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> must prioritise complaints raised by "trusted flaggers" That's the real concern here. Speech must be handled very carefully, but now we're elevating some spe

> must prioritise complaints raised by "trusted flaggers" That's the real concern here. Speech must be handled very carefully, but now we're elevating some specific people to be 'more equal' than others? Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I can see that opening a can of worms. I don't live in the EU, but just like that well intentioned but shortsighted cookie law, the rest of us will have to deal with the fallout of that for a long time to come.

tarsiec 6y ago
Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I assumed their level of "trustworthy" comes from them consistently flagging content or issues of the platform and those reports being valid, as some sort of reputation system, and not some users being selected for more arbitrary reasons. I could be wrong though.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Vanilla reputation systems don't optimize for "validity"; rather, they optimize for consensus--whatever opinions are popular get hyper-reinforced in tight feedback loops. If you believe that our society is irredeemably racist, then a vanilla reputation system will optimize for racism. Basically, the reputation system can't dictate what is valid--that has to be determined outside of the reputation system. In other words, set a clear, objective standard for "valid" content and use a reputation system that holds moderators accountable to that external definition of "validity".
john_moscow 6y ago
This is the trend of the past decade. More and more people are expected to work as replaceable drones without any real career advancement, or a shot at affording retirement, house, or family/kids. But the social pressure resulting from this is cleverly redirected. Instead of being passionate about starting their own business (and competing with the former employer), they are now passionate about policing what others can say or do. Instead of creating a new cool product, they create rules that others must follow in fear of being canceled. This costs nothing on the corporate expense sheets, but makes the society increasingly more toxic.
- stiray 6y ago
  Well you might address it also the way you have mentioned but there is a tiny issue. European culture and its laws are highly problematic in regards to todays behaviour and income that large internet companies profit from (spying on users and use their data essentially against them - even for just showing the ads). Today there is just no way to make your own 3rd party OS / search engine / social network (regardless if it would be better) as development is too expensive on the other side you dont have financing from the same murky practices that were just too new when current giants (and even those have monopoly so there is literally no way to finance yourself) came out. Yes, they were first but now they are strangling everybody. And this is not only true for EU, same goes for USA. Someone will have to do something about it but with the power of home lobbying I dont believe that the States will do anything meaningful. On the other side, EU needs to protect its market.
oblio 6y ago
> That's the real concern here. Speech must be handled very carefully, but now we're elevating some specific people to be 'more equal' than others? Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I can see that opening a can of worms. Well, who are the people that censor all other kinds of media? As far as I know movies are censored (Motion Picture Production Code, Motion Picture Association film rating system), music is censored (Parental Advisories), TV is censored (TV station licenses), radio (radio station licenses) is censored, news paper are censored (I can't find the exact reference). The roof hasn't fallen because of existing censorship, or am I missing something?
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  To be clear, movie and music ratings aren't censorship. Moreover, only broadcast television and radio are censored (perhaps because radio waves are a public platform?). I'm not going to argue that censoring broadcast is ideal or valid, but I'm certainly less sympathetic to the plight of massive media companies than I am to millions of private citizens.
  - oblio 6y ago
    > To be clear, movie and music ratings aren't censorship. True, calling them censorship is kind of stretching the definition. But there's still a small group of people that decide those ratings and the commercial impact of those ratings, as far as I know, is massive. So it's not direct censorship, but it still has a "chilling effect".
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      Like I said, I'm not going to die defending censorship of Hollywood or CBS or whomever, but I am much more concerned with the rights of ordinary citizens who only recently got the right to communicate in any sort of broadcast fashion (still nowhere near the power that the media industry enjoys).
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > To be clear, movie and music ratings aren't censorship. To the extent they are incorporated with schemes that limit access to the rated content imposed by powerful entities outside of the transaction, they are part of schemes of censorship. (Public censorship schemes that incorporate movie ratings, and thus delegate to movie raters the role of public censor, are common.) > I'm not going to argue that censoring broadcast is ideal or valid, but I'm certainly less sympathetic to the plight of massive media companies than I am to millions of private citizens. Censorship by a third party equally impacts the rights of the parties on both sides of a potential transaction; broadcast media censorship restricts the freedom of both massive media companies and millions of private citizens.
juskrey 6y ago
"Curators"
eznzt 6y ago
Trusted flaggers sounds to me like crazy people who spend all day reporting content because they are obsessed or have absolutely nothing to do. Having a system like this in place would lead to bad outcomes.
- 6510 6y ago
  They are employees.
- jsmith45 6y ago
  No these are organizations that an EU government has granted special status to: "The status of trusted flaggers under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entities, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established where the applicant has demonstrated to meet all of the following conditions: (a) it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content; (b) it represents collective interests and is independent from any online platform; (c) it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices in a timely, diligent and objective manner." edit: Yeah, NGOs and also MPAA/RIAA style associations will probably be the most common entities.
  - eznzt 6y ago
    Oooof, I imagine an endless list of left-wing NGOs.
    - buisi 6y ago
      Right-wing ones too. Both factions of politics are likely to step in here.
      - emteycz 6y ago
        Not on my site. Probably will have to make it P2P or something...
jsmith45 6y ago
The purpose of this is to ensure that organizations like the European equivalents of RIAA and MPAA have basically one click disable buttons (not strictly required, but how most sites will implement it) for content they claim infringes their copyrights, or is otherwise illegal. This would also be used by organizations that track down child porn etc. As for who is a trusted flagger: "The status of trusted flaggers under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entities, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established where the applicant has demonstrated to meet all of the following conditions: (a) it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content; (b) it represents collective interests and is independent from any online platform; (c) it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices in a timely, diligent and objective manner. " I.E. if you can convince your local government that you should be one, bam you are one, and online platform the EU needs to expedite processing of any notices you make. On the other end of the spectrum, the companies are required to allow you to appeal takedowns and account suspensions/terminations (for TOS or illegal content reasons, not for non-payment reasons) for a 6 month period. Further, if you appeal a takedown or account suspension and the company rejects your appeal, the law will allow you to take the matter to binding arbitration. If the user wins, the company pays all costs, and must reinstate the content or account. If the user loses, they only pay their portion of arbitration costs. (The company's portion are just part of doing business in the EU).
- buisi 6y ago
  This makes it very difficult to host any sort of "borderline" content in the E.U. If someone decides they don't like your decision on a contentious matter, and a court agrees with them, you're the one who'll take the fall for making the wrong call.

