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Two Supreme Court cases that could break the internet
- fourmajor 4y agohttps://archive.is/DQEkR https://archive.is/DQEkR
- junofan 4y ago> these terrorism cases are about wanting platforms to take down more content, to step in more to prevent bad things from happening. And I think everybody sympathizes with that goal, whatever we think is the right set of rules to achieve it without a bunch of collateral damage. Interviewee is a bit biased. I don’t think everyone sympathizes with the goal of taking down more content.
- threeseed 4y ago4chan and early Reddit are classic examples of this. There are people for whom abhorrent content is what they prefer and will defend. And they want this content on mainstream sites so they can feel like they are normal.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoYes that's true. And there are others who believe governments are the peddlers and enablers of the most abhorrent crimes, from slavery to arms trafficking to war and assassination and "intervention" to human experimentation, and should absolutely be fought at every step of the way in their neverending thirst for more power and control, particularly where private speech is concerned. The former group sadly does make a great strawman for people who are emotionally hysterical and don't care to think very deeply about the issue though.
- EMIRELADERO 4y ago> And there are others who believe governments are the peddlers and enablers of the most abhorrent crimes, from slavery to arms trafficking to war and assassination and "intervention" to human experimentation, and should absolutely be fought at every step of the way in their neverending thirst for more power and control, particularly where private speech is concerned. Which is an (in my opinion) very inmature position to take. Look at the governments of western Europe, particularily Scandinavia
- throwawaylinux 4y agoOh, well I looked at them and in my opinion it is not a very immature position to take. Solid debate.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jterrys 4y ago>And they want this content on mainstream sites so they can feel like they are normal. I think they want this content on mainstream sites because they know it pisses off people and makes them laugh
- ever1337 4y ago4chan and reddit are both mainstream sites
- Sakos 4y agoIt's the same manipulative argument you see with "protecting the children". Everybody agrees with the goal, so obviously we're doing the right thing by curtailing everybody's freedoms.
- forgetfreeman 4y agoHow about instead of "curtailing freedoms" we attach some really aggressive consequences for poor choices as regards broadcasting obvious bullshit in public spaces? We good now?
- perryizgr8 4y agoHow about we treat freedom of speech like the inalienable right it is? We better now?
- forgetfreeman 4y agoWe pretending freedom of speech means you can say literally anything you feel like in any venue at any time without repercussions? Care to review any of the laws barring communicating threats, hate speech, slander, libel, etc? If what you're trying to defend is folks shilling obvious falsehood and intentionally misleading rhetoric what's your agenda here?
- perryizgr8 4y ago> you can say literally anything you feel like Yes, by definition. > any of the laws barring communicating threats, hate speech, slander, libel, etc By definition, such laws are incompatible with free speech. > what's your agenda here Free speech
- forgetfreeman 4y agoHaving proposed we legalize calling in bomb threats I feel like you've thoroughly invalidated any argument you may have been trying to advance here.
- Dalewyn 4y agoI'm not about to read the article or concern myself with the minute details of the cases, but I will say I hope SCOTUS throws out section 230 protections for the likes of Google, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, et al. If you engage in editorializing (read: controlling) content beyond what is necessary to comply with laws and regulations (eg: no child porn, no tangible death threats), then you should be liable for the content you subsequently publish. Paper media abides by this, there is no reason why internet-based media cannot abide by the same.
- threeseed 4y ago> Paper media abides by this It's a meaningless comparison. Traditional media produce and own their content. Online media is user generated.
- Dalewyn 4y agoPaper media also has user generated content. Such content has been the liability of the publisher and things have worked just fine for at least the last two centuries if not more. Again: There is no reason internet-based media can't act like their paper counterparts. The only plausible reason is because nobody wants liability, but hey: You modify user generated content in any way, /you the publisher/ are now liable for it.
- threeseed 4y agoI've worked for a large News Corp paper before. The amount of user generated content in comments, letters to the editor etc is tiny and was moderated by a single person. It is simply incomparable to the estimated 500 million tweets a day by Twitter: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/04/14/twitter-statistics https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/04/14/twitter-statis...
- _Algernon_ 4y agoWhy is it my problem that their business model is stupid and doesn't work when treated equally to traditional publishing? Equality before the law. If your business can't adapt it should die.
- i_dont_know_ 4y agoThe whole point of Section 230 was that we wanted to simultaneously incentivize user-content platforms (so, services that just allowed people to freely express themselves without concerning itself too much about the content) while simultaneously encouraging those services to take down illegal content. That was it. The whole reason it was needed was because these platforms were worried that if they took down content, it might be seen as implicitly endorsing the content that remained. If that was the case, then they'd be liable for the content that remained. Including things like libel laws... it would be the same as a newspaper printing that content. They didn't want that, so this was the compromise. You can do light moderation and we'll grant you exemption. Fast-forward to today. Facebook and Twitter do not do "light moderation". They decide what you see and what you don't... they direct your attention from smaller stories to bigger ones, they spend countless thousands of employee hours catering to the whole experience. If that doesn't count as a modern digital scaled form of editorialization, I don't know what would. I think a law designed to encourage very light moderation in no way applies to full-fledged algorithmic determination, and that distinction needs to be made and clarified.
- LatteLazy 4y agoServices could always take down illegal content (in fact they were legally required to). Section 230 is specifically for taking down legal content that the site controller wants gone (without then having endorsed what remains as you say). Section 230 was specifically to allow MORE than what you call "light moderation". That was always the point.
