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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Two articles are popping today that I believe are related. Both are reasons for censorship or reasons the left has used to justify censorship.

  • Dr. Gottlieb cited his “safety” as a reason to censor doctors criticizing COVID vaccines. Here are his tweets showing “violence” against himself.

https://twitter.com/scottgottliebmd/status/1612548694762745856?s=46&t=0qCqhJLXqMO-wn5FoPsWKg

The best he has is some anonymous account saying “execute this bastard”. Obviously with anonymous accounts anyone can just randomly vent and say something mean. It could even be Scott Gottlieb saying this about himself so that he can then asks for censorship of others in the name of “violence”.

Obviously people shouldn’t be threatened but a random message board comment I don’t think rises to the occasion of a real threat - though I’d agree those accounts should be suspended banned that make violent threats. They shouldn’t be used to censor non violent debates.

And the rest of the tweets he cited are not threats but calling him a murder and bastard. Being that he’s citing tweets that are not calls to violence does that means he total received only one anonymous threat to justify censorship of dissenting scientist?

  • Turns out NYU did a study and found that Russian trolls were barely seen by anyone on Twitter. And the trolls mostly interacted with people that were extremely highly likely to vote GOP and in the end there’s no statistical argument that Russian troll bots led to any changed votes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/09/russian-trolls-twitter-had-little-influence-2016-voters/

Another claim for censorship especially in 2020 and especially for the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian troll/bots interferes with the 2016 election and now we need to censor people. NYPost/Zerohedge got censored on these justifications.

At first I thought these were both solid culture war stories to post about but didn’t feel like doing two posts. Then I realized their connected and both are weak reasons that have been used for significant censorship and deplatforming.

I agree with your premise, insofar as you're arguing that Twitter engaged in censorship for political purposes that can't be justified by normal standards of rationality. What I don't understand is why I should care. Businesses make decisions all the time, both political and otherwise, that I find disagreeable, but only rarely do they rise to the level that some sort of public call to action seems warranted. And what action is warranted vis a vis Twitter? The people who put these policies into place no longer run the company. Some would argue that government intervention is warranted, but it seems unusual that those (such as yourself, presumably) who are coming at this from a more conservative position would really find this to be the ideal solution, especially considering that a large component of this scandal is that there was already too much government influence of Twitter's content policies.

Twitter is basically the public square and plays a huge role(probably the hugest role) in deciding what will and won’t be newsworthy. Their censorship policies affect us all for that reason.

I feel like one crucial distinction between Twitter and the "public square" is that Twitter is not "public" (as in owned by the public or government or similar entity).

FWIW, the Supreme Court seems to think that, functionally, it is indeed the public square:

Social media allows users to gain access to information and communicate with one another about it on any subject that might come to mind. Supra, at 1735 -1736. By prohibiting sex offenders from using those websites, North Carolina with one broad stroke bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge. These websites can provide perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to a private citizen to make his or her voice heard. They allow a person with an Internet connection to "become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox." Reno, 521 U.S., at 870, 117 S.Ct. 2329.

Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1737 (2017).

Note also that there is at least an argument that social media companies are state actors because of that functional equivalence, Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center, 23 Cal.3d 899 (1979) [Private shopping center cannot bar signature gathers because shopping centers are the modern equivalent of central business districts]. That is not to say that the argument would be a winning one, but @hydroacetylene's argument has a strong pedigree.

Edit: By "That is not to say that the argument would be a winning one," I mean that the argument is not likely to be successful nowadays. My point simply is that OP's argument is not per se illegitimate. It is consistent with past cases, even though it would be an extension thereof, and one not likely to be adopted.

Packingham isn't the best case to cite here because it specifically dealt with government action and not private action. The court may have described Twitter as a "public square" but stopped short of designating it a public forum, which is the relevant categorization. Similarly, Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump stated that Trump's personal Twitter account was a public forum because Trump was using it for purposes akin to those of an official government account, but the court again stopped short of ruling the entirety of Twitter a public forum.

Additionally, if you're going to cite Robins as a potential argument you should put the case in its proper context. In 1972, the court ruled in Lloyd Corporation, Ltd. v. Tanner that private shopping centers were explicitly not private forums, as they failed to meet the standards set forth in Marsh v. Alabama, wherein the court ruled that a privately-owned company town was a public forum. Robins didn't overrule Lloyd but clarified it; while the First Amendment didn't require private landowners to open their premises to speech activities, state law could broaden that requirement.

I cited Packingham purely to support OP's claim that social media is the modern public square, not for the argument that Twitter is a state actor.

Re Lloyd, yes, that is why I noted that I was skeptical that the public function argument would be a winning one. But note that I cited the CA Supreme Court decision in Pruneyard, not the USSC decision. It will be interesting to see how the Court deals with its Pruneyard decision in the case re the Texas social media law. I am guessing they will overrule it, though I suppose they could distinguish it, since the Texas law de facto extends beyond state borders, and also because Twitter, unlike a shopping mall, arguably is in the business of speaking. Or maybe they will uphold the Texas law; I hope so, but am skeptical that they will.

Note also that overruling Pruneyard on property rights grounds (a key issue in the original case) would undermine the validity of the CA law that requires private colleges to respect the free speech rights of their students, a law which I hope other states will emulate.

I feel like "the government can ban you from accessing a website" and "website operators are obliged to let you access their site" are quite different legal questions. When I hear discussions about Twitter being a public square it seems much more in the vein of objecting to being banned from Twitter by Twitter, rather than the government.

Also not clear to me what traditional governmental function Twitter is providing that would be analogous for Pruneyard.

The relevant critique is being banned from Twitter by Twitter at the request of the government and whether or not someone would have been banned buttfor the government requests and the implied governmental interventions into Twitters business if they refuse.

Well, I did explicitly note that the argument might not be a winning one -- Pruneyard was 40 years ago, even then the US Supreme Court had rejected that argument under the US Constitution (Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, 407 US 551 (1972); Pruneyard was decided under the CA Constitution's free speech clause, not the First Amendment). As for what function is analogous, I thought it was clear that it is the "public square" function.

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