Supreme Court to Hear Social Media Cases on Online Speech

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

They concern social media giants' autonomy and Section 230's protections from liability vs. the need to guard against mis/disinformation online:

Supreme Court Poised to Reconsider Key Tenets of Online Speech
The cases could significantly affect the power and responsibilities of social media platforms.

For years, giant social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have operated under two crucial tenets.

The first is that the platforms have the power to decide what content to keep online and what to take down, free from government oversight. The second is that the websites cannot be held legally responsible for most of what their users post online, shielding the companies from lawsuits over libelous speech, extremist content and real-world harm linked to their platforms.

Now the Supreme Court is poised to reconsider those rules, potentially leading to the most significant reset of the doctrines governing online speech since U.S. officials and courts decided to apply few regulations to the web in the 1990s.

On Friday, the Supreme Court is expected to discuss whether to hear two cases that challenge laws in Texas and Florida barring online platforms from taking down certain political content. Next month, the court is scheduled to hear a case that questions Section 230, a 1996 statute that protects the platforms from liability for the content posted by their users.

I personally think social media should operate on much the same rules as newspapers and magazines do, which have no such protections except those affirmed under the 1964 New York Times vs. Sullivan decision.  

I'd honestly go further and say social media isn't protected by the First Amendment at all.

What are you basing this on?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

They concern social media giants' autonomy and Section 230's protections from liability vs. the need to guard against mis/disinformation online:

Supreme Court Poised to Reconsider Key Tenets of Online Speech
The cases could significantly affect the power and responsibilities of social media platforms.

For years, giant social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have operated under two crucial tenets.

The first is that the platforms have the power to decide what content to keep online and what to take down, free from government oversight. The second is that the websites cannot be held legally responsible for most of what their users post online, shielding the companies from lawsuits over libelous speech, extremist content and real-world harm linked to their platforms.

Now the Supreme Court is poised to reconsider those rules, potentially leading to the most significant reset of the doctrines governing online speech since U.S. officials and courts decided to apply few regulations to the web in the 1990s.

On Friday, the Supreme Court is expected to discuss whether to hear two cases that challenge laws in Texas and Florida barring online platforms from taking down certain political content. Next month, the court is scheduled to hear a case that questions Section 230, a 1996 statute that protects the platforms from liability for the content posted by their users.

I personally think social media should operate on much the same rules as newspapers and magazines do, which have no such protections except those affirmed under the 1964 New York Times vs. Sullivan decision. 

I'd honestly go further and say social media isn't protected by the First Amendment at all.

What are you basing this on?

Social Media isn't the press (if anything, it just copypastes articles from the press onto their platforms).

"The press" is only one of several things the First Amendment protects. Social media is clearly "speech," and often deeply unpopular political and religious speech at that, a type of speech which has long been held to call for just about the highest level of constitutional protection possible. I actually agree that there are things about how social media works that might call for that traditional understanding to be partially revisited, but you can't just say that "social media isn't the press and thus isn't protected by the First Amendment" and expect that argument to be taken seriously.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I know some people bring up the common carrier issue, but I don't think social media platforms are common carriers. When it comes to social media platforms, the content is the central focus and entire point. That contrasts with common carriers such as your phone provider or your ISP. Those provide you with a service and generally carry content without regard to what it is. Editorial discretion is generally not within the purview of those types of companies, unlike social media. Social media is all about speech. If a private entity is all about speech, the government should remain out of the picture and silent.

I'm not sure this dog will hunt. How is a phone company not "about speech", or at least about the content on, or sent through, people's phones? Until very recently it was next to impossible to do anything over the phone other than speak, and that telecomms infrastructure is still a huge part of what supports Neko Atsume or whatever else today.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Justice Clarence Thomas has written skeptically in recent years about broad immunity under Section 230, but he appeared surprisingly sympathetic to the theory on which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit relied in ruling for Google below – the idea that Section 230 protects recommendations as long as the provider's algorithm treats content on its website similarly. If the same algorithm that recommends ISIS videos based on a user's history and interests also recommends cooking videos to someone who is interested in cooking, Thomas asked, how can Google be held responsible for those recommendations?

I mean, the §230 status quo's survival just can't be more assured than that.

Also it sounds strange to be saying this but Thomas's logic makes perfect sense.

I don't think it's that strange. Thomas is an extreme-right hack but he's not Alito; he has an apparently genuinely held philosophy and worldview that happens to align with American rightist priorities >95% of the time, not a philosophy of "the Two Whatevers but for the RNC instead of Chairman Mao".