Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship? • Hacker News Board

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#21

Post by throwawaysea » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

Another example of state censorship via private monopolies was AOC calling for the Apple and Google app stores to ban Parler following the Jan 6 capitol riot. If a sitting member of the government pressures private organizations to censor others, it should be considered a violation of the first amendment. Leaving aside the technicalities of law, it is unethical and immoral even otherwise and completely in conflict with American and classically liberal values.

Glenn Greenwald wrote a great article about this titled “How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler” https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-sho...

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#22

Post by akomtu » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

Guidelines here is an euphemism for orders. The pro-censorship faction in the gov isn't strong enough yet to openly censor media, but it's strong enough to coerce Twitter and the like with the passive-aggressive "guidelines".

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#23

Post by chroem- » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #16

falcolas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporation-persons. Is there a more dystopian concept in existence? Corporations are NOT PEOPLE. They're made up of people, but the entity itself is NOT A PERSON.

Please don't repeat ideological boilerplate on HN and please don't use allcaps for empahsis - this is also in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

Is it boilerplate? It seems very relevant to the discussion, given that it's addressing a specific point in the parent comment.

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#24

Post by 99_00 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

People shake their heads and wonder how the Catholic church could have been so backwards, dogmatic, and ignorant as to jail Copernicus. Yet, here we are.

"At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins."

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...

Censoring commentary on scientific data because it doesn't fit with the a political narrative is anti-science.

The rationale that well intentioned speech should be censored because may be used by people to spread misinformation in a way the speaker never intended is a horrible standard to uphold.

When scientists openly and freely admit to self censorship for political reasons, it erodes the credibility of scientists.

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#25

Post by throwawaysea » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #20

leereeves wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube is choosing who to ask ostensibly due to their expertise, not because of government threats or enforcement. It sounds like you've accepted the article's claim that YouTube is consulting government employees. If that's the case, aren't any gov employees who collaborate with YouTube here engaging in censorship? Imagine an analogous situation: a PI goes to the police and offers to break into a suspect's home a…

That comes down to nearly-unprovable hairsplitting. If government employees are demanding action, backed by force of law, then Yes. But if YT is merely free to follow or reject advice as it chooses, then No. I can hear advice all day long from experts, but whether I choose to follow or ignore, the consequence is on me.

That’s not really a fair representation of reality. YT and others aren’t really “free to follow”. There are implications for their choice. For example they may face less anti trust scrutiny from the progressive left if they continue to perform censorship that aligns to that political ideology. They may face less scrutiny when it comes to taxes or privacy laws as well. It is precisely because we can’t prove or disprove these links that there should be no situation where state employees ask for censorship (either hard bans or actions like algorithmic changes), period.

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#26

Post by salawat » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:58 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #10

leereeves wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article suggests that government employees may be consulting with YouTube in these censorship decisions. And that consultation would seem to be prohibited by the first amendment, just as police aren't allowed to consult with PIs to violate people's rights, even if the PIs volunteer to do so. (In other words, it's the gov employees, not YouTube, who would be violating people's rights by doing this.)

Is YouTube doing that voluntarily, or is that consultation required by law?

It doesn't really matter given the quid pro quo that could be facilitated through such engagement.

There are more ways of implementing incentive structures and control mechanisms than you can possibly imagine, which is exactly why people are right to be concerned.

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#27

Post by ndndksksl » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #13

Covzire wrote: post #11

Facebook's censoring of #Revolution via their claims of moral superiority should frighten the shit out of every free person on earth. While we still have it reasonably good in America, their willingness to suppress speech in good times doesn't bode well for people who will be oppressed during bad times. The first amendment made it clear that not even the government had the authority to use their vast moral authority,…

Media owners have always used their ownership to push their own version of reality. I guess the difference now is that we have allowed so much concentration of media ownership in so few hands. Antitrust is pretty much dead from what I can tell. Or is this just the current story? Maybe media has always been as concentrated as it is now, we just didn’t notice.

Public social media is really fundamentally different from traditional media because it functions as the public square in a way that traditional media never did.

As such, it needs to be evaluated and regulated as the novel thing that it is. It's not a newspaper and it's not a telephone company, and it's time to stop trying to apply old regulatory arguments and mindsets to the new situation.

So far, attempts to regulate social media show barely an understanding of the problem at hand, but I hope we can recognize that there needs to be defined a novel regulatory framework to prevent tragedy of the commons or heavy handed ideological censorship on public social media networks

In the meantime, the value of privately owned and operated, and invite-only social networks (like setting up your own Mattermost or IRC servers) will continue to go up in relation to public networks, because only in tight knit private communities can anyone actually speak their mind.

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#28

Post by fighterpilot » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

plerpin wrote: post #14

The thing that really bothers me about Weinstein's approach is that, while he and his wife are scientists, they're exceedingly quick to assert their hunches as scientific fact. They wear their scientist labels on their sleeves but their thinking is far more ideological. In a recent podcast about fluoridation in tap water, they were talking about how they avoid iodized salt, because iodine is a reactive chemical and y…

Isn't iodine deficiency a common thing?

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#29

Post by api » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

99_00 wrote: post #24

People shake their heads and wonder how the Catholic church could have been so backwards, dogmatic, and ignorant as to jail Copernicus. Yet, here we are. "At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins." https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c... Censoring commentary on scientif…

[flagged]

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#30

Post by klyrs » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #19

klyrs wrote: post #2

Is there a law? Or are the platforms in question voluntarily using guidelines as guidance? Are platforms punished in the courts for failing to follow guidelines or implement moderation? As far as I know, the answers to the above are a resounding "no," and it follows that this isn't state censorship. It's the freedom of association, and freedom of speech, exercised by corporation-persons.

Corporations don't have freedom of speech and it is misleading to suggest that they do. In fact, there is an enormous amount of legal precedent for mandated corporate speech. If you don't believe me, look at your nearest "nutrition facts" label.

That precedent is, in fact, quite pertinent. Contrast with various platforms' labeling of misinformation, a law mandating such labeling would be wholly consistent.

But we don't even have that. First, the government would need to establish that the people are harmed by the lack of labeling.