Civil rights are not contingent upon choice, or the lack thereof.
Anti-discrimination protections are, though. They’re generally written to prohibit discrimination based on factors of a person’s existence that are out of their control—race, age, gender/biological sex, and disability being primary amongst those factors. Religion comes into play because while people can choose their religion, that choice isn’t as simple as choosing what shirt to wear in the morning—and because if discrimination based on religion was legal, Christians in this country could force every other religious group (including the irreligious) out of polite society by sheer force of numbers.
I can’t think of any good reason, other than sheer unadulterated privilege, to treat political affiliation as we would treat religion vis-á-vis anti-discrimination laws. Or would you like to see lawsuits over that particular type of bullshit flood the courts across the country and turn the judiciary into an even bigger exercise in partisan fuckery?
Since someone else called you out on your the first half of your disingenuous bullshit, I’ll handle the second half because fuck you that’s why.
California Civil Rights code also protects political affiliation.
Partly correct on both halves.
California laws protect against employer retaliation for political activity. Labor Codes 1101 and 1102 LC prohibit employers from doing the following:
setting any policy that prevents employees from engaging in political activity or running for political office, or that tries to control or direct employees’ political activity
attempting to control employees’ political activities by threatening to engage in political activity retaliation
retaliating in any way (including through wrongful termination) against an employee for his/her political beliefs or activities
That law doesn’t protect anyone from discriminaton based on political affiliation/activity outside of those situations. An anti-abortion employer in California can legally refuse to hire someone who is pro-choice—but if that employer hires that person, the employer cannot then retaliate against their new employee over those pro-choice views.
Nothing in California law currently protects anyone from being kicked off a social media service operating in California on the basis of political affiliation/activity/belief. The same goes for federal law. Cite the exact law, statute, or “common law” court ruling that directly and explicitly says otherwise, and I’ll concede the point. But I’d bet money you can’t…if I took sucker bets, that is.
Fox News is a platform for speech in the same way a newspaper is a platform for speech. That the people what run that specific platform predetermine who gets to use that platform doesn’t make it any less of a platform. The biggest difference between a platform like Fox News and a platform like Twitter is that Twitter doesn’t (generally) predetermine who gets to use the platform.
And just as Fox News can’t censor someone by refusing them a spot on that platform (e.g., Fox News can’t censor Joe Biden by refusing to air his speeches), Twitter can’t censor someone by doing the same (e.g., Twitter can’t censor Donald Trump by kicking him off Twitter). That you still believe moderation is censorship means you’ve either bought lock, stock, and raging dumpster fire into conservative propaganda or you’re a professional troll. Neither option speaks well of you.
He is saying that the law is neutrally written but motivated by bias.
Even if he were saying that—and I don’t grant that he is—he’d still be right: The Florida law is motivated by a bias against, and unfairly targets, “Big Tech”. The “theme park” carveout and the fact that it doesn’t target smaller companies/services is proof enough of that.
Florida lawmakers probably wanted at least a shred of an argument of fairness to hide behind while it tried to force speech onto a given platform. In that case, they should’ve made its law apply to all interactive web services (including the ones attached to theme parks) instead of a mere handful of services that said lawmakers wanted to attack. But they didn’t. So they don’t.
It is a completely incorrect opinion and will be overturned like many of this dolts other decisions.
When the decision is upheld, I will link back to your comment via this quote and I will laugh. Count on it.
The law is neutral the justification was not.
And in regards to civil rights laws, the laws are neutral: They protect people from discrimination without regard for whether they’re in a marginalized group or the majority. In re: race, for example, civil rights laws protect white people the same as they protect Black people, even though white people rarely need to make use of those protections.
The Florida law isn’t written to the same standard of fairness, as I’ve pointed out already. That the law also attempts to force speech upon a platform—which is a strictly unconstitutional action—doesn’t help the law’s chances of survival.
It is private actors acting from a place of bias that leads to the legislation to force neutrality.
