The First Amendment was written in the 18th century with the noble and vitally important goal of ensuring robust political debate and a free press. For much of American history, First Amendment cases involving speech typically concerned political dissenters, religious outcasts, intrepid journalists and others whose ability to express their views was threatened by a powerful and sometimes overbearing state. The First Amendment was a tool that helped the underdog.
But sometime in this century the judiciary lost the plot. Judges have transmuted a constitutional provision meant to protect unpopular opinion into an all-purpose tool of legislative nullification that now mostly protects corporate interests. Nearly any law that has to do with the movement of information can be attacked in the name of the First Amendment.
Monday’s Supreme Court decision in the two NetChoice cases greatly adds to the problem. The cases concern two state laws, one in Florida and one in Texas, that limit the ability of social media platforms to remove or moderate content. (Both laws were enacted in response to the perceived censorship of political conservatives.) While the Supreme Court remanded both cases to lower courts for further factual development, the court nonetheless went out of its way to state that the millions of algorithmic decisions made every day by social media platforms are protected by the First Amendment. It did so by blithely assuming that those algorithmic decisions are equivalent to the expressive decisions made by human editors at newspapers.
Mr. Wu is a law professor at Columbia who writes often about Big Tech. He served on the National Economic Council as a special assistant to the president for competition and tech policy from 2021 to 2023.
#16
Freeze peach is the greatest weapon of the antisemite.
If Twitter had cracked down hard after Oct 7 we wouldn't be in this situation now, with antisemitism running rampant and unchecked, and Twitter a primary cause of infection. Facebook and Youtube don't allow this garbage.
#21
Mr. Borgia1150 is the Toronto ponce who gets off on pretending to be an eeeeevil American. He never learnt proper Canadian good manners, poor dear — I can only imagine how much he has disappointed his mother.
#22
Dang TW, you really know how to skewer a miscreant with the soft admonition. Were you Southern, it would be the proverbial "Bless His Heart" allusion to imbecility!
#23
Mr. Wu is a law professor at Columbia who writes often about Big Tech. He served on the National Economic Council as a special assistant to the president for competition and tech policy from 2021 to 2023.
No sympathetic Chinese influence on Biden policies, I suppose.
#24
If I have a handle on this, please help or fill in:
The mass media service runs an algorithm on the submitted content. It counts naughty words, phrases, etc. and score enough points, the content gets flagged and a censor reviews the content.
The previous is a hard analysis data vs. the algorithm; this is the human part.
The censor then conducts an interview with the poster, and can apply a series of procedures to poster - demonetize, watch training videos, which parts need altering, even deplatform. Even after the struggle session the censor could add further penalties, like adding auto-naughty points to additional posted content.
And this is where the ruling kicks in? That that portion is randomly variations in the thinking of the inquisitor can be wildly inconsistent and unforgiving, which can have a direct monetary impact on the client such as advertising revenue, as opposed to a private non-contracted site. What the ruling is saying is that both the algorithm and the censor are both under the scrutiny of federal guidelines, the algorithm is a solid piece of evidence where a human involvement is inconsistent in comparison?
*disclaimer: I've been zapped by such a thing; advertised on advertface, and when shopping insurance was directly declined by content with no explanation without contacting for inquiry based on that information. Nothing illegal, hardly, don't even need special license to peddle, but depending on who the inquisitor was, and off paper guidelines, is controversial. Mr. Wu, Columbia law professor, special assistant tech policy. is arguing that those censors are necessary, especially so since it is off the record. It isn't 'perceived'.
And yes. Thank you badanov and all others underneath the hood; hit the tip.
[DC ht AOS] A "highly unusual and potentially chilling effort" is underway to reign in the Deep State and put an end to government actors subverting the will of American voters, Republican or Democrat.
Stop it guys, you’re getting me too excited.
Conservative-backed group is creating a list of federal workers it suspects could resist Trump plans https://t.co/L65nRXbJoJ
"Seasoned political operative" Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are making a list. They better check twice. And they’re gonna find out who’s, well... really just who’s naughty.
With a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, Jones is taking a deep dive into the "backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees." First up: Department of Homeland Security. The mission, dubbed Project Sovereignty 2025, is to compile a list of 100 potential saboteurs within the Deep State, and post their names publicly to let the world know who they really are.
