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.

[–] Blazingtransfem98@discuss.online 8 points 5 days ago

Privately owned company.

Another thing, the first amendment doesn't protect against violent or criminal speech, like terrorist threats/advocacy, threats towards individuals (bodily harm, sexual assault, murder, etc.) things which there is no shortage of anyway on Steam and they have every right to force the platform to moderate this, on the count of it being against the law.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 days ago (1 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 5 days ago (4 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 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days 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 5 days 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 4 days ago

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

[–] ahal@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago

Think of it like your house. You can ask people to leave if they say something you find offensive. That is not infringing on their free speech.

If the owner of a shopping mall wants to ban the word banana, they can ask anyone who says it to leave. That is also not infringing on their free speech. That's because shopping malls are not owned and operated by the government.

[–] emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 4 days ago

A shopping mall is absolutely not a public space, and if youre shouting slurs into a megaphone, or even just harassing random shoppers with your crazy beliefs, you are definitely going to be dragged out by security. And or/have the cops come to remobe you. I hope you understand how badly you just disproved your own point.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I think you're misunderstanding the use of the term "public" here.

A mall is a public space in the sense that people can go, but it's not a public space in the sense that it's not operated by the government, it's a private space.

I'm using the term public space in the governmental sense, not in the publically accessible sense. If you use that definition of public I'm pretty sure even in your country you can get censored and kicked out of a mall and moved off its surrounding property (the parking around it), because it's privately owned. Once on the sidewalk you're on public property though so you can do whatever you want as long as it respects the law.

Also, talking about Europe as a whole is wrong since different countries can still have different rules on the subject.