Private persons can, have, and always will act from “a place of bias”. A business owner is allowed to kick out someone spouting anti-vax nonsense; that someone isn’t in a protected class by virtue of their sociopolitical views on vaccines, and they’re not entitled to act like a shithead and get away with it. The same goes for interactive web services: So long as they don’t discriminate in a way that violates the law of the state they operate in (or federal law), they can pick and choose what speech and which persons to host all the live-long day. If you’d like to argue otherwise, by all means, tell me why a privately owned open-to-the-public Black Lives Matter–centric forum should be made to host pro-Klan propaganda. I sincerely can’t wait to see you make that argument.
That has to do with equal protection not content neutrality which is the issue of scrutinize.
No interactive web service is legally required to remain “content neutral”. The people who run Facebook have as much right as the people who run Mastodon instance queer.party to decide whether their respective service will host anti-queer speech. The same applies to Gab, Parler, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, Patreon, Ko-Fi, 4chan, 8kun, DeviantArt, and every other interactive web service out there. Show me the exact law, statute, or “common law” court ruling that directly says otherwise.
The Fairness Doctrine was FCC regulation for almost 4 decades
And now it’s not. That it hasn’t been revived in the years since its repeal should tell you something.
Big Tech is the exception for no logical reason other than we don't want to.
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?
We can go the mile to extend common carrier, a common law that originated as part of maritime law, to electronic communications. We can go that logical mile, but we cannot extend it an inch to social media?
Because “common carrier” rules are about the pipes we use to send electronic communications, not the services through which we send and receive them. Extend “common carrier” status to Facebook and you will force spam, porn, spam porn (those sick fucks…), dis- and misinformation, and the rankest forms of bigotry and hatred upon Facebook—and all other services, for that matter. Hell, services that are ostensibly “family friendly” would have to fall under that status (and suffer that fate) as well, since they are a form of electronic communication.
You clearly dont understand what you are talking about.
First thing’s first: Learn to use the reply function properly.
I would have to that is the law.
And you wouldn’t fight that law in any way, knowing that the First Amendment protects your right to free speech and the law protects your right of association, both of which combine to give you the absolute legal right to moderate your service as you see fit? You’d sit there and go “well, I guess I have to host ‘HitlerWasRight420’ and all their Nazi propaganda”?
I’m not sure if you lack convictions and the courage to live by them no matter the consequences or if you want the lamest excuse possible to host the worst kinds of people spreading the worst kinds of speech.
Can the government force me to "had to associate yourself and your private property[ with—]racial slurs, anti-queer propaganda, and even pro-Nazi speech," Yes they do.
(Minor correction to my own bullshit aside…)
No, they can’t. They literally can’t force you to host any of that speech, or they’d be making Facebook and Twitter and YouTube host that speech right now. Hell, they’d be making Techdirt host your speech, and last time I checked, Mike is under no legal, moral, or ethical obligation to host my speech, never mind yours.
The check against this is the people.
No, we are not “the check”. We are “a check”—and typically, we are the final check on the power of the government. We also have legislatures (at all levels) and courts to help us do that job, as well we should. Overturning bad law shouldn’t require We, The People to all but wage war against our own government.
It would be political suicide to use the governments power in that way and the Florida law did not
No, it absolutely did. It was an attempt—naked, partisan, and unconstitutional—to make hosting certain kinds of speech a requirement for certain companies to meet while exempting other companies from that same requirement. Even putting aside the attempt to force speech onto a given platform (which is unconstitutional in and of itself), the fact that the law targeted specific companies while exempting others that would be targeted under the law if not for that “Florida-friendly” theme park stipulation is proof enough of its unfairness.
the people would not allow the Florida legislature to pass a law without extreme consequences
Define “extreme consequences”.
Elections are why your argumentum absurdum is in a word absurd.
More than 70 million people thought about what Donald Trump had done to the country in his first (and hopefully only) term as president and thought, “We need four more fuckin’ years of that!” Elections are not the foolproof guard against corruption and bullshit that you believe they are.
People like you always engage in argumentum absurdum because you simple are not smart enough to debate the real issues.
Until someone shows up who has the legal authority to kick them out they don't have to leave. And that someone is not the property own[er].
By your logic, a homeowner has no legal right to kick someone out of their home because the homeowner lacks “the legal authority to kick [someone] out”. Is that an argument you want to stand by?
Unfortunately, yes. Nintendo’s lawyers wanted a head on a pike as a warning to others. That they basically piked his entire body instead of just his head was ghoulish overkill—but they made their point nonetheless.
