John Stossel Loses His Pathetic SLAPP Suit Against Facebook And Fact Checkers
from the john-slappsel dept
You may recall that a year ago, pretend libertarian, John Stossel, who talks a big game about free speech and the “marketplace of ideas,” decided to sue Meta/Facebook and some of its fact checking partners for, oh right, daring to fact check him in a way he didn’t like. For this job, he hired the Dhillon Law Group, which has become the recent go to law firm for nonsense grievance-inspired SLAPP suits (their name keeps showing up in so many of these lawsuits).
Anyway, the lawsuit went exactly as well as expected, which is… the court has just thrown it out completely, said there’s no use amending it, and granting Meta’s anti-SLAPP filing as well. Just bang up job all around, Stossel.
As you’ll recall, the lawsuit was about Stossel getting his “marketplace of ideas” panties all in a bunch because Facebook placed a fact check on a nonsense video he did about climate change, and Stossel was suddenly no longer so interested in the marketplace of ideas. He had to bring in the state to punish those who dared to say things he didn’t like. The video in question was about forest fires in California, and spoke to someone who argued that climate change is “not the primary cause” of the rash of forest fires in California in 2020.
Facebook, as it’s been known to do, had its fact checking partners, Climate Feedback (run by Science Feedback) review the video, where they noted that it was “missing context.” Facebook then placed a notice with the video saying that it was missing context, and noting that “independent fact-checkers say this information is missing context and could mislead people.” If people clicked through they were taken to a fact checking page on Climate Feedback’s site that was a more general explanation of why claims that forest fires are due to poor management, rather than climate change, are misleading.
There was then another video that also got a fact check, this one with clips of a debate he moderated about climate change. In the video Stossel talks about “environmental alarmists” and plays down their concerns. Again, this video got a similar fact check regarding some misleading claims.
Stossel took all of this personally, and insisted that this fact check defamed him (he claims that he wasn’t suing about the “missing context” label, just the underlying fact check). But, John, that’s not how the marketplace of ideas works. And the court has now made that clear.
First, the court notes that for the “fire” video, while Stossel claims that the video defamed him, the fact check was about the entire video not just the claims made by Stossel, and the fact check is accurate regarding other claims made by people in the video:
Second, nothing in the text associating the “claim” that “[f]orest fires are caused by poor management[,] [n]ot by climate change” with the Fire Video implies that Mr. Stossel himself made such a claim. On its face, the challenged text implies or asserts that such a claim is made in the video. A reviewer could reasonably conclude that such a claim is made in the video. For example, the video includes the following passages:
Shellenberger: Climate change is real. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not our most serious environmental problem.
Stossel: And it’s not the main cause of the California fires.
…
Stossel: If not climate change, what is to blame?
[Cartoon clip of Smokey the Bear saying, “Only you can prevent forest fires.”]
Stossel: Foolish policies. . . .
…
Stossel: Climate has made things worse. California’s warmed three degrees over 50 years. But—
Shellenberger: You could have had this amount of warming and not had these fires and the reason we know that is because the forests that were well managed have survived the mega fires.
…
Stossel: It’s about time. Bad policies were the biggest cause of this year’s fires, not the slightly warmer climate. And while climate change is a problem, Shellenberger’s new book explains, it’s not an apocalypse.
But, of course, there’s a larger point: it’s all opinion. Opinion is not defamatory:
Even if the Court assumes, without finding, for purposes of this motion that this is so, the disputed attribution nevertheless is not a statement of objective fact about Mr. Stossel or his reporting, but rather the reviewer’s subjective interpretation of the Fire Video’s contents. A reviewer’s assessment that Mr. Stossel was sympathetic to, or endorsed, the views expressed by Mr. Shellenberger or otherwise in the Fire Video, and intended the video to communicate to his viewers that “poor management” caused the fires, “not climate change,” is the kind of assessment that is protected by the First Amendment as a statement of opinion
The same is true of the other video:
the Alarmism Article is a classic example of viewpoint expression, or opinion, based on disclosed facts. See Yagman, 55 F.3d at 1439 (“A statement of opinion based on fully disclosed facts can be punished only if the stated facts are themselves false and demeaning.”); see also Herring Networks, 8 F.4th at 1159. The article identifies multiple examples of false statements or factual inaccuracies in the Alarmism Video and explains why the reviewers judge the statements to be false or inaccurate. See, e.g., Dkt. No. 28-3 (identifying statement made by Professor Legates that sea levels have been rising for 20,000 years and probably will continue, and observing that this is “imprecise and misleading, as it implies sea levels have continued rising since then and current sea level rise is just a continuation of past natural fluctuations”; identifying statement by Patrick Michaels that “hurricanes and other storms” are not “getting worse” and that “there is no relationship between hurricane activity and the surface temperature of the planet,” and that Michaels is “cherry-picking a single measure of hurricane activity and ignoring the broader corpus of scientific research.”) Mr. Stossel identifies no facts in the Alarmism Article that he contends are false. Defendants’ critique of the Alarmism Video reflects a subjective assessment of the contents of the video and is not capable of being proved true or false.
