yes.

Why? Are they creating any 'content'?

donald was right that twitter and other social media companies need to be treated more like content creators and less like mere platforms for others.

JL

Yes, it is -- and Daryl Gates was outdated the day he was born.

OK, that system ("House Rules") also works fine, but then you become a 'Publisher', and not a 'forum',

Says who? And so what?

meaning you are responsible for what gets posted, and therefor vulnerable for slander, copyright infringement, etc, which it is my understanding that those who operate most of these companies are trying to avoid.

If I make a comment on an article at a "publisher" like "The New York Times," they aren't responsible for the content of my comment any more than Twitter is, and they definitely have "House Rules" just like Twitter does and enjoy protections for third-party content under 47 United States Code Section 230, which law encourages and protects the moderation of third-party users:

(c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material

(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of -

(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

If "The New York Times" is paying someone to defame someone on its website, then they're liable for the published defamatory comment.

If Twitter chooses to "factcheck" a user, then and only then would Twitter be considered to have published material, keeping in mind that Twitter is also a company whose opinion is protected by the First Amendment. By exercising their First Amendments rights, Twitter doesn't magically become liable for the billions of other opinions/tweets that exist on their website/platform.

Here is am explaining law to Stucki again! :)

OK, that system ("House Rules") also works fine, but then you become a 'Publisher', and not a 'forum', meaning you are responsible for what gets posted, and therefor vulnerable for slander, copyright infringement, etc, which it is my understanding that those who operate most of these companies are trying to avoid.

Bull Crap! That does not make a forum become a “Publisher” under any legal definition! Forums are not responsible for what others post without their knowledge. Moderators used to be used on most message boards, and while not perfect; they did a fairly good job of policing for messages that violated TOS. If anything, it’s a better argument that a forum that ignores calls to remove messages that violate their TOS are choosing to publish untrue/false/damaging messages.

From the 1982 article you shared a link to:

It was compassion that led him to authorize his officers to use two special methods for subduing those arrested --the "bar-arm hold" and the "carotid control hold," or choke hold, as it is also known. These disabling holds make it unnecessary for police officers to use their weapons.

It was compassion that led him, a couple of weeks ago, to ban the bar- arm hold, which blocks the flow of oxygen to the lungs.

An “arm-bar” does not block the flow of oxygen to the lungs. And anyone who refers to a “carotid control hold” as a “choke hold” never enjoyed watching professional wrestling when they were younger. A “carotid control hold” is referred to as a “sleeper hold”, as it renders the person unconscious...it does not interfere with breathing at all.

Strangulation is what occurs when you put someone in a “choke hold”. Two hands around a person’s throat pressing on the larynx is a “choke hold”.

The “carotid control hold” is still used today as an effective policing tool to force compliance. Your article is very outdated.

Twitter is the prism through which Trump makes sense of his world, it's the reason he assumes millions of votes were stolen, lost or diverted to Clinton in 16'...He can't compute how he can maintain 70 million followers, yet earn 20 million fewer votes. Trump fancies Twitter on par with the Caligularian 'one throat of the plebs' to be cut at a whim, it's his power, his infinity stone, his sword of Damocles with it's awesome power to hold sway over the mob.

If Trump had his druthers, he'd have it that Twitter catered to his every whim to the exclusion of everyone else on the planet, but to slope off to Coventry of his own accord...Lololololoool

LL&P

OK, that system ("House Rules") also works fine, but then you become a 'Publisher', and not a 'forum', meaning you are responsible for what gets posted, and therefor vulnerable for slander, copyright infringement, etc, which it is my understanding that those who operate most of these companies are trying to avoid.

Sorry Donny Boy, but it is very unlikely that you win this battle in the courts....unless you consider ginning up your base to be a higher form of winning. Twitter is worth 4 Billion. I think they can afford top notch legal representation. Trump gets Rudy and the governmental equivalent of "Public Defenders."

Of course, Trump can decide to stop tweeting....but that would be like cutting off his Little Donny to spite his face. Trump needs Twitter more than Twitter needs Trump. Best for POTUS to just settle down on the toilet seat and blast off a few outrage tweets before shambling off to watch Fox & Friends.

You miss my point. He shouldn't have to "be exposed to corrections", etc. BY TWITTER.

Your so-called "point" in [17] included your typical standard knee-jerk usual dig at "lefties"... so same shit different day coming from Podunk.

The fact is, companies set their own rules that anyone who uses their "facilities" are subject thereto and generally agree to be bound when they sign up for an account... you know, the "check the box" routine and/or "by posting here" you agree to follow these/our rules. If "he" or anyone else doesn't want to "be exposed to corrections, etc. BY TWITTER," while he's ON "TWITTER," then "he" shouldn't have "checked the box" or posted on "TWITTER."

It should be YOU AND I (other forum users) who correct his mistakes and lies, not the people who put up the bulletin board.

Bullshit! House rules. Rule Number 1 is "nobody smokes tobacco in my house." If you come in my house with a lit cigarette, it'll be me asking you to put it out and not the other house guests. This ain't rocket science.

