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I agree that most readers won’t really ‘get it’ by reading the headline, and appreciate your useful addition so we all can get some context without the click, b

I agree that most readers won’t really ‘get it’ by reading the headline, and appreciate your useful addition so we all can get some context without the click, but in defense of the author, I think writing layperson-accessible headlines for technical legal articles is often impossible. Having attempted to make interfaces and applications that made raw legal data useful for laypeople, including with NN summaries and such, if there’s a meaningfully better solution, I sure couldn’t find it after a few years of work. For the same reason reading case law doesn’t effectively help laypeople represent themselves in court, you need context and background knowledge to make sense of legal concepts. (If you’ve ever seen an overconfident ‘sovereign citizen’ cite opinions in court while representing themself, you’ve seen why. And while most are obviously under-educated for the task, they’re probably not unintelligent and they clearly put a lot of effort into it.) To people used to reading legal texts and familiar with the trajectory of decisions in this space, the headline makes sense, and I think that’s probably the best you can do. Trying to construct a headline that’s representative while also giving laypeople the background and context they need to make sense of the topic becomes way too long to be a headline long before it accomplishes it’s goal.

rayiner 2y ago
Yes, I wouldn’t know how to explain all that in a headline either! Unfortunately the word “misleading” has multiple connotations—I wasn’t saying the author was trying to deliberately mislead, but rather that the reader shouldn’t conclude too much based on the headline alone.
- chefandy 2y ago
  Sure, that makes sense. Additionally, whether something is misleading had as much to do with the person reading it as the person writing it.
throwup238 2y ago
The author probably didn’t come up with the headline, the editor did. It’s one thing if the Office of Legislative Counsel tries and fails to come up with a succinct one liner, it’s another when an editor driven entirely by clickbait economic incentives does it. The latter rarely even try to be accurate.
- pc86 2y ago
  I do sometimes wish articles had information in the byline about who wrote the headline as well as just the article, or that it became standard practice for authors to write the headlines as well.
- dcrazy 2y ago
  It’s Techdirt. The author and editor are the same person.
- chefandy 2y ago
  Can you propose a more appropriate one? I can’t think of one that is still headline length.
  - Bjartr 2y ago
    "Federal court says merely repairing a seized device isn't a search" I think that's a bit better
    - weaksauce 2y ago
      “federal court decides that repairing a phone’s firmware during a period of lapsed warrants is not an unconstitutional search” maybe?
      - chefandy 2y ago
        That’s awfully long for a headline but I do agree it’s clearer
    - autoexec 2y ago
      Is it a "mere" repair when they crack open your device swap out the main board and replace the firmware? Imagine that their "search" turned up nothing? You'd still be left unable to get your device back intact or unaltered. Should the government be able to swap out hardware components and install whatever firmware they like on them without a court order? People have their own reasons for selecting the hardware that they do and for not installing certain firmware. Should the police be able to install firmware that isn't official? "merely repairing" seems misleading given what this allows for.
pc86 2y ago
Sovereign citizenry and misquoting admiralty law in your hearing about driving without valid registration or saying the court doesn't have jurisdiction because the flag has gold fringe on it is so close to mental illness it's hard to assign concepts like "smart" or "dumb" to it.
- ronsor 2y ago
  Sovereign citizen activities basically have no correlation with intelligence or political views. It's such a strange category of weirdness.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    Some people like to portray petty mostly victimless lawlessness as sovereign citizen shenanigans as a means to discredit the reasoning that lead to those people to decide not to follow the law. Not everyone who doesn't get a building permit or a fishing license is a sovereign citizen.
  - pas 2y ago
    By what definition of intelligence? :) It seems like a waste of time at best. But have any sovereign citizen got what they wanted at the end of any kind of proceeding? It seems like a very bad strategy to solve their own selfish problems. (DUI, speeding, not paying taxes, going against gun regulations, etc.) And this strategy is usually coming from being unfortunately so tragically misinformed that they cannot help but reject the boring standard model of reality for a bouquet of conspiracy theories.
    - sandworm101 2y ago
      They do "win" sometimes. The rational person just pays the ticket. The sovcit demands a jury trial and, rarely, gets a win when a deal is offered or a witness fails to show. And often just having the proceeding is the win. They get off on being the center of attention. Defending themselves in court is the one time all the important people have to listen to them. They enjoy it.
throwawaycities 2y ago
I’ve attending 1,000’s of arraignments, motion calendars and pleas. In all my experience I’ve seen 2 pro se defendants pull the “I’m a sovereign” spiel. Credit to them they both turned what should have been a 5 minute hearing into at least 15 minute circuses refusing to even announce their names for the record. Both were threatened with being held in contempt before the Judges passed on their cases and made them wait to hear the other matters on the docket. Truly fascinating & unusual events and people, I think if you draw a vin diagram mental illness and Dunning-Kruger Effect these folks would be the overlap.
- chefandy 2y ago
  For sure. I think part of it is what happens when Dunning-Krueger strikes someone confident and charismatic enough to teach their ill-conceived ideas to others who find the idea appealing enough to take it and run with it. A runaway bullshit train. Eventually it becomes widespread enough to become “conventional wisdom” to to some groups and most people don’t question conventional wisdom imparted by people they trust. It seems a lot of conspiracy theories work that way.
  - throwawaycities 2y ago
    Natural result of YouTube scholars learning “appeal to authority” logic fallacy - it somehow becomes reasonable to reject any and all authorities while simultaneously accepting any single YouTube video as truth.
psunavy03 2y ago
There's a huge gray area between "not understanding the law" and "being competent to litigate a case in court." It is entirely possible for non-lawyers to understand the gist of the law at a high level. And thus it's not acceptable to tolerate misleading headlines about legal decisions any more than it is to tolerate misleading headlines about any other decision. And God knows I've seen enough of them about other issues that are within my realm of professional expertise. The problem is that our system as currently set up does not incentivize reporters working a "beat" for years where they develop enough domain expertise on a field to report on it competently. If we had actual senior legal reporters, senior national security reporters, senior tech reporters, and so on, they would have enough knowledge of those fields to effectively write for laypeople.
- chefandy 2y ago
  Your distinction— understanding the law, broadly, and being able to try a case in court are themselves two extremes on the spectrum of people that understand law. The invective for clickbait obviously exists. None of those facts means that it’s easy, or even possible to write a headline-length blurb can give laypeople the context they need to know what’s happening. Maybe I’m wrong? Can you propose one that does?
- nightpool 2y ago
  > The problem is that our system as currently set up does not incentivize reporters working a "beat" for years where they develop enough domain expertise on a field to report on it competently. If we had actual senior legal reporters, senior national security reporters, senior tech reporters, and so on, they would have enough knowledge of those fields to effectively write for laypeople. How does this apply to Techdirt? Tim Cushing has been a staff writer at techdirt for 12 years and works heavily on a legal, civil liberties/policy beat with a tech perspective. By your criteria, he should be a perfect example of journalists who have enough knowledge to effectively write for laypeople.
  - psunavy03 2y ago
    I didn't say they don't exist. I said the system does not incentivize for that.

