retweets – Techdirt (original) (raw)
Elon Musk Blocks Likes And Replies To Tweets That Link To Substack In A Pique Of Pettiness
from the free-speech,-but-not-that-speech dept
Poor Matt Taibbi. He destroyed his credibility to take on the Twitter Files, and did so in part to raise the profile of his Substack site, Racket News. Indeed, Substack has become a home for nonsense peddlers of all kinds to create their own little bubbles of nonsense. In congressional testimony, Taibbi admitted that having Elon Musk hand pick him to deliver the “Twitter Files” has increased the number of paying subscribers to his Substack (though he defended it by claiming that the money has all gone towards journalism).
But… apparently Elon has decided that no one on Twitter is allowed to even like or reply to any tweet that links to a Substack site. Including to Taibbi’s. Oops.
Let’s back up, though. You may recall that back in December, as the number of people deserting Twitter became scary, Twitter instituted a new policy saying that you were not allowed to mention a somewhat arbitrary and random grab bag of other social media sites.
A day or so later, after many people yelled about it (and his Mom was the only one defending it), Elon rolled back that policy, admitting that it “was a mistake.”
Of course, since then, he’s systematically moved to make it more and more difficult to move to services like Mastodon, but at least people are still able to link to Mastodon and other social media.
But now, suddenly Substack is a problem? Twitter will still allow users to send a tweet with a link to a Substack page, but that tweet can no longer be liked, replied to, or retweeted. Basically, tweets with Substack links are dead in the water.
It seems that Substack’s “crime” is releasing a tool for more short form content that looks a bit like Twitter, called “Notes.”
And thus, the world’s pettiest man has decided to retaliate.
You could almost (but not really) understand banning links to Substack. But banning likes and replies? That’s just crazy. If you try to do any of those things with a tweet that links to Substack, you get an error message:
Amusingly, this is acting as a bit of a Streisand Effect for Notes. I had seen a headline fly by about it, but hadn’t looked at the details until now.
This move by Twitter impacts many people, amusingly including many in the Substack crowd who have been falsely going on and on about how Musk was a savior to their free speech. And now he’s blocking basically anyone promoting or interacting with their content.
And, among those impacted… Matt Taibbi, who threw all of his credibility eggs into the Musk basket. Just yesterday Taibbi literally refused to criticize Musk for anything during the Mehdi Hasan interview, saying he thought Musk was clearly good for free speech on Twitter. And today he’s saying that Twitter is now unusable:
Also, yesterday in the interview, I noted that it was funny that Taibbi claimed that the Biden campaign got special treatment from Twitter in that they could reach out to people there, but he couldn’t. So when someone asked him if he had reached out to Musk about the Substack blocks, Taibbi admitted that of course he had, though he hadn’t heard back yet:
Of course, maybe that explains why Taibbi refused to criticize Musk yesterday. Didn’t want to cut off that sweet, sweet, access.
Either way, considering just how frequently these capricious moves are being made by the “new” Twitter, it again raises questions why people are still relying on it as a key source of information and as a way to distribute their own content.
Update: This legitimately made me laugh outloud:
Update 2: So did this:
Filed Under: blocks, competition, elon musk, likes, pettiness, retweets
Companies: substack, twitter
Judge Makes It Official: Retweets Are Not Endorsements — But In A Strange Case
from the retweets-are-not-endorsements dept
Back in the spring of 2021, we wrote briefly about yet another Steven Biss SLAPP lawsuit. This one was filed by the brother of disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, Jack Flynn, arguing that CNN defamed him by showing a video of both Flynns and other family members, repeating the QAnon slogan “where we go one, we go all” while implying that the Flynns were “followers” of QAnon. The CNN report barely mentioned the Flynns at all. It was a report about a QAnon gathering, but showed the clip, which the Flynns themselves had placed on social media. Jack Flynn, with Steven Biss as his lawyer, argued that this clip was defamatory.
The case has been contentious since then with papers flying back and forth, including CNN even trying to block Biss from being able to appear before the court at all:
Here, this Court should deny Mr. Biss’ application because he has a history of making bad faith allegations against defendants in defamation actions, including his conduct towards CNN. Just a few days ago, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland sanctioned Mr. Biss in the amount of 21,437.50inattorneys’feesand21,437.50 in attorneys’ fees and 21,437.50inattorneys’feesand52.26 in expenses because he “engaged in bad faith conduct in filing the last-minute Amended Complaint” against CNN.
The court allowed Biss to appear, and generally the case has mostly gone as many Biss’ cases seem to go: with lots of wacky claims from Biss that don’t survive much scrutiny. The magistrate judge assigned to the case issued a report recommending the Article III judge reject all of the claims, but deny CNN’s request for fees.
However, rather than accept all of the magistrate judge’s recommendations, the judge (somewhat generously, I’d argue) allowed a false light claim to stick around, arguing at this stage of the process (the motion to dismiss stage), the court needed to accept all of the Flynns’ allegations as true, so if they claim they’re not followers of QAnon, that has to be taken as true, and that allowed the false light claim to live on. CNN asked the court to reconsider, highlighting what appeared to be similar cases that were dismissed, and arguing there can be no false light when it is “substantially true” that the Flynns’ showed public support for QAnon.
This Court clearly erred in failing to dismiss Plaintiffs’ false light claim. Having concluded that Plaintiffs’ public statements “express support for QAnon,” see Dkt. 42 (“M&O”) at 8, this Court should have applied the substantial truth test articulated in Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., 501 U.S. 496 (1991) and Tannerite Sports, LLC v. NBCUniversal News Group, 864 F.3d 236 (2d Cir. 2017), and concluded that the alleged defamatory sting of the Report – i.e. that Plaintiffs are QAnon followers – is substantially true. Yet, this Court never undertook the substantial truth analysis. Once the Court does so, given Plaintiffs’ public decision to align themselves with QAnon, no reasonable reader could conclude that it is materially false to describe Plaintiffs as QAnon followers.
Part of CNN’s argument is that Jack Flynn retweeted multiple tweets that, at the very least, suggest that he supported QAnon.
