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I think this gets you into really weird places really quickly. How do you not end up with a censorship department of the government, that is tasked with writin

by clucas 5y ago

I think this gets you into really weird places really quickly. How do you not end up with a censorship department of the government, that is tasked with writing moderation rules? It probably wouldn't be called a censorship office, but that's what it would be: a government office determining what can and can't be posted on social media. This seems entirely antithetical to the idea of the first amendment. Do you have any other way to implement your idea of forcing Facebook to show you the feeds you subscribe to? EDIT: Just saw in your profile that you might not be from the USA - feel free to substitute "the idea of free speech in modern liberal democracies" for "the idea of the first amendment" as needed. :)

stale2002 5y ago
> How do you not end up with a censorship department of the government That department of censorship will exist no matter what. Internally, it is called the trust and safety department, at most big companies. The only question is do you want to have the decisions of that department to be limited by judges and rights that are laid out in the constitution, or do you want it to be an unaccountable free for all, where they can do whatever they want? > Do you have any other way to implement your idea of forcing Facebook to show you the feeds you subscribe to? Well, phone companies are currently forced to allow most people on their network. We could do it the same way, that phone companies are required to do so.
- teeray 5y ago
  > The only question is do you want… or do you want… Therein the problem lies. Users have no choice over which moderation policies their feeds are curated by at all. I should be able to choose moderation that I deem acceptable. To continue your analogy to telcos, this is akin to robocall blocking services which are a user decision and often tell you when blocking occurs.
- clucas 5y ago
  > rights that are laid out in the constitution Just to be clear, under US law, what you are describing (creating a government censorship department that determines how social media companies are allowed to moderate) would have NOTHING to do with the rights laid out in the constitution - it would in fact need to overcome the companies' constitutional rights to publish whatever they wish, just to exist. You can argue that it's a good idea anyway, but claiming that government-mandated moderation is somehow enforcing constitutional rights is way, way off base.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > Just to be clear, under US law, what you are describing (creating a government censorship department that determines how social media companies are allowed to moderate Yes it could. The point is that if the government is doing the "censorsing" or whatever you want to call it, then at the very least, whatever that "censoring" is, we have judges and rights and similar checks and balances that prevents the government from doing too much. If something is so bad, that it needs to be censored, then our court system should handle it.
rndgermandude 5y ago
The legislatures are already the "censors" and the executive the once enforcing "censorship". And there is an "appeal" process to some degree in the judiciary branch. The legislatures already write the "moderation rules" for entire societies. Unlike the big companies who are only beholden to their share holders - and sometimes only really that one shareholder called Mark - the legislatures are beholden at least in theory to the citizens (who vote) in our democracies and at least in theory are curtailed by things like the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and equivalent constitutional documents and human rights legislation in other places. Is leaving it to legislatures to make the rules a perfect solution? Certainly far from perfect, in my humble opinion, at least in practice with all the lobbying, corruption and self-interest going on. But it still beats leaving such extremely significant decisions of what can and cannot be said to the rulers of some big corporations. Facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube, etc will also never get tired to tell everybody that they are not publishers and do not "edit" or "curate" information on their "open" platforms and thus fall under 230 and are not liable. All the while they constantly curate and edit and purge.
- clucas 5y ago
  Having the government writing censorship rules sounds absolutely dystopian to me. There are plenty of ways to get information on the internet - just because Facebook says "no porn" doesn't mean you can't get porn on the internet, you know? But there's only one government (per country, of course). If your government says no porn... What then?
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > Having the government writing censorship rules sounds absolutely dystopian to me. No, because our court system could prevent any censorship that infringed on our rights. It is better to have our court system stop people from censoring too much, than it is for there to be zero rules at all, as to what could or could not be censored.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      > No, because our court system could prevent any censorship that infringed on our rights No they can't. The legislature would. Do you trust Nancy pelosi and Ted Cruz to write censorship rules you agree with?
PontifexMinimus 5y ago
> How do you not end up with a censorship department of the government, that is tasked with writing moderation rules? That already exists: governments already have laws limiting some forms of speech e.g. copyright infringements or pornography. Obviously corporations that want to stay in business have to obey the laws. > "the idea of free speech in modern liberal democracies" As I've already pointed out, all states already have laws limiting speech. Maybe I think there should be more such laws; maybe I think there should be less; but either way it's orthogonal to whether I want FB to have power to control what I can say and hear. If my government passes laws that I don't like, citizens can vote them out at the next election. I can't vote Zuckerberg out, he's an undemocratic locus of power. > It probably wouldn't be called a censorship office, but that's what it would be: a government office determining what can and can't be posted on social media. As I said, such laws already exist. > Do you have any other way to implement your idea of forcing Facebook to show you the feeds you subscribe to? Yes, require all social media apps to provide interoperability though ActivityPub and similar protocols. Make sure there are no legal or technical impediments to people running social media servers (Mastodon etc) on their own hardware though their home internet connections. What I actually want is a world where people don't care whether FB censors things, because it doesn't matter as people can and do use other means to communicate. So FB censors stuff and no-one notices because it has no practical effect. That is, a world where FB is stripped of their power.
- clucas 5y ago
  > What I actually want is a world where people don't care whether FB censors things, because it doesn't matter as people can and do use other means to communicate. Fortunately, we already live in this world! We have the internet!
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Lol, that has the public square embodied in a few big systems. If it were me, I would have those regulated to be like utilities. Pre internet, business was done via phone. Deplatforming = not allowed to have a phone, and that basically did not happen.

