Matt Bennett 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (2814)

• On the post: Forget Shadow Banning, Now Elon Is Shadow Boosting Accounts He Likes, While Trying To Drive Away Users Who Won’t Pay

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 10:40pm

  Searching for “balanced” in the PDF and clicking an arrow a few times will bring you to the Supplemental Methods section. Here’s an excerpt:

  I like this, because it doesn't actually refute any of initial (very reasonable objections). OK, so online "lay people" and ONLY those who shared partisan messages. My god, that is so much worse than I imagined. Half of them were probably bots. They definitely aren't "balanced" WTF.

  YOU read it. YOU decide whether to read the rest of the paper. YOU decide for (only) yourself whether the sample is politically balanced.

  I like the empowering message here, but I want to be clear: I didn't read beyond the summary in order to discount it because I absolutely did not need to. It was already indicted. Thanks for doing so for me though, it turns out it's so much worse and the summary was actually misleading af.

  Where did they try to pass off their opinion (which, unlike you, they reached from some sort of evidence they provided) as an objective metric?

  I think this is a reading comp fail on your part: I didn't say the author's were passing off their opinion as a metric, I said they were passing off the opinions of their "balanced lay people" as an objective metric. This is a common feature of sociology and psychology papers and part of why their irreproducible junk, but it's much worse in this case: They're using the opinions of some people (some sizable % of whom could be foreign agents or bots, who the fuck knows?) to pretend they're giving an objective rating to sites. Not that I would trust them based on objective measures of "weasel words" or claims "fact checked" (there's hellacious intrinsic biases in all of that) but it would still be 1000x times more meaningful (and that's a real measurement, accurate to 3 decimals) than this shit.

  But is there a comparable, recent research paper (even a pre-print) which reaches a conclusion which opposes this paper’s conclusion?

  What part of my response makes you think that I would find this not only needful and worth my time, but even helpful, at all? This paper is trash. It gets trashier the more you tell me about it. You DO NOT accept a trash set of data just because it's the only dataset available. It's just trash data. Sociology is mostly trash. I highly doubt a reputable paper on this subject exists, I can basically guarantee you that none exist that have been replicated. (cuz that just doesn't happen anymore) Why would I spend time trying to contradict trash with more trash? Addendum: oh gawd, I actually made the mistake of reading this and found table S1. "we follow most other researchers in this space (2-5)and use source quality as a proxy for article accuracy, " They list bias and "fact checker rating". Well if you haven't been keeping up "Fact checkers" are rather notoriously politically biased and left leaning, without exception, really only offering a liberal journalists opinion on whatever fact they're supposedly checking. Also funnily enough WaPo ranks rather high on this, which is funny cuz they run one of the more hilariously biased yet prolific "fact checkers" and both CNN and WaPo scored "non partisan" ratings despite just straight lying for last 6 years. Oh, and they cite Ad Fontes Media....which literally started as just a chart based on the author's opinion and now, in version 6 or 7 is just....the same chart, now with manufactured metrics this to back it up. OK, it's not just that this "study" is trash, it is the epitome of why sociology is a failed discipline used only to give a fake scientific veneer to political posturing. I have seen some whoppers but this perhaps the platonic ideal of a leftist propaganda piece pretending to have even the slightest objective basis. It is a pre-print not just because it hasn't been printed yet, but because it will never be printed, even the undisciplined socialist rags that pretend to be scientific sociology publications are too good for this fever dream of leftist FUD "You’re projecting about hand-waving", lol, get fucked.

• On the post: Elon Musk Effectively Admits That He Set Fire To More Than Half Of Twitter’s Value

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 09:48pm

  No, from a societal point of view, it actually doesn’t even if you think it should.

  So, first of all hard disagree and secondly, I think you missed the point where I was refuting the idea that it couldn't be "censorship" if it was just on one platform. Which is not what the word means but some leftist retards seem to want to pretend that it does. So,

  OMG you so fucken dumb!

  yes, actually. Exactly that.

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 09:42pm

  Awwww, you can actually make an argument, with quotes, and everything! I'm so proud. So I think this does directly contradict Marsh v. Alabama, eve more so because the cable operators are essentially given a government mandated monopoly. I think especially the term "has not traditionally and exclusively been performed by government" is very silly because we are talking about functions that have not traditionally been provided by anyone.

