Speedom of Freech


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @mikehurley said in Speedom of Freech:

    It seems like it increases barrier to entry to have alternate viewpoints heard. The answer shouldn't be "make your own PAC".

    How do the PACs raise the barrier? It seems to me that they are a reaction to existing barriers. In this case, the barrier of a very large nation and managing to get one's message to lots of people.



  • @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    I violently disagree with you.

    Shockingly, I agree with Boomzilla.

    The problem is how easy it is to influence voters with TV commercials. Let's solve that problem, if that's the problem.

    But saying a corporation can't engage in political speech but a church or a charity or a group of random guys who play golf every Sunday can is ridiculous. The law needs to be consistent.



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    It's not the speaking that's the problem; it's the organizing and. And the reason I find that problematic is that it has a strong tendency to drown out other speech, so that getting your message heard stops being a matter of who has the best argument and becomes, instead, a matter of who has the most resources and the best organizing tactics. That's a fundamentally problematic thing.

    We won (ok; were on the winning side of) two World Wars because Americans are really, really, really good at logistics, aka "organizing things".

    One might argue that the entity that's better-organized deserves to have a bigger say in the issues than an entity that's ad-hoc.



  • @Dragoon said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    it's the organizing and.

    But we have freedom of association. Which grants us the ability to form a group and pool our resources behind one speaker that shares our views.

    I think the problem with Citizens United is that it allows a small group to take over the "voice" of a corporation, and thus use the corporation's resources as if they were their own to amplify their message. Once you say a corporation is a "person", you run into the problem of deciding who that person is, or who controls it.

    Basically, the administrators of the corporation, who are themselves employees, get to decide what the corporation as a whole is going to back. Suppose you are an employee with a bonus based on the performance of the company. The administrators can spend part of your bonus on speech that you might be opposed to.

    If the people choosing what speech they're going to back were doing it on their own, with their own resources, outside the corporation, that would be a different matter.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @boomzilla That was probably true when PACs started being a thing and they didn't cover everything. Now it seems like if you want to make progress on an issue, you need to participate or else be drowned out.

    Also, like I said, it depends on their funding models. PACs that get almost all of their funding from poor or middle class people (I assume they exist) seem ok to me. At least that's a bunch of private citizens doing that. If a million people do it, that's a million decisions of what to do converging.

    Note: When I say PAC, I don't necessarily literally mean PAC. They're kind of the buzzword for this topic and I'm sure there are other types of groups I'd be equally concerned about.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    But saying a corporation can't engage in political speech but a church or a charity or a group of random guys who play golf every Sunday can is ridiculous. The law needs to be consistent.

    Did you miss the part above, where I said that I believe this needs to apply to groups I like as well as ones I don't?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    But saying a corporation can't engage in political speech but a church or a charity or a group of random guys who play golf every Sunday can is ridiculous. The law needs to be consistent.

    Did you miss the part above, where I said that I believe this needs to apply to groups I like as well as ones I don't?

    Like newspapers?


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla Seriously, shut up about newspapers. I already covered that waaaaay up there! :arrows:


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla Seriously, shut up about newspapers. I already covered that waaaaay up there! :arrows:

    Please give a link. Is this just your confusion about what "the press" means again? Did you actually explain why this stuff doesn't apply to them? What's different about them vs any other corporation?



  • @Kian said in Speedom of Freech:

    Basically, the administrators of the corporation, who are themselves employees, get to decide what the corporation as a whole is going to back. Suppose you are an employee with a bonus based on the performance of the company. The administrators can spend part of your bonus on speech that you might be opposed to.

    But this is true about every decision that the owners of the company make. This is no different than them deciding to help children in Haiti or build a new factory in India. At the end of the day they make the decisions for the company. I can express my displeasure about it, with my final act being to leave the company. But I have very little influence over it.



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    Did you miss the part above, where I said that I believe this needs to apply to groups I like as well as ones I don't?

    Meaning what?

    Ok Jeff, Bob and Ted play golf on Sunday. They all want to elect Fred for Mayor. But they can't individually afford to run a 30-second ad on UHF channel 47. So they pool their money, buy a camcorder, and run their ad. You're saying that should be illegal? They have no sort of legal arrangement or organization at all, they're just three dudes out playing golf.

