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

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

#491

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So the government should pass laws that tell private companies what they can’t talk about. But the government should also pass laws that force companies to publish every other opinion? Isn’t that the government now controlling free speech? Isn’t the government in fact pushing a narrative when they don’t allow companies to focus on sexual an racial harassment? Should companies not train interviewers that you shouldn’t…

I find it amusing you continue with the Cathy Newman reenactment. >So the government should pass laws that tell private companies what they can’t talk about. Yes, they should not allow private companies to spew and enforce systems of prejudices. > But the government should also pass laws that force companies to publish every other opinion? Yes, that's the free speech part, you know. > Isn’t that the government now co…

So you’re in favor of the government controlling political speech that you don’t agree with? Nowhere in the DI&E training I’ve taken at the country’s second largest employer do they claim one group is inherently prejudice. We are all inherently prejudice based on our own lived experiences.

White people in metro areas are often prejudiced against “rural America”. Lighter skinned Black or often prejudiced against darker skin Black people. There have been reports that Indians are still practicing the caste system in hiring. Second and third generation Americans of the same race talk about people from their own country who are “fresh off the boat”.

But either way, seeing that you don’t see a problem with the government controlling speech that you disagree with is the very reason that the government shouldn’t have that power.

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

#492

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Net neutrality was about bandwith, not content. PACs lobbies and religion are 1A protected and not specific to Florida or Republicans, they can't and don't ban book that's fake news unless you consider all books acceptable in schools such as Mein Kampf and Play Boy magazines. Also none of what you said addresses the the proposed legislation.

> Net neutrality was about bandwith, not content This is not true. Net neutrality is about service providers not getting to choose which services you connect with. If your ISP decided you can use Hulu but have to pay $10/mo extra for Netflix, that's a net neutrality issue. It's not about the volume of bytes. It's about who the bytes are coming from and going to, which is a content issue.

So not about content then. And who you connect to is part of bandwidth and how it is distributed.

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

#493

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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.

You don't have any freedom with children who are legally compelled to be alone in a room with you.

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

#494

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In that case, what makes HN different from Facebook? Should HN not be able to ban overly political posts? Why can’t Facebook claim to be a private club that you have to join?

HN seems like the archetype of an interest-specific club as compared to Facebook’s generic content platform.

So now we do carve outs based on places we don’t want the government to intervene? So are Subreddits “interest clubs “?

Why not just keep the government out of regulating private company’s content? Aren’t conservatives all about “small government”?

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

#495

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The "concerned citizens" likely don't want Disney being adversely affected because it affects their business. Their reasoning has nothing to do with the debt or the responsibility for zoning, etc. The debt is how they are arguing that the government has the same interest as them (and in particular, that there is something illicit going on). By ignoring the potential benefits and pointing out the potential harms, they…

Can you point to any article where the local government is salivating over wanting to take over Disney? How does it possibly help the surrounding city? There is a huge movement in the metro Atlanta area to either break off from the larger city or to incorporate county areas so they can have more local control. There is no movement to take over larger responsibilities by the taxpayers.

Most people don't "salivate" publicly. However, they don't seem to mind, and there is no plan to raise taxes on the residents in connection:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...

This is a biased source (a little too right-leaning for my taste), but it has a few interesting quotes from public officials:

https://deadline.com/2022/05/disney-ron-desantis-dont-say-ga...

It helps because Disney in Orlando produces something like $20 billion per year, and owns something like $10-100 billion of property and equipment. All of that is now taxable. It's easy to see how this helps a city: A 1% sales tax would net $200 million, and a property tax would also be in the 8 figures.

Police, fire, and other essential services would cost nowhere near this much. Even servicing the debt on $1 billion of bonds would be nowhere near this much.

In terms of local politicians, this helps them because someone with $20 billion in revenue will be happy to pay you a $500k bribe (sorry, donation to your re-election fund) to give them favorable rules.

I don't know much about the Atlanta metro area, but there have been several cases in the past that I have heard of where rich areas try to break away from larger cities. The cities generally don't want this to happen because these districts are profit centers (this is a reverse of the Disney situation, where a potential profit center would be incorporated into a city). Desires for "local control" are usually about money.

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

#496
post #143

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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."

The thing is, just because it seems as though if the nonsense rules were enforced impartially they'd look like fools doesn't help you because they'll be the ones deciding how the rules are to be enforced. If you explain "literacy test" voting laws prior to the US Voting Rights Act without that sort of context people imagine well, you send one smart black teacher, they do a few lessons, next year every black person in…

Right, but I'm talking about today. Meaning that I have more faith that malicious (righteous, really) compliance with rules thing this can have good outcomes, especially in the "sunshine."

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

#497

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> 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://stor…

Twitter reinstated him because he has internal communications showing Twitter colluded with the Biden administration to silence him for publishing information that went against the administration’s narrative.

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

#498

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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 t…

> 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.

But that's an argument against Facebook in particular, not against social media as a category.

Fundamentally, the problem is that we have allowed the modern "public square" to be in these spaces entirely owned by private companies.

What we really need is an open protocol for a federated social network that works very much like Facebook (so, not something like Mastodon, which is designed to work like Twitter, for instance—though it would probably be worthwhile to do the same with it) and have the government operate some public "reference servers" that anyone can join, while others can also operate servers that can federate with them. That way, you're still able to connect to people even if they're not on your particular server...provided they don't belong to a server that's been blocked from federation due to hate speech or something.

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

#499
post #341
post #237

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> if you complain about this loudly enough well, maybe you have an unlucky "accident" Lynchings are never this circumspect.

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…

Let me stop you right here.

Do you really believe that black and white lynchings were certainly recorded accurately? To say nothing of the proportions as someone said below.

You're providing nothing useful here. Typical softening of racism as many, for whatever reason, like to do. Cut it out.

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

#500

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I would define those convicted of January 6th “insanities” as political prisoners when those responsible for the Summer 2020 violence were not convicted of crimes and when people like Ray Epps were not prosecuted for their role on January 6th.

> when those responsible for the Summer 2020 violence were not convicted of crimes First of all, Citation needed. Second of all, you realize that the people responsible for making prosecutorial decisions regarding Jan 6th crimes are not going to be the same people making those decisions for crimes committed during George Floyd protests and riots, right? You think they’re political prisoners because of perceived incon…

As I understand it there was plenty of federal property destroyed during the summer of 2020. Are you really saying the DOJ doesn’t prosecute people outside of DC? The insanity is turning a blind eye to the obvious hypocrisies and double standards that exist with the two examples.
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