Uh oh, it looks like some doo-doo is being stepped in.
Section 230 does NOT "immunize" an entity from a lawsuit, it only provides a swift way to end such. Named defendants still have to respond in the first place, thus creating a small "cost center" on their balance sheet(s). S230 is intended to keep that cost center from growing outlandisly large, and that's the sum total of it's intent. It accomplishes this by codifying common sense: "Sue the correct party, not a party of convenience".
Consider S230 to be sort of anti-SLAPP law for platforms that do not directly create the content they distribute. If they do create the content in question, in whole or in part, then S230 no longer applies - they are subject to any number of other laws that will act as a "Preparation H" for the plaintiff's alleged butthurt.
What's really needed here are two things:
a) Courts should just outright reject in totality any such lawsuit as matter of law, both case and statutory. They should also automatically sanction any attorney that tries this with "a new and novel approach that's sure to win". This is res judicata, and with all the exposure of such in recent years, no member of the bar can honestly claim a lack of knowledge hereof. (Footnote 1)
b) S230 needs amending alright - an amendment that imitates anti-SLAPP statutes in awarding "costs and fees" to the prevailing party. (See "needed thing a", just above, where the plaintiff automatically loses, thus triggering additional expenses just so he/she can tell the world that his/her feelz have suffered a boo-boo.)
Between these two "fixes", the Andy Worhol-ism going on should subside to an acceptable level.
1: A plaintiff cannot be denied the right to seek redress, but he/she can be denied the opportunity to thwart established law based on alleged facts that have already been tested in other courts, and found wanting. But as usual, and as expected, this is subject to the Court's discretion.
Rather than make everyone go back up and re-read the comment, I'll repeat it here, with some emphasis for my point:
For the sake of argument, let's invent an exaggerated scenario where Social Media Platform X wanted to absolutely destroy Person A's reputation. If X published any libel, they would of course be liable for it. If, however, they instead deleted all positive words about A and amplified all invented and contrived negative stories about A, they have accomplished the same evil act, but are protected from the consequences.
Is there a solution to this problem, aside from hoping that competitors don't behave the same way? (Or hoping that competitors will exist at all?
Sorry to disappoint you (and just about everyone who responded) but there is no problem here. Why not? Because there was no evil act. You might think there was one, but it should go without saying that not everyone agrees with you on this particular definition of evil.
Let's see if we can defuse your misguidance. Sit back and toke another bowlful, we'll get to the bottom of this together.
The exact aim of a privately held source of news (i.e. not one that is owned or sponsred by the government) is to spread the opinions of the ownership to other people. While altruism usually plays a small part of "why do this", the major reasons are either for ego, or for profit... and usually both. If you can provide another reason that stands the test of logic, then please do so.
That said, you have singularly failed to attach any blame for your example's perceived problem where it should lay - at the feet of the actual party doing the disparagement, not at the "carrier" of the statement. In fact, what you propose would make every letter carrier liable for any mailings perceived by the recipient as a threat. Since you posed an extreme example, I have done so as well.
Stating that the media platform "amplified" the disparagement is a non-starter. Amplification, in this case, means nothing more than providing a platform (a "soapbox" if you will) whereby it may be safe to assume that a great number of people are nearby, and likely will give your mutterings some measure of attention.
As with print media, platforms come in all sizes, and have all manner of proclivities as to whom they may wish to associate. Even if they were to do everything by human hand (meaning, no AI), they are still doing nothing more than expressing an opinion by virtue of associating with the original speaker, something that's even more important in the First Amendment than the part about free speech. And yes, just as speech can have consequences, so can association with others. For starters, witness the 6th participants.
tl;dr:
Expecting that a platform be neutral, or worse, mandated by law to be so, that's nothing more than a sad exposure of naivety.
Endgame: stop trying to salve your "feelz" by attacking the nearest/largest pockets you can find. If you can't find the proper party to sue for relief, then suck it up, pal. Life will go on, trust me.