It is undisputed that the Flynns made – and Jack Flynn himself retweeted – a public video showing Plaintiffs using a phrase that is used solely by those within the QAnon movement: “where we go one, we go all” (the “QAnon Phrase”), accompanied by the hashtag #TakeTheOath. See Am. Compl. ¶ 4, n.2. It is undisputed that Plaintiffs posted or liked multiple tweets containing the hashtag for that Phrase (#WWG1WGA), in addition to other statements and imagery that expressed or implied support for the movement. See Motion at 3-4. It is undisputed that Jack Flynn, as Magistrate Judge Cave correctly pointed out, tweeted on August 21, 2020 that “Q” and “where we go one, we go all” “works for me.” See Dkt. 38 (“R&R”) at 4. And it is undisputed that “where we go one, we go all” is “a slogan used by adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory.” United States v. Languerand, No. 21-CR-353 (JDB), 2021 WL 3674731, at *3 (D.D.C. Aug. 19, 2021). Plaintiffs publicly aligned themselves with QAnon. Quibbling with the nuance of describing Plaintiffs as QAnon supporters rather than followers is inconsistent with the substantial truth standard articulated in Masson and Tannerite. That is particularly so where, as here, some of Plaintiffs’ actions were literally to follow other QAnon speakers on Twitter and retweet their statements
And, then that takes us to the ruling this week, in which the judge, Gregory Woods, gets to explain, in detail, why retweets are not endorsements:
What does it say about you if you “follow” someone on Twitter? What does it say about you when you retweet someone else’s tweet? These are not just questions for Millennials or Zoomers. They are critical questions in this motion to dismiss. CNN argues that the Court should conclude as a matter of law that by retweeting another’s tweet, the retweeter is adopting every word in the tweet as their own. A retweet, in CNN’s view, cannot merely be used to comment on another’s tweet or to forward the fact of its existence to another. CNN also argues that the Court should adopt the position that when you “follow” a person’s Twitter feed, you become that person’s “follower,” in the sense that you are now an adherent to the entire belief system of the tweeter. By following someone on Twitter, in CNN’s view, you are not merely interested in seeing what the person you are following has to say. The Court remains unwilling to adopt as a matter of law CNN’s sweeping assertions regarding the significance of a retweet, or what it means to “follow” someone on Twitter, and therefore denies CNN’s motion for reconsideration in part and denies CNN’s motion to certify an interlocutory appeal.
As others, including Prof. Eric Goldman have noted, it’s kind of weird that this case even got this far. There are all sorts of reasons why the court should have dismissed this clearly frivolous case. Indeed, the judge even seems to recognize that the case is unlikely to survive summary judgment (the next stage after some level of discovery), but keeps repeating that at the MtD stage, he can’t yet look at evidence, and has to take the Flynns’ claims that they’re not followers of QAnon as truth.
In some ways, keeping this case alive is frustrating, since there are all sorts of ways in which the court could have dumped it (as the magistrate judge recommended). Also, it seems quite unlikely that the case will survive summary judgment. But, because the judge is allowing the case to continue it becomes even more costly, as the discovery and efforts around summary judgment can really add up.
That said, the underlying point made by the judge is actually good and useful. We shouldn’t be held legally liable for retweets or who we follow online. And there are some quotes in this decision that will likely be useful in other cases where plaintiffs seek to hold others legally liable for retweets:
CNN’s argument places far too much weight on the significance of the Flynns’ social media activity. Crucially, none of the Flynns’ tweets state that they are believers in the QAnon movement. For instance, in one of Jack’s tweets on August 20, 2020, Jack stated “I advocate for the Constitution and Bill of Rights. If Q does too~No harm no foul.” Am. Compl. ¶ 23. Similarly, after a Twitter user replied to one of Jack’s tweets with a tweet stating, “We are with you Jack!” along with an image of the letter ‘Q’ and the slogan “where we go one we go all” superimposed over an American flag, Jack tweeted, “If this means you believe in the constitution and equal justice under the law then this works for me.” Id. As the Flynns identify in the complaint, while Jack’s tweets “embraced the Constitution and equal justice under the law,” Jack’s tweets do not state that he believes in “the dangerous, extremist, racist, anti-Semitic and violent beliefs espoused by QAnon.” Id. The Court cannot assume that Jack believes in every viewpoint held by the QAnon movement merely because Jack tweeted that he shares QAnon’s alleged belief in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and equal justice under the law. CNN’s assertion that believing in these principles automatically makes someone a QAnon adherent is simply wrong. A person can believe in certain viewpoints espoused by a movement without believing in all aspects of the movement.
In addition, CNN argues that the Flynns “publicized their support for QAnon” through retweets. Mot. at 3. In the R&R, Judge Cave also relied on the Flynns’ retweets to support the conclusion that CNN’s statement was substantially true. In one example, Jack retweeted a post which stated, “Qanon is not a violent conspiracy. We are every day people seeking truth. . . . . Qanon’s, share and tell your story.” Mot. at 3. Judge Cave concluded that “[b]y using the word ‘we,’ Jack included himself as one who ‘follows the opinions’ of QAnon, and invited others who ‘share[d]’ those opinions to join his comments.” R&R at 31. By relying on the Flynns’ retweets, CNN assumes that the Flynns believed in, and adopted, everything that they retweeted. In essence, CNN is asking the Court to conclude as a matter of law that retweeting a statement is the same as making the statement in the first instance.
The Court disagrees. Jack did not make the statement, “We are every day people seeking truth.” He retweeted it. There are many reasons that someone might retweet a statement; a retweet is not necessarily an endorsement of the original tweet, much less an endorsement of the unexpressed belief system of the original tweeter, as CNN would have it. Therefore, at the motion to dismiss stage, the Court cannot conclude as a matter of law that Jack adopted the content of the tweet and was therefore calling himself a member of the QAnon movement by using the word “we.” Nor can the Court conclude that the Flynns personally believed the other statements that they retweeted, particularly in light of the Flynns’ factual allegation that they do not share the beliefs of the QAnon movement.
That said, some of the ruling is a bit worrisome in its own way, as it suggests that as long as someone doesn’t agree with EVERY principle of a group, it could be false light to call them “a follower” of that group. That can’t be correct either, because obviously there are tons of “followers” of different religions, philosophies, gurus, etc. who don’t believe each and every tenet of those they follow. But should it then be false light for someone to suggest, in passing, that they’re followers? That seems like a stretch.
So, in the end, this case is a weird one. It still seems like a pretty obvious SLAPP suit that should have been done away with quite early. But, for now it lives on. Overall, the case still seems like a likely loser. The defamation claims have all been dismissed. All that’s remaining is this very weak false light claim, where the court is already telegraphing that after it can consider actual evidence that will be presented during the summary judgment stage, CNN still seems likely to succeed.
But, out of all of this mess, there is still something kind of useful: a court saying that retweets (and follows) are not, by themselves, endorsements of the views within.
So, all of you who have “retweets are not endorsements” in your bios can maybe delete that now. It’s official.
