3 ms·

While I agree with this in the abstract, this particular case is that of a private company refusing hosting to content that it (or, perhaps, its advertisers) do

by snet0 4y ago

While I agree with this in the abstract, this particular case is that of a private company refusing hosting to content that it (or, perhaps, its advertisers) does not want their name attached to. It'd be nice if we didn't have this situation, e.g. income not being tied directly to advertisers -> indirectly to LCD of opinion. I don't know if you were implying that Twitch ought not remove this content, but I just feel like sometimes the conversation gets taken to an abstract space, the conclusions of which then get applied to concrete space e.g. Twitch. It's important to recognise the rights we give private companies to decide what they provide airtime to.

StanislavPetrov 4y ago
>this particular case is that of a private company refusing hosting to content I believe this argument holds water on some level, when it regards a small private company, but it is much less compelling when that "private company" is Amazon (who owns Twitch), Google, Twitter, Facebook or another behemoth with hundreds of millions of users. At that point, it becomes a very chilling attack on free speech, which is why I think that many big tech platforms should be designated at common carriers.
- cmilton 4y ago
  Correct. What if the private company is Visa or Mastercard? What if it is your only ISP?
  - snet0 4y ago
    It's slightly different in that those are basically utility companies at this point, but there's definitely an argument to be made that certain levels of social media ubiquity ought to qualify them as a utility, since you lose so much through not being able to interact with them.
- snet0 4y ago
  Yeah I'm definitely sympathetic to this, and I think the next decade will determine how we proceed with these cases. It does feel like, while they're all private companies, if a random individual was to be banned from all social media platforms, their life really cannot function at some level in a lot of modern societies, so we ought to treat these companies differently. When the companies are generating revenue through selling advertisements, and the advertisers decide "yeah we actually don't want to buy a pre-roll on the stream where the guy is making racist comments", it's another level of difficulty to navigate. Should these companies be required to host someone's content at a loss, given that they have some way for advertisers to "block" certain content types from being associated with their brands?
  - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
    >When the companies are generating revenue through selling advertisements, and the advertisers decide "yeah we actually don't want to buy a pre-roll on the stream where the guy is making racist comments", it's another level of difficulty to navigate. Should these companies be required to host someone's content at a loss, given that they have some way for advertisers to "block" certain content types from being associated with their brands? It is simple enough to add flags to streams that enough people report as "offensive" and let advertisers choose which streams their advertisements appear on. Advertisers (and others) who insist that everyone that find offensive is completely banned off the platform should be given the bird and told to take a walk. I think one of the problems is that advertising has (like big tech) become an oligopoly, dominated by "the big four" ad agencies. It is one thing for a company that represents .001% of the ad market to pull their ads from a website or a platform because they find something offensive, and a massive conglomerate to pull 25% of all ads from a platform (let alone act in concert with the other 3 ad agencies who control the entire ad market). The reality is that far too many of our "markets" are controlled by far too many corporations, many of which act in concert and otherwise coordinate in ways that are legally questionable, at best. Unfortunately due to our largely corrupt government that is heavily influenced by corporate interests and regulatory agencies that are mostly staffed by a revolving door of industry cronies things are very unlikely to change.

by snet0 4y ago

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

>this particular case is that of a private company refusing hosting to content I believe this argument holds water on some level, when it regards a small private company, but it is much less compelling when that "private company" is Amazon (who owns Twitch), Google, Twitter, Facebook or another behemoth with hundreds of millions of users. At that point, it becomes a very chilling attack on free speech, which is why I think that many big tech platforms should be designated at common carriers.

cmilton 4y ago
Correct. What if the private company is Visa or Mastercard? What if it is your only ISP?
- snet0 4y ago
  It's slightly different in that those are basically utility companies at this point, but there's definitely an argument to be made that certain levels of social media ubiquity ought to qualify them as a utility, since you lose so much through not being able to interact with them.
snet0 4y ago
Yeah I'm definitely sympathetic to this, and I think the next decade will determine how we proceed with these cases. It does feel like, while they're all private companies, if a random individual was to be banned from all social media platforms, their life really cannot function at some level in a lot of modern societies, so we ought to treat these companies differently. When the companies are generating revenue through selling advertisements, and the advertisers decide "yeah we actually don't want to buy a pre-roll on the stream where the guy is making racist comments", it's another level of difficulty to navigate. Should these companies be required to host someone's content at a loss, given that they have some way for advertisers to "block" certain content types from being associated with their brands?
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  >When the companies are generating revenue through selling advertisements, and the advertisers decide "yeah we actually don't want to buy a pre-roll on the stream where the guy is making racist comments", it's another level of difficulty to navigate. Should these companies be required to host someone's content at a loss, given that they have some way for advertisers to "block" certain content types from being associated with their brands? It is simple enough to add flags to streams that enough people report as "offensive" and let advertisers choose which streams their advertisements appear on. Advertisers (and others) who insist that everyone that find offensive is completely banned off the platform should be given the bird and told to take a walk. I think one of the problems is that advertising has (like big tech) become an oligopoly, dominated by "the big four" ad agencies. It is one thing for a company that represents .001% of the ad market to pull their ads from a website or a platform because they find something offensive, and a massive conglomerate to pull 25% of all ads from a platform (let alone act in concert with the other 3 ad agencies who control the entire ad market). The reality is that far too many of our "markets" are controlled by far too many corporations, many of which act in concert and otherwise coordinate in ways that are legally questionable, at best. Unfortunately due to our largely corrupt government that is heavily influenced by corporate interests and regulatory agencies that are mostly staffed by a revolving door of industry cronies things are very unlikely to change.