Free Speech

[Keef]

There is no freedom of speech in privately owned settings. I'm not sure why that's so difficult to understand. Any judge is going to laugh this out of court.

 

[TexRex]

There is no freedom of speech in privately owned settings. I'm not sure why that's so difficult to understand.

Stupidity and/or victimhood.

Any judge is going to laugh this out of court.

[Justice Clarence Thomas enters the chat]

 

[TexRex]

Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'

Visit the post for more.

www.techdirt.com

The Republican grievance culture wars about the internet are never ending. The Grand Old Party -- which once presented itself as believing in private property rights, keeping government out of business, and mocking "snowflakes" for playing victim all the time -- has shown its true colors as being for everything it previously insisted it was against. As we noted earlier this year, a bunch of states with Republican controlled legislatures and governors have been proposing blatantly unconstitutional bills to try to prevent social media companies from moderating disinformation and propaganda. Utah was the first state to pass such a bill, but Governor Spencer Cox wisely vetoed it, noting the Constitutional concerns.

Next out of the gate was Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis chose poorly, signing the bill that was thrown out last week for being blatantly unconstitutional under basically any standard of review. As we've noted, this is all performative nonsense, playing to a base that wants to insist it's the aggrieved victims, because sometimes when they violate a website's policies, they face consequences.

Incredibly, though not surprisingly, Texas legislators have looked at Florida's giant constitutional mess of wasted taxpayer funds and said, "yeah, let's do that!" Earlier this year, Texas proposed another awful social media content moderation bill, but the legislative session ended without it being voted on. Rather than move on to dealing with actual problems, Texas launched a special legislative session with a long list of culture war grievances -- including the social media bill.

And so the bill has been re-introduced and it's arguably even more blatantly unconstitutional than the Florida bill. Most of the first part of the bill is just creating a ton of silly and wasteful compliance paperwork -- requiring social media websites to do a lot more to actually moderate content on their site, including having someone people can call, having an official appeals process, and explaining to people in exact terms why they were moderated (this gambit is a favorite of trolls and assholes, who want this information solely to disingenuously insist that they didn't break the rules, or to insist that others who broke similar rules were treated differently, usually by removing any and all context from those decisions).

But then the bill veers into even more ridiculous territory. First, it defines "censorship" to mean things that are clearly not censorship. Even if you disagree with the basic premise that moderation is not censorship, the Texas bill defines "censorship" so broadly to make the term meaningless:

"Censor" means to block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression.

De-monetizing is censorship? De-boosting is censorship? In what world? I mean, Fox News refuses to put me on the air to express my views about their propaganda. Is that censorship? The bill does exempt news organizations, but still. Under this bill, it seems that search ranking is censorship. After all, whoever is ranked below the top spot has been "de-boosted" and not provided "equal access or visibility." I can't wait until I can sue Google for not putting Techdirt at the top of every search!

The bill then tries to prohibit its definition of "censorship" for viewpoints.

CENSORSHIP PROHIBITED. (a) A social media platform may not censor a user, a user ’s expression, or a user ’s ability to receive the expression of another person based on:

(1) the viewpoint of the user or another person;
(2) the viewpoint represented in the user’s expression or another person’s expression; or
(3) a user’s geographic location in this state or any part of this state.

So, you cannot ban Nazis anymore. Or bigots spewing hatred. Sounds great, Texas. I mean...actually, sounds totally blatantly unconstitutional, and a clear waste of Texas taxpayers' money, as you will have to go to Court and defend this law that will easily be tossed out as unconstitutional. But who cares about that when there's a culture war to fight and an opportunity to whine about how you're the victim again?

Lost. The. Plot.

I can't imagine any circumstance under which Abbott won't sign it--as he's been pushing this as hard as DeSantis--save for doing a complete 180 and actually coming to his senses. So...nope.

 

[Danoff]

Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'

Visit the post for more.

www.techdirt.com

Lost. The. Plot.

I can't imagine any circumstance under which Abbott won't sign it--as he's been pushing this as hard as DeSantis--save for doing a complete 180 and actually coming to his senses. So...nope.

Openly fighting against the constitution at this point.

 

[Brett]

Openly fighting against the constitution at this point.

But the Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves at this attack on ... I don't even know, some made up boogeyman. Scary!

 

[McLaren]

Donating money to this guy only for him to lose it in frivolous law suits.

Either self-realization set in, or Jr. realizing once again he doesn't have his dad's charisma to fool people.

Donald Trump Jr. was mocked for trying to crowdfund legal fees for his dad to sue Facebook, Twitter, and Google​

In a Telegram post late Thursday, the younger Trump said: "Guys my dad is suing big tech!!! I'd you can click link to donate to his PAC to help out!!!"

