It's a public space in Europe for sure. No idea why the US would think openly accessible forums are a private little backroom where rules don't apply.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

No it's not a public space.

Public space would be a place like a national park or the sidewalk. These forums are owned and operated by a private company, they're private spaces and can be moderated however the company sees fit. Same thing for Twitter or Facebook or Lemmy.

A senator has the right to tell them that they need to do a better job at moderating their platform if there's reasons to believe they're letting people threaten violence or incite criminal activity.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world -1 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

Alright that's still a weird ruling to someone outside America though because something like a shopping mall or a parking lot are public spaces here too as well as anything that is openly visible on the internet. Which makes a lot of sense.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works speaks unclearly when saying “public space”—the term they are thinking of is usually “public forum.” source

The rules around what constitutes a true public forum and what the public forum doctrine even means are fuzzy, but in all cases the term refers to a space owned or created by the government.

Thus, a shopping mall, parking lot, or internet forum, being owned by a private company, is not a public forum and can’t really be defended on the basis of the public forum doctrine.

Finally, as @Blazingtransfem98@discuss.online points out, none of this matters anyway in cases of incitement to imminent lawless action like threats or terrorist speech, which the First Amendment does not protect.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

See the US section, the use of the term "public space" in this conversation is acceptable as the term "public" is used in opposition to privately owned and not public in the sense that it's open to the public like a mall is.

.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space

The government cannot usually limit one's speech beyond what is reasonable in a public space, which is considered to be a public forum (that is, screaming epithets at passers-by can be stopped; proselytizing one's religion probably cannot).

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 2 points 3 weeks ago

that’s fair, i’ll edit to say speaks unclearly rather than misspeaks. thanks for the clarification :)

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