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This is an excellent piece which really does a good job at explaining the nuance that exists in this challenging problem domain. Thank you for writing this. It'

This is an excellent piece which really does a good job at explaining the nuance that exists in this challenging problem domain. Thank you for writing this. It's a great piece to point to whenever the next scandal gets "exposed" by click-seeking folks on the internet.

uoaei 4y ago
Are you saying that this article excuses data breaches?
- ironrabbit 4y ago
  The "scandal" that prompted this article is referenced with sources under the heading "Why XCheck is in the news". Neither the article nor the comment you're replying to says anything about data breaches.
sneak 4y ago
It's good that it keeps getting exposed that a single organization without accountability decides what people are or are not allowed to publish on a platform to the people who explicitly subscribed to their publications. The fact that moderation is a hard problem is orthogonal. The fact remains that there are different rules for different people, both for flagging and for content. The fact that there is more nuance than "two sets of rules" doesn't really change the fundamental problem that private companies now get to arbitrarily police publication by normal people. I have the distinct impression that in 100 years the default mode is going to be "if it's legal you can post it, if it's not you can't, and if you have a problem with the boundary, take it up with the lawmaking authority and not us". We will look back at this time at the emergence of any-to-any publishing like the dawn of radio or TV or newspaper where a few rich guys got to decide what could or could not be published.
- CursedUrn 4y ago
  What makes you think something as unique and hard-fought as the First Amendment will be applied to the Internet when all trends point in the other direction, both on and offline?
- wbl 4y ago
  https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/109FW5 https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/109FW5 (NSFW) is a beautiful picture, taken by a major 20th century photographer. It's also depicting a sex act that most people would never even consider. Do you really want pictures like this everywhere on Instagram? So now we have a no sex acts rule. But then an art museum is hosting an exhibition of art, and that art is depicting sex. Maybe even pedophilic sex, like a vase in the Met that has an old man stroking a young teenagers hairless genitals on it. That's very likely child pornography, except that the law can't ban images of artistic value, and the image of the vase has a lot of value, and I doubt anyone would find it erotic. Should the Met not be allowed to use a picture of a bunch of vases to promote its exhibitions? There's lots of reasons why reasonable seeming results are not possible from simple rules, and why it's legal, let's have it is not a great rule. Having a moderation system that addresses e.g. art studios and museums differently from other people is quite sensible.
  - sneak 4y ago
    I don’t think pictures like this would be “everywhere on instagram” if instagram allowed all legal content. Correspondingly, I think your argument is a strawman.
  - novok 4y ago
    The solution to that is a rule set that users can select what they want and automated tagging. It is essentially opt-in moderation vs. chosen for you moderation. And it could become fairly sophisticated too! We are starting to see it in the form of subscribing to block lists on twitter. Also in practice I think this is covered for %99 of cases people via an NSFW & NSFL tag system. That would be an NSFW art and thats that. The children issue will boil down to parents are the real root user of their children's accounts and parents will have control over the tagging set for moderation until they are of age. IMO I think most people are fine with mandatory labeling of goods, and actually welcome it because it gives more control and informed consent. It's the mandatory censorship that become the issue. Abusive false labelling might become the next hot topic, but that is far smaller of a surface area.
    - 4y ago

uoaei 4y ago

Are you saying that this article excuses data breaches?

ironrabbit 4y ago
The "scandal" that prompted this article is referenced with sources under the heading "Why XCheck is in the news". Neither the article nor the comment you're replying to says anything about data breaches.

sneak 4y ago

It's good that it keeps getting exposed that a single organization without accountability decides what people are or are not allowed to publish on a platform to the people who explicitly subscribed to their publications. The fact that moderation is a hard problem is orthogonal. The fact remains that there are different rules for different people, both for flagging and for content. The fact that there is more nuance than "two sets of rules" doesn't really change the fundamental problem that private companies now get to arbitrarily police publication by normal people. I have the distinct impression that in 100 years the default mode is going to be "if it's legal you can post it, if it's not you can't, and if you have a problem with the boundary, take it up with the lawmaking authority and not us". We will look back at this time at the emergence of any-to-any publishing like the dawn of radio or TV or newspaper where a few rich guys got to decide what could or could not be published.

CursedUrn 4y ago
What makes you think something as unique and hard-fought as the First Amendment will be applied to the Internet when all trends point in the other direction, both on and offline?
wbl 4y ago
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/109FW5 https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/109FW5 (NSFW) is a beautiful picture, taken by a major 20th century photographer. It's also depicting a sex act that most people would never even consider. Do you really want pictures like this everywhere on Instagram? So now we have a no sex acts rule. But then an art museum is hosting an exhibition of art, and that art is depicting sex. Maybe even pedophilic sex, like a vase in the Met that has an old man stroking a young teenagers hairless genitals on it. That's very likely child pornography, except that the law can't ban images of artistic value, and the image of the vase has a lot of value, and I doubt anyone would find it erotic. Should the Met not be allowed to use a picture of a bunch of vases to promote its exhibitions? There's lots of reasons why reasonable seeming results are not possible from simple rules, and why it's legal, let's have it is not a great rule. Having a moderation system that addresses e.g. art studios and museums differently from other people is quite sensible.
- sneak 4y ago
  I don’t think pictures like this would be “everywhere on instagram” if instagram allowed all legal content. Correspondingly, I think your argument is a strawman.
- novok 4y ago
  The solution to that is a rule set that users can select what they want and automated tagging. It is essentially opt-in moderation vs. chosen for you moderation. And it could become fairly sophisticated too! We are starting to see it in the form of subscribing to block lists on twitter. Also in practice I think this is covered for %99 of cases people via an NSFW & NSFL tag system. That would be an NSFW art and thats that. The children issue will boil down to parents are the real root user of their children's accounts and parents will have control over the tagging set for moderation until they are of age. IMO I think most people are fine with mandatory labeling of goods, and actually welcome it because it gives more control and informed consent. It's the mandatory censorship that become the issue. Abusive false labelling might become the next hot topic, but that is far smaller of a surface area.
  - 4y ago