Filed Under: defamation, endorsements, jack flynn, leslie flynn, michael flynn, qanon, retweets, slapp, steven biss
Companies: cnn
New Hampshire’s Top Court Says Section 230 Shields Retweeters From Defamation Lawsuit
from the not-just-for-billionaires dept
Section 230 isn’t just some unearned privilege enjoyed by tech companies to shield them from angry, incoherent lawsuits filed by banned white nationalists. It’s also for the little people, as Eric Goldman points out while bringing us this recent decision by the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
This ruling is a fabulous reminder that Section 230 doesn’t just protect “Big Tech”; it protects all Americans who use the Internet. Perhaps the defendants would have ultimately defeated this case anyways, but having Section 230 on their sides gave them–and all of us–a little more freedom to engage each other on social media without fearing that every casual interaction might trigger a financial cataclysm. So the next time you hear politicians claiming that Section 230 benefits only Google and Facebook, cite this case as additional proof that they misunderstand what Section 230 actually does, or they are lying, or both.
And it is a solid decision [PDF] that wastes little time determining who’s shielded from this lawsuit and why. In just seven pages, the New Hampshire court covers a lot of ground quickly, ultimately finding in favor of these defendants.
Here’s the backstory: A student defaced a school website and added some additional information about one teacher (the plaintiff in this case). The added post “suggest[ed] that [the plaintiff] was sexually perverted and desirous of seeking sexual liaisons with […] students and their parents.” Another student took a screenshot of the altered site and tweeted it. The defendants being dismissed in this ruling did nothing more than retweet the original tweet.
The trial court found that Section 230 of the CDA immunized these retweeters from the teacher’s lawsuit. The teacher disagreed, appealing the decision to the state’s top court (which is also its only appeals court).
A second pass has changed nothing. The state Supreme Court says the word “user,” found in Section 230(c)(1) means exactly that: user. These defendants were Twitter users and the immunity applies to them. The state’s top court quotes a California Supreme Court case from 2006 — one of the first to apply Section 230 immunity to individual users.
Given that Congress declared that “‘[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as [a] publisher or speaker,’” the court found no basis “for concluding that Congress intended to treat service providers and users differently,” and that “the statute confers immunity on both.” Thus, the court concluded, “Congress employed the term ‘user’ to refer simply to anyone using an interactive computer service,” and held that section 230(c)(1) immunizes such individual users.
Given this background, the top court finds the lower court’s reasoning persuasive. Simply retweeting someone else’s tweet is not actionable under Section 230.
Despite the plaintiff’s assertion to the contrary, we conclude that it is evident that section 230 of the CDA abrogates the common law of defamation as applied to individual users. The CDA provides that “[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.” 47 U.S.C. § 230(e)(3). We agree with the trial court that the statute’s plain language confers immunity from suit upon users and that “Congress chose to immunize all users who repost[] the content of others.” That individual users are immunized from claims of defamation for retweeting content that they did not create is evident from the statutory language.
That leaves the plaintiff with one option: asking the nation’s Supreme Court to take a look at this case. It seems unlikely SCOTUS would be interested in delivering a final ruling on a state-level defamation case that offers multiple options for dismissal, even if it’s Section 230 taking center stage here. Certain justices may be acting weird about 230’s immunity, but this lawsuit was a loser when the plaintiff decided to start suing people who did not create the inflammatory post observed (and distributed) by others.
Filed Under: debbie banaian, defamation, new hampshire, retweets, section 230, students, users
8th Circuit's Bizarre Ruling In Devin Nunes' SLAPP Suit Against Reporter Ryan Lizza
from the wait,-what? dept
Rep. Devin Nunes has kept up his suing news organizations (and satirical internet cows). He has been mostly losing. Lately, we’ve been writing a fair bit about the lawsuit Nunes’ family has (using the same lawyer, Steven Biss) against reporter Ryan Lizza, which has gone somewhat off the rails. There’s been more nonsense since we last wrote about it, but I’m kind of waiting on the judge to actually rule before I go into the details.
Still, if you’ll recall, there were actually two separate lawsuits here. The one we’ve been writing about was filed by Nunes’ family. Nunes had filed a separate one on his own behalf but the judge correctly dismissed it as absolute nonsense, noting that nothing in it was directly defamatory towards Nunes. Nunes and Biss appealed and the 8th Circuit put out a truly bizarre decision (first pointed out by Josh Gerstein at Politico), which mostly upholds the lower court, but allows the case to continue against Lizza because of his tweeting. But even in upholding the lower court ruling, the judges go out of their way to make a really confused analysis of defamation law. The lower court found no defamatory implication in the story, but the appeals court says it’s there.
Based on the article?s presentation of facts, we think the complaint plausibly alleges that a reasonable reader could draw the implication that Representative Nunes conspired to hide the farm?s use of undocumented labor. See Manzari, 830 F.3d at 889; Stevens, 728 N.W.2d at 827. In reaching a contrary conclusion, the district court relied on the location of the relevant facts in the article. The court determined that the facts about Nunes conspiring to hide the farm?s move and the facts about the farm?s use of undocumented labor were ?scattered at disparate points? and thus not ?juxtaposed.?
But defamation-by-implication claims, like defamation claims generally, must be analyzed by considering the article as a whole. Toney, 85 F.3d at 396. Although the Iowa court in Stevens posited a defendant who ?juxtaposes a series of facts,? 728 N.W.2d at 827 (internal quotation omitted), we do not believe the theory is limited to situations in which the implication arises from, say, consecutive sentences. ?It is well settled that the ?arrangement and phrasing of apparently nonlibelous statements? cannot hide the existence of a defamatory meaning.? Church of Scientology of Cal. v. Flynn, 744 F.2d 694, 696 (9th Cir. 1984) (quoting Kapellas v. Kofman, 459 P.2d 912, 919-20 (Cal. 1969)). When a reader, ?connecting the dots,? could reasonably arrive at the implication, the author may be accountable. Elias v. Rolling Stone LLC, 872 F.3d 97, 109 (2d Cir. 2017). Whether the ?arrangement and phrasing? of facts creates a defamatory implication depends on the particular context; an intervening section break does not necessarily avoid liability.
The court also does a really bizarre analysis of how the article might be defamatory. This contradicts nearly every other ruling on what is and what is not protected opinion:
Nunes alleges that the article implies the existence of a ?politically explosive secret? that he ?conspired with others? to hide the farm?s use of undocumented labor. A conspiracy is an agreement that requires knowledge?here, knowledge that the farm employed undocumented labor and a knowing agreement to cover up that politically embarrassing fact. Yet the Congressman?s complaint says that he was ?not involved? in the farm?s ?operations,? had ?no knowledge of who the dairy farm hired,? and thus ?was not involved in any conspiracy or cover-up.? Whether Nunes knew about the farm?s hiring practices, including the potential use of undocumented labor, and whether he agreed with others to keep that information secret, are issues of verifiable fact. We thus conclude that the implication is ?sufficiently factual to be susceptible of being proved true or false,? so it is not a protected opinion.
