One other factor you didn't exactly mention though is the user agreement part of this. When you register a Facebook account, you agree to certain terms and conditions, and one of those is almost certainly about not sharing your password. The account holder is explicitly not authorized to share those credentials and there's no other way to get to the data.
Arguing that the use is authorized just because the user gave their password is like arguing that bribing the gate guard of a military base to let you in means that you are now legally considered "authorized personnel". That's not how that works.
Now, LinkedIn could post some garbage EULA claiming that "by viewing this page you agree to the terms and conditions..." and all of that, but such agreements often aren't legally binding since you don't actively agree and they can't prove you even saw it. It might be more enforceable though if it was a paywall style splash screen where you have to actually click 'Agree' to view the page...
...and they wonder why people with mental illness often don't seek help. Plenty of people saw this kind of crap coming even decades ago. Because it already happened decades before that. The way this stuff cycles, if you admit to having problems, you're guaranteed to be targeted and attacked like this at least once in your lifetime.
Yup. The courts have ruled -- many times -- that the police do not exist to serve or protect the general public. They exist to enforce the will of the state -- see Lozita v. New York City. In fact, even a court-issued protective order does not mean the police have to actually protect you, they're legally entitled to use their own discretion as to whether or not they want to respond to your 911 call -- as explained in Castle Rock v. Gonzales.
If you've got a restraining order against an abusive spouse, one which explicitly states the spouse must be arrested if they violate the order...that spouse could slowly stab you to death in broad daylight right in the lobby of the police station and the police are entirely within their rights to sit there watching and laughing about it. That is how our courts have interpreted the law.
There's a bit of logic in what they did...and if the "standard practice" ever had a legitimate basis, I'd bet this is it.
AIUI, when cops are doing a photo lineup, there's often one or two specific suspects in that list who they think did it, plus a bunch of random other mugshots. Ideally, all of those pictures should look similar. If the surveillance camera saw a black guy, and you give a photo lineup with a bunch of white guys and one black suspect, guess who's gonna get picked? Ideally you want similar enough faces that anyone who didn't actually get a good look at the perp will essentially end up picking at random if they try at all. Then if most of them agree on one person, it's probably the right guy.
So, it seems almost certain that this guy didn't do it based on his appearance. So you alter the face to get it similar, stick him in the lineup, and know that anyone who picks him isn't a very reliable witness. Or maybe he ends up the most similar because none of your photos have the right guy after all. The fact that they came to any other conclusion is...well, I'd say it's baffling, but I know a bit too much about US cops to see it that way. It's probably just laziness, if not outright corruption.
How exactly do you get from "YouTube specifically is paying people to create content and pages on their website that are explicitly marketed towards children" to "YouTube is not intentionally marketing anything to children"? Am I missing some crucial part of the argument here?
YouTube Kids is not moderation, it's a service. They aren't purging offensive content, they're creating a curated list of non-offensive content. Those are very different actions. They're also marketing this service towards parents claiming that it is explicitly designed for children. That's not moderation, it's MARKETING. It's YouTube's own speech saying these things, not users or user content.
Re: Re: "GS", the weird account going back to 2015 first page...
"Hasn't responded to my prior poke. Of course any answer would give me another bit of info, so the zombies never do respond -- that's how I know they're zombies!"
Is there a way to actually get notified of replies? I keep giving TD my email address but I've never gotten a single email from them...
"Android has the majority share of the mobile market"
Globally, sure. But not in the USA. And they're not likely to be turning up too many Chinese citizens in this kind of search so the market share over there isn't really relevant.
Re: Re: Re: This really isn't a difficult concept to grasp...
"It's not like this is a new thing brought about by Twitter (well Twitter just makes it public) most companies for decades have forbidden the use of company email/phone/post for personal reasons."
It kind of is new actually and certainly runs against the normal expectations -- you can't use business devices for personal reasons, but most companies DON'T prohibit you from using personal devices for business reasons. In fact, many pretty much require it -- I'm expected to be available on call, and I'm expected to let them use my personal cellphone for that, and if I get a call I'm expected to have my own personal internet connection which I can use to login. AOC's Twitter isn't an account that was created by the government for her office; this is an account that she had and used personally before she got elected. This is a bit like if your personal cellphone suddenly became company property just because you answered a call from your manager.
Re: This really isn't a difficult concept to grasp...
My immediate question though was precisely how reporting a comment would fit into all of this. If AOC personally reported the offending comments, would that be any different legally speaking compared to just blocking them? Either way her end goal would be the same...
I also have to wonder, considering that I've personally been booted out of press events by politicians, why is it OK to block someone from a room physically but not OK to block them on Twitter? That feels a bit odd...
