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First off, going after e2e encryption is wrong. ...But I am starting to get sick of unencrypted Big Tech's liability shield. It was enacted to let the nascent

First off, going after e2e encryption is wrong. ...But I am starting to get sick of unencrypted Big Tech's liability shield. It was enacted to let the nascent social media platforms survive. But they aren't startups running out of garages anymore. They are some of the richest entities on the planet, they can patrol their own platforms, but they will not patrol their own platforms out of the goodness of their hearts unless it affects their bottom line, or a law makes them fear prosecution.

gruez 3y ago
>they can patrol their own platforms, but they will not patrol their own platforms out of the goodness of their hearts unless it affects their bottom line, or a law makes them fear prosecution. We already see what happens when government delegates law enforcement to corporations: AML/ATF regulations that financial institutions have to follow. The idea is basically the same: "banks can patrol their own customers, but they will not patrol their own customers out of the goodness of their hearts unless it affects their bottom line, or a law makes them fear prosecution". The result? People getting randomly banned because some aspect of them or their transaction info contained something tangentially related to something that's sanctioned[1]. The calculus clearly favors companies being trigger-happy than not. If some Al-Qaeda transaction goes through and the media gets wind of it, they'll get fined and/or raked over the coals by regulators and legislators. The reverse happens and the most is some grumbles but you still stay in business. I fully expect the same dynamic to happen for social media companies. Anything that can vaguely be considered offensive will be taken down. Imagine the youtube demonetization debacle, but worse. [1] eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35337210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35337210, or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450828
- junofan 3y ago
  I mean should a private company like Snapchat be making money off of fentanyl dealers? There are plenty of alternatives. I guarantee Snapchat already reports child pornographers.
- immibis 3y ago
  The right middle ground may be some susceptibility to court orders. E.g. Google shouldn't have to patrol files stored in Google Drive, but a court should be able to get a search warrant for a Drive or order files to be removed. YouTube shouldn't have to proactively search for ElsaGate content, but should have to comply with law enforcement orders to help law enforcement find out why it is happening.
nullc 3y ago
Prior to S230 providers could be shielded from liability through common carrier status. But they couldn't enjoy that protection and remove crap. For point to point services, a very hands off approach makes sense. You generally don't need to remove crap: Garbage in, Garbage out, people can ignore or locally filter what they don't want. But for public online forums a degree of moderation is required (otherwise someone can just flood it with garbage and make it useless to everyone) and generally desirable. S230 is as much about letting people moderate with immunity (both for the things their well intended efforts missed, and for harms created when their moderation goes over broad) as it is anything else. By count most of the deplorable material that shows up on platforms is not illegal or tortious. Material which is offensive, abusive, demeaning, misleading is often lawful and it often doesn't create doesn't create substantial real liability-- except in the form that without broad brush protections like S230 people can sue over whatever frivolous thing they want anf unless you're a multi-billion dollar entity you may well be bankrupt before your inevitable win. A world without powerful liability shields is one where you can't safely irritate or offend parties with significantly more money or power than you. And we can see that already platforms facebook, google, twitter, etc. are effectively immune already to civil suit by virtue of their size and wealth-- just look at the lack of effect litigation over their privacy breaches or shutting users out of their own data with no notice causing them grave harm. ... Or incidents like Apple & Google's wage fixing conspiracy, which while they were eventually convicted cost them less than they saved in wages. Their bad policies are in part because their size, wealth, and power make them significantly immune to public opinion. To the extent that the bad governance of social media sites is harmful to the public we've be better served by having more alternatives. Facebook, Twitter, etc. could survive in a world with S230, but the smaller and better curated alternatives you'd presumably like to see move over very likely couldn't. When we look at laws like the proposed what we can see is the government trying to deputize corporations to investigate and enforce the law on their behalf. One of the drivers of this is that it throughly undermines due process: The constitution established safeguards against government search but we've figured out that we lack the same safeguards against corporations (since we've "voluntarily" handed our data over to them) and so if governments coerce corporations to search they can substantially bypass our fourth amendment rights.
- vel0city 3y ago
whatshisface 3y ago
So now instead of a democratically elected government writing laws and appointing people to enforce them, a private corporation will "patrol" my online interactions...

