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Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech

58 points by DiabloD3 6y ago

jjcon 6y ago
I feel like the EFF has slowly devolved into siding with corporate freedom over all else while only paying lip service to users.
- fsociety 6y ago
  Why is that? S230 protects platform from trolls. Look at Twitch right now. You could run up to a stream in real-life, blast copyrighted music, and get the streamer banned for life. How can you be held legally liable for content on your platform when you can’t actually control that content.
  - burlesona 6y ago
    I think the answer is you can’t, and the implication is maybe those platforms don’t actually need to exist.
leetcrew 6y ago
most of this stuff sounds like bad news, but I have felt for a while that we need to address the issue of moderation on the largest social media platforms. I don't think it should be a binary choice between safe harbor and doing any moderation whatsoever, but there ought to be some sort of gradient for liability. that is, the more you remove stuff you don't like, the more accountable you should be for whatever stuff you continue to host. as an extreme example, suppose you have a billion users and a hundred of them are making libelous posts about some guy. you shouldn't be able to remove everything but those posts and claim safe harbor because it's user generated content.
- csnover 6y ago
  > the more you remove stuff you don't like, the more accountable you should be for whatever stuff you continue to host It seems to me that this just creates a perverse incentive to never moderate anything. How would that be an improvement? At a minimum, you’d end up with a space overrun by spammers.
  - dx87 6y ago
    The platform can provide tools that allows users to moderate what they want. RES on reddit is good at that, you can make it so you don't see posts from certain users, filter posts and links, etc.
    - csnover 6y ago
      What happens if the users are the ones that moderate to include only the libellous content, per the GP’s example? Is the provider then responsible for that in this world where more moderation = more liability? Do the volunteer moderators become the liable parties instead? What if a user is also an employee of the company, does that make the company liable again? While I like the idea of self-policing communities, it doesn’t always work so well in reality (Slashdot’s comment voting system was great at burying bad content during the site’s heyday—though it never eliminated it—now it works pretty poorly because most of the audience has shifted away. Reddit’s subreddit moderation system can be great, except for the racism[0].) This seems to me like a poorly thought through solution and I’m not really sure what the goal is. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/reddit-racism-open-letter/612958/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/reddi...
      - josephh 6y ago
        GP’s comment isn’t referring to the tools given to volunteer moderators. They are referring (and strictly so) to the tools that end-users can use to moderate what they themselves want to see.
        csnover 6y ago
notadev 6y ago
>Section 230 is an essential legal pillar for online speech. And when powerful people don’t like that speech, or the platforms that host it, the provision becomes a scapegoat for just about every tech-related problem. Does anyone actually believe this is an authoritarian attempt to squash speech that is "speaking truth to power"? This is the result of years of work to remove any dissenting voice from the generally Left-leaning sites of the Internet -- Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. First they started disabling comment sections, calling all opposition "trolls". Then they tried to deplatform, go after advertisers, etc. Most recently, two sites were dropped from AdSense because they had unmoderated comment sections. Not only is Google saying what can live on it's platform, but also what can live on the sites of others. But wait...they're a private company and have every right to remove people from their platform. Fine, then they lose all government protection from the results of their choice to decide what legal information people can and cannot see.
- all_factz 6y ago
  I’d rather the sites themselves decide than the US government decide. You can always go to a different site. But once we have the government intervening and saying “this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t”, that’s a whole nother level of censorship I’d rather avoid.
  - commandlinefan 6y ago
    > this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t But that isn't what they're saying. They're saying, "if you are deciding what is acceptable speech, you're now responsible for it." And for the record, I absolutely agree.
    - akersten 6y ago
      I only consider sewing-related posts acceptable on my sewing message board. If I moderate anything else, I'm suddenly responsible for any libel that gets posted while I'm asleep? That position is absurd.
burlesona 6y ago
Honestly I am not sure legal immunity for network platforms is actually a good thing. Those platforms are very much like traditional publishers in that they greatly amplify and spread the content posted on their network. Amplification* without accountability is very different than freedom of speech. * if you want to quibble with “amplification,” I would more specifically say that _asynchronous_ and/or _targeted_ distribution is the key characteristic that makes it logical for these platforms to be held to the same standards as traditional publishers in my opinion.
- dilap 6y ago
  You basically just don't believe in free speech. Which is, historically, the more popular position. The idea that ideas should be able to amplified & spread w/o institutional control is rather radical.
  - burlesona 6y ago
    That’s false. There has always been a difference between freedom to say what you want and freedom from consequences. The famous adage “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” Newspapers are liable for libel suits and other legal remedies if they publish false and damaging information. I think it’s fair to consider Facebook a publisher when their algorithms take content and distribute it to the world better than any newspaper could have. That is fundamentally very different from self-hosting one’s own website, or giving a speech in the town square.
    - lliamander 6y ago
