People over here (including the politicians) understand there's a huge difference between Trump & his MAGA jerks and the rest of the country.
They understand the voting statistics and can see that the country is not seamlessly moving in unity with Trump.
Finally, while there ARE nativist jackasses in many places, the US is seen as a) first world and b) mostly white, so there's not an instant racist reaction by the xenophobes to US immigrants.
This mirrors my experience living in the UK. Taxes are done by the government and if I disagree, I can dispute whatever.
Yet thanks to the US's requirement that all US emigrants must at least file taxes (& pay taxes in certain situations), I still have to deal with the IRS. The US is one of 2 countries that tax based on citizenship and not residency (Eritrea is the other 1). Absolutely bonkers.
PS- In other towns, hotels housing asylum seekers were burned, as were police vehicles.
Many injuries & assaults occurred and many racist protesters have been arrested & jailed for months to years for their actions. (A handful of counter-protesters also stepped over the line but nowhere near as many)
I add this to say that the impact & fear & conflict caused by these riots STARTED BY A TWITTER LIE were major and widespread.
Considering the UK was just wracked by a series of far right riots caused by a lie about the killer of 3 children the day before, and that lie originated on twitter, and was further spread by racists & xenophobes like Tommy Robinson & his ex-EDL (English Defense League) followers on multiple social media sites, the EU's warning is 100% understandable within this context.
(I live in England now, which is why I can attest to this first-hand- I was in Blackpool during one of the disturbances but it fizzled since the punx & later the cops stopped the bigots from doing anything beyond accidentally hospitalising 1 punk- he was pushed backwards & hit his head & got a nasty concussion)
A key thing to remember is that the UK & the EU don't have a First Amendment and have the clear-eyed view of their history that persuades them that a free speech maximalist legal framework isn't appropriate for their countries (whether I agree with that or not).
Twitter's operating within the legal frameworks of these countries. Unlike China or Saudi Arabia, the imperfect democracies of UK & EU have populations who generally support some speech curbs when it comes to racists & neo-nazis. The massive counter-demonstrations in the UK over the last 2 weeks further shows the antagonism that the general public has for these bigots.
Trump's a well-known coddler of authoritarians & bigots and a consistent liar, while Musk is definitely the former (if not the latter).
I think this context is missing from this discussion. Thanks for the never-boring back and forth!
In case you're interested. It's part of their freely available archive features. Funny stuff!
https://www.creem.com/fresh-creem/david-bowie-ziggy-stardust-dave-marsh-creem-review
The recently resuscitated CREEM Magazine is doing this.
Huge quarterly physical issues- absolutely beautiful & jam-packed with cool stuff- alongside a website with some neat archives (original bad review of "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars" from 1972, for instance).
The new content in the magazines is on-line but only available to current subscribers. I'm pretty sure there are options for either physical & digital subs.
I'm pretty chuffed about the return of this mag & the fact that they're apparently able to make it work in 2024.
Thanks to these posts I've discovered the podcast & am slowly working my way through them to the present.
(Mike, we met in person around 10 years back when I ran Alternative Tentacles Records & you asked me to appear at a roundtable about the state of digital music back then)
Anyway, carry on- your writing & podcast are a treat and never boring!
Yeah, the more militaristic careers tend towards shittery, even in their unions (see California prison guard union). Still, my impression of FDNY's union is that it's an outlier & a holdover from when they resisted gender & ethnic integration in the 70s & 80s. I've no doubt Boston's first responders have a similarly bad track record.
My point still stands- the LEO unions are by FAR more to the right and against forward motion than other unions.
Cop & prison guard unions- giving unions a bad name since day one.
SO annoying when the rest of the union movement is pulling its members and the community in the opposite direction.
"It would (1) enable the California government officials (including local officials) to effectively put pressure on social media companies regarding how they moderate by enabling litigation for somehow failing to live up to a terms of service"
AB528 doesn't have any enforcement mechanisms in it, correct? So this is a future law... and if a company has Terms & Conditions, shouldn't it follow those since it "demands" that the public follows them?
I'm not seeing a problem here, beyond the government ensuring that private companies follow their own rules, which is something they do across the for-profit & non-profit business landscape already.
Hi all- It's been a while since I've been here- Mike's excellent piece on Substack as a nazi bar brought me back & I'm glad to be back.
I give that introduction because just reading news articles about this case and then this article reminds me that I'm jumping into BestNetTech in the middle of the river & the current's already taken me a few miles downstream before I've even had time to come up for air.
From my reading of the Digest of AB587, they are asking for a social media site's terms of service aka moderation policy (if any) and a regular report of activity taken under the auspices of that policy.
I don't see anything about 'preferred' moderation policies or 'protected classes' or 'incitement of violence' or anything else that's usually included in moderation policies. In other word, there's no suggested or compulsory language for these policies.
It's requiring a corporation to file this policy with the state- like it files its by-laws, its corporate officers, its compliance with labor & tax laws, etc.
From what I've read, it is mere reporting & data collection. The state then compiles the information and the public can have access to the t&cs of social media sites. If anything, that gives us better data about what sites are & are not permitting and gives us more information about which ones to support/avoid.
The state does the same thing with all kinds of data, from non-profit by-laws to campaign donations to restaurant cleanliness inspection results.
If I am misreading this, how exactly am I misreading it? Is there an earlier BestNetTech piece I should read?
Thanks!
