I mean, look, leave aside the ethics of the subscription model: This sounds like absolutely INSANE design. You have a critical feature of a safety product that must be *activated via a networked mobile device every single time you turn it on*?
I dont even really have a problem in principle with “this is an advanced safety feature you can pay to have activated or not.” But as it’s described, they’re building a bunch of complex dependencies into a feature that defaults to failing closed...
...where “failing closed” means that the expensive safety feature you relied on to protect you in the event of a collision does not function. (What if the company goes under? Is the vest just bricked?) Who would buy a product designed that way?
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I’m frankly unsure whether this whole pseudo-judicial governance structure is an actual improvement over Facebook just saying “Because we feel like it.”
Whatever rubric of rules and procedures they try to set up, moderation decisions as applied to world leaders with millions of followers are always in practice going to be sui generis, high-level judgment calls, which is probably as it should be.
And while I think it’s good and healthy to articulate a public rationale for the decision, there’s also value in reaffirming that “because we feel like it” is in fact all the rationale they ultimately need.
One reason this belief is sticky is that press (understandably) keep saying there’s “no evidence” of fraud. What there actually is, is a huge amount of terrible “evidence” of fraud. All of which is easily—but in the aggregate not briefly—debunked.
So CNN says “no evidence” and people disposed to believe say: “Aha, they won’t even address all the proofs I saw in Mike Pillow’s videos & on OAN & in Parler threads.” And if you do address some, there are a dozen other ones you didn’t, or you didn’t address every aspect, etc.
An overloaded information ecosystem is a great petri dish for motivated reasoning, because even if enough people with the relevant legal or procedural or technical expertise take on the thankless task of refuting all this stuff, no normal person actually has time to read it.
This seems pretty unfair; the IG report was clear that the serious defects with the Carter Page FISA applications (especially the later ones) were down to material omissions by the FBI. The system is not set up to enable legal reviewers to catch that. washingtonexaminer.com/news/fisa-cour…
There are definitely points where the reviewers could & should have kicked the tires harder, but the fundamental problem was their dependence on the information the case agents choose to share (or, as in this case, fail to share).
The better version of this critique is that the amicus role is more usefully filled by folks with a civil liberties background, not someone whose natural disposition is going be to side with their former DOJ colleagues.
“Owning the libs” often seems to be the only defining feature of the artist formerly known as conservatism. On its face, this should be weird: Why should so many people be so invested in what they imagine will make strangers mad? Strangers who mostly will never know or care?
It seems like a sort of fantasy version of acting out for attention. “I feel small and unimportant. But in my imagination, urban grad students are enraged that I eat meat and endanger my loved ones. When I imagine them mad, I imagine they care what I do, therefore I matter.”
Call this exhibit A. Nobody knows this oaf is unvaccinated when he walks into Target. Nobody is “shaking.” But imagining them shaking lets him imagine he’s significant. It’s all a little heart on the sleeve though, isn’t it?
The discussion around “vaccine passports” would be immensely improved if we could separate two questions: (1) Is it desirable to have a secure mechanism for authenticating vaccine status for at least some use cases, and (2) when & where is such authentication appropriate?
The answer to (1) is pretty easy: “Yes, obviously.” We already have a mechanism of sorts—those little cards everyone posts on their Instagram post-jab—it’s just not particularly secure. Anyone with a printer can make one.
Clearly (2) is a lot thornier and more contentious. I think for the most part we should give private entities latitude to determine the circumstances where verification is necessary—it’s cumbersome enough that I doubt many will do it frivolously. But it’s a separate question.
I keep seeing this being misinterpreted. The judge is evaluating a potential charge of *making terrorist threats* (like announcing you’ve planted a bomb in a public building, which is harmful & a crime whether you really have or not).
With respect to *that specific charge* the judge is being totally reasonable. Talking on a private small group chat might well be (an element of) conspiracy to commit the crime you’re talking about, but it’s not a public threat.
If you were talking about kidnapping someone (or doing some other violence) on a publicly accessible forum, then the very same conversation might indeed be a terrorist threat.