      > There has always been a difference between freedom to say what you want and freedom from consequences. No. Free speech is speech which is (at least largely) free of consequence. Not just free of legal consequences either, but social consequences as well (such as getting fired from your job for having certain political opinions). Free speech =/= first amendment. > The famous adage “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” Which was used as justification to punish anti-war protesters. > Newspapers are liable for libel suits and other legal remedies if they publish false and damaging information. Which is part of a set of well known, long-standing exceptions to the first amendment.
api 6y ago
Let's say S230 was dropped. Would this really damage free speech online, or would it damage platforms and lead to a resurgence of the open web? Edit: also would it genuinely endanger end-to-end encryption or only do so in the context of these platforms? It's a genuine question since I don't understand all the nuances of these laws. If I put up a personal site without S230 protections, am I at risk? What about truly neutral ISPs and cloud hosts that do not curate content but just sling packets? What if all the data is encrypted from my server to the end user anyway?
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Exactly. It would lead to a smaller Internet. Giant platforms built around scaling past what human moderators can handle would be unviable, but subject-focused communities and human-curated ones would thrive. Bear in mind, the law is not going to actually or reasonably crucify you because someone left a nasty comment on your blog while you were asleep (nobody seriously believes this can happen). The law needs to be able to go after companies that built social platforms that create extremely bad social effects at scale, who are focused on creating as much engagement as possible to fuel ad revenue. Honestly, the "largest" social platform that would likely benefit from Section 230's repeal is Reddit: They'd have to make some policy changes and probably discourage more cross-posting, and very large communities might need company-hired moderation. But the general design of it being built around small communities moderated individually is likely to allow it to adapt to the change pretty well. Maybe they'd shut down the really large general subs, but it'd be pushed more towards being a shared login way to be a part of a bunch of distinct communities.
  - carapace 6y ago
    I agree. People seem to regard FB and Twitter as bedrock but I wouldn't be sorry to see them forced to spend what it takes to actually moderate themselves or shutdown. I recently rejoined twitter (I watched a bunch of sci-fi shorts on the youtub and wanted to tell people about them) and it is messed up. It's a hate machine. People are so shitty to one another. And the doxxing mobs are fucking terrifying, flash-mobs of hate, ravening and lawless. For this we invented the transistor?
pjkundert 6y ago
Liberty means liberty for all, especially those whom you intensely disagree with. It also means allowing someone to do or say something you consider stupid -- because, someone, somewhere will consider whatever you're doing stupid; do you really want some random self-righteous inquisitor shutting your speech off? Furthermore, if some group is really proposing or performing heinous, illegal acts, we should want to have them feel comfortable associating with each-other in public. Police can then do their job, infiltrate these groups, and track down, charge and prosecute these miscreants. I just don't want to see it. And, they probably don't want to see me berating them. There's a solution to these kinds of situations... We're techies here; I find it surprising that no-one has considered K-means Clustering: https://brainbomb.org/Artificial-Intelligence/Machine-Learning/ML-Mixture-Models-K-means-Clustering/ https://brainbomb.org/Artificial-Intelligence/Machine-Learni.... My hypothesis is that Google, FaceBook, et.al. have investigated using k-means clustering, and have decided against it, because it reduces the "drama" on their platforms, reducing their revenues...
- manfredo 6y ago
  > Liberty means liberty for all, especially those whom you intensely disagree with. Correct, and said people have the liberty to create their own websites. Freedom of speech also means freedom from compelled speech. Removing section 230 means all sites have to be like 4chan - devoid of moderation and hosting the content of genuine Nazis and the like. While it's fair to point out that moderation may be biased, forcing sites to remove moderation for fear of being held liable for content users post is not a positive change. Note that the groups pushing the removal of section 230 are some of social media's biggest competitors (namely traditional media). This is a calculated move. Remove section 230 and social media becomes a cesspool. This pushes users out of social media and back in front of cable news and newspapers.
  - pjkundert 6y ago
    It only "is not a positive change", suddenly, now that websites friendly to the accepted dogma du jour are at risk of being exposed to it!
tmaly 6y ago
I hate to beat a dead horse, but we do have a right to free speech. The issue on encryption should be addressed by 4th amendment protections. We don't have to frogs in a pot of water. There is enough tech to give us enormous reach to a broad audience. This debate does not have to happen in some basement in congress with lobbyists hidden away from the public.
carapace 6y ago
> any platform providing secure end-to-end encryption would face a torrent of litigation I do not see this. By definition content transmitted with end-to-end encryption cannot be moderated. How would anyone but the sender and receiver know that a given message contains "illegal content"? (I put "illegal content" in quotes because it makes my skin crawl, even though in practice I think some content should be suppressed (but I also don't want to be the one to say which content should be suppressed with the force of law because that's hard-to-impossible, and my heart's not in it.) It's a little like anti-smoking laws: technically a gross violation of personal freedom, but one that I'm not prepared to vote down until smoking is a fringe fetish.) In terms of platform vs. conduit it seems to me that e2ee forces the service provider into the "conduit" category.
- akersten 6y ago
  I mean there is also a parallel effort led by Bill Barr and some folks in Congress that would effectively remove your S230 protections for running E2E anyway (EARN IT act), so it's a battle we're fighting on all fronts right now.
