Tanner Andrews 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (1403)

• On the post: Florida Tells Court: Actually, It's Section 230 That's Unconstitutional (Not Our Social Media Law)

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2021 @ 12:08am

  Re:

  To be fair, “preschool playground” is the approximate level of education for the average Florida lawyer.

  Says the expert who carefully observes that this effort is led by
  COOPER & KIRK , PLLC
  1523 New Hampshire Ave., NW
  Washington, DC 20036
  (202) 220-9600

• On the post: Florida Man Governor Wastes More Florida Taxpayer Money Appealing Ruling About His Unconstitutional Social Media Law

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 17 Jul, 2021 @ 03:30pm

  Re:

  This might well be a symptom of a one-party state. There are three branches of government, all run by the same party. You also have a bunch of agencies, whose heads are all appointed by the same party. For similar one-party result, look another 90 miles south.

• On the post: Five Palo Alto Cops Sue The City And Their PD, Claiming A Black Lives Matter Mural Harassed Them

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 17 Jul, 2021 @ 07:51pm

  They demand judgment for

  Physical, mental, and emotional injuries, pain, distress, suffering, anguish, fright, nervousness, grief, anxiety, worry, shame, mortification, injured feelings, shock, humiliation, and indignity, as well as other unpleasant physical, mental, and emotional reactions, damages to reputation, and other non-economic damages,

  As previous comments have noted, these folks are clearly unsuited to be cops. For that matter, they are probably ill-suited for any job calling for performance by a ``competent adult''.

  Still, I cannot help but think that there will be much greater mortification when they are seen to have their names on this complaint. Imagine if their friends or fellow cops found out that the ``Snowflake Five'' had let themselves be associated with this. They should probably move to a different state and change their names in order to avoid the shame and humiliation of having people think of them as being the sorts of people who would bring this.

  And the lawyers? Well, in filing this thing, they have surely beclowned themselves. That may not be disqualifying in LA. or even in California. Still, imagine how they would feel if a search of Matthew S. McNicholas or of Douglas D. WInter or even of Emily R. Pincin were to reveal connection to this steaming pile. That simply cannot help them.

• On the post: It Appears That Jason Miller's GETTR Is Speed Running The Content Moderation Learning Curve Faster Than Parler

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 17 Jul, 2021 @ 01:00am

  Re: It's quite a problem. How do YOU handle it?

  This is just to attack GETTR, not solving any problem

  Identification of the problems is an important step to solving them. We have identified some problems.

  1. It is necessary to provide some sort of content moderation or your web site will become a cesspit of spam, furry porn, MAGAt droppings, troll-feeding, and neo-nazi ranting. TYou may wind up with parler, or daily stormer, or gettr.
  2. Lying is a problem. Calling yourself a ``Free Speech'' site does not help. What appears implicit in the article is that these sites ought to be honest: they in some ways moderate speech they do not like. They have the right to do so. However, lying about it is an unfair business practice.
  3. Inability for the MAGA crowd to provide a viable service suitable to their own needs is a problem. The solution is for them to recruit smarter people, the kind of people who can craft a viable platform. This may be the kind of people who want nothing to do with them.
  4. Lack of ability to reflect is a problem. This may be caused by excessive television, but I cannot offer much hope of a solution.

  Solving these problems probably requires your level of genius. It is certainly above my pay grade. Few people are going to switch off the television and actually, you know, attend public meetings.

• On the post: Elon Musk's Pointless, Subsidized Tunnels Head To Flood-Prone Florida

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2021 @ 12:50am

  Re: Re: Soil dynamics is your enemy

  "your building on a beach causes my insurance rates to climb"

  In fairness, it does not cause the insurance rates to rise as much as they should. Two problems prevent this natural market operation. First, subsidized flood insurance. Almost everyone who buys needs a mortgage loan, and the bank requires flood insurance when you are in a low area such as a beach. Flood insurance would be fabulously expensive in such areas, except for the federal subsidy which makes it much cheaper than would be actuarily sound. Second, state supported ``catastrophe'' reinsurance, meaning that the risk of great damage is shifted to the taxpayers rather than the near-ocean property owners who present the greatest risk of suffering casualty. Here, some but not all of the state support is loaded onto regular insurance policies in safer areas. Together, these operate as a sort of Reverse Robin Hood. The more impecunious taxpayers provide the support so that the better-off may own waterfront properties. Be assured that oceanfront property owners are generous at campaign contribution time. In a sane market, it would be essentially impossible to obtain affordable insurance within a mile of the ocean. Underwriters would flee from such opportunities.

