goofy
April 12, 2023, 1:35am
442
I saw this reported in clickbaity fashion (Twitter Is Facing Fines Costing More Than They’re Worth!) but there’s some solid lol here:
Earlier this week , the federal government announced it was instigating a procedure over suspected systemic failures under the country’s hate speech takedowns law. The law, known colloquially as NetzDG, allows for fines of up to €50 million per case.
The federal government is acting on just a handful of tweets out of hundreds that have been reported and collated in a database, per lawyer Chan-jo Jun, the founder and managing partner of the specialist IT law firm, JunIT Rechtsanwälte.
Jun is representing the antisemitism commissioner of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, Michael Blume, who he says has been targeted by abusive and defamatory tweets that Twitter has refused to take down. Some of the abusive tweets were posted by a Twitter user who had been banned before Musk took over the platform but had his account reinstated in Musk’s general amnesty on suspended accounts .
Late last year , the law firm went to court seeking an injunction against Twitter for failing to act on the reports to remove hate speech under the NetzDG law. The legal challenge succeeded in establishing the tweets were illegal. And it appears to have contributed to spurring the federal government into action — which, on Tuesday, said it had established “sufficient indications of failures” in Twitter’s complaint management processes to start a process that could result in the first penalty for a social media firm for failing to remove illegal content under NetzDG.
Obviously there’s no chance Musk ever pays fines for this kinda stuff, so what’s the endgame here when he stiffs them? Can Twitter be banned from German internet?
pvn
April 12, 2023, 1:52am
443
germany forecloses on t_itter HQ and turns it into a consulate?
Germany is a pretty fundamental part of the world order. I wouldn’t be super shocked if they could do a meaningful amount of harm. Their fines are certainly collectible everywhere in the EU. The punishments for not paying the fines could be pretty considerable as well.
The whole ‘we levied some fines we’ll never collect’ thing isn’t unique to America, but it’s definitely not lolstandard worldwide or anything. In lots of places you don’t pay your fines they come and take them almost immediately. In some places you don’t pay your fine they seize it.
“Hello twitterworld!” - oj
1 Like
goofy
April 14, 2023, 1:47am
448
Substack Notes feels kinda Elon-adjacent, and uh lol wow how many times have you ever seen an interviewer (here it’s Nilay Patel) be like “dude, you’re fucking this up, here is the correct answer to the question, just say it” and the interviewee being like “NO! I am DETERMINED to keep fucking this up!”
!!!
(edit: I now see pvn posted this in the podcast thread too, there’s a video clip over there)
5 Likes
goofy
April 14, 2023, 7:09pm
449
Kara Swisher wrote Elon’s entry (you don’t need to click, the below is the whole thing) in Time’s 100-most-influential-people-of-2023 thing:
I first met Elon Musk in 1999 when he was just another Silicon Valley techie with a startup (in his case, X.com ). But he soon distinguished himself using his boundless imagination and relentless drive that has landed rockets on platforms in the ocean, pioneered the electric-vehicle revolution , and changed how we think about energy in many forms. Cool, right? Not so much these days, because what I did not see coming a mile off was Musk’s wholesale transformation into the world’s richest online troll after his purchase of Twitter . It’s a shame, because much of what he has tried to do over his career —even if some of it is still an aspiration—has been bold and inspirational, especially compared with most of the more anodyne techies for whom a better online dating service is the peak of innovation. But under Musk’s erratic rule, Twitter has become a nonstop grievance tantrum we must all endure, and he wastes far too much of his time fiddling on his toxic violin while it burns. What’s the opposite of progress? Elon Musk 2023.
it appears Elon Derangement Syndrome is contagious
He is not saying no as it would require banning readers who simply quote Substack authors.
The not 18 year old thing is not a flaw. It is the result of pinpoint accurate ai.
they post “pay for it you clowns” but what they really mean is “charge for it you clowns”. #freemarket #fuckpublicservice #diepoors #muskapital
goofy
April 17, 2023, 6:12am
458
Saw this highlighted from NYT’s Hard Fork podcast:
Not Elon, but certainly adjacent
In this edition of Eat the Rich Weekly, the President and CEO of MillerKnoll, a company hawking the uninspired and overpriced furniture that likely litters your own place of employment, told staffers inquiring about a bonus via Zoom to “leave pity...
