Law | Buzz Chronicles

I’ve been reading lots recently about the interaction between First Amendment law and free speech principles with respect to online services in light of the events of the last few weeks.

And I have thoughts (MY OWN). So, I’m sorry ... a thread 1/25

One of the main reasons I think users are best served by a recognition that social media services have 1st Amendment rights to curate the content on their sites is because many users want filtered content, either by topic, or by behavior, or other. 2/

So online services should have the right to do this filtering, and to give their users the tools to do so too. For more detail see our Prager U amicus brief https://t.co/73PswB9Q7Q 3/

So, I disagree with my friends (and others) who say that every online service should apply First Amendment rules, even though they cannot be required to do so. There are both practical and policy reasons why I don’t like this. 4/

Most obviously, the 1st Amendment reflects only one national legal system when this is inherently an international issue. So it’s politically messy, even if you think a 1st Amendment-based policy will be most speech-protective (though probably only non-sexual speakers). 5/

Danny Cevallos
@CevallosLaw

1] Family handcuffed at gunpoint by police sues Aurora, Colorado. Terrible images in the complaint. These cases are filed all the time. This time it's different: Colorado has a new law.

2] According to the complaint, APD relied on license plate scanner that indicated plt's license plate matched
that of a stolen vehicle. But it was a motorcycle with Montana plates, not an SUV with Colorado plates, which was what plt was driving.

3] This would be a challenge to win in Federal Court. Police "can rely on information obtained from a police computer database in order to establish probable cause." Hughes v. McWilliams, (SDNY 2009).

4] Police reliance on cpu information is "reasonable even if the information is incorrect, provided the police officer did not know or have reason to know that the information was false or unreliable." Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 15-16 (1995).

5] But it seems from the Complaint that the police knew that the vehicles didn't match and possibly that the states were wrong (and aren't motorcycle plates a different size?).

Jeff Kosseff
@jkosseff

A repeal of Section 230 likely would lead to more content moderation and fewer opportunities for user-generated content. To understand why, it's helpful to look at a dispute that Eddie Haskell had with an adult bookstore 40 years ago.

After Leave it to Beaver went off the air, Ken Osmond, the actor who played Eddie Haskell, became an LAPD officer who had a small family and led a pretty quiet life. Until the early 80s, when he found out that a chain of LA porn stores was selling a film starring John Holmes.

The cover of the film's carton said that it starred "John Holmes, who played 'Little Eddie Haskell on the Leave it to Beaver show.'" Ken Osmond was the only one who played Eddie Haskell, and he never was in porn.

The chain of porn stores sold more than 10,000 different films, and the men who ran the stores said they had not reviewed the movie's cover, nor did they know who played Eddie Haskell.

Haskell sold the bookstore chain for libel, and the key issue for the court was whether the company could be held liable for the cover of a film that it distributed, even though it was unaware of that cover and that it might be defamatory.

Pieter Friedrich
@FriedrichPieter

I was raised as a Christian fundamentalist and used to write - in full belief - in support of basing society on the laws of the Torah (first five books) of the Bible.

I was taught that the Confederacy (the pro-slavery rebels of the southern US) were the “right” side. I remember my paternal grandfather (who was later convicted as a child molester) praising me for articles arguing as much. I remember my family flying a Confederate flag.

I once wrote supremacist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and even anti-Semitic blogs, arguing a religious nationalist ideology that was patriarchal, discriminatory, and outright offensive.

I was 17. 18. Early 20s. Back then, I wanted to join the US military. I thought every opinion I regurgitated was Gospel. I missed the part about “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I once confused hatred for love.

$RETIRED MASTER CHIEF\u2693\ufe0f$

RETIRED MASTER CHIEF⚓️...
@CMCRET

$Fabiana Cecin \U0001f3f4 \U0001f339$

Fabiana Cecin 🏴 🌹...
@fabianacecin

But you see you don't actually understand how lawmaking works there's this set of procedures and dates that BLEAAAARGHHHHHvomitvomit

The next day, she voted to move the bill without the 2k. Such a fucking phoney. https://t.co/3aiwDROypo
— ProgressiveSoapbox (@theProgSoapbox) December 31, 2020

Neoliberalism is an economic genocidal ideology predicated on maintaining capitalism, and capitalism is the impoverishment, oppression and death of poor people because that's the OBJECTIVE of capitalist ideology. It's a malthusian ideology.

Neoliberals are the original Alt-Right

Capitalism has ZERO todo with "markets vs. no markets," or "central planning vs. decentralization." That's *propaganda*. That's a diversion.

Capitalism is the NAME OF THE ABSENCE of any support for poor people. In capitalism, giving ANY power to poor people is a CRIME.

Capitalism has an *exception* to the strict forbiddance of giving any economic power to the 99%, and that is the concept of "Merit."

If you act as a SLAVE (wage slave), then you can get some crumbs to *temporarily* avoid your death. While you are mechanically useful.

These fucking Neoliberals which are 99% of the Democratic Party in the US are all POSING as nice people. They are not. They are all sociopaths.

This economic fascism is so thoroughly normalized in the US that nobody has a concept of what capitalism is.

Jeff Kosseff
@jkosseff

Today's Section 230 thread examines what is probably the biggest misconception about the law (and that's saying a lot): whether there is a distinction between "publishers" and "platforms." The short answer is no. The longer answer is No, absolutely not! I explain:

The argument goes like this: websites only receive Section 230 protections if they are "neutral platforms." If they begin to moderate/block/curate user content, they become "publishers" and lose their Section 230 protections. Because 230 only applies to "neutral platforms."

Before deconstructing why this argument is incorrect, it is important to note that we don't know exactly where it has come from. It really only surfaced in the public debate 1-2 yrs ago.

But many lawyers for platforms have been making this mistake since 230 was passed, and have advised their clients to not moderate, lest they lose 230 protections. I think this terrible advice has led to a lot of the garbage we're dealing with online today.

Here's why the "publisher/platform" distinction just isn't a thing under Section 230. A main reason that Congress passed 230 was in response to a badly reasoned 1995 NY state court opinion that found that Prodigy was liable for all of its users' posts because it moderated.

Maya Forstater
@MForstater

Some WESC submissions that are worth a read....(my thread of bookmarks)

Judge Paula Grey is president of the Gender Recognition Panel

She doesn't make any recommendations, but she sets out how the process currently works

Which chimes with my analysis of the GRP User Panel and statistics https://t.co/XixEz7lNJv

She is also co-author if the Equal Treatment Bench Book and writes about how the judges are trained by Gendered Intelligence

There is the government's own response

https://t.co/bOn9XecAkz

On single sex spaces they say the law is clear that service providers are able to restrict access to spaces on the basis of biological sex where there is clear justification.

The response from @womensaid is significant.

Their members want trans survivors to get support they need but not by undermining their ability to serve women with female staff & female only services

They highlight lack of clarity

https://t.co/p7096sZcos

This was their position in 2015

They have moved on alot - they have been consulting with members since last year, and have had the courage to say what their members told them, not what Stonewall wanted to