Subreddit Discriminates Against Anyone Who Doesn’t Call Texas Governor Greg Abbott ‘A Little Piss Baby’ To Highlight Absurdity Of Content Moderation Law
from the greg-abbott-is-a-little-piss-baby dept
Last year, I tried to create a “test suite” of websites that any new internet regulation ought to be “tested” against. The idea was that regulators were so obsessively focused on the biggest of the big guys (i.e., Google, Meta) that they never bothered to realize how it might impact other decently large websites that involved totally different setups and processes. For example, it’s often quite impossible to figure out how a regulation about Google and Facebook content moderation would work on sites like Wikipedia, Github, Discord, or Reddit.
Last week, we called out that Texas’s HB 20 social media content moderation law almost certainly applies to sites like Wikipedia and Reddit, yet I couldn’t see any fathomable way in which those sites could comply, given that so much of the moderation on each is driven by users rather than the company. It’s been funny watching supporters of the law try to insist that this is somehow easy for Wikipedia (probably the most transparent larger site on the internet) to comply with by being “more transparent and open access.”
If you somehow can’t see that tweet or screenshot, it’s a Trumpist defender of the law responding to someone asking how Wikipedia can comply with the law, saying:
Wikipedia would have to offer more transparent and open access to their platform, which would allow truth to flourish over propaganda there? Is that what you’re worried about, or what is it?
To which a reasonably perplexed Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales rightly responds:
What on earth are you talking about? It’s like you are writing from a different dimension.
Anyway… it seems some folks on Reddit are realizing the absurdity of the law and trying to demonstrate it in the most internety way possible. Michael Vario alerts us that the r/PoliticalHumor subreddit is “messing with Texas” by requiring every comment to include the phrase “Greg Abbott is a little piss baby” or be deleted in a fit of content moderation discrimination in violation of the HB20 law against social media “censorship.”
Until further notice, all comments posted to this subreddit must contain the phrase “Greg Abbott is a little piss baby”
There is a reason we’re doing this, the state of Texas has passed H.B. 20, Full text here, which is a ridiculous attempt to control social media. Just this week, an appeals court reinstated the law after a different court had declared it unconstitutional. Vox has a pretty easy to understand writeup, but the crux of the matter is, the law attempts to force social media companies to host content they do not want to host. The law also requires moderators to not censor any specific point of view, and the language is so vague that you must allow discussion about human cannibalization if you have users saying cannibalization is wrong. Obviously, there are all sorts of real world problems with it, the obvious ones being forced to host white nationalist ideology or insurrectionist ideation. At the risk of editorializing, that might be a feature, not a bug for them.
Anyway, Reddit falls into a weird category with this law. The actual employees of the company Reddit do, maybe, one percent of the moderation on the site. The rest is handled by
disgusting janniesvolunteer moderators, who Reddit has made quite clear over the years, aren’t agents of Reddit (mainly so they don’t lose millions of dollars every time a mod approves something vaguely related to Disney and violates their copyright). It’s unclear whether we count as users or moderators in relation to this law, and none of us live in Texas anyway. They can come after all 43 dollars in my bank account if they really want to, but Virginia has no obligation to extradite or anything.We realized what a ripe situation this is, so we’re going to flagrantly break this law. Partially to raise awareness of the bullshit of it all, but mainly because we find it funny. Also, we like this Constitution thing. Seems like it has some good ideas.
They also include a link to the page where people can file a complaint with the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, asking him to investigate whether the deletion of any comments that don’t claim that his boss, Governor Greg Abbott, is “a little piss baby” is viewpoint discrimination in violation of the law.
Filed Under: 5th circuit, content moderation, greg abbott, greg abbott is a little piss baby, hb20, texas
Companies: reddit
Comments on “Subreddit Discriminates Against Anyone Who Doesn’t Call Texas Governor Greg Abbott ‘A Little Piss Baby’ To Highlight Absurdity Of Content Moderation Law”
Tell me you don’t understand how Wikipedia works without telling me you don’t understand how Wikipedia works.
I mean, Wikipedia is so open it airs its own dirty laundry in the talk pages. How much more open does it need to be?
