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I don't see how government can make even a dent in what are ultimately cultural issues without drastic changes to the core of our laws. The idea that you can't

I don't see how government can make even a dent in what are ultimately cultural issues without drastic changes to the core of our laws. The idea that you can't deny service to an individual for their political views is a big shift. The idea that businesses must align with government goals is a big shift. The idea that limitations must be imposed on an individuals exposure to social media for their own good is a big shift.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago
>The idea that you can't deny service to an individual for their political views is a big shift. I can't remember people being denied service for their political views until just recently. Another odd thing is that a company would give a rip about their employees political views. These are strange times.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Look back 50+ years. In the Soviet Union and Soviet-affiliated countries, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly communist enough. In the United States, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly anti-communist enough. The idea of not discriminating based on politics or other overt characteristics, as a widespread cultural phenomenon, was relatively new and short-lived.
  - MrZongle2 5y ago
    In the United States, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly anti-communist enough. In the early 1970s? I'd like to see some citations of that.
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    That is widely recognized as a dark time in the US because of the Cold War and that kind of "McCarthyist" discrimination was loudly and prominently rejected after a decade or so. It's anti-communist discrimination that was relatively new and short-lived. You can identify the beginnings and endings of that time as an era, doesn't seem like a perennial norm to me. Edit: the above is perhaps a bit of an incomplete thought. I'd generally argue that picking wartime era hysteria is a little misleading, that happens to basically every country. On the other hand, there's a reason why people always jump on the "myth" of the First Amendment when it's mentioned in discussions about private companies: Americans often confuse the constitutional principle with the general principle, and they do this because Americans are largely supportive of the general principle.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Yes, I mentioned an easily recognizable dark time in the US, that happened to parallel to an exact and opposite and well-known dark time in half of Europe. But I don't think the times before were all that light either. My point is that, as far as I know, the kind of freedoms and political neutrality the West enjoyed between 1980s to 2010s were a short-lived anomaly. Implied in that was an observation that we're on a downslope now and I agree with 'OneEyedRobot that we're not enjoying much of that neutrality today.
  - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    And a few decades before that when companies would murder their employees for getting involved with unions.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I remember when arguing politics at work would get you a reprimand. You were there to work, not proselytize. Now it's accepted that employees activating against their employer is not cause for dismissal.
- nitwit005 5y ago
  > I can't remember people being denied service for their political views until just recently. Probably wasn't as noticable when they were turning far more people away because of their race, religion, or gender.
josephg 5y ago
The situation as I see it is that we’ve essentially created a new, digital place that we spend half our lives living in. And it started with very little infrastructure. Facebook and Google have created a lot of the infrastructure we need “for free” - in exchange for doing surveillance capitalism. It’s like if big megacorps owned the roads outside your house and tracked you and advertised to you as soon as you set foot outdoors. And they will ban you from using the road outside if an AI doesn’t like something you do. Apple made a fiefdom with a harsh 30% tax of any trades inside their walls. - and once you’re inside, it’s very expensive to leave. The whole situation is crying out for some sort of civic process. If we live part of our lives in cyberspace, we need a voice in how those spaces are governed. Something “By the people, for the people.” We don’t let corporations run towns in the real world and do this sort of thing. It’s entirely consistent to want to bring democratic values online too.
- thephyber 5y ago
  IMHO this is all wrong. We already have a framework for physical networking services that does this: Common Carrier. It doesn’t and shouldn’t apply to companies other than “dumb pipe” utilities. No company which can or does do any moderation of content should be governed by CC laws. You seem to think forcing all companies on the internet to maximize democratic values is somehow either possible or a good idea. I can’t see how that could be implemented without destroying every company’s ability to build a brand, to enforce their own contractual terms. Example: you local church/temple website that accepts with user-generated comments would be forced to allow and keep every comment submitted, no matter how offensive to the members or the faith the church practices. Non-believers would be able to deface the service in a way that trespassing laws prevent IRL. This compelled democratic values maximization concept doesn’t exist in the offline world so you would have to build the logical/rational foundations for doing it from scratch. Obviously the church/temple example is contrived and those are far from Big Tech companies, but if you assert that some services are required to retain all offensive content and others aren’t, then you need to develop a litmus test, which I argue is futile. And from where I stand, demanding a civic process is really strange considering most civic processes in the USA are deteriorating while Big Tech is doing the opposite.
azinman2 5y ago
People keep saying that, but the evidence seems to be largely the opposite: the most viral shares on twitter and Facebook are actually right leaning. Yes more right firebrands have been kicked off, but that’s after they essentially are sharing things that have to do with violence. If you try to say revolution is a political viewpoint, I guess you could make that point, but it seems entirely reasonable that asking for select people to be killed is crossing a meaningful line. Especially in a democracy.
- KorematsuFredt 5y ago
  > but it seems entirely reasonable that asking for select people to be killed is crossing a meaningful line. There is enough legal and philosophical body of work around that question. But either ways it is not a meaningful reason for "regulation". All platforms already have restrictions for such things and very likely government regulations will force platforms to allow for "kill all X" talks but not "kill all Y" talks making the platform very toxic. For example, American company's response to Jan 6 appears to be far more mature and useful to American society than that of American federal government and FBI.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> The idea that you can't deny service to an individual for their political views is a big shift For common carriers that has been a longstanding policy, for example, telephone companies can't deny you service for things you say over the phone. The fewer the viable alternatives to a service are, the more that makes sense. The big shift is the exact opposite, that you would allow companies that run services with network effects to choose what messages are sent over their services while at the same time avoiding liability for the messages that are sent.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago

>The idea that you can't deny service to an individual for their political views is a big shift. I can't remember people being denied service for their political views until just recently. Another odd thing is that a company would give a rip about their employees political views. These are strange times.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Look back 50+ years. In the Soviet Union and Soviet-affiliated countries, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly communist enough. In the United States, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly anti-communist enough. The idea of not discriminating based on politics or other overt characteristics, as a widespread cultural phenomenon, was relatively new and short-lived.
- MrZongle2 5y ago
  In the United States, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly anti-communist enough. In the early 1970s? I'd like to see some citations of that.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  That is widely recognized as a dark time in the US because of the Cold War and that kind of "McCarthyist" discrimination was loudly and prominently rejected after a decade or so. It's anti-communist discrimination that was relatively new and short-lived. You can identify the beginnings and endings of that time as an era, doesn't seem like a perennial norm to me. Edit: the above is perhaps a bit of an incomplete thought. I'd generally argue that picking wartime era hysteria is a little misleading, that happens to basically every country. On the other hand, there's a reason why people always jump on the "myth" of the First Amendment when it's mentioned in discussions about private companies: Americans often confuse the constitutional principle with the general principle, and they do this because Americans are largely supportive of the general principle.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Yes, I mentioned an easily recognizable dark time in the US, that happened to parallel to an exact and opposite and well-known dark time in half of Europe. But I don't think the times before were all that light either. My point is that, as far as I know, the kind of freedoms and political neutrality the West enjoyed between 1980s to 2010s were a short-lived anomaly. Implied in that was an observation that we're on a downslope now and I agree with 'OneEyedRobot that we're not enjoying much of that neutrality today.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  And a few decades before that when companies would murder their employees for getting involved with unions.
WalterBright 5y ago
I remember when arguing politics at work would get you a reprimand. You were there to work, not proselytize. Now it's accepted that employees activating against their employer is not cause for dismissal.
nitwit005 5y ago
> I can't remember people being denied service for their political views until just recently. Probably wasn't as noticable when they were turning far more people away because of their race, religion, or gender.

josephg 5y ago

The situation as I see it is that we’ve essentially created a new, digital place that we spend half our lives living in. And it started with very little infrastructure. Facebook and Google have created a lot of the infrastructure we need “for free” - in exchange for doing surveillance capitalism. It’s like if big megacorps owned the roads outside your house and tracked you and advertised to you as soon as you set foot outdoors. And they will ban you from using the road outside if an AI doesn’t like something you do. Apple made a fiefdom with a harsh 30% tax of any trades inside their walls. - and once you’re inside, it’s very expensive to leave. The whole situation is crying out for some sort of civic process. If we live part of our lives in cyberspace, we need a voice in how those spaces are governed. Something “By the people, for the people.” We don’t let corporations run towns in the real world and do this sort of thing. It’s entirely consistent to want to bring democratic values online too.

thephyber 5y ago
IMHO this is all wrong. We already have a framework for physical networking services that does this: Common Carrier. It doesn’t and shouldn’t apply to companies other than “dumb pipe” utilities. No company which can or does do any moderation of content should be governed by CC laws. You seem to think forcing all companies on the internet to maximize democratic values is somehow either possible or a good idea. I can’t see how that could be implemented without destroying every company’s ability to build a brand, to enforce their own contractual terms. Example: you local church/temple website that accepts with user-generated comments would be forced to allow and keep every comment submitted, no matter how offensive to the members or the faith the church practices. Non-believers would be able to deface the service in a way that trespassing laws prevent IRL. This compelled democratic values maximization concept doesn’t exist in the offline world so you would have to build the logical/rational foundations for doing it from scratch. Obviously the church/temple example is contrived and those are far from Big Tech companies, but if you assert that some services are required to retain all offensive content and others aren’t, then you need to develop a litmus test, which I argue is futile. And from where I stand, demanding a civic process is really strange considering most civic processes in the USA are deteriorating while Big Tech is doing the opposite.

azinman2 5y ago

People keep saying that, but the evidence seems to be largely the opposite: the most viral shares on twitter and Facebook are actually right leaning. Yes more right firebrands have been kicked off, but that’s after they essentially are sharing things that have to do with violence. If you try to say revolution is a political viewpoint, I guess you could make that point, but it seems entirely reasonable that asking for select people to be killed is crossing a meaningful line. Especially in a democracy.

KorematsuFredt 5y ago
> but it seems entirely reasonable that asking for select people to be killed is crossing a meaningful line. There is enough legal and philosophical body of work around that question. But either ways it is not a meaningful reason for "regulation". All platforms already have restrictions for such things and very likely government regulations will force platforms to allow for "kill all X" talks but not "kill all Y" talks making the platform very toxic. For example, American company's response to Jan 6 appears to be far more mature and useful to American society than that of American federal government and FBI.

rufus_foreman 5y ago

>> The idea that you can't deny service to an individual for their political views is a big shift For common carriers that has been a longstanding policy, for example, telephone companies can't deny you service for things you say over the phone. The fewer the viable alternatives to a service are, the more that makes sense. The big shift is the exact opposite, that you would allow companies that run services with network effects to choose what messages are sent over their services while at the same time avoiding liability for the messages that are sent.