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Not the person you were asking but I'd chime in with my opinion: We should set up a system by which these platforms have a choice. Either they are responsible

Not the person you were asking but I'd chime in with my opinion: We should set up a system by which these platforms have a choice. Either they are responsible for the content posted on their sites similar to a news organization and they enjoy the right to fully editorialize (create, remove, modify) the content on their sites. OR They are classified as providers and similar to ISPs they are not responsible for the content on their sites but they're also not free to modify it except under order from a court. Give the sites the ability to choose how they are classified but once they pick they can't switch between the statuses. Then let the natural experiment play out and let's see what happens.

VLM 5y ago
There are also side effects WRT federal election and fundraising laws. Generally the wheels of justice grind very slowly, but grind very finely, and do not tolerate attempts at "hacking" the justice system by just putting a e- prefix on something. For some real world examples, there's no federal election law problem with my local bar giving away free beer during happy hour, and there's no federal election law problem with the local bar banning people from the premises for almost any reason including political beliefs. But they would get into HUGE federal election law trouble if they hacked the anti-bribery rules by pretending that giving away free beer to anyone displaying a vote-by-mail ballot to encourage participation in the voting process, and simultaneously banning from the premises anyone who voted for the "wrong" party, and then pretending that those are isolated activities that do not have a common effect of essentially bribing people with free beer if they vote the correct way. There are also information dissemination legal issues. Like everyone else (probably?) my official election polling site is defined by a postcard from the municipal treasurer's clerk's office. That was delivered by the supposedly non-partisan USPS. In theory I could be deprived of my right to vote by the clerk deciding to deliver voting location postcards by Fedex and an activist stock owner's group pressuring Fedex into refusing to deliver to people whom historically voted in the "wrong" parties primary. There's no law that Fedex must accept all commerce regardless of political affiliation, but the courts would take a pretty dim view of Fedex implementing voter suppression as a secondary effect. A problem that's already appeared on Reddit in a big way, is assumptions about group membership. A real world analogy is about 80% of primary voters where I live are faithful and vote for the same party in the general and primary election and about 20% of voters are unfaithful and vote for different parties in the primary and the general. Primary voting party is public knowledge where I live. So its public knowledge that there's a roughly 40% chance I voted for Hillary in 2016 and a 60% chance I voted for Bernie, and in theory people could use that knowledge against me. In theory its secret whom I voted for in the general, but lets just say it was mathematically very likely it was someone else. Anyway on Reddit its double plus un good think to participate in any way with known religious heretics and that will get you banned, even if you don't agree with them. And if Reddit is ever determined by a court to be operating under federal election law regulations, they will end up in BIG trouble for voter suppression and bribery. All these situations are a pretty big problem to "groupthink" style social media sites that ban all members of one party vs the other.
gerikson 5y ago
What's the incentive for a platform to choose to be a provider? ISPs block spam emails all the time. Should they be prevented from doing so?
- CSMastermind 5y ago
  > What's the incentive for a platform to choose to be a provider? Because it would give them legal protection from being responsible (to a degree) for what their users post. To be clear: they enjoy these protections today. If I upload copyrighted material to Reddit, then Reddit themselves cannot be sued for simply hosting it (assuming they take it down when notified). If I upload a libelous set of statements to Reddit, then you can't sue Reddit themselves for libel. What I'm saying is that if Reddit wants to heavily moderate and editorialize the content on their website then they should lose those protections. I'm advocating for making them pick: either you can moderate speech as much as you like but you are responsible for the end product _or_ you can't moderate speech and you're not responsible. In my view the problem is that today they are allowed to moderate speech as much as they like but have no responsibility for what they say. This would never fly in a traditional news organization for instance. If NPR has one of their anchors play copyrighted material on air - NPR themselves are responsible. If the Wall St. Journal publishes someone's column that contains truly libelous about someone then Newscorp can get sued. > ISPs block spam emails all the time. Should they be prevented from doing so? You'd have to explain the context in which they do it to me more. I'm not informed enough on that particular topic to have an opinion.

VLM 5y ago

There are also side effects WRT federal election and fundraising laws. Generally the wheels of justice grind very slowly, but grind very finely, and do not tolerate attempts at "hacking" the justice system by just putting a e- prefix on something. For some real world examples, there's no federal election law problem with my local bar giving away free beer during happy hour, and there's no federal election law problem with the local bar banning people from the premises for almost any reason including political beliefs. But they would get into HUGE federal election law trouble if they hacked the anti-bribery rules by pretending that giving away free beer to anyone displaying a vote-by-mail ballot to encourage participation in the voting process, and simultaneously banning from the premises anyone who voted for the "wrong" party, and then pretending that those are isolated activities that do not have a common effect of essentially bribing people with free beer if they vote the correct way. There are also information dissemination legal issues. Like everyone else (probably?) my official election polling site is defined by a postcard from the municipal treasurer's clerk's office. That was delivered by the supposedly non-partisan USPS. In theory I could be deprived of my right to vote by the clerk deciding to deliver voting location postcards by Fedex and an activist stock owner's group pressuring Fedex into refusing to deliver to people whom historically voted in the "wrong" parties primary. There's no law that Fedex must accept all commerce regardless of political affiliation, but the courts would take a pretty dim view of Fedex implementing voter suppression as a secondary effect. A problem that's already appeared on Reddit in a big way, is assumptions about group membership. A real world analogy is about 80% of primary voters where I live are faithful and vote for the same party in the general and primary election and about 20% of voters are unfaithful and vote for different parties in the primary and the general. Primary voting party is public knowledge where I live. So its public knowledge that there's a roughly 40% chance I voted for Hillary in 2016 and a 60% chance I voted for Bernie, and in theory people could use that knowledge against me. In theory its secret whom I voted for in the general, but lets just say it was mathematically very likely it was someone else. Anyway on Reddit its double plus un good think to participate in any way with known religious heretics and that will get you banned, even if you don't agree with them. And if Reddit is ever determined by a court to be operating under federal election law regulations, they will end up in BIG trouble for voter suppression and bribery. All these situations are a pretty big problem to "groupthink" style social media sites that ban all members of one party vs the other.

gerikson 5y ago

What's the incentive for a platform to choose to be a provider? ISPs block spam emails all the time. Should they be prevented from doing so?

CSMastermind 5y ago
> What's the incentive for a platform to choose to be a provider? Because it would give them legal protection from being responsible (to a degree) for what their users post. To be clear: they enjoy these protections today. If I upload copyrighted material to Reddit, then Reddit themselves cannot be sued for simply hosting it (assuming they take it down when notified). If I upload a libelous set of statements to Reddit, then you can't sue Reddit themselves for libel. What I'm saying is that if Reddit wants to heavily moderate and editorialize the content on their website then they should lose those protections. I'm advocating for making them pick: either you can moderate speech as much as you like but you are responsible for the end product _or_ you can't moderate speech and you're not responsible. In my view the problem is that today they are allowed to moderate speech as much as they like but have no responsibility for what they say. This would never fly in a traditional news organization for instance. If NPR has one of their anchors play copyrighted material on air - NPR themselves are responsible. If the Wall St. Journal publishes someone's column that contains truly libelous about someone then Newscorp can get sued. > ISPs block spam emails all the time. Should they be prevented from doing so? You'd have to explain the context in which they do it to me more. I'm not informed enough on that particular topic to have an opinion.