My Comments To Attorney General Rob Bonta Regarding Common Sense Media’s Dangerous ‘Protect The Kids’ Ballot Initiative
from the this-is-a-bad-idea dept
Last week I noted that the improperly named Common Sense Media had submitted a very problematic and dangerous California ballot initiative that aims to hold social media companies liable should any harm that happens to any child be loosely connected to social media. As we noted, the research out there does not support the underlying conjecture the entire initiative is based on, and the initiative itself would clearly violate the 1st Amendment. Today is the deadline for submitting comments to California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Below are the comments I have just submitted.
Dear Attorney General Bonta,
As the founder and owner of a California small business engaging in online expression involving technology policy, I write to express my concern over proposed initiative 23-0035 titled “Common Sense Initiative to Protect California Kids Online.” Despite claims to the contrary, the initiative fails to do anything to protect children and instead threatens to harm them and every other citizen of California through its ham-handed and overtly unconstitutional requirements. It should not be permitted to come into force.
Among its defects:
It misdiagnoses an actual problem in order to invent another. Adolescent mental health is a serious issue deserving attention and support. But such is not what this initiative delivers. Instead of addressing the true causes of teen struggles, the initiative instead makes up its own, claiming that “The biggest social media platforms invent and deploy features they know harm large numbers of children, including contributing to child deaths.” However, it provides no evidence for that assertion, while numerous credible studies have shown the opposite to be true.
For instance the American Psychological Association’s comprehensive survey of recent research1 ultimately concluded that “[u]sing social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.” A similarly thorough look into the “teen mental health crisis” by the Journal of Pediatrics2 found in their review of the literature that there was “little support for the contention that either total screen time or time involved with social media is a major cause of, or even correlate of, declining mental health.” The study instead recommended that concerns for teen mental health be focused on more likely exacerbators, such as the lack of spaces for teenagers to engage in independent activity.
Even those studies more inclined to credit concerns about social media recognize that the evidence behind them is slim. For example, the U.S. Surgeon General’s report on “Social Media and Youth Mental Health”3 acknowledged the absence of evidence of either actual harm or causal connection. In fact it noted that what evidence does exist suggests that to the extent that social media use and mental health distress correlate, it is because those facing difficult situations seek out social media, and not because social media is causing those already existing stresses).
Indeed, the Surgeon General’s report itself observed that that many teens, especially more marginalized teens, benefit tremendously from social media:
The buffering effects against stress that online social support from peers may provide can be especially important for youth who are often marginalized, including racial, ethnic, and sexual and gender minorities. For example, studies have shown that social media may support the mental health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other youths by enabling peer connection, identity development and management, and social support. Seven out of ten adolescent girls of color report encountering positive or identity-affirming content related to race across social media platforms. A majority of adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted (58%), like they have people who can support them through tough times (67%), like they have a place to show their creative side (71%), and more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives (80%).
In other words, rather than being the source of trouble for teens, social media is often a source of relief, which this initiative would close off.
Its proposed “solution” to the misdiagnosed problem will only exacerbate it. By not understanding the true sources of strain on adolescent mental health,the initiative proposes a “solution” that will only strain it further by taking away a critical resource teens depend on to alleviate their mental health challenges.
As one example, the Journal of Pediatrics article discussed above suggests that one of the biggest contributors to poor teen mental health is the lack of spaces for them to engage in independent activity. This initiative would only reduce those places by making social media off-limits to them thanks to its regulations that will inevitably lead to many social media sites simply banning those under 18 from accessing their sites. Even if such an outcome is not what the initiative explicitly seeks to achieve, it will still be the inevitable result of raising the risk for social media platforms that allow younger teens to continue to use them.
The proposed initiative will strongly incentivize platforms to look the other way, rather than solve actual issues. The practical effect of this initiative is that social media companies will be less legally able to provide platforms that are as effective at limiting any actual harms. Because all the “knowingly” requirement accomplishes is legally encouraging, if not outright requiring, social media companies to put their head in the sand rather than make their platforms better.
Presently, most major social media platforms regularly conduct internal research, much of which is designed to help identify any risks and dangers to their users, including younger users. If the state is going to care about eliminating those dangers then it should want the companies to engage in the exercise of looking for them. But this law prevents them from looking by imposing liability if they find any. It discourages them from even trying to know what happens on their platforms as a first step to making them better, because they will be legally safer if they do not know. No one is helped by the mandated ignorance this initiative encourages; it produces a completely counterproductive result.
