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> We (consumers) want to hold vendors accountable for policing "hate speech", kiddie porn, or terrorism There's still a large minority of us that sincerely don

> We (consumers) want to hold vendors accountable for policing "hate speech", kiddie porn, or terrorism There's still a large minority of us that sincerely don't.

hfbff 4y ago
Agreed. I don't want either (in general, there might be exception s). I obviously want to hold people (the people that actually have the kiddie porn, that are actually posting the hate speech) accountably for kiddie porn, inciting terrorism and even hate speech, but I don't generally want vendors to be accountable.
- jfengel 4y ago
  Why should they be held responsible for inciting terrorism? They're not injuring anybody.
  - Hackbraten 4y ago
    One could argue that they are indeed injuring people, by stochastic terrorism [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_te...
  - brazzy 4y ago
    Because it still ends up with people killed. Free speech absolutism is poison for actual freedom.
    - jfengel 4y ago
      I agree. I think it needs a lot more thought than the OP was giving it, though of course that kind of sarcasm reads poorly on the Internet.
- throwup 4y ago
  Throughout history vendors have generally not been responsible for the actions of their users. Nobody blames Sharpie if someone uses their markers to make a giant poster with hate speech. Nobody blames the USPS if someone mails a letter with a death threat. Nobody blames Verizon if somebody makes a phone call to bully their kid. Yet people blame Twitter when someone posts a tweet with hate speech. This is a dangerous direction for the world to be moving in.
  - themacguffinman 4y ago
    It's not about who makes the tools, it's about what users want to see. Users don't want to see giant posters of hate speech on Twitter. If they do, they'll stop using Twitter. It just so happens that Twitter is the only tool that can make things users see on Twitter. People still don't blame Sharpie or USPS or Verizon. People have tried to blame WhatsApp, it doesn't stick because WhatsApp is private. The culture hasn't magically changed. Companies like Twitter know that when advertisers and users complain about hate speech, they're not just asking for Twitter to be held "responsible" or whatever that means, they're telling Twitter that they will leave.
    - fallingknife 4y ago
      Users don't see that stuff unless they want to. Advertisers don't care unless their ads appear next to it. And these platforms have pretty much solved this. E.g. Google search results contain the full cesspit of the internet, yet everyone advertises with Google. The issue came when the news media decided that it was newsworthy that undesirables we're saying undesirable things on social media and blamed the platform as a whole. Now it's a pr issue for advertisers to be on the platform at all whether or not they are adjacent to undesirable content.
      - kelnos 4y ago
        I think the people who get harassed on Twitter, and have to spend a significant amount of their Twitter-using time dealing with that, would disagree with you.
- llbeansandrice 4y ago
  Someone has to hold those people accountable though. Either platforms, or a centralized government entity. That’s without getting into the issue of allowing that type of stuff to continue to exist on platforms if the ideal scenario is for Meta/Twitter/etc. To just not police their platforms at all.
  - blue039 4y ago
    > Someone has to hold those people accountable though. Either platforms, or a centralized government entity. Or we could just say people on the internet are assholes and you need thicker skin. Would you be okay with government ID required to sign up to any website? If so, I can see why you have a vengeance complex.
    - llbeansandrice 4y ago
      > you need thicker skin We're talking about holding people accountable for child porn, and inciting terrorism. What the actual fuck are you talking about "need a thicker skin"?
- judge2020 4y ago
  Why is this all-or-nothing for you? Surely, if someone posts CSAM on YouTube, or even Google Photos, they should remain accountable unto themselves to remove content that is both illegal and morally reprehensible? Or should someone's Google Photos be allowed to hold any amount of CSAM to the point where it's a de-facto private hard drive?
amelius 4y ago
Yes, a not-so-vocal minority. People outside our echo chamber don't even know we care about this stuff.
Spivak 4y ago
I the the way forward on this is to pass a national hate speech law and have it work kinda like the DMCA where platforms and people can submit complaints, and the people taken down can dispute in a public government process that has some accountability to the citizenry. Build up some case law about what is and isn’t so it’s applied uniformly and take stronger measures against repeat offenders.
- dhdh2747493 4y ago
  How does one achieve that without KYC-type laws or mechanisms for platforms? In that sense I agree with GP that it's a rock and a hard place situation.
- homonculus1 4y ago
  Expanding the DMCA model to speech in general! Ten years ago I would have been very surprised to see this take on HN.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    I think the calculus has changed a bit since then because we either have unaccountable megacorporations doing it or government.
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      Why would you think government would be any less accountable? If anything, government has everything to gain from this.
      - TapWaterBandit 4y ago
        Governments all over (including our own) have already gotten caught removing things that are directly relevant to transparency for modern systems. Crazy to think they can be relied upon to exercise these types of powers wisely.
        4y ago
jakeogh 4y ago
That's ludicrous grouping the first (free speech) with the other two violent things. Quite a bit of effort goes into blurring these lines. It's not good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY Note that assault (which could be words, threats to life for example) is already against the law, it's psychological warfare to make up a new term "speech I don't like" and parade it around (write long wiki articles, mfg consent etc) like it has meaning. It's a term in the same class as "conspiracy theory" and designed by the same class of social engineering experts.
rootusrootus 4y ago
I wonder how large that minority is, versus how loud it is. I've been to forums that had no moderation. Normal people do not talk that way and do not want to be around people that talk that way. Kiddie porn? FFS, get out of here, we do not want to see that.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Apparently we do have some kiddie porn fans on HN, who knew? I did. Because I've been running discussion forums on and off for 40 years. If you let them, a tiny tiny number of foul people will take over your site by driving away all the normal people who don't want to be exposed to that garbage. Free speech absolutists have trouble understanding that such bad faith actors exist, and in sufficient quantity to crush what could otherwise by a robust, diverse discussion.
jrexilius 4y ago
I wish the minority were larger, or large enough to have some market impact. Although it is perhaps growing in recent years to due fairly blatant abuses of power to push agendas.
- criddell 4y ago
  If the site is ad supported, then the majority they care about are the majority of ad buyers and ad buyers definitely want moderation.
- javajosh 4y ago
  There is hope to grow that market impact! Imagine a service where the user could explicitly modify the algorithm to encourage different emotions in themselves, including hate if they want it. Such a service would make plain a simple truth we don't want to acknowledge: screens hold powerful sway over people, and algorithms hold sway over screens. That power (mood manipulation) can be used for good or evil. Maybe if people are given control over their own tools in this way, they can better appreciate the control that is exerted on them by others, and so better resist it.
a1369209993 4y ago
FpUser 4y ago
Count me in
shadowgovt 4y ago
Yes, but that minority is increasingly irrelevant. The people are now online and the people want this.
yarg 4y ago
Don't worry, there's no technically sound way that it can be done. There'll be bluster, but it won't lead anywhere.
albertopv 4y ago
No policing for kids porn? Seriously?
raxxorraxor 4y ago
I have come to the conclusion that this can only be achieved by separate platforms. I don't believe this is a dangerous split in society, it is just about the people you want to interact with directly. I do no believe there is a common solution to satisfy both types of users. I guess we will shortly see AI empowered moderation, where AI analyses text and gives it a hate score. I would prefer platforms that make no content suggestion at all.