  - carapace 6y ago
    I read up on that and, while it's obviously a naked power-grab and bad law IMO, it also seems to me to have the same loop-hole. I don't understand how a service provider can be anything but a carrier if the traffic is E2E encrypted.
    - akersten 6y ago
      Facebook carries both messaging traffic and user-generated content. If they support E2E encryption in their messenger, the threat is that they are not "following best practices for law enforcement intercept" and risk losing their protections over the non-E2E user-generated content on their main site. The confusion is understandable because the two are unrelated in any technical capacity, but the DoJ seeks to twist their arm by taking away an existing legal protection for not making law enforcement's job easier.
lliamander 6y ago
While I am concerned about the potential negative consequences to altering section 230, there are several elements in the DOJ proposal that I think would be excellent ideas: > 3. Promoting Competition A third reform proposal is to clarify that federal antitrust claims are not covered by Section 230 immunity. Over time, the avenues for engaging in both online commerce and speech have concentrated in the hands of a few key players. It makes little sense to enable large online platforms (particularly dominant ones) to invoke Section 230 immunity in antitrust cases, where liability is based on harm to competition, not on third-party speech. Breaking up advertising monopolies (which all of these social media platforms essentially are) would probably be a good outcome. > b. Provide Definition of Good Faith. Second, the Department proposes adding a statutory definition of “good faith,” which would limit immunity for content moderation decisions to those done in accordance with plain and particular terms of service and accompanied by a reasonable explanation, unless such notice would impede law enforcement or risk imminent harm to others. Clarifying the meaning of "good faith" should encourage platforms to be more transparent and accountable to their users, rather than hide behind blanket Section 230 protections. Is it too much to ask for social media companies to actually abide by their TOS? How often have we seen people complain (outside the realm of politics) about getting banned without explanation or appeal? If people are going to be building their livelihoods around these platforms (for content distribution, ad revenue, etc.) then I think it's time for these platforms to be more transparent with their content creators.
- akersten 6y ago
  The outcome of "breaking up advertising monopolies" can be achieved with existing anti-trust law, without cannibalizing an existing protection that benefits every UGC website large and small. > Is it too much to ask for social media companies to actually abide by their TOS? How often have we seen people complain (outside the realm of politics) about getting banned without explanation or appeal? A physical business can trespass you for any non-protected-class reason they want. Online, one should expect no different treatment.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    > The outcome of "breaking up advertising monopolies" can be achieved with existing anti-trust law, without cannibalizing an existing protection that benefits every UGC website large and small. I don't think it requires cannibalizing existing protections in order prevent section 230 from being invoked in anti-trust cases. And for the record, I don't think I agree with all of the DOJ recommendations, but I think there may be room for improvement. > A physical business can trespass you for any non-protected-class reason they want. Online, one should expect no different treatment. I'm not entering into a legal agreement simply by entering a physical business. However, terms of service are a legal agreement. A lot of tech businesses seem to be under the impression that a TOS doesn't actual impose any obligations on them, but in fact it does.
sub7 6y ago
If Twitter has taught us anything, it's that everyone should not have an equal voice and an equal platform. A person or company's reach or audience should be a function of 1) what they're talking about and 2) what credibility they have re: 1. I'm all for anyone being allowed to say anything but I'm completely against anyone being allowed to amplify anything. Also, the Republicans would do well to introduce legislation expanding data portability and making it much harder for these completely unethical platforms to keep your data locked into their walled gardens. Friends names, birthdays and emails as a csv is basically impossible to export from FB for example.
- lliamander 6y ago
  > If Twitter has taught us anything, it's that everyone should not have an equal voice and an equal platform. A person or company's reach or audience should be a function of 1) what they're talking about and 2) what credibility they have re: 1. How do you propose we should establish credibility of sources? Also, how do propose to factor in the originality of what they say? > Also, the Republicans would do well to introduce legislation expanding data portability and making it much harder for these completely unethical platforms to keep your data locked into their walled gardens. Friends names, birthdays and emails as a csv is basically impossible to export from FB for example. Agreed.
  - sub7 6y ago
    Let's put aside originality for now. I think with a few small deep structural changes, you can get 80% of the way there. I would have all posts require a tagged context, let's call it a topic (in reality it'd be multi facet hierarchical object). I would also have all profiles list the topics they'd like to be credible in. The credibility score for a given topic would be an algorithm that would use followers credibility scores to "rub off" on your score for that topic. You seed the profiles you know to be credible and then propagate the graph. It'd initially be a guesstimate and then gets refined as more humans rate, interact and judge the post. Over a few posts, I think you'd be able to get a broad credibility bucket for a given profile/topic pair. Btw I've built a social network with tens of millions of users and we used this approach and it works pretty well. It does require a bit of moderation and bad actor weeding out but for the most part it works. Also, FB and Twitter aren't full of retards (shockingly) They know they can do this but they also know they would tank a shitload of their core quantitative metric for a vague qualitative metric. It'd just never happen from within.

