Bergman 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Appeals Court Tosses Stupid Lawsuit Filed By Anti-Vaxxer Claiming Federal Government Made Twitter Ban Her Account

    Bergman ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2022 @ 10:26am

    The problem with that…

    At what point do you believe people standing close together should lose their human rights for doing so? That’s basically the gist of your large platforms argument. A million people? A thousand? Ten? Once you create that precedent, it’ll be very hard to argue against it when it’s used against something you like.

  • On the post: Independent Journalist Sues Deputy Who Arrested Him For Filming Officers Responding To A Call

    Bergman ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2022 @ 09:39pm

    How, precisely, does standing 130 feet outside the police perimeter, then when told the police are expanding the perimeter, moving outside of that perimeter (to 40 feet out from the new perimeter) constitute interfering? By your definition of interference, the fact that anyone, anywhere on Earth, even thousands of miles away from Fort Bend, Texas with a camera in their hands would be interfering with those cops in Texas! YOU have interfered with and obstructed those cops by acting as a journalist outside their perimeter too, you realize?

  • On the post: Independent Journalist Sues Deputy Who Arrested Him For Filming Officers Responding To A Call

    Bergman ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2022 @ 09:36pm

    I’ve been saying for years that civil monetary damages do nothing to curb bad behavior when the bad actor’s employer, union and insurance pay their every cost - to the point many bad cops earn overtime pay for appearing in court when you sue them. The thing is though, knowing the bad cops are singling him out and targeting him specifically presents an opportunity. Federal law makes it a felony for anyone to commit any federal crime with a violence component that would be a felony if a dangerous weapon was used to commit, for the mere possession of a firearm while committing a crime (18 USC 242, 18 USC 924). Any rights violation you can legitimately sue for under 42 USC 1983 is also a crime - complete with handcuffs, a cell, bail and arraignment - under 18 USC 241 & 242. The US Supreme Court has ruled that absent any superseding statute, common law prevails when determining if a citizen’s arrest can be lawfully made for a federal crime, or that superseding statute if there is one prevails (US v. Di Re (1948)). Under common law, a citizen’s arrest may be made for any breach of the peace or felony the citizen directly witnesses. At this time, only two states have a superseding statute that forbids felony citizen’s arrests (GA and NC), and there is no superseding federal statute. Texas has the gold standard for citizen’s arrest statutes - the same clause of the same state statute that authorizes Texas police to make arrests without a warrant also authorizes ALL people to do the same under identical circumstances. You can’t even properly call it citizen’s arrest in Texas, because even illegal immigrants can make arrests under that statute, as it is worded (Texas Statute 14.01). So, knowing that deputies are highly likely to target him for future illegal action, why not have someone standing nearby him, without a camera, to step in and make a ‘private persons arrest’ as it is known in Texas, of the deputy? Have a third person ready to begin live-streaming as soon as the deputy begins his approach, for proper documentation of evidence. It’s highly likely for criminals as brazen in their crimes as those deputies to resist arrest - due to their obvious belief they are above all laws - so having a few extra guys nearby to use the necessary force on the resister is probably a good idea. Remember, in Texas and in many other states, a citizen arresting a felony suspect is authorized to use the same degree of force in the same circumstances that police arresting a felony suspect are - up to and including having a guy a ways away with a scoped rifle to put the suspect down the moment he tries to draw a dangerous weapon to resist with. And the suspect’s death would not, by state and federal law - not be murder under those circumstances. While it’s illegal to ‘assemble an armed body of men’ without lawful purpose, law enforcement IS a lawful purpose.

  • On the post: As Many Suspected, Elon’s Claims Of Jet Account Helping His Stalker Turned Out To Be Bogus

    Bergman ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2022 @ 08:48pm

    Have you ever used a “report spam” or similar button on content you didn’t like? Have you ever blocked someone’s post for something you found inappropriate? Both acts send a report to the platform you are on, that can trigger investigations into the poster - that sends the same sort of request you object to the FBI sending, and by your own logic, that makes you pro-censorship.