That seems like a huge stretch. What saves it (and kills the core defamation lawsuit) is the actual malice standard. Nunes, on appeal, tried to argue that the actual malice standard is wrong, and you kind of get the feeling the judges here agree, but feel obliged to live under it:
On appeal, Nunes suggests that the actual malice standard of New York Times v. Sullivan should be reconsidered,… but of course we are bound to apply it. Under that demanding standard, we agree with the district court that the complaint is insufficient to state a claim of actual malice as to the original publication.
And then it gets dumber. Note that they say that with regards to “the original publication.” The court claims the same does not apply to Lizza’s later tweets about the article.
The district court went further, however, and ruled that the complaint does not state a plausible allegation that Lizza acted with actual malice by republishing the article on his Twitter account after this lawsuit was filed. On this point, we respectfully disagree.
The court then claims that tweets are different from the original publication, which is a bizarre perversion of the single publication rule (that says that a single publication of an article can only count as a single defamation), and that each tweet can be a separate “publication.” And then says that Lizza’s tweets after the lawsuit was filed could meet the actual malice standard, since by that point Lizza was, in effect, on notice that Nunes felt the information in the article was false.
Nunes?s initial complaint was filed on September 30, 2019. The complaint alleged that the ?strong defamatory gist and false implication? of the article was that he ?was involved in, covered-up, used his office to cover up, conspired with others to conceal, or was aware of criminal wrongdoing.? The next paragraph of the complaint makes clear that the ?criminal wrongdoing? to which Nunes referred was the farm?s alleged use of undocumented labor. The complaint denied that Nunes had any involvement in the farm?s ?operations,? denied that there was a ?secret? involving the farm?s move to Iowa and his alleged hypocrisy on immigration policy, and denied that he ?was involved in, covered-up, . . . conspired with others to conceal, or was aware of criminal wrongdoing.?
Nonetheless, on November 20, 2019, Lizza posted a tweet with a link to the article. Lizza?s tweet stated: ?I noticed that Devin Nunes is in the news. If you?re interested in a strange tale about Nunes, small-town Iowa, the complexities of immigration policy, a few car chases, and lots of cows, I?ve got a story for you.? As discussed, the complaint plausibly alleges that the article defames Nunes by implication.
Lizza and Esquire pointed out that this tweet is not even remotely republication (because it’s not). And nothing in that tweet by itself can possibly be defamatory. But.. for reasons that I cannot fathom, the court felt otherwise.
Lizza and Hearst contend that Lizza?s tweet of a link to the original article does not constitute republication of the article. They cite Sundance Image Technology, Inc. v. Cone Editions Press, Ltd., No. 02-CV-2258, 2007 WL 935703 (S.D. Cal. Mar. 7, 2007), which held that providing links to previous publications on a website, without more, was not republication. Id. at *7. And other courts have concluded that ?mere reference to an article,? In re Phila. Newspapers, LLC, 690 F.3d 161, 175 (3d Cir. 2012), or a ?mere hyperlink,? Lokhova v. Halper, 995 F.3d 134, 143 (4th Cir. 2021), without more, is not a republication. But these decisions do not hold categorically that hyperlinking to an original publication never constitutes republication.
The complaint here adequately alleges that Lizza intended to reach and actually reached a new audience by publishing a tweet about Nunes and a link to the article. In November 2019, Lizza was on notice of the article?s alleged defamatory implication by virtue of this lawsuit. The complaint alleges that he then consciously presented the material to a new audience by encouraging readers to peruse his ?strange tale? about ?immigration policy,? and promoting that ?I?ve got a story for you.? Under those circumstances, the complaint sufficiently alleges that Lizza republished the article after he knew that the Congressman denied knowledge of undocumented labor on the farm or participation in any conspiracy to hide it.
This is just wrong. It ignores basically all precedent on how the single publication rule works. The story itself has not been republished. It’s the same story. The whole point of the single publication setup is that unless the story changes, all that matters is the original publication date. Reuter’s chief counsel highlights how this is just flat out wrong:
Centrally, the panel conflates publication of the contents of a tweet with *providing a link to* an already-published article.
The article itself was untouched.
There simply is no ?republication? of the article on these facts.
— katharine larsen (@katharinelarsen) September 15, 2021
The ruling is complete nonsense. It’s not how this works at all. Just because Nunes claims the article is defamatory does not put Lizza on notice that it is false, or that pointing people to that article meets the actual malice standard of publishing something knowing that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth. It seems clear that Lizza still stands by the story and believes that what’s in there is true. So everything about this is screwy. The perversion of the single publication rule. The claim that actual malice can apply for any statement after the filing of the lawsuit. Even the elements for what is an opinion are kinda weird.
The likely end result of this is that Lizza now has to go through this process all over again in the district court, focusing on actual malice, and gets the case dismissed again, but that’s a hugely expensive and time exhausting process.
Politico quotes law professor Chip Stewart noting just how weird all this is:
“It?s certainly a novel application of a couple of important libel doctrines, and a potentially troublesome one if the 8th Circuit?s ruling is allowed to stand,” said Chip Stewart, a professor at Texas Christian University. “It?s an odd kind of bootstrapping argument. Nunes claims the underlying article is false. He sues over it. Lizza tweets the exact same story after the lawsuit is filed. And what was originally not actual malice now all of a sudden is, at least plausibly enough for a lawsuit to advance to further costly litigation. All over a tweet that changed nothing about the original story.”
Politico also suggests that this ruling would open up the possibility that Nunes could sue anyone who retweeted the article, but this is almost certainly wrong. Here’s what Gerstein wrote:
One curious aspect of the ruling is that it appears to open the door to lawsuits against anyone who tweeted or retweeted the original story with knowledge of Nunes’ lawsuit, and to similar claims over members of the public or those with significant social media followings tweeting or retweeting stories after learning that the subject of the story is disputing it in some way.
Except, that shouldn’t be true, because for everyone but Lizza (and Esquire), Lizza’s article is 3rd party content, and (while people forget this), Section 230 protects users who share 3rd party speech. Remember, the law is that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” So, all those other tweets should be protected under Section 230.
Still, this is a bizarrely dumb ruling that allows a clearly vexatious SLAPP suit to continue. Even if the district court (hopefully) tosses out the case again on summary judgment, this whole process is extremely wasteful and the ruling on the books in the 8th circuit is completely upending how the single publication rule works — making it a dangerous place for defamation claims.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, 8th circuit, actual malice, anti-slapp, defamation, devin nunes, esquire, free speech, retweets, ryan lizza, single publication, slapp, steven biss
Companies: hearst, twitter
Why Keep Section 230? Because People Need To Be Able To Complain About The Police
from the discourse-demands-it dept
The storm has passed and the charges have been dropped. But the fact that someone who tweeted about police behavior, and, worse, people who retweeted that tweet, were ever charged over it is an outrage, and to make sure that it never happens again, we need to talk about it. Because it stands as a cautionary tale about why First Amendment protections are so important ? and, as we’ll explain here, why Section 230 is as well.
