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Politicians often ask for silly things in connection with technologies they don't really understand, to achieve goals they don't really expect to achieve, just
by Silhouette 6y ago
Politicians often ask for silly things in connection with technologies they don't really understand, to achieve goals they don't really expect to achieve, just in order to look good to a certain part of the electorate.
Consider an analogy between modern social media sites and something like a phone network or postal mail service. What would happen if a politician suggested that phone companies or their national postal service should be required to monitor all communications for some vaguely-defined concept of suspicious activity, and then when something was flagged, have it reviewed by a human and if deemed inappropriate cut off the spread within X hours? It would be considered an absurd suggestion by just about everyone, for being impractical, expensive, intrusive, unreliable and of questionable benefit.
And yet, politicians keep suggesting that social media companies should be able to do almost exactly that. There are demands that these companies magically detect any sort of inappropriate content on their systems, and then remove it quickly. Small details like subjectivity, privacy and practicality never seem to feature in the press conference, though.
- quintushoratius 6y agoThat's a terrible analogy, for two reasons. 1. Post and phone have an expectation of privacy so the government can't review them (in the US, at least) 2. There is already a system in place to review all phone calls in real time. It's run by several Western intelligence agencies to get around the monitoring rules mentioned in #1.
- Silhouette 6y ago1 is merely an accident of history and a subjective question of what you consider a reasonable expectation of privacy. Even if 2 is true, I doubt that system is preventing people from discussing controversial subjects like, say, climate change or politics, even if what the speakers are saying is untrue.
- scarface74 6y agoYet posters on HN are the first ones to want the government to regulate tech.
- Silhouette 6y agoAnd I agree with them. Tech is far too unregulated today, and this causes massive damage to our societies. But regulations should always be reasonable and proportionate, and expecting a social network to police all human communication via their system for vaguely specified bad content does not seem to clear that bar.
- scarface74 6y agoYet the representatives who are going to pass laws are the same people who grilled Zuckerberg for Twitter’s practices. Do you really trust their competence? All the laws being passed and all we got was shitty pop ups on every website saying “we use cookies”. Of course we also got the DMCA....
- Silhouette 6y agoThe government system in the US is essentially dysfunctional, as far as I can tell from outside. Fortunately, not everywhere is like that. All politicians are politicians, but some are more politician than others.
- refurb 6y agoIt’s funny to see. “Snowden showed how corrupt the gov’t is and how our privacy is at risk!” “We should have the gov’t regulate communication on the big social networks!”
- scarface74 6y agoI think the last good thing that the government ever did with regards to tech in the US is cell phone number portability.