When society once again properly separates governmental powers, it will restore balance, and then companies will no longer need to fear "regulators."

In the US, businesses are supposed to be regulated by Congress. That way, if Congress does something foolish, we can vote them out.

But in the last 100 years or so, "administrative law"– that is, binding regulations created by the Executive branch– has become a huge part of law-making [1]. Widespread use of Administrative Law allows Congress to wash its hands of any real decision making.

It isn't supposed to be this way, and I think we will find our way out of it.

Your statement that companies are disadvantaged only rings true because Executive-branch regulators are not held to account. Lower-level staff generally do not rotate from administration to administration, and so they make tons of binding rules without oversight. Fortunately, SCOTUS recently overturned some of this [2].

The fundamental problem is that the separation of powers, which is where America's strength comes from, has been upended. Power has been collected, by parties on all sides, within the Executive branch. It's supposed to be, Congress writes law, Judiciary interprets law, and the Executive enforces law. The Administrative State, however, combines all three powers into one under the Executive. It gives itself executive agencies that can bind citizens, and its own courts (ALJs) to determine their fate. See [1] for a comprehensive review.

[1] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo174366...

[2] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf

Confession: I ran that. Sorry, Apple– that was wrong!

If I recall correctly, I'd grab the latest version from a private Hotline site, then re-host it on my public server backed by a cable modem, whose name you got right. I loved Quake too.

I'm not sure that all was healthy at the time, and I like to imagine I'm over such distractions, but here I am..

That did nothing to help the fishery in this case. The burdens placed upon them came from a lower level bureaucrat, a decision that likely never crossed Trump's desk. That's just one regulation among thousands per year for which there is no accountability.

Those both fall under the executive branch. Plus, Chevron deference was about the court's actions, not prosecutors'.

> Another difference is that agency rulemaking is not made in a vacuum; there's a pretty elaborate rulemaking process which includes (iirc) notices of proposed rulemaking, mandatory public comment periods spanning months, pre-publication of draft rules to allow the possibility of litigation and so on.

That gives the illusion of a democratic process, but in reality, agency rulemakers are not accountable to the people, whereas Congress is. Keep in mind that the fisheries regulation in question on this case was passed during the Trump administration– so it's not like electing a conservative to head the executive put a stop to excess regulation, which is generally a position that conservatives advocate.

Wouldn't it be odd if the police also acted as the judge in your criminal trial? That's the point here, to separate lawmaking and interpretive power from the enforcers. Consolidation of power is dangerous because it doesn't work.

> in accordance with the Administrative Procedures Act

This ruling made clear that the Chevron doctrine was not in line with the APA,

"Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires."

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf

And rather than addressing that problem, with this IPO they've heaped on another one.

Check your account here [1], you probably have removed comments you don't know about. Or comment here [2] to see how it works.

[1] https://www.reveddit.com

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything/about/sticky

See the linked tweet for a more lawyerly argument in defense of shadow banning. The question before the court may hinge upon whether or not shadow banning expresses a message.

(1) You wouldn't want someone to secretly remove or demote your own commentary. But secretive content moderation is extremely common on today's major platforms. In order to be heard there, you would need to fight back against the practice, and you cannot effectively do that while keeping secrets yourself.

(2) Undisclosed content moderation does not express any kind of message, and therefore the platforms' use of it may not even be protected by the first amendment.

#2 is currently under discussion in a few cases before the Supreme Court:

https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1752367424303771948

On HN, my understanding is that you (moderators) can penalize stories without the submitter's knowledge. But if HN instead disclosed that penalty to the story's submitter, that would help this community communicate better.

As for how it works elsewhere, if a YouTube channel removes your comment, you won't know [1]. Same thing on Reddit, Facebook, and X. So while HN is relatively small, the practice of withholding content moderation decisions from submitters/commenters is widespread.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e6BIkKBZpg

[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/...

[2] https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/...

[3] https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/...

It's discussed in the link, and elsewhere [1]. Some mod actions on HN are transparent, some are not. You should not assume that, just because you see marks of some form of moderation, that you can see them all.

Undisclosed content moderation is like directly modifying your production database. It's faster, but always more troublesome. Nobody else knows what changed or why, etc.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36435312