To recap, protester Kevin Alfaro became upset by a police officer’s behavior at a recent Black Lives Matter protest in Nutley, NJ. The officer had obscured his identifying information, so Alfaro tweeted a photo asking if anyone could identify the officer “to hold him accountable.”
Several people, including Georgana Szisak, retweeted that tweet. The next thing they knew, Alfaro, Sziszak, and several other retweeters found themselves on the receiving end of a felony summons pressing charges of “cyber harassment” of the police officer.
As we’ve already pointed out, the charges were as pointless as they were spurious, because they themselves directly did the unmasking of the officer’s identity, which the charges maintained was somehow a crime to ask for. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh took further issue with the prosecution, and in particular its application of the New Jersey cyber harassment statute against the tweet. Particularly in light of an earlier case, State v. Carroll (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2018), he took a dim view:
N.J. Stat. 2C:33-4.1a(2), under which Sziszak is charged, provides, in relevant part,
A person commits the crime of cyber-harassment if, while making a communication in an online capacity via any electronic device or through a social networking site and with the purpose to harass another, the person ? knowingly sends, posts, comments, requests, suggests, or proposes any lewd, indecent, or obscene material to or about a person with the intent to emotionally harm a reasonable person or place a reasonable person in fear of physical or emotional harm to his person.
According to the criminal complaint, the government’s theory is that the post “caus[ed] Det. Sandomenico to fear that harm will come to himself, family and property.”
But the Tweet (and the retweet) aren’t “lewd, indecent, or obscene.” … [And] if the “lewd, indecent, or obscene” element isn’t satisfied, N.J.S.A. 2C:33-4.1(a)(2) doesn’t apply regardless of whether it was posted with the intent to “caus[e] Det. Sandomenico to fear that harm will come to himself, family and property.”
These “cyber harassment” statutes are often problematic, targeting for punishment what should be protected and often socially valuable critical speech. Cases like these, where they get applied to criticism of state power, highlight the Constitutional concern. Being able to speak out against the state is at the heart of why we have the First Amendment, and laws interfering with that ability offend the Constitution. In this case, even if the New Jersey law had been drafted in a sufficiently narrow way to not be unconstitutional on its face by ? in theory ? only targeting speech beyond the protection of the First Amendment, applying it in this way to speech that should have been protected made it unconstitutional.
But while it’s bad enough that the original tweeter had been targeted by the police for his speech, the aspect of the story that is most worrying is that police also targeted for prosecution people who had simply retweeted the original tweet. Section 230 should have barred such prosecutions. And before we so casually chuck out the statute, as so many propose, we need to understand why it should have applied here, and why it is so important to make sure that it still can in the future.
The First Amendment and Section 230 both exist to foster discourse. Discourse is more than just speech; it’s the exchange of ideas. The First Amendment protects their expression, and Section 230 their distribution. Especially online, where speaking requires the facilitation of others, we need both: the First Amendment to make it possible to speak, and Section 230 to make it possible to be heard.
This case illustrates why it is so important to have both, and why Section 230 applies, and must apply, to more than just big companies. Here, someone tweeted protected speech to notify the community of concerning police behavior. Section 230 ensured that the Internet platform ? in this case, Twitter ? could exist to facilitate that speech. And it’s good that Section 230 meant that Twitter could be available to play that role. But Alfaro only had 900 followers; Twitter helped him speak, but it was the retweeters who turned that speech into discourse by helping it reach the community. They had just as important a role to play in facilitating his speech as Twitter did, if not even more so.
It’s important to remember that the statutory text of Section 230 in no way limits its protection to big Internet companies, or even to companies at all. It simply differentiates between whoever created the expression at issue (and can thus be held to answer for it) and who facilitated its distribution online (who therefore can’t be). Given how important that facilitation role is in having meaningful public discourse, we need to ensure that everyone who performs it is protected. In fact, it may be even more important to ensure that individual facilitators can maintain this protection than the larger and more resourced corporate platforms who can better weather legal challenges.
Think about it: think about how many of us share content online. Many of us may even share far more content created by others than we create ourselves. But all that sharing would grind to a halt, if we could be held liable for anything allegedly wrong with that content. Not just civilly, but, as this case shows, even criminally.
And that chilling is not a good thing. One could certainly argue that people should take more care when they share content online and do the best they can in vetting it before sharing it, to the extent it is possible. Of course, it could also be fairly said that many people should use their right to free speech more productively than they necessarily do. But the reason we protect speech, even low-value speech, is because we need to make sure that the good, socially beneficial speech we depend on to keep our democracy healthy can still get expressed too. Which is also why we have Section 230: it is not possible to police all the third-party created content we intermediate, and if we want to make sure that the good, socially beneficial content can get through, to reach the people who need to hear it, then we need to make sure that we don’t have to. When we snip away at Section 230’s protection, or limit its application, we obstruct that spread and curtail the discourse society needs. We therefore do so at our peril.
Obviously in this case Section 230 did not prevent the attempted prosecution. Nor did the First Amendment, and that the police went after anyone over the tweet was an unacceptable abuse of authority that imposed an enormous cost. Discourse was damaged, and the targeted Twitter users may now think twice before engaging in online discourse at all, much less discourse intending to keep state power in check. These are costs that we, as a society, cannot afford to bear.
But at least by having both of these defenses available, the terrible toll this attempted prosecution took was soon abated. Think about how much worse it would have been had they not been. And ask why that is a future we should be continuing to spend any effort trying to invite. Our sole policy goal should be to enhance our speech protections, to impose costs on those who would undermine public discourse through their attempts at abusive process. The last thing we should be doing is taking steps to whittle away at them and make it any easier to chill discourse than it already is, and cases like this one, where people were trying to speak out against abuses of power, illustrate why.
Filed Under: criminal charges, georgana sziszak, kevin alfaro, new jersey, nutley, protests, retweets, section 230
Second Circuit Wrecks All Sorts Of First Amendment Protections To Keep Lawsuit Against Joy Reid Alive
from the what-public-discourse dept
The Second Circuit just issued an ugly decision in a defamation lawsuit against Joy Reid. It not only revived the case against her, but it greased the skids for many more defamation cases to be brought in federal court, including plenty even less meritorious.
