Reblogged:Utah Age-Verification Law Under FIRE

[Gus Van Horn blog]

Lately, Republicans have been working overtime to show that the Democrats hold no monopoly on passing bad legislation in the name of helping "the children."

For example, several "red" states, including Utah, have passed laws requiring age verification to open social media accounts. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has challenged Utah's law.

FIRE's suit argues that the law violates the First Amendment, pointing out that it forces social media companies to restrict users' access to protected expression. Additionally, FIRE argues the law's age verification requirements amount to an unconstitutional prior restraint on free expression.

"What Utah has done, and what other states are doing, is to try to impose sort of a magic bullet solution to the whole question of youth mental health," says Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at FIRE. "In its rush to address what really is the latest moral panic, the state brushes aside what is a nuanced problem and chooses censorship as the presumptive solution to how it addresses these issues, ignoring the individual differences and the diverse needs of families in the state."

The response to this challenge has been for Governor Spencer Cox (R) to delay implementation of the law until October ahead of repealing and replacing the law with what sounds like an equally bad measure.

It is disturbing to consider some of the voices this law might have silenced:

Courtesy photos of Hannah Zoule, one of the plaintiffs, by Guillaume Bigot, via FIRE.

Plaintiffs Lu Ann Cooper and Jessica Christensen co-founded an organization called Hope After Polygamy that connects individuals who are members of, or who have left, polygamous communities with educational resources, often through social media. They know all too well that at-risk youth will disproportionately shoulder the law's harmful effects. The new rules hinder minors' ability to find support and connect with people outside their existing circle, a key feature of social media for vulnerable youth who lack such support at home and school.

"I was raised in an abusive polygamous family being groomed and coerced to marry my first cousin when I was only 15 years old," said Cooper. "Since escaping, I've used social media to provide resources to others in difficult or dangerous situations. This law will only hurt children in similar situations."

I am grateful that the good people of FIRE have taken up their cause.

-- CAV

Link to Original

[tadmjones]

Are laws that place age restrictions on tobacco and alcohol use 'bad legislation'?

The psychological manipulations that all persons who use 'social media' are subject to are not the 'latest in moral panics' , they are design features of the medium. No one disputes that designers of the tech were studying and designing platforms with the expressed purpose of exploiting psychological manipulation techniques and effects, eg how to engage and capture attention, brain chemical fluctuations based on responses in physically interacting with touch screens, ect.

Placing age restrictions on accessing the 'internet' because networked computers qua networks is a manifestation of demonic forces would be a 'moral panic'. Disallowing entities from profiting on uninformed consent of minors isn't necessarily bad legislation, perhaps anti big L Libertarian, but it doesn't 'feel' that bad. I mean I wouldn't punish(unless it was my child) the fifth grader for sneaking a cigarette behind the playground, but if they bought a pack from the corner store I'd see that as abuse by the store owner.  

Edited March 12 by tadmjones

[Doug Morris]

1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

Are laws that place age restrictions on tobacco and alcohol use 'bad legislation'?

 

They don't raise the sort of issues that Gus talked about.

The law in question is "one size fits all".  We probably need a more complicated, nuanced approach.  The better parents have a lot of responsibility here.  We need to avoid closing paths to help for those children who need protection from bad parents.

 

[DavidOdden]

There is a recurring problem – here and elsewhere – of asserting an underlying reasoning behind government actions. Whether those supposed reasons are offered by the right or the left, there is never any concrete proof that those are the reasons. Indeed, there is never any discussion of the actual mental state of the legislators or regulators, much less evidence of that mental state. Instead, the analysts will pick up some phrase uttered by some person and say “That is why we have this law”. Poppycock!

The real reason why such laws come into existence (and this should be so self-evident that no proof is needed, I admit that this is a lazy argument) is that each law-maker creates a mental image of the political consequences of supporting or opposing any law. This particular law is “about protecting children”, no sane politician would oppose protecting children, end of story. But the real issue is very complicated, and Gus fails to give the issue the scrutiny that it deserves – who has what right? Let’s start with the question of what rights children have: do they have the same rights as adults? For example, can a 10 year old rightfully have sex with an adult, consent to surgery, or form contracts and be sued for breach? If not, why not? Under current law, the answer is no they cannot, because children only exercise rights under adult supervision. In the case of surgery, surgery is possible with the consent of the adult (and despite child opposition), but sex and contracts are strictly impossible for children. It is never legally permissible for a parent to rent out their 10 year old under the guise of “parental approval of prostitution”.

