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There's discussion over what exactly a "political view" is here. I find this quote from a previous article [1] enlightening: > "No one—not lawyers, not judges,

There's discussion over what exactly a "political view" is here. I find this quote from a previous article [1] enlightening: > "No one—not lawyers, not judges, not experts in the field, not even the law's own sponsors—knows what compliance with this law looks like." [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/texas-law-banning-social-media-censorship-reinstated-by-appeals-court/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/texas-law-bannin...

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Well the difficult thing is that apparently every day mundane activities can be "political" depending on who is doing them and in what context. Even a character in a show or video game suddenly becomes a political statement (to some people) just by being female, or brown, or gay, etc.
- philippejara 4y ago
  Well, yes, everything is political whether we like it or not. Even not having a character in a videogame that represents a minority can be a political statement. It's far too broad a brush to paint to be useful for anything
  - nomdep 4y ago
    No, like you said, everything CAN be a political statement but, more often than not, everything is not, by default, a political statement
    - philippejara 4y ago
      I agree actually, that's fair. Assuming a default position to not be a political statement does complicate things when you try to classify what is political due to giving the status quo a bit to much leeway, but honestly this classification is a waste of time.
    - judge2020 4y ago
      I imagine you could assume that everything is, indeed, a political statement, to at least one person in the US.
      - nomdep 4y ago
        I will ignore that irrational person incapable of seeing the context of a situation
    - jayd16 4y ago
      Everything is a statement, intentionally or not. The characterization of what is mundane is itself a political statement.
    - sircastor 4y ago
      But we’ve reached a political climate where anything characterized as political is so. It’s unavoidable, and I think that’s the intention of this law. It wasn’t created to provide some fair and balanced public experience for citizens on private platforms. It was created to threaten large tech companies that make some politicians uncomfortable.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  I kinda of want to go back in time when politics was sort of on the back burner. Both left and right wing politics is unrecognizable to me. Everything is politicized and taken into conflict where it need not be. Maybe I was in college and didn’t pay attention to this stuff or maybe the world has really gone mad. Start treating people as people and not some political entity embodied in an activist form. Most of my friends are on the sidelines, thankfully. I treasure my relationships more, there isn’t too much time to live. I’m exhausted.
  - anon84873628 4y ago
    Some might say that you and your friends' ability to sit on the sidelines is a form of privilege not available to everyone. Along with this idea that in the past, politics was more polite, or less bothersome or whatever. Maybe for some people, participating in politics has been a matter of life and death - something they don't have the luxury to ignore.
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      True, it is the sign of bad times. Deglobalization is going to cause more hurt. I expect a rough ride for next decade or two until we come to our senses.
    - kansface 4y ago
      This is a terrible argument - a secular Pascal’s mugging, conveniently invoked to force everyone and everything into politics; a currently un-ironic “think of the children”! It is not healthy for our society to demand that 100% of things be politicized - to claim that not politicizing stuff is immoral because some issues are profoundly impactful for some people! I want the good, the equitable, the right, the just and far, far less of the political! Politics deserves the deference due politics in any particular situation - not that derived from catastrophizing the most extreme outcome and then universalizing it into the quotidian! | Some might say that you and your friends' ability to sit on the sidelines is a form of privilege not available to everyone. I say the ability and demand to turn everything into politics and require the same of everyone else is itself a form of privilege!
dpifke 4y ago
