Says RFK Jr., on TikTok:
@teamkennedy2024 I want you to remember that every right the government has ever taken away was removed under the false pretense of national security. Remember that when members of Congress give Joe Biden the power to remove an app from your phone. #kennedy24 #rfkjr ♬ original sound - Robert F. Kennedy Jr
For more on that court of appeals case, see "RFK Jr. Wins Deferred Injunction in Vax Social Media Suit" (Bloomberg):
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. won a preliminary injunction against the White House and other federal defendants in his suit alleging government censorship of his statements against vaccines on social media....
Kennedy’s class action complaint, brought with health care professional Connie Sampognaro and Kennedy’s nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, alleges that the federal government, beginning in early 2020, began a campaign to induce Facebook, Google (YouTube), and X, formerly known as Twitter, to censor constitutionally protected speech.
Specifically, Kennedy said, the government suppressed “facts and opinions about the COVID vaccines that might lead people to become ‘hesitant’ about COVID vaccine mandates.”
Kennedy has sufficiently shown that these defendants “jointly participated in the actions of the social media” platforms “by “‘insinuating’ themselves into the social-media companies’ private affairs and blurring the line between public and private action,” [Judge Terry A.] Doughty said....
The injunction bars the named federal defendants from taking “actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”...
Posts
52 comments:
A true American leader.
I’ve concluded that Bobby’s third party run is revenge on the Dems for not letting him run in the Dem party. It’s the ultimate ultra political move. Politics isn’t business; it’s personal. That’s why it is called politics.
Good for him.
Bobby hurts Biden way more than Trump. The line about the polls claiming that Bobby hurts Biden and Trump equally is pure BS cooked up by the NYT and WaPo.
You know, it is possible to retain the online functionality while removing hostile foreign governmental influence. Just sayin'.
Truth
I am not sure what to think about the banning of Tik Tok from a philosophical perspective, but I really don't see how it would be a First Amendment violation. It is different than shutting down a particular paper, which would necessarily target that paper's viewpoint, and it is different than having social media quash specific topics, which is clearly not viewpoint neutral. It seems to be viewpoint neutral, in that it does not object to any one particular thing, and Tik Tok (to the best of my knowledge) publishes anything that its users uploads, perhaps with the exception of calls to violence and the like - I don't know whether Tik Tok engages in self-censorship, although I have never heard complaints that they do so. As for Tik Tok users, the proposed law would not ban them from speaking on one of the myriad other forms of social media.
The primary objection seems to be that Tik Tok is so widely used (and loved) that it is the new "town square" - i.e., too big to shut down. But First Amendment rights cannot depend on size and reach, can they?
I don't do Tiktok; but then I haven't done Instagram, whatsapp, snapchat, or any of that. I fired Facebook four years ago. I'm too old, and I've never been a big joiner. So if its influence is constrained, there could be some social good come of it. But the civil liberties side of me believes that the government inserting itself into such an obvious free speech issue can't help but produce bad results. I'm with Bobby Jr.
Kennedy increasingly seems like a voice of sanity. I once was extremely skeptical of his anti-vaccine (i.e. opposition to the way in which vaccines are managed by the government), but here is something he posted yesterday...
First, this retweet: "In 1979, eleven babies died of SIDS in one county in Tennessee. They all had received the same vaccine from the same batch at around the same time. Wyeth's (since merged with Pfizer) response: Instead of recalling the vaccine pending an investigation, they covered it up AND ordered all future batches to be spread out across the country, so that any more deadly clusters would go unnoticed."
Then his reply: "This is the incident that caused Wyeth (now Pfizer) to adopt the “small batch rule,” an internal directive to break up batches among different regions so that the “hot” batches would not all end up in one city where a cluster of deaths would attract notice. CDC also initiated its own policy to keep the SIDS link to DTP vaccines undetected. CDC broke up SIDS into several new diagnostic sub categories including SUID and SUDC to conceal the explosion in SIDS cases from the public."