Yeah, the problem is those competency tests would probably be written by the same kind of "education providers" that do the training programs at my office. The kind of idiots who claim that Git cannot possibly be used except through GitHub, or the ones that claim you can't write Javascript without using Google libraries...because the "competency test" is actually just a thinly veiled advertisement for whatever product the writer was hired to sell. That would be WORSE than the current situation.
"'We've got Tech Companies bragging about rigging elections...'
And which ones would those be, exactly?"
Did you miss the time when Facebook published a paper in Nature about their results in their secret experiments which they claim succeeded in altering voter behavior?
It's a bit of a stretch to call that "rigging election"...but only a bit. They definitely did brag about altering elections, and since we didn't know about that project until they published the results it's quite possible that they've run others that weren't made public.
"The fact that the portmanteau barely contains the word "uber" if you squint at it really hard..."
Or if you actually read it as a word rather than just looking at the individual letters...
And from TFA:
"And she is quick to point out that the 'u' in the name comes from 'beauty,' not 'uber.' So it is silent and therefore doesn’t sound like Uber."
I would typically pronounce "beauty" as "Be-U-tee", so "beauber" sounds a heck of a lot like "Be-uber". How the heck does this woman say it where the U is silent? "Bay-tee"/"bay-ber"? "Bow-tee"/"bow-ber"?? The only pronunciation that makes sense to me is "Be-you-ber", which definitely contains the "ou-ber" of Uber.
Her argument seems strong enough already, but adding in this kind of absurdity just makes it look weaker IMO...
"now"?? Where ya been? They've been writing themselves new bills of rights since the '70s. You and I are second-class citizens; only the gangsters in blue get the full list of civil rights. I'm sure there are probably earlier examples of cops writing the laws, but that's the one I find most offensive personally....
"It seems there a lot of overlap between racists and "RESPECT MUH AUTHORITAH" assholes. Probably because they both come from the same supposition, that they feel that they are inherently better than some other class of people."
Unfortunately, that belief is also backed up by legislation that directly asserts that they ARE better than anyone who chose a different career. For example, the Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights which most states have passed. They think they're entitled to additional rights and privileges just due to their chosen career, and the legislature agrees and passes laws to defend that belief.
"If the info was wrong Amazon will refund the sale. Explain what Amazon is doing wrong here?"
No, they won't. That's why I no longer buy from Amazon. Bought a $500 phone, the seller sent a completely different $150 model (sending a phone locked to a specific US carrier rather than the international unlocked model they had advertised.) Amazon claimed it wasn't their responsibility because it was a marketplace product. Seller refused a return. Amazon ignored that the majority of the seller's positive reviews were all from one single account while most of the negative reviews were complaints about being sent the wrong product. Eventually had to do a charge back through the credit card. Amazon couldn't care less about fraudulent listings as long as they get their cut of any sales.
The RIAA is on the side of their own profits, every time.
When an artist signed to a major label publishes a song that violates someone else's copyright, the RIAA still gets paid, so they won't sue for that. When some random guy on YouTube does it, they don't, so they will.
Granted, this artist is in the UK, so I don't think the RIAA gets anything from that...but they still want to set a precedent that protects those who play by the music industry rules of fifty years ago. Funnel money to them via a major label or get sued.
On the post: Big News: Appeals Court Says CFAA Can't Be Used To Stop Web Scraping
Re: Passwords -- I see where they are coming from
Yup, I was thinking along similar lines.
One other factor you didn't exactly mention though is the user agreement part of this. When you register a Facebook account, you agree to certain terms and conditions, and one of those is almost certainly about not sharing your password. The account holder is explicitly not authorized to share those credentials and there's no other way to get to the data.
Arguing that the use is authorized just because the user gave their password is like arguing that bribing the gate guard of a military base to let you in means that you are now legally considered "authorized personnel". That's not how that works.
Now, LinkedIn could post some garbage EULA claiming that "by viewing this page you agree to the terms and conditions..." and all of that, but such agreements often aren't legally binding since you don't actively agree and they can't prove you even saw it. It might be more enforceable though if it was a paywall style splash screen where you have to actually click 'Agree' to view the page...
On the post: White House Pushing Proposal That Would Subject Mentally Ill People To Increased Surveillance
Of course...
...and they wonder why people with mental illness often don't seek help. Plenty of people saw this kind of crap coming even decades ago. Because it already happened decades before that. The way this stuff cycles, if you admit to having problems, you're guaranteed to be targeted and attacked like this at least once in your lifetime.
On the post: White House Pushing Proposal That Would Subject Mentally Ill People To Increased Surveillance
Re: HARPA
"I wonder, what percentage of serial/mass killers wear smart watches and/or carry cell phones. In addition, what does HARPA intend to measure"
People without smart watches and/or cell phones, probably.