The Court talks about this in the decision[0]. It makes a strong argument that striking down the Texas law before it's ever been enforced makes no sense, because all discussions of its benefits or harms are in the hypothetical realm. Quoting from pages 9-10: First, the judicial power vested in us by Article III does not include the power to veto statutes. And that omission is no accident: The Founders expressly considered giving judges that power, and they decided not to do so. Several delegates at the Constitutional Convention suggested creating a “Council of Revision” consisting of federal judges and the executive. Jonathan F. Mitchell, The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy, 104 Va. L. Rev. 933, 954 (2018). They wanted to empower this Council to veto Congress’s legislation, subject to congressional override. Ibid. A veto would render the legislation “void.” Ibid. But despite the best efforts of James Wilson and James Madison, the Convention rejected the proposal—three times over. Id. at 957–59. That means we have no power to “strike down,” “void,” or “invalidate” an entire law. See id. at 936 (explaining that “federal courts have no authority to erase a duly enacted law from the statute books” but have only the power “to decline to enforce a statute in a particular case or controversy” and “to enjoin executive officials from taking steps to enforce a statute”); Borden v. United States, 141 S. Ct. 1817, 1835–36 (2021) (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment) (noting that “[c]ourts have no authority to strike down statutory text” and that “a facial challenge, if successful, has the same effect as nullifying a statute” (quotations omitted)); Kevin C. Walsh, Partial Unconstitutionality, 85 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 738, 756 (2010) (explaining that the Founders did not conceive of judicial review as the power to “strike down” legislation). Second, the judicial power vested in us by Article III is limited to deciding certain “Cases” and “Controversies.” U.S. Const. art. III, § 2. A federal court “has no jurisdiction to pronounce any statute, either of a state or of the United States, void, because irreconcilable with the constitution, except as it is called upon to adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies.” Liverpool, N.Y. & Phila. S.S. Co. v. Comm’rs of Emigration, 113 U.S. 33, 39 (1885); accord Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 178 (1803). This limitation on federal jurisdiction to “actual controversies” prevents courts from “ancitipat[ing] a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it.” Liverpool, 113 U.S. at 39; see also Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 610–11 (1973) (“[U]nder our constitutional system courts are not roving commissions assigned to pass judgment on the validity of the Nation’s laws.”). And it makes pre- enforcement facial challenges a particularly nettlesome affair. Such suits usually do not present “flesh-and-blood legal problems with data relevant and adequate to an informed judgment.” New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 768 (1982) (quotation omitted). Instead, they require the court “to consider every conceivable situation which might possibly arise in the application of complex and comprehensive legislation,” forcing courts to deploy the severe power of judicial review “with reference to hypothetical cases.” United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 21–22 (1960). Third, federalism. Invalidate-the-law-now, discover-how-it-works- later judging is particularly troublesome when reviewing state laws, as it deprives “state courts [of ] the opportunity to construe a law to avoid constitutional infirmities.” Ferber, 458 U.S. at 768. And “facial challenges threaten to short circuit the democratic process by preventing laws embodying the will of the people from being implemented in a manner consistent with the Constitution.” Wash. State Grange, 552 U.S. at 451. The respect owed to a sovereign State thus demands that we look particularly askance at a litigant who wants unelected federal judges to countermand the State’s democratically accountable policymakers. [0] https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pd... (PDF)
Buttons840 4y ago
Well, I know my political opinion is that you should check out my new product, and I'm going to express this political opinion a lot. If necessary I'll include a sentence about a US President. I'm half serious here. I would love to tell people about a new game I have on Steam (let's say), so I code a WebDriver "tool". It searches out gaming related Tweets and then expresses my political opinion. I have to press enter once for each post it makes. It's not a bot, since it only responds to user input from a genuine Texan. I even do a captcha by hand every once in a while. I guess it goes back to your excellent quote, nobody know what compliance with this law looks like.
- trimethylpurine 4y ago
  The very fact that you made this comment implies that you expect the public to understand what it means. Therefore, so would a jury of your peers. In other words, if you get that this behavior is just a twist on botting, it's safe to assume the courts will too.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    What is 'botting'? Would it include paying a bunch of college kids $50 to spam reply this message to people for 3 hours a day?
    - trimethylpurine 4y ago
      That all depends on how many years your attorney has been playing golf with the judge.
    - catiopatio 4y ago
      > What is 'botting'? It's whatever your acceptable-use policy defines "botting" to be, as long as that definition is viewpoint-neutral. A restriction against "paying a bunch of college kids $50 to spam reply this message to people for 3 hours a day" is clearly a viewpoint-neutral one, and so, yes, it would be obviously legal.
thrown_22 4y ago
No one knows what pornography is either. But for some reason we've managed to keep going as a society for 60 years after it was declared that "I'll know it when I see it."

