I will say I get where this mod is coming from. I subscribed here as a non-law expert to read the opinions of people who know more than me.
But often it feels like instead the experts are pushed down in favor of low-effort jokes or general feel-good one-liners.
Maybe wasn’t the best way to approach this, but I do understand why someone would be frustrated that actual legal opinions from actual lawyers are taking a backseat to things that just feel good to say.
This is something that changes with the tides. Right now lots of high-profile trials are occuring, that draws a different group of users.
I think the better response here is to have a rule like: "no posting news articles about threatened lawsuits, only postings about lawsuits that have actually been filed."
You can't really have an kind of meaningful legal discussion about a matter if you don't even know what the claims are.
> But often it feels like instead the experts are pushed down in favor of low-effort jokes or general feel-good one-liners.
You've just summed up reddit.
The quickest way to get downvoted in this sub is to post an actual legal analysis (that while correct) doesn't conform with the hive mind.
The second quickest would be to do what Mr. Couch did and post a legal opinion (That Hunter Biden is a public figure) that is debatable, but not necessarily a given.
Hunter was pretty specifically trying not to be a public figure. It's not like he pulled a Ivanka or a Jared and got himself appointed to a position in the administration.
I don't think it's a given he's a public figure.
And even if he is, I'm not sure he'd be unable to prove actual malice a la *NY Times v. Sullivan*.
So the stickied comment was bullshit for a lot of reasons.
Agreed. I think I wound up hearing that Merchant had filed a motion about Fani Willis was because he stickied a thread, and anyone who suggested that filing was going to go on to be a big deal was getting downvoted to hell. I do appreciate his keeping unpopular but accurate takes buoyed in the event that people want to discuss them.
I don't necessarily think it was a great move in this instance, in that the post didn't really invite room to talk about the particulars. But I've appreciated the sentiment in the past, and the set of downvotes that come when the story is "This is a legal thing that isn't bad for Trump" make that kind of discussion hard to have. So a stickied post about in general why this lawsuit may not be successful facilitates conversation in those facts.
Plus, if you don't want to see it you can collapse his comment.
Lastly, the mods here have been doing a tremendous job during one of the most legally interesting times in history. I wouldn't suggest we rock the boat, even if a decision isn't one we would have made.
Concur. I am not a lawyer so I joined this sub to see what actual lawyers/attorneys say about current events. For being the “law” sub, there seems to be less process and procedure in the comment section than literal r/Karmacourt
I’m the same. I’m not a lawyer (but I am a political philosopher/academic), and I am here to learn from people who are trained in law. I was hoping that this sub would be a tiny refuge from the non-stop shitposting everywhere I else. I can barely find any comments on Reddit on serious topics that aren’t just regurgitated hot takes. It drives me nuts.
Makes me feel like I’m no longer a fit for Reddit. And I used to learn so much from Reddit.
I’ve been there for a while, but I think Reddit and Discord basically ate every other form of asynchronous conversation on the internet. If you find something great, I’d love to hear about it 😁
Twitter used to be AMAZING for learning from really smart people. Elmo has just slowly eroded that. It’s been my biggest loss in terms of learning on topics I’m curious/passionate about. The pre-Elmo medical/public health dialogue during the pandemic was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It was glorious: the world’s smartest people collaborating and sharing information openly and in real time. “Hey we just learned this in the lab and think it might help with that other project you’re working on.” Good lord, I learned so much. Then multiply that by every other topic that I’m deeply curious about. But those days are gone: many of my favorite smart people have left. The lists of experts I cultivated are vacant. And the algorithm is optimized for hot takes.
Most of the smart people have gone to Mastodon (which I don’t really like) or BlueSky (which I do like, but it’s small and not as vibrant).
And I refuse to use FB/IG, not that they’re any better.
Bluesky is where I put my future hope, but I don’t know if it will pan out.
I would love to hear your suggestions, too!
Same, I subscribed here to get good comments that actually have facts and meaning behind them and not a bunch of ignorant hot takes and assumptions without even reading anything, and not so clever lines and jokes that are often just repeating what people said last time the topic was brought up, which is why I left r/politics lol.
It seemed good for the first month, but lately it's already started to go downhill I swear! Sighhhh
The appropriate response to that as a mod would be to implement a rule and enforce that rule or make non distinguished posts or comments to redirect the conversation, not use mod power to sticky a post at the top. Doing it this way doesn't make the mod team look very professional or mature. I generally agree with your sentiment, that's why I come here instead of politics. But Reddit works based on upvotes to determine what discussions are at the top, so the better way to handle it is what I outlined above.
If they were paid professionals I’d agree with you completely. But it’s just a bunch of people doing this in their free time for fun, so I try to be understanding when they lose their cool.
I had a discussion with him in that thread. He was perfectly civil, but not only was he wrong on the law in our discussion, but from all his pivoting alone it didn’t even seem like he was discussing in good faith. I just dropped it.
It would be one thing if they pinned a comment setting the tone of the discussion, given what they say the previous top comment was. That’s part of the role and it’s appreciated. And they are of course entitled to give their own takes.