gruez 3y ago

>they can patrol their own platforms, but they will not patrol their own platforms out of the goodness of their hearts unless it affects their bottom line, or a law makes them fear prosecution. We already see what happens when government delegates law enforcement to corporations: AML/ATF regulations that financial institutions have to follow. The idea is basically the same: "banks can patrol their own customers, but they will not patrol their own customers out of the goodness of their hearts unless it affects their bottom line, or a law makes them fear prosecution". The result? People getting randomly banned because some aspect of them or their transaction info contained something tangentially related to something that's sanctioned[1]. The calculus clearly favors companies being trigger-happy than not. If some Al-Qaeda transaction goes through and the media gets wind of it, they'll get fined and/or raked over the coals by regulators and legislators. The reverse happens and the most is some grumbles but you still stay in business. I fully expect the same dynamic to happen for social media companies. Anything that can vaguely be considered offensive will be taken down. Imagine the youtube demonetization debacle, but worse. [1] eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35337210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35337210, or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450828

junofan 3y ago
I mean should a private company like Snapchat be making money off of fentanyl dealers? There are plenty of alternatives. I guarantee Snapchat already reports child pornographers.
immibis 3y ago
The right middle ground may be some susceptibility to court orders. E.g. Google shouldn't have to patrol files stored in Google Drive, but a court should be able to get a search warrant for a Drive or order files to be removed. YouTube shouldn't have to proactively search for ElsaGate content, but should have to comply with law enforcement orders to help law enforcement find out why it is happening.

nullc 3y ago

Prior to S230 providers could be shielded from liability through common carrier status. But they couldn't enjoy that protection and remove crap. For point to point services, a very hands off approach makes sense. You generally don't need to remove crap: Garbage in, Garbage out, people can ignore or locally filter what they don't want. But for public online forums a degree of moderation is required (otherwise someone can just flood it with garbage and make it useless to everyone) and generally desirable. S230 is as much about letting people moderate with immunity (both for the things their well intended efforts missed, and for harms created when their moderation goes over broad) as it is anything else. By count most of the deplorable material that shows up on platforms is not illegal or tortious. Material which is offensive, abusive, demeaning, misleading is often lawful and it often doesn't create doesn't create substantial real liability-- except in the form that without broad brush protections like S230 people can sue over whatever frivolous thing they want anf unless you're a multi-billion dollar entity you may well be bankrupt before your inevitable win. A world without powerful liability shields is one where you can't safely irritate or offend parties with significantly more money or power than you. And we can see that already platforms facebook, google, twitter, etc. are effectively immune already to civil suit by virtue of their size and wealth-- just look at the lack of effect litigation over their privacy breaches or shutting users out of their own data with no notice causing them grave harm. ... Or incidents like Apple & Google's wage fixing conspiracy, which while they were eventually convicted cost them less than they saved in wages. Their bad policies are in part because their size, wealth, and power make them significantly immune to public opinion. To the extent that the bad governance of social media sites is harmful to the public we've be better served by having more alternatives. Facebook, Twitter, etc. could survive in a world with S230, but the smaller and better curated alternatives you'd presumably like to see move over very likely couldn't. When we look at laws like the proposed what we can see is the government trying to deputize corporations to investigate and enforce the law on their behalf. One of the drivers of this is that it throughly undermines due process: The constitution established safeguards against government search but we've figured out that we lack the same safeguards against corporations (since we've "voluntarily" handed our data over to them) and so if governments coerce corporations to search they can substantially bypass our fourth amendment rights.

vel0city 3y ago

whatshisface 3y ago

So now instead of a democratically elected government writing laws and appointing people to enforce them, a private corporation will "patrol" my online interactions...