By putting my private property to the public interest I submit to the control of the public.
So, just to be clear: If the government told you that you had to host—had to associate yourself and your private property—which racial slurs, anti-queer propaganda, and even pro-Nazi speech, you would willingly (and perhaps even ecstatically) host that speech despite your property being private and the government having absolutely no right to tell you that you must host such speech?
Because if putting private property to the public interest is all it takes for part of the “speech industry” to be deemed a public forum that the government can force speech upon, then your logic would seemingly apply to newspapers. But I don’t see the government trying to turn those into public fora, so…
Perhaps you can explain why a cable TV provider can be subject to must carry laws without it being a violation of their 1st Amendment Rights but if interactive web services are subject to the same must carry rights it is a violation of their 1st Amendment Rights.
Because any “must carry” laws for the Internet would apply to Internet access providers (or ISPs, if you prefer that terminology). They’re the ones who would, under Network Neutrality rules, be required to let users access any website on the Internet without favor (or disfavor). Facebook isn’t required to let anyone use Facebook; that people can use it is a privilege, not an entitlement.
A state can legally require an industry to host content they don't agree with, if the industry is in the public interest
If this were true, the government could force Fox News—a major part of the news industry, which is clearly in the public interest—to carry all of Joe Biden’s speeches and press conferences. That the government hasn’t done so (and wouldn’t dare to try) is a clear rebuke of your flawed logic.
Not being a state actor doesn't mean you cant be forced to respect customers free speech rights
You have no such rights on the property of others. To say otherwise would be to upend an untold amount of jurisprudence for both the First Amendment and property rights. Besides, the Pruneyard standard has been significantly watered down since the initial ruling, if I recall right.
When Zuckerberg is personally e-mailing Fauci, calling him Tony, giving Fauci his personal cell number, and ostensibly offering Tony access to Facebook's algorithm to censor content Fauci doesn't like, that crosses the line of State Actor.
Unless Fauci personally instructed anyone at Facebook to act in the government’s interest, he didn’t cross a line that makes Facebook a state actor. Zuckerberg allegedly making the offer doesn’t do the job, either.
Yes in 2020 we clearly crossed the state actor line.
Then why hasn’t any state government or the federal government attempted to declare Facebook a state actor, which would force Facebook into becoming a true public forum and restrict it from both blocking anyone in the United States from using it and blocking any kind of speech Facebook otherwise wouldn’t host? Why hasn’t Joe Biden signed an executive order or a bill passed by Congress that makes Facebook a state actor and federalizes the company and its operations?
Deep down, you know damn well why that hasn’t happened:
The judges reasoning in this case is that since the motivation for creating the law was biased the law even though it is neutral is not constitutional because of the biased motivation.
The law isn’t neutral, though. As the ruling itself points out:
The legislation applies only to large providers, not otherwise-identical but smaller providers, and explicitly exempts providers under common ownership with any large Florida theme park. The legislation compels providers to host speech that violates their standards—speech they otherwise would not host—and forbids providers from speaking as they otherwise would. The Governor’s signing statement and numerous remarks of legislators show rather clearly that the legislation is viewpoint-based.
The law is clearly meant to disfavor one group of service providers (“Big Tech”) over all others, exempts one group of service providers (those associated with large theme parks) from the law, and compels the hosting of specific kinds of speech (speech that the service providers wouldn’t host otherwise) that lawmakers believe deserve such privileged treatment. Compare that to civil rights laws, which—despite whatever intent they may have been written with—are worded in a way that make clear that they apply to all peoples of a given protected class (e.g., white people have the same legal protections as Black people in re: racial discrimination).
He could as easily be talking about the Civil Rights Acts here.
Let’s look at what you quoted and see if that’s true:
Laws that are facially content-neutral, but that cannot be justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech, or that were adopted because of disagreement with the speaker’s message, also must satisfy strict scrutiny,
Anti-discrimination laws are neutral in application towards both the marginalized and the majority. Their existence can be justified without reference to whether a given group protected under such laws is the marginalized or the majority. They generally have no restrictions on speech, so “disagreement with [a] speaker’s message” is ultimately irrelevant. Anti-discrimination laws don’t need “strict scrutiny” in the same sense that laws purporting to regulate speech in some way need that level of scrutiny.