The spectrum of “social media sites” out there ranges from various altruistic do-good social-support safe spaces to criminal and sexual Angie’s lists. We might then distinguish unsafe websites from safe indeed good websites, and only restrict access to unsafe websites. But who is the subject of such restrictions? The broadest restriction bans all unsafe websites from existing, as determined by an official government censor. First Amendment strongly says no to that. The narrowest restrictions start by limiting the class of individuals allowed to exercise their adult choices, to, dare I say it, adults.

There is a line that can be drawn between engaging in sex and reading about sex, which underlies this law (though we have no idea what the members of the Utah legislature were thinking when they voted for the law). The most-accessible distinction is between the actual sex act (the adult cannot deem that the child reasonably consents) and gaining expressive knowledge of sex acts (or criminal acts, etc) where the adult may reasonably make the consent judgment for the child. Of course a hyper-libertarian can always insist that the choice should be left up to the child for all of their acts, and if you want to seriously argue that children should be treated as adults from birth, I suggest starting a separate thread to advance that argument.

How then should the government protect the rights of children, if this ID-requirement is seemed to be morally offensive? The answer comes from that initial question about child rights and the role of the adult rights-custodian. Very simply, the child will do whatever it does, and the adult custodian bears responsibility for the consequences of those actions. The adult is responsible for supervising the child, and should be made to bear the consequences of their actions. What is wrong with this law is not that it restricts children from accessing harmful websites and as collateral damage in protecting rights, some adults are inconvenienced. The problem is that the law sees the platform as being solely responsible for the harm, and not the adult who enabled access in the first place. The Utah law is a pragmatic solution, in that there are way fewer platforms than supervising adults, so enforcement against platforms is much easier than enforcement against supervising adults. This law draws a bright line which distinguishes legal from illegal action, the alternative of post hoc lawsuits by children who were harmed by poor parental judgment is unmanageably vague.

There is a third alternative, which is to hold social media platforms (not parents) liable for damage to minors (violations of their rights) that they contributed to. Such a law would be limited to responsibility for damage to those not legally capable of consent. The platform can then decide to take the legal risk and not attempt to vet users, or they can protect themselves by id-checking. Their risk, their choice. Adult users who don’t want to be inconvenienced by providing ID can then take their business to a platform without an ID requirement.

In short, this is an extremely complex moral issue, which is not resolved by simply declaring “there should be no restrictions on expression”. The question that should be asked by the libertarians is, what is the nature of the crisis that demands a further infantalization of our society where everyone is coddled in a safe space?

[tadmjones]

2 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

They don't raise the sort of issues that Gus talked about.

The law in question is "one size fits all".  We probably need a more complicated, nuanced approach.  The better parents have a lot of responsibility here.  We need to avoid closing paths to help for those children who need protection from bad parents.

 

In the article the example of bad parenting is given as an arranged marriage to a first cousin, and that an age restriction on creating an account on a social media platform could harm children in a like situation by barring them from receiving certain information, contacts, or resources.

The author agrees that the legislation is 'bad' because of that effect and the article also talks about suppression of speech or expression.

I am saying the protection children need from bad parenting would be protection from their parents allowing them to participate on social media, and I don't think it is 'bad legislation' unless there is an argument that 'objective laws' that bar selling alcohol and tobacco to minors are 'bad' too.

Edited March 12 by tadmjones

[EC]

Did your guys parents not send you to buy a pack of smokes for them when you were a kid? What "harm" is caused by that? None whatsoever.  Doing completely normal things at that age is what properly prepares a person for life. Alcohol and smoking restrictions are constitutional violations. It's like everyone forgets that they has a fully functional mind by the age of 8. People used to only live until 20 or 30. So according to these highly unconstitutional laws when everyone died by 20 on average nobody could drink or smoke. 