What the initiative attempts to do is unconstitutional. This initiative deliberately aims to control how adolescents can use social media. Such an effort is unconstitutional on at least two fronts.
First, it violates the adolescents’ own First Amendment rights. As the Supreme Court found in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786, 794–95 (2011) (internal citations omitted):
“[M]inors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection, and only in relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances may government bar public dissemination of protected materials to them. No doubt a State possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm, but that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”
It would also violate the rights of the social media platforms themselves. The proposed initiative puts liability on companies only for “knowingly” violating their “responsibility of ordinary care and skill to a child.” But it puts this condition on how a company enables the exchange of expression, which is inherently a First Amendment-protected act, and ultimately inhibits it. As a federal district court recently stated in regards to a different law targeting similar issues, the California Age Appropriate Design Code4:
Putting aside for the moment the issue of whether the government may shield children from such content—and the Court does not question that the content is in fact harmful—the Court here focuses on the logical conclusion that data and privacy protections intended to shield children from harmful content, if applied to adults, will also shield adults from that same content. That is, if a business chooses not to estimate age but instead to apply broad privacy and data protections to all consumers, it appears that the inevitable effect will be to impermissibly “reduce the adult population … to reading only what is fit for children.” Butler v. Michigan, 352 U.S. 380, 381, 383 (1957). And because such an effect would likely be, at the very least, a “substantially excessive” means of achieving greater data and privacy protections for children, see Hunt, 638 F.3d at 717 (citation omitted), NetChoice is likely to succeed in showing that the provision’s clause applying the same process to all users fails commercial speech scrutiny.
Beyond misdiagnosing the real problem, and making any real problems worse, the initiative will result in a flood of frivolous litigation in the courts. Passing the initiative would almost certainly lead to a flood of vexatious litigation. It would greenlight lawyers to sue for any sort of perceived injury, even if the causal connection between the claimed injury and social media use is at best tangential. It also, at its core, would involve holding a third party liable for what another party might have directly done, which has generally been frowned upon by the courts.
Yet by establishing a standard in which families may seek $1 million per child “harmed”5 it is likely that many families, perhaps encouraged by lawyers, will file lawsuits hoping to cash in on the initiative’s promised payday. After all, there is no dispute that adolescence can be a difficult period in a person’s life. Teens may indeed suffer eating disorders, depression, bullying, and more. But it is not at all clear that they suffer them because of social media, especially not when they were suffering them before there was anything we might today call social media. But with this initiative plaintiffs would only need to point to the existence of a problem and the existence of social media in order to get a shot at one million dollars. Even if the most frivolous cases get dismissed, it will still impose an enormous burden on the social media platforms and the courts to throw open the courthouse doors far more widely than our law has allowed in the past, and based on a correlation so unsupported by the evidence.
The initiative itself is guilty of inflicting the same harm it purports to prevent. The initiative suggests that a social media company’s lack of “responsibility of ordinary care and skill to a child” can lead to it being held responsible for any harms that child experiences. Yet this initiative, as shown here, is itself an experiment on children with a high high likelihood of harm (as detailed above) and has demonstrated its own lack of care in addressing it, as this initiative pushes forward without there being evidence to support its fundamental arguments. It wants to address teenagers’ social media experiences, and it will. But it will only make them worse, and without any recourse, concern or responsibility for such harms.
And it would entrench these defects, with no opportunity for the Legislature to ameliorate them. The initiative contains a one-way ratchet. While the Legislature can make modifications, it may amend it “only to either increase the amount of statutory damages or expand the liability of platforms.” (Emphasis added.) Even in the face of accruing evidence that its penalties and requirements need to be rolled back, the Legislature will be powerless to do so, no matter how much harm the initiative causes. Thus not only is the initiative a bad idea on its face, it is one that we will all be stuck with.
For all these reasons and more, proposed ballot initiative 23-0035 titled “Common Sense Initiative to Protect California Kids Online” would not serve the people of the state of California.
