By ratifying the Bill of Rights, the NY assembly adopted and incorporated them into their own constitution. Additionally, the Constitution prohibits state legislatures from abridging the rights enumerated in the Constitution. So, in this case, Federal law (the Constitution) prohibits States from making a law that violates the rights protected at the Federal Level. See if you can justify in your mind the ability of the Mayor or other government official to prohibit your right to free speech, or privacy or the right to vote or the right do any other Constitutionally protected thing.

The Constitution was created to protect citizens from the government, not government from the people.

Setting aside the religious aspect of the 1st Amendment, you neglected to include another, more important phrase... "Congress shall make no law respecting...the right of the people peaceably to assemble..."

That is unambiguous, not open to interpretation, and inviolate.

Someone posts a comment on FB that states that Joe Biden is not yet legally the President-Elect. FB hires Politifact to check the veracity of the post. Politifact says that the comment is not factual. FB censors the post. Commenter sues Politifact and easily wins. Politifact has to retract, in its entirety. FB now has to retract its censorship.

Yeah, I couldn't care less what FB says it's doing regarding 'misinformation'.

How the fuck did this get modded 'Troll'?

What part of what he said is deliberately intended to stir up shit? What part is factually inaccurate? His example is spot on. Two of these examples of BRIBARY are infringements of Constitutionally protected rights in addition to violations of local and state law while the other is a violation of local or state law.

Yes, states have a Constitutionally protected right to create laws that mandate a permit process. This is not in dispute. But elected or appointed or hired government employees do not have a Constitutionally protected right to demand any thing from the applicant other then the legally approved fee for said permit.

Outside of the merits of the story or the other comments, you say

in one sentence and then just a couple of sentences later...

The irony is thick here.

Careful there mate, the LBGTQ mafia sees everything.

This is the problem. If the only place you get your news is from the talking heads, you are not getting news, you are getting entertainment. And as with all forms of entertainment, marketing drives the message.

But, in most cases, if you read the article closely, you can sometimes find that they actually do reference sources. Go read those sources. And look to see if they reference other sources. Follow that thread and eventually, you will probably know more about the subject then the talking heads.

If they don't reference sources, you can probably, safely discount the story as BS.

And finally, if you read or hear about something shocking, try looking at the subject from the opposite point of view. If it smells like crap, look at your shoe, you probably stepped in it.

If I own the vast majority of the means and wherewithal to disseminate information, I get to control what information gets disseminated. And If I want to label any other organization that disagrees with my agenda as a tabloid, how long would it take for the majority of the consumers of my information to reach the conclusion that the other organization is a tabloid?

A significant portion of book burnings in the past were promoted if not started by the majority that was in control of getting information out to people. Sometimes that was religion, sometimes it was business, sometimes it was government. It was never right. It doesn't matter to me that publishers (and yes, I believe they are publishers) like FB, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and now Zoom are not under the auspices of the 1st Amendment. What they are doing is wrong. The Bill of Rights exist to constrain the government in any future attempt to restrict our rights. But just because it does not hinder private organizations or individuals, that does not mean it shouldn't be our job to constrain those that would try to do that outside of government. It doesn't matter if they are doing it to conservatives, terrorists, liberals, socialists, communists, or knitters, it's wrong.

The only way to mitigate the risk of disinformation is with accurate information. Flag the post as you like, but have the courage of your convictions and present a counter-point. And no, a simple downvote without a comment is and should not be sufficient. If you disagree with someone having the inherent right to communicate via the modern equivalent of the community square, you are a coward and part of the problem.

I thought businesses don't actually have a voice or any freedom of expression. So we're actually talking about members of the board and C-group from each of these companies expressing their personal opinion. Which is totally fine and I support them in their effort to force some needed changes to social media in general and Facebook in particular.

But, perhaps FB should consider implementing a shadow ban on every company that pulls advertising. Not that I support FB but I would love to see this turn into a truly popcorn moment.

But I was very much bothered by the fact that T-Mobil implied the outage was A) Not their fault, B) Affecting other carriers, and C) maybe a DDoS and that it was hitting other services, not just communications systems.

The lack of communication that resulted in the rumor mill ramping up was bad enough. But they could easily have come out and said, Hey, it's our bad, we're working on it and we'll let you know when it's fixed. This would have gone a long way toward reducing some or most of the bad taste this has left in everyone's mouth.

I think you may be misunderstanding my point. Regardless, I didn't feel like writing a dissertation on all the aspects of AI in control of weapons systems. Suffice to say, it will be a bad day for everyone if true AI gains access to weapons without some hard barriers in place that prevent such a system from full autonomous action. Humans will not win against such a platform.

The argument I was making was against the presumption that humans will always be able to outsmart, outfight an AI controlled opponent. That would only be true if we limit the AI's capabilities.

Once true AI gains weapons control, the last time that will happen was in the last movie written by a human.

Imagine if that plane's "pilot" was a true AI and not limited by the imagination of the writers. Horrifying!

Perhaps it's because the computer generated opponents are artificially limited in their capabilities. In Elite: Dangerous and all the way back to the first MUDs, computer opponents have been limited in their response times, limited in the type of reaction, limited in the scope of that reaction, limited in the aggressiveness of that reaction and etc.

Imagine how fun any computer game would be if you could never defeat the computer. Difficulty levels exist for this reason. Once you win the game at normal difficulty, you can go back and turn it up to suit your skill or ambition. But you shouldn't assume that the difficulty level of the "AI" (not a true AI by any stretch of the imagination) in Elite: Dangerous or any other computer game is maxed out.