8 ms·

> They’re about politicians ensuring that a favored constituency has access to someone else’s megaphone to spread a message I think this is an inaccurate chara

by sanity 3y ago

> They’re about politicians ensuring that a favored constituency has access to someone else’s megaphone to spread a message I think this is an inaccurate characterization. Over the past 20 years content creators were encouraged to use and invest in building an audience on these platforms based on the tacit understanding that they would behave like content neutral common carriers. If the platform's willingness to abuse this power had been apparent from the start they would never have become so powerful. People created their own "megaphones" over many years only for the platform to start dictating to them how they can communicate with the audiences they've built, often based on naked political animus. It was a bait and switch - a fraud. That said, having listened to most of the oral arguments I think SCOTUS will strike down these laws. The fundamental problem is that the Internet centralizes power in a small number of corporations which then become ripe for capture by powerful interests, whether political, ideological, or commercial. IMO the ultimate solution is a decentralized Internet like https://freenet.org/ https://freenet.org/ that doesn't require creators to hand over control of their voices to powerful third parties.

nobody9999 3y ago
>Over the past 20 years content creators were encouraged to use and invest in building an audience on these platforms based on the tacit understanding that they would behave like content neutral common carriers. That's a strong assertion. Do you have any evidence to back that up? AIUI, the law governing this (at least in the US -- which is relevant since we're discussing US state laws being challenged in the courts) is the Communications Decency Act of 1996[0], with section 230[1] of that law being the pointy end of the stick WRT these particulars. I would also point out that the above serves as a front-end (in that it allows the courts to reject lawsuits misdirected at platforms, when they should be directed at the source of the speech) to the First Amendment[2]. Please detail where, exactly, any of the above supports the claim that "content creators were encouraged to use and invest in building an audience on these platforms based on the tacit understanding that they would behave like content neutral common carriers." Perhaps I'm missing something important (which is certainly possible) and I'd appreciate being enlightened. As such, I look forward to your response. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act [1] https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_... Edit: Cleaned up prose. Additional Edit: I'm responding to [3] below as I am apparently rate limited and wanted to make sure I was clear in what I'm trying to say as I am pretty passionate about it: That's as may be, and I remember it fondly too. However, it wasn't by government or the law that "content creators were encouraged to use and invest in building an audience on these platforms..." Rather it was those platforms themselves. It would be easy for me to just say "sucker! you've been rooked!" and leave it at that. However, I'll (attempt to) respond substantively by saying that the surveillance capitalism[4] business model was still nascent and there were many more options for interpersonal interaction back then. It was inevitable that after the consolidation of "social" media that advertiser influence (since they're actually the customers -- not you) would be paramount to these platforms. And that's what drives the moderation/censorship folks are complaining about -- because advertisers don't want to be associated with anything controversial, they just want you to buy their products/services and (the advertisers and the platforms as well as various middlemen) collect (ala [4]) as much information about you as they can to aid in that process. [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39527216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39527216 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism
- hamhock666 3y ago
  I think to most people on the internet in the early 2000s, it was unthinkable that content on the major platforms would be censored based on political content. I don’t think there is any evidence for that, it’s more of a general feeling, and the fact that political censorship took off in the next decade. If these platforms had started out censoring particular political content, they would not have had the same mass adoption, or there may have been more free-speech competitors.
  - sanity 3y ago
    Agreed, the overt political censorship didn't start until the mid-2010s, over a decade after today's tech giants solidified their dominant positions.
    - joshuamorton 3y ago
      I'd potentially reverse this: 'overt' political censorship didn't start until certain creators started to market their otherwise objectionable content as "political" as a way to bypass existing moderation policies.
    - numpad0 3y ago
      It's App Store. It all started with the App Store.
      - Zak 3y ago
        Advertisers are also considerably more picky about the content they're willing to be associated with, and considerably more influential with regard to the content most people see online than they were 20 years ago. Advertiser demands have produced rapid policy changes from the likes of Youtube and Reddit where other forms of pressure have had little effect.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    I agree with the person you're responding to, that the assertions you're making here don't seem to be supported by the evidence: As one of those people in question, it was never unthinkable. Even during the 2000's, it was common to ban people from MSN chatrooms. Before that, it was common to ban people from IRC channels, individual IRC servers, or even entire IRC networks. Did the GNAA have a right to "be platformed" indefinitely wherever they wanted? Also, the "censorship" in question more often deals with things like insults and other incivility, spamming, death threats, etc. Not mere "political" speech. I doubt many folks were banned from /r/SCOTUS for politely saying "I politically disagree with this ruling". We see via screenshots in the amicus the sort of stuff that was actually moderated. Indeed, the "censorship" which spawned these laws was the banning of a dude actively calling for violent insurrection against the government, and receiving it, and continuing to encourage it during the violent insurrection. That's the "political speech" the bill authors had in mind when drafting it. It's possible that the "censorship" in question is all that stopped the putsch from succeeding. One can see why fans of said dude and his insurrection were so upset by that.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> Over the past 20 years content creators were encouraged to use and invest in building an audience on these platforms based on the tacit understanding that they would behave like content neutral common carriers. Beyond what the other (excellent) comment had to say about this, why does what content creators may have believed mean fuck-all in terms of what these cases are arguing? Nobody would have used Facebook if they thought Facebook would "censor" them? And besides that, your assertion that it's a bait and switch implies that all these creators would've been able to foster the exact same followings using, what, their own websites? Accounts on different social networks? Dubious at best. A lot of the aforementioned creators benefited strongly from the network effects of those platforms and the algorithms bringing their content to new followers. It's likely if they didn't grow up on whichever platform they picked, they wouldn't have grown at all.