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The second half of that tweet gives it away, only the truth according to Trump should be allowed on Wikipedia.
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Enough personal information for threatening and/or swatting people. You really need to keep up with how political discourse works in the U.S.
I get it now.
All they want is that CRAP FLOATS,
Having a dite that Cant moderate, because of Laws, Means they can Fill it up with MORE CRAP.
Insted of having a Good article and debate on something, you get 1000 Piles of Unrelated things that Mention the subject, but go nowhere.
Are they admitting they do this Anyway? With newspapers and TV?
Here is interesting article to ponder. Think about NOT being able to Take this down.
https://www.consumerworld.org/pages/fakenewsprs2.htm
Greg Abbott is a little piss baby!
Re: Greg Abbott is a little piss baby
Greg Abbott is a little piss baby
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This is Chopper Dave, Greg Abbott is a little pissbaby, over.
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From that vantage point you should be able to see some of the images that are on the site for Greg Abbott the little piss baby.
Re: Re: Re: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 *explosion*
HEYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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Two Minutes Of Hate Comes True
I’ve said in the past that social media companies ought to be able to engage in viewpoint discrimination, as long as they clearly post the rules. They just need to admit their bias. Of course, larger platforms stand to lose a lot of money by actively driving users away. But woke platforms would prefer to lose money in order to enforce political agreement. Well done at smoking them out governor Abbott, well done.
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Is that why Twitter bent over backwards—famously, in the case of Donald Trump—to appease conservatives/right-wingers who had long been upset at what they believed was the seemingly leftist/liberal bent of Twitter moderation?
Also, define “woke”.
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Why would I hate a baby that filled its diaper? It’s what babies do.
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It’s not their fault the Terms of Services are a pain to read and too jargony to be read by your average human being.
…towards making money. Which was shown by Twitter keeping Trump on the platform until Jan 6. And FAcebook accepting Koch/Murdoch money to keep VACCINE DISINFO, ANTI-SEMITISM AND TERRORISM PROMOTION up.
Which explains Twitter keeping Trump on the platform until Jan 6. And FAcebook accepting Koch/Murdoch money to keep VACCINE DISINFO, ANTI-SEMITISM AND TERRORISM PROMOTION up.
The closest Twitter and Facebook have ever come to being state censors was to append fact checks and links to posts and tweets.
In Singapore, they were compelled by the government to do so. And Facebook has definitely done way worse to continue to do business in Singapore.
Well, if Greg Abbott is a little NeoNazi piss baby, so are you.
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… who else would you blame?
Terms of Services can indeed be written to be understood by your average human being, much like anything else.
The “jargony” part is lawyerese … or often, pseudo-lawyerese or “cut-and-paste” lawyerese when they don’t have competent lawyers of their own. And yes, lawyerese is needed, because much like jargon anywhere, it provides specific, unambiguous definitions. And specific, unambiguous declarations are what you need in a courtroom.
But the fact that they have a jargony Terms of Service does not prevent them from having a “human friendly” translation. (and I have seen examples of such).
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Lawyers.
*badumtish
(In all seriousness, I’m aware. There’s even an extension that condenses ToSes into something simple and easy to read.)
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In common parlance it can be condensed down to: Don’t be an asshole
If people just adhered to that simple admonishing we wouldn’t have to contend with more and more imperfect moderation driven on by the assholes.
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It’s funny how they think they are a bigger market than they really are, since being loud and stupid works in the political sphere. And yet the corporations (the holy corporation, which they love so much) know, really, how much market they represent, and know they are “driving away” a small segment of irritants and not losing everyone else.
That market shit is working, just not they way they want.
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True, but “conservative” big money has a ton of influence and reach.
News Corp draws its slush money from more than news, for example.
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They’re really not written in legal jargon. It’s arguably a pain to read, but just because it’s kind of long and very boring. For example:
https://twitter.com/en/tos
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Everything starts to look like jargon if it’s long and boring. Or if you don’t want to understand it.
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They do post their rules, its just that people like you cannot distinguish harassment from political discourse.
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This👆👆👆 💯!!!
Especially when you consider the fact that Koby as referred to the Jan 6 insurrection as nothing more than a “kerfuffle”!
