Congress doesn’t have much to do these days. Mainly it is a forum for Republicans to coo over their dictator, while Democrats cluck disapprovingly, writing their strongly worded letters.
It has only passed six laws in the first hundred days. The mob isn’t particularly interested in new laws. There are plenty on the books that they can ignore or abuse. One of these six laws is the Take It Down act. Melania herself wanted this, who could refuse?
In any normal world, this new law would be a good idea. Designed to take down “deepfake” and revenge porn, it is intended to protect people from onling bullying and persecution. To a tyrant, the law is an effective method of government censorship, a way to clamp down on the free speech of his opponents.
The key to it all is in the enforcement. Take Twitter, for example, which is owned by Elon Musk. Any violation of the new law will be policed by the FTC, which is currently controlled by Elon Musk.
Much of the traffic on Facebook nowadays is bots sharing AI pictures with each other. Since Zuck has sworn fealty to the emperor, he has nothing to fear from the law.
Smaller companies however will be hammered, or merely comply without question. Wikipedia will probably be the prize target.
Many writers yesterday were complacently assuming the regime is burning out, that it is running into implacable opposition. It’s only just started.
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