Judge tears apart Texas social media law for violating First Amendment

Discussion in 'Current Events' started by Durandal, Dec 2, 2021.

  1. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    I'd be super careful using Wiki as a source of actual truth. The elite seem to be non partisan in their willingness to build artificial walls that they believe protect them. Twitter seems to be something of a gatekeeper. The Svengali twin Dorsey's removal doesn't seem to have changed or modified their trajectory. I never found much value in Twitter, except as an avenue around legacy media who are just as much involved in the same gatekeeping. Government supported these virtual town squares until the folks who pay their bills became concerned that folks were outcompeting them. And now, censorship seems to be what folks on the left certainly want. To a lesser extent, conservatives want (in my opinion) criminal speech to be removed. Why allow terror cells to use twitter or FB or others to plan with? Why allow pedophiles the ability to coordinate? Leftist folks would tell you that those conversations should be sacrosanct. Wonders never cease...
     
  2. HockeyDad

    HockeyDad Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I didn't use Wiki for my primary source. I used Keith Woods from youtube. See the video below. We should be terrified that these kinds of people are funding Republicans. This is how the conservative party becomes "woke". If you look at Great Britain, both labor and the tories are woke..... there is no option to vote for a politician that is not progressive. I fear that is the way America is headed. Both parties squawking about white privilege, diversity and inclusion, etc....

    A prime example of this was the Waukesha massacre. Our own Republican senator joined with our leftist senator to denounce people trying to politicize the incident. Disgraceful. No such statement was made when the left politicized the hell out of the Rittenhouse trial. It always goes one way and always in the direction of the narrative that the MSM is foisting on us. Ordinary conservative voters must be the gatekeepers to Republican politicians' power. If billionaires become the gatekeepers, we are no better than the Democrats.

     
  3. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    Fair enough. Sorry, not sure who your republican senator is. Suffice it to say that I would categorize the incident in Waukesha as domestic terrorism. I still have not seen the FBI et al taking this seriously in a public way, even though the rantings and writings of the perpetrator are all still out there on several platforms. The fact that folks like Garland aren't publicly trying to assure us the public that they are trying to root out the cause of this terror in our nation certainly is telling. The silence from the left is deafening.
     
  4. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Yes they were selectively prevented from connecting to the established network controlled by Amazon and then other services went along.
     
  5. omni

    omni Well-Known Member

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    They were prevented from using established networks that are not their own. None of these companies prevented Parler from establishing their own network.

    Should fox news be forced to air a commercial that goes against their wishes?
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2021
  6. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Yes and the denying company has an almost monopoly over such services and were perhaps pressuring other provides to deny them access, that could be an anti-trust violation and there should be a FTC/SEC investigation into it. And Paler did not have the resources to build such a network like the tens of thousands of other companies that use those servers. Amazon, Google and Facebook control that access through their corporate power, do you support that?
     
  7. Curious Always

    Curious Always Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What is the barrier to entry?

    At one point, MySpace had all the customers, and Facebook had 0. What was the barrier to entry that FB had to overcome to beat the MySpace monopoly?

    Go try and start your own electric or water company. Those are monopolies.

    Go try and start your own social media page. You can be up and running in an hour, if you really wanted to.
     
  8. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Not with the controlling owners of the networks deny you the access to do so. Why do you think Parler went away?
     
  9. Curious Always

    Curious Always Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And what is the barrier to entry to owning your own server?
     
  10. omni

    omni Well-Known Member

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    No one is stopping parler from investing into their own network.
     
  11. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Resources
     
  12. Curious Always

    Curious Always Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and don't expect successful people to support your dreams. You work hard, and build up your own empire. When you get it, you don't have to do what daddy government tells you. In my government, I'd never force a fine dine French restaurant to serve hot dogs. In your world, that's exactly the role of government.
     
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  13. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    What does that have to do with anything?
     
  14. yardmeat

    yardmeat Well-Known Member

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    Parler had plenty of resources to own servers, and any PC can be a server for a low-volume website. I know of at least one commercial website that is just run on someone's laptop. As for high-volume? If you can command high-volume traffic, you can afford better servers. When has anyone ever gone out of business for not being able to afford servers?

    "I don't have the resources" is not an excuse to use the government to control those that do have such resources. Why is it that, ever since Trump, the "right" gets more Marxist by the day?
     
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  15. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    To build a world wide network, nope as they have explained before.
     
  16. yardmeat

    yardmeat Well-Known Member

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    If you have a business case for a "world wide network," you can get servers.
     
  17. Curious Always

    Curious Always Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Lack of funds to start a business is not a barrier to entry. I can't afford to open my own restaurant. That doesn't mean any one restaurant has a monopoly.

    I've yet to see one credible argument that FB has a monopoly on social media sites. I'll give you a guide on how you can do that

    1. You'll have to demonstrate that Nextdoor, What'sApp, Twitter, Youtube, Ifunny, LinkedIn, Reddit, Snapchat, and many, many more social media sites are NOT social media sites.
    2. You need to show that owning a computer to serve as a server is illegal for everyone, except FB
    3. You'll have to demonstrate that government is colluding with FB to ensure you can't enter to the social media market.

