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Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

arstechnica.com

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

#651

Post by brightlancer »

snowwrestler wrote: post #290
somenameforme wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're speaking of the difference between constitutional literalism, and constitutional intent. The 2nd Amendment, interpreted literally, means I should be able to build a nuke. After all there are no explicit limits. That obviously was not the intent of the amendment by any stretch of the imagination. Such a consideration was never dealt with because this was simply outside any sort of world the Founding Fathers cou…

You’re arguing the obvious and easy part. It’s fully settled law that intimidation can violate the First Amendment. But under current law, intimidation must be proven (there must be an actual threat). The core question here is whether any statement, request, or demand by a federal official will be treated, by default, as intimidation under the law. If upheld, such a standard would be a radical redefinition of the int…

> Imagine if the communications officer of a sitting Senator could get prosecuted because they asked a newspaper to alter a story they did not like.

Stop it, you're turning me on.

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

#652

Post by giraffe_lady »

atlantic wrote: post #187
giraffe_lady wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very heavy in terms of tone, less in content. Definitely workable for nazis if they're careful. You can advocate eugenics and genocide-lite if you're polite and abstract enough. You're more likely to get in trouble for calling someone a nazi than you are for promoting nazi policies, as long as you don't use any slurs.

Could you clarify the term "nazis"? Presumably, you don't mean a member of the German National Socialist party, which was dissolved in 1945. But if you mean "people whose views I disagree with", then perhaps you could be a little more specific.

You notice there how I was specific about "nazi policies" right? It's to avoid a discussion like this one. I don't care about party affiliation per se, I am talking about advocating specific policies and worldviews.

Things like ethnonationism, eugenics, categorizing certain minorities as inherently criminal, white natalism: things that, if you could present them to a 1945-style straw nazi they'd say "yup that's us."

And all that aside, you know that people still self identify as nazis right? It's not preposterous that they show up here. They have jobs and kids and hobbies and professional aspirations, and if a chance to talk about the degeneracy of society re: immigration comes on the tech forum, hey, they know also how to slide into that conversation without saying anything too crass.

And yes, you could elide all that as "people I disagree with" if you're devoted to being particularly sloppy. Because I do disagree with them, and don't want them here? Is that not the case for you?

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

#653

Post by membrcovidb »

michaelmrose wrote: post #344
treeman79 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Washington is incredibly corrupt. There is no limits to what they will do to stop someone/anyone from trying to drain up the swamp. Was shocking when my messages To friends on Facebook were being blocked. 1984 was meant to be a warning to the masses not a guide on how to oppress people.

You said in your other post that the vaccine was gene therapy and that cheap treatments were effective. I'm presuming you either mean Hydroxychloroquine or horse paste. None of those statements are true and because of them countless people died. The statements are worthy of head shaking now. During the pandemic they constituted shouting fire in a crowded theater. They are fundamentally unworthy of protection.

[flagged]

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

#654

Post by didntcheck »

iscream26 wrote: post #575
Karunamon wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The restrictions on teachers you speak of are in their functions as employees of the state while performing their duties on the job on the employer's time. Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment issue. That goes double when we are talking about public employees whose conduct is directly the function of law.

> Employers setting limits on the conduct of employees on the job is generally not a freedom of speech, or first amendment issue. In other words: you're allowed to restrict the speech of other people as long as you own private property. Turns out that freedom of speech in a liberal "democracy" is not all it's cracked up to be.

Indeed, allowing employers to coerce the speech of employees by punishing them for actions outside of the reasonable scope of employment is very worrying. Unfortunately, a good deal of the modern "left" supports it when they dislike the person. Much of the right does too, which I have equal disdain for, but I will at least acknowledge it can be logically consistent with some right-wing philosophies (on the more ancap end). Whereas it's a bit strange to see "socialists" saying "but they're a private company!"

However speech in the classroom is within the scope of your job duties. So my employer should not be able to fire me for wearing a Trump or Biden sticker off the clock, but it is fair to prohibit me from wearing it whilst on the job, and to sanction me if I'm proselytizing to customers during my duties

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

#655

Post by roflyear »

JackFr wrote: post #472
roflyear wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't think of a scenario where the government should be able to express a thought about something? ;)

For instance, if you're the FAA, you should express opinions about airline operations, air safety, etc. That is your role. If you are the FDA, you should express opinions about food and drug safety. And in both those cases note that you are a regulator, and within your domain, it is your role to regulate the players. If you are the White House, you are not a regulator of anything. It is fine to express your opinion.…

Man, people are being really rude here just for me asking a question.

