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Leaked white paper proposes U.S. Congressional regulation of social media

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Re: Leaked white paper proposes U.S. Congressional regulation of social media

#121

Post by humlee »

kodablah wrote: post #30

Ug, never proposals for education, grants for preferred alternative implementations, publicly funded communication platforms, recognition that the status quo is people's preference, data transparency encouragement (not user transparency...not "who", but "what" wrt internal analytics), enforcement of existing advertisement/fraud/collusion statutes, etc. The first step always has to be more legislation, very sad. I'd a…

They will get it wrong till they get it right. The law isn't too different from software. It just deals with a lot more ambiguity. And people are conditioned to think things are black and white.

Social media and mainstream media will get three sets of regulation wrt Privacy, Individual Manipulation, Group Manipulation. It doesn't matter which country you pick, the free for all that currently exists is not being tolerated.

Re: Leaked white paper proposes U.S. Congressional regulation of social media

#122

Post by foolrush »

slg wrote: post #118
foolrush wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the words, it is entirely illegal in many countries around the world. The USA is behind the curve on that.

I don't want to make a value judgement by using a word like "behind", but I do think most Americans are simply not aware of how extreme our country's stance on free speech is compared to the rest of the world. Countries like the UK, France, and Germany seem to function just fine with their more restrictive laws on speech.

Look to Germany. I said "behind" because it requires a certain national hubris to not acknowledge the horrific turn of events that came out of a country, and in turn, acknowledge what they have learned from it.

Re: Leaked white paper proposes U.S. Congressional regulation of social media

#123

Post by zdragnar »

slg wrote: post #106
atomi wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> imagine someone standing just outside your property and yelling at you 24/7 People protest all the time in similar ways. Also, you can block people/bots on social media.

>People protest all the time in similar ways. Sure, that is why protesters are routinely arrested even though the first amendment exists. >Also, you can block people/bots on social media. The sole responsibility of policing and punishing this behavior should not fall on the victims of this behavior.

Protesters are routinely arrested (in the US) for things like blocking traffic, unlawfully carrying weapons or other safety issues, not because they are voicing disagreement with "the man".

Blocking someone is neither policing nor punishing, it's simply ignoring; actual censorship still falls to the platform itself.

Re: Leaked white paper proposes U.S. Congressional regulation of social media

#125

Post by jack9 »

slg wrote: post #97
atomi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as it isn't libel/slander or 'fighting words', we do allow it in the physical world. Shouting words at someone is not illegal.

We have to separate the words from the action of saying those words. The words on Twitter do sometimes include slander and threats which would make them illegal. However, often the words themselves are perfectly legal. That doesn't mean the action of speaking those words are legal. Using your example, imagine someone standing just outside your property and yelling at you 24/7. The words themselves might not be a prob…

> The words on Twitter do sometimes include slander and threats which would make them illegal.

The idea of a nebulous "illegality" is simplistic and wrong, in the US. They might open an individual to civil liability, but they aren't in violation of a criminal code, nor tort law.

> That doesn't mean the action of speaking those words are legal

Speech is always legal, in the US. What you think "legal" means is up for debate.

Re: Leaked white paper proposes U.S. Congressional regulation of social media

#126

Post by h4b4n3r0 »

slg wrote: post #118
foolrush wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the words, it is entirely illegal in many countries around the world. The USA is behind the curve on that.

I don't want to make a value judgement by using a word like "behind", but I do think most Americans are simply not aware of how extreme our country's stance on free speech is compared to the rest of the world. Countries like the UK, France, and Germany seem to function just fine with their more restrictive laws on speech.

Could be that it’s only “fine” in the short term. Just 80 years ago Germany was very far from “fine”.

Re: Leaked white paper proposes U.S. Congressional regulation of social media

#128

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

clarkevans wrote: post #20
jewelthief91 wrote: post #6

I doubt this would help. Judging by my Facebook feed Americans are perfectly capable of vicious, polarized discourse without foreign influence. In fact this may backfire as it would allow the hateful in society to have more of a right to preach on these platforms as no one would be able to accuse them of being foreign trolls. Its probable that this level of discourse is here to stay and that the previous elevated, co…

Is there something that can be done about our polarized discourse without trampling over our civil rights? I think this is necessary dialogue.

Having journalistic standards that were enforced by Law.

It's a can of worms, especially in a country that is as suspicious of it's government as America, but in my view, one of the biggest changes in people's views of the media (and "truth" in general) is the steady erosion of Journalistic standards - putting infotainment shows and opinion pieces on the same level of journalistic rigour as actually well written, high standard news stories.

News corps will continue to chase money, and money is tied to viewership - which gains from people being engaged through polarising, emotion driven content.

If there are no standards for this kind of thing, people will gravitate towards the stuff that gives you that hit of emotion, and they'll forgo and bend facts to present a story in a way that keeps their viewers at the expense of fair representation of facts, and bias.

In the context of social media, it's tricky, because robo websites and opinion pieces run rife through them, with pieces debunking them and/or apologising for incorrect facts not propogating as hard - so in my view there needs to be some level of targeted/intelligent regulation of social media as a news source. (Content aggregators perhaps taking some level of responsibility of curating what is being shared? Admittedly difficult to do this without getting Orwellian...)

But that's just my opinion, interested to hear if people think it's a load of BS or not.

Re: Leaked white paper proposes U.S. Congressional regulation of social media

#129

Post by dragonwriter »

maxxxxx wrote: post #114
dragonwriter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First stop blaming the Russians No, not going to stop blaming the guilty, including the Russians. > and then tell your parties to work for the country and for themselves. I've found that politicians in both major parties have the second part down pretty pat, so I’m more concerned with the first. > I think best would be if people stopped calling themselves "Republicans" or "Democrats" and stopped identifying with a…

"I see no reason for people not to identify with the major party that best represents them," But they have to keep their party accountable. I see it so many times that people complain about something when the other party is in party and as soon as their party has the power it's perfectly fine. Sometimes this reminds me of "Doublethink" in 1984.

> But they have to keep their party accountable

That's basically what I said in the sentence before the one you quoted to respond to.

Re: Leaked white paper proposes U.S. Congressional regulation of social media

#130

Post by karmelapple »

jack9 wrote: post #125
slg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to separate the words from the action of saying those words. The words on Twitter do sometimes include slander and threats which would make them illegal. However, often the words themselves are perfectly legal. That doesn't mean the action of speaking those words are legal. Using your example, imagine someone standing just outside your property and yelling at you 24/7. The words themselves might not be a prob…

> The words on Twitter do sometimes include slander and threats which would make them illegal. The idea of a nebulous "illegality" is simplistic and wrong, in the US. They might open an individual to civil liability, but they aren't in violation of a criminal code, nor tort law. > That doesn't mean the action of speaking those words are legal Speech is always legal, in the US. What you think "legal" means is up for d…

Not all speech is always legal in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Illegal_speech_in_the...
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