4 ms·

Google and Facebook are being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the position of judge and jury of what is our isn't acceptable speech. That's over years and

Google and Facebook are being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the position of judge and jury of what is our isn't acceptable speech. That's over years and by several different governments. There's tremendous power in that position. I wonder if we'll rationalize after the fact that these corporations always seeked this power.

llukas 9y ago
This is power that each newspaper wields everyday for tens of years. Same for TV and radio. Why being on internet automatically makes you not responsible for what you distribute again?
- ghaff 9y ago
  It's different in that newspapers create the content that they publish themselves. So far, we've collectively been able to dance around the fact that different countries have different laws/attitudes/etc. over what sort of things are acceptable to publish. (And those countries that are far out of the mainstream are mostly small enough that they're not that important commercially.) But there are differences between the US and various European countries that probably can't be swept under the rug forever.
  - pimmen 9y ago
    Go back 30 years, when your voice in print media was either starting your own newspaper or writing a letter to the editor and the comparison holds. Edit: I meant your way to communicate in the newspaper
    - ben_w 9y ago
      Was it that? Or was it talking loudly in public places until you gathered a crowd, which probably automatically brought you to the attention of the police?
  - yakitori 9y ago
    > It's different in that newspapers create the content that they publish themselves. This isn't true. A significant portion of newspaper content is derived from the wire services ( AP, Reuters, etc ). And of course the advertisements or "reviews-as-advertisements".
- emiliobumachar 9y ago
  Holding internet companies for such responsibility can go a long way toward undoing the capacity of the average joe to go viral, unless approved.
mindslight 9y ago
Kicking and screaming? More like naively and gleefully. It would have been quite straightforward to architect their sites to encrypt message text end-to-end, and then gradually advance the state of the art in protecting metadata. Instead, they listened to the siren song of surveillance-based advertising, and built out a philosophy of siphoning as much data as they can! Their current position was inevitable based on their philosophy, technical design, and business goals. The truly unfortunate bit is their 20 years of priming people and governments toward digital totalitarianism.
- yuliyp 9y ago
  What are you talking about? Facebook already offers E2E encrypted chats (both in Messenger and WhatsApp). Offering broadcast communication (such as public posts) pretty much flies in the face of offering E2E encryption (the author wants a large group of people to see what they wrote, not have to enumerate everyone who is allowed to see it). Governments generally don't care about controlling content of messaging, they care about the wide spread of information (accurate or not).
  - mindslight 9y ago
    In 2k17 sure, they've thrown the concept of privacy a bone. In 2k7, not so much. The last decade has set government expectations that they can lean on web corporations, and confirmed their expectation that the Internet is censorable. That's what I mean by decade(s) of priming. > the author wants a large group of people to see what they wrote, not have to enumerate everyone who is allowed to see it Good thing we have these diligent things called computers. It's not hard to imagine friend/group membership as being a read cap(ability). > Governments generally don't care about controlling content of messaging, they care about the wide spread of information (accurate or not). Erm, what do you mean by this? Governments do care that their own message gets spread far and wide, while also panicking over competing ("inaccurate") messages being spread. How is this not caring about the content?
    - peoplewindow 9y ago
      You make it sound like end to end encryption is some trivial thing you just switch on or off according to personal preferences. It's very, very far from that. Even today Facebook/WhatsApp's e2e encryption is essentially theatre; they can disable it at any time for any people and nobody would be any the wiser.

llukas 9y ago

This is power that each newspaper wields everyday for tens of years. Same for TV and radio. Why being on internet automatically makes you not responsible for what you distribute again?

ghaff 9y ago
It's different in that newspapers create the content that they publish themselves. So far, we've collectively been able to dance around the fact that different countries have different laws/attitudes/etc. over what sort of things are acceptable to publish. (And those countries that are far out of the mainstream are mostly small enough that they're not that important commercially.) But there are differences between the US and various European countries that probably can't be swept under the rug forever.
- pimmen 9y ago
  Go back 30 years, when your voice in print media was either starting your own newspaper or writing a letter to the editor and the comparison holds. Edit: I meant your way to communicate in the newspaper
  - ben_w 9y ago
    Was it that? Or was it talking loudly in public places until you gathered a crowd, which probably automatically brought you to the attention of the police?
- yakitori 9y ago
  > It's different in that newspapers create the content that they publish themselves. This isn't true. A significant portion of newspaper content is derived from the wire services ( AP, Reuters, etc ). And of course the advertisements or "reviews-as-advertisements".
emiliobumachar 9y ago
Holding internet companies for such responsibility can go a long way toward undoing the capacity of the average joe to go viral, unless approved.

mindslight 9y ago

Kicking and screaming? More like naively and gleefully. It would have been quite straightforward to architect their sites to encrypt message text end-to-end, and then gradually advance the state of the art in protecting metadata. Instead, they listened to the siren song of surveillance-based advertising, and built out a philosophy of siphoning as much data as they can! Their current position was inevitable based on their philosophy, technical design, and business goals. The truly unfortunate bit is their 20 years of priming people and governments toward digital totalitarianism.

yuliyp 9y ago
What are you talking about? Facebook already offers E2E encrypted chats (both in Messenger and WhatsApp). Offering broadcast communication (such as public posts) pretty much flies in the face of offering E2E encryption (the author wants a large group of people to see what they wrote, not have to enumerate everyone who is allowed to see it). Governments generally don't care about controlling content of messaging, they care about the wide spread of information (accurate or not).
- mindslight 9y ago
  In 2k17 sure, they've thrown the concept of privacy a bone. In 2k7, not so much. The last decade has set government expectations that they can lean on web corporations, and confirmed their expectation that the Internet is censorable. That's what I mean by decade(s) of priming. > the author wants a large group of people to see what they wrote, not have to enumerate everyone who is allowed to see it Good thing we have these diligent things called computers. It's not hard to imagine friend/group membership as being a read cap(ability). > Governments generally don't care about controlling content of messaging, they care about the wide spread of information (accurate or not). Erm, what do you mean by this? Governments do care that their own message gets spread far and wide, while also panicking over competing ("inaccurate") messages being spread. How is this not caring about the content?
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    You make it sound like end to end encryption is some trivial thing you just switch on or off according to personal preferences. It's very, very far from that. Even today Facebook/WhatsApp's e2e encryption is essentially theatre; they can disable it at any time for any people and nobody would be any the wiser.