I've never understood why people argue against [or I imagine what they describe as "expressing concern",] over regulations based on the cost/complexity of compliance with small companies. It would seem to me that there would be a fairly simply & pretty effective method to deal with this, if this is the concern. Couldn't the regulatory agency implementing the rule simply have enough staff/funding to provide the on-the-ground assistance small companies need in complying with the rules? Less ideally couldn't there be a tax credit/deduction for the cost small companies incur when a regulatory or legislative change/addition occurs which means some sort of significance threshold test? Also less ideally, couldn't the government implementing the rule actually contract directly with the compliance professionals themselves making them available to small companies to use instead of the companies having to hire them?
To be clear, I don't agree with any of those things or the argument itself broadly speaking. But, if your concern over regulations is merely down to the financial burden of implementing the change for small companies then why not just do one of those things, or some other option I haven't thought of that eliminates this specific concern? It would also likely reduce the overall costs by negotiating smaller fees [i.e. lowering profit margins,] & reducing waste [in a similar kind of way a single-payer health care system lowers overall costs.] This way you eliminate the concern mentioned, while also being able to implement the regulation that people who bring this up appear to agree is in some way good since they don't argue the regulation itself is unnecessary, useless, harmful, etc...
Surely, unless one disagrees with the regulation itself [while not making that argument for some reason,] there are numerous ways to specifically eliminate this ancillary impact on small businesses instead of changing the actual regulation. A change that inevitably weakens the regulation, which again since not arguing against one would assume people with this concern would think is to some degree harmful/bad.
You wouldn't even really need to raise taxes or new sources of revenues to pay for it, since I know some people have incredibly ingrained opposition to the idea of raising taxes. You could theoretically more rigorously enforce existing laws/regulations while also making the fines from violations more accurately reflect the violation [or the company's criminal record.] Then pool those penalty amounts that are going to go to the State instead of as restitution into a fund that is used to cover these costs. This will likely create the "deterrent effect" leading to a reduction in corporate crimes & a corresponding shortfall in the fund for this stuff, but we can cross that road when we get there.
We have an EPA, why should CARB have special rules, and why should California be allowed to violate the clean air act and clean water act otherwise and be more polluted than other states?
What? First of all the CARB exemptions are related specifically & solely to vehicle emission standards under the CAA. It does not have anything to do with the CWA, nor any other part of the CAA. Secondly, it does not allow California to have more lax emission limits, but to create stricter emission limits. So, in fact the federal governments attempt to revoke the waiver is an attempt to force them to lower their standards to the federal level. Also, despite the fact that Trump & the EPA have officially revoked California's authority to set these stricter standards it will be extremely unlikely that they will actually stop applying due to the length of time legal battles between states & the federal government typically take. By the time it would work its way up through the Supreme Court Trump will either be out of office and/or California will have figured out a way to backdoor the limits in... or at least enough so to force another round of legal battles.
On the tech/privacy stuff:
1) "Persistent Pseudonyms" is essentially what we have now. You create an account, you pick the username, you pick the email address you give, & so long as the site is not something explicitly focused on selling you sh-t you never enter an address or anything & if that is what the site does then yeah they kind of have to get that stuff. So, I don't really know what you think would be different with this.
2) Making my best guess at what you mean by "compartmentalized data" if this was to be done you might as well just prohibit the collection of personal data at all. Otherwise you would not only functionally be doing that for all but literally a handful of companies, but you would also manage to not really fix the problem here. Yeah the data would not really be floating around as freely & often as it is now, but the amount of data those handful of companies collect from direct interactions with people is so massive in scale that prohibiting their ability to aggregate data from other sources really doesn't do much of anything about the problem. For the tens of thousands of other companies out there the only value they get from the data they collect is in their ability to sell that to other companies who use that data and/or aggregate it for those who can use it [essentially just companies that directly sell advertising capability to other companies.] While I'm sure there are more than a handful of companies that do this, the vast majority of them sell non-digital services so they would not get any data anymore from this stuff. The ones that do sell digital services though are very tiny in number & are also the same ones with a large enough user base with interactions numerous & broad enough to actually get enough data on people to be useful [i.e. Google, Facebook, & Amazon.] Also don't forget credit score/history companies which I'm going to ignore here, but just know they are very relevant & were around long before the internet.
