Speech said by someone else over a network is not the speech of the network.
Yes, though it’s worth noting that social media sites are not networks.
The concept of "forced speech" is the fraudulent part of section 230.
It’s not a part of §230 at all. It’s part of the 1A.
Site operators cannot in good faith claim "I'm being forced to speak!" while simultaneously saying "It's not me who's doing the speaking, so I'm immune from all liability".
It’s about forced association with that speech and forced hosting/possession of that speech. Also, the difference is that defamation liability is on the speaker, not the platform, but the platform can still have rules it can enforce on speech on its platform. This is true of literally every host of others’ speech. (Note: in the case of a newspaper, an article is a work-for-hire, and thus is considered to be the newspaper’s speech as well as that of the author’s, but a letter to the editor gets more complicated.)
Just as your speech over the telephone is not forced speech onto the telecom carrier, and words printed in a newspaper is not forcing speech onto a paper mill, speech on an internet platform is not the speech of the site operator.
Those are not analogous. It’s more like a private school determining what speech is allowed in its classrooms or on its bulletin boards or in its newspapers.
As a tech-oriented site, I find it astounding you would ignore (or worse, cover up) the hundreds of tech and data people who have addressed definitively the criminal anomalies of Dominion.
If by “addressed” you mean “disproved”, then yes, hundreds of tech and data people have addressed the alleged “anomolies”. That is, the allegations have been shown to be false. I tend to ignore claims that have been disproven.
Simply astonishing that your hatred of Giuliani would blind you to the plain facts of data, math, code, illegal connection to the internet. All of that evidence, and you still claim Rudy's claims are false?
You have cause and effect backwards. I hate Giuliani because he makes up stuff like this. Also, those “plain facts” that I’ve seen that you’re talking about have all been either disproven, don’t prove anything, are not actually anomalous, or are both difficult to believe and unsupported by any actual evidence.
Here’s why I say “cancel culture” isn’t really a thing.
It suggests a tendency of society rather than the existence of some bad cases.
With few exceptions, those who complain about so-called “cancel culture” are never both the victims of the thing they are complaining about and that what they said or did is actually justifiable.
No one I’ve asked seems to agree on an actual, coherent, consistent definition of the term, nor can they seem to agree on what instances are cancel culture and what is justified, rendering it meaningless.
The main proposed solutions to the proposed “problem” would silence far more justified and 1A-protected speech than actual overreaction, to the extent there is any agreement on a solution at least.
It serves only to remove nuance and silence debate and is not an actual argument in itself.
There are what I would call “employer’s conflict avoidance” and “overreactive cancellation” that cover the individual instances, which can be debated, but I wouldn’t say that means that “cancel culture” actually exists or needs to be “solved”.
People can defend themselves without suing intermediaries, and a right to defend is not the same as a right to successfully protect or get compensation from someone not directly responsible for the harm you’re defending against. The right to speak up in your own defense, have others speak up to defend you, ask websites to take down defamatory content, and sue those who knowingly harm your reputation by telling false factual statements for defamation are more than enough to satisfy having “a right to defend your reputation”; intermediary liability is unnecessary to achieve that.
Re: Re: "Be assured that you do not believe in God"
Now, I’m a Christian, but I cannot abide by such faulty arguments.
Without a real God that created humanity and provided absolute truth on how to interact with each other for a properly functioning society, then how do you conclude what is actually right in order to do it.
First off, as a social species, humans have evolved to have empathy, giving them an intuitive sense of right and wrong, at least in broad strokes. This empathy is often strongest for those who are most like the subject. We also evolved to have a sense of fairness for similar reasons, which similarly provides guidance to our individual sense of morality.
Second, we can basically come up with a society-wide set of morals by agreeing on certain goals to work towards, like maximizing well-being and happiness for as many people as possible while minimizing harm to as many as possible, and some sort of priority system. Actions that help us approach those goals are “good”, while actions that push us further from those goals are “bad”. Obviously, some of the details are not agreed upon, which leads to gray areas.
Really, that’s basically what morality is: things that progress us towards some goal we like are “good”, while things that push us away from that goal are “bad”. And it can get pretty subjective and relative. Even if we just look at Christian philosophers, there is a lot of disagreement among them because they can’t agree on some things like goals and which things are more important. And there are a lot of gray area and many exceptions to generally accepted rules.
