211–220 of 550 posts
I think FB/Twitter and others got bold, but kinda forgot they are also most likely digging themselves deep into regulation hell.
Regulatory capture is likely positive for Facebook
This shut down story is another tale in the impending international regulation, and maybe breaking up, of what is comically called 'big tech' ('big' does not begin to describe the sizes involved, the naivety is staggering). As newspaper barons before them, the internet has not policed itself adequately enough, according to the governments of the world, and now they will act in unity to take back some control. And the…
>Citizens will require a personal licence to access the internet, and anonymous use will be illegal. I mean you already do. What do you call a signing up to an ISP?
That is a business relationship, where a personal license to access the Internet refers to a government grant for use. Those are drastically different from each other.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you need to lay off the apocalyptic movies for a bit.
Way to be dismissive. I bet you would have said the same thing to people a decade ago who thought the government was using the Internet to spy on them.
It's a positive thing for these ejections to be across the political spectrum, because it makes the demand for distributed moderation come from across the political spectrum. I hope that demand congeals on support for an open blogging protocol, such that people can very easily post once and direct it to multiple platforms or any listener. If this becomes popular enough, and posts aren't owned by a particular platform…
It's a positive thing for these ejections to be across the political spectrum, because it de-politicizes censorship, and folks on one side of the spectrum cheering for the other side begin to realize that censorship is always a scope creep issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't know my name in the street and I don't know yours. We manage to be perfectly civil to each other. And my reputation does not follow between groups either. I can even have completely distinct friend groups for different activities. Nobody at boxing class knows anybody I work with and the people that hang out with me at a bar can be a completely new set all over. I could even use different names in all these…
> Yet we're all perfectly civil. There are no real-world consequences for being an anonymous jerk online, so you are comparing apples and oranges. > On the other hand, you have to show government ID to walk into a bar and yet people are kicked out for bad behavior all the time. That's because under the influence of alcohol, one stops caring as much about real world consequences. Being anon online is (somewhat) like b…
What am I talking about? Just search for "Google closed my account", "Facebook closed my account", "Google suspended our business advertising and email", "Facebook suspended our advertising account", "Amazon suspended my business account", etc.
These companies have been pulling the plug on people and businesses for years. When they do, there is no recourse whatsoever. It's the closest anyone will get to having to face a totalitarian regime from within a democracy.
The tech community should have revolted against this kind of treatment of individuals and businesses years ago. These companies have ruined people and destroyed businesses. Heck, they even drove people --kids-- to suicide!
Now, with Parler, Trump, the threat to Australia, this thing in the UK and more they are likely scaring the hell out of people around the world and across a wide spectrum of ideologies and circumstances.
What comes next might be easy to predict: The heavy hand of government will likely descend on them around the world. And likely so. As the saying goes, you reap what you sow. What's worse, they will likely be responsible for the creation of onerous regulations that might very well damage other internet companies and make it that much more difficult to do business.
In the end, it might all be for the better. No company should have the power to destroy individuals, businesses, political organizations and even force governments with the click of a button.
That's the world we live in today. Many think Parler was the first violation of trust. It was not. Thousands have been silenced and erased all over the world before them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One problem with moderating content in this way is that it makes it clearer and clearer that they no longer need the protections provided by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It's not injurious to them to moderate content, clearly, since they are doing it. By pulling this crap and especially by doing it algorithmically they are pushing the internet in a difficult direction.
I don't understand the argument here. It's not injurious to them to moderate content because they have §230. §230 isn't there to protect online publishers from the court of public opinion; that's impossible. It's there to protect them from libel lawsuits. If §230 went away, and Facebook continued moderating, they would be liable if anyone posted defamatory content to Facebook -- something which surely happens on a co…
If that is not currently the case and these companies can effectively moderate the content on their networks without driving themselves out of business with the cost, well, they don't have the justification for 230's exemption anymore.
This shut down story is another tale in the impending international regulation, and maybe breaking up, of what is comically called 'big tech' ('big' does not begin to describe the sizes involved, the naivety is staggering). As newspaper barons before them, the internet has not policed itself adequately enough, according to the governments of the world, and now they will act in unity to take back some control. And the…
> Citizens will require a personal licence to access the internet, and anonymous use will be illegal. Sadly, given the actions of Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Google, that is a preferred option to the current state today. Ironically we will have more freedom in that state.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook is absolutely dominated by the far-right, which is why left-wing groups, pages, and users are being censored en-masse. /s
Not yet, but FB's incentive structure is anti-left (they're a corporation natch) and their head of public policy is a hardcore Republican that worked for the GWB administration and energy companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Kaplan
Both Conservatives and Liberals claim Facebook is biased towards the other side, so you're going to have to do a hell of a lot better, and produce some actual, bonafide evidence their "incentive structure is anti-left" besides witchhunting and saying one of their upper middle-managers is a hardcore republican.
Care to let us know about the political leanings of Sheryl Sandberg and Chris Cox, who are actually in the C-Suite? Or would you prefer to cherry pick someone in upper middle management who is a staunch republican, which according to you seems to be some kind of heinous crime. Not to mention you're cherry-picking someone who reports to someone who reports to someone etc... who reports to Sheryl Sandberg (COO).