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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   30479 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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Im on my way to a barbecue right now so dont have time to add much in the way of commentary but a federal has just hand down an injunction barring the white house from working with social media organizations to censor specific content. A rulling that the Washington Post describes as dangerous and violating long standing norms. Happy Fourth of July all ;-)

The Donald Trump-appointed judge’s move could undo years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies. For more than a decade, the federal government has attempted to work with social media companies to address criminal activity, including child sexual abuse images and terrorism.

I thought we were talking about protected speech?

There is certainly plenty of pro-terrorism speech which 1) violates social media companies' terms of service; but 2) is protected speech. Ditto re plenty of speech that advocates violence, and plenty of speech which advocates adult sex with children. The injunction prevents the govt from flagging such posts.

Advocating for criminal activity is, uh, usually not a criminal activity. Protected speech is by definition not criminal activity.

the federal government has attempted to work with social media companies to address criminal activity

The point is that there is all sorts of protected speech that increases the likelihood of criminal activity. Flashing gang signs, for example, as well as all sorts of advocacy of crime. As well as, possibly, sharing animated pictures of fictional children having sex with adults [edit: I say "possibly" because I don’t know if that actually encourages recipients to share actual child porn]. Heck, even agreeing with another person to commit a crime is generally not itself a crime; more is usually needed.

Nevertheless, attempting to censor those typs of speech is "addressing criminal activity," specifically, it is an attempt to reduce the incidence of crime, which is why social media companies do not allow it, and why many other countries censor or punish that type of speech.

Hence, preventing govt from notifying a social media company about speech which is both protected speech and which increases the risk of crime X does indeed hamper the govt's ability to address crime X. Please note that I am not advocating that the govt should do that. To the contrary, I believe that social media companies should be forbidden from censoring users' speech which is protected from govt censorship. But I am not going to pretend that such a policy would not make crime prevention more difficult.

Hence, preventing govt from notifying a social media company about speech which is both protected speech and which increases the risk of crime X does indeed hamper the govt's ability to address crime X.

The government suppressing such protected speech itself instead of informing a social media company about it also hampers the ability of the government to address crime X. Doesn't this policy also make crime prevention more difficult?

Yes, obviously. Just as the Fourth Amendment hampers the ability of the the government to fight crime. And the Fifth Amendment. And the Sixth Amendment. That is the price of having civil liberties. As always, I will quote Justice Scalia at the oral arguments in Maryland v. King:

Katherine Winfree: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: Since 2009, when Maryland began to collect DNA samples from arrestees charged with violent crimes and burglary, there had been 225 matches, 75 prosecutions and 42 convictions, including that of Respondent King.

Justice Antonin Scalia: Well, that's really good. I'll bet you if you conducted a lot of unreasonable searches and seizures, you'd get more convictions, too. [Laughter] That proves absolutely nothing.

You seem to think I am advocating for social media censorship, when I have said the exact opposite.

I for one appreciate the nuanced take here. Even in this forum, there a distressingly large number of people who are unable to admit that their policies come with any tradeoffs whatsoever.

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