Industry Groups Sue To Stop Florida's New Social Media Law (theverge.com) 142
Two tech industry organizations are suing Florida over its newly passed rules for social networks, claiming it violates private companies' constitutional rights. The Verge reports: SB 7072, which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed earlier this week, restricts how large social apps and websites can moderate user-generated content. It makes banning any Florida political candidate or "journalistic enterprise" unlawful, lets users sue if they believe they were banned without sufficient reason, requires an option to "opt out" of sorting algorithms, and places companies that break the law on an "antitrust violator blacklist" that bars them from doing business with public entities in Florida. Notably, it includes an exception for companies that operate a theme park.
NetChoice and the CCIA say SB 7072 conflicts with both constitutional protections and federal Section 230 rules. "As private businesses, Plaintiffs' members have the right to decide what content is appropriate for their sites and platforms," their complaint says. "The Act requires members to display and prioritize user-generated content that runs counter to their terms, policies, and business practices; content that will likely offend and repel their users and advertisers; and even content that is unlawful, dangerous to public health and national security, and grossly inappropriate for younger audiences." The lawsuit claims Florida lawmakers and DeSantis specifically tailored the law to punish services whose moderation policies they disagreed with, while adding the arbitrary theme park exception to pacify Disney, Comcast NBCUniversal, and a handful of other big companies.
NetChoice and the CCIA say SB 7072 conflicts with both constitutional protections and federal Section 230 rules. "As private businesses, Plaintiffs' members have the right to decide what content is appropriate for their sites and platforms," their complaint says. "The Act requires members to display and prioritize user-generated content that runs counter to their terms, policies, and business practices; content that will likely offend and repel their users and advertisers; and even content that is unlawful, dangerous to public health and national security, and grossly inappropriate for younger audiences." The lawsuit claims Florida lawmakers and DeSantis specifically tailored the law to punish services whose moderation policies they disagreed with, while adding the arbitrary theme park exception to pacify Disney, Comcast NBCUniversal, and a handful of other big companies.
Good read (Score:2)
The complaint linked to in the OP is a good read, and pretty firmly establishes the many many problems with this law. I'd suggest taking a look at it.
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I'll do that - I'm always curious when companies start claiming "constitutional rights" violations. (Though I do agree that this law is the wrong way to go about things regardless.)
But wouldn't it be easier, cheaper, and faster just to open "Twitter Park" on two acres of swamp? Does the law actually define what constitutes a "theme park"?
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Does the law actually define what constitutes a "theme park"?
It does!
"Theme park or entertainment complex" means a complex comprised of at least 25 contiguous acres owned and controlled by the same business entity and which contains permanent exhibitions and a variety of recreational activities and has a minimum of 1 million visitors annually.
Section 509.013(9), Fla. Stat.
Flimsy excuse (Score:4, Insightful)
> As private businesses, Plaintiffs' members have the right to decide what content is appropriate for their sites and platforms
Saying that private business can do what they want is a pretty weak argument. Regulating business is what government does. Florida already regulates firework sales, ice cream vendors, taxi services, car dealers, dance halls, exterminators, grocery stores, pet groomers, and many many more types of businesses. Social media platforms aren't magically exempt from regulation.
I've read the complaint and don't find it compelling.
Maybe this law will fall. But pressure is building on both sides of the aisle to regulate these businesses. I don't predict they will still be allowed to operate in ten years the way they are now.
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Re: Flimsy excuse (Score:2)
They certainly can't do just any old thing that they want. But when it comes to speech and association, their rights are very strongly protected.
Re:Flimsy excuse (Score:4, Insightful)
I've read your posts about yourself, and given your utter lack of legal training I don't find your opinion compelling.
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Saying that private business can do what they want is a pretty weak argument.
Then it's a good thing that the complaint doesn't say that, huh?
Re:Flimsy excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
How about we cut the bullshit and regulate politicians instead? Make it a criminal act for them to lie - and enforce it with an independent body.
Then we wouldn't be in this position in the first place - Twitter wouldnt have to ban politicians who are spreading lies and misinformation.
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> How about we cut the bullshit and regulate politicians instead? Make it a criminal act for them to lie - and enforce it with an independent body.
Okay, I elect myself as Minister of Truth and declare that this is a lie, so off to jail with you.
