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> They are a state government attempting to enforce a law. By definition, it is not vigilante. Whether the law is agreeable or just is another question entirely
by quotemstr 5y ago
> They are a state government attempting to enforce a law. By definition, it is not vigilante. Whether the law is agreeable or just is another question entirely; a political question.
Have you been asleep? The OP sees the Texas law as vigilantism because he doesn't believe that the people of Texas have a right to self-determination --- he believes, essentially, that angry-Twitter ought to get a veto over Texan law, and that Texan law that angry-Twitter doesn't like isn't really law at all.
- rsynnott 5y agoOh, for fuck’s sake. The people of Texas, of course, have limited right to self-determination; whether the absurd law their government had just passed falls under that or not will be determined later. However, in this case, it’s nothing to do with the people of Texas. This is a private vigilante group, not the government. Not, really, that it matters in this case. Even the full majesty of the Texas state government presumably can’t force a webhost to ignore its ToS if it doesn’t want to. But in this case it’s not the government, it’s a weird private organisation.
- quotemstr 5y ago> Even the full majesty of the Texas state government presumably can’t force a webhost to ignore its ToS if it doesn’t want to Given that there's a growing movement to use state power against tech censorship, I expect this claim to be empirically tested in the near future.