Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 598 posts

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

#431

Post by honkdaddy »

klyrs wrote: post #53

Meanwhile, Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions. This is not about a principled approach to free speech. It's about protecting the right to enforce religious-inspired bigotry, tearing down the separation of church and state even as that bigotry becomes "unpopular."

> Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions

I think the fact that you deliberately expressed what's been a complicated, and almost exclusively school-board driven, phenomenon in such a simple way shows you either haven't read much outside the headlines, or are just hoping to pull people to your side while discouraging them to do any actual research.

Either way, your comment comes across as just as transparently politically motivated as the actions you're criticizing. If you don't like DeSantis and want him voted out, please just say that, it's not necessary to beat around the bush.

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

#432

Post by honkdaddy »

tomcam wrote: post #185
klyrs wrote: post #53

Meanwhile, Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions. This is not about a principled approach to free speech. It's about protecting the right to enforce religious-inspired bigotry, tearing down the separation of church and state even as that bigotry becomes "unpopular."

> Florida is purging libraries of unpopular political opinions. For example?

https://www.newsweek.com/kill-mockingbird-other-books-banned...

Sorry, that one's actually a school board in California, but the same idea applies here, right? The state is to blame?

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

#433

Post by RobotToaster »

scarface74 wrote: post #121
munk-a wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time - this one move might make Florida accidentally the most progressive state in America.

The same Florida that passed a law specifically to punish Disney because they spoke out against the “Don’t Say Gay” law and passed the “Stop Woke” act?

While I'm sure Florida's motivation was entirely reactionary, the fact that disney has self proclaimed "leftists" defending a literal company town shows how great their propaganda is.

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

#434

Post by honkdaddy »

jackson1442 wrote: post #208
zdragnar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's struck me as weird about this is that I don't recall a single teacher ever mentioning their spouse, or their personal weekend plans. The idea that a teacher wants to talk to their students about their personal lives is utterly foreign to me. Maybe it's just a sign of times changing? Edit: this thought came to me in the context of a quote I saw from a teacher upset he couldn't talk about going surfing with his…

It was relatively common in school to discuss what happened over breaks, weekends, etc. to build conversation skills. Also, almost every k12 teacher I had would prepare a slideshow about themselves to present on the first day of class along with the syllabus. After all, you're spending a lot of time in that classroom as a k12 student. Many teachers also have pictures of their family on their desks, as one might in th…

> Also, almost every k12 teacher I had would prepare a slideshow about themselves to present on the first day of class along with the syllabus

This is pretty different from coming to school and telling 7yos about the sex party you went to this weekend and which gender you were identifying as when you went. This is the reality some parents are trying to prevent when they say some American teachers are taking their freedom to share their personal lives a bit far.

Let's be real, obviously there's nothing wrong with having a teacher who's LGBT. What people have a problem with are the folks who derive their entire identity out of that, and then greatly encourage the kids they teach to do the same. It's not dissimilar from a teacher being a veteran and insisting on sharing that part of their life with their students, to a point where parents find it crosses boundaries. We actually had a teacher at my high school who used to be a sniper in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was eventually told by the principal no more Afghan war stories, as it was making the students feel uncomfortable hearing that sort of thing from teacher.

The very obvious comparison here is a teacher coming to school and telling their kids, in detail, about their sex life or multiple gender transition surgeries. While they're topics which I'm comfortable with, I can't speak for every parent and I think it's wrong for the state to say "these topics MUST be socially acceptable to you, bigot."

Just teach the class! You don't need to get them excited about queer culture or gun culture or joining the military. Everyone would be better so much better off if teachers could just largely leave their personal lives at home and stick to the syllabus.

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

#435

Post by trafficante »

seadan83 wrote: post #360
trafficante wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument, much like the “just make your own x” meme, is one of the many hypotheticals that actually saw real world testing in the past two years. These days, the ”private company so this isn’t 1A” argument oddly reminds me of the omnipresent 200x-era GOP claim that running a federal budget is akin to balancing a household checkbook. Designed to be convincingly simple to state and yet extremely obnoxious to refut…

I don't know if I'm saying, just "build your own if you don't like it". More, if you don't like it, don't use it (eg: if you don't like Arby's, don't go there). Though, I do concede that these platforms/apps/companies are very monopoly-like and that certainly creates its own gravitational pull and challenges to competitors. Do you have any references for further information about how the government supported Facebook…

>Do you have any references for further information about how the government supported Facebook? If Facebook received some support from the government, does that make their platform a public square? What would that threshold be?