• On the post: FBI Cites Guidelines That Don't Actually Forbid Social Media Monitoring As The Reason It Was Blindsided By The January 6 Attack

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 12 Jul, 2021 @ 06:19pm

  Re: [lots of small plans]

  That is true, there were a bunch of small plans by lots of people

  I will tell you the tip-off the FBI missed. The morning of 06-Jan, there was a large armed mob present near the Capitol. There was a platform set up and several rabble-rousing speakers were present to address the armed mob. The speakers did deliver their respective addresses, which were followed shortly by an armed march upon the Capitol. The various law-enforcement and military operations laregely ignored this. Sure, there was also social media chatter, but since it was largely the KKK and ``blue lives'' sorts doing the chatter, it was also largely ignored. Compare the non-armed-mob a few months prior for the BLM protest, and the storm trooper response thereto, and let me know if you have a good explanation for the different responses.

• On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2021 @ 01:40am

  Re: Go ahead and fucking try

  they're not prepared for what happens once they fucking get it

  Most likely they will not get their bill in effect. A bill to similar effect here was struck down even before it could become effective. No doubt the state will appeal, but even the U.S. 11th Circuit is not going to uphold the stink-bomb that is SB 2021-7072. If things move more slowly in Texas, or they do not provide an effective date, it may kick in. In such a case, I imagine that the bill will be so short-lived as to be of no real effect.

• On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2021 @ 12:41am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Publisher vs Platforms

  Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck

  That one was regrettable. The law as stated appears correct, but the application on those particular facts may have been unfortunate. The cable service was transferred from the govt to a private entity in part to allow for viewpoint-based decisions. The govt could not prevent access by critics, where the corp could. I am not sure how the supremes could reach a different result without some serious pretzel logic. Given how much we pay them to be smart, it might have been nice to see a more useful result. Making careful distinctions is part of their job. Compare Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U.S. 485, and Chiles v. C&O Ry, 218 U.S. 71, , to Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 210. Still, genuinely private corps such as the operators of twitter or daily stormer are even more legitimately entitled to control the use of their respective properties.

• On the post: Hong Kong Kowtows To China Again, Turns Virtual Police State Into An Actual Police State

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2021 @ 11:40pm

  Re:

  It's very sad as Hong Kong was a beacon of free speech and
  had a great output of movies and art before China clamped down

  That was actually only during a fairly narrow window. For most of its time under British rule, it was operated by a governor and cronies appointed in London and generally accountable only to their corporate masters. Shortly before the handover, Britain allowed some representative government to be set up. It was always understood that representative government was intended only as a poke in the eye to Red China, and that it would be abolished when it became inconvenient. It has become inconvenient. Red China is therefore clamping down on those recent representative institutions, and indeed on all insufficiently obsequious speech. Try to act surprised.

• On the post: It Can Always Get Dumber: Trump Sues Facebook, Twitter & YouTube, Claiming His Own Government Violated The Constitution

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 08 Jul, 2021 @ 12:18am

  A Serious Problem

  Some judge is going to have to read this thing, including [Twitter pg 14]:

  60. Likewise, with Plaintiff now removed from Twitter and other social media platforms, it has ended balanced, direct public discussions between competing political views on national and local issues.

  Then he will know why there is no longer any direct public discussion of political issues in the U.S.

  Without that information, he might have blamed the lack of U.S. public political discussion on this ``markdown'' stuff, which tried to change P:60 above to P:1 as though it were the first of a numbered list.

• On the post: Federal Watchdog Finds Lots Of Facial Recognition Use By Gov't Agencies, Very Little Internal Oversight

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 06 Jul, 2021 @ 07:47am

  Qualified Immunity Does Not Help

  When they arrest the wrong person based on an obviously wrong ``match'' by the Facial Recognition Technolog (FRT, or ``fart''), the person or his estate will likely bring suit for all the usual things. The courts will dismiss, because there is no clearly established case law that arresting and beating the wrong person is in any wise contrary to the Constitution.

  They will claim good faith based on the FRT, even though some of the matches may appeared to be pulled from the machine's nether regions. The level of good faith for cops is stunningly low. Where you or I might, for instance, think that having a warrant for one address should not allow violent entry into another, the courts find good faith and qualified immunity. A fortiori, where the machine says ``match'', emitting a gaseous cloud of suspicion along with its report.

• On the post: Georgia Supreme Court Overturns Computer Crime Conviction For Man Who Copied Himself On Emails Sent To His Boss

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2021 @ 05:55am

  Re: Hmmm

  a forwarding rule for ALL of your boss's emails

  Probably a bad thing to do, especially in what we call the ``real world''. But in the rarified atmosphere of government, all that stuff is, or ought to be, public records. It is the public's business being carried out, by the public's paid servants. So, while the defendant appears to have done everything wrong, and clumsily, condemnation may be unduly harsh on these facts.

• On the post: Court Rejects Facebook User's Lawsuit Demanding $10 Million Per Day In Damages For Having His Posts Removed

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2021 @ 05:30am

  Re: what are those rights?

  Apparently companies can, in fact, be charged with killing people

  Let me know when one actually goes to prison for it.

