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Newsflash: the thing you're afraid of happening is already happening. Google, Facebook, Amazon exercise editorial control of their platforms all the time. They

by 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.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  > Lets move them towards being a more neutral platform with less or no editorial control. That would be wonderful. Ugh, no. Editorial control and moderation makes the difference between a community and an open sewer. But let's make sure we don't create such a liability that nobody wants to host user content at all. Because the easiest thing to do is to omit user content and focus exclusively on licensed, first-party, commercial content that has a contract associated with it. That doesn't create communities.

by IBM 9y ago

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.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
> Lets move them towards being a more neutral platform with less or no editorial control. That would be wonderful. Ugh, no. Editorial control and moderation makes the difference between a community and an open sewer. But let's make sure we don't create such a liability that nobody wants to host user content at all. Because the easiest thing to do is to omit user content and focus exclusively on licensed, first-party, commercial content that has a contract associated with it. That doesn't create communities.