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

arstechnica.com

421–430 of 598 posts

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

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is finding the right balance between free speech and censorship. I look forward to see how cases that go to the Supreme Court are going to be handled. I personally believe that a private business like Facebook has the right to control content on their app/website.

No amount of censorship is acceptable, IMO.

Unfortunately, without censorship, the spammers take over. Maybe this is what will finally kill Facebook and Twitter.

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

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> However, the state is second, only behind Texas, in actual book bans The bans in the article you cited are done at the school district level, not the state level. Holding the executive branch of government of Florida responsible for those decisions would be similar to blaming the Biden administration for the actions of Florida's executive branch. It also appears that the link you cited confuses curriculum selectio…

Districts are banning books they believe they need to to comply with state law.

Which books are banned under state law?

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

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Florida law says a social media platform "may not willfully deplatform a candidate for office" and imposes fines of up to $250,000 per day on social media companies that ban candidates for elected office. The law also says social platforms "may not apply or use post-prioritization or shadow banning algorithms for content and material posted by or about... a candidate," and may not "censor, deplatform, or shadow b…

If someone very visible is using social media as the delivery mechanism for a stochastic terrorism attack, or to organize and trigger an insurrection should they be allowed access to the tools that enable these things?

Good point - Terrorists are politicians too who believe they have the right to achieve their political goals using violence and anarchy. But most countries already have anti-terrorism and hate speech laws to deal with such kind of politicians who espouse a violent political ideology. As awareness has grown on how hate speech and violence is spreading through the use of internet, law makers are already debating and considering new laws to deal with this menace and trying to find the right balance between restricting such ideas vs balancing your right to express yourself.

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

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that if someone writes a book saying people should physically harm you (yes, specifically you by name and picture) then you will not ask for that person to be put on jail -arguably the worst kind of ban possible- or say anything to stop that book from continuing being published, otherwise you would be an hypocrite for not really following your logic in which words should have no consequences for their authors.

> I hope that if someone writes a book saying people should physically harm you One could argue that calls for gender-affirming surgeries or treatments are equally, if not, worse. These topics are especially prevalent in the LGBTQ community, as I have found from my experience. Nevertheless, we seem to encourage this kind of behavior whereas we. It is important to be aware of which ideas you are rejecting, especially…

Banning books that talk against the Holocaust and promoting books that talk about gender-related surgeries are nowhere close in the damage they can potentially create even if you take the most pessimistic stance possible about the later, a sense of proportion is needed in any discussion.

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

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

"My family and I went to see bears at Yosemite. It was so exciting! Can you point to Yosemite on a map?"

Just because a thing can be expressed in different words does not mean everyone always has the awareness to choose words that are politically desirable at every single point of their lives - especially when you are trying to teach children to use precise language (family implies a group of more than two people), and when identical similar language is perfectly ok if you have the right set of genitalia.

I am not arguing for teaching toddlers about homosexual BDSM culture here. I just think that particular law is overreaching its goals, possibly to stroke the egos of religious zealots.

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

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope that if someone writes a book saying people should physically harm you One could argue that calls for gender-affirming surgeries or treatments are equally, if not, worse. These topics are especially prevalent in the LGBTQ community, as I have found from my experience. Nevertheless, we seem to encourage this kind of behavior whereas we. It is important to be aware of which ideas you are rejecting, especially…

Banning books that talk against the Holocaust and promoting books that talk about gender-related surgeries are nowhere close in the damage they can potentially create even if you take the most pessimistic stance possible about the later, a sense of proportion is needed in any discussion.

I hope you can see the hypocrisy and bias in your desire to ban ideas you dislike – it's dangerous. A better outcome would be to fight bad ideas with good ideas.

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

#427
post #263
post #113

When a state is against net neutrality, pro super PACs, pro hobby lobby/religious tests in employment, pro book banning in libraries, but wants to regulate social networks because "political freedom", their motivations are a bit suspect.

And here I am wondering what the fuck happened to freedom. Both the right and left have become supremely prescriptive in their own ways. I want stronger local government. I have no way of trusting any of these assholes at the federal and state level. Why do they get to set standards for schools, infrastructure funding, or social policy? We have grid lock in part because there are different opinions on what's best. So…

> I want stronger local government.

Please, no. I get the rationale. It's the local knowledge problem, combined with state/federal being more likely to be populists.

But local government irrecoverably sucks for systemic reasons that I've just started to notice.

With local governance there is no way to resolve dilemma like incentives that cause negative sum decision making, i.e. locally good but globally bad policies. For example, restrictive planning laws. Good locally, terrible globally. So terrible that it is the kind of thing that is a threat to the stability of society.

Another reason is that the competence of local governance is significantly lower than state/federal governance, who have budgets to hire actual intelligent experts. I don't know if you're interacted with local government officials. If you have, you will notice what I'm talking about.

A third reason is that corruption is worse in local governments. It flies under the radar because they're not under the microscope of journalists. There's no good mechanism to decorrupt them.

Good federal governance is the way forward.

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

#428
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's trivially true though? If you had a functioning justice system, the lynchers would be arrested and it wouldn't happen again. It's also true in more significant ways, in that lynchings happened because people felt that crimes (or "crimes") were not being appropriately dealt with.

The point is that OP is ignoring the blindingly obvious element of racism involved in lynching of Black Americans in the Jim Crow South (and indeed elsewhere). The post is bordering on apologism for these crimes by painting them as merely a rational reaction to underpolicing. If there is a place for wildly revisionist takes on this part of America's history, I'd suggest that HN is probably not it.

> the blindingly obvious element of racism involved in lynching

Except the context is the high number of white lynching's that also occurred.

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

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

"My family and I went to see bears at Yosemite. It was so exciting! Can you point to Yosemite on a map?"

[deleted]

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

#430
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that OP is ignoring the blindingly obvious element of racism involved in lynching of Black Americans in the Jim Crow South (and indeed elsewhere). The post is bordering on apologism for these crimes by painting them as merely a rational reaction to underpolicing. If there is a place for wildly revisionist takes on this part of America's history, I'd suggest that HN is probably not it.

> the blindingly obvious element of racism involved in lynching Except the context is the high number of white lynching's that also occurred.

If someone wants to argue against the scholarly consensus regarding the role of racism in lynchings in America, I'm happy for them to do so if they do it properly. That is, if they take on the best existing scholarship on the subject and give references to support their arguments. The OP's comment simply asserts that the existing consensus is wrong. I see no reason to take such an assertion seriously, or even to debate it. In the absence of any real effort to engage with the historical facts and scholarship it's mere apologism.
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