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I would challenge you to craft a legal opinion around 230 that excludes Youtube recommending harmful content from protection but not Google placing harmful cont

by eli 4y ago

I would challenge you to craft a legal opinion around 230 that excludes Youtube recommending harmful content from protection but not Google placing harmful content in the "Priority Inbox".

freejazz 4y ago
There isn't difficulty there. Lawyers aren't having problems navigating this language. Obtuse techies who obsess over edge-cases definitions are having difficulty. No one reasonable would describe the SPAM filtering as a recommendation algorithm and to suggest otherwise is either outright ignorant or just facially disingenuous. The law doesn't care what can be argued to be a promotion algorithm based upon some HN-poster's obtuse reliance upon a specific word, the law deals with reasonability as a standard all the time.
- eli 4y ago
  Navigating what language? The law today I agree is pretty clear. This is speculation on a ruling that doesn't yet exist that could change all that. Your suggestion is that there would be a carve out for spam filtering? Or that Google deciding what goes in "Promotions" and what goes in "Priority Inbox" isn't a recommendation?
  - freejazz 4y ago
    The language in 230... My suggestion is that your hypothetical is useless and inapplicable because it is at best, reflective of your own personal misunderstanding, or at worst, outright disingenuous.
hrunt 4y ago
IANAL, but I would start developing my argument with the idea that emails Google placed in my Priority Inbox were sent to me specifically, and the intention of the sender is that I specifically would see it. Google is still not putting anything in front of my eyes that was not intended to be there anyway. When YouTube recommends content to me, the original author did not target that content specifically to me, and YouTube alone is making the decision to put it in front of my eyes.
- eli 4y ago
  When you post a story on HN you aren't specifically choosing to send it to a person. Is HN responsible if a harmful story reaches the front page?
  - owisd 4y ago
    They could rule against personalised recommendations (YouTube) vs while protecting recommendations where everyone sees the same thing (HN). In HN’s case I’m not sure it would matter much either way. HN is pretty heavily moderated already. If stories went into a moderation queue before hitting the main page rather than being retroactively moderated I’m not sure many of us would notice a difference.
    - eli 4y ago
      The comments too? Everything in a moderation queue and potentially serious penalties for getting it wrong? I'm pretty sure you would notice. And would the developer of a Mastodon client be personally liable if their algorithm recommends someone harmful as a new account to follow?
    - shagie 4y ago
      The heavy moderation of HN would mean that they would be more liable for content. And the algorithms showing the front page recommendations would likely be found to be similar to the "what a visitor to YouTube who isn't signed in sees" or "what you see if you go to https://twitter.com https://twitter.com without being logged in." Instead, HN's view would likely become "everyone sees https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest and showdead is set to 'yes'" I'm not sure how to construct an argument that would allow HN's front page while at the same time curtailing YouTube's not signed in front page - both are recommendation algorithms.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      They could rule against personalised recommendations whilst protecting recommendations where everyone sees the same thing, but logically it seems more likely they'd do the opposite (more reasonable to consider a single centralised top stories system consistently highlighting content to all its users a reflection of a "publisher" preference than an algorithm which highlights content based on each individual user's activity and filters the individual user may have set, moderators tend to manually intervene to influence the former more, and of course it's less reasonable to demand that all potentially libellous content is screened from procedurally generated individual user links than from a "top stories" list or home page.) I think most of us would notice the difference if HN was allowed only to rank comments only in chronological order, never mind if for liability reasons the stories permitted to appear in order of upvotes on HN were restricted to the ones Dang was satisfied weren't libellous, or possibly none at all if YC decided it wasn't worth the risk

by eli 4y ago

I would challenge you to craft a legal opinion around 230 that excludes Youtube recommending harmful content from protection but not Google placing harmful content in the "Priority Inbox".

freejazz 4y ago

There isn't difficulty there. Lawyers aren't having problems navigating this language. Obtuse techies who obsess over edge-cases definitions are having difficulty. No one reasonable would describe the SPAM filtering as a recommendation algorithm and to suggest otherwise is either outright ignorant or just facially disingenuous. The law doesn't care what can be argued to be a promotion algorithm based upon some HN-poster's obtuse reliance upon a specific word, the law deals with reasonability as a standard all the time.

eli 4y ago
Navigating what language? The law today I agree is pretty clear. This is speculation on a ruling that doesn't yet exist that could change all that. Your suggestion is that there would be a carve out for spam filtering? Or that Google deciding what goes in "Promotions" and what goes in "Priority Inbox" isn't a recommendation?
- freejazz 4y ago
  The language in 230... My suggestion is that your hypothetical is useless and inapplicable because it is at best, reflective of your own personal misunderstanding, or at worst, outright disingenuous.

hrunt 4y ago

IANAL, but I would start developing my argument with the idea that emails Google placed in my Priority Inbox were sent to me specifically, and the intention of the sender is that I specifically would see it. Google is still not putting anything in front of my eyes that was not intended to be there anyway. When YouTube recommends content to me, the original author did not target that content specifically to me, and YouTube alone is making the decision to put it in front of my eyes.

eli 4y ago
When you post a story on HN you aren't specifically choosing to send it to a person. Is HN responsible if a harmful story reaches the front page?
- owisd 4y ago
  They could rule against personalised recommendations (YouTube) vs while protecting recommendations where everyone sees the same thing (HN). In HN’s case I’m not sure it would matter much either way. HN is pretty heavily moderated already. If stories went into a moderation queue before hitting the main page rather than being retroactively moderated I’m not sure many of us would notice a difference.
  - eli 4y ago
    The comments too? Everything in a moderation queue and potentially serious penalties for getting it wrong? I'm pretty sure you would notice. And would the developer of a Mastodon client be personally liable if their algorithm recommends someone harmful as a new account to follow?
  - shagie 4y ago
    The heavy moderation of HN would mean that they would be more liable for content. And the algorithms showing the front page recommendations would likely be found to be similar to the "what a visitor to YouTube who isn't signed in sees" or "what you see if you go to https://twitter.com https://twitter.com without being logged in." Instead, HN's view would likely become "everyone sees https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest and showdead is set to 'yes'" I'm not sure how to construct an argument that would allow HN's front page while at the same time curtailing YouTube's not signed in front page - both are recommendation algorithms.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    They could rule against personalised recommendations whilst protecting recommendations where everyone sees the same thing, but logically it seems more likely they'd do the opposite (more reasonable to consider a single centralised top stories system consistently highlighting content to all its users a reflection of a "publisher" preference than an algorithm which highlights content based on each individual user's activity and filters the individual user may have set, moderators tend to manually intervene to influence the former more, and of course it's less reasonable to demand that all potentially libellous content is screened from procedurally generated individual user links than from a "top stories" list or home page.) I think most of us would notice the difference if HN was allowed only to rank comments only in chronological order, never mind if for liability reasons the stories permitted to appear in order of upvotes on HN were restricted to the ones Dang was satisfied weren't libellous, or possibly none at all if YC decided it wasn't worth the risk