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>So if you wanted tech giants to have less power what exactly would you do? It's really easy. This is the nuclear option, but it's very doable: eliminate their

by IBM 9y ago

>So if you wanted tech giants to have less power what exactly would you do? It's really easy. This is the nuclear option, but it's very doable: eliminate their Section 230 immunity [1]. All of these internet businesses and platforms are running markets online, but they face zero liability for anything bad that happens on their platform. It's what gives Google and Facebook such high margins. They employ a relatively small number of highly paid software engineers and let the buyers and sellers take it from there on their marketplace. If they were actually responsible or liable for what happened on their platform, it would mean they'd have a lot more policing to do. And policing costs money. Customer service costs money (which is why there's no one to call at Facebook or Google when something's wrong with your account). Suddenly those highly efficient, zero liability two-sided markets have a lot more frictional costs, and that will ultimately limit their power because the flywheel won't snowball as much. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
That's "easy", except for controlling the unintended consequences...
JoshTriplett 9y ago
That isn't "give them less power", that's "kill all of them dead unless they're huge enough to tank a massive and never-ending money pit". What you're suggesting could be folded into an expensive but manageable cost of doing business for companies the size of Google or Facebook, but would utterly destroy a small company. That would shift the balance of power towards large companies and away from small ones, and large companies don't need any more advantages than they already have.
- IBM 9y ago
  Look any time anyone suggests a regulation this is always what everyone responds with. But this isn't even a new regulation, this would be the elimination of a freebie for the tech industry. It'd be extremely easy to limit the impact of it by not eliminating the freebie for everyone, recognizing that there's societal value in enabling these online marketplaces. Think Systematically Important Financial Institutions [1]. The "too big to fail" banks bear the toughest capital requirements, your local community bank doesn't. The same can be done for the tech industry. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemically_important_financial_institution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemically_important_financi...
  - plainOldText 9y ago
    Adding more regulation to one industry just because other industries have it is not sane policy making. One must consider how each operates as an independent system and think about all the implications when one tries to poke it.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    Getting rid of platform immunity would result in massive censorship and decreased freedoms for the individual USERS of that service. These platforms would just ban everything that is slightly controversial, on the off chance that they could be sued for it. It is not about the rights of the companies that I care about. What I don't want is for this kind of massive censorship to happen to the users of these sites. Immunity allows users to remain free and mostly unregulated. It is what makes the internet useful. And I care about this issue, even though it would be "legal" for these companies to ban everything controversial, so please don't say "The 1st amendment protects you from the government, not private companiezzz!!"
    - IBM 9y ago
      Newsflash: the thing you're afraid of happening is already happening. Google, Facebook, Amazon exercise editorial control of their platforms all the time. They delete spam, malware, porn. Just this week Google pulled right wing YouTube content as they moved to remove gun content [1]. They banned anything with the word "gun" in their shopping search [2]. These were never neutral platforms and they never pretended to be. The tech industry lobbyists cloak themselves in the language of free speech and liberty to avert regulation, but they have always been censoring content on their platform if it served their commercial interests. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/youtube-s-new-moderators-mistakenly-pull-right-wing-channels https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/youtube-s... [2] https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/27/google-gun-shopping-search-ban-creates-issues/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/27/google-gun-shopping-sear...
      - stale2002 9y ago
        And your proposal, to hold them liable for content on their platform, would making things a hundred times worse, as they'd now take down more content because they are afraid of being sued for it. It would certainly be great if the big tech companies engaged in less censorship. Which is why we need more policies that encourage them to be neutral platform, possibly like the utilities laws we have, instead of doing the opposite of making them more likely to take down content. Lets move them towards being a more neutral platform with less or no editorial control. That would be wonderful.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  This is blanket false. Our legal system already factors in culpability and reasonableness. Intent is a crucial part of our legal system. The problem is, Section 230 helps big companies avoid responsibility even when they ARE culpable. A small company doing their best to moderate their site is not going to be held legally responsible for bad user content, companies making hundreds of billions by avoiding spending money moderating content, are. Section 230 has to go if we're going to do anything to fix the Internet.
plainOldText 9y ago
Do you really believe is that easy? Eliminating the Section 230 would incur additional barriers to entry for small companies, as they would have to spend more resources to police their platforms, while also opening themselves up to expensive legal battles before their platforms even take off. While the tech giants have plenty of legal, financial and engineering resources to take on the challenges posed by eliminating Section 230. What you're proposing would actually give the tech giants even more power.
shkkmo 9y ago
Doesn't 230 just cover the publishing of user generated content? I don't see how if affects "two-sided markets" at all. It seems like it would make far more sense to make operators of two-sided market places liable without destroying every small forum and every blogging platform and possible every public chat platform.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Section 230 only effectively helps large companies. Any small site taking reasonable measures to manage their site would be fine. But companies which sit on hundreds of billions in cash while making a profit on illegal activity (as Google, Facebook, and Twitter are all guilty of), should not be immune to prosecution for their willful violations of the law.
  - kcmp 9y ago
    I don't see how you can say that. Section 230 was made to allow service providers to monitor content without becoming responsible for all the content that gets posted by users. Let's say you run a small forum and someone starts harrassing users and creates a very toxic environment. 230 allows you to delete this person's comments/account without suddenly being liable for everything users post on your site. Big companies will just have a team create an automatic filtering tool with strong rules to prevent lawsuits. The forum runner doesn't have the money or resources for that. Maybe startups would pop up and sell filtering services but Joe Smith who was just trying to host a community gardening forum isn't going to want to/be able to pay for that. Either he pays, let's trolls run wild, or brings down the site. It's a lose-lose scenario.
    - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      Suggesting that US law makes a company legally culpable for all interaction with that company's website has no basis in our legal system. That isn't how our law has ever worked. The first and foremost thing to understand about law is that intent is as important as the actual act itself. So, no, there is no way removing the blank check we cut big tech is going to hurt small startups or a community forum. And most of those are going to have human moderators that do a much better job than those "automatic filtering tools" you seem to suggest are a solution. The whole point here is that automatic filtering doesn't work. We've seen YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter prove that. Of course, Google has hundreds of billions of dollars at it's disposal, but it isn't hiring human moderators, because it has no reason to: Our government holds that Google isn't responsible for anything on it's platform, so it is better off keeping the money as profit. Now, where it starts to get interesting is perverse incentives: Much of advertising profits comes from malware and scams. Ad companies make billions off this illegal, criminal behavior. And since we've granted them platform immunity, because it's "user content", they're free to keep making that money. They have no reason to take down illegal content, they can't be held responsible for cash cow scams like the fake rehab center fiasco that make them millions. (Source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-google-search-scam-florida-treatment-centers https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-go...) Even if they get pressured to shut them down, they get to keep all of the profits. Section 230 protects companies which knowingly (and this is key, intent is important) do not remove illegal and criminal conduct because it is profitable, and they can't be held responsible for it. Section 230 does not protect small businesses, and the marketing to protect it relies on fundamental misconceptions about basic legal responsibility. Companies without intent to profit off criminal conduct are protected by the basic concepts of our legal system: That you can't commit a crime without intent. It's amazing how the organizations promoting how critical Section 230 is to "small businesses" are funded by the five largest companies in the US by market cap. (The Center for Democracy & Technology spoke out against SESTA-FOSTA in some articles today, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are all top tier sponsors.)

