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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The decision, published Friday, was hailed by conservative litigation group the New Civil Liberties Alliance as a victory for free speech. But Eric Goldman, a professor, Santa Clara University School of Law, believes Biden administration foes may have scored an own-goal.
The lower court ruling [PDF], from Louisiana federal district Judge Terry A. Doughty on July 4, partially granted an injunction that broadly limited the extent to which US government agencies can deem content so potentially harmful that they urge social media sites to remove it from their services.
Judge Doughty determined that the plaintiffs – the State of Missouri, the State of Louisiana, Dr Aaron Kheriaty, Dr Martin Kulldorff, Jim Hoft, Dr Jayanta Bhattacharya, and Jill Hines – made sufficiently strong arguments that their speech was suppressed at the direction of the government that they are likely to succeed at trial.
In short: the judge partially granted their request to prohibit the government from telling social media companies how to moderate content.
The United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth'
"Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the court is only examining it in terms of plaintiffs' likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario," Judge Doughty wrote in a memorandum explaining his ruling.
"During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth.'"
[...] The Fifth Circuit, called the "most politically conservative circuit court" in the US, dialed that injunction back somewhat. The appellate ruling [PDF] affirmed part of the ruling, reversed part of it, vacated part of the injunction, modified part of the injunction.
The three-judge appeals panel said nine of the lower court's ten prohibitions were vague and overly broad at this stage of the litigation.
"Prohibitions one, two, three, four, five, and seven prohibit the officials from engaging in, essentially, any action 'for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing' content moderation," the appeals panel said. "But 'urging, encouraging, pressuring' or even 'inducing' action does not violate the Constitution unless and until such conduct crosses the line into coercion or significant encouragement."
And citing problems with prohibitions eight, nine and ten, they vacated all save for the sixth, which they modified to state that government officials or their agents can take "no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech."
Not all speech in the US is protected, so this injunction – in place while the case is being heard – does not apply to government communication to social media companies about: incitement to imminent unlawful action; harassment; credible threats; defamation; obscenity and child pornography; among other exceptions.
"The line between impermissible state intervention and ordinary government functions is really murky, and this opinion doesn't really try to clarify that," Santa Clara University’s Goldman told The Register in a phone interview.
"They simply decide some things are impermissible. Other things are okay. And that makes the rule from the case impossible to operationalize, for the government and possibly for the services. Nobody exactly knows what they're going to be required to do based on this ruling."
The line between impermissible state intervention and ordinary government functions is really murky, and this opinion doesn't really try to clarify that
[...] "The court said it is impermissible for the government to commandeer content moderation practices," he said. "But that's exactly what the Florida and Texas social media censorship laws did. They literally overrode the social media companies' editorial discretion via government edict.
"And thus, the Fifth Circuit, the same court, upheld those interventions, saying that was constitutionally permissible for the government to dictate content moderation operations. In other words, this opinion is in irreconcilable tension with the Fifth Circuit's earlier opinion on the social media censorship laws."
Also, Goldman observed that the Fifth Circuit seems to be saying that these social media companies risk becoming state actors by engaging with government officials.
For example, with regard to platform cooperation in limiting health misinformation, there's passage in the opinion that says, "In sum, we find that the White House officials, in conjunction with the Surgeon General's office, coerced and significantly encouraged the platforms to moderate content. As a result, the platforms’ actions 'must in law be deemed to be that of the State.'"
"That's a huge problem for the government," he continued. "If internet companies become state actors, then they cannot report information about their users to law enforcement unless they comply with all the laws on criminal procedure."
As an example, Goldman cited how the government requires internet services to provide data about child sexual abuse material. If those companies become state actors through government intervention, he said, then those reports become impermissible evidence because they haven't been done in compliance with legal rules that constrain the government.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday September 17 2023, @10:58AM (6 children)
Because there are low-educated people who will believe the most unintelligent things: this is how Hitler rose to power, this is how Trump remains in power. The entire world is laughing at the Republicans and its' low-educated supporters because they either haven't the sense to see him for what he is, or are all so afraid (except for a, now, more vocal few) to speak up against the nonsense that Trump keeps spouting.