  • On the post: As Many Suspected, Elon’s Claims Of Jet Account Helping His Stalker Turned Out To Be Bogus

    Bergman ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2022 @ 08:40pm

    Context matters, history matters. #6 can be read that way, but only if you ignore all context and history - which people who want desperately for pre-Musk Twitter to be evil and wrong have done in their analysis.

  • On the post: As Many Suspected, Elon’s Claims Of Jet Account Helping His Stalker Turned Out To Be Bogus

    Bergman ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2022 @ 12:55pm

    And the fact that when Twitter did ban those accounts, they did so with greater justification than Musk’s recent reporter purge, just escapes the notice of guys like Matthew. smh

  • On the post: Hertz Shells Out $168 Million To Settle 364 False Theft Reports

    Bergman ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2022 @ 01:33pm

    You can get insurance that covers you for malicious, bad-faith acts? Where do you sign up for that?

  • On the post: Twitter’s Big Ad Plan: Violate FTC Consent Decree, California Privacy Law & EU Privacy Laws To Force Users To Hand Over Info For Ad Targeting

    Bergman ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2022 @ 12:30pm

    Everything you just said is at least half wrong, most is misleadingly phrased and/or betrays your lack of understanding of what you are talking about. Just about all of it has already been debunked multiple times on this very site. 1a) Musk doesn’t support free speech anymore. He used to claim to, often still does claim it, but he has been proven to be lying about supporting free speech at least when it comes to Twitter. Just look at his policies on parody and the ElonJet account. 1b) Opposing a hypocrite who lies about his support for freedom of speech is not opposing free speech, nor is laughing at the guy for shooting himself in the foot with a machine gun repeatedly. 2) The Twitter files are the act of gaslighting here, as the spin being placed on the reporting of them is highly misleading - they present even the most innocent actions as nefarious, twist facts to look bad, etc. Twitter has been very open about ahadow-banning, or at least they were pre-Musk. The fact such things exist isn’t secret, Twitter actually held a press conference explaining exactly how their visibility rating system worked and exactly what it did. The fact your preferred media outlet didn’t cover it fairly doesn’t mean it never happened. Musk himself has used that tool against Twitter accounts he disliked for them exercising free speech rights in ways that weren’t to his personal advantage - of using it is anti-free speech, then Musk is anti-free speech. 3) Twitter wasn’t shadow-banning based on politics, unless you consider defamation and threats of violence that both cross the threshold to where they can result in civil or even criminal penalties to be politics - and if those ARE protected politics, you have no grounds to complain about things like BLM protesters rioting without becoming a hypocrite. 4) You are closest to being right in your parade of wrongness, when you say the government cannot direct Twitter to censor protected speech, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. There are categories of speech the first amendment does not protect and never has - immediate credible threats of violence, inciting others to actually go out and commit violence and libel/slander are three excellent examples of things Twitter has censored people for WITHOUT violating the first amendment even if the government told them to do it. 5) Trump violates TOS on most sites regularly, since most social media writes those aforementioned exceptions to the first amendment into their TOS for civil liability reasons, even if they don’t ban toxic people for being toxic.

  • On the post: Twitter’s Big Ad Plan: Violate FTC Consent Decree, California Privacy Law & EU Privacy Laws To Force Users To Hand Over Info For Ad Targeting

    Bergman ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2022 @ 12:09pm

    Um, no. Most phones DON’T contain GPS systems. If they did, there would be no need for tower triangulation, which is almost an order of magnitude less accurate than GPS.

  • On the post: Raspberry Pi Shows How Not To Mastodon

    Bergman ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2022 @ 01:06pm

    So basically, Raspberry Pi hired a guy and everyone dogpiled them out of fear of what that guy might do, and when his employer stood up to the blind, unreasoning hate, they got defederated because apparently that’s what passes for justice these days.

