[HN Gopher] Injunction issued in case about social media pressur...
___________________________________________________________________
Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US
Government
Author : cm_silva
Score : 366 points
Date : 2023-07-06 12:19 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| edit: link to pdf[1]
|
| [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/75e9f7a3-da4e-45af-..
| .
|
| The two big pieces that appear to be driving this coverage are,
| if true, the following:
|
| "suppressing negative posts about the economy", "suppressing
| negative posts about President Biden" and, apparently, parodies
|
| There are others, but you could technically claim there is some
| non-POTUS benefit there so it does not look self-serving.
|
| All in all, so far it is pretty damning, but the private-public
| partnership has been hailed by some as the best thing since
| sliced bread ( I am absolutely not joking -- it was only a week
| since I listened to a Canadian official discussing how well it
| works for their organization ).
|
| I am not a Trump supporter and I am glad, but I can't help but
| wonder how much of that is just laying groundwork for 2024
| elections.
| curiousllama wrote:
| This'll come out in discovery, but I didn't see anything
| particularly crazy in the complaint.
|
| I didn't see any examples of economic posts at issue, despite
| it being in the summary.
|
| And the parody accounts seemed to be focused either on (1) non-
| public figures, like Biden's granddaughter or (2) have resulted
| in sincere confusion, such as when Twitter actually asked the
| CDC if a 'parody' account was Fauci's real handle.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << This'll come out in discovery, but I didn't see anything
| particularly crazy in the complaint.
|
| You are absolutely right the discovery part and I admit it
| will likely be something now I will follow more closely ( not
| completely unlike gems that came out of recent Microsoft/Sony
| deposition ) despite its political flavor.
|
| << I didn't see any examples of economic posts at issue,
| despite it being in the summary.
|
| I disagree here, but I just dislike government overreaching
| so I also might be overreacting on principle ( and assuming
| the worst rarely steered me wrong in that realm ).
|
| << And the parody accounts seemed to be focused either on (1)
| non-public figures, like Biden's granddaughter or (2) have
| resulted in sincere confusion, such as when Twitter actually
| asked the CDC if a 'parody' account was Fauci's real handle.
|
| A parody is a parody is a parody. The backstory is irrelevant
| for one reason and one reason only. The moment POTUS seemed
| to implicate himself and his administration in deciding what
| is kosher, he opened himself to, justifiable, scrutiny and,
| more importantly, likely eventual mistakes. It can be
| defended, but the more subtle point is that it should not
| have happened to begin with.
|
| Not if you want to preserve the system that has even a
| semblance of pretending to adhere to the original founding
| principles of this nation.
| Guthur wrote:
| The problem i believe we are coming to is that all secular
| governance eventually replaces the role once taken by church and
| religious philosophy.
|
| It starts to become the arbiter of moral truth and with out any
| real moral center it can only but fail spectacularly. The second
| and third political theories of racial and social idealogies more
| rapidly succumb to this due to a more overt desire to place the
| state at this moral centre. But I feel liberalism is ultimately
| doomed to the same fate, just more by accident.
|
| No matter how individual everyone seems to think they are they
| still seem to want some sort of collective morality. Maybe
| because we mostly need to live some sort of relational existence
| and in the absence of anything else a collective morality will
| fill that void, but when that reality is so grounded in human
| will it can get quite corrupted quite quickly.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| This is survivorship bias, literally. Religion displays a
| seemingly higher cohesiveness of a moral and ethical philosophy
| partly because many who disagreed were actually killed. In more
| modern times they are merely excommunicated, shunned. Now that
| we can't just kill our political dissidents, we are left with
| less cohesion.
|
| I am currently reading The Brothers Karamazov and recorded a
| couple quotes from the chapter I'm currently in (Book V: Pro
| and Contra, Chapter 5: The Grand Inquisitor) about freedom and
| religion, which seem too poignant to pass up right now. Not
| that I think religion is the answer to the problem. Here's one
| of my favorites:
|
| "So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so
| incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But
| man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so
| that all men would agree at once to worship it...what is
| essential is that all may be together in it. This craving for
| community of worship is the chief misery of every man
| individually and all of humanity from the beginning of time."
|
| This just tells me that there is no solution to this foible of
| human nature and that we are doomed to a future of
| dissatisfaction, and we'll invent endless ways to keep
| fighting.
|
| I'm not saying we should do nothing. I'm just so tired, it
| seems so obvious, yet the path is not clear at all.
| hnfong wrote:
| If "secular governance" includes mega corporations I'd fully
| agree.
|
| Social media is just the latest of them. For example,
| relatively traditional companies like credit card companies
| have disproportionate power in deciding whether transactions
| are allowed or not, regardless whether they're legal. Often
| they refuse to process transactions for industries apparently
| out of "moral" reasons.
|
| Governments are actually becoming less influential because laws
| don't reach beyond their borders. Yet multinational companies
| often have monopolistic power and influence over many important
| aspects of people's lives.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Historically, religion doesn't have a great track record with
| its use of moral authority.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Historically, no entity does
| Guthur wrote:
| I'd beg to disagree. The track record of secularism from the
| French revolution, to empire and idealogy had quite a lot of
| blood on it's hands. The body count is most certainly not
| skewed to religion by any stretch.
| areoform wrote:
| We now live in the most peaceful time in human history.
|
| And just to be clear, we're contrasting this time of
| unprecedented peace with entities that have killed in
| spasms of violence with no _apparent_ public casus belli
| than "my book is better than your book and it told me to
| do so?"
|
| Spasms that, in one set of instances, led to the deaths of
| a significant fraction of the global population?
| "Estimates of the number of people killed in the Crusades
| begin at 1 million (Wertham...) and go as high as 9 million
| (Robertson...) passing through 3 million (Garrison...) and
| 5 million (Elson...) along the way. I took the low middle
| (Garrison's estimate) as my estimate. The geometric means
| of the extremes is 3 million." Matthew White, The Great Big
| Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of
| History's 100 Worst Atrocities (2012), p. 576 (see f.n. 1
| under The Crusades).
|
| Or, the religiously affirmed _divine_ right fascists felt
| during WW2 to rule others as decreed by their holy men?
| NAZI 'DIVINE RIGHT' TO RULE ASSERTED; Dr. Ley Says Reich's
| 'Mission' to Dominate Other Nations Is Among War Aims WOULD
| WIPE OUT BRITAIN 'Annihilation' of Obstacle to German
| Destiny Demanded by Labor Front Head
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1939/12/19/archives/nazi-divine-
| righ...
|
| Or, doctrines like "Manifest Destiny" that were religious
| in origin and preached in church?
|
| http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinf
| o...
|
| The only way to end the cycle of violence is by embracing
| the scientific method, rationality, and empathy. Anything
| else is a step to madness. Voltaire said it best,
| There have been people who once said, you believe
| incomprehensible, contradictory, impossible things, because
| we have ordered you to do so; therefore do unjust things
| because we order you to do so. These people reasoned
| wonderfully. Certainly, whoever has the right to make you
| absurd has the right to make you unjust.
|
| Or, more succinctly, as Desmond MacCarthy put it via a
| fictional Voltaire, Ah, my child, as long
| as people continue to believe absurdities they will
| continue to commit atrocities!
|
| We must fight irrational lunacy and ensure that the light
| of enlightenment doesn't die out.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > We now live in the most peaceful time in human history.
|
| I would say we live in the most widespread Uneasy Peace
| in human history. And unlike religious peace which had
| occasional conflicts, a break in the peace now would mean
| annihilation. Is general peace, risk of annihilation
| better than occasional petty wars without annihilation?
|
| > And just to be clear, we're contrasting this time of
| unprecedented peace with entities that have killed in
| spasms of violence with no apparent public casus belli
| than "my book is better than your book and it told me to
| do so?"
|
| I quoted The Washington Post's opinion, which is hardly
| the number most favorable to religious causes. Plus,
| older books had higher numbers than newer scholarship.
|
| https://apholt.com/2019/02/19/modern-scholars-on-the-
| casualt...
|
| https://apholt.com/2019/01/30/death-estimates-for-the-
| crusad...
|
| > NAZI 'DIVINE RIGHT' TO RULE ASSERTED; Dr. Ley Says
| Reich's 'Mission' to Dominate Other Nations Is Among War
| Aims WOULD WIPE OUT BRITAIN 'Annihilation' of Obstacle to
| German Destiny Demanded by Labor Front Head
|
| Well, considering that they murdered priests and pastors
| in their camps, were they really friendly to religion?
| Particularly Catholic Priests, who represented 94% of the
| clergy they executed.
|
| > Or, doctrines like "Manifest Destiny" that were
| religious in origin and preached in church?
|
| Let's not confuse Protestant fundamentalism motivated by
| political ends with religion in general.
|
| > The only way to end the cycle of violence is by
| embracing the scientific method, rationality, and
| empathy. Anything else is a step to madness.
|
| So said the French Revolution. They did everything they
| could to break away from religion - they even invented a
| new calendar starting at year 0 because... anyway. Didn't
| go so well, there were a few smaller revolutions
| afterward to get to modern France.
| areoform wrote:
| Before I begin, I believe that everyone has the right to
| believe and (if they choose to do so) worship and pray as
| they want.
|
| The reason why I wrote the above language, quite
| explicitly, is because religions, in the long-term, do
| not agree with such co-existence. Eventually, there's a
| reversion to the mean, or a splintering that spreads
| fundamentalism and decries other groups.
| > I would say we live in the most widespread Uneasy Peace
| in human history. And unlike religious peace which had
| occasional conflicts, a break in the peace now would mean
| annihilation. Is general peace, risk of annihilation
| better than occasional petty wars without annihilation?
|
| When was this religious peace? Here's a graph of human
| history, could you kindly tell me when you think this
| religious peace lies in this graph?
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGL9VKKXkAAVhwB.jpg
|
| As far as I can tell, this peace we experience is truly
| _un_ -precedented in the original sense of the word, i.e.
| there is no prior precedent. > Well,
| considering that they murdered priests and pastors in
| their camps, were they really friendly to religion?
| Particularly Catholic Priests, who represented 94% of the
| clergy they executed.
|
| They believed that they were the true chosen people of
| god and everyone else was _less_. Their persecution of
| jewish people was (partly, not completely) driven by the
| belief that they were the ones who killed god.
|
| Expanding on this, with the following statement,
| > Let's not confuse Protestant fundamentalism motivated
| by political ends with religion in general.
|
| That's the problem. Whose book and under what
| interpretation and rules?
|
| You can't just say, "these events wouldn't occur under my
| doctrine. My religion is the only religion and the others
| aren't."
|
| When you create rules by fiat, "X is Y because I/holy
| book/prophet said so." Then is it surprising that others
| will make rules by fiat as well? What makes their rules
| more valid than yours? You believe that you have god's
| mandate. Well, so do they. They're both equally absurd
| claims with equal validity to an outside observer.
|
| The point of the enlightenment is to look towards
| something more concrete; ideals that have been honed via
| debate and examination of history. Ideals that are
| subject to change as we learn more. Ideals that are more
| real, because they become real in their execution.
|
| You may say, well, that's religion as well, but I am not
| aware of any religion where things are subject to _true_
| debate (can you even question the existence of the
| deity?), or religious groups that are open to changes in
| their fundamental philosophies.
| LexiMax wrote:
| > Let's not confuse Protestant fundamentalism motivated
| by political ends with religion in general.
|
| This is the rule, not the exception. Throughout history,
| instances where religious war was waged or religious
| atrocities occurred, there was often an underlying
| political logic to them. Religion has less to do with the
| underlying morality of the scripture and more to do with
| what religious leaders of the time say it is, and their
| interpretation can be...flexible.
|
| > So said the French Revolution.
|
| What followed the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars
| was one of the most peaceful 99 years on the European
| continent since Pax Romana.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > What followed the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars
| was one of the most peaceful 99 years on the European
| continent since Pax Romana.
|
| Yeah... on the continent. They were merciless to
| indigenous populations across the globe during that
| century. Big improvement there - instead of fighting each
| other, we'll invade everyone else with the full takeover
| of India in 1858, and the New Imperialism of the 1870s
| which added 8.8 million square miles of land to European
| possession.
|
| > This is the rule, not the exception. Throughout
| history, instances where religious war was waged or
| religious atrocities occurred, there was often an
| underlying political logic to them. Religion has less to
| do with the underlying morality of the scripture and more
| to do with what religious leaders of the time say it is,
| and their interpretation can be...flexible.
|
| Nah, ask a historian. The history of Europe over the last
| 1500 years or so is long, but you can only name a few
| incidents and examples. And even then, you can't show of
| a change where one thing was widely unacceptable and
| became acceptable to this day. The Catholic Church, for
| example, still condemns premarital sex and always has.
| LexiMax wrote:
| > Nah, ask a historian.
|
| I did. They call it "Pax Britanica," and there's loads of
| things you can read about that outline why historians put
| this period of history in the same category as Pax
| Americana and Pax Romana.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| You answered the wrong question. I said to ask a
| historian regarding the unfounded assertion that
| "Religion has less to do with the underlying morality of
| the scripture and more to do with what religious leaders
| of the time say it is, and their interpretation can
| be...flexible."
|
| Prove that. You can name a few examples where there was a
| widespread spirit in the air (Crusades, Spanish
| Inquisition [even though the death count was only about
| 14 executions per year]), but you can't show an example
| where Christians ever believed premarital sex was OK, or
| Muslims ever believing you could eat pork one morning.
| You can show _plenty_ of flexibility of Protestantism
| though, but that 's unique to that religion which rejects
| centralized authority or the importance of traditional
| views for scriptural interpretation.
| LexiMax wrote:
| My assertion isn't that the moral justification isn't
| there, it's that whatever moral justification that is in
| vogue at the time just so happens to dovetail with
| personal gain and/or political expediency.
| atlantic wrote:
| > What followed the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars
| was one of the most peaceful 99 years on the European
| continent since Pax Romana.
|
| This was the period when the Austro-Hungarian empire was
| dissolved, the Ottoman possessions in Europe were lost,
| the Prussian empire formed, the Italian nation formed,
| and many European monarchies fell during the liberal
| revolutions. Amongst the conflicts between the leading
| European powers, there was the Franco-Prussian War, the
| Boer War, the Anglo-Russian war in the Crimea. And then,
| just after your carefully-chosen 99 years, the Great War,
| and Russian Revolution. Hardly peaceful.
| LexiMax wrote:
| Hey, I'm not the one who coined "Pax Britanica." People
| can read for themselves why this period of history is
| called that, and why it compares favorably to Pax
| Americana and Pax Romana as opposed to the rest of
| history on the continent, instead of relying on what you
| or I say. :)
| freedomben wrote:
| You seem to be inferring an argument in GP that they didn't
| make - that secularism is has no blood on it's hands. Of
| course it does.
|
| This does not mean that religion is innocent. That is a
| fallacy. They are not mutually exclusive. People can do
| terrible things when guided by religious faith, or when
| guided by a secular "faith." Both are bad and should be
| called out.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Mandatory reminder that many of the "but the Crusades"
| arguments are also misleading. Sure, ~1.0-1.7 million people
| died in the Crusades according to modern scholarship.
| However, the Crusades were an extremely diverse set of
| conflicts that spanned a 196-year period, with both sides
| having their own atrocities.
|
| The last 196-years of secular government has killed, let's
| just say, way more than ~1.0-1.7 million people. Even the
| nice ones like France, which killed ~1.5 million Algerians
| from 1954 to 1962, so small by comparison to other atrocities
| you probably didn't even hear about it. That's before even
| considering the Reign of Terror, Communist Governments of all
| kinds, US Forced Sterilization in the name of science for
| decades, and on and on.
|
| And as for the Spanish Inquisition, despite the horrible
| memory, modern estimates now show the total death count was
| about 3,000-5,000 people over a _350 year_ time span. At
| worst, 14 executions per year. Secular courts were far less
| forgiving. Even Wikipedia has updated their numbers
| accordingly.
| LexiMax wrote:
| The last 196 years of secular government took place in wake
| of the industrial revolution and the unprecedented
| population growth which those advances enabled.
| edgyquant wrote:
| The other poster is correct that this an incorrect secular
| talking point. "Secular" regimes have murdered tens of
| millions of people in this past century alone
| LexiMax wrote:
| Nevertheless, the assertion that religious regimes are
| somehow advantaged is off base. Religious morality is not
| some constant force, it's a malleable, flexible construct
| that has less to do with actual scripture and more to do
| with what religious leaders of the time say it is.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Make no mistake: the old arbiters of morality can also fail
| spectacularly. Christendom did centuries of crusades with no
| better justification than "Our god says that land is ours."
|
| The problem is the challenge of scalable applied philosophy.
| What name we affix to that challenge is less relevant than the
| challenge itself.
| nonrepeating wrote:
| Interesting point, and one that's difficult to dispute. Belief
| in the supernatural or divine is baked into human nature.
| There's significant research showing that human capacity for
| faith is genetic. So, as we're building a secular society, it's
| worth asking: what happens to that need for the divine? Failing
| to account for basic human nature drove vast amounts of
| suffering in the 20th century, I fear that making a similar
| mistake will do the same.
| Guthur wrote:
| There is a concept that we can only BE in relation to
| something else, indeed even the most basic idea of true and
| false, 1 and 0 are in and of themselves relations. It
| permeates everything, a sort of cosmic dichotomy.
|
| In the mundane it's our relation to ourselves and the world,
| but they are very fluid and chaotic. The believe in the
| metaphysical provides a means to ground a relation outside
| the chaotic uncertain reality, which can be very comforting
| and liberating.
| freedomben wrote:
| This rings true to me, but it reinforces my existing beliefs,
| so my awareness of the dangers of confirmation bias demands
| that I not trust it without some due diligence.
|
| Does anybody have any citations to backup this point?
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Yes, trying to have a "secular state" just means that
| traditional religions are going to be replaced by something
| that doesn't read as such, like "human rights", "liberal
| democracy" which we are happy to spread by the sword with
| disastrous consequences (afghanistan, iraq etc), DEI, ESG...
| ledauphin wrote:
| i think this is a strong point, and it's underscored by how
| little anyone is willing to center the discussion on something
| quite fundamental: is the behavior from the individuals in
| question acceptable even if it were legal? My answer to that is
| no, it is not and could not be acceptable human activity even
| if the laws protected it.
|
| We've largely lost the ability to talk about the things
| themselves, preferring instead to look at things through the
| tremendously artificial lens of "what do the lawyers say?"
|
| We've outsourced morality to a technocracy.
| ethanbond wrote:
| You don't think government agencies should be allowed to
| report things to private companies? Why?
| JediWing wrote:
| People can most certainly believe in a collective moral code
| that is, at times, at odds with the laws of their country, and
| simultaneously not dictated by a central religious authority.
|
| Desiring the state to more closely model one's personal moral
| code isn't a signifier that people are placing the state at the
| "moral center", it's an indicator that they want those with a
| monopoly on violence to act in accord with what they believe is
| right.
|
| I do believe the collective moral codes are drifting from those
| dictated by religions, but I hardly think that is a bad thing,
| given the rigidity and absolutism of many religions.
| doitLP wrote:
| > Doughty said that one Flaherty [White House director of digital
| strategy] message in February 2021 accused Facebook "of causing
| 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims."
| Flaherty also wrote in a July 2021 email to Facebook, "Are you
| guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and
| I want it today."
|
| Sure sounds like a relationship where the power only goes one
| direction and the Flaherty was very comfortable demanding
| whatever he wanted.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| which direction are you imagining?
|
| the one originating from the dude who used a swear word?
|
| or the one originating from the company who felt comfortable
| ignoring the dude and the request?
|
| after all, anyone can _feel_ comfortable _demanding_ anything,
| what matters is what they _get_ :
|
| e.g. TFG _felt_ comfortable _demanding_ that his political
| rivals be imprisoned, did he get it?
| ajkjk wrote:
| TFG?
| dporter wrote:
| It stands for "The Former Guy." Some people won't say
| Trump's name.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| It's such an odd thing. I don't think I've ever heard
| people refusing to say Stalin or Hitler's names. Andrew
| Jackson isn't alluded to with euphemisms, despite being a
| piece of shit who perpetrated genocide among other
| crimes. Nixon doesn't get this for his crimes and shitty
| policies, nor Truman for the a-bombs or FDR for mass
| internment of American citizens.
|
| It seems like an idea people got from Harry Potter
| refusing to say Voldemort.
| krapp wrote:
| When you've seen enough threads derail, go unhinged and
| burst into flames at the mere mention of his name, it
| makes sense.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Seems like "TFG" made it kinda derail here instead.
| krapp wrote:
| You're damned if you do here, and damned if you don't.
| ajkjk wrote:
| No, I think here "Trump" is normal and "TFG" is weird.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| If the conversation is about Trump I don't think there's
| any hiding that, nor any avoiding of flame wars.
|
| Honestly I think it's a reddit meme from Harry Potter
| fans.
| code_duck wrote:
| More of a Twitter thing from my observations, and nobody
| is thinking about Harry Potter at all.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Donald Trump, former, and possibly future, president
| tome wrote:
| FTI, TFG means "that former guy" and refers to Donald Trump:
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TFG
| [deleted]
| hgsgm wrote:
| Who did TFG send his demands to? His rally crowds have no
| power to act, and consented, so there is no coercion.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| in which direction do you imagine the power dynamic OP
| mentioned went?
|
| the one originating from the dude who used a swear word?
|
| or the one originating from the company who felt
| comfortable ignoring the dude and the request?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > His rally crowds have no power to act
|
| Jan 6 would like a word. (There's every indication Trump
| was internally pressuring as _President_ , too, not just
| via rallies as _candidate_. https://apnews.com/article/060c
| a2399a744b4a9554dbd2ec276a90)
|
| > Who did TFG send his demands to?
|
| TFG definitely sent in the same sort of requests.
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-
| tru...
|
| > When the White House called up Twitter in the early
| morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they
| believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model
| Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump "a
| pussy ass bitch" on Twitter -- and the White House wanted
| the tweet to come down.
|
| > That exchange -- revealed during Wednesday's House
| Oversight Committee hearing on Twitter by Rep. Gerry
| Connolly -- and others like it are nowhere to be found in
| Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" releases, which have focused
| almost exclusively on requests from Democrats and the feds
| to the social media company.
|
| > "It was strange to me when all of these investigations
| were announced because it was all about the exact same
| stuff that we had done [when Donald Trump was in office],"
| one former top aide to a senior Trump administration
| official tells Rolling Stone. "It was normal."
| plagiarist wrote:
| It's like when a rightist explains that Donald was a
| great president because he didn't "drone strike people
| like Obama did." The doublethink is ridiculous.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Or when hosting a private email server is worthy of being
| locked up but only if you are Hilary Clinton
| specifically.
| plagiarist wrote:
| What she did to national security is despicable. She
| should have relied on WhatsApp like normal people with
| security clearances use for secure communication.
| stephencanon wrote:
| Wait, you think that when a random official says something,
| it carries the weight of the US Government, but when _the
| president_ says it, it does not? I'm not sure that you've
| thought this through fully.
| koolba wrote:
| > after all, it anyone can feel comfortable demanding
| anything, what matters is what they get
|
| Not when that someone is the government or its
| representative. The act of asking can itself be a violation
| of your rights as there's an implication that if you do not
| comply their may be some unknown ramifications.
|
| Judges are savvy enough to know that threats need not be
| verbalized to be received.
| hooande wrote:
| what was the implied threat?
| Clubber wrote:
| Repeal of section 230. Remember when they brought all the
| CEOs to testify in front of congress?
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| "they" didn't.
|
| a GOP-controlled congress did, and that party remains the
| most opposed to section 230
| Clubber wrote:
| Democrats have threatened it as well: "Democrats Want To
| Hold Social Media Companies Responsible For Health
| Misinformation"
|
| _Co-sponsored by Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar of
| Minnesota and Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, the Health
| Misinformation Act targets a provision in Section 230 of
| the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms
| from being held liable for what their users post in most
| cases._
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019346177/democrats-want-
| to-...
|
| It's obvious government infringement on free speech from
| both sides when you take off your red or blue colored
| glasses.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Republicans have threatened it as well:
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-
| bill/502...
|
| S.5020 - A bill to repeal section 230 of the
| Communications Act of 1934.
|
| Sponsor: Sen. Graham, Lindsey [R-SC]
|
| you're now free to respond to the substance of the post
| you replied to: it was, in fact, a GOP controlled Senate
| which performed the action in question
| stale2002 wrote:
| Ok, so then we can agree that the gov definitely is
| engaging in illegal violations of first amendment rights!
|
| Looks like you agree with the judge here from the
| article.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Looks like you've still failed to articulate the credible
| implied threat Facebook felt from the Biden
| administration's requests,
|
| or how that ties in with the GOP-controlled senate
| bringing the CEOs before them:
|
| did they do that because the Biden administration ordered
| them to, as a result of Facebook ignoring one of the
| requests?
|
| It's a laughably bipartisan conspiracy theory, and thus
| nobody would actually feel threatened by it.
| Clubber wrote:
| It's been articulated, you just choose to ignore it.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| ah yes, that classic proof, _" I already proved it!"
| [with no citations, while entirely failing to respond to
| any clarifying questions]_
|
| can be applied in all cases!
| Clubber wrote:
| First you said articulated, not proof, so you're moving
| the goalposts to be argumentative and aren't discussing
| in good faith. Second, you seem to be under the
| impression that unless everyone caves to coercion 100% of
| the time, then it isn't coercion, which is obviously a
| fallacy. Just because someone doesn't pay when they are
| blackmailed doesn't mean they weren't blackmailed.
|
| Both political parties threatened to rewrite section 230
| on multiple occasions. This would effectively bankrupt
| most social media companies. The fact that you are unable
| or unwilling see this as coercion is your blind spot, not
| everyone else's.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Bringing up an example of something that your disfavored
| party does, is not a counter argument to the idea that
| the government pressured companies.
|
| In fact it actually proves the point, you just also thing
| the other party infringed on people's rights as well.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| the discussion is not about that idea of yours, and "the
| government" is not a monolithic entity
|
| the discussion was around whether Facebook felt there was
| an implied threat there credible enough to act on it out
| of fear
|
| obviously, they didn't, and wouldn't, because such a
| threat would have required that Biden control the GOP
| Congress somehow, which he didn't
| Clubber wrote:
| Someone asked what the implied threat was to social media
| companies if they didn't comply with takedown request
| from the government. I said they (the government)
| threatened to revoke section 230. Someone replied with
| "well it was the GOP controlled congress," of which I
| replied that the Democrats also threatened revoking
| section 230.
|
| Just to back this up, the ACLU also warned against the
| dismantlement of section 230 as a serious threat to
| freedom of speech, and I agree with them on this topic.
|
| Here: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-warns-
| harm-free-spe...
|
| And Here: https://www.aclu.org/news/free-
| speech/section-230-is-this-th...
|
| And Here: https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-letter-
| congress-opposing...
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _> they (the government)_
|
| _They_ here refers to the Biden administration, unless
| you 're alleging the Biden administration conspired with
| a Republican Congress to coerce social networks into
| silencing posts that Republicans themselves were in favor
| of
|
| it's laughable on its face that this is a plausible
| threat, and the fact that Facebook totally ignored the
| "demands" when it suited them indicates empirically that
| there was no such implied threat they felt pressured by
|
| indeed, Facebook, with knowledge of US partisanship, and
| a hand in increasing it, was best suited to dismiss such
| a bipartisan conspiracy theory aimed at silencing such
| speech a Republican Congress would never dream of
| silencing
| axus wrote:
| I'd look at it the same as a police officer demanding things.
| It's not illegal for them to say whatever they want, and
| imply powers they don't have, but it's still coercive and an
| abuse of powers we've granted them.
|
| Hopefully this ruling applies to more types of government
| speech.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > I'd look at it the same as a police officer demanding
| things.
|
| The Government cannot demand that political speech be
| censored without running afoul of the First Amendment.
|
| If you recall, the courts didn't allow Trump to block
| critical accounts on Twitter.
| efitz wrote:
| That is literally what the government was found to be
| doing by a court.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's not what a preliminary injunction is.
|
| A judge has _ordered_ that the government not do the _in-
| dispute_ things _while the dispute is being ajudicated in
| court_.
| krona wrote:
| Facebook is employing former CIA agents to moderate
| content/determine misinformation policies.
| https://thehill.com/hilltv/3566225-reporter-facebook-
| using-e...