Actually, it has been for some time, like decades.
France has an anti-Nazi law that pretty much precludes even mentioning them, except in certain historical contexts. It's fairly bizarre in that when a seller on eBay listed some Nazi memorabilia a few years ago, France nearly sued eBay to make them take down the listing. I don't recall the final outcome, only that France seemed awful thin-skinned over something that happened 65 years ago (at the time of the listing).
I mean, if you wanna guarantee that history will repeat itself, just delete it from all possible view, and wait a few years/decades. If there's no chance that anybody could learn a lesson, then sure as It Don't Rain In Indianapolis.... Need I illustrate further?
I have never been to Israel, or any other part of the MIddle East, so I don't have any opinion of note regarding that country and/or it's citizenry, let alone its politics. Additionally, I'm also unconcerned about any trademark battles going on because US law doesn't apply outside of the US - that's where International Trademark law takes over, and Shurat HaDin will find itself with a germ-infested scoop laying on the ground. (ref. Osmosis Jones)
Instead, I'm quite curious about this statement:
... will receive legal protection to sell the exact same ice cream, ...
Oh? And just how do they expect to get away with using B&J's exact same formula, eh? No one can patent ice cream in general, but they certainly can copyright their formula for a particular flavor. I'm thinking that someone is going to "walk back" that statement in the near future, or the legal war over B&J's action will become very serious indeed.
Re: Re: Re: 'Our evidence is rock solid! No you can't see it, it
That's one way to look at it. My perspective is that if the "evidence" is challenged in case after case (and likely withdrawn), pretty soon sales will go down, not up. Defense lawyers do talk to each other, all the time, and it doesn't take long for news of this sort to make the rounds.
What I wanna know is, how is it that nobody thought to give a GSR test to Williams in the first place??
And the man would need to have an IQ lower than a raw carrot to bring his own victim into a place where cops are either already present, or only a phone call away.
Re: 'Our evidence is rock solid! No you can't see it, it's ours.
Whereas if I were ShotSpotter....
I'd be demanding that my technology be admitted into evidence so that I could prove it was human intervention that was at fault, not my technology. After all, I want to make sales to other cop outfits, and withdrawals of this sort only harm my sales potential.
Either that, or I'd be serving up a heaping spoonful of lawsuits for "willful tortious interference with my business model".
"Government says so" [is a good excuse to block a user]
I hope that you're not advocating for government controlled speech. While that won't even get to first base in the US, thanks to 1A, it's a different story in the EU. In some countries, you do have some (limited) government controlled speech. For example in France the topic of Nazis is 100% interdit. Elsewhere I'm not qualified to address, but I do think that any government control over speech is always a bad idea.
The court has made a couple of tactical errors here.
a) Fb can still block/hide/suspend/etc. an account by simply saying "Hey, we gave notice, and they didn't respond in a timely manner, so....." There should've been a minimum time limit between the two events. As it stands, a minute might seem reasonable to an AI that's going to automatically do the blocking operation.
b) There's nothing in there that compels Fb to change their minds. The intended "reconsideration and new determination" doesn't have to be in favor of the policy offender. After all, Fb isn't going to (nor can they be required to) change their TOS, TOU, AUP and other policy statements just for any one given policy offender, doing so in mid-stream, so to speak. More telling, they are required to apply their policies equally across the board, so they literally can't show any favoritism - they simply must not change their minds, given that the offense is real and not a mistake. (AI's rarely understand the context, so mistakes can be rectified.)
But I do give the court credit for one thing: users have complained since Day One that notices of deficiency have been woefully... deficient in explaining why an action was taken. It's exactly like your parents telling you that you can't do something for the reason of "Because I said so!" That doesn't sit too well with most adults, I'm certain. But the explanation needn't be detailed, it can be nothing more than a list of checkboxes with short-and-sweet generalized descriptions. For example:
a) Bullying another user;
b) Threats of violence towards elected officials;
c) Espousing medical advise contrary to current medical practices;
d) Promoting discrimination contrary to established law;
e) yadda yadda, so on and so forth, blah blah, woof woof....