This might sound drastic, but nothing could be more warranted.
The Deep State has worked overtime for nearly the past decade to hamstring candidate, President, and once again candidate Donald Trump from ever getting near the levers of American power. Sometimes they fail: the Mueller report, the absurd impeachments, and weaponized indictments that have yet to pay off in the polls. Other times they succeed, like the original Russiagate hoax and the endless slew of damaging leaks from within the federal bureaucracy that hobbled Trump’s entire first term. But the point of Jones’ list is to prevent Deep State saboteurs before they even get the chance to try.
The goal of posting the 100 names, according to the AP, is to expose who might impede "a second-term Trump agenda"— and who is "ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings."
To the Democratic handmaidens in the bureaucracy, this is all deeply disturbing. The mission reportedly "stunned democracy experts and shocked the civil service community."
Good, let them be stunned. No, more importantly — let them be afraid. They will be treated no worse than they’ve treated their own enemies over the past decade, but their days of subverting the rule of law, our constitutional system, and the good nature of the American people are over. It’s well past time for them to be treated as the enemies of the nation that they’ve long shown themselves to be.
This characterization is far more apt than calling them mere opponents of Donald Trump, or simply idiots suffering from TDS. It’s about far more than just one man.
The most truthful line Trump has ever said went something like, "They’re not after me, they’re after you — I’m just in the way."
These saboteurs want to fundamentally change how the system works. They will manipulate, subvert, and ultimately dismantle any institution that would limit their power. They want the system to benefit only themselves and their preferred groups, as it increasingly does, and they want to punish everyone who stands in their way. Anyone who threatens their place within the status quo, be it Trump, RFK Jr., or even Bernie Sanders, must be annihilated. The result is no less than the destruction of the nation itself.
We know what they want. All that’s left is to find out who they are.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/03/2024 13:24 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11139 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
[TCW via Insty] WILL our world eventually realise the extent of the covid con trick to which we have been subjected over the past four years? While most UK authorities, including the mainstream media, are still maintaining silence on the disaster, the American legal system seems poised to break omerta around the issue.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and another three of the state’s top legal officials have announced a lawsuit against Pfizer alleging misleading claims related to its covid vaccine. ’Pfizer made multiple misleading statements to deceive the public about its vaccine at a time when Americans needed the truth,’ Kobach said. A similar action by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton remains pending, and several other states are becoming involved.
Pfizer says the lawsuits have no merit, and that its representations about the vaccine have been ’accurate and science-based’.
However, according to Dr Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-based Medicine at Oxford University, the charge sheet against Pfizer, with the main points outlined here, is ’devastating’.
Kobach summarised the case under four headings.
1. Pfizer marketed its vaccine as safe for pregnant women. But in February 2021, the company possessed reports for 458 pregnant women who received the gene-based jab during pregnancy. More than half reported an adverse event and more than 10 per cent a miscarriage, many within days of the vaccination. Pfizer also had information from an October 2020 study on pregnancy in rats indicating that its vaccine was probably linked to infertility, loss of litters, and stillborn offspring.
2. Pfizer consistently denied any evidence of a connection or safety signal between its covid vaccine and the heart conditions myocarditis and pericarditis. On January 18 2023 the company’s chairman and CEO Albert Bourla stated: ’We have not seen a single [safety] signal, although we have distributed billions of doses.’ This was despite the US government and military, foreign governments and others having found that the Pfizer vaccine caused both forms of heart damage.
3. Pfizer claimed that its vaccine protected against covid variants, even though data available at the time showed it was effective less than half the time.
4. Pfizer urged Americans to get vaccinated ’to protect their loved ones’, clearly indicating a claim that the jab stopped transmission of the virus, yet it later admitted that it had never studied transmission after vaccination. They're forgetting the turbo-cancer - some of us can't
#3
Any bets that those involved in the Clotshot are given a pardon/legal pass due to the National Emergency & WH Exec Declarations?
As I recall, President Trump stated it directly at the time, that being the trade-off for the manufacturers to develop vaccines in less than the usual 3-20 years. By which they would no longer be needed.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[TCW via Insty] WILL our world eventually realise the extent of the covid con trick to which we have been subjected over the past four years? While most UK authorities, including the mainstream media, are still maintaining silence on the disaster, the American legal system seems poised to break omerta around the issue.