rayiner 2y ago

Yes, I wouldn’t know how to explain all that in a headline either! Unfortunately the word “misleading” has multiple connotations—I wasn’t saying the author was trying to deliberately mislead, but rather that the reader shouldn’t conclude too much based on the headline alone.

chefandy 2y ago
Sure, that makes sense. Additionally, whether something is misleading had as much to do with the person reading it as the person writing it.

throwup238 2y ago

The author probably didn’t come up with the headline, the editor did. It’s one thing if the Office of Legislative Counsel tries and fails to come up with a succinct one liner, it’s another when an editor driven entirely by clickbait economic incentives does it. The latter rarely even try to be accurate.

pc86 2y ago
I do sometimes wish articles had information in the byline about who wrote the headline as well as just the article, or that it became standard practice for authors to write the headlines as well.
dcrazy 2y ago
It’s Techdirt. The author and editor are the same person.
chefandy 2y ago
Can you propose a more appropriate one? I can’t think of one that is still headline length.
- Bjartr 2y ago
  "Federal court says merely repairing a seized device isn't a search" I think that's a bit better
  - weaksauce 2y ago
    “federal court decides that repairing a phone’s firmware during a period of lapsed warrants is not an unconstitutional search” maybe?
    - chefandy 2y ago
      That’s awfully long for a headline but I do agree it’s clearer
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Is it a "mere" repair when they crack open your device swap out the main board and replace the firmware? Imagine that their "search" turned up nothing? You'd still be left unable to get your device back intact or unaltered. Should the government be able to swap out hardware components and install whatever firmware they like on them without a court order? People have their own reasons for selecting the hardware that they do and for not installing certain firmware. Should the police be able to install firmware that isn't official? "merely repairing" seems misleading given what this allows for.