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But woke platforms would prefer to lose money in order to enforce political agreement.
If only you simple-minded assholes would take your cash and fuck off somewhere else, you could show them the error of their ways…
Greg Abbott is a little piss baby.
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Social media companies ARE allowed to engage in viewpoint discrimination, because they are ultimately private entities formed by individuals voluntarily pooling their resources and that act does not somehow suddenly give congress and states the right to ignore the First Amendment. For the exact same reason, forcing them to state bias that may or may not exist (since it doesn’t matter) would also constitute a violation of their rights. As the post in OP said, the Constitution, kind of important, had some good ideas and some ideas that aged poorly and some, well, are the 3rd Amendment, but the First Amendment was definitely a good idea, and not to mention the law of the land. They are also free to lose money as they like until their shareholders force them to change tack. Feel free to buy them out if you don’t like it. It’s not your money or your platform, after all.
And nor is it Greg Abbott’s, but he does represent the state. You like tyranny? I would suggest spending some time in China except they’re way ahead in ethno-nationalism too so without being ethnically Chinese (or, technically at least, Russian or Korean but in reality lol naw) or a soccer player with no international caps but decent talent, you won’t even get to stay around to figure out how a black box political system is supposed to work. Womp womp. Frankly between all of the cultural right’s hobbyhorses why not just admit that what the official position of American conservatism is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics? Since it is really the shanzai version of it.
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“They just need to admit their bias.”
Heal thyself dipshit
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Anyone who uses the trite word is a little piss baby just like there little piss baby hero Gregg Sbbott.
Go find your safe place you little snowflake and triggered piss baby!
Be careful what you wish/throw a tantrum demanding...
Greg Abbot is a little piss baby.
With the mandatory text out of the way this seems reasonable enough, I mean there’s been so much whining about how platforms just need to be more exact and clear in their rules by people who are definitely not bad actors looking for loopholes to exploit that having clear rules about what your commentary must include can only be an improvement.
On top of that with all the furor about ‘viewpoints discrimination’ since there are people who don’t think that Greg Abbot is a little piss baby the platform’s hands are tied on this rule as it legally cannot tell the mod of that subreddit that they aren’t allowed to do that since that would be viewpoint discrimination against them, and I’m sure the law’s supporters would never be so grossly hypocritical as to demand viewpoint discrimination in their favor.
And last but most certainly not least since it’s a rule that all comments must include the ‘Greg Abbott is a little piss baby’ line there’s no possible concern about confusion over whether the text represents the position of the poster, and since it’s not forced speech so long as that confusion isn’t there there’s really no grounds at all for the first-amendment hating supporters of the bill to object to this new rule.
Polling replies
look, I crunched the polling numbers from March of 2020 to August of 2022 and used the polling algorithms utilized by F&M University and the simple matter of all of this is just Greg Abbott is a little piss baby
According to my calculations, Greg Abbott is a little piss baby.
I really don’t understand the cannibalism analogy, does he think cannibalism is inherently wrong?
Must have gotten Wikipedia confused for Conservapedia.
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Reminder: Conservatives made Conservapedia because citing credible and factual sources was too much of a threat to their ideological paradigm.
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You can tell a lot about a person/group by who/what they consider their enemies and when [Citation Needed] is on that list it’s probably not a good sign.
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Because belief in fairy tales is so much easier that doing actual research.
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If said fairytale was National Socialism, then yes.
Then again, Jesus mythicists are a thing and I consider Jesus Mythicism a fairy tale too. Admittedly a worse fairy tale then, let’s say, Sir Terry Pratchett’s books for kids or even My Friend Peppa Pig.
And the truth is so much more interesting than fiction.
LOL. Wikipedia to me is as transparent and open access as a website can reasonably get to. Someone must drank much Kool-Aid of the Trumpist Cult to make that such comment of Wikipedia.
Pretty sure truth is a defense
Pretty sure truth is a defense to a defamation claim, just sayin’
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Factual truth and honest mistakes are a defense against defamation, it’s not enough that someone thinks they are speaking the truth. YMMV.
