XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, rec.arts.tv   
   XPost: alt.privacy   
   From: d@ray   
      
   The Supreme Court is currently authoring its opinion on Section 230 of the   
   1996 Communications Decency Act, an enormously consequential decision that   
   could radically change how we use the internet.   
      
   The decision, which could be released any time from now to July due to the   
   complex and politically fraught nature of the case, has pit several Jewish   
   organizations against a dwindling number of civil liberties groups willing   
   to defend the Constitutional right to free speech.   
      
   The case combines Gonzalez v. Google LLC and Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh, two   
   lawsuits which assert that social media platforms are legally liable for   
   acts of violence committed by groups or individuals that utilize their   
   services to promote their ideas.   
      
   SCOTUS’ decision to grant certiorari to Gonzalez shows the immense   
   political pull Zionist groups — foreign and domestic — have inside the   
   American system.   
      
   Gonzalez is a brazen display of foreign interference by an Israeli NGO   
   called Shurat HaDin, which seeks to challenge the standing of Section 230   
   in the name of Nohemi Gonzalez, a California exchange student who was   
   killed during a 2015 ISIS terrorist attack in Paris.   
      
   Shurat HaDin has made strategic lawsuits seeking to undermine American laws   
   protecting free speech its central cause, though previous attempts by the   
   group to attack Section 230 have been dismissed or defeated in courts. The   
   Supreme Court typically reserves certiorari for cases with mixed rulings,   
   but they have made a special exception for Gonzalez, which was defeated in   
   lower courts and beaten again in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.   
      
   The argument in Taamneh is similar to Gonzalez, though this case is being   
   argued in the name of a Jordanian national who was killed in a 2017 Islamic   
   State attack in Turkey. Taamneh was able to achieve victory in the same   
   Ninth Circuit court, which curiously ignored Section 230 in Twitter’s case   
   and instead found them liable under the Anti-Terrorism Act. Twitter’s   
   relative tolerance for free speech compared to the Jewish-owned Google   
   monopoly in the biased Ninth Circuit is likely to have played a role in the   
   creation of drastically different rulings on similar facts.   
      
   Amicus briefs in these Supreme Court proceedings have brought together a   
   united Jewish front against the First Amendment. The Zionist Organization   
   of America, which supports Gonzalez, is playing the role of “bad cop” on   
   Google, while other Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League are   
   staying “neutral” in the case, stating that any ruling should merely   
   encourage the company to continue its good work engaging in strict   
   censorious and editorializing practices against right-wing speech. Google   
   put content moderation in the hands of the ADL as early as 2017, though the   
   Zionist lobbyists have still complained that current technology is not   
   thorough enough when it comes to censoring their political opponents on   
   Youtube.   
      
   On the Twitter leg, the landscape is different, with Jewish litigants   
   showing far less patience by unleashing a furious legal onslaught attacking   
   the company.   
      
   The Zachor Legal Institute, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and   
   Jurists, Simon Wiesenthal Center and others are arguing that Twitter and   
   other social media companies deliberately and knowingly recruit for violent   
   terrorists and are thus responsible for the harm caused by the activities   
   of criminal users.   
      
   The ADL’s amicus brief reiterates many of these points, but with   
   supplements generated through its questionable in-house data collection   
   practices, where the Jews cite themselves as an authoritative source   
   supporting the idea that Twitter and Youtube are co-conspirators in the   
   financing and spread of terrorism. The filing goes after the real target of   
   these lawsuits by emphasizing the supposed availability of “white   
   supremacist” content on social media platforms to make its point.   
      
   The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed in favor of leaving Section   
   230 untouched, explaining that even the most advanced algorithms can’t   
   always distinguish between illegal calls to imminent violence and First   
   Amendment protected content, thus opening up infinite possibilities for   
   crippling litigation. In its public statement, the EFF wrote that “if the   
   plaintiffs in these cases convince the Court to narrow the legal   
   interpretation of Section 230 and increase platforms’ legal exposure for   
   generally knowing harmful material is present on their services, the   
   significant protections that Congress envisioned in enacting this law would   
   be drastically eroded.”   
      
   So far, SCOTUS’ engagement with this case has exposed the limitations of   
   having a small group of judges do work that is the responsibility of the US   
   Congress. The consensus among legal observers on the oral argument phase of   
   this case, which was streamed, is that the justices were flustered and   
   confused. SCOTUS judges have even admitted that they are out of their   
   depth, while previous supporters of altering Section 230 like Clarence   
   Thomas appeared much more tepid on the question as of late.   
      
   Experts believe that the Supreme Court is leaning in favor of keeping   
   Section 230, though this view should be questioned. If SCOTUS wants to keep   
   the status quo, why did they agree to hear this case in the first place?   
      
   Watching First Amendment safeguards for online speech being debated, and   
   thus threatened, could further encourage companies already engaging in   
   widespread censorship. Virtually all major social media companies already   
   have FBI operatives controlling their speech compliance departments, making   
   the private-public distinctions being discussed farcical.   
      
   Even if big tech is able to escape from this case unscathed, the   
   willingness of our judicial system to entertain repealing Section 230 will   
   strongly accelerate the ongoing campaign to suppress journalists, erode   
   free thought and interfere in the open exchange of ideas even further.   
      
   No matter what SCOTUS’ final verdict looks like, the era of unprecedented   
   freedom to think, read and believe what we want that the internet once   
   provided is never coming back.   
      
      
      
      
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)