Justice Black explained it better than I do. The key reason the SCOTUS ruled that First Amendment protection extended to forcing a company to provide access (in Marsh v Alabama) was:
It is clear that, had the people of Chickasaw owned all the homes, and all the stores, and all the streets, and all the sidewalks, all those owners together could not have set up a municipal government with sufficient power to pass an ordinance completely barring the distribution of religious literature. Our question then narrows down to this: can those people who live in or come to Chickasaw be denied freedom of press and religion simply because a single company has legal title to all the town? For it is the State's contention that the mere fact that all the property interests in the town are held by a single company is enough to give that company power, enforceable by a state statute, to abridge these freedoms.
We do not agree that the corporation's property interests settle the question....
Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.... thus, the owners of privately held bridges, ferries, turnpikes and railroads may not operate them as freely as a farmer does his farm. Since these facilities are built and operated primarily to benefit the public, and since their operation is essentially a public function, it is subject to state regulation. And, though the issue is not directly analogous to the one before us, we do want to point out by way of illustration that such regulation may not result in an operation of these facilities, even by privately owned companies, which unconstitutionally interferes with and discriminates against interstate commerce.
Do you see the point the Justice is making in his opinion? If your business profits from public use of your property, you lose some control of that property. There's tons of precedent for this.
Because Facebook makes its money through providing a platform for members of the public to communicate with one another, it's a very close analogy. That's different from e.g. Amazon, which primarily provides access to buy from Amazon (a shopping mall is not bound by this ruling, see Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, because of this distinction)
Breitbart is fundamentally different because it's a publisher not a platform, that is, it's not a venue by which members of the public reach other members of the public, to a meaningful degree (it does have a comments section, but that's obviously not the primary use of the site).
If you build a bridge on your land, but allow the public to use it (perhaps for a toll), you can't ban people form the bridge for constitutionally-protected reasons, even though it's your bridge on your land.
The justice concluded:
When we balance the Constitutional rights of owners of property against those of the people to enjoy freedom of press and religion, as we must here, we remain mindful of the fact that the latter occupy a preferred position. As we have stated before, the right to exercise the liberties safeguarded by the First Amendment "lies at the foundation of free government by free men," and we must in all cases "weigh the circumstances and . . . appraise the . . . reasons . . . in support of the regulation . . . of the rights."
Indeed, but Breitbart has a far smaller reach than Facebook. I'm not sure Facebook has a de-facto monopoly over its space, with Snapchat being popular with the kids these days, but it's pretty big. At some point, it becomes quite a bit like a company town. I'd say YouTube is already there for random people sharing videos. Anyway, I think you see my point: it's not entirely isolated from the First Amendment.
The people living in that company town did leave from time to time, after all, but the dominant way you'd reach them is through the company's property. That meant the company couldn't block protected speech, and had to allow use of it's property for speech it didn't agree with (in this case, it was a Jehova's Witness, so it was also speech that annoyed everyone exposed to it).
The government does get to regulate monopolies, after all.
As soon as someone needs your check, you own them. Doesn't matter that they didn't need your check before you started giving it to them. People will disregard other opportunities which could have been liberating if your check is easier.
First, Joe, Facebook banning The Daily Stormer has absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment. Not even in the most remote, tangential way. Nothing at all.
The SCOTUS has previously ruled that First Amendment protections apply to company property if access to that company property is needed to reach people. Company towns can't block access to people with a religious or political message to distribute.
Second, people who are trying to stop nazis will never be as bad as the nazis. It's an immutable truth.
The Communists killed 20x as many people as the Nazis. Objectively, Stalin was roughly 8 times as bad as the Nazis.
Also, there's something wrong with saying "We can do anything to $GROUP because nothing can be as bad as $GROUP". After all, that's exactly what Hitler said about the Jews.
If my "master" doesn't tell me to do anything, how are they not simply my benefactor?
The cat thinks she's the master of the house until her kittens are given away. If you can't live without the monthly check from X, X can become your master whenever they decide to.
Was it just a regular outage that could have happened to anyone, or something very specific to their own infrastructure?
Just because a change was made at some point in the past, you don't get to just assume that everything would have been fine if Change X or Y hadn't been made. Oracle isn't a silver bullet.