On a side note, playing a different sort of Devil’s advocate, let’s say that there is a real God who created humanity and provided a code of conduct. 1) That’s not an absolute morality as there are still exceptions to some of the rules. 2) It’s also not an objective morality because it’s based on the views of a personal being (God). 3) If it’s so perfect, why has it changed over time? I go into more detail later with some examples, but the morality most American Christians follow today, even the most devout Evangelical ones, is not the same as the one in Biblical times or even in early American history or just a few decades ago. 4) Again, if it’s so perfect and an absolute truth, why is it that so many Christians cannot agree on what that truth is? And what about the other religions with their own rules? What puts Christianity above them?
Since there is no way to definitively prove or disprove the existence of any God, gods, or goddesses in general, which God, gods, or goddesses exist (if any), which of the many holy texts is/are an accurate description of the “true” morality, or which interpretation of the “true” holy text(s) is the right one, if any, until after death, and there is no provable way for the dead to come back and tell us (and the stories of those that claim to have done so or that they witnessed someone else do so) are contradictory or unhelpful in these matters, as a practical matter if nothing else, it’s best to treat morality in general as relative and largely subjective.
For example is sex outside of marriage right
In my opinion, it depends on the particulars. Is the sex consensual by all involved parties? If so, was that consent informed and not coerced? Is either party dating or married to someone else? If so, is the married/dating party’s significant other aware of and consenting to the act? Is this an exclusive relationship (that is, limited to a subset of a relatively small, known group of persons that are also only sexually involved with a subset of that same group) that is just not formally recognized by some sort of authority? If not, or if any sexually involved party(s) may or do(es) have some STD(s), are they taking precautions to prevent the transmission of STDs? Are they taking actions to prevent pregnancy? If not, have they adequately planned for the possibility of a pregnancy, and if so, what is that plan and how well prepared are they for it? What are the ages of the parties? Is there a command relationship between the parties outside of the bedroom? Does this relationship lead to a conflict of interest or favoritism in their professional/political capacity? Has either party vocally condemned sex outside of marriage during or prior to the affair? Did they lie about the affair, and to whom?
I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong or dangerous about sex outside of marriage, so it depends on the particulars. That actually applies to a lot of statements as broad as this one. The answer to such broad questions is often, “It depends.”
(Note: I personally have no intentions of actually having sex outside of marriage, but I don’t judge the morality of others’ behaviors based solely on mine.)
and if so (going against "God" given rules), how do we know it's not actually causing tiny undetectable ripples of damage to society that combine with other tiny ripples (like envy, gluttony, pride, etc.) which eventually lead to waves of broken adults later on.
That’s where psychological and sociological studies come in, though it’s also worth noting that it also depends on how one defines “damage to society” and “broken adults”.
We can determine some measurable indicators of “damage to society” and “broken adults” and measure those against the questioned behavior (in this case, sex outside of marriage). If there’s a statistically significant correlation, more studies can be done to determine the likelihood of a causal connection between them and what direction that causality goes as well as the possible existence of confounding factor(s). If so, then we can determine what and how much, if any, “damage to society” is done by sex outside of marriage and, if there is any, how much of it is preventable without disallowing sex outside of marriage altogether. Of course, these studies would have to be compared to sex within marriage and a mixed group of both.
Again, though, this depends on how we define “damage to society” and “broken adults”, which are in turn based upon some predetermined goal(s) upon which to base our morality. It also depends on our threshold for “damage to society” before we determine something is “bad”.
And then there’s what you said about envy, gluttony, pride, etc. Again, those would have to be tested for “damage to society” before we could even determine those to be “bad for society”.
Perhaps our feeble efforts to relax the long established written religious rules of conduct because "God doesn't exist" is the reason for 99% of society's current ills.
[citation needed]
First, you presuppose that there are long-established written religious rules of conduct that were followed more often before than they are now. Given the fact that there have been numerous disagreements throughout history on what those written rules actually are even within a given faith and the diversity of faiths throughout history, each with their own written rules of conduct, and the fact that many of those pushing these rules are often guilty of breaking them, this is a questionable assertion.
Second, you also presuppose that there has been an increase in “society’s ills”. Again, I don’t see any evidence of that. There has actually been a decrease over the past several decades in crimes committed in general and in violent crimes in particular. I suppose it depends on how one defines “iils” in this context, but then people can’t seem to agree on that.