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I don't know that former government officials are the
| same level of problem that demands from (then) current
| government officials are.
|
| For example:
|
| > We released a list of 354 names Maine Senate Angus King
| wanted taken down for reasons like "Rand Paul visit
| excitement," "followed by [former Republican opponent
| Eric] Brakey," and my personal favorite, "mentions
| immigration." For balance we also released a letter from
| a Republican official at the State Department, Mark
| Lenzi, who tells Twitter about 14 real Americans "you may
| want to look into and delete."
|
| https://www.racket.news/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-
| twitter
|
| This behavior clearly violates the First Amendment.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Doesn't the First Amendment _protect_ the right to say
| "I think this should be taken down"?
|
| (Side note: The Angus King stuff is a misrepresentation.
| The screenshots are from a spreadsheet - https://docs.goo
| gle.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS1PbfNEqDCK... - in
| which a column indicates how the account first came to
| the King campaign's attention, not the reason they think
| they warranted action.)
| chipsa wrote:
| If you're a private citizen, yes. If you're a government
| employee, speaking in the course of your duties, then
| it's not your speech, it's government speech. The First
| Amendment doesn't protect the right of the government to
| speech, because the government doesn't have rights. What
| does that even mean, for the US Government to have a
| right to speak without fear of action being taken against
| it by the US Government?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > If you're a government employee, speaking in the course
| of your duties, then it's not your speech, it's
| government speech.
|
| This would make quite a few Congressional hearings
| unconstitutional. For example:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/4-tech-industry-
| titan...
|
| It'd probably also apply to the President saying "lock
| her up" about a private citizen. Is that unconstitutional
| pressure from an elected official?
|
| > What does that even mean, for the US Government to have
| a right to speak without fear of action being taken
| against it by the US Government?
|
| It means stuff like this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_or_Debate_Clause
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This would make quite a few Congressional hearings
| unconstitutional
|
| Well, maybe, if you ignore the Constitutional _carte
| blanche_ for Congressional proceedings of the Article I
| Speech and Debate Clause.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If you prefer, it'd make a whole bunch of press
| conferences unconstitutional.
|
| It's quite common for elected officials to criticize
| private citizens and businesses. To be concrete: Ted Cruz
| (and a bunch of others) publicly pressured the NFL over
| players kneeling at games, in a clear attempt to suppress
| First Amendment expression by said players, without any
| hint of consequences.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > It's quite common for elected officials to criticize
| private citizens and businesses.
|
| They can criticize all they like.
|
| What they can't do is order the political speech of
| citizens be censored.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > What they can't do is order the political speech of
| citizens be censored.
|
| Agreed. That doesn't appear to have happened. Even the
| worst examples the Twitter Files sort of reporting could
| dig up is some loud huffing and puffing followed by a
| :rolleyes: emoji and inaction from various social
| networks.
| chipsa wrote:
| Elected officials are not government employees. It is
| not, in fact, turtles all the way down. They may be paid
| by the government, but the government does not dictate
| when they get hired and fired. It's possible that someone
| may be both an elected official and a government
| employee, but that's fairly rare (something like:
| Congressman and member of the military reserve, in which
| case they're only a government employee while activated).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Elected officials are not government employees.
|
| The First Amendment distinction here being what, exactly?
| The President can chant "lock her up" but it's a
| violation if their FBI director does it?
| chipsa wrote:
| Elected officials set policies. Government employees
| implement those broad policies into action. You can
| change the policies your representative is pushing by
| changing the representative. I'm a little unclear on
| where exactly the FBI director falls (because he's
| appointed to his job with the advice and consent of the
| Senate, which makes a difference for these things,
| maybe). A FBI field office head chanting "locker up" in a
| press conference would be violation though, yes.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Elected officials are not government employees.
|
| [citation needed]
|
| The IRS disagrees, but obviously different legal contexts
| have different definitions, but I am aware of none
| supporting the distinction you are trying to make.
| chipsa wrote:
| Example: Hatch Act provides that persons below the
| policy-making level in the executive branch of the
| federal government must not only refrain from political
| practices that would be illegal for any citizen, but must
| abstain from "any active part" in political campaigns.
|
| In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court held "that
| when public employees make statements pursuant to their
| official duties, the employees are not speaking as
| citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the
| Constitution does not insulate their communications from
| employer discipline."
|
| Obviously, speech and debate clause controls for Federal
| Congress members.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Not when your are a government official demanding that
| political speech be censored.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "you may want to look into and delete" isn't a demand.
|
| Politicians demand censorship all the time, as is their
| right. They usually don't get what they want, as they
| don't typically have the right to enforce their desires.
|
| For example:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9619449/Rand-
| Paul-b...
|
| > Rand Paul blasted Twitter on Tuesday for not
| immediately taking down Richard Marx's tweet from Sunday
| in which he offered to buy drinks for the Kentucky
| neighbor who assaulted the Republican senator in 2017.
|
| He can demand. They can say no. Both are First Amendment
| protected actions.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Politicians demand censorship all the time, as is their
| right.
|
| Sorry, but that just won't fly.
|
| > A federal appeals court in Manhattan says President
| Trump cannot block critics from his Twitter account,
| calling it "unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination."
|
| In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of
| the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld
| a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated
| the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users
|
| https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-
| court-r...
|
| Trump may have wanted to silence criticism, but he didn't
| get away with it, even on his own personal account.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Trump may have wanted to silence criticism, but he
| didn't get away with it, even on his own personal
| account.
|
| This is a misrepresentation of the facts. Trump was only
| using his "personal" twitter during his presidency so the
| court considered it his de-facto presidential account.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Blocking isn't censorship; it does not prevent you from
| speaking.
|
| Blocking wasn't permissible because it restricted access
| by citizens to official announcements; it's like banning
| someone from coming to a town hall meeting or visiting
| Congress's website.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Blocking isn't censorship
|
| Trump was blocking those who replied to his comments with
| takes that were critical of himself or of his policies.
|
| He was silencing critics.
|
| It wasn't allowed.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| That's not what the ruling said. Trumps actions weren't
| impermissible censorship, they were impermissible for
| other reasons. You can't just assume a court ruling was
| done for the reason you believe.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Trumps actions weren't impermissible censorship, they
| were impermissible for other reasons.
|
| They were impermissible as viewpoint-based censorship of
| a designated public forum in violation of the First
| Amendment, you are wrong that it was "for other reasons".
| snowwrestler wrote:
| What is your theory in posting this? That people who work
| for the CIA must give up their right to free speech and
| future private employment? This just reads like
| unprincipled scare mongering to me.
| tzs wrote:
| That was because Trump often used his personal Twitter
| account for official Presidential stuff instead of using
| @POTUS or @WhiteHouse.
|
| If Trump had done like other presidents and tried to keep
| official Presidential business off his personal Twitter
| account he would have been to block anyone he wanted to.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| I'd look at it as some random government bureaucrat
| demanding it: the fact that the company felt comfortable
| ignoring said random bureaucrat when it suited them seems
| to indicate they didn't feel coerced at all
| axus wrote:
| So if they did it to me, it's bad, but to Facebook it's
| OK? In some court cases the actual harm matters, and
| sometimes it's the principle that matters.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| if the random government bureaucrat "demanded" something
| of you you didn't want to do, and you laughed him or her
| out of the room, both actions are okay
|
| it seems Facebook was more polite than that, instead just
| ignoring the random government bureaucrat when it suited
| them
|
| also, in American courts, it _is_ the actual harm that
| matters. No harm, no standing, no court case.
| axus wrote:
| There are "criminal attempt" and "conspiracy" charges, so
| in general it's possible, but probably not in this case.
|
| If I'm reading this right, the plaintiffs felt harmed
| because their information they might have received was
| effectively censored. Not all of the sources were, but
| enough of them were removed that would have been
| published without the government's intervention.
| gcoakes wrote:
| This is one of those times where I look at what someone
| says, and think, "Aren't you the same people who thought
| X about Y, and now, you think something that seems
| totally contradictory because Y' happens to support the
| opposite side?" Then, I realize all sides are comprised
| of heterogenous people with ideas that happen to have
| similar throughlines, and I'm comparing your statement to
| something I read from someone I perceived as being from
| the same side.
|
| To this specific topic, could you clarify your position?
| Do you think the same is applicable to a police officer
| or an IRS agent?
|
| The specific thing that made me think your statement was
| contradictory was police. The left was demanding police
| to be accountable seemingly five minutes ago. For most
| police departments, I think they went too far in saying
| the whole system was corrupt. I think there's at least an
| argument to be made about the extent of the Biden
| administration's involvement, but certainly you think the
| person doing the coercion should be punished, right?
|
| It seems to me that any case of a "random bureaucrat"
| attempting to coerce a citizen or company outside of
| their civil mandate should be punished to the maximum
| extent of the law. If there isn't a criminal punishment
| already for this, one should be created and applied
| retroactively because it should be common sense.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| if an IRS employee told you that you needed to delete a
| social media post, you'd obviously realize they have no
| authority to do so, just like a BLS employee for example,
| and you could tell either to go stuff themselves in as
| polite a fashion as you prefer
|
| in the case of a police officer, our current society is
| one in which police officers can and often do immediately
| assault and/or shoot and/or kill you for doing or being
| something they don't like, regardless of whether you're
| right or wrong, and they can do so with little question
| and no internal criticism or retribution or punishment,
| which is an entirely different issue in and of itself
|
| the same is obviously not true of Steve who works at the
| IRS. Steve would be tried for murder. So would Flaherty.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > also, in American courts, it is the actual harm that
| matters. No harm, no standing, no court case.
|
| Traditionally, yes, although that didn't stop SCOTUS from
| ruling last week in a case in which the plaintiff
| experienced no harm (not to mention admitted to perjury).
| gcoakes wrote:
| Which one are you referring to? A lot happened last week
| in the SCOTUS, and I haven't heard of this specific
| concern.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/303_Creative_LLC_v._Elenis
|
| > When Smith's suit was filed at the federal district
| court in 2016, she had not begun designing websites, nor
| had she received any requests to design a wedding website
| for a same-sex couple. In 2017, her lawyers ADF filed an
| affidavit from Smith stating that she had received such a
| request several days after the initial filing, and
| appended a copy of the request. Smith never responded to
| the request, and has stated that she feared she would
| violate Colorado's law if she were to do so. However, the
| name, email, and phone number on the online form belong
| to a man who has long been married to a woman, and who
| stated that he never submitted such a request, as
| reported by The New Republic on June 29, 2023, a day
| before the Supreme Court's decision was released.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/sham-
| customer...
|
| > That narrative was thrown into question last week after
| The New Republic published an article on Stewart, who
| denied ever having reached out to Smith. It quoted him
| saying he was a web designer who has been married to a
| woman for years.
|
| > "I wouldn't want anybody to ... make me a wedding
| website?" the man identified only as Stewart told the
| magazine. "I'm married, I have a child -- I'm not really
| sure where that came from? But somebody's using false
| information in a Supreme Court filing document."
|
| Perjury is probably a stretch, and it's unlikely to
| affect the ruling any.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Perjury is probably a stretch, and it's unlikely to
| affect the ruling any.
|
| Perjury is not a stretch. The case was revised before it
| reached SCOTUS, but her original court filing claimed
| that she had received a request from a specific named
| individual to design a website for his gay wedding.
|
| Not only has that individual - who is a heterosexual man
| _already married to a woman_ - denied ever making a
| request, but the plaintiff herself later claimed in court
| documents, under penalty of perjury, that she had not yet
| received a request to design a wedding website from a gay
| couple.
|
| The case as presented to SCOTUS did not contain any
| perjurous claims, but the original case undeniably did.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I can't find evidence of that. From the NBC article,
| which calls the original request one asking for "pre-
| enforcement review":
|
| > Smith sued in 2016 saying she wanted to design wedding
| websites but was concerned that the Colorado Anti-
| Discrimination Act would force her to put together
| websites for same-sex weddings, as well. She said she
| wanted to post a statement on her website making clear
| her opposition to doing so.
|
| The claim about the email is in a later filing as an
| update. Its existence doesn't seem to be in question; its
| provenance does, but that could happen without the
| plaintiff's involvement. You'd have to prove they knew it
| was bullshit.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/2023/07/01/1185632827/web-designer-
| supre...
|
| > A Colorado web designer who the U.S. Supreme Court
| ruled Friday could refuse to make wedding websites for
| gay couples cited a request from a man who says he never
| asked to work with her.
|
| A pre-emptive request backed up by a fake customer does
| not equal standing (in a sane court but SCOTUS left
| sanity behind a couple of justice appointments ago.)
| chipsa wrote:
| Someone said, "I want to do this," and the government
| credibly responded, "Do that and we'll take action
| against you." This equals standing for pre-enforcement
| actions, because the government is threatening to do
| something. If the government had responded, "Go ahead, we
| don't care", then that someone would not have standing.
| You don't always have to wait for the government to
| actually take action against you to have standing, so
| long as you can prove the government would take action
| against you if you did the thing.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Laura at the DMV could tell me to disallow ISIS from
| buying stuff from my company and there's no way I could
| consider that an actionable threat of any kind.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| "dude who used a swear word"?
|
| You left a bit out here. He is a representative of the
| government demanding that a private company censor speech
| supporting policies it opposes and speech about the
| president's family among other things.
|
| "A February 2021 message in which Flaherty asked Twitter to
| remove a parody account related to Hunter Biden's daughter
| said, 'Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be
| resolved immediately. Please remove this account
| immediately.'"
| freen wrote:
| "Lock her up"
|
| I didn't know that impersonating a public figure was
| acceptable according to twitter's terms of service.
|
| Perhaps there was special consideration that permitted an
| impersonator to remain on the platform?
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| I don't know if we should hold out Trump as the standard
| to judge other behavior. Trump saying that was also
| wrong, but that is off topic.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| he's actually not a representative at all, we elect those
|
| he's a random government bureaucrat who didn't appear to
| have any actual power besides sending angry letters, and
| who Facebook felt totally comfortable ignoring
|
| the article presented a great example proving me right
| here: even _he_ admits facebook ignored his impotent wails
| when it didn 't suit them to satisfy him
| chipsa wrote:
| He's not a member of the House of Representatives, but
| the word "representative" is larger than merely that.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| I didn't say representative, that's a misleading
| paraphrase.
|
| I said representative of the government. Those can be
| police officers, FBI agents, or bureaucrats making
| demands of private companies.
| xdennis wrote:
| > anyone can feel comfortable demanding anything, what
| matters is what they get
|
| Try demanding that a lady give you her purse and see how far
| that takes you.
|
| Attempting a crime is often a crime regardless if you
| succeed.
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _TFG_
|
| what is this referring to?
| dporter wrote:
| It stands for "The Former Guy." Some people won't say
| Trump's name.
| dogleash wrote:
| Huh. Didn't know that. Sounds fairly lost in the
| political ragebait sauce.
| thepangolino wrote:
| [dead]
| zen_1 wrote:
| Huh, so like Voldemort then. Fun.
| pakyr wrote:
| Worth noting that this is a something of a misrepresentation of
| Flaherty's email[0] by the judge. Flaherty said
|
| > All, especially given the Journal's reporting on your
| internal work on political violence spurred by Facebook groups,
| I am also curious about the new rules as part of the
| "overhaul."
|
| Referring to this[1] WSJ article that details explicit calls to
| violence on FB. He then specifically quotes part of FB's
| response in his question
|
| > I am seeing that you will no longer promote civic and health
| related groups, but I am wondering if the reforms here extend
| further?
|
| So Flaherty was absolutely not accusing Facebook "of causing
| 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19
| claims", he was accusing FB of hosting actual calls to
| violence.
|
| [0]https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63290154/174/1/missouri
| ...
|
| [1]https://archive.is/6q67O
| nashashmi wrote:
| Now imagine if the same words were used by the trump admin
| personnel! Left media would scream words like bullying. This
| gives complete justification and vindication of how the trump
| admin behaved! Untouchable.
|
| This country is officially over.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Trump admin personnel behaved the same way. The platforms
| were free to ignore it in the same way.
|
| The Trump administration is being prosecuted over entirely
| different acts.
| nashashmi wrote:
| My comment was not about how they are being prosecuted. But
| just about the ethics of doing something like that.
| Especially when the prior admin are heavily perceived as
| bullies. And they were supposed to be different.
|
| The fact that the Biden admin behaved the same way
| vindicates them from accusations that Trump admin behaved
| unjustly or they should be disciplined for such
| inappropriateness.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > Now imagine if the same words were used by the trump admin
| personnel!
|
| You don't need to imagine. This happened.
|
| > Left media would scream words like bullying.
|
| That you don't know this happened says everything.
|
| > This gives complete justification and vindication of how
| the trump admin behaved! Untouchable.
|
| No.
|
| > This country is officially over.
|
| Incorrect, again.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Why no?
|
| This country's reputation is built upon the idea of
| collaboration and compromise. Both administrations behaving
| with such obtuseness means this is a new chapter.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > "... I want an answer on what happened here and I want it
| today."
|
| I think I would drive to the airport, go through security, and
| fly to DC just to throw a drink in that dumbass's face and
| laugh.
| mymac wrote:
| Not the smartest move unless you want to spend some time in
| jail for assault.
| afavour wrote:
| But Flaherty specifically _didn't_ get what he wanted (that's
| why he was mad!) so I think it's misleading to say the power
| only goes from government to Facebook. If anything this example
| shows the exact opposite with Flaherty sending indignant anger
| in the other direction.
| patapong wrote:
| In my opinion thr government should not even try to influence
| public speech, irrespective of whether it succeeds or not.
| efitz wrote:
| > If anything this example shows the exact opposite with
| Flaherty sending indignant anger in the other direction.
|
| I don't see how you got there. I see literal demands for
| action in the tone of someone giving orders to a subordinate.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Yes but what you don't see is the many many requests in the
| same tone that come into social media (and traditional
| media!) companies from corporations, celebrities, even
| regular old citizens who are mad their drunk driving arrest
| got reported (for example).
|
| The idea that an imperious tone somehow proves a power
| imbalance is hilarious to anyone who has ever been on the
| receiving end of these requests from regular people. "I
| demand an answer right now" is what angry diners say when a
| restaurant runs of the special. It's the tone that people
| adopt to imply power when they don't actually have power,
| but want to seem like they do. Which is a common, and
| legal, mode of speaking in everyday life.
| uLogMicheal wrote:
| This is not talking about "regular old citizens". This is
| the government and the government has power. Your comment
| is basically a Straw man.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The government has power. Craig the office drone asking
| for "misinformation" to be taken down at behest of his
| boss does not have the power "The government" does.
|
| Or am I now supposed to believe that if you anger Sheila
| at the DMV the IRS will audit you?
| melony wrote:
| > _The government has power. Craig the office drone
| asking for "misinformation" to be taken down at behest of
| his boss does not have the power "The government" does.
| Or am I now supposed to believe that if you anger Sheila
| at the DMV the IRS will audit you?_
|
| Craig's boss is the highest executive power in the
| country. Most of their work is handled by aides and
| subordinates like Craig, with authority delegated from
| their office. The boss only directly makes the important
| decisions. You are being disingenuous by claiming Craig
| is a innocent, powerless trigger-happy drone. And if you
| have lived in small towns, expect to receive worse
| service or discrimination from Sheila in future. The
| highest power in the country cannot be held to the same
| standard as a county clerk (and frankly speaking, most
| DMV employees need more training in customer service and
| have their compensation tied to overall productivity and
| performance, lots of fat to be trimmed there, both
| literal and metaphorical).
| joshuamorton wrote:
| No, the point of the comment is that the government
| didn't have power in this situation.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I mean, it's also the tone of a kid not getting what they
| want from their non-subordinate parent.
| Zetice wrote:
| And I see refusal to follow those orders from a person who
| recognizes they're not a subordinate.
| afavour wrote:
| I invite you to have a conversation with my six year old
| child and then reflect upon the difference between power
| dynamics as they exist and as they are vocalised.
| peteradio wrote:
| Your toddler doesn't represent the United States
| Government.
| freedude wrote:
| You make a good point. The United States Government is
| more like a demanding toddler throwing a tantrum than a 6
| year old throwing a tantrum. The difference is the 6 year
| old is potty trained.
| afavour wrote:
| What impact does that have on the difference between
| power dynamics as they exist and as they're vocalised?
| p_j_w wrote:
| Are they subordinate if they can disobey those order with
| no reprecussions?
| didntcheck wrote:
| Is a demand not still inappropriate even if it's
| correctly rebuffed? If I ask for someone to violate
| policy at work and they refuse, I can still expect I
| might be investigated on the basis of the attempt
|
| I mean, sure, in terms of jurisprudence here the lack of
| actual tort may indeed mean that there is no legal
| outcome, but evidence a desire to do something is a
| pretty good justification for investigating if there were
| cases where you did do it. And in the court of public
| opinion, it's very damning. I certainly won't be saying
| "no harm, no foul"
| p_j_w wrote:
| Maybe, but calling them a subordinate is still misleading
| as fuck.
| causi wrote:
| I don't see why one's judgment of the situation should depend
| on whether the government was _successful_ in intimidating
| Facebook. What matters is that they tried.
| afavour wrote:
| I was specifically responding to the OP's point that this
| demonstrates power flowing _from_ government _to_ Facebook.
| The fact that FB ignored the request and did not suffer
| consequences demonstrates that power does not in fact flow
| that way.
|
| You're welcome to judge the appropriateness of the event as
| a whole however you want! I'm not over the moon about it
| either. I wasn't arguing that it's wonderful this
| interaction occurred.
| Zetice wrote:
| Coercion requires a stick, I see no stick here.
|
| The judge literally cited Biden saying, "they're killing
| people" as coercion, which is a bald-faced lie.
| causi wrote:
| Do implied threats count as coercion? Does a threatening
| tone? Does someone in a position of power making demands
| they don't actually have the power to enforce count as
| coercion? I don't know. The judge seems to think they do.
| Zetice wrote:
| What implied threats, what threatening tone? What
| position of power?
|
| If you read the examples cited, nothing even remotely
| comes close to a layperson interpretation of coercion,
| and I believe the legal definition is _more_ rigorous,
| not less.
| causi wrote:
| _Therefore, the question is not what decision the social-
| media company would have made, but whether the Government
| "so involved itself in the private party's conduct" that
| the decision is essentially that of the Government._
|
| The government asking them to remove specific posts and
| accounts and demote others is pretty clearly that.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| How so? If someone asks me for something, and I have
| EXPLICIT LEGAL PROTECTION TO SAY NO, how coercive should
| that be to me?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| How coercive? If you're right, the government can still
| make a court case that takes a good part of a decade and
| costs you ten million dollars to win.
|
| That's just the straightforward stuff. That's without the
| IRS deciding your corporate profit statements deserve
| extra scrutiny, and the FCC deciding to question whether
| you really qualify for section 230, and and and...
|
| You can be right. They can still make your life very
| difficult if they decide to. And it will be _very_ hard
| to prove that that 's what they're doing. And even if you
| can, you probably aren't going to get the money back that
| the court cases cost, and you _definitely_ aren 't
| getting back the time and management attention it cost.
|
| So, not _legally_ coercive. But still kind of coercive,
| even though legally it has no force.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That would imply the person or group doing the asking
| somehow have unilateral control over those distinct
| agencies. At what point down the career ladder do you
| become just another drone who shouldn't be considered to
| have power over distinct government agencies? Surely
| Rachel in the Post office can't have you audited. But
| maybe the president can talk to enough people to
| encourage that to happen. So where is the limit?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, a "White House director of digital strategy" is
| presumably not Rachel in the post office. He's someone
| _in the White House_ , which means he's in a position to
| have a quiet conversation with the president. "They're
| not playing ball" might be all it would take.
|
| I mean, yes, you're right, the White House director of
| digital strategy, taken by himself, can go jump in the
| lake as far as Facebook or Twitter are concerned. Even
| given all the people under him, that's still true. The
| question is, to what degree is he speaking for the people
| _over_ him? How many layers are there between him and the
| president? I 'd guess somewhere from 0 to 2, though I
| admit that's a guess. Can he cause trouble on his own?
| No. But the one giving him orders may be able to give
| orders to others.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| But if the president asks for something, you say no, and
| he sics the NSA or something onto you, how does this
| injunction protect you?
|
| Basically this is arguing that _the mere existence of
| government has a chilling effect_ , which it demonstrably
| does, but isn't really something you can make go away
| with an injunction. Hell, what's stopping the Biden admin
| from enacting this punishment scheme on these people for
| getting this injunction?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, it protects some. It makes the Biden administration
| somewhat less likely to ask, because there's a public
| rebuke from the courts, and if they keep doing it anyway,
| they are likely to lose any further court cases around
| it. So they have some deterrent - not perfect, but more
| than zero.
|
| From the company's side, they have some indication that
| they are likely to be backed by the courts if it comes to
| that, so they have some more confidence in telling the
| administration to get lost - not perfect, but more than
| none. (They're not going to be _less_ willing to say no
| after this court ruling.)
|
| So, yes, the Biden administration could keep going. But
| that's unlikely to play well, either in the courts or in
| the press. The Biden administration is not a dictatorial
| regime; they face an election in 14 months. That gives
| them more incentive to "control the narrative", true, but
| it also gives them incentive to not be visibly seen as
| bullying the social media.
| [deleted]
| Zetice wrote:
| You're not recalling the example I and the judge also
| cited, which was the Biden quote.
|
| There's _no way_ Biden 's quote is coercive. Zero way
| whatsoever.
| neilv wrote:
| I don't yet see an ACLU statement on this, though it seems up
| their alley, and they have a more recent statement on a different
| case. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases.
|
| (Incidentally, the Ars Technica favicon looks very similar to the
| ACLU's.)
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| The ACLU has become a run-of-the-mill left wing org.
|
| For proper 1st amendment protection, you should look at FIRE.
| Like the EFF, they are willing do defend that which they find
| objectionable - the ACLU no longer does.
| curiousllama wrote:
| I love HN legal threads because engineers have great (logical)
| legal analysis, but with a terrible (practical) understanding of
| the law. And every so often a someone with legal training chimes
| in like "wtf guys"
|
| It's like watching a good software engineer try to build a
| circuit board without google: I see how you got there, but damn,
| that's... not gonna work great.
|
| Idk the law either, though, so I can't judge
| jjaken wrote:
| [flagged]
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| craig1f wrote:
| [flagged]
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| These are private platforms. They can censor whatever speech they
| want. They decide whether to listen to big bad government with an
| axe over its head or simply get their head cut off, right? I
| mean, they could have just chosen to be crushed with legal
| battles from the government, right? Free speech and free will in
| America, right?
| qntty wrote:
| The Supreme Court said in Norwood v. Harrison (1973):
|
| _Racial discrimination in state-operated schools is barred by
| the Constitution and "[i]t is also axiomatic that a state may
| not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish
| what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish." Lee v.
| Macon County Board of Education, 267 F. Supp. 458, 475-476 (MD
| Ala. 1967)._
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Which is why they were swiftly cut down when they ignored these
| requests.
|
| Oh wait.
| thsksbd wrote:
| [dead]
| echelon wrote:
| I'd rather the platforms be treated as common carriers - unable
| to censor by themselves. Corporations having the right to
| censor is no better than the government. It would fix a lot of
| misalignment in terms of advertiser spend, too.
|
| In a common carrier world, the government censoring private
| individuals would go against our first amendment rights. Pretty
| clear cut.
|
| Ideally we eventually reach p2p social networking protocols. I
| don't want my interest or attention graph dictated or
| influenced by a third party. I want to be able to (de)weight
| and (de)prioritize based off of my own personal preferences.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _I 'd rather the platforms be treated as common carriers_
|
| That's called the internet.
|
| _Corporations having the right to censor is no better than
| the government._
|
| Yes it is, there are lots of corporations and anyone can
| start one. There is only one government that applies to
| someone at any one time and they have a monopoly on violence.
|
| _In a common carrier world, the government censoring private
| individuals would go against our first amendment rights.
| Pretty clear cut._
|
| It's clear cut that the internet does that already and
| corporations do not have to broadcast what they don't want
| to.
|
| If you hate censorship so much why are you on hacker news?
| This is one of the most censored sites on the internet.
| Comments are not just deleted and removed but there is no
| record when they are.
|
| There are plenty of sites that let anyone post whatever they
| want and they turn into people spamming nazi propaganda. You
| can find these sites and see if you like them better than the
| mainstream sites of the internet.
| echelon wrote:
| > Yes it is, there are lots of corporations and anyone can
| start one.
|
| Please tell me how to start a Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
| Reddit, or Twitter and reach their scale and engagement.
| Preferably up and running with billions of users _by
| tomorrow_.
|
| Your suggestion is implausible and denies the reality that
| these entities are entrenched and more or less here to
| stay.
|
| > If you hate censorship so much why are you on hacker
| news?
|
| You want me to leave because I hate censorship? Same
| argument as "If you don't like America, then leave."
| Systems can be improved. Just because we don't like the
| status quo doesn't mean we want to throw everything out.
| This is a shallow dismissal of the free speech argument.
|
| > There are plenty of sites that let anyone post whatever
| they want and they turn into people spamming nazi
| propaganda. You can find these sites and see if you like
| them better than the mainstream sites of the internet.
|
| Again, clearly not what I'm advocating for here. Not all
| discourse turns to "Nazism" (as liberals say) or "kiddie
| diddling" (as conservatives say). I operated forums back in
| their 2000-2010 heydey that had a free speech policy.
| People behaved, and we all learned a lot. The only reason
| corporations have the market share now is that they
| blitzscaled to critical mass.
|
| My argument stands. The ideal social media system is a p2p
| protocol that nobody can exert undue control or influence
| over. That everyone can tailor as they so please.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Please tell me how to start a Facebook, Instagram,
| YouTube, Reddit, or Twitter_
|
| You can start a site and say what you want. You aren't
| entitled to have a wide audience. If no one wants to
| broadcast or read what you say, too bad.
|
| _You want me to leave because I hate censorship?_
|
| Read what I wrote again and pay closer attention, I don't
| care what you do, the question is if you care about the
| censorship on the site you are posting on now.
|
| _" If you don't like America, then leave."_
|
| I never said that, I asked why you were using a heavily
| censored site while being against censorship.
|
| _Not all discourse turns to "Nazism"_
|
| I also never said this, read again. You can look at voat,
| slashdot, zero hedge and 4chan knockoffs, and there is
| tons of nazi spam along with other terrible stuff that
| people don't want to read and sites don't want to
| broadcast.
|
| If people don't want to broadcast it and other people
| don't want to ever see it, but you allow it anyway, that
| drives away users. No one is going to allow that on a
| site they control. You can go make your own site but you
| aren't entitled to an audience.
|
| _The ideal social media system is a p2p protocol that
| nobody can exert undue control or influence over._
|
| That's been done and it gets over run with spam if people
| can message other people without explicitly connecting
| first.
|
| _My argument stands._
|
| You didn't actually make an argument and you didn't back
| anything up with evidence at all. You just said you
| wanted big sites to not have any moderation.
| echelon wrote:
| > You can start a site and say what you want.
|
| Again, nobody is going to visit a website without
| critical mass. There is a huge cost to do this. That's
| why platforms should be common carriers in absence of
| social media being turned into a set of protocols.
|
| > You aren't entitled to have a wide audience.
|
| What does "entitlement" have to do with anything? You're
| making these arguments personal.
|
| There's a science to virality. There's a cost to
| exploring state space and connecting ideas together. To
| matchmaking like thinkers. It's all just math.
|
| I don't care if people choose to mute me. What I don't
| want is a platform muting other people on my behalf, or
| muting me when my messages may have an audience.
|
| I was banned from /r/atlanta for complaining about crime
| on one occasion. My comment was entirely benign and
| apolitical, but it was against the rule of the mods to
| speak up about it. Now I can't post about events or ask
| questions. It's one of the biggest forums for my city,
| and I've been cut off at the knees. It's absurd. Like
| 1984, but we're doing it to each other.
|
| Remember all of the censorship during Covid? Masks good
| -> censored, masks bad -> censored, lab leak -> censored.
| We lost our collective minds and started treating
| everyone like cattle, and that's just over one issue.
| This slide into darkness is going to get worse.
|
| > If no one wants to broadcast or read what you say, too
| bad.
|
| Again, your arguments are deeply personal.
|
| One can learn how to say valuable or viral things. No one
| should have their finger on a trigger that can silence a
| voice for hundreds of viewers, let alone hundreds of
| millions. We're giving a few people the ability to un-
| person others. Technology is so central to our existence
| now that we need to revisit the first amendment to square
| up our rights and make sure they're still being
| respected.
|
| > Read what I wrote again and pay closer attention, I
| don't care what you do, the question is if you care about
| the censorship on the site you are posting on now.
|
| I don't like the censorship on HN. I don't like
| censorship _anywhere_.
|
| We don't need to brainwash people into agreeing with us
| or hellban those we disagree with.
|
| Signal to noise ratio is an engineering problem.
|
| Do you have any remaining questions about my position? It
| should be pretty clear.
|
| > I never said that, I asked why you were using a heavily
| censored site while being against censorship.
|
| ""If you don't like America, then leave.""
|
| This is a perfectly salient analogy.
|
| I will not leave because you don't like my opinion.
|
| I will not leave because you may or may not want me to
| go.
|
| I will not leave because this isn't my ideal
| communication platform.
|
| There are lots of ways in which the world and technology
| could be better. I'll make do with what I have, and I'll
| strive for something better.
|
| > You can look at voat, slashdot, zero hedge and 4chan
| knockoffs, and there is tons of nazi spam along with
| other terrible stuff that people don't want to read and
| sites don't want to broadcast.
|
| Anecdotal.
|
| Turning social media in a protocol would give everyone
| the lever to control their own intake. If that were
| built, you needn't worry about stuff you "don't want to
| read".
|
| You shouldn't ever concern yourself with other people's
| business or determining what _they_ should or shouldn 't
| read. That's authoritarian.
|
| > You can go make your own site but you aren't entitled
| to an audience.
|
| I know I'm taking some liberty here, but this reads as,
| "leave me alone and go do [impossible thing]. You don't
| deserve to be heard and nobody wants to listen to you."
|
| There's an audience for just about anything. The
| platforms we have today are suboptimal means of
| connecting interest graphs together. They have other
| people and objective criteria meddling in the middle.
|
| I see your argument as potentially being one of desiring
| power over others. To control what one side can read or
| say. Have you ever wondered what would happen if the
| power dynamics reversed? Because that's one of my chief
| concerns. Free speech is so important that anyone should
| have access regardless of the institutions in power.
| Institutions that are fickle and subject to change.
|
| Would you give _me_ the ability to unilaterally censor or
| choose what you consume? Would you trust anyone other
| than yourself?
|
| You shouldn't control what liberals or conservatives can
| see. Neither party should have control over the other.
| Everyone should be left alone.
|
| The ideal stack would be pure p2p communication. Nobody
| sticking their nose in anyone else's business.
|
| > You didn't actually make an argument and you didn't
| back anything up with evidence at all. You just said you
| wanted big sites to not have any moderation.
|
| Let me clarify: websites with over 100M DAU should be
| public squares. We can't possibly agree on the right
| level of censorship to apply or which subjects are
| forbidden. Any influence thus exerted is a relative form
| of positional brainwashing and silencing. You cannot
| possibly get it right.
|
| Illegal content can be removed - that's a pretty well
| defined line.
|
| NSFW content can be tagged and users can (probably by
| default) filter it out. I'm even fine when platforms
| prohibit this outright, though you can easily get into
| debates about classification - "female presenting
| nipples" and other minutiae.
|
| Political or controversial content can be annotated and
| filtered at the discretion of end users. This is where
| technology can and should be leveraged. The platform
| moderators should have no say.
|
| Direct harassment can be muted. Every platform has a
| "mute" button and a "block user" button. A p2p platform
| could make these block lists shareable (another reason
| why p2p social media would be fantastic).
