The US President [apparently] threatens to violate the first ammendment

Tech Talk Internet
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The President [and his cronies, like Conway] is/are threatening “Big Action” against Twitter. This is gonna be interesting. Many people misunderstand how free speech works in America (this stated by a non-American.) Freedom of speech and expression is NOT a right guaranteed by just anyone or any corporation. The only guarantee is that US Government must not interfere with freedoms (with certain exceptions, usually around criminality)… and it sounds like whatever he might try would be just that… an interference on Twitter’s freedoms.

“The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. It forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual’s religious practices. It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. It also guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition their government.”

I am no constitutional expert, but I presume the courts would interpret “congress” broadly to mean any branch of the government, including the office of the President.

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Yes, how ironic it is the this “president” has zero understanding of the Constitution. :persevere:

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I would comment on the subject, but I am not allowed to…

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Disclaimer: Not a political post!

Many people in US do not understand what 1st Amendment (to Constitution) is about. As you note, it is about the government restricting free speech. Companies can restrict what is posted on their platforms (“terms of service”), and entities can request content be removed from Youtube, for example (and it is almost always removed, right or wrong).

In the case at hand, the current US President has threatened to remove certain protections for companies that are part of the Communications Decency Act. This act already provides certain liabilities for public “speech.” Specifically “publishers” (like Twitter) are held not to be responsible for the content (e.g. Tweets) posted on their platform by others. Generally, a company like Twitter isn’t responsible when someone posts content that would be illegal under some other grounds. Were this protection removed, social media platforms would have to put great effort ($$) into scanning and removing this content. None of this is about the 1st Amendment.

Fortunately, it seems the President is unlikely to be able to make good on his threat, according to the analysis from The Cyberwire.

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Hey I can top that. What if the President called for the US Military to march, by force, into every city in America to shut down the 1st Amendment right to protest?

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Leo, it is no longer about the 1st amendment right to protest and speak. It is the looting, violence and destruction that needs to be stopped. If these were peaceful protests, it would be an entirely different story.

Did you see how many people were hurt or killed around the country by the mob just LAST NIGHT?!?.. By the violent mob, AKA by “the protesters?” (the people doing this violence are not “protesters.”) Even the family of the man that was killed by police do not want this going on.

That cannot be allowed to continue. You do not have a constitutional right to anarchy, chaos and destruction. The looting, burning of buildings and violence against people must be stopped. What the police did to that man cannot be allowed to happen again. But this behavior since cannot be excused either. It must be stopped.

If it were just marches in the street without violence, this would not be an issue. The military does need to be brought in because it needs to be stopped, and stopped now.

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im-right-youre-wrong-la-la-la-la-la

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Twitter is acting as an editor. They pick and choose who violates their rules and who does not. They even “fact checked” one of Trump’s tweets and put a tag on it last week… Claiming his post was not factually correct.

Funny thing is that their “fact check” was wrong, and proven to be so by follow up posts by others. (This was the tweet about voter fraud with mail in ballots). Also, the guy Twitter has hired to be in charge of these issues is NOT fair and balanced. He has made several horrific statements publicly that prove he is not fair.

You cannot have it both ways. If non Democrat points of view get banned, shut down, shadow banned etc… Yet left sided posts that clearly violate Twitters rules are left standing (this happens each and every day) - then the company is starting to editorialize, and they should not have that protection.

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That would be horrible, but isn’t he mouthing off about the military marching in to quell riots, not peaceful protest? I think that should be left up to the states in my opinion.

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I certainly hope it will be possible to have a discussion on this thread without any posts being flagged like last time…

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Section 230 is probably not perfect, very few laws are. (They can suffer from the need to be interpreted by the courts.) Section 230 could probably use an update. That is SOLELY the responsibility of Congress.

As the laws currently stand, Twitter is FULLY within their rights and the law to operate the site as they see fit… It’s their site. As I tried to make clear, above, there is no free speech issue here. Despite the President acting like Twitter is in his to control, it is a private business and it can run its business however it sees fit, within the law. The issue with most conservatives is they don’t like the law, and the President can’t get Congress to change it, so he acts to work around the fact that he can’t control Congress.

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Word is that his executive action really does nothing without Congress changing the law (which the Dems will likely not do). But, he is at least bringing attention to the issue.

I understand that there is not a free speech protection on Twitter. I understand that, and never claimed otherwise.

But tv channels cannot do or say whatever they want without possible legal repercussions (or civil). It is getting to the point where Twitter and other social media do not deserve certain legal protections if they do not start being more even handed.

They are a huge company with huge influence. More fairness is needed. The silencing of 1 side continously is not right, fair, honest or correct.

It would sorta be the same if the phone company started to disconnect phone calls for anyone with the wrong political view. I know it is not quite the same analogy. But I have seen some argue that some tech companies could be viewed the same way as utilities in this 21st century.

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They are under pressure internationally to ensure that false information is flagged, yet in the US, if the president posts information that is incorrect and it gets flagged, they are a threat and must stop.

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But what he said is not false. It has been proven that there is voter fraud with mail-in ballots. Heck, I just saw a news story last week: dozens and dozens of blank mail-in ballots were sent to 1 specific address. Some guy saw them all and even took photos. And, people proved that Twitter’s fact checking was wrong - And they did so ON Twitter (with replies to that original message).