- sanity 3y ago
  > why does what content creators may have believed mean fuck-all in terms of what these cases are arguing? I didn't say it did, I acknowledged that SCOTUS would probably rule against the TX and FL laws. I'm talking about the broader context. > Nobody would have used Facebook if they thought Facebook would "censor" them? I think if people knew then what they know now about how these platforms would behave starting around 2015 they would have had a much more difficult time achieving their dominant positions, there would have been far more skepticism. Of course it's hard to prove a counterfactual but that's my view having been a small part of it.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    > I think if people knew then what they know now about how these platforms would behave starting around 2015 they would have had a much more difficult time achieving their dominant positions, there would have been far more skepticism. Maybe. The polarization of the country has increased significantly since the covid era. Plus most of this censorship discourse really only occurs at the edges. 99% of my meatspace social network cares about seeing puppy vidoes or whatever Taylor Swift has to say. Exactly zero of them have any expectation that their posts will ever be censored because they don't post anything oppositional. I think that, even with censorship, void a real alternative competitor, the networks would have grown all the same. The only difference is maybe TruthSocial or Rumble would have spun off a few years earlier.
Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
I'd support Freenet if it wasn't for their massive CSAM problem. I absolutely hate that I know what "PTHC" stands for. Maybe it's changed. I haven't touched Freenet since...I think 2010? I just remember seeing index pages with links to tons of sites on Freenet, and a considerable number of them were links to CSAM. Nope. Deleted that. Ain't gonna be a part of that.
- sanity 3y ago
  I find that surprising, even in 2010 it was difficult to find illegal content on Freenet unless you were looking for it - and certainly in recent years it's virtually impossible, the default indexes are carefully vetted. In any case, the original Freenet was never going to be a general-purpose replacement for today's centralized services as it can only handle static content. For the past few years we've been working on a sequel to Freenet that is much more general-purpose, you can learn about it at https://freenet.org/ https://freenet.org/. While the original Freenet was analagous to a decentralized hard drive, the new Freenet is like a decentralized computer. As part of it we're building a decentralized reputation system (based on a "web of trust") to address illegal/offensive/objectionable content.
  - pacmanincarnate 3y ago
    [dead]
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  I'm guessing it isn't Parent-Teacher Home Conference.
  - MikeTheGreat 3y ago
    Not to embarrass you doing a nearly effortless Google search for the answer, but it's clearly Percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography /s [1] On a more serious note - part of me really wants to know, and a much larger part of me doesn't. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percutaneous_transhepatic_cholangiography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percutaneous_transhepatic_chol...
jcranmer 3y ago
Mike Masnick wrote the speed run guide to content moderation here: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you... In short, the problem is that there is no universally agreed-upon definition of "problematic" content. No matter what definition you think is reasonable for moderation, there will both be people who complain that it is too permissive and people who complain that it is too restrictive. At a large enough scale, people on both extremes of the spectrum will be complaining about your moderation policies--and at very large scales, there will be politicians to listen to them!
- sanity 3y ago
  There's definitely a slippery slope when you start with centralized moderation, which seems to be the article's central argument. With the new Freenet, we're using a decentralized moderation system that lets users control what they see or don't see, based on sensible defaults. This builds on a concept from the original Freenet called web-of-trust[1]. I believe this method, combined with the fact that centralized censorship is impossible in the new Freenet due to its lack of centralized control, offers a strong alternative. [1] https://github.com/hyphanet/plugin-WebOfTrust/blob/master/developer-documentation/core-developers-manual/OadSFfF-version1.2-non-print-edition.pdf https://github.com/hyphanet/plugin-WebOfTrust/blob/master/de...
  - int_19h 3y ago
    There's also Aether, which has a system based on delegation: https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/ https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/ In essence, you can either curate all content yourself, or you can upvote other people's curation for a given community. The curators who are voted for by the majority of a community effectively become the default moderators for it, but any member can explicitly opt out of curation by any given moderator.
- echelon 3y ago
  > In short, the problem is that there is no universally agreed-upon definition of "problematic" content. I got banned from my city's subreddit for making a mild criticism about crime once. Now I'm shut off from events, networking, etc. I'm from the southeast, which is a conservative area of the country. The internet I grew up on had thicker skin, wasn't trigger happy with banning, and because of that I was exposed to ideas and perspectives that I wouldn't have ordinarily been in contact with. People didn't have a disgruntled disposition that immediately banned opposing views on sight, so I was able to soak in so much information. Expressly because of this, I was able to change my shape from a conservative kid into a well-rounded moderate. I don't think I could replicate this experience easily on today's internet. People are divided into factions and are quick to mute and ban those they disagree with. (The rage-centric algorithms also heighten confrontational language and showdowns, but that's another issue.) Censorship almost always leads to imbalanced power dynamics and gatekeeping. It's become a tit-for-tat tool of retaliation and playing "gotcha". People enjoy digitally flicking each other off by banning them. It's super fucked. Filtering is important, but we should have protocols for that where individuals have complete control and discretion. I don't know how that's supposed to work on platforms that are wholly controlled by profit-seeking corporations, but maybe legislation can craft a way forward. I really hope we don't dive deeper into the censorship rabbit hole. It genuinely terrifies me more than any other issue facing humanity.
intended 3y ago
Data and network systems tend towards centralization. They simply work more effectively. More specifically - having all actors in the same ecology ensures more opportunities for interaction. Platforms are synonymous with a standard way to connect to nodes on their network. I’m increasingly certain that (to some extent) platforms would be more effective if treated as public goods. At the same time the idea of a public good platform is far too close to big brother. Case in point - the great firewall of China.

