Twitter's lawsuit against anti-hate-speech crusaders gets SLAPPed out of court Elon Musk's attempt to use the courts to silence a nonprofit documenting hate speech on X has been dismissed by a California judge, who said it was clear the billionaire's legal action was all about putting a lid on criticism. In a 52-page order [PDF], San Francisco federal district judge Charles Breyer said, in essence, that …
Seems to be the right's current playbook, sadly. When El Reg covers DeSantis' latest move, banning children's social media activities, you will wonder where that "small government" promise is.
It's only there when THEY want it to be. Otherwise you'll do what we tell you.
Musk's "freedom of expression" goes just as far - rules for me, not for thee.
Costs is usually a given when you are the losing party, but typically how it works is first a judge/jury decides which side is at fault. In this case, Xitter, which even a lay person could have seen coming as soon as the lawsuit was announced. Then, once it's established who is at fault, there's a separate hearing, or even trial, to determine damages. So, we're at Phase 1: We've identified the source of the stench: Xitter and Xitler (happy coincidence). Phase 2 will be determining what is required to wash it off, and that hasn't happened yet.
I am not exactly holding out hope, but it would be most excellent if the Xitter lawyers were sanctioned for even bringing this case in the first place. You don't need to be one of the finest legal minds to be able to figure out what the reason was for bringing this case. Xitler was throwing another man-baby tantrum because people were quantifying what was already clear to anyone paying even a little bit of attention: Xitter has become overrun with Nazis, white nationalists, antisemites, Russian and Chinese propaganda, *phobics, and just generally insufferable people. Understandably, a lot of companies don't want to be associated, even tangentially, with that kind of hate speech by having their ads show up next to it. Since Xitter either can't or won't take the necessary steps to ensure it no longer happens, these companies have chosen to take their advertising budget dollars elsewhere. Before CCDH and others started putting actual numbers and analysis to the issue, Xitler could always try to claim that it was just an oopsie and won't ever happen again even if absolutely nothing was actually done. Then, unless the company went to the hassle of tracking where every impression of their ads showed up, they'd probably just have to take Xitler at his word.
At the heart of this lawsuit is basically that Xitler was embarrassed personally. Maybe he also had nightmares involving bone saws when he saw the amount of red ink on the Xitter balance sheet get larger as every major advertiser left, but mostly it was his ego being bruised that brought about this lawsuit. Which is why the lawyers who filed it should absolutely be referred to the CA State Bar for potential disciplinary action. When your whole job is about cutting to the quick of any argument, it should have been blindingly obvious that this was a frivolous lawsuit, and as officers of the court, they should have refused to bring it. Assholes like this are the sort who give the hard working lawyers a bad rep. IANAL, lest anyone get the wrong impression. I just know that there are plenty of people in the profession who, may not exactly be the most pleasant of people (they literally get paid to argue all day), but they do an honest days work for their pay.
One of the conditions of passing the Bar is that you agree not to bring cases to the court that clearly have no merit or are unlawful - eg SLAPPs.
If I asked a lawyer to sue Musk for something clearly frivolous or obviously intended to make him waste time and money to respond, like, I dunno, he didn't reply to my xits*, the lawyer should tell me I don't have a case and refuse to go to court - regardless of how much money I wave at them.
*Is that the accepted term?
(1) rcfp[.]org[/]anti-slapp-guide[/]california -- Nothing here about CA Bar disciplinary action against lawyers for plaintiffs bringing SLAPP judged lawsuits.
(2) Forbes - Anti-SLAPP Laws And Actions By Or Against Attorneys Personally - Opposing Party Cause Of Action Against Attorney
An attorney who brings an unsuccessful case on behalf of a client against another party may be subject to potential liability for malicious prosecution or abuse of process. Ordinarily, the special motion will be sustained in the vast majority of these situations, but still might be overcome in particularly egregious cases.
The only examples discussed therein are failed attempts to sue attorneys who brought SLAPP lawsuits - absolutely nothing about Bar disciplinary action.
(3) CA Bar Oath: I, (licensee name) solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of an attorney and counselor at law to the best of my knowledge and ability. As an officer of the court, I will strive to conduct myself at all times with dignity, courtesy and integrity.
Can you show any basis in case law or written law to show that attorneys can be disciplined by the Bar for a SLAPP judgement?