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

Well the difficult thing is that apparently every day mundane activities can be "political" depending on who is doing them and in what context. Even a character in a show or video game suddenly becomes a political statement (to some people) just by being female, or brown, or gay, etc.

philippejara 4y ago
Well, yes, everything is political whether we like it or not. Even not having a character in a videogame that represents a minority can be a political statement. It's far too broad a brush to paint to be useful for anything
- nomdep 4y ago
  No, like you said, everything CAN be a political statement but, more often than not, everything is not, by default, a political statement
  - philippejara 4y ago
    I agree actually, that's fair. Assuming a default position to not be a political statement does complicate things when you try to classify what is political due to giving the status quo a bit to much leeway, but honestly this classification is a waste of time.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    I imagine you could assume that everything is, indeed, a political statement, to at least one person in the US.
    - nomdep 4y ago
      I will ignore that irrational person incapable of seeing the context of a situation
  - jayd16 4y ago
    Everything is a statement, intentionally or not. The characterization of what is mundane is itself a political statement.
  - sircastor 4y ago
    But we’ve reached a political climate where anything characterized as political is so. It’s unavoidable, and I think that’s the intention of this law. It wasn’t created to provide some fair and balanced public experience for citizens on private platforms. It was created to threaten large tech companies that make some politicians uncomfortable.
systemvoltage 4y ago
I kinda of want to go back in time when politics was sort of on the back burner. Both left and right wing politics is unrecognizable to me. Everything is politicized and taken into conflict where it need not be. Maybe I was in college and didn’t pay attention to this stuff or maybe the world has really gone mad. Start treating people as people and not some political entity embodied in an activist form. Most of my friends are on the sidelines, thankfully. I treasure my relationships more, there isn’t too much time to live. I’m exhausted.
- anon84873628 4y ago
  Some might say that you and your friends' ability to sit on the sidelines is a form of privilege not available to everyone. Along with this idea that in the past, politics was more polite, or less bothersome or whatever. Maybe for some people, participating in politics has been a matter of life and death - something they don't have the luxury to ignore.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    True, it is the sign of bad times. Deglobalization is going to cause more hurt. I expect a rough ride for next decade or two until we come to our senses.
  - kansface 4y ago
    This is a terrible argument - a secular Pascal’s mugging, conveniently invoked to force everyone and everything into politics; a currently un-ironic “think of the children”! It is not healthy for our society to demand that 100% of things be politicized - to claim that not politicizing stuff is immoral because some issues are profoundly impactful for some people! I want the good, the equitable, the right, the just and far, far less of the political! Politics deserves the deference due politics in any particular situation - not that derived from catastrophizing the most extreme outcome and then universalizing it into the quotidian! | Some might say that you and your friends' ability to sit on the sidelines is a form of privilege not available to everyone. I say the ability and demand to turn everything into politics and require the same of everyone else is itself a form of privilege!