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _nobody is going to visit a website without critical
| mass._
|
| Too bad. Also there are plenty of 'free speech' websites
| out there already and they are cesspools.
|
| _What does "entitlement" have to do with anything_
|
| You can't stop mixing something being technically
| possible with what you actually want, which is to
| broadcast something people don't want to see to a large
| audience. It doesn't work that way.
|
| _What I don 't want is a platform muting other people on
| my behalf,_
|
| So use those websites. Go to voat or 8chan. Maybe you
| will like it better.
|
| Sounds like you have lots of ideas for your perfect
| message board. Go ahead an make it and see what happens.
| By your own rules it will probably be a disaster until
| people implement their own filters, but most people won't
| do that and will go somewhere that is already cleaned up.
| People don't want to go to a site and see swastikas
| spammed and then have to figure out how to not see that
| before they can use the site. That is basically slashdot
| if you turn the filtering down.
|
| You probably haven't realized this yet, but the next
| thing you will get upset with is the filters. Once there
| is filtering and you realize that you aren't able to spew
| whatever you want to people that don't want to see it you
| get mad that you are being filtered and you will call
| that censorship.
| entriesfull wrote:
| Just a reminder that Hitler and Stalin would be so jealous at the
| amount of power these governments have compared to them:
|
| 1. Force twitter, fb, blah blah to shadowban anyone that
| criticizes their lies
|
| 2. Backdoor any device made by Google, Apple, etc.
|
| 3. Warrantless wiretap
|
| 4. Shove out more lies and goto step 1.
| crawsome wrote:
| Oh, a planted Louisiana judge
| Clubber wrote:
| Good news, now if we can just get rid of all the domestic spying
| and police overreach, we might resemble a semblance of a free
| society rather than an analog of it.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Given Apple and Google have the ability to record every word
| you say(maybe not store it for 300M people, but they can
| certainly filter it for specific words that could begin
| recording once triggered... "Hey Google/Siri/Alexa/Cortana"),
| the issue is that we don't want the US government doing it, but
| private companies can? Heck if you buy any IOT device with a
| mic, you should give up any idea you have privacy.
|
| I'm over this illusion of privacy.
|
| If you are asking if we should spend less on spying, sure, but
| that could be my ignorant teens when I was an anarchist
| talking.
| beachwood23 wrote:
| This comparison doesn't seem up to snuff.
|
| The government has the ability to prosecute crimes, and has a
| monopoly and the use of force. Private companies have
| neither.
|
| One of the two is clearly more dangerous if they have the
| ability to control your speech.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Given Apple and Google have the ability to record every word
| you say(maybe not store it for 300M people, but they can
| certainly filter it for specific words that could begin
| recording once triggered... "Hey Google/Siri/Alexa/Cortana"),
| the issue is that we don't want the US government doing it,
| but private companies can? Heck if you buy any IOT device
| with a mic, you should give up any idea you have privacy.
|
| Isn't all that optional though? If I don't use gmail or
| apple's services, I'm essentially opting out. Also to this
| sibling reply, when was the last time Apple broke down
| someone's door, threatened to kill them, threw them on the
| ground, beat them up and tased them?
|
| >If you are asking if we should spend less on spying, sure,
| but that could be my ignorant teens when I was an anarchist
| talking.
|
| You're deeming the desire for privacy as anarchism? What a
| warped sense of perspective that is. When I was in my teens,
| we actually had privacy, because that time period was before
| 9/11. Perhaps you're just accustomed to being spied on and
| you're experiencing Stockholm syndrome.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| [flagged]
| tpush wrote:
| Twitter is not a Nazi hellscape.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It really kind of is though.
| retrac wrote:
| Maybe your slice of Twitter isn't. My take is that we can't
| actually say whether Twitter is, or isn't, a Nazi
| hellscape, because of the darn algorithm. It's in the way.
| Since everyone gets a personalized view, there's no
| coherent "Twitter" to analyze as to how much fascist
| content is on it. There's a billion bot posts, but who
| actually sees them?
|
| It's certainly possible to get stuck in a recommendation-
| algorithm Nazi hellscape, where it's a very weird far-right
| bubble. (I got some interesting recommendations on both
| Twitter and Youtube after a few posts and videos about that
| guy making the UFO claims. Quite suddenly the feed became
| dark, conspiratorial, and with lots references to
| "globalists".)
|
| It's also, of course, possible to get stuck by the
| recommendation algorithm in some weird far-left universe,
| also quite out of step with the mainstream.
|
| Nothing wrong with being out of step with the mainstream in
| itself; the problem is when you don't know that you are.
| Some of the people in these social media bubbles don't
| _know_ they 're in those bubbles. As far as they're
| concerned, everyone else agrees with them and they're
| getting more and more re-enforcement.
|
| I think that a growing general ineptitude and inexperience
| with dealing with the fact that some people have radically
| different worldviews, social beliefs, and political
| attitudes, probably explains some of the contemporary
| derangement. If they're literally the only example of
| disagreement you run into, then obviously they're insane
| and/or stupid and/or evil, (Surely they know what you
| know?! We tend to assume that even when it can't be true.)
| Maybe related to why we seem to be particularly prone to
| portraying the political opposition as evil, insane, or
| stupid these days. The viciousness of the in-group towards
| the dissenters makes all the sense in the world if they're
| just evil, insane and stupid. And since we can't comprehend
| their worldview since we never see the world as they see
| it, (thanks to the algorithm), it just becomes re-
| enforcing.
| jl6 wrote:
| > As far as they're concerned, everyone else agrees with
| them and they're getting more and more re-enforcement.
|
| Yes. Radicalisation in a nutshell.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Twitter is not a Nazi hellscape. It's a Nazi-accusation
| hellscape, but anywhere where "Nazi" is a bad word is not
| going to be a Nazi hellscape.
|
| It's like saying Salem was a witchcraft hellscape. If you
| were the one saying that, then you were one of the ones
| creating the actual hellscape.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| On the contrary, Nazis were very aggressive about suppression
| of speech they didn't like.
|
| Furthermore, it was one of, possibly the very most, free-
| speaking societies in the world that played a key role--first
| economically, then militarily--in stopping them.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Yes, the censor and safethink crowd at Twitter have more in
| common with fascist regimes than anyone else.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| they have an evolved use of irony where they project with
| their accusations, luckily more people seem to have
| become savvy to noticing this
|
| the incompatible logical extremes of safety vs freedom is
| starting to line up with historical precedent again
| safety1st wrote:
| The thing is, Nazis are really unpopular, so if we have a
| free market, Nazi hellscapes will be unpopular, too.
|
| This is a case where the free market is good at solving a
| problem, we know this because Nazis have been writing books
| for nearly a century, yet you probably haven't heard of any
| of them other than Mein Kampf.
|
| Whether we have a free market in social media is up for
| debate, certainly the dominant platforms enjoy network
| effects and go to great lengths to keep their users locked
| in, even when they have Nazis running around on them and the
| users don't want to see Nazis. We even have evidence that
| some platforms will show more Nazis to you if Nazis trigger
| you and make you want to fight with them! But I think a
| landscape with more platforms is a good way to try and deal
| with this. If anything in the Mastodon world you have the
| exact opposite problem, platforms defederate each other for
| very small offenses, being a full blown Nazi is definitely
| not required.
|
| And whether people use the Nazi hellscape argument genuinely
| or as a straw man/proxy for "things I don't like" is an open
| question as well.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Nazis have been writing books for nearly a century
|
| Small, basement-run printing press? Sort of like nazi
| zines?
|
| I remember seeing copies of "Soldier of Fortune" in the
| 1970's (US) but it was relegated to the one weird military-
| collectible-store-that-also-sold-Avalon-Hill-games. Extreme
| ideologies need buy-in from a printer, publisher, and
| distribution network -- combined they create quite a series
| of hurdles, act as gatekeepers of a sort. I suspect that
| was enough to keep The John Birch Society and others in
| relative obscurity.
|
| Letters to the editor in the local newspaper were of course
| heavily moderated.
|
| The free internet with near zero-cost to
| print/publish/distribute due to social networks, site
| comments sections make the fringe voices just as loud as
| the mainstream ones.
|
| Add bots into the equation and possibly determined state
| actors and it only gets worse.
| jwells89 wrote:
| > Add in bots [snip]
|
| Also algorithms that signal boost
| controversial/inflammatory content as well as unearth
| more of whatever the user has signaled what they believe
| in/enjoy/etc, not to mention artificial signal boosts via
| things like Twitter Blue... with all of this, with social
| media the extreme fringe can be made to appear popular.
| It's like viewing the world through a funhouse mirror.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| This is the absolute wildest take I've seen in a while. How
| can any sort of free market ideas apply? Fascists operate
| by force. A tiny minority of fascists can take control over
| a much larger population through violence. Source: history
| stale2002 wrote:
| > How can any sort of free market ideas apply
|
| Because people who engage in violence can be handled by
| the legal system and people who are merely engaged in
| protected speech can be left to do so?
| tremon wrote:
| There have been plenty of free platforms that have not turned
| out like that. HN, for example.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Only thanks to heavy moderation.
| shitlord wrote:
| Yes, but the key difference is that White House staffers
| aren't personally pressuring dang.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| They don't feel the need to, because HN mods do their job
| and there aren't millions of people spreading verifiable
| misinformation here unchecked.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| [citation needed]
| unethical_ban wrote:
| You want me to verify that dang hasn't gotten a message
| from executive agencies? Don't attack me for that
| assertion, attack the person I responded to.
|
| You want me to verify that there aren't coordinated
| disinformation campaigns festering all over this site?
| Well, I can read, so I'm fairly confident.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Do we know that for sure?
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| Is HN "free?" How heavy of a hand do the mods have here? (I
| genuinely don't know the answer to that question.)
| [deleted]
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's very heavy in terms of tone, less in content.
| Definitely workable for nazis if they're careful. You can
| advocate eugenics and genocide-lite if you're polite and
| abstract enough.
|
| You're more likely to get in trouble for calling someone
| a nazi than you are for promoting nazi policies, as long
| as you don't use any slurs.
| atlantic wrote:
| Could you clarify the term "nazis"? Presumably, you don't
| mean a member of the German National Socialist party,
| which was dissolved in 1945. But if you mean "people
| whose views I disagree with", then perhaps you could be a
| little more specific.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| You notice there how I was specific about "nazi policies"
| right? It's to avoid a discussion like this one. I don't
| care about party affiliation per se, I am talking about
| advocating specific policies and worldviews.
|
| Things like ethnonationism, eugenics, categorizing
| certain minorities as inherently criminal, white
| natalism: things that, if you could present them to a
| 1945-style straw nazi they'd say "yup that's us."
|
| And all that aside, you know that people still self
| identify as nazis right? It's not preposterous that they
| show up here. They have jobs and kids and hobbies and
| professional aspirations, and if a chance to talk about
| the degeneracy of society re: immigration comes on the
| tech forum, hey, they know also how to slide into that
| conversation without saying anything too crass.
|
| And yes, you could elide all that as "people I disagree
| with" if you're devoted to being particularly sloppy.
| Because I do disagree with them, and don't want them
| here? Is that not the case for you?
| HEmanZ wrote:
| The mods have a heavy hand, stuff gets loudly or silently
| removed all of the time. Dang seems to work full time at
| it, and I suspect he's not the only one on the team doing
| so
| Pxtl wrote:
| Dang works very hard to censor this site quite heavily and
| maintain the kind of discourse he and his team want. As is
| his right.
|
| HN is _not_ a example of libertarian social media.
| [deleted]
| tremon wrote:
| The GP didn't ask for examples of libertarian social
| media. The GP asked for examples of forums/platforms from
| a "free society" that had not turned into a cesspool.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Every politicized topic gathers dozens of comments from
| lunatics who are deliberately ignoring reality. This very
| week someone on HN told me black people are
| disproportionately not accepted to colleges because of
| "genetics." Perhaps HN is on its way.
| onion2k wrote:
| _HN, for example._
|
| HN isn't really a 'platform'. The reach for a post on HN is
| tiny. There needs to be a critical mass of people before
| something can really be called a platform.
|
| And HN posts are moderated, both by the mod team using
| their tools, and by the users using flagging and votes.
| It's quite far from being 'free'. You can say anything you
| want _in theory_ by it won 't remain visible for very long.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Elaborate conclusion and consequence please? (:
| rvz wrote:
| How exactly? That's quite an unfounded overreaction and
| exaggeration as typically found here on HN. Close to
| conspiracy level. Surely you meant Meta who actually profited
| from an actual genocide [0].
|
| But other than that, finally there is a _real_ alternative to
| Twitter but again owned by Meta. It just means the town-hall
| and outrage will move to on large social network linked to
| Instagram and Meta.
|
| It will degrade into a Nazi hellscape anyway. Just like
| Facebook once did.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohing
| ya-...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Headline is factually inaccurate; its a preliminary injunction
| which includes consideration of _likelihood_ of success on the
| merits, not a ruling on the merits.
| efitz wrote:
| This thread baffles me.
|
| There are a lot of replies that either didn't read the article
| (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or
| arguing that a particular email isn't coercive enough, etc.
|
| A court found that the government abused its power and infringes
| on people's first amendment rights by using its intimidation
| power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens.
|
| Freedom of speech is literally the first thing in the Bill of
| Rights. The government did a bad thing. Why defend them?
| DannyBee wrote:
| "A court found that the government abused its power and
| infringes on people's first amendment rights by using its
| intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech
| of citizens."
|
| They literally did not.
|
| This is a preliminary injunction, not a decision on the merits.
|
| This is why the court is clear they are allegations, etc.
|
| There is a ton of issues with this injunction and rationale,
| and it will almost certainly be overturned (or at the very
| least,seriously modified) on appeal.
|
| In fact, the injunction and reasoning even deliberately
| misquotes evidence to try to support points. Not like in
| arguable ways, either. While that sort of thing may be fun and
| play okay sometimes at the district level, and in the news, 99%
| of the time that goes very badly at appeals.
|
| I strongly doubt when that happens that you will come back and
| say "i guess the government didn't do a bad thing"
|
| (I read the entire decision, FWIW)
| ndr wrote:
| The injunction is quite harsh and I agree that it's likely to
| be seriously modified in its final form.
|
| As fare as predictions go do you think the gov will come out
| clean or it'll end with "gov did a bad thing"? And if so will
| _you_ come back and say "i guess the government _did_ do a
| bad thing "?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That assumes a court deciding "this was a bad thing"
| definitively makes it a bad thing. Dred Scott might
| disagree.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > That assumes a court deciding "this was a bad thing"
| definitively makes it a bad thing. Dred Scott might
| disagree.
|
| That can be a pretty convenient tool.
|
| Decision I agree with: This is just like Brown v Board of
| Education of Topeka!
|
| Decision I disagree with: This is just like Dred Scott!
|
| Both major parties have done this and IME most
| individuals do this because they don't care about the
| law, only about whether their side "wins".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > That can be a pretty convenient tool.
|
| It can, and it can also be accurate. We've a long history
| of demonstrating that morally right and what's legal
| aren't always identical concepts.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've changed the title above to make it clear that it's
| an injunction, not a ruling. Thanks!
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> This is why the court is clear they are allegations
|
| "Plaintiffs have shown that not only have the Defendants
| shown willingness to coerce and/or to give significant
| encouragement to social-media platforms to suppress free
| speech with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic and national
| elections, they have also shown a willingness to do it with
| regard to other issues, such as gas prices, parody speech,
| calling the President a liar, climate change, gender, and
| abortion"
|
| Doesn't sound to me like the court is clear they are
| allegations.
| jrockway wrote:
| I agree with you. Things like this:
|
| > A February 2021 message in which Flaherty asked Twitter to
| remove a parody account related to Hunter Biden's daughter
| said, "Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be
| resolved immediately. Please remove this account immediately."
|
| are just self-dealing. If I email Twitter with a request like
| that, they correctly route it to /dev/null. If the office of
| the President sends that, they can't do that. It's just too
| risky. So that's why I think it's an abuse of power.
|
| In the absence of some court ruling that prohibits parody, you
| have the Constitutional right to pretend to be Hunter Biden's
| daughter on Twitter. Twitter also has the right to do some
| editorializing, like not giving them a checkmark, or posting a
| note like "we don't think this is actually Hunter Biden's
| daughter", or shutting down the account. It's their right, but
| they have to do it because they want to do it, not because the
| President of the United States said so. That's not a power that
| the President has.
|
| While I personally agree with the causes the administration is
| fighting for, they are exercising powers that the government
| doesn't have. That should always be viewed critically. It sucks
| that people are getting bad information about vaccines.
| Increase funding for schools or get a Constitutional amendment
| passed that removes the freedom of speech. Threatening emails
| are easy, but an abuse of power. Follow the process you swore
| an oath to uphold, even if you don't get instant gratification.
| The 1st Amendment exists for a good reason, and we can't forget
| that.
| nektro wrote:
| this was clearly not an abuse of power and the fact that you
| think so and appear to be the top comment is deeply concerning
| crawsome wrote:
| Suddenly a Louisiana plant judge cares about the effects of the
| White House on free speech? If you need to make an announcement
| about fairness, it's in bad-faith if you ignore how it's 100%
| politically motivated maneuvers made-up by GOP thinktanks to
| neuter democrat power.
|
| You betcha they'll ignore that law or destroy it once they're
| back.
| lasermike026 wrote:
| Because the judge was wrong and he actually limiting free
| speech. The whitehouse should ignore the ruling.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| The government wasn't found to be suppressing information, it
| is just an injunction. The government claims to simply be
| engaging in dialog about areas they find concerning from a
| variety of angles including salient public health in a declared
| emergency, what is considered to be dangerous medical advice,
| participation in conspiracy and sedition, influence of
| elections, etc. The injunction, as the article describes,
| doesn't prevent the agencies from engaging on a lot of these
| topics and the topic set is somewhat narrow. The government
| generally has been allowed to constrain speech that's a clear
| danger or interferes with either the goals emergency operations
| or the safe conduct of emergency operations, as well as public
| health and safety. This has been upheld in case law and by the
| Supreme Court for over 200 years.
|
| I'd note that a Trump appointed judge in Louisiana giving a
| preliminary injunction on something uniquely ideologically
| aligned by those dimensions and is noted in the article as out
| of step with precedent isn't the end of the line.
| elishah wrote:
| > Freedom of speech is literally the first thing in the Bill of
| Rights.
|
| Not necessarily talking about this injunction in particular,
| but I would like to address this argument. Yes, freedom of
| speech is very clearly expressed in the Constitution. But there
| are limits and exceptions to every right in the Constitution,
| certainly including speech.
|
| There are many things that are indisputably "speech" and yet
| are also illegal: fraud, extortion, libel, slander, perjury,
| threats, impersonating a doctor or law enforcement officer,
| etc.
|
| I think it would be difficult to make a case that our society
| would be better off if we defined free speech in so broad and
| absolutist a sense as to permit all of these. So our evaluation
| of any particular issue must be more complex than "it's speech,
| therefore it is always automatically okay."
| robertxlongo wrote:
| If the government was just trying to police fraud, extortion,
| etc., then few people would have a problem. However, there is
| solid evidence that the government worked in secret to censor
| the speech of a Stanford University professor, physician, and
| epidemiologist. How is society better off when the government
| is working is secret to suppress the speech of academics who
| have opinions that are misaligned with the establishment.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Why defend them?
|
| Because a depressingly large percentage of people would
| actually like to see the first amendment overturned.
| causi wrote:
| It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend speech
| they don't agree with, and rarer still any speech they find
| repugnant. It isn't liberty vs authority anymore; it's just
| team red and team blue. One might be wrong-er than the other
| but neither think people they hate should be able to open
| their mouths in anything but agreement.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I realized a long time ago that if no one was allowed to
| say thing I find distasteful the world would be a very
| quiet place. And I must imagine that there exist people who
| given the opportunity would be far more censorious than I
| might be at my worst. As such it seems beneficial to in
| general to mutually disarm with respect to censorship
| rather than create a world of pressing silence.
| elishah wrote:
| > It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend
| speech they don't agree with ...
|
| I think framing this as being about speech with which one
| disagrees, or finds repugnant, is a bit disingenuous. It
| omits consideration of the possibility of speech that is
| genuinely harmful. For a few examples:
|
| - My friends and I decide it'd be cool to put you in jail,
| so we report you as committing a serious crime that you
| didn't, and all give matching testimony that leads to your
| conviction.
|
| - Pfizer starts selling a new drug that cures cancer.
| Except it turns out that they completely fabricated all the
| studies showing its effect, and actually the pills are
| nothing but placebos.
|
| - A mugger with his hand in his pocket stops you at night
| and says, "Give me your wallet or I'll shoot you." You give
| him your wallet and he leaves.
|
| I hope you would agree that these situations are... not
| ideal, and that the law should be able to discourage them.
| Despite the fact that all of these are, indisputably,
| speech.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Absolutely nothing you stated is legal now. The
| government would not have to intervene asking for
| censorship in any of these cases. They would press
| charges and have a court order to remove the non-
| protected speech.
| elishah wrote:
| > Absolutely nothing you stated is legal now.
|
| Sure, I didn't mean to suggest that those things are
| legal. Just giving a few examples of speech that is
| harmful, rather than merely distasteful.
|
| > The government would not have to intervene asking for
| censorship in any of these cases.
|
| Hm, I think that may be pinning quite a lot on some
| questionable definition of "censorship."
|
| In these examples the law would be banning some specific
| speech from me, Pfizer, and the mugger, and punishing us
| if we engaged in that banned speech anyway. Isn't that
| what censorship is?
| bequanna wrote:
| Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction?
| If so, they are by far the minority in that camp.
|
| Only one side is afraid of open debate and pure freedom of
| speech. Why could that be?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Kind of - crack downs on "obscenity" always come from the
| right and rarely if ever from the left. For the most
| part, everybody seems to agree than "obscenity" should be
| an exception to freedom of speech, although there's quite
| a bit of disagreement on what constitutes it.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >crack downs on "obscenity" always come from the right
| and rarely if ever from the left
|
| Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman would like a word.
| sangnoir wrote:
| This just shows how useless a single-dimension left/right
| axis is. There were plenty of socially conservative
| Democratic party members then (and now, but moreso then).
|
| This was also a time when the majority (>50%) of
| Americans disapproved of mixed-race relationships,
| according to Gallup. That percentage only fell below 50%
| in 1993, IIRC.
| stcroixx wrote:
| As a kid growing up, Tipper Gore's PMRC slapped stickers
| on heavy metal and rap CDs they didn't like.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| I disagree. At most you'll see parents deciding that
| their tax dollars should not be used to stock a school
| library with "obscene" books in schools. That is not an
| infringement on speech, those authors are free to publish
| and sell in any other market.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| Book bans, the "Don't say gay" law, requiring medical
| professionals to spout _specific_ claims about the
| "harms" of pregnancy termination and a raft of other
| stuff too.
|
| Do you claim those are not censorship?
|
| I'm not taking a side here. Government censorship is
| _bad_. Full stop.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Book bans, the "Don't say gay" law
|
| These are limited to the government itself. The "don't
| say gay," bill makes it illegal for teachers to teach
| sexual related stuff to elementary school kids. It's a
| form of self-governing (no pun intended) and isn't
| restricting the rights of citizens, which the first
| amendment protects. It's restricting what the government
| itself can do. Book bans are also limited to what the
| school library may carry and doesn't apply to public
| libraries or book stores and the like.
|
| >requiring medical professionals to spout specific claims
| about the "harms" of pregnancy termination and a raft of
| other stuff too.
|
| This is technically compelled speech rather than
| censorship. It's another concept I'm not overly
| comfortable with. To be fair, it's compelling a licensed
| physician to do this when performing his or her
| profession, which the government (and the people) has
| chosen to regulate. A physician wouldn't be compelled to
| do this outside his or her practicing medicine.
| causi wrote:
| _Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech
| restriction?_
|
| Yes. Restrictions on what teachers are allowed to teach
| are restrictions on freedom of speech. Restrictions on
| non-sexual drag performances are restrictions of freedom
| of speech. Bans on calling for boycotts of Israeli goods
| and services are restrictions of the freedom of speech.
| bequanna wrote:
| People getting sexual gratification from exposing young
| children to sexual content is considered "protected
| speech"?
|
| Pornography is pornography and pedophiles are pedophiles,
| but please, feel free to make your case for this.
| causi wrote:
| I don't doubt many of the performers are deriving sexual
| satisfaction from the performance, but as long as the
| performance itself is not sexual it isn't harming
| children. Don't get me wrong, I think "Drag Queen Story
| Hour" is the gender equivalent of blackface, but a man
| dressing up like a mockery of womanhood and reading
| stories doesn't violate anybody else's rights, therefore
| we have no right to use violence to stop it.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Women can be drag queens too! For me, drag adjacent to
| Cabaret and Burlesque. I'm not a fan of any of those, but
| I appreciate that they are art forms that people should
| be free to express themselves in.
| Karunamon wrote:
| The restrictions on teachers you speak of are in their
| functions as employees of the state while performing
| their duties on the job on the employer's time. Employers
| setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is
| generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment
| issue.
|
| That goes double when we are talking about public
| employees whose conduct is directly the function of law.
| iscream26 wrote:
| > Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on
| the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first
| amendment issue.
|
| In other words: you're allowed to restrict the speech of
| other people as long as you own private property. Turns
| out that freedom of speech in a liberal "democracy" is
| not all it's cracked up to be.
| Karunamon wrote:
| You skipped the rather pertinent bit where these
| restrictions apply only to people who chose of their own
| volition to take them on.
|
| You are, of course, free to not take on the burden of
| employment from a particular organization if you find
| their demands on your conduct _while they are
| compensating you for your time_ to be unacceptable.
|
| This relationship is purely transactional. And, sorry,
| the idea that this is actually a bona fide problem is
| facile.
| iscream26 wrote:
| That line of reasoning would make sense if the have-nots
| in a liberal society didn't need to work just to survive.
| But that is not the case, is it?
|
| Liberal society loves to characterise itself as a rigid,
| well-structured system in which individuals choose to
| make idealised rational decisions to work towards their
| own interests. As opposed to _emotional_ reasoning, which
| is conveniently implied to be the diametrical opposite of
| rational thought. And I call it "convenient" because as
| a result can easily paint protests and strikes, as
| "irrational" and "despicable" actions perpetrated by
| "unreasonable" individuals.
|
| However, as soon as one considers the fact that the
| disparity of power between people with private property
| and people without makes it so that the people _without_
| private property cannot _afford_ to make decisions on a
| "rational vacuum". We quickly find ourselves reverting
| back to "what are you going to do about it? You don't
| work, you don't eat."
| didntcheck wrote:
| Indeed, allowing employers to coerce the speech of
| employees by punishing them for actions outside of the
| reasonable scope of employment is very worrying.