Third, you presuppose that there has been a relaxation of the aforementioned rules that is because of people asserting that “God doesn’t exist”. 1) Many religious people have a more relaxed interpretation of the rules than their ancestors did that has nothing to do with other people saying that God doesn’t exist. 2) You assume that religious people are more likely to follow these rules than atheists, and I haven’t seen evidence that this is the case. 3) You forget that sometimes the rules have gotten stricter; for example, slavery used to be condoned, but no longer is; polygamy was once allowed and is actually explicitly allowed in the Bible, but now it’s condemned; racism and sexism were previously commonplace but are now strongly discouraged.
Rally sizes are not a reliable indicator of election results, especially during a time when many voters, especially on one side, are fearful of catching a highly infectious disease and both they and the people organizing the rallies for that side are taking precautions (like social distancing) to reduce the spread of said disease. And that’s not getting into the fact that a lot of people who voted to elect Biden were doing so not because they like Biden or were Democrats (the type of people who’d attend Biden’s rallies) but because they dislike Trump more than they dislike Biden.
I wish Techdirt's populace would realize that this is actually a nuanced grey area decision that affects how politics should be discussed on the internet and not "HATE TRUMP/LOVE TRUMP" binary decision that all of us seem to have fallen into.
If he was anyone else other than a sitting President, Trump would almost certainly have been banned or suspended a long time ago. I agree there are policy decisions to consider, which is why we should see what comes of the Oversight Board’s look into this to see what happens and not jump to conclusions about what will happen like Koby did.
I don't think ANY politician should be contactable solely over Facebook/twitter, if they should have a presence there at all.
Agreed, but I don’t believe that is true of any politician.
These are private organizations and I can't talk to my public representative anymore without having an account with them.
Huh? There’s a portal that shows you how to contact your representative through other means, such as by phone, mail, or email. If your representative doesn’t have any other means to contact them, that’s on them, but I highly doubt it.
But clearly my opinion isn't in the majority,
I haven’t really seen evidence of that here.
so if politicians require a social media presence, then we have to seriously re-think how social media interacts with the public sector.
I disagree. At most, it suggests that we should have to re-think how the public sector interacts with their constituents online. It’s not the social media companies’ problem.
I don't know why everyone is suddenly in big tech's pants
We’re not. That a big tech company happens to be right in one case and that we’re saying that doesn’t make us huge supporters of Big Tech. There is nuance.
Sure, no one liked or should like parler, that doesn't change the fact that this is really just paving the way for the next time this happens.
You mean the next time a social media company decides to have another company handle its cloud-based infrastructure rather than doing it in-house and then fails to adhere to the terms of the contract it agreed to when it signed up despite several warnings leading to its service being suspended? Oh no. The horror.
Dude, if you sign a contract and fail to adhere to the terms you agreed to, unless those terms are extremely onorous or something (which doesn’t appear to be the case here), the other party has every right to break off with you. I see no problems with what happened even if it was, say, Twitter being suspended instead.
And unlike what some of the commenters have posted, Amazon is NOT a beacon of morality. Unless you think union busting during a pandemic is a wholly moralistic view.
First of all, no one claimed that. At most, people have said that AWS had every legal right to do what they did, this lawsuit had no chance of success, and that they were right to do so. And some didn’t even go that far.
Second, while owned by the same company, AWS and the part of Amazon that handles the warehouses are not quite the same thing. I haven’t heard anything about AWS doing any union busting.
If someone is unable to afford a shirt or unwilling to wear one, that doesn’t mean that a policy of “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” is problematic. That a person is unable and/or unwilling to follow the rules doesn’t necessarily mean that the rules themselves are the problem.
True. As Trump learned, even if someone is loyal to you, there may be limits to that loyalty. For example, Jeff Sessions recusing himself from the Russia investigation and Bill Barr refusing to lie about the election results.
Re: Re: Re: 'Those are only acceptable when we do them!'
Nope. They observed that Russians attempted to interfere in the election using hacks, leaks, and disinformation campaigns, and that those attempts tried to get Trump elected. They also observed that Trump, his campaign, and his administration were very cavalier about the whole thing and lied about a number of contacts with Russians during the campaign. A Trump-appointed cabinet member then appointed a Republican former FBI head to head a special investigation into the matter. There were some calls for impeachment around this point, but some were from Republican officials and none went anywhere.
That investigation found that Russia had in fact made the attempt to interfere in the election, that a number of Trump’s associates had done some illegal things during and after the election (who they prosecuted or got guilty pleas from), and was inconclusive on whether or not and to what extent Trump was personally aware of or involved in these matters, but that he had obstructed justice, though as President the only recourse was for Congress to impeach him. Although several Democrats wanted to impeach Trump over the obstruction-of-justice charges, no actual attempt was made to do so.
