4 ms·

LinkedIn: a rebuttal of an anti-net neutrality paper

107 points by vldr 2y ago

supriyo-biswas 2y ago
There are many "reputation management" companies that do this sort of thing, via various sorts of tricks, which are most often bogus copyright or legal claims. I can't say what happened in this case, but there's a report from the NY AG[1] about companies running an astroturfing anti net-neutrality campaign, so nothing surprises me at this point. [1] https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/reports/oag-fakecommentsreport.pdf https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/reports/oag-fakecommen...
nonrandomstring 2y ago
This is what happens when the interests of those who own the means of communication are not aligned with those who use their tools to communicate.
immibis 2y ago
This is all you need to know to have a reasoned position on net neutrality.
gisssop 2y ago
The author did not compare against the findability of other articles which aren't about net neutrality. So his conclusion that it's about the content of his article isn't supported by his analysis.
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  Not everything in life is a scientific experiment that fits into an undergraduate "research methods" model of the world. What does it even mean to conduct a sampling of "findability" within a system whose results depend on when you search, who you are, where you search from, and the subject on which you're searching? We're way beyond Schrodinger's cat level of uncertainty with these non-deterministic systems and their hidden actors explicitly manipulating the results (as "guardrails", "moderation", whatever). Search (and AI) is a principal agent problem and there are insoluble trust issues around information technology today that make a "scientific" approach rather naive.
- JdeBP 2y ago
  Yes, xe did. Xe explicitly compares it to the findability of one of xyr articles that mentions Squid Game.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - master-lincoln 2y ago
    The author calls himself male https://www.blogger.com/profile/17977561124307072281 https://www.blogger.com/profile/17977561124307072281 Why that made up pronoun?
    - scotty79 2y ago
      ... and in the context where gender non-indicative well established word 'they' would suffice. I can see why commenter wouldn't call author 'him'. Why would anyone bother to track authors gender if it's irrelevant for the topic?
    - Ukv 2y ago
      > Why that made up pronoun? Pedantically, all words are made up. I'd assume GP is using it because they see utility in a unambiguously-singular gender-nonspecific pronoun, opposed to the more widespread but somewhat ambiguous singular "they".
      - master-lincoln 2y ago
        Yeah I also realized my wording probably wasn't right. I meant to say words not known by most of the English speakers which can also not be found in the big dictionaries (to be fair Oxford had it, but Merriam webster didn't). Especially when there is an established gender neutral pronoun: they
    - internetthought 2y ago
      The pronouns people use for me can be independent of what I call myself
  - 2y ago
- Maken 2y ago
  The article is not about net-neutrality either, it's about pieces of information silently disappearing from the public internet, without even the authors being notified. The contents of the specific article are not the focus here.
master-lincoln 2y ago
This is no surprise. It's what we get with a free market and capitalism driving it: Monopolization. And then we can only access what those mono/oligopolies deem profit increasing or at least not hurting.
- f1shy 2y ago
  How would a regulation be like, that in this case, without significant detriment to investment, makes things better? Because I cannot imagine one (not saying there is not, just that myself cannot find it) I’m in a context of an super-regulated EU market, where such things still somewhat happen (well even worst, with people having their homes and theirs relatives searched, because he called dumb a politician), bad with the added problems, namely: there can just not exist such a giant in the EU.
  - master-lincoln 2y ago
    I also can't think of a regulation that is without significant detriment to investment and makes things better here. But that is my point: "without significant detriment to investment" is what is most important in capitalism... Despite society crumbling > I’m in a context of an super-regulated EU market, where such things still somewhat happen (well even worst, with people having their homes and theirs relatives searched, because he called dumb a politician), bad with the added problems, namely: there can just not exist such a giant in the EU. I think state police forces acting beyond their power is an unrelated problem. Such giants shouldn't exist and be for profit in my view. The issue is that the EU does not block the non-EU giants so Europeans also suffer from the less strict regulation.
anarchonurzox 2y ago
I understand the desire for takedown requests on truly infringing content. But there will always be people who exploit those tools for bad faith takedowns, and because this kind of moderation is a loss leader for companies like Google and Bing it seems like they will forever be disincentivized from doing a good job. (We constantly hear similar stories about Youtube copyright strikes.) We have a legal system that's subject to public scrutiny and supposed to handle cases of "law-breaking." In its current incarnation there's no way for it to handle every single claim, but I wonder if investment there wouldn't be better incentivized than having a bunch of tech companies trying to reduce expenses by always choosing the "easiest" option whenever they receive a takedown request.
- master-lincoln 2y ago
  What does the legal system have to do with companies deciding whats happening on their platforms? Do you want to force all companies to treat all content the same if it's not illegal?
  - anarchonurzox 2y ago
    Of course companies have the rights to remove and restrict content on their platforms! I'm not saying that's a problem. I'm talking about e.g. the DMCA requirements than an OSP be responsible for complying with takedown notices. This is not the company deciding to take action on certain content, but the company being forced to take action in response to certain submissions. The law pushes the burden of enforcement onto a private company. As someone else posted in the comments, there are services that will go around and make (bogus) claims on your behalf. It seems plausible that's what happened to the author's original article, rather than that bing and google themselves were trying to influence the net neutrality conversations.
    - master-lincoln 2y ago
      oh ok. I misinterpreted that. Yeah DMCA needs to change and complaints about right holders should go through courts.
onetokeoverthe 2y ago
net neutrality briglauer oecd retraction request The pdf is the #1 result on a well known non-US search engine. Stopped updating my millions hits/month blogspot after google insisted blogger's content must be hosted on their servers.
- anticensor 2y ago
  yandex? baidu?
  - onetokeoverthe 2y ago
    The Y one. The other one is dreadful. Jack Ma will confirm.
- TheChaplain 2y ago
  It's #1 on DDG, which afaik is american?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
- Craighead 2y ago
  [dead]
cowboylowrez 2y ago
I think a nice rebuttal to this would be a search engine for pages reported removed from google lol so I'm guessing the guys who own the data from the webcrawls are the critical path, guess you need big resources for that. great chart thing here --> https://www.searchenginemap.com/ https://www.searchenginemap.com/
- xnx 2y ago
  Like this? https://lumendatabase.org/ https://lumendatabase.org/
  - cowboylowrez 2y ago
    I gave it a spin, I'm sure the guys meant well but no. Search results seemed poor or irrelevent, included porn links, too much captcha, had to use email for results.
squarefoot 2y ago
Big thanks to Google, Bing, and Linkedin then, for trying to bury net neutrality by creating the best possible argument for supporting it.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]