....
Several of the comments, which Insider has seen, criticized the fundraising call considering the Trump family's considerable wealth.

"Is this a joke? Don't the Trump's have billions of $$$$?" one user said.

Forbes has estimated the elder Trump's net worth to be $2.4 billion.

"******* GRIFTER," another user wrote. "You should be ashamed. Wake up people. They are one of the richest families in the country and they need your hard earned dollars to do what he should have done for free."

Many Trump supporters also responded to the post by suggesting that the former president should have restrained tech companies while in office — which he repeatedly threatened to do.

Donald Trump Jr. was mocked for trying to crowdfund legal fees for his dad to sue Facebook, Twitter, and Google

Donald Trump Jr. asked his followers on Telegram to donate to his father's PAC. Some people mocked the request considering his family's wealth.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[MIE1992]

There is no freedom of speech in privately owned settings. I'm not sure why that's so difficult to understand. Any judge is going to laugh this out of court.

If I'm right, then ironically, the government trying to force a private setting (e.g. a social media platform) to say something would be a violation of free speech, wouldn't it?

 

[TexRex]

If I'm right, then ironically, the government trying to force a private setting (e.g. a social media platform) to say something would be a violation of free speech, wouldn't it?

Yes. Compelled speech isn't free speech.

---

Gettr by the Pu$$y

Jason Miller pitched a free-speech utopia. He got a moderation nightmare.

thebulwark.com

Language warning. I've transcribed the article nearly in full (there's a screenshot left out and I've removed all hyperlinks as I couldn't vouch for their contents--of course, this is all still available in the article linked...oh, and...yeah...language warning for that as well) and it includes discourse from a social network that GTPlanet forum software may not have seen fit to censor but is arguably inappropriate regardless.

Ahhh, internet forum moderation policy debates.

Right-wing politicians and pundits will have you believe that their victimization at the hands of overzealous online censors is a challenge both unique and urgent. But for as long as there have been posters posting on the vast information superhighway, the power users among them have discussed the very rules of the road that are perturbing conservatives with passion and verve. These bitter disputes happen no matter the forum. No matter the topic.

A few examples:

How does one ensure that the integrity of the FarmersOnly dating site isn’t harmed by the presence of a garden-variety suburban green thumb?

Could the wheel of ChatRoulette keep spinning if the ball track is consistently landing on a lonely man’s junk?

Were the lovers’ lounges in AOL’s People Connection undermined by 13-year-old boys unconvincingly pretending to be 40-year-old divorcees ISO companionship?

One of my favorite message-board haunts, GWHoops.com, was forced to close up shop when our long-suffering site manager was caught betwixt his laissez faire ethos and a troll with multiple personality disorder whose incessant posting overwhelmed the tens of Colonial faithful who merely wanted to vent about Coach Hobbs’s defensive schemes.

The same problem (to an exponential degree) bedeviled Craigslist, an unmoderated website that in the early aughts grew to become the world’s largest classified ad space and the home to dreamers of all sexualities and genders trying to find that Missed Connection. By 2008, the spammers and scammers and catfishers had begun to swamp the regular old Listers and Craig had to change course to contain them. More than a decade on the site has neither regained its former glory nor resolved the problem.

And thus the question has persisted for sites big and small since the days of the very first usenet groups: How do you balance user experience with the internet’s promise of unhindered expression?

At some point over the past few years this debate, which once had been the sole domain of Prodigy Classic Chat administrators, gripped an entire political party.

The protection of uninhibited speech rights on private internet forums is now one of only three proactive policy priorities of the Republican party. (The other two are limiting the speech rights of woke teachers and addressing imaginary voter fraud.) The GOP’s newfound passion is driven both top-down by the cult leader who is sad he has lost his toys and bottom-up through demands from MAGA voters.

If you find yourself in any digital space where supporters of the twice-impeached former President Donald Trump gather, you will notice that internet forum moderation is now among their prime concerns.

These great patriots are being CENSORED. And they let you know it on the many platforms where they are mysteriously still allowed to post.

They are pissed that they can no longer spread deadly misinformation about COVID vaccines. Or plot violent coups. Or harrass women, or trans folks, or other users they hate who happen to share the platform with them.

In order to remedy this anti-MAGA discrimination, these salt-of-the-earth trolls are demanding action from their representatives in Washington. But steering the ship of state takes time and the prospect of federal, filibuster-proof message-board moderation legislation seems dim.

Enter: Gettr.

Gettr is the “new” social platform that was founded by Jason Miller, a child-support-ducking deadbeat dad whose main career distinction is the abject shamelessness with which he defends Donald Trump’s lies.

