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Stolen Election Claims



I EXPLAINED TO A COURT HOW CALIFORNIA’S ‘KID’S CODE’ IS BOTH IMPOSSIBLE TO
COMPLY WITH & AN ATTACK ON OUR EXPRESSION

Free Speech


FROM THE THE-WRONG-APPROACH DEPT

Wed, Feb 22nd 2023 11:56am - Mike Masnick

Last year, Techdirt was one of only a very few sites where you could find out
information on California’s AB 2273, officially the “California Age Appropriate
Design Code” or “Kid’s code.” As with so many bills that talk about “protecting
the children,” everyone we talked to said they were afraid to speak up, because
they worried that they’d be branded as being against child safety. Indeed, I
even had some people within some larger tech companies reach out to me
suggesting it was dangerous to speak out against the bill.

But the law is ridiculous. Last August, I explained how it was literally
impossible to comply with the bill, questioned why California lawmakers were
willing to pass a law written by a British Baroness (who is also a Hollywood
filmmaker) with little to no understanding of how any of this actually works,
and highlighted how the age verification requirements would be a privacy
nightmare putting more kids at risk, rather than protecting them. Eric Goldman
also pointed out the dark irony, that while the Kid’s Code claims that it was
put in place to prevent internet companies from conducting radical experiments
on children, the bill itself is an incredibly radical experiment in trying to
reshape the internet. Of course, the bill was signed into law last fall.

In December, NetChoice, which brought the challenges to Texas and Florida’s bad
internet laws, sued to block the law. Last week, they filed for a preliminary
injunction to block the law from going into effect. Even though the law doesn’t
officially take effect until the summer of 2024, any website would need to start
doing a ton of work to get ready. With the filing, there were a series of
declarations filed from various website owners to highlight the many, many
problems this law will create for sites (especially smaller sites). Among those
declarations was the one I filed highlighting how this law is impossible to
comply with, would invade the privacy of the Techdirt community, and act as an
unconstitutional restriction on speech. But we’ll get to that.

First up, the motion for the injunction. It’s worth reading the whole thing as
it details the myriad ways in which this law is unconstitutional. It violates
the 1st Amendment by creating prior restraint in multiple ways. The law is both
extremely vague and overly broad. It regulates speech based on its content
(again violating the 1st Amendment). It also violates the Commerce Clause as a
California law that would impact those well outside of the state. Finally,
existing federal law, both COPPA and Section 230 pre-empt the law. I won’t go
through it all, but all of those are clearly laid out in the motion.

But what I appreciate most is that it opens up with a hypothetical that should
illustrate just how obviously unconstitutional the law is:

> Imagine a law that required bookstores, before offering books and services to
> the public, to assess whether those books and services could “potentially
> harm” their youngest patrons; develop plans to “mitigate or eliminate” any
> such risks; and provide those assessments to the state on demand. Under this
> law, bookstores could only carry books the state deemed “appropriate” for
> young children unless they verified the age of each patron at the door. Absent
> such age verification, employees could not ask customers about the types of
> books they preferred or whether they had enjoyed specific titles—let alone
> recommend a book based on customers’ expressed interests—without a
> “compelling” reason that doing so was in the “best interests” of children. And
> the law would require bookstores to enforce their store rules and content
> standards to the state’s satisfaction, eliminating the bookstores’ discretion
> as to how those rules should be applied. Penalties for violations could easily
> bankrupt even large bookstores. Such a scheme would plainly violate
> fundamental constitutional protections.
> 
> California has enacted just such a measure: The California Age Appropriate
> Design Code Act (AB 2273). Although billed as a “data protection” regulation
> to protect minors, AB 2273 is the most extensive attempt by any state to
> censor speech since the birth of the internet. It does this even though the
> State has conceded that an open, vibrant internet is indispensable to American
> life. AB 2273 enacts a system of prior restraint over protected speech using
> undefined, vague terms, and creates a regime of proxy censorship, forcing
> online services to restrict speech in ways the State could never do directly.
> The law violates the First Amendment and the Commerce Clause, and is preempted
> by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), 15 U.S.C. §§ 6501 et
> seq., and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230.
> Because AB 2273 forces online providers to act now to redesign services,
> irrespective of its formal effective date, it will cause imminent irreparable
> harm. The Court should enjoin the statute.

As for my own filing, it was important for me to make clear that a law like AB
2273 is a direct attack on Techdirt and its users’ expression.

> Techdirt understands that AB 2273 will require covered businesses to evaluate
> and mitigate the risk that “potentially harmful content” will reach children,
> with children defined to equally cover every age from 0 to 18 despite the
> substantial differences in developmental readiness and ability to engage in
> the world around them throughout that nearly two-decade age range. This entire
> endeavor results in the State directly interfering with my company’s and my
> expressive rights by limiting to whom and how we can communicate to others. I
> publish Techdirt with the deliberate intention to share my views (and those of
> other authors) with the public. This law will inhibit my ability to do so in
> concrete and measurable ways.
> 
> In addition to its overreaching impact, the law’s prohibitions also create
> chilling ambiguity, such as in its use of the word “harm.” In the context of
> the issues that Techdirt covers on a daily basis, there is no feasible way
> that Techdirt can determine whether any number of its articles could, in one
> way or another, expose a child to “potentially harmful” content, however the
> State defines that phrase according to the political climate of the moment.
> For example, Techdirt covers a broad array of hot-button topics, including
> reporting on combating police brutality (sometimes with accompanying images
> and videos), online child sexual abuse, bullying, digital sexual harassment,
> and law enforcement interrogations of minors—all of which could theoretically
> be deemed by the State to be “potentially harmful” to children. Moreover,
> Techdirt’s articles are known for their irreverent and snarky tone, and
> frequently use curse words in their content and taglines. It would be
> impossible to know whether this choice of language constitutes “potentially
> harmful content” given the absence of any clear definition of the term in AB
> 2273. Screening Techdirt’s forum for “potentially harmful” content—and
> requiring Techdirt to self-report the ways its content and operations could
> hypothetically “harm” children—will thus cause Techdirt to avoid publishing or
> hosting content that could even remotely invite controversy, undermining
> Techdirt’s ability to foster lively and uninhibited debate on a wide range of
> topics of its choosing. Moreover, not only would Techdirt’s prospective
> expression be chilled, but the retroactive application of AB 2273 would result
> in Techdirt needing to censor its previous expression, and to an enormous
> degree. The sheer number of posts and comments published on Techdirt makes the
> self-assessment needed to comply with the law’s ill-defined rules functionally
> impossible, requiring an enormous allocation of resources that Techdirt is
> unable to dedicate.