Your disagreeing with the ruling doesn’t mean his logic is factually unsound or hypocritical. Your saying the logic of the ruling is unsound or hypocritical when a proper reading of said ruling proves otherwise means your disagreement is rooted in bullshit reasoning that seems to favor whatever professional conservative grifters/victims say you need to believe about something or someone. And since you’re accusing the judge of basically overriding civil rights laws…well, the phrase “every accusation, a confession” comes to mind, and what you’d be confessing to probably isn’t a position you’d want to express outside of the Deep South.
Social media services are not public fora. A Supreme Court ruling from 2019, for which Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, doesn’t directly address social media but still provides the logic necessary to counter any “yes they are public fora” argument:
Under the Court’s cases, a private entity may qualify as a state actor when it exercises “powers traditionally exclusively reserved to the State.” … It is not enough that the federal, state, or local government exercised the function in the past, or still does. And it is not enough that the function serves the public good or the public interest in some way. Rather, to qualify as a traditional, exclusive public function within the meaning of our state-action precedents, the government must have traditionally and exclusively performed the function.
The Court has stressed that “very few” functions fall into that category. … Under the Court’s cases, those functions include, for example, running elections and operating a company town. … The Court has ruled that a variety of functions do not fall into that category, including, for example: running sports associations and leagues, administering insurance payments, operating nursing homes, providing special education, representing indigent criminal defendants, resolving private disputes, and supplying electricity. …
When the government provides a forum for speech (known as a public forum), the government may be constrained by the First Amendment, meaning that the government ordinarily may not exclude speech or speakers from the forum on the basis of viewpoint, or sometimes even on the basis of content[.]
By contrast, when a private entity provides a forum for speech, the private entity is not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment because the private entity is not a state actor. The private entity may thus exercise editorial discretion over the speech and speakers in the forum. This Court so ruled in its 1976 decision in Hudgens v. NLRB. There, the Court held that a shopping center owner is not a state actor subject to First Amendment requirements such as the public forum doctrine[.]
The Hudgens decision reflects a commonsense principle: Providing some kind of forum for speech is not an activity that only governmental entities have traditionally performed. Therefore, a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor. After all, private property owners and private lessees often open their property for speech. Grocery stores put up community bulletin boards. Comedy clubs host open mic nights. As Judge Jacobs persuasively explained, it “is not at all a near-exclusive function of the state to provide the forums for public expression, politics, information, or entertainment[”.]
In short, merely hosting speech by others is not a traditional, exclusive public function and does not alone transform private entities into state actors subject to First Amendment constraints.
If the rule were otherwise, all private property owners and private lessees who open their property for speech would be subject to First Amendment constraints and would lose the ability to exercise what they deem to be appropriate editorial discretion within that open forum. Private property owners and private lessees would face the unappetizing choice of allowing all comers or closing the platform altogether. “The Constitution by no means requires such an attenuated doctrine of dedication of private property to public use.” … Benjamin Franklin did not have to operate his newspaper as “a stagecoach, with seats for everyone.” … That principle still holds true. As the Court said in Hudgens, to hold that private property owners providing a forum for speech are constrained by the First Amendment would be “to create a court-made law wholly disregarding the constitutional basis on which private ownership of property rests in this country.” … The Constitution does not disable private property owners and private lessees from exercising editorial discretion over speech and speakers on their property. …
A private entity … who opens its property for speech by others is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor.
Trump knows a platform of his own won’t have the reach that a platform like Facebook or Twitter does. The end of his brief attempt at blogging, such as it was, proves he knows that. It’s also why he never joined Parler or Gab—where’s the fun in poking at liberals if they’re not there to poke back and give him all the attention?
On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'
Anti-discrimination protections are, though. They’re generally written to prohibit discrimination based on factors of a person’s existence that are out of their control—race, age, gender/biological sex, and disability being primary amongst those factors. Religion comes into play because while people can choose their religion, that choice isn’t as simple as choosing what shirt to wear in the morning—and because if discrimination based on religion was legal, Christians in this country could force every other religious group (including the irreligious) out of polite society by sheer force of numbers.
