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r721

Mike Masnick's opinion:

>Elon Musk Files Really Strong 1st Amendment Challenge To California’s Terrible Social Media ‘Transparency’ Law

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/08/elon-musk-files-really-s...

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I don't know who Masnick is but the loaded headline tells me I shouldn't care. So, should I?

Tech/legal blogger:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techdirt

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/technology/mike-masnick-t...

He's usually quite critical of Musk, so it's a newsworthy thing that he supported him in this case.

Mike Masnick is probably one of the most critical people of Elon. You've may have read one of his articles prior, perhaps in the early days when Elon bought Twitter. His analysis of Elon's obligations to purchase Twitter, criticism of Elon's approach to content moderation (and lack of understanding), it's all been pretty good and legally sound.

The fact that he is praising Elon here says something.

Whether or not he's critical of Elon has no bearing on his legal analysis

In theory, where people are perfect reasoners, it doesn't. Realistically, people tend to form opinions that fit the narratives they want. If someone who normally takes one side of a politicized issue instead takes the other side, that suggests that the case for the other side is particularly compelling because it compelled this person to switch sides.

I'm more interested in his qualifications in legal analysis to come to his conclusion that Musk's challenge is strong, and frankly, I don't really think his opinions on Musk have a strong bearing there. Especially given the fact that I don't think there is a reasonable legal basis to say the challenge is strong. So him being against Musk has gotten me nowhere in this.

Masnick is a long-time and respected tech blogger with a good legal knowledge as far as I can tell. He's article are usually pretty fact-based and well-informed. And as others have said, he's usually pretty critical about Musk. So yes, I think his opinion on this matter is to be taken seriously.

It's not really so much "Mike Masnick's opinion" as "Masnick explaining his TechDirt colleague's, Eric Goldman's, opinion".

Eric Goldman is a "leading expert in the fields of Internet Law" [0]. His assessment of this bill's constitutionality is probably a good one. The Washington Post cited it in one of their stories [1], and quoted the part where he says it's "likely to be struck down as unconstitutional at substantial taxpayer expense".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Goldman

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/13/califor...

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