Agreed, but that should still be the goal. It seems like many laws are written with obvious loopholes for exactly the opposite purpose. Almost anything allowing "discretion" for prosecution just opens things up to malicious prosecution against whomever is in power's enemies. If a law is broad enough to allow such, it shouldn't exist.

So no matter how specific you are, you still need judges, I agree, but ideally it should be extremely rare for their personal politics to have significant influence, because the laws are written well. This won't (and can't) solve all the problems, but it's a good rule of thumb to start with.

I argue (and others do it better than I) that such decision was legally sound, but an indictment of Corporate Personhood as a whole. So a symptom and not the cause. The chaos of weakening Rule of Law (in many ways that have already happened) is much worse IMO. Your assertion reminds me too much of any view based around "If we get the right judges in, we'll have justice!" That's wrong IMO, and the laws (and highest secular laws, constitutions) should be written soundly enough that judges need to outright ignore the text (ie: Canada, Living Tree Doctrine, etc) in order to go against it. If bad consequences happen, change the laws, don't throw out the idea of Rule of Law. All that replaces it with is Cronyism IMO.

I'm trying to be charitable here, but it sounds like you're saying that it's OK to restrict freedom of speech if it results in less corruption. If this isn't what you're saying, OK, but that's what it sounds like. I would assert that less freedom of speech will result in more corruption (on the whole) rather than less, and that the tradeoff is unlikely to be worth it. But I'm willing to listen if you say that's not what you meant.

Fine. However, reparations are "Somebody who looks a bit like you (maybe), did something bad to somebody who doesn't look as much like you, 50, 100, 150, or more years ago. And neither of you were born yet either. Now you have to pay for it regardless of if your life is crap, or if anybody benefiting is actually better off than you, because as a whole they aren't. And remember to feel guilty about what that person historically did, regardless of how connected or not you are to them."

Or you can advocate for social spending without vilifying entire races (or sets of them, as the case may be). Because blaming races for social or societal ills never ends badly.

Your "regardless" is my original main point actually, but I'd say that you're making a compelling argument that the only difference between "fascism" and "communism" is who owns the means of production, up until the moment the government slaps you down for going against them (real or imagined). That's a fairly supported position historically IMO.

Ah yes, a No True Scotsman as applied to Communism. Yet again.

I agree that hosting and curating are different, and should have different guidelines and protections. Where it gets difficult IMO is to what level of "curation" and "hosting" should the platforms be liable for?

For example, YouTube, the algorithm is nearly opaque, and it runs it based on both what you and others are doing. Probably a pretty high level of liability.

The opposite end: This slashdot forum. Except for ratings above a threshold (user-driven), things are laid out in exactly the order replies occurred in, no ranking other than "First!" occurs. IMO this is a near-perfect example of minimal-to-no liability inside the article. There may be an argument for which articles actually get seen, but the reply layout itself is pretty "hosting only" or extremely close.

And then there's Reddit. Things appear more frequently with more engagement, and those numbers are public. But things obviously decay over time, or all that would ever get recommended is greatest hits. So what else is being done for their algorithms? What sub-Reddits will never get promoted due to editorial influence on what pops up? So there's some user control here, but some aspect of not. Should they be protected?

I don't know what the right route to take for lawmakers should be that allows the free exchange of unpopular and controversial ideas without unacceptable legal risk for platforms, but also doesn't completely shield the company when they decide to rest their thumb on the scale, as that gives far too much influence to far too few people.

Any discussion of "reparations" argues that the attitude is indeed quite mainstream.

I'd argue this is also why SpaceX is private. If it were public there'd be different pressures on how to do things. Right now the only person that the company directly answers to is Elon. So if he wants to launch 10 times to have 1 success (during development at least, as I think Falcon 9 has a better launch ratio than any other orbital-class rocket in history), that's OK. Every other launch company (ULA in particular) can't have that kind of public failure rate during development, because they're concerned about "image" because of stock price.

Should they? Just check Wikipedia. Should they have the ability to take it from somebody with that last name? I'd say no. If it's purely for trolling, then OK, I can see an argument, and there should be an open process, but all you need is to bribe literally any tin-pot dictator, and you can yank a domain name officially?

I'm going to hire based on merit only. I will not filter my candidates by anything more than that they live in the same area so that they can come into the office as needed, and their ability to do the job as described (competence), but I will hire the most proficient person encountered. Based on a lot of different policies in effect right now, I'm (at a minimum) racist, sexist, and ableist because where I live has disparities.

This is the world we live in now.

I think what you allude to is much more interesting: should a Platform be responsible for amplifying content that it didn't write? I'd argue that there is a difference between offering an aggregator for subscriptions in a unified timeline, versus "here's what we think you'd be interested in (ie: what we want you to watch)." And given the power of platforms (be they old-school media, or new media) to promote what they want you to see... I think it's not as simple as they "are" or "are not" responsible for what's on their platforms, because of the promotion aspect.

It was a plot device. Maybe it turned out to be prescient, but was he intending to be a futurist? That's something that's hard to know. But maybe somebody who's studied his life and letters, interviews, etc, knows better.

I'd say regardless of original intent, it has served well as a warning against arbitrary "laws" like that. But that's just my interpretation, and a good story has many.