• On the post: Former Trump Aide Launches Twitter Clone, That Seems To Yank A Ton Of Data Right Out Of Twitter; Already Has First Content Moderation Crisis

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 03 Jul, 2021 @ 10:42pm

  Re: Re:

  I've little doubt that the ghost accounts thing is so they can crow about how many users they have without actually having said accounts signed up for by actual human beings

  The mechanics will prove problematic. User A on platform A creates his new account on gettr. System imports and creates ghost accounts for his followers, including user B. Now, when user B (who would naturally follow A anyway) goes to create his account, the name is taken . He cannot log in using the ghost account because he does not know the ghost password.

• On the post: Florida Steps Up To Defend Its Unconstitutional Social Media Law And It's Every Bit As Terrible As You'd Imagine

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2021 @ 12:59am

  Re:

  It's regrettable that [Florida] won't just snap off and drift away at high speed.

  My preference would be to build machine gun towers at the bridges over the St Marys, particularly focusing on the south-bound lanes of I-95. That would offer less disruption than a complete separation. The problem is that we get so many people here from up north. A lot of them stay. If they were to go home, they would probably raise the average both here and in their home states.

• On the post: Florida Steps Up To Defend Its Unconstitutional Social Media Law And It's Every Bit As Terrible As You'd Imagine

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 30 Jun, 2021 @ 07:11pm

  Re: Re: Failure

  Please feel free to point out the specific conservative viewpoints for which Trump was banned

  Advocacy and encouragement of armed violence against the govt of the United States. I presume that supporting armed efforts to overthrow the govt is still considered a ``conservative'' value because the GOP seems very much in favor of such, and opposed to anything that would discourage or learn from such violence.

• On the post: Former Trump Lawyer Facing Sanctions In Michigan Now Saying The Things She Said Were Opinions Are Actually Facts

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 30 Jun, 2021 @ 05:43pm

  Re:

  A company running an election on contract is a state actor. They lost any right they had to act like a private entity and must respect First Amendment rights

  It might be, though I do not see any citation to authority for your bare assertion. UItimately, however, the lack of authority does not matter because the implicit premise is missing. That is, the voting machine company was not running the election, on contract or otherwise. It was simply providing machinery for use in the election. The nature of the machinery may make it distinguishable from the car dealer who sold the vans that carry the ballots between the supervisor of elections office and the polling places, but it is not going to be an easy distinction to make. It is as though the paving company which put down the blacktop for the roads would deemed a state actor rather than a vendor, because in theory the state could pour the blacktop itself. If I say untruthful things about the paving company, I could get sued. If I say untruthful things about the car dealer, I could get sued. If I say untruthful things about the voting machine vendor, I could get sued. Indeed, if I say untruthful things about the supervisor of elections, with reckless disregard for their falsity, I could get sued. I suspect that you are largely engaging in the practice known as ``making stuff up'' to reach your conclusion. That practice might explain the lack of cited authority.

• On the post: 2nd Circuit Upholds Non-Monetary Sanctions Against Copyright Troll Richard Liebowitz

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 30 Jun, 2021 @ 05:31pm

  Re: Re: Re: Couldn't have happend to a more deserving man

  in character for him to treat sanction as more 'suggestions' than legally binding rulings

  Well, he explained the failure to file in some cases as inadvertence or mistake, rather than a determination that the order to file in all his firms' cases did not apply. He was unsure of the status in some, he said, claiming that they might have been closed and therefore not subject to the order. He also claimed that his computers were not able to accurately identify all the cases on which the attys in the firm were working.

• On the post: Florida Steps Up To Defend Its Unconstitutional Social Media Law And It's Every Bit As Terrible As You'd Imagine

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 29 Jun, 2021 @ 05:57am

  Re: Re: Re:

  Does this include the outrageous lies he keeps pulling out of his fat butt?

  Sure, most of his lies are protected speech. That does not mean that any given platform ought to be required to host them. If Twitter does not wish to host that particular collection of vulgar falsehoods, Mr. Trump is free to go to Parler, or Stormfront, or Fox News, or donaldjtrump.com for that matter.

• On the post: Florida Steps Up To Defend Its Unconstitutional Social Media Law And It's Every Bit As Terrible As You'd Imagine

  

  Tanner Andrews ( profile ), 29 Jun, 2021 @ 05:52am

  Re: Re: Re:

  Let me ask one question, why do you think Trump is banned from social media?

  Question assumes the premise. In fact, Trump is banned only from certain social media platforms, but is free to use others. As to those from which he is banned, I need not discern a reason; it being their soapbox, they may lend its use to whom they please. Likewise, my living room shall not contain rude people who offend my other guests. While I may not discern the reason for Trump's ouster from particular platforms, I suspect that it comes down to a totality of factors:

  • telling many lies
  • harmful covid disinformation
  • leading armed rebellion against U.S. govt
  • endorsement of ``proud boys'' and similar hate groups

  But, really, I am just guessing. The platforms which do not choose to have him as a user are free to choose on that basis or on the basis of coin flips. Their platform, their choice. If I do not like it, I can go to Parler or Stormfront where I can have all the Trump promotion I want.

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