Sincerely,
Mike Masnick
Floor64, Inc. (publisher of Techdirt.com)
- APA “Health advisory on social media use in adolescence” https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advisory-adolescent-social-media-use
- Journal of Pediatrics: “Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Well-being: Summary of the Evidence” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2023.02.004
- Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, “Social Media and Youth Mental Health,” https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf
- NetChoice v. Bonta, Order Granting Motion for Preliminary Injunction
- Another sign of the lack of care taken in drafting the initiative, aside from addressing its collateral effects, is that the proposed initiative states that the presumed damages are to be “one thousand dollars ($5,000) per violation up to a maximum, per child, of one million dollars ($1,000,000.).” Notably, “one thousand dollars” would be written as ($1,000) not ($5,000). While typos can be forgiven, what cannot be is the lack of attention to the potentially distorting effect such terms will have, and in any case it is unclear which amount is the typo.
Filed Under: ballot initiative, california, common sense initiative to protect california kids online, protect the children, rob bonta
Companies: common sense media
Comments on “My Comments To Attorney General Rob Bonta Regarding Common Sense Media’s Dangerous ‘Protect The Kids’ Ballot Initiative”
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Great comments, Mike! I really think readers of TechDirt and other like-minded individuals need to unite and put real pressure of the Attorney General and those like him. Enough talking and submitting comments – let’s show these authoritarians that we won’t stand for their vile attempts to abridge our freedom!
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Define “real” pressure. What do you mean? Like protesting peacefully in the streets?
Nice letter
Nice letter Mike. Hopefully, somebody reads it.
It is not certain that the people of California will vote to enact this batshit crazy proposal, but it is most definitely certain that should they do so, several groups of both citizenry and lawyers are already planning on, and drafting documents for, an appeal to either the State courts, and/or the Federal courts, should it become necessary. (People in quotes, because I’m also not certain that the results won’t be misreported by those who think this is a good idea, and are in a position to “help it along”.)
My predictions: a) No fewer than three different court houses will receive lawsuits seeking an immediate injunction; b) Mike’s dissertation above will be included in at least one of those documents, alleging that the AG had been suitably and adequately warned regarding the negative effects of this initiative; c) Initiatives attempting to cut out the Legislature beyond a defined time frame are generally frowned upon, and thus at least that portion will likely not survive a challenge. After all, a Legislative body is the people’s method of implementing public policy. Removing the Legislature’s ability to craft and implement policy directly deprives the people in general of having their elected representatives do these things for their (public) benefit. That’s a RomperRoom No-no.
Words of wisdom
Well said. I’m sure the ostriches in power will keep their head in the sand until this is made law. They get the cookies for passing stupid legislation, and double cookies when they later call out the commie Courts for dismantling this kid-saving law.
Well said. Too bad our “representatives” don’t want to either listen nor represent.
Yes and No
Yes, it’s not too hard to see the myriad problems with this awful ballot initiative.
But the argument (which I see repeated over and over and over on Techdirt) that social media isn’t harmful to young people is overly simplistic in that it seems to be largely based on aggregated/general findings.
Without a doubt, social media is beneficial to many youths in many ways. Similarly, it’s harmful to many youths. The overall net effect might be neutral or even positive, but that’s small consolation to the subset of people for whom social media has a detrimental effect.
If there was a drug that fully mitigated some disease in 75% of patients but was quite harmful to the other 25%, would you agree with the manufacturer who says, “This drug does no harm, and is even beneficial, so the panic over this drug is unfounded”? No. Because it’s a nuanced situation.
The Surgeon General’s report cited by the author has a section entitled “The Potential Harms of Social Media Use Among Children and Adolescents” devotes four pages to these harms, including studies to support the claims. Such as, Over the last decade, evidence has emerged identifying reasons for concern about the potential negative impact of social media on children and adolescents. A longitudinal cohort study of U.S. adolescents aged 12–15 (n=6,595) that adjusted for baseline mental health status found that adolescents who spent more than 3 hours per day on social media faced double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes including symptoms of depression and anxiety.
There’s a lot more in there. Check out pages 6-10 in that report
The APA report cited by the author is also less sanguine than suggested. Sure, social media is not “inherently beneficial or harmful to young people“, but all that means is that whether it’s good or bad depends on other factors. I could say, “Pizza is not inherently beneficial or harmful,” which is true, but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore any potential harmful effects of pizza out of hand: it all depends on circumstances.
That APA report goes on to list a myriad of pitfalls that need to be considered regarding social media use for developing children, lest it cause them psychological harm.
