5 ms·

Services didn't allow racism and the like from the start not just a few years ago.

extheat 5y ago
Hate speech (racism, bullying, threatening, harassment) might as well be thought of as illegal. It may not be illegal by the literal word of the law, but in the interpretation most people in practice treat these as illegal.
- themitigating 5y ago
  This is what the parent said ." Run the service as if it was bound by the First Amendment (i.e. only illegal content should be removed, basically how every social network ran prior to a few years ago.)" Hate speech is legal
  - AvocadoPanic 5y ago
    This is very jurisdiction dependent.
    - themitigating 5y ago
      Can you provide an example? I'm assuming we are talking about the US
      - AvocadoPanic 5y ago
        No, in Europe there are laws against various sorts of speech. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43864133 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43864133 https://www.thelocal.de/20180803/freedom-of-speech-doesnt-cover-holocaust-denial-germanys-top-court-rules/ https://www.thelocal.de/20180803/freedom-of-speech-doesnt-co...
- philipkglass 5y ago
  The grandparent said Run the service as if it was bound by the First Amendment (i.e. only illegal content should be removed, basically how every social network ran prior to a few years ago.) No large social network ever ran that way and I'm skeptical that any social network could be run that way and make a profit. Here are some of the things that are not actually illegal to publish under US law: - Most forms of doxxing - Adult nudity and pornography - Most gore images and videos (industrial accidents, car crashes, corpses from war zones (including children), animal abuse...) - Praise and promotional material for pedophilia - Praise and encouragement for anorexia and other eating disorders - Promotional material and instructions for suicide - Praise and promotional material for terrorist groups like ISIS, as long as it doesn't call for "imminent lawless action." Much historically banned-by-bigtech ISIS propaganda was not actually illegal, which is why government officials urged companies to do something about it instead of just dispatching law enforcement. - Spam that isn't delivered via email - Coordinated foreign propaganda, e.g. "50 Cent Party" commenters piling on to criticize anyone who criticizes mainland China's government - Jailbait images (in the sense of the banned-in-2011 subreddit r/jailbait) A lot of things that 95% of Americans never want to see online are actually legal, just so widely reviled and moderated against that you rarely encounter them accidentally.
  - staunch 5y ago
    I think 99% of people would agree it's reasonable to have a very few, very clear exceptions. And it's possible to do so without falling down a slippery slope. We know this for a fact because sites like Reddit did it for over a decade, as did many other sites. It used to be that they didn't moderate content themselves for fear of losing their "common carrier" liability protection. And many of these exceptions might not even necessarily even be exceptions to US law or the First Amendment. Abuse of computer systems (spam), Federal obscenity laws, etc. And there are many potential approaches to hiding (with transparency) from view legal content that no one (or almost no one) actually wants to see, without necessarily even deleting it. One obvious approach would be to allow users to dictate what kinds of content they want to see. An example is subreddits, where users who want to see gore could be free to do so. Twitter could implement similar kinds of self-moderation features. There are probably even more creative approaches that could solve some of the echo chamber effects, misinformation, etc without heavy-handed global moderation. It's a hard problem but it'd be really great to see someone try at least.
honkdaddy 5y ago
Full and outright racism was 100% allowed on reddit up until a few years ago. Same with Facebook. Groups and subs dedicated solely to racist rhetoric were super common.
- themitigating 5y ago

Hate speech (racism, bullying, threatening, harassment) might as well be thought of as illegal. It may not be illegal by the literal word of the law, but in the interpretation most people in practice treat these as illegal.

themitigating 5y ago
This is what the parent said ." Run the service as if it was bound by the First Amendment (i.e. only illegal content should be removed, basically how every social network ran prior to a few years ago.)" Hate speech is legal
- AvocadoPanic 5y ago
  This is very jurisdiction dependent.
  - themitigating 5y ago
    Can you provide an example? I'm assuming we are talking about the US
    - AvocadoPanic 5y ago
      No, in Europe there are laws against various sorts of speech. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43864133 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43864133 https://www.thelocal.de/20180803/freedom-of-speech-doesnt-cover-holocaust-denial-germanys-top-court-rules/ https://www.thelocal.de/20180803/freedom-of-speech-doesnt-co...
philipkglass 5y ago
The grandparent said Run the service as if it was bound by the First Amendment (i.e. only illegal content should be removed, basically how every social network ran prior to a few years ago.) No large social network ever ran that way and I'm skeptical that any social network could be run that way and make a profit. Here are some of the things that are not actually illegal to publish under US law: - Most forms of doxxing - Adult nudity and pornography - Most gore images and videos (industrial accidents, car crashes, corpses from war zones (including children), animal abuse...) - Praise and promotional material for pedophilia - Praise and encouragement for anorexia and other eating disorders - Promotional material and instructions for suicide - Praise and promotional material for terrorist groups like ISIS, as long as it doesn't call for "imminent lawless action." Much historically banned-by-bigtech ISIS propaganda was not actually illegal, which is why government officials urged companies to do something about it instead of just dispatching law enforcement. - Spam that isn't delivered via email - Coordinated foreign propaganda, e.g. "50 Cent Party" commenters piling on to criticize anyone who criticizes mainland China's government - Jailbait images (in the sense of the banned-in-2011 subreddit r/jailbait) A lot of things that 95% of Americans never want to see online are actually legal, just so widely reviled and moderated against that you rarely encounter them accidentally.
- staunch 5y ago
  I think 99% of people would agree it's reasonable to have a very few, very clear exceptions. And it's possible to do so without falling down a slippery slope. We know this for a fact because sites like Reddit did it for over a decade, as did many other sites. It used to be that they didn't moderate content themselves for fear of losing their "common carrier" liability protection. And many of these exceptions might not even necessarily even be exceptions to US law or the First Amendment. Abuse of computer systems (spam), Federal obscenity laws, etc. And there are many potential approaches to hiding (with transparency) from view legal content that no one (or almost no one) actually wants to see, without necessarily even deleting it. One obvious approach would be to allow users to dictate what kinds of content they want to see. An example is subreddits, where users who want to see gore could be free to do so. Twitter could implement similar kinds of self-moderation features. There are probably even more creative approaches that could solve some of the echo chamber effects, misinformation, etc without heavy-handed global moderation. It's a hard problem but it'd be really great to see someone try at least.

honkdaddy 5y ago

Full and outright racism was 100% allowed on reddit up until a few years ago. Same with Facebook. Groups and subs dedicated solely to racist rhetoric were super common.

themitigating 5y ago