It was actually Twitter who took a stance, and fumbled. If you want to take a corporate stance that the President is lying, you better pick an issue where he really is lying. Instead, THEY were wrong in their assertion. But, that has not been admitted to or fixed.

And, go look at what the guy that Twitter has put in charge of deciding (what is true and what is not true) has previously said publicly… It is astonishing and a shame that he, of all people, is now in charge of what Twitter decides is “the truth.” Go read his past public comments…

The issues I am talking about are not false stories. People are being targeted by Twitter for their political views. Plain and simple. Open and shut… Over the last few years, I have seen countless examples of this.

Agree or disagree with Trump (I don’t agree with everything he says). That is a seperate issue. There is now a new way to silence the oppositional view. Freeze them out via large tech companies

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Proven by who? I think you may be biased. If there is significant fraud, and considering the results of the last election, it would have mostly benefited the Republicans. People in glass houses should not throw stones. It’s the same with gerrymandering.

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Biased? Because I am anti voter fraud, and I see this for what it is?

Ok… I spent 5 minutes and found some examples… There are actually tons of examples of voter fraud with mail-in ballots…

Three quick examples… A 2018 congressional race in North Carolina was overturned by the state election board due to absentee ballot fraud.

A city council member in Ashtabula, Ohio had to resign after an investigation proved that he illegally registered to vote at his parent’s address in Ashtabula, rather than his residence in Plymouth, Ohio.

And, the mayor of Gordon, Alabama was removed from office after his conviction of absentee ballot fraud.

Now, this is not a Democrat vs Republican issue. We should all be concerned. Heck, another example was done to favor a Republican… In 2018, a political consultant and 7 others were indicted for scheming to illegally collect, fill in, forge and submit mail in ballots to benefit Republican Mark Harris. The fraud was extensive enough that Harris’s 900 vote victory was invalidated by the courts.

Another example… In 2016, a San Pedro couple found more than 80 unused ballots on top of their apartment building mailbox. All had different names but were addressed to an 89 year old neighbor who lived alone in the building.

Another issue… Los Angeles County in California has a voter registration rate of 112% of the adult citizen population. Yea, that’s not ripe for fraud…

In 2019, the state of California and Los Angeles settled a lawsuit to begin removing 1.5 million people from voter rolls. They had not been removing the names of people who had moved away for 20 years or more… How many of those “people” who are no longer even residents have miraculously voted in that city or state? And, some states belong to an electronic system to catch the names of people who move somewhere else - so they won’t vote in multiple states. Unfortunately, only 25 states and Washington DC participates in that system.

Now, in Ohio in recent years, there have been several known cases of people voting in multiple states (at the same time). And, from 2013 to 2017, 56 elections in Ohio resulted in a tie, and 86 were decided by 1 vote. Such voter fraud can absolutely affect the outcome of an election.

They also had 77 instances of non citizens they caught who voted in Ohio that cast ballot, and 277 more people registered to vote that were not citizens. And, that was just a search I did for a few minutes…

Admittedly, this is becoming a totally different issue when I say that Pennsylvania found that over 11,000 non citizens had registered to vote in that state last year. In Virginia, they removed 5,556 non citizens from voter roles, but not before 1/3 of them had already voted…

But there are a lot of voter fraud issues going on.

As for gerrymandering, we discussed that in a previous thread. BOTH sides do it, and it is wrong

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You do realize that some states vote EXCLUSIVELY by mail? Policy Research

So sure, there may be some isolated problems… it’s like saying that no one should pay for their items at Walmart because sometimes thieves can shoplift. Yes, bad sh*t happens… fraud is tempting to anyone with a criminal bent. It doesn’t mean that all transactions should be prevented in case fraud might occasionally happen. It means more effort should be spent to eliminate fraud that does happen.

Apropos of the current situation, frequently the attempts to fix a problem that doesn’t really happen very often are thinly veiled voter suppression of marginalized people.

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You said it did not exist (the problem). Then you wanted examples, so I gave you examples. Now, all of a sudden, it’s just isolated problems that are not important. Very convenient.

It’s never enough… If I was paid to research the issue, I could find tons more. These were easy to find, and there are many more examples. Plus, think of the ones we DON’T know about…

You wanted me to prove that Trump was not lying about voter fraud and mail in ballots. I did, and so did hundreds or more people on Twitter (in retweets). Yet, Twitter “fact checked” him and said he was lying. He was fact checked by a Twitter employee who is a partisan who insults Republicans, calls them Nazis, and had said many other disgusting and nasty things. This guy gets to decide what is “true” for the company. And he lied.

I have proven what you asked… That Twitter has been proven to lie. Now, you dismiss all the time and energy I took to find that information, and you move the goal posts by essentially saying it doesn’t matter anyway…

Go figure…

Twitter and other tech companies DO have an agenda. When it gets pointed out, it gets excused or brushed aside… And when it gets proven, it conveniently gets ignored…

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If there’s a second wave of covid-19 in the fall, it will be important to put the vote-by-mail processes in place to ensure a minimization of fraud. To just say don’t do it is irresponsible at best.

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I did not say that, and I’ll ask you kindly to refrain from trying to put words in my mouth. Here is a quote of what I did say:

I didn’t say it couldn’t or never happened.

I do say that some people in the President’s cadre (including the President) claimed there was fraud in the last federal election, the one that he won. So… based on that, it would be reasonable to assume that it was fraud in favour of Republicans.