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I think the only real solution to this is going to be once we hold platforms accountable for the content they let people host. I know the general HN crowd is

• bilekas 5y ago
  > I think the only real solution to this is going to be once we hold platforms accountable for the content they let people host. I really don't see this as a solution, it's not going to stop the reposts laid out above. I think reporting the infringing uploader to authorities etc would be more appropriate given revenge pr0n is a crime in most places. This would act as at least a deterant for some. The hashing seems like it would filter out at least a few more, but there are a lot of patterns that could be picked up, audio track recognition, frame counts etc. There are better ways than manual intervention on every re-upload.
• gruturo 5y ago
  Would you agree to go to jail if a user posts something illegal on a forum you run? No? Fair and reasonable. Neither do I. Now let's ask ourselves - would ANYONE reply yes? A bit unlikely? Therefore the result is absolutely no more forums/hosting of any kind. I'm not talking pornhub here - even a cake recipe sharing site, a scientific forum, a community of model train enthusiasts, Stack Overflow, your MMO guild's site, even HN itself... nothing. No Discord, no Slack, obviously no social media (which I happen to dislike, but I'm quite firmly in the minority, I'm told), nothing at all.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    There might be a middle ground between what you suggested and letting harmful content run hog wild on your platform. You should always have a right to sue if you are harmed.
    • gruturo 5y ago
      > You should always have a right to sue if you are harmed. Yes, but not to sue the hoster. If I offend you during a phone call, you should be able to sue ME, not the telco. Harmful content must be taken down once identified, and any technology reasonably helping its early identification should be put to use - but the hoster should be immune from lawsuits except if they do not act timely on legitimate takedown requests. Please, stop suggesting you should have a right to sue the hoster - this can only end up in countless avenues of free speech disappearing, and dictatorial governments (and aspiring ones) abusing it to silence their victims or dissenters.
      • 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
        The bottom line for me is that people are being harmed and they have no legal means of recourse. Victims can probably sue the original uploader but what about other people who do not know it is harmful? And there is nothing to prevent users from uploading the same video forever. Is re-uploading this harmful content a crime? I think the host should be held accountable if they keep allowing the same harmful content to be uploaded again and again. The first occurrence is their notice. Future occurrences is negligence.
        • gruturo 5y ago
          > I think the host should be held accountable if they keep allowing the same harmful content to be uploaded again and again. The first occurrence is their notice. Future occurrences is negligence. On this, I fully support your view. Something as trivial as a keeping list of hashes, to prevent repeat uploads of the exact same binary content, is incredibly easy to implement and I would fault any major hoster for not doing it. But people quickly learn to re-encode or subtly alter the content, so hashes, size, number of frames, etc don't match. Perceptual hashes are a lot more expensive computationally, should be much harder to dodge, but even youtube, which supposedly has the best minds behind it, copes very poorly with the many popular evasion techniques (slight distortion, horizontal mirroring, superimposing a couple thin lines, showing the content in the left pane, while showing nonsense in the right pane, etc etc) so I'm not sure they're a viable option. Can you really hold the hoster at fault when the technology doesn't exist, or is impractically slow and expensive? Would you rather have no hosters?
  • jazzyjackson 5y ago
    Small communities would be favored in an environment where all user submissioned are reviewed before going public. We might see some innovation, like how HN allows you to opt in to seeing dead comments, just have all comments dead-by-default. there's more friction there, but IMO anything is better than hiring overseas workers to view flagged content 8 hours a day.
    • jimbob45 5y ago
      >Small communities would be favored in an environment where all user submissions are reviewed before going public. HN would have to go offline anytime dang decided to sleep.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • PoignardAzur 5y ago
        dang sleeps? That doesn't sound right.
    • psyc 5y ago
      I can think of a couple of niche forums that are so dead, that would be feasible. Keywords: so dead
  • d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
    > Would you agree to go to jail if a user posts something illegal on a forum you run? I just wouldn't run a forum unless I had the proper staff and a legal team. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.
    • int_19h 5y ago
      Facebook, Google, and other megacorps would be very happy when they're the only ones who can afford this - yet another barrier to entry to solidify their oligopoly.
  • shadowfox 5y ago
    > Would you agree to go to jail if a user posts something illegal on a forum you run? > No? Fair and reasonable. Neither do I. Now let's ask ourselves - would ANYONE reply yes? A bit unlikely? You seem to be asking rhetorical questions and then answering them on your own instead of letting the OP answer? So, I am not sure what the point is?
    • gruturo 5y ago
      I don't feel my question was rhetorical at all. And if OP wishes to answer, and contradicts me, declaring themselves willing to go to jail for material not posted by them, but by a user of their forum, I will have to accept their perspective. I just stated mine.