On the post: Investigation Uncovers Mass Purging Of Phoenix Police Department Misconduct Records
Re:
Yup. The courts have ruled -- many times -- that the police do not exist to serve or protect the general public. They exist to enforce the will of the state -- see Lozita v. New York City. In fact, even a court-issued protective order does not mean the police have to actually protect you, they're legally entitled to use their own discretion as to whether or not they want to respond to your 911 call -- as explained in Castle Rock v. Gonzales.
If you've got a restraining order against an abusive spouse, one which explicitly states the spouse must be arrested if they violate the order...that spouse could slowly stab you to death in broad daylight right in the lobby of the police station and the police are entirely within their rights to sit there watching and laughing about it. That is how our courts have interpreted the law.
On the post: Cops Digitally Erase Suspect's Facial Tattoos To Make Him Look More Like The Robbery Suspect Caught On Camera
There's a bit of logic to that...
There's a bit of logic in what they did...and if the "standard practice" ever had a legitimate basis, I'd bet this is it.
AIUI, when cops are doing a photo lineup, there's often one or two specific suspects in that list who they think did it, plus a bunch of random other mugshots. Ideally, all of those pictures should look similar. If the surveillance camera saw a black guy, and you give a photo lineup with a bunch of white guys and one black suspect, guess who's gonna get picked? Ideally you want similar enough faces that anyone who didn't actually get a good look at the perp will essentially end up picking at random if they try at all. Then if most of them agree on one person, it's probably the right guy.
So, it seems almost certain that this guy didn't do it based on his appearance. So you alter the face to get it similar, stick him in the lineup, and know that anyone who picks him isn't a very reliable witness. Or maybe he ends up the most similar because none of your photos have the right guy after all. The fact that they came to any other conclusion is...well, I'd say it's baffling, but I know a bit too much about US cops to see it that way. It's probably just laziness, if not outright corruption.
On the post: T-Mobile Employees Want Promises They Won't Be Fired Post Merger
Re: Re: Re: Re: "GS", the weird account going back to 2015 first
The only box to check is "Subscribe to the Techdirt Daily newsletter"...
On the post: FTC's Latest Fine Of YouTube Over COPPA Violations Shows That COPPA And Section 230 Are On A Collision Course
...what?
How exactly do you get from "YouTube specifically is paying people to create content and pages on their website that are explicitly marketed towards children" to "YouTube is not intentionally marketing anything to children"? Am I missing some crucial part of the argument here?
YouTube Kids is not moderation, it's a service. They aren't purging offensive content, they're creating a curated list of non-offensive content. Those are very different actions. They're also marketing this service towards parents claiming that it is explicitly designed for children. That's not moderation, it's MARKETING. It's YouTube's own speech saying these things, not users or user content.
On the post: T-Mobile Employees Want Promises They Won't Be Fired Post Merger
Re: Re: "GS", the weird account going back to 2015 first page...
"Hasn't responded to my prior poke. Of course any answer would give me another bit of info, so the zombies never do respond -- that's how I know they're zombies!"
Is there a way to actually get notified of replies? I keep giving TD my email address but I've never gotten a single email from them...
On the post: Epic Accuses Cheating Minor Of Continuing To Promote Cheat Software Even After Lawsuit
Violating ToS is apparently legal anyway...
The government has already asserted that there is nothing illegal about an adult knowingly and willfully violating a Terms of Service agreement, as posted here a few hours ago:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190904/11261742918/federal-govt-gives-customs-officers-perm ission-to-break-social-media-platform-rules-forbidding-fake-accounts.shtml
Why would it be any more illegal when a minor does it?
On the post: Feds Used A 'Reverse' Warrant To Try To Track Down Bank Robbers In Wisconsin
Re: Re:
"Android has the majority share of the mobile market"
Globally, sure. But not in the USA. And they're not likely to be turning up too many Chinese citizens in this kind of search so the market share over there isn't really relevant.
https://ceoworld.biz/2019/01/17/most-popular-mobile-operating-systems-in-the-united-states -android-vs-ios-market-share-2012-2018/
On the post: Knight Institute Warns Rep. Ocasio-Cortez That She, Like Trump, Can't Block People On Twitter
Re: Re: Re: This really isn't a difficult concept to grasp...
"It's not like this is a new thing brought about by Twitter (well Twitter just makes it public) most companies for decades have forbidden the use of company email/phone/post for personal reasons."
It kind of is new actually and certainly runs against the normal expectations -- you can't use business devices for personal reasons, but most companies DON'T prohibit you from using personal devices for business reasons. In fact, many pretty much require it -- I'm expected to be available on call, and I'm expected to let them use my personal cellphone for that, and if I get a call I'm expected to have my own personal internet connection which I can use to login. AOC's Twitter isn't an account that was created by the government for her office; this is an account that she had and used personally before she got elected. This is a bit like if your personal cellphone suddenly became company property just because you answered a call from your manager.
