> While this effort has largely failed, applying "just cause" protections to these workers is the sort of workplace protection that usually attaches to more traditional employees. In other words, what progressives have not been able to achieve outright they're attempting to do in piecemeal fashion.
[...]
> It's unclear whether NYC will appeal the recent decision or instead accept that the law needs to be rewritten. A better idea would be to scrap the misguided idea entirely.
(Notwithstanding the other arguments in TFA), the author is arguing that so-called non-"traditional" workers don't need and thus might not deserve "just cause" protections. The author also frames "just cause" for non-"traditional" employees as a primarily progressive political objective.
> One of the hallmarks of the gig economy is flexibility. Drivers work when they please and often use multiple platforms, while the labor supply is ideally meant to fluctuate dynamically based on demand. Attaching more rules to driver deactivation inevitably raises labor costs as platforms are less able to weed out bad apples. In the end, the flexibility that drivers themselves most prize when it comes to gig work will be eroded, as companies respond to the regulations by potentially limiting the number of drivers they allow on the platform.
The supposed "flexibility" is usually Uber's flexibility at the expense of Uber drivers' flexibility [1]. Assuming that the drivers do "most prize" their flexibility, it would be easy to most prize one not quite good aspect of the job that is much better than the other aspects of the job. What's more, the premise is that everything that burdens gig companies with massive profits will (not is likely to, will) necessarily burden the drivers. If Uber/Lyft were to maliciously comply (I'm using the word "malicious" idiomatically [2]) with a just cause law by needlessly terminating or reducing the job quality of drivers whom wouldn't have been terminated before the existence of the law, the author would attribute most blame to the just cause law and not to Uber/Lyft.
> A companion "just cause" bill for food delivery drivers also recently passed in New York and was not opposed by gig platforms like Uber, likely because it lacked the onerous 14-day notice provision of the rideshare version.
> It's unclear whether NYC will appeal the recent decision or instead accept that the law needs to be rewritten. A better idea would be to scrap the misguided idea entirely.
If I seem to inappropriately attribute an anti-labor sentiment to the author that you believe isn't there, please take notice: The author is asking people to give up on the idea of making "just cause" laws for gig drivers. There's no rewritten version (not even a version similar to the other bill for food delivery drivers) that would be better than nothing, the author concludes.
As for my opinion, a better, safety-respecting just cause law for drivers might let companies immediately suspend the driver for just cause proceedings so long as the company provides some level of pay during the suspension period or sets up back pay.
Gift link [1]. But now the New York Times puts a login wall on gift links, so if you can't bypass it somehow I got the gift link from a related (not a substitute) article [2].
> the article author seems not to mind the controls if they are on manufactured gore or porn.
From what I've read of her blog, my interpretation is that Heather Burns opposes all government-mandated age verification (which most government-mandated age gates would require), but does not necessarily oppose all voluntary (on the part of the website) or socially-enforced age gates.
> not to mind the controls if they are on manufactured gore or porn.
Should we ignore the differing purposes of creating contextually inappropriate info and the differing purposes of sharing it? Is there a logical or moral contradiction in treating potentially inappropriate info created or shared by people for the purpose of pleasing or shocking (without urgency) other people with violent, disgusting, or sexually explicit material differently than we treat potentially inappropriate info shared or recorded (not the same as created) by people for the purpose of informing or shocking (into urgency) other people?
What's more in this case, 9/11 is one of the few events that some US middle schools (with students as young as 10 or 11) and high schools hold an annual moment of silence for. After "hearing" it twice, almost every student will understand that 9/11 is being singled out as a particularly important historical event. At least by the end of middle school age, children should have some room to voluntarily (on the part of the children) learn about the most disturbing aspects of 9/11.
There's a major difference in who imposes the age gate. The parent, for their own children, or the website, for all children and adults. (In some cases, both types are wrong to use.)
The California Digital Age Assurance Act forces operating systems to collect age info. Adults cannot choose to withold both their own age info and the age info of their children. Older children in abusive parental situations cannot both get their own (standard) devices and withold their age info. I oppose such an implementation because a more privacy-respecting implementation is available: the government could mandate that operating systems provide device owners with an option to reveal their age info or their children's age info.
Anyway, TFA is not about any particular act. TFA is about the attitudes that lead toward both privacy-harming government-mandated age gates and toward privacy-harming or education-harming voluntary/informally-pressured age gates.
It seems what would be more productive would be for sites to publish metadata about the nature of the content. Then the access method could decide whether, or which of it to show.
Analogy: parent seeing that a movie is R rated and not letting their kid see it.
Age verification means that the content origin still has to rate its material for age suitability, and match that to the user. Asking them to do just one out of these two things is easier.
Doesn't work, what if both are on the same page such as a home feed? Analogy: the theater shows both R and PG movies, so a forcefield prevents kids entering the building on days where an R movie is shown at any time in any theater that day.
If both are on the same page, then it it can't be a domain-level (e.g. DNS) property, but something in the HTML markup. Like a certain actual <div> contains 18+ material; if the configured age of the user is less, then that element is not shown. That aspect of it seems the least difficult.