| Unfortunately, a good deal of the modern "left" supports
| it when they dislike the person. Much of the right does
| too, which I have equal disdain for, but I will at least
| acknowledge it can be logically consistent with some
| right-wing philosophies (on the more ancap end). Whereas
| it's a bit strange to see "socialists" saying "but
| they're a private company!"
|
| However speech in the classroom _is_ within the scope of
| your job duties. So my employer should not be able to
| fire me for wearing a Trump or Biden sticker off the
| clock, but it is fair to prohibit me from wearing it
| whilst on the job, and to sanction me if I 'm
| proselytizing to customers during my duties
| causi wrote:
| That's a fair point.
| didntcheck wrote:
| > Restrictions on what teachers are allowed to teach are
| restrictions on freedom of speech
|
| Do you consider a curriculum to be a restriction on
| freedom of speech? I ask as a genuine question - being
| from the UK the norm for me is having a national
| curriculum and standard testing (albeit it executed by
| private-but-certified exam boards). It seems like common
| sense to me that obviously teachers have restrictions on
| what they can say in a classroom. Any employee does
| within their workplace and job duties, but teaching is
| one profession where I'd clearly expect a much higher
| level of restriction (along with the police, who
| represent the state, and doctors, who have duties of
| professionalism and to give medical advice only in line
| with the regulator, and various other regulated roles)
| [deleted]
| didntcheck wrote:
| Yeah, it's worrying how many people seem to go: "I don't
| like this" => "Nobody else should be able to see it". I've
| had people be confused in conversations where I've
| confirmed I strongly dislike a thing/person/site, yet do
| not wish at all to see it banned or deplatformed. Not to do
| the whole generational sneering thing, but I do find the
| difference is often whether someone grew up with the pre-
| social-media internet, where it was common sense that not
| all of the internet would appeal to you, and you'd need to
| manage your own experience, or the modern "safe" internet,
| where people are accustomed to having a direct line to the
| powers that be to come and remove stuff that upsets them
| mynameishere wrote:
| Well, people would like the Bill of Rights to be "selectively
| enforced" like all federal laws.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Or, you know, because this is just a preliminary injunction,
| not a decision on the merits and evidence?
| ndr wrote:
| "The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in
| establishing that the Government has used its power to
| silence the opposition"
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.1
| 8...
| DannyBee wrote:
| I'm not sure what you think this changes about what I
| said. It's literally not a merits decision.
|
| There are even plenty of times they get issued and
| dissolved days later.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| "Temporary restraining orders" (TROs) are _extremely_
| preliminary. This is not a TRO.
|
| This is a "preliminary injunction" (PI). A PI is a
| different phase of the case. Granting a PI is extremely
| an significant and consequential action by the judge.
| Think about it this way-- if the judge is right and
| conservative voices were suppressed-- the PI has the
| potential to change the political landscape in which the
| legal challenge occurs. So, in addition to the judge
| signaling that the plaintiffs are _likely_ to succeed in
| getting _permanent_ relief, in the meantime the judge
| also is tipping the playing field in their favor to undo
| the irremediable harms that are the subject of the
| litigation.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "Likely to do X" is not "have done X", or even "will do
| X".
|
| If it was, we wouldn't need the preliminary in
| preliminary injunction, the standards for which _balance_
| the likelihood of success on the merits with the kinds of
| impacts the action sougjt to enjoin would have on the
| situation of the parties, so a greater and /or more
| difficult to undo impact requires a lesser probability of
| success to be sufficiently likely to warrant an
| injunction.
| ndr wrote:
| It's still rooted in evidence, and that evidence doesn't
| need to be conclusive.
|
| This was to say the injunction is not completely on a
| whim, agreed on everything else you wrote.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Kinda. It depends on whether you mean the legal
| definition of admissible evidence or just "stuff"
|
| It is mostly meta evidence - statements about what
| evidence will show at trial. Which assumes it's valid and
| admissible and actually shows that and ....
|
| In this case, this isn't on a whim but I wouldn't say
| it's on the evidence either - especially given the
| consistent misquotes.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| Naw, just redefined to something which allows complete
| freedom of speech... so long as it's the right speech.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| Which is the entire point of the first amendment. You don't
| need to protect popular speech from censorship.
| didntcheck wrote:
| Yeah I think this is a point people miss. Rights aren't
| just _also_ for unpopular people and things, they 're
| arguably _only_ for them - because popular people /things
| are generally not under duress in the first place. So it
| shouldn't be surprising at all that many debates end up
| involving unsavoury situations, since that's the only
| time these safeguards really get put through their paces.
| I sound like Captain Obvious when I write it down, but
| I've found it bears repeating
| cgriswald wrote:
| It doesn't bear repeating because it isn't at all true.
| Unpopular speech does need to be protected but even
| popular speech can be suppressed by governments and often
| has been when the government has reason to disagree with
| it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Because freedom of speech isn't absolute, and whether "the
| government did a bad thing" is the very question being asked,
| to which reasonable people may disagree.
|
| With over a million COVID deaths in the US, there's a very
| valid question to be raised as to when emergency public health
| requirements take precedence over a right to spread
| misinformation/disinformation.
|
| Freedom of speech isn't of much use when you're dead.
|
| I'm not arguing which side was right, but I am saying it
| shouldn't baffle anyone, because it's a complex question with
| real tradeoffs on both sides. It's not simple black-and-white
| in the way you're presenting it.
| aksss wrote:
| It's one thing to officially commandeer media outlets during
| an emergency. That's in-bounds. That's not what happened here
| and therefore not what the debate is about.
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, that's precisely what the debate is about.
|
| Governments spreading information or halting disinformation
| exists on a spectrum. This is precisely about where it
| exists on the spectrum and about balancing rights against
| harms.
| aksss wrote:
| Maybe we're talking past each other - the government did
| _not_ commandeer or nationalize these companies as part
| of its emergency declaration, and so the government 's
| ability to direct actions at an organization in those
| circumstances is not what the issue is about.
|
| The issue (and apparently we may agree on this(?)) is
| where the line is for the government to compel action in
| a private organization short of officially commandeering
| it. This will inevitably lead us to debating how
| "voluntary" the actions of a company are when law
| enforcement is asking it "nicely", and how nicely they
| were really asking for that cooperation.
|
| You seem to be framing this as an interest balancing
| test. The courts may see it that way. It doesn't seem
| like the whole story to me though, principally because
| none of the actions on the part of the government were
| done through regulatory policy or legislation, but
| through "conversation", side-channel influence, etc. To
| me, that's _fundamental_ to this discussion. Interest
| balancing would make sense if we were debating the
| legality of regulation saying the government can direct
| Internet platforms to hide the non-criminal commentary of
| users that is not in alignment with the official
| government position. Instead, we 're talking about
| actions of law-enforcement and their NGOs influencing
| organizations outside of any official regulatory
| commission to do so. It's hard to see the public
| accepting regulatory policy that allowed this. It's hard
| for me to see how this behavior of the federal government
| is allowable when nobody wants to make it official
| policy.
|
| Now, my biases having interacted with the FBI on behalf
| of organizations in past lives, I think all interaction
| with them is highly delicate, and _never_ blind to
| potential consequences of getting on their bad side.
| Consider the background of this particular injunction -
| most of these substantial conversations with law
| enforcement personnel will be off the record (over
| coffee), broad statements are being made about criminal
| liability from public figures in the press. Is it
| possible for a multibillion-dollar American company to
| not feel any pressure to "cooperate"? If there's
| pressure, it's coercive. It may or may not be effective,
| it may or may not be the deciding factor. But there's
| also the scale - do we believe _all_ these companies
| happened to voluntarily go along with the government
| program of censorship out of friendly cooperation sans
| subtext of ending up on the "wrong" side of the Justice
| dept?
|
| I think all of us we need to be considering if that's how
| we want our federal law enforcement to operate. Again, if
| the gov. feels it has the political capital to commandeer
| companies in an emergency, go for it. Do it above the
| board and let the political consequences (if any) work
| themselves out. Or if it feels it has the support for
| censorship as a regulatory matter, try it. Just be up
| front about it. Yes, the specific _method_ certainly is
| at issue here.
| ironmagma wrote:
| It's been well established by this point that Americans do
| not believe their government should lie to them and that when
| it does, it damages the long-term effectiveness of the
| government at leading the people. This was a short-sighted
| move that ultimately damaged public health.
| timcavel wrote:
| [dead]
| snowwrestler wrote:
| It's not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can
| believe that the federal government and its employees should
| also be free to speak.
|
| The legal theory at stake here is that all government speech is
| inherently coercive. But this is not necessarily true, or
| aligned with free speech as a principle of society.
|
| Any time someone says "we must protect free speech by legally
| enjoining the following people from speaking," I am suspicious.
| chipsa wrote:
| The government does not have a "right" to speech, because the
| government doesn't have rights. Employees for the government
| generally have the right to speak, unless they are speaking
| for the government. If they are speaking for the government,
| that is not their speech, but rather is government speech.
|
| Government speech isn't inherently coercive, but government
| speech telling one party to muzzle another, or else, is
| coercive.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > the federal government and its employees should also be
| free to speak.
|
| They are. They're not allowed to speak on _behalf_ of the
| government without limit, though. In this case, it's pretty
| clear, that's what they did.
|
| They weren't _personally_ reaching out to Twitter as a
| citizen and asking for posts to be removed. They were asking
| as _agents_ of the government, through official
| communications channels established precisely for this
| purpose, and they did it on taxpayer paid time.
|
| > Any time someone says "we must protect free speech by
| legally enjoining the following people from speaking," I am
| suspicious.
|
| The purpose of their speech is to remove the ability for
| others to access platforms. They are not making any legal
| claims or starting any legal cases, they are simply using
| their power to remove speech from American citizens. They
| have no _natural right_ to do this.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > It's not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech
| can believe that the federal government and its employees
| should also be free to speak.
|
| If the speech the government officials are engaging in is a
| demand to censor the political speech of citizens, then we
| are looking at a violation of the First Amendment.
|
| Nobody is saying that government officials can't engage in
| other kinds of speech that don't violate the Bill of Rights.
| curiousllama wrote:
| > If the speech the government officials are engaging in is
| a demand to censor the political speech of citizens, then
| we are looking at a violation of the First Amendment
|
| "Censor" is doing a lot of work here.
|
| It's important for the government to engage in public
| speech that may lead another person to self-censor. E.g., a
| press release saying "FYI: publishing your how-to-build-a-
| nuke guide is gonna help crazy people bomb US cities,
| please don't do that."
|
| If gov speech is inherently coercive, then the gov is NOT
| allowed to make that request. (which feels dumb to me) In
| reality, it's more likely a court would hold they can say
| that; they just can't imprison the publisher (or audit
| their taxes more aggressively) as a result.
|
| So the gov can def say things that would lead to self-
| censorship. They just can't be dicks about it.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > So the gov can def say things that would lead to self-
| censorship. They just can't be dicks about it.
|
| The government is going to have a hard time claiming they
| didn't engage in coercion when they've been actively
| threatening to yank the Section 230 protections of the
| Communications Decency Act if the platforms don't step up
| the censorship.
|
| >You may have never heard of it, but Section 230 of the
| Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the
| internet. The law was created almost 30 years ago to
| protect internet platforms from liability for many of the
| things third parties say or do on them.
|
| Decades later, it's never been more controversial. People
| from both political parties and all three branches of
| government have threatened to reform or even repeal it.
|
| https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230
| -ex...
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >If gov speech is inherently coercive, then the gov is
| NOT allowed to make that request. (which feels dumb to
| me) In reality, it's more likely a court would hold they
| can say that; they just can't imprison the publisher (or
| audit their taxes more aggressively) as a result.
|
| Governments absolutely _can_ be coercive, but that doesn
| 't mean _all_ government speech is coercive.
|
| Claiming (you're not, just expanding on your point) that
| government speech is _inherently_ coercive is ridiculous
| on its face.
|
| My local government sends me a "voter guide" a couple
| months before every election. By that logic, that means
| the government is _coercing_ me to vote.
|
| CISA[0] sends me multiple emails a day telling me to
| apply patches or mitigations to address
| vulnerabilities/security issues.
|
| CISA is a government agency. By that logic, by doing the
| above, they are _coercing_ me to manage my _private
| property_ to their whim.
|
| The CIA is a government agency. Their "World Fact
| Book"[1] argues against travel to certain destinations.
| By that logic, they're _coercing_ people to only travel
| where the CIA wants you to travel.
|
| There are hundreds (thousands?) of other examples of
| government speech that isn't coercive. Was there
| _coercion_ WRT communications between the government and
| social media companies? I have no idea as I don 't know
| all the facts of the case. And neither does anyone
| posting in this thread.
|
| If the government was coercive, then let's
| (metaphorically) put them up against the wall to be shot.
| If not, then let's do it for real. /s
|
| [0] https://www.cisa.gov/
|
| [1] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/
| revelio wrote:
| The threat of more aggressive tax audits or regulations
| or whatever is always there. It doesn't have to be
| spelled out. Piss off the government and they have a
| billion ways to make you feel pain. It would be absurd if
| the government could "suggest" you do something and this
| was considered not an abuse because they didn't
| literally, at that exact moment, spell out the penalties
| they would impose for non-compliance.
|
| Of course in a theoretically ideal system laws are
| precise enough that governments can't simply make your
| life worse for getting on the wrong side of them. But
| nobody seems willing to stomach the level of rigor that
| would require from lawmakers. Three Felonies A Day and
| such.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Demands are free speech, even if unreasonable. The First
| Amendment constrains the application of the power of law,
| like prosecution and imprisonment. Which is not what
| happened in these cases.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Demands are free speech
|
| When a government official demands that the political
| speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected
| speech.
|
| If you recall, Trump wasn't allowed to block citizens who
| were critical of him on Twitter for the same reason.
|
| > In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of
| the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld
| a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated
| the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users
|
| https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-
| court-r...
| snowwrestler wrote:
| > When a government official demands that the political
| speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected
| speech.
|
| In other words, you're happy to censor speech you
| disagree with, while waving the flag of free speech.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The First Amendment is doing the demanding here.
|
| Not all speech is protected, and Government officials are
| not allowed to censor political speech.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Speech does not censor speech; this is an essential core
| of the concept of free speech.
|
| If I tell you to take down your comments, I am not
| censoring you. I'm speaking. It's only censorship if I
| can force you to take them down.
|
| The same is true for federal officials; just telling
| someone to shut up is not censorship. Without an actual
| threat of force, it's not censorship or intimidation.
|
| Note that I'm not arguing that intimidation cannot and
| does not happen. But intimidation requires an actual
| threat. Not just an angry email.
|
| The ironic thing is that federal officials can speak
| freely _because_ of the First Amendment. It gives them
| license to speak because actual legal protections exist
| for citizen speech. The power of federal officials is
| well constrained under U.S. law. They can tell a media
| company to change their content, and the company can say
| "no." Because of the First Amendment.
| mrangle wrote:
| You are falsely speaking of Federal Officials as if they
| are not acting in a government capacity, and therefore
| have their freedom of speech in that capacity protected
| by the Constitution.
|
| The opposite is true.
|
| The Constitution's protection of individual citizen free
| speech very specifically is a restriction on the
| government (and its officials acting in government
| capacity, which is how the government speaks) from acting
| to limit the speech of citizens under most circumstances.
|
| Which is exactly the case in question.
|
| This is how Constitutional protections work. They limit
| the capacity of the government and its officials in order
| to protect the Rights of individual citizens.
|
| Case law has long held that even the politest censorship
| request by the government is viewed as threat of force.
|
| The propaganda around this issue is weak to the point of
| being insulting.
| mrangle wrote:
| Below, I further frame the argument against the false-
| assertion that the government has free speech protections
| under the Constitution.
|
| The government is specifically restricted by the
| Constitution in order to convey Rights to citizens.
|
| Just as the FBI does not have Constitutionally protected
| free speech rights to request censorship of citizens, no
| matter how politely requested, the FBI can not legally
| "request of you" to report to prison for five years in
| the absence of being convicted of a crime.
|
| As any such request carries the presumption of force.
|
| This restriction protects the Constitutional Rights of
| citizens.
|
| I can request that you report to prison. That is
| protected speech. I can request that speech be censored.
| That is protected speech.
|
| Aside from my lack of power and potential force to be
| able to effect those outcomes, the Constitution also
| exists to protect individuals from my such requests
| should I, for instance, then drum up a mob (akin to a
| government) in order to try to intimidate or force
| results.
|
| The government is not an individual with Constitutional
| Rights. It is the entity that the Constitution exists to
| protect individuals against.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Speech does not censor speech
|
| We know from the Twitter document dumps that government
| officials on both sides of the aisle have been demanding
| that speech (and speakers) critical of them, their
| preferred policies and/or their political party be
| censored.
|
| > intimidation requires an actual threat
|
| Threatening to yank section 230 of the Communications
| Decency Act if platforms don't ramp up their censorship
| is an actual threat.
|
| > You may have never heard of it, but Section 230 of the
| Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the
| internet. The law was created almost 30 years ago to
| protect internet platforms from liability for many of the
| things third parties say or do on them.
|
| Decades later, it's never been more controversial. People
| from both political parties and all three branches of
| government have threatened to reform or even repeal it.
|
| https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230
| -ex...
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Come on, none of the people involved in this case had the
| power to "yank" Section 230. I feel like you don't have a
| solid handle on how government actually works, which is
| hampering this discussion.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > People from both political parties and all three
| branches of government have threatened to reform or even
| repeal it.
| somenameforme wrote:
| You're speaking of the difference between constitutional
| literalism, and constitutional intent. The 2nd Amendment,
| interpreted literally, means I should be able to build a
| nuke. After all there are no explicit limits. That
| obviously was not the intent of the amendment by any
| stretch of the imagination. Such a consideration was
| never dealt with because this was simply outside any sort
| of world the Founding Fathers could have imagined.
|
| So too here with the 1st amendment. Interpreted
| literally, you're absolutely correct. Intimidation isn't
| passing a law, but obviously the government using threats
| to censor billions of people (since this would expand
| even beyond the US) is obviously contrary to every single
| reasonable interpretation of the 1st Amendment. Again a
| world where the government even _could_ censor billions
| of people using intimidation alone is something the
| Founding Fathers could never have even begun to imagine.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| You're arguing the obvious and easy part. It's fully
| settled law that intimidation can violate the First
| Amendment.
|
| But under current law, intimidation must be proven (there
| must be an actual threat). The core question here is
| whether _any_ statement, request, or demand by a federal
| official will be treated, by default, as intimidation
| under the law.
|
| If upheld, such a standard would be a radical
| redefinition of the interactions between the federal
| government and private sector, and have some very weird
| and unexpected side effects.
|
| For example, political speech is usually the most
| protected, but this standard would constrain tons of it.
| Imagine if the communications officer of a sitting
| Senator could get prosecuted because they asked a
| newspaper to alter a story they did not like. Something
| that happens almost every day in DC.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > Imagine if the communications officer of a sitting
| Senator could get prosecuted because they asked a
| newspaper to alter a story they did not like.
|
| Stop it, you're turning me on.
| ETH_start wrote:
| The government has no First Amendment rights.
| mrangle wrote:
| LOL at the "censorship requests are free speech of the
| government" argument.
|
| You are trying to assign Constitutional Rights to the
| government in its relationship with citizens. As if the
| government was an individual whose rights are covered under
| the First Amendment and it is the citizens who are restricted
| from limiting the government's freedoms.
|
| Very specifically, the First Amendment protects Freedom of
| Speech of US citizens by restricting what the government can
| do. Under the First Amendment and its case law, the
| government is widely restricted from censoring citizens.
|
| Your sole rhetorical strategy was to invert that relationship
| in a manner that does not exist.
|
| Beyond that, it has long been established in case law that
| government requests for censorship are tantamount to demands
| that have the threat of force behind them.
| ndr wrote:
| That's not at all what the injunction says. See point 5 at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36618822
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Hiding regulatory threats behind "simple, optional requests"
| is so far beyond the pale that I can't imagine letting them
| get away with it. Especially when the counter argument is
| that _the government_ has inalienable rights to free speech.
| The federal government is not some downtrodden dissident in
| need of protecting.
| emodendroket wrote:
| > The government did a bad thing. Why defend them?
|
| Talk about smuggling your conclusion into the premise.
| mindslight wrote:
| To me, the problem is that the whole situation is rotten, and
| focusing on one tiny aspect while leaving out the wider context
| just makes a convenient scapegoat.
|
| Even before centralizing websites entered pop culture, it was
| blatantly obvious that they are intrinsically subject to
| censorship, just like TV, radio, and newspapers. cf "The
| revolution will not be televised". It wasn't a matter of _if_ ,
| and it wasn't even a matter of _when_. They are defective by
| design, and most people just straight up didn 't seem to care.
| Just like how they were happy to believe corporate news on
| other mediums for decades.
|
| Furthermore, most of the power in this country resides outside
| the _de facto_ government. The pattern of "this is bad for us.
| please take it down. <possible implied escalation>" is _routine
| and banal_. Focusing on a government agency doing this (which
| actually has much less soft power than say a major advertiser
| or a golf buddy), and blowing it out of proportion just feels
| like a distraction from the overall dynamic. "Look we found
| _the_ censorship! This is what we need to fix! " - even though
| censorship is pervasive for any centralized media.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Freedom of speech shouldn't be freedom of hate speech.
| csomar wrote:
| I was listening to Ray Dalio the other day and the thing that
| caught my attention was when he talked about the WWII era
| during the Nazi reign: he said that it's the centrists (people
| holding center and more reasonable views) are the ones that got
| hanged.
|
| When society polarizes, it seems that people will stick
| _blindly_ to their side. Maybe the rational behind that, is
| that a non-polarized side won 't get you as many protections.
|
| HN seems to be non-immune to that. Many people here would like
| to think that they are smarter than the rest. It does seem from
| the many discussions here that it's the same homunculus
| everywhere.
| roflyear wrote:
| It's an interesting discussion: should the government be able
| to ask private entities to take down content?
|
| What if that content puts a family at risk?
|
| What if the WH thinks it does, but it isn't obvious to a third
| party?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What if the party that receives that ask knows that legally
| they can reject it with a "hah, no" note and the government
| can't do anything about it? Free speech is thoroughly
| protected in the US.
|
| Are there any carveouts about how even government employees
| are private citizens when they don't work in government
| capacity. Can Amy from the DMV ask to have revenge porn taken
| down? Can Tim from the IRS tell his wife who works at Twitter
| that he thinks Elon is a liar and grifter?
| adfhbaidnioni wrote:
| Courts say a whole lot of things.
|
| The large majority of what the government is alleged to have
| done sounds entirely appropriate to me. The CDC, Surgeon
| General, and NIAID are responsible for publishing health
| guidance. This means they will say some things are true and
| some things are false. They have no power to censor third-party
| sources and I don't see evidence of even informal pressure. Yet
| third parties believed this information and used it to
| determine what posts are true, which sounds to me like these
| agencies did their job by publishing trustworthy guidance.
|
| Some of the things this court said were factually incorrect.
| For instance,
|
| >Dr. Francis Collins, in an email to Dr. Fauci told Fauci there
| needed to be a "quick and devastating take down" of the GBD--
| the result was exactly that
|
| Yet in context, you find that the "take down" in question was
| _a published rebuttal_ , not censorship. This is a lie, plain
| and simple.
|
| > The FBI's failure to alert social-media companies that the
| Hunter Biden laptop story was real, and not mere Russian
| disinformation, is particularly troubling.
|
| The "story" is that Hunter Biden owned a laptop. The "Hunter
| Biden laptop story" was very much fake. None of the supposed
| evidence of corruption existed.
| root_axis wrote:
| It's quite ironic that you're castigating commenters for not
| reading the article as you confidently proclaim false
| information that reading the article would remedy you of.
|
| > _A court found that the government abused its power and
| infringes on people's first amendment rights by using its
| intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech
| of citizens._
|
| False. I think you should edit your comment to remove the false
| information or acknowledge that you are wrong.
| BlakeSimpson wrote:
| The vast majority of people are only headline readers. They see
| the title and they go on insane tangents on the subject.
| Facebook is the worst by far.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Now do this for everything. Don't allow the government to
| 'request' the information they have on you. You want
| information, get a warrant. The two must go together. Either
| it's coercion by the government to ask a corporation to do XZY
| or it's not.
| brasic wrote:
| Read the entire injunction. It's only seven pages. Then tell me
| with a straight face that you think it's a good thing for free
| speech.
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...
|
| It amounts to "no one from these 8 government agencies may
| communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20
| social media companies or any similar organization"
|
| I'm not defending the behavior alleged here but this judge is
| not the sort of person you want adjudicating serious issues.
| You don't fight censorship with blanket bans on speech.
|
| A supporter of free speech should be horrified by this ruling.
| If you're not, imagine an injunction of similar scope where the
| political sides were reversed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It amounts to "no one from these 8 government agencies may
| communicate with anyone working at these three non profits,
| 20 social media companies or any similar organization"
|
| No, it doesn't. See the exceptions on pp 5-6.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| The injunction is ridiculous.
|
| It basically says the govt cannot suppress protected free
| speech but it can suppress unprotected free speech.
|
| Without ever explaining why the particular speech argued
| about by the plaintiffs is protected.
|
| Maybe that's fine for an injunction, but anyone drawing any
| conclusions about whether the govt suppressed protected free
| speech from this ruling is highly mistaken.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Speech is similar to our criminal system. When you're
| accused of a crime, you're innocent until proven guilty.
| And anything you say is "protected" unless it falls into
| one of an extremely narrow range of exceptions. And those
| exceptions are actual crimes, not just 'silently censor and
| move on' type stuff. So the injunction basically comes down
| to 'stop doing unconstitutional things' while offering a
| list of things that are obviously unconstitutional, and a
| list of things that are obviously fine.
|
| So e.g. "urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in
| any manner social-media companies to change their
| guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing
| content containing protected free speech" is obviously
| unconstitutional. By contrast, "informing social-media
| companies of postings involving criminal activity or
| criminal conspiracies" is obviously perfectly
| constitutional.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| You aren't under the impression that the 1st amendment
| protects government speech, are you?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I mean I've seen gun grabbers try and argue that the second
| amendment was meant to guarantee the right of the
| government to field an army, so it's certainly possible.
| aksss wrote:
| There are a lot of parallels there - people with a very
| pro-state bent try to invert what is meant by "the
| people" in the Constitution. It truly is a phenomenon in
| the gun rights debate. For decades we've heard that "the
| people" in 2A does not refer to individuals but the
| collective people, i.e. the government, despite such
| reasoning contradicting how the term is understood
| literally in every other amendment that uses it. But here
| we are watching the same rhetoric being applied to 1A. A
| misc. poster says this injunction infringes on the
| "rights" of the federal government because they're people
| too. It takes a lot of chutzpah to turn this injunction
| into an argument that the Judiciary is suppressing the
| rights of the Executive. The humanity!