Again, the ballot initiative sucks, and it may well be that social media is a net benefit to young people, and that the media exaggerates its dangers. But that doesn’t mean that society shouldn’t take steps to mitigate the very real harms that it can cause to some. And Techdirt shouldn’t continue to dismiss these harms with a simple wave of the hand.
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it seems to be largely based on aggregated/general findings.
The only thing that matters. So yeah.
Everything else should be dealt with on an individual basis among caring humans.
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There are thousands of domains in society in which aggregated/general findings are deemed inadequate to render a judgement.
I gave an example with drugs. Others are auto reliability safety, and food safety: recalls are initiated even when a very small number of harmful events could occur, even though there’s no problem in the aggregated data: people like the food, people like the cars.
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Your examples are things that will cause harm to any user, if they use the product long enough. Lets fix your brakes before you have an accident seems like a good idea. Lets ban alcohol because f few people have a problem with it is not. Also, with social media you have to address the question is it social media doing the harm, or is that just the means of social interaction that would do the same harm, regardless of how that interaction took place.
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I meant examples like, people with peanut allergies or allergies to medications, people who receive a tainted package of lettuce or a car with a faulty airbag. These are people who can be harmed even though they are in a small minority that society deems important to protect.
Agreed, although please note that I never advocated banning social media!
Fair point. Some of the research proves correlation but not causation.
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but why are you helping the fascists who think harming children even more is saving them?
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The problem is not that social media causes some kids problems, but rather that some kids have problems interacting with other kids. Also there are cultural issues that cause some kids problems, like the way that body image, as promoted by magazines etc. aimed at teenage girls cause some of them problems.
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So you dispute the research in the papers the author cited?
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Research has shown social media doesn’t cause kid problems.
The author cited no condlicting reports.
Your passive aggressive question to the previous poster helps nobody.
If you have sources that support a position you have, post them.
Othewise, thanks so much for your rhetorical useless question.
He who asserts must prove. Not “he who asserts must ask stupid questions about whether those who previously asserted things have proof.”
I dispute anything you say that has no backing or proof. Prove me wrong.
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I did. Did you read my initial posting? The sources I cited are in two of the very documents that the author linked to.
Rather than consume a lot of space here, I just pointed to these documents by the Surgeon General and the APA. To reiterate: read pages 6 to 10 of the Surgeon General’s report; they list multiple studies citing harm.
And the APA web page is replete with potential pitfalls of social media, with plenty of links to studies on the topic.
Nice.
I was trying to give that respondent the chance to back up their statement. There is plenty of evidence that social media can be beneficial, and plenty of evidence that it can be harmful. I was curious why that respondent felt the evidence I (and Mike Masnick) cited was faulty.
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Show that the harm is due to social media only, rather than due to kids interactions with other children, and children targeted media. Teenage girls body image problems were a problem before the Internet was even dreamed of, and fueled by magazines targeted at teenage girls promoting an unrealistic body image for most of them.
In country that suffered the problems of prohibition, why are you going down the same road again?
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There are limited examples showing causation, because it’s so hard to mandate and control social media use in such studies. There are some, like from the Surgeon General’s report:
And here’s a recent one from the APA:
There are many, many examples showing correlation of high social media use with poor psychological conditions in youth, but those only show smoke, not fire. Still, they suggest that more research is needed and that in the meantime we need to be circumspect in how we monitor kids who are heavy into social media.
I’m not talking about banning social media. I’m talking about making sure that articles that discuss social media reflect that there is evidence that it can cause harm to a subset of the population, and portraying it only in a positive light is deceptive.
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That does not show that social media is damaging, as that could easily be because that poor psychological condition could lead to high social media use, as such people have difficulty in finding friends in the real world.
Also, even if there were reasons to prevent or reduce children’s use of social media, the law under discussion is not the way to do it. It is essentially an attack on social media by enabling the social media companies to be sued if a case can be made that the harm can be linked to social media use. Suicide, mental illness, coming pout as gay, pregnancy, car smash, find a link associated with social media and the parents sue for a big payout. Under US law, the case needn’t have much merit, just suggest it is cheaper to payout than fight and win in court.
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This is EXACTLY what we do with drugs, especially over the counter drugs. Manufacturers, doctors, and pharmacists provide guidance on dosage, frequency, length of treatment, potential interactions and side effects. And we consider it very safe to use. So much so that anyone can purchase a lethal dose of acetaminophen, and some people should absolutely not take it at all.