The court doesn’t even need to get to the fact that Stossel was unlikely to ever be able to show actual malice. It also doesn’t even need to get to the Section 230 bit, which Meta raised in defense of its fact checking efforts. Because why bother when the fundamental complaint is so SLAPPtastically ridiculous?
So, on to the anti-SLAPP argument. Here, the defendants argued that the case was a SLAPP suit and the court agrees:
For the reasons described above, Mr. Stossel cannot show a probability of success on the merits of his defamation claim because he fails to state a claim for defamation under the Rule 12(b)(6) pleading standard
I’m pretty sure this means that the defendants could ask Stossel to pay their legal fees now…
Stossel also asked the court to allow him to amend the complaint if the court was going to dismiss it, but the court says there’s basically no way to turn this into a legitimate complaint:
He does not describe the amendments he proposes to make. In any event, even if he had, the Court is not persuaded that Mr. Stossel could make any amendments that would remedy the critical deficiency the Court identifies above—i.e., that the challenged statements are not actionable as false statements of objective fact. The record before the Court includes not only the allegations of the complaint, but also the videos in question and the entirety of the challenged statements, all of which are incorporated by reference in the complaint. For this reason, the Court finds that any amendment of the pleadings would be futile because no additional allegations could alter the nature of the underlying statements challenged as defamatory.
Stop filing bullshit SLAPP suits folks.
Filed Under: anti-slapp, california, climate change, defamation, free speech, john stossel, marketplace of ideas
Companies: meta, science feedback
Comments on “John Stossel Loses His Pathetic SLAPP Suit Against Facebook And Fact Checkers”
If I may quote Stossel's former catchphrase
Does John Stossel believe in free speech?
Does John Stossel have a sound legal argument?
Give me a break.
Stossel is an idiot. I’m sure he believed Trump, when Trump said California should rake the forests like Finland does. (or doesn’t, actually). You have to love climate change deniers when they make shit up. I know Stossel, that sciency shit is hard. Poor guy.
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NDC
NDC rules in favor of BigTech. In other breaking news water is wet. This case was never intended to win at the NDC level or 9th.
“Defendants argue that challenged statements cannot reasonably be understood to declare or imply provable assertions of fact.”
Translation a fact check is not fact.
Not that we didn’t already know this it was nice to force the fact checkers to admit it in a court of law.
You didn’t win Mike. Every suit is a battle in a larger war. You lost a lot of ground here.
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As opposed to what? Big fascist propaganda (which is what Rupert Murdoch owns now)?
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No, they ruled in favor of the First Amendment and protected speech. That the speakers were Facebook and their team of fact checkers is coincidental; a smaller service that said the same things and gotten sued for it would’ve deserved the same ruling. This ain’t about “Big Tech”—it’s about protecting free speech from a lawsuit designed to chill speech critical of a SLAPP-happy asshole.
Then again, I suppose “I want the law to protect all free speech…except for the speech of those ‘Big Tech’ assholes” is the exact kind of fascist hypocrisy you’re more than happy to express.
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Re: Re:
Opinion is protected speech. Calling something a fact check then turning around and saying its opinion when sued is a definitional abortion.
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But it isn’t defamation.
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A fact check is an opinion about whether a given statement of fact is, in and of itself, factual. As you said, “opinion is protected speech”—and that means a fact check is protected speech. Whether it’s a Facebook fact checker or a seasoned journalist or some random jackoff on Twitter who states that opinion is largely irrelevant to whether the opinion is legally protected.
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Unfortunately, facts are protected under 1A, NeoNazi.
Save us the trouble and start threatening to kill us all already, as you are wont to do.
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Um. A fact check has always been an opinion. It’s an opinion about whether or not something is factual. That has always been the case, and nothing has changed about that with this case.
Re: Re: Re: Here you are yelling bro
“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”
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Not at all. A fact check is someone evaluating a statement made by someone else, opining on how factually accurate it is, and then presenting evidence supporting and reasons behind that opinion. It is, and always has been, an opinion regarding facts.
This is not a change in claims at all. Certainly not by Mike, who has been saying this for many years now.
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All you’ve proven with this statement is that you’re illiterate.
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Shh honey, you know you can’t comment until you’ve cleaned your room.
Re: You’re a joke Crunchwrap
“ You didn’t win Mike. Every suit is a battle in a larger war. You lost a lot of ground here.”
That’s just about as believable as
“I’ve never been proven wrong here!”
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I still don’t understand why people think this, but there is no evidence that federal courts in the 9th Circuit are biased towards Big Tech.