How is it that this is the first time I've ever heard of this? Re: free speech, how is it that this never got covered? If it did, I sure don't remember it.
C.S. Lewis said something similar:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
RFK Jr. has a point.
Joe Biden and his administration are jackbooted thugs and prove it almost every day.
So again, Trump is not the tyrant, democrats are.
RFK is absolutely correct. But Americans today are too ignorant of basic history to understand what he is saying. It all stems from our rainbow flag waiving public education system, and liberal female dominated colleges and universities.
Modern Democrats LOVE censorship. And American women and beta males support them. What's the attraction for educated women, beta males, and homosexuals toward totalitarianism? Is it some deep down dark resentment, or is it just simple stupidity? Let's throw once freedom fighting boomer hippies in this group too.
Just look at the front and center lawfare warriors. Fani Willis, Letitia James... Even the head of the first female NYC Fire Commissioner, Laura Kavanagh, is hunting down NYC firefighters who booed Letitia James and chanted TRUMP!
Is it now scratch an American woman, and find a totalitarian??
RFK jr. knows howto speak like an adult.
He really is the only adult running.
and here- he is Right on. oh - and fuck the corrupt left.
"let's never reduce Americans' ability to freely exchange ideas."
It is always refreshing to hear a political candidate make a statement so clearly supportive of American freedom.
If Biden dropped Harris for VP and recruited RFK Jr., the race would get interesting. Has that been seriously discussed by anyone at the DNC or corporate media?
"To grow business" is a good angle. How many incomes are lost with a TikTok ban?
I was aghast at the breadth of a power of the Patriot ACT. I saw nothing but /unconstitutional abuse of power. My better half thought we had to do something in the face of 9/11. I explained the for sure use by the govt to spy on all citizens was not worth it.
I still believe that.
Here is what we have learned with all the intel gathering.
Authorities are powerless to prevent criminal acts they believe may happen. All these mass shooters, are known to authorities through the spying facilitated by the Patriot ACT. But while our privacy has been breached with impunity, the Constitution still does not allow arrest for thought crimes.
He's not wrong. Or recently under the guise of national health.
TikTok is Chinese cyber warerfare.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/k6smfruHDNs
I'm still wondering why no other tech players or newcomer can offer a TikTok substitute.
It's hard to argue against RFK's words. It's too bad people dismiss him as wacko, since he very clearly is not.
Who would have thought that RFK Jr. would be the voice of reason in public discourse?
"Every right that the government has ever taken away from citizens was removed under the pretense of national security."
Well said. The road to serfdom, indeed.
Under the general topic of pernicious Government expansion, School Districts in Texas are opening health clinics: Denton ISD for students on Medicaid; Raymondville ISD for students, staff, and any "public servant."
The CDC study of myocarditis totally redacted?
https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1765852724606726557
C'mon man!
Roadkill711: Thanks for the C.S. Lewis quote at 7:28am.
It sums up our current political environment well.
Tik Tok is easily replaceable. I'm more concerned about what else they'll do with this legislation.
Don't Trust the Chi-coms - unless they are feeding big bucks to the Bidens (under the table and in secret)
or unless Chinese men are crossing our open border. then the Chi Coms are cool.
No one has a First Amendment right to trade with Communist China. And China has exactly ZERO rights under the U.S. Constitution.
I used to think RFK Jr. was actually insane. Then he started saying some things that made sense to me and I took a more moderate view of him. But he has come back to full color for me, and I still think he's got a few bolts in need of tightening. His selection of Aaron Rogers as a running mate is just utterly nuts. Yes, we've got Trump vs Biden, and that's insane enough. But Aaron Rogers as VP?
I'd hate to be the Jets front office today.
But while our privacy has been breached with impunity, the Constitution still does not allow arrest for thought crimes.
Canada is now pretty far down the road to doing exactly that. The UK and Australia will soon follow.