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| lelanthran wrote:
| > A supporter of free speech should be horrified by this
| ruling. If you're not, imagine an injunction of similar scope
| where the political sides were reversed.
|
| Governments don't get free speech. They get all sorts of
| restrictions on them that citizens don't.
| halfjoking wrote:
| The government can say whatever they want in press
| conferences or through their social media. Both the
| government and their employees have as much free speech as
| they want - and not only that but they spent billions of
| dollars for advocacy groups especially during covid. (which
| we know now was used to promote fraudulent science)
|
| The injunction says the government can't urge, pressure or
| encourage censorship. (yes everyone should read it). You have
| to be joking you think that is a bad thing.
| pohuing wrote:
| But they can't? Not according to this judge:
|
| > Some of the statements that Doughty deemed to be coercion
| were made in public by Biden and other administration
| officials. "When asked about what his message was to
| social-media platforms when it came to COVID-19, President
| Biden stated: 'they're killing people. Look, the only
| pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated and that--
| they're killing people,'" Doughty wrote.
| adfhbaidnioni wrote:
| This judge thinks that merely _publishing information that
| other people believe_ constitutes censorship.
|
| >Various social-media platforms changed their content-
| moderation policies to require suppression of content that
| was deemed false by CDC and led to vaccine hesitancy. The
| CDC became the "determiner of truth" for social-media
| platforms, deciding whether COVID-19 statements made on
| social media were true or false. And the CDC was aware it
| had become the "determiner of truth" for social-media
| platforms. If the CDC said a statement on social media was
| false, it was suppressed, in spite of alternative views. By
| telling social-media companies that posted content was
| false, the CDC Defendants knew the social-media company was
| going to suppress the posted content. The CDC Defendants
| thus likely "significantly encouraged" social-media
| companies to suppress free speech.
| curiousllama wrote:
| I post on Twitter "I'm gonna beat up anyone who disagrees
| with the CDC about vaccines!"
|
| CDC views my post
|
| Now, the CDC can't say anything about vaccines, because
| they know it'll be violently enforced.
|
| The CDC ceases to exist because of my legal jiu jitsu
| brasic wrote:
| Thank you. The real issue here is a small number of
| companies have become the defacto gatekeepers of a large
| amount of public discourse. That's a major problem that
| this debate is just a symptom of.
| aksss wrote:
| It would be harder for the government to censor speech if
| their were more diverse venues for speech, yes.
|
| But the real issue - the matter before the Court - is
| whether the government is abusing its power by directing
| the venues to stifle one type of speech and promote
| another. An injunction is issued when a judge deems the
| plaintiff likely to succeed on the merits, and the harm
| inflicted by the defendant's actions in the meantime to
| not be redressable.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| And "people believe what they see on Twitter" isn't a
| problem the court can fix.
| halfjoking wrote:
| That is not anywhere in the injunction.
|
| You are taking a statement about the climate created by
| overreaching government demands out of context. When a
| government repeatedly makes authoritarian demands, it
| causes widespread suppression outside the scope of the
| initial demands.
|
| But that has nothing to do with the specifics of the
| injunction. Once again people should read it, and decide
| if anything in the injunction restricts legitimate
| government free speech. (it doesn't)
| adfhbaidnioni wrote:
| [flagged]
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > but they spent billions of dollars for advocacy groups
| especially during covid. (which we know now was used to
| promote fraudulent science)
|
| ....what.
| lightedman wrote:
| You seem to be mistaken on what an injunction is.
|
| This is not a direct ruling, it is an order to cease the
| current behavior (the gov't telling social media companies to
| censor speech) until it can be ascertained whether or not
| this is a harmful thing which is happening.
|
| You're acting as if this injunction creates a law or sets
| some sort of precedent. It truly does not.
| brasic wrote:
| I know very well what an injunction is and does. You seem
| to be mistaken on what "law" is. It is by no means limited
| to statutory text or even final judicial opinions.
|
| The fact that contempt of court is the only real penalty
| available for violating this injunction is exactly why it's
| harmful. Making ludicrously broad and unenforceable
| injunctions like this inevitably corrodes the rule of law
| and damages the overall system.
| [deleted]
| lightedman wrote:
| "You seem to be mistaken on what "law" is."
|
| As the person that whipped Electronic Art's ass in court
| over the Spore DRM, no, I'm pretty well-aware of what
| 'law' is. And re-reading your post, again, you're still
| giving off the impression that this is some bad thing. It
| isn't.
|
| It's literally the gov't telling the gov't to quit being
| a twerp while the courts actually figure out wtf is going
| on.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _It amounts to "no one from these 8 government agencies may
| communicate with anyone working at these three non profits,
| 20 social media companies or any similar organization"_
|
| Except that it doesn't say that. It's quite clear that such
| communication is still perfectly fine when it's for normal
| gov't operations; I'll quote it below[1].
|
| The folks objecting to this don't make much sense to me. The
| injunction forbids the gov't from doing the things that the
| plaintiff complains about. If the gov't isn't currently
| misbehaving, then the injunction is a No-Op: the government's
| claimed current state of doing nothing wrong will just
| continue as is (putatively) already is.
|
| What is lost due to the injunction?
|
| [1] Here are the exceptions to the injunction:
|
| IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT
| prohibited by this Preliminary Injunction:
|
| 1. informing social-media companies of postings involving
| criminal activity or criminal conspiracies;
|
| 2. contacting and/or notifying social-media companies of
| national security threats, extortion, or other threats posted
| on its platform;
|
| 3. contacting and/or notifying social-media companies about
| criminal efforts to suppress voting, to provide illegal
| campaign contributions, of cyber-attacks against election
| infrastructure, or foreign attempts to influence elections;
|
| 4. informing social-media companies of threats that threaten
| the public safety or security of the United States;
|
| 5. exercising permissible public government speech promoting
| government policies or views on matters of public concern;
|
| 6. informing social-media companies of postings intending to
| mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures;
|
| 7. informing or communicating with social-media companies in
| an effort to detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber
| activity;
|
| communicating with social-media companies about deleting,
| removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media
| platforms that are not protected free speech ....
|
| [EDIT: fixed formatting]
| firstlink wrote:
| > The folks objecting to this don't make much sense to me.
| The injunction forbids the gov't from doing the things that
| the plaintiff complains about. If the gov't isn't currently
| misbehaving, then the injunction is a No-Op: the
| government's claimed current state of doing nothing wrong
| will just continue as is (putatively) already is.
|
| The argument being pushed is "The government didn't do
| those things and it's a good thing that it did." Makes
| perfect sense to me, in the correct context about the
| ideology of those pushing it.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| The list of individuals who work for the government are
| "hereby enjoined and restrained from taking the following
| actions a to social-media companies:....
|
| (3)urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner
| social-media companies to change their guidelines for
| removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content
| containing protected free speech; (4) emailing, calling,
| sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of
| any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging,
| pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion,
| suppression, or reduction of content containing protected
| free speech;"
|
| Yes, this is a victory for free speech. The aforementioned
| government officials don't need free speech; we, the
| taxpayers, do. The government officials have proven they
| cannot be trusted due to their maligning interests to collude
| with Big Tech to shill for Big Pharma products. I'm so
| grateful for some of these federal judges.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Free speech for citizens is important to me and I'm on no
| political side. This seems like a great thing to me. I don't
| want the government doing what they're been doing or doing it
| again in the future, regardless of who that government is.
| Ideally, these losers would have enough morals to police
| themselves or not do this in the first place, but here we
| are. Might not be a perfect ruling, but in spirit it's
| against gov. censorship, which I'm also against so I hope it
| or something like it sticks around.
| lancesells wrote:
| I agree for the most part, but the only thing that keeps me
| wholesale from this is the idea that all social media posts
| are US citizens.
|
| What if, and I'm not suggesting it is, 100% of the posts in
| question where from foreign actors looking to disrupt the
| US? Is the government in no way allowed to step in? Is that
| even censorship?
| didntcheck wrote:
| No. I don't trust a government trying to prevent me from
| seeing information outside our borders for my "safety".
| Banning receiving foreign broadcasts is a staple of
| authoritarian governments (I'm not saying it's a
| sufficient condition, but a non-authoritarian government
| would have no need or desire to)
| stcroixx wrote:
| In my view that's to be expected and I'd want no
| intervention from the government at all. I would view
| that as censorship. Gov. is not there to decide for me
| which ideas are disruptive, I don't want them or anyone
| in that role. To those in power, any dissent could be
| spun as disruption to their agenda.
| DropInIn wrote:
| So your fine with a foreign power using bullying tactics
| to silence your fellow citizens, undermining thier right
| to free speech?
|
| Because that's what you're actually arguing for.... And
| if you still support that position despite being informed
| of this fact, then I have to question exactly who You are
| working for....
| stcroixx wrote:
| Goal posts moved. I don't know anything about bullying -
| if that's going on, prosecute that for what it is. Sounds
| like a possible law enforcement issue that needs to be
| investigated. I've worked at enough tech companies to
| know I don't want them trying to handle it. Freedom of
| speech is about protecting ideas you may hate and find
| utterly horrible.
|
| And a big middle finger to you for that last dig there.
| My family fought in the American Revolution - worked for
| ourselves then and still do now.
| revelio wrote:
| By foreign actors do you just mean foreign people in
| general or something more specific. Because using the
| word "actors" give what you say an ominous overtone, but
| I can't figure out how it's not that you believe in some
| generic but wide ranging conspiracy of non-Americans to
| disrupt America with .... opinions. Those things that
| Americans are famously lacking and reluctant to espouse.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If the government says vaccine misinformation is killing
| thousands of people on air on the evening news and Facebook
| agrees and starts banning people posting it and those folks
| have to share their misinformation on their own sites
| rather than Facebook how has your freedom been infringed?
|
| Likewise if the communique takes place via a memo.
|
| You have a right to communicate what you please you don't
| have a right to have your thoughts carried by a particular
| site any more than you have a right to have them posted in
| the New York Times or relayed on Fox News.
| revelio wrote:
| Yeah that works great up until the people who distribute
| memos act like Facebook, and then the people who sell you
| ink, and then the phone companies, and then ....
|
| Really why is this so hard to understand. There's nothing
| special about tech firms in this story except the naivety
| of their executives, who have ended up looking like utter
| tools in this whole sorry charade. These idiots
| systematically suppressed discussion of the lab leak
| hypothesis for over a year and then once the Biden admin
| started taking it seriously decided, whoops, maybe it
| wasn't misinformation after all and stopped banning it.
| Twitter was systematically banning stuff even whilst
| expressing serious reservations internally because they
| knew the claims were true. Yet these firms are
| nonetheless still doing better than Google, at least
| Facebook and Twitter realized they were wrong in the end.
|
| This thread seems to be full of FAANG employees
| desperately trying to come up with some reason why their
| employers are not in fact easily duped rubes who would
| sew the mouths of their own mothers shut if a 100%
| conflicted mid-level nobody at the CDC suggested it.
| stcroixx wrote:
| The government has no authority to decide for me whether
| something is misinformation. They can share their
| opinions and I'll be the judge of what I trust. If
| Facebook reaches the same conclusion independently,
| without being coerced by the government, I'd react
| according to how I feel about the specific issue. Maybe
| I'd stop using the platform. I'm not claiming NYT or FB
| needs to publish my views, I don't expect that at all.
| What I don't want is the government telling them what
| they can and can't publish.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| I don't give a rat's ass about the free speech rights _of the
| government_. Why on earth would I? The government is already
| massively constrained in what it can say and that's _entirely
| appropriate_ because the purpose of free speech is to protect
| the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree
| with them.
|
| You may disagree with the ruling but if you're on the side of
| free speech, you should definitely cheer it.
| staticman2 wrote:
| " I don't give a rat's ass about the free speech rights of
| the government...the purpose of free speech is to protect
| the right of the weak to speak even when the strong
| disagree with them."
|
| That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued
| "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the
| right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should
| free speech be a right?
|
| Out of curiosity I pulled up an article in Stanford
| Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
|
| One principle put out by John Stewart Mill is that free
| speech is valuable because it leads to the truth. If this
| is correct you should arguably be concerned if the
| government can't engage in it because we will all be lead
| away from the truth.
|
| The article says "... arguments show that one of the main
| reasons for justifying free speech (political speech) is
| important, not for it's own sake but because it lets us
| exercise another important value (democracy)."
|
| So if we accept this then if censoring the strong
| undermines democracy it could be bad, especially if they
| became strong because the weak elected them into office to
| represent them.
|
| The article quotes someone who says "Speech, in short, is
| never a value in and of itself but is always produced with
| the precincts of some assumed conception of good."
|
| In other words, don't argue free speech is good because
| free speech is good.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It's also not free speech if it's only for some. The
| government is a very important player in our society, we
| depend on them being able to speak freely!
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| I just don't understand how you can think this. If I
| profess my religion in a private capacity, that's a
| rightful exercise of my freedom of speech and religion.
|
| If I profess those same beliefs while acting in a public
| capacity I am infringing on the rights of others by
| favoring or creating the impression of favoring a
| particular religion.
|
| You individually have freedom of association. If you
| don't like gay people, or Vietnamese people, or MAGA
| republicans - ultimately nobody can make you be friends
| with them in your private life. However, acting in an
| official capacity you're absolutely obliged to be
| neutral.
|
| The government very rightly has restrictions on how
| partial it can be as it is the arbiter of our society.
| aksss wrote:
| To be clear we're not talking about the government
| speaking freely. They do so and with seeming impunity for
| bs relative to their position of authority.
|
| We're talking about the government coercively censoring
| speech of citizens in/on the media, not under emergency
| orders or commandeering, but as a matter of routine. Yes
| they've always done this even with the major news
| networks thirty or forty years ago (pre-Internet). It was
| wrong then just like it's wrong now. It's more visible
| and obvious now to more people, the evidence is right in
| front of us through leaks and email disclosures from
| efforts like the Twitter files.
| tdehnel wrote:
| They certainly can speak freely and any number of
| channels will pick up their statements and carry them
| without much critique.
|
| But their right to free speech ends when they start to
| hurt citizens' rights to express themselves.
| dvt wrote:
| > That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just
| argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to
| protect the right of free speech." It's circular
| reasoning. Why should free speech be a right?
|
| That's not what GP argued, and you're being quite
| uncharitable. Their argument goes something like this:
| 1) Free speech is meant to protect those that don't have
| a monopoly on speech 2) The government has a
| monopoly on--or can coerce--speech (because it taxes you,
| appoints the judges, has a police force, etc.) 3)
| Therefore, protecting the free speech of the government
| is not really a stewardship of free speech
|
| This argument makes sense and is not circular. The
| definition of free speech doesn't even come into play
| (and is in fact assumed to be desirable: after all, it's
| in the Bill of Rights.)
| staticman2 wrote:
| " 1) Free speech is meant to protect those that don't
| have a monopoly on speech "
|
| You lost me here.
|
| How can the government have a monopoly on speech if we're
| talking about the government being prevented from saying
| things by a judge?
| dvt wrote:
| > How can the government have a monopoly on speech if
| we're talking about the government being prevented from
| saying things by a judge?
|
| The judicial branch is supposed to be independent by
| design[1], so it's _of_ the government, but not quite
| _the_ government.
|
| [1] https://judiciallearningcenter.org/judicial-
| independence/
| staticman2 wrote:
| So the judicial branch is and is not quite the
| government, and the government has a mnonopoly on speech
| even though they can't say things, and I'm being
| uncharitable by finding this argument less than coherent.
| Got it.
| dvt wrote:
| > (1) So the judicial branch is and is not quite the
| government, and (2) the government has a mnonopoly on
| speech even though they can't say things
|
| On (1): yes, that's the idea behind the independent role
| of the judiciary. They're supposed to be _quis custodiet
| ipsos custodes_. Sometimes, it doesn 't work out, but
| usually it does. I'll concede that there's gray area
| here, but not quite enough to make the argument non-
| coherent.
|
| On (2): the government can _definitely_ say things (the
| White House literally has a Communications Director), but
| also (and more importantly) both stifle and coerce
| speech. I 'm not sure how you came to this second
| conclusion.
| staticman2 wrote:
| My issue is your claim the government has a monopoly on
| speech, not your other claims.
|
| Imagine I'm a visitor from mars and you tell me the
| government has a monopoly on speech. I say, fascinating,
| so only the government is allowed to talk?
|
| And you say, well no, anybody can talk, generally.
|
| And I say, oh, do you mean the government does the
| majority of the talking?
|
| And you say no, most talking is done by private
| individuals.
|
| And I say oh, do you mean the government decides what
| people can say?
|
| And you say no, no exactly, see there's these people
| called judges who are not quite the government who
| prevent the government from deciding what people can say.
|
| And I'm thinking "?????????"
| dvt wrote:
| > My issue is your claim the government has a monopoly on
| speech, not your other claims.
|
| Ah gotcha, yeah maybe that's too strong of a premise. You
| can probably fix it by saying "potential monopoly" or
| something in the vein of "it would be easiest for the
| government to monopolize speech," as historically,
| freedom of the press was meant to counter or criticize
| strong central governments (e.g. monarchies).
| tdehnel wrote:
| From a constitutional perspective (which is the
| perspective Supreme Court Justices swear to have), the
| ability of the government to limit speech is not allowed.
| Full stop. Sources below.
|
| First Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make
| no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
| prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
| freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the
| people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
| Government for a redress of grievances."
|
| Constitutional Oath taken by all current Supreme Court
| Justices: "I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm)
| that I will support and defend the Constitution of the
| United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
| that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;
| that I take this obligation freely, without any mental
| reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well
| and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on
| which I am about to enter. So help me God."
| staticman2 wrote:
| "From a constitutional perspective (which is the
| perspective Supreme Court Justices swear to have), the
| ability of the government to limit speech is not allowed.
| Full stop. Sources below."
|
| The Supreme court has never said anything like what you
| just typed in 200+ years of american history. Do you type
| this every day, constantly knashing you teeth at the
| existence of trade secret laws, copyright laws, libel
| laws, and the like, or does the rheteric come out in
| service of special goals?
| tdehnel wrote:
| Wow what a jerk. I'm going off the Constitutional Oath,
| which all judges take. Obviously they use judicial
| discretion but be charitable for a second and at least
| try to understand my point, which is that deviating from
| what the Constitution says is the very rare exception,
| not the rule.
| ponow wrote:
| > Why should free speech be a right?
|
| You cannot be serious.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I think you might be reading something that's not there.
| Asking the question doesn't imply an answer. And it's
| probably better if people can answer it rigorously rather
| than just repeat the claim because everyone else does.
| Spivak wrote:
| You're reading this wrong, they're not saying that free
| speech shouldn't be a right but that "free speech is
| important because it protects free speech" isn't very
| useful when trying to evaluate whether the government
| itself ought to also have or not have free speech
| protections.
|
| Is free speech important solely because it protects you
| against a malicious government and therefore there's no
| issue at all with non-government entities censoring
| others' speech and no reason for the government itself to
| have it? Or is it important because the marketplace of
| ideas confers some societal benefit and it would be
| better if agents of the government were equal
| participants in that market?
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| I think you misunderstand what I'm saying.
|
| The spirit of free speech is to protect saying things
| that are either unpopular or inconvenient to the
| powerful. Speech that is popular or convenient to the
| powerful needs no such protection! Even in the most
| repressive states you can still praise the party or the
| dear leader.
|
| The truths that we need free speech to find are not the
| congenial truths, but the inconvenient ones.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Do you think that what is popular today will be popular
| tomorrow, so needs no defending?
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Yes, I do think that whoever is today's top dog doesn't
| need defending today. The alternative is just using power
| to crush the powerless which- I mean okay, that's a
| normal human reaction but I think it is beneath our
| aspirations as a country.
| evandale wrote:
| lol I gotta say I've been trying to read the defenders of
| this and take them seriously but your incredulity matches
| mine...
|
| .. and people are replying to you and _still_ defending the
| government and think they should have unilateral power over
| their people
|
| I'm kind of speechless about how many people think this
| ruling is a bad thing.. like who in the hell out there
| believes the government should have OPINIONS? Can one of
| you reply to me?
|
| It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an
| opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no
| idea how you could come up with an argument to change my
| mind on that.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an
| opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no
| idea how you could come up with an argument to change my
| mind on that.
|
| Well, I wouldn't presume to make you think, but _BY
| DEFINITION_ corporations are legal persons.
|
| Corporation. Incorporate. Corporeal.
|
| This is a legal definition, not biological or
| sociological or religious or whatever else.
|
| And under that legal framework, the corporation can act
| as a person and enter into contracts, initiate lawsuits,
| be sued, be prosecuted, etc. And more basically, the
| corporation can make public statements which express the
| _opinion_ of the corporation.
|
| Once folks set aside political bigotries, this shouldn't
| be a hard concept to understand.
| npunt wrote:
| FYI the purpose of an entire branch of government
| (judiciary) is to have opinions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_opinion
| brightlancer wrote:
| Judicial opinions != Personal opinions
|
| It ain't the same ballpark. It ain't the same league. It
| ain't even the same freakin' sport.
|
| Equating the two is like equating a sea sponge and a dish
| sponge. "Well, they're both sponges!"
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Equating the two is like equating a sea sponge and a
| dish sponge. "Well, they're both sponges!"
|
| Actually, they _can_ [0] be. In fact, I use sea sponges
| as dish sponges _every single day_.
|
| [0] https://www.naturalbathbody.com/natural-sea-sponges/
| evandale wrote:
| The judiciary branch is separate from the legislative
| branch and I was under the impression we were discussing
| the legislative branch of government.
| afavour wrote:
| > It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an
| opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no
| idea how you could come up with an argument to change my
| mind on that.
|
| I guess I don't understand your point here unless we're
| being ultra-literal and saying a corporation can't have
| an opinion because it doesn't have a physical brain
| developing individual thought.
|
| An example of "corporate opinion" off the top of my head:
| Facebook is in favour of advertising. I guess it's just a
| shorthand for "the executive board and shareholders of
| Facebook share the collective view that advertising is
| good" but I don't think anyone is particularly confused
| about what is meant when someone says Facebook is favour
| of something.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Facebook is made up of many parts. Some parts find
| advertising to be directly opposite of their goals. The
| react team may not like ads being force in their docs for
| example. If own shares through a pension I may not like
| advertising.
|
| The CEO decides who manages which roles and divides
| authority. Opinions comes from these power structures.
| They could be divided on issues or unified. They speak
| for the company.
|
| Google is so big you often have conflicting goals from
| different power structures.
| afavour wrote:
| > Google is so big you often have conflicting goals from
| different power structures.
|
| In that situation I'd say Google is conflicted on the
| topic. It's still not all that different from a human
| being, IMO, I can be internally conflicted on a topic and
| find it difficult to find an opinion that encompasses all
| of my thoughts.
|
| I get that it's shorthand and euphemism but I don't think
| it's all that confusing.
| evandale wrote:
| If anyone reads this thread please see this comment:
| parent is not even trying to argue in good faith.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36621860
| afavour wrote:
| Good grief, man.
| evandale wrote:
| Can you answer any of my questions? I think they are all
| pretty straightforward.
| evandale wrote:
| > because it doesn't have a physical brain developing
| individual thought.
|
| You summed up my point with a single sentence I can agree
| with, can't argue there!
|
| In your scenario what's the opinion Facebook has about
| advertising? I'm in favour of more bike lanes in my city
| but I don't consider that an opinion. Describing _why_
| I'm in favour has an element of opinion but voting yes/no
| is not an opinion to me. Plus, any old why isn't good
| enough for an opinion. For instance, if Facebook says
| they're in favour of advertising because it helps them
| make money then I don't think I can consider that an
| opinion.
|
| I suppose corporate slogans and mission statements are
| opinions (We believe the customer is always right) but
| it's hard for me to call that an opinion because are your
| values actually opinions? I would say that they can be
| formed using opinions but I would be reluctant to say
| they're opinions themselves because of the "strength" of
| them I guess?
| DropInIn wrote:
| It's pretty clear that your "reasoning" is based not in
| any logic but almost exclusively in your "feels"...
|
| You just dislike corps and it's undermining every thought
| you have on this topic.
| evandale wrote:
| Mind telling me how it's clear that I dislike
| corporations?
|
| I'll proudly admit I have no trust in corporations, but
| dislike is a little far. There's corporations I like but
| there's no corporations I trust.
| DropInIn wrote:
| Any entity you distrust is also an entity that most
| reasonably fits into the classification of dislike.
|
| You may like thier products or services but that's not
| the same as liking the corp itself.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Your conception of what constitutes an "opinion" is
| different than any other one I've ever encountered.
| evandale wrote:
| What's your conception of an opinion?
|
| To me am opinion is a belief you have that's not based on
| facts.
|
| Why do you want your government to have a belief not
| based on facts? Furthermore, why would you want the
| government to push this belief on its people?
|
| Lastly why would you care about the opinion (remember: an
| opinion is a belief that isn't based on facts) of a
| corporation to the point that you'd defend their right to
| make statements that aren't factual?
| afavour wrote:
| > To me am opinion is a belief you have that's not based
| on facts.
|
| > Why do you want your government to have a belief not
| based on facts?
|
| There's some kind of fallacy at work here, you're
| establishing what your personal definition of something
| is then arguing with OP while taking your personal belief
| as fact.
|
| "Opinions are not based on facts" definitely isn't a
| universally accepted definition of an opinion. An opinion
| doesn't _have_ to be based on facts but it 's not
| precluded from it.
| evandale wrote:
| If there is a fallacy then you need tell me your
| definition of an opinion or the widely accepted
| definition.
|
| I can work with you if we have a common understanding but
| we're not at that point yet.
| afavour wrote:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/opinion
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/op
| ini...
|
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/opinion
| evandale wrote:
| Can you please just summarize? There's way too many
| definitions and this isn't helpful.
|
| I gave you my opinion on what an opinion is, now why
| can't you return the favour instead of throwing thousands
| of words back in my face with no nuance or context?
|
| If you're not interested in the conversation that's fine
| too, but just say so.
| afavour wrote:
| I won't be replying any further to this thread. Reading
| it back I had the realization that once we've gotten to
| the point where we're debating the meaning of the word
| "opinion" it is so far off-topic as to be useless to the
| discussion at hand, frankly. All the best.
| evandale wrote:
| Alright, I thought I was trying to end the debate and
| find common ground but you didn't want to tell me in your
| own words the definition you use for opinion.
|
| You had me define it in my own words and was able to tell
| me I'm wrong but you never gave me the same chance.
|
| There's a reason why people throw their hands up and say
| "it's just my opinion!" when they're blatantly wrong
| about something. It's a phase used to indicate they don't
| care about facts and they don't have to defend their
| position, which I thought was the common definition of
| opinion: a position one holds even when the facts say
| they're wrong.
| emodendroket wrote:
| An opinion is a belief which is not itself objectively
| factual. Factual information can certainly be a basis for
| them. If we go back the advertising example, we could
| take two objective facts about advertising:
|
| * online advertising allows consumers to learn about new
| products and services
|
| * advertising incentivizes user data collection in order
| that it may be more effective.
|
| From just these two facts one could easily come to a pro-
| or anti-advertising position based on their values and
| the relative weights they choose to put on each fact.
| afavour wrote:
| OK, I guess we _are_ being ultra-literal. Which is fine!
|
| > I'm in favour of more bike lanes in my city but I don't
| consider that an opinion
|
| ...I do not understand why not. To my perception that is
| very much the definition of an opinion.
|
| But anyway, we clearly have a bunch of different
| definitions in play here. I think we can safely agree to
| disagree.
| evandale wrote:
| It's not an opinion because IMO you need a why for an
| opinion. There's an implicit why most of the time. But
| Facebook supporting marketing because they make more
| money with marketing can be a verified fact - there's no
| opinion element in it and I don't think Facebook
| supporting marketing by itself is an opinion.
|
| If you like rain because it waters your garden I'd
| hesitate to call that opinion because you have a factual
| reason.
|
| If you like rain because it sounds pleasant that's an
| opinion.
|
| If you like rain because it restores your chi it's
| (probably) an opinion.
|
| I say governments and corporations can't have opinions
| for lots of reasons. One of them being they're not
| people, others that follow from that, like you need
| thoughts or feelings to have an opinion.
|
| It just doesn't sit right with me having faceless
| entities publishing opinions because by definition
| opinions aren't based on facts and we have enough of a
| problem with regular people spreading misinformation.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > I say governments and corporations can't have opinions
| for lots of reasons. One of them being they're not people
|
| That's just your opinion. Others are of the opinion that
| corporations are in fact people and deserve all the
| protections that people deserve regarding free speech.
| Some such people even sit on the Supreme Court!
| Materialists would even go so far as to argue countries
| are conscious.
| afavour wrote:
| Alright, this will be my last contribution here. But:
|
| To start, "I like rain" is a factual statement derived
| _from_ your opinion, not an opinion itself. So let 's
| change it for "rain is good":
|
| > If you think rain is good because it waters your garden
| I'd hesitate to call that opinion because you have a
| factual reason.
|
| > If you think rain is good because it sounds pleasant
| that's an opinion.
|
| You're making distinctions that don't exist.
|
| Thinking rain is good because it waters your garden is
| based on the _fact_ that it will help your garden grow.
|
| Thinking rain is good because it sounds pleasant is based
| on the _fact_ that you enjoy the sound of the rain.
|
| Both of these ignore counter-factuals. Sure, _you_ think
| rain is good because it waters your garden, _I_ think
| rain is bad because I live at the bottom of the hill and
| all that rainwater frequently floods my house. _I_ think
| rain is bad because I dislike the sound.
|
| Your opinion is based on the fact most relevant to you,
| my opinion is based on the fact most relevant to me.
| Choosing which facts are most important is a personal
| choice that results in an opinion. They're all opinions!
| To finally bring the thing full circle:
|
| > But Facebook supporting marketing because they make
| more money with marketing can be a verified fact
|
| It is an opinion supported by fact. A Facebook exec could
| make the argument that they could make more money by
| dropping advertising and instead charge a monthly
| membership fee. There are definitely fewer facts
| available to back up that opinion but it would still be a
| valid one.
| evandale wrote:
| Definitely agree to disagree at this point.
|
| > You're making distinctions that don't exist.
|
| >Thinking rain is good because it waters your garden is
| based on the fact that it will help your garden grow.
|
| >Thinking rain is good because it sounds pleasant is
| based on the fact that you enjoy the sound of the rain.
|
| I'm not sure how you can say the distinctions don't
| exist. There has to be an analogy but I don't think I can
| come up with one that will satisfy you. I mean you had to
| rewrite my example to make your point.. not sure how
| that's not the world's most obvious strawman, you
| literally twisted what I said into something else and
| went on to argue against that.
|
| I think it's easy enough to glean what I mean from my
| past replies if someone wanted to try to understand me.
| afavour wrote:
| > you literally twisted what I said into something else
| and went on to argue against that.
|
| I had to, your original post contained two factual
| statements and no opinions, so there was nothing to
| argue!
|
| Based on your previous replies I _think_ your distinction
| is that liking the sound of rain is different because
| it's a thought conjured up inside your head? "It is good
| that my garden grows" is also a thought conjoured up in
| your head that others may disagree with. Your argument
| seems to require some kind of appeal to objective
| authority that doesn't exist.
|
| (I know I said the last post was the end for me but I'll
| admit to being somewhat fascinated by the counter
| argument here)
| evandale wrote:
| Are you going to continue this conversation or stop? You
| continue to muddy the waters and twist things and now I
| don't even know what the original point is.
|
| You've continuously refused to define opinion for me and
| continuously refuse to put anything in your own words.
| You throw paragraphs of strawman at me because I'm being
| unclear. You throw 3 dictionary links in my face with at
| least 25 different definitions and can't zero in on a
| single one.
|
| Back at the top you said:
|
| > An example of "corporate opinion" off the top of my
| head: Facebook is in favour of advertising.
|
| Can you first confirm you said that and you stand by the
| statement? If you do, explain to me how Facebook saying
| "we are in favour of advertising" is an opinion.
|
| Now explain to me how "I like rain" is different and not
| an opinion. You told me "I like rain" is "a factual
| statement derived from your opinion" and not an opinion
| and then used that to strawman my argument.
|
| Where I stand "I am in favour of advertising" is the
| exact same format and is not an opinion from YOUR
| definition. So how about you explain exactly what you
| want from me because your contradictions are confusing
| me.
| afavour wrote:
| > Are you going to continue this conversation or stop?
|
| I am going to stop. Your definition of opinion is not one
| I've ever encountered before but you're welcome to hold
| it. I can't see any point in continuing to explain the
| differences.
| evandale wrote:
| What's your definition!? Can you please summarize it, I'm
| dying to know here... or answer this?
|
| > An example of "corporate opinion" off the top of my
| head: Facebook is in favour of advertising.
|
| How is Facebook saying "we are in favour of advertising"
| an opinion?
|
| How is "I like rain" is different and not an opinion? You
| told me "I like rain" is "a factual statement derived
| from your opinion" and not an opinion and then used that
| to strawman my argument.
|
| Where I stand "I am in favour of advertising" is the
| exact same format and is not an opinion from YOUR
| definition. How are they different?
