Judge Blocks Florida Law That Would Punish Social Media Companies for Banning Politicians (go.com) 254
"A federal judge on Wednesday blocked for the time being a new Florida law that sought to punish large social media businesses like Facebook and Twitter if they remove content or ban politicians," reports the Associated Press:
U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle granted a preliminary injunction stopping the new law from being enforced. The law — which was supposed to take effect on Thursday — enabled the state to fine large social media companies $250,000 a day if they remove an account of a statewide political candidate, and $25,000 a day if they remove an account of someone running for a local office. The legislation was challenged in federal court in Tallahassee by NetChoice, a lobbying firm that represents Twitter, Facebook and other online companies, and the Computer and Communications Industry Association. Both said the new law was unconstitutional and violated federal law.
The plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that the new law violated the First Amendment if the case went to trial, the judge said.
Hinkle said the new law was aimed at only large social media businesses, not smaller ones that provide the same services, and made exceptions for Disney and their apps by including that theme park owners wouldn't be subject to the law.
The judge also argued that the law "compels providers to host speech that violates their standards."
The plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that the new law violated the First Amendment if the case went to trial, the judge said.
Hinkle said the new law was aimed at only large social media businesses, not smaller ones that provide the same services, and made exceptions for Disney and their apps by including that theme park owners wouldn't be subject to the law.
The judge also argued that the law "compels providers to host speech that violates their standards."
Performative legislation at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
This was an entirely predictable result [wikipedia.org].
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And the Republican party has made it very clear that if they win the mid terms they will block any and all judicial nominees. So it could easily become a 7-2 or even a 8-1 Court.
Fortunately (from a somewhat liberal perspective), as seems likely at present - if the GOP nominates Trump again in 2024, the Dems are likely to hold onto the White House.
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Maybe. But in 2015, and even going into the fall of 2016; the idea that the US would or could be so dysfunctional that someone so utterly loathsome and completely unsuited to the job as trump could ever win the presidency was seen not just as unlikely, but so totally daft and laughable as to not even be worth entertaining.
Itâ(TM)s good to keep up the hope and optimism, of course. But vigilance is equally⦠or even more⦠necessary.
Re:Performative legislation at its finest (Score:5, Insightful)
That may have been true in the past. But the thief, the rapist, and the theocrat have been reliably regressive and have voted lockstep to allow commerce and adoption rights to be taken away from from LGBT people in Colorado and Pennsylvania, and to allow Arizona to remove voting rights from black people. And those rulings set precedent for those rights to be taken away elsewhere. So I really donâ(TM)t see any place for optimism wrt/ the courts any time soon.
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Perhaps I should be more specific about *exactly* what the unanimous ruling is that you complained about.
For over 200 years, the church in Philly (hereafter CSS) had been providing foster care placement services. In those 200 years, they never once turned away a same-sex couple.
The new law laid out some requirements for foster care agencies that the city *may*, at their option impose. The mayor had the option to waive or enforce these against any agency.
One of the listed items was that the mayor could requ
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Not defined here, but in some other replies on the topic, my definition of a "nonpartisan Justice" is one who was confirmed by a majority of the Senators from both parties. Used to be the norm. Negative votes were the weird outliers, whereas now the weird outliers are the increasingly few Senators who dare to vote against the party decision on the nominee.
"Partisan Justice" is defined as any Justice who is not nonpartisan, but now I realize there should also be a category of "Hyperpartisan Justice". That wo
its a step (Score:2)
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But the big social media companies need to also be consistent in their standards
Perhaps they should be, but they don't really have to be. Bear in mind also that moderation at scale is virtually impossible; there's too much stuff, and the staff involved may lack the skills or knowledge necessary to do so. For example, what if a site doesn't happen to employ people who speak a particular language, but a lot of users do, and are up to all kinds of no-good in that language? Worse still for various regional issues that might be totally opaque to outsiders.
Ban ALL POLITICIANS (Score:3)
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Twitter has been a mixed bag for politics. In some ways it's great, people are now closer to their elected representatives than ever and can see what they think about all sorts of issues that the media would not bother getting quotes from them on. We now have a much better idea of what many of them are like, including the ones who use a team to manage their Twitter account (i.e. they are politibots and not real human beings).