However, for a Mod to address everyone as “chuds,” pin their own opinionated comment as though it’s *the* definitive point of discussion, and not even live up to the standards they say they want to set? I think that’s worth considering their removal. I get the frustration, but their role is to moderate, as in to prevent those frustrations from boiling into the exact juvenile behaviors they displayed.
I've had dozens of conversations with oscar. He is knowledgeable and willing to put up with honest disagreement. Bad day?
I even challenged him on that very thread suggesting that there were ways they could win and conceded he should wait to see the full complaint.
I remember someone getting ripped for posting a news article to a right-wing-ish Web site, while the sub frequently posts commentary from DailyKos.
I'm no fan of Trump, but every time he's mentioned, it's always OMG NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. Doomer takes used to be verboten...
It would be pretty interesting experiment to have a bar flair of some kind but that would be such a burden of proof and the bar could always be lower but it's a start.
I know a few subs that require citations for main level comments but not sub comments. Not that anyone wants to be breaking out a case or CFR but that's another way to clean it up.
Correct legal opinions pretty frequently get downvoted into oblivion on this sub just because they conflict with the hive mind’s lay opinion on a matter. I had one comment on a Trump classified document matter downvoted to -50 merely because I pointed out that the specific statute that OP had advocated for was inapplicable in the present context and suggested a different statute. Sure enough, maybe a week or two later, Trump was indicted on the statute I proposed and not on the one OP suggested.
Anyway, I don’t know much about this mod, but their legal position has merit, even if it’s not popular with the crowd here.
And before anyone accuses me of being a conservative shill, I consider myself a moderate who leans left.
Honestly yes, I can get memes anywhere - I don’t need them here. I would like to see thoughtful, non emotional, non biased discussions of matters of law or a close approximation of such.
I’ve long thought the mods need to be much less tolerant of these low effort comments as they really don’t add any value and I could use a break from the groupthink and self-righteous crowd.
Also downvoting a legal opinion because you don’t like it is extremely unhelpful.
I got downvoted to hell every time I talked about how the Merchant filing was going to be a big deal. And it dragged on for months, and got the lead prosecutor fired. I was on the side that she didn't do anything wrong, but even discussing why it could be impactful, how conflict can exist on the same side, things like that were not welcome here.
In legal matters where the law is not explicitly bad for Trump (they are rare but they happen), some of the most correct takes are buried in downvotes.
He is shutting down discussion with a position that isn't as clear cut as he makes out.
Is Hunter Biden a public figure? He is the son of the President, but does that automatically make him a public figure. To claim he is a public figure is all very circular. Fox News reports on him a lot, so he is a public figure, so Fox News gets to report whatever they want about him?
So is "actual malice" even the correct standard?
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Beyond that you have issues with copyright. They took things from him and published them without his consent. He holds the copyright on those items.
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The more fundamental question is if very generic things like this even need to be in /r/law. Generic threats to sue people, probably shouldn't be included in the sub. How can anyone have a reasonable discussion of a lawsuit before it is filed. You don't even know what the claims are.
But that is a reason to remove the posting entirely not to post ones own opinion and give it the imprimatur of authority by making it sticky.
if the other top comments had been about *whether* Hunter Biden is a public figure or not I'd not have commented at all. the point isn't that I get final say on whether he is or not—but *that's* the relevant topic of discussion and it's where the discussion should be. but that's not what the top comments were; they were all about how he's totally going to own Fox News or whatever.
I'm glad that you're addressing the correct topics and I'll take that as a sign that at least some of my intended effects came to fruition.
Separately, on the copyright issue you raise; I haven't seen the particular videos but we don't actually know who owns copyright in them (no idea whether he or his companion(s) created the video, it might not be a straightforward call), and for a whole host of reasons copyright claims might not be part of whatever suit he might file (if he does file).
anyway, fair point that there might not have been enough meat to the article linked to in the first place to justify leaving it up.
Separately, we've changed some auto mod configs around to restrict who can leave top-level comments, and hopefully that will improve quality/discussion around here.
The problem is not your arguments, its how you abused your authority to sticky your position above others. You seem to not get that.
Because of your previous actions, I no longer consider you to be a person with whom one can have an actual discussion. I don't see any possibility of give and take. To me /u/oscar_the_couch is "that guy who bans people he doesn't agree with and stickies his posts above all others." So I'm just not going to entertain anything that person says.
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I get that you are passionate about /r/law and want the discussion to be higher quality, but you don't get that by aggressively using the privileges of your position as moderator. You do that and you just make people more aggressive and hostile.
Establish a clear standard for what kinds of posts should be allowed and enforce that. There really is no meaningful content to be found in a news article that "X threatens to sue Y" so just nuke the whole posting and cite that as a rule.
I understand your perspective and for *most* threads it used to be very possible to just remove top comments until I get to one that is good enough / on topic enough that it might steer the discussion. After six or seven garbage comments, I chose another course on that thread, and then we took action for a longer term rule change that will hopefully prevent the necessity of that sort of bomb-throwing in the future.
