• cygnus@lemmy.ca
    32·
    22 days ago

    Damn, from democracy to lèse-majesté in 100 months days, congrats guys!

    • Wiz@midwest.social
      2·
      21 days ago

      I bet Trump has other people pay fines for him. “Take it out of the special Russian account.”

  • JustAThought@lemm.ee
    57·
    21 days ago

    It irks me when rich people will just pay the fine rather than following the law. Example: Parking in handicap spots and not caring about a $250 fine. It is like paying $5 parking fee for low income drivers.

    Finland actually has speeding fines proportional to your income! In 2002, a Finnish millionaire was fined €103,000 (over $100,000 USD at the time) for going 75 km/h in a 50 km/h zone. (47mph in a 32mph zone)

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    21 days ago

    Lol. Have fun trying to enforce that while real crimes are happening.

    Texas set to overtake Florida for America’s redheaded stepchild.

    • BradleyUffner@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      21 days ago

      As always with these laws, they are a tool designed to be used selectively against someone you already decided you don’t like.

    • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      21 days ago

      The trick is, they don’t really care about enforcing it - just having it as a potential charge to pursue when they hate someone.

      This just in: Breathing is illegal. They’ll only bother prosecuting critics of Trump though.

    • JustAnotherPodunk@lemmy.world
      3·
      20 days ago

      I live in Texas. I know what they want to do. And they cant. The answer to all this is that they are powerless. Continue on as normal and shit post to your heart’s content.

      That’s the fun thing about the Internet. Volume beats quality. Amazon and tiktok are corporate proof of this fact. It takes a good damn army to make wikipedia barely functional, and since 4chan crashed, there is an actual apocalyptic army of degens with nothing but free time and bandwidth.

      as a patron and contributor to the mind sink that is the Internet, they can never beat the valueless shit show of volume that our degenerate minds can contribute.

      Carry on you worthless shitlords. Magnificent bastards every one. Do your worst.

  • Vainamoinen@leminal.space
    4·
    20 days ago

    Here in Finland, many fines are “means-tested” i.e. based on one’s income.

    For example, a person gets caught speeding 30 over the limit.

    Person A has monthly income of 3000, the fine is 180.

    Person B has monthly income of 50,000, the fine is 100,000.

    The fine is intended to inflict the same amount of pain, regardless of one’s income. For a rich person, it makes sense to just hire a chauffeur for 35,000 a year and pay their 180 fine if they get a ticket.

    • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      20 days ago

      That last line is somewhat the problem with this. Way too many loopholes around this, many rich people barely have income on paper but work around it in other ways

      • Vainamoinen@leminal.space
        1·
        19 days ago

        Let’s clarify the objection. Is the concern that a wealthy person arrives faster? Or that they can legally hire someone to absorb a penalty designed to equalize discomfort?

        Because if what offends us is that inequality persists despite mechanisms meant to neutralize it, then the issue isn’t the mechanism, it’s the expectation that justice should feel like equal suffering. That’s not justice. That’s calibrated envy.

        Means-tested fines don’t eliminate structural advantage; they merely simulate fairness by scaling pain. They don’t dismantle hierarchy, they accessorize it with the appearance of equity. When a wealthy individual hires a chauffeur to avoid tickets, they aren’t cheating the system. They’re operating within it, creating employment, not evading law.

        If that offends our moral instincts, we should question the instincts, not the transaction. Because a system that punishes prosperity instead of regulating behavior will always confuse justice with vengeance.

        • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          19 days ago

          The concern is that the rich person endangers others.

          We’re not talking about justice or punishment, but determent.

          Not even sure what point you’re trying to make, but you’re starting from a wrong premise.

          • Vainamoinen@leminal.space
            1·
            19 days ago

            Exactly. That is the problem.

            The wealthy don’t stop the behavior; they just move the liability. Someone else speeds, someone else gets fined, and the danger stays the same. That’s not a loophole, it’s how financial deterrence works when money can absorb risk.

            So no, I’m not defending that outcome. I’m exposing it.

            A system built on fines doesn’t stop harm; it prices it. And once something has a price, people with money will pay to bypass the barrier, whether it’s them behind the wheel or someone they hired.

            You think my premise is broken? I’m saying the system already is.

  • Etterra@discuss.onlineEnglish
    29·
    21 days ago

    I’ll say it until I’m dead: fines need to be calculated by income and net worth, increasing exponentially. The only way for a fine to act as a deterrent is for it to cost more relative to a person or company’s ability to pay it.

  • frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io
    5·
    22 days ago

    Who are they going to pay to evaluate all the damn memes on the internet? What counts as alteration? Resizing, cropping, other basic photo manipulations that people use all the time? Has a politician ever used images of themselves without touch up?

  • mkwt@lemmy.world
    75·
    22 days ago
    1. The law applies only to office holders, candidates, campaigns, or to people who buy or sell political advertising.
    2. People and platforms who post and distribute content without exchanging money are exempted.
    3. All the big media firms: tv, radio, ISPs, Internet content platforms, and billboard operators are exempted when they just run someone else’s ads. The people who are liable are the ones who place the ads.
    4. The requirement is to include a disclosure message when depictions of a public figure have been altered by technology: Photoshop, AI, deepfake audio, or whatever else. The content itself is not censored, it just has to be noticed that it’s artificial.
    5. “Superficial” alterations are exempted from the notice message, for example, changing the color balance on a video.
      • mkwt@lemmy.world
        15·
        21 days ago

        Hard to say for sure, but probably more “fine print” style notices on TV ads and billboards.

        This could conceivably be used to prosecute dirty tricks-style campaigns. For example, many years ago there was an anonymous mailer campaign against the incumbent mayor in my city where a photograph of him was photoshopped to insinuate that had been beaten up, when he really hadn’t. That kind of thing might become the target of this if it becomes law.

        It’s also possible that federal courts will step in and carve out some exceptions for obviously fake parody stuff. Texas law cannot override the first amendment.

    • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
      10·
      21 days ago

      Honestly sounds reasonable to me. But it would be nice if they could include deterring that over dramatic black-and-white effect lol.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
        1·
        18 days ago

        It sounds reasonable to me, too, but given that it was passed by the Texas legislature, I’m certain there’s something nefarious about it. Texas politics is dirty tricks all the way down.

  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
    4·
    21 days ago

    That penis was actually there, not interpreted, don’t do this. The penis was tattooed right on his face.