Supreme Court to decide if private platforms should be forced to accept unwanted users

[Sonikku]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/sup...cide-fb-twitter-power-to-regulate-speech.html

Despite conservatives supposedly being proponents of allowing private businesses to do what they want on their turf and turn away users it doesn't want, I expect the conservative judges to rule against Facebook and the like on account of likening them taking away Alex Jones' megaphone on their platform as a violation of the first amendment.

 

[TheVrolok]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/sup...cide-fb-twitter-power-to-regulate-speech.html

Despite conservatives supposedly being proponents of allowing private businesses to do what they want on their turf and turn away users it doesn't want, I expect the conservative judges to rule against Facebook and the like on account of likening them taking away Alex Jones' megaphone on their platform as a violation of the first amendment.

I haven't read in on this case, can anyone who has tell me why a private company censoring voluntary users is a constitutional issue?

 

[ch33zw1z]

So much for an open internet being the stage for technical innovation.

 

[dank69]

Someone needs to update the two choice button meme with the options:

Allow discrimination against conservative heroes

Prevent discrimination against gays and minorities

And swap the last picture with a distressed picture of Kavanaugh.

 

[shortylickens]

Someone needs to update the two choice button meme with the options:

Allow discrimination against conservative heroes

Prevent discrimination against gays and minorities

And swap the last picture with a distressed picture of Kavanaugh.

I would if I could Photoshop.

 

[K1052]

I'd expect a narrow decision here, though it's still possible they do something hugely boneheaded.

Conservatives on the court probably saving their ammo for the big fights like undoing abortion, gay marriage, environmental regulation, and coming up with more innovative ways to put corporations farther beyond the reach of the law.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

I haven't read in on this case, can anyone who has tell me why a private company censoring voluntary users is a constitutional issue?

The case itself isn't about social media. It's about people arguing they were censored on public access television. I highly doubt this will change anything on social media platforms, regardless of the fact some are trying to use it as a measure against it. But conservatives will still hold it as some kind of example of how persecuted they are.

 

[TheVrolok]

The case itself isn't about social media. It's about people arguing they were censored on public access television. I highly doubt this will change anything on social media platforms, regardless of the fact some are trying to use it as a measure against it. But conservatives will still hold it as some kind of example of how persecuted they are.

Thanks. Sounds like an entirely different context begging for a narrow decision?

 

[Sonikku]

Someone needs to update the two choice button meme with the options:

Allow discrimination against conservative heroes

Prevent discrimination against gays and minorities

And swap the last picture with a distressed picture of Kavanaugh.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Thanks. Sounds like an entirely different context begging for a narrow decision?

More or less. There can be cases where private companies can be subject to the first amendment but this was by any definition a HUGE stretch to try and apply it there.

In this case a private company suspended two people for expressing views critical of the network. As such, private company, first amendment access, social media. That's the line conservatives are drawing.

 

[Homerboy]

@Sonikku wins the day!

 

[sdifox]

1st amendment says no, they don't have to.

 

[K1052]

1st amendment says no, they don't have to.

LOL

 

[sdifox]

LOL

Can you go on Sinclair and put on a show about how abortion is the right thing?

 

[dank69]

Haha, well done!

 

[dank69]

Of course, the correct ruling would be that businesses can discriminate at will except against protected classes. That would be the ruling consistent with The Constitution, but since that would fuck over conservative heroes AND protect gays and minorities, the conservative justices will butcher logic and decency in order to protect conservative heroes since they know they cannot oppress gays and minorities anyway.

 

[K1052]

Can you go on Sinclair and put on a show about how abortion is the right thing?

I am not about to underestimate the legal creativity that people like Gorsuch or Kavanaugh could use to impose something that will help conservatives and nobody else. To be clear that I don't think that such an outcome from this particular case is likely but the supreme court as an institution is capable of some wildly bad stuff (Scott, Korematsu, Exxon, Citizens United, Plessy, Bush, etc).

 

[theeedude]

Kavanaugh previously ruled that ISPs have a First Amendment right to censor and edit your speech on the internet.

 

[yllus]

Is it just me, or is CNBC wildly misrepresenting this case?

The case, Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-702, centers on whether a private operator of a public access television network is considered a state actor, which can be sued for First Amendment violations.​

That's a hugely different situation that Facebook or Twitter having to keep neo-Nazi trolls on their platforms.

 

[pauldun170]

details

Jesus Melendez was a sometime contributor to the network who was suspended in 2012 for harassing an employee. He later produced a video that included harassing and threatening language toward MNN and the staff. In response, MNN banned the video from further airings as a violation of the network’s zero tolerance policy for harassment. Melendez and his associate DeeDee Halleck brought a First Amendment claim against MNN, but the initial question was whether the network is a state actor for the purposes of the First Amendment. The district court said no, noting that, while it was a close call, other circuits had concluded that privately run public-access networks were not state actors. The Supreme Court hasn’t yet weighed in on the question directly, but Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a 1996 concurrence in a case dealing with laws regulating content on public-access channels, wrote that they should be considered state actors who run public fora and are thus subject to the First Amendment. In his concurrence in the same case, Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed, writing that “franchising authorities require cable operators to create public access channels, but nothing in the record suggests that local franchising authorities take any formal easement or other property interest in those channels that would permit the government to designate that property as a public forum.”
https://www.cato.org/publications/legal-briefs/manhattan-community-access-corporation-v-halleck

 

[K1052]

Is it just me, or is CNBC wildly misrepresenting this case?

The case, Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-702, centers on whether a private operator of a public access television network is considered a state actor, which can be sued for First Amendment violations.​

That's a hugely different situation that Facebook or Twitter having to keep neo-Nazi trolls on their platforms.

Depends entirely on how the court rules.

 

[Maxima1]

Everything will be fine!

Justice Roberts: "Now the court has from time to time erred, and erred greatly but when it has, it has been because the court yielded to political pressure."