  In other words, nobody with the slightest understanding of Marsh would ever tell the lie that it applies in any way to private social media platforms.

  Awww, he's gone again. We could have discussed the finer points but clearly you don't want to.

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 09:29pm

  I'm sorry, are you too young to remember 2005 or thereabouts?

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 09:27pm

  Making a basic-ass wedding cake with the same generic-ass decorations as every other wedding cake isn’t exactly making a “unique” cake.

  Cool. Besides "basic-ass wedding cake with the same generic-ass decorations" NOT being a product that Masterpiece Cakeshop offers, court says you're wrong. OK? We're done. Making a custom cake (and I really don't care what you claim, any wedding cake is custom) is expressive speech and protected speech. This is literally settled law. I don't care what you think about it, I care that you keep on lying about what the case was about.

  if all anti-discrimination laws are unconstitutional, that means the ones meant to protect people on the basis of race are also unconstitutional.

  Yes, obviously. I don't think the principal stops at race, I just think the courts will stop at race.

  Every time you try, you’re going to look like an even bigger asshole than usual

  You guys literally call everyone who disagrees with you racist at some point You, personally, have done it to me, probably a dozen times, tho less lately. Here's the thing: Slippery slopes are real. And Jim crow was a special kind of iron clad unavoidable life ruining discrimination that it was thought something special was required to break it. Freedom of association requires the ability to discriminate. It's an enumerated right for a reason. And the Civil Rights Act just broke that wide open. Now boys schools have effectively been outlawed. (by which I mean they were sued until they let in girls) Girls and Women's schools were allowed to persist for decades longer (I don't see why, same principal should apply) but now are letting in biological men. Women have literally been forced to box biological men, in at least one case causing a pretty bad skull fracture (volleyball too!), nevermind all the medals lost to people who were only mediocre in the men's division. And no I don't think someone should be forced to make a cake they don't want to (I'm a principled Libertarian, I don't think anyone should be forced to do something they don't want to), but it seems downright petty by comparison. You only have every other cake shop to choose from. All that in the name of fighting discrimination. Well, I want some discrimination back. And no, there's no core principle separating race from all the other things. Actually race is considerably more a "social construct" than gender is. Courts do sometimes rule a severe practicality outweighs a governing principle so I suspect we'll get to somewhere where courts decide it is OK to discriminate based on biological sex but probably not race or religion. (what about satanism? Which is, btw, basically made up, recently. The edge cases get weird.) Btw, I think the principal effect of something like the CRA being repealed would be mass discrimination against whites and asians, because it seems like there's an awful lot of people eager to do that already, even when the law specifically says they can't. SF wants to give out money (a LOT!) based on race. That can't possibly be legal, gonna try anyway. So no, even were I KKK member I wouldn't want the CRA invalidated. That's doesn't mean there's a governing principal separating it from the rest of it.

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 08:38pm

  People have problems with post-divorce remarriages,

  Y'know what, fair, tho I sorta doubt it comes up that often and it's not a protected class. (which I also don't think should be a thing, but it is, legally, for the moment) I'm a til death does us part kinda person. You married them you're stuck with them, no divorce, adultery is a capital offense. Yup, for the gays too. Equal protection under the law and all that.

  Azucar Bakery case kinda proves that baking a cake....

  Nope. I've explained this to you, at length. You're just wrong. The courts have said you're wrong.

  I hate to break this to you, ..both wrong as blah blah

  Not sure what you're "breaking" to me. "Wrong" is an opinion. I have no problem baking wedding cakes for gay jews. But the courts have made clear not doing so is protected speech and all the same logic applies to both. Ok, so you're starting to argue from emotion instead of logic or law, which you were always doing and I just wish you had admitted to it earlier.

  they don’t get to decide who makes up the general public even if they claim that their religion says they do.

