Listened to Corporations Were Always People from On the Media | WNYC Studios

Ten years ago Citizens United declared that corporations are people and that their money is speech. A historian tells us actually, it was ever thus.

No discussion of money and politics is complete without a tip of the hat to Citizens United, the landmark Supreme Court ruling of 10 years ago that recognized corporations as people and their money as speech. 

That ruling was followed a few years ago by the Hobby Lobby decision, giving business owners the right to flout federal law based on their religious beliefs. To many Americans, particularly on the left, both rulings were bizarre and ominous expansions of corporate rights. But, if you think this is the novel handiwork of a uniquely conservative Supreme Court, you haven't been paying attention to the past three or four hundred years of court cases and American history.

Adam Winkler, professor of law at UCLA, is the author of We the Corporations: How American Business Won Their Civil Rights. He told us in 2018 that the principle of corporate rights has been litigated forever and predates our very founding. 

To even out the playing field we should definitely prevent corporate interests from dominating the discussion. Certainly they may need some protections in law where it comes to owning property and some of their basic functions, but allowing them outsized influence in governance is not necessary.

This episode has some fantastic historical discussion. It is painfully disappointing to hear corporations taking advantage of the 13th and 14th amendments that African Americans weren’t able to appreciate in the same way at the same time.

👓 Following People or Feeds in the #IndieWeb #mb #DoOO #edtechchat #literacies” | Greg McVerry

Read Following People or Feeds in the #IndieWeb #mb #DoOO #edtechchat #literacies by Greg McVerryGreg McVerry (quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com)
I am scrolling through history (h/t to Kevin Marks for reminding of the ccurated posts by danah boyd) as we discuss how best to follow people in social readers on the IndieWeb. Tantek Çelik has suggested nobody ever on the history of the web wants to follow feeds. danah seemed  to agree in 2004. T...

👓 Can we PLEASE talk about privacy, not GDPR, now? | Sebastian Greger

Read Can we PLEASE talk about privacy, not GDPR, now? by Sebastian Greger (Sebastian Greger)
It’s the “morning after”: a mere twelve hours have passed since the GDPR applies and while still awaiting breaking news on hobbyist blog owners being fined EUR 20 million, an army of burnt-out web and legal professionals has begun to clean up from the party that was “the final dash towards GDPR”.
A nice article pushing folks to focus more on the privacy portion of the discussion rather than the non-nonsensical technical GDPR regulations.

tl;dr: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

👓 human beings | Khürt Williams

Read human beings (Island in the Net)
I’m saddened that a blog post linking to another blog post might need to include a disclaimer even if some of it is in jest. A part of me thinks we’re headed down a path of permission based interactions. Both online and offline. If that happens during my lifetime I’ll exit this experiment called the USA, to places where human beings are still human beings.
I was being facetious and satirical, but all the same… This is just the type of response I was aiming at eliciting.

Fantastic photo, by the way!