They are all intentionally ambiguous and therefore not legal. Due to their ambiguity a typical TOS isn't worth the paper its not printed on.
If a TOS isn’t a binding contract, how can you thus complain about Twitter or Facebook banning people? I mean, by your own logic, the parties haven’t entered into a contract, so the banned users can’t make the courts legally enforce a contract-that-isn’t.
You seem to be saying that if someone trespasses on property I own, and they refuse to leave when asked, I can’t make them leave without filling out paperwork or calling the cops.
What fucking country do you live in that doesn’t let you defend your own property from intruders?
I see we can add “move the goalposts” to the lists of phrases you don’t understand.
The bar analogy started with someone being obnoxious. When that didn't work you 4 moved the goal posts to breaking up a fight.
You’re the one who nudged the conversation towards violence by saying the owner of a given piece of private property needed to sign fifty forms in triplicate and wait three-to-six months before booting an unruly guest out of said property. We had to point out where, here in the real world, we’ve seen people forcefully ejected from private property—businesses and homes alike—by the owners of that property or a duly designated representative (e.g., an employee/manager) without having to do all the paperwork you say they need to do beforehand. When your argument fell flat, you kept flailing about in an attempt to find some new angle on it, only to get shut down at every turn—which is when you started accusing people of moving the goalposts. “Every accusation, a confession”, indeed.
Reduction to absurdity and extrapolation to absurdity that is entirely how you think.
…says the person who sincerely believes a homeowner has to file tons of paperwork before they can kick out a trespasser by either telling them to leave or literally throwing them out of the house.
And if you could please point to the law, statute, or “common law” court ruling that explicitly says what you think Halleck says about social media, you would have a point.
Halleck established that social media is in the public interest.
No, it doesn’t—because Halleck isn’t about social media. It’s about a public access television station. The logic expressed in Halleck vis-á-vis private entities and state actors can be applied to social media, though. Even the Wikipedia page for the decision says this:
The opinion also stated that even if a private organization creates a public forum for speech, the fact that it is a private company means the First Amendment is not applicable. An example the opinion gives is that private organizations such as grocery stores and comedy clubs allow public forums such as bulletin boards or open mic sessions, but only topics that are relevant to these organizations are allowed to be expressed.
That said…
It does not prohibit statute from regulating social media in the public interest.
FYI: Section 230 doesn’t protect “Big Tech” from its own speech. If—and that word does a lot of heavy lifting here—what Facebook is doing with its “extremism” warnings is unlawful in some way, neither 230 nor the First Amendment would allow Facebook to have the lawsuit dismissed before it even gets off the ground. That said: Facebook’s speech isn’t unlawful, which means it’s still protected by the First Amendment.
If you’re more worried about the flag than about the ideals and institutions it represents—like, say, democracy and the right of all citizens to have a say in who gets to represent them—you might be a Republican.
Forums and imageboards can damn well be “social media” if you look past the way Twitter and Facebook work on the surface and talk about the function they serve—which is to say, they all enable communications between other people using the same service. I mean, other than the more instantaneous nature of Twitter and Facebook, what makes them any different on that front than 4chan or a traditional phpBB forum?
Lumping them in with the later social media move is wrong.
Forums, imageboards, and video sharing sites are all interactive web services. So are Twitter, Facebook, and other social interaction networks. Insofar as they’re being lumped together, it’s under the banner of “interactive web services”. Stop actively trying to misunderstand people.
Discord, chan sites, and the like aren’t the same thing as “social” platforms like Twitter and Parler.
That Discord and imageboards like 4chan don’t function in the same way as Twitter and “Twitter-likes” doesn’t make either of them any less of an interactive web service.
That isn't what "content neutral" means in the law we are talking about here.
Yes, it is.
you are arguing an equal protection argument not a free speech argument
In this case, they’re one and the same. The Florida law provides unequal protection from the law in regards to what speech a social media service must host. The services that run afoul of the law must be made to host certain kinds of speech/speakers “or else”, while the services that fall outside of the law—including those “Florida-friendly” theme park–affiliated services—face no such regulation. Other than “they big”, you can’t offer (and haven’t offered) any reason to make Big Tech host speech it otherwise wouldn’t host but exclude everything outside of Big Tech (including the “Florida-friendly” services) from doing the same.