I don't use Fb (or any other socially acceptable social media), so I'm a fine one to talk. But I do keep my ears open, and they get filled with this complaint vis-a-vis Fb and other platforms, way too often for me not to notice.
Anybody else here see the strong resemblance between this crap and 1930's Nazi Germany?
In my view, just because the targets have the legal freedom to pick up and move, or to hire a lawyer and sue, that doesn't mean that they have the financial reserves to do so. This was true back then, and is still true today.
I'd sure like to see the racial breakdown of these t̶a̶r̶g̶e̶t̶s̶ "recipients", versus the breakdown for the entire county. My ACLU-sensing nose is twitching more than a little bit just now.
Actually, the term "lawyer" is best applied to one who makes law(s). The proper sobriquet for one who appears in court on behalf of others is "attorney". But if even the legal profession gets it wrong, who am I to pee in their collective Cheerios?
Perhaps not, but they still code like monkeys, for job justification if nothing else. I invite you to look at the web in general, where 98% of all sites are composed of nothing more than "Look at what I can do! Watch this, I'm gonna enrage our users even more!!"
You've forgotten one important factor: The first five members of your list are not out to kill you, or at a minimum, make you sick for a long period, perhaps for the rest of your life. Can't claim that for number six on the list.
We don't necessarily hate them, we're just upset that the rest of us had to work for our scholastic achievements, and yet we have to put up with poster children for No Child Left Behind, still whining after all these years.
It's "res judicata" when the top court in the state says "no more for you". To try to take it to a federal court before that point will definitely result as you described, "Now is not the time for you to come before us".
And at that, she'll have to come up with ia plausible claim that the State denied her Constitutional rights to redress, not just rehash the previous claims. Failure to get that part correct will also earn her a "Lacking merit your case is" award.
But as pointed out elsewhere, this is all performance art for the sake of grift. Proving once again that it's to bad that ignorance isn't painful.
Obviously, we just need to find the "proper" FCC Chairman -- with vastly superior integrity, management skill, technical knowledge, and wisdom.
You had him, once. And he's still alive, you can have him again! Although at 95 years of age, he may not want the job.....
Newton N. Minow, the author of the famous "TV is a vast wasteland" speech in May of 1961. That man had everything you asked for, so no sarcasm need be expended, it is possible to find these people, they do exist in real life. But more to the point, he had a vision for the future, and we're still living in it, 60 years later. That vision? Consumer choice. Check it out.
Notably, he has never stated that the Internet was/is a vast wasteland. So I'll say it for him...... ;)
p.s. The person who actually coined that phrase for Minow's speech was a journalist by the name of John Bartlow Martin.
On the post: Man Sues Multiple Social Media Services, Claims Banning His Accounts Violates The Civil Rights Act
Uh oh, it looks like some doo-doo is being stepped in.
Section 230 does NOT "immunize" an entity from a lawsuit, it only provides a swift way to end such. Named defendants still have to respond in the first place, thus creating a small "cost center" on their balance sheet(s). S230 is intended to keep that cost center from growing outlandisly large, and that's the sum total of it's intent. It accomplishes this by codifying common sense: "Sue the correct party, not a party of convenience".
Consider S230 to be sort of anti-SLAPP law for platforms that do not directly create the content they distribute. If they do create the content in question, in whole or in part, then S230 no longer applies - they are subject to any number of other laws that will act as a "Preparation H" for the plaintiff's alleged butthurt.
What's really needed here are two things:
a) Courts should just outright reject in totality any such lawsuit as matter of law, both case and statutory. They should also automatically sanction any attorney that tries this with "a new and novel approach that's sure to win". This is res judicata, and with all the exposure of such in recent years, no member of the bar can honestly claim a lack of knowledge hereof. (Footnote 1)
b) S230 needs amending alright - an amendment that imitates anti-SLAPP statutes in awarding "costs and fees" to the prevailing party. (See "needed thing a", just above, where the plaintiff automatically loses, thus triggering additional expenses just so he/she can tell the world that his/her feelz have suffered a boo-boo.)