  Except that they do, now, legally. The law, as interpreted by the courts, DOES allow them to do that. You don't like that? OK, fine, I have no problem with you having a problem with it. I have a problem with LOTS of court rulings. But just say that instead of bringing up a lot of shit like "basic ass cake" and "following a recipe" which have nothing to do with the actual case or how and why it was decided. Court ruled that making a custom cake was expressive speech and thus protected speech. That should be enough, but Court ruled that CO was also discriminating between expressive speech, which was OK to compel and which was not. That's it. That's the whole thing. Tired of arguing this with you.

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 08:10pm

  Except it shouldn’t be risky for you to moderate perfectly legal content.

  Of course it should. (mostly obviously, I think you just shouldn't do that). If you don't moderate, you have nothing to worry about. The internet really was almost completely unmoderated before twitter (early days of twitter too), do any of your remember that? It was fine.

  That’s the whole point of Section 230: It gives services the legal freedom to moderate

  Again, for probably the 20th time: that's completely incorrect. Go read the law yourself. It gives a legal exemption to allow moderation for a very limited set of things. The Point of 230 is to make clear that you as a host are not responsible for content which is not yours. (which should be obvious but it wasn't) But if you go editing it you can indeed become the publisher, i.e. it's yours, or at least partly yours. It then lists those specific things you can moderate for and not become the publisher. Not "moderate whatever you want, you're still not liable" It's closer to the opposite of that.

  That logic extends to the CSAM issue, too

  It very specifically does not, as laid out in 230. You both have carte blanche to moderate anything "obscene" but also 230 in no way protects you from liability for hosting anything "criminal". (that would have included a great deal of normal porn back when but almost all those laws got struck down). Note that criminal is very different than defamation which is what we're usually concerned with with 230. You could be found both criminally and civilly liable for child porn that someone else put on your server, because if it's criminal 230 doesn't cover it. That's how they got Backpage, actually. ("human trafficking", meaning prostitution but they wanted to make a federal case out of it, not child porn that I know of)

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 07:45pm

  Oh, trust me, all conservatives wish the ruling was a lot more robust and we basically chalk it up to Roberts being a squish when he was still trying to make all sides happy.

  it largely addressed the perceived bias against the religion of the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshope

  The bias was pretty concrete, not just perceived, but it also made clear that expressive speech, is protected speech, and that included making a unique cake. The basically told the lower court how to rule, and gave them the blueprint for it, instead of just overruling them. Which is super weird, but again, Roberts was a squish. And all anti-discrimination laws are clearly unconstitutional, they override not just free speech but also right of free association. We'll probably get that recognized at some point for everything but race.

• On the post: Elon Musk Effectively Admits That He Set Fire To More Than Half Of Twitter’s Value

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 07:29pm

  Oh don't be silly. I'm less mean in person (because I have to see those people again) but most people realize very quickly that I'm smarter than them.

• On the post: Elon Musk Effectively Admits That He Set Fire To More Than Half Of Twitter’s Value

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 07:27pm

  Actually, no, the link provides net income, which is sometimes called "net profit", and it is Gross Income (mostly the same as revenue) - expenses. Net Income is actually a more precise term than just "profit", and also what you are referring to in this case. So no, first year accounting student, there is no missing "other half". .....are you going to take the test again?

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 07:11pm

  No, he's actually got a great point. Twitter is not just an awful lot like the sidewalk in the company owned town, it's possibly a hyper-example of it. You didn't read the link, didya Toomie?

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 07:09pm

  Look who’s talking Mr “We’ve got the guns”

  Yes.....you seem to think that is ironic somehow. Why?

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 07:08pm

  And then Section 230 came along to change that⁠

  No no, I was referring to 230.

  the incentives for moderating content likely would’ve been less appealing than the incentives for not moderating content

  Oh, if the law was actually followed as written it is definitely risky to be "moderating" content and it should expose you to a lot of liability.

  risk being held liable for child porn

  This is actually covered by two specific exemptions in 230 allowing moderation: 1) Obscene 2) illegal.

  being held liable for child porn if it shows up on their platform and they delete some, but not all, of that shit?

