The wrongful death lawsuit against several social media companies for allegedly contributing to the radicalization of a gunman who killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, will be allowed to proceed.
That is generally what Governments do. They write laws that say … you can do this but not that. If you do this thats illegal and you will be convicted. Otherwise you wouldnt be able to police things like Mafia and drug cartels. Even in the US their freedom of speech to conspire to committe crimes is criminalised. There is no difference between that and politically motivated ‘extremists’ who conspire to commit crimes. The idealogy is not criminalised the acts that groups plan or conduct are. You are totally fine saying . I dont like x group.
What its not ok to say is . Lets go out and kill people from x.group.
The problem is that social media sites use automated processes to decide which messages to put in front of users in the fundamentally same way that a newspaper publisher decides which letters to the editor they decide to put in their newspaper.
Somehow though Tech companies have argued that because their is no limit on how many posts they can communicate amd hence theoretically they arent deciding what they put in and what they done, that their act of putting some at the top of people’s lists so they are seen is somehow different to the act of the newspaper publisher including a particular letter or not …but the outcome is the same The letter or post is seen by people or not.
Tech companies argue they are just a commutation network but I never saw a telephone, postal or other network that decided which order you got your phone calls, letters or sms messages. They just deliver what is sent in the order it was sen.
commercial social media networks are publishers with editorial control - editorial control is not only inclusion/exclusion but also prominence
There is a fundamental difference in Lemmy or Mastodon in that those decisions (except for any moderation by individual server admins) dont promote or demote any post so therefore dont have any role in whether a user sees a post or not.
That is generally what Governments do. They write laws that say … you can do this but not that. If you do this thats illegal and you will be convicted. Otherwise you wouldnt be able to police things like Mafia and drug cartels. Even in the US their freedom of speech to conspire to committe crimes is criminalised. There is no difference between that and politically motivated ‘extremists’ who conspire to commit crimes. The idealogy is not criminalised the acts that groups plan or conduct are. You are totally fine saying . I dont like x group.
What its not ok to say is . Lets go out and kill people from x.group.
The problem is that social media sites use automated processes to decide which messages to put in front of users in the fundamentally same way that a newspaper publisher decides which letters to the editor they decide to put in their newspaper.
Somehow though Tech companies have argued that because their is no limit on how many posts they can communicate amd hence theoretically they arent deciding what they put in and what they done, that their act of putting some at the top of people’s lists so they are seen is somehow different to the act of the newspaper publisher including a particular letter or not …but the outcome is the same The letter or post is seen by people or not.
Tech companies argue they are just a commutation network but I never saw a telephone, postal or other network that decided which order you got your phone calls, letters or sms messages. They just deliver what is sent in the order it was sen.
commercial social media networks are publishers with editorial control - editorial control is not only inclusion/exclusion but also prominence
There is a fundamental difference in Lemmy or Mastodon in that those decisions (except for any moderation by individual server admins) dont promote or demote any post so therefore dont have any role in whether a user sees a post or not.