- asah 4y agoserious q: what exactly is "light moderation" and how is this not itself an algorithm, just being executed by wetware neural nets with all sorts of biases, inconsistent judgments, etc ? if "light moderation" means an escalation path for exceptions, then the major platforms all have this.
- mjevans 4y agoWhen content is offered, not based on a factual request from the user but as a 'recommendation' that is a decision (even if it's an algorithm) and NOT a simple fact of serving whatever matched the end user requested (not the provider with 230 immunity) filter / sorting order on other end user published (not the provider with 230 immunity) content.
- weitzj 4y agoSo maybe this will lead to more p2p Internet services like IPFS. And maybe for Google and such you have to use their p2p version probably baked into the chrome browser with an authentication system. Something like the old AOL dialup but decentralized like ipfs and per website or with some kind of audit trail.
- LatteLazy 4y agoIt continues to amaze me how many people, even here on HN, just parrot various (factually incorrect) talking points from various groups. Others pick a single desired outcome (less moderation) and refuse to address any of the resulting outcomes (Nazi and Terrorist propaganda on all major sites for instance).
- untech 4y agoI think the terms “Nazi”, “terrorist” and “propaganda” won’t help you, if you want to have a complex view of the world.
- LatteLazy 4y agoI really just mean actual self-described neo-nazis...
- untech 4y agoWell, for the audience of Russian highly regulated TV, news sites and social networks, the invasion of Ukraine was necessary because the poor neighbour was suffering under a regime of “actual self-described Neo-Nazis”. Russian Ministry of Defence even reports its daily results in terms of ”Neo-Nazis eliminated“. My parents are consumers of Russian media, and it is impossible to discuss the war with them, because they talk and think with these flexible terms like “Nazi”, “terrorist” and “propaganda”. And they are not unintelligent people. I wish citizens of the free world would be more careful with their freedoms. Democracy and autocracy is a spectrum, and the slide towards dictatorship, from my experience, could be gradual and subtle.
- LatteLazy 4y agoI am a little confused by your point. I don't disagree, I just don't see it as dictatorial for people to be allowed to decide what happens in their communities. In fact, I think they only way any community can actually function is to have the right to exclude bad content and bad actors. That's true for a church or a book club or hacker news or facebook or anyone else.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoTwo cases that could break Big Tech's hold on the internet. These cases are not going to stop anyone from publishing their own content via internet, but they might affect Big Tech intermediaries that publish only other people's content and produce no content themselves. These cases will not stop traditional media organisations that employ journalists from fact-checking and publishing the content they produce. Even if these cases are decided favourably to the defendants, "tech" companies will continue to publish low quality, low-brow, incendiary, false, "clickbait" content. That is what gets eyeballs. Section 230 is not incentivising them to moderate, as it was intended. Advertising is incentivising them to allow anything that garners more views and "engagement". Section 230 is only providing them with immunity from all manner of litigation around any moderation. There is no incentive to fact-check anything. Even "recommending" terrorrist group videos is apprently fair game. If they have zero obligation to moderate and no incentive to fact-check, because they have immunity under 230, i.e., Google wins against Gonzalez, then they can grow their once modest websites to gigantic, overpowering size, with a disproportionate amount of influence on the open web.^1 Reframing the situation, the gigantic websites now call themselves "platforms", sharecroppers and serfs are "publishers" and "creators". Grab a stake in the "Metaverse". You cannot break something that is already broken. 1. For Big Tech this web feudalism is the Holy Grail. Grow the audience size and reap the advertising revenue. Obviously any proposed change, an improved interpretation of Section 230, that could threaten this status quo is unacceptable to them. But they are not the majority of web users. Was the web created so that a few websites could control the majority of traffic. In their view, yes. That is the only way the web can operate. How convenient.
- nindalf 4y agoRemember that most content written by most people actually happens in these platforms owned and moderated by someone else. You say it won’t stop anyone but how many people currently posting on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok are capable of creating their own websites, posting the content there, paying for the cost of hardware and bandwidth and also finding an audience somehow? 0.1%? 0.01%? The rest of your comment is equally wrong (perhaps even low quality, low brow, incendiary, false), but I have little time to fact check it.
- chmod600 4y ago"This is the law colloquially known as Section 230, which is probably the most misunderstood, misreported, and hated law on the Internet." That by itself is a problem. For a law like this to survive, someone needs to explain to voters what problems it solves, the way companies take advatage of it, why that's hard to fix, and why it's still worth having.
- kart23 4y agocomments here are a great example of the hn bubble. killing youtube, instagram or facebook would be a massive net negative for society right now. the amount of money and people that depend on these platforms far outweigh the concerns of people complaining against corporate censorship.
- em-bee 4y agohow is that? it won't be more than a disruption. for each of these services alternatives exist, and just like mastodon has seen more users since the recent twitter upheaval, other services, existing or new, will quickly fill in any gap left by the demise of an existing service.
- kart23 4y agohttps://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 The eff articulates it better than I ever could. Those alternative services will also fail to exist without section 230.
- bradwood 4y agoHow does the outcome of a couple of court cases in one jurisdiction, in one country, break the entire, global internet? This just sounds like clickbait.
- vuln 4y agoNo worries I'm already dead from lack of Net Neutrality. /s