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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30474 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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Im on my way to a barbecue right now so dont have time to add much in the way of commentary but a federal has just hand down an injunction barring the white house from working with social media organizations to censor specific content. A rulling that the Washington Post describes as dangerous and violating long standing norms. Happy Fourth of July all ;-)

I suppose this is a good time to bring up a comment I made a while back: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/pitqan/comment/hc3utzv/?context=3.

I think this decision by SCOTUS is bad governance. I don't have any opinion on whether it's good law or consistent with the US Constitution, just that this ruling will have an overall negative effect on this country and more broadly that control of the media (and certainly social media) is an essential function of government.

I mean... at least with the traditional media, one could point to some semblance of professional ethics! I personally don't place much weight on these but it's something at least! Uncontrolled social media is a cesspool of lies, cancel mobs, and cat memes. If it isn't brought under control, it will create havoc in our society.

If social media is to be controlled, the only question is: by whom. And here, I claim that government is the only possible answer. Any non-government organization would amass so much influence that it's "non"-government status would become merely a polite fiction. The only choice here is between formal government control vs. informal government control (much like the argument I made in my last post).

To avoid repetition, please refrain from arguing for free speech as an end unto itself. I understand the argument. I just don't agree with it. In my opinion, free speech is a tool (for a more orderly and prosperous society). This is a disagreement on core values and we'll just have to agree to disagree. Now, if you want to argue about how effective a tool free speech is, have at it (spoiler alert: I don't place much faith in it).

[EDIT: it was pointed out below that this wasn't a decision by SCOTUS. Replace "SCOTUS" by "the courts" in the above. I don't think it makes a meaningful difference.]

Uncontrolled social media is a cesspool of lies, cancel mobs, and cat memes. If it isn't brought under control, it will create havoc in our society.

Note that if it becomes commonly known that the deck is hopelessly stacked against one's faction, democracy's function as a relief valve against rebellion breaks down. This is edging toward that kind of case for "we can't win through the system, burn it all down".

That said, you're right that social media can be a problem. There are mostly-politically-neutral ways of solving that; the most obvious is "ban smartphones". I say "mostly" there because SJ in particular might fall apart without omnipresent social media to keep everyone scared (and the alt-right/alt-lite as reaction to SJ would also fall apart, in that case, though a lot of that infosphere is less smartphone-dependent so it's more indirect).

I think this decision by SCOTUS is bad governance.

It's not a decision by SCOTUS.

more broadly that control of the media (and certainly social media) is an essential function of government.

Thank you Joe Goebbels.

Any non-government organization would amass so much influence that it's "non"-government status would become merely a polite fiction.

That's the theory. But so often, particularly in the United States, we find that when it appears this is happening, the actual government has really put its thumb in. That's what was happening here.

To avoid repetition, please refrain from arguing for free speech as an end unto itself.

No.

It's not a decision by SCOTUS.

You're right. Thanks for the correction. s/SCOTUS/courts.

Thank you Joe Goebbels.

Ad Hominem? Or not even...? Guilt by association? I'm not even sure which logical fallacy this falls under.

That's the theory. But so often, particularly in the United States, we find that when it appears this is happening, the actual government has really put its thumb in. That's what was happening here.

That's... not even a counter-argument? It's little surprise the government wants to... govern!

I'm not even sure which logical fallacy this falls under.

People usually call it Godwin's Law (technically, it's a corollary; GL itself merely says that Hitler or the Nazis will be invoked) or reductio ad Hitlerum (snowcloned off the non-fallacious "reductio ad absurdum").

The Donald Trump-appointed judge’s move could undo years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies.

They are saying it like it's a bad thing or something.

Any link to the actual injunction? (Here's a link from@ToaKraka: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63290154/missouri-v-biden/, I think the injunction is https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0_5.pdf

I'm interested in what concrete orders are given, and what that says about the final remedies. The article says:

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies,

Which is pretty spectacular, and raises it's own obvious First Amendment concerns.