Also, the age verification requirements would fundamentally put the privacy of
all of our readers at risk by forcing us to collect data we do not want about
our users, and which we’ve gone to great lengths to make sure is not collected.

> Redesigning our publication to verify the ages of our readers would also
> compromise our deliberate practice to minimize how much data we collect and
> retain about our readers to both limit our obligations that would arise from
> the handling of such data as well as preserve trust with our readers and
> undermine our relationship with our readers of any age, including teenagers,
> by subjecting them to technologies that are at best, unreliable, and at worst,
> highly privacy-intrusive (such as facial recognition). Moreover, because a
> sizeable portion of Techdirt’s readership consists of casual readers who
> access the site for information and news, any requirement that forces users to
> submit extensive personal information simply to access Techdirt’s content
> risks driving away these readers and shrinking Techdirt’s audience.

I have no idea how the courts are going to treat this law. Again, it does feel
like many in the industry have decided to embrace and support this kind of
regulation. I’ve heard from too many people inside the industry who have said
not to speak up about it. But it’s such a fundamentally dangerous bill, with an
approach that we’re starting to see show up in other states, that it was too
important not to speak up.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, aadc, ab 2273, age appropriate design code, age
verification, facial scanning, free expression, kids code, privacy
Companies: netchoice

62 CommentsLeave a Comment

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   An Anti-vaxxer's Book
 * As Congress Rushes To Force Websites To Age Verify Users, Its Own Think Tank
   Warns There Are Serious Pitfalls

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COMMENTS ON “I EXPLAINED TO A COURT HOW CALIFORNIA’S ‘KID’S CODE’ IS BOTH
IMPOSSIBLE TO COMPLY WITH & AN ATTACK ON OUR EXPRESSION”

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62 Comments Collapse all replies

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This comment has been deemed funny by the community.
Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 12:09 pm




> Imagine a law that required bookstores, before offering books and services to
> the public, to assess whether those books and services could “potentially
> harm” their youngest patrons; develop plans to “mitigate or eliminate” any
> such risks; and provide those assessments to the state on demand. Under this
> law, bookstores could only carry books the state deemed “appropriate” for
> young children unless they verified the age of each patron at the door. Absent
> such age verification, employees could not ask customers about the types of
> books they preferred or whether they had enjoyed specific titles—let alone
> recommend a book based on customers’ expressed interests—without a
> “compelling” reason that doing so was in the “best interests” of children. And
> the law would require bookstores to enforce their store rules and content
> standards to the state’s satisfaction, eliminating the bookstores’ discretion
> as to how those rules should be applied. Penalties for violations could easily
> bankrupt even large bookstores. Such a scheme would plainly violate
> fundamental constitutional protections.

Great, now you’ve given Ron DeSantis an idea.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 12:20 pm




> I’ve heard from too many people inside the industry who have said not to speak
> up about it.

So what, they want Techdirt just lie down and die quietly?

Any age verification requirement will sadly mean I don’t comment (or read) here
any more. And I suspect the same will be true for the majority of Techdirt
readers and commenters.

Also, did I miss it, or was the potential destruction of the comment section not
mentioned? Or was there some way comment sections are exempt or something?

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 1:30 pm


RE:

Facial recognition is a non-starter for me: no camera on my desktop computer.
And damned if I’m going to get one simply to comment (or read) content.

“Fax us your ID” is similarly a non-starter, although infinitely more onerous
for Techdirt than just for me.

“Give us a credit card number” is laughable too: I don’t use ’em. (And honestly,
what kid worth his salt couldn’t copy down their parent’s credit card number?)

… which segues into the spoofing of every other “age verification technique”.
From photos (or if necessary, YouTube clips) of Sam Elliot, to digitally altered
PDFs of ID, and so on, and so on…

Write a bad law, get bad results.

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@b says:
February 22, 2023 at 1:38 pm


RE: RE: MIKE'S RIGHT ON DATA HANDLING RESPONSIBILITIES

Too few think in terms of the downside of sighting and storing ID documents.

You will find you need a web cam to sit an exam, attend a job interview, etc.

Hold outs will find less options. These requirements are not equitable. They are
however becoming ubiquitous. Unfortunately.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 6:04 pm


RE: RE: RE:

“You will find you need a web cam to sit an exam, attend a job interview, etc.”

Hence the need for several throw away laptops.
Alternatively one could run virtual machines, fresh build with every reboot.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 24, 2023 at 2:57 am


RE: RE: RE:2

Webcams are

 * connected via USB, the universal unsecured plug and pray protocol.
 * mostly a standard USB device class
 * so yes, these wonderful apps that can age your image, in any random
   CS/AI/data science/machine learning curriculum on this planet implementing
   this using some embedded platform that can do USB both ways, and has a video
   optimized AI accelerator embedded would be probably somewhere between a BSc
   thesis and what we here call a “practical work” class.

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HotHead says:
February 22, 2023 at 5:46 pm


RE:

> Also, did I miss it, or was the potential destruction of the comment section
> not mentioned? Or was there some way comment sections are exempt or something?

Mike didn’t address the comments section in isolation. The focus of Mike’s
argument was that Mike may have to shut down Techdirt because of the logistical
impossibility of making Techdirt as we know it compliant with the age
verification law. No site = no comments on the site. At the very least, Techdirt
would have to shut down the comments section and possibly also publish articles
less often.