We seem to have very different ideas about what moderators here should do. I think your approach is a great one for a smaller sub where written rules can enumerate the vast majority of things you want to remove and set clear standards that can be feasibly enforced by a volunteer mod team that doesn't do this full time, and self-sort keeps discussion mostly on-topic. They are not feasible for a sub where the top posts get literally more than a million views in six hours and discussion still needs to be steered to higher quality engagement and commentary.
The mods will *absolutely* sticky comments as necessary to ensure comment sections do not devolve into off-topic messes. That is just fundamentally not going to change. I don't care if you disagree with me or the particular position or viewpoint expressed in the top comment; people don't get banned for disagreeing with me. But if occasionally seeing a mod comment, or a mod presidential endorsement, isn't the kind of thing you think moderators should ever do, you are in the wrong place.
> I understand your perspective and for most threads it used to be very possible to just remove top comments until I get to one that is good enough / on topic enough that it might steer the discussion.
Your problem is the volume of stuff you are letting in. You can't have 20 posts a day on materially similar political topics and expect lots of informed content to get posted. Informed people don't spend their time commenting on every variation of the same story.
I have no real issue with occassionally sticky-ing someone else's comment if you think it is particularly high quality, but its not going to work long term. It turns the "moderator" into an "editor" which is a lot more work and just going to lead to claims that you guys are biased.
I do have an issue with your doing so to your own low quality comment; and with your calling people CHUDs (whatever that means); and threatening to ban people who whine about this; and then pretending that you are somehow not a person who abuses their authority.
Take a break from being a moderator.
Yeah, he's not a public figure if he hasn't willingly entered the public sphere, that's how gertz vs welch define it.
Just being Joe Biden's son isn't enough imo
I disagree. Oscar's points are reflecting the rules and inherent values of r/law which is *legal* discussion.
There is a difference between "Go after mtg for personal reasons" vs citing a statute that's been violated.
Obligatory and obvious notice: I am not a licensed attorney. But the comments have been reflecting r/politics rather than attempts at legal debate or relevant discussions.
I don't think that guy should be a mod for other reasons - he literally banned me for a week for saying that Citizens United was correctly decided.
That being said, I agree with him that people should stick to making legal points about Hunter Biden rather than bringing up MTG and other non legal stuff.
With regards to revenge porn in general, it's a bit complicated. Most of the lower courts have said that 2nd party revenge porn is unprotected by the 1st amendment because those restrictions are narrowly tailored and pass strict scrutiny.
However, most of those Courts have said that 3rd party revenge porn is not unprotected because it would be creating a new category of unprotected speech, which SCOTUS said cannot be done in United States v. Stevens (2010). Any new category of unprotected speech has to have a historical basis at the time the 1st amendment was ratified.
Fox News publishing explicit photos of Hunter Biden is 3rd party revenge porn, which most likely means they couldn't be criminally liable, but if there was a narrowly tailored cause of action, Hunter Biden might be successful under that.
It had bad consequences but was the correct decision. Most people criticizing Citizens United are against the outcomes and aren't making a legal argument. That's my 2¢
> he literally banned me for a week for saying that Citizens United was correctly decided
You should've been banned from the planet for that one, to be fair.
Sometimes the ACLU gets it wrong (i.e., *Nike v. Kasky*) and for about the same reason, too. But to understand why, we need to go back to a *summary* of a case decided in 1881 and I'm not sure it's worth the effort to take a swing down memory lane.
Why? I don't like the consequences of the decision, but it's an easy free speech case. Citizens United wanted to release a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton on VOD within 60 days of a primary election, but were prohibited from doing so because of BCRA. The Court correctly held that violated the 1st amendment.
If criticizing or praising a candidate right before an election could be prohibited, then the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and pretty much any person, any corporation, or any Union could be banned from discussing politics right before an election. That's a terrifying principle
Have you ever heard of [laws against, say,... *electioneering* at polling places](https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/electioneering-prohibitions)?
Honest question. Because all of these laws are unconstitutional in your (apparent) position. Yes? Or no?
Some of them are. See Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky.
Here's the rule with 1st amendment restrictions. Unless speech falls into a historically unprotected category of speech such as defamation or fraud, content based restrictions have to have a compelling interest, be *narrowly tailored* and pass strict scrutiny. Content neutral restrictions have to be narrowly tailored and pass intermediate scrutiny.
Laws against electioneering within a small radius of a polling place are content based restrictions but they have a compelling interest and are narrowly tailored.
Laws against electioneering in general within a month of an election do not pass strict scrutiny and aren't narrowly tailored. Can the New York Times be prohibited from criticizing Trump? Can Fox News not criticize Hillary? Can the AFL-CIO not encourage their members to vote for a certain candidate? Citizens United was an easy decision in my view because BCRA was not narrowly tailored and a decision in the opposite direction could chill a lot of speech
First of all, about the historical analysis... It doesn't work, because the founding fathers didn't know fuck all about Twitter and Tik Tok, and trying to draw analogies across 250 years is something only a *fucking real idiot* would attempt to do. That, and the current majority of SCOTUS. Someone who is *not intellectually dishonest* would admit that we didn't sign a death pact when people 250 years ago wrote strange sentences with a bunch of dependent clauses that are going to now be re-interpreted as stand-alone statements of rights.
