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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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Okay, I'll bite. Should newspapers be liable (that is, able to be sued) for a letter to the editor they publish? Ho…

> Should newspapers be liable (that is, able to be sued) for a letter to the editor they publish? Why shouldn't they? If the letter is libelous, then they're responsible for distributing it to a larger audience.

But is distribution sufficient to trigger liability?

Printing a letter to the editor isn't authoring it, after all. The newspaper is exercising some editorial control in that letters to the editor are not all printed, but it isn't endorsement per-se, just a judgement that there is some public interest in making it available. Any liability for libel should surely lie with the letter's author rather than the newspaper.

I also note that you ignored the latter half of my question.

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

You could technically set up a mesh network and bypass the ISP too. I don’t think that argument is aging well, since it depends on some essential distinction between “telephone wire” type infrastructure and “server farm” or “installed base” type infrastructure.

Why should we assume that a global content management and delivery network, broadcasting 500 million messages every day, is trivially replaceable? The fact is nothing has even come close to replacing it.

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

#163
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…

> 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.

Just the opposite. Companies unwillingness to intervene did so. Your opinion may be different, but it's nothing more, and suggesting we deny people their civil liberties based on your hunch is a dangerous line of thinking.

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

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should newspapers be liable (that is, able to be sued) for a letter to the editor they publish? Why shouldn't they? If the letter is libelous, then they're responsible for distributing it to a larger audience.

But is distribution sufficient to trigger liability? Printing a letter to the editor isn't authoring it, after all. The newspaper is exercising some editorial control in that letters to the editor are not all printed, but it isn't endorsement per-se, just a judgement that there is some public interest in making it available. Any liability for libel should surely lie with the letter's author rather than the newspaper.…

> I also note that you ignored the latter half of my question.

In case you weren't aware, the answer, currently, to the second half of your question, is that they aren't liable for a website comment, due to section 230.

As for the first half of your question, the newspaper affirmatively chooses to publish the letter. That's where they get the liability. The website does not, it simply fails to censor it.

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

#165
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Can you explain how twitter is controlling the speech of a newspaper by blocking its article on their platform? Does twitter blocking the article suddenly unpublish it?

Should conventional printing press owners be considered utilities because you might want to post a bunch of posters somewhere, and by refusing to print your posters they censor you?

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

#166

I've reached the conclusion that this is not about censorship. It's really about attempting to force ideas into the definition of "the mainstream". Facebook and Twitter legitimize content. From a social media perspective, they define the vanilla. When people say "I saw it on Facebook", you instinctively intuit it was on their feed between a photo of a kid and advert for Red Robin. If you want rocky road rather than v…

> I've reached the conclusion that this is not about censorship. It's really about attempting to force ideas into the definition of "the mainstream".

Of course. That's why the people crying about the NY Post article said nothing when Twitter was threatening to suspend accounts for hoping Trump would die of COVID. It's why they're fine when conservative content gets algorithmically boosted but nut when it gets penalized.

I'm happy to have a discussion about what the boundaries of acceptable speech should be. But it always gets cast as a discussion about censorship and freedom of speech, when really the goal is to shift those boundaries to a place they find acceptable.

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

#167

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.

You might enjoy Elizabeth Warren's proposal about designating "platform utilities": https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big...

But that aside (and I think she's using "utility" in a slightly different way), I think it would be a huge mistake to say that our approach is to regulate Twitter (and Facebook, and so forth) as is. That just cements their oligopoly: either your regulation calls out these companies by name (and therefore needs to ensure they retain power to work), or it imposes a regulatory burden which makes it even harder for competitors to replace them. This would be a serious unforced error for people who think that Big Tech is run by their political/ideological opponents. It would also be a practical disaster (imagine government-regulated Twitter spam detection), and IMO it would reflect an abandonment of the ideal of liberty. Rather than providing some structural reason why we need to regulate Twitter, we'd be regulating them baed on their effects - that they did something we don't like, and we don't know how to stop it other than telling them to not do it. It feels like it violates the spirit (though probably not the letter) of the constitutional ban on bills of attainder.

A sibling comment points out the "natural monopoly" argument for regulating ISPs as utilities. That's an argument on structure (there can only be so many ISPs and there's a huge up-front cost to becoming competitive), not effect, and in fact the argument for Net Neutrality was that companies could act in unwanted ways in the future, not that they did.

Our fundamental model for Twitter should be that it's just a company, and it could be replaced by some other company, and if we think that's infeasible, that's the bug in the market that we should fix. We should not resign ourselves to some government-guided-Twitter monstrosity - either you get regulatory capture or you get a private company whose product priorities swing with every election. My personal thesis here is that Twitter is simply too big, and that companies should be barred from growing beyond a certain size (of revenue, employees, or some similar measure). We can break them up like we broke up the trusts of old, and in fact like the trusts of old, they'll probably generate more GDP broken up - without the giant incumbent distorting the market, there's a more meaningful and direct profit motive on each resulting piece as well as more room for innovation by new companies, and therefore more general room for economic growth. That would be regulating the structure of the market in a generic way, and it would specifically regulate it in a way that promotes the ability of the non-government parts of society to have primary responsibility in shaping society.

There is an alternative political model where the government is closely involved in making sure that social media is run in a way that promotes the society the people want (in the government's opinion). WeChat and Weibo run under this model. That model seems to be unpopular in the US (I recall something recently about trying to ban WeChat), and I hope we don't decide that they had it right all along.

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

#168

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…

> 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. Just the opposite. Companies unwillingness to intervene did so. Your opinion may be different, but it's nothing more, and suggesting we deny people their civil liberties based on your hunch is a dangerous line of thinking.

> deny people their civil liberties

Are you saying that a special immunity from prosecution, granted to particular businesses, is a civil liberty?

Or is this some kind of “freedom from being offended/misinformed” newspeak?

I can’t think of another interpretation where what I am proposing does anything but preserve civil liberties.

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

#169

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…

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…

It has to be treated as criminal negligence when a platform applies its 'Terms of Use' or rule of conduct, selectively.

I think that will solve the problem.

Today, HN or Twitter can, selectively, diminish visibility of pro-conservative content and posts, while not applying the same scrutiny to the other side.

They can sit there and claim neutrality, ask for 'evidence' and so on.

But really, they are the ones that should be convincing courts that they were not partial, biased or selective in applying their Terms of Use.

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

#170
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You might enjoy Elizabeth Warren's proposal about designating "platform utilities": https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big... But that aside (and I think she's using "utility" in a slightly different way), I think it would be a huge mistake to say that our approach is to regulate Twitter (and Facebook, and so forth) as is. That just cements their oligopoly: either your regulation calls out these…

Why not put a protocol in the public domain and let service providers implement it, like email? Is there something about broadcast communication that makes impartiality or neutrality impossible? Even if the broadcast protocol is based on follow/subscribe interactions?

This is an interesting subject!

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