representative example is the recent Twisted Tea smackdown video that made the rounds. If a police officer had swooped in and arrested the instigator before he got hit the arrest likely would have been kosher under the doctrine because the n-word is generally so vulgar you don't expect to be able to use it in that manner and not start a fight. Basically it's used to justify arresting someone for speech so inflammatory that even though you are not picking a fight someone is inevitably gonna pick a fight with you whether you want one or not.

I can't think of any case where it was used to prosecute someone for calling for "adjacent to violence" type behavior. I am unaware of any cases (that have not been overturned) where fighting words doctrine was used as a justification for suppressing political speech. If you know of any examples I'd be interested to read them.

For a concrete example of nominally political threatening speech that was found not to be protected, see Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists, where it was found that certain anti-abortion ads were not protected by the First Amendment because they reasonably caused the targeted doctors to fear for their safety. I don't believe they explicitly invoked the "fighting words" doctrine, but it relied on the same principle as Chaplinsky — that if speech has the effect of creating a real-life threat, the speech isn't necessarily protected by the First Amendment.

(To be clear, the point wasn't that Chaplinsky is the be-all-end-all, just that the concept of "hate speech," where the consequences of some speech make it unworthy of free speech protections, is not a recent invention.)

>(To be clear, the point wasn't that Chaplinsky is the be-all-end-all, just that the concept of "hate speech," where the consequences of some speech make it unworthy of free speech protections, is not a recent invention.)

Yes, but those consequences must be imminent and unlawful.

The point of Chaplinsky isn't that it's a real life in the moment affront to civility so offensive that it's bound to cause a fight.

Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists is about specific threats, e.g. "I'm going to specifically kill you".

Both examples of non-protected speech are under totally different doctrines (I forget how far back the specific credible threat doctrine goes and what the real name for it is but it's really old, older than planned parenthood) that were more or less condensed into the "imminent lawless conduct" test established in (Brandenbyug).

It's going to be very hard for anything that is published in an asynchronous medium that isn't a direct call to lawless action by someone who can credibly get people to pull it off to fail the test because in order for the lawless action to happen people must do things that would be premeditated crimes on their own. There is no current US court doctrine for limiting free speech with regard to hate unless the content and situational details add up to something that fails the Brandenburg test.

I'm not even going converse this with nonsense.

From what I can tell, whether speech in the form of "group X should be eliminated" constitutes a threat is still subject to controversy [1].

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/02/steyn...

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...

I think when speech starts to risk real harm to others, we need to start thinking carefully about it. It's not so clear cut, but I think that if someone threatens to harm someone with some degree of seriousness, society should be able to act before that harm occurs.

With Parler (and to be fair, Twitter), I see it creating more radicalization, which very directly creates a risk of harm to others as we saw play out on the 6th. And I don't think we should tolerate it, or we're stuck just treating symptoms rather than causes.

The algorithmic curation of all social media platforms that is intentionally built to assault users with the most distasteful, extreme lies (because it's good for engagement!) is the real problem in my view. If every social media platform stopped all algorithmic curation/recommendation and simply presented a chronological list of updates from people you follow (and did not recommend who to follow), then I think the bulk of the problem goes away.

I have no problem with free speech (even abhorrent speech). But I have a problem when a person's online experience is controlled by algorithms specifically designed to ratchet up the garbage and inundate people with hateful rhetoric.

With all the discussion about Section 230, could such opaque algorithmic curation constitute a form of editorial control, not unlike that of a publisher? Could we reform Section 230 in a way that is pro-user, so if a website wishes to be a "platform" they would have to make their raw feed available to the user, or if they provide algorithmic curation, it's transparent to the user how information is prioritized? Could we clarify the distinction between platform and publisher?

That's not reforming 230, that's abolishing it and repudiating it's entire purpose. Enabling host action to suppress perceived-as-undesirable content without increasing host liability for content not removed was the purpose of 230.

> Could we clarify the distinction between platform and publisher?

The distinction in 230 is crystal clear: to the extent content items are user-generated, the online service provider (land other users, even if they may have the power to promote, demote, or suppress the content are not publishers or speakers, period, the end.

The source (whether it is the user that is the source or the service provider for it's internally-generated, first-party content) is the publisher or speaker.

Unequal enforcement is already very much a thing on the roads. Ever heard of a "fishing stop" or "driving while black". Getting cut less slack than a boring sedan and a work truck is one of the few things red Porche drivers and 30yo shitbox drivers have in common.