by IBM 9y ago

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

That's "easy", except for controlling the unintended consequences...

JoshTriplett 9y ago

That isn't "give them less power", that's "kill all of them dead unless they're huge enough to tank a massive and never-ending money pit". What you're suggesting could be folded into an expensive but manageable cost of doing business for companies the size of Google or Facebook, but would utterly destroy a small company. That would shift the balance of power towards large companies and away from small ones, and large companies don't need any more advantages than they already have.

IBM 9y ago
Look any time anyone suggests a regulation this is always what everyone responds with. But this isn't even a new regulation, this would be the elimination of a freebie for the tech industry. It'd be extremely easy to limit the impact of it by not eliminating the freebie for everyone, recognizing that there's societal value in enabling these online marketplaces. Think Systematically Important Financial Institutions [1]. The "too big to fail" banks bear the toughest capital requirements, your local community bank doesn't. The same can be done for the tech industry. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemically_important_financial_institution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemically_important_financi...
- plainOldText 9y ago
  Adding more regulation to one industry just because other industries have it is not sane policy making. One must consider how each operates as an independent system and think about all the implications when one tries to poke it.
- stale2002 9y ago
  Getting rid of platform immunity would result in massive censorship and decreased freedoms for the individual USERS of that service. These platforms would just ban everything that is slightly controversial, on the off chance that they could be sued for it. It is not about the rights of the companies that I care about. What I don't want is for this kind of massive censorship to happen to the users of these sites. Immunity allows users to remain free and mostly unregulated. It is what makes the internet useful. And I care about this issue, even though it would be "legal" for these companies to ban everything controversial, so please don't say "The 1st amendment protects you from the government, not private companiezzz!!"
  - IBM 9y ago
    Newsflash: the thing you're afraid of happening is already happening. Google, Facebook, Amazon exercise editorial control of their platforms all the time. They delete spam, malware, porn. Just this week Google pulled right wing YouTube content as they moved to remove gun content [1]. They banned anything with the word "gun" in their shopping search [2]. These were never neutral platforms and they never pretended to be. The tech industry lobbyists cloak themselves in the language of free speech and liberty to avert regulation, but they have always been censoring content on their platform if it served their commercial interests. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/youtube-s-new-moderators-mistakenly-pull-right-wing-channels https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/youtube-s... [2] https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/27/google-gun-shopping-search-ban-creates-issues/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/27/google-gun-shopping-sear...
    - stale2002 9y ago
      And your proposal, to hold them liable for content on their platform, would making things a hundred times worse, as they'd now take down more content because they are afraid of being sued for it. It would certainly be great if the big tech companies engaged in less censorship. Which is why we need more policies that encourage them to be neutral platform, possibly like the utilities laws we have, instead of doing the opposite of making them more likely to take down content. Lets move them towards being a more neutral platform with less or no editorial control. That would be wonderful.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
This is blanket false. Our legal system already factors in culpability and reasonableness. Intent is a crucial part of our legal system. The problem is, Section 230 helps big companies avoid responsibility even when they ARE culpable. A small company doing their best to moderate their site is not going to be held legally responsible for bad user content, companies making hundreds of billions by avoiding spending money moderating content, are. Section 230 has to go if we're going to do anything to fix the Internet.