Miller’s site is a re-skinned version of a previous app developed by his Chinese billionaire sugar daddy Guo Wengui, who you may remember as the owner of the yacht on which Steve Bannon was arrested.

Gettr tried to brand itself as a Trump-endorsed site, though that was quickly shot down by the Butterscotch Baron of Bedminster, who knows a thing or two about licensing and isn’t letting a chinless bootlicker trade on his name unless he’s getting a big piece of the action.

Gettr enters a crowded “MAGA social media” space that manages to continue sprouting new companies despite the imposing monopoly power wielded by Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Telegram, Reddit, and YouTube. It is the successor to, among others, Gab, a “free speech” platform frequented by neo-Nazis, and Parler, a dystopian hellscape I ventured into a year ago.

I wanted to see if Gettr had been able to learn from Parler’s mistakes and achieve the utopian free speech ideal that has bedeviled the internet since Day 0.

So I hopped over to the app store to check it out.

First things first: If you are going to download Gettr, I would recommend choosing a spam email account and a unique password, seeing as the site has already been scraped by hackers. (I’m @PayChildSupport; give me a follow!)

Upon download I was greeted with the opportunity to follow “popular users” such as Newsmax, Dinesh D’Souza, Mike Pompeo, and other unapologetic insurrectionists. These suggested accounts indicate that this marketplace will be more akin to the Soviet Safeway which offers only the state-approved brand of detergent rather than a diversity of options competing with one another. I was hoping that there might be more underneath the hood.

I scrolled through the suggested non-verified accounts and clicked on those that caught my eye. I was excited to see that all my friends were here. There’s @assplug, @nutboi, @BigRightTiddie, @GayforCummunism, @fat_trump_bussy, @qarmy, @qanonjohn, @johnQanon, @WinningWWG1wga, @pepedeluxe, @Confederate88, @Ni****s88, and more!

I also wanted to get a sense for the quality of discussion emanating from influencer and brand accounts, so I followed @SonicFastFood, @officialChewy, @SubwayUSA, @DominosOfficial, several different official Sean Hannity accounts, @KylieJenner, and Trump’s former campaign manager @CLewandowski.

Once I got to 100 follows, I figured I had a nice cross-section of the platform and was ready to experience a truly unbiased social network.

What I found is that Gettr has the same exact problems that have tormented every platform in the history of the internet.

For starters, Gettr’s verification system is a mess because the platform hasn’t figured out how to resolve the tension between freedom of speech and the freedom to spoof. Which is to say, if you’re a Newsmax anchor, you can get a special red Verrit V, meaning that you are who you say you are. Other accounts are stuck with a black V that I could not determine the significance of. Still other accounts display a homemade checkmark.

And the pranksters got me! My very first brand follow—@SonicFastFood—was not a representative of America’s heritage of innovative and tasty drive-in cuisine, but rather a digital gathering space for furry porn. Of which there is a lot on Gettr.

Look, that’s not my bag of beans but no judgment. If MAGAs are into that sort of thing, that’s cool. But let me just say that during my first day on Gettr I didn’t come across a single substantive exchange of ideas—but I was exposed to a very great deal of Sonic the Hedgehog erotica. What a world.

But back to our verification problem: The “official” Frito’s account posted a series of absurdist memes that featured a suggestion that users should dip their penises into a Wendy’s frosty. The “official” Domino’s account is much more obsessed with “breeding” than with pizza (and not so subtly requested that women send selfies in which they are covered in feces). Meanwhile the Ford Motor Company is “horny” and has joined the “pisser army” being spearheaded by Still Piss Kink Proud.

None of the non-MAGA celebrity accounts seemed to be genuine, either. The @KylieJenner account tweeted the n-word and followed up with an announcement about how her new make-up line, KylieSkin, was “cumming soon.” Memes from these fake accounts were earning dozens of “regeets”—the Gettr netspeak for retweet or share.

The fakers also managed to take over the trending topics, which appear to be suspiciously managed by meddling Gettr overlords in order to not put their most offensive foot forward. At the time of this writing the “trends” were #Elsa and #COVID, but clicking on these stale topics brought you to things like “Real” Nicki Minaj asking her barbz to RETPOST IF TRUMP HAS A PISS KINK #Elsa. (Apparently Nicki hasn’t been told that they’re called regeets.)

None of these “real” or “official” accounts identify as parodies, and while I’m certain that Frito Lay doesn’t appreciate their well-cultivated brand identity being tea-bagged by random trolls, it’s at least obvious that the scatalogical endorsements aren’t authentic.