Here’s an excerpt from paragraph 17 from Mike’s declaration, not included in the
article:

> If this is what AB 2273 requires, Techdirt would have to create a separate
> Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) for every individual website
> feature—like Techdirt’s comment system, comment voting, comment promotion,
> posts, newsletter subscription, and podcast, just to name a few. This
> obligation would impose an enormous logistical and resource burden on
> Techdirt’s team and would likely significantly impact Techdirt’s capacity to
> continue publishing at its current rate, as well as constrain its ability to
> launch any new editorial features.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 2:43 am


RE: RE:

Thanks for clarifying that.

It seems like it’s reasonable to say AB2273 is a direct attempt to curtail[1]
peoples speech on private property[2].
If Techdirt was physical place where people gave speeches, and then they and the
audience talked about it (roughly analogous to article + comment section), this
would be like saying “if there’s any risk children might enter you have to ID
everyone, and have plans to mitigate any risk to children”. That seems like a
pretty clear preemptive suppression of free speech to me (in this instance
“free” refers to people being able to say things on the spur of the moment, and
not have to get it approved first).

To further the analogy, why isn’t the state vetting all adults on the streets,
and have they vetted everything a politician says (I know some of those things
can’t have passed, e.g. AB2273 is harmful to children, where is their plan to
mitigate it’s harms, and their write up)?

[1] Technically it’s an attempt by the government to force websites to do the
enforcement… but it’s enforcement the site doesn’t otherwise need to or want to
engage in.

[2] I could clarify more by saying “when there is any non-zero risk that
children might someday be present” … but I mean the places where that’s NOT true
are fairly rare.

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ECA (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 12:46 pm


TAKING AWAY RESPONSIBILITY, IN THE 2000'S

Who is responsible for their OWN children?
NOT US, by the above information.
Why in hell does the gov think it has RIGHTS to regulate what our children can
read and experience.
Someone needs to make a list of the Work conditions in the EU, that BOTH parents
get Child leave, after birth. 6-12 months. To BOND with the child.

That Rich politician NOW has nothing more to do. HE dont even have to Care for
his OWN child. He has the internet to babysit. JUST as we had the TV to babysit
us.

Can I add something to this? WHAT ABOUT GAMES? Those are connected to being on
the internet, and Who thinks this would Come to BITE THEM?>?

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Anythingbutlateforsupper says:
February 22, 2023 at 12:50 pm


IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY ...

Imagine a law that required political parties, before electing candidates and
hiring staff for their campaign, to properly vet and assess whether those
candidates and staff could “potentially harm” the people of this nation; develop
plans to “mitigate or eliminate” any such risks; and provide those assessments
to the people on demand.

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HotHead says:
February 22, 2023 at 5:22 pm


RE:

Yo. Your analogy is brilliant. Then the First Amendment violations should be
obvious to most elected and appointed officials. I would hope so, anyway.
Murphy’s Law is always lying in wait.

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@b says:
February 22, 2023 at 1:33 pm


LOOKING AT YOU BIBLE.COM

Likely too difficult to imagine curating an entire bookstore Maybe California
can illustrate for us how this works by using a single, classic Book kids read
online?

Surely they must invent carve-outs to allow The Holy Bible to be hosted in plain
view.. Won’t somebody think of the violent misinformation contained therein….
Sigh.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 3:21 pm


RE:

It’s a good point. biblegateway.com tells the story of how a man’s concubine was
raped and died in the event, after which he cut up her body and sent the pieces
all over Palestine. I can see a strong argument by many that this content is as
harmful for children to read as almost anything else they may read on the
Internet. And that’s just a single example off the top of my head.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 3:33 pm


RE: RE:

Forgive the link to r/Atheism, but there’s an old image of a Bible with a
warning label on it that seems appropriate for this discussion. I should also
note that with all the book bans going on in GOP-controlled states, the Bible
has likely never been considered for such a ban despite its content⁠—at least,
not without a little push in that direction.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 4:31 pm


RE: RE: RE:

We need a push in the other direction. We need to start taking all the Bibles
and shift them to the fiction section, and mock the fuck out of anyone who tries
to stop us.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 6:37 pm


RE: RE: RE:2

I thought like you did once upon a time.

Then I grew the fuck up.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 10:33 pm


RE: RE: RE:3

You keep telling yourself that, but we all know the truth, and I stand by your
decision. We will stand by double-cocked futanari unbirthers before we even
consider anything that risks enabling cishet white scum polluting the gene pool
with the products of their rape and toxic masculinity.

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Toom1275 (profile) says:
February 23, 2023 at 12:26 am


RE: RE: RE:4

…said nobody mentally competent, ever.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 1:09 am


RE: RE: RE:5

Mental incompetence can’t stop true love.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 8:04 am


RE: RE: RE:4 SOME PEOPLE DON'T MAKE STRAWMEN. THEY ARE MADE OF STRAW

Another troll (this one blatantly vulgar!) pretending to support LGBTQ people
and racial minorities.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:
February 23, 2023 at 1:00 pm


RE: RE: RE:5

You’ll have to forgive that particular asshole. They’re doing a schtick where
they’re trying to sound like what they think a radical far-left queer person
sounds like, but end up coming off as a right-wing whackjob doing a terrible job
of both sounding like an actual radical leftist and hiding their own sexual
fantasies. It’d be sad if it weren’t so goddamn hilarious.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 27, 2023 at 10:02 pm


RE: RE: RE:6

So we blame right-wingers. Shame them into the ground. Business as usual.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 8:00 am


RE: RE: RE:2

Ah, yes, Jesus Mythers.

Also, didn’t you assholes already try that? Only to throw in your lot with
Trump, Qanon and white supremacists?

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 27, 2023 at 10:03 pm


RE: RE: RE:3

That’s impossible. Extremist atheists don’t exist, everyone knows that. It’s the
people who believe in an imaginary sky friend that are child molesters, not us.

