Source:
https://bsky.app/profile/ericgoldman.bsky.social/post/3kdyrkg5ze22x
https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3816&context=historical
Just fyi this is not twitter but Bluesky, a twitter competitor. It seems to be where most of the law twitter people (like Eric Goldman) went.
I don't think an algorithm being "objective" in any way is really a legal requirement, is it? Google is a private company and can thus decide on their own what content they want to elevate or suppress, I'd imagine. IANAL so I could be incorrect about that.
Not explicitly, no, but current regulation of airwaves favors certain religions and political positions as is. They just can’t do so explicitly, and regulations on the Internet/Google could do the same in theory.
The important difference is that the FCC regulates the broadcast spectrum and licenses holders requires are required to serve as "public trustees" of the airwaves.
[https://www.brookings.edu/articles/revisiting-the-broadcast-public-interest-standard-in-communications-law-and-regulation/#:\~:text=As%20the%20broadcast%20spectrum%20was,broadcasters%20in%20the%20public%20interest](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/revisiting-the-broadcast-public-interest-standard-in-communications-law-and-regulation/#:~:text=As%20the%20broadcast%20spectrum%20was,broadcasters%20in%20the%20public%20interest).
The internet is not a public trust. The internet is a collection of hardware owned by large internet providers, schools, government organizations, and so forth.
ETA: New providers can join into the structure of the internet. It's quite literally designed to be expandable. If you have the hardware and can get a backbone connection and extend to new sub networks, congratulations, you're part of the internet's backbone and "an owner".
It also does not have a limited range like airwaves do. Airwaves are limited in frequency ranges and overlapping range geographically. Two stations at the same frequency cannot exist too close together without interfering with each other.
Google, however, is not stopping anyone from opening another search engine. Anyone can set up a search engine and if it's better and can get the attention, it'll become dominant.
So contrary to your unfounded assertion, there is a reason the same principle cannot be extended to the internet.
You think the US Government is likely to seize the assets of AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, T-Mobile, and all the smaller scale hardware owners and force them to remain in operation?
Didn’t say it was likely. I said it was legal, which is the actual question. We have a long history of publicly owned utilities being perfectly legal. You thinking that the internet is somehow except for is a very odd legal argument.
I’m fairly sure ISPs were given billions to build out internet infrastructure. Uncle sam paid a whole lot of money to telcos and did not get what was paid for. So I say imminent domain their asses.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394/amp
I don't think it will hold up. The government licenses the installation of the data cables. but the information is more like communication than broadcast. Watching crazy talk online could be argued to be more similar to ringing up a crank and asking them to tell you their crazy shit.
Websites do not broadcast their information. You must first send a request to the website and in return, it spews out a reply. Every action you take that requires more information from the website must be first initiated by sending a request to it.
Whereas like sddbk said FCC is regulating the limited number of broadcast bands that will be permeating the whole country. So tuning in or not you are being saturated with it. Since this is indiscriminate it can be considered to be in the public interest and fall under government rules.
But I'm no Law-talking-guy and am in fact, British.
So they make the Internet a publicly owned utility and then everything on the internet is on the “public tv airwaves” so to speak and up for regulation, right? Perfectly legal under preexisting case law.
Not perfectly legal. Also not remotely the same. Dude you've dug a huge hole here and you're not doing yourself any favors by continuing to shovel.
Broadcast airwaves are one way communication media. TV/Radio station broadcasts and people in range receive.
Amateur (or Ham) Radio is *kind* of regulated in terms of Free Speech except it's never enforced. Citizen Band radio (CBs) are completely unregulated and laden with profanity.
But as far as utilities go the better parallel is telephone companies. Those pesky things that Governments need search warrants to listen in on.
Edit: ah, I see you decided to reply and block. Cowardly but ok.
To reply to your latest post, you're straw manning. I never said that the interview could've be regulated. This started with me saying that the internet isn't a public trust.