I'll state again I think it is a bad idea and would cut both ways. Your attitude seems to be part of the "by any means" short sighted trend that disregards and has nothing but contempt for legal precedence. Like you want to do, Stalin made his own laws. Stalin also beat Xitler but was not a nice guy.
The oath you quoted states that the lawyer will conduct themselves with integrity. If you are knowingly bringing a meritless case, how is that acting with integrity? Also, look at the recent case of John Eastman. He was part of the cabal that was responsible for bringing a bunch of meritless lawsuits claiming election fraud in 2020. I forget if they've already disbarred him or if it's still in limbo, but basically a foregone conclusion. He wasn't even directly involved in the lawsuits IIRC, he just was the one who came up with the scary idea of alternate electors that was intended to throw the formal process of counting electoral college votes into disarray long enough for Trump to file more lawsuits.
And again, you're taking this to an illogical extreme. This isn't a case of, I'm suing you because you are picking fruit off branches of my tree which extend over the property line onto your lot. You might consider that a silly case, and it is, but there's a legitimate issue at the core. Of course, if my lawyer even suspects that I'm actually wanting to file a lawsuit just to harass you, they should refuse to take it. This is a case where the lawyer(s) knew before they filed it that it had no merit, but that it ran afoul of SLAPP legislation.
Except that they're not bearing the consequences for their client's guilt, they're bearing the consequences for wasting the court's time with obviously frivolous cases that should never have been brought in the first place. This isn't about Xitler losing the case, it's about how this is a case that has absolutely no foundation in law, and was intended entirely to try to silence CCDH's speech which Xitler didn't like. Not only is it a waste of time for the CCDH's lawyers and the judge/jury who has to sit there read/listen to this garbage, but it takes up one of the limited slots on the court's docket, meaning people with legitimate cases have to wait longer to have their issue resolved. So, issuing a few fines to lawyers who bring these idiotic cases seems like an excellent first step in stopping them entirely. or at least cutting them down in number.
Businesses who advertised there won't have cared much about the motives behind the research. They would purely have looked at the facts.
Were their ads being shown next to hate speech? Yes.
That's all they care about. They were told it wouldn't happen, it did happen, so bye bye Twitter. Their only consideration would be brand safety and is the platform a good place to advertise that won't tarnish their image. Twitter has no one else to blame.
So throw all the lazy buzz words you like at the motivations of those doing the research, but the fact is they just revealed what was already happening. Twitter was and likely still is not a safe place to advertise if you value your brand image.
It's not so much that it happened... if it were a one-off, I doubt many companies would have left Xitter the way they did. It was the fact that it kept happening that was the problem. Xitter either couldn't, or wouldn't, do what was necessary to prevent it from happening, so advertisers said, "Fuck it, I'm out!"
You mean like how conservatives have been loosing their shit Bud Light because they had an advertising deal with a trans person? I forget why it was they were upset with Yeti coolers, but there was that one too. I'm sure if I wanted to, I could find plenty of other examples.
Usually when liberals get upset with a company, it's because they did something like promote antisemitism or their CEO is a racist POS. Conservatives seem to get angry with companies when they do something that upsets their delicate sensibilities like make them get a hardon over a person in a commercial, only to later find out they were trans. I also can't recall the last time I saw a liberal taking a gun and shooting at the product of a company that made them confront their latent homoerotic desires. That's a pretty aggressive action. You're literally play killing something.
Sadly, the "winners" probably will still get stung here. John Oliver got sued by Bob Murray for a piece about his coal mining business and their business practices. Despite winning it cost $200,000 in legal fees and their liability insurance premium was tripled.
It's worth looking in to this story just for the musical number "Eat Shit, Bob" that was on a follow-up show.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Week_Tonight_with_John_Oliver#Coal_mining_and_Bob_Murray
I mean, to be fair... John Oliver very deliberately picks fights with powerful people. If you're an insurance company providing the policy for that show, you kind of have to figure they're going to get sued again... and again, and again. I mean, just recently he tried to provoke Disney into suing them for using the Steamboat Willy version of Mickey Mouse a few days before it went into the public domain. While I'm sure they run the script for every show past the legal department before filming, they deliberately dance right up to the line and proceed to lean over it pretty far. Which is what tends to make that show so damn funny an entertaining.
