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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

I'll post the same obligatory "actually read your Constitution" note:

The first amendment protects US citizens right to speak freely in public and private venues from being retaliated against by the government.

It specifically means you cannot be denied government services, support our rights because of any opinions you express publicly or privately.

It does not and never has obligated any private persons or business to listen, rebroadcast, or not *react" to what you say. You have never been protected from the consequences of your speech within your community, nor has anyone been required to enable it. It has never been a protection against the speech of anyone else, for example rallying their community to speak against you or for other private services to deny you patronage.

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> It does not and never has obligated any private persons or business to listen, rebroadcast, or not *react" to what you say. You have never been protected from the consequences of your speech within your community, nor has anyone been required to enable it.

So there might be an example of the supreme court requiring just that: in a case called Marsh vs. Alabama, a private community (a company town) was forced to allow some mormons to keep door-knocking on private property because of First Amendment rights.

Something to the effect of 'if you have enough control over private space, you start to take on an increasing blend of public square obligations'. At least, that is the conclusion I drew from the below article. Unfamiliar domain name but I got it from memeorandum so it's not afaik some completely off the rails screed.

https://lpeproject.org/blog/after-the-great-deplatforming-re...

Marsh v Alabama is a pretty narrow ruling, and hasn't been interpreted to apply to much more than company towns, which are now illegal.

Cyber Promotions v AOL is a subsequent case which is much closer to today's question: Cyber Promotions wanted to spam AOL, and AOL wanted to filter out spam because it threatened to ruin the internet. Thankfully, AOL won that case, and spam filtering is constitutional.

Apologies, but it's not clear to me the relevance of what you are saying to what I have posted.

I don't think I'm asking for freedom from consequences for anyone, just the reverse of anything, I think sites should be granted 230 immunities but only if they provide some form of due process to users, and if they don't, users should be able to take sites to court just like they could if there was no 230.

The language you use seems to indicate that you either assume the First Amendment to be synonymous with freedom of speech, a common misconception, or that you believe the First Amendment would apply to tech companies currently protected by Section 230 were it repealed.

> or that you believe the First Amendment would apply to tech companies currently protected by Section 230 were it repealed.

Is that not what Tim Wu is saying?

> But content moderation, as an exercise of editorial discretion, is protected by the First Amendment. And that Congress can’t repeal.

And so my understanding is that

1. Site content moderation actions are protected by the First Amendment.

2. Gov't can't tell a site what to moderate or not.

3. But without 230, a user can potentially sue a site for defamation or other reasons.

4. 230 provides a site a bypass to those suits, it gives sites publisher immunity.

My suggestion is that publisher immunity from user lawsuits should come with some guarantee of due process. Congress took away the ability of users to sue. My suggestion is that seemed reasonable in 1996, but today Congress should return to the user some ability to negotiate/talk/appeal to sites regarding their takedowns/suspensions/bans. I refer to that as a form of due process. But if you wish, call that a consumer protection law.

I've mentioned this twice now, and people tell me I need to read the Constitution or that I am confusing free speech and the First Amendment.

I definitely have no idea what you folks are seeing, and wish you could more clearly express your ideas and help with that.

What sort of suits do you wish could proceed?

When you say due process regarding being banned what would that look like? Why should anyone have to justify to you why you can't use someone else's website?

Under what terms and situations would they have to reinstate you? Why?

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