What, you say you're not a politician and it doesn't count? Turns out I get to decide that, too, and by making up a haphazard rule that applies only to people who aren't you qualifies you as a politician-wannabe, which is good enough for me to count you as a poli
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Do you understand that we only live in one timeline and that there is only one past? That means that the things that happened in the past are the true events, you don't get to decide what those events are, they already happened, the past itself is the arbiter of truth, not any person.
Truth is not some fuzzy thing that people make up, truth is the fact of what happened in the past, it's immutable, you, politicians judges, media, social media, fact checkers and religious nuts do not get to decide what it is b
You know you just denied science, right? (Score:3)
> Do you understand that we only live in one timeline and that there is only one past?
See, that's actually not true [wikipedia.org] under relativity. So you're already off to a bad start by denying science here. Maybe we should just bin your whole post now with a "FALSE" label and call it a day?
But no, I get the concept you're gesturing at and that relativity doesn't actually come into play much because we're generally all within reference frames tied to Earth (save the occasional astronaut). So I'm going to address t
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So long as fact checkers arn't untouchable then the system should work and there's no comparison between fact checkers and the constant flow of bullshit that hits the media. We are far better off and have far more accuracy with fact checkers than without them, the difference is massive. Saying we shouldn't have fact checkers is like saying motor-bikers shouldn't have helmets because some of the helmets might be faulty.
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Well I won't argue that there's been a constant stream of BS in the media, I'll just argue that it's best addressed with more speech, not less, and a central authority that decides what is True is just asking for trouble.
So I would prefer that anyone get to do their own investigations and present their evidence, without mass movements to deplatform people for presenting inconvenient data. It's how I knew that the bioweapon theory of covid was bunk while realizing that the lab leak hypothesis had a lot of p
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Fine in theory but in realty I have no wish to go visit Parlor or create a Facebook account. Also these places are echo chambers that breed stupid conspiracy theories, sites like Facebook learn who the suckers are and send them the BS news but they don't send it to people who have the sense to ignore it.
We already have 'more speech' in the west, we have all we can eat speech, but that hasn't stopped the echo chambers or confirmation bias, this is why
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Which ones, exactly?
Britain, where state media (the BBC) covered for a pedophile [wikipedia.org]?
Belarus?
Shall we go through the alphabet here?
Re:Flimsy excuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Saying that private business can do what they want is a pretty weak argument.
Well they indicated a lot more than just that. Going through the points.
SB 7072 Violates the First Amendment
SB 7072 Violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment
SB 7072 Violates Due Process Clause of the 5th and 14th Amendments
Regulating business is what government does. Florida already regulates firework sales, ice cream vendors, taxi services, car dealers, dance halls, exterminators, grocery stores, pet groomers, and many many more types of businesses.
Absolutely and there is a way to which a state may regulate businesses in regards to social media. The argument put forward by the plaintiffs is that SB7072 does not meet the bar required to do such a thing. It is the plaintiffs' rights to have a court review if Florida's law meets such bar and is not preempted by some Federal law or power.
If you want my take, and take with grain of salt, there's not a method by which the Governor of Florida can regulate the content of an entity not established within its state. States are incredibly limited in what they can and cannot do with online businesses, if you've ever heard modernize our laws, this is kind of the point. Even the collection of Sales tax isn't a codified thing, it was only with the relaxation of nexus definition that SCOTUS determined that States could collect taxes in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc.
Now in fairness the High Court may determine otherwise in yet additional relaxation of conditions for the term nexus in the determination of what constitutes a good or service in the State. But as it stands, the court has only expanded the Dormant Commerce Clause online to the extent of sales tax only. But with the current understanding as it is, regulation of a company across state borders would be preempted by Federal powers indicated in Article I of the Constitution. A state attempting to undo that would indeed be a violation of due process.
In short, all the things that you just listed as being regulated are distinctly different from social media in that all of those things require a physical presence in the State. Online does not.
I've read the complaint and don't find it compelling.
Eh... It is what it is. The biggest thing it looks like is they're looking for an injunction for the Florida law to give them time on the Federal end.
Maybe this law will fall.