Yes, this outcome was obvious from the start, but that’s because it was a frivolous lawsuit. This has nothing to do with the fact that it was Facebook (among others) being sued and everything to do with the fact that simply opining that something someone else said is false or misleading is, under defamation law, a matter of opinion rather than a statement of fact, especially where, as here, the facts underlying the statement have been clearly disclosed.
First off, this is hardly the first time that has happened. Not even close.
More importantly, the more common, colloquial definition of the term “fact”, along with the academic, linguistic definition, are distinct from the legal definition. Under defamation law (as well as laws governing fraud), a statement is one of fact only if both of the following are true:
Many statements that would be considered statements of fact colloquially and/or linguistically are considered statements of opinion under US law. Hyperbole and “puffery”, for example, are essentially always considered non-actionable statements of opinion. It is also more likely that a statement on social media or an online forum will be considered a statement of opinion than it would be in other contexts. Calling someone a liar is often (though not always) a statement of opinion, at least so long as the subject statement either is a matter of public debate or (most particularly) is itself a statement of opinion under the same legal standards. And, finally, a statement made together with full disclosure of the facts underlying the statement (which is nearly always the case for fact checks) is usually considered a statement of opinion based on disclosed facts, which are also nonactionable.
Not really. Again, as stated from the very beginning of this suit, including on this very site, fact checks are generally considered statements of opinion for the purposes of defamation law. Heck, this was stated on this site as a general principle long before this suit was even threatened.
To have lost ground, one would have to say, do, or become something new that they didn’t want to. Having further legal confirmation of a position you had since before the start is not even remotely “losing ground”.
Mike lost nothing from having the court and the defendants say exactly what he was saying since before the lawsuit because this was always his desired outcome. He doesn’t care about whether people will pay more or less heed to Facebook’s fact checks in the future as a result of this, nor would he have anything to lose either way. If Facebook shuts down because of this “concession”, so be it.
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Stossel obviously deserved to lose, but you mocking someone for talking a big game about free speech but not acting that way is such a case of the pot calling the kettle black that it makes me laugh and cry at the same time.
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lmao you can’t spread anti-trans hate here
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Oh, do tell, Hyman. Explain to me what you think is hypocritical?
Lemme take a wild guess. You think because I asked you to STOP BEING AN ASSHOLE to people and then EXERCISED MY RIGHTS OF ASSOCIATION to stop you from using MY PROPERTY to post your harassment of others here, that I’m violating my free speech principles?
Because, if that’s your argument, it’s wrong. Stossel is a hypocrite for claiming to be about the marketplace of ideas, and against gov’t speech suppression, when he then asked the gov’t to step in and suppress speech critical of him in the marketplace of ideas.
My position on free speech remains ENTIRELY consistent. Free speech is important, and that means that the gov’t should be used to suppress speech AND that private entities have their own association rights to bar you from making use of their property to spread your message. Indeed, those association rights are CRITICAL to supporting free speech, because without it, very few websites would even be willing to allow 3rd party speech, because they know their sites would fill up with abuse and harassment, of the type you engage in.
I understand free speech. You don’t. I have been entirely consistent with my support for free speech.
You haven’t.
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Re: Re:
Free speech allows people to (duh) speak freely. When you decide to exercise your 1st Amendment right to silence opinions you don’t like on your site, you are using your own free speech rights to destroy the free speech of others. People who want to silence opinions they hate can come up with endless reasons why it’s OK for them to do that; none of those reasons change the fact that they oppose free speech for people other than themselves.
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And I have and continue to fight for the right of people to speak freely. That DOES NOT mean and CANNOT mean that they should be able to commandeer the private property of others to say what they want.
That’s the part that you refuse to acknowledge.
No. Because YOU HAVE NO FREE SPEECH RIGHT to use someone else’s property to speak. You have admitted this in the past, when I asked if I could spray paint your house to tell people that you’re a pervert. You don’t want me to do that. Does that “destroy my free speech”? Of course not. I can still tell anyone that you’re a pervert. That I don’t get to spray paint your house to tell people that is not a free speech issue.
I don’t oppose anyone’s free speech rights. You can be a pervert, and obsess all you want about other people’s genitals. You can yell and scream about “woke ideologues” no matter how antifactual it is. All I’m saying is DON’T DO IT ON MY PROPERTY. That’s it. There’s no attack on your free speech rights.
You’re just so desperate to be a perverted asshole that you have to make up excuses about how you’re an oppressed victim. Fuck off. You have your free speech rights.
Anyway, I’m getting kind of tired of you posting this bullshit over and over again. Let me come spray paint your house or go the fuck away? Okay?
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Re: Re: Re:2
My house is an apartment in a Manhattan co-op, so it would be fun to see you hauled away by the NYPD for vandalism. Maybe Cushing could write an article about it.
