Former President Donald Trump’s frequent use of Twitter lurked in the background as the justices weighed whether an official’s online activities can constitute government action.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that members of the public in some circumstances can sue public officials for blocking them on social media platforms, deciding a pair of cases against the backdrop of former President Donald Trump’s contentious and colorful use of Twitter.
The court ruled unanimously that officials can be deemed “state actors” when making use of social media and can therefore face litigation if they block or mute a member of the public.
In the two cases before the justices, they ruled that disputes involving a school board member in Southern California and a city manager in Michigan should be sent back to lower courts for the new legal test to be applied.
Free speech is not a left or right issue anymore. The left is anti-free-speech as often as the right is. The left is happy to silence speech it doesn’t like when it’s online or on campus. The right is happy to silence it when it’s a library book or story time.
I hope leftists wake up as they watch anti-Zionist speech get silenced by the mechanisms they used to use against the right. The answer to bad speech, whether hate speech or misinformation, is more speech.
Edit: spelling
Ah, there’s the usual “both sides” “argument”.
I gave specific examples. Be specific in your response. Where was I wrong?
The “left”, insofar as it seeks to limit speech, usually tries to limit hate speech towards minority and oppressed groups.
The “right” usually limits speech to restrict the voices of those same minority and oppressed groups. Equating the two is absurd at best.
It’s not, though. The precedent protecting speech that does not incite imminent lawless action, Brandenburg v. Ohio, was won when the ACLU defended a Ku Klux Klan leader. That precedent protects your right to call for the workers of America to rise up and overthrow the corrupt billionaire-led capitalist regime and the politicians who do their bidding. Of course the left and right are not equivalent. But they do have at least one thing in common: deep-seated ambivalence about the free speech. Even the ACLU is faltering: NYT: Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis
The Palestine issue shows how hate speech restrictions can be used against minority and oppressed groups. Just label it anti-semitism.
Wikipedia: Working definition of antisemitism
Hate speech rules can also be used against criticism of white supremacy and patriarchy. Just claim it expresses hatred of white people and men.
The whole thing, from start to finish.
Ah so you are full of shit! I got you
Nope. They’re right, you’re wrong.
You didn’t even give specific examples as you pretended to, it was just a blanket “both sides do it!” You just used more words.
And " the only answer to bad speech is more speech" is just factually and provable wrong. The Nazis and their enemies had free speech during the Weimarer Republik, they all used it extensively, the social democrats, the liberals, the communists, the clerics, the workers, the unions, they all used their right to free speech to try and fight the “bad speech” the Nazis could deploy openly, do you know how that story continues? They all lost their free speech because they were forced to let the cancer that is fascism roam free, with lies, propaganda, misinformation, calls for violence and just pure hate.
So the “bad speech” got plenty of “more speech” to counter but it didn’t change anything.
What am I wrong about?
I just called them full of shit for blowing someone off.
It’s almost like I did the same thing they did
You could make the same argument against every civil liberty the Germans enjoyed in the Weimar Republic: freedom of movement, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, even democracy.
Here’s more specifics: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4317052-what-the-vexed-history-of-campus-hate-speech-codes-teaches-us-about-fighting-antisemitism/
https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and
That’s exactly my point, the Nazis never acted in good faith, they were never beholden to the freedoms they used, in fact they used those freedoms to get rid of them, so to protect them we have to restrict them. So unfortunately we have to exclude some things from the protection Democratic values can deliver. For example the swastika in Germany - all it represents, all it refers to in that context is anti democratic, anti freedom so if you show it outside of a educational context we have to assume it represents exactly that - that you want to get rid of democratic values like free speech, so we exclude that symbol from the protection of our democratic values TO protect said democratic values.
It’s a little paradox and a lotta complicated. We should never take those measures lightly but imo they have to exist, because history showed that if you don’t protect them , some forces are willing to use them to destroy them.
Your first link shows what happens when we don’t apply those measures carefully and too broadly, the framework has to be very precise for them to make sense, otherwise they do the job of the deconstructors of democracy for them.
Your second Link refers to a private entity, those can not restrict free speech, they can censor what speech they want to host and it is their right under free speech to do so, so it is irrelevant. Like if you’re in my house talking shit I can kick you out, no free speech was impeded by that action, I just exercised my free speech to show you the door.
I’d like to point out that this thread began with me asserting that the left and right are both anti-free-speech in different contexts. I was told I was wrong. I asked how I was wrong. Then you stepped in and began arguing against free speech in certain situations. This is my precise point. The left is not pro-free-speech, but pro-speech-I-like, just like the right. Why should the right respect your speech rights if you don’t respect their speech rights? The end result is everyone’s speech rights get chipped away, and eventually speech restrictions will be used by antidemocratic forces within the government to entrench themselves.
This is laughably incorrect. The left are so tolerant of harmful speech by their political opponents it’s neutered their own ability to sell themselves as competitively viable when they do clash with fascists in the political arena. The most lefty space I know bends over backwards to accommodate genocidal retards in the name of pacifying the right and it’s because they believe people who say things like this.
Fuck Israel, free Palestine
As you complain about excessive tolerance of free speech, you make my point for me.
See also: Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis
Your point about free speech being neither left nor right? Hate speech is not free speech. Incitement of violence and genocidal ideation is not free speech.
Sedition is not free speech. Defacing the flag is not free speech. Blasphemy is not free speech. Criticism of party officials is not free speech.
lmao, are those your opinions?
No. My point is if you arbitrarily redefine free speech to exclude speech you don’t like, free speech loses all meaning.
It’s not arbitrary, though you ran with it like they’re all the same.