The liberal government of the UK is moving toward complete online censorship with their bill to prevent children from going on social media sites. The reality is that they will now be able to identify and will arrest people for posting opinions they don't like. This has already been happening for the last couple of years and will now be even easier. This is exactly how it works in China.
If Democrats come into power again in the US, this will soon be coming to a computer near you.
This should be the #1 story on HN, but the tech community has been strangely silent on the subject....
I just wish the people claiming to be champions of free speech and rights will just admit that this all goes out the window when it applies to speech and people you don't like. It would make everything much easier.
Apparently they missed Ron Wyden (co-sponsor) of the bill is a Democrat and the bill is a bi-partisan effort?
Or the fact the EFF is actually in support of the bill:
EFF applauds Senators Cruz and Wyden for taking this critical issue seriously, and we look forward to working with Congress on this bipartisan bill as it moves through the process. We hope it lands on the right balance to provide additional protections for everyday users around freedom of expression.
And thank god for that. I hope this is indicative of a larger trend in the opposite direction.
I'm not in the US, but here too free speech and other democratic values have been something the far right could contrast themselves on against the center and left. It pisses me off to no end that the issues I've been harping on about for years are now most effectively championed by a group that is otherwise ideologically opposed to me. I'm not mad at the right for this, I'm mad at the center and left who handed it to them.
Square this circle:
1) Big Social Media firms have to make decisions on speech.
2) The ideals of free speech that everyone espouses are from an era where publishing and control of publishing was nascent.
3) As businesses, it is their job to ensure they take care of their shareholders, and thus this means driving engagement.
4) As humans, we respond and engage with certain stimului more actively than others.
5) As of 2026, moderation is still value driven. Private entities must now what is fair speech and moderate according to their values.
6) Platforms, following the incentives that are set out for them, create environments that are as addictive as possible for its users. This is what their job is.
You can make small enclaves for long form content. However, the majority of the voting population is drugged to the gills with enrapturing content.
This is not a recipie for a healthy information economy, this is the opium wars being waged by our own business structures on our own people - a druggie information economy.
Giving governments more power is ... oof... a bad idea. We need more genuine efforts to ensure a healthier content environment that works for society.
Do note, that while US based commenters are concerned, the situation is even worse in other nations, given that Authoritarianism is on an upswing. Figuring this out is not a trivial philosophical issue.
Generally speaking, we deem various kinds of speech that harms people as NOT protected under the first amendment, and that kind of speech would not be protected here.
Yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, libel and slander, speech calling for violence, and fraudulent advertising are some typical examples of speech not protected by the first amendment.
It would be tricky, but we could reasonably categorize engagement algorithms with certain properties as harmful to people and not subject to first amendment protections. This would be consumer protection, like laws against fraudulent advertising and other misleading claims.
> After earlier stating he first ran for Congress in 2012 “with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate,”
Texas has laws that government contractors must promise not to boycott the state of Israel [2]. 35+ US states have similar laws [3]. This on its face seems like a government restriction on speech, squarely violating the First Amendment. The Supreme Court, who otherwise love to pay lip service to the First Amendment, go out of their way to avoid anti-BDS challenges [4]. Courts have generally split hairs here saying anti-BDS impacts commerce and is speec-neutral. That's a complete cop out.
So do I think that Ted Cruz really cares about free speech? Not for a second. I suspect that if this passes, it'll only ever be applied in cases where governments officials attack conservative misinformation (eg stolen elections, anti-vaxxer anything). Any speech contradicting US foreign policy will be labelled as domestic terrorism so First Amendment freedoms don't seem to apply (I suspect).
US tech platforms already have incredible conservative bias. Meta's policy chief, Jordana Cutler (who worked in Benjamin Netanyahu's office), boasts about taking down pro-Palestinian content [5]. Twitter is a Nazi shithole [6]. And worse [7]. The whole manosphere, which is an alt-right entry point, flourishes on every platform.
So, no, I have no confidence in anything Ted Cruz supports.
[1]: https://www.christianpost.com/news/ted-cruz-cites-genesis-12...
[2]: https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/anti-israel-policies-are-ant...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
[4]: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/supreme-court-declines-t...
[5]: https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti...
[6]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-mus...
[7]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/07/27/twitter-...
It really does, that's the entire point. If you go find somebody and physically attack them for what they've written on HN about for example medicine, that makes you the law-breaker.
I understand from the way you write that you might consider it your right to do such things to other people who don't have the same opinions as you, but freedom of speech protects them against retribution from you or anybody else, including from the government.
Yeah if I did this thing you completely made up, that would be illegal. Just like if the parent commenter was imprisoned for the post he made, that would also be illegal. Have you considered basing your politics on real things?
> I understand from the way you write that you might consider it your right to do such things to other people who don't have the same opinions as you,
Oh don't flatter yourselves. I have no interest at all in going to prison for slapping the shit out of COVID deniers. I'll happily tell you you're wrong though.
> but freedom of speech protects them against retribution from you or anybody else, including from the government.
Correct, but it doesn't protect them from social consequences, in this case getting downvoted, which is what they were pissing and moaning about.
It's also true, I should acknowledge, that the US has a strong system of checks and balances against stupid proclamations like this and a generally oppositional culture around speech restrictions. It's unlikely I'll be arrested for posting 8647, or indeed for pointing you to other illegal numbers like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag, and if I were I'd wear it as a badge of honor. But just because Americans are successfully fighting it doesn't mean there's no issue.
https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/when-complaining-about...
https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-of...
https://www.rcfp.org/supreme-court-throws-out-1876-criminal-...
https://www.fire.org/cases/larry-bushart-v-perry-county
There's a lot more.