107 points by vldr 2y ago

There are many "reputation management" companies that do this sort of thing, via various sorts of tricks, which are most often bogus copyright or legal claims. I can't say what happened in this case, but there's a report from the NY AG[1] about companies running an astroturfing anti net-neutrality campaign, so nothing surprises me at this point. [1] https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/reports/oag-fakecommentsreport.pdf https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/reports/oag-fakecommen...

nonrandomstring 2y ago

This is what happens when the interests of those who own the means of communication are not aligned with those who use their tools to communicate.

immibis 2y ago

This is all you need to know to have a reasoned position on net neutrality.

gisssop 2y ago

The author did not compare against the findability of other articles which aren't about net neutrality. So his conclusion that it's about the content of his article isn't supported by his analysis.

nonrandomstring 2y ago
Not everything in life is a scientific experiment that fits into an undergraduate "research methods" model of the world. What does it even mean to conduct a sampling of "findability" within a system whose results depend on when you search, who you are, where you search from, and the subject on which you're searching? We're way beyond Schrodinger's cat level of uncertainty with these non-deterministic systems and their hidden actors explicitly manipulating the results (as "guardrails", "moderation", whatever). Search (and AI) is a principal agent problem and there are insoluble trust issues around information technology today that make a "scientific" approach rather naive.
JdeBP 2y ago
Yes, xe did. Xe explicitly compares it to the findability of one of xyr articles that mentions Squid Game.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- master-lincoln 2y ago
  The author calls himself male https://www.blogger.com/profile/17977561124307072281 https://www.blogger.com/profile/17977561124307072281 Why that made up pronoun?
  - scotty79 2y ago
    ... and in the context where gender non-indicative well established word 'they' would suffice. I can see why commenter wouldn't call author 'him'. Why would anyone bother to track authors gender if it's irrelevant for the topic?
  - Ukv 2y ago
    > Why that made up pronoun? Pedantically, all words are made up. I'd assume GP is using it because they see utility in a unambiguously-singular gender-nonspecific pronoun, opposed to the more widespread but somewhat ambiguous singular "they".
    - master-lincoln 2y ago
      Yeah I also realized my wording probably wasn't right. I meant to say words not known by most of the English speakers which can also not be found in the big dictionaries (to be fair Oxford had it, but Merriam webster didn't). Especially when there is an established gender neutral pronoun: they
  - internetthought 2y ago
    The pronouns people use for me can be independent of what I call myself
- 2y ago
Maken 2y ago
The article is not about net-neutrality either, it's about pieces of information silently disappearing from the public internet, without even the authors being notified. The contents of the specific article are not the focus here.