I'm pretty sure it will. I don't think anyone in the Federal government likes the idea of a State pushing around some company HQed in some other State. Additionally, the Federal government seems to be approaching the issue proactively, so I'm pretty sure the court will put an temporary injunction on the law and allow Federal lawmakers some time to get their shit together.
But pressure is building on both sides of the aisle to regulate these businesses. I don't predict they will still be allowed to operate in ten years the way they are now.
Yeah, but all of the suggestions put forward by the Federal government thus far aren't really going to change the situation we're in. DeSantis' law is just red meat for his base, there's literally no way you can make some sort of law all about what some public forum does with people campaigning and members of a court not see it as sour grapes. Deplatforming someone while they campaign is about as equal as some newspaper making the call to not run or run some sort of endorsement. Courts are usually going to be like "Well if you don't like Twitter dropping Trump, then go to Parler and leave the courts out of it." The Florida law is just too political to be taken seriously in courts. There's just nothing good faith about it. If people don't like what Facebook, Twitter, and what not are doing, then they need to vote with their wallets. And if Facebook, Twitter, and what not are a monopol
Re:Flimsy excuse (Score:5, Interesting)
The real question is why do private corporations have Constitutional Rights and should they? Corporations being equal to citizens was one of Scalia's worst mistakes. Hopefully that question alone gets it to the Supreme Court.
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Because corporations consists of people. Denying people their constitutional rights just because they happened to assemble and create a corporation leads to some really interesting consequences.
Re:Flimsy excuse (Score:4, Interesting)
People aren't being denied constitutional rights by regulating their corporations though. People form corporations in the first place to be afforded certain liability and tax protections that individuals don't get.
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People form corporations in the first place to be afforded certain liability and tax protections that individuals don't get.
There are different tax rates for corporations, that much is true. The corporation is also treated as a separate legal entity for the purposes of civil liability. But I take issue with the word "protections."
The only way that incorporating your business "protects" you is that it creates a separation between your personal financial assets and that of the business. So if the corporation were to get sued, the corporation is the one liable and a individual shareholder in the corporation will not have to forfeit
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Of course companies are regulated in several ways, but the context of the discussion is the first amendment (and the 4th and the 14th for that matter).
The whole point is that saying that companies must be forced to carry some speech or being forced to associate breaks the first amendment. The first amendment specifically enjoins the government from doing that in any way which is one of the reasons some constitutional rights are conferred to companies through the rights of the people owning said company.
Re:Flimsy excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
The individual people are not being denied anything, the corporation as an entity is being denied something.
The government consists of people and the same applies. The constitutional limits what the government as an entity can do, but does not restrict individual actions taken by a member of the government.
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The individual people are not being denied anything, the corporation as an entity is being denied something.
Individuals ARE being denied the control of their private property AND the choice with whom to associate. Why should groups of people have less individual rights than an individual?
The government consists of people and the same applies. The constitutional limits what the government as an entity can do, but does not restrict individual actions taken by a member of the government.
You are argument may sound reasonable, but it's wrong. The government consists of people, and if they now happened to own the government as private property you may have had a point in comparing it to a corporations that actually is owned by people. Individual actions taken as a member of the government is regulated the same as i
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> Individuals ARE being denied the control of their private property AND the choice with whom to associate.
Neither is being denied. The individuals still have all of their individual civil rights. Every business is regulated more than the individual already.
> Why should groups of people have less individual rights than an individual?
Because a group of people is not an individual. The "group" still maintains their rights as individuals.
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See, it's not a question of whether or not the companies have free speech or association rights, it's all about whether they are liable for user content. Just like
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Ah, but the whole point of social media/hosting companies, and the 230 protection they enjoy, is that they are neutral hosts for the property and associations of users. They can't be sued for what users post because they don't control what users post. If they do control what users post, then they must be liable for all the content they host.
Social media companies aren't neutral hosts in any sense and 230 doesn't actually confer any protections - it just makes clear who is liable for what, ie companies are liable for w hat they post and users are liable for what they post. Setting aside liabilities pertaining to state or federal laws, the only time a company may be liable for users content is if they act as the users publisher in the traditional sense..
See, it's not a question of whether or not the companies have free speech or association rights, it's all about whether they are liable for user content.
That's two separate issues. Companies have first amendment rights, which means they can choos
Theme Park (Score:2)
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It'd be better if they just stopped providing services in Florida entirely. For the rest of the country, that would be no big loss.
