Live data from Hacker News

Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

arstechnica.com

391–400 of 598 posts

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds perfectly reasonable as long as the bill goes on to explicitly define in law exactly what is and is not age/developmentally appropriate. I'm going to guess that it does not and that the true point of the law is to criminalize something poorly defined so that it can be used to selectively attack anyone who covers those subjects no matter how they do it.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Laws like this are intentionally vague so we can put such a person under the prison where they belong without having to worry about them weaseling out of it.

This is freedom, apparently.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#392
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In retrospect, no. But reality was never so clear cut, especially contemporaneously. Lynchings of whites wasn't uncommon. The so-called "last lynching in California" was of two white murder suspects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooke_Hart#Lynching_of_Thurmo... The application of lynchings were, however, disproportionate, and this must have at least been apparent to anyone who cared to consider the question. Accord…

Those numbers don't take into account the percentage of the total US population that was Black and white from 1883-1941. In 1880 and 1940, respectively, 13.1% and 9.8% of people in the United States were identified as Black. The Wikipedia article below only offers the white population number for 1940, but that is reported as being 88.4% of the US population. Despite the wildly disproportionate population sizes, more…

> Despite the wildly disproportionate population sizes, more than three times the number of Black people were lynched compared to white people.

Now do per-capita murder rates today, I think you'll find the same disparity.

The fact is, lynching of whites and blacks (usually for murder) were inline with "likelihood to commit that crime" based on having virtually identical per-capita murder rates today. Lynchings occurred in the past primarily because the law didn't function effectively.

No one wants vigilante justice (then or now), but we shouldn't be too surprised that communities police themselves when the government can't (or won't).

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#393
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pro book banning in libraries I've seen tons of recent support for censorship from ideas and speech the (left? I wouldn't consider it actually left) doesn't like. Then you have conservatives moving against these books that promote woke religion and suddenly these same people are very pro free speech.

There's a huge difference between saying, "LGBT people are people," and "LBGT people should be shunned out of existence." Words have meanings.

I see, so we allow the ideas that you agree with, and ban the ones you don't. FREE SPEECH!

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#394
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A teacher mentioning about their same-sex spouse runs afoul of this law, but one mentioning their opposite-sex one does not. Which is, of course, because there are two sexualities - straight, and political.

Why would a teacher discuss their personal life with K-3 students? Asking about a teacher’s marriage was obviously out of place in my experience, and for good reason. It’s not a topic for the classroom.

> "What did you do during summer break, Mrs Dickson?"

> "Clara, my wife, and I went to see bears at Yosemite. It was so exciting! Can you point to Yosemite on a map?"

Everyday situation at any school I ever went to. Schools are not learning factories, they are social places, especially in K-3.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#395
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you about that, but I also (might) agree with them about this. Not that you said otherwise, but... I think we should go back to a transactional mix-and-match style of politics, with different coalitions per issue, instead of the "agree with your friend tribe and disagree with your enemy tribe about everything" style that we seem to be locked into these days. There shouldn't be any shame in being part of…

Isn't it consistent to say the government deciding not distribute books is wrong for the same reason the government telling private companies they must distribute speech they disagree with is wrong? Both clearly violate free speech. Maybe you don't actually think free speech is the standard, maybe it's something more vague like an open society, but I don't see this as any different than the state mandating churches r…

There are many responses here, but I think one of the most relevant is that of natural monopolies. If you created a competitor that was somehow objectively superior to Facebook in every possible technical way, it would still almost certainly fail. Because Facebook's product isn't their software, but access to the billions of people using it. They are effectively doing little more than acting as a carrier for access to society. And you can't compete against that.

This immediately puts massive scale social media in a very unique place. By contrast, public school libraries are anything but a monopoly. If they don't offer a book you want, there are countless other ways to get it that are no less convenient, to say nothing of the digital age and searching for 'book i want pdf.' This generalizes to other scenarios as well. At one time it was believed that private businesses out be able to restrict employment or service based on things like the race or religion of their customers/applicants. But as this started to become a more substantial issue in terms of scale, society decided otherwise.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the government is regulating speech via dependent proxies, that is in violation of the First Amendment. There is actually developed case law as to what constitutes sufficient government coercion that turns a third party into a state actor, and some of things that have been done actually cut close enough to that threshold to be viably argued at trial. The problem is that no one filing these various cases against so…

> The problem is that no one filing these various cases against social media is properly alleging sufficient facts to suggest government coercion… Alex Berenson did.

Hardly. The judge tossed all of Berenson's claims that relate to government coercion [0]. The only claims that survived are those for breach of contract and promissory estoppel, which didn't have to do with alleged government coercion.

> In sum, plaintiff’s breach of contract and promissory estoppel claims survive for now. Plaintiff’s other claims are futile and are DISMISSED WITHOUT LEAVE TO AMEND.

[0]: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.38...

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#397
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but seriously, they're doing this stuff in such a sloppy way that I'd definitely be looking for opportunity, e.g. the wording of one of their anti-CRT things essentially said "no one can make someone else uncomfortable about race" and I'm like "word? I can work with that."

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

I don't get the point of being divisive on that. That quote is literally just describing corruption, which is present in all governments, though especially those in decline. Ideology has literally 0 relevance there. The past 2 years have had countless examples of such from people all across the political spectrum, and all across the world for that matter.

"Rules for thee, but not for me."

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#398

I think the Chinese have something to teach us. Basically, once a social network surpasses say, 20M users, it becomes a defacto political entity, with the power to move elections. Given this immense power, the government should regulate accordingly. Instead of passing detailed regulations though, I am of the opinion that if a company passes 200B USD in enterprise value, that Congress should get the right to appoint 5…

Not sure about this particular solution, but I really think antitrust is where it's at. Big companies should do big things, not collect many little things under their umbrella. If you're going to do big things (or even big collections of little things) then be regulated because your outcomes affect so many others.

I don't think antitrust does much to Twitter. So that reduces its popularity as a solution among politicians. I feel like politicians ceded their power to Twitter. So I write it off as 'you made your bed, now lie in it'.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds perfectly reasonable as long as the bill goes on to explicitly define in law exactly what is and is not age/developmentally appropriate. I'm going to guess that it does not and that the true point of the law is to criminalize something poorly defined so that it can be used to selectively attack anyone who covers those subjects no matter how they do it.

Quoted post unavailable.

Sexual education is not 'talking dirty' and 3rd graders are usually around 9 years old.

Re: Florida to Supreme Court: Let us regulate social networks as common carriers

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers don't take into account the percentage of the total US population that was Black and white from 1883-1941. In 1880 and 1940, respectively, 13.1% and 9.8% of people in the United States were identified as Black. The Wikipedia article below only offers the white population number for 1940, but that is reported as being 88.4% of the US population. Despite the wildly disproportionate population sizes, more…

> Despite the wildly disproportionate population sizes, more than three times the number of Black people were lynched compared to white people. Now do per-capita murder rates today, I think you'll find the same disparity. The fact is, lynching of whites and blacks (usually for murder) were inline with "likelihood to commit that crime" based on having virtually identical per-capita murder rates today. Lynchings occurr…

> Lynchings occurred in the past primarily because the law didn't function effectively.

Jesus Christ I thought this thread was bad but then we get to this post.

Post reply on HN