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

#656

Post by ceejayoz »

GeekyBear wrote: post #637
ceejayoz wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you prefer, it'd make a whole bunch of press conferences unconstitutional. It's quite common for elected officials to criticize private citizens and businesses. To be concrete: Ted Cruz (and a bunch of others) publicly pressured the NFL over players kneeling at games, in a clear attempt to suppress First Amendment expression by said players, without any hint of consequences.

> It's quite common for elected officials to criticize private citizens and businesses. They can criticize all they like. What they can't do is order the political speech of citizens be censored.

> What they can't do is order the political speech of citizens be censored.

Agreed. That doesn't appear to have happened. Even the worst examples the Twitter Files sort of reporting could dig up is some loud huffing and puffing followed by a :rolleyes: emoji and inaction from various social networks.

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

#657

Post by brightlancer »

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…

> It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no idea how you could come up with an argument to change my mind on that.

Well, I wouldn't presume to make you think, but _BY DEFINITION_ corporations are legal persons.

Corporation. Incorporate. Corporeal.

This is a legal definition, not biological or sociological or religious or whatever else.

And under that legal framework, the corporation can act as a person and enter into contracts, initiate lawsuits, be sued, be prosecuted, etc. And more basically, the corporation can make public statements which express the _opinion_ of the corporation.

Once folks set aside political bigotries, this shouldn't be a hard concept to understand.

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

#658

Post by didntcheck »

lancesells wrote: post #375
stcroixx wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech for citizens is important to me and I'm on no political side. This seems like a great thing to me. I don't want the government doing what they're been doing or doing it again in the future, regardless of who that government is. Ideally, these losers would have enough morals to police themselves or not do this in the first place, but here we are. Might not be a perfect ruling, but in spirit it's against go…

I agree for the most part, but the only thing that keeps me wholesale from this is the idea that all social media posts are US citizens. What if, and I'm not suggesting it is, 100% of the posts in question where from foreign actors looking to disrupt the US? Is the government in no way allowed to step in? Is that even censorship?

No. I don't trust a government trying to prevent me from seeing information outside our borders for my "safety". Banning receiving foreign broadcasts is a staple of authoritarian governments (I'm not saying it's a sufficient condition, but a non-authoritarian government would have no need or desire to)

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

#659

Post by lightedman »

brasic wrote: post #226
lightedman wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be mistaken on what an injunction is. This is not a direct ruling, it is an order to cease the current behavior (the gov't telling social media companies to censor speech) until it can be ascertained whether or not this is a harmful thing which is happening. You're acting as if this injunction creates a law or sets some sort of precedent. It truly does not.

I know very well what an injunction is and does. You seem to be mistaken on what “law” is. It is by no means limited to statutory text or even final judicial opinions. The fact that contempt of court is the only real penalty available for violating this injunction is exactly why it’s harmful. Making ludicrously broad and unenforceable injunctions like this inevitably corrodes the rule of law and damages the overall s…

"You seem to be mistaken on what “law” is."

As the person that whipped Electronic Art's ass in court over the Spore DRM, no, I'm pretty well-aware of what 'law' is. And re-reading your post, again, you're still giving off the impression that this is some bad thing. It isn't.

It's literally the gov't telling the gov't to quit being a twerp while the courts actually figure out wtf is going on.

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

#660

Post by hyperpape »

mrangle wrote: post #593
judge2020 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In particular, they need to find if there was any actual coercion or threat made by the gov't agencies to remove the speech they asked to. For example, when the FBI was asking Twitter to take down videos (of content that violated Twitter's own TOS), Twitter could've told them to go pound sand. But it would be a different story if the FBI indicated that Twitter "ought to" do it or face increased scrutiny, perhaps.

It has been long established in case law that government requests for censorship are tantamount to coercion and threats. To wit, it matters not if the Giant makes a polite or directly threatening request of Jack. In either case, Jack is right to assume that he has no choice in the matter. And can not be expected to tell the Giant to "pound sand". Conversely, the Giant should not be able to claim that Jack had a choic…

It would be useful to cite the case law here so that everyone reading along could look it up.
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