The thing that you refuse to acknowledge is that I am not, and never have been, talking about any right I have to use your property. I have no such right. You are completely within your legal rights to censor me or anyone else as you choose. What you and the other woke ideologues here cannot seem to understand is that if you claim to believe in free speech, you ought to be letting people speak freely. It is never the case that you must not censor, but it is always the case that you should not censor. Telling people to speak elsewhere does not make you any less of a censor. Censorship is the act of the censor, and it is entirely irrelevant whether the person you censor here can speak elsewhere.
Furthermore, your “spray paint my house” comment demonstrates one more your willful unwillingness to recognize the difference between censorship based on opinion and moderation based on behavior, because you find it convenient to frighten the susceptible by claiming that not censoring is the same as not moderating.
Re: Re: Re:3
No. Believing in free speech means believing in not allowing THE GOVERNMENT to censor speech and then, further, supporting the systems and policy that enables more free speech in the long run. And LETTING ASSHOLES DRIVE ALL THE GOOD PEOPLE OFF YOUR SITE is not that. I have been entirely consistent in my approach to free speech.
Elsewhere you comment that you would be an even bigger censor, so, yeah, you’re just a total fucking hypocrite, which is not surprising.
One day, when you grow up, maybe you’ll realize how immature and stupid your position is. But considering that you embrace being an asshole, I will just say: fuck off.
Re: Re: Re:4
No, outsourcing censorship to private third parties is not supporting free speech. Free speech is allowing people to speak freely, not just restraining the government from censoring and silencing people. The 1st Amendment is a partial implementation of free speech, directed against the government, but it is not the entirety of free speech. You don’t want to see that because you like the censorship that the large generic speech platforms are currently providing for you, and the censorship you apply here to popular ideas that you hate. You hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment to pretend that you are supporting free speech. You are not. You are supporting censorship.
Re: Re: Re:5
At no point here are we talking about outsourcing to third parties. I don’t know why you’re bringing in other claims other than as admission that you got nothing.
As I have explained, and WHICH YOU ADMIT IMPLICITLY, this is a nonsensical argument. Every private business HAS to have the ability to refrain from being compelled to allow others to speak on their property, otherwise you have no free speech rights. The only way in which free speech makes sense is if you talk about in terms of government censorship. Because private discretion is part of one’s free speech rights, and you are arguing to take those rights away.
You admit this when you insisted that I would be arrested for painting your home with my own messages. According to you that’s censorship. Indeed, you insist that I would be arrested for my free speech rights.
What you don’t realize is how this proves your entire argument is bunk.
You keep making this claim and it’s no less stupid the 50th time than it was the 1st. I have long argued that platforms should actually moderate less. And I have regularly called out the mistakes that they make. So fuck off with your made up nonsense about how I approve how they moderate.
But what I do not do is insist, idiotically, that they should not do any moderation at all of assholes being assholes.
Again, you yourself admit that YOU would moderate to ban speech that involves cursing. That is viewpoint discrimination and against free speech, according to your own definition.
You are a hypocrite.
I have explained why the rights of private parties and their association rights are KEY to understanding and supporting free speech. You refuse to admit that because you’re blinded by your desire to be a pervert and an asshole in places that have asked you to knock it off.
So stop your bullshit about that I’m happy with the rights to moderate because I support how they moderate. Hell, my most famous paper is a giant criticism of how they moderate, and you’re just too stupid to realize that, and you have so little argument that you have to fucking lie about what I believe and what I say.
I have never supported “censorship” in my life. I support free speech, INCLUDING the free speech rights of private parties to say “fuck off, get off my property.”
You don’t. You support censorship.
Re: Re: Re:5 I Wish to Shout in Your Living Room and Drink Your Liquor
Not quite how it works. You may not come in my living room to express those unspecified “ideas that [I] hate”. If you attempt it, I am likely to beat you with a stick until you go away.
Am I welcome to come in your living room during the football game, drink your liquor, and shout at your guests about how unsavory your views and assumed practices are? Or are you the same sort of nasty pro-censorship person you claim to deplore, barring me and my free speech?
Let me know, and also be sure to stock the good snacks also.
Re: Re: Re:
Yes, Hyman, we know you HATE the freedom of association. Oh, and Property laws. And castle doctrine.
And you’d do the same too, you admitted it, remember? You’d also do it far more than Mike has removed your hateful comments.
If Mike truly opposed free speech he’d be calling for YOUR HEAD. Not trying to jaw jaw in the hopes you’d get the message and fuck off.
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Re: Re: Re:2
Trust me, I love the castle doctrine. I wish it had been applied to the rioters, looters, and arsonists in the wake of the BLM protests.
It would be great if the site owner called for my head instead of censoring my posts. And yes, I would moderate much more than he does, because I don’t care for cursing and vacuous garbage that doesn’t contribute to a useful discussion. That’s different than censoring based on viewpoint.
Re: Re: Re:3
Lol. Wait, wait, wait. Dude.
Wait.
So… moderation of cursing is perfectly good and not censorship.
But moderation of you harassing people and being an asshole is… censorship.