I can’t think of any good reason, other than sheer unadulterated privilege, to treat political affiliation as we would treat religion vis-á-vis anti-discrimination laws. Or would you like to see lawsuits over that particular type of bullshit flood the courts across the country and turn the judiciary into an even bigger exercise in partisan fuckery?
On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'
Since someone else called you out on your the first half of your disingenuous bullshit, I’ll handle the second half because fuck you that’s why.
Partly correct on both halves.
California laws protect against employer retaliation for political activity. Labor Codes 1101 and 1102 LC prohibit employers from doing the following:
That law doesn’t protect anyone from discriminaton based on political affiliation/activity outside of those situations. An anti-abortion employer in California can legally refuse to hire someone who is pro-choice—but if that employer hires that person, the employer cannot then retaliate against their new employee over those pro-choice views.
Nothing in California law currently protects anyone from being kicked off a social media service operating in California on the basis of political affiliation/activity/belief. The same goes for federal law. Cite the exact law, statute, or “common law” court ruling that directly and explicitly says otherwise, and I’ll concede the point. But I’d bet money you can’t…if I took sucker bets, that is.
On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'
Fox News is a platform for speech in the same way a newspaper is a platform for speech. That the people what run that specific platform predetermine who gets to use that platform doesn’t make it any less of a platform. The biggest difference between a platform like Fox News and a platform like Twitter is that Twitter doesn’t (generally) predetermine who gets to use the platform.
And just as Fox News can’t censor someone by refusing them a spot on that platform (e.g., Fox News can’t censor Joe Biden by refusing to air his speeches), Twitter can’t censor someone by doing the same (e.g., Twitter can’t censor Donald Trump by kicking him off Twitter). That you still believe moderation is censorship means you’ve either bought lock, stock, and raging dumpster fire into conservative propaganda or you’re a professional troll. Neither option speaks well of you.
On the post: As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
Even if he were saying that—and I don’t grant that he is—he’d still be right: The Florida law is motivated by a bias against, and unfairly targets, “Big Tech”. The “theme park” carveout and the fact that it doesn’t target smaller companies/services is proof enough of that.
Florida lawmakers probably wanted at least a shred of an argument of fairness to hide behind while it tried to force speech onto a given platform. In that case, they should’ve made its law apply to all interactive web services (including the ones attached to theme parks) instead of a mere handful of services that said lawmakers wanted to attack. But they didn’t. So they don’t.
When the decision is upheld, I will link back to your comment via this quote and I will laugh. Count on it.
And in regards to civil rights laws, the laws are neutral: They protect people from discrimination without regard for whether they’re in a marginalized group or the majority. In re: race, for example, civil rights laws protect white people the same as they protect Black people, even though white people rarely need to make use of those protections.
The Florida law isn’t written to the same standard of fairness, as I’ve pointed out already. That the law also attempts to force speech upon a platform—which is a strictly unconstitutional action—doesn’t help the law’s chances of survival.
Private persons can, have, and always will act from “a place of bias”. A business owner is allowed to kick out someone spouting anti-vax nonsense; that someone isn’t in a protected class by virtue of their sociopolitical views on vaccines, and they’re not entitled to act like a shithead and get away with it. The same goes for interactive web services: So long as they don’t discriminate in a way that violates the law of the state they operate in (or federal law), they can pick and choose what speech and which persons to host all the live-long day. If you’d like to argue otherwise, by all means, tell me why a privately owned open-to-the-public Black Lives Matter–centric forum should be made to host pro-Klan propaganda. I sincerely can’t wait to see you make that argument.
No interactive web service is legally required to remain “content neutral”. The people who run Facebook have as much right as the people who run Mastodon instance queer.party to decide whether their respective service will host anti-queer speech. The same applies to Gab, Parler, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, Patreon, Ko-Fi, 4chan, 8kun, DeviantArt, and every other interactive web service out there. Show me the exact law, statute, or “common law” court ruling that directly says otherwise.
And now it’s not. That it hasn’t been revived in the years since its repeal should tell you something.
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?