> We (consumers) want to hold vendors accountable for policing "hate speech", kiddie porn, or terrorism There's still a large minority of us that sincerely don't.

hfbff 4y ago

Agreed. I don't want either (in general, there might be exception s). I obviously want to hold people (the people that actually have the kiddie porn, that are actually posting the hate speech) accountably for kiddie porn, inciting terrorism and even hate speech, but I don't generally want vendors to be accountable.

jfengel 4y ago
Why should they be held responsible for inciting terrorism? They're not injuring anybody.
- Hackbraten 4y ago
  One could argue that they are indeed injuring people, by stochastic terrorism [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stochastic_te...
- brazzy 4y ago
  Because it still ends up with people killed. Free speech absolutism is poison for actual freedom.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    I agree. I think it needs a lot more thought than the OP was giving it, though of course that kind of sarcasm reads poorly on the Internet.
throwup 4y ago
Throughout history vendors have generally not been responsible for the actions of their users. Nobody blames Sharpie if someone uses their markers to make a giant poster with hate speech. Nobody blames the USPS if someone mails a letter with a death threat. Nobody blames Verizon if somebody makes a phone call to bully their kid. Yet people blame Twitter when someone posts a tweet with hate speech. This is a dangerous direction for the world to be moving in.
- themacguffinman 4y ago
  It's not about who makes the tools, it's about what users want to see. Users don't want to see giant posters of hate speech on Twitter. If they do, they'll stop using Twitter. It just so happens that Twitter is the only tool that can make things users see on Twitter. People still don't blame Sharpie or USPS or Verizon. People have tried to blame WhatsApp, it doesn't stick because WhatsApp is private. The culture hasn't magically changed. Companies like Twitter know that when advertisers and users complain about hate speech, they're not just asking for Twitter to be held "responsible" or whatever that means, they're telling Twitter that they will leave.
  - fallingknife 4y ago
    Users don't see that stuff unless they want to. Advertisers don't care unless their ads appear next to it. And these platforms have pretty much solved this. E.g. Google search results contain the full cesspit of the internet, yet everyone advertises with Google. The issue came when the news media decided that it was newsworthy that undesirables we're saying undesirable things on social media and blamed the platform as a whole. Now it's a pr issue for advertisers to be on the platform at all whether or not they are adjacent to undesirable content.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      I think the people who get harassed on Twitter, and have to spend a significant amount of their Twitter-using time dealing with that, would disagree with you.
llbeansandrice 4y ago
Someone has to hold those people accountable though. Either platforms, or a centralized government entity. That’s without getting into the issue of allowing that type of stuff to continue to exist on platforms if the ideal scenario is for Meta/Twitter/etc. To just not police their platforms at all.
- blue039 4y ago
  > Someone has to hold those people accountable though. Either platforms, or a centralized government entity. Or we could just say people on the internet are assholes and you need thicker skin. Would you be okay with government ID required to sign up to any website? If so, I can see why you have a vengeance complex.
  - llbeansandrice 4y ago
    > you need thicker skin We're talking about holding people accountable for child porn, and inciting terrorism. What the actual fuck are you talking about "need a thicker skin"?
judge2020 4y ago
Why is this all-or-nothing for you? Surely, if someone posts CSAM on YouTube, or even Google Photos, they should remain accountable unto themselves to remove content that is both illegal and morally reprehensible? Or should someone's Google Photos be allowed to hold any amount of CSAM to the point where it's a de-facto private hard drive?

