That corporations have influence on Congress doesn’t change the accuracy of what I said. They can’t vote in elections, run for office, or hold a public office.

Sure. I never said the law was foolproof. However, that has nothing to do with this discussion, which has nothing to do with sidestepping limitations or abusing loopholes at all. It also has nothing to do with corruption or the outsized influence of corporations on elected officials while they’re in office. Facebook doesn’t use its platform to lobby or petition public officials, after all, and its ability to moderate its own platform is a directly intended result of the law as it is.

There are multiple stories on this very site that disprove Facebook is not using it’s platform for lobbying purposes, but that is irrelevant to this conversation.

My point was that the law is ineffective. It does ban these practices, but in reality the law has so many loopholes that such bans are unenforceable. The reason why corporate voting rights are relevant to this discussion, is because you brought it up.

I don’t see why they shouldn’t be given those protections. Corporations are ultimately run by humans, so how would one regulate corporations’ speech without infringing on the free speech rights of the individuals running that corporation?

Because as you said: Corporations are ultimately run by humans. Those humans running those corporations have rights themselves, that they are fully capable of utilizing without needing extra protection. A corporation is not a thinking entity. It’s actions are solely the result of decision making performed by the humans that run it. A corporation has no more ability to refuse to break the law, or stop those wishing to break it, than the chair you are sitting on. As such it is ridiculous to apply the law to corporations as if they have control over their actions. I.e. As a person. Corporations are property. The law may say otherwise, but in doing so the law grants extra protections that are not necessary and creates issues enforcing the law against those who are actually responsible for breaking it.

Furthermore, this position on corporations’ constitutional rights is a culmination of multiple Supreme Court decisions—some pretty recent—on the Constitution. To overturn that, you would either have to convince the Supreme Court to overturn a significant amount of precedent—which is incredibly unlikely—or amend the constitution to expressly exclude corporations from constitutional protections—which is also unlikely to happen. In other words, what the law is in this case is unlikely to change regardless of what you or I think it should be. I’m just being realistic here.

Agreed it would be difficult to change the law as is.

Ultimately, our opinions on whether or not corporations should have constitutional rights doesn’t really mean anything in regards to what should be done about §230. Remember, we’re not talking about whether or not the Constitution should be changed or whether or not a specific Supreme Court decision should be overturned; we’re talking about whether or not §230 should be repealed or amended. While what constitutional law is in this area is important, what constitutional law should be tells us nothing about what to do about §230.

Except the First Amendment directly forbids the government enforcing a particular view on a person’s speech. If the law considers a corporation equal to a person, then by definition the First Amendment applies. The reason §230 is brought up is because of the legal fiction created by bureaucrats wanting to illegally silence the people, and using the potential repeal of §230 as the leverage by which to force companies into compliance. An act which should be illegal in and of itself. It’s effectively saying "That’s a nice business ya got there, be a shame if somethin happened to it. Hows about you silence ya people for us and we’ll make sure ya business keeps runnin?" The government is attempting an illegal end run around the First Amendment using businesses as forced accomplices under penalty of death. That alone should entitle the businesses to compensation, and the potential repeal of §230 blocked by the courts. The repeal of "corporate personhood" would make that argument more difficult to make. As it would need to be shown that the rights of the people running the company were being infringed on by the government. Instead of the company itself which would lack such rights in that case. So no, our opinions on corporate rights do matter in discussions about §230. If anything, my opinion gives the bureaucrats more wiggle room, whereas yours does not.

You have not provided a compelling reason to overturn the status quo.

The statement I made was to point out that you didn’t respond to the original AC’s post. You just reiterated the law as an implication that the original AC’s opinion was invalid because of it.

Your justification for changing it is just that you don’t like corporations having power over the platforms that they own and run. Most find that idea antithetical to capitalism and basic human rights to property.

Said who? Not even the original AC said that. The original AC was complaining about corporate personhood. The closest they got to saying "corporations shouldn’t have rights to their own property" was:

Do you think that corporations do or should exist independently of The People’s benefit? Or are we to loose immortal monsters on ourselves?

If you think that you should have the right to swing your fist any/every where you please, damn anyone / anything else in the way, I would say that it’s your opinion that is antithetical and against basic human rights.

Again, you cannot limit the rights of corporations without also limiting the rights of the individuals who run them (other than things like voting in a public election or running for or holding public office).

No, the rights of the humans running the corporation are not limited by considering corporations property instead of "people." Unless you consider forcing those humans to be legally responsible for their actions, instead of being able to shift blame and liability to some inanimate object, as a "limitation." Those humans can just as easily sign their own names on the contract they wrote as they can the name of a company. The difference between the two is who is ultimately responsible in court: The humans who designed the contract and it’s terms vs. the corporate liability shield meant to execute the contract.

At any rate, my point in this discussion was to refute your claims that corporations don’t have any constitutional rights at all (without any reason given why they shouldn’t) by pointing out that they do. You were not simply saying that corporations shouldn’t have constitutional rights; you were saying that they don’t.

I believe you have confused me for the original AC you responded to.

My or your opinion on the question of whether or not they should have rights does not change what the law currently is.

Agreed.

For the purposes of this discussion, I am not arguing about what the law should be but what the law is.

Which I already acknowledged and said that reiterating the law as it is written, does not justify it.

If you had said, “Corporations should not have constitutional rights,”

Again, not the original AC. My apologies for missing that. (I thought I had put the disclaimer in….)

then I would have been more interested in discussing whether or not I agree with what the law is,

Then why don’t you? That’s what the original AC was rallying and seeking confirmation for.

though I’d still point out that the law in this area is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Agreed.

But you did not. You said, “Corporations do NOT have constitutional rights.”

The original AC opened their post with a question of opinion. Most would expect the response to be that of an opinion.

Further, the original AC said:

Corporations are NOT in the Constitution.

The word "rights" does not appear in that sentence.

That’s a very different claim altogether, one that should be supported with facts rather than personal opinions. It’s also easily refuted.

If you go read the US Constitution, you’ll find that it doesn’t have the word "corporation" in it. Hell the word corporation doesn’t even show up on that webpage, with a quick Ctrl+F search. (As of this posting.) As such even your amended version of the original AC’s statement doesn’t exist in the US Constitution. Corporate rights are mostly a construct of legal precedent and court opinion. With the occasional law passed by Congress.

Besides, the reason Techdirt bring up the 1A in these discussions and articles regarding §230 is to show that repealing §230 won’t actually make corporations unable to lawfully moderate their platforms. It’s not an argument about what the law should be but an argument against certain (false) claims about what the law is (and what §230 actually does). A discussion on what the law should be won’t make that point invalid.

Agreed.

Most of the arguments about what the law should be from Techdirt have little to do with constitutional rights of corporations, anyways. For those arguments, we turn to other things like property rights, the free speech rights of users (which gets a bit complicated and has to do with how platforms would react to changes in the law), the fact that you always have other alternative platforms you can use, etc. We might also use analogies, like a privately-owned bulletin board on privately owned property viewable from a major street that the owner allows anyone to post things on. Note that that has nothing to do with corporations having or not having constitutional rights at all.

Corporate rights are used as a common justification for the current application of the law. You yourself have done so in this thread already. In your example alone, the privately-owned bulletin board is one of the most frequent recipients of the First Amendment justification. Regardless, the courts, as of this posting, do have to consider corporate rights when applying the law, and as such they are important to the discussion.

My main point is that your claims about what the law is are incorrect.

Considering I agreed with your statement of it, I don’t see how that is the case.