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Oh please. Laws exist, platforms must ensure their customers follow the laws, and when a customer refuses to remove illegal content or implement a moderation p

Oh please. Laws exist, platforms must ensure their customers follow the laws, and when a customer refuses to remove illegal content or implement a moderation policy the platform has the choice to accept the liability or remove the customer. Proof is right here, with some moderation changes they let Parler back in.

GoldenMonkey 5y ago
Laws exist? How about protecting free speech and other points of view. It's clearly a right vs left viewpoint. And so political. We can easily list how much worse facebook is in terms of supporting dictators, supporting the CCP, censoring stories on Uyghurs. Not allowing political discourse on alternative viewpoints besides what is in their leftist bubble.
- kingnothing 5y ago
  Free speech protects you from the government, not private companies.
  - noofen 5y ago
    These "private companies" are monopolies.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    The first amendment protects against Congress specifically. But you as a human have the right to free speech, and that right needs to be protected against private individuals/ corporations as well. If McDonalds blew up your house, you would sue for property damages instead of shrugging and saying "well it wasn't the government, so I guess they didn't violate my property rights after all." Whether what Apple did here is actually a violation of one's right to free speech is a pretty tenuous argument. But that is the argument you should be responding to.
Aerroon 5y ago
When will Google and Apple start moderating Chrome and Safari? Those are their apps. Therefore they should be held accountable for all the unmoderated content you can find on them, right? Or are some apps/publishers more equal than others? If Brave becomes more popular, will they also get removed for "unmoderated content"?
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Some apps and publishers have always been more equal than others. Look in the source code for both Firefox and Chromium, and you'll find a section that glad-handles high-value extension binaries... The binaries where if they aren't configured correctly when the browser is installed, the user will assume the browser is broken, not the extension binary. Similarly, Microsoft decompiled some of its own APIs when developing Windows XP to account for circumstances where third-party developers (mostly Adobe) had squeezed clock cycles out of their API calls by assuming certain memory footprints in clear violation of the API spec. But if Photoshop didn't work on Windows XP, it was XP that was broken, not Photoshop. There has never, to my knowledge, been a point in the history of the computer industry where "all software is created equal."
- ksec 5y ago
  I have a better example. Email. Do they now censor my email from a Group message involving things they do not like? Do I need moderation for my Email now? But you know Apple will hide behind their privacy policy when it is their apps.
jariel 5y ago
"Oh please. Laws exist, platforms must ensure their customers follow the laws, and when a customer refuses to remove illegal content" Don't make this about 'laws' - this was definitely not about 'laws' or the 'law' would have stepped in - and it's definitely not Amazon's job to enforce the law. Amazon knowingly sells fake goods and suppresses unions so let's not give them the moral high ground. Apple's concern I don't think was arbitrary: there was a lot of 'really bad discourse' on Parler, and it was not moderated at all (or community moderated which had no effect). I don't like Apple's App Store 'monopoly' however they were within reason to not want Parler in the store. If Apple allowed non-AppStore downloads, then I think it would have sat much better. Amazon however, I think did something a few steps more inappropriate and more nakedly political. Amazon has a zillion customers that do arguably more nefarious things, in the 'big picture' they look hypocritical, though they are surely within legal rights as well. I do feel however, that Amazon shouldn't be allowed to drop customers without a 3 month notice unless said customers have done something actually illegal, and by that I mean 'illegal as designated by an actual Judge'.
- tekstar 5y ago
  > and it's definitely not Amazon's job to enforce the law. It's about liability, and big corp's allergy to it. > I do feel however, that Amazon shouldn't be allowed to drop customers without a 3 month notice unless said customers have done something actually illegal, and by that I mean 'illegal as designated by an actual Judge'. That's not how liability works
  - octopoc 5y ago
    > > I do feel however, that Amazon shouldn't be allowed to drop customers without a 3 month notice unless said customers have done something actually illegal, and by that I mean 'illegal as designated by an actual Judge'. > That's not how liability works The post you're replying to is describing a better process (note the use of the word "shouldn't"), and your reply seems to be saying, "no, because that's not the current process." The fact that the system we have now exists does not mean it's the best system possible. I could have misunderstood your comment though.
  - 5y ago