Edited March 13 by EC

[DavidOdden]

27 minutes ago, EC said:

It's like everyone forgets that they has a fully functional mind by the age of 8.

So do you argue that the age of legal adulthood should be 8, including e.g. the obligation to fulfill contract, provide for your own survival, have sex etc?

[EC]

9 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

So do you argue that the age of legal adulthood should be 8, including e.g. the obligation to fulfill contract, provide for your own survival, have sex etc?

No. Just saying that my mind was fully on by that age but just didn't have all the knowledge I gained over time.  I know that's when I started having sexual fantasies and remember wishing the woman across the street would "molest" me, etc. 

[tadmjones]

Too bad, I guess, that the street you grew up on wasn't populated by stricter constitutionalists.

[Doug Morris]

20 hours ago, tadmjones said:

I am saying the protection children need from bad parenting would be protection from their parents allowing them to participate on social media, and I don't think it is 'bad legislation' unless there is an argument that 'objective laws' that bar selling alcohol and tobacco to minors are 'bad' too.

Protecting children from alcohol and tobacco is a much simpler issue than protecting them from social media.

Should we have laws protecting children from foods containing unhealthy amounts of sugar or salt?  How do we define "unhealthy"?  Should we have laws limiting children's access to over the counter drugs?  To pornography?  To violent fiction?  Should we get into arguments about what ideas could be harmful to children?

 

[DavidOdden]

9 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

Should we have laws protecting children from foods containing unhealthy amounts of sugar or salt?  How do we define "unhealthy"?  Should we have laws limiting children's access to over the counter drugs?  To pornography?  To violent fiction?  Should we get into arguments about what ideas could be harmful to children?

Do you think that parents (or other legal guardians) should be held legally responsible for harm that befalls a child because of lack of parental supervision, including foreseeably bad choices? Or should parents be free from the consequences of their inaction, when action (restriction) is warranted?

[Doug Morris]

25 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:

Do you think that parents (or other legal guardians) should be held legally responsible for harm that befalls a child because of lack of parental supervision, including foreseeably bad choices?

Yes, but the devil might be in the details.

 

[tadmjones]

1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

Yes, but the devil might be in the details.

 

And the detail I am harping on is the detail in this article ie age restrictions for social media accounts.

[DavidOdden]

The next step in the analysis is to determine in what way children should be protected from harm (removing the question of the role of government), which therefore means identifying what is harmful to children. Many things are harmful to children, in my opinion. Causing a child to hold false beliefs is harmful, for example, causing them to believe that they are sacrificial animals meant to serve the greater good is harmful, believing in God or other supernatural entities or mystical supposedly axiomatic forces like “climate change” is harmful, causing a child to believe that good is arbitrary and subjective or that it is what is mandated by God (according to whomever) is also harmful. Raising a child so that they will believe that others will take care of them is harmful, similarly not raising a child so that they become independent self-propelling beings is harmful. It is harmful to cause a child to believe that heroin, meth, amphetamines and so on are harmless aids to spiritual development, it is also harmful to enable a child to inflict self harm (supplying them with dangerous materials such as tobacco, drugs or alcohol, also firearms or power tools when not paired with appropriate training). This is just a sample of harmful things, by no means an exhaustive list.

Man is not born with a hard-wired moral code, such a code must be learned, and it is primarily the responsibility of the parent to provide a moral code to their child. Of course the child must choose to accept the code which is offered, or to develop their own moral code (ultimately though the choice of higher-level moral codes which rely on more perceptual principle such as “don’t kill yourself!”, “don’t steal!”, “don’t lie!”). The responsibility of the parent is to make an earnest effort to import a proper moral code to the child, and irresponsibility is defined on the basis of a lack of effort, not a lack of success.

This is a very thin and under-specified framework for defining the idea of “protecting a child”. Still casting aside the question of proper or constitutional law and the role of government as a means of protecting rights, if a society cannot say what end it is trying to reach and only relies on meaningless slogans like “protect the children!”, I see no hope for bridging the logical gap between that desired end and the proper means of reaching the end.