The Tennessee SIDS was not covered up; it was extensively studied. The rest of the 261,000 doses in that lot were monitored and no excessive SIDS incidence was found. There have been numerous studies of SIDS and the DPT vaccine since then, around the world. None of them have shown higher incidence of SIDS asking vaccinated vs unvaccinated babies. They don't show a pattern in the timing.
When RFKJr talks about vaccines, go and look for what he's not telling you, and ask yourself why he's not telling you.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234368/
Get Off My Lawn!
When I was young, television watching was strictly governed by my parents. Every kid now has seemingly unlimited cartoons and certainly worse distractions abound.
Maybe try to trim the double edged sword down to a dull pen knife for the young and impressionable.
I had no first amendment rights as a child and the worst of us were not transgender mass murderers.
Congress should have reined in ALL the unethical subliminal data-mining that mobile apps have introduced to our lives. But they didn't. This appears to be a step in the right direction, but I think it will be abused, mostly because our Surveillance State Overlords have proven themselves incapable of keeping their eyes and ears and hands off of information they have no right to know. Over and over. How many baby steps is it from "used by Russia" to "influenced by Russia" to "controlled by Russia" to banned by Executive Order?
Scott Adams, on today's "Coffee with Scott Adams," has a good discussion about the effort to ban Tic Tok. Scott is a supporter of the ban, but he argues that the paragraph in the bill which hints that it may also be used on other platforms, that this paragraph be deleted. Restrict it to JUST Tic Tok.
Here's another relevant quote.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." --Pitt the Younger, 1783
Check out Mark at 9:26. Foul ball way out in left field. Nobody is advocating a first amendment right to "trade with Communist China". Although the Biden crime family certainly enjoyed trade with Communist China.
We are advocating for the ability of Americans to freely exchange ideas under the first amendment without gov't interference. This is something Democrats and liberals now truly fear.
The best part about the few liberal trolls here at Althouse, some of which I believe are paid, is that they speak for millions of other American libs. It lets you know how these people really think... A valuable service.
In related news, SCOTUS issues another unanimous ruling saying people can sue government officials for muting them on social media. 9-0. Again. They set up a new test for lower courts to use in considering such cases.
So 1A is still strong in the highest level of jurisprudence.
Hassayamper said...
But while our privacy has been breached with impunity, the Constitution still does not allow arrest for thought crimes.
Canada is now pretty far down the road to doing exactly that. The UK and Australia will soon follow.
3/15/24, 9:43 AM
UK has been leading the way, Canada racing to keep up.
https://nypost.com/2022/12/22/uk-woman-arrested-for-praying-across-from-abortion-clinic/
RFK Jr for the win.
Bobby Kennedy’s favorite philosopher was Camus.
I’m appalled. I enjoy Existentialism as much as the next guy or gal but it’s no way to govern a country.
Blogger Gusty Winds said...
Check out Mark at 9:26. Foul ball way out in left field. Nobody is advocating a first amendment right to "trade with Communist China".
I wouldn't be surprised if Rand Paul believes that. Not necessarily a first amendment right, but rather that the Federal Government has no authority to limit who or with which countries an individual may trade. His father, Ron Paul, was against NAFTA back in the day. But it wasn't because he didn't want trade between US, Canada, and Mexico, but rather because he felt the government had no authority to oversee, regulate, or interfere with whom individuals traded.
Blogger Wince said...
I'm still wondering why no other tech players or newcomer can offer a TikTok substitute.
3/15/24, 8:19 AM
YouTube has YouTube shorts, which are similar short format videos. Before both that and Tik-Tok there used to be a service called Vines which was to my knowledge the first short format video service. That went the way of the dodo because people didn't like the way they tried to monetize it. With any social media network a lot of it depends on that service reaching a critical mass of users, and a lot of that depends on it appearing 'cool' to the youngsters.
Randomizer: If Biden dropped Harris for VP and recruited RFK Jr., the race would get interesting. Has that been seriously discussed by anyone at the DNC or corporate media?
Very good idea. Won't happen. Biden may be mentally diminished, but Ego is the last thing to go and he will never abide a VP who eclipses him. (I believe the McCain machine turned on Palin for exactly the same reason; she was the better "horse" on the ticket.)