I have some contacts at Amazon and can shed some light on this. Normally, Amazon retail prioritizes "Prime Day prep" above all else. Every team must prove they can stand up to the spike in load, and fill out lots of paperworks demonstrating they did adequate diligence. Rumor is that Prime Day was actually started as a way to do this exercise twice a year (and thus get better at it), rather than only for Christmas shopping.
However, this year is different. Moving off Oracle has been made the first priority of every retail team (well, every one that uses Oracle in any way, which is most). No doubt that shift in priorities is what's at play here: given the thousands of teams, it's no surprise that some team somewhere dropped the ball given the conflicting priorities.
So it's less about "Oracle was a silver bullet" and more about "changing stuff you don't usually change".
If someone demands to be referred to as "Admiral Krang of the Klingon Empire", it's not a stretch to assume they have mental issues. If their code comments are only in Klingon, or they only respond to questions in Klingon, they may not be welcome. If someone clarifies that they are a "she" or a "he", sure, whatever, it's irrelevant to code. But if someone starts making up pronouns and insisting on them, or changes their pronouns from day to day, or otherwise becomes a pain in the ass to have a simple communication with, then their mental illness has become a burden on others, and they may not be welcome.
It may be a bit different in an in-person interaction. If someone is at a gaming or SF convention, and is wearing full Klingon makeup and regalia, I'll be delighted to play along. Outside of that context, I'll be backing away slowly while reaching for a stick. Normal social interaction is only made possible by the assumption of sanity
The Time Cube is strong with this one. AC may have discovered "four-cornered empathy". However, he left out that those who disagree have been "educated stupid" (which, in this case, I'd agree with). Keep pluggin away, AC, we all miss Time Cube.
There is just no reason for anyone contributing to an online collaboration needs to make their gender public. The normal English pronouns for a person whose gender is unimportant or unknown work fine: "he, him, his".
Fun fact, English used to have a distinct word for male adult: "were". It survives only in werewolf and wereguild. The gender-indeterminate "man" has replaced "were", because men are unimportant. We have words to highlight when a person is important or valuable, like "king" or "woman", but there was just no need for a word for "male adult" distinct from "adult".
By designating something political correctness you are saying that it's trivial and unimportant, and therefore the person complaining is just whining.
Obviously, true - such things are indeed unimportant complaints from whiners.
The idea is to belittle people's concerns and requests to be treated better by implying that they are so inconsequential that the argument/request is ether absurd or not made in good faith.
Correct - they are not operating in good faith. Progressives seek to infest any establishment, gut it out, and wear it as a skin suit, while demanding respect. Attempts to control language are just one tool for that goal. CoCs are another.
Now it's expanded from just trying to silence them to being part of victimhood narrative where requests to recognize the affect that such things have on others is a form of bullying.
Correct: political corrctness has expanded from silencing tactic to victimhood narrative.
The actual difference between romantic admirer ad creepy stalker is: is the guy hot.
But that doesn't matter: the rule for sexual harassment in the workplace isn't anything objective: if a woman complains, you're guilty. It's a strange game; the only winning move is not to play.
So, pretty much like all the other CoCs then? Well, they want you to take a political stance you might not agree with, rather than a religious, but it's much the same.
23 Not to foster a desire for revenge. 25 Not to make a false peace. 29 Not to return evil for evil 30 To do no injury, yea, even patiently to bear the injury done us. 31 To love one's enemies 32 Not to curse them that curse us, but rather to bless them.
Well, it is overtly Christian, but if you look past there there's lots of good stuff. "Not to swear": looking at you Linus. "Not to return evil for evil": no flame wars. Respect those more senior, but welcome those more junior.
The best though is: "Not to desire to be called holy before one is; but to be holy first, that one may be truly so called", i.e., virtue signalling is forbidden.
People are objecting, but is it a bad code of conduct? I can't find the text, but being monastic I'm guessing it values service to the community and forbids sexual harassment.
I see your point. Placing the candidates well could make a real difference, assuming you could find any overlap between "hotly contested" and "lots of YouTube viewers". Even with a small party, you'd just need an overlap between lots of disaffected voters and YouTube viewers, which doesn't sound so far-fetched.
It's a bit different when it's not just "endorsement" but "reasoned argument and debate". Appeals to tribalism, which is most of modern politics, is great for getting out the vote but as you say it's a marginal effect.
