6 ms·

After the mid-terms, any Section 230 protection these companies have is going bye-bye. Any kind of active moderation of perfectly legal speech through 'terms of

After the mid-terms, any Section 230 protection these companies have is going bye-bye. Any kind of active moderation of perfectly legal speech through 'terms of service'/'community standards' will remove any common-carrier liability shield. Actions like this have turned this into political red meat for some. These companies really need to learn how to read the room. Ratcheting downward the ability of people to freely use these platforms just feeds into whatever persecution complex they have, and justifies it. You don't get rid of bad ideas by allowing them not be spoken no matter how well meaning you are.

themitigating 5y ago
Why would the midterms do this?
- mise_en_place 5y ago
  The midterms won’t, but the Fed losing control of interest rates will. You’re going to see a lot of valuation disappear in the next year as the bubble deflates.
- rhdunn 5y ago
  If the midterms result in more Republicans being elected -- which is a possibility -- it would be easier to vote through laws like this. That risk is likely one reason why Biden's state of the union speech echoed Trump policies: strengthening the border, moving jobs (like chip manufacture) to America, improving police funding, etc.
- greyhair 5y ago
  In this election year, Republicans will, at the very least, retake control of the House of Representatives, making Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the house. There is also an opportunity for them to take control of the Senate, returning Mitch McConnell to his leadership role. The far right despises technology companies, and there will be a huge push by their members to bring them all to heel.
  - ok123456 5y ago
    It's not just the 'far right'. It's anybody who has an opinion which falls outside of the technocratic consensus machine at the current moment. Right. Left. Anarcho-Syndicalist. Mid-century UFO Cultists. It doesn't matter. This is fundamentally a business decision driven by advertising: they don't want ads for dish washing detergent pixels away from someone Chomsky posting or Brandon posting. They want a stream of inane pablum for the Skinner box.
6510 5y ago
The security by obscurity where they don't tell the user why their account was terminated is also a call to send in the regulators
monkellipse 5y ago
I absolutely hate what’s going on here with YT, but I think I’d rather have a company making bad decisions on its own than having bad decisions mandated by fiat. A law demanding that YT keep particular content up is at least as distasteful as YT taking down content. If we hadn’t as a society cast tech as responsible for disinformation then we wouldn’t be here. We dug this hole, I don’t think we can legislate ourselves out of it.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
That is the wrong solution. The problem isn't people making content decisions, it's market concentration. They have too much market power and it lets them get away with too much hamfisted behavior without losing users. They've already gone far enough for the market to start to solve this. Rumble and Gettr and whatever else are gaining users. But it's producing an ideological split which is pretty dangerous. The other platforms don't set out to attract only the right, but when the censorship by the incumbents is one-sided, it's them who want to leave for somewhere else. Which only makes the incumbents lean more to the left. What we need is some way to get left-leaning people to move to platforms without excessive censorship, which would both keep the balance and deter the incumbents from continuing to be heavy handed. A lot of this is cultural. The thing where people cheer because their ideological opponent got silenced is cancer and needs to go away. Everyone of all stripes should quit platforms that do this, and then they wouldn't. This is kind of like the thing where violence is impermissible except in self-defense. We need to cancel anyone who tries to cancel anyone.
- leereeves 5y ago
  > They have too much market power and it lets them get away with too much hamfisted behavior without losing users. I agree, but Section 230 also contributes to this. It eliminates the legal consequences for that hamfisted behavior and enables these sites to grow far beyond their ability to properly manage the site. It's often been said that clumsy AI moderation is necessary because there's no other way to moderate sites with so many users. If true, I see that as an argument against enabling sites to grow "too big to moderate" rather than an argument for excusing hamfisted behavior.
- ok123456 5y ago
  Further segmentation into boutique social media platforms that cater to different groups will just make this "Hypernormalization" even worse and lead to more political polarization.
- PolygonSheep 5y ago
  > What we need is some way to get left-leaning people to move to platforms without excessive censorship, which would both keep the balance and deter the incumbents from continuing to be heavy handed. There's no shortage of people trying to make these platforms but the problem is free-speech oriented sites get deplatformed. "Build your own hosting company!", "Build your own mobile operating system!", "Build your own payment processor!", etc, etc. A small handful of tech and payment companies can veto any website or app. It's like the old days of broadcast television where if your show was too controversial for ABC, CBS, or NBC it didn't get on TV, period.
Siira 5y ago
These companies want the liability. That would kill all their nascent competitors for good.

