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The expectation that your own words are going to cause the lawless action, rather than supporting an action that was going to happen with or without them.

The entire Brandenberg case is about the distinction, on this particular word.

Like I said, this is a hash of an argument.




I don't think anyone can know what's going to happen with or without their participation, but granting that for the sake of argument, he also quoted "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action". (Edit: also "organize actions that spill over into the physical world")

The article, IMO, made it clear enough that information that causes violence but wasn't intended to cause violence is protected by the 1st amendment.


The bullet's heading is "incitement", the purpose of the bullet is to explain the clear "incitement" standard that Twitter could rely on to block content likely to cause harm, and we've reached a point where we're using the word "inciting" to define it. Like I said, this is a hash of an argument.

There is a clear legal standard for incitement. Sacks hasn't articulated it. Either he doesn't know what it is, or he does know, but smartly recognizes that it cuts directly against his argument. The point he wants to make is that First Amendment jurisprudence already provides a basis for service providers to eliminate the most objectionable content. It does not.

Particularly in the case of incitement: if Twitter was held to the 1A standard, it would be unable to block a great deal of content likely to cause imminent lawless action.


That's a fine objection to his proposal (though perhaps better with examples of information protected by the 1st that you want Twitter to ban).

But I don't think it's a fair criticism of his article. I clearly understood from his writing that the "Incitement" exception only covers information intended to cause violence in the near future.

I don't know if he's familiar with the precise legal language, but even if he is, it wouldn't be appropriate to use it in this article for laypeople. He's using common English.


No, he's not. He's obviously not. He's listing the specific notable exceptions to the First Amendment's bans on prior restraint. He goes out of his way to attempt to depict the specific legal language.




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