WASHINGTON (CN) — For the Supreme Court, a challenge to content moderation laws just got personal.
Reddit content moderators provided the justices with a sampling of posts that would remain on the platform if they weren’t able to delete posts.
An article about Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mask-wearing got the comment “Yeah, well Neil can Gorsuch a dick.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor was called a Nazi for her praise of her conservative colleague. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s official portrait received this feedback: “Is that a woman?”
Many of these comments promote violence, such as the one under an article about protests at Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house that reads, “Promoting violence is the only rational response, which is why the authorities don’t want you to do it.” One user suggested Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues should “learn that what happened to Marie Antoinette can happen to them too, I doubt they’d be quite so brazen and arrogant.” Another article featuring Justice Clarence Thomas suggests setting up “some nice shiny guillotines” to force “corrupt justices” to “face justice on the national mall.”
Although many Supreme Court briefs often use emotive language to get their point across, the amicus brief submitted by the Reddit moderators forges new ground.
“We wanted to pick out some of the examples of things that especially in high profile cases stand out as things that would be our most urgent delete button because that's what's at stake,” Brian Lynch, a California attorney, said in a phone call. “If we can't press the delete button, then it kind of destroys the forum.”
Brian and Connor Lynch, also a California attorney, moderate r/law and r/SCOTUS, subreddits that host discussions on developments in law, the legal profession, and, of course, the Supreme Court. The forums have almost 300,000 subscribers combined, holding top spots among community forums on the site.
You won’t find the comments cited in their brief online because Connor and Brian moderate the forum to maintain a standard of constructive conversation. But, if the justices rule to uphold two laws from Texas and Florida this term, they won’t be able to do so without facing legal action.
Following former President Donald Trump’s expulsion from Facebook and Twitter, the two states enacted legislation to target how social media companies moderate content. The states claim tech giants have censored conservative voices in their efforts to remove harmful content online.
The laws would place greater critique on how online forums are moderated, forcing social media companies to explain the reasoning behind removing posts. At bottom, the laws force tech giants — or anyone moderating content online — to be exposed to legal action every time they press the delete button.
Although r/law and r/SCOTUS disclose what kind of content warrants removal from the forum, their warning is not always heeded. One user cited in their amicus brief by the name “HateSpeechLuvr” called one moderator a flurry of racist and homophobic slurs "who needs to be shot."
Under Texas and Florida’s laws, the moderators would be forced to justify the removal of HateSpeechLuvr’s comment with an individualized explanation. Even then, the moderators could still face legal repercussions for taking the post down.
While not every example of censored material is as extreme as those cited in the moderators’ amicus, the point was to put the consequences of a ruling in the case squarely before the justices.
“I think something that we really feel strongly about is keeping the spaces that we moderate safe, not only for the justices but for pretty much everybody,” Connor said. “That's not the kind of behavior that we would tolerate, and it's especially visible when it targets Supreme Court justices.”
The brief also establishes that content moderation is not about weighing one side above the other.
“We're looking at that not necessarily through the lens of we're trying to put our thumb on the scale one way or the other, we're looking at it from the perspective of this isn't the kind of speech that you want in a healthy setting,” Brian said.
Connor and Brian didn’t have a firm answer for what would happen to r/law and r/SCOTUS should the court rule in favor of Texas and Florida. The options stretched from shutting down the forums altogether to making them private and only accessible to invitees.
“If I was facing a bunch of personal liability and malicious lawsuits from people in Texas, it would definitely dissuade me from wanting to continue a volunteer service to the public,” Brian said.
Follow @KelseyReichmann
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