Supreme Court Orders New Look At Social Media Laws in Texas and Florida (cbsnews.com) 75
The Supreme Court on Monday ordered lower courts to take another look at a pair of laws from Florida and Texas that imposed restrictions on how social media companies can moderate the content posted to their platforms. From a report: Justice Elena Kagan delivered the court's opinion, which tossed out lower court rulings and sent the two cases back for additional proceedings. The court said neither lower court conducted the proper analysis of the First Amendment challenges to the laws regulating major social media platforms.
"[T]he question in such a case is whether a law's unconstitutional applications are substantial compared to its constitutional ones. To make that judgment, a court must determine a law's full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other," Kagan wrote. "Neither court performed that necessary inquiry."
"[T]he question in such a case is whether a law's unconstitutional applications are substantial compared to its constitutional ones. To make that judgment, a court must determine a law's full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other," Kagan wrote. "Neither court performed that necessary inquiry."
So "a little unconstitutional" is ok? (Score:3)
Sounds like a law that's "less than 50% unconstitutional" is ok, then?
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I don't think she put a specific number on it.
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Whatever the number - the requirement to weigh the unconstitutional uses vs constitutional means that *some* amount of unconstitutionality is acceptable. We are now just bargaining for the %.
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I think it's quite clear that 0% constitutional is acceptable. Did you know that your houseplants are Interstate Commerce?
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I agree 0% is the only acceptable number, however, if we actually followed the constitution as written and intended by the Founders, there'd be riots.
Most of what the government does and how it acts are not allowable under a strict reading. Not even close.
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Re:So "a little unconstitutional" is ok? (Score:4, Insightful)
To wit, an old eastern block joke:
- Will you have sex with a guy that offers you $1000000?
- I sure will.
- Ok, so how about sex with me for $100?
- No way, what am I, a prostitute?
- I think we've established that, now we are just trying to settle on the price.
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Jack Sparrow to Davy Jones: "So we've established my proposal is sound in principle, now we're just haggling over price."
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Kavanaugh already said just tip is ok.
nothing is true. everything is permitted. (Score:2, Interesting)
Man, what a bunch of whorish fuck ups.
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I think that was originally George Bernard Shaw to a British Lady (female aristocrat). But he may have copied someone earlier.
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This joke is as old as wealth and poverty:
Would you sleep with a guy who had 10,000 cows?
etc.
Re:So "a little unconstitutional" is ok? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you put a number on it, it's not a gratuity, it's a service.
But be generous.
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As long as white christians are safe.
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Real world outside internet isn't black and white. And world of interpreting complex centuries old legal structures even less so.
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You make it sound as if the principals have changed when in fact it was just the tools. The issue dates back to the beginning of time. Those who have the power can interpret the law how they see fit. The constitution is as meaningful/meaningless as the one who interprets it.
You make it sound as if the law was carefully thought out and voted on and not pieced together with scraps thrown in budgets and other pieces of legislation to sneak in under the radar with ambiguous claims "about the children" and to h
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Your objection is correct, but the constitution as written is unworkable in a large civilization with fast transport and fast communication. It was designed for a civilization where even the states couldn't quickly find out what was happening within them, and people in one village had to walk for a day to get a message to the next village.
It *SHOULD* have been amended repeatedly, but the process of amending it is so difficult that this is rarely even attempted.
(OTOH, even in the early days the government d
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If this process was so difficult, how did we get 10 amendments passed in one year (1789)? Or on average 1 amendment passed every ~6.5 years between 1913 and 1992? We haven't seen an amendment passed in 3 decades for two simple reasons:
1) Everyone is partisan as fuck and nobody wants to compromise
2) It's way easier to just invent whatever law your want through "interpretation"...y
Re:So "a little unconstitutional" is ok? (Score:5, Insightful)
No the point is pretty clearly, that the law might be able to stand if it is not found to facially violate 1A, however just because it might be facially ok, does not mean that application of it would be or could be. The court is basically say, more work needs to be done. First before we accept the law as facially ok, it should be show there at least exist specific applications which would be constitutional. The court is also in no way blocking challenges to specific applications of the law in the future should it be allowed to stand.
Kinda exactly like how SCOTUS did not determine the Firearms Control Act had to be vacated when it determined they don't apply to bump-stocks last week.
If I were the solicitor for TX of FL right now though I'd be feeling pretty pessimistic about my chances of saving this law though. I don't see the appeals court when they take another look at this finding much in the way of examples where this can be used that don't violate 1A with respect to the social media sites.