by sanity 3y ago

nobody9999 3y ago

>Over the past 20 years content creators were encouraged to use and invest in building an audience on these platforms based on the tacit understanding that they would behave like content neutral common carriers. That's a strong assertion. Do you have any evidence to back that up? AIUI, the law governing this (at least in the US -- which is relevant since we're discussing US state laws being challenged in the courts) is the Communications Decency Act of 1996[0], with section 230[1] of that law being the pointy end of the stick WRT these particulars. I would also point out that the above serves as a front-end (in that it allows the courts to reject lawsuits misdirected at platforms, when they should be directed at the source of the speech) to the First Amendment[2]. Please detail where, exactly, any of the above supports the claim that "content creators were encouraged to use and invest in building an audience on these platforms based on the tacit understanding that they would behave like content neutral common carriers." Perhaps I'm missing something important (which is certainly possible) and I'd appreciate being enlightened. As such, I look forward to your response. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act [1] https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_... Edit: Cleaned up prose. Additional Edit: I'm responding to [3] below as I am apparently rate limited and wanted to make sure I was clear in what I'm trying to say as I am pretty passionate about it: That's as may be, and I remember it fondly too. However, it wasn't by government or the law that "content creators were encouraged to use and invest in building an audience on these platforms..." Rather it was those platforms themselves. It would be easy for me to just say "sucker! you've been rooked!" and leave it at that. However, I'll (attempt to) respond substantively by saying that the surveillance capitalism[4] business model was still nascent and there were many more options for interpersonal interaction back then. It was inevitable that after the consolidation of "social" media that advertiser influence (since they're actually the customers -- not you) would be paramount to these platforms. And that's what drives the moderation/censorship folks are complaining about -- because advertisers don't want to be associated with anything controversial, they just want you to buy their products/services and (the advertisers and the platforms as well as various middlemen) collect (ala [4]) as much information about you as they can to aid in that process. [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39527216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39527216 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