pc86 2y ago

Sovereign citizenry and misquoting admiralty law in your hearing about driving without valid registration or saying the court doesn't have jurisdiction because the flag has gold fringe on it is so close to mental illness it's hard to assign concepts like "smart" or "dumb" to it.

ronsor 2y ago
Sovereign citizen activities basically have no correlation with intelligence or political views. It's such a strange category of weirdness.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  Some people like to portray petty mostly victimless lawlessness as sovereign citizen shenanigans as a means to discredit the reasoning that lead to those people to decide not to follow the law. Not everyone who doesn't get a building permit or a fishing license is a sovereign citizen.
- pas 2y ago
  By what definition of intelligence? :) It seems like a waste of time at best. But have any sovereign citizen got what they wanted at the end of any kind of proceeding? It seems like a very bad strategy to solve their own selfish problems. (DUI, speeding, not paying taxes, going against gun regulations, etc.) And this strategy is usually coming from being unfortunately so tragically misinformed that they cannot help but reject the boring standard model of reality for a bouquet of conspiracy theories.
  - sandworm101 2y ago
    They do "win" sometimes. The rational person just pays the ticket. The sovcit demands a jury trial and, rarely, gets a win when a deal is offered or a witness fails to show. And often just having the proceeding is the win. They get off on being the center of attention. Defending themselves in court is the one time all the important people have to listen to them. They enjoy it.

throwawaycities 2y ago

I’ve attending 1,000’s of arraignments, motion calendars and pleas. In all my experience I’ve seen 2 pro se defendants pull the “I’m a sovereign” spiel. Credit to them they both turned what should have been a 5 minute hearing into at least 15 minute circuses refusing to even announce their names for the record. Both were threatened with being held in contempt before the Judges passed on their cases and made them wait to hear the other matters on the docket. Truly fascinating & unusual events and people, I think if you draw a vin diagram mental illness and Dunning-Kruger Effect these folks would be the overlap.

chefandy 2y ago
For sure. I think part of it is what happens when Dunning-Krueger strikes someone confident and charismatic enough to teach their ill-conceived ideas to others who find the idea appealing enough to take it and run with it. A runaway bullshit train. Eventually it becomes widespread enough to become “conventional wisdom” to to some groups and most people don’t question conventional wisdom imparted by people they trust. It seems a lot of conspiracy theories work that way.
- throwawaycities 2y ago
  Natural result of YouTube scholars learning “appeal to authority” logic fallacy - it somehow becomes reasonable to reject any and all authorities while simultaneously accepting any single YouTube video as truth.

psunavy03 2y ago

There's a huge gray area between "not understanding the law" and "being competent to litigate a case in court." It is entirely possible for non-lawyers to understand the gist of the law at a high level. And thus it's not acceptable to tolerate misleading headlines about legal decisions any more than it is to tolerate misleading headlines about any other decision. And God knows I've seen enough of them about other issues that are within my realm of professional expertise. The problem is that our system as currently set up does not incentivize reporters working a "beat" for years where they develop enough domain expertise on a field to report on it competently. If we had actual senior legal reporters, senior national security reporters, senior tech reporters, and so on, they would have enough knowledge of those fields to effectively write for laypeople.

chefandy 2y ago
Your distinction— understanding the law, broadly, and being able to try a case in court are themselves two extremes on the spectrum of people that understand law. The invective for clickbait obviously exists. None of those facts means that it’s easy, or even possible to write a headline-length blurb can give laypeople the context they need to know what’s happening. Maybe I’m wrong? Can you propose one that does?
nightpool 2y ago
> The problem is that our system as currently set up does not incentivize reporters working a "beat" for years where they develop enough domain expertise on a field to report on it competently. If we had actual senior legal reporters, senior national security reporters, senior tech reporters, and so on, they would have enough knowledge of those fields to effectively write for laypeople. How does this apply to Techdirt? Tim Cushing has been a staff writer at techdirt for 12 years and works heavily on a legal, civil liberties/policy beat with a tech perspective. By your criteria, he should be a perfect example of journalists who have enough knowledge to effectively write for laypeople.
- psunavy03 2y ago
  I didn't say they don't exist. I said the system does not incentivize for that.