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I think this is one of the great unsolved problems of our time. Apple, Google and Amazon (ok and Azure too I guess) are effectively gatekeepers in terms of wha

• ethbr0 6y ago
  Parent pointed out a good starting place: in the physical world, we've evolved minimum property and contractual rights that cannot be waived. In the digital world we have... binding arbitration clauses in terms & conditions of use.
  • silon42 6y ago
    IMO, eventually this will revert, when lawyers (and judges) realize DRM makes many of them redundant.
• cbradford 6y ago
  There is a framework for this that was created over 100 years ago when the same problem happened with railroads. They did they same thing and used their monopoly power to discriminate on who could ship goods by rail. Society said that was wrong and we have the idea of a common carrier that must treat all customers the same. We should declare all app stores to be the same, common carries that may not discriminate. Bottom line, end of story. No BS about "hate speech" or other terms that are made up to make censorship sound more palatable.
  • oblio 6y ago
    We'll need a legal framework for removing apps in this case.
    • vincnetas 6y ago
      Court order. You cant remove app just because you dont like it. App should violate laws to be removed.
      • Robotbeat 6y ago
        I disagree with that. Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. However, we should make it more possible for alternative stores to be available. Side-loading (including on iPhones) should be a protected ability, not government officials deciding that Apple can’t ban white supremacists from publishing hate speech apps on Apple’s App Store.
        • pmichaud 6y ago
          > Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. I don't know about that. It feels a little too close to Verizon cutting off a phone call to my friend because an employment or sentiment detection algo didn't appreciate my tone.
        • tester34 6y ago
          >Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. Why should they unless the app violates the law? And please take into consideration the fact that we aren't talking about small / mid size businesses, but giant behemoths and we're trying to apply some rules to the biggest ones.
          • Robotbeat 6y ago
            And why should those huge companies be able to collect rents from their App stores? Protecting side-loading (legally and technically) solves both problems. And limits the ability of the government to do the same kind of moderating as they’d first have to somehow disable sideloading. (Imagine the government trying to disable ability to run arbitrary code on all laptops or PCs. Possible with enough manpower, sure, but way harder than just moderating an App Store.)
  • TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
    People love to talk about great the web of the 90's was, and I miss it myself, but what made it work was "the price of admission" which elevated the level of both the posters (who had to understand how to make, and pay for, a web site), and the readers (who had to pay for an internet connection, and understand how to configure the connection). I think categorizing social media services as common carriers is half of it. People who shipped things over the rail line also paid money for the service. I think social media services should charge a nominal fee for the privilege of posting. This alone would keep out a lot of the spammy riff-raff, and would automatically help in taking some pressure off the moderation algorithms and content screeners. If it were up to me, I'd put limits on how large of an enterprise would be allowed to be supported with ad tech.
    • monkeybutton 6y ago
      Does anyone remember the Something Awful forums? One thing that set them apart was charging $10 for an account. People balked at the idea of paying to post on an internet forum but it kept out the spam and crap other forums were inundated with. Edit: I doubt perma-banning via CC number would be as effective a tool now that things like Apple Pay and virtual credit card numbers exist.
      • thedevelopnik 6y ago
        They’re still around, And it’s still 10bux! I literally owe many of the major changes in my life to the SA Forums and people I met through them, and yeah, the quality of posts there is high due to the moderation and cost. Even the creator got perma-banned recently when it was discovered he was a serial abuser who had been using the forums as part of his abuse.
  • sweetheart 6y ago
    Uh, it’s alarming to see someone refer to hate speech as a made up term. Do you think hate speech doesn’t exist?
    • ycombigator 6y ago
      Hate speech exists as a concept, but it's entirely subjective. Hate speech can be defined as anything that those in power choose they want to suppress, which means in practice its really just censorship. Besides which, it's counter productive.
    • cbradford 6y ago
      Correct. Hate speech means speech you do not like because it disagrees with your biases and viewpoints. For some the use of speech to coordinate a summer of violent riots is hate speech, for others it is a rally cry of the oppressed. Using the violence of the state to restrict freedom of speech and thought is never done by people on the right side of history.
      • wizzwizz4 6y ago
        It's (almost) always done by people on the wrong side of history. There's an important distinction, there. Should people be free from consequences for these? • Yelling fire in a crowded theatre • Posting nohup sudo -knu cat /dev/zero > /dev/sd* (but, you know, a working version) as an answer to “how do I recover my backups URGENT!!1” on a Q&A site / IRC. • Asking a very drunk person to hand their wallet over to the “wallet inspectors” for “indefinite inspection and spending”. • Asking a bank employee to wire you money from someone else's account. • Asking a bank computer to wire you money from someone else's account. • Giving somebody else the DeCSS decryption keys. • Publishing a detailed procedure for how to build a dirty bomb using common household items. • Verbally punching down in a way that causes significant psychological distress. I know what I'd answer to these.
  • Robotbeat 6y ago
    I get this concern, but the hate speech bit is not BS. People using platforms to plan insurrections or other violence are not gonna be protected, whether by private companies or the government.
    • singularity2001 6y ago
      You mean like those evil resurrecting revolutionists in myanmar, hongkong and russia?
      • Robotbeat 6y ago
        You’re making my point. The government isn’t going to protect speech more than private companies. Be careful for what you wish for on asking the government to step in.
        • skohan 6y ago
          The government has legal limits with which it cannot infringe on speech. That's not to say it always works perfectly, but at least if the government prevents my speech, I have recourse to challenge it in the court system on constitutional grounds. If Google or Apple does it, I have zero recourse, and the limits of the speech on their platforms are decided entirely unilaterally.
          • Robotbeat 6y ago
            Which is why sideloading should be protected. The government restricting the freedom of companies to moderate pretty terrible content is not great. What we should have is sideloading protected technically and legally. That also prevents Google and Apple from just collecting monopoly rents from their App Stores with no alternative. App stores and the ability of companies to pick and choose the apps that are allowed on them is a legitimate thing. What’s not legitimate is being stuck with ONLY being able to use the company’s App Store on the device you own. Government sticking their nose in there is likely to have results that are not what you want. The freedom-maximizing option is not to have government-moderated app stores (shudder). It’s to have the freedom to shop at different stores. The App Store model itself (where sideloading is prohibited and technically impossible) is a single point of failure, and having the government run it is not going to make things more free. I mean for goodness sake, you can’t even swear on FCC’s airwaves, and you’re telling me THAT’S the model you want in App Stores?
  • zepto 6y ago
    I don’t think government regulation of software distribution will prevent censorship.
    • skohan 6y ago
      I don't understand, are you arguing that mandating equitable access to railroads was bad for free enterprise and commerce?
      • zepto 6y ago
        How do I run my own train on the open train lines? Where are the open source train designs? Why are new railway projects mired in government bureaucracy?
        • skohan 6y ago
          I don't know if I understand what you are trying to say with this metaphor, but I am not sure how government regulation to make software explicitly more accessible would not be in the interest of the consumer and the entrepreneur.
          • zepto 6y ago
            You don’t understand the metaphor of railway regulation? Why did you introduce it? Government regulation often doesn’t do what people say it’s going to do. Often it is written to benefit a particular lobby. If you have specific ideas, those can be discussed in the context of government regulation of software. If you’re going to say ‘it will turn out the way it did with railways’, then you also have to face that access to railway lines is only available to a small number of companies chosen by the government. I think that is exactly what would happen if the government regulated software distribution.
• ptero 6y ago
  It is even broader (and worse) than this. Technological gatekeepers you listed there are often working in concert with financial gatekeepers (credit card companies, payment processors) to prevent funding of alternative information flows.