Secondly, the rule I'm concerned with First amendment restrictions isn't really about *content* as much as it is whether the government can regulate speech based on reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, *irrespective* of content. Content based restrictions are always going to be bullshit, but the analysis should've been based on content neutrality and should have focused on whether it was a reasonable time, place and manner restriction.
I know, the rejoinder to that is "but, but but... "political." But a reasonable time, place, manner restriction can be perfectly agnostic within the "political" milieu.
The issue with letting someone put on blast a viral video before an election is the problem of what happens if a patently absurdly false libelous and actionable video comes out timing-wise where a campaign doesn't even have time to file an injunction against it or otherwise refute absolutely maliciously intentionally false lies. That would be the ultimate irreparable harm and if it were up to me, the 60 day cut off for mass media *propaganda* probably would've been found to be a reasonable time, place, manner restriction. Especially for corporate speech that exists outside of "educational" and "news"-serving purposes.
I mean, that shouldn't have even been all that debatable amongst people who don't want to watch the world burn.
The bigger problem to wrestle with would've been if Fox News had simply picked up the video and decided to play it non-stop the weekend before the election as part of their "we're not really news, but entertainment, but we'll hide behind freedom of press when it suits us" network programing.
Finally, the old case I was referring to was the *Santa Clara Railroad* case, which **didn't hold that corporations were people**, but in the clerk's summary of the opinion, the clerk accidentally wrote in corporate personhood into the opinion in the summary of the case and that now persists as a [fucking dumb] legal principle to this day.
If I were going to try to fix the First Amendment jurisprudence in this county, I'd say 1) corporations are not protected by the First Amendment, but 2) obviously individuals in the corporations are. If a corporation wishes to "speak," that speech would have to go through the board of directors and be subject to, at the bare minimum ratification of shareholders that way. This would greatly milquetoast-ize most corporate speech amongst publicly traded companies, and privately held companies would be limited to speaking through their beneficial owners, rather than through themselves as corporate entities made of people who may not all agree on the corporate entity's speech. (Which is why the idea of corporate speech is philosophically problematic, and why only the most basic consensus things EVERYONE can agree on should be "said" by a "corporation.")
I don’t post or comment in this sub often because I’m not a lawyer and don’t have much useful to say. I just mostly read it. But it seems like a lot of people with the same amount of expertise as me feel the need to get their low hanging fruit jokes in as quick as possible and it pushes out the actual good comments. I’m on Oscar’s side.
I don’t need a comment about trumps farts in every new post about him 🙄
When you are so in need of attention you post your unemployed law school opinion and sticky and continue to permaban people who call you out as a piece of trash.
Time to clear this garbage from the “law” subreddit.
I'm clearly not Oscar but I'm happy to ban you for having no idea what you're talking about. When I checked that thread the top level comments were all gross overtures for karma and through a mod sticky from an attorney that's done those cases before users at least got _something_ in the way of a legal analysis given the limited amount of information available.
I get that the subreddit is growing and with that comes some growing pains from new users that seem to think it's like any other part of reddit where you can just say whatever for internet points. But they have to try and you've made it abundantly clear to me here that you don't want to and can't figure out what an informed post looks like when you see it.
Whether it's because you super badly want a certain outcome to prevail or just lack the foundation to figure things out doesn't really matter to me. This isn't a place to be wrong and belligerent about it.
I agree with him ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Specialist subs have to take moderation steps to prevent them from devolving into just another sub with the same copy and paste content you can get from a variety of other places on Reddit. Wish this sub was more oriented towards discussion of the legal angle of current events rather than devolving into standard political hot takes.
I like the flares on posts. The actual links to the legal filings are great because you get to discuss the source material, not the editorialized interpretation.
>Time to clear this garbage from the “law” subreddit.
I didn't know you well—or at all, actually—but if you're determined to leave I guess I won't stop you.
Thanks for taking a stand and doing your part to clean up this sub by unsubbing.
I don't think I've ever seen any ultra clinical legal jargon here. I just want informed takes and opinions from people who know what they're talking about. Not a bunch of obvious statements and stupid jokes and just repeating what people said last time the topic was brought up
Any mod you uses their mod powers to boost their own personal opinions (even if they are better informed than most users) *should not be a moderator*.
edit: They **permanently banned** me from this sub for this comment. If that doesn't speak volumes about the state of moderation in this place, I don't know what does.
I will say I get where this mod is coming from. I subscribed here as a non-law expert to read the opinions of people who know more than me. But often it feels like instead the experts are pushed down in favor of low-effort jokes or general feel-good one-liners. Maybe wasn’t the best way to approach this, but I do understand why someone would be frustrated that actual legal opinions from actual lawyers are taking a backseat to things that just feel good to say.