tarsiec 6y ago

Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I assumed their level of "trustworthy" comes from them consistently flagging content or issues of the platform and those reports being valid, as some sort of reputation system, and not some users being selected for more arbitrary reasons. I could be wrong though.

throwaway894345 6y ago
Vanilla reputation systems don't optimize for "validity"; rather, they optimize for consensus--whatever opinions are popular get hyper-reinforced in tight feedback loops. If you believe that our society is irredeemably racist, then a vanilla reputation system will optimize for racism. Basically, the reputation system can't dictate what is valid--that has to be determined outside of the reputation system. In other words, set a clear, objective standard for "valid" content and use a reputation system that holds moderators accountable to that external definition of "validity".

john_moscow 6y ago

This is the trend of the past decade. More and more people are expected to work as replaceable drones without any real career advancement, or a shot at affording retirement, house, or family/kids. But the social pressure resulting from this is cleverly redirected. Instead of being passionate about starting their own business (and competing with the former employer), they are now passionate about policing what others can say or do. Instead of creating a new cool product, they create rules that others must follow in fear of being canceled. This costs nothing on the corporate expense sheets, but makes the society increasingly more toxic.

stiray 6y ago
Well you might address it also the way you have mentioned but there is a tiny issue. European culture and its laws are highly problematic in regards to todays behaviour and income that large internet companies profit from (spying on users and use their data essentially against them - even for just showing the ads). Today there is just no way to make your own 3rd party OS / search engine / social network (regardless if it would be better) as development is too expensive on the other side you dont have financing from the same murky practices that were just too new when current giants (and even those have monopoly so there is literally no way to finance yourself) came out. Yes, they were first but now they are strangling everybody. And this is not only true for EU, same goes for USA. Someone will have to do something about it but with the power of home lobbying I dont believe that the States will do anything meaningful. On the other side, EU needs to protect its market.