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| I mean if you can drone strike a citizen as president
| there is little left to have in the toolbox of
| "unilateral power over their people".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-
| Awla...
| [deleted]
| mc32 wrote:
| All that needs to happen for those loyalists to change
| their mind, is to have the party governing to change to
| someone they disagree with. Then you will hear how the
| gov't is killing free speech (that would be a rightful
| complaint). But we all know what happened to Qwest
| communications when they declined the gov'ts offer to spy
| on citizens.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The platforms had a preexisting way to report ToS
| violations. The government made _statements of fact_ about
| posts that violated those ToS. The platforms were free to
| act or not act on those reports.
| roflyear wrote:
| You can't think of a scenario where the government should
| be able to express a thought about something? ;)
| JackFr wrote:
| For instance, if you're the FAA, you should express
| opinions about airline operations, air safety, etc. That
| is your role. If you are the FDA, you should express
| opinions about food and drug safety. And in both those
| cases note that you are a regulator, and within your
| domain, it is your role to regulate the players.
|
| If you are the White House, you are not a regulator of
| anything. It is fine to express your opinion. In fact the
| White House has a daily press briefing for specifically
| that purpose. It is fine to call out people with whom you
| disagree. Perfectly OK to call them dangerous charlatans
| and liars. It is not OK to censor their speech. It is not
| OK use the implicit coercive force of the executive
| branch to encourage third parties to censor them.
|
| It's not hard to understand.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If you are the White House, you are not a regulator of
| anything
|
| If you are the White House, you are the ur-regulator of
| anything any part of the executive branch is a regulator
| of, as well as the things that the Executive Office of
| the President is the actual direct regulator of (which
| are mostly internal to government operations.)
| roflyear wrote:
| Man, people are being really rude here just for me asking
| a question.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| They have plenty of ways to do so without using
| intermediaries at social media companies.
| roflyear wrote:
| That's implying compelling speech which is not the
| discussion.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| The rights apply to people not the govt lol
|
| Edit: Amazing, a perfect factual comment is downvoted.
| roflyear wrote:
| I'm just saying there are times where you may want the
| government to be able to express opinions....
| caseysoftware wrote:
| A government doesn't "express opinions" they "enact
| policy."
| JackFr wrote:
| The daily White House press briefing is an excellent
| venue.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Yeah, and no one is preventing that.
|
| There is a diff between opinion and force/blackmail
| disguised as opinion.
|
| "You have a fine shop here, would be a shame if it burned
| down".
|
| Syntactically, it is an opinion. But it is not just an
| opinion if comes from a mobster.
| evandale wrote:
| No? What!? Name a scenario in which the government would
| put forth an opinion on something.. governments, like
| corporations, can't have opinions.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| I am satisfied for the space of the government's
| unenforceable opinions to be circumscribed.
| roflyear wrote:
| Which restrictions are you cool with?
| mc32 wrote:
| Sure, in addition to all of their organs of
| dissemination, of which they have plenty of options, they
| can also have their own Twitter and Facebook accounts.
|
| What they can't do is ring up Twitter and Facebook and
| say, hey, that's misinformation, do something about it.
| Or have government embeds giving guidance.
|
| That's hilariously very ayatollesque behavior!
| uLogMicheal wrote:
| The government has plenty of ways to express thoughts.
| Almost every agency has a podium with a room full of
| reporters waiting whenever they want to make a statement.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| They don't have enough channels to do that? They have to
| do it via veiled threat to a speech platform to delete
| users posts?
|
| How can anyone defend this behavior? Just because it's
| your guy doing it? If Trump was telling Twitter to delete
| posts that hurt his re-election chances would you feel
| this same way?
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Unbelievable that you're being downvoted at all. The
| authoritarian minded have definitely increased
| substantially as this site has become more popular and
| drawn increasingly larger crowds. When it was dominated
| by those capable of logic and reasoning and having some
| knowledge of the world, authoritarianism would get
| smacked down hard and rightfully so.
| roflyear wrote:
| I am sure you are just as illogical as other people - and
| it would be good for you to realize that!
|
| Never did I say that I support governments. I was only
| asking what I thought (and was wrong about) was a
| positive provoking question.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I would be _even more_ be supportive if the political sides
| were reversed. Imagine a Trump White House was threatening
| social media companies, and pressuring them to restrict posts
| on climate change, civil rights, or some other progressive
| cause. Why wouldn 't I support it if the political sides were
| reversed?
|
| The First Amendment doesn't just protect people from being
| imprisoned by the government for their speech. It also
| prohibits the government from pressuring or coercing private
| individuals and companies into censoring content. Otherwise,
| the government could just pressure private entities into
| doing whatever censorship they want. This isn't a ban on
| speech, this is a ban on government coercion.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| What was the justification for the ban on the hunter Biden
| stories? Why not just issue a statement- the White House has
| a press office that could just deny things. They went around
| their messaging in an unusual way.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Washington is incredibly corrupt. There is no limits to
| what they will do to stop someone/anyone from trying to
| drain up the swamp.
|
| Was shocking when my messages To friends on Facebook were
| being blocked.
|
| 1984 was meant to be a warning to the masses not a guide on
| how to oppress people.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You said in your other post that the vaccine was gene
| therapy and that cheap treatments were effective. I'm
| presuming you either mean Hydroxychloroquine or horse
| paste. None of those statements are true and because of
| them countless people died. The statements are worthy of
| head shaking now. During the pandemic they constituted
| shouting fire in a crowded theater. They are
| fundamentally unworthy of protection.
| kolanos wrote:
| "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular analogy
| for speech or actions whose principal purpose is to
| create panic, and in particular for speech or actions
| which may for that reason be thought to be outside the
| scope of free speech protections.
|
| It was first used against a man in 1917 for giving an
| anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio. It was later popularized
| to charge people handing out anti-war flyers opposing the
| WWI draft with sedition.
|
| It was later overturned in 1969, in which the Supreme
| Court held that "the constitutional guarantees of free
| speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or
| proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law
| violation except where such advocacy is directed to
| inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is
| likely to incite or produce such action."
|
| The fact that people still cite this analogy to argue for
| the abridgment of free speech 100 years later is truly
| disturbing.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I'm not ignorant of the history I merely disagree.
|
| I think promoting what every educated person knows are
| provable falsehoods liable to cause the death of
| thousands during a public emergency ought to fall outside
| of free speech. There isn't some controversy about
| whether covid vaccines change your DNA or whether horse
| paste is an effective treatment that obviates the need to
| vaccinate. These are lies and every promoter of such lies
| has heard them denounced as such a hundred times thus it
| is willfully promoting what they reasonably ought to know
| are lies that they reasonably ought to know will lead to
| deaths. If they were promoting it during the pandemic
| they were doing so during a public health emergency.
|
| That said the government isn't trying to prosecute they
| are trying to advise social media companies to stop
| boosting lies and hosting it. Let the dissenters get a
| mastodon if they want to share such.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I had no clue about this at ALL, and I went to multiple
| top schools all the way from kindergarten !
|
| Whoa
| ziptechnologies wrote:
| You are repeating a narrative from mass media, hook line
| and sinker.
|
| What you consider evidence of "provable falsehoods" could
| potentially be the result of a captured medical research
| establishment with ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
| It's not hard to imagine such aberrations in the data if
| you understand the sources of funding for research and
| the sometimes vindictive bureaucracy present in the
| medical journals. There are numerous studies
| (intentionally buried in search results) that claim
| otherwise.
|
| Your statement - "None of these statements are true" is
| perhaps not as true as you think. It takes a brave and
| intelligent person to consider that the general narrative
| or your pre-existing beliefs may be flawed. A sign of
| true intelligence is the willingness to be wrong. Our
| world is awash in disinformation, but based on your
| comments, you will have to let go of almost your entire
| worldview to see the truth. So we arrive at the moment of
| truth - blue pill or red pill? We need more intelligent
| people to wake up. You can choose to mock this post or me
| or anything else- it doesn't bother me. I am asking you
| and others who advocate for top-down restriction of
| dissenting opinions to reconsider and accept that perhaps
| the mainstream narrative is an instrument of control of
| thought.
|
| https://www.biznews.com/health/2023/01/23/ivermectin-
| efficac...
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7534595/
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32673060/
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The fact that some understandings change, are clarified,
| or are in doubt doesn't imply there aren't provable lies.
| Statements can be said to be on a spectrum of provable
| truth to provable lie say from 2+2=4 to 2+2=17 and on a
| spectrum from neutral to harmful.
|
| If I say ziptechnologies is Michael Jackson living in
| hiding with the mom of one of the neverland kids I'm
| provably lying. There is no legitimate doubt as to his
| death and no reason to believe that is your actual
| identity. If I say you are a drug dealer and invite the
| police to raid your home I have crossed over from neutral
| to harmful.
|
| The fact that many statements can't be evaluated so
| simply doesn't mean there aren't obvious lines that many
| statements clearly cross articulable objective standards.
| membrcovidb wrote:
| Both of those statements are actually true.
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| There was no ban. The links from the "Twitter files" they
| the WH asked to be removed were all dick pics (you can
| confirm this via archive.org) which were a violation of the
| Twitter TOS.
| chr1 wrote:
| Government agencies secretly communicating with people is not
| a free speech, There are many more cases when government
| employee can't talk about work with other people, so i don't
| see a reason to be horrified.
| hiidrew wrote:
| I couldn't find the list on my first skim. Then found in the
| footnotes, in case anyone is curious:
|
| "2 "Social-media companies" include Facebook/Meta, Twitter,
| YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok, Sina
| Weibo, QQ, Telegram, Snapchat, Kuaishou, Qzone, Pinterest,
| Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, Discord, Twitch, Tumblr, Mastodon,
| and like companies"
| themgt wrote:
| The American elite's novel definition of "free speech" is
| that the bedrock foundation is the FBI's freedom to instruct
| social media conglomerates to delete the speech posted by US
| citizens and ban their accounts. If the government doesn't
| even have the freedom to tell trillion dollar companies who
| should be allowed to voice what opinions, the first amendment
| is dead paper.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Do blanket bans on speech usually have a large group of
| exceptions? Not to mention the government can use their
| official accounts to communicate whatever they want, they
| just need to refrain from asking companies to take down
| things (that aren't a threat to national security, etc) until
| this case in adjudicated.
| jtbayly wrote:
| No way.
|
| The government is still _entirely_ free to post its news,
| including on social media.
|
| What it's not allowed to do (at least temporarily) is tell to
| those organizations what speech it deems unacceptable from US
| citizens.
|
| This is the entire purpose of the first amendment. This is a
| huge win for freedom of speech.
|
| The government _must_ not be doing this.
| ndr wrote:
| > It amounts to "no one from these 8 government agencies may
| communicate with anyone working at these three non profits,
| 20 social media companies or any similar organization"
|
| That's plain false. From middle of page 5 there's the list of
| things explicitly not banned, it starts with "IT IS FURTHER
| ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this
| Preliminary Injunction:".
| brasic wrote:
| Adding a list of carve outs doesn't make the ban ok.
| ndr wrote:
| You wrote a false claim and are now changing the subject.
|
| Which ban is not ok, specifically?
| mc32 wrote:
| The 1A grants the right to free speech to the people --people
| who do not have the force or threat of violence to coerce. It
| does not speak to the freedom a government has to
| communicate.
|
| Besides, the government has its own organs at its disposal to
| communicate with the people.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| -> Then tell me with a straight face that you think it's a
| good thing for free speech.
|
| I'm just curious, can you tell us what you take issue with?
| brasic wrote:
| It's a blatantly illegal prior restraint on speech,
| completely at odds with the values the plaintiffs and judge
| claim to hold.
|
| Free speech cuts both ways. If you're pleased when a judge
| bans any and all communication among millions of citizens,
| you don't actually value the first amendment, you're just
| cheering a partisan victory.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| > If you're pleased when a judge bans any and all
| communication among millions of citizens, you don't
| actually value the first amendment, you're just cheering
| a partisan victory.
|
| What? You seem very misinformed. Here's the ruling:
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd
| .18...
| brasic wrote:
| I linked that in my original comment in this thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616058
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Perhaps read(or reread) it? There is literally nothing in
| there which "bans any and all communication among
| millions of citizens".
| brasic wrote:
| The targets of the injunction are the following agencies.
| The wording makes clear that all members of said agencies
| are in scope of the injunction:
|
| HHS: 80,000
|
| NIAID: 18,000
|
| CDC: 11,000
|
| Census Bureau: 5,000
|
| FBI: 40,000 (double counted under DOJ)
|
| DOJ: 115,000
|
| CISA: 3000
|
| DHS: 260,000
|
| State Department: 14,000
|
| Among the actions prohibited are communicating with
| "social media companies", defined in the injunction as
| including:
|
| "Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp,
| Instagram, WeChat,TikTok, Sina Weibo, QQ, Telegram,
| Snapchat, Kuaishou, Qzone, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn,
| Quora, Discord, Twitch, Tumblr, Mastodon, and like
| companies."
|
| That list, especially given the "like companies" part,
| includes easily several million people.
|
| Also "Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality
| Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like
| project or group".
|
| What makes a group "like" those orgs?
|
| The prohibited topics and purposes of communication are
| incredibly vague, basically anything contrary to
| "protected free speech", which has no definition in the
| injunction and is famously tricky to define in US law.
|
| This amounts to a blanket ban from where I'm sitting.
|
| If I were a low level staffer at DHS this would arguably
| prohibit me from expressing opinions on this matter to a
| friend or spouse working at a social media company, for
| fear of, for example, "encouraging reduction of content
| posted with social-media companies containing protected
| free speech". The fact that that example is silly is
| precisely my point. Injunctions must be narrowly tailored
| to address the specific conduct at issue. This is so
| broad as to make a joke of the process and in doing so
| harms the free speech and rule of law that are at issue
| in this case.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| It's really strange that the PDF you've linked to omits
| pages 2-4. Half of the list of prohibited activities, as
| well as some context, are missing from it.
|
| Try the Reason article posted earlier:
| https://reason.com/volokh/2023/07/04/july-4-injunction-
| bars-...
|
| Given your example of a DHS staffer expressing opinions
| to a friend or family members who is employed at a social
| media company, there are many regulated industries like
| government and social media, where employees must
| disclose conflicts of interest. If rules reflecting this
| injunction were to be adopted, then disclosing
| relationships with social media employees would be quite
| reasonable. DHS staffers, who already go through
| extensive background checks, would not be significantly
| more burdened by this than any of the other disclosures
| that are already required.
|
| >CISA: 3000
|
| Glad you mentioned them, as their history of partisan
| censorship is well documented: https://web.archive.org/we
| b/20230318074435/https://report.fo...
| shkkmo wrote:
| > The prohibited topics and purposes of communication are
| incredibly vague, basically anything contrary to
| "protected free speech", which has no definition in the
| injunction and is famously tricky to define in US law.
|
| By "incredibly vague" you mean "specified with a detailed
| 10 point list over 1.5 pages with an additional page of
| specific exclusions"
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| It is very strange that this PDF omits pages 2-4. The
| full list of prohibited activities, plus additional
| context, was given on the Reason article posted here in
| Tuesday:
|
| https://reason.com/volokh/2023/07/04/july-4-injunction-
| bars-...
| chipsa wrote:
| You seem to be under a misapprehension of how free speech
| works for the government: it doesn't. The government has
| no rights. It has powers. People have rights, including
| the right to freedom of speech. If the government is
| barred from doing something directly, they can't then try
| to do it indirectly by telling a third party to do it for
| them.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>Free speech cuts both ways.
|
| You have completely miss understood the purpose of the
| Constitution and the 1st amendment, the Constitution is
| the States and the People limiting the power and role of
| the federal government.
|
| The 1st amendment DOES NOT bestow or grant the US
| Government any freedom of speech, in fact it specifically
| limits the US Governments freedom / power in many ways by
| baring it from actions and activities that curb the
| speech of the people of these united states.
|
| To proclaim this ruling is "violating the rights of the
| government" is a complete and utter inversion of the how
| the constitution works, and the direction of power.
|
| We the people...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| We are all "the people" even when acting in our official
| capacity as government employees. It also doesn't bestow
| shit. It says our rights are self evident and forbids the
| government, which includes the judiciary, from stomping
| on them.
| tdehnel wrote:
| You're really mixed up here. This is the text of the 1st
| Amendment:
|
| "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
| of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
| petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
|
| When a person who works for the government is acting in
| their official capacity, they are the government. In that
| case the 1st Amendment prohibits them from abridging a
| private citizen's freedom of speech.
|
| When that same person is acting as a private citizen,
| they are protected from their speech being abridged by
| the government.
|
| People at work in their government jobs, using government
| equipment and email addresses, with government signatures
| are 100% the government, not private citizens.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| They don't cease to be people nor to have rights. How did
| you think all those cases go where a government employee
| sues the government for infringing on your rights. Judge:
| Sorry you aren't a person again until you clock out
| neeeext!.
| tdehnel wrote:
| That is a logically different scenario from a government
| employee (acting in their official capacity) infringing
| the rights of a private citizen.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Yeah, no this just ain't so. You may in your personal
| devotion believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. If you say
| that in your private life, no problem. That's your
| freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
|
| Now let's say you clock in to your job as Attorney
| General and you make it known that you think Christianity
| is the best and other religions are sad and misguided.
| Then we have a problem.
|
| You have rights as an individual and you have official
| duties acting as the government but the government does
| not _also receive your rights by proxy_.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You have a right to speak freely, duties you agree to
| abide by as an employee, laws you must follow, and an
| obligation to respect the constitution and the rights of
| citizens. The fact that you can't in your official
| capacity promote Jeebus means your conduct must not
| infringe on the rights of others not that you have no
| rights at all.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| It is that infringement of the rights of others which is
| the very issue at hand here! The government undertook
| actions which caused people to be unable to express their
| opinions.
|
| That the government was "just expressing their opinion
| that's totally nonbinding except of course I can exert
| selective regulatory scrutiny if I feel like it" is not a
| get-out-of-jail-free card.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The government notifying Facebook that someone posted
| content contrary to Facebook's TOS doesn't violate the
| rights of the person violating said TOS. You never had a
| right to post content that violates the TOS you agreed to
| in the first place.
|
| You do have a right to share that same content on your
| own website and the government would have no right to
| make you take it down.
|
| In no cases were people unable to express their opinions.
| They were unable to create posts or comments contrary to
| the terms of service of the site they were using to share
| said opinions. Much like neither of US may herein violate
| the terms of Hacker News.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| I think you can see how a court might look at that as
| laundering unconstitutional actions through a private
| entity and hold the government to a higher standard than
| that.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Thanks! Good discussion follows this comment, thank you
| :)
| ch4s3 wrote:
| There's a 5 part test laid out by the 9th circuit in
| Gibson v. Office of Attorney Gen related to speech rights
| of government employees. The government has broad
| latitude to restrict the speech that occurs in the course
| of a government employee's job, SCOTUS laid this out in
| Garcetti v. Ceballos. Moreover, this is an injunction
| related to the pending trial, and while judges can
| sometimes be a bit too aggressive for my taste there
| seems to be a compelling reason here.
| curiousllama wrote:
| I mean, I don't agree with the top level comment here,
| but this isn't a reverse-free-speech issue. Courts are
| absolutely free to restrain what public officials can
| say.
|
| E.g., a regulator cannot say "if you don't burn this
| book, we'll tax you out of existence" while a person
| could say "if you don't burn this book, I'll vote to have
| you taxed out of existence"
| brasic wrote:
| A narrowly tailored prohibition on specific speech aimed
| at specific government officials may be permissable in
| some cases. This injunction is carelessly worded to apply
| to millions of people and to preclude essentially all
| communications related to "protected free speech". The
| breadth and vagueness is specifically what I'm objecting
| to.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Did you read the injunction? it isn't vague at all. The
| injunction only prohibits actions which should be illegal
| in the first place.
|
| Can you name a specific action that you think this
| injunction prohibits or potentially prohibits that you
| think should be allowed?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > If you're pleased when a judge bans any and all
| communication among millions of citizens, you don't
| actually value the first amendment, you're just cheering
| a partisan victory.
|
| Except, that's not what's happening? The judge ordered
| the government not to contact a handful of companies,
| because it was coercing them into censoring speech it
| didn't like. A restraining order on a harasser is not a
| violation of the first amendment. This ruling is like
| putting a restraining order on an executive branch that
| was harassing companies into censoring speech.
| throwaway72762 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Pxtl wrote:
| First off, I think all of us have learned the unfortunate
| downsides to a libertarian approach to free speech over the
| past 20 years. Any free speech purist would do well to remember
| what their legal recourse would be if somebody made elaborate
| false-allegations about you that harmed your career and
| marriage - we have many legal tools that protect us from
| harmful lies. It is not remarkable that there are people who
| believe in "free speech" but do not consider disinformation
| about more nebulous bodies that don't have standing for a
| lawsuit (eg defaming vaccines in general, epidemiology,
| democracy, ethnicity, climate science, trans people, etc) to be
| something that should fall under that protection, any more than
| threats or perjury fall under that protection.
|
| Why is it actionable when you make dangerous public lies that
| hurt somebody's pocketbook, but not public health?
|
| Secondly, the US constitution says "shall make no law". What
| law was made here? What legal action was taken? There wasn't
| even a _threat_ of legal action.
|
| Government workers should be free to contact private
| organizations and speak to them freely and make _requests_ of
| them. "The government would like this content taken down for
| public good" is not making a law, it's making a request. It's
| making their opinion known, and government functionaries are
| allowed to have professional opinions. Something like "In my
| professional opinion as a public health worker, this content is
| dangerous advice that will get people killed, and in the
| interest of public safety it would be best if readers were
| protected from it." That is a reasonable thing for a
| government-employed professional to do and say.
|
| That said, I think they crossed the line here when it became a
| demand instead of a request. When the government starts
| ordering people around instead of just making the public
| interest known, it can easily be argued there's implied threats
| there.
|
| IANAL, but I'm assuming in the end that's where this will land
| during the appeals - that sweeping injunctions against various
| government bodies communicating with social media companies
| will be lifted, but the court will find against the government
| on this case.
| polski-g wrote:
| There was 100%, clear, and explicit threat of legal action:
|
| https://twitter.com/AGAndrewBailey/status/167664657087005491.
| ..
|
| You should read the order before you comment on something
| like this.
| BryantD wrote:
| Okay, let's dig into that one. The tweet quotes the court
| ruling, which says "Psaki publicly reminded Facebook and
| other social-media platforms of the threat of 'legal
| consequences' if they do not censor misinformation more
| aggressively."
|
| But that quote isn't accurate. The second direct quote in
| the ruling is there; "legal consequences" is not[1].
|
| I read the whole thing. I don't think she came close to
| threatening legal action at any point. So what are we to
| make of this? I can't come to any conclusion other than
| that the judge's political bias led him to be sloppy about
| the evidence and misquote government officials in order to
| bolster his case.
|
| 1: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-
| briefings/202...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > Any free speech purist would do well to remember what their
| legal recourse would be if somebody made elaborate false-
| allegations about you that harmed your career and marriage
|
| This is a total straw man. Free speech absolutists almost
| universally acknowledge that fraud, defamation, libel, and
| narrowly defined incitement are special cases that don't
| qualify for protection.
|
| With respect to "disinformation", I would challenge you to
| come up with a strict definition and a framework for applying
| that designation and see how you might feel about giving that
| tool to your political opponents.
| sneak wrote:
| Quite incorrect. Defamation is a tort, not a crime. It's
| legal.
|
| Criminal defamation laws in the US have been repeatedly
| struck down as unconstitutional, not by absolutists but by
| lots of normal working judges.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I'm quite aware of that, and you'll notice if you read my
| comment again that I specifically said "are special cases
| that don't qualify for protection", not that they should
| be a crime. Civil cases are actually a great way to
| address defamation.
| sneak wrote:
| That's the thing, though - they are still "protected
| speech" under 1A. That's why laws banning it get struck
| down.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| If you're going to lawyer every word here, I'll be more
| precise. I mean immune from legal redress, not
| "protected" per 1a. Dealing with defamation via civil
| suit is perfectly consistent with a free speech
| absolutist position, which is my original point.
|
| This is an incredibly tedious exchange, it seems like
| you're going to pains to find the least charitable
| interpretation of what I'm saying.
| rabite wrote:
| [flagged]
| spacemadness wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Nobody is going around defaming vaccine scientists...
|
| I'm sorry, but this is just laughably false.
| rabite wrote:
| [flagged]
| stcroixx wrote:
| Being a government employee carries a threat with it. I don't
| want those people making 'requests' to suppress others points
| of view in any situation, that's not reasonable to me at all.
| I'd rather they have their own press conference or whatever
| and counter whatever it is they disagree with and let me
| decide who I want to trust.
|
| I don't trust anyone to decide what is misinformation or
| disinformation - that's also something I want to decide for
| myself.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| -> Government workers should be free to contact private
| organizations and speak to them freely and make requests of
| them. "The government would like this content taken down for
| public good" is not making a law, it's making a request. It's
| making their opinion known, and government functionaries are
| allowed to have professional opinions. Something like "In my
| professional opinion as a public health worker, this content
| is dangerous advice that will get people killed, and in the
| interest of public safety it would be best if readers were
| protected from it." That is a reasonable thing for a
| government-employed professional to do and say.
|
| A fair point, and I don't disagree at all with this. I only
| wish to share with you my opinion as a fellow citizen:
|
| I'd just as much prefer to use a social media platform that
| doesn't bend the knee to the government. Let the people
| decide for themselves what is useful information or not. We
| live in a representative democracy - this form of government
| is itself a safeguard against an ill-informed populace.
|
| Tangentially, not a small part of the problem may be the
| government's proclivity to lie to the people. "Fool me once,
| shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me..."
|
| EDIT: It might be a useful exercise to consider /why/ we are
| interested in the freedom of speech issue at a foundational
| level. I think that due to the speed of modern communication,
| in a crisis like COVID-19 where people are debating what
| /must/ be done and there are disagreements, we find that the
| common road is a hard one to walk and we run out of ways to
| rationalize a compromise. Maybe this leads us to want a fast
| fix, limit personal responsibilities so the government has
| the space to make things nice again.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| If you're down voting at least be kind enough to tell me
| what you take issue with. I won't bite
| generj wrote:
| I didn't downvote but was tempted.
|
| > I'd just as much prefer to use a social media platform
| that doesn't bend the knee to the government. Let the
| people decide for themselves what is useful information or
| not. We live in a representative democracy - this form of
| government is itself a safeguard against an ill-informed
| populace.
|
| Over the past decade or two with social media we have
| increasingly seen people are NOT good at deciding what
| information is useful. A large percentage of the population
| believes wild folklore, conspiracy theories, etc. We used
| to live in a truth based society (with occasional issues
| when lies were presented as truth). We now have a post-
| truth society where alternative facts are invented at will
| and displace reality. Worse many of the peddlers of
| misinformation are just not harmlessly misinformed but know
| they are lying.
|
| In times of extreme crisis, we do need a quick fix. There
| simply isn't time to waste placating people who think
| injecting bleach will protect them from an airborne illness
| in a pandemic. We could have spent a decade giving everyone
| a Master's in Microbiology and Epidemiology and still not
| convinced antivaxxers, because they aren't swayed by facts
| but by beliefs that feel truthy to them.
|
| The entire point of representative democracy is to avoid
| the pitfalls of direct democracy which prevents expert
| analysis and decisions. Modern society is complex enough it
| has to be guided by subject matter experts. Can you imagine
| if the simple majority of users of your software got to
| decide every product decision from now on? Or worse, you
| had to get approval from the 5% of users that are mad the
| app doesn't display Sasquatch's location?
|
| Personal responsibility has never alone been adequate to
| deal with the externalities government is uniquely able to
| fix - war, natural disaster, famine, and pandemics.
| Collective action is required for these challenges (and
| more mundane ones like pollution and other externalities).
| Any society has to be able to balance between the rights of
| individuals such that a tiny vocal minority can't overly
| endanger the continued existence of society. Doing that
| well, so that nobody is run roughshod over and everyone
| gets a voice is important. But in extremis we don't care to
| compromise with people who are endangering the herd. Humans
| never have had much tolerance for that.
|
| I say all this knowing authoritarian governments are often
| able to do their worst abuse in times of crisis. But
| politely asking Facebook to take down or spread-limit some
| misinformation that statistically will lead to death isn't
| tyranny.
| dogleash wrote:
| [flagged]
| engineer_22 wrote:
| -> There is legal precedent regarding chilling effects and
| government action.
|
| Please provide citation, I'd like to know more
|
| -> If you're not American you can't be expected to know
| that level of detail. If you are American, your highschool
| civics teacher was terrible.
|
| Please be kind, or avoid discussing politics. There are
| other opinions than our own, and though we may disagree we
| need to respect each other, I hope all civics teachers
| would agree on that.
| stale2002 wrote:
| It is a pretty well covered topic.
|
| You can get an overview here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Chilling_effect#:~:text=A%20....
| rtkwe wrote:
| Except if you look at the number of complaints that were
| actually acted on it looks a lot less like they were that
| intimidating at all. From the Twitter files it seems like way
| less than 10% of the reported tweets had anything happen to
| them at all.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > The government did a bad thing.
|
| The filing is that there is sufficient probability the
| government did a bad thing to issue an injunction while the
| court figures out if the government did a bad thing. In
| general, injunctions protecting freedom of speech are broadly
| and freely issued.
|
| ... But a rational person can ask how we protect free speech by
| muzzling the government in this context.
| aksss wrote:
| But the Court is not muzzling the government in the sense of
| prohibiting their public message. The court is enjoining
| their method of influencing public debate - that they
| were/are preventing what _you_ say from being published based
| on its content.
|
| Prohibiting unlawful orders is not an abridgment of an
| authority's "free speech".