On the other hand it helped Trump and many other populists come to power, and all o
Re:Ban ALL POLITICIANS (Score:5, Insightful)
'Social media' is a cancer on our entire civilization
He posts on Slashdot, a social media site that provides a discourse forum for nerds based on content published elsewhere.
Yeah, I call B.S. (Score:3, Interesting)
It can't violate the first amendment when the companies themselves are violating the first amendment whenever it suits them. Remember that companies regularly get slapped for violating their employees first amendment rights. Social media companies can't have it both ways. In this case, the first amendment guarantees the right to free speech but it does not give anyone the right to deny anyone else that right. Basically, the first amendment doesn't even apply here.
Re:Yeah, I call B.S. (Score:4, Informative)
the first amendment when the companies themselves are violating the first amendment whenever it suits them.
The first amendment does not apply to private companies. The 1st Amendment literally says "Congress shall make no law . . ."
. Remember that companies regularly get slapped for violating their employees first amendment rights.
Citation needed.
In this case, the first amendment guarantees the right to free speech but it does not give anyone the right to deny anyone else that right. Basically, the first amendment doesn't even apply here.
Again, "Congress shall make no law . . ". The 1st Amendment says the government cannot regulate speech. The government
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What first amendment rights are you talking about here. You absolutely can fire an employee for saying stuff you disagree with, there is no federal law that prohibits this (some states do try to prohibit more of that though).
The first amendment applies SOLELY to the government; federal, state, and local. Read the first amendment, the first words are: "Congress shall make no law..." The rights were later made to apply to the states as well (14th amendment, etc). There's nothing in there about employers o
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In this case, the first amendment guarantees the right to free speech but it does not give anyone the right to deny anyone else that right.
This is utter bullshit the 1st Amendment doesn't require people to be compelled to speak other people's messages. Social media companies aren't actively denying anyone their speech, they're just refusing to allow them to use their private property. Is your argument seriously that you have to let anyone post anything they want anytime you have a website or message board? That's absolutely not what the constitution requires. "Congress shall make no law..."; are they Congress? Who's modding this garbage up?
Punishment and banning is not speech (Score:2)
This judge misinterprets the constitution and the law when he claims that social media companies have their speech unfairly limited by not being allowed to ban or punish users.
Twitter is perfectly in their rights to make posts on their own platform about how much they think a politician is cringe, or how much they love the corprotacracy and that is speech, but preventing others from access to the public is not freedom of speech.
Thomas said as much in the moot supreme court case regarding Trump blocking jour
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is an expression of freedom of speech, but it's also the job of an editor. Twitter doesn't get to pretend to be a platform while doing the work of an editor.
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You seem confused about what constitutes government and what constitutes private business.
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I expect the judge is better informed than you are on this matter.
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This judge misinterprets the constitution and the law when he claims that social media companies have their speech unfairly limited by not being allowed to ban or punish users.
What part of the Constitution is the judge misinterpreting? You are aware a social media company (a private company) and can limit or ban their users based on their users' speech? The state of Florida is expressly forbidden to arbitrarily limit free speech by the 1st and 14th Amendments
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It's a complex argument that Thomas explains better than I do, but arguing against it is self defeating. If punishing people you don't like is speech, then can't the state of Florida just argue that their fines aren't limiting twitter's rights but rather their own process of "speaking" against them? Does the legislature not enjoy the same presumption of speech in their bullying of others that twitter does?
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It's a complex argument that Thomas explains better than I do, but arguing against it is self defeating.
What part of the 1st Amendment applies to the government and the government alone is "complex"?
then can't the state of Florida just argue that their fines aren't limiting twitter's rights but rather their own process of "speaking" against them?
The 1st Amendment literally says "Congress shall make no law . . ." . The 14th Amendment literally says "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States . . . "
Does the legislature not enjoy the same presumption of speech in their bullying of others that twitter does?
"Congress shall make no law . . ."
Why the Difference Between Statewide and Local? (Score:2)
Republican Minority Stuggles to Maintain Control (Score:2)
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Freedom of the press, in case you've forgotten.
