FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230 • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by paulgb » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 11:12 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #165

paulgb wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It doesn't unpublish it, but in the long run it sets up Twitter and Facebook as de facto deciders of what type of content is created. To the extent that newspapers rely on social media for traffic, the editorial decisions of those platforms will silently shape the content of those newspapers. It's the “hidden” aspect of this control that worries me.

The difference in the printing press analogy is that if a printing company won't print my poster, I can take it elsewhere.

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

#212

Post by eternalban » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 12:24 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #102

eternalban wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Moderation on the client side doesn't work and never has. The Usenet killfile model was awful and was a big part of why huge swaths of it were an unnavigable mess for most users--because unless you wanted to expend the effort to build one you didn't have one and got the whole sewer pipe spraying straight into your face. And, oh boy, client-side moderation happens on Twitter, it works so well? Then why do female frie…

"Just educate users" didn't work when there were a few hundred to a few thousand users. It's one of the reasons, though granted not the only one, why Usenet was a hole and people migrated to saner pastures when they were available. What makes you think it's any more feasible when it's "now you just need to go administer your ration of racism and transphobia and personal threats" on a millions-to-billions scale? If yo…

Re. the scale of the effort required on the client side by the user, I think you missed the "kludgy UI/UX" bit. Obviously, we need to address the kludgy kill-file approach.

> you're falling for ..

You seem to think that you know a lot about me. Let me gently suggest that possibly your technical imagination is failing to show you alternatives that solves all these issues.

So, actually, it is not a case of falling for anything, rather waiting since 1996 for someone else to start discussing having social models for networked virtual spaces.

> If you're being legit with your post

And why would I be otherwise? I found that quite offensive, and entirely un-necessary.

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

#213

Post by CydeWeys » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 12:28 PM UTC

juniper_strong wrote: post #135

jakelazaroff wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not true, someone running a small blog can read every single comment that gets submitted. 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 communicati…

>> But they then have to choose... Yes, that's correct. They have to choose what content to allow. That's called being a publisher. >> Telephones are not public communication I'm guessing that you are too young to have heard of party lines. But yes, telephones were public communication. Wishing the president would die of COVID would obviously be allowed under a platform scenario, what law do you think it breaks where…

The rules you're proposing would lead to most blogs closing their comment sections entirely. People simply would not want to take the risk. This situation would not be an improvement over the status quo.

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

#214

Post by CydeWeys » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 12:31 PM UTC

dlp211 wrote: post #171

zlsa wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get notifications about an alert in a given area?

Considering that EAS's are handled at a hardware level and a public subscription API sounds ripe for a targeted DDoS attack for a pull model and bound to fail for a push scenario, I think radio, TV (OTA & cable), and Cell/Mobile are sufficient to reach the vast majority of people. Really only people who completely eschew technology would be left out since news orgs will be quick to update their web sites and forward…

Have a separate replica system supplying the API, so even if it's DDoSed or whatever the cell alerts will be unaffected. The value of this API would be strictly additive.

Think of the emergency weather alert radio broadcast channels as a form of primitive public API. We need something like that but over the Internet.

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

#215

Post by guscost » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 12:47 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #173

guscost wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

That's a great idea, and I think if private individuals (either businesses or open-source hackers or whoever) want to do that, they should! But I think if private individuals (again, including business) don't want to do that, they shouldn't be compelled to! No law makes an email provider use SMTP; they do it because the industry / the market has settled on it. (Imagine if nobody could use STARTTLS until it got approv…

You make good points. But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street.

In this context it is not at all that “government should be in charge of these decisions”, it is entirely that Twitter’s privileged status should be questioned, given the amount of control they are exercising over the amount of content they distribute.

Put another way: AT&T should not be liable for what I publish on my personal website, but if they were dropping packets from my server because of a “content policy” then I would think differently!