Now, admittedly, an org like CCDH is also likely the sort that will piss off people who may sue, but probably not with the same frequency as John Oliver. If I'm an insurance adjuster looking to set rates, I'm going to give CCDH a much lower premium than John Oliver.
And for some reason when I saw Bob Murray my first thought was Bill Murray. Took me a second to remember who you were referring to and how, aside from a single vowel difference in their names, they're completely different people.
The point isn't risk though, it's that despite anti-SLAPP legislation being designed to stop people suing to silence critics, unless the people being sued get their fees in judgement from the courts or can afford it, then people like Musk or Bob Murray will continue to file SLAPP suits to silence their critics.
I only cited Oliver as a public example of fees and premiums, something most people would not publish, and he will get sued again and knows it, but for a regular person to even get an anti-SLAPP suit filed, never mind win it, the hurdles are pretty high.
See my comments above. I'm all for judges handing down some stinging sanctions for lawyers who bring these kinds of frivolous lawsuits. I know, as a general rule, they're reticent to do so because they don't want to sanction someone who was intending to bring a legitimate case, but there's a difference between a case that may seem rather stupid and pointless (like two neighbors arguing over who owns the fruit from a tree when the branch extends over the property line) and cases like this one. If, as a judge, you find you need 50+ pages to tell one party or the other just how frivolous the case was, I'd say that puts you on pretty firm footing for issuing a fine and referring the lawyer to the state bar for potential disciplinary action.
Tty this on for size, Mush--
You're an asshole; you always have been an asshole, and you always will be an asshole.
Will be glad to provide clarification if your reptilian-complex-only brain requires it (oops! You definitely need to get help with that five-syllable word, "clarification").
The only thing that would have made this better is if the suit had been dismissed with prejudice and the lawyer(s) who filed it be sanctioned for bringing an obviously frivolous lawsuit in the first place. As the judge pointed out, there's absolutely no question that this was an attempt to silence a critic and not any of other crap that they came up with as an afterthought in a piss-poor attempt to provide a pretext. We really need to start cracking down more on this shit. You start fining a few lawyers for wasting the court's time, and pretty soon the message will get out. That law license is a lot more valuable than any single client, no matter who they are.
So, cheers to the CCDH.
1. Lots of news stories around the world about how he lost his case trying to silence his critics
2. A reminder to potential advertisers that there's tons of filth on his site
3. Self publicised reputation as "free speech absolutist" incinerated
4. Failure to get money back he's lost by hosting filth on his site, by suing his critics
All in all, a thoroughly poor set of outcomes for Mr Strategic Business Genius there.
You're forgetting #0, which is that there were a lot of stories covering the case when it was filed, which invariably resulted in them talking about how CCDH found a lot of ads from big name companies being displayed next to... objectionable content. It's the Streisand Effect all over again.
Also #5: Having to pay damages to CDDH, and #6: Similar lawsuits against two other agencies now being greatly imperiled as there's now legal precedent SLAPPing down these arguments.
Saw some article today while skimming headlines waiting for a delivery at the store. The daily users of Xitter has been dropping significantly since Xitler took over, and basically everyone is putting the blame squarely on him. Someone said it's running the risk of becoming another MySpace, only probably without the sort of afterlife that MySpace is enjoying. It's nowhere near what it once was, but it's found a small profitable niche market to serve. My guess is Xitler would just close the entire site down as part of another one of his man-baby tantrums. Then again, he may not have much choice. On paper, if you just multiply the number of shares he owns in Tesla by the current price, he's one of the wealthiest people on the planet. However, when you look a little deeper, he's leveraged up to his eyeballs. He might even be able to teach Trump a few things about being the king of debt. We don't really know exact figures, but I think a conservative estimate is around 80% of his Tesla shares are collateral for some loan or another. The rest is illiquid assets, since as CEO, he can't just up and sell stock whenever he feels like it. There are a bunch of regulatory hoops he has to jump through. So, if the Saudi's and others want their money, and Xitler can't come up with the cash, he probably won't have any choice but to liquidate Xitter and try to get as much as he can from it to pay off that ridiculous tender offer he made to buy Twitter when he was high and wouldn't take yes for an answer.