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Insightful)
and vice versa [americanbar.org]:
New York Times v. Sullivan is also one of numerous examples of an important principle that the Supreme Court has followed regarding freedom of the press, namely that the press is not really entitled to special protections that are separate from or more extensive than the public generally. In ruling that L.B. Sullivan, Police Commissioner of Mongomery, Alabama, could not recover damages from the New York Times for errors in a published civil rights advertisement because there was no actual malice, the Court applied the same First Amendment standard to repel his damage claims against four individual ministers who were leaders of the civil rights movement and whose names appeared in the advertisement.
We're all the press, and the press is us. The law is what it is, not merely what you think that it is or should be.
Hey, if you want to make so that nobody will accept your "valuable commentary" out of fear of being sued, then you do you.
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Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Insightful)
Then social media will simply cease to exist unless courts themselves overturn Prodigy as a bad idea, which they're free to do.
You can help us all to appreciate what this would be like by going away from here and never coming back, since you're so fond of the idea. Slashdot is a social media site, after all: everything with user-posted content is.
The alternative is unelected technocrats like Dorsey and Zuckerberg having Grand Ayatollah-like powers to nominate politicians.
All media owners have an ability to do so. Nothing stops a newspaper editor or TV station owner from only carrying good stories about some politicians and bad ones about others, or just denying some any coverage at all, as though they don't exist, and this has long been used to influence politics.
You're just upset that people would find your favorite bigots, criminals, and trolls so uncouth as to not want to do business with them, ejecting them from the premises, so to speak. I've no doubt whatsoever that your position is based on any actual concern for democracy, civil liberties, or other lofty principles -- or that you wouldn't applaud if the tables were turned.
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Then social media will simply cease to exist
The 'do nothing' alternative will lead to corporatocracy. I would rather live in a republic without convenience of social media then in corporatocracy with social media.
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> I would rather live in a republic without convenience of social media then in corporatocracy with social media.
How about a corporatocracy without social media? That is what you are really advocating for here. "Military-Industrial Complex". "Regulatory Capture." "Machine Politics." "Railroad Barons." All of these terms existed long before social media. All of them represent the influence of large organizations.
So what you are proposing by asking for section 230 to not apply to social media is to
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Social media sites are not necessarily pleasant, but they are not the evil you seem to think they are. They have far less power than you imagine, and any amount of trivial banning of dangerous content encouraging others to commit violence is irrelevant to that. Banning sites from banning people is in itself a suppression of free speech, even if it's speech you don't like. Speech calling for violence or calling for people to perform dangerous actions is the sort of speech that the law can prohibit.
Don't bl
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A Political Civil War, left unchecked and championed to escalate, sadly has only one logical outcome. Be careful what you root for, cheerleader. You just might get it.
Exactly. Whatever negative woke opinions one might have about USA, it is guaranteed they will like whatever comes after even less. As they submit to the yoke of the local warlord they will fondly remember bitching about being oppressed by this and that back in 2021.
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You probably think the MSM is still a valued source of truth as they go down in flames for a fucking reason.
I think that they have a lot of problems but are also way better than any would-be successor who unprompted throws out the term 'MSM.' Two other points: economic success is unrelated to value as a provider of information, and many of the economic problems of the media these days appears to lie with drastic changes in the advertising market that was long relied-upon for revenue, rather than changes to their ability to provide truth.
A Political Civil War, left unchecked and championed to escalate, sadly has only one logical outcome. Be careful what you root for, cheerleader. You just might get it.
The fuck is that even supposed to mean?
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Insightful)
Hunter Biden is a politician now? If you believe in inter-generational guilt, how far back do you have to go in your ancestry to find criminals, slave owners, etc.?
Besides which, the reason there was little reporting on Hunter Biden was that there was nothing there. It was all fantasy from QAnon and similar.
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Insightful)
He's Biden's son, not his ancestor. And he seems to be getting a lot of cash from people who want to influence Biden, either when he was VP or now that he's President.
I know right. Man if only we'd voted for Trump instead. His family has nothing to do with politics and certainly didn't hold any positions of influence. /s
Anonymous posting has been disabled which means we all know you have a Slashdot account. If I wrote something so mindnumblingly stupid as you just did, I wouldn't want my name attached to it either.