58 points by DiabloD3 6y ago

I feel like the EFF has slowly devolved into siding with corporate freedom over all else while only paying lip service to users.

fsociety 6y ago
Why is that? S230 protects platform from trolls. Look at Twitch right now. You could run up to a stream in real-life, blast copyrighted music, and get the streamer banned for life. How can you be held legally liable for content on your platform when you can’t actually control that content.
- burlesona 6y ago
  I think the answer is you can’t, and the implication is maybe those platforms don’t actually need to exist.

leetcrew 6y ago

most of this stuff sounds like bad news, but I have felt for a while that we need to address the issue of moderation on the largest social media platforms. I don't think it should be a binary choice between safe harbor and doing any moderation whatsoever, but there ought to be some sort of gradient for liability. that is, the more you remove stuff you don't like, the more accountable you should be for whatever stuff you continue to host. as an extreme example, suppose you have a billion users and a hundred of them are making libelous posts about some guy. you shouldn't be able to remove everything but those posts and claim safe harbor because it's user generated content.

csnover 6y ago
> the more you remove stuff you don't like, the more accountable you should be for whatever stuff you continue to host It seems to me that this just creates a perverse incentive to never moderate anything. How would that be an improvement? At a minimum, you’d end up with a space overrun by spammers.
- dx87 6y ago
  The platform can provide tools that allows users to moderate what they want. RES on reddit is good at that, you can make it so you don't see posts from certain users, filter posts and links, etc.
  - csnover 6y ago
    What happens if the users are the ones that moderate to include only the libellous content, per the GP’s example? Is the provider then responsible for that in this world where more moderation = more liability? Do the volunteer moderators become the liable parties instead? What if a user is also an employee of the company, does that make the company liable again? While I like the idea of self-policing communities, it doesn’t always work so well in reality (Slashdot’s comment voting system was great at burying bad content during the site’s heyday—though it never eliminated it—now it works pretty poorly because most of the audience has shifted away. Reddit’s subreddit moderation system can be great, except for the racism[0].) This seems to me like a poorly thought through solution and I’m not really sure what the goal is. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/reddit-racism-open-letter/612958/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/reddi...
    - josephh 6y ago
      GP’s comment isn’t referring to the tools given to volunteer moderators. They are referring (and strictly so) to the tools that end-users can use to moderate what they themselves want to see.
      - csnover 6y ago