The thing is, I could imagine a detailed statue that laid out what what government could and could not do in this regard, and creates offences for trying to censor the public. But I'm finding it harder to imagine what a judge could do about it from the bench, even if he sees a rock-solid case that the government is violating the Constitution.

The government doesn't have First Amendment rights. The First Amendment is a restriction on what the government (specifically, Congress) has authority to govern. In a sense, the government can't make regulations that prohibit its own employees from having First Amendment rights. But regulators working for the government, given authority by various acts of Congress, can't ask third parties to censor on their behalf (with the implied threat understood by all that regulators will regulate these social media companies if they don't comply).

(Besides, workplaces do have workplace rules about what can and can't be said all the time, and the government is a workplace like any other, you can't flash your dick in the White House Press room and keep your job, so I hope you can't also work for a White House task force and ask social media companies to ban you.)

Government speech is a whole explicit area of US jurisprudence which is probably over both our heads.

But however you categorise, an injunction preventing government agents from merely communicating with persons is a pretty big deal. But IMHO the judge go this right. The injunction is mostly a list of prohibitions like

[Youse fuckers are enjoined from]:

emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;

My emphasis. So he is allowing the Government to communicate, but just not for the constitutionally forbidden purpose. Sounds reasonable.

I have not read through the injunction carefully, so for the sake of argument I'll just accept your claim that it's over broad in various ways. If true, it should certainly be trimmed down to size.

My concern was whether any ruling made from the bench (whether as a temporary injunction or as final) could be structured in a reasonable way. And it seems to me that a list of prohibitions for various kinds of communication *for the [curtailment in some particular sense] of protected speech" is a good way to do it.

Do you think that legislation duly by Congress with similar content would meaningfully curtail the free speech and petition rights of the platforms?

Seems to me that such a law would be subject to strict-scrutiny, but would pass it with flying colours.

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From that Washington Post article:

"Deep state” refers the unsubstantiated idea, frequently invoked by Trump, that a group of bureaucrats is working to undermine elected officials in order to shape government policy.

I'm not sure which annoys me more, that they don't even pretend that an opposing view might be worth hearing out, or that they have stopped bothering with proofreading as well.

It’s a poor definition of the deep state. The deep state exists, but it’s not about undermining the elected government. The deep state is all of the agencies that the elected government has given the power, for all practical purposes, to create legislation to run the state rather than do so itself. So you have OSHA banning chemicals in the workplace or requiring safety equipment rather than making the legislators do it. Or they have the FDA declare pot schedule I and thus illegal rather than them doing so themselves. And so these agencies have taken on a life of their own governing the nation, but without pesky things like elections or balance of power or accountability to hold them back.

I would say the deep state is institutional inertia. It also just so happens that formal and informal barriers to changing direction disfavor one party.

Maybe my memory is faulty, but I thought Trump even encountered legal challenges to him firing employees that weren't effectively implementing his orders. Google and ChatGPT are both failing me, though.

The deep state used to be described by the DC phrase, "Band leaders come and band leaders go, but the band plays on."

The deep state is more than that, it's when a bureaucracy becomes so large and so ossified and so specialized that replacing people becomes impractical. Producing a kind of feudalism, where directors of departments can't be forced to implement policies they don't want to.

J. Edgar Hoover is the ne plus ultra American example. See also Obama stating that his efforts to pull out of Afghanistan were consistently thwarted by "The Generals" engaging in foot dragging or sabotage. Much of The Ferguson Effect can also be traced to localized Deep States, with cops collectively engaging in work slowdown at a scale where discipline or replacement becomes impractical.

You can't just fire bureaucrats without skilled replacements on hand, unless you want to destroy the entire governing apparatus. It turns reform into chicken, who will swerve first?

Which is why rather than reform the IRS, we should simply privatize it.

I modeled the Furguson Effect more as a work to rule union slow-down.

I'm not sure I can apply that to the deep state.

The deep-statey aspect is that no sizable city can just replace its police force. Not an option, not possible, not happening. So no matter what mayor you elect, or what police commissioner you elect, or what laws the state passes, if the police decide against you there is simply no practical way to enforce the decision.

