Comment by msla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by msla | Hacker News Reader

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https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/326us501

> Grace Marsh, a Jehovah's Witness, attempted to distribute religious literature on the sidewalk near a post office in Chickasaw, Alabama. The Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation owned Chickasaw, Alabama in its entirety as a company town. Marsh was convicted of criminal trespass. Appealing her conviction, Marsh argued that the state law violated the First Amendment.

[snip]

> In an opinion by Justice Hugo L. Black, the majority ruled in Marsh’s favor. The Court reasoned that a company town does not have the same rights as a private homeowner in preventing unwanted religious expression. While the town was owned by a private entity, it was open for use by the public, who are entitled to the freedoms of speech and religion. The Court employed a balancing test, weighing Chickasaw’s private property rights against Marsh’s right to free speech. The Court stressed that conflicts between property rights and constitutional rights should typically be resolved in favor of the latter.

And, because Silicon Valley is in California:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...

> A state can prohibit the private owner of a shopping center from using state trespass law to exclude peaceful expressive activity in the open areas of the shopping center.

Those two cases say much more about company towns and the California state constitution than they do about the US Constitution's First Amendment.

The first one was decided on the basis of the US Constitution's First Amendment.

Also, I was responding to a blanket assertion that you have no constitutional rights in a private forum. A company town is a private forum.

“it was open for use by the public”

The ruling makes clear a company town is not a private forum. One thing that separates that company town or shopping mall from say a private resort is the requirements for access. Cruse ships, aircraft, etc default deny entry making them less public spaces.

Beyond that, a private home can deny access based on skin color while a bed and breakfast can’t. That same bed and breakfast could however deny access because a customer is rude.

> The first one was decided on the basis of the US Constitution's First Amendment.

Yes, but much more narrowly than you're trying to apply it.

Subsequent decisions made clear internet services are not the same as company towns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

> The Marsh holding at first appears somewhat narrow and inapplicable today because of the disappearance of company towns from the United States, but it was raised in a somewhat high-profile 1996 cyberlaw case, Cyber Promotions v. America Online, 948 F. Supp. 436, 442 (E.D. Pa. 1996).[1] Cyber Promotions wished to send out "mass email advertisements" to AOL customers. AOL installed software to block those emails. Cyber Promotions sued on free speech grounds and cited the Marsh case as authority for the proposition that even though AOL's servers were private property, AOL had opened them to the public to a such a degree that constitutional free speech protections could be applied. The federal district court disagreed, thereby paving the way for spam filters at the Internet service provider level.

True but to apply 1A it had to be determined that the constitutional protections were applicable at all which hinged on the level the area had been "dedicated/opened to public use" more recently other qualifiers have been added such that a company needs to exercise "powers traditionally exclusive to the state" to be held to constitutional standards. There were cases back years ago like Cyber Promotions v. America Online that allowed companies to limit speech on their platforms that would already cover cases like this too.

> Also, I was responding to a blanket assertion that you have no constitutional rights in a private forum. A company town is a private forum.

But your own stuff explicitly stated that the courts did not deem it a private forum but was a public form.

Websites are not the same thing, so yes a website is still a private forum and therefore not in violation of 1A.

There are few facts on which Pruneyard relies that are completely at odds with the attempts to apply it to social media moderation:

1. The speech being conducted was agreed by everybody to not be disruptive.

2. It was agreed by all parties that no one could confuse the speech of the protesters with the speech of the shopping center.

For social media concerns, these two facts do not describe the actual situation, and so Pruneyard is not appropriate precedent.

Speech that isn't disruptive isn't really worth anything. There's little point in saying things people already agree with. It's saying the things that people don't want to hear that has real value. If you can't say the things that people don't want to hear because they are "disruptive" then you don't really have the freedom of speech.

8kun is more like a dank, smelly basement than an open air market.

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