Based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they cannot discriminate for any reason that is a protected status. However, they can makeup any reason for not serving them. That means some racist asshole could say they aren’t serving the black customer because they were rude or some other made up shit. Thankfully, your political stance is not a protected status.
Well they could do that a few times. But if someone really wanted to press the issue I am sure they could use the pattern of behavior to establish that he is indeed kicking out due to race.
Right. The various Civil Rights Acts in establishing proteted classes in placed of public accommodation and associated case law created a standard whereby there does not need to be, for example, an explicit “No blacks!” sign out front. A demonstrated pattern of refusing to serve black customers was sufficient to run afoul of the laws.
In fact, the discriminatory effect doesn’t even need to be intentional. If the end result of a policy results in a discriminatory result, it too is a violation of the law. For instance, where I grew up down south, whenever you went indoors you took your hat off. It’s respectful and such. Imagine a dining establishment that turned this custom into a steadfast rule – no one is seated while wearing a hat. Seems reasonable right? Everyone is treated the same! Until you refuse to serve a Sikh customer because they refuse to remove their turban. Now you’re discriminating against someone because of their religion, and there’s no overarching reason (safety, health, etc.) that a person can’t eat and wear a turban at the same time.
This is a bad take. When we, society, allow you to register as a business, we form an agreement. Part of that agreement is that you follow certain rules. We make those rules to better society.
Some rules are things like pay taxes, or don’t sell outdated food. Some rules are there to make sure anyone can shop there, without discussion.
Those rules are important because it’s very possible for a small number of business owners to make a group of people’s lives very difficult, especially out in rural areas where people don’t have a lot of options.
For a concrete example, let’s say Pfizer cures cancer. Do you want them to be able to say they won’t sell to Christians? You can’t just “go elsewhere”. But now this is allowed.
The much more dangerous part of this ruling is that the supreme Court ruled on a case where there was no standing. A lot of people don’t realize that having standing is one of the cornerstones of our legal structure. Now, in theory, any idiot could sue for any dreamed up scenario and have a much better chance of winning in court.
There are already regulations on discrimination. You cannot be discriminated against for your religious beliefs. However, Pfizer could choose not to service rapists. In which case, want the cure for cancer? Don’t rape. Having the option to not service someone based on their actions is very different than not servicing them because of who they are. If someone is being a dick to your employees, you should have the right to kick them out. Based on what you’re saying, you think no matter how much of an asshole they are, the employees should put up with it and be their personal assistant.
Society needs to codify these rules into law though otherwise bad actors break those rules. When a right wing activist supreme court removes these protections, people get hurt. But, a store like this isnt doing this to hurt people, it’s to make a statement that the far-rights own discrimination can backfire on them. It’s a form of protest and a statement, not true bigotry. Its like using the flying spaghetti monster tactic to push legislation to be more strict on religion. These people are trying ro show that regulation on business to prevent denying goods and services is important for everyone, not just minorities the the right hates.
You’re right in that the current state of the country does not actually reflect the ideals it professes to be based on, and this Supreme Court ruling is proof of that.
Congratulations to the instance for it’s extraordinary growth!
Welcome everyone who popped over from reddit.
It’s important to remember you’re on the fediverse, a huge variety of websites running all sorts of software of which lemmy.world is just one server, and Lemmy itself is just one piece of software. There’s many other reddit-alikes like Lemmy, as well as software like Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook, or YouTube.
Decentralization is strength. Try to spread out over instances with our users and our communities because instances can and do shut down, shut off federation, or otherwise become reddit.
This is supported by admins and users, there is no pot of venture capital money keeping instances running or paying admins. Keep that in mind.
The funny thing about Twitter for me is that I think I have a Twitter account and it’s kind of like floating out there since 2010 or so. I never bothered with it. It was so tedious for me. I’m actually surprised about all this Twitter news now. I never actually could “get” Twitter as a social media platform. So, I don’t know. I dislike the man. I can’t remember my password. If it goes away I guess my internet security is better off.
Hard to tell at this point, this is extrapolated speculation and shouldn’t be taken as statements of fact.
Musk has a policy of fucking around with other people’s money and not paying his debts. That works with companies smaller than him, but when Google is hosting a significant amount of Twitter infrastructure they can absolutely pull the plug.