To what end? Even the towns that would be small enough to fire all their police, would then have less control over policing by the subsequent agency until thw town reconstitutes its own force. Once you've lost so many of the police there are none to enforce the law you've also likely lost the consent of the governed or made the expectations and duties of the police untenable. I see the police more like firemen, garbagemen or water and power workers, infrastructure.

The deep state is more public private partnership.

What do you mean by pubic private partnership?

The police are a simple and clear model, but it applies equally to every department. You can't just fire the entire EPA, the entire DoD, the entire Treasury department. At a sufficient level of determination, bureaucrats can play chicken with the public: anarchy or the status quo. Elected officials, no matter how powerful, are stuck with the people they have.

I'd say that the deep state is probably best defined by asking two different questions:

Who is the Vice President of the United States?

Who is the Treasury Department employee in charge of NYC and thus the NYSE?

The one who's name I can't reasonably expect you to know is the deep state.

Who is the Treasury Department employee in charge of NYC and thus the NYSE

While thats not exactly how the Treasury is structured, its likely this guy:

https://home.treasury.gov/about/general-information/officials/josh-frost

"Before serving as Assistant Secretary, Josh was most recently the co-chair of the Liquidity Program for systemically important financial institution supervision at the New York Fed. Prior to this, he spent almost two decades in the New York Fed’s Markets Group in a variety of positions, including a role overseeing the two corporate credit facilities launched in response to the pandemic. Josh also served as the Director of Money Markets and Director of Treasury Markets, where his teams launched the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, conducted open market operations, and facilitated auctions of debt on behalf of the Treasury. Josh began his career at the New York Fed in 1998 as an analyst on the Central Bank and International Account Services team."

archive link to article

The comments on that article are truly mind-numbing partisanship.

I guess those kinds of people will have to work doubly hard to fortify the next election.

Ah yes:

Our nation has always recognized limits on free speech. Furthermore our nation has long recognized the legal concept of product liability. Oh and let us not forget that fraud consists of telling lies to gain an advantage or benefit. Censoring lies is fully in keeping with the spirit and the letter of our free speech rights.

And much more of the same. And lots of quoting Schenck v. US, which hasn't been good law since 1969. Full-throated defense of government censorship of social media, along with a bunch of vitriol towards Republicans for daring to oppose it.

I always assume that anyone unironically quoting Schenck agrees with its conclusion that distributing anti-draft pamphlets is akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater. Which seems like a downright fascist perspective, but what do I know?

I have yet to encounter a person who seriously quotes the "fire in the crowded theater" thing and also can answer what was the actual case about. Because if you know that, you'd likely to shy away a bit from quoting from that case, where the court basically decided anti-government speech is a crime. That's usually not what many people want to sign under (give it time, I guess?)

Inside of Facebook we had a group for free speech advocates. Zuck, defending the company's censorship, had no idea about the origins of "fire in a crowded theater" and so used it as part of his defense. It took employees to point out that that example comes from a controversial and overruled SCOTUS decision.

Most of them probably have no idea about the case beyond "fire in a crowded theater" and "clear and present danger". But someone did mention the case by name, and as far as I can tell given the limitations of the Post's execrable (technically) comment section, nobody pointed out it's no longer good law since Brandenburg v. Ohio.

And I'm sure they'd agree that distributing anti-draft pamphlets about the Vietnam War or the Gulf Wars (yeah, I know, there wasn't a draft) would be fine but it's absolute treason and not protected to do so about WWII or the Ukranian War (again, I know there isn't a draft in the US).

nobody pointed out it's no longer good law since Brandenburg v. Ohio.

I mean, with the current Supreme Court, who’s to say Brandenburg v. Ohio isn’t next on the chopping block? Brandenburg is just one of a laundry list of cases from that time period which changed longstanding precedent. Those cases are being rolled back one by one as we speak.

The most prominent rollback of precedent was overturning a case which several justices were put on the Supreme Court specifically to overturn. The other semi-prominent overturning of precedent, NY rifle and pistol, is much more arguable as an example of overturning precedent.

Aside from Roe, can you name another? I believe there are two members of the Supreme Court (Thomas and Barrett) who might seriously consider overturning Brandenburg, but that's it.

