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This article focuses on Google not being liable, but ignores the fact that the specific creators and posters of the content appearing in Google's search results

by envy2 7y ago

This article focuses on Google not being liable, but ignores the fact that the specific creators and posters of the content appearing in Google's search results certainly can be sued. There have been a lot of anti-CDA 230 sob stories lately, which have indeed highlighted real victims of online content and abuse, but imposing liability on platforms simply destroys the free and open internet. Search engines would cease to exist if they became liable for simply indexing content created by others, and sites like Hacker News wouldn't be able to allow user submissions and comments. We need to be careful to avoid victim-blaming, but equally important to recognize that very real harms to some people don't justify upending policies that have created enormous value for society as a whole. Not to mention that, even without CDA 230, the majority of the problematic speech online would remain legal in the US because of the First Amendment.

writepub 7y ago
When Google indexes reputation impacting personal information, it is not verifying the authenticity of the information. This leads to a potential market for reputation harming falsehoods to be SEO-ed to the top of search results. Sure, section 203 indemnifies Google et al, but it creates an incentive for bad faith actors to exploit the system. What is your solution for this problem?
- envy2 7y ago
  The bad actors are still liable. You go after them to force them to remove the original content that is being indexed. Yes, it's whack-a-mole, but that will forever be the nature of the internet or any other tool that facilitates democratized content creation at effectively zero cost.
  - writepub 7y ago
    No - Google should be liable if it enables repeat offenders to purchase ad-dollars and SEO their way up to the top. At that point, Google isn't an innocent by-stander, but enabler. The article mentions a clear pattern, where the base URL stays the same, and small variations are employed to circumvent any legal actions, because Google refuses to acknowledge the "repeat offender" status of the base URL.
geofft 7y ago
But the "free and open internet" is a vague term. We would not say, for instance, that an internet without HTTPS or end-to-end encryption is desirable, despite it being less "open" in a surface-level sense, because we know that our underlying goals of a "free and open internet" are better served by reliable security and privacy. I would also argue that an internet where you are afraid to send nudes to your partner is less "free and open" than one where you can. It's both technically and ethically challenging to build one where you can (one very promising approach, for instance, is DRM, which has the ethical issues of whether to build DRM and whether to portray DRM as reliable - see in particular Snapchat, whose DRM is used for this exact purpose), but it still seems like a worthwhile long-term goal.
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  I hope nobody really believes Snapchat DRM is going to prevent their nudes appearing on a porn site. Just take a photo of the screen with another phone. If anybody is suggesting that it makes sending nudes safe should also be held liable for extreme stupidity.
  - geofft 7y ago
    One valid threat model for revenge porn is, I trust this person now, but if we break up I might not trust them anymore. So Snapchat disappearing messages do actually solve that problem. (And more generally, "I trust this entity now but they might become compromised in the future" is a model with some precedent in encryption, cf. forward secrecy and deniable messages which are for related, similar problems.) It's also not unreasonable to hold that the additional effort of taking a photo of the screen falls into the locks-keep-honest-people-honest category. Of course nobody believes that a lock on their front door will prevent a sufficiently determined attacker from breaking in, yet we all lock our doors. (And we wouldn't say that "change the locks" is useless advice against an ex with a key.)
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      No they don't. Taking a picture or screenshot of such an image immortalizes it. Stopping people from taking screenshots is essentially rootkit or virus functionality. (Plus it doesn't stop anyone from taking a picture of the screen.) You're trusting the person to not make this image permanent. Could be valid, could be a serious problem. That's if they just don't make the revenge porn out of slightly enhanced deepfake cloth.
jay_kyburz 7y ago
I believe search engines and social media should be held liable for the content they distribute. They could choose to moderate the content more closely, or if that is too expensive for their business model, they could enter agreements with content creators who want their content appearing in searches or online. They can counter sue the content creators. Our society and our democracies are suffering under the vast amount of disinformation. Nobody knows what to believe or who to trust. What's real and what's bullshit. Something needs to change.
- gus_massa 7y ago
  > they could enter agreements with content creators who want their content appearing in searches or online So if you create a new business you must pay a Google tax to be indexed. What about Bing? If you have an obscure blog about gardening or ponies or microprocessors you must pay some fee to Google to get indexed. Is it a one time fee or it's yearly? I guess you can have a page in Facebook and they will make some arrangement with Google. The big wallet garden host can make some similar deal (probably in exchange of placing ads in your page). What about personal pages of the professors in the universities? There is a lot of good material there, some courses have almost all the material online.
  - jay_kyburz 7y ago
    Yeah um, that's basically how Google works now. If you want to get into search results you have to buy ads. I'm sure the Universities will cover the liability costs of their professors. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.
    - gus_massa 7y ago
      A few months ago, I wanted a recipe with a nice photo of a "salty croissants with tallow" (medialuna de grasa, they are popular here in Argentina, sorry for the horrible translation). https://www.google.com/search?q=medialuna+de+grasa&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=medialuna+de+grasa&tbm=isch This looks nice: https://www.johaprato.com/receta/medialunas-de-grasa https://www.johaprato.com/receta/medialunas-de-grasa Autotranslation: https://translate.google.com.ar/translate?oe&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=es&client=tw-ob&sl=es&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.johaprato.com%2Freceta%2Fmedialunas-de-grasa https://translate.google.com.ar/translate?oe&um=1&ie=UTF-8&h... I don't get ads neither in the image search nor in the normal search. The results look quite organic. Most of them are from professional or semiprofesional cooking blogs.
hrktb 7y ago
One of the issue is that Google is not neutral to these results: the bot went out its way to index these pages, give exposure, and if any single person posting these videos can’t be found and sued to force them to remove it completely it will stay online forever. In other words the asymmetry between posting something online and having it removed is exacerbated by Google exposing any copies of the information that could otherwise get lost in some random site. Wouldn’t it be fair for Google to also provide decent support the to remove content from its index ? From the article Google is doing some effort, just clearly not enough. > Google’s policies dictate only two instances when they will remove content — child pornography and copyright-infringement requests. > The current policy says Google may remove nude or sexually explicit images that were shared without consent, but the company maintains sole discretion about when to remove nonconsensual pornography.

