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Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

theatlantic.com

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Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#181

Post by andrewla »

dillonmckay wrote: post #166
andrewla wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a court decision ... Out of curiosity, what was the court decision? I've been thinking about this recently from the same perspective; that once you start allowing moderation then you should lose the shield of liability, but wasn't aware that this had been articulated by the courts previously.

I think DMCA in 1996? [edit] DMCA was passed in 1998, based on WIPO treaties from 1996.

The DMCA had the safe harbor provisions, which the GP claimed were added in response to a court case. It's that court case that I'm interested in learning more about, because it sounds like the logic used in that case mirrors my own thoughts on the issue and I'm curious to see if that is the case.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#182

Post by cr0sh »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #27
tetrisgm wrote: post #6

The problem is that we've equated some platforms with a certain kind of media. Youtube is video, Twitter is news, Facebook is.. reality tv, I dunno. It's pretty debatable whether those platforms are the right place for the coverage of war crimes. I'm not going to start an argument about the media not doing their job right. However, this discussion would be moot if there was a news platform on par with the above, and…

> I'd love to see someone build or modernize a news outlet that isn't driven by attention or clicks as a currency. There are two motivations for running a news outlet, both with extensive historical precedent: - You want money. - You want to spread your view of the world, inflicting your culture on other people. There isn't a lot of immediate financial gain associated with the second approach, but the gains are real…

> But in the modern US, while we still have outlets of that type, there is a very strong belief that they shouldn't count as "news", and that they are less legitimate than "neutral" journalism.

At least one of those outlets, in a court of law, by it's creator/owner/founder at the time, admitted that it was "entertainment" and not "news", but rather a channel that called itself "news" in name only, that its main purpose was orthogonal to its stated purpose.

This small tidbit of information is often forgotten about, because it is inconvenient to the narrative.

That doesn't mean that other outlets aren't doing the same, or have elements of it - but only one that we know of has admitted it under oath. That counts for something.

It also doesn't help that this "news" organization also has (or had, until its sale) a side actual entertainment arm that allowed it to hide behind. It was a curious "sleight of hand", all the more shadowy considering that the owner of the channel was not a citizen of the United States, and so not only could push his own views, but views that may be in direct contradiction to the values of our country.

Unfortunately, there are no laws against this - and I am honestly not sure there should be, for that matter.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#183

Post by jerf »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #158
leftyted wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems unlikely to me that there is no coordination between left wing media institutions. They say the same things at the same time using the same language. I don't read much right-wing media. I'm not saying there's a shadowy conspiracy (though I'm not ruling out people talking about "messaging" via email). It may be that they read each other's stuff and the demands of the 24 hour news cycle dictate that there's a…

> It seems unlikely to me that there is no coordination between left wing media institutions. They say the same things at the same time using the same language. I don't read much right-wing media. > I'm not saying there's a shadowy conspiracy (though I'm not ruling out people talking about "messaging" via email). It may be that they read each other's stuff and the demands of the 24 hour news cycle dictate that there'…

"The original implication was that a group behind the scenes of large organizations was coordinating them—not that journalists might communicate and share ideas."

When complaining this is impossible or unlikely, you might want to google the term "Journo-list". It is a thing that is known to have happened, and the idea that one exists again today does not require too much suspension of disbelief, especially since much the same symptoms that made people suspect it at the time are fully visible in the news again. They were absolutely coordinating on stories and doing all the bad things that independent journolists aren't supposed to be doing.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#184

Post by unethical_ban »

basetop wrote: post #106

Tech companies are deleting evidence of war crimes and everything else at the behest of media companies like the atlantic. Youtube, facebook, reddit, google search, etc have all been targeted by the atlantic, nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc and bullied into scrubbing content and direct their users to "authoritative sources". Ironically enough, in china, russia and most countries, "authoritative sources" are state p…

This is entirely in your mind until you put some evidence to it, you know, like journalists tend to do.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#185

Post by refurb »

ionised wrote: post #157
refurb wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On balance has done more damage? Do you believe that in the countries where the US has intervened that without US involvement things would be that much better? Seems to me that when the US supported a dictatorship, the alternative wasn’t a thriving democracy but just another dictatorship aligned to a different power.

> Seems to me that when the US supported a dictatorship, the alternative wasn’t a thriving democracy but just another dictatorship aligned to a different power. You're free to think that if it helps you sleep at night. You would be mistaken though. Some may have been just as bad as those they were replacing, but considering many of them were democratically elected governments that the US chose to overthrow in favour…

You've proven my point exactly. Your standard for America is perfection - a country that has never done anything wrong or made mistakes. Under your standard, every country is evil. It's a silly way to look at things.

And, I see you've swallowed the Mossadegh narrative hook line and sinker. Iran was in chaos prior to the coup. Mossadegh was not uniformly popular, there were riots on the street. He was on his way out regardless, as he had failed to deliver on many of his promises.

As for Iraq, sure, that didn't turn out well.