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This is just more ridiculous replaying of the whole "Clintons are murderers" or Benghazi memes. Don't let utter lack of evidence get in the way of riling up a base about fake stories. Why focus on a Biden relative while ignoring the more obvious Trump relatives?
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Interesting)
Repealing 230 is the nuclear option, but it absolutely should be used against social media. The alternative is unelected technocrats like Dorsey and Zuckerberg having Grand Ayatollah-like powers to nominate politicians.
No, that's exactly what will happen if you DO repeal Section 230.
We will go back to rich arseholes owning most of the media, controlling what information you have access to. No more seeing what your local politician has to say about something, or asking them yourself, now some rich guy decides if they are allowed to broadcast their views.
S230 is the reason why social media sites don't ban politicians until they either do something really egregious on the site or incite an insurrection, and even then Facebook might let him back on one day. Give us an example of Dorsey or Zuck booting a politician for their own political reasons. It's really not an issue outside of far right talking points.
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"We will go back to rich arseholes owning most of the media, controlling what information you have access to. No more seeing what your local politician has to say about something, or asking them yourself, now some rich guy decides if they are allowed to broadcast their views."
Ahem.. we *already* have that. Since Reagan and the death of the Fairness Doctrine, some 90% of US media (AKA "mainstream media") has been consolidated into half a dozen holding companies... guess whose viewpoints you're going to be of
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This is question of values. Yes, social media is private companies. Yes, this law impedes on that private ownership. It does so to protect our fre
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As I've said in my own root-level comment: ban ALL politicians from 'social media' entirely. That's the proper solution to this problem.
Sure, but such solution is less practical than preventing any politicians from getting banned. The main roadblock is that no politician would vote for your proposed solution, so it won't ever make it into the law.
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Answer this - if Facebook fucks-up, like in a case with censoring lab-leak hypothesis, how do we hold them accountable?
You don't. Because they're not censoring people, they're at most saying that they don't want that kind of thing on their site. In exactly the same way that they could say that they don't want any porn on their site, or any posts that are pro-cat and anti-dog (because as we all know it goes mouse or small bird, then cat, then dog).
If you want to discuss something and your host tells you not to, your job is to either toe the line or go find somewhere else to talk.
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There were no political campaigns that were banned that I ever heard of. I heard banning those calling for violence, and banning of those encouraging people to not be vaccinated, but no politician was banned for free speech allowed by the constitution. The Florida law served no purpose whatsoever except as a stupid means of campaigning to those on the far right who want to destroy tech companies for leaning centrist.
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John Jorsett bleated:
You omitted to mention, just off the top of my head, 1) James Damore, the Google engineer who was fired for saying that, just maybe, there are valid reasons besides sexism to explain the lack of females in tech and that using discrimination to correct the balance would be wrong.
Incorrect.
Damore was fired for mass-emailing his tl;dr rant to thousands of other Google employees - almost none of whom had ever even heard of him before, and none of whom had opted-in to receiving what was essentially spam - in a desparate bid for attention. He got it, and, in the process, he created so much disruption in the Google workplace that he was fired for cause.
Despite hiring ambulance-chaser Harmeet Dhillon to sue Google for discrimination and unlawful termination, last year
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Damore was fired for mass-emailing his tl;dr rant to thousands of other Google employees
That's not true. It was the woke that mass emailed everyone. He just posted on a thread in a google discussion on sexism. And on your second point, YouTube banned all sorts of scientists commenting on COVID-19 for all sorts of things. Some of those things were at the time cannon (and have now been proven wrong) and some of those things were heresy at the time (and now appear to be the most likely hypothesis). Its not good or bad censorship, it is random at best. It is said that industries with heavy r
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And then there are the cases of someone being cancelled for something relatively mild he did twenty years prior as a dumb teenager. Getting rid of a rapist is part of justice. Punishment for being a dumb teenager is political correctness run amok.
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:4, Informative)
He was cancelled? But wait, ... I can see him. There's a video online. You posted it. It's almost like being "cancelled" and being kicked out of a private venue are not the same thing. Either that or I got cancelled by the bouncer last week after one too many beers.