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Mr. Blond says:
February 22, 2023 at 1:34 pm




I’m optimistic in that about 20 years ago, there was a similar bipartisan moral
panic about violent video games, which came from not only politicians, but
journalists and members of the public. Seven states and two cities passed laws
restricting the sales of violent video games to minors. And in every level up to
the Supreme Court (except for the 2 cities – Indianapolis and St. Louis, where
the law was initially upheld and then struck down by the appellate court), the
courts held fast to the First Amendment and ruled them unconstitutional, up
until the final victory in Brown v. EMA.

I have a feeling that once this gets in front of jurists rather than emotionally
or politically charged individuals, the realization sets in that the First
Amendment should not be applied any differently than it was to the last witch
hunt that came and went.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 2:18 pm


RE:

> I have a feeling that once this gets in front of jurists rather than
> emotionally or politically charged individuals,

Well that won’t be in the current USA, given the politicization of the
judiciary, in that appointment to the supreme court depend on which party is in
power at the time they are made.

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Mr. Blond says:
February 22, 2023 at 4:37 pm


RE: RE:

It might not even make it to SCOTUS. Judges in the lower court might strike it
down early, and SCOTUS might not even hear it.

I was terrified when the Court granted cert to Brown (at the time
Schwarzenegger) v. EMA. There was a consistent ruling pattern in the lower
courts. They had just ruled on US v. Stevens, which concerned a similar
violence-as-obscenity law, making me think they would draw a distinction, likely
due to speech reaching minors. We just had two new justices replace Souter and
Stevens, who tended to be mostly First-Amendment friendly. Lagan had previously
written law review articles on expanding obscenity law, and Sotomayor was a
blank slate on First Amendment jurisprudence. And their general hostility to the
Ninth Circuit all had me bracing for the worst. But when oral arguments came, it
was like watching California’s attorneys get beaten over the head with a frying
pan. And it resulted in a masterful decision that has been cited several times
in this case.

And honestly, I don’t know how California will argue around First Amendment
protection. They will have to either come up with a new category of unprotected
speech, which every court has resisted vigorously in Brown and Stevens, or they
will have to stretch an existing category like obscenity, and try to make the
argument that minors are entitled to less First Amendment protection than adults
under Ginsberg v. New York, a case that Brown specifically narrowed the scope
of.

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ECA (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 5:08 pm


RE: RE: RE: TALKED TO FRIEND

About how Cali Democrats are not being democratic.

Its getting scary out there.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 1:36 pm


IN OTHER NEWS...

Craftsman is forced to make the circular saw safe for toddlers.

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HotHead says:
February 22, 2023 at 5:28 pm


RE:

And next, it’ll be “make a shelf that won’t tip over on children”. Sure, Govy
Love. I’ll make a shelf which has to be embedded into my customer’s frickin
floor.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 3:15 pm




Ban children from the internet for their own good.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 3:48 pm


RE:

Can’t be done without age verification that cannot be faked; kids being better
at getting round the rules than adults.

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HotHead says:
February 22, 2023 at 5:18 pm


RE:

Cool. You do that with your children. Let other parents decide on their own how
to keep their children safe.

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TheCentralScrutinizer (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 3:48 pm




Well, I suppose the Internet was good while we had it.

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discussitlive (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 4:14 pm


OH, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD ALREADY!

This whole age verification thing is entirely backwards. Instead of sites having
to determine if someone is “Old Enough”, have that person’s account on a
computer/phone/tablet locked. After all, I don’t know too many 14 year olds that
can afford their own $1,000.00 Apple iPhone, mommy or daddy bought it for them.
Make part of the set up ask “User’s birth date” and if under 18, lock it so only
the parents can change it.
A browser change would be needed however, to detect an X-AGE header added to
websites and enforce an age limitation. This would be a trivial change, about 10
minutes.
To check this on your own Apache web server:
As the superuser:
a2enmod headers
edit the web server config (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/whatever your config file
is called) and add
Header set X-AGE “14”

Problem freaking solved and we don’t have to work as your free baby sitter
because you’re too lazy to raise your own children. If a site doesn’t post a age
limit that’s an issue for them to be held accountable for. Enforcing that age
limit should be the responsibility of a parent, not random strangers on the
Internet.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 4:34 pm


RE:

> This whole age verification thing is entirely backwards.

Only if the actual intent is to protect children. I suspect the real Intent is
to remove adult content from the Internet.

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discussitlive (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 9:45 pm


RE: RE:

I suspect the real Intent is to remove adult content from the Internet.

The Kama Sutra predates Christianity. I somehow doubt at this late date we can
keep “sexy” things from anyone anywhere. Heck, they can’t even keep it out of
prisons. “What worm hath devour’d thy brain entire?” is a quote I’d throw at
’em.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 3:36 am


RE: RE: RE:

I said intent, I never said they would succeed.

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PaulT (profile) says:
February 23, 2023 at 2:51 am


RE: RE:

Close. The intent is to have another tool by which to shut down speech certain
people don’t like, but carve out protections for the stuff they do. So, for
example, the Bible would be OK despite all the murder, incest and slavery. But,
anything relating to drag performers would be outlawed, even if it’s part of the
British pantomime tradition that’s been uncontroversially presented as
childrens’ entertainment for centuries. The knuckledraggers would not see the
hypocrisy, because they’ve been programmed to think that their religion is OK
but drag queens are grooming pedophiles (despite the overwhelming evidence that
the actual pedos are leaders in their own churches).

We’re always having these nonsense arguments, but as even these people aren’t
interested in realistic standards, they want the ability to force everyone to
conform to their beliefs.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 7:59 am


RE: RE: RE:

Why you do assume that merely talking about a thing and/or including it in a
body of work automatically means approving of that thing, rather than simply as
examples and illustrations of what NOT to do? More likely, you’re just so full
of hate against a particular belief system that you’ll take any opportunity to
grind your axe. And thus, you prove your bias against it and that nothing you
say relating to it can be believed or has any merit.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 8:28 am


RE: RE: RE:2

More likely, you’re just so full of hate against a particular belief system that
you’ll take any opportunity to grind your axe.

