3 ms·

I'm not a fan of Alex Jones, I barely know who he is, but all this banning seems a bit risky to me. Hosting companies have generally had "Safe Harbor" protectio

I'm not a fan of Alex Jones, I barely know who he is, but all this banning seems a bit risky to me. Hosting companies have generally had "Safe Harbor" protection against liability for content that third parties post on their platforms. However if they actively start policing and censoring content, they're more involved, and might now be more liable in other claims of offensive or defamatory content.

alphabettsy 8y ago
They don’t allow porn in the App Store among other things. He says “everyone is trying to stop him from telling the truth”. Maybe banning him for his actions helped prove his point, but I doubt it gave him more legitimacy than the fact the Trump called-in to his show. I personally think there’s a fine balance between normalizing these people by providing a platform and encouraging free-speech. They didn’t ban him for promoting a questionable grasp on reality, they seem to have banned him for sharing content of him harassing people or sharing hate speech. Maybe all of these platforms should have a filter that users can disable if they want to see it?
- artilect 8y ago
  They think they have to be big brother and protect us from ourselves. they are basically teaching the population, "trust us to protect you from fake news", which farms a population which can't think for themselves. People need to figure out for themselves what is real or fake. Teach people skills on how to use Google-search to fact check statements. It's not right to depend on a small group of people in silicon valley to decide what the world sees.
astura 8y ago
This isn't about legal liability (which is what safe harbor refers to) it's about Apple's ToS. TFA says app store guidelines say apps that are "defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or place a targeted individual or group in harm’s way" are rejected. "Holding contributors to a standard" is not legally risky just like HN removing comments that are against the rules is not legally risky. Apple seems to have made it clear they don't want to be a dumpster.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  I imagine that Apple is ultimately doing this for the same reason all businesses do it. There's no reason for a business to unnecessarily restrict its customer base. Apple would like to sell its iPhone to people whether or not they support abortion. Unfortunately I feel that big corp understands the value of secularism better than the rest of America, perhaps because they are constrained by the imperative to be more effective than their competitors, including with their workforce and customers.
mrsteveman1 8y ago
If the "safe harbor" you're referring to is CDA230, you have it quite backwards. They're shielded under that statute even if they ban people and delete things selectively, regardless of the reason. Under the legal environment at the time CDA230 was enacted, they already had a shield. What they didn't have was the ability to moderate their own platforms and still keep that shield, they had to pick one or the other because if they screwed up and missed something then suddenly they were liable again. So CDA230 actually encouraged them to moderate their platforms, arbitrarily if they want to. The "moderation" they were expected to do was mostly to remove "indecent" content, but they aren't required to do that or forbidden from removing anything else. So at least in that respect, Twitter and Apple are doing exactly what they were expected to do.

alphabettsy 8y ago

They don’t allow porn in the App Store among other things. He says “everyone is trying to stop him from telling the truth”. Maybe banning him for his actions helped prove his point, but I doubt it gave him more legitimacy than the fact the Trump called-in to his show. I personally think there’s a fine balance between normalizing these people by providing a platform and encouraging free-speech. They didn’t ban him for promoting a questionable grasp on reality, they seem to have banned him for sharing content of him harassing people or sharing hate speech. Maybe all of these platforms should have a filter that users can disable if they want to see it?

artilect 8y ago
They think they have to be big brother and protect us from ourselves. they are basically teaching the population, "trust us to protect you from fake news", which farms a population which can't think for themselves. People need to figure out for themselves what is real or fake. Teach people skills on how to use Google-search to fact check statements. It's not right to depend on a small group of people in silicon valley to decide what the world sees.

astura 8y ago

This isn't about legal liability (which is what safe harbor refers to) it's about Apple's ToS. TFA says app store guidelines say apps that are "defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or place a targeted individual or group in harm’s way" are rejected. "Holding contributors to a standard" is not legally risky just like HN removing comments that are against the rules is not legally risky. Apple seems to have made it clear they don't want to be a dumpster.

threatofrain 8y ago
I imagine that Apple is ultimately doing this for the same reason all businesses do it. There's no reason for a business to unnecessarily restrict its customer base. Apple would like to sell its iPhone to people whether or not they support abortion. Unfortunately I feel that big corp understands the value of secularism better than the rest of America, perhaps because they are constrained by the imperative to be more effective than their competitors, including with their workforce and customers.

mrsteveman1 8y ago

If the "safe harbor" you're referring to is CDA230, you have it quite backwards. They're shielded under that statute even if they ban people and delete things selectively, regardless of the reason. Under the legal environment at the time CDA230 was enacted, they already had a shield. What they didn't have was the ability to moderate their own platforms and still keep that shield, they had to pick one or the other because if they screwed up and missed something then suddenly they were liable again. So CDA230 actually encouraged them to moderate their platforms, arbitrarily if they want to. The "moderation" they were expected to do was mostly to remove "indecent" content, but they aren't required to do that or forbidden from removing anything else. So at least in that respect, Twitter and Apple are doing exactly what they were expected to do.