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FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

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Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#151

Post by paulgb »

the8472 wrote: post #143
paulgb wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or it's a sign that Twitter and FB shouldn't be "major providers of information". Yeah, it really does seem some times like what Section 230 abolitionists really want is better accomplished through antitrust law. Trying to use liability for unrelated torts as a lever to force sites not to moderate is a very indirect and messy way to get back at the major platforms while creating a lot of collateral damage for small…

What has twitter done that would even remotely fall under anti-trust laws? On the other hand using communications regulation does sound kind of obvious when you use the telephone or previous net neutrality disputes as reference points. Although it is ironic that the current anti-NN FCC now wants to push for platform services in the name of neutrality.

They aren't in violation of current anti-trust laws (AFAIK), but if the problem is that companies have grown so powerful that they can control speech, that has parallels to the problem of companies growing so powerful they can control prices. So what I'm suggesting is, why not create new laws that target the biggest platforms, using the same framework as existing anti-trust laws?

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#152

Post by holler »

guscost wrote: post #142
morpheuskafka wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a forum like HN cannot even have rules that a discussion has to be on topic/within the scope of the site? Wikipedia cannot have notability and credibility policies (I guess that is an edge case since it is other editors actually doing the removing, but according to community consensus guidelines)? A forum for a marginalized group needs to allow hate speech against them, so long as its not illegal? All the while th…

Is it time for Twitter to be considered a utility? ISPs evolved from “online service providers” which themselves evolved from “bulletin board systems”, and if you consider an ISP to be a utility today, then there was a point where that kind of service became a utility.

Why? I'm not a fan of that idea as I'd rather find ways to spur new competition. Also, anyone can live without Twitter or any social network, whereas its harder to live without electricity, water, etc.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#153

Post by paulgb »

juniper_strong wrote: post #149
paulgb wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or it's a sign that Twitter and FB shouldn't be "major providers of information". Yeah, it really does seem some times like what Section 230 abolitionists really want is better accomplished through antitrust law. Trying to use liability for unrelated torts as a lever to force sites not to moderate is a very indirect and messy way to get back at the major platforms while creating a lot of collateral damage for small…

>> Yeah, it really does seem some times like what Section 230 abolitionists really want is better accomplished through antitrust law That's called false dichotomy.

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make? Yes, you could do both, but you'd still have the collateral damage I mentioned as a negative of the CDA approach. If there's another approach without that downside, why do both?

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#155

Post by morpheuskafka »

guscost wrote: post #142
morpheuskafka wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a forum like HN cannot even have rules that a discussion has to be on topic/within the scope of the site? Wikipedia cannot have notability and credibility policies (I guess that is an edge case since it is other editors actually doing the removing, but according to community consensus guidelines)? A forum for a marginalized group needs to allow hate speech against them, so long as its not illegal? All the while th…

Is it time for Twitter to be considered a utility? ISPs evolved from “online service providers” which themselves evolved from “bulletin board systems”, and if you consider an ISP to be a utility today, then there was a point where that kind of service became a utility.

Historically, utilities/public services are things that have a natural monopoly, which absolutely applies to ISP/other wireline telcoms (city franchise licenses), mobile cell service (limited competition due to spectrum auctions and the need for enough nationwide spectrum to be accumulated to launch a viable service), water, sewer, power, gas, etc. It might apply to things like undersea cables, although there isn't really a natural monopoly (plenty of space under the ocean) and those primarily connect two privately owned datacenters. It applies to other services such as post office and city trash where either laws (private express statutes) prohibit competition for the sake of making the public service more profitable, or where taxes force the customer to "buy" the public trash pickup, making even the best-run private enterprise unable to compete.

It is technically quite trivial to clone the basic functionality of Twitter and run a competing service. This has been done semi-sucessfully with Gab (not endorsing that community, but it is a good example), for example. People choose social media services based on their perceived value, social prestige, etc. There's no equivalent to "I have to use Twitter because they own the lines to the house/they have the only 5G coverage in my area/they are the only company licensed by my city." Twitter is not the only physically possible way to publish short messages to the world (unless the ISPs ruin that now that net neutrality is gone).

