4 ms·

How will content that is illegal in some jurisdictions and legal in others be handled? Is there a presumed default jurisdiction, like California, or something?

pfraze 3y ago
I’m unsure how it will play out in practice. I think it’s possible that different infra could wind up being deployed in jurisdictions that differ too significantly. Certainly that could happen outside of Bluesky. Bluesky itself is US-based.
- westhanover 3y ago
  So I guess when Bluesky gets a take down from the Indian government the plan is just for you guys not to go to India anymore?
  - perihelions 3y ago
    Let's be realistic. The only question is whether they'll censor dissident speech globally for the world audience—or merely georestrict it to individual nations falling to autocracy. Coming from Silicon Valley companies, all the federation stuff aren't sincerely-intended ideas to promote free society values. They're an escape hatch. It's a free-speech zone to divert unwanted activists onto—away from the company and its brand, and away from its users—where they can blow off steam quietly. And it's something their PR can point to to deflect accountability for the awful things they will definitely end up doing, in their uncompromising pursuit of market share. ("Oh, we're not really censoring that; it's only censored on the main corporate instance, which is the only one people use").
    - PaulHoule 3y ago
      With distributed moderation the repressive government can, in principle, publish its own labels, but by publishing labels they make public what it is they want to suppress. Federated social media could be used for very bad purposes and it would be impossible to stop. Consider this situation https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb... in the centralized case we can point to Facebook as a responsible entity. The thing is Facebook later got kicked out of Myanmar not as accountability for those crimes but because they were insufficiently pliant to the government. In the future a country like that might just run its own Mastodon network where it is all genocide all the time.
- samstave 3y ago
  Seems like following the EU's rules - and use the below to have tags that could be placed on a post as per the EU categories? -- https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2020/658184/IPOL_ATA%282020%29658184_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2020/6581... As you can use their guidelines: European Union (EU), there are several types of social media content that are considered illegal. --- * Incitement to Terrorism: Any content that encourages or promotes terrorist acts, violence, or extremism is prohibited. * Illegal Hate Speech: Social media posts that spread hate based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or other protected characteristics are not allowed. * Child Sexual Abuse Material: Sharing, distributing, or creating content related to child sexual abuse is strictly illegal. * Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights: Posting copyrighted material without proper authorization violates intellectual property rights. * Consumer Protection Violations: Misleading advertisements, scams, or fraudulent content that harms consumers are prohibited. -- These rules are further strengthened by stricter regulations for four specific types of content, which have been harmonized at the EU level: * Counter-Terrorism Directive: Addresses terrorist content. * Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Directive: Focuses on combating child sexual abuse material. * Counter-Racism Framework: Aims to prevent and combat racism and xenophobia. * Copyright in Digital Single Market Directive: Deals with copyright infringement online1. --- You could ideally put the EU illegal categories in a drop down like old Slashdot Style - but each mod who selects the same selection from the drop down adds a point to the tag - the post is removed upon some thresholds of the points. This could be different for each reagion - and a post could be flagged with points for each region... so have a region selection, then the illegal tag list sets to that region. A post maybe could be tagged by multiple regions infractions based on where the mod sits? Also - you can keep metrics for all posts flagged for what infraction types for - plus you can move them to the "if law enforcement needs this post S3 bucket" -- based on whatever time period the laws require.
- BryantD 3y ago
  Putting aside the social issues for a moment, I can imagine a government deciding to run its own moderation server and mandating use of that server in the country in question. I'd prefer that Bluesy not enable that by geolocking users of the official client to individual moderation servers, though.
tlamponi 3y ago
Their stackable moderation system might actually allow one to implement this relatively easily. Add a moderation channel per country and let clients apply them depending on location/settings. It's naturally not perfect, but as one can just travel to other countries and get their (potentially less restricted) view or even simpler use a VPN, it's as good as basically any other such censorship measurement.
- supriyo-biswas 3y ago
  This wouldn’t still work though. If someone uploads CSAM and it’s distributed to multiple users in a jurisdiction where it’s banned (which is virtually all of them) but only hidden by the moderation filters, then Bluesky would still be in a lot of pain from distributing said material. Also, filters which are optional on the user’s part can’t really be counted as moderation.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    Wouldn't Bluesky be able to have an admin rule that hides all content tagged with labels that are illegal in Bluesky's own jurisdiction?
    - Doxin 3y ago
      The problem is that hiding content isn't enough. It's illegal to even have the content.
  - catapart 3y ago
    From the root comment: > There are also "infrastructure takedowns" for illegal content and network abuse, which we execute at the services layer (ie the relay). My understanding, here, is that any app has the ability to shut down entire accounts from being able to provide content for that app. And my expectation is that states will have laws that say "operators of an app must ensure that they don't provide illegal material" - at least to the extent of CSAM. So you have state motivation for app-runners to moderate illegal content on their app, and you have app-level mechanisms for shutting down content. And while it can still be hosted on whatever relay was hosting it to start with (if that isn't the one that shut down the content), I would be surprised if sharing that content to another relay didn't give away a ton of information that a person doing illegal activities wouldn't necessarily want published. Put more simply: it's unlikely that if I have to shut down some CSAM coming from your relay, that I can't also turn that relay data over to the authorities. Meaning you have a pretty strong incentive to not actually share your CSAM content to any law-abiding apps.