Oh, and suppose it's worth mentioning that Xitter claims usership is up and the number of people signing up for new accounts is around 2m/day, but as pointed out, that number exceeds the number of app downloads per day, so odds are it's just all the bot accounts. Plus, Xitler is known for peddling misinformation. That's what happens when you fire anyone who tells you what you don't want to hear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Edit: And I see our vatnick friends are clocking in for the day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatnik
The Saudis are financially stuffed. They paid a few billion for a share in Twitter, and they own exactly that: A share in Twitter. If they know own a share in a business worth ( billion instead of 44 billion, that’s just tough luck.
The banks however are owed real money. Good luck getting it back.
I have to actually give Xitter and Xitler a small bit of credit on this one. They posted something on the site which was basically "We strongly disagree with the ruling and plan to appeal." It was surprisingly devoid of the narcissistic whining and other self-serving bullshit you would have likely expected these days. It was more your classic on-message, non-response type of response so as not to give the appeals court judge any reason to dislike you before the case even lands on their docket. Not sure how they managed to get that one past Xitler, maybe they just flashed something shiny in front of him and he distractedly gave the OK, maybe it was like #30 in a stack of 50 things he had to sign, but serious kudos are in order for whomever managed to do so, however they did it.
Didn't he ostensibly splurge a fortune on Twatter in order to ensure free speech rather than because it was a sound business investment? Moaning about lost advertising dollars, or rather, suing over them, kind of blows the lid off any claimed altruistic motivation. And that's completely leaving aside the exodus of advertisers dismayed at Musk's own pronouncements.
-A.
The whole free speech thing was just a crock of shit. He bought it while on a massive drug-fueled bender and wouldn't take yes for an answer. He just wanted to be queen bitch of his own personal mean girls platform. Of course the way he financed the deal was even worse than his repeatedly sweetening the offer to Twitter before they even had time to respond to his previous offer. The entire $45bn has to be paid, in full, within like 5-years. So far he's paid like $1bn, and that was basically by not just cutting Twitter to the bone, but sucking some of the marrow out while he was at it, not paying any bills, and not paying promised severances, etc. The thing about cutting like that, is you can only do it once, and you're basically mortgaging your future revenue, so where he's going to come up with the cash for the next payment is anyone's guess. Xitter revenues definitely aren't going to cover it, even if he were willing to risk not making payroll for the sad bastards who are left, he's already leveraged up to his eyeballs so most of his famed wealth isn't really his. He could maybe try using his Tesla cash salary, but I doubt that would buy him more than maybe one more year. He already uses his Tesla stock to fund things like SpaceX, which is why most of it is already spoken for. He could potentially let one of his various business ventures fail, like Neuralink or Boring, but that will likely result in lawsuits that will tie up a lot of his resources for years.
He's basically fucked, and it was all of his own doing. He's completely overextended, and I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me that will enjoy the schadenfreude of watching his little "empire" come crashing down around him. I'll feel bad for all the people who may lose their jobs as a result, but not for Xitler. I almost hope there really is a hell, and he gets to spend eternity having to relive watching everything come crashing down around him, but I'd settle for him suddenly becoming essentially penniless and untouchable in the business world because of all the racist and antisemitic things he's posted on Xitter. If he became a homeless person wandering the streets of Austin rooting through garbage cans looking for cans and bottles to redeem, being told by a bunch of rednecks to go back to his country because of his accent, I would be quite amused.
re: "If [Musk] became a homeless person . . . being told by a bunch of rednecks to go back to his country because of his accent, I would be quite amused."
Agree. But it's more likely he'll get some well-salaried "consultant" job at a company operated by one of his fan bros. Not quite a golden parachute, but better than the lead one anyone else would get.
The CCDH frequently "identify" examples of people claiming that transitioning away from fossil fuels will decrease people's standard of living or that renewables will need more land than fossil fuels.
So, many people on these very comment pages could find themselves being harassed for spreading "disinformation". Or more likely more famous people saying similar things, would find themselves on the wrong side of CCDH and have their advertising revenue cut off.
Hardly what I would call "Hate". More like debate, which they feel should be stifled.
A nice little explainer here
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/the-center-for-countering-digital
This doesn't mean I agree with Elon trying to SLAPP them down, but it does give a little context as to what he's up against.
