So, Elon did it!

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I'm thinking now about the trolls from companies who compete with Fractal, who send people on this forum to lie about stuff. So Fractal rightly takes down BS posts of that nature, but a "free speech absolutist" would just say, hey, you just hire a lawyer, that's your recourse.

That's a great idea; that way everyone would end up bankrupt! Yay!

Not to be pithy, but lies have consequences.

Look at DiMarzio and Kinman. According to Kinman, DiMarzio reverse engineered some of Kinman's noise supression / cancelling tech, filed it in US patent court, and Kinman, this tiny tiny company in Australia, was quoted $50,000.00 just to begin defending themselves in court, which they could not afford.
Hmmm.... Might have to think about updating the SG Special with some Kinman P90s (if he makes some), and bin the DiMarzios that are in it....
 
The thing about free speech in America is that everybody wants to scream all day long about their ability to say whatever they want, but nobody seems to remember the built-in exceptions to free speech, like for example not "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater." If your speech results in harm to body or property in a way a reasonable person could predict, then you've broken the law. Let's also not forget about Slander (speech) or Libel (written) attempts to defamate someone's character by spreading lies about them in ways that might not physically harm a person or property but instead reputation and/or ability to generate income, which is still illegal.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. For example, if somebody posts some believable deepfake of Trump or Biden diddling a toddler and it goes viral, or other proven-false claims like for example that the 2020 election was "stolen," and those postings result in real legal consequences, will Twitter be held legally responsible for knowingly providing the microphone to those people? If so, will they be cool with being fined into Oblivion or will Elon conceed and realize that "some" censorship is a legal necessity?
You'd think yelling election fraud over and over at maximum volume in every available public forum would fall under the not yelling fire provision, it's arguably had way more impact. If that doesn't qualify, what does? And if it doesn't, then we need at least some form of moderation.
 
You'd think yelling election fraud over and over at maximum volume in every available public forum
The H.C. or the D.T. version? People have a habit of reflecting the behavior they are exposed to... Which is exactly why it's so dangerous for one group to control the narrative... It's documented when someone's been mistreated in whatever way, and they find themselves in the dominate position later, instead of showing understanding, compassion and putting forth a helping hand... They usually take the role of the one who mistreated them :( I'm getting old but what are we leaving for our children and grandchildren?
 
If you like strawberry ice cream and I don't, you should be free to express your opinion. And vice versa.

THAT is what this is about; expression of opinion, differences of opinion, facts, fact-checking, conjecture, arguments, counter-arguments, etc.

The ability for ALL those to take place, in this case, on Twitter.

If you're worried about someone's ability to control this today, it should have worried you two weeks ago. Two months ago. Two years ago. And so on.

And yet to many, it didn't. So long as "their" ability to shape the narrative and sit at, near or with "like minded" people at the proverbial controls wasn't impacted, all was good.

Now that that dynamic has presumably been changed, or could be changed suddenly shit just got real.

Global Thermonuclear War and 99% of "Social" Media share the same take away:

The only winning move is not to play.

But this all just MY opinion. You're all free and welcome to disagree and that, to me at least, is the way it ought to be. 😎
 
The thing about free speech in America is that everybody wants to scream all day long about their ability to say whatever they want, but nobody seems to remember the built-in exceptions to free speech, like for example not "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater." If your speech results in harm to body or property in a way a reasonable person could predict, then you've broken the law. Let's also not forget about Slander (speech) or Libel (written) attempts to defamate someone's character by spreading lies about them in ways that might not physically harm a person or property but instead reputation and/or ability to generate income, which is still illegal.

That's a common misunderstanding. You absolutely can yell fire in a crowded theater, even if it's a false statement. That particular example came from people misquoting a supreme court decision from 1919 (Schenck v. US) which was overturned in 1969 (Brandenburg v. Ohio).

The original case was also a mistake by the supreme court. It was made essentially to say that the 1st amendment doesn't protect speech when it's used to oppose the draft, which is patently absurd. The "fire" statement was just a metaphor used in the decision. And in addition to the precedent being overturned, it's almost never quoted correctly anyway.

Defamation cases are so hard to win when the subject was a public figure because the person complaining has to prove that the speaker knowingly made a false statement of fact.

Basically...these are terrible arguments.
 
THAT is what this is about; expression of opinion, differences of opinion, facts, fact-checking, conjecture, arguments, counter-arguments, etc.

The ability for ALL those to take place, in this case, on Twitter.
Yep.
 
That's a common misunderstanding. You absolutely can yell fire in a crowded theater, even if it's a false statement. That particular example came from people misquoting a supreme court decision from 1919 (Schenck v. US) which was overturned in 1969 (Brandenburg v. Ohio).

The original case was also a mistake by the supreme court. It was made essentially to say that the 1st amendment doesn't protect speech when it's used to oppose the draft, which is patently absurd. The "fire" statement was just a metaphor used in the decision. And in addition to the precedent being overturned, it's almost never quoted correctly anyway.

Defamation cases are so hard to win when the subject was a public figure because the person complaining has to prove that the speaker knowingly made a false statement of fact.

Basically...these are terrible arguments.

Just because these things are "tough to prove" during trail doesn't mean the arguments themselves are without merit.

If I'm a journalist for a major newspaper and I write and publish an article that says "Donald Trump Absolutely Cheated On His Taxes And Here's Proof" and I make up a bunch of lies about that, and I go to the lengths of falsifying IRS documents and publish them, and I provide false quotes from government officials that "verify" all of this stuff that I knowingly made up, I can be sued for that and I'd very likely lose, and I'd deserve to lose and face the legal repercussions.

Or another thing... what if I lie under oath? Can I just claim "free speech" there?

The point I was making was that the concept of "free speech" isn't a carte blanche pass to say or print literally anything you want without consequence, no matter what forever and ever, no take-backsies.

The broader implication of my previous post was to point out that in the case of social media, "speech" doesn't happen in a vacuum. A person has to be provided with an entire chain of instruments that enables them to cast that speech. The real question is to what degree the entity providing the platform shares in the responsibility of any such speech it knowingly permits, good or bad.

It's an important question. On one hand, ideas that dissent from authority or popularity absolutely should not be suppressed, and personally I don't believe anything should be regulated based on something as subjective as "what's in good taste or not" but I do think, for example, that if you're an entity that enables a large, organized group of people with real political pull, who use thoroughly proven-false statements to try and literally destroy a democratic society, you should absolutely be held at least partially responsible for the destruction of said democracy, especially if it can be proven you knew about the destructive actions and did nothing to impede them.
 
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The H.C. or the D.T. version? People have a habit of reflecting the behavior they are exposed to... Which is exactly why it's so dangerous for one group to control the narrative... It's documented when someone's been mistreated in whatever way, and they find themselves in the dominate position later, instead of showing understanding, compassion and putting forth a helping hand... They usually take the role of the one who mistreated them :( I'm getting old but what are we leaving for our children and grandchildren?
If you, you being ANYBODY, are constantly lying and yelling about voter fraud in 2020 election and the rest of the BS that's spewed, you belong in jail or perhaps Russia or China. Maybe Hungary!~
 
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