When the bedrock, lead-off of your case is that college students not wanting to date Trump supporters reveals a predilection for infringing on people's rights, you've lost the argument in a way that veers way too close to incel-ville.
He literally CANNOT stop talking about who college kids want to date.
Oh good, I was beginning to get worried that he was ignoring the mating preferences of us non-students. Phew.
This. is. so. weird.
*citation needed
"De facto common carriers?" I guess we can just call people legal concepts and use "de facto" and like...whatever, it's cool.
Two can play this game: The author of this lengthy whine about how people don't like his views is a de facto Superfund site.
"We should protect free speech by protecting against political discrimination, EXCEPT for beliefs not worthy of respect in a democratic society, as defined by the government" is some galaxy-brain shit.
At it's core, this is just a de-religionized version of Sohrab: In order to win the war against society rejecting our ideas, we must curtail the freedoms of those of who disagree with us and have the ability to impact our lives in some way.
People will indeed say it is authoritarian, Eric. Because it is. And saying "nu uh, it's LIBERAL" isn't going to magically change that.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
If only someone had counseled people to take a deep breath and not panic over speculative fears that have not been borne out in a single election cycle.
Senate Judiciary is having a hearing today on "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis," in which senators will yell at a bunch of social media platform CEOs and likely say some very wrong things. Follow along in this thread, if you dare.
2/ Durbin kicks off by showing a video from victims of online CSE and their parents. Undeniably horrible stories, and if the hearing really focuses exclusively on platform efforts to combat CSE/CSAM, I'll be on board--platforms SHOULD be doing more.
But that's unlikely.
3/ And not for nothing, Durbin's STOP CSAM Act swings the pendulum too far, threatening end-to-end encryption and incentivizing takedowns of lawful content and campaigns of false reporting. EFF has a good explainer: eff.org/deeplinks/2023…
1/ I must respectfully take issue with this piece, for a few reasons.
First, as a normative matter, to mee it comes too close to equating the harms of CSAM with the effects of minors looking at porn. Whatever you think about the latter, the former is *inestimably* worse.
2/ Second, the "secondary effects doctrine" is a heaping MESS that gives government an end-run around the First Amendment, even for non-porn speech. Expanding it to the online world rather than physical locations would be terrible.
SED should be retired, not broadened.
3/ Third, there is no distinction between the age verification mandates being proposed now, and the ones struck down in the Great COPA Wars, practically or constitutionally.
The curtailment was in fact being forced to verify your identity before accessing disfavored content.
1/ So @MiamiSeaquarium, which tortures Orcas by keeping them in confined spaces, have filed suit because Phil published drone pictures and criticized them.
It's evident that they didn't like being criticized, and are trying to shut him up.
In case you're unfamiliar with the litigation, let me refresh your memory & explain why it's important.
2/ In April 2021, a video started circulating on social media showing a man accosting a teen taking pre-prom pictures with his boyfriend at a hotel restaurant, because the teen was wearing a dress.
Super normal stuff.
When Kathy saw the video, she tweeted about it a few times.
3/ In her first tweet, she identified the man as Sam Johnson, and noted that he worked at VisuWell, a telehealth software company from what I gather.
A couple tweets later, VisuWell announced Johnson's firing. Griffin asked if he was going to remain on the board. They said no.