Some people need to be protected from themselves because they haven't the sense to protect themselves.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 17 2023, @12:37PM (2 children)
Pretty much this:
>Some people need to be protected from themselves because they haven't the sense to protect themselves.
I would very much like an AI based consensus system wherein you feed the engine a statement like: "The COVID vaccine causes cranial sensitivity to 5G radio signals." and the engine returns with a matrix of for, against, abstain positions from the various organizations that have made any statements regarding such an idea. Results might look like:
American Medical Association - Strongly, directly against: "There is no basis in any existing research to suggest that any such association could exist."
Federal Communications Commission - Strongly, indirectly against: "All testing of 5G radio signals have shown them to be safe."
Libertarian Party of Florida - Vaguely supporting: "We have our suspicions and nothing in the testing shows that either one is safe, much less both in combination."
Office of Ron DeSantis - Evasively supporting: "There are those in our community who have concerns, and we feel those concerns should be addressed."
with links to the various articles those statements came from, demographic characterizations of the people who tend to believe and dis-believe statements from those bodies, etc.
Of course, political platform engineers have been building such tools for themselves for over a decade now. Unfortunately, this "presentation of all sides" approach does lead to the divisiveness seen in recent US politics, and if you get a majority of voters who trust their demagogues over science, you'll end up with the lunatics running the asylum (Jan 6 going the other way...)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday September 17 2023, @08:42PM (1 child)
Probably better to NOT assign names/designates; just give facts.
Those who can't think for themselves will just align with what, for example, Desantis spouts.
Without a designation, they'll have to stare at facts and decide.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 17 2023, @10:19PM
>better to NOT assign names/designates; just give facts
Whose "facts"?
My parents were science teachers starting in the early 1970s. A lot of the "facts" they were taught to teach middle and high school students have been revised, improved, and proven outright false in the past 50 years, by general consensus of the science teaching community.
The most, perhaps only, important skill people should learn by the time they are adults is: critical thinking. Make up your own mind what is right or wrong based on the available information, and when it is important seek out additional information until you have enough to make an appropriately informed decision.
Life is too short and resources are too limited for everyone to do all their own research, observation and experimentation, so the next most important skill is: recognizing who you should trust about what.
Otherwise you end up supporting some form of authoritarianism, blind trust in whatever the authority says.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/2yf8qo/baffling_nazi_school_map_claiming_all_major/ [reddit.com]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by cykros on Monday September 18 2023, @09:06AM
Agreed. There even seem to be people out there who actually believe that Trump has a huge base because people believe everything that he says, rather than the fact that it really doesn't take much for someone to want to vote for someone other than Hillary or Joe and be pretty darn enthusiastic about doing so, particularly when that candidate is the most anti-war president in decades, among another few, key core stances.
Might be worth remembering that the caricatures that end up on TV cameras aren't typically statistically representative of the whole, no matter what group you're talking about.
Beyond that, do you REALLY want the next government, or the one after that, to hold the reins you so enthusiastically are trying to grant this one?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday September 18 2023, @01:50PM (1 child)
Hitler rose to power, because he was a smooth talker and said the right things. It was too late to back out by the time some people realized they were screwed. Some of his people even tried to remove him from power via assassination plots. Though, it's entirely possible that the war would have lasted longer, if they had succeeded in killing Hitler. He being a narcissistic personality and definitely drank his own koolaid.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday September 18 2023, @08:22PM
Yup, and Trump is doing the same: say what the followers want to hear even when it is impossible.
"I'll make Mexico pay for the wall". Yeah. Right. That happened ... when? Trumps' supporters paid for it...dumb-asses.
He just lies and lies and lies and they suck it up. Just like Hitler.
Say things they want to hear and keep repeating the lie until they believe it.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---