master-lincoln 2y ago

This is no surprise. It's what we get with a free market and capitalism driving it: Monopolization. And then we can only access what those mono/oligopolies deem profit increasing or at least not hurting.

f1shy 2y ago
How would a regulation be like, that in this case, without significant detriment to investment, makes things better? Because I cannot imagine one (not saying there is not, just that myself cannot find it) I’m in a context of an super-regulated EU market, where such things still somewhat happen (well even worst, with people having their homes and theirs relatives searched, because he called dumb a politician), bad with the added problems, namely: there can just not exist such a giant in the EU.
- master-lincoln 2y ago
  I also can't think of a regulation that is without significant detriment to investment and makes things better here. But that is my point: "without significant detriment to investment" is what is most important in capitalism... Despite society crumbling > I’m in a context of an super-regulated EU market, where such things still somewhat happen (well even worst, with people having their homes and theirs relatives searched, because he called dumb a politician), bad with the added problems, namely: there can just not exist such a giant in the EU. I think state police forces acting beyond their power is an unrelated problem. Such giants shouldn't exist and be for profit in my view. The issue is that the EU does not block the non-EU giants so Europeans also suffer from the less strict regulation.

anarchonurzox 2y ago

I understand the desire for takedown requests on truly infringing content. But there will always be people who exploit those tools for bad faith takedowns, and because this kind of moderation is a loss leader for companies like Google and Bing it seems like they will forever be disincentivized from doing a good job. (We constantly hear similar stories about Youtube copyright strikes.) We have a legal system that's subject to public scrutiny and supposed to handle cases of "law-breaking." In its current incarnation there's no way for it to handle every single claim, but I wonder if investment there wouldn't be better incentivized than having a bunch of tech companies trying to reduce expenses by always choosing the "easiest" option whenever they receive a takedown request.

master-lincoln 2y ago
What does the legal system have to do with companies deciding whats happening on their platforms? Do you want to force all companies to treat all content the same if it's not illegal?
- anarchonurzox 2y ago
  Of course companies have the rights to remove and restrict content on their platforms! I'm not saying that's a problem. I'm talking about e.g. the DMCA requirements than an OSP be responsible for complying with takedown notices. This is not the company deciding to take action on certain content, but the company being forced to take action in response to certain submissions. The law pushes the burden of enforcement onto a private company. As someone else posted in the comments, there are services that will go around and make (bogus) claims on your behalf. It seems plausible that's what happened to the author's original article, rather than that bing and google themselves were trying to influence the net neutrality conversations.
  - master-lincoln 2y ago
    oh ok. I misinterpreted that. Yeah DMCA needs to change and complaints about right holders should go through courts.

onetokeoverthe 2y ago

net neutrality briglauer oecd retraction request The pdf is the #1 result on a well known non-US search engine. Stopped updating my millions hits/month blogspot after google insisted blogger's content must be hosted on their servers.

anticensor 2y ago
yandex? baidu?
- onetokeoverthe 2y ago
  The Y one. The other one is dreadful. Jack Ma will confirm.
TheChaplain 2y ago
It's #1 on DDG, which afaik is american?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Craighead 2y ago
[dead]

cowboylowrez 2y ago

I think a nice rebuttal to this would be a search engine for pages reported removed from google lol so I'm guessing the guys who own the data from the webcrawls are the critical path, guess you need big resources for that. great chart thing here --> https://www.searchenginemap.com/ https://www.searchenginemap.com/

xnx 2y ago
Like this? https://lumendatabase.org/ https://lumendatabase.org/
- cowboylowrez 2y ago
  I gave it a spin, I'm sure the guys meant well but no. Search results seemed poor or irrelevent, included porn links, too much captcha, had to use email for results.

squarefoot 2y ago

Big thanks to Google, Bing, and Linkedin then, for trying to bury net neutrality by creating the best possible argument for supporting it.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]