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

#216

Post by jakelazaroff » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

guscost wrote: post #215

geofft wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great idea, and I think if private individuals (either businesses or open-source hackers or whoever) want to do that, they should! But I think if private individuals (again, including business) don't want to do that, they shouldn't be compelled to! No law makes an email provider use SMTP; they do it because the industry / the market has settled on it. (Imagine if nobody could use STARTTLS until it got approv…

You make good points. But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street. In this context it is not at all that “government should be in charge of these decisions”, it is entirely that Twitte…

> But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street.

That’s not quite true — Section 230 protects all platforms from liability for content produced by third parties. You enjoy that exact same immunity for comments others post on your personal website. And conversely, Twitter does not enjoy immunity for content that they themselves produce, such as descriptions of trending topics.

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

#217

Post by guscost » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #192

guscost wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Are you saying that a special immunity from prosecution, granted to particular businesses, is a civil liberty? I think that moderation is a consequence of the rights to speech and association. The ability to choose what content you host, and whose content you host, is a consequence of those rights. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, whomever, cannot violate your civil liberties. Only the government can do that. And when t…

> I think that moderation is a consequence of the rights to speech and association. The ability to choose what content you host, and whose content you host, is a consequence of those rights.

The right to speech does not mean that you are also immune from libel laws. That’s the controversial part, Facebook enjoys both the rights (plus consequences), and a special immunity under Section 230 that does not apply to any other kind of speech.

> And when they pass laws that, de facto, restrict the ability of companies to associate and speak freely, they restrict those essential liberties.

Do you think that being banned from Facebook does not also restrict an individual’s ability to associate and speak freely, in 2020?

> Section 230 ensured civil liberties, both Facebook's, and yours, and mine.

I’m sure lawmakers are hearing this exact line from lobbyists, but it rings hollow. One of those is clearly not like the others, and perhaps the law should favor “yours and mine”.

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

#218

Post by guscost » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #216

guscost wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make good points. But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street. In this context it is not at all that “government should be in charge of these decisions”, it is entirely that Twitte…

> But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street. That’s not quite true — Section 230 protects all platforms from liability for content produced by third parties . You enjoy that exact sa…

> Twitter does not enjoy immunity for content that they themselves produce

Exactly. If the law is not changed, any challenge would hinge on the court defining their curation process as an act of production. It may not be as far-fetched as you think: DJ Shadow can copyright a song made entirely from snippets of other recorded music.

For the record, I think the law should be changed. Twitter is categorically different from a small/personal website. You could argue that it is a natural monopoly.

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

#219

Post by guscost » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

Meph504 wrote: post #195

nitrogen wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is nothing has even come close to replacing it. Indeed, it seems that just as there are natural monopolies over physically exclusive infrastructure like roads and cables, there are natural monopolies over network effects and attention/mindshare.

I think the argument on monopoly is getting muddied, a monopoly isn't based on consumer's choosing a preferred service, but that they have no choice of provider. Twitter is popular because people choose to use it, but they have the choice to use other services, or to attempt to create one, and compete with the current popular one, the difficulty of succeeding in the field doesn't change if it is a monopoly (unless of…

> A monopoly isn't based on consumer's choosing a preferred service, but that they have no choice of provider.

Survey a hundred small publishers, and ask them whether their use of Twitter is a choice.

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

#220

Post by DeonPenny » Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

athms wrote: post #207

DeonPenny wrote: post #202

What they did this week sealed their fate. Section 230 was supposed to make social networks public squares but that line is obviously being ignore especially by some people because they think censoring things they think are wrong is moral. Which has to be one of the most arrogant things I have ever witnessed.

>Section 230 was supposed to make social networks public squares Wrong. There is nothing in the statute that implies neutrality. Section 230 was to enable online platforms to engage in good-faith community moderation without fear of taking on undue liability for their users’ posts. Online platforms are within their First Amendment rights to moderate their online platforms however they like, and they’re additionally s…

Have you looked at the case that created section 230? Because it literally flies in the face of what you just said.

It started off as a discussion between social networks. One that didn't moderate its content and one that did. The one that did got sued into the grown because its attempted moderation. So how is that not an attempt to make them into public squares.

Also saying you just let them moderate doesn't square with how anyone in a government would look at this especially the US government. Why would anyone want them to regulate themselves.