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What is freedom of speech?
- Thread starter Dan From Smithville
- Start date
The shareholders are the owners.
They elect a board to run the company on their behalf. If the board doesn't run it as they see fit, they vote the board outvand elect a new one.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
And shareholders always buy and sell.
There is no real true single (private) owner and these type of corporations ought to fall under constitutional protections.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Stockholders buy and sell. It's not really a true private enterprise as if there is one single private owner. . It's an open publicly traded one meaning its not really private.
I disagree with your distinction. Under US law, a corporation is considered for legal purposes an individual...hence the ruling that campaign spending is free speech for organizations...But it is clearly a collectively owned entity, owned in the interest of the stockholders and not in the interest of the government or society...except maybe in the broadest of senses, as criminal organizations are not treated as legitimate entities.
I tend to agree, although if not a guarantee of free speech, then at least a sense of fair play and consistent standards to follow. If one signs a contract outlining the terms of service, then one has a reasonable expectation that the rules will be applied equally to everyone. When they're not, I believe that people have every right to cry foul.
That's what seems to be the underlying issue here, not so much "free speech" in the abstract.
In fact I wrote "a certain level of freedom of speech".
True, although many in this thread are talking about how private companies are not bound by the same obligations to honor free speech rights as governments would be.
We know of course that even if the headquarters are in the United States, there are branches in every country.
So...yes, these branches are obliged to be in line with the law of the land. Facebook Italia was sued by far right party CasaPound, and CasaPound won the case.
FB Italia had to reactivate Casapound's account and to compensate Casapound for both the hedonic damage and the judicial expenses.
Casapound won the case because Facebook 's decision was called "totally discriminatory and against freedom of speech" in the ruling.
It is true that the user-company relation is contractual.
But, the private law here entails that the so called vexatious clauses are null and void (and their nullity saves the validity of the rest of the contract).
A vexatious clause is a clause that violates a constitutional principle, so that there is a disproportion between the two parties.
Source Il giudice condanna Facebook: vietato oscurare CasaPound
I guess in the United States private companies are not obliged to comply with the law of the land.
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In the U.S., it's ostensibly viewed as a "private property" issue. The idea is that free speech only applies on public property, but private property is different. There's also a question of whether the internet should be viewed as a "public utility" (such as the electric company) or a "publisher" which can reject material at will and which can also be held liable if they publish anything libelous.
Should there be "public property" on the internet? If private companies don't have to allow free speech, then perhaps there can be some publicly-owned platform where free speech would have Constitutional backing, since it would be public property.
Precisely. That's the juridical difference.
Internet software companies are considered services providers, according to the civil law, and more precisely contractual law. A social platform is to be seen as an utility which, even it is privately owned (like a private swimming pool is), provides a service, so the users, the recipients of this service have to abide by certain contractual rules (of course) unless these rules are against constitutional principles such as freedom of thought.
If they are, they are to be considered vexatious clauses, ex art. 1341 Italian Civil Code, which expressively says "limitations of freedoms" in the relations with thirds.
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Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
The government is by and of the people. Is that private?
Corporations declared as people is pure BS.
On this, I agree with you 100 percent. However, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that corporations are for legal purposes, persons. If you have any luck convincing them to change that, let me know...
No, it's that free speech is a constraint on the government: free speech is the right not to be imprisoned, fined, excluded from government jobs, or otherwise punished by the government for your speech.
Free speech is not freedom from the consequences of your speech or entitlement to a platform.
Sounds like you're confusing free speech with public accommodation.
The mere fact that a platform is "public property" doesn't entitle you to use it.
You can't just go to your local state college, grab a vacant lecture hall, and start doing a lecture. The college still has the right to kick you out if you try.
There are limits to that ruling, though.On this, I agree with you 100 percent. However, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that corporations are for legal purposes, persons. If you have any luck convincing them to change that, let me know...
I mean, no American court has ruled that the 13th Amendment prohibits ownership of a "corporate person."
The Napoleonic juridical tradition has created a very schematic pattern of juridical notions.
Every juridical notion is perfectly defined in detail. And commercial law, also known droit des affaires privés, identifies the rights and duties of the contracting parties.
There can be no disproportion between the parties, meaning that the provider and user must necessarily have the same "contractual force".
And that is why, in Italy or in France, it is not possible to dismiss an employee without just cause. Because otherwise there would be a socially unjust juridical disproportion between the contracting parties.
As for social platforms, they are defined "public service providers", and it means that since it deals with a service of public interest, the user is even more protected than the provider.
And so therefore, the provider cannot insert in the contract clauses which limit constitutional rights such as freedom of thought.
Well, sure, that's obvious, but that doesn't negate what I wrote. As an individual entity, Twitter has the right to free speech the same as any other individual, but they also have the right to control what takes place on their own property. The standard argument has been that, since it's their servers, their property, their platform, they have the right to allow or disallow anyone they wish, for any reason or no reason. It's their property, and it has nothing to do with abrogating anyone's right to free speech.
The government is bound to follow the First Amendment, which means they are not allowed to abridge any free speech. It says nothing about punishment or fines. It doesn't say anything about consequences either.
It's not just me. That's the main issue under discussion these days. That's why there's been much debate over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Weren't you aware of this?
The way I see it, either they're publishers or utilities. If they presume to act like publishers, then they should be treated as publishers, in which case, Section 230 loses relevance and should be removed. The problem with these platforms nowadays is that they presume to act as publishers yet insist they be treated like utilities. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. It's not going to last forever, as Musk's purchase of Twitter is getting Democrats to start talking about removing Section 230.
I was thinking more in terms of public squares or parks which are for open public use. In terms of using public schools and colleges, I think there's a process you have to go through because it's a limited space - but they can't automatically bar someone from using such facilities as long as they go through proper channels. That's reasonable, just as it is with any public demonstration on the streets. The people own it collectively, so it's a shared space, but the people have a right to use it.
But considering that all of these social media companies and other forums are mainly privately owned and not bound by the First Amendment, why can't there be space set aside on the internet as "publicly-owned" and therefore legally bound by the First Amendment?