volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@Hash the role of the Supreme Court is to protect federal law, not citizens.

If they were to throw law overboard, now that would be unpatriotic, they'd be failing at their duties to stand up for the US system as they swear to do.

@DrJackBrown

@poetrybot it's long been the case that states have been allowed to run their elections as per the needs of their own communities, so there's nothing particularly impossible about each state deciding for itself, in response to its residents.

Not only that, but SCOTUS might find itself legally barred from making such a call in this case against the state's application of its own laws.

@AustinLBuchanan it sounds to me like this is focusing purely on mathematical theory while the arguments excerpted in the paper may be referring to much more than the math theory, balancing other factors including restrictions earlier in the legal process.

For example, in saying that six in the minimum you have to have, Lacour was also referring to different plans before them, hinting that he really meant regardless of the theory, that's what they had on the table to work with.

@tze oh good, I'm glad you see the censorship now.

@sj_zero @GrahamDowns

@david_megginson

Well, it's kind of a political question in a way, but I'd tend to focus on the goal of providing users the experiences they want and value, and that decentralized sharing of power can transfer power to users to help them reach their personal wants.

So you're missing the factor in the story that big social media platforms gave users experiences that they wanted, with different platforms giving experiences that different users wanted.

The experiences on Facebook and Twitter were VERY different, with users choosing to participate in one or the other or none based on their personal preferences.

The instance focus of Fediverse lets us add many new, potentially different experiences to help users find the one that best matches their individual wants.

And yep, that happens through distributing that power downwards.

@mahal

@mimarek well the question of where to set that level and, just as importantly, exactly who has authority to judge that level are some of the key factors in dispute here.

SCOTUS might reasonably find that it lacks authority to judge that behavior one way or another, so there are those big process questions to be answered before this one can even be reached.

@tze censorship is not merely the restriction on what someone can say but the blocking of those messages getting to audience.

Sounds to me like @sj_zero describes censorship pretty clearly.

Now, you might be in favor of that censorship, and that's fine. Plenty are. But if it's that important an issue then one might as well own that they are, in fact, censoring because they think it's just so important to block those messages.

@GrahamDowns

@dsfgs@mastodon.sdf.org not sure why you're harping on a line of argument that I've tried to clearly state doesn't really resonate for people who don't share your personal priorities.

It doesn't make a difference to the conversation so I don't know why you would keep pulling at that thread, pun intended.

Anyway I would thank you to not engage in Facebook style repression by demanding that sort of heavy-handed instance policy.

You end up looking an awful lot like them, which maybe would be something you would care about.

@bontchev this is such an important message and it's bringing up a lot of trends in journalism that I've been watching grow over the last couple of decades, and that I believe have contributed so strongly to the state of things around the world where nobody knows which conflicting report to trust.

And the problem is I know people associated with professional journalism who actually actively prefer the practices that you are calling out here.

Unfortunately it's not just a question of asking them to do better because, at least the ones I talk to and the experience I have watching journalism, they actually think they are doing better with this approach.

It's not good for society, and I honestly don't know what would have to happen to have them change course.

@tze but now you're just talking about different user preferences.

You say less is more, and that reflects your own personal preferences, while many other users will say more is better because they have different prefaces than you. And there's no reason we can't develop this space to empower users to choose and get the experience they want from this same communication platform.

Also, by the way with the way the underlying network is designed here, it's much less efficient with many smaller instances then fewer large ones. That means more duplication of work, more overhead for communication, generally more resource consumption, if that's what you are interested in.

Finally I also just think it's notable that you seem to be referring to something of a centralization of platform policy, exactly the kind of thing Facebook and the others do to the detriment of users, and exactly the sort of thing that so many of us are here to get away from since here we don't need to be so centralized.

@GrahamDowns

@dsfgs@mastodon.sdf.org maybe in your eye one is validated through federation, but I would reject that interpretation of that network activity.

Any system like this will have bad actors.

It will also have different ideas about how they should be dealt with, and even the bad actors do bring value to users based on users' diverse wants from the system.

So again I'm pointing out that for all you wrote about Facebook being a bad actor, a lot of us don't care whether that's true or not. It's not the case to be made because it just doesn't matter to us.

Yes I know that matters a lot to you. I know that's your personal focus. I understand that.

But this system doesn't require us all to conform to that philosophy, and to me that's one of the most important parts about it.

@steveroyle I think this is so much of the picture over there right now, the lack of features, it's so far still surprisingly early in development, given how much time has passed.

They say they are working on those features, so I guess we'll see what it's like once the development gets a little farther down the road.

Their decision to be invite only for such a long time almost makes me suspect that they were trying to establish that more professional culture, but really I don't think they planned it that far.

I just think something is going strange in the development and roll out of the platform.

@GrahamDowns I know so many people feel exactly that way.

And one thing I'd amplify is that for people who are so interested in privacy, lack of ads, lack of vacuuming up content, Hey I understand that pretty reasonable focus, but then why in the world would they set up shop on this platform that is so fundamentally bad at addressing each of those concerns?

I would say if those are priorities then there in the wrong place anyway because this platform isn't designed to focus on those!

@dsfgs@mastodon.sdf.org I guess it all depends on what your personal ideas are about what the goals of this system should be. And I don't share your goals.

Mainly, yes a lot of people are passionate about things like Facebook track record, but that's completely uninteresting to others of us. We all have our different hobby horses, and that's not one that's universal here.

So I put it the other direction, it's a slap in the face to fedizens to demand this sort of imposition of values because that's exactly the kind of thing we came here to get away from, we're trying to get away from that kind of approach of sites like Facebook!

But, the nature of a federated system makes it possible for people with those different approaches to coexist. So long as we don't insist on the one size fits all approach.

@osma and we really can't overlook governmental contributions to that environment.

Throughout the world politicians have threatened or actually cracked down on different aspects of tech and finance, including sex work to name one.

And that can be even trickier because sometimes there aren't clear rules, only threats, that companies have to do their best to try to live within, sometimes with irrational outcomes.

@fraying

@dsfgs@mastodon.sdf.org many of us believe it's generally better to leave as much control in the hands of users, so in many cases it's better to have the instances only set policy when it comes to technical or legal issues, leaving that choice to users.

Of course that varies from instance community to instance community, but particularly on large instances it can be harder to propose one size fits all moderation if the user group is diverse and will have different things they want from their experience.

That being said, overall I think this is a bad idea merely because it adds noise, amounting to spamming the system.

@hulavikih Well they are, even if one believes that is the entirely correct and legal thing to do, those court cases interfere with settling the election by the ballot box.

As for the meme, it really goes the other way, since Trump's efforts were never going to be successful it weakens the argument for the need for these court cases.

@kegill no I heard it, and like I pointed out we know that SCOTUS absolutely has oversight of the state law since firstly the state court explicitly recognized that right and secondly we can name off the top of our head a famous case where that very thing happened.

You don't have to trust me. I'm sure you've heard of Bush v Gore, so you can trust your own memory for that counter example.

@kegill you shouldn't. But if you're interested in this there are plenty of resources to back up what I'm saying, and I'm sure you yourself know of some examples of what I'm talking about.

And like I said, I would encourage everyone who's interested to go read the actual state ruling since it talks about the federal laws involved AND the state court even put its own ruling on hold to give time for the appeal to the Supreme Court.

If it was true that SCOTUS had no authority there then the state court wouldn't have gone out of its way to recognize that authority.

Anyway, also keep in mind the most famous example of bush v Gore where the Supreme Court reviewed exactly the same sort of state business.

I suspect you misunderstood what Conway was saying though.