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DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

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341–350 of 392 posts

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enlight us. For example, calling for the murders of specific people based on their political views or races don’t fall under the first. And social medias allow the spread of some of these messages with no consequences at the moment.

The First Amendment does protect that though. As long as the speech isn't intended to incite imminent lawless action , calling for murders is absolutely protected. E.g. "We should go harm X" is arguably illegal, since it's an immediate call to action. However, "It'd be great if X died" or "All Y should die" are certainly protected. In the same vein, this is why "Punch a Nazi" is totally legal: assault is illegal, but…

The essential thing missing from all of these discussions (unless I am misunderstanding people) is the immediacy of the incitement. The context in which the speech matters. That is where the imminent and likely parts properly arise from.

If you write a book advocating for violence against x or y group or individuals that is permissible, but if you were in a crowded square and advocated the same thing when those targets were also in the square and it is likely that your incitement will lead to violence then it is not. That's incitement, it's imminent, and it is for a lawless act. But again, if you did it at home on your blog in some nebulous sense that isn't likely to cause some specific event then it is protected speech.

An important distinction here is that "true threats" are a separate category from what we are talking about. A true threat doesn't have a "likely" or "imminent" component and so is even broader in scope than violent speech in general. That is, true threats are not protected.

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1025/true-threa...

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#342
post #9

I think that’s fine to ask social medias to choose between being a publisher or a platform. It’s perfectly fine to push your point of view online as it’s protected by the first. But you should bare consequences for the cases not protected by the first.

I think that most of them should remain platforms, but that recommendation algorithms should be treated as publishers. So a reverse chronological feed would be protected by 230, while publishers would be liable for the contents in an algorithmic feed. People can subscribe to whatever sketchy content they want, but it won't be pushed to people that didn't ask for it.

That’s a fantastic distinction. I would love to see that happen.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#343
post #120

Almost guaranteed to be used to selectively prosecute.

Laws are always enforced by humans, so this is always true. What is different about these proposals is that they are explicitly prompted by partisan (and personal i.e. Trump) motives which, although it's true of other laws too, is supposed to be the quiet part not said out loud. The whole premise of investigating for "bias" is clearly designed to be abused - similar to HUAC asking you to prove that you aren't a commu…

On the other hand, they're a reaction to that exact thing in e.g. Twitter's enforcement of their rules. They'll decide what's kind and what's not.

If you're on Twitter's good side and retweet somebody with "get em!", you're good. If you do the same while not aligned with Twitter politically, you're asking your followers to harass individuals and will be punished.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#344
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so I was under the impression that if you are say, a telephone network, that people can't sue you for stuff people do during phone calls, under the premise that the phone company doesn't moderate phone calls; and my understanding of the "bargain struck" is then that online web forums felt that centralized moderation was absolutely critical to spam prevention and search/discovery services (I disagree on the practi…

> [iCloud Backup] should be end-to-end encrypted, but explicitly isn't Just keep in mind that, when you say it should be , what you're saying is that Apple should make iCloud Backup work in such a way that, if the user loses the keys, Apple is completely unable to help them recover their data. And, I don't agree. I can support it as an opt-in feature, but wouldn't use it; I expect sensitive applications, such as Sign…

Fun story bro, but in the real world Apple agreed with my position and only didn't go through with it because of the FBI.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

The reality is that there are tons of obvious alternative solutions to user secure key escrow other than "lose access to your data".

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#345
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so I was under the impression that if you are say, a telephone network, that people can't sue you for stuff people do during phone calls, under the premise that the phone company doesn't moderate phone calls; and my understanding of the "bargain struck" is then that online web forums felt that centralized moderation was absolutely critical to spam prevention and search/discovery services (I disagree on the practi…

> and so wanted the ability to "have their cake and eat it too": to be able to decide almost on a whim to take down content Not really. Sure the telcos can't sensor individual phone calls, but if they don't like what you are doing they will disconnect you. For example my telco explicitly prohibits me from sending spam over SMS. If I break that, they disconnect me. It costs me money to reconnect which is a huge disinc…

I thought the only reason the telephone company bans you for SMS spam is because of an FCC rule that says they have to do that; very different than them wanting to or taking agency in the idea.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't semantics. We give protected classes extra protections because they are attributes of who a person is . To give the same protections to actions that people do would be wildly different. A salesperson should be able to be fired for shit-talking their own product. A customer service representative should be able to be fired for treating a customer inappropriately. The editor of a magazine should be allowed to…

Alright, so let's take you literally and seriously: A boss can't fire a homosexual for being homosexual, because that's something he is . But can definitely fire him for anything he does , right? Like having a pride flag on his backpack? Or committing the speech act of saying "I'm gay"?

Courts aren’t machines that evaluate a series of IF statement in vacuums; they look at the entirety of the situation. They’re going to be looking for the root cause of the reason that management has landed on their decision.

Someone mentioning they’re gay after being asked if they have a wife would be a very different situation from someone who, for instance, is engaging people in inappropriate and unwanted discussions of sexuality.

The law is quite simple: was the person fired because of their membership in a protected class?

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think when the person above you said recommendations should be "valueless", they meant it should be a neutral, objective recommendation. Like you've tasked us with enforcing laws A, B, and C, and if you gave us powers D, E, and F it would make that easier in these ways. Not like Barr's words: "For too long Section 230 has provided a shield for online platforms to operate with impunity. Ensuring that the internet is…

> I think when the person above you said recommendations should be "valueless", they meant it should be a neutral, objective recommendation. No, I mean that the DOJ's opinion on what the law should be is literally without merit, and possibly is worth even less than that. The creation, implementation, and adjudication of the laws are separated into distinct branches of government by design . I do not want the group th…

> I mean that the DOJ's opinion on what the law should be is literally without merit

Same for the CDC, FDA, EPA, IRS, HHS, etc.?