Oh fucking woes me, the left are after me. It all makes sense now! I see your point of view. It's all a conspiracy against me being allowed to drink alcohol. I'm so glad you opened my eyes.
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Comedy was being murdered by Cancel Culture.
Are you trying to be funny or ironic? Because I love comedy. I went to a comedy show last week and I am going again tonight.
Are you using "murder" like the word "cancel" culture now, as in describing things that aren't happening anywhere other than your own little fantasy?
Come back to reality man.
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty today who cannot speak freely out of fear of being "cancelled", so let me know what the hell the difference is.
Anyone can speak freely, but no one can enjoy immunity from social disapproval for things they've said or done.
For example, suppose that sinij, who has been posting a lot here today, were to publicly proclaim that he thinks it ought to be 100% legal for him to have sex with underage sheep, it is perfectly reasonable for people to react with a wide range of responses. For example, zkiwi34 might say that he approves entirely, and that he's inviting sinij to dinner. Other people might find this repulsive that they filter his posts so that they don't even have to be reminded that he exists. Sinij's boss, who I will assume owns a sheep ranch, might fire him because he's worried as to what will happen (or maybe already has). But maybe someone else likes how truthful sinij is and how he's not willing to just keep his head down, and will offer him a job at Fox News, working with a team of sheep-fuckers.
And this is all fine. The only group that should not be able to react is the government, which should treat sinij equally with everyone else, and which should be blind to and tolerant of mere speech and voiced opinion.
I dare you to find a time in history or a place anywhere in the world where ordinary people could not turn a cold shoulder to those they found offensive, but which wasn't abhorrently oppressive.
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:4, Funny)
For example, suppose that sinij, who has been posting a lot here today, were to publicly proclaim that he thinks it ought to be 100% legal for him to have sex with underage sheep,
Out of interest, what is the appropriate age for a sheep?
Uh... asking for a friend.
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:4, Funny)
Come now -- no one could ever seriously believe that there is someone out there who is acting as a gatekeeper to keep out bad furry fanfic.
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Like who?
I see people openly booing players taking the knee, proudly being xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic... They seem to be doing okay. Most of these people who claim to be "cancelled" are not cancelled at all, as proven by the fact that you can hear what they are saying.
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His master has hated that he is still banned from Twitter etc. De Santis wants to be 'the former guy's successor so has to keep in his good books.
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Trump called Ted Cruz’s wife ugly on Twitter and Cruz is still riding Trump’s dick. I really don’t understand that.
Re: Judgicial activism (Score:3)
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:4, Insightful)
Gingrich divorced his dying wife to marry his mistress, and still called Clinton a man of low character. For some reason, people stopped ignoring Gingrich and he was back in the right's good graces. Maybe after proclaiming Trump as God's own personal choice that Gingrich didn't seem so bad?
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Insightful)
So social media is now part of The Press? Fine by me, but end 230.
Title 47 of the U.S. Code, Section 230 - Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material (read the whole thing, https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu])
The Press has the right to screen content that is offensive (either by own standards or as set by government, i.e. classified materials), and equally not get punished for doing so. It's a protection of one's rights as to decide what they may allow.
Why would ending First Amendment rights (freedom of press in all of its forms) be a GOOD thing?!
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"The press" is not just journalists, though that's what it means in current common speech. When the First Amendment granted freedom of the press, it meant the printing press, i.e, material printed and not spoken. That material could be words or images. A newspaper could, with only the most narrow exceptions, print what they wanted, and they could refuse to print what they didn't want to print, including material submitted by the public. Social media is protected by the same freedoms because it is an extensi
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Insightful)
Judge Robert Lewis Hinkle, a Clinton appointee, thinks that social media is well-within its rights to dictate to public what politicians and political opinions are acceptable.
Dictate to [the] public? You are not forced to participate in any social media... This would be like Fox News having to air a show hosted by AOC because we can't let Fox News dictate what politicians and political opinions are acceptable. Do you get it now?
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't wait until Brietbart has to carry articles by Ilhan Omar
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I can't wait until Brietbart is forced to carry any article that isn't outright fabrication.
