We get maybe 1 or 2 fighter jet overflights near my house per year and it's pretty jarring. My military friend says, "that's the sound of freedom" as if the only possible place to practice low-altitude maneuvers is over my kid's elementary school.
I enjoy a good troll as much as the next substacker, and maybe I haven't thought through how enforcement works, but it seems bad that someone could just spam every government account with the word fuck and there's nothing they can do about it. But also, if that's true, now would be a great time to be spamming every government account with the word fuck. Why isn't this happening?
Also:
Sorry about your cat
Your website is ridiculous and made me laugh out loud at work
No, what they can do about it disable all comments or all messages. That's part of 1A's bargain though, if you open up a public forum, you have to keep it open for everyone.
Ah makes sense. I don't do social media - I'm guessing most/all government social media disable comments then? Otherwise I'm amazed the comments haven't devolved to what I said above.
But they don't moderate right? (i don't have social media) Just surprised any government accounts don't get spammed with vitriol based on my impression of social media.
Ok I saw the lawsuit and the social media pile on, but this is hilarious! And yeah it was pretty clear the core complaint was pretty unambiguous and straightforward.
Public agencies that can't handle the public probably should avoid social media.
I was wondering why I didn't hear them so much this past weekend...
Holy shit! If you'll pardon the expression, this is like catnip to me. It has a cat (IN A DRESS, no less), internet drama, some genuinely interesting social questions, and your hilarious and excellent writing documenting the whole thing.
Best of luck to you guys; it seems to me you have an airtight case (I don't know squat, but it seems like a pretty clear-cut 1A violation to me).
I meant to tell you back when you published it that I loved your paean to Layla. I'm a cat person through and through and that one hit me in the feels.
There's something so banal about modern life: most people online just live in cycles of outrage. It's always whatever's going on on this episode of Love Island, or who kissed whom on the Coldplay cam, or Sydney Sweeney selling jeans... or this lawsuit. Innocious stories go viral and people get high off being part of a digital lynch mob. I'm not sure if democracy can survive the age of social media.
I'm not a lawyer and the law is essentially magic to me, but wasnt this addressed recently by the Supreme Court in Lindke v. Freed and that one about the school board? It seems like you should be able to say whatever you want without getting blocked.
It's predictable that it fell along partisan lines but I think people are just going to conflate your complaint about the angels and your complaint about the angels blocking you. Everyone would reverse sides on that 2019 case of AOC blocking a youtuber that was harassing her on twitter. And people love scolding other pet owners.
I do have some questions about the idea government officials can't block people. It is kind of odd that I could have spent four years dming slurs at Kamala Harris, but would have had to stop once she left office. Are elected officials just supposed to accept that sort of thing? Or rely on tech companies to ban people? Maybe society will just develop a sort of pillarisation where each party only uses one form of social media. Twitter bans critics of Republicans and bluesky bans critics of democrats so politicians just use the one that protects them. Can Elon(x owner) ban people while Elon (doge head) not block them?
Anyways, congratulations on the success of your anti-blue angel campaign.
Practically speaking, the inbox for a social media account with any significant following quickly becomes useless because of the avalanche of messages. This isn't even getting into the issue of slurs and insults. Govt accounts should probably disable DMs by default just based on the record-keeping logistical headaches it creates.
That's a good point but from the user perspective, there isn't much difference between an account disabling dms or blocking them. Even if blocking a specific person is illegal, it doesn't feel particularly different from disabling all dms.
If I was dming slurs to Harris daily, I wouldn't feel like my rights were less infringed if she just shut down all dms rather than blocked me specifically. It seems like a procedural technicality that one is prohibited by the first amendment. I guess people feel differently though.
(For context, i think the blue angels are bad and it's too bad the mouth-breathers like them enough that they're invited back)
(Should also probably clarify that I wouldn't harass Harris. She seems like a perfectly fine person, even if she got in over her head last year and seems pretty incompetent at running a campaign. Sending her slurs just seemed like something stupid that x tos would allow)
I disagree that there's no difference, consider if a city council had a meeting open to everyone except you VERSUS if no city council meeting took place. Along one dimension, you could argue that it's better for the city council to hear from 99% of residents rather than 0%, and I agree. But you also have to weigh it against another dimension of how valuable equal access to government is, particularly when the discrimination is on an improper basis.