We wouldn't even have to be bothered with this "police thug snuff" stuff if only Daryl Gates, the LAPD Chief from 1978 to 1992, had published his scholarly theories on the differences between Black and normal people with respect to choke holds.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/05/17/the-chief-and-the-choke-hold/e17fa90f-c692-43c2-935f-463da9cab500/

We could have, as you suggest, just moved along to the real things of moment.

You miss my point. He shouldn't have to "be exposed to corrections", etc. BY TWITTER.

It should be YOU AND I (other forum users) who correct his mistakes and lies, not the people who put up the bulletin board.

I think you mistakenly typed 'lefties' for 'right-wingers' and "can't stand being exposed to a racial epithet or 'hate speech' type stuff" for 'can't stand seeing any opinion or image which doesn't reflect their narrow viewpoint in every respect.'

If your tender feelings can't stand being exposed to a racial epithet or 'hate speech' type stuff, don't read what bothers you.

It will depend on the interpretation and how literal and strict it is, but many forms of commercial speech and pornography are technically protected free speech.

If overly literal or pursued by industry lawyers for possible profit things like copyright violations could come in to play requiring owner moderation to fend off liability. Michale's copy and paste of most an article, for example...

I personally think it's going to get shot down pretty quick. Places like Reddit basically can't exist with this order (or get very interesting). At least not in the United States. And this is where Trump really does not understand the internet. We don't own it or completely control it. We have an oversized influence over it, but there is no reason to think that must be permanent. Twitter already has an invitation from Germany. Is Trump really going to drive out a profitable subsection of our tech industry to another country just as we enter a recession or possibly a depression?

Does he not realize that conservative outlets and communities on the internet are some of the most exclusionary out there?

But in the end let us not forget or be distracted by the fact Trump's incompetence is killing Americans every day.

102,917 Americans dead from Coronavirus and counting...

Government censorship has a long and dishonorable history, including breaking and burning presses and imprisoning publishers and writers. It also includes the holes cut in my father's letters home from the Pacific during WWII--soldiers could write anything, but place names or any other information deemed sensitive by the censors was literally cut out.

There is an unofficial censorship of the type dsws seems to mean: often an unspoken social agreement which denies a voice to certain groups. Contrary to right-wing whining, historically it has rarely if ever been conservative, white, Christian male Americans; it has mostly been women, ethnic minorities, other religions (Catholics at one time) and what could loosely be called left-wing views. There is no a shortage of venues for conservative, white, Christian male voices at present.

Some people (and I particularly remember online conversations 20 or so years ago) consider any limits on their own language, even when abusive and threatening to others, as censorship. This included left-wing males who might not have considered using racist terms, but used a lot of sexist language. There's actually still quite a lot of this online. I am not criticizing anyone here, by the way, I am thinking other, earlier, contexts.

In the previous column, CW wrote:
In the first case, no company or corporation can ever censor free speech, because they are not the government.

This is the most heinously incorrect thing I've ever seen you write. ~ dsws

Nah. It appears you're just seriously overthinking it, dude.
_______________________

In the first case, no company or corporation can ever censor free speech, because they are not the government.

~ CW

WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!!

ONLY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN VIOLATE THE FIRST AMENDMENT. BUT ANY ENTITY WITH EFFECTIVE POWER TO INFLICT PUNISHMENT, OR TO REMOVE THE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION, CAN CENSOR.

I hear you, of course... but try reading it again in context with the operative words there being "censor free speech" and not just "censor."

THE FIRST AMENDMENT RECOGNIZES AN INHERENT RIGHT, AND FORBIDS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FROM VIOLATING IT. THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THE RIGHT DOESN'T EXIST IN OTHER CONTEXTS. IT MEANS THAT THE CONSTITUTION IS ABOUT THE STRUCTURE AND POWERS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

Contexts -- you yelled it right up there -- so obviously a "company or corporation" has a right to "censor" you because you enjoy no "free speech" on their "turf." A "company or corporation" that enjoys the right to "censor" you doesn't exactly "censor free speech" since your speech ain't free.

Try not to overthink it. I can scream it if you need me to.

This is the most heinously incorrect thing I've ever seen you write.

Nicely ranted!

Or, to put it yet another way, less than 24 hours after Twitter simply put a fact check on a tweet of a user on their very own website, Trump had already signed an Executive Order attempting to censor a private company. Now imagine how many lives of the 100,000+ of our fellow Americans could have been saved if President Self-Centered Narcissist had cared enough about the citizens of the United States as much as he cares about himself... you know... his job, honoring the oath he swore to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Let the whataboutism begin. If Obama had done anything like this, the GOP's tiny little brains would have exploded, and can you imagine if Obama had ordered churches either opened or closed how triggered the righties would have been!?

Every single one of these complicit right-wing cowards needs to be voted out of office along with Comrade Trump. Every. Single. One.

I know, write!? <--- intentional spelling... as well as equally free to NOT write about whatever you don't want to write about, right!?

You know it. :)