  • On the post: Before Musk Riled Everyone Up With Misleading Twitter Files About ‘Shadowbanning,’ Musk Used The Tool To Hide Account Tracking His Plane

    Bergman ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2022 @ 10:43am

    The problem is, both major parties do this. Each has topics that they don’t allow themselves to be educated about, that cause defections when one of them is forced to become educated about one or more of those topics. John Lott, for example, is widely viewed among progressive democrats as a traitor, because of his abrupt heel-face turn on gun control and gun rights some years back, after he decided to get the full facts so he could properly debunk pro-gun arguments once and for all. Once he had those facts, he became one of the biggest opponents to gun control in the country. Both sides are mislabeling the other though, this big fight isn’t about liberals and conservatives, and there are people in college right now who weren’t born yet the last time it actually was conservatives vs liberals. It’s progressives vs traditionalists - people who want progress towards their agenda no matter what has to be abolished, versus people who prefer the old ways even when the new ways are obviously better. A liberal wants more freedom, but progressives aren’t liberals because freedom often gets in the way of their agendas. A conservative (in the USA anyway) wants to make sure changes are good ones before making them, because most of the existing system works the way it does for good reasons, and blind change for the sake of change can screw vast numbers of people. Most of the conservatives and liberals self-identify as libertarians these days, not democrats or republicans,

  • On the post: Denver PD Sued After SWAT Team Raid Of 77-Year-Old Woman’s House Based On Nothing More Than Phone Pings

    Bergman ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2022 @ 11:41pm

    Given how inaccurate those pings are, he had tracked it to somewhere in a two block area, not a specific house, and had no means of pinpointing the house.

  • On the post: Denver PD Sued After SWAT Team Raid Of 77-Year-Old Woman’s House Based On Nothing More Than Phone Pings

    Bergman ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2022 @ 11:40pm

    This. The error range of those pings is just over 200 feet. They lacked the specificity required to get a warrant, because probable cause is needed for a warrant, and every house on the block was within that ping. A one in six or worse chance of guessing right doesn’t meet the 51% test for probable cause.

  • On the post: Appeals Court Reminds Cop That Calling Normal Human Behavior Suspicious Is No Way To Secure A Conviction

    Bergman ( profile ), 09 Dec, 2022 @ 11:50am

    A victory means you came out ahead. Breaking even is a draw. But unless the defendant’s lawyer was working pro bono, the defendant never spent a minute in jail, was never announced to the public as a criminal and didn’t miss any days of work, you can’t plausibly claim she won, because she lost plenty along the way.

  • On the post: The First Amendment Needs To Protect Everyone (Even Homophobic Web Designers) To Protect Anyone

    Bergman ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2022 @ 03:08pm

    The problem is that anyone who is not themselves transsexual or homosexual gets declared phobic by the extremists. The result is that too many wind up intolerant of heterosexuals and cisgendered people. And the society as a whole ends up merely reversing roles, not ending intolerance.

  • On the post: The First Amendment Needs To Protect Everyone (Even Homophobic Web Designers) To Protect Anyone

    Bergman ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2022 @ 03:04pm

    If exercising a right comes with government-enforced negative consequences, then it either isn’t a right or the government is infringing upon it.

  • On the post: The First Amendment Needs To Protect Everyone (Even Homophobic Web Designers) To Protect Anyone

    Bergman ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2022 @ 03:01pm

    If creating a website was that easy and formulaic, no one would ever need to hire a web designer. The job description would literally not exist, because everybody would be creating them by filling out a wizard-type tool.

  • On the post: The First Amendment Needs To Protect Everyone (Even Homophobic Web Designers) To Protect Anyone

    Bergman ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2022 @ 02:58pm

    Tell us that you didn’t read all of the Techdirt post without telling us you didn’t read all of the Techdirt post.

  • On the post: The First Amendment Needs To Protect Everyone (Even Homophobic Web Designers) To Protect Anyone

    Bergman ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2022 @ 02:56pm

    So, by your logic, a neo-nazi group could hire, say, George Takei to give a speech condemning same-sex marriage and gay rights, and calling for laws to be passed making them illegal, and it would be against the law for him to refuse because bigotry isn’t a protected class. That’s the thing about how rights work in the USA - the government is forbidden from picking and choosing which content to allow. And by the strict definition of the word, George Takei IS bigoted against neo-nazis.

  • On the post: How Will Elon Feel When He Realizes Congress Is Trying To Force Him To Throw Free Money At Newspapers He Hates?

    Bergman ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2022 @ 10:21am

    I wonder if the GOP would be in favor of this when they realize it would force their pet social media apps to give equal time to extreme-Left publications?

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