I disagree with that analogy because I think functionally the government hears from 0% of dms in their inbox. As you point out, social media for large accounts aren't really usable. Is there an expectation that dms get anything besides a boilerplate response after a light skimming? I don't think so.
Instead of a city council meeting, I would compare it to am overflowing suggestion box that rarely get a response. It doesn't seem like an injustice to not have to opportunity to speak when speakers aren't listened to.
Sure, if every suggestion in the box gets ignored, then banning one person from the box will have no practical effect. At that point the concern is one of equity; that it's unfair to ban only one person from the box.
Do note that being blocked on social media also prevents someone from posting comments, and having others see those comments. That aspect has a much bigger practical impact.
Situations in which rights have no practical effects have never struck me as unfair. So the right to send messages to overflowing inboxes has never been intuitive to me. And when I think of rights, I don't think of things that are conditional on everyone else also not losing that right. If I have a right to DM and I am denied doing that, I don't think it's any less infringed if other people are also not allowed to DM. I understand that we apparently do have the right to not be kept from DMing someone who can receive DMs from other people. I just don't feel too strongly about it and feel like that's more of a technicality than a moral victory
Maybe that's a minority position, but I think it'd be hard to tell. My guess is that people don't actually have strong feelings about the 1st amendment right to DM, just how it can be used. That seems like it was your experience - people ignored the specific complaint (that a government account blocked someone) to focus on the larger conflict between you and the Blue Angels. However you made it clear that you considered anyone commenting on the Blue Angels(a jingoistic waste imo) overall, rather than your specific complaint about their social media policy, is ignorant and illiterate, so instead I commented on how it's not very intuitive to me that you can DM anything you want to government officials and they can't do anything about it.
I think one reason for my ambivalence about that right is the situations it lead to. Let's say DMs are like a city council meeting. Doesn't that city council meetings are being held at Elon Musk's or Zuckerberg's gated houses and they can remove constituents at any time for any reason? And that city councils can choose which venue they want for their meetings, with a pre-screened list of possible attendees? It is a good thing that citizens can wear "fuck the draft" to a courthouse. But if that courthouse was hosted by twitter, then citizens might be barred from entering if they wore "cisgender" on their clothes.
In other words, I don't think the recognition of the right to DM is entirely a good thing. While usually the recognition of rights shifts power from government to citizen, it seems like in this case it actually shifts power to the tech companies instead. This is shown by how you referenced Instagram's TOS in the same sentence as the first amendment. This is quite a tangent from what you're actually talking about here, but I hope it contextualizes why I view the Blue Angel's violation more as a technicality than a moral injustice. But once again, congratulations on the anti-Angels campaign and I hope they stop getting invited back soon.
(and I guess I should apologize for my own illiteracy - I didn't see that you linked to the Lindke case in your first sentence, but had read about it after seeing your complaint on the cat instagram and being reminded of the Trump lawsuit enough to look into how it developed. One benefit of reading your writing is that it often provokes that sort of thing)
Great performance on Jake & Spike. I lol'd more than once: "maybe you need a better booker", "my clients are happy", "I'm sorry you disagree with the first amendment". The hosts were a pleasant surprise too.
Overall, that was excellent radio (or whatever we call this hybrid broadcast/streaming format). I plan to tune in next time I visit my mom.
Note: I am very sorry about your cat. My wife and I currently have three cats but we lost one about a year ago to cancer. Losing your pets sucks. It must suck even more to have it happen due to something that could have been prevented. And the Blue Angels suck for banning your wife from expressing her unhappiness.
Now that that's out of the way, I'm about to make this about me. :-)
This is one of the things I really, really hate about the internet, which is that it makes me aware that for every thing in this world that I love wholeheartedly, there are lots of people out there who I otherwise like who hate the thing I love and would be happier if it went away.