notadev 6y ago

>Section 230 is an essential legal pillar for online speech. And when powerful people don’t like that speech, or the platforms that host it, the provision becomes a scapegoat for just about every tech-related problem. Does anyone actually believe this is an authoritarian attempt to squash speech that is "speaking truth to power"? This is the result of years of work to remove any dissenting voice from the generally Left-leaning sites of the Internet -- Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. First they started disabling comment sections, calling all opposition "trolls". Then they tried to deplatform, go after advertisers, etc. Most recently, two sites were dropped from AdSense because they had unmoderated comment sections. Not only is Google saying what can live on it's platform, but also what can live on the sites of others. But wait...they're a private company and have every right to remove people from their platform. Fine, then they lose all government protection from the results of their choice to decide what legal information people can and cannot see.

all_factz 6y ago
I’d rather the sites themselves decide than the US government decide. You can always go to a different site. But once we have the government intervening and saying “this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t”, that’s a whole nother level of censorship I’d rather avoid.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t But that isn't what they're saying. They're saying, "if you are deciding what is acceptable speech, you're now responsible for it." And for the record, I absolutely agree.
  - akersten 6y ago
    I only consider sewing-related posts acceptable on my sewing message board. If I moderate anything else, I'm suddenly responsible for any libel that gets posted while I'm asleep? That position is absurd.

burlesona 6y ago

Honestly I am not sure legal immunity for network platforms is actually a good thing. Those platforms are very much like traditional publishers in that they greatly amplify and spread the content posted on their network. Amplification* without accountability is very different than freedom of speech. * if you want to quibble with “amplification,” I would more specifically say that _asynchronous_ and/or _targeted_ distribution is the key characteristic that makes it logical for these platforms to be held to the same standards as traditional publishers in my opinion.

dilap 6y ago
You basically just don't believe in free speech. Which is, historically, the more popular position. The idea that ideas should be able to amplified & spread w/o institutional control is rather radical.
- burlesona 6y ago
  That’s false. There has always been a difference between freedom to say what you want and freedom from consequences. The famous adage “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” Newspapers are liable for libel suits and other legal remedies if they publish false and damaging information. I think it’s fair to consider Facebook a publisher when their algorithms take content and distribute it to the world better than any newspaper could have. That is fundamentally very different from self-hosting one’s own website, or giving a speech in the town square.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    > There has always been a difference between freedom to say what you want and freedom from consequences. No. Free speech is speech which is (at least largely) free of consequence. Not just free of legal consequences either, but social consequences as well (such as getting fired from your job for having certain political opinions). Free speech =/= first amendment. > The famous adage “you can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” Which was used as justification to punish anti-war protesters. > Newspapers are liable for libel suits and other legal remedies if they publish false and damaging information. Which is part of a set of well known, long-standing exceptions to the first amendment.

api 6y ago

Let's say S230 was dropped. Would this really damage free speech online, or would it damage platforms and lead to a resurgence of the open web? Edit: also would it genuinely endanger end-to-end encryption or only do so in the context of these platforms? It's a genuine question since I don't understand all the nuances of these laws. If I put up a personal site without S230 protections, am I at risk? What about truly neutral ISPs and cloud hosts that do not curate content but just sling packets? What if all the data is encrypted from my server to the end user anyway?

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Exactly. It would lead to a smaller Internet. Giant platforms built around scaling past what human moderators can handle would be unviable, but subject-focused communities and human-curated ones would thrive. Bear in mind, the law is not going to actually or reasonably crucify you because someone left a nasty comment on your blog while you were asleep (nobody seriously believes this can happen). The law needs to be able to go after companies that built social platforms that create extremely bad social effects at scale, who are focused on creating as much engagement as possible to fuel ad revenue. Honestly, the "largest" social platform that would likely benefit from Section 230's repeal is Reddit: They'd have to make some policy changes and probably discourage more cross-posting, and very large communities might need company-hired moderation. But the general design of it being built around small communities moderated individually is likely to allow it to adapt to the change pretty well. Maybe they'd shut down the really large general subs, but it'd be pushed more towards being a shared login way to be a part of a bunch of distinct communities.
- carapace 6y ago
  I agree. People seem to regard FB and Twitter as bedrock but I wouldn't be sorry to see them forced to spend what it takes to actually moderate themselves or shutdown. I recently rejoined twitter (I watched a bunch of sci-fi shorts on the youtub and wanted to tell people about them) and it is messed up. It's a hate machine. People are so shitty to one another. And the doxxing mobs are fucking terrifying, flash-mobs of hate, ravening and lawless. For this we invented the transistor?

