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A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

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Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#91
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? We have more free speech than ever online at this moment. The last regime colluded with the major social media companies to censor people they didn't like and it's also recently come to light that they attempted to get the Joe Rogan/Spotify deal nuked, all based on censoring speech they don't like. The liberal government of the UK is moving toward complete online censorship with their bill to prevent children fr…

Collusion is the wrong word. Coercion is more appropriate. > I just wish the people claiming to be champions of free speech and rights will just admit that this all goes out the window when it applies to speech and people you don't like Try using the word "cis-gender" on Twitter and let us know how that goes.

Considering Twitter the bastion of _anything_ is as stupid now as it was 15 years ago.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#92

JAWBONE == Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression. Max Kudos. Ron and Ted owe a staffer (or staffers) a few drinks.

My favorite of these has always been the USA PATRIOT Act, or the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act". And that one predates LLMs, so… sheesh.

I like MAGIC CARPET "Maritime Augmented Guidance with Integrated Controls for Carrier Approach and Recovery Precision Enabling Technologies"

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#93
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> public-health officials should be allowed to tell platforms, "This claim is false, it is contributing to real-world harm, and we urge you to reduce its reach." I think the line between that and Brendan Carr calling ABC and saying “Jimmy Kimmel is lying, he is contributing to real-world harm, and I urge you to reduce his reach” while e.g. a merger is under review or licenses up for renewal is impossible to delineate…

Agree, it is hard to delineate, especially when the government is run by people that are thin-skinned and retaliatory. That's what makes this issue so challenging. But is it fair to curtail speech because someone might perceive it as a threat? That question applies to the government as well as to individuals. I think it has to be resolved on a case-by-cases basis by courts.

> is it fair to curtail speech because someone might perceive it as a threat?

Plenty of speech is criminally curtailed. Credible threats of imminent violence. Fraud. Perjury. They’re just tightly defined ex ante.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#94
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proper response to that is to support free speech values in both circumstances. Otherwise, we’re just going to be fighting about the details of whether particular conduct falls within the letter of the free speech protections.

There's a very important distinction to be made. Nazi rhetoric earning bans on private platforms happens because a large number of people organize in protest against such rhetoric. Advertisers see this and don't want to be associated with it, so the ad-driven platforms make the obvious choice to remove the Nazis. This is an example of people exercising their free speech and their often overlooked freedom of/from asso…

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Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, freedom of speech does not guarantee you freedom from consequences of your speech. The government can't stop you from saying stupid shit, however it also can't stop other people from telling you you're stupid. Second, horse dewormer doesn't cure COVID. Censoring dangerous misinformation from fools like yourself who will believe it because it's given to them via the right mouthpiece is a good idea, because if…

There are multiple hypotheses for methods of action for IVM against covid that were plausible and deserved serious funding and investigation by governments. This did not happen. What did happen is the two people who brought it to the attention of congress got slandered the next day in the press and then got their careers destroyed. Anyone else who ever mentioned it also got dumped on by the press. There are over 100…

I know in my heart of hearts that responding to this nonsense is a waste of time, but in the odd event someone reasonable runs across this gish-gallop, I refuse to leave it sitting unchallenged.

To start, sure, ivermectin is safe at proper dosing, yes hundreds of millions of people take it for parasites every year, yes there was an early in-vitro study showing it fucked with viral replication in a petri dish. Cool. This is true of a ton of compounds that do absolutely nothing for you once they're in an actual bloodstream instead of a lab dish, because the concentration needed to see that effect in-vitro was way higher than what you can safely hit in a human's body. For example, one of those compounds is bleach, but if you take enough to hit the concentrations for it to do what you what it to do in your body, you will have much bigger problems than the COVID you were trying to kill.

Further, "nobody ever looked into it" is just not true. TOGETHER and ACTIV-6 were specifically designed, peer-reviewed RCTs with thousands of participants, published in NEJM/JAMA, built for the exact purpose of answering "does this actually work?" They looked. The answer was no. "A couple big studies got waved off as inconclusive" is just an incorrect read, full stop. The studies were done and the evidence was in, and it was not the answer.