Re: Re: Exactly?
No, drugs come with extensive oversight by the FDA, by physicians, and by lots and lots of fine print on the drugs themselves. If a drug company glossed over potential harms because on the whole it was beneficial, that would not go over well.
In the case of the author’s post, he seems to whitewash any potential harms of social media. What I’m saying is that it’s imperative to look at who is being harmed by social media and take steps to prevent/mitigate that harm. Just as we do with drugs.
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I feel like you ignored most of my post. My example, Tylenol, comes with limited oversight by the FDA and no oversight by physicians or pharmacists. And the marketing certainly glosses over potential harms.
But your second point is getting some where. It’s important to determine who is begin harmed (no, not all or even most kids) and what to do (banning things that are easily accessible hasn’t had a particularly good run of success with teens.)
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I’ve had physicians talk to me about the dangers of overusing Tylenol. And the product literature (on the box/bottle/insert inside) describes the potential dangers, as do the little labels they stick on pill bottles if you get a prescription for acetaminophen. You’re right that the marketing material ignores it, other than “Use product only as directed” warnings at the bottom.
Yes, I agree of course.
I see this is the third comment were people have mentioned banning, or prohibition. Not sure what is causing that leap.
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Ugh. You’re really stretching here. You’re comparing an entirely voluntary act against a law.
And the click wrap has ai.ilar disclaimers and disclosures.
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If any of these bills, or this ballot proposal, were focused on mitigating the harm to a very small group of users, that would be one thing. None of them are. They all treat it as a generalized harm. So if they are going to treat it as a generalized harm, my response is to show it is not a generalized harm.
I am all for targeted solutions that help those who may face serious issues, but all of the evidence suggests that requires narrow, targeted solutions for those most at risk, rather than vast, generally targeted “social media bad” proposals.
I regularly admit that some kids have trouble with social media. A solution for them means figuring out ways to help those kids, without harming everyone else.
This is not that.
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Is it really a small group of users? Reference(s)? Even if it is a very small group, it’s not possible to know in advance which subset of users are susceptible to harm, so there’s an argument that all kids need to be monitored/controlled to ensure that they have a healthy relationship with social media, and that lack of oversight is more likely to lead to harm. Oversight mostly by parents and teachers, not the law.
That is very good, but it’s not the way your posts have come across to me. I am interpreting what you have said from this and you prior posts as, “The media portrays social media as a big problem, but mountains of evidence show that it’s not, indeed, a problem.” In other words, it feels like you’re compensating for the media’s broad generalization about the evils of social media with your own generalization about benign and beneficial social media, with the implication that it simply doesn’t cause enough harm to be concerned about.
I don’t see these regular admissions. This post itself doesn’t seem to have any such admissions, did I miss them?
You seem to refute the notion that social media can be harmful, even though the references you cite quote studies showing that it can. You quote research that shows no link between screen time and mental health issues, but the Surgeon General’s report lists several studies that do show a link.
And as above, a solution for them might also mean figuring out ways to prevent the harm in the first place, rather than waiting till after harm occurs. Though as you correctly point out, this legislative effort (and many similar efforts) are deeply problematic.
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The very first link, in the very first sentence, points to a previous article with a bullied list of reports supporting his assertions. But you know this, as you allude to his previous posts. So, why the rhetorical act?
Now, where are yours? You’ve posted, what, a dozen times making claims and have yet to substantiate them.
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There are six references in the link at the very beginning of the article.
Yes, Masnick is also arguing against doing this through law.
Your interpretations aren’t really on Masnick when he has stated in multiple articles on this topic that the issue is overblown, and that evidence(the evidence cited in the link I mentioned) shows that social media, overall, are a net benefit for young people. He has never said that it’s not a problem for anyone.
He doesn’t.
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So are you prepared to go down the road of prohibition, by trying to protect a minority by removing something the majority enjoy without problems?
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Even if it is a very small group, it’s not possible to know in advance which subset of users are susceptible to harm, so there’s an argument that all kids need to be monitored/controlled to ensure that they have a healthy relationship with social media, and that lack of oversight is more likely to lead to harm.
Bollocks. Having social interactions in person can be beneficial to most kids but some might find themselves negatively impacted by it, whether due to being extreme introverts or dealing with stressful people/situations, yet by that argument all social interactions kids have should be either heavily monitored and/or banned entirely since you can’t know for sure beforehand.