In some jurisdictions outside the US even the truth can be considered defamation.
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In some jurisdictions outside the US even the truth can be considered defamation.
That idea blew my mind the first time someone brought it up and it still does as it implies a mindset and legal system where reality itself can be considered defamatory if you do nothing more than tell someone about it.
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And that’s how a very well-connected person in Singapore got sued for defamation. Over a “private” Facebook post.
If it isn’t the narrowly “government-defined” version of reality (in this case criticism of the judicial courts in Singapore) you get sued.
It also goes without saying that protesting is still considered taboo here and any actual proteats are done in a tiny place where the police can easily monitor your “protest” and arrest you or otherwise deny you permission to proteat because, and I kid you not, someone else is using the damn place for some other event.
Re: Pretty sure truth is a defense
In some states, truth with good motives. See, e.g., Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U.S. 250 (1952).
But even truth alone as a defense has problems. In most types of claim, the burden is on the plaintiff to prove his case. A defendant who is proceeding on a defense is generally obliged to .bear the burden, which is to prove that defense
Consider the burden shift. If I say that a school board member is a useless waste of oxygen, the idea of truth as a defense shifts the burden to me. If I say that a developer’s project is bad for the community, he proves that I said it, and then I have to assemble tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of experts.
Truth as a defense is therefore, in my view, a disappointment. Sort of like “preview” on this new platform.
Are you suggesting that a subreddit should be banned from creating a rule like this?
I don’t get the complaint. The Texas law would allow a subriddet to express their outrage against the Texas governor so how is the subriddet identifying any issue with the Texas law?
Re: TD isn't but Texas sure would
They’re banning people for not including speech in their comments, ‘discriminating’ against any users that refuse to comply by moderating comments to remove any that violate the rules, hence the sticking to Texas aspect, since the entire point of their first-amendment hating law is to prevent platforms from engaging in moderation/’viewpoint discrimination’ by removing content.
TX AG indepedently elected
Funny. But correction: Abbot is not Paxton’s boss.
Let’s just lay down the facts:
Fact 1: Greg Abbott is a little piss baby.
Fact 2: This “law” is hilariously unenforceable and flagrantly unconstitutional.
Fact 3: Anyone supporting Greg Abbott is a brain-dead subhuman and needs to stop wasting air. These subhumans are literally worse than worthless, they’re active detriments to society and the only possible way they can redeem their horrid life is to end it.
Hail, Jimbo!
Creator of the greatest collection of human knowledge and offender of piss babies.
As an actual factual Texian, I can tell you that Greg Abbott is indeed a little piss baby and only the engineered ‘majority’ likes his drippy, fake-texanish ways.
Don’t Mess With Texas is an anti-littering slogan, so please, Mess With Abbott and take him to the nearest trash receptacle.
“Greg Abbott is a little piss baby”. That’s actually a pretty-much loving, warm & fuzzy evaluation of this bastard, when it all comes to a boil. Abbott, along with Rafael “Ted” Cruz, Willie or Billy-Bob Gohmert (or whatever his first name is), Dan Patrick (the Lieut.Governor, not the sports-media guy) and of course “Rev.” Jeffress are all pretty-much boils on the ass of the human race.
Greg Abbott
I don’t know or care if Greg Abbot is a little piss baby or not. But; it seems to me that if I include the sentence: I don’t know if “Greg Abbott is a little piss baby”. But I want to comment about —-. I could write anything printable under the First Amendment.
Re: if you're taliking about reddit...
the mods make their own rules in each sub. you follow the rules, or you’re out. you can appeal, but it’s the mod’s subreddit, and reddit admins won’t get involved.
Re: Context...
Of course Greg Abbot is a little piss baby, but…
I see you have managed to put a little context around the required declaration and totally changed the meaning. This is what makes moderation difficult and trips up AI moderation constantly. And yes, you could do that, but the subreddit might decide that denying the truth of the assertion was out of bounds. I don’t think anything stops them from deciding that the rest of your post was out of bounds, either.
To be useful, there have to be bounds on the conversation. Gubmnt really needs to stay out of that process, with very limited exceptions — the hard case being Alex Jones style stochastic terrorism.