    What about Boomzilla's example, where Jeff, Bob and Ted are editors at a newspaper funded by the money of ten thousand subscribers and they write an editoral. Should that be allowed?

    Look, I think a lot of people would agree with the statement: "money should have less influence in politics". I agree with that statement. All I'm arguing is that the law needs to be consistent. Special cases and exceptions suck.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    Is this just your confusioncorrect understanding about what "the press" means again?

    Yes.

    Did you actually explain why this stuff doesn't apply to them?

    Because the First Amendment specifically says that the press is a special case. (I'd think that, out of everyone, software developers would be able to comprehend the concept of special-casing!)

    What's different about them vs any other corporation?

    Because they're publishing their own speech. Advertising is publishing someone else's speech for money. That's a different thing conceptually, and should be treated differently.



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    Because the First Amendment specifically says that the press is a special case. (I'd think that, out of everyone, software developers would be able to comprehend the concept of special-casing!)

    The First Amendment indeed says the press is a special case, then does not define with the term "the press" means.

    I think it's safe to say most Constitutional scholars interpret it to mean literally every printing press, and not simply what we now call mainstream media. (The difference was back then only organized media companies could afford a printing press. So the two concepts were kind of one and the same. But it'd be pretty odd if a Government founded by dudes just printing pamphlets on someone else's press they "borrowed" overnight would then restrict the right to do that for everybody else.)

    This means that clause applies to the New York Times, but also to your discount grocery store that has a $0.05/page Xerox machine gathering dust in the corner.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    Because the First Amendment specifically says that the press is a special case. (I'd think that, out of everyone, software developers would be able to comprehend the concept of special-casing!)

    I'll give you props for sticking to your silly ideas here. So...as a consequence, the government can suppress your written speech?

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    Because they're publishing their own speech. Advertising is publishing someone else's speech for money. That's a different thing conceptually, and should be treated differently.

    But...they were publishing their own ideas! Now...literally, how are these guys different than the editorial board of a newspaper? Or an opinion segment on a TV news show? How can you tell / justify the difference?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    The difference was back then only organized media companies could afford a printing press.

    Maybe, but (as you alluded) it didn't stop people from printing up pamphlets and stuff outside of normal newspapers.



  • @Dragoon said in Speedom of Freech:

    At the end of the day they make the decisions for the company.

    Which is exactly why pretending that the company is a "person" is wrong.



  • @Kian But you have yet to explain why presenting a public opinion is any different from any other decision they make as the head of a company?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Kian said in Speedom of Freech:

    @Dragoon said in Speedom of Freech:

    At the end of the day they make the decisions for the company.

    Which is exactly why pretending that the company is a "person" is wrong.

    But what makes it correct to pretend that the people who are running the corporation aren't people?



  • @boomzilla Common Sense was a rare case. In most cities, pamphlets urging independence were printed by employees of newspapers (or other printing companies) "borrowing" the company equipment to print a 1 or 2-page treatise.

    But the point is: it would be silly for a company founded on the backs of works like Common Sense to then restrict its citizens to create works like Common Sense. Which is why people interpret the calling-out of "the press" to mean "the press" the machine, and not simply the company of people who own the machine.



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    they're publishing their own speech. Advertising is publishing someone else's speech

    Publishing a paid endorsement overlaps them both.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat What's also interesting is that if you follow @masonwheeler's test of printing "other people's speech" then how would he justify book publishing?

    This was an actual point in the case. One of the Justices asked something like, "What if instead of a movie, they printed a book? Could the government stop it from being published?" And the government responded, "Yes." Because they had to or else they knew they were admitting their whole argument was crap.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    I'll give you props for sticking to your silly ideas here. So...as a consequence, the government can suppress your written speech?

    No. That's literally the exact opposite of what I said.

    But...they were publishing their own ideas!

    Once again, because your 🦊-grade reading comprehension has apparently caused you to miss this both of the times I pointed it out it before, the objectionable elements in the Citizens United ruling had nothing to do with the actual topic of the lawsuit; they were injected in by activist justices who used the lawsuit as a pretense to push an agenda.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    No. That's literally the exact opposite of what I said.

    It's the opposite of what you were thinking, but it's a logical consequence of what you said.

    But...they were publishing their own ideas!

    Once again, because your 🦊-grade reading comprehension has apparently caused you to miss this both of the times I pointed it out it before, the objectionable elements in the Citizens United ruling had nothing to do with the actual topic of the lawsuit; they were injected in by activist justices who used the lawsuit as a pretense to push an agenda.

