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Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

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Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#151

Post by shrimpx »

emptyparadise wrote: post #46

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

You can make the same argument in the opposite direction: for those who support unbridled electronic speech amplification, are you prepared for it to fall in the hands of people who are bent on changing minds en masse to fill society with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence?

On a more detailed note, I draw a sharp line between normal speech and selectively amplified speech. Twitter and Facebook are in a bind because their business is to curate speech amplification in order to maximize exposure to ads. So if you ask “why did person X see post Y?” it’s because Twitter/FB decided to show Y to X. So they have automatically become at least partially responsible for the effect of that post.

So to me this Twitter/FB censorship fiasco is not about free speech censorship whatsoever. It’s about these companies being in the business of deciding who sees what, being externally pressured to do a better job.

It wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever to ask Twitter/FB to “stop censoring” while admitting that they should be allowed to curate feeds to maximize ad revenue.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#152

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #41
jancsika wrote: post #30

Google is like a virtual version of Walmart, if Walmart had cornered U.S. flea markets and installed trapdoors in each stall to flush vendors down into the sewer at a moments notice. The best part is that everybody starts quoting the first amendment, and Google is like, "Look, we hear you. Just tell us where our intractable flushing procedure fucked up, and we will promise to never again accidentally flush that vendo…

Basically. I get the "its their service, and you agreed to the terms" but these tech corps are so big and powerful its on a scale unimaginable when these laws and ideas were originally created and its probably time to rethink how we let corporations run when they basically control the world.

It seems to me that the first step is to stop letting the tech corps control your world. If the range of opinion on popular platforms is too restricted, make a deliberate effort to step back from popular platforms onto group chats and random blogs and web forums, the same way we used to a decade ago.

Most people who do this, in my experience, realize that it's actually pretty easy to see and talk about what you want these days. Youtube's content policies are still a problem, but they're the same kind of problem as CBS's content policies, not an existential threat to free speech.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#153

Post by dang »

cutitout wrote: post #100
emptyparadise wrote: post #46

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

> are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? No, they aren't, and when that time comes around they won't own up to the sophistry they spout today. Nobody has the right to leave it up to them. That is all there is to say. Don't ask the most spineless percentile, no matter how large, how to handle issues of this importance. edit: oh fuck off with your cowardly button clicking already. If you can't…

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. Regardless of how right you are or feel, it only takes discussions into hell, and we're trying to avoid that here.

It's possible to make your substantive points while staying within the site guidelines, so please do that instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#154

Post by bloaf »

bawolff wrote: post #72
emptyparadise wrote: post #46

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

What tools are these actually - the delete button? When it comes down to it - i like moderated spaces on the internet. I dont want to wade through spam, not to mention violent and abusive content. I don't like seeing shock images. So yes, i support having moderation. The question to me is not: yes/no moderation, its where you draw the line; what are your policies and how are they enforced. Fundamentally i think the s…

Competition makes it harder for malicious actors to manipulate everyone's content, but lets not pretend that companies don't know how to create the illusion of competition [1,2]

We already have the problem of people creating too many filter-bubbles in their online lives. A fragmented social media environment will not usher in an age where everyone gets exposed to a more diverse set of ideas, we'll just get FoxNewsBook and MSNBCBook, or ChristianTube and MuslimTube, or whatever other social groups happen to be the most defining.

Moderated communities are basically the HOA neighborhoods of the internet. There is nothing wrong with liking the high property values, but competition alone does not prevent their abuses [3].

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/expresident/all-the-por...

[2] https://www.foodbeast.com/news/pepsi-boycott-kendall/

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/homeowners-...

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#155

Post by rebuilder »

I find myself being more sympathetic to YouTube than most commenters here. It seems we want YT to both provide editorial oversight so that e.g. mass murderers are not given a platform to flaunt their crimes, and to provide a platform where anyone can start livestreaming at any time, anywhere.

The way broadcast media handles this is they have an editorial policy that is applied by humans producing a single stream at a time. There are multiple people monitoring everything a news station puts out at all times. It's kind of hard to see that happening with YouTube.

So while I think YT policies can probably be improved, I don't think it's ever going to be a great environment for content that depends on editorial staff to exist. Any moderation policy YT takes has to be applied to what must be billions of videos now. Complaining that they're not doing what broadcast media does feels like going to McDonalds and complaining that the chicken McNuggets aren't made of filet. It's part of the product, not a kink that can be ironed out.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#156

Post by [deleted] »

bawolff wrote: post #72
emptyparadise wrote: post #46

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

What tools are these actually - the delete button? When it comes down to it - i like moderated spaces on the internet. I dont want to wade through spam, not to mention violent and abusive content. I don't like seeing shock images. So yes, i support having moderation. The question to me is not: yes/no moderation, its where you draw the line; what are your policies and how are they enforced. Fundamentally i think the s…

[deleted]

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#157

Post by Thorrez »

emptyparadise wrote: post #46

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

>supporting restrictions on speech and privacy violations

That's a confusing phrase. It took me a while to realize you meant "supporting privacy violations" rather than "supporting restrictions on privacy violations". You seem to be lumping speech restrictions and privacy violations into the same bucket, but I see them as very different, often even opposed to each other. The US elevates free speech higher than privacy. Europe elevates privacy higher than free speech. In many European countries the press isn't allowed to report the names or faces of suspects. In many European countries you can't take pictures of people walking on the street.

Doxing is a clear case where free speech is directly opposed to privacy. Same with right to be forgotten.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#158

Post by ogre_codes »

emptyparadise wrote: post #46

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

Your television and radio broadcasts have been "censored" and curated since the dawn of time. Newspapers have curated their content and various newspapers are known for having left or right bias.

This isn't just the stations own content. If you paid to put content on television, radio, or in the paper, the publisher has always had the right to publish or not publish content (with some limits, but nothing this article speaks about would be protected by law). You couldn't have a cable community access channel with whatever content you wanted.

YouTube/ Twitter/ Facebook have been and remain far more permissive in publishing outside content than any other media in history.

You are implying that there is some kind of "new" restrictions on speech, but this is literally hundreds of years old.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#159

Post by natmaka »

bawolff wrote: post #142
natmaka wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO the central question is: do you tolerate zones moderated (or not moderated at all) by their owners exactly how they want it, provided that you remain free to avoid any zone and also to create your own zone(s)? No one likes spam, abusive content, fake news... However many won't qualify a given content the same way. IMO, for example, history shows that anyone thinking that he is _right_ and has to educate others b…

> IMHO the central question is: do you tolerate zones moderated (or not moderated at all) by their owners exactly how they want it, provided that you remain free to avoid any zone and also to create your own zone(s)? Is that not what we do currently? (subject to certain legal restrictions, but generally in usa the restrictions other than copyright are pretty light. And if they aren't, well Tor). You have pretty wide…

Yes, indeed, by and large (in 'Occidental' nations). However during those last ~25 years there are IMO more and more pushes towards censorship, from memory laws ( from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_laws ) to deplatforming ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming ). Albeit none of those is really new it seems to me that they are gaining speed.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#160

Post by dang »

If anyone can suggest a more accurate and neutral title, preferably using representative language from the article, I'd appreciate it. I think the story is about an interesting new phenomenon and therefore on topic for HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), but I don't think "Silicon Valley" is the right subject for that sentence, and it's not clear to me if the article is only about YouTube or just primarily.

We could change it to the article's main title, but it's a lot more obscure.

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