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, they already carry plenty of content by Ilhan Omar.
The difference between "articles by" and "quotes from" is devilishly subtle, but once you understand it, it will seem as easy and obvious as your current misunderstanding.
Those of us who aren't leftist lunatics don't have any problem with nut jobs being able to express themselves. I WANT Ilhan Omar to tell everybody as loudly as possible what it believes.
Normal people like myself do not want lunatics of any political persuasion polluting and derailing interesting discussions. This doesn't mean "silencing them", but normal people understand the value of having them take their bullshit elsewhere. Also, please explain referring to Omar as "it" and "things like that" in a way that does not make you seem like a lunatic.
When someone censors speech I can only assume they know that speech to have truth to it and that's why they don't want others to hear such speech.
Please check your spam filter and see if those censored communications truly have the key to increase the size of your johnson.
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I don't understand why you are having such difficulty grasping the concept that social media is predominant communication medium in 2021.
He's not. You seem to be having difficulty understanding that *MOST* politicians do not participate in *ALL* social media. Jesus man take a look at the world around you sometime.
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No, he thinks that social media companies are protected by the First Amendment, not bound by it. Not only is that correct, but it has excellent support. For example, Justice Brett Michael Kavanaugh (the one who likes beer), a Trump appointee, wrote for the majority in the Manhattan Community Access Corp. that
when a private entity provides a forum for speech, the private entity is not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment because the private entity is not a state actor. The private entity may thus exercise editorial discretion over the speech and speakers in the forum.
So just like you have the right to choose which, if any, political signs to put up on your front yard, or to affix to your car, or even to your own person, so too can Facebook or Twitter or others dec
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:4, Interesting)
It's amazing how many communists come out of the woodwork on threads like this. I believe in private property, comrade.
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:5, Informative)
Judge Robert Lewis Hinkle, a Clinton appointee, thinks that social media is well-within its rights to dictate to public what politicians and political opinions are acceptable.
Or Judge Robert Lewis Hinkle doesn't think politicians should be granted more rights and protections than ordinary citizens.
Or Judge Robert Lewis Hinkle agrees with Republican ideas of limited government regulation and that private businesses should be free to decide who they provide their services to, and if you don't like it, go start your own social media company [slashdot.org]
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Or Judge Robert Lewis Hinkle doesn't think politicians should be granted more rights and protections than ordinary citizens.
The fact that ordinary citizens are also subjected to whims of social media censorship is also a concern, but it is not nearly the same level of democracy-breaking severity as allowing social media to filter politicians by banning ones they don't approve of.
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Minor correction: He agrees with conservative ideas of limited government regulation and private property. That's pretty much the opposite of Republican.
I don't know what happened to that party, but it happened right in front of my face. They're the parasitic new-age fa
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thinks that social media is well-within its rights to dictate to public what politicians and political opinions are acceptable
I mean you're going to get freedom of press arguments for days because that's the obvious one. But more so Florida cannot compel a company not headquartered in their state to regulations binding to those within the state. Interstate commerce is solely the Federal government, not Florida. If Florida actually had a problem with social media, it's up to Florida to bring such up on the floor of Congress. Florida believes that it doesn't need the Federal government. Florida believes it is above the Federal
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Judge Robert Lewis Hinkle, a Clinton appointee, thinks that social media is well-within its rights to dictate to public what politicians and political opinions are acceptable.
By dictate you the public, you mean a judge is telling Florida that it cannot dictate to a private company what speech a private company allows. It is called the First Amendment.
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Definition of statism
: concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government often extending to government ownership of industry.
Re:Judgicial activism (Score:4, Insightful)
In the sense that you mean, I agree that you are.
You're the one apparently calling for the state to punish information services for operating in ways that you don't line. That's state action, is it not?
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I can't tell you what to say, but I can certainly tell you that you can't say it in my kitchen...
It's not as simple as you think.
Depends on what you do in your kitchen. If you're hosting classes open to the public there, things may get more complicated - especially if you are charging for the class.
If 'you' are a corporation or other organization, and not an individual, then things definitely get complicated.