oblio 6y ago

> That's the real concern here. Speech must be handled very carefully, but now we're elevating some specific people to be 'more equal' than others? Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I can see that opening a can of worms. Well, who are the people that censor all other kinds of media? As far as I know movies are censored (Motion Picture Production Code, Motion Picture Association film rating system), music is censored (Parental Advisories), TV is censored (TV station licenses), radio (radio station licenses) is censored, news paper are censored (I can't find the exact reference). The roof hasn't fallen because of existing censorship, or am I missing something?

throwaway894345 6y ago
To be clear, movie and music ratings aren't censorship. Moreover, only broadcast television and radio are censored (perhaps because radio waves are a public platform?). I'm not going to argue that censoring broadcast is ideal or valid, but I'm certainly less sympathetic to the plight of massive media companies than I am to millions of private citizens.
- oblio 6y ago
  > To be clear, movie and music ratings aren't censorship. True, calling them censorship is kind of stretching the definition. But there's still a small group of people that decide those ratings and the commercial impact of those ratings, as far as I know, is massive. So it's not direct censorship, but it still has a "chilling effect".
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    Like I said, I'm not going to die defending censorship of Hollywood or CBS or whomever, but I am much more concerned with the rights of ordinary citizens who only recently got the right to communicate in any sort of broadcast fashion (still nowhere near the power that the media industry enjoys).
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > To be clear, movie and music ratings aren't censorship. To the extent they are incorporated with schemes that limit access to the rated content imposed by powerful entities outside of the transaction, they are part of schemes of censorship. (Public censorship schemes that incorporate movie ratings, and thus delegate to movie raters the role of public censor, are common.) > I'm not going to argue that censoring broadcast is ideal or valid, but I'm certainly less sympathetic to the plight of massive media companies than I am to millions of private citizens. Censorship by a third party equally impacts the rights of the parties on both sides of a potential transaction; broadcast media censorship restricts the freedom of both massive media companies and millions of private citizens.

juskrey 6y ago

"Curators"

eznzt 6y ago

Trusted flaggers sounds to me like crazy people who spend all day reporting content because they are obsessed or have absolutely nothing to do. Having a system like this in place would lead to bad outcomes.

6510 6y ago
They are employees.
jsmith45 6y ago
No these are organizations that an EU government has granted special status to: "The status of trusted flaggers under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entities, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established where the applicant has demonstrated to meet all of the following conditions: (a) it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content; (b) it represents collective interests and is independent from any online platform; (c) it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices in a timely, diligent and objective manner." edit: Yeah, NGOs and also MPAA/RIAA style associations will probably be the most common entities.
- eznzt 6y ago
  Oooof, I imagine an endless list of left-wing NGOs.
  - buisi 6y ago
    Right-wing ones too. Both factions of politics are likely to step in here.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      Not on my site. Probably will have to make it P2P or something...

jsmith45 6y ago

The purpose of this is to ensure that organizations like the European equivalents of RIAA and MPAA have basically one click disable buttons (not strictly required, but how most sites will implement it) for content they claim infringes their copyrights, or is otherwise illegal. This would also be used by organizations that track down child porn etc. As for who is a trusted flagger: "The status of trusted flaggers under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entities, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established where the applicant has demonstrated to meet all of the following conditions: (a) it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content; (b) it represents collective interests and is independent from any online platform; (c) it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices in a timely, diligent and objective manner. " I.E. if you can convince your local government that you should be one, bam you are one, and online platform the EU needs to expedite processing of any notices you make. On the other end of the spectrum, the companies are required to allow you to appeal takedowns and account suspensions/terminations (for TOS or illegal content reasons, not for non-payment reasons) for a 6 month period. Further, if you appeal a takedown or account suspension and the company rejects your appeal, the law will allow you to take the matter to binding arbitration. If the user wins, the company pays all costs, and must reinstate the content or account. If the user loses, they only pay their portion of arbitration costs. (The company's portion are just part of doing business in the EU).

buisi 6y ago
This makes it very difficult to host any sort of "borderline" content in the E.U. If someone decides they don't like your decision on a contentious matter, and a court agrees with them, you're the one who'll take the fall for making the wrong call.