volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@shepgo I guess that's a cute line but, we're just going to let Media Matters get away with misleading the public?

We don't actually care about it?

@ignova I don't think they ever do really justify that decision in the movies. They just do it for the plot.

I always thought it was a weak point of the movies.

@Basmitharts his strategy seems to be calling out his critics for false criticisms that misled the advertisers.

It's hard to see what else he might have done in that situation.

Media Matters has quite the history of sensationalized reporting and misleading audiences for the sake of clickbait, at best.

@squig@mastodon-uk.net he didn't stage a coup.

The temper tantrum was focused on the wrong branch of government for that, asking the Congress to act when a coup would have required engagement with the executive branch.

That story misunderstands fundamental civics of the US system.

@CommonMugwort well I think it's best understood in context of a lot of similar social things that it was rejecting.

It wasn't so much a rejection of ecosystem as a rejection of other human created institutions, themselves separate from ecosystem, things like cultures and governments that were themselves leaving ecosystem behind.

If that makes sense.

It was about transcending other institutions that had already transcended the material world.

@squig@mastodon-uk.net the important thing about the US system in this case is that we don't rely on losers of elections to admit their losses.

It's just not up to them.

They lost and they have no authority regardless of whether they want to admit it or not.

@hittitezombie according to the complaint Media Matters intentionally set up accounts with follow lists to engineer that situation.

And they still needed some luck since they reloaded over and over until they finally got the screenshot they wanted.

@thomasfuchs

@CardboardRobot consider that a billionaire has the resources not to really care about practical outcomes. They will be fine no matter what happens.

So sure, they might think, favor the autocrat. It might be interesting, and worst case scenario they will almost definitely personally be okay.

This is just one answer to your question I'm throwing out there. Another answer is that the billionaire might honestly believe the autocrat knows what's best and will be able to manage things effectively.

@davidpmaurer@mastodon.sdf.org I'm familiar with all of that and yet it doesn't change a single thing about what I said.

Every single congressperson is there because we voters empowered them to do those jobs, and cycle after cycle we largely re-elect them, apparently approving of the job they are doing.

Cycle after cycle, since far before 2020, we have been electing morons and we should probably stop doing that.

Or we can keep electing morons and continue to empower the hundreds of politicians who show such dysfunction, who set up the situation that you described above with crazy people having undue influence over the operation of Congress.

Not to mention, they tried to prevent us? What they? People we elected, people we actively gave power to.

It all comes back to voters, and voters voluntarily give up their control when they stop holding officials accountable and just keep re-electing the same morons.

@elizabethtasker perhaps I misunderstood your post.

There has been so much hate thrown at SpaceX for the last few days, based on misunderstandings of the development process, and it's been a shame.

@Catawu good thing that's not what I'm insisting then!

And neither is the argument that you presented above.

The argument you presented above is that there was no realistic threat, so all of your talk of knives and guns or anything else don't apply to this situation.

@Catawu and in this case the speech did not cause harm, which is the whole point.

Again, you don't have to like the speech, but the reasoning is pretty solid.

Without that harm that you mention, there's no substantial justification for silencing the speech.

@elizabethtasker consider that as a private company maybe SpaceX just isn't as concerned with PR and informing the public as the politicized agency is.

The Starship launch was a success because it met the goals of the launch. True, not everyone in the general public was up to speed about how the launch program was proceeding, so a lot of people aren't aware of what the goals were.

Maybe SpaceX is more interested in focusing on the engineering mission than public outreach. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

A whole lot of us who follow the development, though, understand why the launch is seen as a success because we knew ahead of time what their goals were and we watched them accomplish their goals.

@Catawu you seem to be saying that the argument is flawed merely because you don't personally prefer the outcome it leads to.

That doesn't mean the argument is flawed. It just means you don't like its implications. Which is fair, but your personal opinion doesn't override the logic.

The point here is that there is no violence. Asking about what to do after violence has commenced doesn't make sense when there is no violence to commence.

But yes, in the real world we are left always weighing risks as we go about our daily lives. That's the real world.

@Catawu the argument is that it was not a legitimate threat to safety, and so it amounts to a restriction on speech without concrete cause.

@PJ_Evans that's not what this case is about.

To break it down to its core, the allegation is that Media Matters put out deceptive reports that misrepresented its intentionally engineered setup as normal when it was anything but.

EVEN IF we stipulate that Twitter screwed up in displaying those ads, which doesn't seem true but whatever, even if that is the case, it's not what's being litigated here.

@lauren

@PJ_Evans according to the complaint they simply chose to follow the accounts that they figured would result in spicy screenshots.

@lauren

@Catawu careful, because the lawyer might simply reply consistently and thus reinforce his position.

Yes, maybe they can all be excused, with logical consistency.

@mvario Occam's razor would have us at least consider the possibility that maybe the judge was simply right and the guy writing the opinion piece simply fairly isn't getting the outcome that he would have personally preferred.

It's not that judges are terrified. It's that the law simply doesn't say what you or I might want it to say, and the judge is bound by it anyway.

The author pretty much admits this when acknowledging what he calls a loophole. Well there it is, whether you refer to it as loophole or not, it is law and the judge agreed and followed law.

Personally I don't think it's a loophole at all, I think there are a very good reasons that the US is designed the way it is, but regardless, it is law, that the judge followed, not out of fear but out of obligation to the law.

@lauren again according to the complaint ads *were supposed* to appear there because Media Matters set up accounts specifically to show ads interspersed with controversial opinions.

The problem is that Media Matters didn't make it clear that they caused it to happen and instead presented this as if it was normal use of the site instead of an engineered situation looking to get that exact outcome.

I really don't care about Musk, he's a troll that's better ignored, but there's a lot of misreporting about what this lawsuit is over, and that does bother me.