But for the MAGA celebs the situation isn’t as clear. Rep. Matt Gaetz got ensnared in a controversy when a Gettr account presumed to be a catfish called for pardons for the January 6 insurrectionists. “Corey Lewandowski” posted that his pronouns are Trump/Won. And while my prior assumption would be this is the kind of joke Corey would make, are we sure that was actually him? I emailed to ask and have received no response.

Meanwhile Sean Hannity has many official—“official”?—accounts and there’s no way to tell if any of them is authentic.

Taken as a whole, my Gettr newsfeed was a mash-up of catfishes and spoofs, conspiratorial craziness from real-life right-wingers, racial slurs from anonymous Nazi accounts, and pornographic trolling from (I assume) bored libs. The Algonquin Round Table this is not. The marketplace of ideas was barren.

But hey, it’s the internet, new sites with dumbass trolls and nutty power users are a dime a dozen. The most revealing part of the Gettr experience wasn’t what was on the platform—but what wasn’t.

Because it turns out that this cesspool would have been even worse if not for the fact that Jason Miller was doing exactly the same thing that Facebook and Twitter and all the other Big Bad Tech Oligarchs do: moderating his site’s content in order to provide a more usable product for his audience.

Complaints about this heavy-handed, neo-Puritan moderation were all over the platform.

@RoseyRose lamented that their previous account had been banned because they told “ben shapiro I want to piss in his lungs.”

@Kenma suggested that many of their fellow trolls had been banned.

There was much consternation over the fact that one of the Fake Nicki Minaj accounts was suspended.

@Safeway Official shared a meme that offered a thoughtful critique of Gettr’s crackdown on Sonic the Hedgehog porn.

Where’s muh free speech?!

Funny how the entire premise behind these “free speech” platforms—and the GOP policies targeting tech censorship and the endless faux outrage on cable news—is negated the minute the complainers are put in charge.

Because what these people inevitably find is that there’s no lib cabal targeting them. No grand conspiracy of Silicon Valley billionaire bros.

Instead the founders of Gettr have been crushed by the same banal challenge that every neckbeard site admin and anxiety-riddled Zoomer slaving away at the dystopian Facebook content-moderation farm has confronted from the moment the internet birthed this vast catch basin of human knowledge and obscenity and allowed people to post on it anonymously. The problem is the users. You can’t live with ’em. But you can’t live without ’em.

So good luck, Jason. As every content moderator who has come before you knows, the job in front of you is not all that different from the new spa treatment offered by Kylie_Cosmetics on Gettr.

I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Oh, and buddy? When that sweet, sweet Chinese tech money starts coming in? Pay your child support, you freaking deadbeat.

 

[Keef]

If I'm right, then ironically, the government trying to force a private setting (e.g. a social media platform) to say something would be a violation of free speech, wouldn't it?

As @TexRex said, right. A government would need something like a warrant or subpoena to force that private entity to produce anything. That said, some companies have been known to produce information voluntarily after being "coerced" or pressured, in the belief that they're saving face, but obviously that then calls into question the freedom of speech or non-speech of the platform's users. That's effectively the company talking on your behalf but without your permission (assuming that permission wasn't given when you signed up which it probably was).

 

[TexRex]

As an American, it's difficult to wrap my head around British police investigating online racism directed at players over their Euro Cup performance. I hate racism but the police shouldn't have any involvement but for legitimate threats of violence.

 

[TexRex]

 

[UKMikey]

Not sure whether a jury was involved but if so I wonder whether the footage was shown in its entirety in court while Roy and his wife looked on stony faced.

Or whether more people who have yet to watch the show in question will be looking it up for research purposes. Streisand effect gonna Streisand.

[EDIT] Exhibit A:



🤣🤣... comedy gold I mean, most interesting from a purely legal perspective of course.

 

[TexRex]

Not sure whether a jury was involved but if so I wonder whether the footage was shown in its entirety in court while Roy and his wife looked on stony faced.

Or whether more people who have yet to watch the show in question will be looking it up for research purposes. Streisand effect gonna Streisand.

[EDIT] Exhibit A:



🤣🤣... comedy gold I mean, most interesting from a purely legal perspective of course.

No jury.

And Moore's claim in the clip that he's been married for however long and he's never been accused of "such things" is a lie, because he has been accused and his having been married for however long has no bearing. Accusations against him are a matter of public knowledge (they have to be or there is no bit for Cohen to do).

He was never going to win this one, and will never should the ruling be challenged (it will), which is why he and his attorney have been playing games all along, including appealing to populism and trying it in the court of public opinion at the very same time that he rides it through the actual courts.

