4 ms·
The problem is that these kinds of content based bans/service boots/kicks/what have you are all based on human emotion and responses to the given content. It's
by FussyZeus 9y ago
The problem is that these kinds of content based bans/service boots/kicks/what have you are all based on human emotion and responses to the given content. It's easy to create a policy to address something like file-sharing, for example; it's a website distributing content it doesn't have the rights to distribute. So take that down, easy.
Next we have a website promoting porn. Well, some people have objections to porn, in fact quite a lot do, but a lot also don't. So we'll be alright with that, just make sure kids don't look at it.
But then you find a rape video on the porn site. Well that's obviously illegal, clearly this is footage of a heinous crime. Delete it!
Well wait, no it turns out that actress was paid and signed a document saying she was participating of her own free will. I guess that's fine then, even though it would be offensive to many there really isn't anything wrong with it.
But then you find out that the video was scraped from another website's paid section...
And on and on it goes. There are infinite different directions this sort of thing can go, where content that's offensive and horrible can still technically be perfectly fine to host. Ultimately this is the sort of thing that's going to be incredibly hard to get machines to figure out properly, mostly because in our century-ish of "rating" media for audiences and appropriateness, we still haven't even figured it out ourselves. And that phrasing implies there's one given moral set, which is also of course not true; even what passes as "safe for TV" between Europe and the USA is quite a large gap.
Ultimately I think this is something that needs to be handled on a case by case basis by the individual hosts. I refuse to believe the Daily Stormer and disgusting websites like it will have a hard time finding someone willing to host their content. There are plenty of hosts that look the other way, and failing that sort of thing, you can always build your own server too.
Sadly that's the downside to the democratization of the Internet.