  Oh, that's actually still a huge issue. CDA 230 does not cover criminal content at all. Not just "liable", criminally responsible. Twitter has child porn on there, somewhere, any sufficiently large platform does, and the FBI 100% could raid the place and accuse them all of felonies. 230 isn't even involved. Now as a practical matter courts have decided intent really matters (it's not listed in the statue tho) and since these big companies are all trying to get rid of the stuff (but never will) intent is not there. But that's all common law interpretation, precedent, and gentleman's agreement. Nothing to do with what either 230 or the child porn laws say.

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 06:53pm

  To everybody else who doesn’t post by the name of “Matthew M Bennett” Stephen is totally destroying your argument with nothing but facts.

  Lol, that's nice. Sad for you, but nice. Go read the SCOTUS ruling if you actually want to be informed. Also, I'm much more a libertarian, but I really don't care what you think about it.

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 06:49pm

  I did, actually! As Stephen well knows. I don't see why I should repeat myself just for you.

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 06:48pm

  I’d bet that the owner of that bakery has personal issues with certain kinds of straight marriages

  Oh, cool, you called him racist, never seen that before.

  Again:

  Again fucking nothing. He's in the business of making custom, very expressive cakes, you are hiring him for his expression, specifically, there's no need to "get to" a decoration state. He didn't want to design and decorate a cake for a gay wedding, fini. This is as dumb as talking about the baking, it's not the point, you hire him for his expression.

  Azucar Bakery..

  Azucar nothing. The only relevance of that case is it proves the state was hypocritical. It doesn't make ANY of the points you think it does. It only matters in that the state compelled one set of speech but not another. You keep on saying "Azucar defeated the lawsuit because" and none of it has nothing to do with anything. MPC stated many times he would be happy to sell an off-the-shelf cake to anyone, and all your points on this are just meaningless. Neither shop was willing to accept compelled speech.

  Let’s take a different tack here.

  Let's not, actually. No the Jewish wedding isn't any different than the gay wedding except that he claimed a religious objection and very few Christian sects have any problems with Jewish weddings. (I think this is a sorta false excuse -- you shouldn't NEED to claim a religious exemption to not be forced to do something you don't want to do -- but it is presumably also his actual reason) You then babble on about "decorations" as if it's some separate thing, cuz it's fucken not for the 10th time.

• On the post: Forget Shadow Banning, Now Elon Is Shadow Boosting Accounts He Likes, While Trying To Drive Away Users Who Won’t Pay

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 06:12pm

  oh sure it is. It's hand-wavey bullshit even for sociology. "politically-balanced" according to who "U.S. laypeople." assuming that's important, according to who.....how large a sample size? Were they all college students? (they are, usually) Were they all from the same area? Urban, presumably? Regardless of all that wild shit, they are now trying to pass an unvarnished opinion off as some sort of objective metric which it most definitely is not. Oh, and peer review is in an atrocious state, particularly in the soft sciences, but this is a preprint, meaning it hasn't even had that. It's just junk from top to bottom. So yeah, I didn't make all that "argument" initially, but I also feel like I really didn't have to.

• On the post: As Free Speech Enthusiast Elon Plans To Release Twitter’s Source Code, Twitter Desperately Seeking Identity Of FreeSpeechEnthusiast Who Leaked Twitter Source Code

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 05:20pm

  No, you couldn't actually. Evidence has been provided in spades.

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 05:17pm

  “If you carry inclusivity content, you must also carry racist content”.

  Racist according to who? Racists running rampant is preferable to being ruled by whatever standard YOUR dumbass thinks is appropriate. People do actually have the right to say racist things, y'know.

  CDA 230 protects a platform from Libel claims, but only if they are not editing it.

  Wrong once again, Matthew. CDA 230 protects a platform from civil liability

  Fuck, man, how would you fucking know?!? Libel claims ARE a form of civil liability, you just repeated what I said, you walnut brained atavism.

  Moderating content doesn’t magically make them the publisher of what someone else wrote/posted.

  It does, actually, at least as originally written, with a few fairly specific exemptions. But again, how would you know? Do you know anything?

• On the post: In Internet Speech Cases, SCOTUS Should Stick Up For Reno v. ACLU

  

  Matt Bennett ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2023 @ 05:05pm

  tragically he really isn't. I can't tell to what degree he doesn't understand the whole thing vs he's just lying.

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