Between these two "fixes", the Andy Worhol-ism going on should subside to an acceptable level.
1: A plaintiff cannot be denied the right to seek redress, but he/she can be denied the opportunity to thwart established law based on alleged facts that have already been tested in other courts, and found wanting. But as usual, and as expected, this is subject to the Court's discretion.
On the post: Yes, Actually, The 1st Amendment Does Mean That Twitter Can Kick You Off Its Platform, Wall Street Journal
Rather than make everyone go back up and re-read the comment, I'll repeat it here, with some emphasis for my point:
Sorry to disappoint you (and just about everyone who responded) but there is no problem here. Why not? Because there was no evil act. You might think there was one, but it should go without saying that not everyone agrees with you on this particular definition of evil.
Let's see if we can defuse your misguidance. Sit back and toke another bowlful, we'll get to the bottom of this together.
The exact aim of a privately held source of news (i.e. not one that is owned or sponsred by the government) is to spread the opinions of the ownership to other people. While altruism usually plays a small part of "why do this", the major reasons are either for ego, or for profit... and usually both. If you can provide another reason that stands the test of logic, then please do so.
That said, you have singularly failed to attach any blame for your example's perceived problem where it should lay - at the feet of the actual party doing the disparagement, not at the "carrier" of the statement. In fact, what you propose would make every letter carrier liable for any mailings perceived by the recipient as a threat. Since you posed an extreme example, I have done so as well.
Stating that the media platform "amplified" the disparagement is a non-starter. Amplification, in this case, means nothing more than providing a platform (a "soapbox" if you will) whereby it may be safe to assume that a great number of people are nearby, and likely will give your mutterings some measure of attention.
As with print media, platforms come in all sizes, and have all manner of proclivities as to whom they may wish to associate. Even if they were to do everything by human hand (meaning, no AI), they are still doing nothing more than expressing an opinion by virtue of associating with the original speaker, something that's even more important in the First Amendment than the part about free speech. And yes, just as speech can have consequences, so can association with others. For starters, witness the 6th participants.
tl;dr:
Expecting that a platform be neutral, or worse, mandated by law to be so, that's nothing more than a sad exposure of naivety.
Endgame: stop trying to salve your "feelz" by attacking the nearest/largest pockets you can find. If you can't find the proper party to sue for relief, then suck it up, pal. Life will go on, trust me.
On the post: President Of France Sues Citizen Over Billboard Comparing Macron To Hitler
Re: So this means…,
Actually, it has been for some time, like decades.
France has an anti-Nazi law that pretty much precludes even mentioning them, except in certain historical contexts. It's fairly bizarre in that when a seller on eBay listed some Nazi memorabilia a few years ago, France nearly sued eBay to make them take down the listing. I don't recall the final outcome, only that France seemed awful thin-skinned over something that happened 65 years ago (at the time of the listing).
I mean, if you wanna guarantee that history will repeat itself, just delete it from all possible view, and wait a few years/decades. If there's no chance that anybody could learn a lesson, then sure as It Don't Rain In Indianapolis.... Need I illustrate further?
On the post: President Of France Sues Citizen Over Billboard Comparing Macron To Hitler
In America, stupid lawsuits are criticized.
In France, criticism causes stupid lawsuits.
On the post: Social Network GETTR, Which Promised To Support 'Free Speech' Now Full Of Islamic State Jihadi Propaganda
Re: Re: Re: Let's Check The Details
Koby, I think you need to sit down with Charlie Hebdo and have a serious conversation.....
