This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
laws passed in 2021 by Texas and Florida state legislatures. Texas House Bill 20 and Florida Senate Bill 7072 prohibit website operators from banning users or removing speech and content based on the viewpoints and opinions of the users in question
What the absolute fuck America.
“We want small government!”
“But also big government in cases where our hate speech might be at stake!”
Texas and Florida are pretty well-known as the shitholes of America. Run by populist idiots who cater to the uninformed and gullible voter. I'm sure there are places like that in every country.
Places like that in other countries usually don't have as much power as US States do. Other countries are better designed and don't have practically independent sub-countries inside them with their own laws.
Federalism can also be a very good thing to allow autonomy for certain groups within a country, though. I wouldn’t say Unitarianism is a better design by default.
If you are going to compare the United States to other political entities, I think that the better thing to compare it to is the European Union rather than other countries, because like the EU the US was formed from the union of sovereign member states and that is why it is designed the way that it is (for better or worse).
Given that, I have an honest question asked out of ignorance: Does the EU have more power over its member states than the United States does? (I am not super-familiar with it, so the answer may very well be yes.)
The wording of this law makes no sense to me. You could apply it to almost anything
How would it work if, say, a website run out of California or even another country violated this law
Pretty much the same way that Europe's GDPR works: they fine the business operations within the covered jurisdiction. If you don't do business in their jurisdiction, you are perfectly free to tell them to shove their regulation up their ass.
Wikimedia collects donations from Texans. If these laws survive a legal challenge, Wikimedia would either have to stop collecting donations from Texas or comply with Texas law.
Wikipedia is one of the most impressive collective creations of the modern world. One day corrupt politicians will ruin it. They're one of the organizations I donate to every year in my futile hope they preserve it as long as possible. Articles like this just reinforces the need to vote for people who aren't actually cartoon villains. May not vote for SC but we do for who appoints them.
I donate frequently also. It pains me that people poke fun at Wikimedia or Jimmy Wales for their constant fundraising. It's such a ubiquitous tool, it's a miracle that it's free.
It's entirely possible to get it out of their reach. It needs to be pushed out to the point of the Pirate Bay.
It's just begging for their primary mechanism to be decentralized. They could severely reduce their operating expenses if they went to community hosting.
DHT, chunks of it hosted everywhere. New content and corrections come down as deltas. There are already copies of it on IPFS that are relatively robust, as robust as IPFS can be anyway.
So am I to understand that this is yet another attempt by fascists and Nazis to claim free speech rights as a way to destroy free speech and oppress all opposing voices, including those who defend factual information?
It's basically the tactic of adding noise to a discourse to derail the conversation, thus preventing conversation altogether and keeping factual information from being accessible.
I've said this before. They are targeting the wrong layer!
They want to force websites to be neutral while allowing the internet providers to block and shape traffic however they want.
Force ISPs to allow access to all websites - good
Force ISPs to allow anyone to host a website at home - good
Force AWS to allow anyone to pay for and host websites on their infrastructure - probably good, but we're approaching the line
Force websites to host content they don't want to host - bad
It's almost like they're just wrong about everything.
It's not about being right or wrong, they know what they're doing. Quit giving them the benefit of the doubt.
They want to derail discourse so they can apply their politically expedient talking points without competition or questioning.
Wrong as in wrong-headed. They want to make everything worse.
I wish they would move their base of operations to a country with a more stable government and just ignore weird laws like this.
These laws expose residents of Florida and Texas who edit Wikipedia to lawsuits by people who disagree with their work
If that quote it accurate, then it doesn't matter where Wikipedia itself is based.
Honestly moving to the EU is probably their best bet. But laws respecting speech are not nearly as liberal.
But laws respecting speech are not nearly as liberal.
Then I'm not sure if it would be their best bet ... Wikipedia relies on free speech on many levels.
They should just show up to Clarence Thomas' house with a suitcase of money and get some Argentinian old guy to call up Roberts claiming to be the Pope and tell him how to vote.
They say the multiverse contains every possible version of existence. They are wrong. There is no version of existence in which our illegitimate "supreme" court sides with any entity that exists to provide honest education to the public. As long as conservatives have infested the court (and our nation), it simply cannot happen.
Well yeah they said every POSSIBLE version. If it’s not possible, it wouldn’t exist in the multiverse.
Can Wikipedia simply not allow users from Texas or Florida? I.e. not operate in that jurisdiction?
Yes, but that kinda defeats the point of an open knowledge library for all. This is a problem that should be fixed with legislation and not artificial blocking. We shouldn't punish the unfortunate for being stuck with the stupid.
We shouldn't punish the unfortunate for being stuck with the stupid.
I'm a Texan and over 7 mil didn't vote in the last gubernatorial election. Block us. It'll piss off high school and college students royally and they're the blocks we need voting.
Cheers for this (and my condolences), as much as it sucks to block Texas, it'd be much worse to let Texas ruin Wikipedia for the rest of the world.
What would happen, if they ignored the laws and did not geoblock Texas and Florida, just say they don't operate there, but not restrict the users and still operate the way they operated until now?
I feel like they should see the consequences of their actions. The politicians might learn that the public won’t put up with this shit, rather than have it forced upon them by a higher court so they can continue to play the victim card.
Not everyone in Florida and Texas voted for the fascists and not everyone who wanted to vote against them were able to.
Punishing those who are not complicit is injust, not to mention excellent campaign fodder for the fascists.
Honestly... I get your point and I know people in Texas that don't agree with Texas politics. However, the largest party in the county is the party of "I don't vote." If you actually manage to wake up 10%... 20%... 30%... of those people, plus all the Republican voters that didn't want it, plus all the Democrats that didn't want it and/or got lazy with their state votes... Well we might actually see major change in representation from Texas.
I understand your point. My intention isn’t so much to “punish” as to have them see the consequences of their policies. Which should drive a sane voting public against them once they really see first hand the consequences. If SCOTUS or someone hands down a ruling to counter them, then they just play the victim card, and their supporters are emboldened.
these fascist laws are fucking insane. we need to stop these state governments now!
I think people would be surprised just how often the Wikipedia mods have to remind people that the government or court of any nation does not affect the facts of an event or change the reporting of media.
There's a cesspool of a changes thread for the Gujarat Massacre page because every BJP supporter showed up deleting entire swaths of paragraphs because the Supreme Court of India cleared Modi of any involvement, so obviously that means he's innocent and the event in question never happened.
I feel like those laws would affect all social media platforms and directly go against Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Gosh this seems so relevant to the Wikipedia highway discussion. Maybe there cannot be flexibility in their rules when they are facing this type of threat.
