The New York Times reports that Big Tech’s power grab is related to the Constitution
The Up First Podcast: Gaza negotiations in the u.s., Israel, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan with a “torsion deal”
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There’s a chance there’s a deal for another temporary truce in Gaza to allow for an exchange of hostages. Representatives of Israel, the U.S., Egypt and Qatar agreed on the “basic contours” of a deal this past week in Paris, according to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan. The next stage of the negotiations will be held in the state of qatar. Still, despite U.S. objections, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will not call off a planned military offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians are seeking refuge.
Gaza cease-fire talks inch forward; Supreme Court hears social media censorship case: Kara Swisher spoke to Up First Newsletter Gaza Ceasefire Negotiations
This fact has been well-known. Texas wrote a law that prohibits tech companies from discriminating against one another on the basis of viewpoint if they take posts off their social media platforms. Two advocacy groups that are funded by Facebook and other companies sued immediately, arguing that they have the right to remove whatever they want from their platforms for any reason, if they so choose. It has raised a constitutional question tricky enough to have made it to the Supreme Court in a case that will be argued on Monday called NetChoice v. Paxton.
Congress is facing a partial government shutdown yet again. It is supposed that the government will be funded every year by the end of September. They’ve been stuck renewing their spending plan. Federal funding for several departments, including the Transportation, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, runs out at the end of the week. President Joe Biden is expected to host the top four Congressional lawmakers tomorrow to negotiate ahead of Friday’s deadline.
Kara Swisher came by our studios last week and had a lot to say. She talks about one tech leader she has interviewed and is reminded of another. She processes the world in many different ways.
Swisher’s memoir Burn Book: A Tech Love Story is about more than 30 years covering the technology industry as a reporter, analyst and TV personality. She writes that she went from asking tech leaders what they were thinking to telling them what she thought of their business. Today, she’s disillusioned with many of them.
Free expression is under attack in the U.S. Capitol after Donald Trump booted from social media platforms: The case of the Tharu community
The Himalayan mountains are plagued by waste left by mountaineering activities over the years. The Department of Tourism estimates that there are a lot of waste on Mt. Everest. The government began an initiative in 2019 to clean up the mountains. The Tharu community of indigenous women use their traditional skills to transform garbage from the mountains into something new, thanks to the material collected from the mountains.
See photos of how Sunita Kumari Chaudhary and her fellow crafters change trash into art and read about their fledgling effort to repurpose mountain waste into economic opportunity for their community.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group for the social media companies, believes that the government is attempting to dictate what viewpoints are distributed in the name of free expression. “And that’s what’s at issue in this case.”
The dispute intensified after the violent siege on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, when social media sites booted former President Donald Trump from their platforms, fearing his posts could provoke more unrest.
“Freedom of speech is under attack in Texas,” declared Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott at the bill signing. There is a danger in the movement to silence conservative ideas and values, by some social media companies. This is wrong and we will not allow it in Texas.”
Guidelines and terms of use are needed to make sure that the community isn’t polluted. “And that’s everything from posting dog pictures in the cat forum to barbeque in the vegan forum to far more serious things like trying to groom children in a children’s site.”
First Amendment protection should not be violated on social media, even if it’s challenged by a high-court-in-the-slope-of-state law
John is the founder of the Rutherford Institute. Whitehead, who was a co-lead counsel in the cases, argued that the social media sites should not be subject to censorship.
“It’s out to make people think,” he said. You can disagree, in other words. If someone puts something foolish on, let’s say, Facebook, people should respond immediately and start a debate. debating is the only way to eliminate.
Other allies of Florida argue that the sites are just hosting content, and not making editorial judgments that deserve First Amendment protection.
Everyone is urged to oppose government control of speech. “So we know you are the person in the White House today, and that will not be forever.” The First Amendment is so important that it’s paramount.
They may be more like bookstores and newspapers, places that edit and make their information available to the public that get the highest level of First Amendment protection.
The social media giants are relying in part on a 1974 Supreme Court case, Miami Herald v Tornillo. Florida tried to force the newspaper to carry op-eds it didn’t want to publish. The high court sided with the Herald back then.
Today, the social media sites said that Florida is trying to make the big social media platforms print every letter to the editor. Users don’t want that and neither do advertisers, they said.
What do social media platforms tell us about democracy, liberty and security? A critical analysis of Netchoice, CCIA, and the Institute for Social Advocacy and Protection
Netchoice and CCIA are supported by groups of the political spectrum including the US Chamber of Commerce, Americans For Prosperity and the American Civil Liberties Union.
A bipartisan group of national security experts weighed in, too. Rupa Bhattacharyya is a former Justice Department lawyer and special master for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. The Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection is at Georgetown University Law Center.
On the average day, some 95 million pictures are posted onInstagram, 34 million videos are uploaded on TikTok, and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on social media. Some go viral, most don’t. And some percentage — the numbers are unclear — are taken down for violating the content rules set by the platforms. Given the volume of posts and videos, it is no exaggeration to say that the rules for social media have become the most important speech regulations on the planet, policing what can and cannot be said online.
Home grown extremists like the Proud Boys and foreign groups like the Islamic State have deployed social media to attract converts. The mosque shooter in New Zealand tried to inspire others by live-streaming his activities.
Bhattacharyya said social media platforms should face common-sense regulations, including consumer protection and anti-fraud laws. And the current content moderation policies of some of the big sites have real flaws.
Their court papers claimed that there were threats against the justices. They said that they have deleted those things. The state laws might cause them to be sued for yanking trolls who flood their chats with lewd and racist posts.
It is important to understand what the companies are asking for. Nearly everything TikTok or Instagram does involves moving and sorting information, even if it is just displaying search results or quietly collecting your personal data. The tech giants are pushing the simplistic position that any such conduct is “speech” (and any sorting or blocking of that speech is “editing”). If the justices buy this argument, they’d be giving constitutional protection to almost any social media platform’s actions, leaving tech companies more freedom to do what they please. Doing so would create a kind of immunity verging on sovereignty that it is hard to imagine the framers of the Constitution ever intended.
There are gaps in the laws when it comes to how their mandates would be enforced. The questions posed by the justices showed the court’s frustration at being “caught between two polar opposite positions, both of which have significant costs and benefits for freedom of speech,” says Cliff Davidson, a Portland-based attorney at Snell & Wilmer.