The proper response to ‘while the majority benefit from activity X there is a sub selection that does not’ is not ‘therefore treat everyone as falling into the minority just in case’ it’s ‘find and/or develop tools to help identify and then help the minority subsection with whatever issues are causing them problems that others aren’t having to deal with’.
If you really want to continue on with that argument however how about you practice what you preach first? Anonymity is greatly beneficial to many people online, both kids and adults, allowing them to engage in conversations that might not be possible were they required to post under their real names yet at the same time it can also be a bane to others at times by allowing toxic people to say things they wouldn’t normally do so if they had to attach their name to their words, and as such by your argument should not be allowed. So, from this point on if you’re going to stick with that argument do so while posting under your real name, because after all if it can be harmful to some then it must be prohibited to all.
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> You seem to refute the notion that social media can be harmful
I’m not sure how this is going to play out, so bear with me here.
If you were an alien coming from a futuristic civilization that had never before encountered humanity, you’d be forced to draw one conclusion – these apes don’t have a clue about how to use their tools. They seem to think that blathering about them without surcease will either make the tool absolutely %100 safe, or render it totally unusable by anybody.
Unless you’ve had your head up your ass since birth, then you’ll have heard of the old saying “When all you have is a hammer, then every problem starts to look like a nail”. Sorry, but social media is nothing more than a tool, plain and simple.
Before your time on this planet, there was a thing we called ‘pen pals’. Those were people, of all ages, mind you, that corresponded with each other by the use of pens or pencils, paper, envelopes, stamps, and the Post Office. In other words, the short description is that they interacted with each other. And in due course, some of those people developed chain letters, thus widening the total amount of audience participation. And they did so with the aforementioned tools.
And that was before the time of modern electricity, whereupon A.G. Bell empowered people to speed up the process of interaction via the telephone. And the advent of party lines really got things going.
So to cut things a little shorter, tools have been used since the creation of the opposing thumb. And speaking of that venerable appendage, plenty of allegedly qualified tool users have hit their the thumbs with the proverbial hammer, haven’t they. And did society in general have an uproar and demand an end to all hammers?
If you can’t answer that question correctly, then it’s no wonder that you continuously post an unsupportable proposition, that being that social media should be regulated out of existence, all in the name of ‘Think Of The Kids’.
tl;dr
It’s a fookin’ tool. It has the potential for misuse, just like any other tool. If you feel the need to prohibit a tool just because it has been misused by a vanishingly small number of users, or even can be potentially misused, then you are in the wrong, not the remaining %99.99999 of society.
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HAH! Just like guns!!! 😀
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Was “just like guns” meant to elicit a response on my part?
In point of fact, you’re correct, and you just proved my point… albeit with yet another emotionally-laden hot topic.
Yes, guns are tools, and they not only can they be misused, but they are misused on a daily basis. Which is why gun-haters want them taken away from everyone except LEO’s. And why gun-lovers are continually pushing back. That’s a policy war that: a) isn’t germane to the topic at hand, and b) is not easily debated to a mutually acceptable final conclusion. If you want to go there, let me suggest that you start a different conversation. I’m not the only one here who dislikes drifting so far off-topic.
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Guns in the US is another polarized topic, allow them or ban them. Other countries have as many or more guns that the US, and far fewer problems. Then they have gun regulations requiring things like separate locked safes to store guns and ammunition. They also ban carrying a loaded gun outside of the range or hunting ground. and require guns to be transported in cases or bags. The don’t have and don’t allow the US gun owner attitude that a gun is only useful if loaded and readily to hand.
Speaking of writing comments, anyone feel like trying to place an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal before the Texas/Florida social media cases? You know, “A principled conservative should seek a solution that allows the market to flourish, rather than imposing the heavy hand of the State… The Court, designed by the Framers to be above the fray of daily politics and seasonal fads, is ideally positioned to see beyond inflammatory rhetoric about ‘Big Tech’ and its nefarious, mustache-twirling deeds… Amid a crisis of public confidence in its legitimacy, the Court can take the easy step of siding with the people against email spam.”
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The opinion section of the WSJ? Why, is Alex Jones busy?
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“Principled conservative” there is no such thing, their closest thing to a principle is “in-group good, out-group bad”
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Is it wrong that I imagined the animals of Animal Farm chanting that slogan?
