The Up First newsletter: Breaking the Barrier on the Interaction Between Hamas and Israel in the Fourth-Centrifugal Interaction of the Gaza Strip
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Negotiators are inching closer to a deal for another temporary cease-fire in Gaza to allow for an exchange of Israelis held hostage by Hamas and Palestinians detained in Israel. Jake Sullivan, White House national security adviser, said that representatives of Israel, the US, Egypt and the U.S. reached a basic deal in Paris last week. The next stage of negotiations will be held in Qatar. Despite U.S. objections, Benjamin Netanyahu will go ahead with his planned military bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
The full Kara: a tech professional’s disappointments after a cease fire talks inch forward: Supreme Court hears social media censorship case
The Supreme Court will hear arguments today that center on Florida and Texas laws preventing social media companies from banning users based on political viewpoints or rapidly changing their policies. It’s one of the most important First Amendment cases in a long time, say legal experts. Several social media websites banned Donald Trump after a riot at the Capitol, which was caused by the former president’s messages.
There is a partial government shut down this time. Lawmakers are supposed to pass laws that fund the government by the end of September. But they’ve been stuck renewing a 2022 spending plan. The federal government funding for several departments ends at the end of the week. President Joe Biden is expected to host the top four Congressional lawmakers tomorrow to negotiate ahead of Friday’s deadline.
A portion of our long conversation was broadcast on Morning Edition. The full flavor was not captured in a few minutes. So we have also published a longer version. Think of it as the full Kara: she details her views on the tech world and her disappointments with it.
Swisher was a journalist and TV personality for more than three decades, covering the tech industry in his memoir. She went from asking tech leaders what they were thinking to telling them what she thought of their business. Today, she’s disillusioned with many of them.
The Story of the Tharu Community: What Free Expression is Undermining in the United States and How Social Media Companies Are Harassing
The Himalayan mountains are plagued by waste left by mountaineering activities over the years. Nepal’s Department of Tourism estimates that there are nearly 140,000 tons of waste on Mt. Everest alone. The government started to clean up the mountains in 2019. Some of the material collected from the mountains has found its way to indigenous craftswomen of the Tharu community, who are using their traditional skills to transform the garbage into something entirely new.
See photos of how Sunita Kumari Chaudhary and her fellow crafters change trash into art and read about their fledgling effort to repurpose mountain waste into economic opportunity for their community.
“There is nothing more Orwellian than the government trying to dictate what viewpoints are distributed in the name of free expression,” said Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a trade group for the social media companies that’s involved in the litigation. That’s what’s at issue in this case.
The dispute got worse after the violent siege on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, when social media sites removed President Trump from their platforms.
“Freedom of speech is under attack in Texas,” declared Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott at the bill signing. “There is a dangerous movement by some social media companies to silence conservative ideas and values. This is wrong and we will not allow it in Texas.”
“It is necessary to have guidelines and terms of use to make sure that a community isn’t polluted,” Schruers said. “And that’s everything from posting dog pictures in the cat forum to barbeque in the vegan forum to far more serious things like trying to groom children in a children’s site.”
The Social Media Giants of the Texas Supreme Court to Hear Challenges to Florida, and What We Can Learn About the State of the State
John Whitehead runs the Rutherford Institute, a conservative-leaning nonprofit group. The social media sites that have become the centers of people’s lives should not be restricted in any way, according to author and friend-of-the-court briefer Peter Whitehead.
“It’s out there to make people think, that’s what it’s about,” he said. You can disagree in other words. People should start a debate if someone puts something foolish on Facebook. Debating is the key, not eliminating.”
Other allies of Texas and Florida argue the sites are merely hosting content, not making editorial judgments that deserve lots of First Amendment protection.
“Everyone is required to oppose government control of speech,” Szabo said. It is our belief that, as it may be your person in the White house today, that will not be forever. The First Amendment is important because of that.
Or, are they more like like bookstores and newspapers, places that edit and curate information, that get the highest level of First Amendment protection?
The social media giants rely on a 1974 Supreme Court case. Florida tried to force the newspaper to carry op-eds it didn’t want to publish. The high court sided with the Herald back then.
Today, the social media sites said, Florida is trying to make the big social media platforms print every single letter to the editor. Users don’t want that and neither do advertisers, they said.
Source: Supreme Court to hear challenges to Texas, Florida social media laws
What Social Media Users Really Think about Using Social Media to Promote Their Views and Protect Their Online Speech: A Reply to Ms. Rupa Bhattacharyya
The two trade associations — Netchoice and CCIA — are backed by groups across the political spectrum, from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Americans For Prosperity, which is linked to Charles Koch, to the American Civil Liberties Union.
A bipartisan group of national security experts weighed in. Rupa Bhattacharyya is a former Justice Department lawyer and special master for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. She now works at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center.
On the average day, some 95 million pictures are posted on Instagram, along with 34 million videos on TikTok and hundreds of millions of tweets. Some go viral, most don’t. And some percentage — the numbers are unclear — are taken down for violating the content rules set by the platforms. Given the volume of posts and videos, it is no exaggeration to say that the rules for social media have become the most important speech regulations on the planet, policing what can and cannot be said online.
Extremism like the Islamic State and the Proud Boys are using social media to get people to join them. She said that the New Zealand mosque shooter Live-streamed his activities to try and inspire others.
Consumer protection and anti-fraud laws need to be included in common-sense regulations of social media platforms. The current moderation policies of some of the big sites have real flaws.
There were threats against the justices, according to their court papers. Moderators said they delete those things now. Under the state laws, they could face lawsuits for removing troll who flood their chat with racist and offensive posts.
It is important to understand what the tech companies are asking for. Even if it’s only showing search results, moving and sorting info is what TikTok andinstagram does most of the time. The tech giants are pushing the simplistic position that any such conduct is “speech” (and any sorting or blocking of that speech is “editing”). If the justices buy this argument, they would be granting constitutional protection to nearly anything a social media platform does, putting both their actions — and those of tech companies more broadly — beyond the reach of lawmakers who want to constrain them. Doing so would create a kind of immunity verging on sovereignty, that it is hard to imagine the people who wrote the Constitution intended.
There are gaps in the laws as to how they would be enforced. The questions posed by the justices showed the court’s frustration at being “caught between two polar opposite positions, both of which have significant costs and benefits for freedom of speech,” says Cliff Davidson, a Portland-based attorney at Snell & Wilmer.
