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What does it matter whether it has more than 5 million accounts? Why not 50K accounts?
by EGreg 4y ago
What does it matter whether it has more than 5 million accounts? Why not 50K accounts?
- _heimdall 4y agoBecause every law we write is ultimately arbitrary. Lines have to be drawn through massive swaths of gray area, those lines are entirely arbitrary and should be a sign that making laws like this is pointless. The 90s Era gun ban that Biden was so proud of is a perfect example. They had to include so many caveats and arbitrary descriptions of what makes a gun an "assault rifle" that manufacturers just dodged the rules with tweaked rifle designs. Something as small as a thumb hole in the grip made a gun legal because of how specific the law had to be. In this case, what stops a social media company from coming up with some business model where a child company is spun up for every 4.9m users? You could argue its more like Mastodon, a decentralized network that just happens to use the same proprietary protocol, app, and is owned by the same parent Corp.
- lo_zamoyski 4y agoMarginalium: Some laws are arbitrary, not all. They may all be contingent, which is different from arbitrary. Ultimately, law is a prudential determination of moral principle.
- _heimdall 4y agoThe distinction between arbitrary and contingent is very muddy in a legal sense where arbitrary has a specific meaning related to laws and court decisions. The two relevant definitions of arbitrary are: > based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something > law : depending on individual discretion (as of a judge) and not fixed by law A law itself fits the first definition. At best, a law is written by a tiny minority of the population but with the intent of best reflecting the majority opinion or preference. I'd be really interested to hear an example of a law that is based on necessity or intrinsic nature, though maybe there are a few! https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arbitrary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arbitrary
- EGreg 4y agoI meant where does this law mention 5 million ?
- _heimdall 4y agoHah, sorry! I misread your question and have been thinking a lot about that topics lately!
- dragonwriter 4y agoIt matters because that’s the cutoff in the law. If you want to know why that’s the cutoff in the law, that’s a question for the authors, sponsors, and supporters of the law.