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It’d be wrong if you didn’t.
While hopefully submissions like this are enough to swing support away from the law and tank it for good the problem with performative legislation is that facts and evidence tend very much to be treated as ‘optional’, to be raised when it supports the proposed law but ignored outright should it contradict the law.
To be clear it’s always going to be better to voice your objections/concerns than not so at least they’re on the record and the supporters of terrible bills can’t claim that there was no oppositition, my concern is merely that when facts aren’t being used by those pushing a bill facts aren’t likely to sway their minds, and it’ll end up being determined in court after the fact.
Perhaps a reference to this article has been made before, but I figured it was worth sharing here if not. This interrogation of research seems to happen far less frequently than it should, which is unfortunate.
The problems you point out are features, not bugs. Still worth saying tho
You are just attempting to silence Californians
Californians have their first amendment rights to put (good or bad) politicians in the legislature to make them (good or bad) laws or to vote on (good or bad) ballot measures. It is up to the courts, not you, to determine whether these laws are constitutional violations. If you don’t believe me, show me your track record of predicting how courts ruled on constitutional matters.
Californians also have their rights to make whatever laws that harm their kids. The constitution does not say we are not allowed to harm our kids, so these laws usually stay. Your attempt to take away their ballot measure will silence millions of Californians to express their opinion whether or not they support harming of their kids. It is against democracy.
What can be wrong with a ballot measure is use of any non-facts to lure voters to pick a side they would otherwise not support. Therefore I don’t see many convincing arguments here.
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The citizens of California have every right to ask their state government not to pass certain laws—and to explain why they believe the passing of those laws would be a bad thing. Hell, the First Amendment protects their right to do that. Who are you to say the government can’t change its collective mind when confronted with reasonable explanations of the potential outcomes of a proposed law?
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Everyone can argue with the AG how they want, as much as Musk can moderate XTwitter how he wants. That doesn’t mean I can’t try to convince them what they do is morally wrong.
What we confront here is whether to have a bad law put up as a California ballot proposition, a referendum for citizens to directly to vote on. Arguing for it to not happen is like arguing that a political candidate should be put off the ballot because they did bad things. This is sidestepping a democratic process, as if the people cannot make the same decision themselves. It is morally wrong even when the constitution says we can do it.
To deal with bad speech, we need more speech, not less. I applaud for all the analyses given here for why it is a bad law. What I do not see fit is merely the statement “It should not be permitted to come into force.” and that everyone’s expectation of the ballot being killed by the AG as the favorable outcome.
Re: 'How dare you try to prevent me from silencing you?!'
Oh the irony is thick enough to walk on… ‘Presenting a multitude of contradictory studies to a bill that would silence millions both kids and adults by making having minors on social media a massive legal liability such that social media would be better off served banning them entirely is an attempt to silence the people pushing that unconstitutional law!’
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As TOG just noted, the irony is thick with this one.
Apparently you have failed to realize that Mike Masnick is located in…. wait for it…. Californial! He gets his equal say in the matter of what shape Public Policy should take, just as the other 39 million Californians do. The fact that he writes an eloquent letter doesn’t detract from that fact.
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What I really want to know is why you sick fucks support mutilating and sterilizing vulnerable children and young people on behalf of the demonic transgender movement.
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And you’ll keep on wondering, because your hallucinations on this topic are not treatable by any legal means.
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I say this with all sincerity but you should really see a psychiatrist/psychologist, paranoid delusions like that are not the sign of a healthy mind but one that’s in need of help.
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What I’d like to know is why are you still harassing us.
While I know I’m a sick fuck, even I don’t support genital mutiliation unless it’s a medical suggestion made by a team of doctors (which includes an endocrinologist, at least one psychiatrist and psychologist, and at least a few other doctors of other medical fields) who have already examined and diagnosed a patient with actual gender dysphoria, explained the side effects of such a treatment, and the patient agrees to it.
ie, it rarely happens and you’re straight up lying so as to harass us.
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What I really want to know is why you’re making transphobia your entire personality when trans people just want to be:
1. left alone,
2. happy, and
3. alive.
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In other words, Trans people want Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Why is that so wrong?
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What I really want to know is what that has to do with this article and where you got that idea from.
Our thanks to Reasonable Coward for demonstrating that pushing the “social ,edia is harming kids” false narrative is fundamentally incompatible with honesty.