[iamnothere]

Sophistry. The question is not whether or not regulation is authoritarian, it’s whether or not it’s constitutional. As in, whether or not the government is even allowed to make such a law.

A law doesn’t just get a constitutional bypass because it’s addressing known harms or “anti-social” behavior or whatever. This is not the UK.

Illuminated signs exist in the real, physical world. They can beam bright light into your home, involuntarily. Design and presentation exists in the realm of a printed page, or on the display of your device. Can we regulate how a book lays out its type?

The First Amendment is quite possibly the most uniquely American thing about our Constitution, and its most defining feature. It’s worth defending.

[coldbrewed]

Can I buy a 40mm grenade launcher without a FFL? No, I can't. Can I legally manufacture and install an auto sear on my AR? Also no. Would it be sick if I could? Hell yes. Do I own a delightful selection of firearms, including AR pattern rifles? Yes, and the cardinality of that set is only going up.

Does society benefit from mass ownership and unlimited access to fully automatic rifles and grenade launchers? If it does, what country allows it?

Are the above constraints explicitly decided as constitutional though years of legal decisions at all levels of the courts? Yes? Then we can observe that we can reasonably constrain constitutional rights through law and legal opinions. The line may be hard to draw and may shift, see the AR ban, but it is accepted that constitutional guaranteed rights have bounds that can be articulated and clarified through the legal and political system.

We put upper bounds on the rights and freedoms of individuals and corporations because we all must live within proximity to each other. These bounds may be authoritarian at times, and of course that's bad. But we collectively can limit freedoms because the alternative is actively and disproportionally harmful to society.

When it comes to the rights and the freedoms of the largest and wealthiest corporations, we already live in an era where these entities are shaping major aspects of our lives. Infinite scroll is one small mechanism by which they're hacking our biology; this is more than just pixels on a screen but a component in a system that was A/B tested to maximize behavior modification.

Help me understand - do you believe that it is possible to regulate these entities in any form? Or do we need to say that the folks that yeeted tea into a harbor were fine with infinite corporate power and regulatory capture?

[ndriscoll]

Not that I think this significantly alters the point, but it's pretty common in the US to regulate or ban signage. e.g. billboards are illegal in my city and there are specific regulations about what kind of elements can be present on buildings to signal business names. I'm pretty certain illuminated signs beaming into people's homes would be illegal here. Actually I don't think light-up signs are allowed at all; I believe they have to be lit via projected light pointed at the building the're on.

[iamnothere]

Yes, my point is that things like illuminated signs or loudspeakers can actually physically affect neighbors, so speech concerns have to be balanced against other concerns. Often the speech still wins, but not always.

We’re talking apples and oranges because a website is more like a book than an illuminated sign. You have to decide to view it, and it doesn’t shine through your window at night, disturbing the peaceful enjoyment of your home.

[inigyou]

A website like mygeotechnicalblog.example.com is like a book that you have to seek out. But websites like Facebook and Twitter may be so ubiquitous that they are more akin to a street that you walk down for many purposes and shouldn't be bombarded by obnoxious advertisements on the way.

[iamnothere]

While we’re just stretching metaphors to fit our preferences, comments like yours are so odious that they are akin to an open sewer, and should be regulated for public health reasons. Am I doing this right?

[watwut]

It was not sophistry, it was completely valid.

> A law doesn’t just get a constitutional bypass because it’s addressing known harms or “anti-social” behavior or whatever. This is not the UK.

First, the harm arguments are regularly made in front of the supreme court. And sometimes, when it suits them, justices make their own harm or sociality arguments. No, USA is worst. It gets to be constitutional if it advances conservative right wing agenda and unconstitutional otherwise.

> The First Amendment is quite possibly the most uniquely American thing about our Constitution, and its most defining feature.

You dont defend it by redefining its meaning to unrecognizable to encompass things non-speech of corporations. All the while making it so that in practice, poorer people have no defense anyway.