plainOldText 9y ago

Do you really believe is that easy? Eliminating the Section 230 would incur additional barriers to entry for small companies, as they would have to spend more resources to police their platforms, while also opening themselves up to expensive legal battles before their platforms even take off. While the tech giants have plenty of legal, financial and engineering resources to take on the challenges posed by eliminating Section 230. What you're proposing would actually give the tech giants even more power.

shkkmo 9y ago

Doesn't 230 just cover the publishing of user generated content? I don't see how if affects "two-sided markets" at all. It seems like it would make far more sense to make operators of two-sided market places liable without destroying every small forum and every blogging platform and possible every public chat platform.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Section 230 only effectively helps large companies. Any small site taking reasonable measures to manage their site would be fine. But companies which sit on hundreds of billions in cash while making a profit on illegal activity (as Google, Facebook, and Twitter are all guilty of), should not be immune to prosecution for their willful violations of the law.
- kcmp 9y ago
  I don't see how you can say that. Section 230 was made to allow service providers to monitor content without becoming responsible for all the content that gets posted by users. Let's say you run a small forum and someone starts harrassing users and creates a very toxic environment. 230 allows you to delete this person's comments/account without suddenly being liable for everything users post on your site. Big companies will just have a team create an automatic filtering tool with strong rules to prevent lawsuits. The forum runner doesn't have the money or resources for that. Maybe startups would pop up and sell filtering services but Joe Smith who was just trying to host a community gardening forum isn't going to want to/be able to pay for that. Either he pays, let's trolls run wild, or brings down the site. It's a lose-lose scenario.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Suggesting that US law makes a company legally culpable for all interaction with that company's website has no basis in our legal system. That isn't how our law has ever worked. The first and foremost thing to understand about law is that intent is as important as the actual act itself. So, no, there is no way removing the blank check we cut big tech is going to hurt small startups or a community forum. And most of those are going to have human moderators that do a much better job than those "automatic filtering tools" you seem to suggest are a solution. The whole point here is that automatic filtering doesn't work. We've seen YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter prove that. Of course, Google has hundreds of billions of dollars at it's disposal, but it isn't hiring human moderators, because it has no reason to: Our government holds that Google isn't responsible for anything on it's platform, so it is better off keeping the money as profit. Now, where it starts to get interesting is perverse incentives: Much of advertising profits comes from malware and scams. Ad companies make billions off this illegal, criminal behavior. And since we've granted them platform immunity, because it's "user content", they're free to keep making that money. They have no reason to take down illegal content, they can't be held responsible for cash cow scams like the fake rehab center fiasco that make them millions. (Source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-google-search-scam-florida-treatment-centers https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-go...) Even if they get pressured to shut them down, they get to keep all of the profits. Section 230 protects companies which knowingly (and this is key, intent is important) do not remove illegal and criminal conduct because it is profitable, and they can't be held responsible for it. Section 230 does not protect small businesses, and the marketing to protect it relies on fundamental misconceptions about basic legal responsibility. Companies without intent to profit off criminal conduct are protected by the basic concepts of our legal system: That you can't commit a crime without intent. It's amazing how the organizations promoting how critical Section 230 is to "small businesses" are funded by the five largest companies in the US by market cap. (The Center for Democracy & Technology spoke out against SESTA-FOSTA in some articles today, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are all top tier sponsors.)