Actually persuading independent voters with reasoned argument is what these YouTubers potentially bring. Does that actually work, though? Hard to say, as when's the last time we saw a political "debate" that was anything but candidates reciting prepared statements?
While I have no doubt that you know "what a troll is" to the point of a science, you make a good point. "Troll" used to mean "an insincere opinion proffered to provoke an emotional response", and that's still the/. mod guidance, but these days it seems to mean "someone I disagree with".
Alex Jones may be a bit of a troll - I doubt he believes half the shit he talks about - but he's really not focused on aggravating people who disagree with him (after all, normal people simple don't listen to him, so he has no audience to troll).
Breitbart is merely sensational, and no more so than most media outlets. I wouldn't call "exaggerating stuff you actually believe for clicks" trolling, but maybe that makes me old fashioned.
One thing... most of these youtubers will join existing parties. And in many elections, have you seen how *close* most regions are?
It's a little different in Britain, I think. UKIP is a very small party, small enough that it doesn't get seats (some oddity of the UK system where you need to get ~5% of the vote to get any seats). However, it might well be that a million supporters, plus continued advocacy in more traditional ways, can push UKIP above that threshold. That could be at least the start of something.
The trolls get old fast, but there are others on YouTube from the UK that now has entered politics. I have no idea if their combined subscriber base of over 1mil, will be enough to change elections.
With Sargon stepping back from the Culture Wars, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Is he really tired of YouTube fame, or is he positioning himself for a political career with UKIP? I think 1 million subscribers isn't enough to make a real impact, but it is great training for politics. Heck, just the idea that "maybe we should debate ideas on their merits" has become radical means it's time for something to change.
IMO the more "radical centrists" and "free speech extremists" get involved with politics, the better, for all they will inevitably be called *phobic Nazis.
Slashdot Mirror
Justice Black explained it better than I do. The key reason the SCOTUS ruled that First Amendment protection extended to forcing a company to provide access (in Marsh v Alabama) was:
It is clear that, had the people of Chickasaw owned all the homes, and all the stores, and all the streets, and all the sidewalks, all those owners together could not have set up a municipal government with sufficient power to pass an ordinance completely barring the distribution of religious literature. Our question then narrows down to this: can those people who live in or come to Chickasaw be denied freedom of press and religion simply because a single company has legal title to all the town? For it is the State's contention that the mere fact that all the property interests in the town are held by a single company is enough to give that company power, enforceable by a state statute, to abridge these freedoms.
We do not agree that the corporation's property interests settle the question. ...
Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it. ... thus, the owners of privately held bridges, ferries, turnpikes and railroads may not operate them as freely as a farmer does his farm. Since these facilities are built and operated primarily to benefit the public, and since their operation is essentially a public function, it is subject to state regulation. And, though the issue is not directly analogous to the one before us, we do want to point out by way of illustration that such regulation may not result in an operation of these facilities, even by privately owned companies, which unconstitutionally interferes with and discriminates against interstate commerce.
Do you see the point the Justice is making in his opinion? If your business profits from public use of your property, you lose some control of that property. There's tons of precedent for this.
Because Facebook makes its money through providing a platform for members of the public to communicate with one another, it's a very close analogy. That's different from e.g. Amazon, which primarily provides access to buy from Amazon (a shopping mall is not bound by this ruling, see Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner, because of this distinction)
Breitbart is fundamentally different because it's a publisher not a platform, that is, it's not a venue by which members of the public reach other members of the public, to a meaningful degree (it does have a comments section, but that's obviously not the primary use of the site).
If you build a bridge on your land, but allow the public to use it (perhaps for a toll), you can't ban people form the bridge for constitutionally-protected reasons, even though it's your bridge on your land.
The justice concluded:
When we balance the Constitutional rights of owners of property against those of the people to enjoy freedom of press and religion, as we must here, we remain mindful of the fact that the latter occupy a preferred position. As we have stated before, the right to exercise the liberties safeguarded by the First Amendment "lies at the foundation of free government by free men," and we must in all cases "weigh the circumstances and . . . appraise the . . . reasons . . . in support of the regulation . . . of the rights."
Not if there are other alternatives.
Indeed, but Breitbart has a far smaller reach than Facebook. I'm not sure Facebook has a de-facto monopoly over its space, with Snapchat being popular with the kids these days, but it's pretty big. At some point, it becomes quite a bit like a company town. I'd say YouTube is already there for random people sharing videos. Anyway, I think you see my point: it's not entirely isolated from the First Amendment.
