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Just having one service ban you will screw up your life, such is the case of one programmer who uploaded a picture of his toddler to let the doctor check for in

Just having one service ban you will screw up your life, such is the case of one programmer who uploaded a picture of his toddler to let the doctor check for infection - and got permanently banned by the AI, losing access to his Gmail and other Google tools registered to him. And services rarely act alone, when they do decide to target someone, they usually act in unison to deplatform, whether justified or not. In some ways big tech is far more powerful than governments.

deleted 4y ago
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parminya 4y ago
This is a case for regulation* and for promoting competition and diversity in the marketplace. It's not a case for treating them as governments. If they're governments, who chooses their leadership? Do they have one board, selected by the US president/according to the rules of the US Congress, that is applicable in the US, and another board, selected by the Canadian PM/according to the rules of Canadian law, that is applicable in Canada? How much are we going to pay to their shareholders for confiscating their property? * Banning moderation is a form of regulation. It falls far short of treating them as governments. It is possible to say "I want to regulate Twitter" without having to make weird statements like "We should treat Twitter as a government".
- welshwelsh 4y ago
  Nobody said that they are national governments. They are organizations with governance policies. Even if corporations are not governments, they are far more similar to governments then they are to private individuals. Moderation is a form of regulation- it is a way of regulating speech. Banning moderation is deregulation. "More platforms" is not the answer. In a democracy, when people are publicly discussing matters of public or political importance, other citizens have the right to participate in that conversation.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    > Nobody said that they are national governments. They are organizations with governance policies. Under this definition, practically any organization "is a government". My college debate team, Tesla, your local Starbucks. All "governments", because they are organizations have a governance policy (which really just means "leadership"). > Banning moderation is deregulation. No. The government controlling how corporations can act is, definitionally, regulation. You can argue that is good regulation, but it is regulation. If I am allowed to censor you, that is less regulation than if I am legally prevented from censoring you.
themitigating 4y ago
That person was banned because of automatic child pornography detection, you think that should be removed?
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Maybe the detection could stay, but the decision making (= acting on gathered intelligence) should absolutely be not outsourced to dumb robots. In this particular case, the context of the e-mails between the father and the doctor would immediately indicate that the photo was legit.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    How could a large service have enough people to review material in a timely manner?
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      CP is, in reality, a fairly infrequent crime. It is also a crime, meaning that someone human should definitely pay attention to it - unless you propose robotization of sentencing as well. If your automatic detection is tuned well enough not to produce shittons of false positives, you should have enough people to review suspected cases. Real positives ought to be escalated to actual police. (Also, actual police will not be happy about an automatic mechanism that locks out real CP producers out of their mailboxes, thus alerting them to the fact that there is something going on, and possibly giving them time and opportunity to destroy some incriminating evidence. There is a reason why suspected criminals are staked out carefully, then suddenly raided.)
  - odessacubbage 4y ago
    do we really expect underpaid and overworked jannies who get to spend 12 hours a day checking gore and cp will have a better error rate than bots? customer service & support is dogshit even for the users that these services are ostensibly trying to keep. potential liabilities will never get anything short of kafka.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

parminya 4y ago

This is a case for regulation* and for promoting competition and diversity in the marketplace. It's not a case for treating them as governments. If they're governments, who chooses their leadership? Do they have one board, selected by the US president/according to the rules of the US Congress, that is applicable in the US, and another board, selected by the Canadian PM/according to the rules of Canadian law, that is applicable in Canada? How much are we going to pay to their shareholders for confiscating their property? * Banning moderation is a form of regulation. It falls far short of treating them as governments. It is possible to say "I want to regulate Twitter" without having to make weird statements like "We should treat Twitter as a government".

welshwelsh 4y ago
Nobody said that they are national governments. They are organizations with governance policies. Even if corporations are not governments, they are far more similar to governments then they are to private individuals. Moderation is a form of regulation- it is a way of regulating speech. Banning moderation is deregulation. "More platforms" is not the answer. In a democracy, when people are publicly discussing matters of public or political importance, other citizens have the right to participate in that conversation.
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  > Nobody said that they are national governments. They are organizations with governance policies. Under this definition, practically any organization "is a government". My college debate team, Tesla, your local Starbucks. All "governments", because they are organizations have a governance policy (which really just means "leadership"). > Banning moderation is deregulation. No. The government controlling how corporations can act is, definitionally, regulation. You can argue that is good regulation, but it is regulation. If I am allowed to censor you, that is less regulation than if I am legally prevented from censoring you.

themitigating 4y ago

That person was banned because of automatic child pornography detection, you think that should be removed?

inglor_cz 4y ago
Maybe the detection could stay, but the decision making (= acting on gathered intelligence) should absolutely be not outsourced to dumb robots. In this particular case, the context of the e-mails between the father and the doctor would immediately indicate that the photo was legit.
- themitigating 4y ago
  How could a large service have enough people to review material in a timely manner?
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    CP is, in reality, a fairly infrequent crime. It is also a crime, meaning that someone human should definitely pay attention to it - unless you propose robotization of sentencing as well. If your automatic detection is tuned well enough not to produce shittons of false positives, you should have enough people to review suspected cases. Real positives ought to be escalated to actual police. (Also, actual police will not be happy about an automatic mechanism that locks out real CP producers out of their mailboxes, thus alerting them to the fact that there is something going on, and possibly giving them time and opportunity to destroy some incriminating evidence. There is a reason why suspected criminals are staked out carefully, then suddenly raided.)
- odessacubbage 4y ago
  do we really expect underpaid and overworked jannies who get to spend 12 hours a day checking gore and cp will have a better error rate than bots? customer service & support is dogshit even for the users that these services are ostensibly trying to keep. potential liabilities will never get anything short of kafka.