• slothtrop 5y ago
  This sort of occurred with pornhub. However users just migrated elsewhere. So the question is whether any heavy legislation is looming that might coerce all platforms to employ this type of screening, or if wackamole will pointlessly persist.
• csunbird 5y ago
  No, I think, in this specific case, there should be a way of escalation to the LEO on repeated offenses, providing the details of the uploader.
  • stevenicr 5y ago
    small data point I guess - but I've seen this issue in the world, just a few years ago. The ex-bf was using vpns to upload things, and sharing stuff on the darknet and taking screen shots of the things, and sms-texting the pics of the things via some remote voip service from a different country - or was paying someone else to do some of that. He also got one of those spyware things added to her phone. That was interesting situation let me just say. Anyways.. Now I know there are some leo in some places that are sophisticated enough to possibly track down where a burner card was bought or something and maybe get a video feed and go from there.. but my experiences have shown that most leo offices have bigger fish to fry with less prep/cooking needed, and even if they could try, they won't spend the time.
• georgia_peach 5y ago
  You are right. If I distribute copyright infringing content on a USB stick and sell it, I can look forward to an FBI investigation, 5 years in prison, and a fine of $250,000. If I write an algorithm to do the exact same thing over the internet, and monetize it with ads and subscriptions, I'm in the clear--as long as I can afford a staff of wagies to play copyright whack-a-mole in a somewhat timely manner.
  • ipaddr 5y ago
    People sell USB sticks in flea markets all the time. Your risk of a 250,000 fine would match your profile (are you making 100,000?) You are more likely to get the fbi over the internet.
    • georgia_peach 5y ago
      Investigation? Maybe. Punishment? Definitely not. As long as my financial benefit isn't "directly attributable," and my takedown procedure is "expeditious," DMCA has me covered! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act#Safe_harbor_provision_for_online_storage_-_%C2%A7_512(c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_...
• 015a 5y ago
  I don't feel something to that extreme is necessary. But I do believe something similarly controversial, which is: platforms which host user generated content should be required to enforce strong know-your-customer on UGC submission. That doesn't mean other users should be able to click on my HackerNews profile and see my real name, but at minimum the service provider should be required to have that information; to map an account back to a real person (though, I strongly believe people behave more positively when their name is known to everyone they're interacting with; its actually a good thing, overwhelmingly but not totally of course). Argument against: right to anonymity. I don't feel this is a right any human has ever had in contexts of interpersonal communication. Moreover, I don't feel its a desirable right to uphold. HackerNews is a public square; anyone is welcome to join and talk. But public squares always had an element of accountability; I, being human and present in the physical plane of existence, had to travel there in person, accountable to anyone else there listening, authorities patrolling the square, etc. The only examples of anonymity in the non-digital are niche; masked protestors, maybe, but even that involves physical presence where improper conduct could be responded to by authorities unmasking the individual. Books published anonymously? Possibly, but... Here's my strongest argument for it: there will always be platforms to express yourself truly anonymously. American law is written in absolutes, but is rarely enforced so; speeding is illegal, but I speed every day. Piracy is illegal, yet my NAS over there has twelve terabytes of totally legitimately obtained content. They've gone after the Pirate Bay more times than I can count, and its still there, at the same domain. The point is not to build a totalitarian internet with one world government user registration; it's to correlate accountability with scale. Larger platforms have super-linear correlation with their ability to inflict real-world pain on their users (and those their users interact with nonconsensually). Larger platforms also tend to be built by corporations who have a difficult time escaping laws like this. If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it actually fall? If revenge porn is uploaded to a fly-by-night no-name site and no one sees it, was harm created? I'd argue Yes; but it's an improvement over our current situation of the tree falling and everyone hearing it.
  • kodah 5y ago
    KYC won't work on anything related to sex work, and most of the people uploading videos to these websites are semi-professionalized to sex work now. KYC doesn't work because sex work is largely illegal in most countries or states/provinces. > The point is not to build a totalitarian internet with one world government user registration: it's to correlate accountability with scale. You can already do this with PGP. You'd just need an operator/vendor who values confidentiality but also can handle the overhead of managing identities from a systematic viewpoint.
• georgia_peach 5y ago
  A nice consistency test would be to create a "platform" for production-ready, revenue-generating source code and data sets--using pornhub-style content moderation policies of course!--and see what happens.
  • samhw 5y ago
    This actually made me wince. It's the nerdiest thing to say, but this actually made me understand better. (And I say this as someone who does have porn of myself on the internet - without my consent - but I suppose I'm not the sort of person who really cares or gets embarrassed about that sort of stuff. I don't have that sense of pudeur. But this made me understand how it would feel to be that way.)
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  I agree. These women are being harmed and there is no avenue for recourse.
• pronlover723 5y ago
  We do NOT hold other media platforms accountable this way. Other media platforms do not publish user content, they publish their own content.