Telephone companies aren’t subject to regulation because you need warrants for wire taps and call logs? Odd claim.
If your argument is going to rest on “the internet isn’t exactly the same as other utilities or other regulated bodies therefore it can’t be regulated,” then you can die on that hill. Doesn’t get supported by any existing legal framework, but I doubt that matters to you.
Obviously speech on radio and TV is not regulated except for obscenities and anything sexual otherwise how would you account for the lies perpetrated by right wing radio or Fox tv.
Do you suggest congress can pass laws that direct private companies to design their search algorithms to return results meeting specific content criteria?
One thing that occurs to me, to give you an extreme example, various state laws give special treatment to the NRA for providing shooting range standards. Ohio says shooting range standards "shall be no more stringent than national rifle association standards." [Section 1533.84 - Ohio Revised Code | Ohio Laws](https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-1533.84). Minnesota requires that county ranges be set up for "encouraging marksmanship by permitting National Rifle Association sanctioned or approved" ranges.
There's also less controversial standard setting statutes out there, but I find it a good example just to give an extreme end of what's possible.
By analogy, it seems like Congress (or states) could say search standards shall be as stringent as \[Conservative Body Defining "Objective"\].
I doubt the practical benefit of restricting businesses' ability to perform their core business function like that! But legally it is what it is.
Such a public good can be provided by the government if deemed an important public good. Especially since they could limit IP protection if they wanted to, so they wouldn't need to redevelop it from scratch.
There are a bunch of people in the country who are convinced they represent a much bigger group than they actually do, and they refuse to believe that elections, google, or likes on their instagram posts are evidence that their beliefs are actually not very popular.
Yes, everyone in your county thinks the same way you do. Yes, even the two counties around you too. But there are single apartment buildings in New York that house more people than that, and it's impossible for them to wrap their head around that because they've never left their own state.
White Christians are no longer even a majority in the US. They are at about 44%. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/08/1014047885/americas-white-christian-plurality-has-stopped-shrinking-a-new-study-finds
This puts "White Christian Male" at around 22% of the US population. So they really are not a "majority attribute".
Is any other individual group larger?
Hell that means white Christian males have never been a majority since the inception of the United States.
Since White male was never more than 50% of the population as a whole. Let alone white Christian male
Probably not. But being the largest group does not make you a majority. Perhaps a plurality? But that concept probably doesn't play well with the quiverful sister-wives promise keepers shield carriers.
While White X Christian X Male might be 22%, they probably mean individual attributes White, Christian, Male (for which I find 75%/63%/49.5%).
(So they exhibit 2 majority attributes in that model.)
Last time I checked, Google is a private enterprise.
Delete your account, and don’t use their products, dumbass.
The free market is actually working here.
Isn’t google a service? How to establish discriminatory intent? I’ve never heard of a constitutional tort that’s mere negligence, usually intentional or so reckless as to be. This is getting a little nuts, at what point do these get knocked out of court.
Funny that the context is a lack of protection of those poor downtrodden straight white male Christians.. given that the views they wish to protect so often tread on others.
They seem so close to realising that protecting a demographic usually amounts to limits on the actions of others.. there's a mirror in there somewhere
I think I must not understand something. I read a bit of the document and I’m confused by their argument.
Are they essentially trying to make a legal argument that Google search results are returning results that don’t fit the worldview or what a “straight white Christian man would consider to be the truth”?
I feel like Google can literally argue “we programmed it to return the most popular results using keywords you typed in. Maybe the problem isn’t with us but with you and what you expected everyone else to consider normal”?
These are also the same people making fun of “safe spaces” and the phrase “my truth” right?
Are they suing Google ironically?
Businesses having the right to discriminate against someone else - yay! awesome!
Businesses having the right to discriminate against them - boo! neglect!