pfraze 3y ago

I’m unsure how it will play out in practice. I think it’s possible that different infra could wind up being deployed in jurisdictions that differ too significantly. Certainly that could happen outside of Bluesky. Bluesky itself is US-based.

westhanover 3y ago
So I guess when Bluesky gets a take down from the Indian government the plan is just for you guys not to go to India anymore?
- perihelions 3y ago
  Let's be realistic. The only question is whether they'll censor dissident speech globally for the world audience—or merely georestrict it to individual nations falling to autocracy. Coming from Silicon Valley companies, all the federation stuff aren't sincerely-intended ideas to promote free society values. They're an escape hatch. It's a free-speech zone to divert unwanted activists onto—away from the company and its brand, and away from its users—where they can blow off steam quietly. And it's something their PR can point to to deflect accountability for the awful things they will definitely end up doing, in their uncompromising pursuit of market share. ("Oh, we're not really censoring that; it's only censored on the main corporate instance, which is the only one people use").
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    With distributed moderation the repressive government can, in principle, publish its own labels, but by publishing labels they make public what it is they want to suppress. Federated social media could be used for very bad purposes and it would be impossible to stop. Consider this situation https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb... in the centralized case we can point to Facebook as a responsible entity. The thing is Facebook later got kicked out of Myanmar not as accountability for those crimes but because they were insufficiently pliant to the government. In the future a country like that might just run its own Mastodon network where it is all genocide all the time.
samstave 3y ago
Seems like following the EU's rules - and use the below to have tags that could be placed on a post as per the EU categories? -- https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2020/658184/IPOL_ATA%282020%29658184_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2020/6581... As you can use their guidelines: European Union (EU), there are several types of social media content that are considered illegal. --- * Incitement to Terrorism: Any content that encourages or promotes terrorist acts, violence, or extremism is prohibited. * Illegal Hate Speech: Social media posts that spread hate based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or other protected characteristics are not allowed. * Child Sexual Abuse Material: Sharing, distributing, or creating content related to child sexual abuse is strictly illegal. * Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights: Posting copyrighted material without proper authorization violates intellectual property rights. * Consumer Protection Violations: Misleading advertisements, scams, or fraudulent content that harms consumers are prohibited. -- These rules are further strengthened by stricter regulations for four specific types of content, which have been harmonized at the EU level: * Counter-Terrorism Directive: Addresses terrorist content. * Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Directive: Focuses on combating child sexual abuse material. * Counter-Racism Framework: Aims to prevent and combat racism and xenophobia. * Copyright in Digital Single Market Directive: Deals with copyright infringement online1. --- You could ideally put the EU illegal categories in a drop down like old Slashdot Style - but each mod who selects the same selection from the drop down adds a point to the tag - the post is removed upon some thresholds of the points. This could be different for each reagion - and a post could be flagged with points for each region... so have a region selection, then the illegal tag list sets to that region. A post maybe could be tagged by multiple regions infractions based on where the mod sits? Also - you can keep metrics for all posts flagged for what infraction types for - plus you can move them to the "if law enforcement needs this post S3 bucket" -- based on whatever time period the laws require.
BryantD 3y ago
Putting aside the social issues for a moment, I can imagine a government deciding to run its own moderation server and mandating use of that server in the country in question. I'd prefer that Bluesy not enable that by geolocking users of the official client to individual moderation servers, though.

tlamponi 3y ago

Their stackable moderation system might actually allow one to implement this relatively easily. Add a moderation channel per country and let clients apply them depending on location/settings. It's naturally not perfect, but as one can just travel to other countries and get their (potentially less restricted) view or even simpler use a VPN, it's as good as basically any other such censorship measurement.

supriyo-biswas 3y ago
This wouldn’t still work though. If someone uploads CSAM and it’s distributed to multiple users in a jurisdiction where it’s banned (which is virtually all of them) but only hidden by the moderation filters, then Bluesky would still be in a lot of pain from distributing said material. Also, filters which are optional on the user’s part can’t really be counted as moderation.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Wouldn't Bluesky be able to have an admin rule that hides all content tagged with labels that are illegal in Bluesky's own jurisdiction?
  - Doxin 3y ago
    The problem is that hiding content isn't enough. It's illegal to even have the content.
- catapart 3y ago
  From the root comment: > There are also "infrastructure takedowns" for illegal content and network abuse, which we execute at the services layer (ie the relay). My understanding, here, is that any app has the ability to shut down entire accounts from being able to provide content for that app. And my expectation is that states will have laws that say "operators of an app must ensure that they don't provide illegal material" - at least to the extent of CSAM. So you have state motivation for app-runners to moderate illegal content on their app, and you have app-level mechanisms for shutting down content. And while it can still be hosted on whatever relay was hosting it to start with (if that isn't the one that shut down the content), I would be surprised if sharing that content to another relay didn't give away a ton of information that a person doing illegal activities wouldn't necessarily want published. Put more simply: it's unlikely that if I have to shut down some CSAM coming from your relay, that I can't also turn that relay data over to the authorities. Meaning you have a pretty strong incentive to not actually share your CSAM content to any law-abiding apps.