Then, more than 3 years into Trump’s presidency, after learning about a call to Ukraine where Trump tried to force Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden’s son while Biden was running against him, the House began proceedings towards impeaching him based solely on that and not anything that happened prior to that, but after he was formally impeached and the case was sent to the Senate for a trial, the Senate ruled to acquit him along party lines with the exception of Mitt Romney, who voted to convict.
It’s worth noting that impeaching a President is not “attempting to overturn an election” unless it is based entirely on trumped-up charges, which this was not. There were no claims that the transcript of the call was false, that the witnesses were lying, or that the alleged conduct was proper (well, except for Trump claiming it was “the perfect call”, but even most Republicans thought the call was improper behavior; they just didn’t think he should be impeached/removed from office over it).
At no point did Democratic politicians claim that the election was rigged, claim that there was widespread election or voter fraud, try to contest the election results, election process, certification process, or selection of electors in court, try to get state legislatures to appoint a slate of electors contrary to the election results, try to contest the electoral college vote results, interfere with the certification of the electoral college vote, claim that Trump’s victory or presidency was illegitimate, consider imposing martial law to redo the election or something like that, or force their way into a government building that they were not allowed to enter while government officials were inside on official business and while carrying weapons and flex-cuffs and bombs and proceed to kill a police officer, steal government property, break doors and windows (among other things), leave bombs at DNC and RNC HQs, threaten to kill government officials, search through government officials’ documents for “something good we can use”, or any of that crap.
Now, it is true that many people (including Democrats) were unhappy with the results of the 2016 election, that there were two faithless electors in that election who chose to not vote for Trump, that people (including Democrats) alleged that Russia at least attempted to interfere with the election (because it was true, even if how much of an effect it had is debatable), that some Democrats who were not in government (incorrectly) thought that the Russians had hacked the voting machines to give Trump the victory (though this never had much traction and no mainstream media source or Democratic official claimed that), that many people (including Democrats) protested Trump’s victory and/or actions as President (though these protests were almost entirely peaceful and never involved storming a government building), that some Democratic officials (and some Republican officials) called for Trump’s impeachment a few months into his presidency (though, again, nothing actually happened until more than halfway through his third year), that a lot of Democrats pointed out that despite Trump winning in the electoral college he had lost the popular vote by millions of votes, and that a lot of Democrats wanted Trump’s presidency to end early.
However, none of this means that Democrats spent four years trying to overturn the 2016 election.
Not entirely accurate, but if by that you mean they can use hyperbole, “puffery”, and other such tactics or conceal certain information that isn’t legally required, then yes, that’s true.
and how many Even Shareholders have been lied to?
I should note that it is actually unlawful for companies to lie to their shareholders. I’m not saying that it’s never happened, but shareholders can and have sued companies for lying or failing to disclose certain information, and both federal and state governments have also sued companies who do this.
He noticed a turning point in the data in 1975, the year that the Court decided Virginia Pharmacy, a case that overruled the precedent that commercial speech deserved no First Amendment protection.
First off, based on the details you shared, I can’t find any fault in the Virginia Pharmacy decision. The company wanted to honestly advertise its prices. What’s the problem with that?
Second, why should commercial speech deserve no 1A protection at all? Even commercial speech can be expressive, and unless we’re dealing with privacy concerns or calls for lawless action, I don’t believe that truthful information should ever be unprotected, regardless of whether or not the speech is commercial.
Third, you just cited proof that corporations do have 1A protections! You found a specific court case that says exactly that. In fact, none of what you just said supports the proposition that Tanner was asking you to provide citations for:
Corps dont have a 1st amendment
At best, you claim that commercial speech was unprotected until 1975, but commercial speech is not always speech from corporations, and not everything said by a corporation is commercial speech. For example: a corporation publishes a newspaper written entirely by in-house staff; the contents of the newspaper are considered to be speech published and written by the corporation but not commercial speech (outside of any ads inside).
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: More moderate than I was exp
The Constitution doesn’t protect from private individuals. To the extent that there’s a constitutional right to privacy, it only restricts the government.
So FISA would violate your rights, but not Facebook.
On the post: Google Threatens To Pull Out Of Australia Entirely; Australians Demand That It Both Stay And Pay News Orgs For Giving Them Traffic
Re: Re: 'How dare you not cave to our thuggery!'