Lemon v. Kurtzman overturned by Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.

Abood v. Detroit Board of Education overturned by Janus v. AFSCME.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke overturned by Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard

Not necessarily from the same era, but NYSRPA v. Bruen basically overturned every 2nd amendment case in history besides Heller

Lemon v. Kurtzman overturned by Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.

Wikipedia claims that; the opinion of the court claims Lemon had already been effectively set aside.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke overturned by Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard

SFFA overturned neither Bakke (which was a mess of a set of opinions, and in fact the ruling was in favor of Bakke) nor even the later Grutter which endorsed Powell's opinion in Bakke. The ruling was that Harvard and UNCs programs were impermissible under Grutter.

Not necessarily from the same era, but NYSRPA v. Bruen basically overturned every 2nd amendment case in history besides Heller

I only wish it overturned US v. Miller.

More comments

You just had 6 SCOTUS justices put forth a very strong view of first amendment protections (including ACB and Thomas). I don’t know if they specifically cite Brandenburg but what makes anyone think they want to revisit first amendment caselaw? If anything, they seem keen to extend it.

Now if they actually were to reinstate Lochner my joy would be complete.

It's pretty obvious that Brandenburg isn't on the chopping block, and it doesn't make sense to imply that it is just because "the Court is changing precedent", when most of the precedents that are being changed are of the opposite political valence as Brandenburg, and often of the opposite legal conclusions given that this Court is clearly committed to an expansive view of speech rights.

Frankly everyone whines about the sanctity of precedent when, and only when, it suits them to do so, so I'm never swayed by appeals to stare decisis. The precedents overturned in Lawrence and Obergefell were a hell of a lot older than the ones overturned in Dobbs and SFFA.

And in SFFA, it’s hard to say there was a large overturning of prior case law. Bakke was a mess; Grutter was very uncomfortable with the idea and clearly positioned the holding as currently permissible but not permissible in perpetuity. It was if anything a natural outgrowth of Grutter taking into account reality post Grutter.

The idea is that a left-wing court has carte blanche to overturn precedent because that is their philosophy. A subsequent right-wing court is then bound to that precedent because that is THEIR philosophy. Works until Thomas gets cranky, I guess.

To respectfully break the rules on recruiting for a cause: anyone want to join me in distributing pamphlets advocating for disbanding the Selective Service in Washington some time soon? We can call it a performance art piece.

(sarcasm, if unclear, but only mostly)

the white house from working with social media organizations to censor specific content

Is this anything to do with Hunter Biden (allegedly! allegedly! allegedly! what I say three times wards off the lawyers!) leaving cocaine in the White House, a story I haven't read past the headlines but which is absolutely hilarious for the weekend?

I can see why they'd want to stop social media passing the story around, but it gave me a laugh when I needed it, so stop being such spoilsports, White House Press Department!

Now I know why they call it the White House.

The censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story by the FBI is part of the case.

Can you link to me the document you are referring to?

AFAICT the particular injunction that this article on about is https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0_5.pdf, and is only seven pages. But of course there are many, many other documents.

It is an interesting question how far govt can go in cooperating with third parties who have a policy of restricting rights which are protected from infringement by govt. If I have a "no Irishmen allowed" rule at my business, can a govt agent alert me that a certain customer is Irish?

But I agree that the decision is not super well reasoned. Eg, it says:

The targeting of conservative speech indicates that Defendants may have engaged in “viewpoint discrimination,” to which strict scrutiny applies. See Simon & Schuster, Inc., 505 U.S. 105 (1991).

But, targeting one side of an issue, eg vaccine denial, is already viewpoint discrimination. The fact that it is coded conservative (assuming it is) adds nothing to the question of whether strict scrutiny applies.

If I have a "no Irishmen allowed" rule at my business, can a govt agent alert me that a certain customer is Irish?

This isn't actually how things happened if you read the complaint - this would be more akin to the government informing you that you have to implement a "no Irishmen allowed" rule at your business, and then constantly sending you lists of "Irish" people that are sometimes Irish but always members of a political faction opposed to the government.