And when you say hate against a belief system let’s remember that said belief
system is based on hate. Let’s not pretend there’s love in wanting drag queens
wiped off the face of the earth for nothing more than existing.

It would be stupid as all fuck to tolerate the intolerant, despite what
horseshit about bias you want to toss around.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 8:35 am


RE: RE: RE:2 IS IT REALLY HATE, OR SOMETHING MORE NUANCED?

> Why you do assume that merely talking about a thing and/or including it in a
> body of work automatically means approving of that thing, rather than simply
> as examples and illustrations of what NOT to do?

You’re attacking a strawman and making assumptions of your own. The Bible
doesn’t merely “talk about” terrible acts.

Deuteronomy 13:5 in the New International Version regarding murder:

> That prophet or dreamer must be put to death for inciting rebellion against
> the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land
> of slavery. That prophet or dreamer tried to turn you from the way the Lord
> your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you.

1 Peter 2:18 regarding slavery:

> Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to
> those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is
> commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because
> they are conscious of God.

Isaiah 13:15-16 regarding rape:

> Whoever is captured will be thrust through; all who are caught will fall by
> the sword. Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their
> houses will be looted and their wives violated.

Genesis 20:11-14 regarding the marriage of half-siblings Abraham and Sarah:

> Abraham replied, “I said to myself, ‘There is surely no fear of God in this
> place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’ Besides, she really is my
> sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother; and she became my
> wife.

Maybe in other parts the Bible condemns these behaviors, but at least
temporarily the Bible advocates for murder, rape, and slavery and condones
incest.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:
February 23, 2023 at 1:11 pm


RE: RE: RE:2

> Why you do assume that merely talking about a thing and/or including it in a
> body of work automatically means approving of that thing, rather than simply
> as examples and illustrations of what NOT to do?

No one here said “depiction is endorsement”. What we’re saying is that book
banners are hypocrites if they ban secular books for adult content but don’t ban
the Bible for the same reason.

> More likely, you’re just so full of hate against a particular belief system
> that you’ll take any opportunity to grind your axe.

I have my issues with organized religious groups⁠—that, I can’t and won’t
deny⁠—but I grew out of the phase where I think all religious people need to be
taught The Glorious Path of Atheism. Nowadays, I don’t generally have issues
with any given religion. What I do have are issues with people who use religion
to justify morally heinous acts such as censorship.

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Darkness Of Course (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 6:34 pm


RE: OH, FOR NOT KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT SECURING DATA (OBVIOUSLY)

Capturing children’s ID is fraught with issues. Not the least of just having it
will temp many to acquire it. Acquiring their parent’s ID and CC will make the
temptation impossible to ignore. Identity theft on a medium level scale just
with Techdirt data alone. Now, extrapolate that to a website for Home Depot, or
Disney. The odds on all of the attack vectors being secured are zero.

If you don’t understand the problem, maybe take the time to read through
Masnick’s actual document.

You clearly do not get it. So, move on. Let the grown ups talk.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 5:56 am


RE: RE:

Capturing children’s ID is fraught with issues.

Yeah, the first of which is that what exactly is a ‘children’s ID?’

I’m not sure about anyone else across the pond, but my first form of usable ID
was a learner’s permit to drive at 16. And even then, it didn’t have my picture
on it until I got my license.

And the second one is the one I really don’t understand. Why are these people
advocating that children provide their personal information to absolute
strangers? That just seems really really fucking stupid.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 5:48 pm




From the Constitution itself; Art 1, Section 9, third clause:

> No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

That means that no law can be made that criminalizes the results of previously
legal behavior. It can certainly criminalize something going into the future,
but it cannot penalize someone for having done a legal thing in the past, such
as print/post verbiage that has only now been proclaimed to be “harmful” to the
population, or some segment thereof.

Now, consider that they simply can’t say “Your past articles are harmful now,
and you’re on the hot seat” because that would be a direct violation of the
Constitution. So the government is left with declaring it illegal to post
“harmful” content anymore, but anyone with a browser can see all kinds of that
content anyway, even though it’s not current. To my way of thinking, being
visible from having been posted when it was legal (in the past), how does the
government reconcile that with it being illegal to post it now? IOW, children
can still see it anyway, so how is the government going to mitigate this
imaginary “harm”? Make sites take it all down? We’ve already seen and discussed
how far that will go, I need not go any further on that score.

My money is on the courts giving this the boot rather quickly. Even a
first-quarter L1 student knows that any judge going against the Constitution is
just asking to be raked over the coals, big time, by his/her superiors. This is
a stretch that simply can’t be made, and both the Assemblypersons and the voters
putting them there should be ashamed to call themselves contributing members of
society. They are a disgrace to their parents, their teachers and professors,
and are imminently harmful to society at large.

To those who cry “Think of the children!”, I can only say, “Do you really
believe that children are the only thing worthy of consideration in this world
full of compromises?”

sumgai

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discussitlive (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 9:36 pm


RE:

As I’ve stated before, I am an IT professional, not an attorney and try to do
computer and let attorneys do law. I will say that most(? perhaps all?) laws use
the words “publish” rather than “create” or “write”, and the typical legal
fiction I see is that a web visit is considered “publishing” it again.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 3:40 am


RE:

But they can say it is illegal to let children access your content in the
future.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 8:49 am


RE: RE:

Yes, they can say it’s now illegal to let children access “harmful” stuff, but
they can’t suppress the actual expression of such. In declaring it illegal for
that access to happen, they first have to determine a method of doing so that
does not run afoul of the Constitution. IOW, putting the onus on the publisher
of “harmful” content to keep children out is effectively deputizing that
person/company to become a cop in the name of The People, and that’s just now
how things work in our society.