hamhock666 3y ago
I think to most people on the internet in the early 2000s, it was unthinkable that content on the major platforms would be censored based on political content. I don’t think there is any evidence for that, it’s more of a general feeling, and the fact that political censorship took off in the next decade. If these platforms had started out censoring particular political content, they would not have had the same mass adoption, or there may have been more free-speech competitors.
- sanity 3y ago
  Agreed, the overt political censorship didn't start until the mid-2010s, over a decade after today's tech giants solidified their dominant positions.
  - joshuamorton 3y ago
    I'd potentially reverse this: 'overt' political censorship didn't start until certain creators started to market their otherwise objectionable content as "political" as a way to bypass existing moderation policies.
  - numpad0 3y ago
    It's App Store. It all started with the App Store.
    - Zak 3y ago
      Advertisers are also considerably more picky about the content they're willing to be associated with, and considerably more influential with regard to the content most people see online than they were 20 years ago. Advertiser demands have produced rapid policy changes from the likes of Youtube and Reddit where other forms of pressure have had little effect.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  I agree with the person you're responding to, that the assertions you're making here don't seem to be supported by the evidence: As one of those people in question, it was never unthinkable. Even during the 2000's, it was common to ban people from MSN chatrooms. Before that, it was common to ban people from IRC channels, individual IRC servers, or even entire IRC networks. Did the GNAA have a right to "be platformed" indefinitely wherever they wanted? Also, the "censorship" in question more often deals with things like insults and other incivility, spamming, death threats, etc. Not mere "political" speech. I doubt many folks were banned from /r/SCOTUS for politely saying "I politically disagree with this ruling". We see via screenshots in the amicus the sort of stuff that was actually moderated. Indeed, the "censorship" which spawned these laws was the banning of a dude actively calling for violent insurrection against the government, and receiving it, and continuing to encourage it during the violent insurrection. That's the "political speech" the bill authors had in mind when drafting it. It's possible that the "censorship" in question is all that stopped the putsch from succeeding. One can see why fans of said dude and his insurrection were so upset by that.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

> Over the past 20 years content creators were encouraged to use and invest in building an audience on these platforms based on the tacit understanding that they would behave like content neutral common carriers. Beyond what the other (excellent) comment had to say about this, why does what content creators may have believed mean fuck-all in terms of what these cases are arguing? Nobody would have used Facebook if they thought Facebook would "censor" them? And besides that, your assertion that it's a bait and switch implies that all these creators would've been able to foster the exact same followings using, what, their own websites? Accounts on different social networks? Dubious at best. A lot of the aforementioned creators benefited strongly from the network effects of those platforms and the algorithms bringing their content to new followers. It's likely if they didn't grow up on whichever platform they picked, they wouldn't have grown at all.

sanity 3y ago
> why does what content creators may have believed mean fuck-all in terms of what these cases are arguing? I didn't say it did, I acknowledged that SCOTUS would probably rule against the TX and FL laws. I'm talking about the broader context. > Nobody would have used Facebook if they thought Facebook would "censor" them? I think if people knew then what they know now about how these platforms would behave starting around 2015 they would have had a much more difficult time achieving their dominant positions, there would have been far more skepticism. Of course it's hard to prove a counterfactual but that's my view having been a small part of it.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  > I think if people knew then what they know now about how these platforms would behave starting around 2015 they would have had a much more difficult time achieving their dominant positions, there would have been far more skepticism. Maybe. The polarization of the country has increased significantly since the covid era. Plus most of this censorship discourse really only occurs at the edges. 99% of my meatspace social network cares about seeing puppy vidoes or whatever Taylor Swift has to say. Exactly zero of them have any expectation that their posts will ever be censored because they don't post anything oppositional. I think that, even with censorship, void a real alternative competitor, the networks would have grown all the same. The only difference is maybe TruthSocial or Rumble would have spun off a few years earlier.