A very small number of people who get upset that people are saying things on the internet that they don't agree with, and try to shut down their ad revenue.
If this organisation stuck to actual "Hate" I would have no issues with them.
They don't have a master control panel that can shut off ad revenue, not that I have any ad revenue to be cut off anyway. Still, they can only cut it off by going to advertisers and telling them things that make them want to cut it off voluntarily, and they individually have to be convinced. Twitter still has some advertisers. The important part here is that, if they don't have anything convincing to tell them, then the advertisers don't have any reason to stop advertising. It only worked because what they were able to show advertisers is something the advertisers didn't want to see enough that they choose to stop buying advertising space. The organization may have helped to shine a light on that, but without that light, it would still have been going on, and advertisers were already leaving as a result anyway.
Debate is not stifled by someone pointing out facts. If you want to accuse someone, accuse the advertisers; they made the actual decision not to spend when they were free to ignore any reports written, and if they had, nobody would notice much. Those advertisers have free speech, including the right not to advertise. No debate stifled, nothing untoward happening. There are some forms of harassment that do occur and are dangerous. This isn't it.
People like to dunk on Elon Musk (which is their right) but one thing I will say is that he does give some balance against people who also want to shut down speech apart from their own. It's always good to have comptetition rather than a one sided narrative - whoever's narrative that happens to be.
Hi is definitely a dick, but unfortunately Twitter is the only place that you are allowed to say certain things that the US Government doesn't like. Things like saying Covid vaccines don't stop you catching it or stop you passing it on, would have got you banned from every platform. Criticising the Net Zero policy will currently get you severely limited on Google and Facebook platforms, by shadow banning or other means.
Unfortunately this means you do seem to be getting all kinds of other hate speech on Twitter/X, but I don't believe the other large platforms are free of that also.
It's strange how Elon has gone from being compared to Tony Stark in most of the tech press, to now being compared to Hitler. Strange how this has also come about just around the time that he's upset the US government.
Is it possible that you aren't thinking for yourself but you are just a useful idiot who is thinking what you have been nudged to think?
He's not Tony Stark, but he's also not anything close to Hitler. I've heard him speak a few times and he does seem pretty balanced on most things, although he does seem to throw his toys out of the pram occasionally about not getting his own way. Like every other billionaire. At least he's open about it, unlike Google and Facebook who sneakily just silence you / demote you / shadow ban you if you challenge their elitist world view.
> Twitter is the only place that you are allowed to say certain things that the US Government doesn't like. Things like saying Covid vaccines don't stop you catching it or stop you passing it on, would have got you banned from every platform
So either you just proved yourself wrong, or you should be banned from El Reg..
Things like saying Covid vaccines don't stop you catching it or stop you passing it on
They were never intended to prevent you from getting covid, they were intended to make it so if/when you get covid your immune system is already primed to fight it off, so the disease is less severe and also less likely to kill you. My guess is that you're not being entirely honest about how you're phrasing things on the other platforms, because if you simply said what you put here, that would be factually correct, if maybe a bit misleading.
Criticising the Net Zero policy will currently get you severely limited on Google and Facebook platforms, by shadow banning or other means.
Yes, yes, the "shadow banning" bullshit. I have yet to see anyone do any kind of thorough analysis to show that it really was the company taking action against them and not any of the other almost infinite number of possibilities. Conservatives very often have a nasty habit of jumping to wild conclusions. A byproduct of too much time spent listening to each other instead of getting out into the world and exposing yourself to other people and viewpoints.
He's not Tony Stark, but he's also not anything close to Hitler.
Except that he does things very much like a young Hitler.
He
1) Repeats the Great Replacement Theory, which is that brown people from Mexico and Central America, are coming to the US to take the jobs of honest, hard working, white folk and various other racist tropes
2) He constantly rails against DEI
3) Tesla has repeatedly been sued for racial discrimination, meaning he clearly isn't interested in doing anything about it -- Tesla just settled one such lawsuit they'd already lost at trial 2X
4) He's been peddling Russian disinformation about Ukraine, where Putin is not just trying to destroy a people, but has literally been kidnapping their children and brainwashing them
5) Has made several antisemitic comments
Unlike Hitler, who at least managed to get the German economy back on track among a few other positives, before he went full-on genocidal lunatic, Xitler doesn't have even a few successes like that he can point to. He came from money, fucked things up at PayPal so badly they paid him to go away, and then used that money to effect a hostile takeover of Tesla, which he's been using as his own personal piggy bank ever since after stacking the board with literal family members and other sycophants.