by envy2 7y ago

writepub 7y ago

When Google indexes reputation impacting personal information, it is not verifying the authenticity of the information. This leads to a potential market for reputation harming falsehoods to be SEO-ed to the top of search results. Sure, section 203 indemnifies Google et al, but it creates an incentive for bad faith actors to exploit the system. What is your solution for this problem?

envy2 7y ago
The bad actors are still liable. You go after them to force them to remove the original content that is being indexed. Yes, it's whack-a-mole, but that will forever be the nature of the internet or any other tool that facilitates democratized content creation at effectively zero cost.
- writepub 7y ago
  No - Google should be liable if it enables repeat offenders to purchase ad-dollars and SEO their way up to the top. At that point, Google isn't an innocent by-stander, but enabler. The article mentions a clear pattern, where the base URL stays the same, and small variations are employed to circumvent any legal actions, because Google refuses to acknowledge the "repeat offender" status of the base URL.

geofft 7y ago

But the "free and open internet" is a vague term. We would not say, for instance, that an internet without HTTPS or end-to-end encryption is desirable, despite it being less "open" in a surface-level sense, because we know that our underlying goals of a "free and open internet" are better served by reliable security and privacy. I would also argue that an internet where you are afraid to send nudes to your partner is less "free and open" than one where you can. It's both technically and ethically challenging to build one where you can (one very promising approach, for instance, is DRM, which has the ethical issues of whether to build DRM and whether to portray DRM as reliable - see in particular Snapchat, whose DRM is used for this exact purpose), but it still seems like a worthwhile long-term goal.