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So they go to all the trouble to pass this bill, and Facebook and Twitter just buy a minor roadside attraction in the swamp somewhere, and now they "operate a theme park"
And the way that law is phrased, that minor roadside attraction wouldn't even need to be in Florida.
Re: Theme Park (Score:3)
Yeah, but the investment would soon be underwater.
Expect new theme parks (Score:2)
Flip it around (Score:5, Interesting)
If this stands at all, I'd love to see a very left-wing candidate post something truly outrageous on Gab and Parler, and then force those sites to not deplatform or even suppress them. Let's see what happens when they cannot shut out AOC or Pelosi, for instance, and their content must be algorithmically unfiltered.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
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Gab and Parler already moderate content they disagree with.
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If this stands at all, I'd love to see a very left-wing candidate post something truly outrageous on Gab and Parler, and then force those sites to not deplatform or even suppress them. Let's see what happens when they cannot shut out AOC or Pelosi, for instance, and their content must be algorithmically unfiltered.
Yeah, the Right has more to win here with such legislation, which of course is why the Left opposes it. But society as a whole also stands to benefit if this improves the potential for free public discourse.
The weirdest ideas on the Right are fringe conspiracy theories that are at least plausibly true but probably false and basically impossible-to-prove. The weird ideas on the Left are mainstream but objectively false, easy to disprove; ideas like there is no difference between male and female.
If Parl
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Let's see what happens when they cannot shut out AOC or Pelosi, for instance
Ooh, please. AOC without the ability to block people from replying to her?
easy to see (Score:2)
It's pretty easy to see who contributed what to whose election campaign etc. DeSantis is nothing if not shameless. And I say that as a New Yorker who grew up with corruption. This is just beyond the pale.
Bullish on Florida Theme Parks (Score:5, Interesting)
Who wants to bet that all the social media companies will now each buy a tiny theme park in Florida?
This is what actually happened with Pandora.
Pandora purchased KXMZ, a small adult contemporary station on the main street in Rapid City — population 70,000 — in an effort to get the rate enjoyed by iHeart Radio
This is what happens when you create a set of rules for others, but a different set of rules for your own friends.
I'm just surprised they didn't carve out an exception for Parler. After all, no one will ban you faster than Parler if you express a positive opinion of President Biden.
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But can Pandora generate a million visitors a year to their 25 acre theme park?
If they can it's a going concern so absolutely why not.
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What took them so long? (Score:2)
That law is so blatantly unconstitutional, I'm surprised it took so long for the lawsuits to surface. If you can force a private company to publish whatever you want, I'm gonna sue Random House for not publishing my novel.
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That law is so blatantly unconstitutional,
No, it's definitely constitutional. States have the power to limit private companies from limiting individual speech on their premises. SCOTUS has already decided this years ago in the context of sidewalks of privately-owned shopping malls.
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And what is a "platform" that makes it different from a "publication?" If I write a letter to my local newspaper, is that newspaper a "platform" or a "publication?" Is the newspaper required to publish my letter? What if the newspaper has a website, are they required to publish all comments?
This word "platform" is just a fake concept right-wingers are tossing around. If it's a private company the government cannot require it to publish. Period. Doesn't matter whether you call it a platform. a publication, o
Can social media companies just ignore the law? (Score:2)
If the answer is they can't, then IMHO, that's the best course of action tantamount to the social media companies telling Florida to go pound sand.
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How exactly would Florida compel a social media company that has no physical presence in the state to pay a fine?
By issuing a subpoena to any bank that company uses as long as that bank has any presence in Florida.
social media companies telling Florida to go pound sand.
I guess they must agree with your politics.
Would the user agreement bypass this? (Score:2)
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arbitrary? (Score:2)
Everyone knows ... (Score:3)
Everyone knows what the Left has been doing ... outsourcing their censorship to "private companies".
Lots of you like it, because it's been working for you, but you do know it.
Well, I know what leftist activists in the 60s would have said about some town claiming that "hey, our sidewalks are owned by Sidewalk Corp, so sure, they can ban you from demonstrating here."