Who wants a “cop” that’s untrained, unequipped, given a mission that goes
against the Constitution, and also just plain does not want to do the job? I
certainly don’t.

sumgai

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 23, 2023 at 7:55 pm


RE: RE: RE:

For an example of ex post facto check out the Baldwin case with the accidental
shooting on set. The prosecutor had to lessen the charges due to this issue, and
blamed Baldwin’s lawyers for having to do so, making it out to be a crude tactic
of theirs to oppose ex post facto charging that simply is not allowed.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 6:37 pm




California legislators are like Slinkys – they aren’t good for much, but you
still get a laugh when you push one of them down the stairs.

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That One Guy (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 7:48 pm


BUT WHAT TO CALL THEM...

If only there was some group or category of people that could be tasked with
keeping kids from questionable or explicit content online, a group that would
have a personal connection to them and be directly involved in their lives, able
to impose restrictions on individual kids without having to impose those same
restrictions on everyone else too…

Ah well, no such group exists apparently so I guess it’s up to the state to pick
up the slack.

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Anonymous Coward says:
February 22, 2023 at 8:12 pm


RE: LAWMAKERS WHEN THEY THINK OF KIDS

If there’s something dange on your internet, who you gonna call? Speech busters!

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Cattress (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 8:20 pm




Hmm, how about the harm my kids my suffer because information or content has
been WITHHELD from them, (completely outside of the academic realm which should
be the first & easiest point to make about how fucked this law is)? Say they are
experiencing an emotional crisis, needing to reach out to a friend via social
media or find a support group? Or they need to administer Narcan, epinephrine or
insulin shot, do CPR or heimlich maneuver, and they have to go through the
vetting process on multiple sites before being able to access vital instructions
to save a life?
Or what about young people who want to organize an event, like March for Our
Lives, which will require at least some help from adults for transportation &
lodging. They can’t be entirely walled off from adults. What if someone
mentioned a possible act of civil disobedience, the whole thing would have to be
shut down.
As a parent it’s my job to monitor my kid online. And while I have the right to
determine what is appropriate, that right is not limitless. I don’t believe that
parents have the right to withhold age & context appropriate information about
bodies & sex from kids (the idea that legislators have, with parent approval,
crafted laws around sex ed that deliberately teach misinformation is beyond
abhorrent and a violation of academic freedom IMHO).
This law is disgusting.

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Keroberos (profile) says:
February 22, 2023 at 10:12 pm


MAKE UP YOUR MINDS PLEASE

Grandstanding politicians: “Evil social media is spying and collecting data on
everyone. We have to stop them for our children’s safety.”

Also grandstanding politicians: “We just enacted a law that will require social
media to spy and collect data on everyone. This will make our children safe.”

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PaulT (profile) says:
February 23, 2023 at 3:07 am


RE:

Looking for intellectual honesty and logical consistency is a fools’ game. They
just want to push through as much nonsense as they think will benefit them, and
they know that if they attach “for the children” at the end of it then they can
claim their opponents are anti-children instead of against the real problems
associated with their bills.

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That One Guy (profile) says:
February 23, 2023 at 10:43 am


RE: RE:

They just want to push through as much nonsense as they think will benefit them,
and they know that if they attach “for the children” at the end of it then they
can claim their opponents are anti-children instead of against the real problems
associated with their bills.

For good reason as apparently it’s worked superbly according to the article,
keeping many companies from pushing back and instead conceding at the outset.

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TheDumberHalf says:
February 23, 2023 at 11:03 am


NOT CONSIDDERING AI

One could use AI to create foreign IDs and real-time video of an adult’s face.
There isn’t an end to the fakery kids have at their disposal.

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JustMe (profile) says:
February 24, 2023 at 12:17 pm


WE SUPPORT TECHDIRT!

Keep fighting the good fight, Mike and gang. And consider another AMA Zoom
session.

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The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