    Have fun with your homework. Let me know when you have proof that FB is a monopoly.
     
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  18. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    "On Aug. 6, 2021, I was contacted by the New York state attorney general’s office, which, along with the Federal Trade Commission, is leading a 46-state antitrust investigation of Facebook. On June 28 a previous case was dismissed by a federal judge, who said the states failed to prove Facebook was a monopoly. The FTC filed an amended complaint on Aug. 19, which listed MeWe as one of Facebook’s few competitors left standing. In tandem, the attorneys general are seeking an appeal and requesting my perspective. Facebook has responded by denying that it’s a monopolist and calling the FTC’s lawsuit “meritless.”

    I’ve changed my mind. MeWe continues to succeed, albeit on a modest scale. Two years ago the platform had five million users and no revenue. Today it has nearly 20 million users and is breaking even with millions of dollars in revenue. Yet despite MeWe’s growth, Facebook’s troubling actions over the last two years have caused me to change my position, for six reasons....."

    The six reasons he list here
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebo...atforms-competition-mewe-big-tech-11633104247
     
  19. yardmeat

    yardmeat Well-Known Member

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    MeWe is not the only competitor. Nor is it as difficult, technologically speaking, to start a competing company as you claim. The problem is making it work with market demand, not the technological capital. That's not the barrier to entry.
     
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  20. Curious Always

    Curious Always Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm not sure how otherwise sane capitalists are wandering down this path. Being successful does not make a monopoly. This is literally 8th grade stuff.

    @Bluesguy

    Monopolies exist when you only have ONE choice. At least half of my friends live their lives never having set up a FB account. My sister has one; my brother doesn't, as an example. My husband gets along fine without FB. He had one for years, until five years ago, it became obvious that FB was becoming a cesspool echo chamber. He hasn't logged in since 2015 or so. I ONLY have my FB account for two games I play. It exists for me, to save game progress in the cloud, so I can play on multiple devices. I have other choices of where to store that data, but I already had a FB account.

    I NEED electricity. I have no choice but FPL. Monopoly.
    I NEED water. I have no choice but my local town's supply. Monopoly.

    Nobody NEEDS FB, there are dozens upon dozens of other options, including no social media. Not a monopoly. Our sons hate FB; they hang out online elsewhere, with other millennials.
     
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  21. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    It's not about success itself it's about what do you do with it.

    "the New York state attorney general’s office, which, along with the Federal Trade Commission, is leading a 46-state antitrust investigation of Facebook."

    They seem to think it matters.
     
  22. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Yea how many are left? How hard would it be to start a trucking company if SAI or another large trucking company owned all the roads and terminals and decided you couldn't use them. Hey go build your own. Parler was was working just fine, that's why they were shut down, they were going to be a major competitor. And then you find out that the other construction companies who could build you roads and also do a LOT of business with the other company suddenly told you THEY would not build roads for you.

    "the New York state attorney general’s office, which, along with the Federal Trade Commission, is leading a 46-state antitrust investigation of Facebook."
     
  23. omni

    omni Well-Known Member

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    Well, Facebook doesn't really have anything to do with Parler because they are separate entities. In addition, the lawsuit has to do with Facebook buying Instagram and Whatsapp in order to control the market through mergers. Neither facebook, amazon or any other big tech are trying to buy parler to take them off the market.

    For instance, company A wants to buy B+C+D in order to merge into one big company to become a monopoly. Amazon refusing to do business with Parler does not meet that requirement.
     
  24. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    Freedom from lawsuit for what people post on the site. It is called Section 230.

    Guilt has nothing to do with it. It is about potential lawsuits

    Why would a site have to remove something because somebody doesn't like it? It is about lawsuits. Remember?

    Now you've got it.

    [/quote]example, on a tech site, we were discussing a bug, and it turned out to be spywhere in a web client plugin, we mentioned the dns adddess, the spyware company fixed their bug, then threatened the site with a DMCA violation, so the site removed any posts with the dns address in them - did they have too, no, but pick your fights[/QUOTE]

    I would fight that one. Calling out spyware is a service to internet users. Nothing should stand in the way of it. If it is true, court cases won't matter. In the last 30 years of self employment I have been threatened with lawsuits many times. Nevertheless i have never been sued. Threats are cheap and easy. I think the web site was chicken. If they published the truth then they aren't liable for anything. They could add information on the site that the bug had been fixed. That would be good manners. But caving to a lawsuit threat when you are in the right is not the right thing to do.
     
  25. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    i agree that the Parler situation represents anti trust as clearly as anything I have seen. However I think we will have to wait for a republican administration for the FTC to actually do anything about it. Facebook's corruption is minor compared to that of federal government.
     

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