Just block Florida Ips for a day or two (Score:3)
Iâ(TM)m sure the fallout from Florida being blocked by Twitter/Facebook would change the peopleâ(TM)s minds. My family that lives there would not be able going cold turkey on Facebook
I thought they existed so users could decide (Score:2)
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Can you name one instance where a social media site has become the sole channel for official communications (I assume you are referring to government communication)?
Re: Would you feel the same way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you feel the same way about this case if it were "As private businesses, Plaintiffs' members have the right to decide what content is appropriate for their custom decorated wedding cakes."
Sure, so long as they were not discriminating on the basis of gender or sexual orientation, in that they would decorate and sell a cake a particular way for a pair of straight, opposite-gender customers marrying each other, but would not decorate and sell a cake the exact same way, for a pair of homosexual, same-gender customers.
So if they want to say that they don't make goth wedding cakes, or Game of Thrones-themed wedding cakes, or something, and it has nothing to do with protected characteristics of the customers, that's fine. Silly maybe, but fine.
But I get the feeling that what you want is to protect discrimination against queer people, and that's not okay.
Re: Would you feel the same way... (Score:2)
Re: Would you feel the same way... (Score:2)
Yes, private discrimination is generally prohibited at the federal level under the 13th Amendment and the commerce clause. States have some ability to regulate it as well, having plenary powers, but limited by the federal constitution, federal law, and state constitutions.
For example in the infamous cake shop case, the state of Colorado passed a law prohibiting certain types of discrimination, which apparently didn't stop the baker in question.
But there are limits as to how far we should go in limiting what
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Discriminate against protected classes of course, with political affiliation not being a federally protected class yet. If only, it would create so much hilarity and show the fundamental stupidity of trying to push non discrimination on private citizens running a non monopoly business.
Unfortunately some classes are forced more equal than others :( Injustice.
Re: Would you feel the same way... (Score:2)
You'd run into serious conflicts with the First Amendment if political affiliation is protected. And generally anti discrimination laws focus on people who have traditionally been discriminated against, who possess immutable traits, who are politically powerless. This doesn't make well into political affiliation.
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You run into serious conflicts with everything even with the existing classes, there's a giant heap of exceptions.
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Discrimination is not a scoreboard, and should not be acted against as though it is one.
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Here's a better question, why is religion more protected than a political party? Both involve sincerely-held beliefs, have great influence on the country and its people, and have a strong impact on people's beliefs and morals. There is barely any difference, and that difference goes away when you consider atheistic religions.
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The reason such rules apply to the government and not to a cake shop is because of the reach of the government vs a cake shop. Everyone is affected by what the government does, but the actions of a cake shop only affect a tiny number of people. Most people will never visit that cake shop, most people live nowhere near it, have no idea it exists, and would be more likely to buy a cake from a shop local to them. Even those who do live near the cake shop in question likely have several other cake shops to choo
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Sounds like an anti-trust issue more then anything.
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Yes, I think you're doing some nice circles around the separate but equal doctrine. Most people would condemn that sort of thing, but I guess you're a fan.
Once a company gets sufficiently large and influential, like the big social media sites have, then they have as much influence over peoples lives as government - perhaps more so.
If people trust a source of information, that's their choice to do so. Walter Cronkite was free to report that we could not win the Vietnam War, and CBS was not obligated, in some mealy-mouthed way, to also claim the opposite. This situation is even more interesting in that social media is to a substantial extent people communicating with one another.
Re: Would you feel the same way... (Score:5, Informative)
Should a baker be allowed to refuse service to a gay couple? I don't think so. But should a baker be allowed to refuse to bake an ostensibly gay-themed wedding cake? That's not the same thing. In a way, the couple was trying to force the baker to issue a statement that goes against their beliefs ("ha ha, we made them write that"), and that's not okay either. I think the baker should be allowed to "protect their brand" as it were, and refuse to bake certain cakes, based on what's being ordered rather than who is doing the ordering.
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Oh that's right. Discrimination is okay when only some people do it. Somehow I forgot that nugget of wisdom.
So just so we're clear, how do you feel about blacks? Are you okay with them? Because if that's the case I should be good to put my clan hood on again right? And we're all cool as a society?
Re: Would you feel the same way... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because if that's the case I should be good to put my clan hood on again right? And we're all cool as a society?
Yes, yes you can. There is no one stopping you from putting your hood on and walking around free as a daisy. It is only when you deliberately go after someone while wearing the mask that you run into problems.