On the post: Israel, Ice Cream, Trademarks: This Year's Dumbest Controversy Results In Trademark Skullduggery
I have never been to Israel, or any other part of the MIddle East, so I don't have any opinion of note regarding that country and/or it's citizenry, let alone its politics. Additionally, I'm also unconcerned about any trademark battles going on because US law doesn't apply outside of the US - that's where International Trademark law takes over, and Shurat HaDin will find itself with a germ-infested scoop laying on the ground. (ref. Osmosis Jones)
Instead, I'm quite curious about this statement:
Oh? And just how do they expect to get away with using B&J's exact same formula, eh? No one can patent ice cream in general, but they certainly can copyright their formula for a particular flavor. I'm thinking that someone is going to "walk back" that statement in the near future, or the legal war over B&J's action will become very serious indeed.
On the post: ShotSpotter (Again) Spotted Altering Shots (And Spots) To Better Serve Police Narratives
Re: Re: Re: 'Our evidence is rock solid! No you can't see it, it
That's one way to look at it. My perspective is that if the "evidence" is challenged in case after case (and likely withdrawn), pretty soon sales will go down, not up. Defense lawyers do talk to each other, all the time, and it doesn't take long for news of this sort to make the rounds.
On the post: ShotSpotter (Again) Spotted Altering Shots (And Spots) To Better Serve Police Narratives
What I wanna know is, how is it that nobody thought to give a GSR test to Williams in the first place??
And the man would need to have an IQ lower than a raw carrot to bring his own victim into a place where cops are either already present, or only a phone call away.
On the post: ShotSpotter (Again) Spotted Altering Shots (And Spots) To Better Serve Police Narratives
Re: 'Our evidence is rock solid! No you can't see it, it's ours.
Whereas if I were ShotSpotter....
I'd be demanding that my technology be admitted into evidence so that I could prove it was human intervention that was at fault, not my technology. After all, I want to make sales to other cop outfits, and withdrawals of this sort only harm my sales potential.
Either that, or I'd be serving up a heaping spoonful of lawsuits for "willful tortious interference with my business model".
On the post: ShotSpotter (Again) Spotted Altering Shots (And Spots) To Better Serve Police Narratives
Re:
"Technology Saves Lives! Film at 11!"
On the post: ShotSpotter (Again) Spotted Altering Shots (And Spots) To Better Serve Police Narratives
Re:
In America, police protect the citizens.
In Copland, citizens protect the police with quota-meeting arrests.
On the post: Top German Court Says Facebook Must Inform Users About Deleting Their Posts Or Suspending Their Account, Explain Why, And Allow Them To Respond
Re: Re:
I hope that you're not advocating for government controlled speech. While that won't even get to first base in the US, thanks to 1A, it's a different story in the EU. In some countries, you do have some (limited) government controlled speech. For example in France the topic of Nazis is 100% interdit. Elsewhere I'm not qualified to address, but I do think that any government control over speech is always a bad idea.
On the post: Top German Court Says Facebook Must Inform Users About Deleting Their Posts Or Suspending Their Account, Explain Why, And Allow Them To Respond
la
The court has made a couple of tactical errors here.
a) Fb can still block/hide/suspend/etc. an account by simply saying "Hey, we gave notice, and they didn't respond in a timely manner, so....." There should've been a minimum time limit between the two events. As it stands, a minute might seem reasonable to an AI that's going to automatically do the blocking operation.
b) There's nothing in there that compels Fb to change their minds. The intended "reconsideration and new determination" doesn't have to be in favor of the policy offender. After all, Fb isn't going to (nor can they be required to) change their TOS, TOU, AUP and other policy statements just for any one given policy offender, doing so in mid-stream, so to speak. More telling, they are required to apply their policies equally across the board, so they literally can't show any favoritism - they simply must not change their minds, given that the offense is real and not a mistake. (AI's rarely understand the context, so mistakes can be rectified.)