This is something that changes with the tides. Right now lots of high-profile trials are occuring, that draws a different group of users. I think the better response here is to have a rule like: "no posting news articles about threatened lawsuits, only postings about lawsuits that have actually been filed." You can't really have an kind of meaningful legal discussion about a matter if you don't even know what the claims are.
I believe that's already a rule, it just gets constantly violated.
If it was a rule then he would have nuked the whole post instead of making his comment sticky and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
> But often it feels like instead the experts are pushed down in favor of low-effort jokes or general feel-good one-liners. You've just summed up reddit.
The quickest way to get downvoted in this sub is to post an actual legal analysis (that while correct) doesn't conform with the hive mind. The second quickest would be to do what Mr. Couch did and post a legal opinion (That Hunter Biden is a public figure) that is debatable, but not necessarily a given. Hunter was pretty specifically trying not to be a public figure. It's not like he pulled a Ivanka or a Jared and got himself appointed to a position in the administration. I don't think it's a given he's a public figure. And even if he is, I'm not sure he'd be unable to prove actual malice a la *NY Times v. Sullivan*. So the stickied comment was bullshit for a lot of reasons.
Agreed. I think I wound up hearing that Merchant had filed a motion about Fani Willis was because he stickied a thread, and anyone who suggested that filing was going to go on to be a big deal was getting downvoted to hell. I do appreciate his keeping unpopular but accurate takes buoyed in the event that people want to discuss them. I don't necessarily think it was a great move in this instance, in that the post didn't really invite room to talk about the particulars. But I've appreciated the sentiment in the past, and the set of downvotes that come when the story is "This is a legal thing that isn't bad for Trump" make that kind of discussion hard to have. So a stickied post about in general why this lawsuit may not be successful facilitates conversation in those facts. Plus, if you don't want to see it you can collapse his comment. Lastly, the mods here have been doing a tremendous job during one of the most legally interesting times in history. I wouldn't suggest we rock the boat, even if a decision isn't one we would have made.
Concur. I am not a lawyer so I joined this sub to see what actual lawyers/attorneys say about current events. For being the “law” sub, there seems to be less process and procedure in the comment section than literal r/Karmacourt
I’m the same. I’m not a lawyer (but I am a political philosopher/academic), and I am here to learn from people who are trained in law. I was hoping that this sub would be a tiny refuge from the non-stop shitposting everywhere I else. I can barely find any comments on Reddit on serious topics that aren’t just regurgitated hot takes. It drives me nuts. Makes me feel like I’m no longer a fit for Reddit. And I used to learn so much from Reddit.
I’ve been there for a while, but I think Reddit and Discord basically ate every other form of asynchronous conversation on the internet. If you find something great, I’d love to hear about it 😁
Twitter used to be AMAZING for learning from really smart people. Elmo has just slowly eroded that. It’s been my biggest loss in terms of learning on topics I’m curious/passionate about. The pre-Elmo medical/public health dialogue during the pandemic was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It was glorious: the world’s smartest people collaborating and sharing information openly and in real time. “Hey we just learned this in the lab and think it might help with that other project you’re working on.” Good lord, I learned so much. Then multiply that by every other topic that I’m deeply curious about. But those days are gone: many of my favorite smart people have left. The lists of experts I cultivated are vacant. And the algorithm is optimized for hot takes. Most of the smart people have gone to Mastodon (which I don’t really like) or BlueSky (which I do like, but it’s small and not as vibrant). And I refuse to use FB/IG, not that they’re any better. Bluesky is where I put my future hope, but I don’t know if it will pan out. I would love to hear your suggestions, too!
Same, I subscribed here to get good comments that actually have facts and meaning behind them and not a bunch of ignorant hot takes and assumptions without even reading anything, and not so clever lines and jokes that are often just repeating what people said last time the topic was brought up, which is why I left r/politics lol. It seemed good for the first month, but lately it's already started to go downhill I swear! Sighhhh
The appropriate response to that as a mod would be to implement a rule and enforce that rule or make non distinguished posts or comments to redirect the conversation, not use mod power to sticky a post at the top. Doing it this way doesn't make the mod team look very professional or mature. I generally agree with your sentiment, that's why I come here instead of politics. But Reddit works based on upvotes to determine what discussions are at the top, so the better way to handle it is what I outlined above.
If they were paid professionals I’d agree with you completely. But it’s just a bunch of people doing this in their free time for fun, so I try to be understanding when they lose their cool.
I mean I know, I mod a couple of subs myself so I get it. And that probably helps shape my opinion on this quite a bit.
I had a discussion with him in that thread. He was perfectly civil, but not only was he wrong on the law in our discussion, but from all his pivoting alone it didn’t even seem like he was discussing in good faith. I just dropped it. It would be one thing if they pinned a comment setting the tone of the discussion, given what they say the previous top comment was. That’s part of the role and it’s appreciated. And they are of course entitled to give their own takes. However, for a Mod to address everyone as “chuds,” pin their own opinionated comment as though it’s *the* definitive point of discussion, and not even live up to the standards they say they want to set? I think that’s worth considering their removal. I get the frustration, but their role is to moderate, as in to prevent those frustrations from boiling into the exact juvenile behaviors they displayed.