On the post: Knight Institute Warns Rep. Ocasio-Cortez That She, Like Trump, Can't Block People On Twitter
Re: This really isn't a difficult concept to grasp...
My immediate question though was precisely how reporting a comment would fit into all of this. If AOC personally reported the offending comments, would that be any different legally speaking compared to just blocking them? Either way her end goal would be the same...
I also have to wonder, considering that I've personally been booted out of press events by politicians, why is it OK to block someone from a room physically but not OK to block them on Twitter? That feels a bit odd...
On the post: Josh Hawley Continues To Pretend That Silicon Valley Isn't Innovative
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Are you claiming that there's no difference between a regulated political advertisement and a secret behavioral experiment?
On the post: Josh Hawley Continues To Pretend That Silicon Valley Isn't Innovative
Re: Re: Re:
Yeah, the problem is those competency tests would probably be written by the same kind of "education providers" that do the training programs at my office. The kind of idiots who claim that Git cannot possibly be used except through GitHub, or the ones that claim you can't write Javascript without using Google libraries...because the "competency test" is actually just a thinly veiled advertisement for whatever product the writer was hired to sell. That would be WORSE than the current situation.
On the post: Josh Hawley Continues To Pretend That Silicon Valley Isn't Innovative
Re: Re:
"'We've got Tech Companies bragging about rigging elections...'
And which ones would those be, exactly?"
Did you miss the time when Facebook published a paper in Nature about their results in their secret experiments which they claim succeeded in altering voter behavior?
It's a bit of a stretch to call that "rigging election"...but only a bit. They definitely did brag about altering elections, and since we didn't know about that project until they published the results it's quite possible that they've run others that weren't made public.
On the post: Uber Takes On Beautician/Barber Over Her BeauBer Mobile App
How the heck do you guys pronounce "Beauty"???
"The fact that the portmanteau barely contains the word "uber" if you squint at it really hard..."
Or if you actually read it as a word rather than just looking at the individual letters...
And from TFA:
"And she is quick to point out that the 'u' in the name comes from 'beauty,' not 'uber.' So it is silent and therefore doesn’t sound like Uber."
I would typically pronounce "beauty" as "Be-U-tee", so "beauber" sounds a heck of a lot like "Be-uber". How the heck does this woman say it where the U is silent? "Bay-tee"/"bay-ber"? "Bow-tee"/"bow-ber"?? The only pronunciation that makes sense to me is "Be-you-ber", which definitely contains the "ou-ber" of Uber.
Her argument seems strong enough already, but adding in this kind of absurdity just makes it look weaker IMO...
On the post: California's 'Model' Police Use-Of-Force Law Won't Change Much About Deadly Force Deployment
Re:
"now"?? Where ya been? They've been writing themselves new bills of rights since the '70s. You and I are second-class citizens; only the gangsters in blue get the full list of civil rights. I'm sure there are probably earlier examples of cops writing the laws, but that's the one I find most offensive personally....
On the post: Woman Complains About Trooper's Behavior, Ends Up Getting A Whole Bunch Of Cops Fired For Timecard Fraud
Re: Re: Re:
"It seems there a lot of overlap between racists and "RESPECT MUH AUTHORITAH" assholes. Probably because they both come from the same supposition, that they feel that they are inherently better than some other class of people."
Unfortunately, that belief is also backed up by legislation that directly asserts that they ARE better than anyone who chose a different career. For example, the Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights which most states have passed. They think they're entitled to additional rights and privileges just due to their chosen career, and the legislature agrees and passes laws to defend that belief.
On the post: NY Times Goes Off On Amazon Because Some People Are Publishing Fake George Orwell Books
Re: Re: Re: It IS (not) Amazon's fault here
"If the info was wrong Amazon will refund the sale. Explain what Amazon is doing wrong here?"
No, they won't. That's why I no longer buy from Amazon. Bought a $500 phone, the seller sent a completely different $150 model (sending a phone locked to a specific US carrier rather than the international unlocked model they had advertised.) Amazon claimed it wasn't their responsibility because it was a marketplace product. Seller refused a return. Amazon ignored that the majority of the seller's positive reviews were all from one single account while most of the negative reviews were complaints about being sent the wrong product. Eventually had to do a charge back through the credit card. Amazon couldn't care less about fraudulent listings as long as they get their cut of any sales.
On the post: DOJ/Copyright Office File An Amicus Brief In Support Of Led Zeppellin
Re: You know what they say…
The RIAA is on the side of their own profits, every time.
When an artist signed to a major label publishes a song that violates someone else's copyright, the RIAA still gets paid, so they won't sue for that. When some random guy on YouTube does it, they don't, so they will.
Granted, this artist is in the UK, so I don't think the RIAA gets anything from that...but they still want to set a precedent that protects those who play by the music industry rules of fifty years ago. Funnel money to them via a major label or get sued.
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