    Totally wrong:

    In the case, the conservative non-profit organization Citizens United wanted to air a film critical of Hillary Clinton and to advertise the film during television broadcasts shortly before the 2008 Democratic primary election in which Clinton was running for U.S. President. This would violate a federal statute prohibiting certain electioneering communications near an election. The court found the provisions of the law that prohibited corporations and unions from making such electioneering communications to conflict with the U.S. Constitution.

    They looked at a law and realized that it violated the Constitution.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla ...and that's not particularly problematic. I agree that there's nothing wrong with that, specifically. But tacking on the parts about money being equatable with freedom of speech and corporations having free speech rights, and thus having the right to political advertising protected by the First Amendment, that's pure crap.



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    and thus having the right to political advertising protected by the First Amendment,

    Why shouldn't they?

    I really don't understand the argument.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @blakeyrat Do some research on why political advertising is heavily restricted (and even banned outright in many cases) in the majority of democracies around the world. When you understand that, you'll understand this.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler Well, saying, "You can speak, but you can't spend any money to do so," is really damn close to saying, "You can't speak." Remember, this wasn't about giving money to a candidate. This was about spending money to publish your own speech.

    Which you supposedly support. So I don't understand what problem you have here.



  • I get those arguments, but that's also not compatible with current US law.

    If you want to have a Swedish (or whatever) election system, you gotta get the majority and amend the Constitution. Until that's done, the Supreme Court made the correct decision here. Yes, it's difficult to amend the Constitution. Sorry.

    Like I said: if the real problem is "money influences politics too much", let's fix that problem. Not just add weird special-cases to totally unrelated areas of law. You might even be able to fix that actual problem without changing the Constitution, who knows.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @blakeyrat Do some research on why political advertising is heavily restricted (and even banned outright in many cases) in the majority of democracies around the world. When you understand that, you'll understand this.

    Do some research on why all of your friends are jumping off of bridges. When you understand that, you'll understand this.

    Or: Just because democracies around the world trample the most important freedom of speech doesn't mean that we should.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    Like I said: if the real problem is "money influences politics too much", let's fix that problem. Not just add weird special-cases to totally unrelated areas of law.

    But in the meantime, can we agree that giving even more power and influence to that money is a very bad, harmful thing?



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    But in the meantime, can we agree that giving even more power and influence to that money is a very bad, harmful thing?

    Evidently not.

    Look, if idiots didn't just vote for whoever had the most TV ads, this would all be a non-issue. If we increased education spend and had fewer idiots, maybe that's a better solution to the problem-- the reason politicians spend money on advertising is because advertising works.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    Like I said: if the real problem is "money influences politics too much", let's fix that problem. Not just add weird special-cases to totally unrelated areas of law.

    The problem is that the money is going to find a way. The solution IMO is to make finding that way much less valuable. Which is to say, if you make government more powerful (regulating speech, in this case) then there's more demand to control that power and you're defeating the purpose.

    The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers – 00:06
    — Quest


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @blakeyrat Do some research on why political advertising is heavily restricted (and even banned outright in many cases) in the majority of democracies around the world. When you understand that, you'll understand this.

    Do some research on why all of your friends are jumping off of bridges. When you understand that, you'll understand this.

    I actually only have one friend who ever jumped off a bridge. He said it was a lot of fun. (It wasn't that high above the river below, and he easily swam to safety afterwards.)

    Or: Just because democracies around the world trample the most important freedom of speech doesn't mean that we should.

    Political advertising is "the most important freedom of speech"? :wtf: TDEMSYR.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said in Speedom of Freech:

    Look, if idiots didn't just vote for whoever had the most TV ads, this would all be a non-issue.

    Problem solved!


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    Or: Just because democracies around the world trample the most important freedom of speech doesn't mean that we should.

    Political advertising is "the most important freedom of speech"? :wtf: TDEMSYR.

    Political speech. Yes.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    Political speech. Yes.

    Please stop conflating two distinct concepts. It's incredibly disingenuous.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    Political speech. Yes.

    Please stop conflating two distinct concepts. It's incredibly disingenuous.

    You've asserted this but haven't explained it. Why are you conflating commercial speech (i.e., advertising a brand of toothpaste for sale) and political speech where someone pays a third party to broadcast or print or whatever the speech?