GoldenMonkey 5y ago

Laws exist? How about protecting free speech and other points of view. It's clearly a right vs left viewpoint. And so political. We can easily list how much worse facebook is in terms of supporting dictators, supporting the CCP, censoring stories on Uyghurs. Not allowing political discourse on alternative viewpoints besides what is in their leftist bubble.

kingnothing 5y ago
Free speech protects you from the government, not private companies.
- noofen 5y ago
  These "private companies" are monopolies.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  The first amendment protects against Congress specifically. But you as a human have the right to free speech, and that right needs to be protected against private individuals/ corporations as well. If McDonalds blew up your house, you would sue for property damages instead of shrugging and saying "well it wasn't the government, so I guess they didn't violate my property rights after all." Whether what Apple did here is actually a violation of one's right to free speech is a pretty tenuous argument. But that is the argument you should be responding to.

Aerroon 5y ago

When will Google and Apple start moderating Chrome and Safari? Those are their apps. Therefore they should be held accountable for all the unmoderated content you can find on them, right? Or are some apps/publishers more equal than others? If Brave becomes more popular, will they also get removed for "unmoderated content"?

shadowgovt 5y ago
Some apps and publishers have always been more equal than others. Look in the source code for both Firefox and Chromium, and you'll find a section that glad-handles high-value extension binaries... The binaries where if they aren't configured correctly when the browser is installed, the user will assume the browser is broken, not the extension binary. Similarly, Microsoft decompiled some of its own APIs when developing Windows XP to account for circumstances where third-party developers (mostly Adobe) had squeezed clock cycles out of their API calls by assuming certain memory footprints in clear violation of the API spec. But if Photoshop didn't work on Windows XP, it was XP that was broken, not Photoshop. There has never, to my knowledge, been a point in the history of the computer industry where "all software is created equal."
ksec 5y ago
I have a better example. Email. Do they now censor my email from a Group message involving things they do not like? Do I need moderation for my Email now? But you know Apple will hide behind their privacy policy when it is their apps.

jariel 5y ago

"Oh please. Laws exist, platforms must ensure their customers follow the laws, and when a customer refuses to remove illegal content" Don't make this about 'laws' - this was definitely not about 'laws' or the 'law' would have stepped in - and it's definitely not Amazon's job to enforce the law. Amazon knowingly sells fake goods and suppresses unions so let's not give them the moral high ground. Apple's concern I don't think was arbitrary: there was a lot of 'really bad discourse' on Parler, and it was not moderated at all (or community moderated which had no effect). I don't like Apple's App Store 'monopoly' however they were within reason to not want Parler in the store. If Apple allowed non-AppStore downloads, then I think it would have sat much better. Amazon however, I think did something a few steps more inappropriate and more nakedly political. Amazon has a zillion customers that do arguably more nefarious things, in the 'big picture' they look hypocritical, though they are surely within legal rights as well. I do feel however, that Amazon shouldn't be allowed to drop customers without a 3 month notice unless said customers have done something actually illegal, and by that I mean 'illegal as designated by an actual Judge'.

tekstar 5y ago
> and it's definitely not Amazon's job to enforce the law. It's about liability, and big corp's allergy to it. > I do feel however, that Amazon shouldn't be allowed to drop customers without a 3 month notice unless said customers have done something actually illegal, and by that I mean 'illegal as designated by an actual Judge'. That's not how liability works
- octopoc 5y ago
  > > I do feel however, that Amazon shouldn't be allowed to drop customers without a 3 month notice unless said customers have done something actually illegal, and by that I mean 'illegal as designated by an actual Judge'. > That's not how liability works The post you're replying to is describing a better process (note the use of the word "shouldn't"), and your reply seems to be saying, "no, because that's not the current process." The fact that the system we have now exists does not mean it's the best system possible. I could have misunderstood your comment though.
- 5y ago