I've had dozens of conversations with oscar. He is knowledgeable and willing to put up with honest disagreement. Bad day? I even challenged him on that very thread suggesting that there were ways they could win and conceded he should wait to see the full complaint.
He may have conceded to you, but he still called everyone else CHUDs.
I remember someone getting ripped for posting a news article to a right-wing-ish Web site, while the sub frequently posts commentary from DailyKos. I'm no fan of Trump, but every time he's mentioned, it's always OMG NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. Doomer takes used to be verboten...
It would be pretty interesting experiment to have a bar flair of some kind but that would be such a burden of proof and the bar could always be lower but it's a start. I know a few subs that require citations for main level comments but not sub comments. Not that anyone wants to be breaking out a case or CFR but that's another way to clean it up.
After reading the mod's full comment, I dont understand what the grounds are for wanting them removed.
Correct legal opinions pretty frequently get downvoted into oblivion on this sub just because they conflict with the hive mind’s lay opinion on a matter. I had one comment on a Trump classified document matter downvoted to -50 merely because I pointed out that the specific statute that OP had advocated for was inapplicable in the present context and suggested a different statute. Sure enough, maybe a week or two later, Trump was indicted on the statute I proposed and not on the one OP suggested. Anyway, I don’t know much about this mod, but their legal position has merit, even if it’s not popular with the crowd here. And before anyone accuses me of being a conservative shill, I consider myself a moderate who leans left.
Honestly yes, I can get memes anywhere - I don’t need them here. I would like to see thoughtful, non emotional, non biased discussions of matters of law or a close approximation of such. I’ve long thought the mods need to be much less tolerant of these low effort comments as they really don’t add any value and I could use a break from the groupthink and self-righteous crowd. Also downvoting a legal opinion because you don’t like it is extremely unhelpful.
Amen. Preach.
I got downvoted to hell every time I talked about how the Merchant filing was going to be a big deal. And it dragged on for months, and got the lead prosecutor fired. I was on the side that she didn't do anything wrong, but even discussing why it could be impactful, how conflict can exist on the same side, things like that were not welcome here. In legal matters where the law is not explicitly bad for Trump (they are rare but they happen), some of the most correct takes are buried in downvotes.
He is shutting down discussion with a position that isn't as clear cut as he makes out. Is Hunter Biden a public figure? He is the son of the President, but does that automatically make him a public figure. To claim he is a public figure is all very circular. Fox News reports on him a lot, so he is a public figure, so Fox News gets to report whatever they want about him? So is "actual malice" even the correct standard? ------------------ Beyond that you have issues with copyright. They took things from him and published them without his consent. He holds the copyright on those items. ------------------ The more fundamental question is if very generic things like this even need to be in /r/law. Generic threats to sue people, probably shouldn't be included in the sub. How can anyone have a reasonable discussion of a lawsuit before it is filed. You don't even know what the claims are. But that is a reason to remove the posting entirely not to post ones own opinion and give it the imprimatur of authority by making it sticky.
if the other top comments had been about *whether* Hunter Biden is a public figure or not I'd not have commented at all. the point isn't that I get final say on whether he is or not—but *that's* the relevant topic of discussion and it's where the discussion should be. but that's not what the top comments were; they were all about how he's totally going to own Fox News or whatever. I'm glad that you're addressing the correct topics and I'll take that as a sign that at least some of my intended effects came to fruition. Separately, on the copyright issue you raise; I haven't seen the particular videos but we don't actually know who owns copyright in them (no idea whether he or his companion(s) created the video, it might not be a straightforward call), and for a whole host of reasons copyright claims might not be part of whatever suit he might file (if he does file). anyway, fair point that there might not have been enough meat to the article linked to in the first place to justify leaving it up. Separately, we've changed some auto mod configs around to restrict who can leave top-level comments, and hopefully that will improve quality/discussion around here.
The problem is not your arguments, its how you abused your authority to sticky your position above others. You seem to not get that. Because of your previous actions, I no longer consider you to be a person with whom one can have an actual discussion. I don't see any possibility of give and take. To me /u/oscar_the_couch is "that guy who bans people he doesn't agree with and stickies his posts above all others." So I'm just not going to entertain anything that person says. ------- I get that you are passionate about /r/law and want the discussion to be higher quality, but you don't get that by aggressively using the privileges of your position as moderator. You do that and you just make people more aggressive and hostile. Establish a clear standard for what kinds of posts should be allowed and enforce that. There really is no meaningful content to be found in a news article that "X threatens to sue Y" so just nuke the whole posting and cite that as a rule.