Edit: And I see our vatnick friend Jellied Eel is lurking about with one of his many sock puppet accounts.
"They were never intended to prevent you from getting covid"
Rewriting history a bit there mate!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SkzTa8HRDk
"The CDC concluded that fully vaccinated people are at a very very low risk of getting covid 19"
"If you are fully vaccinated you no longer need to wear a mask"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebmj_3Y75bc
"Reduce Risk Of COVID Infection By 91%"
So was the President and MSNBC spreading misinformation?
"And I see our vatnick friend Jellied Eel is lurking"
Getting a bit paranoid?
There's only one vaccine I'm aware of that actually aims to prevent infection, and you can't even get it in the US. It works by fortifying your nasal passageways to prevent the virus from ever being able to enter the body in the first place. I want to say it's approved in India, but don't quote me on that; could be somewhere else in or around SE Asia. The mRNA vaccines that you can get in the US and Europe, are intended to prevent severe disease and death, not infection. It might help incidentally prevent spreading the virus to others if your immune system is able to attack it quickly and efficiently, but that's not the intent.
Since I don't consider random youtube videos to be credible sources, I'm not even going to bother looking at them. I'll just assume that, like dozens of other people I've come across, you think you're some kind of expert on a subject when you really don't know WTF it is you're talking about. You "do your own research" but that "research" basically involves just reading a lot of the same circle jerk info from the same paranoid people who don't know WTF they're talking about. This being a tech oriented site, one of my favorite examples goes back to when computers only had a max of 512KB of L2 cache. At the time, people who claimed to be experts would tell you that this means you should never have more than X amount (I forget what X was now, maybe 128MB?) of RAM, because otherwise it would slow your computer down. This was based on an incorrect/incomplete understanding of how L2 cache works. It stores memory addresses for RAM to provide faster access. They made the leap from "uncached RAM is slower, so uncached RAM = slower computer" which is incorrect. Uncached RAM is absolutely slower, but it's still going to be hundreds of times faster than the alternative of paging to a spinning rust drive. Even if you applied it to more modern computers with SSDs, uncached RAM would still be significantly faster than the alternative. It's even better to have fully cached RAM, but if you ever have to choose between uncached RAM and paging, uncached RAM will win every single time.
Also, I must thank you for the chuckle of posting as an anonymous coward and asking me if I was being paranoid.
"Since I don't consider random youtube videos to be credible sources"
It was a video of President Biden speaking. Are the words coming directly from his mouth not a credible source?
"I'll just assume"
Well, you just made an ass out of yourself, that is for sure.
"reading a lot of the same circle jerk info from the same paranoid people who don't know WTF they're talking about"
Says the person stuck in an echo chamber.
You are the one getting upset about being corrected by typing your big wall of text and the personal insults.
I am of no doubt that if in 2021/2022 someone had said to you that the vaccine doesn't stop transmission you would have been hammering the keyboard saying that it did and quoting definitions. I'm also sure you fully believe in the '30000 lies', 'fine people', 'injecting bleach' and 'bloodbath' hoaxes. All just inconsequential words really.
Not just that but I think aerogems has some shadow accounts to like their own posts and dislike ones that they disagree with. They even accuse others of doing the same, which is what made me think that.
I think this person is very bitter about something, and can be very nasty and throw all kinds of un-based accusations at people. Also, they seem to have a lot of time on their hands. (although not enough time to actually read things outside their cosy echo chamber)
I am a real person and I have feelings, I really don't appreciate being called a racist.
At least they can't stalk me on "other platforms" any more because I've either been kicked off, or decided to leave them dormant (or just lost my password and decided to stay away anyway).
Reg forums is my last remaining complete-waste-of-time arguing with wrong people on the internet who I just must correct at all costs.
"They were never intended to prevent you from getting covid"
...
"The CDC concluded that fully vaccinated people are at a very very low risk of getting covid 19"
Did you miss the words "low risk" there? Low risk means you could still catch it, which is entirely legitimate. Vaccines are not there to prevent you from catching something, they're there to try to prevent it from causing you serious harm (you know, like dying and such).