There is an underlying historical / documentary challenge coming from this specific law. Social media has abundant unsupported assertions as to why this law was passed, but those analyses lack concrete evidence. Can anyone locate floor debates or committee reports, or even notes from legislative aids, surrounding the enactment of this law which provides evidence as to the state of mind of the legislators who voted for (or against) this bill? I have searched for any such evidence on the Utah legislature website, to no avail. This is not entirely surprising, since overt discussion of real issues is typically lacking in the official legislative process (discussion of content needs to be via unofficial channels, in order to circumvent the Utah Government Records Access and Management Act – if there’s no record of discussion, there’s no hope of revealing the underlying truth about a particular law). It is not insane to think that most legislators hate social media platforms for being so blatantly leftist in their policies, that is both a standard right-wing meme and an observable fact. However, there isn’t a shred of concrete evidence that this fact caused the majority to vote yes on the bill.

[EC]

Just found this. It explains what is happening to me and the tech and methods behind it. Some parts do go a bit conspiratorial though.

https://archive.org/stream/targeted-individual-handbook-master-copy/TARGETED INDIVIDUAL HANDBOOK master copy_djvu.txt

[Doug Morris]

"

Those who oppose the cabal are targeted and those of pure blood, those of a healthy 
mind incorruptible by its influence are foremost in the crosshairs. This group, especially those 
who are the most intelligent and intuitive amongst them, are prime target's for the cabal's use of 
the following means of global enslavement. 

"

If this is true, why are you the only victim who posts here?

 

[Doug Morris]

"

"What we are seeing now is a globally co-ordinated and organised effort of control and 
conformity. Many countries around the world are currently using a model of policing called 
Community Oriented Policing [ie.gangstalking]." (ibid.pg.3) 

"

Here is a definition of Community Oriented Policing from Wikipedia:

Community policing or community-oriented policing (COP) is a strategy of policing that focuses on developing relationships with community members. It is a philosophy of full-service policing that is highly personal, where an officer patrols the same area for an extended time and develops a partnership with citizens to collaboratively identify and solve problems.^[1]

The goal is for police to build relationships with the community, at times through mediums such as local agencies, to reduce antisocial behavior and low-level crime.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} Some scholarship, such as the broken windows theory, proposes that community policing can reduce serious crimes as well.^[8][9]

Community policing is related to problem-oriented policing and intelligence-led policing, and contrasted with reactive policing strategies which were predominant in the late 20th century.^[10] Many police forces have teams that focus specifically on community policing.

 

[Doug Morris]

I see that the document you linked mentions the East German Stasi.  Maybe the secret police of a dictatorship could bring something like this off.  But how workable would it be in a relatively free society?

 

[EC]

36 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

"

Those who oppose the cabal are targeted and those of pure blood, those of a healthy 
mind incorruptible by its influence are foremost in the crosshairs. This group, especially those 
who are the most intelligent and intuitive amongst them, are prime target's for the cabal's use of 
the following means of global enslavement. 

"

If this is true, why are you the only victim who posts here?

 

I'm the only Objectivist that has solved physics that they are trying to deny to the world? I don't know why else.

[EC]

33 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

"

"What we are seeing now is a globally co-ordinated and organised effort of control and 
conformity. Many countries around the world are currently using a model of policing called 
Community Oriented Policing [ie.gangstalking]." (ibid.pg.3) 

"

Here is a definition of Community Oriented Policing from Wikipedia:

Community policing or community-oriented policing (COP) is a strategy of policing that focuses on developing relationships with community members. It is a philosophy of full-service policing that is highly personal, where an officer patrols the same area for an extended time and develops a partnership with citizens to collaboratively identify and solve problems.^[1]

The goal is for police to build relationships with the community, at times through mediums such as local agencies, to reduce antisocial behavior and low-level crime.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} Some scholarship, such as the broken windows theory, proposes that community policing can reduce serious crimes as well.^[8][9]

Community policing is related to problem-oriented policing and intelligence-led policing, and contrasted with reactive policing strategies which were predominant in the late 20th century.^[10] Many police forces have teams that focus specifically on community policing.

