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URGENT: We’re one bad D.C. deal away from the era of online government censorship. (www.fire.org)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 20 points 5 months ago (18 children)

slow your roll.

getting kicked off Reddit, a private entity, is not a violation of your free speech.

having FBI agents show up at your door asking threatening questions about your Reddit history is.

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago

    Reddit is a community of millions, and I can no longer talk there because they do not like my politics. It is not illegal to do this, I agree entirely. This is not a violation of the constitution. I am not even an American.

    But it is a violation of my ability to speak freely, inflicted by a billionaire because he is politically allied with Israel.

    The places we treat like public agoras in the modern day are controlled by private citizens, based entirely on their wealth. Zuck, spez, Ellison, Musk, and a few more; these handful of white men control who is allowed to interact in the defacto public arenas of the internet.

    Sure, I can come here, and this is exactly why Lemmy and all the other forums of the Fediverse were made. I hope this gets big.

    But right now, what opinions and ideas the vast majority of people are exposed to are quietly being limited, so quietly they mostly don't know.

    Is that good? Should I shrug and say "Oh well, it's a billionaire, not the government, so it's okay that they have all this power."?

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Facebook, twitter, YouTube, Google Search, and Amazon Books accepted a vast quantity of secret, backdoor censorship "requests" from the US government, mostly during Biden's administration. Facebook had a private web portal for requests and bragged about handling millions of requests per year. Private emails with Mark Zuckerberg lament that they have been processing requests that are very clear free speech, and are not even misinformation, such as statements of opinion. Facebook in particular, closed this portal before Trump took office. Reddit is not named in this document but I am personally certain they took similar requests.

    https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Biden-WH-Censorship-Report-final.pdf

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago*

    Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

    You realize you're citing the absolute most insane fascists right now, right? What you're saying is likely true, but that document is about the furthest possible thing from a credible source.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    your point being?

    just because there are insane people doing insane things that break the law doesn't mean anything. they can blur the lines all they want but at the end of the day banning or silencing people on a privately owned platform does not violate constitutional rights.

    and if Reddit is silencing voices based on requests from the federal government, that still amounts to Reddit executing their rights as a private platform. they have the right to refuse the request based on the constitutional crisis.

    it only becomes a violation of your rights when you can prove the government attacked your right to free speech. anything less is just hearsay.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    I'm dead sick of hearing this argument. One, it's completely legalistic. The holocaust was legal too. Two, it's incorrect. The government has been in trouble for coercing private entities like this before. I'm sure it would not pass in the current supreme court. They only got away with it for so long because they did it secretly from the public.

    Given the choice, this is obviously behavior that should be stopped by legal intervention or possibly green Mario. There was no punishment because the worst of it passed before it was made public, much like nobody got imprisoned for various CIA crimes or whatever. Thats it.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    I'm dead sick of hearing this argument.

    boo hoo

    One, it's completely legalistic.

    That's because the constitution and the bill of rights are legal doctrines...

    The holocaust was legal too.

    True, but that was because a fascist government took power and made it legal. so far the current admin hasn't made things legal, they're just simply illegally ignoring the laws they are required to uphold.

    sorry if that was too...legalistic for you.

    Two, it's incorrect.

    so your first point us that the concept of the constitutional violations I described are too legal (assuming you mean logically), and now you're saying it's wrong? first time I have ever heard of something being incorrectly legal.

    The government has been in trouble for coercing private entities like this before. I'm sure it would not pass in the current supreme court.

    am I being punk'd by an LLM right now?

    They only got away with it for so long because they did it secretly from the public.

    Imagine how many crimes we would know about if our government would come out and openly admit to them 🤣.

    Given the choice, this is obviously behavior that should be stopped by legal intervention or possibly green Mario.

    I literally cannot even take your opinions seriously anymore. you make reference to Luigi as "green Mario" as if this is Reddit.

    you're still too much of a child to understand how the world works. you're probably what, early to mid 20s? you lack proper perspective that only life experience and time can teach you. you still have your rose colored glasses on and believe that you have the power to "change the world". it's admirable but you feel that way because it's a social mechanism that has been installed to keep people like you busy spinning your wheels on frivolous bullshit while the wheels spinning the grinder spin on.

    justice, like history, is written by the victors. when was the last victory for the righteous? I mean a real legal victory.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago

    What a bizarre doomer set of goalposts. One, we literally had an election and now Facebook's no longer doing this, thats a win for a start. We also shut down USAID and I got to read an article crying about how a bunch of people no longer get paid $300,000yr running nonprofits to bring in immigrants and spread propaganda, so thats cool. Some of the stuff coming out of the current supreme court has been good.

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  • [–] -4 points 5 months ago (10 children)

    You are failing to draw a distinction between the 1st amendment and the concept of free speech.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    There is no single "concept" of free speech.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    Smokescreen. My point is that whatever "free speech" means, it's not limited to the scope of what's protected by the US Constitution.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    But this is about US companies and US law, not hypothetical philosophy.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    No it isn't. It's about Reddit. Read up the chain.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (5 children)

    Yeah Reddit the private US company that is not beholden to preserving your free speech. That's the context. Are you functionally illiterate and cannot infer the meaning unless explicitly stated?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

    Not legally beholden. You realize that speech can be free or not outside of the context of the Constitution, yes? Like "free" and "speech" are just common nouns that can be used in other ways. You dumb motherfucker.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Can be. Isn't in this context though, it's about reddit having the legal right to ban your account.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    Re-read the entire chain, their legal right to do it was only mentioned in your head

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Ooh, you mean this part?

    slow your roll. getting kicked off Reddit, a private entity, is not a violation of your free speech. having FBI agents show up at your door asking threatening questions about your Reddit history is.

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