Get over yourself, you fucking asshole.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Your definition of harassment is telling people truths that they find unpleasant, do not wish to hear, and do not believe. On a site where people are able to speak freely and present their ideas, that is always going to happen. That you cannot understand the difference between telling someone something they don’t want to hear, as opposed to screaming and cursing at them, is a stark failure on your part.
Re: Re: Re:5
Don’t pretend that your racism, bigotry and perversion are “truth telling.” You may want to believe that to justify the fact that you’re an asshole, but you’re wrong. You have harassed people on this site. I asked you to stop. And you refuse. Because you are an asshole.
Stop it.
Re: Re: Re:5
That you can’t understand how your anti-trans bigotry isn’t a “difference of opinion” and how it’s still bigotry even if you don’t use anti-trans slurs is a failure on your part to recognize how your rhetoric leads to ever-increasing hatred, distrust, and violence against trans people.
You can have a difference of opinion on how to handle the economy. You can’t have a difference of opinion on whether a trans person deserves to exist openly in society (or exist at all). You’ve tried for months to convince the most reasonable commenters here that they should agree with your bigotry and you’ve been rejected so hard that Mike started holding back your anti-trans comments. For what reason do you persist in the face of being told you, your bigotry, and your disruptive behavior are all unwelcome on this site, other than some idiotic belief that this (or any other) site somehow “needs” an unwelcome bigoted contrarian who stands against “wokeness” to be a regular poster?
God, just fuck all the way off already, then keep fucking off after that.
Re: Re: Re:5
[Hallucinates facts contrary to evidence]
Re: Re: Re:
But it doesn’t allow you to make other people listen—or to make them host/promote your speech at their expense. Whether “other people” are regular jackoffs on the street or Mark Zuckerberg is irrelevant; you don’t have the right to make them give you their time or their property for your benefit.
What’s stopping you from making a website or a blog or a whatever-the-hell and espousing on that site/service the same hateful speech you’re trying to espouse here without consequence? Because it ain’t Mike Masnick.
…says the exterminationist TERF who thinks the only opinions about trans people that matter all come from bigoted cisgender shitheads like J.K. Rowling.
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Re: Re: Re:2
I don’t have the right to use anyone else’s property to speak. But people who host discussions and claim to favor free speech should not be censoring opinions based on their viewpoint.
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing speech on platforms they control. The ability of the speaker to speak elsewhere is irrelevant.
All opinions about trans people matter. Only some, however, are true.
Re: Re: Re:3
Really? What about party political sites and conferences then? What you keep on asking for is the right to force your views into the view of others, who are aware of them in general, but choose not to listen or support people with those views. You are free to speak on the street corner, a website that you own, or any website prepared to host your speech.
What you keep on demanding is the right to force people to listen, and to help you spread you speech, and that is a large step open the totalitarian road. As I said elsewhere, I support your right to speak on sites in in forums that you have paid for, or with the help of those who agree to help you. Go speak where you are welcome, and if that only gives you a small audience, possibly of people you do not wish to be associated, then think about your views, and why they result in such outcomes.
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Re: Re: Re:4
I don’t demand anything. I merely point out that people who claim to support free speech should not be silencing opinions based on their viewpoint. If someone wants to run a site where only one-sided opinions are allowed, that’s fine, but they are then not being supportive of free speech on that site, because they are not allowing people to speak freely. The large generic speech platforms should especially not be censoring opinions based on viewpoint, because in the eyes of their users, they are the places where people go to speak about everything.
Re: Re: Re:3
I can favor the ideals of free speech without having to host all of it on my own site. Should someone have the right to say bigoted bullshit? Yes. Should they be able to make me host it in any way? No.
You don’t have the right to make anyone give you a platform, an audience, or their attention. If you can’t deal with the fact that the owner of this site—and a large group of its regular commentators—doesn’t want your fucking exterminationist views on trans people shitting up otherwise decent commentary sections, that’s your problem. Solve it yourself—somewhere else.
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“ but you mocking someone for talking a big game about free speech”
You feel personally attacked we get it.
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Re: Re:
Since I am personally attacked, my feelings are correct.
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Words aren’t physical violence, and while YOU probably can physically assault us and walk away scot-free, we don’t get THAT luxury.
Try again.
Re: Re: Re: You asked bro
Being told you are wrong when you are oh so obviously wrong isn’t a person attack.
A personal attack you be more along the lines of.
You are an actual shit-stain on the fabric of society’s nasty azz panties and should be thrown out or drowned in bleach you hate filled human sized condom full of day old jiz.
See the difference, busted hymen?
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Re: Re: Re:2
Eh, there are plenty of comments directed to me that have similar sentiments, if expressed less creatively. Being called a pervert would usually be considered a personal attack, for example.
Anyway, don’t let me stop you. This isn’t my site, and the owner seems to enjoy seeing such language and thinks it’s useful. While the attacks are personal, I don’t respect the attackers, so they don’t bother me.