The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who us
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Marsh is barely good law. It almost never applies. The case you ought to be looking at is Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck [justia.com] which points out just how limited Marsh is.
In short, people are still trying to figure out exactly what the state governments can do.
The First Amendment has been fully incorporated against the states. In particular see Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925), De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937), and Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609 (1984). You should look these things up before trying to talk about them.
Probably, in this case, especially given the presence of the 9th Amendment in the Bill of Rights, the law should have gone before the public and be subject to public vote before it became Florida law
That's the stupidest thing I've hear
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Social media is private property no matter what you want to believe. No different than a mall asking you to leave for causing a disturbance.
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Internet is not a dump truck argument again? Social media isn't your private kitchen, it is open communication platform that in 2021 is as essential as telephone or telegraph in previous centuries.
Social media companies are publicly funded? No. They are declared utilities? No. They are private companies and they are not open communication platforms.
Imagine per-breakup Bell banning specific politicians from making calls. It is like that.
No it is not.
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It is *not* a public utility.
Yes it is. If telephone was considered a public utility in 20th century, then so should be a social media in 21st.
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Because they exert great control over a number of politicians in Florida and just didn't want to deal with it. Comcast (which owns Universal Studios Florida) was also exempted.
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I never understood why Disney (and Comcast/Universal Studios) was exempted. Can someone explain? They aren't a social media company, are they?
Lobbyists and/or special interests and/or "politician's piggy bank."
Take your pick.
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The so-called social media standards are anything but standard. And even then they are unequally applied. The social media giants have no standards, just a current narrative that fits their executive's views and offer them a greater chance at profit.
This is 100% correct and exactly why they waited so long to give Trump the boot, profits before standards.
That said, it's unfortunately their own right to lie about their standards or change them on a whim. Frankly, I think it's total bullshit. However, I also think the entire concept of modern social media is bullshit and nobody should be a party to using it.
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This is 100% correct and exactly why they waited so long to give Trump the boot, profits before standards.
That said, it's unfortunately their own right to lie about their standards or change them on a whim. Frankly, I think it's total bullshit. However, I also think the entire concept of modern social media is bullshit and nobody should be a party to using it.
Umm... Federal laws mandate platform access for sitting Presidents, with exception of the sitting President pushing for a revolution against the very Constitution which grants them protections. Trump did what he did, and that forced the "out" clause of the Federal laws protecting his platform access.
If the platforms had their way, they'd have kicked him off their platform the moment he was elected in 2016... but they didn't, because they couldn't, because of the federal laws guaranteeing platform access
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Umm... Federal laws mandate platform access for sitting Presidents, with exception of the sitting President pushing for a revolution against the very Constitution which grants them protections.
Please tell us which law you think this is, or where you heard it, or what you're on and where you bought it.
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We could also ask when Trump called for a revolution, but that would just be cruel...
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When he told his followers to attack Congress.
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You are more pro Trump than Mitch McConnell: https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
And more charitable than reality permits: https://www.nytimes.com/video/... [nytimes.com]
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Federal laws mandate platform access for sitting Presidents, ...
[citation needed]
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Federal laws mandate platform access for sitting Presidents
Cool. Please provide a citation to the law, because I absolutely don't believe you. The closest I can think of is that mobile phones can carry an emergency message in the event of disaster.
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Federal laws mandate platform access for sitting Presidents, with exception of the sitting President pushing for a revolution against the very Constitution which grants them protections.
LOL! Where did you get this idea? Perhaps you aren't from the US?
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However, I also think the entire concept of modern social media is bullshit and nobody should be a party to using it.
Slashdot is a social media site in which users post to one another. If you really believe what you say, you won't ever post here again. But I doubt that will happen.
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Slashdot is a social media site in which users post to one another.
You aren't wrong which is why I explicitly use the terminology "modern social media" because in modern social media you aren't commenting on a particular topic, you're just posting your life and thoughts. Another destructive element of social media systems (topical and modern) is the unconstrained moderation systems which are terrible for one's mental health. People vote up and down and it's the intensity of that value that users judge themselves by in addition to approval seeking it causes.
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As I’ve said before that is a classic move of the stasi. Keep a list of political enemies for “reasons”.