 * Tomac: Eh, they're cleaning up the old galleries and posts from before
   explicit content was banned. Not unexpected, kind of surprised it's taken
   this long.
 * The real question is around the "art exception" in their policy - which they
   admit will likely get deleted as well since the system is automated.
 * Candescence: I don't think that's the case? Explicit content was only banned
   in public community imgur posts, it was perfectly acceptable for private
   hosting, the new TOS explicitly involves banning/deleting explicit content
   outright even if it's only hosted privately
 * Also deleting all images uploaded by non-registered users is gonna create a
   huge graveyard of deadlinks
 * deadspatula: Fox has multiple trials over the same facts. A court could not
   have compelled an apology. Fox was never going to conceed to apologize. It
   would much rather have fought in the appealate court to limit damages. Anyone
   ever expecting an admission of guilt while fox was in seperate litigation was
   going to be dissapointed.
 * Because Pai's alliegence was to the lobbists who rewarded his brown nosing
   with his current position. Thats why he took the job in the first place.
 * Samuel Abram: very fair
 * I blocked my first person on Discord and it was someone on the Mastodon
   discord calling @Mike Masnick a “shill for Google” and a “free speech
   extremist”.
 * Basically, he sounded exactly like one of the trolls Techdirt often gets.
 * He also blames Section 230 for the election of TFG in 2016. What? It’s a
   total non-sequitur.
 * I rarely block people on discord, but that one took the whole cake and
   claimed it was a lie (metaphorically speaking).
 * Look, if this person made fair criticisms of Mike, I wouldn't have blocked
   him. But when I tried to offer counterevidence, he was like "You can't
   convince me!" like a denier. Better to block him.
 * deadspatula: Im at this point confused as to what Musk thinks Microsoft Ads
   was doing? Like he talks like it was another tweetdeck or something,
   providing the twitter feed without the ads? But from microsoft's description
   of the platform being affected, this prevents Microsoft ad customers from
   buying ad space on twitter?
 * Mike Masnick: No, it is basically a tool for managing corporate tweets AND
   ads. So it is tweetdeck like.
 * Lol. That's funny. There are always some folks like that. There was a
   congressional staffer who sent a good friend of mine a long rambling
   complaint about how i was a big tech shill when my friend suggested he read
   an article by me. But the bizarre thing was, the article in question was one
   where I was explaining how problematic a policy proposal was because it would
   strengthen big tech
 * pyrex: oof!!
 * that's a confusing take to me! i feel like the blog is pretty monofocused on
   legal thuggery, which tends to make it pretty opposed to big tech, even if
   like superficially it sides with one tech company over another tech company
   sometimes
 * John Roddy: I'm still waiting for my check.
 * Every time I suggested that Copyright maximalist policies were less than
   ideal, I was accused of being a Google shill.
 * mildconcern: I have literally worked for George Soros and not once did I get
   read into his secret plot to take over the US government for the UN world
   cabal in return for millions for my silence. I felt a lot of FOMO.
 * Samuel Abram: @Timothy Geigner Regarding this article in the Crystal Ball:
   [link]
   https://www.techdirt.com/2030/01/01/red-cross-continues-to-want-to-pretend-that-video-game-wars-are-irl-wars/
   I actually think the Red Cross is onto something: Maybe there should be a
   game (or mod or whatever) where people adhere to IRL rules of engagement
   instead of having a typical FPS free-for-all!
 * I think the Red Cross just became game designers!
 * Candescence: Oh welp Elon straight up deleted all "state-affiliated" and
   "government-funded" labels, probably throwing a tantrum:
   https://www.npr.org/2023/04/21/1...
   https://www.npr.org/2023/04/21/1171236695/twitter-strips-state-affiliated-government-funded-labels-from-npr-rt-china
 * John Roddy: 10 years ago: "We see you just purchased a new washing machine.
   Would you like to consider purchasing one of these other washing machines?"
 * Today: "We see you purchased this video card. Would you like to consider
   purchasing these other $1k+ video cards?"
 * pyrex: as a walking bitcoin, this makes sense to me!
 * mildconcern: https://twitter.com/CooperCodes/...
   https://twitter.com/CooperCodes/status/1649559104627834880
 * Tomac: It'd be neat if we all just stopped giving traffic to the bird site.
 * Let it become the new AM radio.
 * Samuel Abram: Everybody: I want to announce that I read Chapter II:
   Subchapter VII of the Penguin edition of the Upton Sinclair tome _OIL!_ at my
   local Barnes & Noble without paying for it. I'm awaiting a lawsuit from
   Penguin any second now…
 * Candescence: Uh, Tucker Carlson is gone from Fox News??
 * https://twitter.com/axios/status...
   https://twitter.com/axios/status/1650524593923260416
 * BentFranklin: It's too bad that FO comes so long after FA but it'll have to
   do.
 * Candescence: https://twitter.com/srl/status/1...
   https://twitter.com/srl/status/1650527565671542784
 * Something happened _all of a sudden_ that caused Fox to yeet him
 * The lawsuits might've been a factor at least but nobody knows what the hell
   is going on
 * Definitely not an amicable parting tho
 * Tomac: He's such a big fan of them, maybe he tried to stage a coup at fox
 * mildconcern: Maybe he was due to make exactly $780 million in the next 10
   years and they did the math
 * Bode: i suspect they've discovered some nasty messages or tapes tethered to
   that sexual harassment lawsuit that will be revealed in time. can't imagine
   what he said or did to cause king propagandist murdoch to implement actual
   accountability
 * Candescence: The MS Activision merger is dead at least for now, the UK CMA
   has announced they're blocking the merger.
 * But not for the reasons you'd think - apparently the sticking point is *cloud
   gaming* of all things.
 * Which is baffling considering how small and irrelevant cloud gaming is atm
 * mildconcern: The MS response is also downright angry. Threatening, even.
 * I wonder if they'd just pull up stakes and leave the UK gaming market if it
   stands. Another Brexit Benefit!
 * Candescence: I'd be genuinely surprised if they actually were desperate
   enough to do that
 * Tomac: I read that response as a threat as well. Interesting path to take
   when you're trying to persuade them.
 * mildconcern: Right. Means they think they have leverage I suspect. I wonder
   what their UK numbers are like. the UK is a lot more bully able lately, but
   I'd not have thought it had gone that far.
 * Samuel Abram: If that were the case, it makes me think of the principle as to
   why Google pulled out of markets due to things like link taxes. The main
   differences are that Google was pulling out due to impossibility of doing
   business, and Microsoft would (theoretically) pull out for prevention of
   getting bigger, so technically, different principles.
 * Candescence: I'm noticing conversations about Bluesky are being tainted by
   the fact that Jack Dorsey is the face of it as people think it'll just be
   another libertarian techbro pipedream because of that
 * BentFranklin: One bright side to this Wizards of the Coast / Hazbro debacles
   is millions of young adults are getting a history lesson about the brutality
   of the capitalists resisting unionization and waking to the reality that it's
   not over.
 * Mike Masnick: yeah, it's a bit frustrating, especially since jack has
   basically written off bluesky, has made it clear he disagrees with the
   direction they're going in, and the bluesky team has publicly described how