Re: Re: Re:3
“I don’t respect the attackers, so they don’t bother me.”
Tell yourself that as many times as you need to in order to believe it bro.
Re:
Just because I will defend your right to free speech does not mean I have to listen to you, or help you publish your words. You can publish your own words on your own site, or any site and try and attract an audience, which is what Mike has done, or you can go to a site like 8kun. I will not interfere with you doing any of those things, and neither will Mike.
What you keep demanding is that people who disagree strongly with your views help you publish those views, and that is not how freedom of speech works, and is disruptive, and often abusive.
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No, I’m not demanding anything. I am pointing out that the site owner likes to wrap himself in the mantle of free speech while censoring opinions he hates but knows are widely popular. He’s allowed to do that, but he shouldn’t.
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Even so, I don’t think he’s done it more times than you subtly implying you hate anyone who isn’t white and sucking Trump’s dick.
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No, you keep on asking that your be allowed to spout your bile, and disrupt other peoples conversation. Also, freedom of speech only means that you can spend your own money, and gain the help of those willing to support you. It does not mean that anybody telling you to fuck off from their property, or any group that they organize and support is infringing on your freedom of speech. Indeed, you keep on asking to be able to infringe on others speech rights by being a disruptive, abusive and bigoted speaker.
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Re: Re: Re:2
Freedom of speech is the ability to speak freely. Someone who hosts a discussion site and claims to favor free speech should not be censoring parts of the discussion based on their opinions.
Re: Re: Re:3
Someone who’s told they’re not welcome on that site should fuck off—and yet, here you are, demanding we take you seriously by continuing to post where you’re not welcome.
You’re such a disruptive little shit that I wouldn’t blame Mike for not letting any of your posts through. You’ve proven how much you deserve that.
Re: Re: Re:
Every time you whine about being “censored”, you’re demanding that people here take your bullshit seriously and side with you over the mean “censor” who won’t let you be an open bigot on his property. If you think I’m wrong, you’re not paying attention to yourself.
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Re: Re: Re:2
No, I’m not demanding anything. Someone who hosts a discussion and claims to support free speech should not be censoring parts of the discussion based on viewpoint. If the site owner wants to, that’s fine, but they should be aware of the dissonance between claiming to support free speech and yet refusing to allow people to speak.
Re: Re: Re:3
I don’t moderate based on viewpoint. I let the vast, vast, vast majority of your comments through. The only ones that have been blocked are when you go off on perverted rants about your obsession with what’s in other people’s underwear, which were freaking creepy, and then some of your racist bullshit in defense of cops killing black people. I’m sorry, but I don’t want that shit on my site. It’s not censorship, it’s me telling you to stop being an asshole.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Some large numbers of women do not want to be locked in prison with male prisoners, do not want men on their sports teams, do not want to be seen naked by men in locker rooms, and do not want to see naked men in locker rooms, and do not consider transwomen to be women for that purpose. No matter how much you call me a pervert, rant at me about obsession, and curse at me, that will remain true, and attempts to force those women to submit to those things will backfire very badly on woke gender ideologues.
Here in Manhattan, Tessa Majors, an 18-year-old student, was murdered by three Black boys aged 13 and 14. Tamir Rice, shot by police, was a 12-year-old Black boy with a toy gun. You need to overcome your woke ideological blindness and realize that these two facts are not uncorrelated.
Re: Re: Re:5
Tell me again that you’re not a pervert and a racist as you post this kind of nonsense?
Defending the shooting of Tamir Rice is a new low for you Hyman. Fuck you you terrible piece of shit.
Re: Re: Re:5
Dude, you can say you want trans people dead and gone. We all know that’s where your rhetoric is headed—it’s the same place where all bigoted speech eventually goes—so at least have the testicular fortitude to be honest about it, you perverted ghoul.
Re: Re: Re:5
… said nobody who has ever once demonstrated evidence of mental competence, ever.
Re: Re: Re:3
Yes you are, by remaining on this site you are demanding that people who have told you to go away, including the site owner, you are demanding that we listen to you.
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Re: Re: Re:4
The site owner has the ability to block me altogether if they want to. I don’t care what other commenters who believe in falsehoods want me to do.
Re: Re: Re:3
By continuing to post where you’re not wanted, you’re demanding we take your bullshit seriously. Fuck off, hatemonger.
Re: Re: Re: You keep using that phrase…
What opinions precisely are so “widely popular?”
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Re: Re: Re:2
If I try to say, the post will likely never appear.
But let’s see. Here one – a huge majority of Americans oppose admission or hiring decisions that use race or gender as a criterion.
https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2022/05/02/poll-finds-public-doesnt-favor-affirmative-action
Re: Re: Re:3
You didn’t read the report, right?
Or perhaps you didn’t understand it and thought one of the questions taken out of context where relevant to prove something nonexistent, like people being “censored” for the “popular opinion” of thinking academic acumen is a more important factor than race/ethnicity for college admissions.