3) I can't even guess what you mean when you talk about "upstream data vacuuming providers," so I don't really have any comment on it. Sorry.
For the record I should state that prohibiting this type of information from being collected entirely is not something I strongly oppose or support really. The impossibility of it ever happening means I have never really looked that deeply into what all the ramifications would be. I lean towards prohibiting it, but I also understand that it is a really complex issue & the shear scope of what would be effected means anyone really needs to look at it closer before deciding.
The essence of QI is that you cannot be sued for "doing your job"...
The problem though is that this has not been how QI has functioned for a number of years now. It began to substantially change in nature beginning with the 1982 Harlow v. Fitzgerald decision which fundamentally altered past precedent in what sort of judicial tests claims are put through. Today, cops have immunity no matter what the facts are or what they did unless a plaintiff can find precedent that meets the "clearly established law" requirement & with the required level of specificity.
In Mullenix v. Luna, the Fifth Circuit found that shooting a fleeing motorist in a high-speed pursuit violated a clearly established right, but the Supreme Court reversed & rebuked the Fifth Circuit for describing the right too broadly. Although the Fifth Circuit described the officer's actions as "deadly force against a fleeing felon who does not pose a sufficient threat of harm to the officer or others," the correct inquiry was whether the officer's conduct was prohibited "in the 'situation [she] confronted. '" With proper specificity, the analysis should have included pivotal facts: "a reportedly intoxicated fugitive, set on avoiding capture through high-speed vehicular flight, who twice during his flight had threatened to shoot police officers, & who was moments away from encountering an officer at Cemetery Road. " With those new facts, the case law became too muddied to establish a clear rule for the officer to have followed. And if the case law is too murky, a plaintiff like Mullenix cannot use it to analogize to his own case & show the law was clearly established.
The Supreme Court itself had already included a number of Qualified Immunity cases in the cases that they are currently considering on taking, even prior to all the recent events they had put forward a list of 13 such cases on their list of cases they were considering... although they ultimately rejected 3 of those & are undecided on the others.
Also, yeah the slogans for changes to this legal doctrine have been about "ending qualified immunity," but like pretty much every slogan ever [especially slogans for things that are complicated & technical in nature,] they are extremely simplified ways to message a more detailed, boring idea that 99% of people simply tune out. None of the ideas that have been legitimately considered or pushed [by people who can actually implement them & not some random person,] are things that eliminate qualified immunity. They merely change the details of its technical implementation in the courts. Most of them, if not all them, either reverse or prohibit the use of the problem-causing changes in the doctrine that began happening in the 1980s.
I'm about to respond to Anon, but I did just want to add that the issue isn't quite as simply as you seem to imagine. Now, I am absolutely for eliminating QI & rebuilding something different & significantly more restrained... but what Anon means is that most of what the police do physically in their job would be called crimes if you or I did it. If you were to "arrest" someone you would be charged with false imprisonment & kidnapping. If you were to drive like police typically do when responding to an actual emergency or serious call then you would be guilty of dozens of traffic violations & reckless endangerment. The list goes on & on.
From what I understand about the historical development of the QI doctrine it originally was just supposed to do what most of us would think it should do [i.e. if a cop arrests someone who legitimately violated the law they can't be sued for kidnapping & false imprisonment.]However, it was in the early 1980s that Supreme Court decisions began to alter its interpretation in a pretty significant way which is led to this almost blanket immunity no matter what they do.
But, if there was not some formal thing that tried to lay out exactly what immunity they get what do you think is more likely to happen; A) police get the type of limited immunity they should have for their legitimate job functions & lose that immunity when they engage in some sort of misconduct or inappropriate behavior or B) police get full blanket immunity for anything & everything they do?
I don't have an issue with websites moderating content like this. My question was to the person posting the comment I responded to who made an explicit exception to this being done for threats of violence & racial slurs, while also explicitly saying it should not be done for other non-racial forms of pejoratives/slurs. I was just wondering how that person justified these contradictory positions.
