New York Tries to Force Website Owners to Regulate “Hate Speech” FIRE Pushes Back.

New York has enacted a law ostensibly requiring "social media platforms" to police "hate speech." Here is an excerpt from that law, Section 394-CCC:

2. A SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK THAT CONDUCTS BUSINESS IN THE STATE, SHALL PROVIDE AND MAINTAIN A CLEAR AND EASILY ACCESSIBLE MECHANISM FOR INDIVIDUAL USERS TO REPORT INCIDENTS OF HATEFUL CONDUCT. SUCH MECHANISM SHALL BE CLEARLY ACCESSIBLE TO USERS OF SUCH NETWORK AND EASILY ACCESSED FROM BOTH A SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS' APPLICATION AND WEBSITE, AND SHALL ALLOW THE SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK TO PROVIDE A DIRECT RESPONSE TO ANY INDIVIDUAL REPORTING HATEFUL CONDUCT INFORMING THEM OF HOW THE MATTER IS BEING HANDLED.

3. EACH SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK SHALL HAVE A CLEAR AND CONCISE POLICY READILY AVAILABLE AND ACCESSIBLE ON THEIR WEBSITE AND APPLICATION WHICH EXPLANATION INCLUDES HOW SUCH SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK WILL RESPOND AND ADDRESS THE REPORTS OF INCIDENTS OF HATEFUL CONDUCT ON THEIR PLATFORM.

There are many problems with this law, according to FIRE:

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sued New York Attorney General Letitia James, challenging a new state law that forces websites and apps to address online speech that someone, somewhere finds humiliating or vilifying....

“New York politicians are slapping a speech-police badge on my chest because I run a blog,” said plaintiff Eugene Volokh, who co-founded The Volokh Conspiracy legal blog in 2002. “I started the blog to share interesting and important legal stories, not to police readers’ speech at the government’s behest.”

The law forces internet platforms of all stripes to publish a policy explaining how they will respond to online expression that could “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence” based on a protected class, like religion, gender, or race. The law also requires the platforms to create a way for visitors to complain about “hateful” content or comments, and mandates that they answer complaints with a direct response. Refusal to comply could mean investigations from the attorney general’s office, subpoenas, and daily fines of $1,000 per violation.

New York’s law doesn’t define “vilify,” “humiliate,” or “incite.” Yet, it targets speech that could simply be perceived by someone, somewhere, at some point in time, to vilify or humiliate, rendering the law’s scope entirely subjective. (The First Amendment does not protect inciting imminent violence, but New York’s law offers no indication, as the First Amendment requires, that it applies only to speech directed to and likely to produce imminent lawless action.) ....

“The state of New York can’t turn bloggers into Big Brother, but it’s trying to do just that,” said FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner. “The government can’t burden online expression protected by the Constitution, whether it’s doing it in the name of combating hate or any other sentiment. Imagine a similar law requiring sites to publish a reporting policy for speech the state considers un-American — that would be just as unconstitutional.”

Here is FIRE's complaint, filed the Federal District Court of New York, Southern District.

Continue ReadingNew York Tries to Force Website Owners to Regulate “Hate Speech” FIRE Pushes Back.

Continued Silence by Democrats Regarding Julian Assange of Wikileaks

Glenn Greenwald:

That you can't find one national Dem politician willing to do defend Assange the way Lula does -- you have to go to GOP politicians for that -- shows what a fraud and joke is the mainstream US left. . . . Someone try to get AOC, Bernie or any Squad member to say anything like this -- let alone standard Democratic Party officials -- and tell me what happens. Everyone who has tried thus far has failed.

Continue ReadingContinued Silence by Democrats Regarding Julian Assange of Wikileaks

Elon Musk’s New Role as Guardian of the Gates of Hell

Today's pro-censorship crowd doesn't seem to want to understand that the censorship powers they put into place today will eventually be used against them, possibly in the new future. Here's an excerpt from Glenn Greenwald's latest post:

It was easy to predict that there would be an all-out war from Western power centers if Musk sought to mildly reduce censorship on Twitter. Still, the media outdid itself.