Some of what I mentioned is covered in a very roundabout way in this Vice article [1] while the Palantir/Thiel connections (as well as info on early FB executives being “former” CIA employees/contractors) is on FB’s Wikipedia page. There’s a decent NYT write up from ~2010 on some of the DARPA connections but I’m having a hell of a time finding it right now.

As far as I know, there’s less of a smoking gun so much as there’s a series of very big dots that are hard NOT to connect to the intelligence agencies. You can search up some of the stuff below and draw your own conclusions. Much like with PRISM etc, where security researchers weren’t exactly surprised at the content of the Snowden leaks, the alphabet agency connections to SV are pretty apparent but we’ll never see documented proof without another Ed Snowden.

Eg: DARPA’s Total Information Awareness program was established post-9/11 with the stated goal of creating a total digital panopticon. It was officially canceled due to public outcry. That said, several of its programs have popped back up over the years and many analysts believe it was just broken up into classified chunks - SAFE HOME [2] being one of the more recent and obvious examples of an old TIA project resurfacing.

Lifelog was another TIA project that was essentially “Facebook’s social graph but with satellite tracking and bio surveillance for added creepiness”. It was shutdown one day before Facebook launched [3].

Basically there’s a whole lot of very odd circumstantial evidence (usually the only kind of evidence you can get regarding active intelligence programs) that heavily suggests a link between early FB and DARPA/CIA. It’s very similar to Palantir and suggests that the main outcome of the negative public response to TIA was to push it underground and into “private” hands. It absolutely glows in the dark (RIP Terry) and should be subject to the same rules and Constitutional restrictions as the agencies that aided its birth and certainly still play a huge internal role to this very day.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbqdb8/15-years-ago-the-mili...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/22/white-hou...

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog

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

#436

Post by lazyeye »

somenameforme wrote: post #397
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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."

Agreed. You really have to have the ideological blinkers on not to see that this proposition applies equally to whoever has the power.

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

#437

Post by honkdaddy »

buildbot wrote: post #51

I’ll ask the same question I asked on the other threads to all those cheering this - do you think HN will be the same without moderation? Or just another 4chan? Will r/conservative stop banning users who dare suggest trump was maybe not such a good person, even if they are otherwise extremely conservative?

4chan is as or more heavily moderated than most of reddit, I'm not sure where you get the idea it's not. 4chan culture is the way it is largely because of the demographic of its users, it doesn't really much to do with its moderation policies.

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

#438

Post by UncleMeat »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #380
tsimionescu wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be more acceptable, exactly? This is not even about sexual education, it is literally illegal to explain to those kids that sometimes a man and a woman love each other, and sometimes two men or two women do the same. Of course, the first part will never be enforced, but the second and third clearly will. There is no age at which it is inappropriate to listen about these extremely basic facts of the worl…

When I was in kindergarten I didn't even know my teachers had first names, much less spouses. A kindergartener is not your friend to share your life with. People have terrible boundaries. This is why public schooling must be destroyed.

And when I was in first grade my teacher got married, showed us pictures of the wedding, and changed her last name.

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

#439

Post by UncleMeat »

treeman79 wrote: post #369
scarface74 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same Florida that passed a law specifically to punish Disney because they spoke out against the “Don’t Say Gay” law and passed the “Stop Woke” act?

So you support teaching highly sexual content in Kindergarten? Because that’s what the law was about.

The law covers every age group. Do you think that the proponents of the law think that a book with trans protagonists is “developmentally appropriate” for 8th graders?

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

#440

Post by UncleMeat »

webmobdev wrote: post #423
shostack wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Hate speech laws in the US are toothless. Richard Spencer could happily run for local office and then post on Twitter over and over that white people should go murder all black people and he would be protected from any policy action by this law.
Post reply on HN