   they're moving in a different direction than jack wanted. People freaking out
   about it because of Jack don't realize that it's not a jack project
 * The bluesky team is incredibly thoughtful in how they're going about things.
   they'll make mistakes, but it's not going to be a "libertarian techbro
   pipedream"
 * Candescence: Oh, interesting, I didn't know that - what's got Jack's feathers
   ruffled in this instance?
 * Or is it just a case of vague disagreement with no publicly known reasons
 * Mike Masnick: No, he's been pretty clear that he (1) doesn't think bluesky
   should be so much like Twitter and that it should be more different and (2)
   he disagreed with the idea that they should build out content moderation
   tools before launching
 * mildconcern: So he was in the "let a thousand Nazis bloom" school?
 * I suppose that's not surprising
 * pyrex: i realize this isn't a thing everyone cares about, but has bluesky
   hinted at a pivot towards cryptocurrency features?
 * Candescence: I'm pretty sure they've ruled out any kind of crypto integration
 * pyrex: i wouldn't be that offended by their existence, but i would be if the
   platform decided to move into that only after getting a captive userbase and
   i guess i'm looking for foreshadowing
 * mildconcern: that could also be part of what turned Dorsey off
 * if I remember right he is/was into crypto
 * pyrex: i definitely wanna clarify, i wouldn't use the service if it had
   crypto features, but like, i probably won't use it anyways and it's ok for
   things to exist that aren't for me
 * suddenly springing it on people and hoping platform lock-in keeps people
   there would be pretty unethical though, IMHO
 * Mike Masnick: bluesky has no crypto. jay has been clear from the very start
   (from before she was hired, actually) that even though she's worked in
   crypto, it makes no sense to build a social network on crypto.
 * but because she worked in crypto, and because of jack's "involvement" many
   people assume that it's a crypto project
 * pyrex: thanks, that's what i was hoping to hear!
 * Mike Masnick: before she was hired, i was actually in a meeting with her and
   some other folks, including a group that is trying to build a crypto-based
   social network, and she was quizzing them on why, and asking what benefits
   they thought it brought, and just kept pushing them when they tried to
   handwave around things. so she's not anti-cryptocurrency by any stretch, but
   she's one of the most practical and thoughtful people i know on this stuff.
   she's very focused on building a good service, not based on ideology, but on
   what's actually good
 * pyrex: that's pretty reassuring! i briefly used uh, i think steemit? like, in
   at least one case i saw jack dorsey float the idea of using crypto-based cash
   tipping instead of likes. i understand why this is appealing to people and at
   the same time i don't like the kind of content this incentivizes people to
   make
 * Mike Masnick: jack was floating that idea on nostr, which is also interesting
   (to me) but i doubt will go mainstream
 * pyrex: it's in "i probably won't use it, it should definitely be allowed to
   exist, maybe i will like it in four years" territory to me
 * i don't really understand nostr's fixation on censorship, which is very
   frequently a dogwhistle
 * i kinda like their protocol design, it looks to me like it does not attempt
   to do very many things and would probably scale pretty well. with standard
   cryptographic protocol problems like "if you lose your key, heaven help you"
 * John Roddy: Wait... He *disagreed* on moderation tools being built out before
   launch?
 * Cathy Gellis: I don't understand that. But I also don't understand how anyone
   could have volitionally decided to be a minority shareholder in a platform
   Musk was about to take over, so I have already been perplexed by his
   judgment.
 * John Roddy: Especially right after so many other ones launched and
   immediately slammed into exactly the same problem of bad moderation policies
 * mildconcern: It would save them not at all if the network were not explicitly
   aimed at crazy right wingers like so many of those were, too. Maybe that
   would delay the pain by a day.
 * Candescence: I think the only other main competitors that are worth watching
   so far are Mastodon, Post and Hive
 * Mike Masnick: Yeah, I'm perplexed a bit by that as well, but...
 * there's also T2 and spoutible. spoutible seems... very questionable to me. T2
   is... fine. But, it just looks like a twitter clone. I think if they were
   smart, they'd quickly adopt the AT Protocol once bluesky releases federation
   details
 * BentFranklin: Is there a way to get techdirt in dark mode?
 * Mike Masnick: not currently, no
 * Candescence: So the Writer's Guild of America has started striking, and this
   was one of their demands that the studios rejected:
   https://twitter.com/pmiscove/sta...
   https://twitter.com/pmiscove/status/1653249330239909888
 * According to the guild, the counteroffer was "annual meetings to discuss
   advancements in technology".
 * Even though it's quite obvious to everyone what the end goal the studios have
   with AI is, aka eventually reduce as much involvement of writers in the
   actual writing process as possible
 * MSR4: [link]
   https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/02/pornhub-says-no-more-porn-for-folks-in-utah-unless-they-know-how-to-use-a-vpn/
   This is so stupid. You can not legislate morality. Just like attempts to ban
   Usenet in the 90s because some teen could take a few text messages, mush them
   together, and get a nude photo. Or heading over to a friends house to view
   his dads playboy, there is nothing going to stop people from seeking out this
   material. What is the end game, ban all porn in the US. Great, everyone will
   move their opeations overseas. Then what, block internet connections to those
   countries? Even North Korea and Iran is accessable from the Internet, not to
   mention Tor. It is stupid virtual signaling to get around parents not wanting
   to monitor what their kids are doing online and take responsibility for their
   actions.
 * Mike Masnick: yup.
 * Samuel Abram: I would say this is as copyrightable as Naruto's selfie:
   https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki...
   https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki/status/1653093584042614792
 * Actually, I wouldn't mind this monkey script replacing Lorem Ipsum...
 * BentFranklin: “material harmful to minors” Today it means porn. Tomorrow it
   means information on guns and climate change.
 * Maybe Nintendo should hire the Pinkertons.
 * Samuel Abram: I chuckled. https://twitter.com/amatsujanait...
   https://twitter.com/amatsujanaito/status/1653518113697144832
 * Happy Bandcamp Friday! Today, I have released a single I had long finished
   but didn't have the cover art done until now: Lo, a track by the band Genesis
   on the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive outside of North America), Mama (with the
   vocaloid MEIKO)! [link]
   https://ironcurtain.bandcamp.com/album/mama-feat-meiko
 * Mike Masnick: i want to delete this spam, but the response is so good that i
   feel like i have to leave it.
 * Samuel Abram: [video]
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7GdDLbm55U
 * mildconcern: I'm going to be hiking in the Canadian rockies this summer for a
   couple weeks. This video was a good chance to practice my Canadian language
   skills.
 * "Abooot.....aboooooooot....."
 * Samuel Abram: @mildconcern I swear, I've been to Canada many, many times, and
   J. J. is the only one I know who does that.
 * mildconcern: I've met a couple others who do, but yeah for the most part
   these days we're all raised by the same TV

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