When was that? That sounds interesting.
On the post: Columbia Law Professor Spews Blatantly False Information About Section 230 In The Wall Street Journal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Easy Difference
Yes, though it’s worth noting that social media sites are not networks.
It’s not a part of §230 at all. It’s part of the 1A.
It’s about forced association with that speech and forced hosting/possession of that speech. Also, the difference is that defamation liability is on the speaker, not the platform, but the platform can still have rules it can enforce on speech on its platform. This is true of literally every host of others’ speech. (Note: in the case of a newspaper, an article is a work-for-hire, and thus is considered to be the newspaper’s speech as well as that of the author’s, but a letter to the editor gets more complicated.)
Those are not analogous. It’s more like a private school determining what speech is allowed in its classrooms or on its bulletin boards or in its newspapers.
On the post: Columbia Law Professor Spews Blatantly False Information About Section 230 In The Wall Street Journal
Re: Re: Re: Easy Difference
And since they have not become public fora nor have they actually replaced public fora, I see no problem.
Also, the professor’s article and Techdirt’s article are both about what the law is, not what it should be.
On the post: Columbia Law Professor Spews Blatantly False Information About Section 230 In The Wall Street Journal
Re: Easy Difference
Show me where in the law it says that platforms have such a duty.
Note: the points you’re quoting are about what the law (allegedly) is, not what they think it should be.
On the post: Dominion Sues Rudy Giuliani For $1.3 Billion Over False Statements About Its Voting Systems
Re: It's just Tech
If by “addressed” you mean “disproved”, then yes, hundreds of tech and data people have addressed the alleged “anomolies”. That is, the allegations have been shown to be false. I tend to ignore claims that have been disproven.
You have cause and effect backwards. I hate Giuliani because he makes up stuff like this. Also, those “plain facts” that I’ve seen that you’re talking about have all been either disproven, don’t prove anything, are not actually anomalous, or are both difficult to believe and unsupported by any actual evidence.
On the post: Professional Assholes Equate Consequences With 'Cancel Culture' To Obscure That They're Finally Being Held Accountable
Here’s why I say “cancel culture” isn’t really a thing.
It suggests a tendency of society rather than the existence of some bad cases.
With few exceptions, those who complain about so-called “cancel culture” are never both the victims of the thing they are complaining about and that what they said or did is actually justifiable.
No one I’ve asked seems to agree on an actual, coherent, consistent definition of the term, nor can they seem to agree on what instances are cancel culture and what is justified, rendering it meaningless.
The main proposed solutions to the proposed “problem” would silence far more justified and 1A-protected speech than actual overreaction, to the extent there is any agreement on a solution at least.
There are what I would call “employer’s conflict avoidance” and “overreactive cancellation” that cover the individual instances, which can be debated, but I wouldn’t say that means that “cancel culture” actually exists or needs to be “solved”.
On the post: No Section 230 Has Nothing To Do With Horrific NY Times Story Of Online Stalker Getting Revenge For Decades' Old Slight
Re:
People can defend themselves without suing intermediaries, and a right to defend is not the same as a right to successfully protect or get compensation from someone not directly responsible for the harm you’re defending against. The right to speak up in your own defense, have others speak up to defend you, ask websites to take down defamatory content, and sue those who knowingly harm your reputation by telling false factual statements for defamation are more than enough to satisfy having “a right to defend your reputation”; intermediary liability is unnecessary to achieve that.
Also, I don’t think you understand autism.
On the post: As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
Re: Re: "Be assured that you do not believe in God"
Now, I’m a Christian, but I cannot abide by such faulty arguments.
First off, as a social species, humans have evolved to have empathy, giving them an intuitive sense of right and wrong, at least in broad strokes. This empathy is often strongest for those who are most like the subject. We also evolved to have a sense of fairness for similar reasons, which similarly provides guidance to our individual sense of morality.
Second, we can basically come up with a society-wide set of morals by agreeing on certain goals to work towards, like maximizing well-being and happiness for as many people as possible while minimizing harm to as many as possible, and some sort of priority system. Actions that help us approach those goals are “good”, while actions that push us further from those goals are “bad”. Obviously, some of the details are not agreed upon, which leads to gray areas.
Really, that’s basically what morality is: things that progress us towards some goal we like are “good”, while things that push us away from that goal are “bad”. And it can get pretty subjective and relative. Even if we just look at Christian philosophers, there is a lot of disagreement among them because they can’t agree on some things like goals and which things are more important. And there are a lot of gray area and many exceptions to generally accepted rules.
