I mean we don't know it for sure; but we do know it.
It's like saying repealing laws prohibiting dumping lead into drinking water (ex. Prop 67) won't cause companies to dump lead into water. But like we passed prop 67 because companies were dumping lead. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was added because people were sueing websites over comments not made by staff in their comments section.
Curating HN to only be tech-specific topics is protected by 230. Literally the history of 230 is there were 2 lawsuits [1].
1. Website was sued over having "defamatory" content posted by a user and website won because they had no moderation (minus illegal stuff).
2. Website was sued over having "defamatory" content posted by a user and website lost because they had moderation (curated to be "family friendly").
Politicians (and less importantly, the general public) like the idea of websites being able to be "family friendly".
So forums and blogs can still exist but if you do any sort of not strictly legally required moderation you have legal liability for all content without 230.
> So forums and blogs can still exist but if you do any sort of not strictly legally required moderation you have legal liability for all content without 230.
Which means the consequence for any mistake on sticking exactly to the bounds of legally mandatory moderation is enormous liability (either massive civil liability if you go slightly beyond the bounds of the minimum, or given the source of most minimums catastrophic criminal liability if you fall below it); the only realistic approach at non-trivial scale is just not to allow UGC except at the level you are willing to edit as if it were first party content you were going to be fully responsible for.
It's going to be fun watching HN, which is full of people who support this sort of thing (and even more extreme regulations to boot,) deal with the ramifications of this forum's guidelines and moderation policies being de facto illegal.
It won't even be "turning into Reddit" it's all going to turn into 4chan.
could you highlight what in the original article made you think they were banning their kids from social media entirely? or were you trying to explain something else?
The "The U.S. government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies." seems like quite the federal overreach never mind the court decision.
> However, by almost any way you can present "popularity" of a president - be it approval ratings, polling figures, popular vote, electoral vote, etc. - he is one of the more popular presidents in US history.
You might want to look up those data yourself because uh he's actually unpopular in those metrics.
Approval - 42.5% [1]. Much better than Trump's love interest Biden's 37.1% [2] but being below 50% is unpopular.
Popular Vote / Electoral Vote - 49.8%, 312. I may need to tell you this so I will. 50% is greater than 49.8%; a majority of voters (nevermind the country) did not want Trump. As before, this is better than Biden's 306 and Trump1's 304 but worse than Obama2 (332), Obama1 (365) and in general 312 (57%) is nothing to write home about.
That's the whole point. They aren't law, and they were (probably) never meant to be so far-reaching, and yet the clear purpose of this Executive Order is to tell the states what laws they can enact. The EO doesn't have the legal power to do that directly, but it clearly outlines the intention to withdraw federal funding from states that refuse to toe the line.
> The order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to create an “AI Litigation Task Force” within 30 days whose "sole responsibility shall be to challenge State AI laws" that clash with the Trump administration's vision for light-touch regulation.
The EO isn't about Federal Preemption. Trump's not creating a law to preempt states. So a question about how Federal Preemption is relevant is on point.
> My Administration must act with the Congress to ensure that there is a minimally burdensome national standard — not 50 discordant State ones. …
Sounds like leaving it up to Congress! But then the administration vows to thwart state laws despite the vacuum of no extant preemption, so effectively imposing a type of supposed Executive preemption:
> Until such a national standard exists, however, it is imperative that my Administration takes action to check the most onerous and excessive laws emerging from the States that threaten to stymie innovation.
So preemption link is relevant, I think; and at any rate, helpful to give background to those not familiar with the concept, which constitutes the field against which this is happening.
Also why are they small federal government states rights for things but big federal government centralized power for this? It doesn't make sense to me.
I think the message between the lines is what's important, and it goes like this:
"We in the executive branch have an agreement with the Supreme Court allowing us to bypass congress and enact edicts. We will do this by sending the Justice Department any state law that gets in the way of our donors, sending the layup to our Republican Supreme Court, who will dunk on the States for us and nullify their law."
We don't have to go through the motions of pretending we still live in a constitutional republic, it's okay to talk frankly about reality as it exists.
It goes deeper than that - the Supreme Council will issue non-binding "guidance" on the "shadow docket", so that when/if the fascists/destructionists [0] lose the Presidency, they can go back to being obstructionists weaponizing high-minded ideals in bad faith. As a libertarian, the way I see it is we can disagree politically on what constitutes constructive solutions, but it's time to unite, stop accepting any of the fascists' nonsense, and take back the fucking government - full support for the one remaining mainstream party that at least nominally represents the interests of the United States, while demanding they themselves stop preemptively appeasing the fascists. The Libertarian, Green, or even new parties can step up as the opposition. Pack the courts with judges that believe in America first and foremost, make DC and PR states to mitigate the fascists' abuse of the Senate, and so on. After we've stopped the hemorrhaging, work on fundamental things like adopting ranked pairs voting instead of this plurality trash.
[0] I'd be willing to call them something else if they picked an honest name for themselves - they are most certainly not "conservatives"
It's right in the text of the EO: they intend to argue that the state laws are preempted by existing federal regulations, and they also direct the creation of new regulations to create preemption if necessary, specifically calling on the FCC and FTC to make new federal rules to preempt disfavored state laws. Separately it talks about going to Congress for new laws but mostly this lays out an attempt to do it with executive action as much as possible, both through preemption and by using funding to try to coerce the states.
There's a reasonable argument that nationwide regulation is the more efficient and proper path here but I think it's pretty obvious that the intent is to make toothless "regulation" simply to trigger preemption. You don't have to do much wondering to figure out the level of regulation that David Sacks is looking for.
This is quite literally going to lead to a Supreme Court case about Federal Preemption. Bondi will challenge some CA law, they will lose and appeal until they get to the Supreme Court. I don't have any grace to give people at this point, you have to be willingly turning a blind eye if you do not see where this will end up.
Federal preemption requires federal law (aka laws written by congress). How else would it get to the supreme court?
The EO mentions congress passing new law a few times in addition to an executive task force to look into challenging state laws based on constitutional violations or federal statues. That's the only way they'd get in front of a judge.
If the plan is for the executive to invent new laws it's not mapped out in this EO
> Federal preemption requires federal law (aka laws written by congress). How else would it get to the supreme court?
1. No federal preemption currently. (No federal law, therefore no regulation on the matter that should preempt.)
2. State passes and enforces law regarding AI.
3. Trump directs Bondi to challenge the state law on nonsense grounds.
4. In the lawsuit, the state points out that there is no federal preemption; oh yeah, 10th Amendment; and that the administration's argument is nonsense.
5. The judge, say Eileen Cannon, invalidates the state law.
6. Circuit Court reverses.
7. Administration seeks and immediately gets a grant of certiorari — and the preemption matter is in the Supreme Court.
> passing new law … only way they'd get it in front of a judge.
The EO directs Bondi to investigate whether, and argue that, existing executive regulations (presumably on other topics) preempt state legislation.
Regardless, the EO makes it a priority to find and take advantage of some way to challenge and possibly invalidate state laws on the subject. This is a new take on preemption: creation of a state-law vacuum on the subject, through scorched-earth litigation (how Trumpian!), despite an utter absence of federal legislation on the matter.
the Task Force can try to challenge state AI laws. they can file whatever lawsuits they want. they will probably lose most of their suits, because there's very little ground for challenging state AI regulations.
Lina Khan did try and regulate. She had some successes, but the major cases w/r/t concentration of power against Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta and Apple have all moved slowly and (so far) failed to result in break ups.
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