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Nothing the government was doing is preventing what I say
| from being published based on its content because (a) I
| left Twitter ages ago (on account of it being a hole) and
| (b) I have no right to post on Twitter in the first place.
| aksss wrote:
| I'm not sure why this needs to be said, but "you" in this
| context is conceptually an abstraction of the private
| citizen. Maybe @shadowgovt the individual never says a
| word that the establishment would disapprove of, but
| don't count on that always being the case, and certainly
| don't expect others to fall in line in that regard. Is it
| your opinion that the government should have such power -
| specifically to, without officially
| commandeering/nationalizing the companies, to direct them
| to censor disfavored non-criminal speech?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I personally believe the government can certainly pass
| information on to private corporations and then the
| private corporations can then choose what to do.
|
| Whether the situation went past that is what this court
| case would be about, and nothing has been decided on that
| topic yet.
| aksss wrote:
| > the government can certainly pass information
|
| As you acknowledge, that's not remotely the issue here.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Same reason counties fall to communism. Free speech and open
| debate get in the way of bureaucrats trying to control peoples
| lives.
|
| Example. There is a highly experimental vaccine, which is
| really gene therapy. People are questioning it. Including Mark
| Zuckerberg, who told all those people not to take it.
|
| But then censored anyone online that wanted to have a
| discussion about it.
|
| People are reporting severe injuries "including my own wife!"
| let's block and ban them too. Big Pharmacy's got millions to
| make.
|
| Oh cheap already available treatments seem to work? Let's ban
| discussion about those those too. No one can know that possible
| alternatives exist.
| Timon3 wrote:
| > Example. There is a highly experimental vaccine, which is
| really gene therapy. People are questioning it. Including
| Mark Zuckerberg, who told all those people not to take it.
|
| My good, that sounds horrible! Can you share some
| information? You should go to the media with this. A hidden
| gene therapy, wow... Which genes are they trying to change in
| what way?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Also working gene therapy holy shit I have a friend with a
| lifelong condition who would give away limbs for that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > A court found that the government abused its power and
| infringes on people's first amendment rights by using its
| intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech
| of citizens.
|
| This is not how a preliminary injunction works.
|
| The court has ordered that the governmment stop doing the in-
| dispute things until the dispute is resolved - in either
| direction - in court.
|
| The standard for such an injunction is not proof, but "they
| might prevail in court, and there's potentially enough harm
| from letting it continue in the meantime".
| lordfrito wrote:
| Also, a WSJ article suggested the point is that discovery
| needs to occur here before a judgment is made. [1]
|
| _Judge Doughty could have dismissed the case without an
| opportunity for discovery, as another judge did in another
| NCLA case, Changizi v. HHS, involving the same sort of
| censorship. Judge Doughty understood, however, that a largely
| secret censorship system can't be evaluated under the First
| Amendment until after discovery._
|
| [1] https://archive.is/GCWCr
| kyrra wrote:
| While I agree here, I want to add a caveat that the linked
| article is technically a "commentary" pieces, not a news-
| side piece (aka: it's published on the opinion pages). But
| even given that, the opinion pages of the WSJ is just as
| fact-filled as the news side, but just highlights that the
| person writing it may not be a disinterested party.
|
| The Opinion Pages of the WSJ also tend to lean more
| conservative, while the news side leans liberal. Though
| they will happily publish people from the left, such as
| publishing President Biden:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/never-bet-against-the-
| american-...
| tcbawo wrote:
| The WSJ Opinion pages generally consist of articles
| written by The Editorial Board and also those submitted
| by guest contributors. It would be hard to argue that
| opinion pieces written by external authors and published
| by the WSJ have any consistency or standard in factuality
| or completeness. For example, the column frequently
| includes content from politicians, business leaders, or
| former campaign managers like Karl Rove. From what I have
| seen, the WSJ does not edit external opinion pieces, but
| can write a short disclaimer.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| 'lean' lol.
|
| the wsj opinion section has gone _wildly_ off the rails.
|
| love their journalism. can't read half the crap they
| allow to be published in opeds.
|
| at a minimum, is it too much to not publish outright
| provable lies?
|
| it actually feels like a similar persecution complex vibe
| to these lawsuits and congressional hearings to me
|
| that somehow if we aren't forced to listen to them, or
| that their megaphone isn't as loud as it once was, that
| they are being persecuted and censored with the most
| orwellian oppression in the history of our country! (i
| can think of a lot of truly terrible things our govt has
| done... literal internment camps and more! but that is
| besides the point)
|
| no one has silenced them. we continue to hear it
| constantly.
|
| i hear more anti gay slurs now - on traditional media and
| online - than i ever remember growing up as a very
| obviously gay boy ;0
|
| if anything, whenever someone crows about being
| 'cancelled' their message is spread even farther.
|
| there isn't a right to amplification.
|
| the next door kook was never promised a full page column
| in the local paper. with a guaranteed readership of
| thousands or millions.
|
| any truth filter or higher bar for discourse that might
| have existed in legacy news media has been smashed
|
| news corp is the leader and biggest offender
|
| the democratization of the megaphone (internet gives any
| random conspiracist opportunity to reach more than
| cronkite did), has given many the impression that they
| are owed this power to yell and be guaranteed a listening
| and receptive audience.
|
| and anything less is cancelation or "censorship."
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The Opinion Pages of the WSJ also tend to lean more
| conservative, while the news side leans liberal.
|
| As with most News Corp outlets, the news side of the WSJ
| leans pretty far to the right (it did so even before it
| was a News Corp outlet, though not as much), it only
| seems "liberal" by comparison with its own opinion
| section.
|
| That said, unlike, say, Fox News, the WSJ news side at
| least makes an effort to adhere to traditional
| journalistic norms, its right wing bias is more evident
| in agenda-setting (story selection, devotion of space,
| and placement/promotion), and less in commentary and
| outright fabrications in "news" content.
| kyrra wrote:
| [flagged]
| jp191919 wrote:
| An interesting site if you are concerned about media
| bias- https://www.allsides.com/media-bias
| kurthr wrote:
| An excellent example of the Overton Window.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
| mistermann wrote:
| Very good point...you would think tech folks would be
| better at identifying relative vs absolute frames of
| reference, but then the problem space is heavily
| propagandized and there is only so much time in the day.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| What would an absolute frame of reference with regard to
| political opinion look like? I'm having a hard time
| conceiving such a thing, since not only does the range of
| opinion shift over time, but issues move into and out of
| relevance unpredictably.
| ignoreCJR wrote:
| [flagged]
| johnmaguire wrote:
| "leans far to the right" is not the same as "is far
| right"
|
| > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive,
| not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
| ignoreCJR wrote:
| [flagged]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| [flagged]
| ignoreCJR wrote:
| [flagged]
| JasonFruit wrote:
| If you think that's "pretty far to the right," I'd wager
| you haven't met many people on the right or spent much
| time reading their thought. There's a whole world of
| interesting political variety on the left, the right, and
| elsewhere that will never appear in the newspaper.
| judge2020 wrote:
| In particular, they need to find if there was any actual
| coercion or threat made by the gov't agencies to remove the
| speech they asked to. For example, when the FBI was asking
| Twitter to take down videos (of content that violated
| Twitter's own TOS), Twitter could've told them to go pound
| sand. But it would be a different story if the FBI indicated
| that Twitter "ought to" do it or face increased scrutiny,
| perhaps.
| mrangle wrote:
| It has been long established in case law that government
| requests for censorship are tantamount to coercion and
| threats.
|
| To wit, it matters not if the Giant makes a polite or
| directly threatening request of Jack. In either case, Jack
| is right to assume that he has no choice in the matter. And
| can not be expected to tell the Giant to "pound sand".
| Conversely, the Giant should not be able to claim that Jack
| had a choice.
|
| The government has no business asking any entity, which it
| does not fund, to remove speech in the United States.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I'd argue that the US doesn't have enough of a reputation
| for disappearing people or putting their business under a
| heat lamp if they don't willfully comply with police
| requests that are overbearing. Apple, Google, etc get
| away with denying a lot of data requests[0]. And despite
| being put on the stand for 2016 election interference,
| Jack, Elon, and Mark are doing just fine.
|
| 0: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html
| mrangle wrote:
| Reputation isn't an argument. It would be false in its
| assumption even if it were.
|
| The case law is established.
|
| There isn't a single case of someone's speech being
| censored, due to government request, for which the person
| being censored does not have a Constitutionally airtight
| First Amendment violation complaint.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Is that why President Biden called for a federal
| investigation [0] into Musk's companies shortly after he
| bought Twitter and told the government censors to "pound
| sand?"
|
| Keep in mind this was in response to a question from a
| Bloomberg "journalist" which basically laid out the
| premise that Musk might be a national security threat.
| Biden has been known to show up to press conferences with
| a "cheat sheet" listing which journalists to call for
| questions, and the verbatim text of the question that
| each will ask. [1]
|
| [0] https://nypost.com/2022/11/09/biden-calls-for-
| federal-invest...
|
| [1]
| https://www.allsides.com/news/2023-04-27-0330/politics-
| biden...
| hyperpape wrote:
| It would be useful to cite the case law here so that
| everyone reading along could look it up.
| leereeves wrote:
| I don't see why there needs to be any coercion. The offense
| here is not against the social networks, it's against the
| people whose speech was suppressed.
|
| Whether that suppression was done with threats, requests,
| subtle hints, or an automated system, if the government's
| intent was to suppress speech, the means employed make no
| difference.
|
| Edit: imagine an extreme case in which a social network
| independently created an automated system for government
| employees to remove posts. Would it be constitutional for
| the government to use that system?
|
| Clearly not, despite the lack of any coercion.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Because the choice was ultimately made by company staff,
| not government employees
|
| Giving the government a special, higher priority reviewed
| support queue isn't illegal, as long as the company is
| acting with independence.
| rewmie wrote:
| > I don't see why there needs to be any coercion.
|
| If there is no coercion then your complain boils down to
| others not sharing your opinion, both in the way they
| don't reverberate your personal opinion and in the way
| they express opinions you don't agree with.
|
| That's kind of the opposite thing you claim you're trying
| to achieve.
| leereeves wrote:
| My complaint is about the government removing speech from
| social networks, even if they did so with just a wink and
| a hint.
|
| And I don't understand the argument that the social
| networks' willingness to cooperate makes the government's
| actions more acceptable.
|
| That's a bit like allowing the government to confiscate
| property without a trial, if the bank is cooperative.
| mindslight wrote:
| A bank is acting as a trustee of property, corporate
| social mediums unfortunately do not.
|
| If you want a legal right to individual freedom of speech
| on corporate commons, be explicit about it and work for
| that! Focusing on this small slice of corporate
| censorship just because it was encouraged by the
| government is distraction from the fundamental problem.
| judge2020 wrote:
| It was not "remove this", it was "this probably violates
| your TOS", so that could be the difference between asking
| social media companies to take stuff down for only the
| Government's interest versus both the Government's and
| the platform's interests. The FBI isn't going to Klan
| website hosts and asking them to take down Klan content
| because those hosts don't forbid hosting that sort of
| speech.
| leereeves wrote:
| And what was the government expecting to happen as a
| result of saying "this probably violates your TOS"?
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Well, that's definitely not true. The government can
| suppress speech when it sends an emergency action alert
| to commandeer tv and radio stations during an emergency,
| for one example.
|
| The fact is that the means employed make _every bit of
| difference_ when it comes to whether or not the content
| based speech restriction is tailored as narrowly as
| possible to achieve a compelling government interest.
|
| On the other hand, maybe it makes not difference to your
| feelings, which is fair.
| leereeves wrote:
| I'm obviously not saying the means never make a
| difference in any case. I'm talking about this case.
|
| I'm saying that using minimal means does not make an
| unconstitutional action acceptable; you're pointing out
| that using excessive means can make a constitutional
| action unacceptable. That's a different situation and not
| really a reply to my comment or this case.
|
| To make it more relevant, can you point to a single case
| where a court has ruled that a constitutionally limited
| action was permitted simply because the means were
| unintrusive?
|
| A compelling government interest, as you said, could
| justify the action, but what is the compelling government
| interest here?
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Ok. I'm glad you're not saying that; I think it means we
| are coming at this similarly.
|
| You can choose how compelling the interest is, but my
| take was that the government has a compelling interest in
| free and fair elections. Or in making sure a pandemic is
| handled well.
|
| My hourly rate for research is higher than you probably
| expect! But your question is super interesting so I will
| try to answer it this evening. You might have a point
| about these situations being opposites (contrapositives?
| I forget) and I have to think about this more.
| [deleted]
| brightlancer wrote:
| > To make it more relevant, can you point to a single
| case where a court has ruled that a constitutionally
| limited action was permitted simply because the means
| were unintrusive?
|
| I think that's self-contradictory: if the court permitted
| it, then it did not cross the limits.
|
| If you meant this more broadly, then we should understand
| that ALL government actions are constitutionally limited
| and the more an action infringes upon liberty, the more
| the action should be "narrowly tailored", but actions can
| still be permitted.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Emergency announcements or orders have to be temporary
| and limited in scope. They also couldn't target specific
| channels on talk radio just because they have a made up
| emergency.
|
| Meanwhile the emergency broadcast rules that were created
| in early tv and radio era definitely don't apply to
| social media, given that they are discretionary,
| asynchronous forms of communication, and there's no lack
| of bandwidth as there was in the early tv and radio era.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Totally agree. Wouldn't apply to cable tv for the same
| reason. Turner Broadcasting v fcc, 520 US 180 (1997).
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| The standard actually is the plaintiffs are _likely_ to
| prevail on the merits (not "might"-- it's _probable_ per the
| judge), and in practice a preliminary injunction hearing in a
| major case can take the form of a mini-trial. The judge wrote
| 155 pages that, at first blush, appear to be a very serious
| and thoughtful effort. The judge summarized on page 154 thus:
|
| "The Plaintiffs _are likely to succeed on the merits_ in
| establishing that the Government has used its power to
| silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines;
| opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to
| the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity
| of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden's
| policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was
| true; and opposition to policies of the government officials
| in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each
| example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in
| nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a
| perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political
| speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free
| debate about the significant issues affecting the country. "
| [1] (emphasis mine)
|
| [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd
| .18...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Likely" means more than "possible" and less than
| "probable", with a pretty hefty error bar given the trial
| hasn't happened yet. It's a far cry from the settled state
| the original headline implied.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| An ultimate win must be "likely" to prevail in a PI, and
| this judge said it was. "Likely" and "probable" are
| synonyms".[1] Apparently some courts do apply an relaxed
| standard in First Amendment cases of "reasonably
| likely"[2], but that's not clearly right and it's also
| not a quibble over whether "likely" is "probable" (which
| it is).
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/likely#synonyms
|
| [2] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/publica
| tions/l...
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| The court clearly found that wrongly because they do say that
| there are other non first amendment protected speech that the
| government can indeed suppress on social media.
|
| It's just these few non first amendment protected items that
| the court is ideologically opposed to that the government
| cannot suppress.
| curiousllama wrote:
| > there are other non first amendment protected speech that
| the government can indeed suppress
|
| This is a famously narrow category (eg CSAM). The gov often
| can't even suppress state secrets. I think most people are
| fine with this category existing, even if there's
| disagreements on what's in it.
| lordfrito wrote:
| I'm with you on this.
|
| Something tells me the people here arguing that Flaherty wasn't
| coercive or threatening would be arguing just the opposite if
| this was the Trump administration.
|
| Apparently it's about time for our collective citizenry to
| relearn some generational lessons from history, preferably not
| the hard way.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Something tells me the people here arguing that Flaherty
| wasn't coercive or threatening would be arguing just the
| opposite if this was the Trump administration.
|
| The Trump administration was doing the same thing.
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-
| tru...
|
| > When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning
| hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed
| was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen
| had just called President Donald Trump "a pussy ass bitch" on
| Twitter -- and the White House wanted the tweet to come down.
|
| > "It was strange to me when all of these investigations were
| announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that
| we had done [when Donald Trump was in office]," one former
| top aide to a senior Trump administration official tells
| Rolling Stone. "It was normal."
| zpeti wrote:
| I think you'll find, that except for hardcore trumpists not
| many on the right support trump doin this.
| Timon3 wrote:
| I haven't seen any outcry from Hardcore trumpists. There
| is an outcry for anything Biden does. Is it possible you
| want them not to support Trump doing that, even though
| they might do?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Horse shit. Even people who swear up and down that they
| don't like Trump pretend he has done nothing wrong and
| the only negative press about him is a smear campaign by
| the wokestream media.
|
| He's very likely going to get the Republican Nomination
| again.
| p_j_w wrote:
| They never raised a stink, so I have to assume they, at
| the very least, didn't have a problem with it.
| ahallock wrote:
| Usually this happens due to political ideology. People will
| condone things that benefit their tribe.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| [flagged]
| tdehnel wrote:
| So much writing. So little explanation of your view or
| specific critique of the person you're responding to. You
| could have just typed "Wrong. Do your research."
| dr-detroit wrote:
| [dead]
| rewmie wrote:
| > A court found that the government abused its power and
| infringes on people's first amendment rights by using its
| intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech
| of citizens.
|
| I'm not sure you read the article you're quoting, because
| you're claiming stuff that does not correspond to the facts.
|
| The article you're quoting states quite clearly that a judge
| granted a request for a preliminary injunction imposing limits
| on how a few state institutions can exercise their rights to
| fight disinformation.
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...
|
| This is a preliminary injunction. It loosely means "hey we have
| here a plaintiff that claims a few government institutions are
| doing something wrong. While we check if the plaintiff's
| complain holds any water, let's put a pin on these things."
|
| The article you're quoting also states quite clearly that the
| US government has the right to fight disinformation, specially
| that which directly harms the public. This happens to be
| exactly the case.
|
| This boils down to covid denialists and antivaxers in general
| trying to push their disinformation, and thus trying to stop
| state institutions such as the Department of Health from
| suggesting that, say, letting a pandemic spread freely through
| a population can get a lot of people killed.
| boringuser2 wrote:
| The orange man is bad.
|
| What I find of great concern is that the US used to have a
| strong dissident faction that was against government
| suppression of basic rights such as free speech.
|
| Now, we have two cheerleading factions.
|
| I feel the division in the country has stoked authoritarian
| sentiment on both sides as they desperately grasp for measures
| to suppress each other.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Because its okay when their side does it. Human nature at it's
| worst.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Because the world just isn't that simple anymore.
|
| 100 years ago, I would totally agree that the govt stopping
| citizens from spreading false information would be a violation
| of the first amendment. But we now live in a world where the
| generation of misinformation is automated. Controlling
| communication on social media does not necessarily imply
| stifling the speech of a human.
|
| It's very possible that we currently live with an internet
| where more than half of accounts represent entirely fabricated
| personas created specifically to generate malicious propaganda.
| And they know that if they can get a judge to defend their
| antics as "Free Speech" they will be free to manipulate the
| general population however they want.
|
| I agree that we need to be careful about protecting free speech
| online, but if we act like every character that goes over a
| wire is protected speech, we are digging our own grave.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The Bill of Rights is not ranked by importance.
|
| Did you read the article?
|
| >The ruling was criticized by Jameel Jaffer, an adjunct
| professor of law and journalism who is executive director of
| the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
| "It can't be that the government violates the First Amendment
| simply by engaging with the platforms about their content-
| moderation decisions and policies," Jaffer told The New York
| Times, calling it "a pretty radical proposition that isn't
| supported by the case law."
|
| > While the government must be careful to avoid coercion in its
| efforts to combat false information, Jaffer said that
| "unfortunately, Judge Doughty's order doesn't reflect a serious
| effort to reconcile the competing principles."
|
| > Stanford Law School Assistant Professor Evelyn Douek told The
| Washington Post that the "injunction is strikingly broad and
| clearly intended to chill any kind of contact between
| government actors and social media platforms."
| LatteLazy wrote:
| >But Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee at US District Court
| for the Western District of Louisiana, granted the plaintiffs'
| request for a preliminary injunction imposing limits...
|
| 1. Him being a trump nominee makes me suspicious, but also sad
| that that is the effect and that papers need to list who
| nominated a judge.
|
| 2. Granting a preliminary injunction is a long way from winning a
| case.
|
| 3. There is pressure and there is pressure. "Social media
| companies should suppress X" is fine. "if they don't I will audit
| the fuck out of their taxes" is not. The "bully pulpit" has long
| been used for this purpose and is the president's only real power
| beyond bombing things and vetoing stuff...
|
| 4. How does this affect executive actions pressuring 101 other
| companies to do things that are MUCH more questionable
| (everything from giving the NSA access to private data to
| bullying companies into censoring movies)?
|
| Edit:
|
| 5. Plenty of Senators have gone on record demanding platforms
| make changes or face some or other legislative punishment. I
| wonder how/if this affects that?
| hgsgm wrote:
| If this a jury trial, or will the same judge makes the final
| trial ruling?
|
| The cited behavior is egregious, with Flaherty issuing orders
| and requesting specific takedowns, and doing so in an
| unprofessional and threatening manner that shows he is unfit
| for office. It's clear overreach beyond broadcasting the
| Executive's concerns about public health and requesting that
| companies do their part to help.
|
| The injunction may go too far in the other direction (but it is
| temporary), in the final ruling maybe less limiting to the
| Administration, but behavior like Flaherty's should be reined
| in.
| brasic wrote:
| The plaintiffs have not demanded a jury, so yes, this judge
| will make the final ruling, although it will certainly be
| appealed. Docket:
|
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63290154/missouri-v-
| bid...
|
| To a first approximation, the appellate system is the only
| real mechanism for oversight of federal judges not engaging
| in outright misconduct. This is why packing the federal
| judiciary with intemperate partisans is so dangerous.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| When Trump complained about "Obama judges" he was rightly
| ridiculed. Why is ok to cast aspersions on judges nominated by
| Trump?
| [deleted]
| afavour wrote:
| Classic case of false equivalence: they both appointed judges
| therefore their actions _must_ be equivalent, right?
|
| Did Obama ever nominate a judge that's never tried a case in
| front of a court and failed to disclose his marriage to the
| White House counsel's chief of staff?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Talley
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| I didn't realize that was the judge who wrote this opinion!
|
| Oh wait, he's not. So whatever ad homs you have about him
| are irrelevant here.
| afavour wrote:
| > I didn't realize that was the judge who wrote this
| opinion!
|
| If that's the criteria why did you bring up "Obama
| judges" and "judges nominated by Trump"? They clearly
| didn't write the opinion either. You don't get to broaden
| the scope of discussion then scold someone for responding
| within that scope.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| I was responding to someone who said:
|
| > Him being a trump nominee makes me suspicious
| plagiarist wrote:
| I think because Obama didn't extort a foreign country, commit
| an insurrection, or sell top secret information to US
| adversaries.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Trump should have been impeached and convicted for those
| things, which have nothing to do with the judges he
| appointed.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Yes, of course, the same dude extorting a foreign
| country, committing an insurrection, and selling
| classified information would never appoint judges on any
| basis other than their individual merits. Every corrupt
| individual keeps the corruption pretty compartmentalized
| away from whatever judicial appointments they are doing.
| myko wrote:
| Attitude aside, this is a very good point. Everything
| trump did should be reviewed at this point. It's sad that
| plenty of civil servants / folks who have made careers
| for themselves and worked to improve this country are
| likely to be viewed dimly because trump appointed them to
| positions of power. But the reality is everything he did
| should be viewed with suspicion.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Surely the guy who literally sold pardons for a few
| million a pop has broad respect for the role of Justice
| in society.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| [citation needed]
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| As usual, I think the term that applies here is projection. A
| vast amount of politicians and Trump in particular have taken
| to heart a particular realpolitick tactic for dealing with
| the loyal opposition, of never wasting a chance to accuse the
| other side of exactly what you're doing.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror
|
| And further, Trump's actions were fairly wild & chaotic &
| needed restraint.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I am a limey brit, and was no great fan of Obama but... I
| don't think his judges ever overthrew precedent the way Trump
| judges have. Ironically the main place they have done this is
| Abortion, which Trump didn't seem to give a damn about, so
| really they should be called Republican or Christian Right
| judges rather than Trump judges maybe? Who knows...
| hellojesus wrote:
| Overthrowing precedent is necessary when the precedent is
| wrong.
| plagiarist wrote:
| You're perhaps more correct than you know. Donald basically
| received lists to appoint right-wing judges from:
| https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/360598-meet-
| the...
| generj wrote:
| To points 1 and 2 this particular judge, amongst others, has
| been known to issue overly broad injunctions that reek of
| political bias.
|
| The injunction is almost more the point of these cases.
|
| If someone goes forum shopping, they have a decent chance of
| shutting down whatever Democratic policy they want until the
| injunction can be appealed. Or worse, a narrow injunction can
| conflict with a national injunction, which puts an
| administration in the position of choosing which binding
| injunction to follow. This recently occurred with an abortion
| drug [0].
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2023/04/07/1159220452/abortion-pill-
| drug...
| moduspol wrote:
| > Him being a trump nominee makes me suspicious, but also sad
| that that is the effect and that papers need to list who
| nominated a judge.
|
| They don't, they just choose to do so. It's the same way
| pundits, authors, and broadcasters often get labeled "right-
| wing" or "conservative" while similarly left-wing ones don't
| get labeled. It's an editorial choice to call the reader's
| attention to it and imply relevance.
|
| Beyond that, I think this is unique relative to the normal
| "bully pulpit" pressure in that:
|
| * It's being used in order to suppress speech and opposition to
| the administration's policies, and
|
| * It was being done in secret, not exposed until later, and has
| otherwise shown no signs of stopping
|
| That makes it a bit different from, say, publicly pressuring
| lawmakers to reduce tariffs on sugar.
| Pxtl wrote:
| The Trump administration lost any benefit of the doubt with
| their judicial appointments when they outraged the legal
| establishment (eg American Bar Association) by frequently
| ignoring the most qualified candidates for judicial
| appointments in favor of ideologically Republican ones.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Neither you or are the Bar Association have any right to
| tell the president who is most qualified for a role he
| appoints. Maybe you don't like it or it's "wrong," but the
| Bar Association is a bunch bureaucrats not an arbiter of
| platonic truth or good.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Obviously it's his prerogative to choose who he and the
| Senate want, but then nobody should be outraged when the
| impartiality of his appointed judges is questioned.
|
| edit: I'm rate-limited so can't reply, so here's my reply
| below:
|
| It's a matter of degrees. For example, when Biden made it
| clear that he was hiring Ketanji Brown Jackson in part
| because she was a progressive black woman, she still had
| a massive amount of relevant experience and professional
| reputation. There's the understanding that while she
| obviously has a political bias, she's still a good judge.
| She had worked in district court, appeals court, she'd
| even worked as a public defender. She had an
| exceptionally long list of cases and legal opinions she
| could point to for her experience.
|
| Meanwhile, contrast to Amy Coney Barrett, who had _never
| been a judge_ before Trump appointed her into the Court
| of Appeals as a fast-track to the Supreme Court. She 'd
| never tried a case all the way to verdict. She'd never
| argued an appeal. Her background was purely in academia.
| Clubber wrote:
| All judges are picked for their political bias, that's
| how it works. Democrats pick judges who are more left
| leaning, conservatives pick justices that are more right
| leaning. To pretend it's just one way is incorrect.
| tzs wrote:
| ...and before Trump both Republicans and Democrats when
| picking their nominees would pick a candidate that leaned
| their way _and_ that the the other side could agree was
| well qualified and experienced enough to do the job well
| even if they didn 't like the candidates politics.
| Clubber wrote:
| _In October, the American Bar Association rated Barrett
| "well qualified" for the Supreme Court opening, its
| highest rating.[115] The ABA confines its evaluation to
| the qualities of "integrity, professional competence, and
| judicial temperament_
|
| The ABA rated her as well qualified. I'm doing to defer
| to them. I do understand your point that she had never
| had a judgeship before her appeals appointment in 2017,
| of which she served a little over 3 years in that
| position.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I think looking back at the alacrity with which she was
| appointed, the speed at which Roe was subsequently
| overturned, not to mention the stated rationale of the
| POTUS at the time, we can all be confident that the true
| reason for her appointment wasn't her qualifications as a
| jurist.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Institutional ethics are a counter force to tyranny.
|
| In a democracy a professional organization _does_ have a
| right to check power as does every individual citizen.
|
| Where do you think checks and balances come from? A two
| party state defeats a traditional notion of checks and
| balances. Our founding fathers warned against it.
| tiahura wrote:
| As an ABA member, I can assure you 90% of members couldn't
| care less about their "qualified" list.
| hgsgm wrote:
| After the Senate ran a party-line unpresidented and
| unconstitutional multi-year campaign to block Obama's
| nominations from entering office without even a hearing, and
| then packed the courts with their own judges, it absolutely
| is relevant who appointed a judge.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| How is it unconstitutional? Article II Section 2 of the
| Constitution says that the President shall nominate, _with
| the advice and consent of the Senate_ [...] judges. The
| Senate did not consent, so Merrick Garland was not given a
| confirmation hearing.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii
| tzs wrote:
| It's pretty hard to argue that the Senate gave advice if
| they didn't even hold a hearing to consider the matter.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Just because you perform the rituals of democracy doesn't
| mean you get democracy.
|
| If voting doesn't result in representation, then the act
| of voting is just a ritual and not an exertion of
| political power.
|
| You're saying because we performed a ritual around
| judges, we should be getting the result we want, or
| judges that represent America at large.
|
| You're so focused on rituals you are missing the bigger
| picture.
|
| _That is cargo cult democracy._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science
|
| > In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people.
| During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good
| materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So
| they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put
| fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden
| hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his
| head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like
| antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the
| airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The
| form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked
| before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call
| these things cargo cult science, because they follow all
| the apparent precepts and forms of scientific
| investigation, but they're missing something essential,
| because the planes don't land.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The US isn't an abstract 'democracy', it's a functioning
| democracy with a specific set of rules.
|
| I don't agree with Mitch McConnell's decision to refuse
| to have a hearing for Merrick Garland. I'm just saying
| it's not against the Constitution as it is written. If
| the Obama Administration thought they had a legal right
| to force a hearing on Merrick Garland in the Senate, they
| would've filed a lawsuit to force the issue. The fact
| that they didn't tells me that what McConnell and the GOP
| did wasn't illegal. It may have arguably been immoral and
| unethical, but it wasn't illegal, and that was the point
| of my post that you responded to.
| edgyquant wrote:
| In what way was that unconstitutional? It was democrats who
| changed the rules so they could block judges with a simple
| majority, not republicans. They did so assuming they'd be
| the ones in power.
| moduspol wrote:
| "unprecedented", and you're right, up until the point of
| relevance.
|
| It's only relevant to this story to imply that its causal,
| i.e., an impartial judge might not have made the ruling. Or
| to your point, "this wouldn't have happened if Obama's
| appointee were there." It's openly questioning the judge's
| ability to be neutral.
|
| Regardless, though, I'm OK with it as long as it's labeled
| every time a Clinton, Obama, or Biden-appointed judge makes
| a decision that could be framed as political. That doesn't
| happen, though.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > They don't, they just choose to do so. It's the same way
| pundits, authors, and broadcasters often get labeled "right-
| wing" or "conservative" while similarly left-wing ones don't
| get labeled.
|
| Which is even weirder when we consider that being "right
| wing" is considered bad but "left wing" is not. When in
| reality during the 20th century, far left wing political
| organizations have been responsible for the deaths of 10's of
| millions more than far right parties. Being a Nazi is bad but
| being a Communist is far worse if history is any indicator.
| But you'd never know it by how much of the media frames
| things.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The left wing individuals responsible for the 10s of
| millions of deaths you're citing here sound more like
| Donald Trump in their rhetoric than any "leftist" rhetoric
| you'll find today in the USA. After all, it was Stalin who,
| like Trump, called the media the "enemy of the people"
| "Stalin originated the concept 'enemy of the people'. This
| term automatically made it unnecessary that the ideological
| errors of a man be proven," Khrushchev said in his secret
| address to the Communist party's inner circle.
| "It made possible the use of the cruellest repression,
| against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin,
| against those who were only suspected of hostile intent,
| against those who had bad reputations."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/03/trump-
| enemy-...
|
| That's how the right behaves today, which is why the right
| is dangerous. Communism vs. capitalism doesn't mean a thing
| if the person in charge is a deranged, power-hungry,
| narcissistic dictator.
| hgsgm wrote:
| 4. Which movies were censored, by whom?
|
| 5. That's clearly the Legislature's job. The Legislature is not
| the Executive. They make new law, not apply existing law.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I am not sure it is legislators job to censor free speech?
| And if they passed such a law and it was somehow
| constitutional, it would then be the president's job to
| enforce it, so they are very much in the same boat wouldn't
| they?
|
| The current movie (and TV and music) censorship regimes are
| all based on an agreement between producers that they will
| not produce/distribute etc material that is legal but "bad"
| and in exchange the government will take no action against
| them like tax hikes etc.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code
|
| This is how the US has handled all sorts of "censorship
| that's not technically censorship" since day 1. The actions
| here seem to be basically the same thing but in our era it's
| social media not rap music or sitcoms.
| [deleted]
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _1. Him being a trump nominee makes me suspicious, but also
| sad that that is the effect and that papers need to list who
| nominated a judge._
|
| See for example another nominee:
|
| > _On December 1, the Eleventh Circuit ordered the case to be
| dismissed because Cannon "improperly exercised equitable
| jurisdiction" over it.[64][65][66][67][68] The Eleventh Circuit
| stated that Trump needed to show that the case met all four
| criteria under the Richey test for equitable jurisdiction over
| lawsuits for seized materials, but failed to do so for any
| criteria.[69][70][71] The Eleventh Circuit found that under
| Cannon, "the district court stepped in with its own reasoning"
| multiple times to argue in favor of Trump, sometimes even
| taking positions that Trump would not argue before the appeals
| court.[72][73][74] The Eleventh Circuit also found that when
| Trump did not explain what materials he still needed returned,
| or why, the "district court was undeterred by this lack of
| information".[69][75][76]_
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aileen_Cannon#Trump_v._United_...
|
| The panel that over-ruled Cannon were also majority-Trump
| nominees:
|
| *
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/22/thorough-...
|
| * https://archive.fo/aR3KZ
|
| So it may be 'just' that particular judges are incompetent
| (which you would hope would be discovered in some kind of
| vetting process).
| merpnderp wrote:
| The courts have historically taken a dim view of the
| government's "chilling of free speech."
