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Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

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Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#511

Post by evandale »

afavour wrote: post #506
evandale wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your conception of an opinion? To me am opinion is a belief you have that's not based on facts. Why do you want your government to have a belief not based on facts? Furthermore, why would you want the government to push this belief on its people? Lastly why would you care about the opinion (remember: an opinion is a belief that isn't based on facts) of a corporation to the point that you'd defend their right t…

> To me am opinion is a belief you have that's not based on facts. > Why do you want your government to have a belief not based on facts? There's some kind of fallacy at work here, you're establishing what your personal definition of something is then arguing with OP while taking your personal belief as fact. "Opinions are not based on facts" definitely isn't a universally accepted definition of an opinion. An opinio…

If there is a fallacy then you need tell me your definition of an opinion or the widely accepted definition.

I can work with you if we have a common understanding but we're not at that point yet.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#512

Post by Spivak »

ponow wrote: post #491
staticman2 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government...the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them." That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right? Out of curiosity I pulled up an…

> Why should free speech be a right? You cannot be serious.

You're reading this wrong, they're not saying that free speech shouldn't be a right but that "free speech is important because it protects free speech" isn't very useful when trying to evaluate whether the government itself ought to also have or not have free speech protections.

Is free speech important solely because it protects you against a malicious government and therefore there's no issue at all with non-government entities censoring others' speech and no reason for the government itself to have it? Or is it important because the marketplace of ideas confers some societal benefit and it would be better if agents of the government were equal participants in that market?

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#513

Post by dragonwriter »

ndr wrote: post #509
DannyBee wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, because this is just a preliminary injunction, not a decision on the merits and evidence?

"The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition" https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

“Likely to do X” is not “have done X”, or even “will do X”.

If it was, we wouldn’t need the preliminary in preliminary injunction, the standards for which balance the likelihood of success on the merits with the kinds of impacts the action sougjt to enjoin would have on the situation of the parties, so a greater and/or more difficult to undo impact requires a lesser probability of success to be sufficiently likely to warrant an injunction.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#514

Post by stcroixx »

commandlinefan wrote: post #305
bequanna wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone on the right arguing for any speech restriction? If so, they are by far the minority in that camp. Only one side is afraid of open debate and pure freedom of speech. Why could that be?

Kind of - crack downs on "obscenity" always come from the right and rarely if ever from the left. For the most part, everybody seems to agree than "obscenity" should be an exception to freedom of speech, although there's quite a bit of disagreement on what constitutes it.

As a kid growing up, Tipper Gore’s PMRC slapped stickers on heavy metal and rap CDs they didn’t like.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#515

Post by dvt »

staticman2 wrote: post #474
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government . Why on earth would I? The government is already massively constrained in what it can say and that’s entirely appropriate because the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them. You may disagree with the ruling but if you’re on the side of free speech, you should definitely cheer i…

" I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government...the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them." That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right? Out of curiosity I pulled up an…

> That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right?

That's not what GP argued, and you're being quite uncharitable. Their argument goes something like this:

    1) Free speech is meant to protect those that don't have a monopoly on speech 
    2) The government has a monopoly on—or can coerce—speech (because it taxes you, appoints the judges, has a police force, etc.)
    3) Therefore, protecting the free speech of the government is not really a stewardship of free speech
This argument makes sense and is not circular. The definition of free speech doesn't even come into play (and is in fact assumed to be desirable: after all, it's in the Bill of Rights.)

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#516

Post by ceejayoz »

chipsa wrote: post #488
ceejayoz wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're a government employee, speaking in the course of your duties, then it's not your speech, it's government speech. This would make quite a few Congressional hearings unconstitutional. For example: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/4-tech-industry-titan... It'd probably also apply to the President saying "lock her up" about a private citizen. Is that unconstitutional pressure from an elected official? >…

Elected officials are not government employees. It is not, in fact, turtles all the way down. They may be paid by the government, but the government does not dictate when they get hired and fired. It's possible that someone may be both an elected official and a government employee, but that's fairly rare (something like: Congressman and member of the military reserve, in which case they're only a government employee…

> Elected officials are not government employees.

The First Amendment distinction here being what, exactly? The President can chant "lock her up" but it's a violation if their FBI director does it?

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#517

Post by afavour »

evandale wrote: post #511
afavour wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me am opinion is a belief you have that's not based on facts. > Why do you want your government to have a belief not based on facts? There's some kind of fallacy at work here, you're establishing what your personal definition of something is then arguing with OP while taking your personal belief as fact. "Opinions are not based on facts" definitely isn't a universally accepted definition of an opinion. An opinio…

If there is a fallacy then you need tell me your definition of an opinion or the widely accepted definition. I can work with you if we have a common understanding but we're not at that point yet.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/opinion

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/opini...

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/opinion

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#518

Post by calgarymicro »

dragonwriter wrote: post #508
calgarymicro wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying about an election to mislead voters on election processes (i.e. time, place, and manner) is illegal.[0] "Threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States" are also illegal. The judge lists several other things that are also illegal, such as malicious cyber activity and criminal conspiracy, so it doesn't seem like that section is intended to contains exceptions to section 8. [0] https://w…

> Lying about an election to mislead voters is illegal The big exception is, of course, the last, which covers any content that isn’t protected by the Free Speech Clause whether or not it is expressly illegal.

Ah, you're right; I think most of that speech (fighting words, obscenity, etc.) is already illegal anyway, but in case there's any that isn't, I will edit that to say speech that's "protected by the 1st amendment".

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#519

Post by ndr »

snowwrestler wrote: post #212
efitz wrote: post #131

This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing that a particular email isn’t coercive enough, etc. A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. Freedom of speech…

It’s not so cut and dry, because believers in free speech can believe that the federal government and its employees should also be free to speak. The legal theory at stake here is that all government speech is inherently coercive. But this is not necessarily true, or aligned with free speech as a principle of society. Any time someone says “we must protect free speech by legally enjoining the following people from sp…

That's not at all what the injunction says. See point 5 at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36618822

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#520

Post by backtoyoujim »

evandale wrote: post #401
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government . Why on earth would I? The government is already massively constrained in what it can say and that’s entirely appropriate because the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them. You may disagree with the ruling but if you’re on the side of free speech, you should definitely cheer i…

lol I gotta say I've been trying to read the defenders of this and take them seriously but your incredulity matches mine... .. and people are replying to you and _still_ defending the government and think they should have unilateral power over their people I'm kind of speechless about how many people think this ruling is a bad thing.. like who in the hell out there believes the government should have OPINIONS? Can on…

I mean if you can drone strike a citizen as president there is little left to have in the toolbox of "unilateral power over their people".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awla...

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