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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

#171

Post by tylermenezes »

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.

Yes. This isn't the government hunting down political opposition, this is a private company saying "hey, neonazis go somewhere else".

If a different private company wants to host the neonazis, they can go for it. It turns out it's /difficult/ for them because most people find them repulsive.

I don't hear anyone making this argument for child abuse images for what it's worth.

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

#172

Post by CivBase »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #162
CivBase wrote: post #147

The constitution protects our freedom of speech from the government, not from private entities on their own private property. Make no mistake, that's what centralized social media platforms are - private property. Freedom of speech is not protected by the constitution on social media platforms and, frankly, I don't want 100% free speech on social media. Take a look at HN. HN mods do a brilliant job of moderating. We…

*incoming nitpick >If you're civil, respectful, and on-topic you're seemingly allowed to present just about any idea. HN heavily follows the religion of scientism. If you reject science, you will be downvoted nearly immediately. HN forgets that the reason that we don't fog our kids with DDT anymore is because 'settled science' was questioned. Yes I am generalizing by using "HN". This is still, however, one of my favo…

Yeah. I'm more focused on mods removing content and suspending/banning users, though; not just other users downvoting posts.

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

#173

Post by stale2002 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #99
technick wrote: post #73

I'm starting to look forward to the downfall of any of the FAANGs that become censorship happy. This shit has to stop and I know the 1st wasn't mean for private business, but now that private business has such a reach, it needs to be forced on them.

Where would your law end? I’m curious how you’d write it... Would it be something like: “No person may delete content which has been made publically accessible on a server they administer without a court order demanding that content’s removal”? Would you have a certain size threshold, like the law kicks in when you hit 1 million monthly uniques?

> Where would your law end? I’m curious how you’d write it...

There is an easy answer to this. We could just model this stuff after other similar laws, that apply to other networks.

Those similar laws, are called common carrier laws, and they could be expanded to apply to more things.

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

#174

Post by sneak »

root_axis wrote: post #95
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.

Nobody is being hunted, that's pretty hyperbolic. If YouTube were silencing protests I wouldn't like that, but I don't rely on YouTube to understand what's going on in the world and I would encourage anyone concerned about YouTube's content policy to consider visiting other websites on the internet in addition to YouTube.

> If YouTube were silencing protests I wouldn't like that, but I don't rely on YouTube to understand what's going on in the world

A lot of people do. You can't really find out what's going on in the world from the mainstream media in any real resolution or detail, and "other websites on the internet" don't generally have thousands and thousands of people livestreaming actual live video of what's happening.

Perhaps this could be rectified by our society working to make bandwidth an order of magnitude or two cheaper, so that there can be lots more live video hosts. As it stands, you're pretty much stuck with a few giant megacorps like Google or Twitch.

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

#175

Post by sneak »

joubert wrote: post #89
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.

Aren’t there more ways how and more places where you can speak out today than ever before? Aren’t people able to say more radical or extreme things at scale than ever before? I’m reminded of folks claiming that their voices are silenced but say so on Twitter, at physical events, on the news, etc.? The irony seems mind boggling to me.

> Aren’t there more ways how and more places where you can speak out today than ever before?

No. There was for a little while, but the number of avenues that one has for publishing unpopular speech are at a major low vs 10 or 15 years ago.

Now, the internet has reached the status quo of broadcast media prior to it: a small handful of gigantic powerful organizations have total veto over what can be published.

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

#176

Post by jb775 »

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.

Since I primarily see the canned response of "they can build their own youtube if they don't like it", I'll rephrase to help get your actual point across:

Imagine if Hitler were currently alive and rising to power in Germany, and imagine if Silicon Valley were located in Germany. Would you be ok with Silicon Valley de-platforming and doing everything in their power to silence the Nazi-opposition political party? And knowing what's about to come, do you think the stance of "they can build their own communication systems" would be beneficial to humanity as a whole?

I'm aware this is kind of extreme but there are multiple responses that missed the point.

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

#177

Post by SulfurHexaFluri »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #152
SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tech companies make it harder and harder to avoid their lock in platforms. They crush and buy all the competitors and end up with userbases so big that if you do not participate you will be missing out.

I never wish to sign up for facebook but they have crippled the alternative buy and sell sites, obsoleted most forums and are now invading the VR space with their spyware.

At some point we need to stop blaming the user and look at what we can do to curb the size and power of these companies.

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

#178

Post by sneak »

CivBase wrote: post #147

The constitution protects our freedom of speech from the government, not from private entities on their own private property. Make no mistake, that's what centralized social media platforms are - private property. Freedom of speech is not protected by the constitution on social media platforms and, frankly, I don't want 100% free speech on social media. Take a look at HN. HN mods do a brilliant job of moderating. We…

> The constitution protects our freedom of speech from the government, not from private entities on their own private property.

Yet, it's somehow still illegal for the phone company to cancel your phone service because you said something they didn't like while making a call on their telephone network ("private property").

You seem to be conflating constitutional rights violations by the government (1A) with the abhorrent (but legal!) practice of censorship by private organizations.

We've passed all sorts of laws to protect our communications systems and secure access thereto. This "but it's private property!" argument is a red herring.

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

#179

Post by jt2190 »

dang wrote: post #160

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…

Not quite sure how to craft this into a headline, but this is the gist of the article:

> Indie journalist live streams taken down due to “lack of moderation” and “non-authoritative content”

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

#180

Post by mercurialshark »

CivBase wrote: post #147

The constitution protects our freedom of speech from the government, not from private entities on their own private property. Make no mistake, that's what centralized social media platforms are - private property. Freedom of speech is not protected by the constitution on social media platforms and, frankly, I don't want 100% free speech on social media. Take a look at HN. HN mods do a brilliant job of moderating. We…

I would encourage you to read this article from the EFF. They do an excellent job of explaining material concerns regarding private censorship and chokepoints for the freedom of expression:

"Beyond Platforms: Private Censorship, Parler, and the Stack"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/beyond-platforms-priva...

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