 

[MatskiMonk]

As an American, it's difficult to wrap my head around British police investigating online racism directed at players over their Euro Cup performance. I hate racism but the police shouldn't have any involvement but for legitimate threats of violence.

Here it's threats of violence and things that are indecent or grossly offensive under the Malicious communications act. I believe the instance you're referring to related to use of the N word, but was otherwise not exactly threatening, indecent or grossly offensive.

Another bloke told Rashford to go back to his own country and was detained for questioning under the Racial & religious hatred act.

In both instances 'being hacked' is being used a defence.

Racism aside, I cannot imagine the scale of policing required to investigate every instance of a football fan being abusive towards/about a player, a manager, an official, another fan or even a commentator.

 

[TexRex]

Here it's threats of violence and things that are indecent or grossly offensive under the Malicious communications act. I believe the instance you're referring to related to use of the N word, but was otherwise not exactly threatening, indecent or grossly offensive.

Another bloke told Rashford to go back to his own country and was detained for questioning under the Racial & religious hatred act.

In both instances 'being hacked' is being used a defence.

Racism aside, I cannot imagine the scale of policing required to investigate every instance of a football fan being abusive towards/about a player, a manager, an official, another fan or even a commentator.

I'm sorry that I don't recall exactly what it was that prompted me to post that. I think you're probably right that it was purely concerning racist filth, but it was something I'd heard on the radio and I can't refer to it now for additional information.

Not to offer any kind of approval for racist filth (though I do maintain that people should be allowed to be racist provided their being racist doesn't lead to perpetrating acts against others based on race)...because I don't...at all...but I think that things are said in the heat of the moment (and it should be acknowledge that these moments may be longer for some than others) should be considered, as they may not accurately represent the speaker's beliefs or intentions.

 

[Daz555]

As an American, it's difficult to wrap my head around British police investigating online racism directed at players over their Euro Cup performance. I hate racism but the police shouldn't have any involvement but for legitimate threats of violence.

UK has laws governing "hate speech" so police are right to follow up accordingly. From Wikipedia:


In England and Wales and Scotland, the Public Order Act 1986 prohibits, by its Part 3, expressions of racial hatred, which is defined as hatred against a group of persons by reason of the group's colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins. Section 18 of the Act says:

A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if—
(a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
(b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.

At the time this law was passed in the UK, the Conservative Party were in power and Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister.

 

[TexRex]

UK has laws governing "hate speech" so police are right to follow up accordingly. From Wikipedia:


In England and Wales and Scotland, the Public Order Act 1986 prohibits, by its Part 3, expressions of racial hatred, which is defined as hatred against a group of persons by reason of the group's colour, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins. Section 18 of the Act says:

At the time this law was passed in the UK, the Conservative Party were in power and Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister.

Police may be right to investigate under law, but that doesn't make the law right.

The closest we have is the fighting words doctrine, which isn't so much legislation that holds speech will be investigated, rather that speech which can reasonably be expected to result in an imminent unlawful retaliation may not be protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The scope of what may be deemed fighting words has been narrowed as recently as 1989 in Texas v. Johnson in which it had been incredulously invoked in a flag burning case wherein the subject Johnson was convicted of violating a state statute prohibiting desecration of a venerated object. It's nothing to do with the doctrine, but I'm compelled to point out that the Supreme Court held in Johnson that all such prohibitions are unconstitutional.

However much I may disapprove of hate speech, I believe it should be the beneficiary of speech protections, which I have on good authority aren't actually a thing in the UK.

 

[TexRex]

It's not really possible to argue that section 230 is unconstitutional.

As you'll recall, Florida's social media bill was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge a couple weeks ago. The state has already moved to appeal that decision, so we'll have to see how the judges on the 11th Circuit feel about all of this. However, apparently the case in the lower court is still moving forward in some way (I had assumed that after the preliminary injunction and appeal that the case would be stayed until the appeal was decided, but apparently not? Understanding civil procedure is an impossibility).

Earlier today Florida filed its response to the lawsuit, which is... not much. It's basically this sentence over and over again:

This paragraph contains legal conclusions that do not require a response. Defendants deny any remaining allegations in this paragraph.

I count 142 such statements (roughly). When you get down to the defenses, they toss out a bunch, but the one that caught my attention is their sixth defense:

Insofar as 47 U.S.C. § 230 would render all or any portion of the Act unconstitutional, 47 U.S.C. § 230 is invalid and in violation of the First Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and the principle of federalism.

The issue here is that while the law has been put on hold for violating the 1st Amendment, one of the other arguments is that even if it were constitutional (which it is not), it would be pre-empted by Section 230. We've discussed this in the past. Section 230 makes it clear that states cannot contravene federal law regarding moderation and if they do they're pre-empted. So, to counter that, Florida is now doing a "it's not our law that's unconstitutional, it's actually Section 230 that's unconstitutional!"

