Carleas wrote:Serendipper, you are right, I did forget about Marsh, again. Pesky Marsh. But as I said last time, I don't think it's dispositive, and I think a web forum can be easily distinguished from a company town.
In what way? It's public as anyone can signup. It's viewable to the public since it appears in search engines. It's political in nature.
Now maybe if this were a motorcycle board, it could be interpreted differently. Or maybe if membership were by invitation, it may be different. Or maybe if it were not visible on search engines, it may be different. Regardless of any court decisions made by political appointment with agenda, I fail to see the reasoning of how this site is not at least as public, if not more-so, than a company town.
I found a more recent case that's more on point, e-Ventures v. Google, in which Google's delisting of a website for violation of its policies was
held found to be protected by the First amendment. From the order granting summary judgement for Google:
Google’s actions in formulating rankings for its search engine and in determining whether certain websites are contrary to Google’s guidelines and thereby subject to removal are the same as decisions by a newspaper editor regarding which content to publish, which article belongs on the front page, and which article is unworthy of publication. The First Amendment protects these decisions, whether they are fair or unfair, or motivated by profit or altruism.
That seems pretty close to what's going on here, right? Granted, it's a district court case, but its matches other similar district court cases (see
Zhang v. Baidu,
Search King v. Google. Zhang is particularly noteworthy for not only upholding Baidu's right to filter search results, but their right to do so for overtly political reasons).
I accept that, but the problem is the fairness doctrine is gone. Without the fairness doctrine, yes, it's perfectly legal for a newspaper to present a one-sided political view, but that doesn't mean it's fair or right. It just means that the judges were neutered in the google case and had no legal means to arrive at any other decision, unfortunately. What is right and fair is the basis on which I appeal to you.
The fairness doctrine:
Justice White also explains that it is the rights of the viewers and listeners that is the most important, not the rights of the broadcasters.The Court did not see how the Fairness Doctrine went against the First Amendments goal of creating an informed public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lion_ ... _the_CourtRevocation:
In Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld (by a vote of 8-0) the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine in a case of an on-air personal attack, in response to challenges that the doctrine violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In 1985, under FCC Chairman Mark S. Fowler, a communications attorney who had served on Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign staff in 1976 and 1980, the FCC released a report stating that the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
In 1986, the 99th Congress directed the FCC to examine alternatives to the Fairness Doctrine and to submit a report to Congress on the subject.[16]
In August 1987, under FCC Chairman Dennis R. Patrick, the FCC abolished the doctrine by a 4-0 vote, in the Syracuse Peace Council decision, which was upheld by a panel of the Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit in February 1989, though the Court stated in their decision that they made "that determination without reaching the constitutional issue."[17] The FCC suggested in Syracuse Peace Council that because of the many media voices in the marketplace, the doctrine be deemed unconstitutional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_DoctrineReagan undermined an 8-0 supreme court decision because he was in favor of business over the people, which included his trickle-down nonsense. That's why google has grown into the monster that it is with its carte blanche ability to reshape society according to the perverted wishes of it's "progressive" controllers.
Serendipper wrote:How can speech-maximizing reasons be unconnected to expression of views?
First, note that "speech-maximizing" isn't about quantity. If, upon finishing this post, I copy and paste the text three or four times to increase the length, I haven't said anything more.
It still isn't clear what you mean by "speech-maximization." If you say you want more speech that isn't repetitive nonsense, then you cannot achieve than by constructing an echochamber. You need conflict in order to have discussion. You need Autsider. And you need me because without me, this discussion would not be happening. This is what is meant by "love your enemies." You need them in order for yourself to manifest.
Next, note that certain forms of speech effectively silence other forms. The heckler's veto is the classic example: if I shout loudly enough, I can prevent you from expressing yourself. That is true regardless of the contents of my shouting.
Shouting isn't a property of message boards and we can ignore whomever we choose. And there is a difference between purposeful disruption and expression of political view. If I'm posting meaningless crap just to take up space and disrupt the functioning of the board, then that force warrants force, but the expression of an opinion, vile or not, is not forceful.
In the context of a forum, there's no shouting, but there are manners of participation, unrelated to the ideas being expressed, that reduce the amount of speech that results from them. Since threads are conversations, posts shape what follows them, and participation in a thread that erodes the intellectual content of the conversation reduces the amount of speech the conversations contain.
I understand as well as anyone because I left for just such a reason, but it wasn't due to expression of an ideology, but expression of unethical refusal to admit a point and that is cheating. If someone wants to assert that jews should be tossed into ovens, then fine, let's talk about it, but when they clam-up and refuse to concede a point, then I want to leave. What matters is being reasonable and fair, not having an opinion.
Concerning manners of participation, it takes two to tango. Where Ultimate Philosophy was banned, UrGod was just as much at fault for being a provocation and it should be the job of a moderator to moderate the situation. UrGod got under my skin too, but I handled it differently. Why Ultimate Philosophy was so angry is something I wanted to observe longer, but I'm denied that opportunity because of the existence of UrGod and a banishment policy.
Regardless of viewpoint, we should seek to reduce participation that drags down conversation and replaces content with flames.
Why? Who leaves because of flames? And if they leave, then what does banning do differently? And who says flames do not have content? All you've accomplished is a personal satisfaction from having slaughtered someone who you didn't like, which, coincidentally and ironically, reduced the content of the board. Did not the Roman Colosseum draw crowds because of flames? People love to watch fights.
After you've selectively bred your echochamber, this place is going to be mighty boring lol
But I stand by my words. We talked about that 6 months ago... banning is murder. Regardless how nice he is, how much money he spends, and how otherwise good this place is, it's still murder. It's eternally silencing someone. Nevermind the legal ramifications on whether my rights to other's speech has been infringed upon. How would the courts view this?