People can be offended by you walking around with your hood on, but that's on them. They are free to criticize your choice all they want. They can't stop you from wearing the hood and showing your inner self.
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Which is what any reasonable person would do when presented with facts. We may not like the facts, but at least we then can use them to talk about the issue in a better way.
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I have to correct myself after it was pointed out that the baker actually offered to sell them a "blank" cake.
Mea culpa.
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That's incorrect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Masterpiece's owner Jack Phillips, who is a Christian, declined their cake request, informing the couple that he did not create wedding cakes for marriages of gay couples owing to his Christian religious beliefs, although the couple could purchase other baked goods in the store."
The bakery was sued again by a lawyer for refuse to make a customer cake to celebrate transgenderism.
https://apnews.com/article/us-... [apnews.com]
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Ah, so my memory failed me.
Regardless, the case aptly illustrates what happens when the protections for two types of protected groups are at odds. In this case the baker was in the right since the couple had multiple other options to acquire a cake.
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Honestly, I am a supporter of "traditional" marriage only or - better yet - government only being involved in civil unions.
That said, if the case had been the way you remembered, I would have been against the baker and for the gay couple. I don't think anyone should be forced to make or create something, but to refuse sale of an item already made due to the person being or thinking different is a non-started for me.
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SCOTUS decided [supremecourt.gov] that not all cakes are the same, and that wedding cakes for same-sex marriages celebrates a same-sex wedding. The baker specifically objected to providing cakes for gay weddings, as doing so would be an endorsement to an act that conflicted with his religious convictions.
Supposedly, if the gay couple just wanted a birthday cake, there never would have been an issue.
I'll argue for gay marriage all day long. But I get the feeling that you're okay with social media corporations manipulating publ
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> But I get the feeling that you're okay with social media corporations manipulating public discourse on a massive scale, and that's not ok either.
They can do whatever they want as long as they don't break any laws, just like any other media.
And "manipulating public discourse on a massive scale", well that is what media does and social media corporations can't hold a candle to some of the other traditional media since it's their manipulations that show up in social media posts in the end.
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There's is no "online public square".
Here's an excerpt of Justice Brett Kavanaugh opinion on the SCOTUS ruling for Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/587/17-1702/#tab-opinion-4109118 [justia.com]
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And here is part of Sotomayor's dissent:
“A common idiom describes property as a ‘bundle of sticks’—a collection of individual rights which, in certain combinations, constitute property.” Rights to exclude and to use are two of the most crucial sticks in the bundle. “State law determines . . . which sticks are in a person’s bundle,” and therefore defining property itself is a state-law exercise. As for whether there is a sufficient property interest to trigger
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Sotomayor's dissent explicitly pertains to how state regulations for public access channels confers the status of state-actor on a cable-company carrying these channels. Kavanaugh's opinion on the other hand has a section that clarifies that when the state isn't involved the issue of public space never arises.
To clarify my statement that there is no online public space, no private platform can become a public space unless they act as a stand-in for the government which means they then are a state-actor. If
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SCOTUS decided that not all cakes are the same, and that wedding cakes for same-sex marriages celebrates a same-sex wedding.
Well, actually they didn't. Instead they punted.
What they said was that at a lower level of the case, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, with whom the original complaint was filed, didn't treat him nicely enough. The Court didn't say what they should have decided, just that their process for deciding anything wasn't sufficiently respectful, and was slanted against him. They left open the possibility that a neutral decision could still have come out against him.
I'll argue for gay marriage all day long. But I get the feeling that you're okay with social media corporations manipulating public discourse on a massive scale, and that's not ok either.
Not particularly, though part of the m
Re: Would you feel the same way... (Score:5, Interesting)
it's more that I'm absolutely okay with a speech-oriented business like a social media site, a newspaper, or a book publisher saying "We will not publish speech we find offensive or otherwise objectionable, nor will we allow you to use our services to do so. Get lost."
Publishers aren't common carriers.
The social media monoliths that host the messages that hundreds of millions of people send every day are common carriers by any reasonable interpretation.
I disagree with your statement on the basis that anti-trust action or regulation is sometimes necessarily for the sake of the public interest. There was a reason Standard Oil was broken up, same as Ma Bell. We should not, we cannnot, allow the principles of free speech to be applied to these corporations as if they were just individuals. That's not what they are. They are fictional entities formed to limit liability for the persons that operate them.
