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The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

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Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulating the format and presentation of displayed information, on some kind of online publication, is almost certainly regulation of speech. 1A violation.

It's as much of a 1A violation as regulating that you can't preach the gospel with a megaphone in the middle of Times Square.

Times Square is a physical place with limited space. It has multiple uses and the road or sidewalk you’re standing on is a publicly owned thoroughfare. Your megaphone might damage the hearing of non-audience passerby if you have it turned up really loud.

That said, such a regulation would actually be unconstitutional unless it’s narrowly aimed at real concerns like blocking traffic. Snyder v. Phelps established that you can go protest with signs saying “God Hates F*gs” and yell at people during a military funeral. Believe it or not, sometimes free speech may be distasteful and disruptive.

The virtual world is very different. The audience is willing, there’s no passerby, no blocking traffic. Competing rights go out the window.

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does choosing your book’s font and margins apply to freedom of speech? Why should you get to choose that as an author/publisher?

> How does choosing your book’s font and margins apply to freedom of speech? The fonts and margins dont communicate anything by themselves. There is a book that communicates ideas/opinions and that is what's protected by the first amendment. If someone found a font that exploits the brains reward mechanism and causes all sorts of mental health problems perhaps that should be regulated too. Infinite scroll doesn't com…

Tell me you’ve never done serious graphic design work without telling me

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#403
post #77

This is exactly why I force my kids to always create accounts as 30-years old (by specifying a birth data in the 90s), to avoid as much State interference as possible. Did you know that if your child has a "kid" account you cannot follow him on google maps? We had to make one for "adults" in order to be able to do so.

Zood Location is pretty good. Open source, location data is end-to-end encrypted (encrypted to the keys of the people you are sharing with before it leaves your device).

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the right “fix” is, why is a US state involved in deciding how my app presents my speech to you? Under what authority? You know, I hate to give the oppo any decent ideas, but maybe there’s some allowable way to subsidize apps that use “healthy” patterns rather than attempting to “ban” things!

States get to regulate things that happen within the state. That's how it's always worked. They're like mini-countries.

Not if they violate rights as enumerated in the Bill of Rights and later amendments.

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another alternative to avoid legal terrorism is low penalties. If the law would rapidly shift to say infinite scroll is illegal, but the only penalty is being ordered to remove it (and then penalised more if you fail to do so after being notified) I don't think that's really that bad?

You’d need a Constitution that allows laws regarding speech. And probably a mechanism to prevent legislators from assigning excessive penalties. It’s not about whether the law meets some abstract notion of good or bad, it’s about whether it is even possible to enact under the framework that governs us. Under the Constitution as it stands, it wouldn’t be possible.

Let's not get too distracted from the fact that good things are good and bad things are bad.

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Shouting fire” was a bad decision denying the right to protest the draft, and it’s since been overturned. (Thankfully, as we may need that right soon!) The First Amendment is clear: there shall be no law abridging freedom of speech. Courts have bent around that in the past, in earlier eras, but they were wrong to do so. Their mistakes have mostly been corrected although there’s still a few left. The document that go…

There's the constitution (basically a piece of toilet paper with scribbles on it) and then there's the actual reality of how the country operates, and the actual reality is that speech is restricted in many ways. I must also mention that courts are not Congress and states are not Congress. The first amendment does not say "there shall be no law" - that is your poor paraphrasing - it says "Congress shall make no law"

Well just throw it all out the window then, if we’re not going to pay attention to the constitution. First things first, let’s make a law to ban you.

If you’re just going to pick and choose what rights you apply, then it’s not much of a governing document, is it? Is this just “Parliament is Sovereign” with extra fluff? Might makes right?

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, my point is that things like illuminated signs or loudspeakers can actually physically affect neighbors, so speech concerns have to be balanced against other concerns. Often the speech still wins, but not always. We’re talking apples and oranges because a website is more like a book than an illuminated sign. You have to decide to view it, and it doesn’t shine through your window at night, disturbing the peaceful…

A website like mygeotechnicalblog.example.com is like a book that you have to seek out. But websites like Facebook and Twitter may be so ubiquitous that they are more akin to a street that you walk down for many purposes and shouldn't be bombarded by obnoxious advertisements on the way.

While we’re just stretching metaphors to fit our preferences, comments like yours are so odious that they are akin to an open sewer, and should be regulated for public health reasons. Am I doing this right?

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d need a Constitution that allows laws regarding speech. And probably a mechanism to prevent legislators from assigning excessive penalties. It’s not about whether the law meets some abstract notion of good or bad, it’s about whether it is even possible to enact under the framework that governs us. Under the Constitution as it stands, it wouldn’t be possible.

Let's not get too distracted from the fact that good things are good and bad things are bad.

Good and bad things both exist independent of your preferences.

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, what right do you have to regulate the presentation of speech ? If you regulate this format because it’s now considered harmful, what stops El Presidente from moving to ban “zines” because the format is “harmful to young minds” and used by “antifa”? What stops CA from moving to ban forums because threaded formats are suddenly considered “too addicting”? Maybe we should ban VR or first person shooter video game…

btw zines are already illegal in the USA. 30 year sentence. https://culture.org/art-and-culture/thirty-years-for-a-box-o...

That specific case is why I brought this up, no they aren’t illegal, this is Making Shit Up and exaggerating beyond what actually happened. But if people like you got your way, they could be made illegal.
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