If it's not a threat of violence or a racial slur, leave it alone. For example, if Steven Crowder makes Carlos Maza uncomfortable but doesn't threaten him, Maza will just have to deal with it.
Just out of curiosity why the exception for the racial slur? I mean the threat of violence you can argue because that is an illegal act in itself, but you can't say that about racial slurs. How do you simultaneously justify moderating something that makes some people "uncomfortable" when it is in the form of racial slurs, but then claim it is discriminatory when it is done for other forms?
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Compliance Costs
I've never understood why people argue against [or I imagine what they describe as "expressing concern",] over regulations based on the cost/complexity of compliance with small companies. It would seem to me that there would be a fairly simply & pretty effective method to deal with this, if this is the concern. Couldn't the regulatory agency implementing the rule simply have enough staff/funding to provide the on-the-ground assistance small companies need in complying with the rules? Less ideally couldn't there be a tax credit/deduction for the cost small companies incur when a regulatory or legislative change/addition occurs which means some sort of significance threshold test? Also less ideally, couldn't the government implementing the rule actually contract directly with the compliance professionals themselves making them available to small companies to use instead of the companies having to hire them?
To be clear, I don't agree with any of those things or the argument itself broadly speaking. But, if your concern over regulations is merely down to the financial burden of implementing the change for small companies then why not just do one of those things, or some other option I haven't thought of that eliminates this specific concern? It would also likely reduce the overall costs by negotiating smaller fees [i.e. lowering profit margins,] & reducing waste [in a similar kind of way a single-payer health care system lowers overall costs.] This way you eliminate the concern mentioned, while also being able to implement the regulation that people who bring this up appear to agree is in some way good since they don't argue the regulation itself is unnecessary, useless, harmful, etc...
Surely, unless one disagrees with the regulation itself [while not making that argument for some reason,] there are numerous ways to specifically eliminate this ancillary impact on small businesses instead of changing the actual regulation. A change that inevitably weakens the regulation, which again since not arguing against one would assume people with this concern would think is to some degree harmful/bad.
You wouldn't even really need to raise taxes or new sources of revenues to pay for it, since I know some people have incredibly ingrained opposition to the idea of raising taxes. You could theoretically more rigorously enforce existing laws/regulations while also making the fines from violations more accurately reflect the violation [or the company's criminal record.] Then pool those penalty amounts that are going to go to the State instead of as restitution into a fund that is used to cover these costs. This will likely create the "deterrent effect" leading to a reduction in corporate crimes & a corresponding shortfall in the fund for this stuff, but we can cross that road when we get there.
Re: And Ill
What? First of all the CARB exemptions are related specifically & solely to vehicle emission standards under the CAA. It does not have anything to do with the CWA, nor any other part of the CAA. Secondly, it does not allow California to have more lax emission limits, but to create stricter emission limits. So, in fact the federal governments attempt to revoke the waiver is an attempt to force them to lower their standards to the federal level. Also, despite the fact that Trump & the EPA have officially revoked California's authority to set these stricter standards it will be extremely unlikely that they will actually stop applying due to the length of time legal battles between states & the federal government typically take. By the time it would work its way up through the Supreme Court Trump will either be out of office and/or California will have figured out a way to backdoor the limits in... or at least enough so to force another round of legal battles.
On the tech/privacy stuff:
1) "Persistent Pseudonyms" is essentially what we have now. You create an account, you pick the username, you pick the email address you give, & so long as the site is not something explicitly focused on selling you sh-t you never enter an address or anything & if that is what the site does then yeah they kind of have to get that stuff. So, I don't really know what you think would be different with this.
2) Making my best guess at what you mean by "compartmentalized data" if this was to be done you might as well just prohibit the collection of personal data at all. Otherwise you would not only functionally be doing that for all but literally a handful of companies, but you would also manage to not really fix the problem here. Yeah the data would not really be floating around as freely & often as it is now, but the amount of data those handful of companies collect from direct interactions with people is so massive in scale that prohibiting their ability to aggregate data from other sources really doesn't do much of anything about the problem. For the tens of thousands of other companies out there the only value they get from the data they collect is in their ability to sell that to other companies who use that data and/or aggregate it for those who can use it [essentially just companies that directly sell advertising capability to other companies.] While I'm sure there are more than a handful of companies that do this, the vast majority of them sell non-digital services so they would not get any data anymore from this stuff. The ones that do sell digital services though are very tiny in number & are also the same ones with a large enough user base with interactions numerous & broad enough to actually get enough data on people to be useful [i.e. Google, Facebook, & Amazon.] Also don't forget credit score/history companies which I'm going to ignore here, but just know they are very relevant & were around long before the internet.