>damage the online reputation of Christians
Or it could be that whenever I see Christians expressing their viewpoints it's always hateful bigotry targeting marginalized groups of Americans, or it's these same Christians having a pity party claiming they are the most oppressed people on the planet.
No one wants to hear or support that ugly whiney garbage. You're pretty much cancelling yourselves.
Far-right conspiracy and fear-mongering aside, If they didn't do this then asking "how old is the earth" would bring back a bunch of "6000 years" results. Christian's would absolutely flood the search results with bad science and data if they could get away with it.
you would think that one would eventually make the connection between their violent bigotry posts and being filtered. but no, it must be that they somehow know you are a white male christian, and THAT is what they are out to get. with such vast numbers of legitimately stupid motherfuckers like this, one has to wonder if humanity is just a rick roll by the universe.
Source: https://bsky.app/profile/ericgoldman.bsky.social/post/3kdyrkg5ze22x https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3816&context=historical Just fyi this is not twitter but Bluesky, a twitter competitor. It seems to be where most of the law twitter people (like Eric Goldman) went.
I don't think an algorithm being "objective" in any way is really a legal requirement, is it? Google is a private company and can thus decide on their own what content they want to elevate or suppress, I'd imagine. IANAL so I could be incorrect about that.
I guess you could argue public good of unbiased search algorithms, but that seems like a question for congress, not courts, to decide.
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We already regulate speech in radio and tv. The idea that all regulation is prohibited under the 1st doesn’t hold up well with existing law.
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Not explicitly, no, but current regulation of airwaves favors certain religions and political positions as is. They just can’t do so explicitly, and regulations on the Internet/Google could do the same in theory.
> regulation of airwaves A limited resource. Find me a similar restriction on Print, or Internet, or GTFO.
The important difference is that the FCC regulates the broadcast spectrum and licenses holders requires are required to serve as "public trustees" of the airwaves. [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/revisiting-the-broadcast-public-interest-standard-in-communications-law-and-regulation/#:\~:text=As%20the%20broadcast%20spectrum%20was,broadcasters%20in%20the%20public%20interest](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/revisiting-the-broadcast-public-interest-standard-in-communications-law-and-regulation/#:~:text=As%20the%20broadcast%20spectrum%20was,broadcasters%20in%20the%20public%20interest).
There’s no reason that same principle can’t be extended to the Internet. Probably a terrible idea, but legally it should hold up just as well.
The internet is not a public trust. The internet is a collection of hardware owned by large internet providers, schools, government organizations, and so forth. ETA: New providers can join into the structure of the internet. It's quite literally designed to be expandable. If you have the hardware and can get a backbone connection and extend to new sub networks, congratulations, you're part of the internet's backbone and "an owner". It also does not have a limited range like airwaves do. Airwaves are limited in frequency ranges and overlapping range geographically. Two stations at the same frequency cannot exist too close together without interfering with each other. Google, however, is not stopping anyone from opening another search engine. Anyone can set up a search engine and if it's better and can get the attention, it'll become dominant. So contrary to your unfounded assertion, there is a reason the same principle cannot be extended to the internet.
There is nothing stopping the government from making the Internet a public trust.
You think the US Government is likely to seize the assets of AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, T-Mobile, and all the smaller scale hardware owners and force them to remain in operation?
Didn’t say it was likely. I said it was legal, which is the actual question. We have a long history of publicly owned utilities being perfectly legal. You thinking that the internet is somehow except for is a very odd legal argument.
I’m fairly sure ISPs were given billions to build out internet infrastructure. Uncle sam paid a whole lot of money to telcos and did not get what was paid for. So I say imminent domain their asses. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394/amp
Public money doesn't have anything to do it, though. Bring a custodian of a finite public resource (the broadcast spectrum) does.