The "100+ studies, many positive" thing is doing a lot of heavy lifting too: that number gets real big real fast once you stop separating "huge well-controlled RCT" from "12 people in a non-randomized trial somebody ran out of a spare room." Lumping those together and calling it "the science" is exactly the kind of cherry-picking everyone (correctly) clowns on anti-vax studies for doing.

And the FDA/CDC "didn't look at the data" thing is also just bullshit. They reviewed it as the RCTs rolled in, which is why the guidance moved from "not recommended outside trials" to "no benefit shown:" that is literally the science working exactly as it should be.

Now, to be clear: people getting publicly dog-walked in the press for even mentioning it? Yeah that part was genuinely shitty and probably made some people dig in out of spite instead of curiosity, which I get. However no amount of that being a fair accusation does a damn thing to make it so the amount of IVM OR bleach required to pull this off in the way anti-vaxxers wish doesn't render you stone fucking dead.

It's not like the same damn pharma industry couldn't have gotten just as rich selling IVM, or whatever, cure to the literal entire goddamn world to cure the plague that was skull-fucking every nation on the planet, and to pretend otherwise, that an ineffective medicine was chosen instead is pure, unadulterated nonsense. If it worked, every pharma company would've spun up production of it immediately, and the companies that already made it would've seen the value fly through the goddamn roof. New billionaires minted overnight. It didn't, they weren't, because it didn't work.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#96
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you agree this bill is positive?

But this assumes that a bill is required to establish fundamental rights. Free speech unfortunately does not exist anywhere. Even the USA has restrictions, such as "speech aimed at inciting quick reaction/violence" or some other restrictions with regards to "offensive" words and minors or similar. Or, even simpler, to talk very loudly in public late at night. So free speech is not unlimited, despite its name.

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Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#97
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, yelling fire in a crowded theater is First Amendment protected speech. https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/14/setting-1st-amendment-my... I'm just stating facts. https://www.popehat.com/p/the-first-amendment-isnt-absolute

Sigh . Yes, it depends on context. Like everything. Yet, what’s the point of pedantic digressions that distract and muddy rather than clarify and communicate?

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Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#98
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, it is hard to delineate, especially when the government is run by people that are thin-skinned and retaliatory. That's what makes this issue so challenging. But is it fair to curtail speech because someone might perceive it as a threat? That question applies to the government as well as to individuals. I think it has to be resolved on a case-by-cases basis by courts.

> is it fair to curtail speech because someone might perceive it as a threat? Plenty of speech is criminally curtailed. Credible threats of imminent violence. Fraud. Perjury. They’re just tightly defined ex ante .

Threat of imminent violence clearly falls on one side of the line. There are other cases that are on the border and you can't judge so easily.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#99
post #67

I think "government pressure" needs to be defined. If vaccination misinformation is spreading like wildfire on social media, and measles and other deadly diseases are getting out of control, and the government urges social media to control the spread of misinformation, is that "government pressure" and should it be illegal? Now you can argue that the right way to counter misinformation is by countering it with legit…

>the government urges social media to control the spread of misinformation

There's always an implied or else. Stop harming the public, because the government is obligated to stop harms to the public and if they have to step in, it won't be favorable to your company.

Re: A new bill takes aim at government pressure to silence lawful online speech

#100

Do people not read the article, or do they just read the clickbait title and comment? Apparently they missed Ron Wyden (co-sponsor) of the bill is a Democrat and the bill is a bi-partisan effort? Or the fact the EFF is actually in support of the bill: EFF applauds Senators Cruz and Wyden for taking this critical issue seriously, and we look forward to working with Congress on this bipartisan bill as it moves through…

> Apparently they missed Ron Wyden (co-sponsor) of the bill is a Democrat and the bill is a bi-partisan effort? And why should that matter? Your assumption here is that these two parties are different to one another AND not corrupt. I don't see why these two assumptions should be true intrinsically. Can you explain why, if a Democrat does xyz, one should not be wary anymore? As for "bi-partisan effort": look at publi…

Cynically, if I was looking at this as if both parties are protecting their interests - they might be realizing that this behavior going forward is going to be harmful to their donors, and thus themselves. State mandated TV/speech is not necessarily great for business, depending on the tastes and whims of whoever is in power at the moment.
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