this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
497 points (98.1% liked)

News

22838 readers
3642 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Elon Musk‘s X failed to block a California law that requires social media companies to disclose their content-moderation policies.

U.S. District Judge William Shubb rejected the company’s request in an eight-age ruling on Thursday.

“While the reporting requirement does appear to place a substantial compliance burden on social medial companies, it does not appear that the requirement is unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law,” Shubb wrote, per Reuters.

The legislation, signed into law in 2022 by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, requires social media companies to publicly issue their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, harassment and extremism on their platforms. They must also report data on their enforcement of these practices.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It would appear so but anything to do with digital spaces are murky.

As we kind of treat digital space the way we do physical space aince the digital space is owned the people who own it get to set the rules and policies which govern the space... But just like a shopping mall can't eject you for the sole reasoning of you being a specific race certain justifications within moderation policies are theoretically grounds for constitutional protections.

However it is a fucking mess to try and use a court to actually enforce the laws like we do in physical spaces. Like here in Canada uttering threats and performing hate speech to a crowd and scribbing swastikas on things for instance are illegal. But do that over a video game chat or some form of anonymizing social media and suddenly you're dealing with citizens of other countries with different laws, a layer of difficulty in determining the source that would require a warrant to obtain and even if both people are Canadian you would need a court date, documentation that the law was appropriately followed in obtaining all your evidence, proving guilt, deciding where the defendant must physically show up to defend themselves and even if they do prove assault by uttering threats or hate speech violations... They would probably just get a fine or community service.

Nobody has time for that.

So if you want to enforce the protections of these laws either you hold the platform responsible for internal policing of the law and determine whether it is discharging it's duty properly by giving citizens a means to check for and report violations of it's own internal policies for later reveiw and give them means to pursue civil cases... Or you go hands off and create means to give a platform's users means to check and make informed choices based on their own personal standards and ethical principles. Every moderation policy leaves a burden on someone but the question is who.

So it might be a transparency law but it also opens the door for applying - ~~Constitutional~~ civil rights law protections to users by holding the business accountable if there are glaring oversights in their digital fifedoms...but such laws are basically inert until someone tries to challenge them.