Personally I think social media badly needs reform. The right way to do it though is to dump CDA-230, and let individuals go after them when they publish things they don't like and can prove them to be counter factual. That should be enough 'incentive' for them to stop algorithmic soliciting the most incendiary content possible to drive clicks. Facebook can be cat pictures and boasting about your kids honor roll status. Meta can tell you take your controversial stuff to you own webserver if you want to post it.
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Personally I think social media badly needs reform. The right way to do it though is to dump CDA-230, and let individuals go after them when they publish things they don't like and can prove them to be counter factual. That should be enough 'incentive' for them to stop algorithmic soliciting the most incendiary content possible to drive clicks. Facebook can be cat pictures and boasting about your kids honor roll status. Meta can tell you take your controversial stuff to you own webserver if you want to post it.
I tend to agree. If the social media platforms are going to remove content that is not already illegal (e.g., child pornography), then they violate the definition of an immune-to-prosecution platform per section 230. Social media is the electronic version of the physical street corner, and scrolling past the stuff you don't like is just like walking past someone shouting stuff while standing on a street corner. People seem to have forgotten that there is no such thing as a right to not be offended, the S [wikipedia.org]
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I tend to agree. If the social media platforms are going to remove content that is not already illegal (e.g., child pornography), then they violate the definition of an immune-to-prosecution platform per section 230.
This patently incorrect.
(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1]
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Kinda exactly like how SCOTUS did not determine the Firearms Control Act had to be vacated when it determined they don't apply to bump-stocks last week.
Apply that same logic to the Chevron ruling.
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The right way to do it though is to dump CDA-230, and let individuals go after them
That would destroy the modern Internet. Not just the social media sites you hate. (It would also mean /. would delete the comment system and it's database almost instantly due to the massive legal liability it would then represent.)
The correct solution is to go after the individual posters who are the source of that "counter factual"* information. The sites themselves are only acting as a relay for it, just like the post office or other telecoms. If they are filtering it, and many are (there's no doubt o
Re:So "a little unconstitutional" is ok? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, not even just for First Amendment law. Not to mention, any of the (many, many diverse) tests that courts have used are nothing more than a fig leaf that can be stripped away at any time. "Implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" used to mean we could articulate additional individual constitutional protections- now, of course, it means "implicit in the concept of order
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That really isn't what is being said here at all. Although plenty of others seem to agree with you. The government has legitimate interests. The government also has constitutional restrictions. The government has an interest in ensuring that appropriate infrastructure is built. The government can't ban undesirable businesses like adult entertainment. But the government can impose time and place restrictions on such things. That is, they can require that certain types of business be located in commercial/industrial zones and not within residential areas. The government can't really do anything without a de minimus infringement on somebody somewhere. But the government needs to function. The analysis of laws in the US has always been around does the law maximize a legitimate government interest while minimizing impact. What other balancing could one possibly use? The government can do nothing? The government can act without restriction?
The American government has other ways of dealing with adult content, mainly by having Visa/Mastercard et al. enforce the rules rather than an organisation under government oversight. If the banks and credit networks refuse to process their payments, they go out of business without any of their pesky "rights" being openly violated.
The Supreme Court Just ruled Trump is immune (Score:2, Informative)
Seriously, I had a low opinion of them but this is just insane. The Democrats of course won't abuse this ruling but if we ever get another Republican that's it. Game over. No more democracy. No rule of law.
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What color is the sky in your world? B/c thinking any politician of any stripe won't abuse power is so naive as to not have been born on planet Earth. Of course I bet you though President Biden was of sound mind right up until the debate last week.
Sky's blue here (Score:1)
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Nope, constitution's crystal clear (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean that *was* true yesterday. Today he isn't president anymore. Any willing man who is in the White House is now Your King.
I get it, you're OK with King Trump. What about the next one? You didn't think of that because you can't. I don't mean you won't, _can't_. Trump is so Golden & God Anointed with the Divine Right of Kings that the idea of him failing is impossible. He will smite your enemies and raise up.
But that's you. What about everyone else on this forum. The ones with doubts about King Trump. Emperor Trump. I'm talking past you because you're a lost cause. Everyone else, you have to know this is bad. Real Bad.
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Trump if he is even re-elected will not be kind, he will serve for 4 more years; or less you never know Congress and the Senate might determine he actually is guilty of something that matters and have him removed from office. You they have that power, its right in the Constitution, its not being question, by even Trump. The Senate could have convicted him, they didn't!
The president is NOT a dictator he is accountable, - to the legislature!
It is not me or other conservatives advocating against accountabili
Your excuses are pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore under this ruling the president can literally order the assassination of any member of the legislature. That came up during the trial and Trump's people literally said that yes they could do that.