Not so much "have to" but strongly suggested to, and we also have this Section 230 sword of Damocles hanging over your head that will drop if you're not cooperative enough.

I used that example because it is one of the things that the injunction bars the govt from doing. It also bars the govt from urging changes in rules, as you note, but that is an easier case.

BTW, I would be cautious is assuming that what is alleged in a complaint is "actually how things happened," since that is rarely the case.

I'm not making assumptions - the complaint is in large part based on the twitter files that I've already read. I've already seen the emails and communications from White House officials that were the motivating reason behind this legal effort, and anyone who has been paying attention will have as well.

I don't quite know how you write a policy that prohibits the government from saying things that are true and not secret.

What exactly are you saying here?

What true statements do you think are being barred from being said?

I would hope that a statement like "Facebook Post #12345657 is related to an Issue of Interest wink, wink." would be against the (new?) law if it was sent from the FBI to Facebook. As far as I can tell, that's all that happened to trigger this case.

"This is a nice restaurant you have here. It would be a shame if anything happened to it." is likely a true statement, but in its typical context, illegal anyway.

The list of targeted ideas:

Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power.

I think the government may have preserved its viewpoint neutrality if it had also gone after those that were overstating the risks of COVID-19, or those speculating that the 2020 election was going to be rigged in Trump's favor. Maybe it did and that'll come out later.

Link to documents

From the introduction:

This case is about the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The explosion of social-media platforms has resulted in unique free speech issues—this is especially true in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.

From the conclusion:

The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country.

Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the Court is only examining it in terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”.

The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign. This court finds that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment free speech claim against the Defendants. Therefore, a preliminary injunction should issue immediately against the Defendants as set out herein. The Plaintiffs Motion for Preliminary Injunction [Doc. No. 10] is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART.

The Plaintiffs’ request to certify this matter as a class action pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. Article 23(b)(2) is DENIED.

I don’t see the “violates long standing norms” quote but how can you have “longstanding” when the tech is 15 years old (when Facebook launched) and as far as I know government directly working with social media is only a handful of years old. Instead of “longstanding” it would appear to be what the government did last news cycle.

Also I don’t think anyone is debating “taking criminal activity like child porn” off social media and that’s just a distraction from the case.

The Donald Trump-appointed judge’s move could undo years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies. For more than a decade, the federal government has attempted to work with social media companies to address criminal activity, including child sexual abuse images and terrorism.

I thought we were talking about protected speech?

The Donald Trump-appointed judge’s

Confirmed 98-0 by the senate. This guilt by association for judges is ridiculous. Yes, Republicans also appoint judges when in office. No, those judges are not uniquely compromised.

Ah, I get it now. "Trump-appointed judge tries to stop White House cracking down on child porn online" is a rallying cry for the next election. Save Democracy Which Dies in Darkness Now, Vote Them In To Get Them Out, Vote Blue For Great Justice messaging.

It's an easy way to score some points. Mention who appointed the judge when it was a political opponent and the judge is doing something controversial or something you disagree with. Otherwise, keep silent. Everyone will quickly get the impression that such judges (in this case, Trump-appointed) are uniquely compromised and highly political bad actors. It's like a superpowered version of Cardiologists and Chinese Robbers.

There is certainly plenty of pro-terrorism speech which 1) violates social media companies' terms of service; but 2) is protected speech. Ditto re plenty of speech that advocates violence, and plenty of speech which advocates adult sex with children. The injunction prevents the govt from flagging such posts.

This isn't exactly the most compelling parade of horribles. Even for the central case, that the FBI's employees can't take time away from stopping actually child-abusers to report not-child-abusing creeper accounts is... not obviously a horrible thing. Even for actual 'advocacy of violence', Reddit's pretty happily demonstrated that the things that can be reported and the things that should be spending any of the DoJ's time might as well be two disjoint circles. And there's a ton of non-central cases, here.

((That's separate from my general skepticism about government agencies obeying court orders like this. Contra your recent arguments, I don't think we'd see a bunch of DoJ employees go to jail if they ignore this court order while it's getting appealed and before it is stayed or overturned; I don't think we're even going to see serious efforts by DoJ attorneys to warn employees that they may be covered by the injunction.))