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I would disagree with that. Courts in the last 100 years have
| been more than happy to let government come to private
| arrangements where they "self" censor in exchange for not
| being targeted. Just look at things like TV networks refusing
| to show married couples in the same bed or recent treatment
| of Pornhub in some states.
|
| Maybe it's true for individual speech in the limited sense of
| them just speaking (not broadcasting)?
| ethanbond wrote:
| The courts have long upheld the government's right to request
| action from private entities and for those private entities
| to comply or not to comply per their preference. That's all
| that happened here, just as what happened when the Trump
| Admin (and every administration prior) requested action from
| private entities.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I'm definitely not a fan of Trump and I was also suspicious.
| But after reading the article, I don't see anything
| objectionable with it especially with the carve outs.
|
| But censorship pressure very much happened on "both sides".
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-tru...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I don't think the injunction is an issue either. If we were
| in the run up to an election or the middle of a pandemic then
| maybe? But now is actually a good time to answer this
| question imho...
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So what if social media was spreading a rumor that the
| "secret Muslim president" was using troops to invade a
| state to impose marshal law.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/05/02/4038
| 6...
|
| Should the federal government intervene to keep citizens
| from attacking their own soldiers?
| mullingitover wrote:
| > sad that that is the effect and that papers need to list who
| nominated a judge.
|
| It matters because Trump appointed, and the GOP Senate
| confirmed, a batch of federal judges who the bar association
| determined were Not Qualified, because they were found to be
| lacking in "integrity, professional competence or judicial
| temperament."
|
| The past two GOP presidents have eschewed bar association
| recommendations entirely and instead had their judicial
| appointments selected by the right-wing Federalist Society.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| >It matters because Trump appointed, and the GOP Senate
| confirmed
|
| Minor nitpick - Judge Terry Doughty's confirmation was bi-
| partisan. There were 98 votes in favor, no votes against, and
| only 2 abstaining. Even Bernie Sanders voted in favor of the
| confirmation.
|
| https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1.
| ..
| edgyquant wrote:
| No this doesn't matter. The president and senate are who pick
| and approve the judges not the bar association.
| adfhbaidnioni wrote:
| [flagged]
| LexiMax wrote:
| This is non-responsive to their point.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Incorrect and regardless your comment is 100% useless
| [deleted]
| viggity wrote:
| The Hunter Biden laptop story was _actively_ suppressed on
| Twitter and Facebook specifically because the FBI told them it
| was Russian information, _despite_ the fact that the FBI had
| verified it was legit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
| ethanbond wrote:
| From that exact Wiki article:
|
| > Musk tweeted that Twitter had acted "under orders from the
| government", though Taibbi reported that he found no evidence
| of government involvement in the laptop story, tweeting,
| "Although several sources recalled hearing about a 'general'
| warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible
| foreign hacks, there's no evidence--that I've seen--of any
| government involvement in the laptop story."[22][27] His
| reporting seemed to undermine a key narrative promoted by Musk
| and Republicans that the FBI pressured social media companies
| to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop stories.[22][36]
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| [flagged]
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Looks like James Baker was actively pushing heads to
| censor.
|
| https://nypost.com/2022/12/03/twitter-files-reveal-james-
| bak...
| [deleted]
| Pxtl wrote:
| It was stolen revenge-porn of the President's son. Come on, do
| you remember how bad "The Fappening" went for Reddit? How Hulk
| Hogan's stolen sex tape went for Gawker? Twitter didn't need
| FBI to tell them that they didn't want Hunter Biden's cock all
| over their site.
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| [dead]
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| The porn and drugs were bad, but peddling influence with
| foreign adversaries is a pretty big deal.
| dashundchen wrote:
| You're right, which is why it's insane Saudi Arabia handed
| $2 billion in investment funds to Jared Kushner months
| after he left the White House as a "Senior Advisor",
| against the advice of the fund's advisors.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/jared-kushner-saudi-
| in...
|
| If you want to be shocked by influence peddling, just
| review what and Mr. Kushner did business with while
| actually being employed by the government.
|
| https://trumpfamilyinfluencepeddling.com/jared-and-ivanka/
|
| > Jared Kushner Held Contacts With Foreign Officials He Did
| Not Officially Report Or Clear With The National Security
| Council. "H.R. McMaster, President Trump's national
| security adviser, learned that Kushner had contacts with
| foreign officials that he did not coordinate through the
| National Security Council or officially report."
| [Washington Post, 02/27/18]
|
| > Jared Kushner's Family Courted "State-Connected
| Investors" To Bail Out A Kushner Property In Regions In His
| Government Portfolio While Working In The White House. "And
| since Mr. Kushner entered the White House, his family has
| courted state-connected investors in China and the Middle
| East -- both regions that were in Mr. Kushner's government
| portfolio -- to bail out the firm's headquarters at 666
| Fifth Avenue in Manhattan." [New York Times, 10/11/19]
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| That's whataboutism. Both of these things are abhorrent
| and should be punished.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I think it's despicable that Hunter Biden had a position
| on the board of a company heavily involved with a foreign
| government that US foreign policy affects, while having
| no qualifications and while his father was vice
| president. Even though Joe biden's actions as VP toward
| Ukraine were consistent with foreign policy of the US and
| its allies, it still smacks of influence peddling. I
| would love to see a federal law prohibiting federal
| judges and federal elected officials families from
| serving on the boards of foreign operated companies.
|
| That said,
|
| It is insanely frustrating that people like the person
| you responding to come out of the woodwork to complain
| about aspects of the Biden presidency that pale in
| comparison to the obvious treason in misbehavior of the
| Trump presidency and of his family. It shows just how
| partisan people's mindsets are.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| What do you think the FBI's goal was with that behavior?
| ethanbond wrote:
| That behavior didn't occur, as the Twitter Files themselves
| indicated. FBI gave a general warning prior to the election
| around hacked materials, Twitter (and many others) thought
| the laptop story might be one such example and reacted
| according to their own corporate policies/scenario planning.
| There is zero evidence that the government acted on the
| laptop story in any way, and even the Biden campaign/Biden
| family (private parties) only made requests specifically on
| posts sharing images of Hunter's penis, not on articles about
| the laptop itself.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| James Baker actively pushed heads to have the story
| censored, which happened.
| ethanbond wrote:
| James Baker was Deputy General Counsel at Twitter lol.
| His official job was to be involved in exactly these
| types of decisions. He left the FBI in 2018.
|
| Raise complaints about the revolving door between govt
| and industry if you want, but this is cut-and-dry _not_
| about a government official pressuring a private company.
| It 's about a private company hiring a former government
| official (years out of service) and then that person
| doing the job they were hired to do.
| vuln wrote:
| > former government official (years out of service) and
| then that person doing the job they were hired to do.
|
| You honestly believe that "retired" Intelligence
| Community members just "retire," so naive. I'm sure he
| was hired for his law qualifications and not his IC
| network, reach, or influence. Did he get read out of
| every program and give up his clearance upon leaving the
| FBI? Very doubtful.
| ethanbond wrote:
| You are aware that his job _at FBI_ was also General
| Counsel, right?
|
| Seems like one of the best candidates in the world for GC
| of Twitter if you ask me.
| infamouscow wrote:
| The same could be asked for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI
| %E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...
| worksonmine wrote:
| FBI seems schizophrenic at times, confirming and denying
| based on politics. Remember the e-mail server in 2016? First
| advising against criminal charges, only to open an
| investigation months later. Epstein was covered up and
| considered a conspiracy theory until it wasn't a few years
| later. Everything is politics today and the people in charge
| seem to have difficulties navigating in this context, and
| it's only getting worse.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Not at all. Remember that FBI is also a political entity
| subject to the whims of congress and its willingness to
| appropriate funds for it. In other words, they are always
| walking a tightrope of expectations from opposing sides;
| there is always pressure.
|
| I am not sure if you remember Comey saga, but remember how
| carefully some of the statements were worded to satisfy
| those various sides ( iirc, he wasn't supposed to say
| Clinton was a suspect and he didn't but instead said
| something that sounded close to it so press ran with it
| anyway -- and he could placate both sides saying he did
| their bidding ).
|
| Its not schizophrenic when you understand how much of a
| political capital is spent there.
| afavour wrote:
| The link you've provided does not back up the assertion you've
| made.
|
| > Twitter, along with Facebook, implemented measures to block
| its users from sharing links to the story, and Twitter further
| imposed a temporary lock on the accounts of the New York Post
| and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, citing
| violations of its rules against posting hacked content. The
| Washington Post reported that this was a result of the
| company's scenario-planning exercises to combat disinformation
| campaigns
|
| > Musk tweeted that Twitter had acted "under orders from the
| government", though Taibbi reported that he found no evidence
| of government involvement in the laptop story,
| traviswingo wrote:
| There's a difference between freedom of speech and education. The
| government did a bad thing. Anyone should be allowed to speak
| their piece.
|
| We need more people to speak up when those speaking the loudest
| are wrong, uneducated, and unqualified to speak on the topic
| they're preaching.
|
| I get the incentive here, but it's not the governments place to
| decide what we do and don't say.
|
| Society as a whole needs to be better at calling out the lies
| with hard facts and data. Because right now, it feels like the
| people with the most effective voices are taking us in the wrong
| direction.
| Zetice wrote:
| People _shouldn 't_ be allowed to speak their piece when that
| piece can be bright-line traced to people dying.
|
| But fine, let's allow people to speak their piece because
| bright lines are hard to draw, starting with Twitter, who
| should be completely free to follow or not follow what the US
| government says, _which is literally what happened here_.
|
| This will be overturned on appeal, because the bar for this
| kind of order is way higher than where the Biden admin was, and
| for the most part we still care about being consistent when
| applying the rule of law.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > Society as a whole needs to be better at calling out the lies
| with hard facts and data.
|
| It doesn't work. In the time it takes to refute one lie with
| facts and data, the world has moved on and uncountable
| additional lies have been spread in the meantime.
|
| Besides which. Both the people that produce the lies, and their
| supporters, are well aware of the fact that it's not true. They
| just choose to ignore that. And any facts and data you are able
| to compile, will fall on deaf ears.
| InSteady wrote:
| Plus when people do take the time to thoroughly refute
| misinformation, it's getting easier and easier to drown out
| any signal that starts spreading with a cacophony of noise
| from bots.
| ClarityJones wrote:
| > It doesn't work. In the time it takes to refute one lie
| with facts and data, the world has moved on and uncountable
| additional lies have been spread in the meantime.
|
| Great point, free speech is bad. We should repeal the 1st
| Amendment. /s
| Clubber wrote:
| There's an uncomfortable amount of people on this thread
| that seem to feel that way.
| klyrs wrote:
| > We need more people to speak up when those speaking the
| loudest are wrong, uneducated, and unqualified to speak on the
| topic they're preaching.
|
| How, though? It takes a _lot_ more work to develop an educated
| opinion than an uneducated one. There will always be more
| educated speakers than uneducated speakers. And do you really
| think that, during a pandemic, the best use of an
| epidemiologist 's time is wading into the trenches and fighting
| every single case of "wrong on the internet"?
| hgsgm wrote:
| I don't understand how Missouri and Louisiana have any standing
| here.
|
| 1. They aren't the victims.
|
| 2. The individual posters were censored by Facebook et al, not
| the government, so even they might not have standing. The social
| networks obviously have standing, but have they complained?
|
| "Facebook likes the President" isn't something you should be able
| to sue the _President_ for.
| fwlr wrote:
| The judgement itself is worth reading; it is not nearly as
| polemical as it being made out to be. It goes into detail on
| the question of how the states of Missouri and Louisiana have
| standing here; the "letter of the law" answer is that there is
| extensive precedent for determining whether states have
| standing in cases like this and the judge determined this case
| clearly passes the tests set by those precedents, while the
| "spirit of the law" answer (also given in the ruling) is that
| millions of citizens of Missouri and Louisiana have had their
| constitutional rights (both state and federal) interfered with
| by the plaintiffs, and as states are charged with upholding
| their citizens' rights, they have standing to seek injunctions
| to protect those rights.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Nobody has a right to post on Twitter.
| dogleash wrote:
| > I don't understand how Missouri and Louisiana have any
| standing here.
|
| Did you read their legal complaint? It doesn't feel like your
| statements here are responding to their claims about standing
| in the complaint.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Does this mean I can yell fire in a crowded theater again?
| Apparently not limiting my free speech is more important than the
| impact of my disinformation.
| worksonmine wrote:
| Content from .gov sites was labeled disinformation. One could
| consider the censorship at the time an act of disinformation.
| Remember the lab leak? Fauci with his smug smile behind Trump
| knowing full well the NIH sponsored gain-of-function research
| on Coronavirues in Wuhan of all places. Now that the dust has
| settled it's no longer a conspiracy theory but the most likely
| origin. CNN claims them not covering it at the time was
| "because Trump".
|
| What is even disinformation in this climate other than a
| comfort blanket for those unable to form an actual argument?
| naillo wrote:
| There's an argument that some pieces of the disinformation has
| some truth to it and thus not being able to say it cause more
| harm then censoring it. (So which side actually is analogous to
| yelling fire, the censorship side or the non censorship side.)
| HPsquared wrote:
| Indeed. If there is something smouldering in the theater and
| someone yells "fire" then is shut down because "Ackchyually
| it's not a fire!"
| romeros wrote:
| Who gets to decide what information is "disinformation" and
| what is the right information?
|
| Any view that you do not approve of is not disinformation.
|
| Also, you are smart enough to recognize disinformation.. but
| you think everyone else around you is too gullible and would
| fall prey to "disinformation"
| zuminator wrote:
| But disinformation isn't just incorrect information.
| Disinformation is false information seeded with an intent to
| mislead the population. The person who "gets to decide" what
| is disinformation is effectively the person who is planting
| the disinformation.
|
| Once the disinformation starts to propagate then the
| downstream propagandists may believe they are spreading
| legitimate truths, but ultimately by definition the
| disinformation can be traced to a source that intended to
| deliberately disinform.
|
| Also, not everyone around us needs to be gullible for
| disinformation to work. In the US for example we live in a
| country where national elections are routinely decided on
| razor thin margins, where just a couple of percent or less
| can flip the results. We also live in a nation where 32% of
| people believe in ghosts [0]. So there are enough gullible
| people for the type of disinformation that wouldn't persuade
| a reasonable person to still yield powerful results.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/style/do-you-believe-
| in-g...
| hnfong wrote:
| Why is ghosts relevant here?
|
| If the concept of ghosts are disinformation, who's the
| person that intentionally planted this seed? Even if that's
| the case, you'd have to go back thousands of years at
| least.
|
| You seem to be convinced that ghosts don't exist. Why is
| that? Note that absence of evidence is not evidence of
| absence. Among the millions of potentially fraudulent
| claims from people reporting to have seen ghosts, just one
| legit claim would suffice to contradict your premise. I
| don't know how good those odds are, but I'm guessing
| they're probably not as bad as you seem to believe.
|
| On the contrary, the claim that "ghosts don't exist" seems
| to be a prime candidate for being disinformation. Pretty
| useful thing for secular institutions to have the
| population believe (regardless of its truth value) if only
| to wrestle power away from religious and spiritual
| institutions.
| JustBreath wrote:
| This is the fundamental and intrinsic reason for concepts of
| free speech.
|
| The power to control what can and can't be shared between
| people corrupts just like any other power.
| swayvil wrote:
| We can't trust individuals to distinguish misinformation from
| "I don't like it" or whatever else.
|
| So we shouldn't. Route around the unsolvable problem. Find
| another way.
| somenameforme wrote:
| There's a really fun, and deeply relevant, historical tidbit on
| the history of 'yelling fire in a crowded theater.' That
| statement didn't actually come from any court case along those
| lines. Instead it was first used by Supreme Court Justice
| Oliver Wendell Holmes in the case Schenck vs the United States,
| as a metaphor. [1]
|
| So, what was the egregious offense, endangering all of society
| by words alone, uttered by by Schenck? This "yelling fire in a
| crowded theater"? Charles Schenck was a member of the local
| Socialist party, and was distributing fliers urging draft age
| men to oppose the draft (for World War 1) on the grounds that
| it entailed involuntary servitude, outlawed by the 13th
| amendment.
|
| So there's your "yelling fire in a crowded theater" when you
| concede your right of free speech to the government.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
| perihelions wrote:
| The meta-lesson I've learned from these types of examples is
| that language is a slippery construct: the more you wander
| away from concrete words and specific meanings, in the
| direction of metaphors and abstractions, the easier it is to
| convince of yourself of stupid things. It's on the back of my
| mind a lot when worrying about LLM's. The power to convince,
| and the power to reason, are very different things.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > worrying about LLM's
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-
| controversial/
| hnfong wrote:
| In my years of arguing with people online (#xkcd386), I
| notice that those who resort to metaphors and analogies
| often have the least convincing arguments. Metaphors are
| great when you're explaining a difficult concept (of which
| you've attained a satisfactory level of understanding) to a
| willing listener, but it's really easy to enter the
| slippery slope you mentioned if the correctness of
| something is in dispute.
|
| These days when I see a argument based on metaphor, I just
| ... disengage.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Fire Fire Fire!!!!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDap-K6GmL0
| [deleted]
| fwlr wrote:
| The "fire in a crowded theater" metaphor, in addition to being
| more a legal myth than a legal principle, is not quite the
| right perspective to understand this ruling. That said, if we
| try to use that metaphor to understand this ruling, it is sort
| of like "a judge has ruled that the federal firefighting
| organization is no longer allowed to pressure movie theaters to
| bar entry to moviegoers whom the firefighters suspect will
| shout fire in the theater". In this metaphor, the bulk of the
| ruling is an extensive documentation of the many instances of
| firefighters and government organizations with names like
| "Conflagration Interdiction Committee" sending names of
| specific people to major theaters with comments like "this
| person regularly posts charts of the flammability of
| upholstery, do something about it" and then that person gets
| barred from that theater days later.
| bena wrote:
| Always could. Because everyone else can _see_ if the theater is
| on fire or not.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Damn, the US is doomed if we have a systematic expectation of
| individuals validating people telling them to panic
| RobotToaster wrote:
| It's a myth that it's illegal to yell fire in a crowded
| theatre,
| https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
| hanniabu wrote:
| What about yelling bomb on an airplane
| merth wrote:
| how is that information is useful even if it's true. it's
| not like you can walk away.
| hirundo wrote:
| You can pray, which many people find useful. You might be
| able to phone home and say goodbye. There might be a bomb
| squad technician on the plane.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| It's not illegal to yell "fire", but you can bet you're
| getting charged for manslaughter if someone dies as a result.
|
| This isn't far fetched, many people have gotten crushed or
| trampled in a panic and died as a result.
| halfjoking wrote:
| The CDC yelled "VACCINATE YOUNG PEOPLE" using fraudulent
| data.
|
| https://twitter.com/kevinnbass/status/1674920880219234304
|
| I agree they should be charged with manslaughter for all
| the blood clots, heart disease and cancers they caused
| among young people.
| theossuary wrote:
| You're going to have to do better than linking to a
| verified Twitter user if you want most people to take you
| seriously. Just the fact you get your news from Twitter
| makes me think you're just spouting what you heard in
| your echo chamber.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| And Trump should be prosecuted for treason because he
| attempted to overthrow the government. Good luck making
| your case stick. :)
| hoten wrote:
| Half the comments here are saber-rattling at the title of the
| article, without the understanding that the title itself is an
| egregious mischaracterization. Yeah, the court issued a rule, but
| the layman's interpretation of "that means they found actual
| wrong doing" is not correct. It's just a preliminary injunction,
| apparently based on some flawed misinterpretation of the actual
| communication that took place [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36619241
| darealrealist wrote:
| [flagged]
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| This goes beyond the President using his "bully pulpit" to urge a
| social action. From the article:
|
| >Several of the messages came from Rob Flaherty, former deputy
| assistant to the president and director of digital strategy, who
| criticized Facebook over its handling of COVID misinformation.
|
| >Doughty said that one Flaherty message in February 2021 accused
| Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor
| false COVID-19 claims." Flaherty also wrote in a July 2021 email
| to Facebook, "Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on
| what happened here and I want it today."
|
| >A February 2021 message in which Flaherty asked Twitter to
| remove a parody account related to Hunter Biden's daughter said,
| "Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved
| immediately. Please remove this account immediately."
|
| In my opinion there is a big difference between the President
| saying in a speech that social media should do something versus
| what is revealed here.
| pakyr wrote:
| I wanted to point out several factual issues with this ruling,
| some of which I mentioned yesterday on another post. For
| starters, the judge severely misquotes an email:
|
| >However, various emails show Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on
| the merits through evidence that the motivation of the NIAID
| Defendants was a "take down" of protected free speech. Dr.
| Francis Collins, in an email to Dr. Fauci told Fauci there needed
| to be a "quick and devastating take down" of the GBD--the result
| was exactly that.
|
| In reality, the email[0] actually said this:
|
| >There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of
| its premises. I don't see anything like that online yet - is it
| underway?
|
| Notice how he removed the word "published" from his quote, making
| it seem like an instruction to a social media company rather than
| a published rebuttal. He also mischaracterizes a WH aide's email
| to FB, claiming that the aid accused FB "of causing 'political
| violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims", when in
| actuality he was referring to a WSJ article that detailed actual
| calls to violence on the platform[1].
|
| He also characterizes Twitter's removal of an account with the
| handle "AnthonyFauci_" as government-directed censorship of
| parody:
|
| > NIAID and NIH staff sent several messages to social-media
| platforms asking them to remove content lampooning or criticizing
| Dr. Fauci . . . An HHS official then asked Twitter if it could
| "block" similar parody accounts...
|
| But in reality, the contact was initiated by Twitter, who asked
| the CDC whether the account was real or fake[2]. Why were they
| confused about this? Because the account wasn't a parody at all;
| its name was "Dr. Anthony Fauci", its bio was "Director of the
| National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases #NIAID",
| and there was nothing parodic about its tweets[3][4], which
| purported to be giving out factual info; it was a straight up
| impersonation.
|
| On the subject of Dr. Fauci, there's a particularly egregious
| section where the judge accuses him and other members of NIAID of
| 'censoring' the so-called Great Barrington Declaration. To
| support his claim that Reddit and Google censored the GBD at the
| government's behest, he cites an article[5] that describes how
| Reddit _mods_ (not Reddit the company!) took down links to the
| GBD, and complains about the top Google search results for the
| GBD were all disparaging it, without providing any evidence that
| either NIAID instructed Google to change the results, or even any
| evidence that Google purposely changed the results at all. His
| accusation is that Fauci made public statements 'in collusion'
| with another employee
|
| >Dr. Fauci testified "it's possible that" he coordinated with Dr.
| Collins on his public statements attacking the GBD.
|
| Disparaging the GBD, and that Google and these individual mods in
| turn took independent action against it. So I guess PSAs are
| censorship?
|
| Needless to say, there's a lot of issues with this injunction,
| and from just the small sections I've looked at, it doesn't seem
| like the judge has applied the necessary rigor to justify a
| nationwide injunction restricting the government from nearly all
| contact with various companies and nonprofits. I kind of wish Ars
| Technics had done some of this scrutiny (which really didn't take
| that long) before publishing this article.
|
| [0]https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/12/18/23/51969841-10324873..
| .
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=36619117
|
| [2]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18..
| .
|
| [3]https://twitter.com/merrymanlab/status/1239321484297998336
|
| [4]http://web.archive.org/web/20200313170022/https://twitter.co..
| .
|
| [5]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18..
| .
| ModernMech wrote:
| This new crop of politicians in robes seem to be worse than the
| rest. I'd expect this kind of malpractice from Fox News
| Channel, not the federal judiciary.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| A reminder to others that Trump appointed HUNDREDS of hand
| picked judges all over, not just the supreme court. All while
| calling legal challenges to his actual crimes "Legislating
| from the bench"
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Politicking judges are less bad than judging politicians.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > a nationwide injunction restricting the government from
| nearly all contact with various companies and nonprofits.
|
| Good thing that such an injunction was not issued.
|
| Given all the emphasis you place on paraphrasing things
| correctly, this seems to be a pretty egregious
| misrepresentation of the injunction.
| pakyr wrote:
| Is it? Reading over pages 4 and 5 of the injunction[0], based
| on points 4, 5, 9, and 10, it seems government employees are
| now barred in any way from discussing any social media
| content or company policy protected by the 1st amendment with
| the companies or nonprofits.
|
| > (4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or
| engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media
| companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any
| manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of
| content containing protected free speech;
|
| > (5) collaborating, coordinating, partnering,
| switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election
| Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford
| Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the
| purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in
| any manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of
| content posted with social-media companies containing
| protected free speech;
|
| > (9) requesting content reports from social-media companies
| detailing actions taken to remove, delete, suppress, or
| reduce content containing protected free speech; and
|
| > (10) notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout
| ("BOLO") for postings containing protected free speech.
|
| As you'll see from my above post, the judge has a curious
| idea of what 'inducing' censorship entails (among other
| things: making public statements that might be heard by
| Reddit mods, who in turn take it upon themselves to remove
| links to content).
|
| [0]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.
| 18...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Reading over pages 4 and 5 of the injunction[0], it seems
| government employees are now barred in any way from
| discussing any social media content or company policy that
| isn't explicitly illegal with social media
|
| Whether or not any involved content is "explicitly
| illegal", they are explicitly permitted to discuss that
| content so long as it is related to threats to public
| safety and security of the US, content that may be
| misleading voters on voting processes, or about content
| that isn't Constitutionally protected, among other
| exceptions; see the explicit exceptions on pp. 5-6. As
| framed, the exceptions are cumulative and trump the
| restrictions, so, e.g., a BOLO for content whose context
| was efforts to protect the public safety and security of
| the US would permissible under the injunction _even if_ the
| content was itself Constitutionally protected free speech.
| pakyr wrote:
| Lying about an election to mislead voters on election
| processes (i.e. time, place, and manner) is illegal.[0]
| "Threats that threaten the public safety or security of
| the United States" are also illegal. The judge lists
| several other things that are also illegal, such as
| malicious cyber activity and criminal conspiracy, so it
| doesn't seem like that section is intended to contains
| exceptions to section 8.
|
| [0]https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-
| resources/sca...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Lying about an election to mislead voters is illegal
|
| The big exception is, of course, the last, which covers
| any content that isn't protected by the Free Speech
| Clause _whether or not_ it is expressly illegal.
| pakyr wrote:
| Ah, you're right; I think most of that speech (fighting
| words, obscenity, etc.) is already illegal anyway, but in
| case there's any that isn't, I will edit that to say
| speech that's "protected by the 1st amendment".
| shkkmo wrote:
| "Nearly all contact" != "social media content or company
| policy that isn't explicitly illegal with social media
| companies"
|
| The types of contact that are still allowed are still the
| vast majority.
|
| The types of contact that are prohibited are those that are
| potentially viewed as part of efforts to suppress free
| speech.
|
| I really don't understand the objection unless you support
| the efforts to suppress this free speech.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The free speech misinformation directly led to deaths of
| citizens. It is no different from any other speech that causes
| mass panic and confusion. I don't understand why this decision
| was allowed to become detached from reality.
| s__s wrote:
| Yelling fire in a crowded theatre is only illegal when you know
| for sure there is no fire and are intentionally trying to cause
| panic and death.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Yes, disinformation is not free speech. Misinformation can be
| allowed, however amplification of it cannot.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's more akin to yelling that there isn't a fire when there
| is and avoiding all evidence so you can claim ignorance.
| thsksbd wrote:
| You mean misinformation like the Hunter laptop story, the Wuhan
| lab origin - both censored and true - or do you mean Russia
| gate (throughly discredited, but shoved down the electorate's
| throat for four years?
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