I LOVE airshows. I've been going to them since I was 8 or 9, I think. And the thing I love so much about them, probably more than anything else, is the sound. I can see jets and other planes flying around on video, but I can really only experience the amazing sounds in person. The way it rattles in your chest and shakes everything around you is a feature, not a bug, for me.
But, thanks to the internet (and not just your post), I'm acutely aware of how much other people, often people with pets with noise sensitivity but also just people in general, really hate the sound of military aircraft flying around at max power. And I'm not aware of any good solution for making everybody happy here. (You might say "you have have airshows but they have to be far away from population centers" but that's functionally equivalent to "you can't have airshows", since not enough people can or will travel to and pay for an airshow in the middle of nowhere to make them sustainable.)
This has happened with so many of the things I grew up loving:
Golf (urbanists and environmentalists hate the waste of land and water resources)
Cars (ditto)
Classical music (turns out it's white supremacist)
Catch-and-release fly fishing (why do you like torturing fish?)
Flying small airplanes (public health experts now believe that the lead from leaded avgas is making kids that grow up near airports stupid)
Shooting guns for fun (aside from whether or not I should be allowed to have guns at all, environmentalists and public health folks want to ban lead bullets, which is the only remotely cheap and effective option for projectiles)
A psychologically healthier person would be able to tune out the chattering masses and continue to enjoy the hobbies they enjoy, but I can't seem to. I think "maybe I should go to the range this weekend", but then I'll think "other than my dad I can't think of anybody who I can talk to about this without them looking at me strangely" and I'll just stay home and watch YouTube instead.
I agree with the principle of the lawsuit and all, but it seems like a bit much to call the cat “her daughter” in the legal complaint.
Language is organic
Words have meanings. A lawyer should know that.
Bees are fish
If I die of secondhand embarrassment, my surviving spouse knows who to sue.
We get maybe 1 or 2 fighter jet overflights near my house per year and it's pretty jarring. My military friend says, "that's the sound of freedom" as if the only possible place to practice low-altitude maneuvers is over my kid's elementary school.
"XXX-XXX-XXXX - Do not call us."
"Presence acknowledged. Engagement declined."
Peak website design. 10/10, no notes.
Also, Yassine Meskhout isn't your real name?!?!?
I enjoy a good troll as much as the next substacker, and maybe I haven't thought through how enforcement works, but it seems bad that someone could just spam every government account with the word fuck and there's nothing they can do about it. But also, if that's true, now would be a great time to be spamming every government account with the word fuck. Why isn't this happening?
Also:
Sorry about your cat
Your website is ridiculous and made me laugh out loud at work
No, what they can do about it disable all comments or all messages. That's part of 1A's bargain though, if you open up a public forum, you have to keep it open for everyone.
Ah makes sense. I don't do social media - I'm guessing most/all government social media disable comments then? Otherwise I'm amazed the comments haven't devolved to what I said above.
The private platform where these comments are hosted can still moderate comments. The concern at that point would be if the platform is censoring on behalf of the government. This came up with the NRA recently https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rifle_Association_of_America_v._Vullo
But they don't moderate right? (i don't have social media) Just surprised any government accounts don't get spammed with vitriol based on my impression of social media.
Good point about jawboning, and Interesting case
Yassine, your wife is a lucky woman to have such a devoted partner, but putting all of this out there in the world is a little crazy.
I am a beacon of righteous living, upholding my cherished values with every breath and free of shame 😊
Ok I saw the lawsuit and the social media pile on, but this is hilarious! And yeah it was pretty clear the core complaint was pretty unambiguous and straightforward.
Public agencies that can't handle the public probably should avoid social media.
I was wondering why I didn't hear them so much this past weekend...
Holy shit! If you'll pardon the expression, this is like catnip to me. It has a cat (IN A DRESS, no less), internet drama, some genuinely interesting social questions, and your hilarious and excellent writing documenting the whole thing.
Best of luck to you guys; it seems to me you have an airtight case (I don't know squat, but it seems like a pretty clear-cut 1A violation to me).
I meant to tell you back when you published it that I loved your paean to Layla. I'm a cat person through and through and that one hit me in the feels.
