7 ms·
The platform operators have a responsibility to remove garbage from their site. I don’t see how it’s better if adults are the recipients of these alleged harms.
by pizza 10mo ago
The platform operators have a responsibility to remove garbage from their site. I don’t see how it’s better if adults are the recipients of these alleged harms. And I definitely don’t see how the platform operators are going to clean up their act if — rather than being penalized — they can pretend that the problem has vanished into thin air because a specific category of vulnerable users is now de jure disappeared.
- anonymous_sorry 10mo agoIn the same way it's better that adults are the recipients of the harms of smoking, drinking or gambling. It's still not desirable, but societies have settled upon thresholds for when people have some capacity to take responsibility for their choices. Not saying those thresholds are always right and should definitely apply in this case, but it surely isn't an alien or non-obvious concept.
- AlexandrB 10mo agoI don't want Mark Zuckerberg, or the government, deciding what's garbage. If they can empower the user to filter this stuff out on their own accord, that's great. The second problem is that the medium itself is garbage. Algorithmic feeds strongly encourage clickbait and sensationalism. Removing content does nothing to change the dynamic.
- dlisboa 10mo agoSo, do absolutely nothing is your plan?
- behringer 10mo agoYes. The internet is awesome and the government will destroy it.
- roguecoder 10mo agoAh yes, the genocides, fascists and blackmail are just delightful parts of that awesome internet that any kind of cooperative governance would simply _ruin_
- behringer 10mo agogenocides are happening online? That's pretty remarkable.
- kazen44 10mo agono, but incentives to commit genocide are spread through social media. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide
- heavyset_go 10mo agoThe genocides would have happened with age verification or not, don't conflate the two. Ironically, the solution to both the proliferation of genocide and social media causing harm to kids is the same, and it's a solution that helps everyone: legislate the source of the problem, the product itself and what we colloquially call "the algorithm". Algorithmic optimization and manipulation that causes harm needs to be banned wholesale, across the board, from advertising to social media. Instead, we get legislation that not only makes it easier to identify everyone as verifiably monetizable users to platforms, it also makes it easier to keep the proles in their place.
- frumplestlatz 10mo agoSometimes doing absolutely nothing is the right thing to do. Not everything can be improved through top-down intervention, and many things can only be made worse. The comment you’re replying to raised the idea of empowering the users. That’s probably the way to look, but the danger is always if we do that using top down enforcement in a way that promulgates more harm, including stifling vibrant and necessary speech. My very radical opinion is that section 230 of the CDA was our original sin. The Internet was better when it wasn’t divided into a few centrally managed private social media silos. It’s better to have a vibrant, messy, competitive, and very grass roots public square.
- ricardobeat 10mo agoAdults love 'garbage'. How do you define that? There is also the problem that making platforms responsible for policing user-generated content 1) gives them unwanted political power and 2) creates immense barriers to entry in the field, which is also very undesireable.
- pizza 10mo agoI have no idea how to define it. I also don’t know if I’m personally convinced one way or another about the harms. Just think the platforms would probably have to be made to make more substantial changes were it the case.
- KaiserPro 10mo ago> rather than being penalized The problem is, currently doing any kind of content filtering, as in making illegal stuff hard to find, and having a moderated semi walled garden, plays right into the noisy fuckers brigade. If I were to design a TV programme which is aimed at 11-16 year olds, where I just play soft porn every 15 seconds, offer guides on how to do financial scams, and encourage the children to hide away from their parents as they watch. it would be banned instantly, regardless of how much "good" content I put in there. People would say it's irresponsible to expose kids of that age to such things. Yet, here we have social media doing just the same. The reason why we make it illegal to beat kids, sell them smokes, drugs, booze and generally treat them like shit, is because we want well rounded functioning kids who are able to live a long an illustrious life as part of society. Giving them a device that feeds them war, porn, rage bait, and huge lies, all for the profit of a few hundred people in america seems somewhat misguided.
- whimsicalism 10mo agoI'm glad when I was a teenager the adults in my life were less concerned with protecting me from wrongthought. Are modern teenagers more or less credulous consumers of information than adults, I wonder.
- roguecoder 10mo agoWhere did you grow up? Because America in the 80s was all about shutting teenagers out of violent video games and music with naughty words.
- whimsicalism 10mo agoI grew up in DC in the 21st century.
- ndriscoll 10mo agoThings used to be more scrutinized. e.g. look at the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hot Coffee controversy and legal fallout over sexual content that existed in the game data files but could only be accessed by modding the game, at which point you could just mod the content in. Porn websites also used to generally put anything explicit behind a credit card barrier, and there was an attempt to require that that the supreme court struck down.