Equal protection is being denied by way of a First Amendment–violating law demanding that a privately owned service be forced to host speech the government says it must host.
This is the law. This is the law the state passed regulating how social media operates.
Except no, it isn’t. The law doesn’t give Big Tech services that right—it revokes that right and tells those services “host this kind of speech or else you’re fucked”.
People forget that in the Colorado baker case the courts ruled that the baker did have to sell the gay couple a cake from his inventory. He just didn't have to bake a specific one for their wedding. His services only amounted to his speech when the act was specific to the event.
You misunderstand the ruling in that case, but that’s no surprise. Conservatives like you always fuck up at least one detail—and it’s almost always the biggest one.
Masterpiece Cakeshop lost its anti-gay discrimination case on the merits at every level but the Supreme Court (which booted it back to the lower courts on technical grounds). At no point did any of the courts that ruled against the cakeshop force that cakeshop to bake a cake for the gay couple in question. The courts only ruled that the refusal to sell the gay couple a cake in the first place, decorations be damned, amounted to a violation of Colorado anti-discrmination law. The cakeshop could’ve continued discriminating if the owner wanted to keep doing so—but he’d be fined for every instance of it. Masterpiece instead stopped selling wedding cakes altogether so it wouldn’t have to worry about violating the law again.
And before you make that jump: I’m not in favor of compelled speech even when it’s speech I agree with.
Did you know that in the state of California their civil rights law extends to political affiliation?
Did you know that you’re full of shit?
The justification for the Fairness Doctrine was scarcity.
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube dominating social media doesn’t make them the only games in town. We also have Gab and Parler, Discord servers, Mastodon instances, 4chan and its bastard brethren, and any other number of smaller services and communication protocols that let people stay in touch with each other/share content/be a shitlord meme-troll. Your being upset about the reach of the largest services doesn’t make the smaller services stop existing.
The larger the company the more effect it has on the public interest and the more capable it is on dealing with the regulation.
You didn’t answer my question. How could the government regulate speech on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube without (A) regulating speech on all such platforms and (B) standing on the wrong side of the First Amendment, right of association jurisprudence, and property rights laws?
If someone literally shits in your home and you literally throw them out, that might technically be battery, but no DA worth a good god’s damn would ever prosecute that case. Same goes for someone shooting an intruder: It might be assault, but no one is going to prosecute a homeowner for protecting their home (and anyone inside it).
Only a cop or permitted security can kick someone out.
Under that logic, if you ask a guest to leave and they refuse—or a robber enters your home and refuses to leave because damn your house is better than theirs—they can legally stay in your home as long as they want so long as you don’t call the cops. Do you understand how fucked up that sounds—and how fucked up you are for presenting an argument using that logic?
Those trust fund brats have an army of lawyers behind them and you don't just "kick them out" or their parents lawyers will legally kick our ass.
“Kick them out” doesn’t always mean “literally kick them out”. It’s a shortcut for referring to any act that makes an unwanted guest leave. Telling someone to leave is “kicking them out”. So is literally throwing them out. So is calling the cops to have them dragged out. And FYI: All of those are legal acts, so long as you’re the property owner.
You go from someone being obnoxious to someone committing physical battery of another.
The act someone commits to being kicked out of property they don’t own is ultimately irrelevant. They’re not the owners of that property, and so long as they’re not in a rental contract or other binding legal agreement with the owners of that property, they can be kicked out of that property for any reason. A homeowner, a bartender, and a corporate office can all make an unruly guest leave that property without running afoul of the law. They can even use force if necessary.
That you’re all but arguing that a thief should be allowed to stay in a home they broke into because the homeowner hasn’t called the cops is…well, it doesn’t say anything good about you.
On the post: Elon Musk's Pointless, Subsidized Tunnels Head To Flood-Prone Florida
Maybe he should be less concerned about life on Mars and start focusing on how he can help fix the planet we already have.