I suppose the President should also be forbidden from proposing legislation and for asking any of his agencies for proposals also?

This is an untenable position, IMHO.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The court that turned "Shall not be infringed" into "No really, it's okay to infringe on this particular combination of parts because it wasn't an arm at the time" should not in any way be underestimated for capacity to torture language.

> The court that turned "Shall not be infringed" into "No really, it's okay to infringe on this particular combination of parts because it wasn't an arm at the time" Is there a case you’re referring to? Because in reality, it’s not uncommon for two “shall not be infringed” sections of the law or Constitution to come into conflict.

Pretty much the entirety of the National Firearms Act as projected through Miller.

I fully understand the social context of the time, (shortly having come to pass after the events of the Valentine's day massacre) but find the entire logic behind it flawed, and open to challenge on the grounds it's essentially a poll tax (unreasonable barrier to entry on the exercise of a constitutionally guaranteed right) predicated on the Federal power of taxation of interstate commerce, which is it's own bag of shakyness.

I was reluctant to even post it because it almost always devolves into a whining match that no one is infringing anything, until you add the "closing" of the Machine gun registry in '86 into the picture where the registration requirement creates a de facto ban on civilian ownership/production of automatic firearms for lawful purposes because Congress has mandated no money be spent updating or maintaining the registry; leaving it open yet non-functional, constraining supply of legally transferable automatic weapons to those produced and registered prior to 1986. That notwithstanding there's a lot that has been hung on the coat rack of that entire vein of politicking that just smells to high heaven to me.

But we aren't talking about that, we're talking about Miller, being the one case in which the Supreme Court leaned so heavily on a qualification that an arm must be kept and used consistent to the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment, thus cementing the next 50 odd years of slow methodical encroachment on firearm owner's rights to keep and bear arms until Heller reversed the stance, and explicitly acknowledged the non-modificatory nature of the prefatory clause on the operative clause of the United State's 2nd Amendment.

Note I'm not opposed to some level of tracking/registration of certain firearms in general; just not combined with the wild gesticulations that have been employed to create de facto bans and excessively high barriers to entry to possessing, fabricating, or doing business in firearms. To me, the 'keep' part of the 2nd Amendment covers the right to fabricate replacement parts as needed, even receivers, but in the eyes of the Law, the act of fabricating or production is separate from the Act of keeping (possessing). Hence to meet with my standards of keeping, you not only have to pay a $200 tax, you have to pay an appropriate recurring SOT ($2000ish last I checked), which also requires you to essentially do business as an FFL of some flavor, and to structure your life around what should be as frictionless and routine an interaction as humanly possible because otherwise the Federal government will unilaterally decide you don't really need that right to "keep" (to my standard remember) those arms because you're not engaging in enough interstate (or intra-state commerce due to some effing grain taxing case that SCOTUS ruled on that established the interstate commerce clause granted Federal regulatory authority on intrastate commerce if that stuff had a reasonable chance of effecting the interstate market environment) for it to be a slam dunk case that Federal Law Enforcement can dunk on you for effecting or attempting tax evasion in violation under jurisdiction granted by the interstate commerce clause, which is really being employed as a workaround to clamp down the number of automatics or undesirable firearms, and disenfranchise any poor sod who doesn't sweat the details enough of their right to vote via a felony firearm charge.

I've spent entirely too much time thinking on this sort of thing. Especially since I only own a Mossberg, but it's the principle of the thing. I downright object to any implementation of something that requires an average person to navigate that many layers of indirection for something that should just be straightforward.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as CloudFlare is fine with just taking money and serving content, no matter whose it is, they have the legal immunity as intended. As soon as they decide (on a whim) to deny service based on content, as they did a while back, that legal immunity vanishes. It would be catastrophic to their business to make that decision (especially considering everything else CloudFlare hosts), and that's the point. Except t…

Does CF actively look for malware, CP etc to throw them out, or are they responding to law enforcement in that regard? My understanding is that the hurdle to get something booted from CF is extremely high, which is why it's very well liked in both copy right infringement (torrents) and for general scammers trying to hide their server locations.

They do periodically check Google safe browsing (or simply have a webhook for safe browsing) and disable websites that are flagged there. You can also submit the abuse report forum and CF regularly disabled websites for malware that haven't been detected by safesearch.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think when the person above you said recommendations should be "valueless", they meant it should be a neutral, objective recommendation. No, I mean that the DOJ's opinion on what the law should be is literally without merit, and possibly is worth even less than that. The creation, implementation, and adjudication of the laws are separated into distinct branches of government by design . I do not want the group th…

> I mean that the DOJ's opinion on what the law should be is literally without merit Same for the CDC, FDA, EPA, IRS, HHS, etc.? I suppose the President should also be forbidden from proposing legislation and for asking any of his agencies for proposals also? This is an untenable position, IMHO.

I never said “forbidden”, that’s obviously untenable. Even people I don’t like have the right to say thinks I don’t want them to say; I’m speaking of norms and social pressure.

I’m saying that we should tell those who will wield the power to pound sand when it comes to what powers they should get. Ideally the president should not be proposing legislation, that is not their role in this democratic republic. One could argue that the centralization of legislative agenda making into the executive is one part of why presidential elections are such a high pressure situation these days; ideally that should be handled by the deliberative body and not the executive.

That being said, there is a huge, massive, unbridgeable chasm between the DOJ, who is not only capable but expected to send men with guns to either detain you or legally shoot you if you resist and every other organization you listed. The risks of abuse of power within that specific organization are massive, which is why traditionally there’s supposed to be a bit of a gap between the president and the DOJ to reduce the risk of politicization of the latter.

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