3 ms·

I love how people think fact checking is censorship, but banning nipples and other "not advertiser friendly" content is A-O-K. One thing which annoys me about

I love how people think fact checking is censorship, but banning nipples and other "not advertiser friendly" content is A-O-K. One thing which annoys me about this is that internet corps have gotten with avoiding the framing of "editorial control". Facebook (and others) would like to pick and choose out of the following 1. We have things like the internet, which are utilities and only exist to convey their users intent. They are regulated (at least in europe strongly, in the US to some degree), and your ISP is simply not liable for what you say using them. Facebook doesn't want this because they don't want the commoditization and regulatory control 2. We have media which has editorial control: you have control on what is published on your platform, you can pick and choose for monetization, but you are liable in the end. Of course none of the big corps want this 3. And then there is the sad attempt of a middle ground carved out by the DMCA and similar laws which try to do something in between, but fail to meaningfully specify the amount of legal liability for non-copyrighted material. Who is responsible for publishing this? The platform isn't AFAIK, they only have to worry about brand impact. Let's clear this up, either put some of the legal responsibilities and liabilities that newspapers and publishers face on the platform and see the problem of fake news vanish as facebook shuts down hard on what they allow on their platform OR classify them as something like a utility and demand openness OR something else, but let's stop the doublethink of "spreading propaganda is okay, but anything that hurts us making money is ok to censor". People might even migrate to new platforms based on their editorial style then

EricE 5y ago
Yup - this is the real problem with Section 230. Originally it was intended to shelter ISPs that just carried Internet traffic from being responsible for the contents of that traffic. We've allowed sites, especially the big tech sites, to pervert that into some sort of carte blanche excuse to exert editorial control disguised as moderation. With zero transparency into supposed content moderation decisions and blatantly obvious unequal application of their "rules", anyone who thinks big tech isn't exercising editorial control is either naïve or just blind because the "moderation" happens to align with their personal and political beliefs. Personally I think before you get any of the Section 230 safe harbor provisions you should be required to post your content moderation rules, and for any content moderation document the decision on how you got there - and show how the decision is supported by rules that existed at the time you made the content moderation decision. No more hiding biases behind opaque "content moderation" decisions that are far often flat out censorship of opposing views. Want to be able to exercise editorial control and don't want to play it straight? Then fine - open yourself up to get sued like any other sites that have editorial control.

EricE 5y ago

Yup - this is the real problem with Section 230. Originally it was intended to shelter ISPs that just carried Internet traffic from being responsible for the contents of that traffic. We've allowed sites, especially the big tech sites, to pervert that into some sort of carte blanche excuse to exert editorial control disguised as moderation. With zero transparency into supposed content moderation decisions and blatantly obvious unequal application of their "rules", anyone who thinks big tech isn't exercising editorial control is either naïve or just blind because the "moderation" happens to align with their personal and political beliefs. Personally I think before you get any of the Section 230 safe harbor provisions you should be required to post your content moderation rules, and for any content moderation document the decision on how you got there - and show how the decision is supported by rules that existed at the time you made the content moderation decision. No more hiding biases behind opaque "content moderation" decisions that are far often flat out censorship of opposing views. Want to be able to exercise editorial control and don't want to play it straight? Then fine - open yourself up to get sued like any other sites that have editorial control.