It's not the point, but your captions are always a+. Layla's memory is for a blessing.
There's something so banal about modern life: most people online just live in cycles of outrage. It's always whatever's going on on this episode of Love Island, or who kissed whom on the Coldplay cam, or Sydney Sweeney selling jeans... or this lawsuit. Innocious stories go viral and people get high off being part of a digital lynch mob. I'm not sure if democracy can survive the age of social media.
You absolute chad
Unfathomably based.
I'm not a lawyer and the law is essentially magic to me, but wasnt this addressed recently by the Supreme Court in Lindke v. Freed and that one about the school board? It seems like you should be able to say whatever you want without getting blocked.
It's predictable that it fell along partisan lines but I think people are just going to conflate your complaint about the angels and your complaint about the angels blocking you. Everyone would reverse sides on that 2019 case of AOC blocking a youtuber that was harassing her on twitter. And people love scolding other pet owners.
I do have some questions about the idea government officials can't block people. It is kind of odd that I could have spent four years dming slurs at Kamala Harris, but would have had to stop once she left office. Are elected officials just supposed to accept that sort of thing? Or rely on tech companies to ban people? Maybe society will just develop a sort of pillarisation where each party only uses one form of social media. Twitter bans critics of Republicans and bluesky bans critics of democrats so politicians just use the one that protects them. Can Elon(x owner) ban people while Elon (doge head) not block them?
Anyways, congratulations on the success of your anti-blue angel campaign.
Practically speaking, the inbox for a social media account with any significant following quickly becomes useless because of the avalanche of messages. This isn't even getting into the issue of slurs and insults. Govt accounts should probably disable DMs by default just based on the record-keeping logistical headaches it creates.
That's a good point but from the user perspective, there isn't much difference between an account disabling dms or blocking them. Even if blocking a specific person is illegal, it doesn't feel particularly different from disabling all dms.
If I was dming slurs to Harris daily, I wouldn't feel like my rights were less infringed if she just shut down all dms rather than blocked me specifically. It seems like a procedural technicality that one is prohibited by the first amendment. I guess people feel differently though.
(For context, i think the blue angels are bad and it's too bad the mouth-breathers like them enough that they're invited back)
(Should also probably clarify that I wouldn't harass Harris. She seems like a perfectly fine person, even if she got in over her head last year and seems pretty incompetent at running a campaign. Sending her slurs just seemed like something stupid that x tos would allow)
I disagree that there's no difference, consider if a city council had a meeting open to everyone except you VERSUS if no city council meeting took place. Along one dimension, you could argue that it's better for the city council to hear from 99% of residents rather than 0%, and I agree. But you also have to weigh it against another dimension of how valuable equal access to government is, particularly when the discrimination is on an improper basis.
I disagree with that analogy because I think functionally the government hears from 0% of dms in their inbox. As you point out, social media for large accounts aren't really usable. Is there an expectation that dms get anything besides a boilerplate response after a light skimming? I don't think so.
Instead of a city council meeting, I would compare it to am overflowing suggestion box that rarely get a response. It doesn't seem like an injustice to not have to opportunity to speak when speakers aren't listened to.
Sure, if every suggestion in the box gets ignored, then banning one person from the box will have no practical effect. At that point the concern is one of equity; that it's unfair to ban only one person from the box.
Do note that being blocked on social media also prevents someone from posting comments, and having others see those comments. That aspect has a much bigger practical impact.
Situations in which rights have no practical effects have never struck me as unfair. So the right to send messages to overflowing inboxes has never been intuitive to me. And when I think of rights, I don't think of things that are conditional on everyone else also not losing that right. If I have a right to DM and I am denied doing that, I don't think it's any less infringed if other people are also not allowed to DM. I understand that we apparently do have the right to not be kept from DMing someone who can receive DMs from other people. I just don't feel too strongly about it and feel like that's more of a technicality than a moral victory
Maybe that's a minority position, but I think it'd be hard to tell. My guess is that people don't actually have strong feelings about the 1st amendment right to DM, just how it can be used. That seems like it was your experience - people ignored the specific complaint (that a government account blocked someone) to focus on the larger conflict between you and the Blue Angels. However you made it clear that you considered anyone commenting on the Blue Angels(a jingoistic waste imo) overall, rather than your specific complaint about their social media policy, is ignorant and illiterate, so instead I commented on how it's not very intuitive to me that you can DM anything you want to government officials and they can't do anything about it.