BestNetTech has not posted any stories submitted by Jesse T.
how UK & EU see the US
People over here (including the politicians) understand there's a huge difference between Trump & his MAGA jerks and the rest of the country. They understand the voting statistics and can see that the country is not seamlessly moving in unity with Trump. Finally, while there ARE nativist jackasses in many places, the US is seen as a) first world and b) mostly white, so there's not an instant racist reaction by the xenophobes to US immigrants.
Same boat...
This mirrors my experience living in the UK. Taxes are done by the government and if I disagree, I can dispute whatever. Yet thanks to the US's requirement that all US emigrants must at least file taxes (& pay taxes in certain situations), I still have to deal with the IRS. The US is one of 2 countries that tax based on citizenship and not residency (Eritrea is the other 1). Absolutely bonkers.
umm...
... you know that the First Amendment is part of the US Constitution and therefore only applies within the United States, right?
PS
PS- In other towns, hotels housing asylum seekers were burned, as were police vehicles. Many injuries & assaults occurred and many racist protesters have been arrested & jailed for months to years for their actions. (A handful of counter-protesters also stepped over the line but nowhere near as many) I add this to say that the impact & fear & conflict caused by these riots STARTED BY A TWITTER LIE were major and widespread.
Stopped clock, twice a day
Considering the UK was just wracked by a series of far right riots caused by a lie about the killer of 3 children the day before, and that lie originated on twitter, and was further spread by racists & xenophobes like Tommy Robinson & his ex-EDL (English Defense League) followers on multiple social media sites, the EU's warning is 100% understandable within this context. (I live in England now, which is why I can attest to this first-hand- I was in Blackpool during one of the disturbances but it fizzled since the punx & later the cops stopped the bigots from doing anything beyond accidentally hospitalising 1 punk- he was pushed backwards & hit his head & got a nasty concussion) A key thing to remember is that the UK & the EU don't have a First Amendment and have the clear-eyed view of their history that persuades them that a free speech maximalist legal framework isn't appropriate for their countries (whether I agree with that or not). Twitter's operating within the legal frameworks of these countries. Unlike China or Saudi Arabia, the imperfect democracies of UK & EU have populations who generally support some speech curbs when it comes to racists & neo-nazis. The massive counter-demonstrations in the UK over the last 2 weeks further shows the antagonism that the general public has for these bigots. Trump's a well-known coddler of authoritarians & bigots and a consistent liar, while Musk is definitely the former (if not the latter). I think this context is missing from this discussion. Thanks for the never-boring back and forth!
Here's that bad Bowie review
In case you're interested. It's part of their freely available archive features. Funny stuff! https://www.creem.com/fresh-creem/david-bowie-ziggy-stardust-dave-marsh-creem-review
Analog vs digital
The recently resuscitated CREEM Magazine is doing this. Huge quarterly physical issues- absolutely beautiful & jam-packed with cool stuff- alongside a website with some neat archives (original bad review of "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars" from 1972, for instance). The new content in the magazines is on-line but only available to current subscribers. I'm pretty sure there are options for either physical & digital subs. I'm pretty chuffed about the return of this mag & the fact that they're apparently able to make it work in 2024.
Stoked on the podcast!
Thanks to these posts I've discovered the podcast & am slowly working my way through them to the present. (Mike, we met in person around 10 years back when I ran Alternative Tentacles Records & you asked me to appear at a roundtable about the state of digital music back then) Anyway, carry on- your writing & podcast are a treat and never boring!
FDNY....
Yeah, the more militaristic careers tend towards shittery, even in their unions (see California prison guard union). Still, my impression of FDNY's union is that it's an outlier & a holdover from when they resisted gender & ethnic integration in the 70s & 80s. I've no doubt Boston's first responders have a similarly bad track record. My point still stands- the LEO unions are by FAR more to the right and against forward motion than other unions.
LEO unions
Cop & prison guard unions- giving unions a bad name since day one. SO annoying when the rest of the union movement is pulling its members and the community in the opposite direction.
PS- I'll check out those links probably later today. Sorry, I ran outta time. Thanks!
"It would (1) enable the California government officials (including local officials) to effectively put pressure on social media companies regarding how they moderate by enabling litigation for somehow failing to live up to a terms of service" AB528 doesn't have any enforcement mechanisms in it, correct? So this is a future law... and if a company has Terms & Conditions, shouldn't it follow those since it "demands" that the public follows them? I'm not seeing a problem here, beyond the government ensuring that private companies follow their own rules, which is something they do across the for-profit & non-profit business landscape already.
2 more cents
Hi all- It's been a while since I've been here- Mike's excellent piece on Substack as a nazi bar brought me back & I'm glad to be back. I give that introduction because just reading news articles about this case and then this article reminds me that I'm jumping into BestNetTech in the middle of the river & the current's already taken me a few miles downstream before I've even had time to come up for air. From my reading of the Digest of AB587, they are asking for a social media site's terms of service aka moderation policy (if any) and a regular report of activity taken under the auspices of that policy. I don't see anything about 'preferred' moderation policies or 'protected classes' or 'incitement of violence' or anything else that's usually included in moderation policies. In other word, there's no suggested or compulsory language for these policies. It's requiring a corporation to file this policy with the state- like it files its by-laws, its corporate officers, its compliance with labor & tax laws, etc. From what I've read, it is mere reporting & data collection. The state then compiles the information and the public can have access to the t&cs of social media sites. If anything, that gives us better data about what sites are & are not permitting and gives us more information about which ones to support/avoid. The state does the same thing with all kinds of data, from non-profit by-laws to campaign donations to restaurant cleanliness inspection results. If I am misreading this, how exactly am I misreading it? Is there an earlier BestNetTech piece I should read? Thanks!