themitigating 5y ago

Why would the midterms do this?

mise_en_place 5y ago
The midterms won’t, but the Fed losing control of interest rates will. You’re going to see a lot of valuation disappear in the next year as the bubble deflates.
rhdunn 5y ago
If the midterms result in more Republicans being elected -- which is a possibility -- it would be easier to vote through laws like this. That risk is likely one reason why Biden's state of the union speech echoed Trump policies: strengthening the border, moving jobs (like chip manufacture) to America, improving police funding, etc.
greyhair 5y ago
In this election year, Republicans will, at the very least, retake control of the House of Representatives, making Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the house. There is also an opportunity for them to take control of the Senate, returning Mitch McConnell to his leadership role. The far right despises technology companies, and there will be a huge push by their members to bring them all to heel.
- ok123456 5y ago
  It's not just the 'far right'. It's anybody who has an opinion which falls outside of the technocratic consensus machine at the current moment. Right. Left. Anarcho-Syndicalist. Mid-century UFO Cultists. It doesn't matter. This is fundamentally a business decision driven by advertising: they don't want ads for dish washing detergent pixels away from someone Chomsky posting or Brandon posting. They want a stream of inane pablum for the Skinner box.

6510 5y ago

The security by obscurity where they don't tell the user why their account was terminated is also a call to send in the regulators

monkellipse 5y ago

I absolutely hate what’s going on here with YT, but I think I’d rather have a company making bad decisions on its own than having bad decisions mandated by fiat. A law demanding that YT keep particular content up is at least as distasteful as YT taking down content. If we hadn’t as a society cast tech as responsible for disinformation then we wouldn’t be here. We dug this hole, I don’t think we can legislate ourselves out of it.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

That is the wrong solution. The problem isn't people making content decisions, it's market concentration. They have too much market power and it lets them get away with too much hamfisted behavior without losing users. They've already gone far enough for the market to start to solve this. Rumble and Gettr and whatever else are gaining users. But it's producing an ideological split which is pretty dangerous. The other platforms don't set out to attract only the right, but when the censorship by the incumbents is one-sided, it's them who want to leave for somewhere else. Which only makes the incumbents lean more to the left. What we need is some way to get left-leaning people to move to platforms without excessive censorship, which would both keep the balance and deter the incumbents from continuing to be heavy handed. A lot of this is cultural. The thing where people cheer because their ideological opponent got silenced is cancer and needs to go away. Everyone of all stripes should quit platforms that do this, and then they wouldn't. This is kind of like the thing where violence is impermissible except in self-defense. We need to cancel anyone who tries to cancel anyone.

leereeves 5y ago
> They have too much market power and it lets them get away with too much hamfisted behavior without losing users. I agree, but Section 230 also contributes to this. It eliminates the legal consequences for that hamfisted behavior and enables these sites to grow far beyond their ability to properly manage the site. It's often been said that clumsy AI moderation is necessary because there's no other way to moderate sites with so many users. If true, I see that as an argument against enabling sites to grow "too big to moderate" rather than an argument for excusing hamfisted behavior.
ok123456 5y ago
Further segmentation into boutique social media platforms that cater to different groups will just make this "Hypernormalization" even worse and lead to more political polarization.
PolygonSheep 5y ago
> What we need is some way to get left-leaning people to move to platforms without excessive censorship, which would both keep the balance and deter the incumbents from continuing to be heavy handed. There's no shortage of people trying to make these platforms but the problem is free-speech oriented sites get deplatformed. "Build your own hosting company!", "Build your own mobile operating system!", "Build your own payment processor!", etc, etc. A small handful of tech and payment companies can veto any website or app. It's like the old days of broadcast television where if your show was too controversial for ABC, CBS, or NBC it didn't get on TV, period.

Siira 5y ago

These companies want the liability. That would kill all their nascent competitors for good.