3) I can't even guess what you mean when you talk about "upstream data vacuuming providers," so I don't really have any comment on it. Sorry.
For the record I should state that prohibiting this type of information from being collected entirely is not something I strongly oppose or support really. The impossibility of it ever happening means I have never really looked that deeply into what all the ramifications would be. I lean towards prohibiting it, but I also understand that it is a really complex issue & the shear scope of what would be effected means anyone really needs to look at it closer before deciding.
Re: Re: 'If the uniform is off, you're not a cop.'
The problem though is that this has not been how QI has functioned for a number of years now. It began to substantially change in nature beginning with the 1982 Harlow v. Fitzgerald decision which fundamentally altered past precedent in what sort of judicial tests claims are put through. Today, cops have immunity no matter what the facts are or what they did unless a plaintiff can find precedent that meets the "clearly established law" requirement & with the required level of specificity.
Let me quote here from a March 1, 2020 article in the North Carolina Law Review A One-Two Punch: How Qualified Immunity's Double Dose of Reasonableness Dooms Excessive Force Claims in the Fourth Circuit:
The Supreme Court itself had already included a number of Qualified Immunity cases in the cases that they are currently considering on taking, even prior to all the recent events they had put forward a list of 13 such cases on their list of cases they were considering... although they ultimately rejected 3 of those & are undecided on the others.
Also, yeah the slogans for changes to this legal doctrine have been about "ending qualified immunity," but like pretty much every slogan ever [especially slogans for things that are complicated & technical in nature,] they are extremely simplified ways to message a more detailed, boring idea that 99% of people simply tune out. None of the ideas that have been legitimately considered or pushed [by people who can actually implement them & not some random person,] are things that eliminate qualified immunity. They merely change the details of its technical implementation in the courts. Most of them, if not all them, either reverse or prohibit the use of the problem-causing changes in the doctrine that began happening in the 1980s.
Re: Re: Re: 'If the uniform is off, you're not a cop.'
I'm about to respond to Anon, but I did just want to add that the issue isn't quite as simply as you seem to imagine. Now, I am absolutely for eliminating QI & rebuilding something different & significantly more restrained... but what Anon means is that most of what the police do physically in their job would be called crimes if you or I did it. If you were to "arrest" someone you would be charged with false imprisonment & kidnapping. If you were to drive like police typically do when responding to an actual emergency or serious call then you would be guilty of dozens of traffic violations & reckless endangerment. The list goes on & on.
From what I understand about the historical development of the QI doctrine it originally was just supposed to do what most of us would think it should do [i.e. if a cop arrests someone who legitimately violated the law they can't be sued for kidnapping & false imprisonment.]However, it was in the early 1980s that Supreme Court decisions began to alter its interpretation in a pretty significant way which is led to this almost blanket immunity no matter what they do.
But, if there was not some formal thing that tried to lay out exactly what immunity they get what do you think is more likely to happen; A) police get the type of limited immunity they should have for their legitimate job functions & lose that immunity when they engage in some sort of misconduct or inappropriate behavior or B) police get full blanket immunity for anything & everything they do?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Someone would
I don't have an issue with websites moderating content like this. My question was to the person posting the comment I responded to who made an explicit exception to this being done for threats of violence & racial slurs, while also explicitly saying it should not be done for other non-racial forms of pejoratives/slurs. I was just wondering how that person justified these contradictory positions.
Re: Re: Someone would
Just out of curiosity why the exception for the racial slur? I mean the threat of violence you can argue because that is an illegal act in itself, but you can't say that about racial slurs. How do you simultaneously justify moderating something that makes some people "uncomfortable" when it is in the form of racial slurs, but then claim it is discriminatory when it is done for other forms?
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