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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

#731

Post by coolhand2120 »

Zetice wrote: post #346
traviswingo wrote: post #315

There’s a difference between freedom of speech and education. The government did a bad thing. Anyone should be allowed to speak their piece. We need more people to speak up when those speaking the loudest are wrong, uneducated, and unqualified to speak on the topic they’re preaching. I get the incentive here, but it’s not the governments place to decide what we do and don’t say. Society as a whole needs to be better…

People shouldn't be allowed to speak their piece when that piece can be bright-line traced to people dying. But fine, let's allow people to speak their piece because bright lines are hard to draw, starting with Twitter, who should be completely free to follow or not follow what the US government says, which is literally what happened here . This will be overturned on appeal, because the bar for this kind of order is…

> People shouldn't be allowed to speak their piece when that piece can be bright-line traced to people dying.

Authoritarian governments love it! All for public safety, that’s the spirit!

“You can’t say that, someone might hate it enough to attack me! Doesn’t matter how true it is!” -any dictator

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

#732

Post by DropInIn »

evandale wrote: post #713
DropInIn wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any entity you distrust is also an entity that most reasonably fits into the classification of dislike. You may like thier products or services but that's not the same as liking the corp itself.

Trust and affection are two different emotions that I'm able to separate. For example, I like Adidas shoes but when they boast about sustainability I question the truth in that and their intentions. I prefer Pepsi over Coke but I don't trust either to be truthful in their marketing. I think it's bullshit that Santa prefers Coke, for one he's not even a real person, but I don't dislike Coke for using Santa as a mascot…

Like in context of businesses/products/organizations/governments does not generally refer to "affection"... That's "love"...

One can "love" something or someone but not "like" it.... Is that something you're not aware of?

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

#733

Post by hayst4ck »

brightlancer wrote: post #643
ceejayoz wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes a court deciding "this was a bad thing" definitively makes it a bad thing. Dred Scott might disagree.

> That assumes a court deciding "this was a bad thing" definitively makes it a bad thing. Dred Scott might disagree. That can be a pretty convenient tool. Decision I agree with: This is just like Brown v Board of Education of Topeka! Decision I disagree with: This is just like Dred Scott! Both major parties have done this and IME most individuals do this because they don't care about the law, only about whether their…

Our founding fathers made the distinction between civil law and natural law.

Rights are granted by natural law. If rights were granted by civil law then they would not be rights, they would be privileges and privileges can be taken away.

That is a clear basis for which to make distinctions between cases a person might agree or disagree with even if the process is identical.

When law is used against the weak, it's probably wrong. When law is used against the powerful, it's probably right.

If you believe in rule of law, rule of law is the idea of preventing arbitrary exercises of power. You have to have power to exercise it, so rule of law is first and foremost a belief that the law should protect the weak and bind the powerful.

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

#734

Post by revelio »

stcroixx wrote: post #704
revelio wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that works great up until the people who distribute memos act like Facebook, and then the people who sell you ink, and then the phone companies, and then .... Really why is this so hard to understand. There's nothing special about tech firms in this story except the naivety of their executives, who have ended up looking like utter tools in this whole sorry charade. These idiots systematically suppressed discussi…

I think it’s very, very generous to excuse this behavior as that of naive rubes. These people are simply currying favor with those in power hoping for something in return.

You must be right that there's an element of that, but I still think most of it especially at the lower levels of the orgs is that these people genuinely have adopted the "if a civil servant says it, it must be true" way of thinking.

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

#735

Post by hayst4ck »

quickthrowman wrote: post #607
hayst4ck wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you perform the rituals of democracy doesn't mean you get democracy. If voting doesn't result in representation, then the act of voting is just a ritual and not an exertion of political power. You're saying because we performed a ritual around judges, we should be getting the result we want, or judges that represent America at large. You're so focused on rituals you are missing the bigger picture. That i…

The US isn’t an abstract ‘democracy’, it’s a functioning democracy with a specific set of rules. I don’t agree with Mitch McConnell’s decision to refuse to have a hearing for Merrick Garland. I’m just saying it’s not against the Constitution as it is written. If the Obama Administration thought they had a legal right to force a hearing on Merrick Garland in the Senate, they would’ve filed a lawsuit to force the issue…

> The US isn’t an abstract ‘democracy’, it’s a functioning democracy with a specific set of rules.

Democracy isn't something you "are," democracy is something you do. Democracy is the sum of beliefs, actions, and understanding of the people in a "democratic" society.

So you cannot talk about us being a democracy without respect to the idea that democracy is a spectrum. You used the word "functioning" democracy which implies that democracy is a spectrum. In your spectrum you at least have [non-democracy, non-functioning democracy, functioning democracy, abstract democracy]. It is even more grey than that. Every 18 year old that doesn't vote means society is 1/N less democratic. Every time gerrymandering happens, society is 3 districts less democratic. Every time you get a politician who would choose party over country, or who chooses loyalty over values, you 1/5xx less democratic. Every time you get a supreme court judge who takes bribes, you are 1/9th less democratic.

I hope you find that persuasive.

You can say a judge has the authority to exercise discretion, and when they make a ruling they are justified by their position and the process that got them there, but that ignores the greater context of the reasoning behind their rulings. A judge that takes a bribe is ruling from a place of corruption. A judge that rules based on loyalty to a party rather than loyalty to a set of ideals is what separates cargo cult justice, from justice.