The case, La Liberte v. Reid, involves two of Reid’s social media posts from 2018. The first was from June 29:
At some point during the Council Meeting, La Liberte was photographed interacting with a fourteen-year-old teenager who appears to be (and is) Hispanic (the “Photograph”). The Photograph showed La Liberte with her mouth open and her hand at her throat in a gagging gesture. On June 28th, a social media activist named Alan Vargas tweeted the Photograph along with the following caption: “‘You are going to be the first deported’ [and] ‘dirty Mexican’ [w]ere some of the things they yelled they yelled [sic] at this 14 year old boy. He was defending immigrants at a rally and was shouted down. Spread this far and wide this woman needs to be put on blast.” The Photograph went viral. The next day, Joy Reid, a personality on the MSNBC cable station, retweeted (i.e., shared) the Vargas tweet to her approximately 1.24 million followers. (La Liberte is not alleging defamation by Reid as to that communication.) Later that same day (June 29), Reid posted the Photograph on her Instagram with the following caption: “He showed up to a rally to defend immigrants . . . . She showed up too, in her MAGA hat, and screamed, ‘You are going to be the first deported’ . . . ‘dirty Mexican!’ He is 14 years old. She is an adult. Make the picture black and white and it could be the 1950s and the desegregation of a school. Hate is real, y?all. It hasn?t even really gone away.” [p.6-7]
The second was from July 1:
Two days later (July 1), Reid published another post about La Liberte, this time on Instagram and Facebook. This post juxtaposed the Photograph of La Liberte with the 1957 photograph showing one of the Little Rock Nine walking past a screaming white woman. Reid added the following caption: “It was inevitable that this [juxtaposition] would be made. It’s also easy to look at old black and white photos and think: I can’t believe that person screaming at a child, with their face twisted in rage, is real. By [sic] every one of them were. History sometimes repeats. And it is full of rage. Hat tip to @joseiswriting. #regram #history #chooselove” [p. 7-8]
Subsequently, further media coverage revealed that the plaintiff had not been the source of the cited racist comments. [p. 7] On July 2 the plaintiff contacted Reid to ask that she delete the posts and apologize, which Reid did later that day. [p. 8]. Despite her doing so, the plaintiff sued anyway, but the district court in EDNY then dismissed it.
The Second Circuit has now stepped in to revive the case, and in doing so opened the door not only to this troublingly weak case but plenty of others even weaker.
There are a number of issues with the decision:
- Its denial of Section 230 protection;
- Its refusal to find the plaintiff a limited purpose public figure;
- Its refusal to allow California’s anti-SLAPP law apply in federal diversity cases; and
- Its insistence on rendering destructive precedential decisions on questions that were moot.
Section 230
Section 230 became an issue because Reid had raised it as a defense for her June 29 posting of the picture on Instagram with her caption (although not her July 1 post on Instagram and Facebook). The district court rejected that defense, and the Second Circuit agreed with that rejection. But whereas it mattered less in the district court because it had found other reasons to dismiss the case against Reid, because the Second Circuit kept the case alive, it doing so also on Section 230 grounds raises more concerns (plus, it is an appeals court, so its decision will reverberate more into the future).
In denying her the statute’s protection the court did get the basic rules right: only the party that created the offending expression can be held liable for it. Furthermore, citing earlier Circuit precedent, “a defendant will not be considered to have developed third-party content unless the defendant directly and ‘materially’ contributed to what made the content itself ‘unlawful.'” [p. 22]. But in denying her the protection it applied these rules in a way that may expose myriad other social media posters – and even platforms themselves – to litigation in the future, and in a way that Section 230 should really forestall.
Reid was ostensibly only being sued for the commentary that she added to her re-posts of the original picture, and not the photographer’s original tweet. Had it been the latter, Section 230 would have more clearly applied. Asserting it for her own speech is an aggressive argument, but not a ridiculous one. It’s also not one that the court dismissed out of hand. As that prior precedent made clear, liability for speech hinges on who imbued the speech with its allegedly wrongful quality. Reid argued that it wasn’t her: The original post had been of a picture of the plaintiff seemingly shouting threateningly at a Latino boy, and included a caption indicating that this picture was captured at an event where racist invective was shouted at him. Thus it was reasonable to take the original post as the statement that La Liberte was one of the people doing that shouting. Unfortunately that statement turned out to be wrong, but Reid repeating that statement in her own words was not what introduced the wrongfulness. Therefore she was not actually the “information content provider” with respect to this message, and Section 230 should have applied.
The trouble is, in the court’s view, she had been the one to imbue the message with its wrongful quality. What might have made this case a close call was that the original post had only included an unspecific “they” in reference to the shouters, whereas Reid had attributed it to the plaintiff by name. However that attribution had already been made in the original post ? not by her name, true, but by her picture. Thus Reid did not introduce anything new to the overall expression. Indeed, that she believed, albeit erroneously, that the plaintiff had screamed the invective at the boy was because that was the message the original post had conveyed. It may have been an erroneous message, but she was not the one who originated it.
The problem with now finding her the “information content provider” in this situation is that it reads into Section 230 a duty of care that does not exist in the statutory language, requiring people who share others’ expression to make some sort of investigation into the veracity of that expression. While it might be good if people did ? we certainly would like for people sharing things on social media to be careful about what they were sharing ? Section 230 exists because it is hard to get intermediation of expression right, and we risk choking off speech if we make it legally risky to get wrong. (See what happened to Reid, where even if she had been wrong about the significance of the underlying tweet, it was a reasonable error to make.)
Worse, not only would it chill social media sharing, but this decision is unlikely to stay tightly cabined to that sort of intermediation of others’ expression. If it were the rule that you had to vet the expression you allowed to be shared before you could be safe from sharing other people’s expression, then Section 230 could almost never apply and *everyone* would be vulnerable to being sued over the expression they intermediate, since no matter how much care they took since they’d still have to defend those efforts in court. Such a rule would represent a profound shift in how Section 230 works, which up to now has not been conditional. Twenty-plus years of jurisprudence has made clear that Section 230 protection is not contingent on the intermediary vetting the expression produced by third parties that it helps share, and this decision undermines that clarity. And not just for social media users, but the platforms they use as well.
Ultimately, if Section 230 can apply to individuals sharing others’ social media posts (prior precedent supports that conclusion, and this court accepted it as well [see footnote 8]) and if it can apply to original, summarizing content (as this court also accepted), then there’s no principled reason it should not have applied here.
Limited-purpose public figures
Denying Section 230 protection is only the tip of the iceberg. Not only does it make people who share on social media vulnerable to being sued, but other aspects of the decision make it more likely that it is litigation they will lose.
