Open Friday Post

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It’s Friday again, so here is another chance to put up your very first ever comment.

Here’s a topic (that troubles me as a blogger): Do you think allowing the very large social media companies to ban swaths of commentary based on viewpoint will be beneficial in the long run? I’m not talking about the common error non-attorney commentators make of confusing this with First Amendment issues. I mean just what I asked — can you see any way that this doesn’t slide into severe, and constantly changing, viewpoint suppression by actual or quasi-monopolies?

Here’s an example: Pinterest Blacklists PJ Media, Other Conservative Sites and This Is Just the Tip of the Censorship Iceberg. PJ Media, if you don’t know it, is clearly a conservative political commentary site. But it’s certainly not radical by any reasonable measure. Among other things, it hosts Tennessee College of Law Professor Glenn Reynolds’ blog, Instapundit, which is widely read and not a hotbed of crazy, whether you agree with the politics there or not. Glenn is cool enough to have a regular column in U.S.A. Today, so I think it is safe to say that blacklisting a site like PJ Media is well down the slippery slope to the place where that greased pig is picking up steam. It’s all fun and games until your speech is the suppressed and blacklisted speech.

Can’t wait until I’m blacklisted. Bright side: maybe I already have been!

Enjoy your weekend.

Friday Open Post

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So I’m going to try an experiment that will almost certainly fail, but I’m going to do it anyhow to spit into the wind. This is your chance to suggest anything you want in comments. You can propose cases to discuss (I’m still contemplating the Supreme Court’s Lamps Plus decision, so that’s covered on my list already). You can note other legal news of note. Anything (within reason - but I will bend the comment policy quite a bit to allow for far-ranging topics).

Related to comments, I’ve updated this blog to use Disqus for comment functions. I wanted to see if it generates any more community discussion. Probably not, because lawyers, for whatever reason, are resistant to actively engaging with sites like this. What I have yet to figure out is why lawyers do so much on LinkedIn but not blogs. Anyhow, go crazy! Comment! Give you review of Avengers: Endgame in the comments.