jay_kyburz 7y ago
I hope nobody really believes Snapchat DRM is going to prevent their nudes appearing on a porn site. Just take a photo of the screen with another phone. If anybody is suggesting that it makes sending nudes safe should also be held liable for extreme stupidity.
- geofft 7y ago
  One valid threat model for revenge porn is, I trust this person now, but if we break up I might not trust them anymore. So Snapchat disappearing messages do actually solve that problem. (And more generally, "I trust this entity now but they might become compromised in the future" is a model with some precedent in encryption, cf. forward secrecy and deniable messages which are for related, similar problems.) It's also not unreasonable to hold that the additional effort of taking a photo of the screen falls into the locks-keep-honest-people-honest category. Of course nobody believes that a lock on their front door will prevent a sufficiently determined attacker from breaking in, yet we all lock our doors. (And we wouldn't say that "change the locks" is useless advice against an ex with a key.)
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    No they don't. Taking a picture or screenshot of such an image immortalizes it. Stopping people from taking screenshots is essentially rootkit or virus functionality. (Plus it doesn't stop anyone from taking a picture of the screen.) You're trusting the person to not make this image permanent. Could be valid, could be a serious problem. That's if they just don't make the revenge porn out of slightly enhanced deepfake cloth.

jay_kyburz 7y ago

I believe search engines and social media should be held liable for the content they distribute. They could choose to moderate the content more closely, or if that is too expensive for their business model, they could enter agreements with content creators who want their content appearing in searches or online. They can counter sue the content creators. Our society and our democracies are suffering under the vast amount of disinformation. Nobody knows what to believe or who to trust. What's real and what's bullshit. Something needs to change.

gus_massa 7y ago
> they could enter agreements with content creators who want their content appearing in searches or online So if you create a new business you must pay a Google tax to be indexed. What about Bing? If you have an obscure blog about gardening or ponies or microprocessors you must pay some fee to Google to get indexed. Is it a one time fee or it's yearly? I guess you can have a page in Facebook and they will make some arrangement with Google. The big wallet garden host can make some similar deal (probably in exchange of placing ads in your page). What about personal pages of the professors in the universities? There is a lot of good material there, some courses have almost all the material online.
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  Yeah um, that's basically how Google works now. If you want to get into search results you have to buy ads. I'm sure the Universities will cover the liability costs of their professors. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.
  - gus_massa 7y ago
    A few months ago, I wanted a recipe with a nice photo of a "salty croissants with tallow" (medialuna de grasa, they are popular here in Argentina, sorry for the horrible translation). https://www.google.com/search?q=medialuna+de+grasa&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=medialuna+de+grasa&tbm=isch This looks nice: https://www.johaprato.com/receta/medialunas-de-grasa https://www.johaprato.com/receta/medialunas-de-grasa Autotranslation: https://translate.google.com.ar/translate?oe&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=es&client=tw-ob&sl=es&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.johaprato.com%2Freceta%2Fmedialunas-de-grasa https://translate.google.com.ar/translate?oe&um=1&ie=UTF-8&h... I don't get ads neither in the image search nor in the normal search. The results look quite organic. Most of them are from professional or semiprofesional cooking blogs.

hrktb 7y ago

One of the issue is that Google is not neutral to these results: the bot went out its way to index these pages, give exposure, and if any single person posting these videos can’t be found and sued to force them to remove it completely it will stay online forever. In other words the asymmetry between posting something online and having it removed is exacerbated by Google exposing any copies of the information that could otherwise get lost in some random site. Wouldn’t it be fair for Google to also provide decent support the to remove content from its index ? From the article Google is doing some effort, just clearly not enough. > Google’s policies dictate only two instances when they will remove content — child pornography and copyright-infringement requests. > The current policy says Google may remove nude or sexually explicit images that were shared without consent, but the company maintains sole discretion about when to remove nonconsensual pornography.