5 ms·

Honestly, I think it is high time people uploading content to the web were subjected to standard laws, as any other citizen trying to share something on the pub

Honestly, I think it is high time people uploading content to the web were subjected to standard laws, as any other citizen trying to share something on the public square: You are pasting graphic content on the square: try it and see how soon the police come after you and you have to at least answer before a judge. You are uploading graphic content to the web? We call the police, nice and simple. And let the judiciary deal with it. Otherwise what you have is this: people with absolutely no training, with no real support and with bad salaries doing something they should not: policing.

simmerup 5y ago
Is it time for the internet to get something like maritime law? I could see each power controlling their own section in that case
nerdponx 5y ago
As long as there are protected places where you can still legally post or distribute such material (there are legitimate reasons for doing so), I'm happy for it to be illegal in "most" places.
krapp 5y ago
People uploading to the web are subject to standard laws - graphic content is already illegal in many cases, as well as against the terms of service of many websites. "You are uploading graphic content to the web? We call the police, nice and simple. And let the judiciary deal with it" is already what moderators do. The problem here isn't that there aren't enough laws, it's that the scale of illegal content being uploaded is vast and moderators are unprepared, untrained and underpaid because their jobs are considered unskilled, low value labor. that is what needs to change.
- pfortuny 5y ago
  Yes: what I am trying to convey is: "Facebook must call the authorities whenever any attempt at doing so within their site happens". Yes, it is troublesome and costly but it is the lawful thing to do.
  - csunbird 5y ago
    are the law enforcement agencies even prepared for this? i do not think that they would be handle the load anyways
    - tapland 5y ago
      No. But we don't adjust laws or tell people not to report crimes just because the legal system can't keep up. It's better to have a record of it being filed even if it's dismissed right away.
  - mewpmewp2 5y ago
    What says that they are not already doing that?
tester34 5y ago
It only partly solves this problem, because good luck calling cops on people from countries like Russia
- vasachi 5y ago
  Well, if it is something like phishing US citizens, then yeah, Russian police have zero motivation to do anything about it. Child porn though? Or something else that is an easy statistics boost? Russian police would be __very__ glad to act upon such information :)
faceplanted 5y ago
It _is_ illegal, and they can and do call the police. The problem isn't that it's not illegal, it's that they still need to delete the content. It's like saying "just call the police" to someone who's just been mugged, they still need to get to a phone and cancel all the cards. You haven't solved the mugging problem and they were probably going to anyway.
DharmaPolice 5y ago
>You are uploading graphic content to the web? We call the police, nice and simple. And let the judiciary deal with it. This is fantasy, even if it were desirable. In most places the judiciary struggles to enforce the laws we already have. In the UK something like 90%+ of burglaries and robberies go unsolved. The figures for rape are even worse. And those are crimes where there is a certainty they were committed by someone in the same country as the person reporting the crime (at least at the time) and where there is broad agreement they are serious crimes, worthy of police attention. If you hand out really graphic leaflets in the street you might eventually be arrested and you might eventually up before a judge (but this is no way certain) but you'd really have to go out of your way to annoy people. You're more likely to just be told to stop it and have your leaflets taken away after a fight occurs. If you were handing out child porn then sure, you'll get arrested but that's because you're standing right there and it requires very little police time to investigate the matter.
- CaptArmchair 5y ago
  The problem isn't just people sharing illicit content. The problem is those who facilitate that. The 'town square' notion isn't apt because that's a public space. A better analogy is a private party as each and every platform is, at the end of the day, owned and managed by private legal entities. If publishers were to verbatim publish whatever crazy, illicit content was mailed to them by their subscribers/readers, they'd be prosecuted within a fortnight. There's plenty of jurisprudence in the U.S. alone. Online platforms escape legal liability because of Section 230 which states: > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. The big dilemma is that Section 230 needs to be reconsidered if you want to do something about the platforms that facilitate sharing graphic content, hate speech and so on. That's problematic because Section 230 has, arguably, allowed for the Internet to become a free haven for whatever anyone wants to share and build. The other option is passing the buck to the free market. That is: if you don't like what you see, move over to a different platform. Or: don't use, or work for a platform that doesn't align with your own morals and values. While that's a nice sentiment: the reality clearly doesn't work like that. Why does someone decide to work for Facebook as a moderator in the first place? Is it because they genuinely want to make a career out of this? Or is it because social/economic circumstances push them in that direction (e.g. lack of other career options, tradeoffs preventing them to move towards other career options,...)? The same is true about the rise of social media. Billions of people are connected online. And they might seemingly have a ton of agency. But reality is that the vast majority of ordinary people spend the vast majority of time on a handful of social media, posting and sharing content, building an online identity... on a 3rd party platform which they don't own. Without hyperbole: they can't readily migrate lest they lose connection with the digital communities which is inextricably hosted on these platforms. That's just how a matter of networking effects. All in all, in closing this diatribe: law enforcement and justice can't do much unless there's a clear, modern legal framework which can be readily applied to the middle men.
V-2 5y ago
If I ever need the help of law enforcement, I'd be quite happy if they weren't all tangled up in investigating people uploading "graphic content" on Facebook. Especially given that in many countries Facebook doesn't contribute to public infrastructure all that much - eg. their effective tax rate in the UK is below 2% [1]. So the deal is that I (as a taxpayer) support the infrastructure, while they'll outsource their workload onto it, "calling police" for the pettiest things all around the clock. Thanks! [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50011441 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50011441
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Do you really want to involve the police and waste taxpayers money because someone posted a photo with half a nipple visible, and someone got offended and reported it? Police currently doesn't even solve most of the cases where there is actual damage (stolen items, violence,...).
globular-toast 5y ago
Basically we need to accept that places like Facebook are effectively public spaces now. That means two things: "disturbing the peace" type laws should apply, and freedom of speech laws should apply. These platforms don't want this, though. They don't want the public to own their platforms and they don't want freedom of speech to apply. What will probably happen is the government will police the platforms for them, while they maintain ownership. We see this pattern a lot.
concordDance 5y ago
Facebook is not the public square. And plenty of uploading is private. Do you think sites like old Liveleak should be illegal?
- pfortuny 5y ago
  No, but they should be under the law as any other citizen. Just that.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Sites like liveleak and similar are already under the law. What Facebook wants to do is curate content beyond the legal minimum and that means they have to sift through a lot of legal but objectionable content.
tarkin2 5y ago
It's not a public square. It's a private house open to the public.