    Why do you think that toothpaste hawkers should have more freedom than citizens interested in the governing of their country?


  • BINNED

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    The problem is that the money is going to find a way. The solution IMO is to make finding that way much less valuable. Which is to say, if you make government more powerful (regulating speech, in this case) then there's more demand to control that power and you're defeating the purpose.

    Or, to put it more succinctly, the only sure way to get money out of politics is to get politics out of money.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in In other news today...:

    Both of these are horribly wrong and actively harmful to our society.

    I violently disagree with you.

    Violently enough to make a sign?


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @antiquarian said in Speedom of Freech:

    Or, to put it more succinctly, the only sure way to get money out of politics is to get politics out of money.

    That's not a sure way, that's throwing up your hands and giving up. Because if history is any guide, that won't work; you'll just see the money applied in politics for different purposes.


  • BINNED

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    That's not a sure way, that's throwing up your hands and giving up. Because if history is any guide, that won't work; you'll just see the money applied in politics for different purposes.

    So where exactly has it been tried?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Polygeekery said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    @masonwheeler said in In other news today...:

    Both of these are horribly wrong and actively harmful to our society.

    I violently disagree with you.

    Violently enough to make a sign?

    No, I'm planning to reuse the one I made for Juicero:

    0_1483705598282_upload-a5ba688f-0790-4f85-a855-68f081e6cb70


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    Why do you think that toothpaste hawkers should have more freedom than citizens interested in the governing of their country?

    Because what they're doing doesn't cause harm to our democracy.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    Why do you think that toothpaste hawkers should have more freedom than citizens interested in the governing of their country?

    Because what they're doing doesn't cause harm to our democracy.

    You are reaching 🦊 levels of despicable here. I guess it's good that you're being honest about your desires to suppress speech, at least. But seriously: "We had to destroy the democracy to save the democracy."

    We just have to all shut up and enjoy it or what?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    We just have to all shut up and enjoy it or what?

    I would have went with "Lie on our backs and take it", just to get some #RapeCulture in there also.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Polygeekery Yeah, but "shut up" is too relevant what with the topic and all.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    You are reaching 🦊 levels of despicable here. I guess it's good that you're being honest about your desires to suppress speech, at least. But seriously: "We had to destroy the democracy to save the democracy."

    TDEMSYR. How does suppressing something that is causing harm to democracy "destroy the democracy"? (Especially given that virtually every other democracy on Earth has banned or severely restricted it, and somehow managed to do so without getting destroyed?)



  • @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    @boomzilla said in Speedom of Freech:

    You are reaching 🦊 levels of despicable here. I guess it's good that you're being honest about your desires to suppress speech, at least. But seriously: "We had to destroy the democracy to save the democracy."

    TDEMSYR. How does suppressing something that is causing harm to democracy "destroy the democracy"? (Especially given that virtually every other democracy on Earth has banned or severely restricted it, and somehow managed to do so without getting destroyed?)

    Let's fix that so you might see the problem: "How does [giving the government the power to suppress] something that [they claim is] causing harm to democracy 'destroy the democracy'?" I think that it should be obvious that giving a corrupted (by your own argument) government more power over citizens' lives can't end well. It's also super undemocratic. "Shut up, we know what's best for you."


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    How does suppressing something that is causing harm to democracy "destroy the democracy"?

    Well, firstly, you're begging the question there. How do we decide what's destroying the democracy? Who decides? When did it become cool for the government to practice content based censorship?

    @masonwheeler said in Speedom of Freech:

    (Especially given that virtually every other democracy on Earth has banned or severely restricted it, and somehow managed to do so without getting destroyed?)

    And yet the lack of our destruction compels you to outlaw the most important sort of speech to protect? I mean...this is literally the reason to have free speech. All the porn and junk is just a side effect.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @Benjamin-Hall said in Speedom of Freech:

    Let's fix that so you might see the problem: "How does [giving the government the power to suppress] something that [they claim is] causing harm to democracy 'destroy the democracy'?" I think that it should be obvious that giving a corrupted (by your own argument) government more power over citizens' lives can't end well.

    Again, non-human entities are not citizens.

    It's also super undemocratic. "Shut up, we know what's best for you."

    Restricting the ability for special interests to subvert the will of the people is undemocratic?


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