On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'
If a TOS isn’t a binding contract, how can you thus complain about Twitter or Facebook banning people? I mean, by your own logic, the parties haven’t entered into a contract, so the banned users can’t make the courts legally enforce a contract-that-isn’t.
On the post: Marco Rubio Jumps To The Head Of The Line Of Ignorant Fools Pushing Dumb Social Media Regulation Bills
You seem to be saying that if someone trespasses on property I own, and they refuse to leave when asked, I can’t make them leave without filling out paperwork or calling the cops.
What fucking country do you live in that doesn’t let you defend your own property from intruders?
On the post: Marco Rubio Jumps To The Head Of The Line Of Ignorant Fools Pushing Dumb Social Media Regulation Bills
I see we can add “move the goalposts” to the lists of phrases you don’t understand.
You’re the one who nudged the conversation towards violence by saying the owner of a given piece of private property needed to sign fifty forms in triplicate and wait three-to-six months before booting an unruly guest out of said property. We had to point out where, here in the real world, we’ve seen people forcefully ejected from private property—businesses and homes alike—by the owners of that property or a duly designated representative (e.g., an employee/manager) without having to do all the paperwork you say they need to do beforehand. When your argument fell flat, you kept flailing about in an attempt to find some new angle on it, only to get shut down at every turn—which is when you started accusing people of moving the goalposts. “Every accusation, a confession”, indeed.
…says the person who sincerely believes a homeowner has to file tons of paperwork before they can kick out a trespasser by either telling them to leave or literally throwing them out of the house.
On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'
And if you could please point to the law, statute, or “common law” court ruling that explicitly says what you think Halleck says about social media, you would have a point.
But you can’t.
So you don’t.
On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'
No, it doesn’t—because Halleck isn’t about social media. It’s about a public access television station. The logic expressed in Halleck vis-á-vis private entities and state actors can be applied to social media, though. Even the Wikipedia page for the decision says this:
That said…
…this is true. On the other hand…
[citation required]
On the post: Why Do We So Quickly Blame The Internet And Anonymity For Things That Are Not About Anonymous People Online?
T’was a quote from Game of Thrones, at least as far as I can recall.
I prefer a different take: Before you open a “but”, make sure doing so won’t expose an asshole.
On the post: Montana Senator Thinks The Third Time Is The Charm For His Anti-Flag Burning Amendment
Your rhetorical gimmick is bullshit.
On the post: Montana Senator Thinks The Third Time Is The Charm For His Anti-Flag Burning Amendment
You forgot to mention the Punisher logo. Though I suppose that goes in tandem with “Back the Blue”…
On the post: Section 230 Continues To Not Mean Whatever You Want It To
FYI: Section 230 doesn’t protect “Big Tech” from its own speech. If—and that word does a lot of heavy lifting here—what Facebook is doing with its “extremism” warnings is unlawful in some way, neither 230 nor the First Amendment would allow Facebook to have the lawsuit dismissed before it even gets off the ground. That said: Facebook’s speech isn’t unlawful, which means it’s still protected by the First Amendment.
On the post: Montana Senator Thinks The Third Time Is The Charm For His Anti-Flag Burning Amendment
If you’re more worried about the flag than about the ideals and institutions it represents—like, say, democracy and the right of all citizens to have a say in who gets to represent them—you might be a Republican.
On the post: Why Do We So Quickly Blame The Internet And Anonymity For Things That Are Not About Anonymous People Online?
Ah, so it’s Michael McDoesn’texist.
On the post: As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
…fucking what
On the post: As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
Forums and imageboards can damn well be “social media” if you look past the way Twitter and Facebook work on the surface and talk about the function they serve—which is to say, they all enable communications between other people using the same service. I mean, other than the more instantaneous nature of Twitter and Facebook, what makes them any different on that front than 4chan or a traditional phpBB forum?
On the post: As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
Forums, imageboards, and video sharing sites are all interactive web services. So are Twitter, Facebook, and other social interaction networks. Insofar as they’re being lumped together, it’s under the banner of “interactive web services”. Stop actively trying to misunderstand people.