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#156

Post by eli »

guscost wrote: post #123
eli wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Since the alternative is leading us toward actual violent war, I say “make HN choose between moderation and immunity too, if we must” without hesitation. “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 ma…

There are infinitely more alternatives that aren’t “gut 230” or “do nothing.” Why is this the starting point when it will affect so many sites that we all agree aren’t doing anything wrong.

You want to propose a law that regulates Facebook let’s talk about that directly.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#157

Post by webmaven »

sfkdjf9j3j wrote: post #144
the8472 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? That is a logically inconsistent outcome so I would expect nasal demons. But yes, it's probably a success because it means the social networks have less of an interest to and a legal reason not to inf…

The issue is that - as anyone involved in online community moderation will tell you - there will always be a group of users who try to push the boundaries and engineer the most plausible edge case situation that maximally violates the rule in spirit while following it by the letter. If your position is "never remove anything ever", you circumvent this. But when your position becomes, "actually, you can delete only sp…

> If you're suggesting crowd sourcing moderation in a democratic fashion, I would contend this both isn't effective and also that by providing systems that facilitate this, companies would be implicitly affecting the "censorship" of their platform. After all, someone has to decide what the voting algorithm is, what the chance of being a spammer before you are blocked is, etc.

I think that what is being suggested is that there be multiple, user-selectable, opt-in providers of crowd-sourced moderation services that are orthogonal to the unfiltered communication platform.

Something like the 3rd-party spam filtering services for blog comments or email.

I imagine, though, that a 3rd-party "view" of the Twitterverse would also be a Twitter client, have it's own web presence, and basically be a white-label version of Twitter. Twitter itself would be largely relegated to being a backend pipe that the different sites have in common for interoperability.

I can't imagine how these federated Twitter clones would themselves be able to provide a curated experience without running into the same liability problems.

The alternative is that these optional collaborative moderation services are somehow integrated into Twitter itself, which, while not impossible, poses some serious issues of combinatorial complexity, scalability, and sustainability.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#158

Post by teraflop »

juniper_strong wrote: post #69
jolmg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you both have a different idea of what a platform is. Given your idea of a platform, I think web forums are neither platform nor publishers, so where does that leave them? To be clear, it's not fair to classify them as publishers. Newspapers and magazines are not mediums of discussions like forums are, they're compilers of articles that people spend days to write and submit for approval. To use an offline met…

When they want the protections of section 230, they claim to be platforms, when they want to block content on a political basis, they act as publishers. I think they should have to decide on which they one want to be, and I think platforms should have greater protection against liability than publishers.

> When they want the protections of section 230, they claim to be platforms

No they don't, because section 230 does not require them to. It does not even contain the word "platform".

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#159

Post by guscost »

eli wrote: post #156
guscost wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the alternative is leading us toward actual violent war, I say “make HN choose between moderation and immunity too, if we must” without hesitation. “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 ma…

There are infinitely more alternatives that aren’t “gut 230” or “do nothing.” Why is this the starting point when it will affect so many sites that we all agree aren’t doing anything wrong. You want to propose a law that regulates Facebook let’s talk about that directly.

Agreed. But if the alternatives (maybe a size/reach threshold above which the laws change?) were to fail, I would rather see every online community become 4chan, than actual violent war. Hopefully things turn out better than either extreme case.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#160

Post by jakelazaroff »

webmaven wrote: post #157
sfkdjf9j3j wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that - as anyone involved in online community moderation will tell you - there will always be a group of users who try to push the boundaries and engineer the most plausible edge case situation that maximally violates the rule in spirit while following it by the letter. If your position is "never remove anything ever", you circumvent this. But when your position becomes, "actually, you can delete only sp…

> If you're suggesting crowd sourcing moderation in a democratic fashion, I would contend this both isn't effective and also that by providing systems that facilitate this, companies would be implicitly affecting the "censorship" of their platform. After all, someone has to decide what the voting algorithm is, what the chance of being a spammer before you are blocked is, etc. I think that what is being suggested is t…

That's my understanding as well, and my claim is that nothing would be fundamentally different from how it is now. Twitter would take on the role of today's ISP, and the moderation services would take on the role of Twitter/Mastodon/etc, and we're back to square one. There would be a couple big ones that people would flock to because of network effects, and some small "free speech" ones that most people avoid because they don't actually want to see spam/porn/propaganda/etc.
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