221–230 of 1001 posts
Hacker News avoids political discussion, would this mean a site like hacker news(assuming it’s big enough) couldn’t moderate heated political discussion as off topic? Im curious how this would apply to Reddit, will there just be constant brigading of the political forums? Ironically as others have pointed out this will probably have a severe chilling effect on speech.
Important to note that this 5th Circuit ruling conflicts with the 11th Circuit's ruling. And SCOTUS had previously reinstated an injunction against this very same law. And this 5th Circuit opinion has very idiosyncratic reasoning [0, just the first few pages will blow your hair back]. A sample: "In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of cours…
It’s a pretty abrupt turnaround from the same legal movement that brought us Citizens United . I’d be interested in a fair (i.e. not overly critical or fawning) book length history of the Federalist Society and how it’s evolved.
There's discussion over what exactly a "political view" is here. I find this quote from a previous article [1] enlightening: > "No one—not lawyers, not judges, not experts in the field, not even the law's own sponsors—knows what compliance with this law looks like." [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/texas-law-bannin...
Well the difficult thing is that apparently every day mundane activities can be "political" depending on who is doing them and in what context. Even a character in a show or video game suddenly becomes a political statement (to some people) just by being female, or brown, or gay, etc.
As a free-speech absolutist, I got no problem with this. Unless the speech is threatening the direct physical harm of someone, or violating a law, it should be allowed. At the same time, everyone else should have the tools to filter, block, and mute speech they do not like. If a tweet or a social media post has a certain word or phrase in it that I don’t like, I should be able to mute that and never see it. Social me…
As a free-speech absolutist, the basic problem you should have with this is that as precedent, it would lead right into the legislature being able to force the press to publish certain things because not doing so would be 'censorship'.
There's discussion over what exactly a "political view" is here. I find this quote from a previous article [1] enlightening: > "No one—not lawyers, not judges, not experts in the field, not even the law's own sponsors—knows what compliance with this law looks like." [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/texas-law-bannin...
Well the difficult thing is that apparently every day mundane activities can be "political" depending on who is doing them and in what context. Even a character in a show or video game suddenly becomes a political statement (to some people) just by being female, or brown, or gay, etc.
Maybe I was in college and didn’t pay attention to this stuff or maybe the world has really gone mad.
Start treating people as people and not some political entity embodied in an activist form. Most of my friends are on the sidelines, thankfully. I treasure my relationships more, there isn’t too much time to live.
I’m exhausted.
Copied from a comment thread below. Because I feel this is the root of the issue/problem. > I don't see how the heck my website is a public square but my home or café isn't, this argument sounds self-contradictory. Yup. This is the exact problem that we’re (as a society/world) wrestling with. The reason it is (not just seems) different is because of the scope. A message on a chalkboard cannot reach millions of people…
If people want there to be a public square online, lobby the government to build and maintain it. Call it "US GOV Civic Not-Facebook public square". Let your taxes pay for it and enjoy all the awesome freedom it'll bring. Otherwise, stop trying to dictate how a private company runs their own business. You already pay for literal, physical town squares, why not a digital one?
The law at issue still allows forums with 49,999,999 or fewer users to discriminate based on political viewpoint. It only says sites larger than that need to allow all political viewpoints (but only if they allow any political viewpoints, and only if they have users in Texas).
Legal: Message board with 49 million users that says "no Republicans allowed."
Legal: Message board with 51 million users that says "no politics allowed."
Legal: Message board with 51 million users (none in Texas) that says "no Libertarians allowed."
Not legal: Message board with 51 million users (some in Texas) that says "no Democrats allowed."
Important to note that this 5th Circuit ruling conflicts with the 11th Circuit's ruling. And SCOTUS had previously reinstated an injunction against this very same law. And this 5th Circuit opinion has very idiosyncratic reasoning [0, just the first few pages will blow your hair back]. A sample: "In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of cours…
I understand why people hate that opinion, because they want civil discourse and nearly free access to media online. Uncensored content pushes normal people out.
Those things are great, but are ultimately out of alignment with a commercial revenue model. The result is social media imposing an algorithmic bias to increase engagement, the results of which are often toxic, and that toxicity ultimately pushes normal people out anyways. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Will this apply to bots? What if I have a big list of a complaints about a certain politician (use your imagination, there's more than one politician to complain about), but the "other party" doesn't follow me, in fact, I have very few followers overall. So I create a bot that spreads my opinions by replying to millions of other Tweets. Anyone who mentions the politician of interest will receive a reply from "me" (my…
Let each user block what they don’t want to see. With filters, ai, etc. Don’t have a centralized “overlord” decide what an individual is allowed to see. That should be obvious and not controversial.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It already passed, it's a law on the books in Texas. And now it's been upheld at by both trial and circuit courts. FWIW: there's one last chance at SCOTUS to undo this, but if that doesn't work out what we're almost certain to see instead of "pre-filtering" is just "No Tweeting from Texas".
Simple. Shut off Texas. You don’t have a right to use social media. I wouldn’t even appeal the decision. Let Texas lie in the bed they made.
I say we do the experiment and find out!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Citizens United determined that corporations have some of the same natural rights that people do. In particular, First Amendment right, which in turn means that corporations can do the same politicking (and political funding) that natural persons do. A more charitable way to put this: you don't lose your First Amendment rights just because you joined with other people for commercial or other purposes.
Further: Citizens United didn't just pop into our reality, fully formed, from a vacuum. Decades of prior jurisprudence and SCOTUS rulings related to campaign speech led to it. Too many people think CU was some sort of this-changes-everything moment when it was actually a fairly narrow, technical decision based on prior rulings.
I agree that CU was a culmination of decades of jurisprudence. But that doesn't meaningfully change the fact that it has had a substantial effect on corporate money in politics.