I guess we can add this to Donald Trump's recent Florida lawsuit that is also challenging the constitutionality of Section 230.

I doubt this particular challenge to Section 230 will end up getting very far, but it does seem notable as a case involving a state government arguing that Section 230 is, itself, unconstitutional under the 1st Amendment, 10th Amendment, and federalism. Of course, as the social media bill itself has shown, Florida does not exactly have a good track record for understanding what is, and what is not, a violation of the 1st Amendment. But, of course, when you have clueless Supreme Court Justices asking for cases challenging the constitutionality of Section 230, eventually we were going to get to this point.

Here's a direct link to Florida's filing:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flnd.371253/gov.uscourts.flnd.371253.118.0_1.pdf

 

[Danoff]

Here's a direct link to Florida's filing:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flnd.371253/gov.uscourts.flnd.371253.118.0_1.pdf

No rationale given other than this? "Insofar as 47 U.S.C. § 230 would render all or any portion of the Act unconstitutional, 47 U.S.C. § 230 is invalid and in violation of the First Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and the principle of federalism."

In my defense, it looks like they haven't really argued it, just stated it. 😁 I have no trust that they can come up with a convincing argument for this, but it seems like thus far they haven't tried.

 

[TexRex]

No rationale given other than this? "Insofar as 47 U.S.C. § 230 would render all or any portion of the Act unconstitutional, 47 U.S.C. § 230 is invalid and in violation of the First Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and the principle of federalism."

In my defense, it looks like they haven't really argued it, just stated it. 😁 I have no trust that they can come up with a convincing argument for this, but it seems like thus far they haven't tried.

It feels like it's nothing more than an appeal to Justice Thomas who more and more comes off as just hating free speech.

 

[Danoff]

It feels like it's nothing more than an appeal to Justice Thomas who more and more comes off as just hating free speech.

Well that's not going to get the job done. Overturning the 1st amendment is going to take some more legwork.

 

[TexRex]

This is funny.



Nevermind the poster's commentary about the guy speaking on national television. Yes, that demonstrates that he hasn't been silenced, but let's focus on what the guy actually says in the clip. He acknowledges that he has an online platform through which he can self-publish just as he can with those provided by "big tech," and that platform is Substack.

Substack is...it's a blog. Readers subscribe to those who utilize the platform for self-publishing in order to access content and/or receive it in their email inbox. The primary service that Substack provides is ease of distribution, but a secondary that's almost just as significant is the opportunity to for content creators to charge for their product, for which Substack itself takes a cut.

So why are conservatives pushing so hard for speech welfare from the big guys when they don't offer such an opportunity? Reach.

The issue for conservatives isn't that there aren't other platforms. There are. They throw around the term "monopoly" as part of their grievance narratives, but like so many other terms that they throw around as part of their grievance narratives, it bears no relation to the term's common use definition. When they say "monopoly," what they actually mean is "successful." A big part of why they say "big tech" (this is another term that has lost its meaning through misuse as part of grievance narratives, and this is no better represented than in its invocation with regards to...wait for it...Soundcloud) has a monopoly is there's a mechanism in the legal system in the United States for combating monopolies. Use of the term serves as a threat, however toothless.

So...reach is the issue. The major social media platforms are successful and their success means that they can offer a degree of reach that just isn't fathomable right now for something like Substack. It probably never will be. Substack is just something different. Other platforms that style themselves after the most popular platforms are also unlikely to provide the same kind of reach despite the format being a similar experience, largely because of the viewpoint to which they cater dying a slow, violent death, but also because of viewpoint-based censorship (something they're free to exercise where they're free to exercise it) and a lack of censorship that makes the platform off-putting to a significant chunk of the audience that the popular platforms enjoy.

...

I think I got out everything that I wanted to, but it's late and I'm drinking.

 

[Danoff]

This is funny.



Nevermind the poster's commentary about the guy speaking on national television. Yes, that demonstrates that he hasn't been silenced, but let's focus on what the guy actually says in the clip. He acknowledges that he has an online platform through which he can self-publish just as he can with those provided by "big tech," and that platform is Substack.

Substack is...it's a blog. Readers subscribe to those who utilize the platform for self-publishing in order to access content and/or receive it in their email inbox. The primary service that Substack provides is ease of distribution, but a secondary that's almost just as significant is the opportunity to for content creators to charge for their product, for which Substack itself takes a cut.

So why are conservatives pushing so hard for speech welfare from the big guys when they don't offer such an opportunity? Reach.