The people living in that company town did leave from time to time, after all, but the dominant way you'd reach them is through the company's property. That meant the company couldn't block protected speech, and had to allow use of it's property for speech it didn't agree with (in this case, it was a Jehova's Witness, so it was also speech that annoyed everyone exposed to it).
The government does get to regulate monopolies, after all.
As soon as someone needs your check, you own them. Doesn't matter that they didn't need your check before you started giving it to them. People will disregard other opportunities which could have been liberating if your check is easier.
First, Joe, Facebook banning The Daily Stormer has absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment. Not even in the most remote, tangential way. Nothing at all.
The SCOTUS has previously ruled that First Amendment protections apply to company property if access to that company property is needed to reach people. Company towns can't block access to people with a religious or political message to distribute.
Second, people who are trying to stop nazis will never be as bad as the nazis. It's an immutable truth.
The Communists killed 20x as many people as the Nazis. Objectively, Stalin was roughly 8 times as bad as the Nazis.
Also, there's something wrong with saying "We can do anything to $GROUP because nothing can be as bad as $GROUP". After all, that's exactly what Hitler said about the Jews.
If my "master" doesn't tell me to do anything, how are they not simply my benefactor?
The cat thinks she's the master of the house until her kittens are given away. If you can't live without the monthly check from X, X can become your master whenever they decide to.
Was it just a regular outage that could have happened to anyone, or something very specific to their own infrastructure?
Just because a change was made at some point in the past, you don't get to just assume that everything would have been fine if Change X or Y hadn't been made. Oracle isn't a silver bullet.
I have some contacts at Amazon and can shed some light on this. Normally, Amazon retail prioritizes "Prime Day prep" above all else. Every team must prove they can stand up to the spike in load, and fill out lots of paperworks demonstrating they did adequate diligence. Rumor is that Prime Day was actually started as a way to do this exercise twice a year (and thus get better at it), rather than only for Christmas shopping.
However, this year is different. Moving off Oracle has been made the first priority of every retail team (well, every one that uses Oracle in any way, which is most). No doubt that shift in priorities is what's at play here: given the thousands of teams, it's no surprise that some team somewhere dropped the ball given the conflicting priorities.
So it's less about "Oracle was a silver bullet" and more about "changing stuff you don't usually change".
If someone demands to be referred to as "Admiral Krang of the Klingon Empire", it's not a stretch to assume they have mental issues. If their code comments are only in Klingon, or they only respond to questions in Klingon, they may not be welcome. If someone clarifies that they are a "she" or a "he", sure, whatever, it's irrelevant to code. But if someone starts making up pronouns and insisting on them, or changes their pronouns from day to day, or otherwise becomes a pain in the ass to have a simple communication with, then their mental illness has become a burden on others, and they may not be welcome.
It may be a bit different in an in-person interaction. If someone is at a gaming or SF convention, and is wearing full Klingon makeup and regalia, I'll be delighted to play along. Outside of that context, I'll be backing away slowly while reaching for a stick. Normal social interaction is only made possible by the assumption of sanity
The Time Cube is strong with this one. AC may have discovered "four-cornered empathy". However, he left out that those who disagree have been "educated stupid" (which, in this case, I'd agree with). Keep pluggin away, AC, we all miss Time Cube.
To quote a google email on the Damore memo "we don't want diversity of ideas".
Diversity of ideas is great. That's the last thing anyone pushing for "diversity" actually wants - they want lockstep orthodoxy of belief.
There is just no reason for anyone contributing to an online collaboration needs to make their gender public. The normal English pronouns for a person whose gender is unimportant or unknown work fine: "he, him, his".
Fun fact, English used to have a distinct word for male adult: "were". It survives only in werewolf and wereguild. The gender-indeterminate "man" has replaced "were", because men are unimportant. We have words to highlight when a person is important or valuable, like "king" or "woman", but there was just no need for a word for "male adult" distinct from "adult".
Political correctness is a silencing tactic.
This is true.
By designating something political correctness you are saying that it's trivial and unimportant, and therefore the person complaining is just whining.
Obviously, true - such things are indeed unimportant complaints from whiners.
The idea is to belittle people's concerns and requests to be treated better by implying that they are so inconsequential that the argument/request is ether absurd or not made in good faith.