by clucas 5y ago

stale2002 5y ago

> How do you not end up with a censorship department of the government That department of censorship will exist no matter what. Internally, it is called the trust and safety department, at most big companies. The only question is do you want to have the decisions of that department to be limited by judges and rights that are laid out in the constitution, or do you want it to be an unaccountable free for all, where they can do whatever they want? > Do you have any other way to implement your idea of forcing Facebook to show you the feeds you subscribe to? Well, phone companies are currently forced to allow most people on their network. We could do it the same way, that phone companies are required to do so.

teeray 5y ago
> The only question is do you want… or do you want… Therein the problem lies. Users have no choice over which moderation policies their feeds are curated by at all. I should be able to choose moderation that I deem acceptable. To continue your analogy to telcos, this is akin to robocall blocking services which are a user decision and often tell you when blocking occurs.
clucas 5y ago
> rights that are laid out in the constitution Just to be clear, under US law, what you are describing (creating a government censorship department that determines how social media companies are allowed to moderate) would have NOTHING to do with the rights laid out in the constitution - it would in fact need to overcome the companies' constitutional rights to publish whatever they wish, just to exist. You can argue that it's a good idea anyway, but claiming that government-mandated moderation is somehow enforcing constitutional rights is way, way off base.
- stale2002 5y ago
  > Just to be clear, under US law, what you are describing (creating a government censorship department that determines how social media companies are allowed to moderate Yes it could. The point is that if the government is doing the "censorsing" or whatever you want to call it, then at the very least, whatever that "censoring" is, we have judges and rights and similar checks and balances that prevents the government from doing too much. If something is so bad, that it needs to be censored, then our court system should handle it.

rndgermandude 5y ago

The legislatures are already the "censors" and the executive the once enforcing "censorship". And there is an "appeal" process to some degree in the judiciary branch. The legislatures already write the "moderation rules" for entire societies. Unlike the big companies who are only beholden to their share holders - and sometimes only really that one shareholder called Mark - the legislatures are beholden at least in theory to the citizens (who vote) in our democracies and at least in theory are curtailed by things like the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and equivalent constitutional documents and human rights legislation in other places. Is leaving it to legislatures to make the rules a perfect solution? Certainly far from perfect, in my humble opinion, at least in practice with all the lobbying, corruption and self-interest going on. But it still beats leaving such extremely significant decisions of what can and cannot be said to the rulers of some big corporations. Facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube, etc will also never get tired to tell everybody that they are not publishers and do not "edit" or "curate" information on their "open" platforms and thus fall under 230 and are not liable. All the while they constantly curate and edit and purge.

clucas 5y ago
Having the government writing censorship rules sounds absolutely dystopian to me. There are plenty of ways to get information on the internet - just because Facebook says "no porn" doesn't mean you can't get porn on the internet, you know? But there's only one government (per country, of course). If your government says no porn... What then?
- stale2002 5y ago
  > Having the government writing censorship rules sounds absolutely dystopian to me. No, because our court system could prevent any censorship that infringed on our rights. It is better to have our court system stop people from censoring too much, than it is for there to be zero rules at all, as to what could or could not be censored.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    > No, because our court system could prevent any censorship that infringed on our rights No they can't. The legislature would. Do you trust Nancy pelosi and Ted Cruz to write censorship rules you agree with?

PontifexMinimus 5y ago

> How do you not end up with a censorship department of the government, that is tasked with writing moderation rules? That already exists: governments already have laws limiting some forms of speech e.g. copyright infringements or pornography. Obviously corporations that want to stay in business have to obey the laws. > "the idea of free speech in modern liberal democracies" As I've already pointed out, all states already have laws limiting speech. Maybe I think there should be more such laws; maybe I think there should be less; but either way it's orthogonal to whether I want FB to have power to control what I can say and hear. If my government passes laws that I don't like, citizens can vote them out at the next election. I can't vote Zuckerberg out, he's an undemocratic locus of power. > It probably wouldn't be called a censorship office, but that's what it would be: a government office determining what can and can't be posted on social media. As I said, such laws already exist. > Do you have any other way to implement your idea of forcing Facebook to show you the feeds you subscribe to? Yes, require all social media apps to provide interoperability though ActivityPub and similar protocols. Make sure there are no legal or technical impediments to people running social media servers (Mastodon etc) on their own hardware though their home internet connections. What I actually want is a world where people don't care whether FB censors things, because it doesn't matter as people can and do use other means to communicate. So FB censors stuff and no-one notices because it has no practical effect. That is, a world where FB is stripped of their power.

clucas 5y ago
> What I actually want is a world where people don't care whether FB censors things, because it doesn't matter as people can and do use other means to communicate. Fortunately, we already live in this world! We have the internet!
- ddingus 5y ago
  Lol, that has the public square embodied in a few big systems. If it were me, I would have those regulated to be like utilities. Pre internet, business was done via phone. Deplatforming = not allowed to have a phone, and that basically did not happen.