The issue for conservatives isn't that there aren't other platforms. There are. They throw around the term "monopoly" as part of their grievance narratives, but like so many other terms that they throw around as part of their grievance narratives, it bears no relation to the term's common use definition. When they say "monopoly," what they actually mean is "successful." A big part of why they say "big tech" (this is another term that has lost its meaning through misuse as part of grievance narratives, and this is no better represented than in its invocation with regards to...wait for it...Soundcloud) has a monopoly is there's a mechanism in the legal system in the United States for combating monopolies. Use of the term serves as a threat, however toothless.

So...reach is the issue. The major social media platforms are successful and their success means that they can offer a degree of reach that just isn't fathomable right now for something like Substack. It probably never will be. Substack is just something different. Other platforms that style themselves after the most popular platforms are also unlikely to provide the same kind of reach despite the format being a similar experience, largely because of the viewpoint to which they cater dying a slow, violent death, but also because of viewpoint-based censorship (something they're free to exercise where they're free to exercise it) and a lack of censorship that makes the platform off-putting to a significant chunk of the audience that the popular platforms enjoy.

...

I think I got out everything that I wanted to, but it's late and I'm drinking.

I've been running into this narrative a lot lately, and it tends to get wrapped up in "I can't give you sources to back my claims because google is removing them", and "I used to have a better video but it's been removed", and "you can't find any information on this because it has been censored".

In otherwords... these people are being cultivated to not question what they hear from right wing media. The internet has become a big biased pool of information that only counters their narrative, and they are retreating from it in total to right wing news outlets so that they can get "unbiased" information. All of this is creating a religious following that is taught to question every source except those currently blessed by Trump. "Big tech" is meaningless because it's supposed to apply to the entire internet. In the end, these people won't mind breaking the internet via section 230 or whatever, as the internet has become a big disinformation campaign in their mind and they've already bailed on it.

 

[UKMikey]

I just got off a long tweet conversation with a lady who was convinced Google was the problem because they owned most of the social media platforms. When I pointed out that the government is already investigating Google from an antitrust perspective and suggested that the Florida bill is instead a politically motivated attempt to punish Twitter for expelling people she liked that break the rules, she went on a rant saying she was kicked off of the platform for calling a trans woman a man in a dress even though this was the common sense perspective a couple of years ago.

It's always personal with these people.

Spoiler: tediously long tweet conversation for anyone who cares. Some NSFW language

 

[Danoff]

I just got off a long tweet conversation with a lady who was convinced Google was the problem because they owned most of the social media platforms. When I pointed out that the government is already investigating Google from an antitrust perspective and suggested that the Florida bill is instead a politically motivated attempt to punish Twitter for expelling people she liked that break the rules, she went on a rant saying she was kicked off of the platform for calling a person a man in a dress even though this was the common sense perspective a couple of years ago.

It's always personal with these people.

That was twitter? Depending on what the story looks like, I could see that being reasonable or unreasonable. If she was commenting on a celebrity and called them that, I'd be surprised if she got kicked. If she tweeted at a less famous person based on their photo of themselves, I could see that being abusive behavior.

 

[Keef]

Netflix's new How to Become a Tyrant show is pretty excellent. Many of the "plays" described in it can be applied to some degree to any government, even the most fair, but in large part all their plays are easily identifiable in right-wing culture right now. And it's advanced along pretty far.

 

[UKMikey]

That was twitter? Depending on what the story looks like, I could see that being reasonable or unreasonable. If she was commenting on a celebrity and called them that, I'd be surprised if she got kicked. If she tweeted at a less famous person based on their photo of themselves, I could see that being abusive behavior.

She didn't specify but it involved calling someone a "he" so I guess misgendering was involved. I assume she made another account and got back in the saddle soon afterwards but without the full story I can't answer your question.

At any rate, it's been against Twitter rules for three years now so her claim that they swapped the TOS on her seems shaky.

Twitter has banned misgendering or “deadnaming” transgender people

Twitter’s hateful content policies were updated last month.

www.theverge.com

 

[TexRex]

A group of California police officers has decided other people's expressive rights end where their personal offense begins. Five Palo Alto police officers are suing the city, along with their own police department, for somehow discriminating against them by allowing artists to create a street-long Black Lives Matter mural these officers passed on their way to work. (Well, at least up until the mural was removed by the city in November 2020, less than six months after it was first painted.)