 

I'm not a criminal though.  I just possess knowledge about several things that they don't want shared with the world.  Also, I didn't write that,  just found it yesterday and shared it here because it contains so much information even if I don't like some of the more conspiratorial stuff it contains. 

[EC]

13 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

I see that the document you linked mentions the East German Stasi.  Maybe the secret police of a dictatorship could bring something like this off.  But how workable would it be in a relatively free society?

 

From my experience with all that has happened nonstop over the last two years we are far less free than we assume already. I would have asked the same questions before all of this occurred. The thing is all of this is and has happening(happened) to myself. The break-ins to where I was staying,  the minor property theft and destruction including slight draining of fluids, etc. The isolation, car engine revving, coughing,  mobbing at places I go, little things like causing things I buy to be out of stock, people acting strange towards me (including here from some that I suspect), sabatoging any job I have tried to hold (to the point of being physically attacked at Amazon then them finding a way to dismiss me because I cursed at my 4 attackers). The list goes on and on, and I could write everything that has happened nearly 24/7, but it would take days to do so. 

[EC]

People being (or pretending to be) skeptical, not believing (or falsely denying) what is happening, and not coming to the aid of a victim such as myself reaching out to literally everyone for some sort of help and protection from this that is allowing it to occur. I'm being tortured and slowly murdered. This is happening and I am being tortured and murdered by whatever this evil group is whether or not it is what I'm finding and sharing via research to help save my life or something else. 

Edited March 14 by EC

[EC]

23 hours ago, EC said:

People being (or pretending to be) skeptical, not believing (or falsely denying) what is happening, and not coming to the aid of a victim such as myself reaching out to literally everyone for some sort of help and protection from this that is allowing it to occur. I'm being tortured and slowly murdered. This is happening and I am being tortured and murdered by whatever this evil group is whether or not it is what I'm finding and sharing via research to help save my life or something else. 

And silence after publicly stated that I'm being tortured and slowly destroyed in every manner and slowly murdered,  including past active murder attempts via allergies, attempted car crashes, and others that I won't mention.  Again,  this is why this is allowed to occur because nobody takes action.  If I were a woman, child, person in some foreign country, a victim of some kind of storm event or fire people would rush to help, but because they are attacking constantly in manners with plausible deniability the world let's it occur as everything, everyone, and any possible way to improve and fix the situation is taken away, sabotaged, or made impossible and I'm forced against my will to sleep in my own vehicle until they finish either passively or actively murdering me.

[EC]

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-gang-stalking-apps?top_ans=288414866

Here's a long bunch of posts of people experiencing the same thing and/or explaining how it is done and some of the things experienced after a Google search of "gangstalking app".  DavidOdden, who I appreciate and thank for his advice asked for me to be more specific but one has to understand that a person is "attacked" essentially 24/7 in countless ways when enduring this so writing details would take days or weeks at the least.  I found these things recently and the existence of gangstalking only this summer after experiencing this for years because it's so much that it at first seems impossible. Again, everything involves the concept of plausible deniability, and such a massive 24/7 series of events over years from minor harassment to theft and countless numbers of different things constantly occurring so writing a full account is not simple.

[Boydstun]

I'm inclined to side with Gus in opposing such a law as is coming about in Utah, and my concern, as in the example Gus mentioned, is the ability of children to find things out about the world, going around the controls of their parents. It is good to be able to learn more truth. The internet offers that, even if it has also the ability to convey the social-gang emotional damaging that goes on among teenagers. Parents do indeed need to be on the lookout for what their children are encountering, whether their children are in pains over social relations with their peers, whether their children are using drugs, shoplifting, becoming depressed, or getting suicidal. But parents can be on the lookout for those things without the lazy turnkey of controlling, not just monitoring, but upfront blindering of children to wider truth of the world and wider truths being discovered of nature beyond what parents wish them to learn. Preparation of a child for independent life is enhanced, as far as I've observed, by wider and argued views of what the world and we consist of, not by deprivation of that information.