By why did you ignore my comment about Taiwan, Japan, Western Europe, etc? You trot out examples of failures, but completely ignore the success stories.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#186

Post by _lessthan0 »

ionised wrote: post #171
patrick5415 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of accusations here with zero citations.

I'm in work and don't have the time to type up an essay for you. This was meant to be an off-the-cuff comment during my lunch that ended up dragging on a bit. Honestly, a lot of what I've mentioned is pretty common knowledge, just not among Americans it seems. These aren't obscure conspiracy theories, they are things that actually happened. A cursory Google search will present you with reams of information on each of…

It's fine, there is a certain collective on HN that do not believe or want to even google United States and the past dealings with the middle East and South America.

America is not the world - Morrissey

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#187

Post by cr0sh »

8bitsrule wrote: post #55

Social media have successfully created the illusion that they are (to some extent, at least) public spaces. This is another reminder that they are not. OTOH, truly public spaces on the internet ... where reasonable speech can truly be free ... are in very short supply. By accident or intention, this is a crappy state of affairs. This isn't a new topic. 20 years ago, Lessig wrote, "We can build, or architect, or code…

> OTOH, truly public spaces on the internet ... where reasonable speech can truly be free ... are in very short supply.

Who decides what is "reasonable"? One's person or group's "reasonable" is another's call to regulation, if not censorship by various means.

How can this conundrum be solved on an international network composed of both adults and children accessing the same content?

I'm not expecting you or anyone else to chime in with a solution; I obviously don't have one myself. But ultimately, this information hydra we've created will need taming in some manner, or it may eat the world alive.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#188

Post by AJ007 »

erentz wrote: post #173
saiya-jin wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet in reality British colonialism was, being equal to other european countries colonialism (France, Spain, Portugal, Dutch, Belgium, Germany a bit), one of the greatest evils in mankind's history, probably the worst if you count all direct and indirect casualties. I would be properly ashamed of my ancestors if I was from one of the countries, yet people simply don't give a nanofraction of a fuck. Much of the mess we…

> I would be properly ashamed of my ancestors if I was from one of the countries, yet people simply don't give a nanofraction of a fuck. I think it’s pretty obvious why people aren’t ashamed. Because they didn’t do the act. Take your expectation of shame to it’s conclusion: It’s very selective to only call out European colonialist countries as being ones where shame should be expected. If we are looking at crimes acr…

It is important to learn from history, but assigning blame on the living -- yourself or others -- for what dead people did is a certain path for repeating many of those same historical mistakes.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#189

Post by naasking »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #180
naasking wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, I don't see why I, as a platform, should host content I find objectionable. So you shouldn't have to provide services to people you find objectionable, even if those people are in a protected class? It's a common but mistaken belief that we have no obligations to society or to our fellow citizens. For hosting specifically, it depends on multiple factors: your ubiquity, the demographics of your au…

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over time. In this case, the Supreme Court made it clear that governments cannot prevent people from using social media. However other Supreme Court decisions have it that property owners don't have to allow others to use their property for speech, except in unusual cases like company towns. It's not obvious to me that they will find these two ideas to be in conflict.

They might not. Then again, aren't Twitter and Facebook essentially company towns in the online world? If they are so ubiquitous that you must join these platforms to participate in modern political debate, that seems pretty darn close to qualifying.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#190

Post by cr0sh »

Xelbair wrote: post #101
deanclatworthy wrote: post #61

These platforms can do no right. If Facebook/Youtube leave a video online of a beheading of John Smith from then inevitably calls them out for promoting and hosting this "illegal" content. Now, they're being chastised for taking it down too. Maybe, just maybe, these companies have internal processes for handing over such materials to the relevant authorities, and don't need to rely on armchair detectives to investiga…

Maybe, just maybe, we can decide if content platforms are responsible for user content or not.. and stick to that decision. Quite frankly i am against any form of censorship.

Let's say you make users responsible for the content they create; how do you intend to enforce that?

Country A's User B uploads Content C that User D in Country E find's objectionable, or in Country E is illegal to view or possess, while in Country A is perfectly legal.

How do you enforce that? Labels or tags aren't the answer, because Content C could be labeled/tagged as X,Y,Z where X,Y,Z are orthogonal to the content, and bear no relation to it.

Do you allow it to be viewed by User D, and if it isn't legal, then put that on User D to be responsible to...what? Unview it?

More than a few of these problems are all because we humans have decided without consensus or agreement that some information is "bad" while other information is "good", and even that "good" information is only viewable by certain people of that group who meet a certain age requirement.

All of it is very arbitrary, and at odds with itself on the world stage.

This issue won't be solved easily, if at all. Instead, we'll likely just continue to make more convoluted laws that can't be followed and/or all descend into totalitarian walled garden states isolated from each other while atrocities continue behind those walls, telling each other within that "we're the free and prosperous ones; those over there are not".

Why does this narrative seem so damn familiar...?

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