121–130 of 261 posts
I think that every company should decide if they're a "publisher" or a "platform". If you're a platform, you're not responsible for what your users say (except directly illegal stuff, eg. child porn), and have no say in what stays on, or gets removed/hidden (except, again, illegal stuff). If you're a publisher, you have a say what is posted on your site, and you carry full responsibility for all the onsite content. W…
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And how are platforms to be regulated? Do they allow anonymous posters? Who investigates and removes harmful content?
The phone company does unfortunately allow spam callers
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> or you want to forbid them from moderating The goal would be to put significant, very large restictions on their ability to moderate. > There are already forums with “zero” moderation How about we look at other examples of communication platforms, that are working perfectly fine. Just take a look at the phone network, or ISPs. ISPs and phone networks, have very little "moderation" from the parent company, and yet s…
Because a discussion forum is not the same as a phone network. It just isn’t. Why would the rules that govern the phone network make sense to apply to Wikipedia? It’s weird to be having this argument on one of the very forums that benefits from 230. Do you think HN would be a better place if it were forbidden from moderating content? Were you here before dang came along? Can you imagine how much spam gets deleted bef…
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” - Sam Adams
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Because a discussion forum is not the same as a phone network. It just isn’t. Why would the rules that govern the phone network make sense to apply to Wikipedia? It’s weird to be having this argument on one of the very forums that benefits from 230. Do you think HN would be a better place if it were forbidden from moderating content? Were you here before dang came along? Can you imagine how much spam gets deleted bef…
> Why would the rules that govern the phone network make sense to apply to Wikipedia? Because it is a platform? I don't see a problem with enforcing neutrality on platforms, in the same way that I don't see a problem with enforcing it on my phone company, or my ISP. > Do you think HN would be a better place I think the old school reddit model is a reasonable goal to aim for for these types of platforms. (yes reddit h…
Let me go out on a limb here and say that no-one is going onto Facebook looking to find misinformation. They may be looking for stories that appeal to their prejudices and be willing to suspend disbelief for those stories.
But no-one is going to tick the box saying "please show me stuff that is actually definitively false, and potentially dangerous to my person".
So the problem will simply move along to how the "misinformation" tag is being applied and the biases at play there.
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Let’s say this regulation passes and YC does decide to operate HNaaS. (Presumably they don’t want to, or they’d be doing it already, but under this regulation that’s how they have to operate.) So HN Prime pops up — which is basically HN as it exists today — and then a bunch of smaller constellation communities that allow things that Prime doesn’t, like spam and porn. And that’s different from present situation becaus…
It's not like the sites would continue to exist exactly as they did before only with a different coat of paint. The platformization would likely impact business model - who pays the platform? who makes deals with advertises? do publisher vs. platform rules also apply to the influence that advertisers have on a site? - and changes in moderation tooling provided as part of the platform. It would also separate the finan…
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Let’s say this regulation passes and YC does decide to operate HNaaS. (Presumably they don’t want to, or they’d be doing it already, but under this regulation that’s how they have to operate.) So HN Prime pops up — which is basically HN as it exists today — and then a bunch of smaller constellation communities that allow things that Prime doesn’t, like spam and porn. And that’s different from present situation becaus…
It's not like the sites would continue to exist exactly as they did before only with a different coat of paint. The platformization would likely impact business model - who pays the platform? who makes deals with advertises? do publisher vs. platform rules also apply to the influence that advertisers have on a site? - and changes in moderation tooling provided as part of the platform. It would also separate the finan…
Sure, but that’s orthogonal. Let’s say for the sake of argument that all those things came true — business models changed, financial interests separated, etc — but from the users’ point of view, everything works exactly as it does today. Success?
> I think the actual escape hatch would be enabling users to filter content collaboratively
This exists today — shared block lists, etc — and it’s insufficient. There’s a reason that when Twitter announced that they would suspend the accounts of people hoping for Donald Trump to die of COVID, the response from people who often receive death threats was “you mean you could have been doing this the whole time?!”
> I assume (without having checked) that filtering spam would still be allowed even under platform rules.
What is spam? “I made $X from my couch”? Repeated links to my blog? Trolling conservative communities with liberal posts?
The problem with carving out exceptions to your ban on moderation is that it moves your complaint from “all censorship is bad” to “censorship of speech I don’t like is bad”.
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> Having many users should not suddenly mean you don't own the site You continue to own it, but that does not mean you can do arbitrary things to your users. That's precisely how things work for utilities. You can do whatever with your private road or power generator. But if you're providing essential services to the masses then eventually universal service, non-discrimination and neutrality rules come into play. If…
> You're assuming that there is no way to adapt to the new rules. If you're liable for user-posted content, you either need massive resources to review literally everything your users post (and a sufficient delay for such review to take place, and a massive insurance policy for the inevitable mistake), or you stop allowing user-posted content entirely. This proposal would make it nearly impossible to simultaneously h…
Yes, I am concerned about the collective of privatized communication mediums. More and more private, personal communication runs over these platforms. Facebook is not just your timeline, it also is whatsapp. Twitter has DMs too. Those get filtered too. This is unlike telephone or face-to-face communication.
Their continued existence is not essential to life, I agree. But they shape communication which is essential to society as a whole. If we can't do anything about the network effect then having a disinterested network should be preferable.
> This proposal would make it nearly impossible to simultaneously have user-posted content and moderation.
I already mentioned this in another post, but let the userbase collectively handle the moderation of what would now be considered "community guidelines", let the platform provider handle moderation of illegal content. This may require much better tooling and different ways content is amplified (or not) than social media platforms currently offer but it doesn't seem as impossible as you say.
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Disagree. Newspapers and ISP follow under this regulation. Social media networks have been able to skirt the issue. If newspapers can get sued for their content and the phone company can't, it only makes sense that this applies to social media companies are held to the same liabilities or protections.
I don’t understand what outcome you are seeking here. Clearly social media companies can’t prescreen every piece of content so either you want them to all go out of business or you want to forbid them from moderating even to delete spam. There are already forums with “zero” moderation and there’s a reason all discussion hasn’t migrated there.
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The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources. The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting of content they haven't checked yet. The world you propose is one in which nobody could take the risk of runni…
>> The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources Not true, someone running a small blog can read every single comment that gets submitted. Twitter can't. >> The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting…
But they then have to choose between allowing every racial epithet, porn link and scam, and risking a lawsuit because a commenter says something that’s construed as defamatory.
> Not true, even pre-internet the world had functional real-time public communication. We called them telephones.
Telephones are not public communication.
> An internet where 3 weeks out from an election, the major providers of information ban information that hurts their political candidate is not a functional internet, it's an Orwellian dystopia.
It’s interesting to me that the same people who are up in arms about the response to the NY Post story — the veracity of which has been questioned by several prominent publications — had nothing to say when Twitter announced that they would suspend accounts of users wishing the President would die of COVID. If I had to label one of those an “Orwellian dystopia”, it would not be the suppression of pro–ruling party agitprop.
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The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources. The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting of content they haven't checked yet. The world you propose is one in which nobody could take the risk of runni…
>> The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources Not true, someone running a small blog can read every single comment that gets submitted. Twitter can't. >> The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting…
Telephone calls are private; not public. There are two parties. It's literally against the law for other parties to attempt to become privy to those communications under most circumstances (wiretapping).
Please explain how something like HN works on the telephone.
>Not true, user generated content exists in print and it should be cheaper on the internet than in print.
User generated content does indeed exist in print, where the cost of printing and shipping that content are incumbent on the party that wishes to make their opinion known. When unsolicited or tiresome, we refer to this as junk mail or chain-letters.