On a side note, playing a different sort of Devil’s advocate, let’s say that there is a real God who created humanity and provided a code of conduct. 1) That’s not an absolute morality as there are still exceptions to some of the rules. 2) It’s also not an objective morality because it’s based on the views of a personal being (God). 3) If it’s so perfect, why has it changed over time? I go into more detail later with some examples, but the morality most American Christians follow today, even the most devout Evangelical ones, is not the same as the one in Biblical times or even in early American history or just a few decades ago. 4) Again, if it’s so perfect and an absolute truth, why is it that so many Christians cannot agree on what that truth is? And what about the other religions with their own rules? What puts Christianity above them?
Since there is no way to definitively prove or disprove the existence of any God, gods, or goddesses in general, which God, gods, or goddesses exist (if any), which of the many holy texts is/are an accurate description of the “true” morality, or which interpretation of the “true” holy text(s) is the right one, if any, until after death, and there is no provable way for the dead to come back and tell us (and the stories of those that claim to have done so or that they witnessed someone else do so) are contradictory or unhelpful in these matters, as a practical matter if nothing else, it’s best to treat morality in general as relative and largely subjective.
In my opinion, it depends on the particulars. Is the sex consensual by all involved parties? If so, was that consent informed and not coerced? Is either party dating or married to someone else? If so, is the married/dating party’s significant other aware of and consenting to the act? Is this an exclusive relationship (that is, limited to a subset of a relatively small, known group of persons that are also only sexually involved with a subset of that same group) that is just not formally recognized by some sort of authority? If not, or if any sexually involved party(s) may or do(es) have some STD(s), are they taking precautions to prevent the transmission of STDs? Are they taking actions to prevent pregnancy? If not, have they adequately planned for the possibility of a pregnancy, and if so, what is that plan and how well prepared are they for it? What are the ages of the parties? Is there a command relationship between the parties outside of the bedroom? Does this relationship lead to a conflict of interest or favoritism in their professional/political capacity? Has either party vocally condemned sex outside of marriage during or prior to the affair? Did they lie about the affair, and to whom?
I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong or dangerous about sex outside of marriage, so it depends on the particulars. That actually applies to a lot of statements as broad as this one. The answer to such broad questions is often, “It depends.”
(Note: I personally have no intentions of actually having sex outside of marriage, but I don’t judge the morality of others’ behaviors based solely on mine.)
That’s where psychological and sociological studies come in, though it’s also worth noting that it also depends on how one defines “damage to society” and “broken adults”.
We can determine some measurable indicators of “damage to society” and “broken adults” and measure those against the questioned behavior (in this case, sex outside of marriage). If there’s a statistically significant correlation, more studies can be done to determine the likelihood of a causal connection between them and what direction that causality goes as well as the possible existence of confounding factor(s). If so, then we can determine what and how much, if any, “damage to society” is done by sex outside of marriage and, if there is any, how much of it is preventable without disallowing sex outside of marriage altogether. Of course, these studies would have to be compared to sex within marriage and a mixed group of both.
Again, though, this depends on how we define “damage to society” and “broken adults”, which are in turn based upon some predetermined goal(s) upon which to base our morality. It also depends on our threshold for “damage to society” before we determine something is “bad”.
And then there’s what you said about envy, gluttony, pride, etc. Again, those would have to be tested for “damage to society” before we could even determine those to be “bad for society”.
[citation needed]
First, you presuppose that there are long-established written religious rules of conduct that were followed more often before than they are now. Given the fact that there have been numerous disagreements throughout history on what those written rules actually are even within a given faith and the diversity of faiths throughout history, each with their own written rules of conduct, and the fact that many of those pushing these rules are often guilty of breaking them, this is a questionable assertion.
Second, you also presuppose that there has been an increase in “society’s ills”. Again, I don’t see any evidence of that. There has actually been a decrease over the past several decades in crimes committed in general and in violent crimes in particular. I suppose it depends on how one defines “iils” in this context, but then people can’t seem to agree on that.
Third, you presuppose that there has been a relaxation of the aforementioned rules that is because of people asserting that “God doesn’t exist”. 1) Many religious people have a more relaxed interpretation of the rules than their ancestors did that has nothing to do with other people saying that God doesn’t exist. 2) You assume that religious people are more likely to follow these rules than atheists, and I haven’t seen evidence that this is the case. 3) You forget that sometimes the rules have gotten stricter; for example, slavery used to be condoned, but no longer is; polygamy was once allowed and is actually explicitly allowed in the Bible, but now it’s condemned; racism and sexism were previously commonplace but are now strongly discouraged.
