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Oppose the Earn IT Act

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Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#161

Post by darkarmani »

mikestew wrote: post #8
danboarder wrote: post #4

Where are my elected representatives that represent my privacy rights on bills like this? Maybe I need to run for office since I care about end2end encryption, free software, and the rights of free people and information to freely travel around the world...

You can run, and with that platform your opponent will conveniently turn it around into "my opponent supports child molestors and terrorists". Because if you think you'll simply walk up to the podium talking about something most folks could not give a working definition for, boy, are you going to be in for a shock when your opponent "dumbs it down" for the audience. Which is how we end up with stuff like the EARN IT…

My reply: "Government is trying to spy on every aspect of your life. There are more government employees that can spy on your children than there are child molestors in the country."

Do you want creepy gov't contractors spying on your kids?

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#162

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ypcx wrote: post #52
blintz wrote: post #3

I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right?

It is worse than just crazy. Government is made of people, and people are corruptible. If the encryption backdoor key leaks from the government to a bad actor, it will create a "national security" issue of magnitude never seen before. If this line of reasoning is correct, then proposing an encryption backdoor is akin to committing an act of treason in itself, because it is purposely weakening the technological infras…

They don't even have to be corruptible. People are fallible. Someone could just make a mistake. No bad actors needed. (Bad actors exist, and make the problem worse. But the problem exists even without bad actors.)

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#163

Post by smichel17 »

nitrogen wrote: post #60
ericd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First past the post voting tends toward a two party system, because there are strong incentives for smaller parties to consolidate to get to a majority.

Since this is a subject I find fascinating, I'll add this link that I first encountered here on HN long ago: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ It's a mathematical model and accompanying explanation that shows that simple plurality (first past the post) voting produces bi-polarization, while other voting methods like approval voting do not. It also shows that the instant-runoff voting method that people are trying to replac…

I don't like that this page links to Arrow's impossibility theorem, because it's kind of misleading. https://rangevoting.org/ArrowThm.html

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#164

Post by darkarmani »

tzs wrote: post #145
manuelabeledo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like the start of a false dichotomy.

Not necessarily. These bad bills keep coming up in an effort to address serious real problems, like child porn. People are going to keep proposing bills to address these problems until something passes. By just concentrating on shooting down bad bill after bad bill without devoting any effort to getting good bills proposed the next bill after each defeated bad bill will be another bill from the same general set of pe…

> to address serious real problems, like child porn

Can you quantify the size of this problem? It sounds like military defense spending during the cold war. "You just have to take our word for it that child porn is a massive problem affecting 1 out of 4 children, so we need to crush the tech industry."

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#165

Post by ocdtrekkie »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #20
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have bipartisan consensus[1] that tech companies have acted badly and that Section 230 should be repealed or significantly amended. I think EARN IT will probably kill Section 230, not strong encryption, so I think EARN IT is pretty great. Tech companies probably should be coming to the realization by now that it's only a matter of time (probably 4-8 years) before we close the 230 loophole: So if they're given a ch…

Honest question, why do you think that Section 230 should be repealed? I myself believe that companies should be doing a better job at moderating the contents they host in their websites, but also that by repealing such provision, smaller ventures with not enough money to enforce the rules, would either go bankrupt or simply suppress any third party content to avoid issues with the law enforcement.

Tech companies don't just host harmful content: They make money off of it. The fact that Google and Facebook take a cut off malware, scams, and fraud perpetrated over their advertising platforms, while bearing no responsibility or liability for them gives them an incredible disincentive to shut down bad actors.

A huge portion of Google Ad income is malicious content, and as long as they can't be sued or indited for it, they're going to continue to automatically approve and profit off criminal activity.

The problem with Section 230 isn't about one guy who posts something bad, the problem is with systemic abuse on platforms which are financially motivated to allow the abuse to continue.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#166

Post by dragonwriter »

godelski wrote: post #152
lukifer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory plug for electoral reform. Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives Maine has converted to RCV already and it's stood up in court; 49 to go.

I want to push back against this, and specifically fair vote. - What they are referring to as RCV is called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). IRV is a RCV, but RCV isn't IRV. Think "Rock and Roll is The Beatles" vs "The Beatles are a Rock and Roll group." - IRV isn't that great when it comes to Voter Satisfaction Efficiency (VSE)[0]. There's even other RCV methods like Ranked Pair[1] that are exactly the same for the vote…

Most of what you write is good, but I want to point out that non-ordinal methods suffer from a problem that is at a level more fundamental than most analyses address, to wit, that there is no objective question about preferences that they ask, and thus no clear “correct” honest ballot marking given a set of voter preferences.

There are conditions which resolve this (e.g., when ballot markings in a method like score voting represent the amount of some valuable resource the voter commits to paying if the given choice is elected, or where markings in approval represent a binding commitment to not participate if an non-approved option is chosen and/or to participate if an approved options is chosen.) But these resolutions are typically not available or desirable in most public elections.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#167

Post by ocdtrekkie »

mulmen wrote: post #42
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already extraordinary chilling effects on speech -- try criticizing Black Lives Matter on any major social media, for example, and you will likely be censored, doxxed, and even receive death threats. Up until now, major social media (FB, Twitter, Youtube etc.) have been free to suppress conservative voices in the name of opposing racism and white supremacists. The tech platforms have been shielded from laws…

Tech companies have the right to suppress speech on their platforms, just like everyone. Section 230 just makes the courts more efficient. There is no loophole. Sorry to keep posting this link but the Section 230 misconception is very dangerous. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

TechDirt/Copia Institute is funded directly by Google, and should be interpreted as paid lobbying.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#168

Post by hedora »

qppo wrote: post #40

To Californians, Dianne Feinstein is one of the cosponsors of the bill in the Senate. It really grinds my gears seeing our senior leadership from California take actions that directly harm our interests, both towards our peoples' freedom and our businesses. I feel vindicated for voting against her in 2018, because I thought she'd be out of touch with our interests as a state.

She will be 91 the next time she is up for re-election. Hopefully she’ll finally retire instead. I’ve been hoping for that for over a decade.

Feinstein could not have been re-elected if it weren’t for overwhelmingly strong support for her in Silicon Valley.

If she is up for re-election again, please vote for the other candidate (who will probably also be a Democrat!). Also, tell your friends.

She wants to ban encryption. Her voting record is further to the right than many republicans. She votes according to Trump’s wishes more than any other Democrat in the senate.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#169

Post by qchris »

lukifer wrote: post #97
thayne wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As an American, I don't see any party that has my interests in mind. Elections always seem to be having to choose the lesser of two evils.

Obligatory plug for electoral reform. Lesser evils aren't inevitable; they're a product of a bad voting system. https://www.fairvote.org/rcv https://www.fairvote.org/alternatives Maine has converted to RCV already and it's stood up in court; 49 to go.

Just a quick reminder that in California, a bill allowing statewide ranked-choice voting in all cities (not just charter ones) was passed by both the state assembly and senate by a wide margin, before being vetoed by Gov. Newsom last year.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Gavin-Newsom-ve...

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#170

Post by jjoonathan »

surround wrote: post #121

“A Parable” by Perry E. Metzger (1993) > There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees that grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100%…

The people who want a skeleton key to open all electronic doors are the same people who compiled a blackmail database on their own high-clearance employees and failed to keep it safe (the OPM data breach).
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