It is hard to overstate how manic, primal and unhinged is the reaction of corporate media employees to the mere prospect that new Twitter owner Elon Musk may restore a modicum of greater free speech to that platform. It was easy to predict — back when Musk was merely toying with the idea of buying Twitter and loosening some of its censorship restrictions — that there would be an all-out attack from Western power centers if he tried. Online censorship has become one of the most potent propaganda weapons they possess, and there is no way they will allow anyone to dilute it even mildly without attempting to destroy them. Even with that expectation in place of what was to come, the liberal sector of the corporate media (by far the most dominant media sector) really outdid itself when it came to group-think panic, rhetorical excess, and reckless and shrill accusations.

In unison, these media outlets decreed that not only would greater free speech on Twitter usher in the usual parade of horribles they trot out when demanding censorship — disinformation, hate speech, attacks on the “marginalized,” etc. etc. — but this time they severely escalated their rhetorical hysteria by claiming that Musk would literally cause mass murder by permitting a broader range of political opinion to be aired. The Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz even warned of supernatural demons that would be unleashed by these new free speech policies, as she talked to a handful of obviously neurotic pro-censorship “experts” and then wrote about these thinly disguised therapy sessions with those neurotics under this headline: “‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts.”

Continue ReadingElon Musk’s New Role as Guardian of the Gates of Hell

MIT Advises How to Write a Winning Diversity Statement

At Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne posts on how to please the DEI department by writing an acceptable diversity statement.

The MIT site says this:

A diversity statement alone is unlikely to get you an interview or a job offer, but a well-written diversity statement may enable you to stand out among a large pool of qualified candidates.

. . . in reality, in some places like Berkeley, if your diversity statement isn’t up to muster you have no chance of getting a job, no matter how good your academic qualifications are (see here and here). And since you have to talk about efforts you have made in the past to increase diversity, as well as your philosophy of diversity, you have to start doing social-justice work well before you intend to apply for jobs. Woe to those students who have immersed themselves wholly in quantum mechanics or classical literature out of the love of the field and of knowledge. Without a track record in promoting diversity, as well as a philosophy of diversity, those people are doomed.

I don’t of course object to universities encouraging diversity efforts as a way to “broaden” a candidate, but there are many ways to be broad besides fighting for equity of races and genders. These include doing general outreach to high schools, writing popular books and articles on your field, doing an internship at a newspaper or other organization,, and so on. But those don’t count nearly as much as showing your history of fighting for equity. And is this attempt to turn universities from places of learning into instruments of specific types of social justice that bothers me. As Stanley Fish said (it’s a book title): “Save the world on your own time.”

And, in the end, DEI statements may be illegal. As my colleague Brian Leiter (a law school prof) pointed out, such required statements, if used to cull candidates, may constitute illegal “viewpoint discrimination”. As he notes:

I recommend that those applying for jobs in the University of California system say only this in the diversity statement: “I decline to supply this statement which constitutes illegal viewpoint discrimination in violation of my constitutional rights.” There are already lawyers gearing up to bring legal challenges; I hope they act soon. If you have been rejected from a University of California search, and suspect it was on grounds of insufficient ideological purity about “diversity,” please get in touch with me. I can connect you with one public interest legal organization looking for plaintiffs.

FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) is also concerned about Diversity Statements. Here is an excerpt from FIRE:

FIRE is concerned by the proliferation of college and university policies requiring faculty applicants or current faculty to demonstrate their commitment to “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” often through a written statement that factors into hiring, reappointment, evaluation, promotion, or tenure decisions. In our newly released Q&A and full Statement on the Use of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Criteria in Faculty Hiring and Evaluation, we explain how DEI statement policies can too easily function as ideological litmus tests that threaten employment or advancement opportunities for faculty who dissent from prevailing thought on DEI.

Over the past few years, FIRE has heard from countless faculty members concerned that their university’s DEI statement policy violates the First Amendment, academic freedom principles, or both. Numerous complaints have prompted FIRE’s intervention.

Our statement provides guidance to universities to ensure they respect faculty members’ expressive freedom when seeking to advance DEI.

Continue ReadingMIT Advises How to Write a Winning Diversity Statement