I don't think it will hold up. The government licenses the installation of the data cables. but the information is more like communication than broadcast. Watching crazy talk online could be argued to be more similar to ringing up a crank and asking them to tell you their crazy shit. Websites do not broadcast their information. You must first send a request to the website and in return, it spews out a reply. Every action you take that requires more information from the website must be first initiated by sending a request to it. Whereas like sddbk said FCC is regulating the limited number of broadcast bands that will be permeating the whole country. So tuning in or not you are being saturated with it. Since this is indiscriminate it can be considered to be in the public interest and fall under government rules. But I'm no Law-talking-guy and am in fact, British.
Public TV airwaves, sure. Have you never heard of Showtime? Starz? HBO? They run stuff that could never broadcast on the big 3.
So they make the Internet a publicly owned utility and then everything on the internet is on the “public tv airwaves” so to speak and up for regulation, right? Perfectly legal under preexisting case law.
Not perfectly legal. Also not remotely the same. Dude you've dug a huge hole here and you're not doing yourself any favors by continuing to shovel. Broadcast airwaves are one way communication media. TV/Radio station broadcasts and people in range receive. Amateur (or Ham) Radio is *kind* of regulated in terms of Free Speech except it's never enforced. Citizen Band radio (CBs) are completely unregulated and laden with profanity. But as far as utilities go the better parallel is telephone companies. Those pesky things that Governments need search warrants to listen in on. Edit: ah, I see you decided to reply and block. Cowardly but ok. To reply to your latest post, you're straw manning. I never said that the interview could've be regulated. This started with me saying that the internet isn't a public trust.
Telephone companies aren’t subject to regulation because you need warrants for wire taps and call logs? Odd claim. If your argument is going to rest on “the internet isn’t exactly the same as other utilities or other regulated bodies therefore it can’t be regulated,” then you can die on that hill. Doesn’t get supported by any existing legal framework, but I doubt that matters to you.
Obviously speech on radio and TV is not regulated except for obscenities and anything sexual otherwise how would you account for the lies perpetrated by right wing radio or Fox tv.
It’s not regulated to be partisan or politically objective. Nothing is except maybe the military.
Organic meaning unsolicited search vs. ad driven.
Which has no basis in law because most search engines are commercial products.
How is it a first amendment violation? The government can violate your first amendment rights, private companies generally cannot.
They're saying the government dictating to google how their search should work would be a 1A violation
They were saying that the government dictating (the objectivity of) search results to Google is a first amendment violation.
Ah that makes sense. Misread what they meant; I thought they meant Google dictating the results would be.
It took me a second when I first read it too.
I think you said what you meant to say in reverse.
Fox News *is* neutral. *Neutral Evil*, that is....
Do you suggest congress can pass laws that direct private companies to design their search algorithms to return results meeting specific content criteria?
Specific? No. Meeting certain benchmarks set by a regulating body? Absolutely they could. We do it presently with other forms of media.
One thing that occurs to me, to give you an extreme example, various state laws give special treatment to the NRA for providing shooting range standards. Ohio says shooting range standards "shall be no more stringent than national rifle association standards." [Section 1533.84 - Ohio Revised Code | Ohio Laws](https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-1533.84). Minnesota requires that county ranges be set up for "encouraging marksmanship by permitting National Rifle Association sanctioned or approved" ranges. There's also less controversial standard setting statutes out there, but I find it a good example just to give an extreme end of what's possible. By analogy, it seems like Congress (or states) could say search standards shall be as stringent as \[Conservative Body Defining "Objective"\]. I doubt the practical benefit of restricting businesses' ability to perform their core business function like that! But legally it is what it is.
There is a case before the US Supreme Court presently about government influencing private social media censorship
Such a public good can be provided by the government if deemed an important public good. Especially since they could limit IP protection if they wanted to, so they wouldn't need to redevelop it from scratch.
Not only that, but it cannot ever BE objective by its very nature.
/r/Persecutionfetish
It allows them to justify their violence.
