Online speech backers’ newest fear: Trump

Free-speech advocates in Congress are teaming up with an unlikely ally: Silicon Valley.

Tech companies and GOP lawmakers have found common cause in trying to make it harder to sue people for what they say online, inspired by cases such as a Virginia carpet cleaner’s attempt to punish the writers of negative Yelp reviews. But while the anti-lawsuit crusade meshes with Republicans’ traditional dislike of trial lawyers, supporters fear it will collide with Trump’s fondness for litigation against his critics — including his real or threatened suits against a Miss USA contestant, a rapper who used his name in a YouTube video, a journalist who questioned his net worth and former GOP primary rival John Kasich.

So the bill’s supporters are pushing to get the legislation passed while Barack Obama is still president.

“Obama will sign this. I don’t think Trump will,” said Texas Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold, a lead sponsor of the anti-lawsuit bill — who also happens to support Trump’s White House bid.

.. Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, has said passing an anti-SLAPP bill would be a fitting rebuke for the Republican hopeful.

“Time and again, Trump demonstrates a flawed understanding of the U.S. Constitution and of American values,” Shapiro, who backed Sen. Marco Rubio’s candidacy, wrote this spring in The American Spectator. “Supporting strong anti-SLAPP legislation would send Trump a message: No reasonable, thinking American wants a bully in the White House.”

.. In some cases, he has openly acknowledged that going to court is less about seeking justice and more about joyfully punishing enemies. In one infamous example, he sued a New York Times business editor over a book in which the writer reported on doubts that Trump was the billionaire he claimed to be.

“I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more,” said Trump, who lost the case. “I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”

 

The Immortal Myths About Online Abuse

Because the vast majority of online abuse is directed at underrepresented people who are women, people of color, and/or members of other marginalized groups, the net effect of online abuse is to silence members of these communities. Allowing abuse hurts free speech. Communities that allow abusers to dominate conversation don’t just silence marginalized people, they also drive away any reasonable or thoughtful person who’s put off by that hostile environment. Common sense tells us that more people will feel free to express themselves in an environment where threats, abuse, harassment, or attacks aren’t dominating the conversation.

.. The bottom line, as I wrote half a decade ago, is that if your website is full of assholes, it’s your fault. Same goes for your apps. We are accountable for the communities we create, and if we want to take credit for the magical moments that happen when people connect with each other online, then we have to take responsibility for the negative experiences that we enable.

SJWs Will Elect Trump

These left-wing demonstrators tried to shut down an American presidential candidate’s speech during the campaign — and they succeeded, through an implicit threat of violence. People who support Trump drove hours to hear him talk, and they were denied their constitutional rights by left-wing hotheads who believe that they are so righteous that they don’t have to observe basic civility. You come to a Trump rally and you start flipping people off? You should not be surprised if you get a sock in the face.

.. What happened tonight in Chicago is why we need Trump, as obnoxious as he is, to keep going. I am not a Trump supporter, and I reject much of his rhetoric. But he has a right to give a speech, even an obnoxious speech, without it being interrupted by demonstrators. All of us do. Trump is revealing how impossible it is to have a normal democracy with the activist left, who think their crying need for “safe spaces” gives them the right to silence their opponents.

.. No. This political correctness needs to be opposed, and it needs to be opposed with force. I don’t know why the police couldn’t handle this situation, but they had better be on it in the future, because many Americans will not stand for this. What those protesters have done tonight is create a lot more Trump voters out of people who are sick and tired of privileged leftists using thug tactics to silence their opponents.

.. Protest all you want, but do it outside the venue, or silently inside. Do not silence the speaker, because if you do that, you legitimize your opponents trying to silence the speakers from your side.

.. For me, it’s all about the mob. I despise the mob. Any mob, which I define as a crowd that acts in force to silence people by intimidation or actual violence.

.. This is why I cannot support Black Lives Matter, even though I support its goal of bringing critical attention to police brutality: because they believe that their cause is so righteous that they have the right to stomp over anybody who doesn’t share their vision.

.. Don’t y’all understand that people like you only feed the Trump beast?

.. When an American presidential candidate has to cancel his rally in a major city because protesters have made it too dangerous, we have a serious problem in this country.

.. But he did not take America to war in Iraq on flimsy evidence, establish Guantanamo in contravention of human rights law, licence the torture of enemy combatants, oversee the gargantuan NSA data-gathering operation, launch a dirty war of drone strikes against both terrorists and those unfortunate enough to live near them, undermine the religious freedoms of employers who do not want to subsidise the sex lives of their workers, overrule the states’ wishes on marriage, compel citizens to buy healthcare products or deport thousands of illegals through aggressive round-ups. No: these things were done by “moderate” Republicans and “liberal” Democrats.

.. Trump is a symptom, and of course Stanley nails what, excatly, he’s a symptom of: American decline. I wonder what, exactly, the SJWs expect?

.. Hillary Clinton will do her best to protect a system that allows for the dismemberment of babies in the womb and trade in their body parts. I believe she, like all other national Democrats, and their allies will stop at nothing to restrict the religious liberty of orthodox Christians, and impose legal penalties on us for practicing our faith in a way that conflicts with progressive orthodoxy.

.. I think she is a serious threat to people like me ..

.. I think abortion doctors are wicked, but certain lines must be respected if we are not going to fly apart as a society. The right of people to be at peace in their homes is a fundamental right. I would also say this is true of the right of people — even bad people — to speak their minds at their own events.

.. it’s as legal in this country to do as the Klan marching through Skokie was. And it is important not only to observe the First Amendment by the letter of the law, but also to cultivate its spirit.

.. It is strange that the SJWs have been able to act in illiberal, rhetorically violent, even physically aggressive, ways for some time in this country, and nothing much happens to them. Trump’s people do it, and suddenly it’s the end of the Republic.

It may be the end of the Republic, and Trump has his role in bringing it about. But he didn’t start it.