Douglass Mackey was arrested and convicted for posting satirical Clinton election ads, though this was later overturned after he spent months in prison.
The current FCC chairman threatens the broadcast license and to block deals of networks who air shows the president doesn’t like. These threats appear to have lead directly to the cancellation of shows — a clear violation of the first amendment, though there have been no consequences so far.
If you really care about this issue, get out of your information bubble.
Whichever party is in power, Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, have tried to suppress speech they don’t like when they get in power. If we pretend this is a partisan issue we can’t stop them.
Additionally, when I fact check what they're whining about, it is often like, "the White House requested Twitter ban medical misinformation about coronavirus, without threat of consequences, and they did."
> I just wish the people claiming to be champions of free speech and rights will just admit that this all goes out the window when it applies to speech and people you don't like
Try using the word "cis-gender" on Twitter and let us know how that goes.
People here are getting police visits and legal mail because they called a politician a name on twitter or get investigated over a sign they held at a political protest.
Thousands of cases at this point.
Are you sure they are? Probably most people in your country would label you as far right for championing free speech, no other issues considered. Probably you are doing the same for others.
They whine about actual Nazi rhetoric earning bans on private companies' platforms, then turn around and open investigations on people criticizing their masked police force. Attending protests gets you added to the terrorist watchlist.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/14/setting-1st-amendment-my...
Okay, so maybe you don't believe a lawyer. Let's try a different lawyer that's more famous.
> So, there you have it: obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, and speech integral to criminal conduct. Throw in true threats - which was left out of this list for some reason - and child pornography, and you’ve got the categories. Note that the Court specifically identifies them as well-known and historic, not as in flux.
That is not a general principle. Consider the following: it is now illegal to say the word “election” because it would harm the President.
This is a hope, however I have not seen any effort that wasn't scuppered, until recently.
The social media bans are a lurch in that direction.
I could separate them out into different strands:
1) Society saying that the engagement algorithms is not what we want to have in our lives or the lives of our children
2) Problematic technical implementations, or benign technical implementations that invade privacy and support government gaining more powers over speech.
Any regulation shaping algorithms is perilously close to shaping speech. Now if you say algorithms are speech or editorial decisions that platforms have their own freedom to choose, then you essentially strip them of their protections.
This would force a form of moderation that would have most people up in arms on HN.
I fully admit, I am being rough in my cuts; the point I am attempting to make is that any decision to decide what constitutes protected and unprotected speech is going to be government interference.
It may even be likely that the firms such as Meta or Tik Tok would end up as untenable under such rules.
The fiction underlying their section 230 liability shield is that they don’t have to make those decisions. They’re just “dumb pipes” for user generated content. The Supreme Court punted on this issue in Twitter v. Taamneh but it’s going to get resolved eventually.
panny•2h ago
cookingrobot•1h ago
panny•1h ago
IVM Block is my tongue in cheek reference to the Biden administration doing everything in their power to block discussion of a safe and effective treatment for Covid which would eliminate the legal justification for the EUA on Covid vaccines and spoil their giant investments in those pharma companies.
ToucanLoucan•1h ago
jMyles•1h ago
Facebook's treatment of the BMJ investigation of the unblinding of the Pfizer trial (which of course, turned out to be spot-on) was absolutely shocking, and is just one of the many instances of "ICE block-level" censorship.
(In case you need a refresher on the Facebook-censors-BMJ drama, I summarized it a few months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232902 )
panny•1h ago
ToucanLoucan•1h ago
Second, horse dewormer doesn't cure COVID. Censoring dangerous misinformation from fools like yourself who will believe it because it's given to them via the right mouthpiece is a good idea, because if you don't, then you end up with fools like yourself, years after the fact, still regurgitating it.
belorn•9m ago
I suspect it goes to explain why this new bill is bipartisan. That case failed because the plaintiffs did not have a legal standing to sue.
"In a dissent that detailed emails, press conferences, and past decisions, Justice Alito painted the "jawboning" as "blatantly unconstitutional".
Wednesday's ruling, he wrote, "permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think"."
Regardless if one agree with them, it do demonstrate that conservative side think that there is a risk that governments will attempt to persuade platforms to moderate content, and that this is a risk. This new bill seem to make it much easier to give people a legal standing to sue, thus allowing the supreme court to give a different verdict if a similar situation happen again.
jMyles•1h ago
In fact, it seems to me that you've chosen precisely two areas between which a palpable bridge exists, contradicting the two-party zeitgeist.
HN, for all its many flaws, is one of the few places where important evidence such as the diamond princess dataset and the cochrane review of evidence of mask (in)efficacy received robust discussion and, seemingly, resulted in changed minds.
Likewise, I don't recall anyone but a few trolls suggesting that Apple's assistance to ICE in covering its tracks was a legitimate exercise of state (to the extent that pressure was a factor) or corporate (to the extent that it created market esteem) pressure.
JoshTriplett•1h ago
That sure is quite an assumption you're making.
Governments should have zero control over speech and zero ability to impose consequences on speech. Individuals and most groups should have absolute freedom of association, which is precisely what they're exercising when choosing not to associate with some speech and some speakers