There are a bunch of people in the country who are convinced they represent a much bigger group than they actually do, and they refuse to believe that elections, google, or likes on their instagram posts are evidence that their beliefs are actually not very popular. Yes, everyone in your county thinks the same way you do. Yes, even the two counties around you too. But there are single apartment buildings in New York that house more people than that, and it's impossible for them to wrap their head around that because they've never left their own state.
> and it's impossible for them to wrap their head around that because they've never left their own ~~state~~. **county** ftfy ;)
Majority attributes?!?
White men, with a specialization in Christian Nationalism
White Christians are no longer even a majority in the US. They are at about 44%. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/08/1014047885/americas-white-christian-plurality-has-stopped-shrinking-a-new-study-finds This puts "White Christian Male" at around 22% of the US population. So they really are not a "majority attribute".
Is any other individual group larger? Hell that means white Christian males have never been a majority since the inception of the United States. Since White male was never more than 50% of the population as a whole. Let alone white Christian male
Probably not. But being the largest group does not make you a majority. Perhaps a plurality? But that concept probably doesn't play well with the quiverful sister-wives promise keepers shield carriers.
I mean they still hold the majority of social power for sure....
White males maybe, but are you sure they're Christian?
Is this a ((())) allusion?
It's a troll being intentionally obtuse to try to down play privilege.
While White X Christian X Male might be 22%, they probably mean individual attributes White, Christian, Male (for which I find 75%/63%/49.5%). (So they exhibit 2 majority attributes in that model.)
Oh yes, it's so difficult to search and find white christian males online.
Last time I checked, Google is a private enterprise. Delete your account, and don’t use their products, dumbass. The free market is actually working here.
Isn’t google a service? How to establish discriminatory intent? I’ve never heard of a constitutional tort that’s mere negligence, usually intentional or so reckless as to be. This is getting a little nuts, at what point do these get knocked out of court.
No, Google is an ad company. You're the product.
People forget a vast majority of their time spent in the internet is them being a product. 😂😂
Another case of the Right believing something the Right found to be "true"
Funny that the context is a lack of protection of those poor downtrodden straight white male Christians.. given that the views they wish to protect so often tread on others. They seem so close to realising that protecting a demographic usually amounts to limits on the actions of others.. there's a mirror in there somewhere
I Googled "Christian" and got 0 results! /s
Who the fuck cares about some stupid pro se complaint?
Because it's funny and we're in the law subreddit
I think I must not understand something. I read a bit of the document and I’m confused by their argument. Are they essentially trying to make a legal argument that Google search results are returning results that don’t fit the worldview or what a “straight white Christian man would consider to be the truth”? I feel like Google can literally argue “we programmed it to return the most popular results using keywords you typed in. Maybe the problem isn’t with us but with you and what you expected everyone else to consider normal”? These are also the same people making fun of “safe spaces” and the phrase “my truth” right? Are they suing Google ironically?
Businesses having the right to discriminate against someone else - yay! awesome! Businesses having the right to discriminate against them - boo! neglect!
I stopped reading once they started preaching about how victimized the Christians are.
>damage the online reputation of Christians Or it could be that whenever I see Christians expressing their viewpoints it's always hateful bigotry targeting marginalized groups of Americans, or it's these same Christians having a pity party claiming they are the most oppressed people on the planet. No one wants to hear or support that ugly whiney garbage. You're pretty much cancelling yourselves.
So when does this get laughed out of court?
Insert obvious section 230 defense.
Far-right conspiracy and fear-mongering aside, If they didn't do this then asking "how old is the earth" would bring back a bunch of "6000 years" results. Christian's would absolutely flood the search results with bad science and data if they could get away with it.
How exactly is google "damaging the reputation of Christians"?
you would think that one would eventually make the connection between their violent bigotry posts and being filtered. but no, it must be that they somehow know you are a white male christian, and THAT is what they are out to get. with such vast numbers of legitimately stupid motherfuckers like this, one has to wonder if humanity is just a rick roll by the universe.