pjkundert 6y ago

Liberty means liberty for all, especially those whom you intensely disagree with. It also means allowing someone to do or say something you consider stupid -- because, someone, somewhere will consider whatever you're doing stupid; do you really want some random self-righteous inquisitor shutting your speech off? Furthermore, if some group is really proposing or performing heinous, illegal acts, we should want to have them feel comfortable associating with each-other in public. Police can then do their job, infiltrate these groups, and track down, charge and prosecute these miscreants. I just don't want to see it. And, they probably don't want to see me berating them. There's a solution to these kinds of situations... We're techies here; I find it surprising that no-one has considered K-means Clustering: https://brainbomb.org/Artificial-Intelligence/Machine-Learning/ML-Mixture-Models-K-means-Clustering/ https://brainbomb.org/Artificial-Intelligence/Machine-Learni.... My hypothesis is that Google, FaceBook, et.al. have investigated using k-means clustering, and have decided against it, because it reduces the "drama" on their platforms, reducing their revenues...

manfredo 6y ago
> Liberty means liberty for all, especially those whom you intensely disagree with. Correct, and said people have the liberty to create their own websites. Freedom of speech also means freedom from compelled speech. Removing section 230 means all sites have to be like 4chan - devoid of moderation and hosting the content of genuine Nazis and the like. While it's fair to point out that moderation may be biased, forcing sites to remove moderation for fear of being held liable for content users post is not a positive change. Note that the groups pushing the removal of section 230 are some of social media's biggest competitors (namely traditional media). This is a calculated move. Remove section 230 and social media becomes a cesspool. This pushes users out of social media and back in front of cable news and newspapers.
- pjkundert 6y ago
  It only "is not a positive change", suddenly, now that websites friendly to the accepted dogma du jour are at risk of being exposed to it!

tmaly 6y ago

I hate to beat a dead horse, but we do have a right to free speech. The issue on encryption should be addressed by 4th amendment protections. We don't have to frogs in a pot of water. There is enough tech to give us enormous reach to a broad audience. This debate does not have to happen in some basement in congress with lobbyists hidden away from the public.

carapace 6y ago

> any platform providing secure end-to-end encryption would face a torrent of litigation I do not see this. By definition content transmitted with end-to-end encryption cannot be moderated. How would anyone but the sender and receiver know that a given message contains "illegal content"? (I put "illegal content" in quotes because it makes my skin crawl, even though in practice I think some content should be suppressed (but I also don't want to be the one to say which content should be suppressed with the force of law because that's hard-to-impossible, and my heart's not in it.) It's a little like anti-smoking laws: technically a gross violation of personal freedom, but one that I'm not prepared to vote down until smoking is a fringe fetish.) In terms of platform vs. conduit it seems to me that e2ee forces the service provider into the "conduit" category.

akersten 6y ago
I mean there is also a parallel effort led by Bill Barr and some folks in Congress that would effectively remove your S230 protections for running E2E anyway (EARN IT act), so it's a battle we're fighting on all fronts right now.
- carapace 6y ago
  I read up on that and, while it's obviously a naked power-grab and bad law IMO, it also seems to me to have the same loop-hole. I don't understand how a service provider can be anything but a carrier if the traffic is E2E encrypted.
  - akersten 6y ago
    Facebook carries both messaging traffic and user-generated content. If they support E2E encryption in their messenger, the threat is that they are not "following best practices for law enforcement intercept" and risk losing their protections over the non-E2E user-generated content on their main site. The confusion is understandable because the two are unrelated in any technical capacity, but the DoJ seeks to twist their arm by taking away an existing legal protection for not making law enforcement's job easier.