When did the dupes and useful idiots and apologists for the Communists hijack the (previously anti-Communist) conservative bus?
Of course, not too long ago these same folks were for banning or divesting Tik-Tok back when Trump was for it. But now that Trump is against it, the sheep are following.
Bobby Jr said...
"Every right that the government has ever taken away from citizens was removed under the pretense of national security.
"My father's favorite philosopher, Albert Camus, wrote that the welfare of the people is always the alibi of tyrants and it provides further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a clear conscience."
Ben Franklin added...
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Dave Begley said...
I’ve concluded that Bobby’s third party run is revenge on the Dems for not letting him run in the Dem party.. Bobby hurts Biden way more than Trump.
I'm not so sure about this. Especially after he announced Aaron Rodgers as his running mate. It will also matter which states he gets on the ticket in. If his goal was to get political revenge on the Democrats, he would have chosen someone like Kyrsten Sinema or Cornell West. Just look at the people in the comments here who are saying positive things about RFK Jr.'s run. I'm assuming most if not all of them already were not going to vote for Biden, which makes me think if he is going to draw votes away from one candidate it is more likely to take away from Trump than Biden.
I was surprised that Althouse did not blog RFK Jr's response to Biden's State of the Union address. Here it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0yvc2Qhn5E
Ok, maybe a half truth... Some rights have been taken away by State governments and for reasons lower than national security.
I distrust Zuckerberg, Facebook, Google, Instagram, etc. as much as anyone. But I distrust the Chinese Communist Party even more. Tik Tok is Chinese cyber warfare. Every piece of information on Tik Tok goes directly to the Communist Chinese Party Military, to use as they see fit. So far, at least, Facebook does not have nuclear weapons, has not murdered millions and millions of Americans, and does not have re-education and forced labor camps.
"Kennedy increasingly seems like a voice of sanity. I once was extremely skeptical of his anti-vaccine (i.e. opposition to the way in which vaccines are managed by the government)"
---
Has anyone ever heard of a baby dying the night before he was supposed to receive several vaccines at his "wellness" check-up? Now, how many times have you heard of a child dying the night after or within a day or two of receipt of several vaccines? I have read more than a few such instances (hundreds in fact). The public health industry waives away those occasions--every single one--as just a coincidence and a case of SIDS (unknown cause of death--dropped dead suddenly).
Before Covid and its vaccines I mocked people who said vaccines were causing deaths and autism in children. After the research I've done over the past few years, I'm now a believer. I now sincerely believe that vaccines are causing autism and other diseases in children. I didn't realize the number of vaccines babies are now receiving---all at once! My children received five or six all total 40 years ago. Now babies receive around 65 or more over just a few months and many of them all at one time in order to save money. Few immune systems, much less a child's can survive unscathed such an onslaught.
Why not convert TikTok into a public utility, the same way the various electric companies were converted into public utilities?
TikTok or Twitter or Facebook could maintain the back end network, and whole new companies could appear to offer different filtering interfaces and algorithms to users.
Just as the electric company can't refuse to power your house because they don't like your politics, so too would no one be excluded from the network. But whether or not what you posted was ever read would depend upon the different filtering interfaces. Some of these would be carefully curated in one way or another, other would be wide open. Also, it would be easy for parents to sign up for a filtering service that absolutely blocked porn, or drugs, or politics that gave parents the sads, or even advertising.
A system of a universal back and and customized front-ends, feeds, whatever you want to call it, is what we are going to end up with anyway.
China can afford to keep other players out. Since they own a lot of our representatives.
No. Really watch thet video I listed above or read
China can afford to keep other players out. Since they own a lot of our representatives.
No. Really watch thet video I listed above or read Zero Hedge about Tik Tok.
What a keen mind RFK has to see how dedicated the Chinese Communist Party is free speech.
I don't remember RFK jr condemning Twitter for deleting Trump's twitter account.
Post a Comment