Because “common carrier” rules are about the pipes we use to send electronic communications, not the services through which we send and receive them. Extend “common carrier” status to Facebook and you will force spam, porn, spam porn (those sick fucks…), dis- and misinformation, and the rankest forms of bigotry and hatred upon Facebook—and all other services, for that matter. Hell, services that are ostensibly “family friendly” would have to fall under that status (and suffer that fate) as well, since they are a form of electronic communication.
Every accusation, a confession…
On the post: Florida Steps Up To Defend Its Unconstitutional Social Media Law And It's Every Bit As Terrible As You'd Imagine
First thing’s first: Learn to use the reply function properly.
And you wouldn’t fight that law in any way, knowing that the First Amendment protects your right to free speech and the law protects your right of association, both of which combine to give you the absolute legal right to moderate your service as you see fit? You’d sit there and go “well, I guess I have to host ‘HitlerWasRight420’ and all their Nazi propaganda”?
I’m not sure if you lack convictions and the courage to live by them no matter the consequences or if you want the lamest excuse possible to host the worst kinds of people spreading the worst kinds of speech.
(Minor correction to my own bullshit aside…)
No, they can’t. They literally can’t force you to host any of that speech, or they’d be making Facebook and Twitter and YouTube host that speech right now. Hell, they’d be making Techdirt host your speech, and last time I checked, Mike is under no legal, moral, or ethical obligation to host my speech, never mind yours.
No, we are not “the check”. We are “a check”—and typically, we are the final check on the power of the government. We also have legislatures (at all levels) and courts to help us do that job, as well we should. Overturning bad law shouldn’t require We, The People to all but wage war against our own government.
No, it absolutely did. It was an attempt—naked, partisan, and unconstitutional—to make hosting certain kinds of speech a requirement for certain companies to meet while exempting other companies from that same requirement. Even putting aside the attempt to force speech onto a given platform (which is unconstitutional in and of itself), the fact that the law targeted specific companies while exempting others that would be targeted under the law if not for that “Florida-friendly” theme park stipulation is proof enough of its unfairness.
Define “extreme consequences”.
More than 70 million people thought about what Donald Trump had done to the country in his first (and hopefully only) term as president and thought, “We need four more fuckin’ years of that!” Elections are not the foolproof guard against corruption and bullshit that you believe they are.
Show me where any part of my argument is absurd.
On the post: Marco Rubio Jumps To The Head Of The Line Of Ignorant Fools Pushing Dumb Social Media Regulation Bills
By your logic, a homeowner has no legal right to kick someone out of their home because the homeowner lacks “the legal authority to kick [someone] out”. Is that an argument you want to stand by?
On the post: After All That, Nintendo Can't Even Get $50 A Month Out Of RomUniverse
Unfortunately, yes. Nintendo’s lawyers wanted a head on a pike as a warning to others. That they basically piked his entire body instead of just his head was ghoulish overkill—but they made their point nonetheless.
On the post: As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
Six of one; how you put it is ultimately irrelevant if it gets the point across.
On the post: It Can Always Get Dumber: Trump Sues Facebook, Twitter & YouTube, Claiming His Own Government Violated The Constitution
shut up, Meg
On the post: Florida Steps Up To Defend Its Unconstitutional Social Media Law And It's Every Bit As Terrible As You'd Imagine
So, just to be clear: If the government told you that you had to host—had to associate yourself and your private property—which racial slurs, anti-queer propaganda, and even pro-Nazi speech, you would willingly (and perhaps even ecstatically) host that speech despite your property being private and the government having absolutely no right to tell you that you must host such speech?
Because if putting private property to the public interest is all it takes for part of the “speech industry” to be deemed a public forum that the government can force speech upon, then your logic would seemingly apply to newspapers. But I don’t see the government trying to turn those into public fora, so…
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Ah, the old “I’m not leaving because you’re wrong for not wanting my greatness around you and I’m gonna prove it” excuse.
Fuck off, Lozenge.
On the post: As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
Because any “must carry” laws for the Internet would apply to Internet access providers (or ISPs, if you prefer that terminology). They’re the ones who would, under Network Neutrality rules, be required to let users access any website on the Internet without favor (or disfavor). Facebook isn’t required to let anyone use Facebook; that people can use it is a privilege, not an entitlement.