simmerup 5y ago

Is it time for the internet to get something like maritime law? I could see each power controlling their own section in that case

nerdponx 5y ago

As long as there are protected places where you can still legally post or distribute such material (there are legitimate reasons for doing so), I'm happy for it to be illegal in "most" places.

krapp 5y ago

People uploading to the web are subject to standard laws - graphic content is already illegal in many cases, as well as against the terms of service of many websites. "You are uploading graphic content to the web? We call the police, nice and simple. And let the judiciary deal with it" is already what moderators do. The problem here isn't that there aren't enough laws, it's that the scale of illegal content being uploaded is vast and moderators are unprepared, untrained and underpaid because their jobs are considered unskilled, low value labor. that is what needs to change.

pfortuny 5y ago
Yes: what I am trying to convey is: "Facebook must call the authorities whenever any attempt at doing so within their site happens". Yes, it is troublesome and costly but it is the lawful thing to do.
- csunbird 5y ago
  are the law enforcement agencies even prepared for this? i do not think that they would be handle the load anyways
  - tapland 5y ago
    No. But we don't adjust laws or tell people not to report crimes just because the legal system can't keep up. It's better to have a record of it being filed even if it's dismissed right away.
- mewpmewp2 5y ago
  What says that they are not already doing that?

tester34 5y ago

It only partly solves this problem, because good luck calling cops on people from countries like Russia

vasachi 5y ago
Well, if it is something like phishing US citizens, then yeah, Russian police have zero motivation to do anything about it. Child porn though? Or something else that is an easy statistics boost? Russian police would be __very__ glad to act upon such information :)

faceplanted 5y ago

It _is_ illegal, and they can and do call the police. The problem isn't that it's not illegal, it's that they still need to delete the content. It's like saying "just call the police" to someone who's just been mugged, they still need to get to a phone and cancel all the cards. You haven't solved the mugging problem and they were probably going to anyway.