The complaint contends harassment begins with the letter "E." From the lawsuit:

The iconography at issue in the letter “E” of the mural is an image of Joanne Chesimard, better known as Assata Shakur, who was convicted in 1977 for the murder of New Jersey State Trooper Wermer Foerster, a white police officer. In 1979, while serving life sentence for the murder, Shakur escaped from prison and ended up in Cuba where she now has refuge and where the Cuban government refuses to extradite her to the United States. As result of her conviction and subsequent prison escape, Shakur was placed on the FBI’s Top Ten List 0f Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists.

The cops also have a problem with a "portion of a logo" that has been attributed to the New Black Panthers, an organization designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It's these two elements of the city-ordained mural that seem to be triggering (yes, and in that form of the word as well) the harassment allegations. That and the fact that the officers were somehow forced to pass the mural on their way to work despite -- as the Palo Alto Daily Post points out -- the officers having to go out of their way to subject themselves to it.

The police department is located at 275 Forest Ave., on the opposite side of City Hall from the mural. The two vehicle entrances to the department are in the 600 block of Ramona and Bryant streets, a half block from where the mural had been located.

Here's a little visual aid that shows how impossible it was for these officers to avoid being confronted by a controversial E:

Somehow the existence of this mural on a street a block away from the police department resulted in host of discrimination and harassment targeting this "protected" group of police officers.

Plaintiffs’ careers have been materially and adversely affected, and irreparably harmed and damaged by the conduct of the Defendants. Defendants, and each of them, created and allowed to exist harassing, discriminatory, and retaliatory work environment and failed to eliminate the illegal conduct complained of by Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs were discriminated against and harassed on the basis of their race, national origin, and/or color and retaliated against for exercising their rights to be free from harassing and discriminatory conduct in the workplace.
Moreover, Plaintiffs spoke out about and reported misconduct, retaliation, discrimination, and harassment in violation of state and federal law and reported such conduct to people above them in the chain of command. As direct and proximate consequence of reporting such misconduct—which constitutes protected activity under state and federal law—Defendants, and each of them, retaliated against, discriminated against, and harassed Plaintiffs and subjected them to adverse employment actions.Those adverse employment actions include, but are not limited to, refusing to eliminate the harassing and discriminatory conduct, and failing or refusing to investigate Plaintiffs’ complaints.

So, while the city did allow the mural to occupy the street and gave its blessing to the sixteen artists involved, it did not direct or supervise the content of the mural. And it's not really "retaliation" for the PD and the City to not remove a mural just because five cops seem super angry about it. Nor is it "retaliation" to refuse to investigate claims that are facially idiotic.

The complaints aren't any less specious just because a law firm signed off on it. The plaintiffs fail to indicate which protected group they believe they're in, which makes it appear the officers believe "police officer" ranks right up there with race, national origin, and skin color.

They also believe the mural bullied them in horrible but nonspecific ways.

As a direct, foreseeable, and proximate result of Defendants' harassing conduct and failure to act, Plaintiffs suffered and continue to suffer humiliation, embarrassment, anxiety, mental anguish, and emotional distress. Plaintiffs were required to and did employ, and will in the future employ, physicians and health care providers to examine, treat, and care for Plaintiffs, and did, and will in the future, incur medical and incidental expenses.

Welp, this lawsuit isn't going to help much on the humiliation and embarrassment fronts. Without more factual assertions about the mural's harassment of protected individuals who happened to pass by it on their way to work as public servants, it's probably not going to survive the first motion to dismiss.

The plaintiffs should be wary of trying to push this too far, because it really looks like the plaintiffs are trying to make the case that saying "Black Lives Matter" somehow means the lives of people who aren't black somehow don't. Their incorrect assumptions about the meaning of this phrase -- as well as their innate ability to be personally offended by certain elements of the street mural -- isn't even remotely in the ballpark of any legally actionable claims.

 

[McLaren]

I just got off a long tweet conversation with a lady who was convinced Google was the problem because they owned most of the social media platforms. When I pointed out that the government is already investigating Google from an antitrust perspective and suggested that the Florida bill is instead a politically motivated attempt to punish Twitter for expelling people she liked that break the rules, she went on a rant saying she was kicked off of the platform for calling a trans woman a man in a dress even though this was the common sense perspective a couple of years ago.

It's always personal with these people.

Spoiler: tediously long tweet coversation for anyone who cares. Some NSFW language

Jeeezzuss. Bless your soul for even attempting to converse with that... person. Retweets from Kirk, Cheong, Sorbo, Zuby, Kashuv, Lindsay, Watson, she's got the who's who of right-wing idiocy on retweet speed dial. This is hilariously ironic, though.

It's quite obvious to me that the Democrats know they're going to get massive numbers of votes disqualified and their plan is to go into 2021 saying Trump stole the election.

 

[TexRex]

How has that not been deleted?