The power to dictate the terms of our national discourse should not be ceded, but guarded. Vigilantly.
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The social media monoliths that host the messages that hundreds of millions of people send every day are common carriers by any reasonable interpretation.
Not in the least. The idea of a 'common carrier' originates in the transport of physical goods and passengers. Basically a common carrier is an entity that takes any paying goods or passengers, up to its capacity, for standard rates, on a standard route, or within a standard service area. It holds itself out as ready and willing to do this, and it's responsible for the safety of the goods or passengers it carries. Ferries, stagecoaches, buses, trains -- these are common carriers.
The idea was applied to t
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Facebook alone handles the messages of roughly 200 million users a day.
Want to know how to kill any chance of a populist being able to win a major election? Kick them off of social media. Even the flimsiest of pretense will do, there's nothing stopping the big tech cartel from doing so.
'just a website, bro!' Please.
The point about Standard Oil wasn't to argue for breaking up Facebook at all, because Facebook is a natural monopoly. Natural monopolies need to be be regulated and audited. We can set a threshol
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You have no trouble whatsoever saying that freedom of association should go straight out the window for some suspect categories, so clearly there's a balancing test being done between the rights of people in those categories vs. others.
So why do you balance the rights of a handful of billionaires in charge of mass communication platforms so highly against the rights of the general public? Just because the current laws say so?
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You have no trouble whatsoever saying that freedom of association should go straight out the window for some suspect categories, so clearly there's a balancing test being done between the rights of people in those categories vs. others.
Yes. Ideally, there would not be any limits on freedom of association, and if someone really wanted to be a prick about who they let into their restaurant, it wouldn't be a big deal. But our history shows in a painfully clear way that it would not be limited to the occasional crank. Instead you get tremendous amounts of discrimination nationwide that's not good for anyone.
Fortunately, this mostly seems to happen with only a few groups, and so it's practical to restrict a bit. On the other hand, most ass
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> Because there's not socially harmful discrimination going on.
Yeah, I'm not going to agree on this point. There are people codifying discrimination into law still, it's driving people I've seen towards racism, etc. And the worst is that none of it is necessary to address past harm because writing those same legal preferences to be in favor of all poor people would have essentially all the same good effects and none of the bad ones. So it's like they're trying to do things wrong.
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I think you've read the answer too broadly; I apologize for not being more specific. I meant that Facebook banning Trump, for example, is not socially harmful discrimination in the way that, say Jim Crow was.
There are people codifying discrimination into law still, it's driving people I've seen towards racism, etc.
There is still a lot of serious discrimination going on, but I think we would disagree quite seriously about what it is, what's being codified, and whether people are being driven, or are driving themselves, or were already there.
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- your cake shop is the only game in town: there is no viable competition.
- people get most of their news and form their opinions by reading what's written on cakes.
- writing on cakes increasingly becomes the major way for politicians to interact with their constituents.
Same as it has been for a long time: you can set your own terms, and you can even be successful... but if
Re: Would you feel the same way... (Score:2)
There's nothing to strike down. What would the argument that it's unconstitutional even be?
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What would the argument that it's unconstitutional even be?
Feelings.
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This could be a good faith question from someone who has done zero research on a complicated topic--so I'll bite.
Short answers 1) The law favors Florida companies over out of state companies, likely running afoul of the Commerce Clause (not supported by the link) 2) Social Media companies are engaging in First Amendment speech in a way that cell carriers are not. Neither end of a telephone conversation cares about the carrier, but Parler and Twitter each have their own vibe, which is the result of marketin
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Seems to me that this law simply forces them to act like the sort of
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Media companies have free speech rights regarding what they publish, but that is not supposed to include what their users decide to publish. And it certainly cannot include what candidates say to voters or what reporters can report.
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So if 10000 people decide they aren't going to listen to what you say they are colluding to silence you?
Is there any evidence that all of those companies actually met and decided to " use[] their power to interfere with Parler and Trump"? I think it is more likely that each of those companies decided on their own to not allow access by said individuals.
I have no idea how diplomatic immunity is even relative to this topic. I guess it is just a nice red herring you decided to toss out there.