But I do give the court credit for one thing: users have complained since Day One that notices of deficiency have been woefully... deficient in explaining why an action was taken. It's exactly like your parents telling you that you can't do something for the reason of "Because I said so!" That doesn't sit too well with most adults, I'm certain. But the explanation needn't be detailed, it can be nothing more than a list of checkboxes with short-and-sweet generalized descriptions. For example:
a) Bullying another user;
b) Threats of violence towards elected officials;
c) Espousing medical advise contrary to current medical practices;
d) Promoting discrimination contrary to established law;
e) yadda yadda, so on and so forth, blah blah, woof woof....
I don't use Fb (or any other socially acceptable social media), so I'm a fine one to talk. But I do keep my ears open, and they get filled with this complaint vis-a-vis Fb and other platforms, way too often for me not to notice.
On the post: Florida Sheriff's Office Now Notifying People It Will Be Inflicting Its Pre-Crime Program On Them
Re: Oxymoron
Sure there is. They're intelligent enough to keep the wool pulled down tight over the eyes of the population, aren't they?
On the post: Florida Sheriff's Office Now Notifying People It Will Be Inflicting Its Pre-Crime Program On Them
Anybody else here see the strong resemblance between this crap and 1930's Nazi Germany?
In my view, just because the targets have the legal freedom to pick up and move, or to hire a lawyer and sue, that doesn't mean that they have the financial reserves to do so. This was true back then, and is still true today.
I'd sure like to see the racial breakdown of these t̶a̶r̶g̶e̶t̶s̶ "recipients", versus the breakdown for the entire county. My ACLU-sensing nose is twitching more than a little bit just now.
On the post: It's Time We Talk About Getting Rid Of The Bar Exam. And Here's Why.
Re:
Actually, the term "lawyer" is best applied to one who makes law(s). The proper sobriquet for one who appears in court on behalf of others is "attorney". But if even the legal profession gets it wrong, who am I to pee in their collective Cheerios?
On the post: Exec That Tried To Send Critical Reporters A Dead Pig Blames 'The Drinking Culture At eBay'
Re: Re:
Perhaps not, but they still code like monkeys, for job justification if nothing else. I invite you to look at the web in general, where 98% of all sites are composed of nothing more than "Look at what I can do! Watch this, I'm gonna enrage our users even more!!"
On the post: As The White House (And Others) Blame Facebook For COVID Vaccination Rates, Health Officials Are Blaming Fox News
Re: Yep
You've forgotten one important factor: The first five members of your list are not out to kill you, or at a minimum, make you sick for a long period, perhaps for the rest of your life. Can't claim that for number six on the list.
We don't necessarily hate them, we're just upset that the rest of us had to work for our scholastic achievements, and yet we have to put up with poster children for No Child Left Behind, still whining after all these years.
On the post: Judge Tosses Candace Owens's Litigious Attempt To Turn Facebook Fact-Checking Into Defamation
Re: claim preclusion
^^ Errr, not quite.
It's "res judicata" when the top court in the state says "no more for you". To try to take it to a federal court before that point will definitely result as you described, "Now is not the time for you to come before us".
And at that, she'll have to come up with ia plausible claim that the State denied her Constitutional rights to redress, not just rehash the previous claims. Failure to get that part correct will also earn her a "Lacking merit your case is" award.
But as pointed out elsewhere, this is all performance art for the sake of grift. Proving once again that it's to bad that ignorance isn't painful.
On the post: AT&T Gets Loyal Lawmakers To Push A Broadband Tax For 'Big Tech'
Re: Heroic FCC Chairman search
You had him, once. And he's still alive, you can have him again! Although at 95 years of age, he may not want the job.....
Newton N. Minow, the author of the famous "TV is a vast wasteland" speech in May of 1961. That man had everything you asked for, so no sarcasm need be expended, it is possible to find these people, they do exist in real life. But more to the point, he had a vision for the future, and we're still living in it, 60 years later. That vision? Consumer choice. Check it out.
Notably, he has never stated that the Internet was/is a vast wasteland. So I'll say it for him...... ;)
p.s. The person who actually coined that phrase for Minow's speech was a journalist by the name of John Bartlow Martin.
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