Re: Re: Re:3 You ain't got the balls to say it boy
As I thought, you are a craven little bitch too.
Re:
The government didn’t clamp down on his speech amd let him file his frivilous complaint, though.
It’s more than his censorious ass deserves, and frankly, considering Facebook was PAID to keep his DISINFORMATION up, it’s DOUBLY HYPOCRITICAL of your anti-trans NeoNazi self to proclaim that they’re censoring him, or to say Mike’s hypocritical about free speech when you’d Holocaust most of the comment section for disagreeing with you.
Oh sure, you won’t go so far as to threaten to rape Mike, but the sentiment is there. That’s what Hitler actually did to critics. I’m 100% sure if you could, you’d murder us too.
Re:
[citation needed]
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Re: Re:
[your comment has been removed for being devoid of useful content]
Re: Re: Re:
…says the guy whose comment was flagged into being hidden.
Re: Re: Re:
My content has not been removed, and you still haven’t demonstrated that asking for a citation for your claim is not useful given that we have offered a case for why it is.
I remember John Stossel’s early days on 20/20.
I rather liked his pieces back then (early 1980’s).
Was I just young and naive back then? Did he somehow stumble down into the pseudo-libertarian rabbit hole later on, or was he always destined to be a Fox News commentator?
Re: Rabbit Hole Check...
Positive feedback from or about a large audience and the power it brings is a powerful, addictive drug, just check in on Elon Musk.
Let’s have you cite a few of Stossel’s earlier pieces so we can see.
The trouble with libertarianism is that it fails to acknowledge that the inevitable inequality of power between individuals requires socially enforced constraints for the good of everyone. (note: also applies to capitalism with Adam Smith’s invisible hand)
Re: Re: Adam Smith
The thing about Adam Smith is that he didn’t want a market free of government interference, he wanted a market free of rentiers, that is to say, landlords. So IP wouldn’t exist in his dream economy.
Re: Re: Re: Adam Smith wasn't wrong...
Rentiers certainly drag down the economy, and allowing the invisible hand to operate on small players in the economy brings it up, to the benefit of all.
However, his invisible hand also incentivizes large players in the economy to become rentiers in various ways; it’s about half of what Techdirt here finds itself writing about and it’s the crux of my criticism: What works for individuals who are approximately equal in status does not work in the presence of large, unequal groups of high status compared to the individuals.
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Re: Re:
The trouble with libertarianism is coordination problems. When the pioneers get arrows in their backs, no one wants to be the first mover, so you need government to force everyone to act together.
Re:
He’s always been an idiot, so maybe you became less of one. Then again, you’re asking that question, so maybe you haven’t gotten far enough.
My question: what makes a pretend or ‘pseudo’ libertarian different than a ‘real’ one?
For free speech so long as it's for them
Nothing tests a person’s dedication or lack thereof towards free speech and/or the marketplace of ideas quite like one or both being against that person, and when that moment came it looks like John Stossel’s principles turned out to be hobbies, to be discarded when convenient.
Yep, that there science stuff they teach in middle school really can come in useful.
But only if you pay attention.
Censorship vs. Moderation
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/10/20/when-i-die-and-go-to-hell-i-want-to-see-the-entire-court-of-appeal-panel-there-to-greet-me/
A relevant story from The Volokh Conspiracy. Courts have the power do declare someone a “vexatious litigant” when they refuse to follow rules of decorum and procedure, including name-calling of judges and lawyers You can sue anyone for anything, but you don’t get to be disruptive about it. And notice that this is the government imposing such restrictions, not even a private third party.
Re:
Relevant how? Perhaps you are conflating things here, because the case has nothing to do at all with censorship or moderation.
Re: Re:
Your lawsuit can make any claims you want, so it’s not censored as to opinion, but you must follow procedure and decorum, so it’s moderated. It’s rather obvious except to people who are willfully blind because they want censorship of opinions they disagree with.
Re: Re: Re:
You just proved once again that you don’t understand the first amendment at all plus the fact that you think that dealing with the government is the same thing as dealing with a private entity or the fact that a court is something entirely different than a social media company.
I could go on why your conflation is so fucking stupid but you wouldn’t get it.
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Re: Re: Re:2
This is a court, a branch of the government, preventing a because litigant from speaking in court, through filings, in disruptive ways. If anything, you would think that the 1st Amendment would prevent this, but it doesn’t.
But that’s not relevant anyway. The 1st Amendment doesn’t apply to censorship or moderation carried out by private entities. The point of the story is to once again illustrate that censorship and moderation are two different things. Woke ideologues are unwilling to see that because they like and want the censorship that the large generic speech platforms are providing for them, and want to frighten people into thinking that not censoring is the same as not moderating.
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Re: Re: Re:3
“Vexatious”, not “because”. Sigh. Blurry vision, swipe keyboards, and autocorrect. The combo from Heck.