"If you are fully vaccinated you no longer need to wear a mask"
I think on your side of the ocean, the whole mask thing was more political than medical.
No, he said 'very very low risk' which is different from 'low risk'. A very is worth at least an order of magnitude.
The CDC, through President Biden, said the vaccine reduces you risk of getting covid to the point that you don't need to wear a mask. This is a world away from 'they were never intended to prevent you getting covid'. Biden didn't say you had a very very low risk of severe illness or dying. He said 'very very low risk of getting covid 19'.
Masks were always political. I just got the sunflower lanyard and did my best to never wear one.
"Things like saying Covid vaccines don't stop you catching it or stop you passing it on, would have got you banned from every platform."
Only if the admin of that platform is a dickhead who doesn't know how vaccines actually work. It's a tool to train your body's defences so it has a much better chance if the real lurgy should try to wiggle inside. It is not a magical portion that will guarantee that you don't ever suffer from the illness. That's down to whether or not you had a recent enough vaccination (for new strains, it's why the flu one is annual) and how good your immune system is at doing it's job (and possibly adapting to slightly different versions of the virus than it was trained on).
But, yes, with vaccination you're still vulnerable, but statistically less vulnerable. And that's the point, keep you out of hospital and out of the reaper's sight.
Another good take from the ministry of truth. I am looking forward to the increase in the chocolate ration!
If you've had the smallpox vaccine you don't get 'mild smallpox'.
Even wikipedia has it right:
"A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity"
The key being the immunity. Again wikipedia:
"In biology, immunity is the state of being insusceptible or resistant to a noxious agent or process, especially a pathogen or infectious disease."
Oh good, we've moved onto the dictionary game phase. Now you will pick some inconsequential word of phrase, latch onto a very specific and narrow definition of that word/phrase, and refuse to acknowledge any other possible meaning besides the one you've decided upon. Then, either people "debate" you on that point until they realize that if they talked to a brick wall, they would at least have an insanity defense for their action, at which point you claim you won. Or, you drag things so far off-topic that the original topic is forgotten and people decide it's no longer worth the effort to continue, at which point you also will claim you won. I expect you'll downvote this post in very short order to prove that I struck a nerve.
You clearly recognize you're on the losing end of the debate, but rather than do something sensible like say, "I was wrong, thank you for correcting me," like a mature adult would, you double down on the stupid like a petulant toddler would. You're really helping prove my suspicions that you're grossly misrepresenting what got you banned on all those other sites, so I'll remind you of the first rule of holes: Stop digging!
I'm pretty well convinced that we're getting a highly sanitized version of what actually transpired that is intended to make them seem like the victim. Sort of like, "they're banning me because I'm a conservative!!11!!!one" when it's really, "No, we're banning you because you've been acting like a fucking asshole who thinks they are above the rules." I don't have any actual proof, but they fit the pattern to a T.
If you weren't so heavily biased you'd notice that I didn't defend him: I simply pointed out that he adds a different perspective and that's a refreshing change from the same chorus of voices preaching the same messages from the mouths of various governments and from the media (both online and offline). The latter part is my real beef with what's been going on in the last deacde: That the MSM is in lock-step with the establishment and that, not Musk, should worry the dickens out of you. Or at least it should worry at least as much.
The Left can't win on the facts, so they have to destroy the person who presents them. Media Matters and ADL label speech as Hate only to suppress it and they will use the law to suppress it if they can. Otherwise they resort to an ad hominem attack on any person who's argument does not line up with the Far Left.
Seems Xitler is looking to spend money Xitter doesn't have helping pay the legal fees of other assholes like him, who tried to silence critical speech.
"X is proud to help defend Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill against the government-supported efforts to cancel her speech," X said, going on to say they would pay the remainder of the doctor's $300,000 legal bills. Gill had previously posted that she had raised around half of the amount herself through a crowdfunding campaign, meaning X was going to fund the estimated remainder of $150,000.However, Musk and company left out an important, glaring detail that seems to run contrary to his stated "free speech" beliefs: The lawsuit that Gill lost was one that she filed in an attempt to silence critics from saying things she did not like.
https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-x-to-support-covid-vaccine-skeptic-kulvinder-kaur-gill-lawsuit
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