amelius 4y ago

Yes, a not-so-vocal minority. People outside our echo chamber don't even know we care about this stuff.

Spivak 4y ago

I the the way forward on this is to pass a national hate speech law and have it work kinda like the DMCA where platforms and people can submit complaints, and the people taken down can dispute in a public government process that has some accountability to the citizenry. Build up some case law about what is and isn’t so it’s applied uniformly and take stronger measures against repeat offenders.

dhdh2747493 4y ago
How does one achieve that without KYC-type laws or mechanisms for platforms? In that sense I agree with GP that it's a rock and a hard place situation.
homonculus1 4y ago
Expanding the DMCA model to speech in general! Ten years ago I would have been very surprised to see this take on HN.
- Spivak 4y ago
  I think the calculus has changed a bit since then because we either have unaccountable megacorporations doing it or government.
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    Why would you think government would be any less accountable? If anything, government has everything to gain from this.
    - TapWaterBandit 4y ago
      Governments all over (including our own) have already gotten caught removing things that are directly relevant to transparency for modern systems. Crazy to think they can be relied upon to exercise these types of powers wisely.
      - 4y ago

jakeogh 4y ago

That's ludicrous grouping the first (free speech) with the other two violent things. Quite a bit of effort goes into blurring these lines. It's not good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY Note that assault (which could be words, threats to life for example) is already against the law, it's psychological warfare to make up a new term "speech I don't like" and parade it around (write long wiki articles, mfg consent etc) like it has meaning. It's a term in the same class as "conspiracy theory" and designed by the same class of social engineering experts.

rootusrootus 4y ago

I wonder how large that minority is, versus how loud it is. I've been to forums that had no moderation. Normal people do not talk that way and do not want to be around people that talk that way. Kiddie porn? FFS, get out of here, we do not want to see that.

rootusrootus 4y ago
Apparently we do have some kiddie porn fans on HN, who knew? I did. Because I've been running discussion forums on and off for 40 years. If you let them, a tiny tiny number of foul people will take over your site by driving away all the normal people who don't want to be exposed to that garbage. Free speech absolutists have trouble understanding that such bad faith actors exist, and in sufficient quantity to crush what could otherwise by a robust, diverse discussion.

jrexilius 4y ago

I wish the minority were larger, or large enough to have some market impact. Although it is perhaps growing in recent years to due fairly blatant abuses of power to push agendas.

criddell 4y ago
If the site is ad supported, then the majority they care about are the majority of ad buyers and ad buyers definitely want moderation.
javajosh 4y ago
There is hope to grow that market impact! Imagine a service where the user could explicitly modify the algorithm to encourage different emotions in themselves, including hate if they want it. Such a service would make plain a simple truth we don't want to acknowledge: screens hold powerful sway over people, and algorithms hold sway over screens. That power (mood manipulation) can be used for good or evil. Maybe if people are given control over their own tools in this way, they can better appreciate the control that is exerted on them by others, and so better resist it.

a1369209993 4y ago

FpUser 4y ago

Count me in

shadowgovt 4y ago

Yes, but that minority is increasingly irrelevant. The people are now online and the people want this.

yarg 4y ago

Don't worry, there's no technically sound way that it can be done. There'll be bluster, but it won't lead anywhere.

albertopv 4y ago

No policing for kids porn? Seriously?

raxxorraxor 4y ago

I have come to the conclusion that this can only be achieved by separate platforms. I don't believe this is a dangerous split in society, it is just about the people you want to interact with directly. I do no believe there is a common solution to satisfy both types of users. I guess we will shortly see AI empowered moderation, where AI analyses text and gives it a hate score. I would prefer platforms that make no content suggestion at all.