Digital "theaters" do not have the same limitations as physical theaters. The metadata can mark the page as R but include an additional indication that a PG filtered version of the page is available, via a different URL or a website setting that uses a cookie.
If the website doesn't want to make a filtered version than the metadata can mark the page as R with an additional indication that PG content is present on the page. The parent can manually select the PG content or someone will make parental controls that can automatically select or (like an ad blocker) filter for only the PG content.
You're right in that, setting aside future laws which might build off of the California Digital Age Assurance Act, the text of the law is compatible with privacy because adults or children can lie about the age info, perhaps with no legal consequences for doing so.
I was wrong to say:
> Adults cannot choose to withold both their own age info and the age info of their children. Older children in abusive parental situations cannot both get their own (standard) devices and withold their age info.
I fix both sentences by adding to the end of each one "unless they lie about the age info".
The other parts of my previous comment remain unchanged so far:
> The California Digital Age Assurance Act forces operating systems to collect age info.
[...]
> I oppose such an implementation because a more privacy-respecting implementation is available: the government could mandate that operating systems provide device owners with an option to reveal their age info or their children's age info.
Are the proponents of the California Digital Age Assurance Act satisfied with the law despite the elephant-shaped "they can select any age they want to" loophole? If not, then the spirit of the law does not respect privacy. If yes, I would still oppose the law. I want both the text and spirit of the law to respect privacy, not merely be compatible with privacy. An illustrative example: even if there were a technology or magic that literally prevented law enforcement from searching a house without a warrant, I would still want the legal system to have a law (in the constitution, specifically) recognizing a right to have one's house not be searched by the government without a warrant.
TFA does not suggest malicious intent on the part of USPS. When government bodies lower in the hierarchy receive foreseeably impractical (or malicious) orders from above, even a good faith effort to implement them will result in chaos.
> Drew convinced me that we should abolish copyright through his blog[1][2]. I find it very unfortunate that he uses the copyright licenses of the software hosted on SourHut as an argument against LLMs. Abolishing copyright means abolishing copyright for everyone, even you. Even if you don't like what people do with their copies.
You're reminding me of "mutual nuclear disarmament", and the related idea that being against anyone's having nukes doesn't necessarily mean immediately getting rid of one's own nukes.
> To be against copyright is to not believe the idea of "adversarial copying".
Not believing the (or an) idea of copyright is one form of being "against" "copyright". One can oppose copyright law while still desiring a form of social enforcement for copyright-law-like ideas. Just as there are many forms of emotional abuse that are not illegal or could not be enforced if made illegal, and just as there is such thing as "abusing one's trust", there are forms of copying behavior that deserve the label of "abuse" regardless of whether the law gives a label.
[...]
> It's unclear whether NYC will appeal the recent decision or instead accept that the law needs to be rewritten. A better idea would be to scrap the misguided idea entirely.
(Notwithstanding the other arguments in TFA), the author is arguing that so-called non-"traditional" workers don't need and thus might not deserve "just cause" protections. The author also frames "just cause" for non-"traditional" employees as a primarily progressive political objective.
> One of the hallmarks of the gig economy is flexibility. Drivers work when they please and often use multiple platforms, while the labor supply is ideally meant to fluctuate dynamically based on demand. Attaching more rules to driver deactivation inevitably raises labor costs as platforms are less able to weed out bad apples. In the end, the flexibility that drivers themselves most prize when it comes to gig work will be eroded, as companies respond to the regulations by potentially limiting the number of drivers they allow on the platform.
The supposed "flexibility" is usually Uber's flexibility at the expense of Uber drivers' flexibility [1]. Assuming that the drivers do "most prize" their flexibility, it would be easy to most prize one not quite good aspect of the job that is much better than the other aspects of the job. What's more, the premise is that everything that burdens gig companies with massive profits will (not is likely to, will) necessarily burden the drivers. If Uber/Lyft were to maliciously comply (I'm using the word "malicious" idiomatically [2]) with a just cause law by needlessly terminating or reducing the job quality of drivers whom wouldn't have been terminated before the existence of the law, the author would attribute most blame to the just cause law and not to Uber/Lyft.
> A companion "just cause" bill for food delivery drivers also recently passed in New York and was not opposed by gig platforms like Uber, likely because it lacked the onerous 14-day notice provision of the rideshare version.
> It's unclear whether NYC will appeal the recent decision or instead accept that the law needs to be rewritten. A better idea would be to scrap the misguided idea entirely.
If I seem to inappropriately attribute an anti-labor sentiment to the author that you believe isn't there, please take notice: The author is asking people to give up on the idea of making "just cause" laws for gig drivers. There's no rewritten version (not even a version similar to the other bill for food delivery drivers) that would be better than nothing, the author concludes.
As for my opinion, a better, safety-respecting just cause law for drivers might let companies immediately suspend the driver for just cause proceedings so long as the company provides some level of pay during the suspension period or sets up back pay.
[1] https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/11/your-risk/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance
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