On the post: Why Do We So Quickly Blame The Internet And Anonymity For Things That Are Not About Anonymous People Online?
“…I’m not disagreeing with the idea.”
On the post: As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
That Discord and imageboards like 4chan don’t function in the same way as Twitter and “Twitter-likes” doesn’t make either of them any less of an interactive web service.
On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'
Neither has compelled speech on communications platforms, yet here you are, arguing for exactly that.
On the post: As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
Yes, it is.
In this case, they’re one and the same. The Florida law provides unequal protection from the law in regards to what speech a social media service must host. The services that run afoul of the law must be made to host certain kinds of speech/speakers “or else”, while the services that fall outside of the law—including those “Florida-friendly” theme park–affiliated services—face no such regulation. Other than “they big”, you can’t offer (and haven’t offered) any reason to make Big Tech host speech it otherwise wouldn’t host but exclude everything outside of Big Tech (including the “Florida-friendly” services) from doing the same.
Equal protection is being denied by way of a First Amendment–violating law demanding that a privately owned service be forced to host speech the government says it must host.
Except no, it isn’t. The law doesn’t give Big Tech services that right—it revokes that right and tells those services “host this kind of speech or else you’re fucked”.
You misunderstand the ruling in that case, but that’s no surprise. Conservatives like you always fuck up at least one detail—and it’s almost always the biggest one.
Masterpiece Cakeshop lost its anti-gay discrimination case on the merits at every level but the Supreme Court (which booted it back to the lower courts on technical grounds). At no point did any of the courts that ruled against the cakeshop force that cakeshop to bake a cake for the gay couple in question. The courts only ruled that the refusal to sell the gay couple a cake in the first place, decorations be damned, amounted to a violation of Colorado anti-discrmination law. The cakeshop could’ve continued discriminating if the owner wanted to keep doing so—but he’d be fined for every instance of it. Masterpiece instead stopped selling wedding cakes altogether so it wouldn’t have to worry about violating the law again.
And before you make that jump: I’m not in favor of compelled speech even when it’s speech I agree with.
Did you know that you’re full of shit?
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube dominating social media doesn’t make them the only games in town. We also have Gab and Parler, Discord servers, Mastodon instances, 4chan and its bastard brethren, and any other number of smaller services and communication protocols that let people stay in touch with each other/share content/be a shitlord meme-troll. Your being upset about the reach of the largest services doesn’t make the smaller services stop existing.
You didn’t answer my question. How could the government regulate speech on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube without (A) regulating speech on all such platforms and (B) standing on the wrong side of the First Amendment, right of association jurisprudence, and property rights laws?
Go back to Kinko’s and keep flippin’ copies.
On the post: Marco Rubio Jumps To The Head Of The Line Of Ignorant Fools Pushing Dumb Social Media Regulation Bills
If someone literally shits in your home and you literally throw them out, that might technically be battery, but no DA worth a good god’s damn would ever prosecute that case. Same goes for someone shooting an intruder: It might be assault, but no one is going to prosecute a homeowner for protecting their home (and anyone inside it).
Under that logic, if you ask a guest to leave and they refuse—or a robber enters your home and refuses to leave because damn your house is better than theirs—they can legally stay in your home as long as they want so long as you don’t call the cops. Do you understand how fucked up that sounds—and how fucked up you are for presenting an argument using that logic?
“Kick them out” doesn’t always mean “literally kick them out”. It’s a shortcut for referring to any act that makes an unwanted guest leave. Telling someone to leave is “kicking them out”. So is literally throwing them out. So is calling the cops to have them dragged out. And FYI: All of those are legal acts, so long as you’re the property owner.
The act someone commits to being kicked out of property they don’t own is ultimately irrelevant. They’re not the owners of that property, and so long as they’re not in a rental contract or other binding legal agreement with the owners of that property, they can be kicked out of that property for any reason. A homeowner, a bartender, and a corporate office can all make an unruly guest leave that property without running afoul of the law. They can even use force if necessary.
That you’re all but arguing that a thief should be allowed to stay in a home they broke into because the homeowner hasn’t called the cops is…well, it doesn’t say anything good about you.
Next >>