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EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

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Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#41

Post by grahamburger »

loxs wrote: post #30
grahamburger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the proper libertarian response to current events? Asking in good faith, honestly curious. To be fair, I'm curious about what the response would be to BLM riots+politician involvement, MAGA riots+president involvement, and big tech censorship in response.

- Corporations have the right to censor whatever they want. But that's not moral (what they are doing currently). We should abandon these instances and find better ways to communicate - less centralized. - Store owners (and property owners in general) should be able to defend their property with firepower (or pay for such services) freely, without fear of repercussions. This stands both against BLM and MAGA. Of cours…

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I mostly agree - we can criticize corporations for their current actions from a moral perspective but not a legal one.

To your second point - isn't the U.S. one of the only developed countries where you kind of can do this? I regularly see armed guards in front of private businesses, from Walmarts in the middle of nowhere to dispensaries in downtown SF.

(FWIW I think calling SV tech 'commies' is off the mark - Marx would find little in common with the SV tech industry, I think.)

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#42

Post by grahamburger »

ndiscussion wrote: post #17
loxs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing is that this is exactly how the right sees the actions of the left. and it's even worse, as they (the left) are now winning. Their eyes are not blinking - they don't care about freedom of speech or fair game. In the long run, both sides start to see this modus operandi as completely normal. Censorship and vengeance to the other side are completely acceptable. As a libertarian, I am utterly horrified.

I used to be a libertarian until I realized my ideals would lead to my own party's censorship and demise. This meme sums it up: https://imgur.com/a/DZJoWKa

Yes this is mostly my feeling to. A central part of libertarianism seems to be insisting the governments give up power, which is all well and good until someone worse steps in to pick it up.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#43

Post by andrewstuart »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #37
andrewstuart wrote: post #4

I'm left wing but I despair for the future of the left. If the right had control of the tech companies it would have removed left content years ago and never blinked or even thought twice about it. The right never agonises over its own strong decisions, whereas the left, if it takes strong action , wrings its hands in agony about whether it has done the correct thing or not. That's why in the long run the right will…

Future of the Left btw. is one of the best bands ever and are very helpful if you need a distraction from all this BS. I fully agree on the notion that the right wields every power it can get, while the left doesn't. We now have two years ahead of us where the Democrats are in full power of the US government. Let's see what they do with it. I'm especially interested if they are going to make sure to help themselves f…

My guess is that the Democrats will be unlikely to make radical changes needed to fix all the things that need to be fixed.

I see the left side of politics generally as weak and unable to take strong action.

The left likes to listen - an admirable trait, but listening and collaborating too much dilutes outcomes.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#44

Post by FrameworkFred »

orange_tee wrote: post #20
FrameworkFred wrote: post #16

I see the argument the commission is making, but when it comes to the question of inciting violence on privately owned systems, is it really the right idea to move it to some sort of public committee when the target is "too big to censor?"

Remember that Facebook and Twitter only acted after the fact. For them, Trump was too big to censor too. They only took action days before he is out of office when it was guaranteed he would leave.

That's not altogether true. They've been footnoting his posts where there's been a mismatch with reality.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#45

Post by lmilcin »

proactivesvcs wrote: post #25

Assuming that a company's terms of service are deemed fair and legal, why would it be "no longer acceptable" to apply them? I couldn't care less how high profile someone is, what public office they hold; if they break the agreement they made with a service provider, they should be subject to the consequences they agreed to. What I would like to see is a company being obliged to enforce its terms of service promptly,…

Well, for one, democratic countries are supposed to be governed by representatives elected by people, not by corporate boards.

Ability to selectively enable or disable people from being able to access voters is tantamount to having a huge influence on election results.

While in the past you could avoid using social media, today this is THE way to reach most of voters. Most people no longer pay substantial attention to what happens on television, forgot what radio is (it is a little bit of noise your car gives so that it is not quiet) and don't read printed papers.

Now, this time it happened for Trump and we can discuss whether this was or was not a good decision, but the question is who is going to wield the power like that in the future and whether it is even permissible do to something like that.

On one side you have the idea of free speech, but then added to social media you have inevitable disinformation as anybody can get amplified and amount of information is such that it is not possible to verify and vet it.

In the past you would have handful of news-generating organizations and it was easy to spot and call false information. But this is forever gone, there seems to be a need to find out some kind of new equilibrium that will allow detect and filter misinformation without anybody having power to singlehandedly "vanish" people from public life.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#46

Post by turbinerneiter »

I fully agree that these decisions have to be done by democratic institutions. They also have to be very liberal and very careful and erring on the side of not taking things down.

My biggest problem however is the EU commission acting like they are a democratic institution.

The president of the commission didn't even run in the election. We were promised that the candidate of the winning party would become president of the commission, but then he didn't and they gave us von der Leyen instead, who never really accomplished anything but hiring consultants. And even that she couldn't do right.

The whole storming the caption hill thing is also funny in that regard. Now we suddenly defend that place as this important symbolic institution of democracy, and how dare they! But in reality, we all know that the people in there spend most of their time sucking up to their donors to stay in power. And we know that they very, very, very often make decision that favour their donors to the detriment of the ... voters.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#47

Post by quotemstr »

proactivesvcs wrote: post #25

Assuming that a company's terms of service are deemed fair and legal, why would it be "no longer acceptable" to apply them? I couldn't care less how high profile someone is, what public office they hold; if they break the agreement they made with a service provider, they should be subject to the consequences they agreed to. What I would like to see is a company being obliged to enforce its terms of service promptly,…

A corporation is an abstraction, an artificial person created to pool resources and do business at scale. It's a good, useful abstraction --- but like all abstractions, it's leaky, and sometimes the abstraction does more harm than good. Governments are run for the benefit of natural people, not artificial ones, and when the latter behave in ways detrimental to the interests of the former, there's nothing wrong with setting rules.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#48

Post by africanboy »

leothecool wrote: post #38
africanboy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think EU doesn't have an opinion on Parler, that's a business relationship gone wrong. The leak of the Parler content shows that they were actively moderating the platform to push it on the far right side, using millions of fake accounts with admin privileges. So Amazon terminated their account. The ban of Trump from social networks is a different topic, I don't think Trump has a big fan base in EU, but it's the pe…

> they were actively moderating the platform to push it on the far right side Do you have a source for this? I tried googling it for ~5 minutes, but my google-fu is too weak.

source:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731121

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#49

Post by [deleted] »

BobbyJo wrote: post #35
proactivesvcs wrote: post #25

Assuming that a company's terms of service are deemed fair and legal, why would it be "no longer acceptable" to apply them? I couldn't care less how high profile someone is, what public office they hold; if they break the agreement they made with a service provider, they should be subject to the consequences they agreed to. What I would like to see is a company being obliged to enforce its terms of service promptly,…

I think we need to acknowledge that a lot of what these agreements outline is, to a large degree, subjective. If human language, or expression in general, weren't contextual and up for interpretation, then I think this would be a viable way of looking at things, but that simply isn't the case. So long as there is room for interpretation, and the consequences (politically, economically, etc.) of those interpretations…

[deleted]

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#50

Post by krona »

andrewstuart wrote: post #4

I'm left wing but I despair for the future of the left. If the right had control of the tech companies it would have removed left content years ago and never blinked or even thought twice about it. The right never agonises over its own strong decisions, whereas the left, if it takes strong action , wrings its hands in agony about whether it has done the correct thing or not. That's why in the long run the right will…

It's rather infantile to think forcing millions of people you disapprove of off a platform would make them magically disappear.

Does closing your eyes make the monsters under your bed go away?

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