lliamander 6y ago

While I am concerned about the potential negative consequences to altering section 230, there are several elements in the DOJ proposal that I think would be excellent ideas: > 3. Promoting Competition A third reform proposal is to clarify that federal antitrust claims are not covered by Section 230 immunity. Over time, the avenues for engaging in both online commerce and speech have concentrated in the hands of a few key players. It makes little sense to enable large online platforms (particularly dominant ones) to invoke Section 230 immunity in antitrust cases, where liability is based on harm to competition, not on third-party speech. Breaking up advertising monopolies (which all of these social media platforms essentially are) would probably be a good outcome. > b. Provide Definition of Good Faith. Second, the Department proposes adding a statutory definition of “good faith,” which would limit immunity for content moderation decisions to those done in accordance with plain and particular terms of service and accompanied by a reasonable explanation, unless such notice would impede law enforcement or risk imminent harm to others. Clarifying the meaning of "good faith" should encourage platforms to be more transparent and accountable to their users, rather than hide behind blanket Section 230 protections. Is it too much to ask for social media companies to actually abide by their TOS? How often have we seen people complain (outside the realm of politics) about getting banned without explanation or appeal? If people are going to be building their livelihoods around these platforms (for content distribution, ad revenue, etc.) then I think it's time for these platforms to be more transparent with their content creators.

akersten 6y ago
The outcome of "breaking up advertising monopolies" can be achieved with existing anti-trust law, without cannibalizing an existing protection that benefits every UGC website large and small. > Is it too much to ask for social media companies to actually abide by their TOS? How often have we seen people complain (outside the realm of politics) about getting banned without explanation or appeal? A physical business can trespass you for any non-protected-class reason they want. Online, one should expect no different treatment.
- lliamander 6y ago
  > The outcome of "breaking up advertising monopolies" can be achieved with existing anti-trust law, without cannibalizing an existing protection that benefits every UGC website large and small. I don't think it requires cannibalizing existing protections in order prevent section 230 from being invoked in anti-trust cases. And for the record, I don't think I agree with all of the DOJ recommendations, but I think there may be room for improvement. > A physical business can trespass you for any non-protected-class reason they want. Online, one should expect no different treatment. I'm not entering into a legal agreement simply by entering a physical business. However, terms of service are a legal agreement. A lot of tech businesses seem to be under the impression that a TOS doesn't actual impose any obligations on them, but in fact it does.

sub7 6y ago

If Twitter has taught us anything, it's that everyone should not have an equal voice and an equal platform. A person or company's reach or audience should be a function of 1) what they're talking about and 2) what credibility they have re: 1. I'm all for anyone being allowed to say anything but I'm completely against anyone being allowed to amplify anything. Also, the Republicans would do well to introduce legislation expanding data portability and making it much harder for these completely unethical platforms to keep your data locked into their walled gardens. Friends names, birthdays and emails as a csv is basically impossible to export from FB for example.

lliamander 6y ago
> If Twitter has taught us anything, it's that everyone should not have an equal voice and an equal platform. A person or company's reach or audience should be a function of 1) what they're talking about and 2) what credibility they have re: 1. How do you propose we should establish credibility of sources? Also, how do propose to factor in the originality of what they say? > Also, the Republicans would do well to introduce legislation expanding data portability and making it much harder for these completely unethical platforms to keep your data locked into their walled gardens. Friends names, birthdays and emails as a csv is basically impossible to export from FB for example. Agreed.
- sub7 6y ago
  Let's put aside originality for now. I think with a few small deep structural changes, you can get 80% of the way there. I would have all posts require a tagged context, let's call it a topic (in reality it'd be multi facet hierarchical object). I would also have all profiles list the topics they'd like to be credible in. The credibility score for a given topic would be an algorithm that would use followers credibility scores to "rub off" on your score for that topic. You seed the profiles you know to be credible and then propagate the graph. It'd initially be a guesstimate and then gets refined as more humans rate, interact and judge the post. Over a few posts, I think you'd be able to get a broad credibility bucket for a given profile/topic pair. Btw I've built a social network with tens of millions of users and we used this approach and it works pretty well. It does require a bit of moderation and bad actor weeding out but for the most part it works. Also, FB and Twitter aren't full of retards (shockingly) They know they can do this but they also know they would tank a shitload of their core quantitative metric for a vague qualitative metric. It'd just never happen from within.