Akiva Cohen Profile picture
Dec 16, 2022 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Hey, #LitigationDisasterTourists: Going to drop a little bit of content here, as a treat.

Twitter is now blocking Mastodon links - to both posts and accounts - as "harmful". Checked it myself, here's the error message that pops up. Give it a shot with any Mastodon link you want.
And yes, it's the Mastodon link. Break it and the tweet sails through just fine
There are a couple of takeaways here.

First, this is an *incredibly* stupid and self-destructive move. These next screenshots are from the @FTC's fact sheets on the Sherman Act (U.S. antitrust law). See the problem?
Blocking a competitor's content from a service that it makes publicly available ... that's just begging for FTC enforcement.

(And no, Twitter doesn't have a monopoly on social media or microblogging. But when it blocks competitors it's attempting to creat one)
Second: Twitter (well, Musk) is absolutely *terrified* about the threat posed by Mastodon. Elon wanted to buy Twitter, not Gab-light or ersatz-Parler. They appear to see Mastodon as a real threat to that.
Third, not that you needed any additional confirmation of it, but Musk's supposed "free speech absolutism" is utter bullshit; if it's speech that he likes or doesn't care about, he's fine with it and allows it on Twitter. If it's speech he dislikes or is harmed by, he doesn't
Which tells you pretty definitively how Elon feels about the racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and other content he allows on here in the name of "free speech", doesn't it.

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More from @AkivaMCohen

Jun 30, 2023
OK, time to get myself ratioed.

The SCOTUS affirmative action decision was legally wrong - poorly reasoned and legally silly. But in the long run, and if it spurs schools to use socioeconomic status and opportunity as the finger on the scales, it will be a net positive
Race is a blunt instrument, and I think we *all* agree that, for example, Willow Smith doesn't need or warrant any sort of bump on her college application. But Willow Smith is a WILD outlier and "but what about [insert rare exception]" isn't a useful policy framework
So yeah, it was perfectly reasonable for universities to use that blunt instrument.

As many of these university reaction statements are making clear, the burden will now be to find finer instruments that allow for the same intended benefit of taking into account the very real
Read 7 tweets
Jun 9, 2023
This thread from Yesh is a good example of a philosophical mistake I like to call "solutionism" - the belief that if a problem is bad enough then there must be a solution out there to resolve it, because "yeah, it sucks, it can't be solved for" is too unthinkable to bear
You see it a lot in the context of Israel/Palestine, with people convinced that the right mixture of fairy dust & button pushing can lead to a peaceful resolution that addresses all of the important and competing imperatives, it's just that nobody has found the right mixture yet
And we're seeing it with "a large portion of the population is willing to believe any prosecution of crimes by Trump is political"

Yes, that sucks. Yes, that's a potentially society-destroying problem.

No, there isn't a solution
Read 8 tweets
Jun 9, 2023
@yesh222 You don't worry about that, because it's not a solveable problem. You keep doing the right thing and hope that convictions and mounting evidence prevents more people from joining the conspiracy theorists, but that's all you can do
@yesh222 I said this 4 years ago, and it's proven true in every particular.

Read 4 tweets
May 19, 2023
That she was the one stealing the bike.

Literally nothing she did on the video is consistent with her new story. When her colleague came over and the kids said "that's his bike, he already paid for it" she didn't deny it, or look surprised by the claim.
Like ... how do you determine truth in a they-said-she-said situation? Watch human behavior. Throughout the video, the kids' tone is exactly what you'd expect for someone who believes their own story. Hers very much is not
And when her colleague comes and suggests that the kids get another bike, and they say "no, he paid for that bike, he unlocked it, it's his" there's exactly no reaction of "no, *I* paid for it" or "what the hell", which is what you'd expect if they were lying
Read 4 tweets
May 9, 2023
Hey, Twitter, and especially my #LitigationDisasterTourists, gather round. B/cwhile DM is focusing in on the court finding that selling videogame cheats is criminal copyright infringement and RICO, I'd like to tell you about something different. The CFAA, and @KathrynTewson
And don't get me wrong - that RICO stuff is big news that should be sending shockwaves through the cheat software industry. Cheatmakers often use resellers. Being found liable on a RICO violation means that every reseller could potentially be liable for 100% of the damage caused
by the cheat software.

And by 100%, of course, I mean 300%, since RICO comes with treble damages. Plus attorneys' fees. So that's a big deal.

As is the finding that it's criminal copyright infringement. Those are both new precedents in the area, and that's huge.
Read 21 tweets
Mar 8, 2023
I'm not inclined to forgive antisemitism, but this is more a learning opportunity than a defenestration opportunity. There are people who still legitimately don't understand that "Jew down" or "gyp" are slurs; it's just a phrase they've grown up around and use w/o thought
And yes, he doubled down when called out on it. That's almost always going to happen when someone who sincerely doesn't believe they're doing anything bigoted is called out for it in a public setting.

The real test will be whether he can learn (& apologize) as he gets more info
Also, HOLY FUCKING SHIT @pnj, you couldn't find an *actual* Jew to get a quote from, so you decided to go to a Christian LARPing as a Jew for missionizing purposes? What the absolute fuck? pnj.com/story/news/loc…
Read 4 tweets

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