Twitter is suddenly unable to function at the current volume of traffic. They limit access to only logged in users. They fired all their competent engineers so they import a hack job that seems to be CONSTANTLY checking if users are logged in. So much that the website is DDOSing itself from the attempts.
Elon, ever the moronic silver spoon man baby, puts in a nonsense policy of “tiered access” where you can only see a certain amount of tweets per day? Advertisers are obviously pissed off because that’s directly cutting their reach and access.
It’s so wonderful that Reddit, by making a decision that benefits no user/mod/sub, and actively harms users/mods/subs, all in the name of corporate greed, gave Lemmy the boost it needed to become a viable alternative to Reddit.
Thank you, Spez. We couldn’t have done this without you.
Edit: I think I made a poor assessment of this article. It mainly focuses on the advertising part of her job and I mistook that as encapsulating her entire position. I encourage you to read and make your own judgment.
Huh, I wonder why I can see it. I get the thing at the bottom advertising unlimited but I was able to make it collapse with the arrow in the corner. Also reading it again I think I got a poor assessment. This article seems to only be focusing on the advertising part of her job and I think I mistook that as encapsulating her entire position.
Oh no! Anyway, here’s the article in its entirety:
When Elon Musk announced last month that he had hired Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s chief executive, he said he was “excited” to bring on someone who could “focus primarily on business operations.”
But just over three weeks into her new job, Ms. Yaccarino, the former head of advertising at NBCUniversal, has been prevented from working on a key component of what she was hired to do: drum up advertising for Twitter.
Ms. Yaccarino, 60, has spoken with some of Twitter’s advertisers about unsavory content on the site, four people with knowledge of the conversations said. But she has not engaged in public hobnobbing and hands-on negotiating with advertisers to increase Twitter’s revenue.
That’s because a contractual agreement with NBCUniversal prevented Ms. Yaccarino — at least initially — from working on advertising deals that would conflict with the interests of her former employer, three people familiar with the arrangement said.
It is all part of an adjustment as Ms. Yaccarino settles into her new role and reports to a new boss. After working for traditional media organizations in New York for decades, she is now helping to lead a San Francisco-based social media company that has undergone rapid changes under Mr. Musk, who bought Twitter last year.
Restricted from hammering out advertising deals, Ms. Yaccarino has instead repaired at least one relationship, between Twitter and Google; talked with regulators; and focused on employee morale. She has held happy hours and tried rallying workers with mission statements and more internal communication.
“Twitter is on a mission to become the world’s most accurate real-time information source and a global town square for communication,” she wrote this month in her first companywide email, which The New York Times obtained. “We’re on the precipice of making history.”
Twitter did not make Ms. Yaccarino, a longtime Madison Avenue power player, available for an interview. A person close to her said the noncompete clause extended only for her first few weeks at Twitter, while another said it was difficult for NBCUniversal to enforce. The clause’s expiration date was unclear.
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Ms. Yaccarino began as Twitter’s chief executive on June 5. Two days earlier, the native Long Islander and longtime New Yorker tweeted a photo of the Manhattan skyline with the message: “Bay Area views coming soon!” She took at least one NBCUniversal colleague with her to Twitter.
Mr. Musk had not made a companywide announcement about Ms. Yaccarino’s hiring at Twitter, three employees said. Instead, in an email to the company’s sales team before Ms. Yaccarino started, her appointment was the second bullet point below an update about a new feature for advertisers.
Ms. Yaccarino quickly struck an upbeat note at Twitter.
At an internal ad sales meeting on June 12, she addressed the state of Twitter’s advertising. Mr. Musk had removed guardrails at the site, allowing misinformation and toxic content to flourish and deterring brands from advertising. The company’s U.S. ad revenue has fallen nearly 60 percent, and Mr. Musk has said he expects revenue this year to be around $3 billion, down from $5.1 billion in 2021.
Ms. Yaccarino acknowledged that some “big brands” had stayed away from the platform, according to a recording of the meeting that The Times obtained, and said she and other sales employees would have to engage in “hand-to-hand combat” to persuade them to return. She did not mention her inability at the time to discuss ad deals with clients.
Ms. Yaccarino also said she would take a different position from Mr. Musk’s rocky relationship with the media. Her strategy, she said, is to “have very good relationships with them so they become our advocates or mouthpieces to amplify our strategies.”
But Ms. Yaccarino also made it clear that she knew who was in charge. She referred to Mr. Musk, who was not in attendance, as “the boss.”