On the post: As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
If this were true, the government could force Fox News—a major part of the news industry, which is clearly in the public interest—to carry all of Joe Biden’s speeches and press conferences. That the government hasn’t done so (and wouldn’t dare to try) is a clear rebuke of your flawed logic.
You have no such rights on the property of others. To say otherwise would be to upend an untold amount of jurisprudence for both the First Amendment and property rights. Besides, the Pruneyard standard has been significantly watered down since the initial ruling, if I recall right.
Unless Fauci personally instructed anyone at Facebook to act in the government’s interest, he didn’t cross a line that makes Facebook a state actor. Zuckerberg allegedly making the offer doesn’t do the job, either.
Then why hasn’t any state government or the federal government attempted to declare Facebook a state actor, which would force Facebook into becoming a true public forum and restrict it from both blocking anyone in the United States from using it and blocking any kind of speech Facebook otherwise wouldn’t host? Why hasn’t Joe Biden signed an executive order or a bill passed by Congress that makes Facebook a state actor and federalizes the company and its operations?
Deep down, you know damn well why that hasn’t happened:
This isn’t a communist country.
On the post: As Expected: Judge Grants Injunction Blocking Florida's Unconstitutional Social Media Law
The law isn’t neutral, though. As the ruling itself points out:
The law is clearly meant to disfavor one group of service providers (“Big Tech”) over all others, exempts one group of service providers (those associated with large theme parks) from the law, and compels the hosting of specific kinds of speech (speech that the service providers wouldn’t host otherwise) that lawmakers believe deserve such privileged treatment. Compare that to civil rights laws, which—despite whatever intent they may have been written with—are worded in a way that make clear that they apply to all peoples of a given protected class (e.g., white people have the same legal protections as Black people in re: racial discrimination).
Let’s look at what you quoted and see if that’s true:
Anti-discrimination laws are neutral in application towards both the marginalized and the majority. Their existence can be justified without reference to whether a given group protected under such laws is the marginalized or the majority. They generally have no restrictions on speech, so “disagreement with [a] speaker’s message” is ultimately irrelevant. Anti-discrimination laws don’t need “strict scrutiny” in the same sense that laws purporting to regulate speech in some way need that level of scrutiny.
Your disagreeing with the ruling doesn’t mean his logic is factually unsound or hypocritical. Your saying the logic of the ruling is unsound or hypocritical when a proper reading of said ruling proves otherwise means your disagreement is rooted in bullshit reasoning that seems to favor whatever professional conservative grifters/victims say you need to believe about something or someone. And since you’re accusing the judge of basically overriding civil rights laws…well, the phrase “every accusation, a confession” comes to mind, and what you’d be confessing to probably isn’t a position you’d want to express outside of the Deep South.
On the post: It Can Always Get Dumber: Trump Sues Facebook, Twitter & YouTube, Claiming His Own Government Violated The Constitution
Social media services are not public fora. A Supreme Court ruling from 2019, for which Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, doesn’t directly address social media but still provides the logic necessary to counter any “yes they are public fora” argument:
On the post: FBI Cites Guidelines That Don't Actually Forbid Social Media Monitoring As The Reason It Was Blindsided By The January 6 Attack
That…really wouldn’t be much better.
On the post: It Can Always Get Dumber: Trump Sues Facebook, Twitter & YouTube, Claiming His Own Government Violated The Constitution
As if on cue…
On the post: It Can Always Get Dumber: Trump Sues Facebook, Twitter & YouTube, Claiming His Own Government Violated The Constitution
One such person: Donald Trump. Or did you forget that he kept saying Article II gave him the power to do basically anything?
Gee, can’t imagine why~.
On the post: It Can Always Get Dumber: Trump Sues Facebook, Twitter & YouTube, Claiming His Own Government Violated The Constitution
Oh, like laws have ever mattered to Donald Trump.
On the post: It Can Always Get Dumber: Trump Sues Facebook, Twitter & YouTube, Claiming His Own Government Violated The Constitution
Trump knows a platform of his own won’t have the reach that a platform like Facebook or Twitter does. The end of his brief attempt at blogging, such as it was, proves he knows that. It’s also why he never joined Parler or Gab—where’s the fun in poking at liberals if they’re not there to poke back and give him all the attention?
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