Category: United States

There are 2 posts filed in United States (this is page 1 of 1).

Read Who Do You Sue? State and Platform Hybrid Power Over Online Speech by DAPHNE KELLER

This essay closely examines the effect on free-expression rights when platforms such as Facebook or YouTube silence their users’ speech. The first part describes the often messy blend of government and private power behind many content removals, and discusses how the combination undermines users’ rights to challenge state action. The second part explores the legal minefield for users—or potentially, legislators—claiming a right to speak on major platforms. The essay contends that questions of state and private power are deeply intertwined. To understand and protect internet users’ rights, we must understand and engage with both.

This essay from the Hoover Institute is worth a read for anyone discussing either online speech in general or the embarrassingly wrong pieces on Sec. 230 which have appeared in both Vox and the Washington Post in the last few days. Click here to read the full version in as accessible a format as possible without having to download the document yourself and tag it.
Read Rep. Devin Nunes’s $250M Lawsuit Against Twitter Will Go Nowhere by Eugene Volokh

The defamation (and negligence) claims against Twitter are blocked by 47 U.S.C. § 230.

This is worth a read by anyone who either wants social media to be classified somehow as a public utility, as well as by those who insist that their First Ammendment rights are being violated when social media platforms remove content they find objectionable. Worth reading also are the linked sources.