It is the ideals and adherence to them that separates cargo cult justice from justice, or cargo cult democracy from democracy.

"functioning" democracy is a judgement call on a spectrum. Your range of "functioning" is not the same as my range of "functioning." I do not believe we are functioning. I believe we are declining. We have supreme court judges openly taking bribes without consequences and a grid locked congress that is incapable of resolving the situation or creating consequences. We have a president who attempted a coup and he is being legally threatened for things that they think they can win, rather than the thing that is the most dangerous and criminal. He isn't being prosecuted for the coup, he's being prosecuted because of the coup. That should be terrifying.

The gridlock doesn't justify the lack of consequences.

> The fact that they didn’t tells me that what McConnell and the GOP did wasn't illegal. It may have arguably been immoral and unethical, but it wasn’t illegal, and that was the point of my post that you responded to.

Obama was the first black president and didn't rock the boat. The GOP declared war on America and the democratic party was and is in denial about it. You can be in shock or denial, or be confronted with a new situation you don't know how to handle and that explains what happened without the explanation being "it was justified because there was no action." Trump is clearly criminal and it's taken what, 6 years to see the potential for any consequences at all?

I don't find "they didn't do anything, so it's all justified" compelling.

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

#736

Post by ndr »

brasic wrote: post #714
ndr wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote a false claim and are now changing the subject. Which ban is not ok, specifically?

I’ve done nothing of the sort. As I said throughout this thread, the injunction prohibits any communications based on a vague and subjective content or motive between a group of approx. 500,000 citizens who are US government employees and several million individuals worldwide who are employed by any of the named social media companies, nonprofits, or similar organizations. This is not ok. If restrictions on speech ar…

Your claim summary is false, the ban is by no mean general.

Which of the following do you believe to be vague and subjective content, and which clause specifically are you opposed to? All of them?

[...] ARE HEREBY ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from taking the following actions as to social-media companies:

(1) meeting with social-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms;

(2) specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;

(3) urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech;

(4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;

(5) collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech;

(6) threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech;

(7) taking any action such as urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution;

(8) following up with social-media companies to determine whether the social-media companies removed, deleted, suppressed, or reduced previous social-media postings containing protected free speech;

(9) requesting content reports from social-media companies detailing actions taken to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce content containing protected free speech; and

(10) notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (“BOLO”) for postings containing protected free speech.

Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

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

#737

Post by causi »

didntcheck wrote: post #645
causi wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's become quite rare for me to see people who defend speech they don't agree with, and rarer still any speech they find repugnant. It isn't liberty vs authority anymore; it's just team red and team blue. One might be wrong-er than the other but neither think people they hate should be able to open their mouths in anything but agreement.

Yeah, it's worrying how many people seem to go: "I don't like this" => "Nobody else should be able to see it". I've had people be confused in conversations where I've confirmed I strongly dislike a thing/person/site, yet do not wish at all to see it banned or deplatformed. Not to do the whole generational sneering thing, but I do find the difference is often whether someone grew up with the pre-social-media internet,…

I've had people be confused in conversations where I've confirmed I strongly dislike a thing/person/site, yet do not wish at all to see it banned or deplatformed.

The day's not over until you've been called a communist groomer and a Nazi.

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

#738

Post by tekknik »

elishah wrote: post #539
megaman821 wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely nothing you stated is legal now. The government would not have to intervene asking for censorship in any of these cases. They would press charges and have a court order to remove the non-protected speech.

> Absolutely nothing you stated is legal now. Sure, I didn't mean to suggest that those things are legal. Just giving a few examples of speech that is harmful, rather than merely distasteful. > The government would not have to intervene asking for censorship in any of these cases. Hm, I think that may be pinning quite a lot on some questionable definition of "censorship." In these examples the law would be banning so…

Your first two examples are fraud, not speech. Your third example is speech, but if you remove the mugger and have a friend say the same thing to you it becomes a joke.

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

#739

Post by tekknik »

sangnoir wrote: post #574
HideousKojima wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>crack downs on "obscenity" always come from the right and rarely if ever from the left Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman would like a word.

This just shows how useless a single-dimension left/right axis is. There were plenty of socially conservative Democratic party members then (and now, but moreso then). This was also a time when the majority (>50%) of Americans disapproved of mixed-race relationships, according to Gallup. That percentage only fell below 50% in 1993, IIRC.

Maybe we should get rid of the 2 party system?

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

#740

Post by tekknik »

iscream26 wrote: post #616
Karunamon wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You skipped the rather pertinent bit where these restrictions apply only to people who chose of their own volition to take them on. You are, of course, free to not take on the burden of employment from a particular organization if you find their demands on your conduct while they are compensating you for your time to be unacceptable. This relationship is purely transactional. And, sorry, the idea that this is actuall…

That line of reasoning would make sense if the have-nots in a liberal society didn't need to work just to survive. But that is not the case, is it? Liberal society loves to characterise itself as a rigid, well-structured system in which individuals choose to make idealised rational decisions to work towards their own interests. As opposed to emotional reasoning, which is conveniently implied to be the diametrical opp…

So because some people can’t afford property we should control speech?
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