I think one reason for my ambivalence about that right is the situations it lead to. Let's say DMs are like a city council meeting. Doesn't that city council meetings are being held at Elon Musk's or Zuckerberg's gated houses and they can remove constituents at any time for any reason? And that city councils can choose which venue they want for their meetings, with a pre-screened list of possible attendees? It is a good thing that citizens can wear "fuck the draft" to a courthouse. But if that courthouse was hosted by twitter, then citizens might be barred from entering if they wore "cisgender" on their clothes.
In other words, I don't think the recognition of the right to DM is entirely a good thing. While usually the recognition of rights shifts power from government to citizen, it seems like in this case it actually shifts power to the tech companies instead. This is shown by how you referenced Instagram's TOS in the same sentence as the first amendment. This is quite a tangent from what you're actually talking about here, but I hope it contextualizes why I view the Blue Angel's violation more as a technicality than a moral injustice. But once again, congratulations on the anti-Angels campaign and I hope they stop getting invited back soon.
(and I guess I should apologize for my own illiteracy - I didn't see that you linked to the Lindke case in your first sentence, but had read about it after seeing your complaint on the cat instagram and being reminded of the Trump lawsuit enough to look into how it developed. One benefit of reading your writing is that it often provokes that sort of thing)
Great performance on Jake & Spike. I lol'd more than once: "maybe you need a better booker", "my clients are happy", "I'm sorry you disagree with the first amendment". The hosts were a pleasant surprise too.
Overall, that was excellent radio (or whatever we call this hybrid broadcast/streaming format). I plan to tune in next time I visit my mom.
Note: I am very sorry about your cat. My wife and I currently have three cats but we lost one about a year ago to cancer. Losing your pets sucks. It must suck even more to have it happen due to something that could have been prevented. And the Blue Angels suck for banning your wife from expressing her unhappiness.
Now that that's out of the way, I'm about to make this about me. :-)
This is one of the things I really, really hate about the internet, which is that it makes me aware that for every thing in this world that I love wholeheartedly, there are lots of people out there who I otherwise like who hate the thing I love and would be happier if it went away.
I LOVE airshows. I've been going to them since I was 8 or 9, I think. And the thing I love so much about them, probably more than anything else, is the sound. I can see jets and other planes flying around on video, but I can really only experience the amazing sounds in person. The way it rattles in your chest and shakes everything around you is a feature, not a bug, for me.
But, thanks to the internet (and not just your post), I'm acutely aware of how much other people, often people with pets with noise sensitivity but also just people in general, really hate the sound of military aircraft flying around at max power. And I'm not aware of any good solution for making everybody happy here. (You might say "you have have airshows but they have to be far away from population centers" but that's functionally equivalent to "you can't have airshows", since not enough people can or will travel to and pay for an airshow in the middle of nowhere to make them sustainable.)
This has happened with so many of the things I grew up loving:
Golf (urbanists and environmentalists hate the waste of land and water resources)
Cars (ditto)
Classical music (turns out it's white supremacist)
Catch-and-release fly fishing (why do you like torturing fish?)
Flying small airplanes (public health experts now believe that the lead from leaded avgas is making kids that grow up near airports stupid)
Shooting guns for fun (aside from whether or not I should be allowed to have guns at all, environmentalists and public health folks want to ban lead bullets, which is the only remotely cheap and effective option for projectiles)
A psychologically healthier person would be able to tune out the chattering masses and continue to enjoy the hobbies they enjoy, but I can't seem to. I think "maybe I should go to the range this weekend", but then I'll think "other than my dad I can't think of anybody who I can talk to about this without them looking at me strangely" and I'll just stay home and watch YouTube instead.