Two days later, Ms. Yaccarino met with Twitter’s investors and lenders in San Francisco alongside Mr. Musk, a person familiar with the meeting said. Together, they presented their plans for the company to focus more on video, work with influencers and news publishers, and integrate payment capabilities. Reuters reported earlier on the presentation.
While Ms. Yaccarino’s noncompete clause with NBC held her back from major advertising discussions, she stayed busy.
David Cohen, the chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group, said that he had emailed with Ms. Yaccarino and that she had been on “a kind of fact-finding tour.” She is leveraging her relationships in the advertising industry to discern where Twitter stands on issues such as how to keep ads away from objectionable content, he said, adding, “She’s definitely listening.”
Yet when Publicis Groupe, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, held a conference in Paris on June 16, its chairman interviewed Mr. Musk without Ms. Yaccarino, who was in San Francisco. During the trip, Mr. Musk also lunched with Bernard Arnault, the founder of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury company and a major advertiser.
Ms. Yaccarino also did not appear last week at the Cannes Lions advertising festival, a glittering networking event on the French Riviera that is often considered the apex of the ad industry calendar. Twitter significantly scaled back its spending and presence there compared with previous years.
Still, Ms. Yaccarino tweeted that she was soliciting feedback from Cannes attendees. “I’m here for ALL of it!” she wrote.
She had remained in San Francisco at Twitter’s headquarters, where she hosted a European Union delegation led by Commissioner Thierry Breton. The group was testing whether Twitter’s content moderation systems would comply with a new European law, the Digital Services Act, that holds social platforms responsible for policing illicit content and disinformation. It goes into effect in August.
Ms. Yaccarino has made progress in some areas, including helping to mend Twitter’s relationship with Google. That relationship frayed under Mr. Musk when Twitter partly stopped paying Google for cloud computing services. Twitter owed Google more than $42 million in unpaid invoices and was trying to stop its use of Google’s products by the end of June, according to an internal memo obtained by The Times.
Ms. Yaccarino spoke this month to Thomas Kurian, the head of Google Cloud, to resolve the issue and ordered the bill paid, a person familiar with the conversation said. She also persuaded Mr. Musk to embrace the new developments, the person said.
Google declined to comment. Bloomberg News reported earlier that Twitter had resumed paying Google.
Ms. Yaccarino has also tried reaching out more to Twitter’s work force, which has shrunk more than 75 percent through layoffs and other departures since Mr. Musk bought the company. Twitter framed a copy of one of her motivational tweets about “wearing 4 inch heels” while working as an executive and hung it in a dining common area in the San Francisco office. She has also held happy hours there and in New York, four current and former employees said.
And she has been relentlessly optimistic in her conversations, two of those people said. In her meeting with the sales team this month, Ms. Yaccarino said Twitter had an “opportunity that comes out of being challenged the last bunch of months.”
“Point me in the right directions,” she said. “I know what it’s going to take."
Ryan Mac is a technology reporter focused on corporate accountability across the global tech industry. He won a 2020 George Polk award for his coverage of Facebook and is based in Los Angeles. @RMac18
Tiffany Hsu is a tech reporter covering misinformation and disinformation. @tiffkhsu
Benjamin Mullin is a media reporter for The Times, covering the major companies behind news and entertainment. @benmullin
He still owns the company so it doesn’t matter who the CEO is, he is their boss. If he wants to continue making big business decisions then he still can, and if the CEO doesn’t agree he can either fire them or just go over their head.
A CEO is what you get when you agree to hand over the reigns of a company to someone you hire to run it. Yes, you can obviously go over their heads and essentially still run the company, but most CEOs will take issue with that and immediately make moves towards looking for a new company, contract allowing.
I totally agree with you that a typical CEO would not put up with this at all, but then I don’t think this is a very typical situation :D I would assume she knew what she was getting into. He named himself CTO so it’s not like he’s no longer involved in the company, and the CEO can’t really ‘overrule’ him on any product decisions or anything else since he’s technically also her boss.
Now, if he’s smart he will hopefully at least take her opinions/guidance into consideration, but 🤷
Yo for real, what’s up with all these social media sites literally shooting themselves in the foot as we speak?.
Youtube planning to antagonize adblock users and limiting video watching, Reddit killing itself with bureocracy style and now Twitter doing this shit. Hopefully shit sites like TikTok or Facebook jump on the wagon too.
lemmy.world
Hot