All any president has to do is kill anyone who would vote to impeach him before the vote happens.
I don't think you're an American I think you're a Russian. I don't think any American who is aware of this and isn't a fascist isn't genuinely horrified and terrified of this outcome.
We have a lot of low information voters who will not get this information. The right wing media, and by that I mean literally all the media, is out there telling everyone that this isn't a big deal and that everything's fine. So if you're a low information voter you're going to come away from this thinking nothing's changed when everything's changed
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I am not the communist operative here, if there is one.
Nobody is murdering anyone, and some stupid hyperbolic rhetoric by attorneys trying to play gotcha with absurdist arguments in court, don't mean anything. Of course a low-information TYT audience members like yourself don't understand that.
Nothing has change - thank God. The Executive has always enjoyed an equality-shall we say with the law. He can be placed under if/when it is politically popular to do so. Nixon resigned because otherwise he WOULD ha
Re:Your excuses are pathetic (Score:4, Interesting)
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F-U AC
If anyone stole an election it was Biden backers. Had there not been a massive disinformation campaign to convince voters the stuff on the Hunter Laptop was fake, that alone would have likely been enough to tilt the election to Trump.
We know EXACTLY who was behind it too because the signed the f'ing letter.
Let me make this plain. If you are still believe Biden won fair and square, you are ignorant or stupid.
If you are still saying Biden won, when you know better you are sack of crap.
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Person you're replying to is right- your sentence structure and inconsistent use of definite and indefinite articles really does make it smell like you're a native East Slavic speaker.
Now that doesn't preclude you from being an American, by any means. But asking for a friend- are you Russian?
Re:The Supreme Court Just ruled Trump is immune (Score:4, Informative)
"Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity, If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.
With fear for our democracy, I dissent."
-Justice Sotomayor
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If you're a gentle snowflake, then yes.
You got the legendary +2 troll (Score:3)
Congrats and good job.
Don't mod me up guys (Score:2)
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Particularly:
realized that the branch of government (an individual in the constitutional sense) charged with law enforcement can't reasonably be expected to enforce against itself and ruled according.
That's the beauty of having a constitutionally enforced election cadence on that government- that any despot can be removed and taken care of by the next.
The fact that there is a political solution does not imply mean that was the only intended solution, particularly
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Not so. The ruling said he's immune from prosecution for official acts only. You can't sue the President for signing legislation or throw him in jail for ordering troops to Akron, Ohio. He *can* be sued and prosecuted for unofficial acts like smelling your little girl's hair and propositioning her, or having sex with an intern. It's not King Biden or King Trump.
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You can't sue the President for signing legislation or throw him in jail for ordering troops to Akron, Ohio.
Red herring.
The question isn't if you can sue him for ordering troops to Akron, Ohio.
The question is if you can prosecute him after he's no longer the President if he orders those troops to massacre every fucking living thing they see, contrary to the law which restricts what the President can do with US Troops, particularly on US soil (Posse Comitatus)
What constitutions an "official act" must be determined by some power.
Who is that authority, if not the law- taking into account the Constitution.
Is
Re:Sure (Score:3)
I mean it's not like they allowed prayer on public school property. Oh wait https://www.njsba.org/news-pub... [njsba.org]
I'd wager the outcome of this verdict would be different had the teacher unrolled a prayer mat and faced Mecca.
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Re:So "a little unconstitutional" is ok? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it depends, but framing it as "unconstitutional" is a mischaracterization. The world is a messy place full of competing rights. One of the most constitutional things about the Constitution is that it doesn't shy away from that fact. Rather, it openly acknowledges that our rights, while important, are bounded (including the ones at play in this case).
Take a look at the Fifth, for instance. The government has a legitimate interest in protecting its people by disincentivizing criminal behavior, but its citizens have a legitimate interest in exercising their rights to the fullest, so the Fifth says that you have the right to life, liberty, and property...and also a right to the due process that would deprive you of them. It's a balance between anarchy and tyranny when we look at individual rights vs. collective rights, but also between the individuals themselves, in that your liberty to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.
So, no matter which individual right we're talking about, at some point it will need to be weighed against the collective rights of others.
Which is why the Constitution took that into account. Just look at how many times "except", "without", and "unless" show up in the Bill of Rights alone, or how often the framers used adjectives or adverbs to limit the exercise of a right. And lest anyone think that bounded rights were not their intent, it's no accident that the Supreme Court went nearly 200 years with barely a glance at the First Amendment when considering defamation cases. Mind you, a libel case—Zenger—gave rise to the First Amendment and "revolutionized America" according to the author of the Preamble, so if the First Amendment's freedom of speech/press had been intended as a right that trumped all other interests, those cases would've been open-and-shut.