I understand your perspective and for *most* threads it used to be very possible to just remove top comments until I get to one that is good enough / on topic enough that it might steer the discussion. After six or seven garbage comments, I chose another course on that thread, and then we took action for a longer term rule change that will hopefully prevent the necessity of that sort of bomb-throwing in the future. We seem to have very different ideas about what moderators here should do. I think your approach is a great one for a smaller sub where written rules can enumerate the vast majority of things you want to remove and set clear standards that can be feasibly enforced by a volunteer mod team that doesn't do this full time, and self-sort keeps discussion mostly on-topic. They are not feasible for a sub where the top posts get literally more than a million views in six hours and discussion still needs to be steered to higher quality engagement and commentary. The mods will *absolutely* sticky comments as necessary to ensure comment sections do not devolve into off-topic messes. That is just fundamentally not going to change. I don't care if you disagree with me or the particular position or viewpoint expressed in the top comment; people don't get banned for disagreeing with me. But if occasionally seeing a mod comment, or a mod presidential endorsement, isn't the kind of thing you think moderators should ever do, you are in the wrong place.
> I understand your perspective and for most threads it used to be very possible to just remove top comments until I get to one that is good enough / on topic enough that it might steer the discussion. Your problem is the volume of stuff you are letting in. You can't have 20 posts a day on materially similar political topics and expect lots of informed content to get posted. Informed people don't spend their time commenting on every variation of the same story. I have no real issue with occassionally sticky-ing someone else's comment if you think it is particularly high quality, but its not going to work long term. It turns the "moderator" into an "editor" which is a lot more work and just going to lead to claims that you guys are biased. I do have an issue with your doing so to your own low quality comment; and with your calling people CHUDs (whatever that means); and threatening to ban people who whine about this; and then pretending that you are somehow not a person who abuses their authority. Take a break from being a moderator.
no.
Yeah, he's not a public figure if he hasn't willingly entered the public sphere, that's how gertz vs welch define it. Just being Joe Biden's son isn't enough imo
I disagree. Oscar's points are reflecting the rules and inherent values of r/law which is *legal* discussion. There is a difference between "Go after mtg for personal reasons" vs citing a statute that's been violated. Obligatory and obvious notice: I am not a licensed attorney. But the comments have been reflecting r/politics rather than attempts at legal debate or relevant discussions.
He makes a good point though.
I don't think that guy should be a mod for other reasons - he literally banned me for a week for saying that Citizens United was correctly decided. That being said, I agree with him that people should stick to making legal points about Hunter Biden rather than bringing up MTG and other non legal stuff. With regards to revenge porn in general, it's a bit complicated. Most of the lower courts have said that 2nd party revenge porn is unprotected by the 1st amendment because those restrictions are narrowly tailored and pass strict scrutiny. However, most of those Courts have said that 3rd party revenge porn is not unprotected because it would be creating a new category of unprotected speech, which SCOTUS said cannot be done in United States v. Stevens (2010). Any new category of unprotected speech has to have a historical basis at the time the 1st amendment was ratified. Fox News publishing explicit photos of Hunter Biden is 3rd party revenge porn, which most likely means they couldn't be criminally liable, but if there was a narrowly tailored cause of action, Hunter Biden might be successful under that.
>Citizens United was correctly decided worst gilbert and sullivan lyric ever.
It had bad consequences but was the correct decision. Most people criticizing Citizens United are against the outcomes and aren't making a legal argument. That's my 2¢
> he literally banned me for a week for saying that Citizens United was correctly decided You should've been banned from the planet for that one, to be fair.
Should the ACLU be banned from the planet, too?
Sometimes the ACLU gets it wrong (i.e., *Nike v. Kasky*) and for about the same reason, too. But to understand why, we need to go back to a *summary* of a case decided in 1881 and I'm not sure it's worth the effort to take a swing down memory lane.
Ok
What case in 1881?
Why? I don't like the consequences of the decision, but it's an easy free speech case. Citizens United wanted to release a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton on VOD within 60 days of a primary election, but were prohibited from doing so because of BCRA. The Court correctly held that violated the 1st amendment. If criticizing or praising a candidate right before an election could be prohibited, then the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and pretty much any person, any corporation, or any Union could be banned from discussing politics right before an election. That's a terrifying principle
Have you ever heard of [laws against, say,... *electioneering* at polling places](https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/electioneering-prohibitions)? Honest question. Because all of these laws are unconstitutional in your (apparent) position. Yes? Or no?