DharmaPolice 5y ago

>You are uploading graphic content to the web? We call the police, nice and simple. And let the judiciary deal with it. This is fantasy, even if it were desirable. In most places the judiciary struggles to enforce the laws we already have. In the UK something like 90%+ of burglaries and robberies go unsolved. The figures for rape are even worse. And those are crimes where there is a certainty they were committed by someone in the same country as the person reporting the crime (at least at the time) and where there is broad agreement they are serious crimes, worthy of police attention. If you hand out really graphic leaflets in the street you might eventually be arrested and you might eventually up before a judge (but this is no way certain) but you'd really have to go out of your way to annoy people. You're more likely to just be told to stop it and have your leaflets taken away after a fight occurs. If you were handing out child porn then sure, you'll get arrested but that's because you're standing right there and it requires very little police time to investigate the matter.

CaptArmchair 5y ago
The problem isn't just people sharing illicit content. The problem is those who facilitate that. The 'town square' notion isn't apt because that's a public space. A better analogy is a private party as each and every platform is, at the end of the day, owned and managed by private legal entities. If publishers were to verbatim publish whatever crazy, illicit content was mailed to them by their subscribers/readers, they'd be prosecuted within a fortnight. There's plenty of jurisprudence in the U.S. alone. Online platforms escape legal liability because of Section 230 which states: > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. The big dilemma is that Section 230 needs to be reconsidered if you want to do something about the platforms that facilitate sharing graphic content, hate speech and so on. That's problematic because Section 230 has, arguably, allowed for the Internet to become a free haven for whatever anyone wants to share and build. The other option is passing the buck to the free market. That is: if you don't like what you see, move over to a different platform. Or: don't use, or work for a platform that doesn't align with your own morals and values. While that's a nice sentiment: the reality clearly doesn't work like that. Why does someone decide to work for Facebook as a moderator in the first place? Is it because they genuinely want to make a career out of this? Or is it because social/economic circumstances push them in that direction (e.g. lack of other career options, tradeoffs preventing them to move towards other career options,...)? The same is true about the rise of social media. Billions of people are connected online. And they might seemingly have a ton of agency. But reality is that the vast majority of ordinary people spend the vast majority of time on a handful of social media, posting and sharing content, building an online identity... on a 3rd party platform which they don't own. Without hyperbole: they can't readily migrate lest they lose connection with the digital communities which is inextricably hosted on these platforms. That's just how a matter of networking effects. All in all, in closing this diatribe: law enforcement and justice can't do much unless there's a clear, modern legal framework which can be readily applied to the middle men.

V-2 5y ago

If I ever need the help of law enforcement, I'd be quite happy if they weren't all tangled up in investigating people uploading "graphic content" on Facebook. Especially given that in many countries Facebook doesn't contribute to public infrastructure all that much - eg. their effective tax rate in the UK is below 2% [1]. So the deal is that I (as a taxpayer) support the infrastructure, while they'll outsource their workload onto it, "calling police" for the pettiest things all around the clock. Thanks! [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50011441 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50011441

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

Do you really want to involve the police and waste taxpayers money because someone posted a photo with half a nipple visible, and someone got offended and reported it? Police currently doesn't even solve most of the cases where there is actual damage (stolen items, violence,...).

globular-toast 5y ago

Basically we need to accept that places like Facebook are effectively public spaces now. That means two things: "disturbing the peace" type laws should apply, and freedom of speech laws should apply. These platforms don't want this, though. They don't want the public to own their platforms and they don't want freedom of speech to apply. What will probably happen is the government will police the platforms for them, while they maintain ownership. We see this pattern a lot.

concordDance 5y ago

Facebook is not the public square. And plenty of uploading is private. Do you think sites like old Liveleak should be illegal?

pfortuny 5y ago
No, but they should be under the law as any other citizen. Just that.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Sites like liveleak and similar are already under the law. What Facebook wants to do is curate content beyond the legal minimum and that means they have to sift through a lot of legal but objectionable content.

tarkin2 5y ago

It's not a public square. It's a private house open to the public.