The court’s refusal to find that the plaintiff was a limited purpose public figure is one of these aspects. Because open discourse about matters of public concern is a value the First Amendment exists to protect, the Supreme Court has developed the concept of the “public figure” to help ensure that it is. A public figure is someone whose fame has so intertwined them in matters of public interest that they must plead “actual malice,” a fairly exacting standard, on the part of a speaker in order to prevail on a claim that the speaker defamed them.
Here, no one argued that the plaintiff was a general purpose public figure. But there are also “limited-purpose public figures.” These are people who are not inherently intertwined in matters of public interest but who may insert themselves in matters that are and thus become public figures within the context of that matter. In such cases they would also need to plead actual malice in any defamation lawsuit where there had been commentary about them in this context.
Reid argued that the plaintiff was a limited purpose public figure. In particular, she regularly appeared at council meetings about the immigration issue and had been visibly, and publicly, vocal on the subject. The court rejected the contention:
That is not nearly enough. [?T]he district court did not take into account the requirement that a limited purpose public figure maintain “regular and continuing access to the media.” One reason for imposing the actual malice burden on public figures and limited purpose public figures is that “[t]hey have media access enabling them to effectively defend their reputations in the public arena.” We have therefore made “regular and continuing access to the media” an element in our four-part test for determining whether someone is a limited purpose public figure. [p. 24-25]
Per the court, “La Liberte plainly lacked such media access.” [p. 25].
The earlier photograph, which showed her conversing, was in a Washington Post photo spread of attendees at an SB 54 protest. The article did not name La Liberte, let alone mention her views. The single caption described everyone depicted as ?[s]upporters and opponents of [SB 54] rally[ing] and debat[ing] outside Los Alamitos City Hall.? Such incidental and anonymous treatment hardly bespeaks ?regular and continuing access to the media.? [p. 25]
Furthermore:
Nor does La Liberte?s participation at city council meetings. La Liberte is said to have ?testif[ied] eight times around the state? (Appellee?s Br. at 26 (citing App. at 102-05)); but Reid does not identify instances in which the media singled out La Liberte?s participation as newsworthy. Nor does speech, even a lot of it, make a citizen (or non-citizen) fair game for attack. Imposition of the actual malice requirement on people who speak out at government meetings would chill public participation in politics and community dialogue. [p. 26]
The problem with this analysis is that it better applies to why a person engaging in civic affairs does not become a full-fledged public figure, where every aspect of their life can be a matter of public interest. It misses the significance of why we have the limited purpose public figure doctrine in the first place, which is that in the context of a specific matter of public concern a person’s behavior can become a matter of public interest. Here the plaintiff had concertedly inserted herself into a matter of public concern ? the policymaking surrounding immigration – on a “regular and continuing” and conspicuously public basis. The court’s ruling puts that public behavior beyond the reach of effective public comment by treating it as if it were private and thus lowering the standard of what the plaintiff would have to plead to support a defamation claim.
State anti-SLAPP in federal court
The decision also reaches an unfortunate conclusion we’ve taken issue with before: disallowing state anti-SLAPP laws in cases that end up in federal court via diversity jurisdiction. It’s a conclusion that seems to reflect dubious constitutional analysis, is bad policy, and in this case, conflicts with Ninth Circuit precedent.
As we explained before:
Diversity jurisdiction arises when the parties in the litigation are from separate states and the amount in controversy is more than $75,000 and the issue in dispute is solely a question of state law. Federal courts ordinarily can’t hear cases that only involve state law, but because of the concern that it could be unfair for an out-of-state litigant to have to be heard in a foreign state court, diversity jurisdiction can allow a case that would have been heard in state court to be heard by the federal one for the area instead.
At the same time, we don’t want it to be unfair for the other party to now have to litigate in federal court if being there means it would lose some of the protection of local state law. We also don’t want litigants to be too eager to get into federal court if being there could confer an advantage they would not have had if the case were instead being heard in state court. These two policy goals underpin what is commonly known as the “Erie doctrine,” named after a 1938 US Supreme Court case that is still followed today.
The first problem with the Second Circuit’s decision is that it does not even *mention* the Erie doctrine ? instead it just dives right into a procedural rules’ analysis. [p. 13]. The second problem is that its decision directly conflicts with Ninth Circuit precedent that applied Erie to find that California’s anti-SLAPP law indeed applied in federal diversity occasions. In other words, the Second Circuit has just reached across the country and into the Ninth Circuit to snatch away the protection of a law that the Ninth Circuit already had assured Californians that they had.
The third problem is that it is bad policy because it would encourage forum-shopping, which is normally discouraged. As the Ninth Circuit articulated in that case, US Ex Rel. Newsham v. Lockheed Missiles & Space Co.:
[I]f the anti-SLAPP provisions are held not to apply in federal court, a litigant interested in bringing meritless SLAPP claims would have a significant incentive to shop for a federal forum. Conversely, a litigant otherwise entitled to the protections of the Anti-SLAPP statute would find considerable disadvantage in a federal proceeding.
The Second Circuit appeared indifferent to these concerns:
Finally, amici warn that refusal to apply the anti-SLAPP statute will ?encourage forum shopping? and lead to ?an increased burden on federal courts in this Circuit.? (Amici Br. at 11.) That may be so; but our answer to a legal question does not turn on our workload; and in any event, the incentive to forum-shop created by a circuit split can be fixed, though not here. [p. 16]
The concern about forum-shopping is not that it will overburden federal courts; the concern the is manifest unfairness to defendants that will arise when they suddenly lose the benefit of the the substantive protections for speech California gave them ? and upon which they may have depended on to speak ? because an out-of-state litigant was able haul them into federal court.
Mootness
It is also not clear why the Second Circuit even reached the anti-SLAPP question. If its public figure analysis was correct, the defense would be unlikely to be able to even use it, because by that logic the expression at issue would have failed to meet the anti-SLAPP law’s requirement that it be about a matter of “public issue.” Thus there was no need for this court to ever reach the anti-SLAPP question, and yet it chose to opine on it first, before even reaching the Section 230 and then the public figure discussions. But because after those latter two analyses there was no reason to reach the anti-SLAPP discussion, and it raises the question of whether at this point it was even a ripe enough issue for the court to have had appellate jurisdiction over. But even if it did, doctrines of judicial restraint should have precluded deciding the issue and creating a mess that speakers who thought they were protected will now have to contend with.
Filed Under: 2nd circuit, anti-slapp, defamation, joy reid, la liberte, public figure, retweets, section 230
James Comey: Retweets Equal Material Support For Terrorism, But Don't Worry, We'll Only Prosecute Real Terrorists
from the our-track-record-on-terrorism-prosecutions-is-immaculate! dept
Better add that “RTs ≠ endorsements” line to your Twitter profile. Huffington Post’s Ryan J. Reilly’s coverage of the FBI’s efforts against ISIS notes that FBI head James Comey considers retweeting to be material support of terrorism. But that’s OK, because the FBI’s crew of mind-readers will make sure that anyone who didn’t “mean it” avoids prosecution.