On the post: As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Uh, Biden has never done even one of those things.
On the post: As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Rally sizes are not a reliable indicator of election results, especially during a time when many voters, especially on one side, are fearful of catching a highly infectious disease and both they and the people organizing the rallies for that side are taking precautions (like social distancing) to reduce the spread of said disease. And that’s not getting into the fact that a lot of people who voted to elect Biden were doing so not because they like Biden or were Democrats (the type of people who’d attend Biden’s rallies) but because they dislike Trump more than they dislike Biden.
On the post: Former US Ambassador Sues Apple Because Telegram Users Are Making Him Feel Scared [Update]
Re: Awkward
The third-party doctrine is about search warrants. It is completely irrelevant in a civil lawsuit between private parties.
On the post: Oversight Board Agrees To Review Facebook's Trump Suspension
Re: Re:
If he was anyone else other than a sitting President, Trump would almost certainly have been banned or suspended a long time ago. I agree there are policy decisions to consider, which is why we should see what comes of the Oversight Board’s look into this to see what happens and not jump to conclusions about what will happen like Koby did.
Agreed, but I don’t believe that is true of any politician.
Huh? There’s a portal that shows you how to contact your representative through other means, such as by phone, mail, or email. If your representative doesn’t have any other means to contact them, that’s on them, but I highly doubt it.
I haven’t really seen evidence of that here.
I disagree. At most, it suggests that we should have to re-think how the public sector interacts with their constituents online. It’s not the social media companies’ problem.
On the post: Judge Easily Rejects Parler's Demands To Have Amazon Reinstate Parler
Re: Re: Leaving Parler aside ...
We’re not. That a big tech company happens to be right in one case and that we’re saying that doesn’t make us huge supporters of Big Tech. There is nuance.
You mean the next time a social media company decides to have another company handle its cloud-based infrastructure rather than doing it in-house and then fails to adhere to the terms of the contract it agreed to when it signed up despite several warnings leading to its service being suspended? Oh no. The horror.
Dude, if you sign a contract and fail to adhere to the terms you agreed to, unless those terms are extremely onorous or something (which doesn’t appear to be the case here), the other party has every right to break off with you. I see no problems with what happened even if it was, say, Twitter being suspended instead.
First of all, no one claimed that. At most, people have said that AWS had every legal right to do what they did, this lawsuit had no chance of success, and that they were right to do so. And some didn’t even go that far.
Second, while owned by the same company, AWS and the part of Amazon that handles the warehouses are not quite the same thing. I haven’t heard anything about AWS doing any union busting.
On the post: Judge Easily Rejects Parler's Demands To Have Amazon Reinstate Parler
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stop exaggerating
If someone is unable to afford a shirt or unwilling to wear one, that doesn’t mean that a policy of “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” is problematic. That a person is unable and/or unwilling to follow the rules doesn’t necessarily mean that the rules themselves are the problem.
On the post: Judge Easily Rejects Parler's Demands To Have Amazon Reinstate Parler
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Why does the popularity of your mantra matter?
On the post: Court Tosses RICO Lawsuit Demanding $90 Million And The Dissolution Of Google For Supposed Anti-Conservative Bias
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They also don’t believe that liberals should be a protected class.
On the post: Biden Fires Steve Bannon Protege, Who Tried To Turn Voice Of America Into A New Breitbart
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True. As Trump learned, even if someone is loyal to you, there may be limits to that loyalty. For example, Jeff Sessions recusing himself from the Russia investigation and Bill Barr refusing to lie about the election results.
On the post: Biden Fires Steve Bannon Protege, Who Tried To Turn Voice Of America Into A New Breitbart
Re: Re: Re: 'Those are only acceptable when we do them!'
Nope. They observed that Russians attempted to interfere in the election using hacks, leaks, and disinformation campaigns, and that those attempts tried to get Trump elected. They also observed that Trump, his campaign, and his administration were very cavalier about the whole thing and lied about a number of contacts with Russians during the campaign. A Trump-appointed cabinet member then appointed a Republican former FBI head to head a special investigation into the matter. There were some calls for impeachment around this point, but some were from Republican officials and none went anywhere.