Re: Re: Re:3
And what speech is being “censored”, pray tell? Is it the speech related to the conservative-led anti-trans panic that intends to push transgender people out of public life (and into open graves)?
Re:
And you can post on social media, but you don’t get to be disruptive about it unless your favored service doesn’t care if you act like a disruptive little shit.
What’s your point.
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Re: Re:
Your lawsuit can make any claims you want, so it’s not censored as to opinion, but you must follow procedure and decorum, so it’s moderated. It’s rather obvious except to people who are willfully blind because they want censorship of opinions they disagree with.
Re: Re: Re:
lmao get the fuck out you anti-trans fascist
John Stossel Is an Idiot
John Stossel exposed as the discredited idiot he is. This is the same idiot who attacked the Southern Poverty Law Center while trying the defend the hate group the Family Research Council. While he didn’t mention it on his Facebook video he made attacking the SPLC he went on to mention in an article on Reason.com about how the real reason the SPLC labels the FRC a hate group is because they label gay men as child molesters more likely to molest children than heterosexuals. Stossel goes on to say there is “evidence” to support this……but fails to provide any kind of source at all. Ironic because on his Facebook video about his lawsuit he complains about Facebook not mentioning any kind of source for “defaming” him. The facts regarding the FRC is that that nothing the FRC says is backed up by professional scientific organizations who study cases on child molestation such as the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute or Dr. Nicholas Groth who is a pioneer in the field of child molestation. Dr. Groth wrote a letter to the FRC demanding to remove his name from a FRC article on homosexual child molestation because he complained the FRC was distorting his work! It also doesn’t help Stossel’s defense of the FRC when their President Tony Perkins once paid $82K to use former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke’s mailing list and that Tony Perkins once spoke at an event for the white supremacist organization Council of Conservative Citizens in 2001 which there is a black and white photo on the internet showing Perkins there. Maybe former pro wrestler David Schultz’s slaps to Stossel’s head caused brain damage to Stossel which could explain his idiotic defense of the FRC. The facts are in plain sight!
Re: John Stossel is an Idiot
Correction, Dr. A. Nicholas Groth is the name of the Scientific Researcher whose work the FRC distorted.
Ironic
Simply ironic that “fact checkers” can give opinions while others cannot give proof of their opinions. In the actual depositions, the “fact checkers” admitted they 1. never watched the video they “fact checked” and 2. those who did watch said they didn’t like the way he expressed the facts. Those who throw around opinions like “John Stossel is an idiot” are playing into the hands of the oligarchs that are ruining our planet by advocating for suppression of fact. For example, regarding the rise in forest fires in 2020, NPR reported in June of 2021 that “he [Gov. Gavin Newsom] claimed 90,000 acres were treated, but we found that’s not true. The state’s own data shows that, in reality, it was less than 12,000 acres, so just a fraction of what Newsom claimed. And looking at the bigger picture, not just those specific projects, we also found that the state’s fire prevention work overall dropped by half last year, which was the worst wildfire season on record for California. And during that time, Newsom also slashed about $150 million from the state’s wildfire prevention budget.” The UN Environment Programme reported in 2021, “Wildfires and climate change are circular in their causes, as fires contribute significant greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and thus exacerbate climate change. Climate change is also worsened as peatlands and rainforests become “tinderboxes” rather than helping to slow temperature rise.” The same people that scream “climate change” will never acknowledge facts like, The International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation reported these findings about lithium mining for electric car batteries. Monitoring the areas around lithium mines around the globe showed “significant degradation over the past 20 years including (1) vegetation decline, (2) elevating daytime temperatures, (3) decreasing trend of soil moisture, and (4) increasing drought condition in national reserve areas.” Each of these scenarios led by greedy politicians with little foresight is devastating the climate, yet the only thing oligarchs want you to see/read is that the entire fault lies upon petroleum, which isn’t true. Also for those who claim we need to rid the world of petroleum use, recall the oligarchs also pushed for reuseable plastic bags under the guise of save the environment. Yet these plastic bags are made from petroleum, and politicians never followed through with finding ways to make them environmentally friendly. When true environmentalists caught on, the response was to make even heavier plastic bags that require even more petroleum to make and take over 100 years to break down in the environment (they hope). They claimed these new, heavier, reuseable bags would be so wonderful because each bag can be used over 30 times! But, nobody does that; everyone including those who scream about stopping petroleum use simply throw their bags out with the garbage only to run to the market and obtain more plastic bags to throw into the environment with each shopping trip. And now more than 5 trillion of those bags pollute our oceans and planet every… single.. year (according to environemental groups such as International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species). Oligarchs will NEVER bring this devastation into the conversation because they are the ones that created it when they lied to us that these bags will be recycled and they continue to suppress information that allows them to continue their destructive path while the rest of us bicker about idiot journalists and other non-topics. So much for caring about the environment.
lol