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[wierd]

What it literally says is not what you just said Reelya.

What it says is:

Congress shall not pass a law that curtails the expression of religious freedom (specifically through enactment of a recognized state religion), that curtails the ability of people to speak freely, for the press to operate without political hindrance, or for private citizens to peacefully assemble to petition for an address of grievances.

Specifically, in the form of this exact sentence.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."


As I pointed out, asserting that it applies only to churches and journalistic speech, does not follow grammatically.  I gave a corrected version of the sentence where that would be true, but that is not how the sentence is written.  It specifically separates the freedom of speech from that of the press, with a ", or" clause.

This means, per the 1st amendment, congress cannot pass a law that restricts a person's ability to express themselves. PERIOD.
(Now, just go try and reconcile that with the DMCA's anticircumvention verbiage, just as an example.)

Laws that are created without that EXPLICIT purpose, still fall foul of the amendment, because such a necessity for explicitness is not stated.


The way the courts *ACTUALLY* get around it, is through the farce that such TOS contracts are conducted from a position of equity;  They are not.  BUT IF THEY WERE, then people would be free to NOT use Disney theaters to watch a new release.  The fiction of this equity then makes the allowance and provision of the onerous components of a TOS legal. (Since the common law requirement for such transactive agreements stems from the basis of such equity, and a whole branch of law covers the provision of such equity.)

[scriver]

Ah, I didn't follow the discussion from the start.

So let me change that to though it isn't a first amendment issue per se it is definitely a freedom of speech issue. There's little difference to whether it's a government or a corporation that is silencing you if the corp is big enough.

[wierd]

More or less--

My take is that while it is not an EXPLICIT 1st amendment violation (like DMCA fucking is), it is still an IMPLICIT one, created through the careful creation and establishment of legal process that performs the same goal.


Again, the courts get around this through insisting that there is a position of equity when a big multi-trillion dollar company enters a very one-side, non-negotiated TOS agreement with a private individual, and uses that TOS to restrict their speech.  (Or, in the condition where such a multi-trilion dollar company is able to preferrentially purchase all possible venues of exchange, and then institute private TOS on how to curate content there. Same thing, just a different format.)


Until we as a country address the elephant in the room of such shameless lies about equity, we will only have things get worse. 

The alternative, is for the judicial to grow some fucking balls, and tell congress "no, that is illegal." the next time they want to push DMCA like legislation, or to permit contract law to continue down this dark path.

[Frumple]

This means, per the 1st amendment, congress cannot pass a law that restricts a person's ability to express themselves. PERIOD.

For folks watching, do note that this is actually very untrue. Congress can and has passed laws congruent with the 1st that restricts people's ability to express themselves, the first just makes it a lot harder to do so (in a way that'll survive legal challenge, anyway). I don't recall the exact ones off the top of my head, but there's very strict but very existent conditions for constitutionally violating the 1st -- and while the courts have mostly been very consistent in ruling in favor of people invoking it, they've also very much established that the 1st is not, in fact, unlimited writ to express anything under any condition. There are guidelines for its (among other amendments) limits written into the constitution.

[wierd]

Does not follow;


That the US government has done so, in contravention of what the amendment says, does not change what the amendment says.
(Instead, the supreme court has authority to interpret the amendment; Based on that interpretation, rather than its literal statement, the above condition is met.)


(this is because rigid literal interpretation leads to other, equally bad outcomes.  The hedge against corrupt interpretation is the hegemony of the other two branches of govt-- but as seen recently in the past presidency, those barriers have eroded to the point of being ephemeral.)


Again, we sorely need civics to be taught in school, so that people don't think it is OK for the president to be mandating the closure of companies, the seizure of private assets, or the conducement to specific speech, in order to not be subject to executive harassment--- and so, rightfully demand censure of the sitting president when he or she tries that kind of shit-, etc.

[McTraveller]

We need a declaration of independence and constitution with respect to corporations, not just with respect to governments.

I mean let's face it - many corporations today are de facto governments: they control commerce, they control speech, they control the power to bring grievance, voting, etc.  Think about it - all the government abuses that the Constitution and Bill of Rights was intended to address, are now all abused by corporations.

Commerce: we only support these payment methods.
Speech: we will pull these views, support these views, and promote these views.
Grievances: sorry you have to only do binding arbitration using this prohibitive process.
Voting: Sorry mate you don't own a huge chunk of our shares, you don't get a say.

[hector13]

Yeah I got a letter from the car company I bought my car through. Had to get financing through them in order to get the car, otherwise they wouldn’t sell it to me.

The letter is how they use my information. I’m not allowed to tell them to stop sharing my information with their affiliates for their every-day business, nor am I allowed to stop them from marketing shit to me, or stop them from sharing my information with non-affiliates they have agreements with to market shit to me.

I have to explicitly tell them I don’t want them sharing certain parts of my information with their affiliates, or to stop them from sharing my information for their affiliates and non-affiliates they have no agreement with from marketing shit to me.

I also got his letter for the first time 3.5 years after I bought the car, and six months after I actually finished paying for the car.

[Eschar]

By this point I just assume all tech companies are Decima until proven otherwise. Hail Samaritan.

[nenjin]

Had to get financing through them in order to get the car, otherwise they wouldn’t sell it to me.

I'd have laughed in their faces and left. I baited my local dealership with the idea of financing and when it came time to sign the papers went "Actually, I'll just buy it outright."

Probably ruined that guy's day.

Jokes on me though. I don't remember signing up for a warranty package, maybe it came standard. I bought my car a few years ago now but I'm still getting phone calls that my 90 Day warranty is "about to expire."

You can't fucking escape their clutches, no matter how hard you try. Next time maybe I'll just buy from an individual instead.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The warranty calls are pure phishing - even people who don't have cars get them, let alone cars with active warranties. It's probably unrelated to your actual car buying adventure.

[Frumple]

Eyup. Those things are 99.99999 repeating percent just flat out scams. They don't know shit about your warranty, they're just trying to trick you into buying shit and/or giving them personal information.

[nenjin]

Well the calls started almost 3 months to the day after I bought my car. So if I didn't sign up for a warranty (which they then probably sold to someone else) at the very least they sold my phone # to someone.

[Maximum Spin]

Well the calls started almost 3 months to the day after I bought my car. So if I didn't sign up for a warranty (which they then probably sold to someone else) at the very least they sold my phone # to someone.

It's not unreasonable that it could be coincidence. I mean, the whole point of the scam is that they call enough people to hope that, statistically, SOME of them will have bought a car around the right time to believe it. You may just be that some.

[Jopax]

Fascinating that a warranty lasts for 90 days only tho, you'd think US cars would be better made than that :V

Anyways, what's this talk of USPS fuckery being commited by the administration. Seeing a lot of noise on social media from US folk, not sure how much of it is knee-jerk panic from folks traumatized by 4 years of shitler in charge and how much is valid concerns.

[Maximum Spin]

Anyways, what's this talk of USPS fuckery being commited by the administration. Seeing a lot of noise on social media from US folk, not sure how much of it is knee-jerk panic from folks traumatized by 4 years of shitler in charge and how much is valid concerns.

From what I can tell, this one actually is just a crazy panic. What I've witnessed is people seeing mail trucks being towed on trailers, and concluding that Trump is literally stealing the mail trucks.