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago

I'd support Freenet if it wasn't for their massive CSAM problem. I absolutely hate that I know what "PTHC" stands for. Maybe it's changed. I haven't touched Freenet since...I think 2010? I just remember seeing index pages with links to tons of sites on Freenet, and a considerable number of them were links to CSAM. Nope. Deleted that. Ain't gonna be a part of that.

sanity 3y ago
I find that surprising, even in 2010 it was difficult to find illegal content on Freenet unless you were looking for it - and certainly in recent years it's virtually impossible, the default indexes are carefully vetted. In any case, the original Freenet was never going to be a general-purpose replacement for today's centralized services as it can only handle static content. For the past few years we've been working on a sequel to Freenet that is much more general-purpose, you can learn about it at https://freenet.org/ https://freenet.org/. While the original Freenet was analagous to a decentralized hard drive, the new Freenet is like a decentralized computer. As part of it we're building a decentralized reputation system (based on a "web of trust") to address illegal/offensive/objectionable content.
- pacmanincarnate 3y ago
  [dead]
at_a_remove 3y ago
I'm guessing it isn't Parent-Teacher Home Conference.
- MikeTheGreat 3y ago
  Not to embarrass you doing a nearly effortless Google search for the answer, but it's clearly Percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography /s [1] On a more serious note - part of me really wants to know, and a much larger part of me doesn't. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percutaneous_transhepatic_cholangiography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percutaneous_transhepatic_chol...

jcranmer 3y ago

Mike Masnick wrote the speed run guide to content moderation here: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you... In short, the problem is that there is no universally agreed-upon definition of "problematic" content. No matter what definition you think is reasonable for moderation, there will both be people who complain that it is too permissive and people who complain that it is too restrictive. At a large enough scale, people on both extremes of the spectrum will be complaining about your moderation policies--and at very large scales, there will be politicians to listen to them!

sanity 3y ago
There's definitely a slippery slope when you start with centralized moderation, which seems to be the article's central argument. With the new Freenet, we're using a decentralized moderation system that lets users control what they see or don't see, based on sensible defaults. This builds on a concept from the original Freenet called web-of-trust[1]. I believe this method, combined with the fact that centralized censorship is impossible in the new Freenet due to its lack of centralized control, offers a strong alternative. [1] https://github.com/hyphanet/plugin-WebOfTrust/blob/master/developer-documentation/core-developers-manual/OadSFfF-version1.2-non-print-edition.pdf https://github.com/hyphanet/plugin-WebOfTrust/blob/master/de...
- int_19h 3y ago
  There's also Aether, which has a system based on delegation: https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/ https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/ In essence, you can either curate all content yourself, or you can upvote other people's curation for a given community. The curators who are voted for by the majority of a community effectively become the default moderators for it, but any member can explicitly opt out of curation by any given moderator.
echelon 3y ago
> In short, the problem is that there is no universally agreed-upon definition of "problematic" content. I got banned from my city's subreddit for making a mild criticism about crime once. Now I'm shut off from events, networking, etc. I'm from the southeast, which is a conservative area of the country. The internet I grew up on had thicker skin, wasn't trigger happy with banning, and because of that I was exposed to ideas and perspectives that I wouldn't have ordinarily been in contact with. People didn't have a disgruntled disposition that immediately banned opposing views on sight, so I was able to soak in so much information. Expressly because of this, I was able to change my shape from a conservative kid into a well-rounded moderate. I don't think I could replicate this experience easily on today's internet. People are divided into factions and are quick to mute and ban those they disagree with. (The rage-centric algorithms also heighten confrontational language and showdowns, but that's another issue.) Censorship almost always leads to imbalanced power dynamics and gatekeeping. It's become a tit-for-tat tool of retaliation and playing "gotcha". People enjoy digitally flicking each other off by banning them. It's super fucked. Filtering is important, but we should have protocols for that where individuals have complete control and discretion. I don't know how that's supposed to work on platforms that are wholly controlled by profit-seeking corporations, but maybe legislation can craft a way forward. I really hope we don't dive deeper into the censorship rabbit hole. It genuinely terrifies me more than any other issue facing humanity.

intended 3y ago

Data and network systems tend towards centralization. They simply work more effectively. More specifically - having all actors in the same ecology ensures more opportunities for interaction. Platforms are synonymous with a standard way to connect to nodes on their network. I’m increasingly certain that (to some extent) platforms would be more effective if treated as public goods. At the same time the idea of a public good platform is far too close to big brother. Case in point - the great firewall of China.