“Knowing it was wrong, you provided material support for a terrorist organization or some other offense,” Comey said, explaining how the FBI sees these suspects in response to Huffington Post questions during a meeting with reporters last month. “That is the bulwark against prosecuting someone for having an idea or having an interest. You have to manifest a criminal intent to further the aims prohibited by the statute.”
Asked if reposting materials alone would cross the line, Comey said the answer would be different based on the individual circumstances.
“It would depend upon what your mental state is in doing it,” the FBI director said. “I can imagine an academic sharing something with someone as part of research would have a very different mental intent than someone who is sharing that in order to try and get others to join an organization or engage in an act of violence. So it’s hard to answer in the abstract like that.”
Yay. “Mental state” and “intent.” That shouldn’t be any problem to disprove in court. Comey says the burden of proof rests on the prosecution — which it does — but this “burden” becomes significantly lighter when “national security” is invoked and the onus suddenly shifts to the defendants, who are put in the position of proving a negative.
Much like Comey’s certainty that secure encryption backdoors exist, the FBI head is also a firm believer that he and his agency will know materially-supportive retweets when they see them.
Comey said it was “pretty darn clear” where the line was.
Eye of the beholder and all that. Not exactly reassuring when the “pretty darn clear” line is being determined by an agency that appears to have created more terrorists in the US than any terrorist organization. Comey talks a lot in Reilly’s article about “intent” and “mental state” — two aspects that have been largely ignored in its counter-terrorist sting operations, which have resulted in the arrest of mentally-incompetent dreamers, senior citizens and a handful of easily-flattered bedroom revolutionaries. When the agency has to do everything but perform the terrorist attack itself, it would appear its definition of “intent” is very fluid… and any considerations about “mental states” completely subservient to its War on Terror desires.
Filed Under: fbi, isis, james comey, material support, material support for terrorism, retweets, social media
Companies: twitter
China's New Censorship Plan: Three Years In Prison If You Get 500 Retweets Of A 'Harmful' Post
from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept
As we’ve noted before, the online community is kept on a pretty tight leash in China, with information deemed subversive or just embarrassing disappearing quickly from the networks. But it seems that’s not enough. Global Voices is reporting that yet another approach is being tried to discourage “offenders” from posting in the first place:
> China has stepped up its crackdown on online rumors by issuing a judicial framework for prosecuting offenders. Internet users who share false information that is defamatory or harms the national interest face up to three years in prison if their posts are viewed 5,000 times or forwarded 500 times, according to a judicial interpretation released on September 9, 2013. > > The new guideline, issued by the Supreme People’s Court, defines the criteria for convicting and sentencing offenders. This includes causing a mass incident, disturbing public order, inciting ethnic and religious conflicts, and damaging the state’s image.
In some ways, this is an escalation of a five-strikes program Techdirt wrote about last year, with the final punishment no longer being thrown off an online service for a short while, but being thrown in prison for a long while. That sudden jump in seriousness would suggest that the earlier scheme didn’t work very well, and that the authorities are still having problems with controlling the flow of information online.
Aside from obvious issues of censorship, what’s troubling here is how easily the system could be abused. For example, it would be simple for people to band together to view or retweet dodgy posts from someone they wanted sent to prison. Whether or not that happens, it’s disappointing to see the new Chinese leadership moving in the direction of more censorship and harsher penalties, when many were hoping the recent handover might be an opportunity to bring in reforms and a lighter touch, both online and offline.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Filed Under: china, defamation, free speech, harms national interest, retweets, rumors, tweets
Companies: twitter
South Korea Arrests Man For Re-Tweeting Oppressive North Korean Government; Wins Ultimate Irony Award
from the isn't-imitation-the-best-form-of-flattery? dept
I have to admit, there are times when I find South Korea immensely confusing when it comes to technology. They appear to embrace the hell out of the more modern view of the music business. They’re heavily invested in their population’s internet connectivity. Yet they can also get goofy when it comes to intellectual property, such as when they decided patenting their military uniforms was a surefire way of keeping the North Korean military from dressing alike. They’ve also put in place a mildly enforced version of 3 strikes legislation to appease American entertainment companies.
Admitting all that, however, my surprise has boiled over upon learning that a South Korean man was found guilty of “praising, encouraging or propagandizing” North Korea under their “National Security Law” for tweets associated with his account. His crime? Well, mostly retweeting North Korea’s official Twitter account, tweeting out a couple of links to North Korean propaganda songs, and tweeting nonsensical nonsense (is there any other kind?) about their neighbors to the north. Oh, and he also mercilessly mocked the hell out of this country he’s accused of supporting as well.
Mr. Park denied praising the North Korean government and said his intention was to lampoon the North Korean regime. In a North Korean post that he tweaked and sent out on Twitter, he replaced a swarthy North Korean soldier’s face with a downcast version of his own and the soldier’s rifle with a bottle of whiskey.
A freedom of speech advocate, who authorities arrested for mocking governments and generally being a smartass? Huh, you know what? That sounds like something that might happen in North Korea. Just to wrap this up in a neat little bow for everyone, South Korea arrested a man for exercising speech because they incorrectly thought he was propagandizing a despotic country. The irony is so thick here, I can hardly breathe.
In his ruling, the presiding judge, Shin Jin-woo, acknowledged that some of Mr. Park’s posts were parody. But he said Mr. Park’s overall acts were tantamount to “supporting and joining forces with an antistate entity.” The justice said his court suspended the prison term, however, because Mr. Park promised not to repeat his act.
You might read this and think that the court was lenient, suspending his jail sentence. I call BS on that. It isn’t lenient to agree not to jail someone in exchange for giving up their rights. Now, lest you think that this speech right doesn’t exist in South Korea and I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, that’s under intense debate.
The United Nations and human rights groups have called on South Korea for years to repeal or revise the law, which the country’s past military dictators had used not only against people suspected of being spies but also against political dissidents. But the law has proved resilient in a society where many fear North Korea, which has launched military provocations against the South in recent years.
See, South Korea today is a Republic. They’re supposed to enjoy rights like the freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Oh, freedom of the press, that reminds me, I have to mention the final ironic cherry on top of this irony sundae.
The Twitter account whose posts Mr. Park forwarded is run by the North Korean government Web site, Uriminzokkiri, which the South Korean news media regularly cite in their reports.
That’s right, kids. Mr. Park was found guilty of disseminating information from a North Korean Twitter account…that the South Korean press regularly uses to disseminate information. You can’t make this stuff up.
Filed Under: free speech, north korea, parody, retweets, south korea