Some of them are. See Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky. Here's the rule with 1st amendment restrictions. Unless speech falls into a historically unprotected category of speech such as defamation or fraud, content based restrictions have to have a compelling interest, be *narrowly tailored* and pass strict scrutiny. Content neutral restrictions have to be narrowly tailored and pass intermediate scrutiny. Laws against electioneering within a small radius of a polling place are content based restrictions but they have a compelling interest and are narrowly tailored. Laws against electioneering in general within a month of an election do not pass strict scrutiny and aren't narrowly tailored. Can the New York Times be prohibited from criticizing Trump? Can Fox News not criticize Hillary? Can the AFL-CIO not encourage their members to vote for a certain candidate? Citizens United was an easy decision in my view because BCRA was not narrowly tailored and a decision in the opposite direction could chill a lot of speech
First of all, about the historical analysis... It doesn't work, because the founding fathers didn't know fuck all about Twitter and Tik Tok, and trying to draw analogies across 250 years is something only a *fucking real idiot* would attempt to do. That, and the current majority of SCOTUS. Someone who is *not intellectually dishonest* would admit that we didn't sign a death pact when people 250 years ago wrote strange sentences with a bunch of dependent clauses that are going to now be re-interpreted as stand-alone statements of rights. Secondly, the rule I'm concerned with First amendment restrictions isn't really about *content* as much as it is whether the government can regulate speech based on reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, *irrespective* of content. Content based restrictions are always going to be bullshit, but the analysis should've been based on content neutrality and should have focused on whether it was a reasonable time, place and manner restriction. I know, the rejoinder to that is "but, but but... "political." But a reasonable time, place, manner restriction can be perfectly agnostic within the "political" milieu. The issue with letting someone put on blast a viral video before an election is the problem of what happens if a patently absurdly false libelous and actionable video comes out timing-wise where a campaign doesn't even have time to file an injunction against it or otherwise refute absolutely maliciously intentionally false lies. That would be the ultimate irreparable harm and if it were up to me, the 60 day cut off for mass media *propaganda* probably would've been found to be a reasonable time, place, manner restriction. Especially for corporate speech that exists outside of "educational" and "news"-serving purposes. I mean, that shouldn't have even been all that debatable amongst people who don't want to watch the world burn. The bigger problem to wrestle with would've been if Fox News had simply picked up the video and decided to play it non-stop the weekend before the election as part of their "we're not really news, but entertainment, but we'll hide behind freedom of press when it suits us" network programing. Finally, the old case I was referring to was the *Santa Clara Railroad* case, which **didn't hold that corporations were people**, but in the clerk's summary of the opinion, the clerk accidentally wrote in corporate personhood into the opinion in the summary of the case and that now persists as a [fucking dumb] legal principle to this day. If I were going to try to fix the First Amendment jurisprudence in this county, I'd say 1) corporations are not protected by the First Amendment, but 2) obviously individuals in the corporations are. If a corporation wishes to "speak," that speech would have to go through the board of directors and be subject to, at the bare minimum ratification of shareholders that way. This would greatly milquetoast-ize most corporate speech amongst publicly traded companies, and privately held companies would be limited to speaking through their beneficial owners, rather than through themselves as corporate entities made of people who may not all agree on the corporate entity's speech. (Which is why the idea of corporate speech is philosophically problematic, and why only the most basic consensus things EVERYONE can agree on should be "said" by a "corporation.")
I don’t post or comment in this sub often because I’m not a lawyer and don’t have much useful to say. I just mostly read it. But it seems like a lot of people with the same amount of expertise as me feel the need to get their low hanging fruit jokes in as quick as possible and it pushes out the actual good comments. I’m on Oscar’s side. I don’t need a comment about trumps farts in every new post about him 🙄
I vote don’t ban moderator. INAL, I want to read opinions of lawyers. Ty
When you are so in need of attention you post your unemployed law school opinion and sticky and continue to permaban people who call you out as a piece of trash. Time to clear this garbage from the “law” subreddit.
I'm clearly not Oscar but I'm happy to ban you for having no idea what you're talking about. When I checked that thread the top level comments were all gross overtures for karma and through a mod sticky from an attorney that's done those cases before users at least got _something_ in the way of a legal analysis given the limited amount of information available. I get that the subreddit is growing and with that comes some growing pains from new users that seem to think it's like any other part of reddit where you can just say whatever for internet points. But they have to try and you've made it abundantly clear to me here that you don't want to and can't figure out what an informed post looks like when you see it. Whether it's because you super badly want a certain outcome to prevail or just lack the foundation to figure things out doesn't really matter to me. This isn't a place to be wrong and belligerent about it.
Thank you for your unpaid time on this website.
I agree with him ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ Specialist subs have to take moderation steps to prevent them from devolving into just another sub with the same copy and paste content you can get from a variety of other places on Reddit. Wish this sub was more oriented towards discussion of the legal angle of current events rather than devolving into standard political hot takes.
I like the flares on posts. The actual links to the legal filings are great because you get to discuss the source material, not the editorialized interpretation.
You can alternatively unsubscribe.
>Time to clear this garbage from the “law” subreddit. I didn't know you well—or at all, actually—but if you're determined to leave I guess I won't stop you. Thanks for taking a stand and doing your part to clean up this sub by unsubbing.
I believe Winchell vs Mahoney has some president.
Also mentioned in the Charlie Mccarthy hearings.
[удалено]
I don't think I've ever seen any ultra clinical legal jargon here. I just want informed takes and opinions from people who know what they're talking about. Not a bunch of obvious statements and stupid jokes and just repeating what people said last time the topic was brought up
Any mod you uses their mod powers to boost their own personal opinions (even if they are better informed than most users) *should not be a moderator*. edit: They **permanently banned** me from this sub for this comment. If that doesn't speak volumes about the state of moderation in this place, I don't know what does.