That investigation found that Russia had in fact made the attempt to interfere in the election, that a number of Trump’s associates had done some illegal things during and after the election (who they prosecuted or got guilty pleas from), and was inconclusive on whether or not and to what extent Trump was personally aware of or involved in these matters, but that he had obstructed justice, though as President the only recourse was for Congress to impeach him. Although several Democrats wanted to impeach Trump over the obstruction-of-justice charges, no actual attempt was made to do so.
Then, more than 3 years into Trump’s presidency, after learning about a call to Ukraine where Trump tried to force Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden’s son while Biden was running against him, the House began proceedings towards impeaching him based solely on that and not anything that happened prior to that, but after he was formally impeached and the case was sent to the Senate for a trial, the Senate ruled to acquit him along party lines with the exception of Mitt Romney, who voted to convict.
It’s worth noting that impeaching a President is not “attempting to overturn an election” unless it is based entirely on trumped-up charges, which this was not. There were no claims that the transcript of the call was false, that the witnesses were lying, or that the alleged conduct was proper (well, except for Trump claiming it was “the perfect call”, but even most Republicans thought the call was improper behavior; they just didn’t think he should be impeached/removed from office over it).
At no point did Democratic politicians claim that the election was rigged, claim that there was widespread election or voter fraud, try to contest the election results, election process, certification process, or selection of electors in court, try to get state legislatures to appoint a slate of electors contrary to the election results, try to contest the electoral college vote results, interfere with the certification of the electoral college vote, claim that Trump’s victory or presidency was illegitimate, consider imposing martial law to redo the election or something like that, or force their way into a government building that they were not allowed to enter while government officials were inside on official business and while carrying weapons and flex-cuffs and bombs and proceed to kill a police officer, steal government property, break doors and windows (among other things), leave bombs at DNC and RNC HQs, threaten to kill government officials, search through government officials’ documents for “something good we can use”, or any of that crap.
Now, it is true that many people (including Democrats) were unhappy with the results of the 2016 election, that there were two faithless electors in that election who chose to not vote for Trump, that people (including Democrats) alleged that Russia at least attempted to interfere with the election (because it was true, even if how much of an effect it had is debatable), that some Democrats who were not in government (incorrectly) thought that the Russians had hacked the voting machines to give Trump the victory (though this never had much traction and no mainstream media source or Democratic official claimed that), that many people (including Democrats) protested Trump’s victory and/or actions as President (though these protests were almost entirely peaceful and never involved storming a government building), that some Democratic officials (and some Republican officials) called for Trump’s impeachment a few months into his presidency (though, again, nothing actually happened until more than halfway through his third year), that a lot of Democrats pointed out that despite Trump winning in the electoral college he had lost the popular vote by millions of votes, and that a lot of Democrats wanted Trump’s presidency to end early.
However, none of this means that Democrats spent four years trying to overturn the 2016 election.
On the post: Fox News Needs To Accept Some Of The Blame For The Insurrection; But That Doesn't Mean We Toss Out The 1st Amendment
Re: Re: Re: Why not?
Not entirely accurate, but if by that you mean they can use hyperbole, “puffery”, and other such tactics or conceal certain information that isn’t legally required, then yes, that’s true.
I should note that it is actually unlawful for companies to lie to their shareholders. I’m not saying that it’s never happened, but shareholders can and have sued companies for lying or failing to disclose certain information, and both federal and state governments have also sued companies who do this.
First off, based on the details you shared, I can’t find any fault in the Virginia Pharmacy decision. The company wanted to honestly advertise its prices. What’s the problem with that?
Second, why should commercial speech deserve no 1A protection at all? Even commercial speech can be expressive, and unless we’re dealing with privacy concerns or calls for lawless action, I don’t believe that truthful information should ever be unprotected, regardless of whether or not the speech is commercial.
Third, you just cited proof that corporations do have 1A protections! You found a specific court case that says exactly that. In fact, none of what you just said supports the proposition that Tanner was asking you to provide citations for:
At best, you claim that commercial speech was unprotected until 1975, but commercial speech is not always speech from corporations, and not everything said by a corporation is commercial speech. For example: a corporation publishes a newspaper written entirely by in-house staff; the contents of the newspaper are considered to be speech published and written by the corporation but not commercial speech (outside of any ads inside).
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: More moderate than I was exp
The Constitution doesn’t protect from private individuals. To the extent that there’s a constitutional right to privacy, it only restricts the government.
So FISA would violate your rights, but not Facebook.
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