It isn't meant to be a parade of horribles. It is merely meant to demonstrate that speech can be protected, yet at least potentially contribute to criminal activity. As I said elsewhere, I think social media companies should be barred from censoring protected speech.

Advocating for criminal activity is, uh, usually not a criminal activity. Protected speech is by definition not criminal activity.

the federal government has attempted to work with social media companies to address criminal activity

The point is that there is all sorts of protected speech that increases the likelihood of criminal activity. Flashing gang signs, for example, as well as all sorts of advocacy of crime. As well as, possibly, sharing animated pictures of fictional children having sex with adults [edit: I say "possibly" because I don’t know if that actually encourages recipients to share actual child porn]. Heck, even agreeing with another person to commit a crime is generally not itself a crime; more is usually needed.

Nevertheless, attempting to censor those typs of speech is "addressing criminal activity," specifically, it is an attempt to reduce the incidence of crime, which is why social media companies do not allow it, and why many other countries censor or punish that type of speech.

Hence, preventing govt from notifying a social media company about speech which is both protected speech and which increases the risk of crime X does indeed hamper the govt's ability to address crime X. Please note that I am not advocating that the govt should do that. To the contrary, I believe that social media companies should be forbidden from censoring users' speech which is protected from govt censorship. But I am not going to pretend that such a policy would not make crime prevention more difficult.

Hence, preventing govt from notifying a social media company about speech which is both protected speech and which increases the risk of crime X does indeed hamper the govt's ability to address crime X.

The government suppressing such protected speech itself instead of informing a social media company about it also hampers the ability of the government to address crime X. Doesn't this policy also make crime prevention more difficult?

Yes, obviously. Just as the Fourth Amendment hampers the ability of the the government to fight crime. And the Fifth Amendment. And the Sixth Amendment. That is the price of having civil liberties. As always, I will quote Justice Scalia at the oral arguments in Maryland v. King:

Katherine Winfree: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: Since 2009, when Maryland began to collect DNA samples from arrestees charged with violent crimes and burglary, there had been 225 matches, 75 prosecutions and 42 convictions, including that of Respondent King.

Justice Antonin Scalia: Well, that's really good. I'll bet you if you conducted a lot of unreasonable searches and seizures, you'd get more convictions, too. [Laughter] That proves absolutely nothing.

You seem to think I am advocating for social media censorship, when I have said the exact opposite.

I for one appreciate the nuanced take here. Even in this forum, there a distressingly large number of people who are unable to admit that their policies come with any tradeoffs whatsoever.

The Washington Post going back to its roots as the Democratic Party rag is nothing surprising. But taking this claim at face value: if the Feds being able to prevent CP and terrorism also means they can and will engage in political censorship, then it is good that the Feds are blocked from preventing CP and terrorism.

Doesn't matter much, though; this ruling won't stand, it's too sweeping for higher conservative courts, and any leftist court would just reject it entirely.

Can you just "reject" a SCOTUS ruling? I was under impression that's not how things are usually done in the common law system, but who knows, these days...

Ask the ninth circuit.

They can and often do ignore, or exploit any plausible workaround.

This isn't a Supreme Court ruling, it's a preliminary injunction from a US District Court judge.

Supreme Court rulings aren't usually "rejected", just re-interpreted to say whatever the lower courts want them to say until a more friendly SCOTUS comes along. If no more friendly SCOTUS comes along, you get stuff like Bruen or SFFA, but the lower courts can keep it up indefinitely.

Oh, sorry, you're right, I was thinking about other much discussed SCOTUS rulings and kinda mixed it up. But since it's an injunction against Federal Government, the other courts don't have much space to intervene then? I mean, they can refuse to do the same, but as I understand, one federal judge is enough.

The order can be appealed in the normal way; to a circuit court panel, to the circuit court en banc, and to the Supreme Court. The Fifth Circuit is pretty conservative, but as I said it's quite likely even a conservative court won't uphold the order.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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