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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

Rumble and FIRE

Federal officials feel entitled to demand the censorship of persons uttering renegade opinions about pandemics and elections. Local police officers feel entitled to arrest persons who commit parody against them.

And New York State officials now feel entitled to compel social-​media companies to restrict speech that the officials dislike.

The video-​sharing platform Rumble, dedicated to making the Internet “free and open once again,” is teaming up with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) in a lawsuit to stop the New York law.

The goal of AB A7865A is to force social media networks “to provide and maintain mechanisms for reporting hateful conduct on their platform.”

“Hateful conduct” is speech that some people dislike. Of course, even the most acidulous asseverations are protected by the First Amendment if they don’t entail actual violations of anyone’s rights. Gangsters and terrorists are not legally entitled to use speech, or anything else, to commit robbery or murder — certainly not on the specious grounds that they have rights to freedom of speech or to bear arms.

The new law is not about such things. Under it, if social-​media companies fail to provide ways for users to complain about “hateful” comments, they could be fined up to $1,000 per violation and investigated by the state attorney general.

Clearly, the law would institute a massive incentive to bury social platforms in fines and investigations if they permit the “wrong” kind of speech. The number of those easily offended by others is infinite.

Also infinite? Excuses for those in power to stomp on opposition speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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6 replies on “Rumble and FIRE”

I have noticed this same problem with state legislatures enacting obviously unconstitutional restrictions on citizen petitions for initiatives and referendums. We win in court but not until funds can be raised to hire attorneys to sue. We ultimately win the lawsuit but the legislature succeeds in delaying any use of initiative rights for a time, frustrates citizen efforts and pays no price for purposely legislating in an unconstitutional manner.

This problem might have been addressed at the founding of the republic, but addressing it now seems nearly impossible. Indeed, given that the US Supreme Court has in the past invented supposèd constitutional rights, perfectly good people would be alarmed at most suggested mechanisms for punishing legislators for willfully passing unconstitutional measures.

We’ve seen this here in Colorado with the whittling away of the protections of our Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR). They violate it and then we have to raise funds to hire a lawyer to contest it. We win. But we can’t always afford to contest. Using this technique, over the years, they’ve reduced our protections dramatically.

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