That didn't happen.
Which is to say, I support this sort of review because the right to free speech is limited in nature and must be weighed against the rights of others, but I also don't see how it'll make a difference in this case. The governments are trying to compel speech in a manner that would impinge on the rights or others, and they're doing so, in my opinion, without a legitimate interest.
Difference between as a whole or as applied. (Score:2)
There are many laws on the books that have ways they could theoretically be applied that would be unconstitutional, but that have a large number of cases where the law is completely within constitutional bounds.
The lower courts judged the law as being unconstitutional on it's face - meaning that all applications of the law are unconstitutional. But they did so while only actually looking at how the law applies to a small group. The Supreme court wants the lower court to go back and actually look into if the
5th Circuit... (Score:2)
Looks like the 5th Circuit is trying to take over the 9th's reputation for being overturned.
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Which is why legislation to compel them to publish speech they don’t agree with infringes their right.
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Corporations do have a first amendment rights, but you might have noticed from the nutritional labels on your food, that those rights are not absolute.
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and the SCOTUS already said money is free speech and corporations tip i mean speech generously.
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I mean, yeah, but SCOTUS also just said that lawsuits about regulations should be decided by random judges instead of regulatory agency personnel, so those may go away.
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And what's most bananas about that is that people keep saying they want congress to make laws, but those agencies were created by laws passed by congress. It's exactly what they asked for.
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They don't have a cogent argument, they're just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
You can watch the argument du jour evolve from partisan media to politician mouths, and disappear as quickly.
They're arguing in bad faith. They don't believe that stupid shit they say.
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However- the implication of the OP was that one existed at the cost of teh other (corporations and people) and that is incorrect on its face.
Limiting the free speech of corporations sounds great to me. But implying that a corporate act can limit your constitutional rights on their own property has hideously bad implications if that logic is extended even an inch.
Suing a bar that 86's you for violating your civil rights sounds amusing on one level, and dangerous on another.
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First Amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It does not say companies shall make no rules...
Scenario One:
Companies (social media or otherwise) making rules about what is allowed and what is not allowed to be communicated through their platform.
First amendment violation? No. No law was created by Congress or even a governmental entity.
Scenario Two:
State government making a law that says what a company must and must not allow to be communicated through their platform.
First amendment violation: Yes. A law was created by a governmental entity*.
The states' actions are not just unconstitutional, they are obviously unconstitutional. I believe all voices are allowed to be heard, even those that differ from my own. In fact, I think that's an essential part of our democracy. But private companies are under no legal obligation to make that happen. If ultra-right conservatives feel their voices are not heard, they can create their own social media sites. That's allowed and even welcomed.
That's why Truth Social was created. As long as it, like any and all social media sites, does not incite violence or contribute to illegal activity, that company and it's contributors should fear no legal retribution.
Along these lines, Scenario Three:
State forces the display of a religious symbols in public schools.
First amendment violation: Yes. A government entity made a law forcing the respect of a religion.
* I am not a constitutional scholar. I know state's rights are not allowed to countermand the US Bill of Rights, but I do not know if a State legislature is considered an extension of the US Congress. The amendment says "Congress shall..." not "any governmental entity". That may be being pedantic, but law often seems to be determined by the minutia of language.
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After the 14th amendment most jurisprudence has held the Bill of Rights extends to the States, though it would be interesting to see how that would
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Contrary to what the right-wing would have people believe, that failing company TS regularly censors people. People were censored for saying the the 2020 election was rigged and the con artist still lost. People have been censored for making fun of the con artist and his fake tan. They've been censored for pointing out the number of child rapists Republicans and Christains seem to have.
These people were either making a joke or stating facts, yet were censored.
If these folks are so concerned about "censor
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These people were either making a joke
I don't bat for that particular team, but let's just call it what it is, and what we'd call them doing it- spreading misinformation.
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Pointing out the number of child rapists who are Republican or Christians is misinformation? Pointing out facts is wrong? Making a joke about a "rigged" election is misinformation?
Is that like "alternative" facts?
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Pointing out the number of child rapists who are Republican or Christians is misinformation?
No.
Pointing out facts is wrong?
No.
Making a joke about a "rigged" election is misinformation?
No. Unless of course, the joke comes in this form: ;)
"maybe if you drank bleach you may be okay"br>
Then, it is.
I'm sorry I tickled your little political football defensiveness center