If you have evidence o some other app hosted on AWS where left wing groups calling for violence and applauding it when it materializes, but not being shut down, please show everyone. I won't even go to the extreme of saying it has to be at the same level or quantity of violent speech we saw on Parler.

Edit to reply the post below:

Actual terrorism? Al-Queda and ISIS are active on Twitter. There is content still up calling for genocide against certain ethnicities. Real genocide and terrorism. Not the hyperbole in U.S. politics.

U.S. politicians were actively egging on protestors and calling for violence around the country this summer. Where do you draw the line? It's cool if one side does it but not the other?

There's clearly an uneven application of their moderation policies. And, they are afforded legal protections as platforms under the assumption / intent that users create the content and they stay out of curation. IMO, they aren't being equitable with enforcing their own rules and should lose status as platforms. Because clearly they are opinionated in their enforcement of the ToS.

Now, it's arguable that the other sites knowingly facilitating crime and just hoping to escape consequences because no one was going to make a big deal of it, and they only cut it off because the risk of that strategy increased after the Capitol attack. But while that may paint the past actions of the other firms in a worse light, it doesn't paint Parler’s actions before it was cutoff by other suppliers in a better one.

The thing I think people miss when making the "this is an assault on free speech!" is that they think it's becoming a gray area, when in fact it has always been a gray area.

I don't think a claim like this is meaningful without a precise definition of "speech". And, consequently, I think you'll find any attempt to define which things are not "speech" ends up being functionality equivalent to dialing back from that theoretical 100%.

In general, you can't have 100% freedom over any finite resource. If there's only one dessert in the fridge, you and I can not both have 100% freedom to eat it.

If you presume that any meaningful "speech" has some non-zero audience size, then speakers are competing for the finite attention of other humans. You can't have perfect freedom for that.

Schrodinger's pie - you both have 100% freedom to eat it until one of you actually does

IMO, this is literally a strawman argument. You're picking a very rare, extreme event and amplifying the importance of that event in an attempt to make an argument.

Following the implication of your argument (that we don't worry about a rare even on an otherwise good system), we shouldn't even bat an eye at Parler being removed.

1. Abuses and crimes should always be persecuted. I have read lots of posts on Parler, and ALL grounds for violent speech, radicalisation and terrorism apply to lots of them. I've read posts inviting people to hang and quarter democrats on the streets in front of their families, as well as posts inviting armed sedition against the institutions. Those who use this kind of language MUST be made accountable of their words, just like we'd make ISIS supporters accountable of their words. It's not that just because they're white and Christian dudes that look like us we can condone them a bit more. And if a platform refuses to limit this language, then the whole platform must be taken down.

2. Your freedom ends where my beings. You may be free of saying whatever you want, but if that ends up doxxing information about me that I didn't want to reveal, or it ends up spreading misinformation about me that ends up in death threats, then you are NOT free to do that.

Parler has failed to guarantee both the non-negotiable freedoms when it comes to building a sustainable free speech framework, therefore it must be taken down. I really fail to see any contradiction in this.

And keep in mind that the anarco-liberalist vision of free speech is something that has arisen only in the past couple of decades. The founding fathers of the liberal school thought (including Popper and Hayek), those who had REALLY seen how things in Europe ended up when unlimited freedom of speech is guaranteed also to fascist jerks, were well-aware that unconstrained freedom with no framework to contain fundamentalism is a threat to a tolerant society. "Being intolerant with the intolerant is a civic duty for a tolerant society that wants to preserve its values" (Popper)

You just described investigative journalism.

Doxxing is not itself a violation of your rights, it’s just taboo when it’s done in the small.

Only when it’s done with the intent of causing illegal harm, such as “X lives here, go kick his ass”, would it be a violation.

And I've read posts on HN saying we should hang and quarter Trump supporters; should HN be wiped from the face of the earth?

And keep in mind that I'm just picking a random example from thousands of similar posts.

Radicalized Trump supporters were using Parler to share invites to "do a bloodbath out of Democrat voters", "burn them alive on the streets and throw them in wooden chips in front of their children", and you really have the courage to come here and say that WE are the violent ones for a whack-a-mole the Nazi joke?

From the bottom of my heart, fuck you, you filthy fascist.

I've got absolutely nothing against the old Republicans, I've got absolutely nothing against conservatives, I've got many, many conservative friends as well. But I've got A LOT against the violent scum of the earth represented by people like you who try to play the role of the eternal victim after inciting Civil War and gratuitous gruesome violence against the political enemy!