Correct - they are not operating in good faith. Progressives seek to infest any establishment, gut it out, and wear it as a skin suit, while demanding respect. Attempts to control language are just one tool for that goal. CoCs are another.
Now it's expanded from just trying to silence them to being part of victimhood narrative where requests to recognize the affect that such things have on others is a form of bullying.
Correct: political corrctness has expanded from silencing tactic to victimhood narrative.
Plenty of dating opportunities outside the workplace. Which is why "chastity" isn't a bad item for a CoC for the workplace.
The actual difference between romantic admirer ad creepy stalker is: is the guy hot.
But that doesn't matter: the rule for sexual harassment in the workplace isn't anything objective: if a woman complains, you're guilty. It's a strange game; the only winning move is not to play.
Someone please update this NPC's script, it's very repetitive.
So, pretty much like all the other CoCs then? Well, they want you to take a political stance you might not agree with, rather than a religious, but it's much the same.
That seems to be a big part of this CoC:
23 Not to foster a desire for revenge.
25 Not to make a false peace.
29 Not to return evil for evil
30 To do no injury, yea, even patiently to bear the injury done us.
31 To love one's enemies
32 Not to curse them that curse us, but rather to bless them.
Well, it is overtly Christian, but if you look past there there's lots of good stuff. "Not to swear": looking at you Linus. "Not to return evil for evil": no flame wars. Respect those more senior, but welcome those more junior.
The best though is: "Not to desire to be called holy before one is; but to be holy first, that one may be truly so called", i.e., virtue signalling is forbidden.
You could probably omit piety and chastity
I dunno, seems like a pretty firm way to shut down sexual harassment. "Nothing we do here has anything to do with sex, so don't go there".
SJWs cannot abide mockery because it is a threat to their own self anointed moral authority.
A religious war? In a tech community? Never heard of such a thing, which is why Captain Kirk using EMACS would be way better than Picard using VI!
Or is the complaint that the monks indented with tabs?
People are objecting, but is it a bad code of conduct? I can't find the text, but being monastic I'm guessing it values service to the community and forbids sexual harassment.
Seems like it might be a good choice for a CoC.
I see your point. Placing the candidates well could make a real difference, assuming you could find any overlap between "hotly contested" and "lots of YouTube viewers". Even with a small party, you'd just need an overlap between lots of disaffected voters and YouTube viewers, which doesn't sound so far-fetched.
It's a bit different when it's not just "endorsement" but "reasoned argument and debate". Appeals to tribalism, which is most of modern politics, is great for getting out the vote but as you say it's a marginal effect.
Actually persuading independent voters with reasoned argument is what these YouTubers potentially bring. Does that actually work, though? Hard to say, as when's the last time we saw a political "debate" that was anything but candidates reciting prepared statements?
While I have no doubt that you know "what a troll is" to the point of a science, you make a good point. "Troll" used to mean "an insincere opinion proffered to provoke an emotional response", and that's still the /. mod guidance, but these days it seems to mean "someone I disagree with".
Alex Jones may be a bit of a troll - I doubt he believes half the shit he talks about - but he's really not focused on aggravating people who disagree with him (after all, normal people simple don't listen to him, so he has no audience to troll).
Breitbart is merely sensational, and no more so than most media outlets. I wouldn't call "exaggerating stuff you actually believe for clicks" trolling, but maybe that makes me old fashioned.
One thing... most of these youtubers will join existing parties. And in many elections, have you seen how *close* most regions are?
It's a little different in Britain, I think. UKIP is a very small party, small enough that it doesn't get seats (some oddity of the UK system where you need to get ~5% of the vote to get any seats). However, it might well be that a million supporters, plus continued advocacy in more traditional ways, can push UKIP above that threshold. That could be at least the start of something.
The trolls get old fast, but there are others on YouTube from the UK that now has entered politics. I have no idea if their combined subscriber base of over 1mil, will be enough to change elections.
With Sargon stepping back from the Culture Wars, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Is he really tired of YouTube fame, or is he positioning himself for a political career with UKIP? I think 1 million subscribers isn't enough to make a real impact, but it is great training for politics. Heck, just the idea that "maybe we should debate ideas on their merits" has become radical means it's time for something to change.
IMO the more "radical centrists" and "free speech extremists" get involved with politics, the better, for all they will inevitably be called *phobic Nazis.