dpifke 4y ago

The Court talks about this in the decision[0]. It makes a strong argument that striking down the Texas law before it's ever been enforced makes no sense, because all discussions of its benefits or harms are in the hypothetical realm. Quoting from pages 9-10: First, the judicial power vested in us by Article III does not include the power to veto statutes. And that omission is no accident: The Founders expressly considered giving judges that power, and they decided not to do so. Several delegates at the Constitutional Convention suggested creating a “Council of Revision” consisting of federal judges and the executive. Jonathan F. Mitchell, The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy, 104 Va. L. Rev. 933, 954 (2018). They wanted to empower this Council to veto Congress’s legislation, subject to congressional override. Ibid. A veto would render the legislation “void.” Ibid. But despite the best efforts of James Wilson and James Madison, the Convention rejected the proposal—three times over. Id. at 957–59. That means we have no power to “strike down,” “void,” or “invalidate” an entire law. See id. at 936 (explaining that “federal courts have no authority to erase a duly enacted law from the statute books” but have only the power “to decline to enforce a statute in a particular case or controversy” and “to enjoin executive officials from taking steps to enforce a statute”); Borden v. United States, 141 S. Ct. 1817, 1835–36 (2021) (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment) (noting that “[c]ourts have no authority to strike down statutory text” and that “a facial challenge, if successful, has the same effect as nullifying a statute” (quotations omitted)); Kevin C. Walsh, Partial Unconstitutionality, 85 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 738, 756 (2010) (explaining that the Founders did not conceive of judicial review as the power to “strike down” legislation). Second, the judicial power vested in us by Article III is limited to deciding certain “Cases” and “Controversies.” U.S. Const. art. III, § 2. A federal court “has no jurisdiction to pronounce any statute, either of a state or of the United States, void, because irreconcilable with the constitution, except as it is called upon to adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies.” Liverpool, N.Y. & Phila. S.S. Co. v. Comm’rs of Emigration, 113 U.S. 33, 39 (1885); accord Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 178 (1803). This limitation on federal jurisdiction to “actual controversies” prevents courts from “ancitipat[ing] a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it.” Liverpool, 113 U.S. at 39; see also Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 610–11 (1973) (“[U]nder our constitutional system courts are not roving commissions assigned to pass judgment on the validity of the Nation’s laws.”). And it makes pre- enforcement facial challenges a particularly nettlesome affair. Such suits usually do not present “flesh-and-blood legal problems with data relevant and adequate to an informed judgment.” New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 768 (1982) (quotation omitted). Instead, they require the court “to consider every conceivable situation which might possibly arise in the application of complex and comprehensive legislation,” forcing courts to deploy the severe power of judicial review “with reference to hypothetical cases.” United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 21–22 (1960). Third, federalism. Invalidate-the-law-now, discover-how-it-works- later judging is particularly troublesome when reviewing state laws, as it deprives “state courts [of ] the opportunity to construe a law to avoid constitutional infirmities.” Ferber, 458 U.S. at 768. And “facial challenges threaten to short circuit the democratic process by preventing laws embodying the will of the people from being implemented in a manner consistent with the Constitution.” Wash. State Grange, 552 U.S. at 451. The respect owed to a sovereign State thus demands that we look particularly askance at a litigant who wants unelected federal judges to countermand the State’s democratically accountable policymakers. [0] https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pdf https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-51178-CV1.pd... (PDF)

Buttons840 4y ago

Well, I know my political opinion is that you should check out my new product, and I'm going to express this political opinion a lot. If necessary I'll include a sentence about a US President. I'm half serious here. I would love to tell people about a new game I have on Steam (let's say), so I code a WebDriver "tool". It searches out gaming related Tweets and then expresses my political opinion. I have to press enter once for each post it makes. It's not a bot, since it only responds to user input from a genuine Texan. I even do a captcha by hand every once in a while. I guess it goes back to your excellent quote, nobody know what compliance with this law looks like.

trimethylpurine 4y ago
The very fact that you made this comment implies that you expect the public to understand what it means. Therefore, so would a jury of your peers. In other words, if you get that this behavior is just a twist on botting, it's safe to assume the courts will too.
- judge2020 4y ago
  What is 'botting'? Would it include paying a bunch of college kids $50 to spam reply this message to people for 3 hours a day?
  - trimethylpurine 4y ago
    That all depends on how many years your attorney has been playing golf with the judge.
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    > What is 'botting'? It's whatever your acceptable-use policy defines "botting" to be, as long as that definition is viewpoint-neutral. A restriction against "paying a bunch of college kids $50 to spam reply this message to people for 3 hours a day" is clearly a viewpoint-neutral one, and so, yes, it would be obviously legal.

thrown_22 4y ago

No one knows what pornography is either. But for some reason we've managed to keep going as a society for 60 years after it was declared that "I'll know it when I see it."