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Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

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

#91

Post by roenxi »

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.

The current situation is technically better than it was 50 years ago. However, there is a big scale that goes from perfect totalitarianism to perfect freedom and it is pretty much always a good idea to be applying pressure in the freedom direction because big institutions (like governments) naturally attract people who want totalitarianism.

And the first amendment is a really good idea. It deserves a spirited defence no matter what the historical situation was. Media companies shouldn't be looking to or pressured governments to decide what is and isn't acceptable on their platform. If the ideal is impossible then the question of how close they can get must be asked.

In this case the answer is "much better than this". YouTube is setting up for more long term harm than good with its policies. Maybe even short term. I don't care if they like it or not, academics are exactly the sort of people who we should be allowing to voice "crazy" and "dangerous" ideas.

This has moved a long way on from when the coordinated takedown of Alex Jones was a controversy. Where is the line here?

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

#92

Post by geofft »

kyrra wrote: post #78
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,…

A possibile solution is changes to section 230. I saw a good approach last year that you can read about here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/washington-can-put-a-... The key bit was a recommendation from the Trump DOJ, which said: > The Justice Department, which last month announced recommended amendments to the statute, has suggested that Congress replace “otherwise objectionable” with “unlawful” and “promot…

Reducing Section 230 protections is a giveaway to Big Tech.

Remember that the thing Section 230 does is not that it permits you to moderate; the thing it does is that it permits you to moderate without taking liability for defamation posted by users (and other similar illegal content, but defamation was the motivating goal). One forum, CompuServe, didn't moderate anything, and wasn't held liable. Another forum, Prodigy, moderated a little bit and was. Lawmakers realized this created a clear incentive not to moderate, which goes backwards from the intended goal of defamation law of preventing defamatory speech. Hence Section 230.

You can still moderate in a world without Section 230, provided that you do so well enough to protect yourself from liability, and you have the resources to fight any cases that arise against you. Who has the ability to do that? Big Tech.

Platforms like Facebook will be able to cope with a weakened Section 230 just fine, while still moderating. They'll end up moderating much more aggressively, in fact, instead of deciding to host unmoderated content - because their paying customers are advertisers, not users, and advertisers don't want to pay to put ads on unmoderated forums. (Compare Facebook's advertising revenue with 4chan's.)

But it's the smaller platforms, like this very site, blogs with comment sections, hobbyist-run Mastodons, etc. that will have trouble. They, also, won't decide to post all content without moderation; even in the world as it already is, so many blogs decided to stop having comment sections because they become swamps full of spam. YC runs HN because it reflects well on them; if they were unable to moderate, it wouldn't be worth their time.

So a founder thinking of taking on Big Tech and making their own, better communication forum will realize that their options are to make an entirely unmoderated forum, something that people demonstrably won't prefer to the options they already have, or to spend a huge amount of time and money on moderating their forums as well as Big Tech does. And their potential investors will realize this too. And those companies just won't get started.

(You might say, if this is all true, why was Big Tech so opposed to the Trump DOJ's proposals to reform Section 230? They weren't, they loved those proposals. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/544707-facebooks-zucke... Remember that Big Tech is the enemy, and they control what you hear.)

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

#93

Post by II2II »

mnouquet wrote: post #57
kingsuper20 wrote: post #37

The amount of gray posts in censorship threads always cracks me up. Please go on.

Actually, it helps me figure out posts I should upvote.

My thoughts on grey posts: these are messages that need further examination.

If the author is making their point in a civil way, then we should be up-voting it. Whether we agree or disagree with their point should not matter since the aim is to maintain civil discourse rather than to create an echo chamber.

If the author is taking away from civil discourse we should be down-voting grey posts. Whether we agree or disagree with their perspective should not play a role since it is far more important to create an environment where everyone is comfortable with expressing themselves.

We will only be able to maintain the freedom of speech if civility is at the core of our discourse. Once civility is dropped, we run the risk of speech being used as a tool to suppress speech.

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

#94

Post by mistermann »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #59
throwawaysea wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disprov…

> we can’t prove or disprove these links Then the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim that these links exist. Until then, they functionally don’t exist from an outside perspective.

A burden of proof exists for anyone who makes an assertion.

In reality, they do exist or they do not, but obtaining accurate knowledge of the situation is another matter.

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

#95

Post by mnouquet »

II2II wrote: post #93
mnouquet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it helps me figure out posts I should upvote.

My thoughts on grey posts: these are messages that need further examination. If the author is making their point in a civil way, then we should be up-voting it. Whether we agree or disagree with their point should not matter since the aim is to maintain civil discourse rather than to create an echo chamber. If the author is taking away from civil discourse we should be down-voting grey posts. Whether we agree or disa…

Civil discourse is long dead, and with an enemy knowing no boundary, it is only fair to respond with no boundary. Morality/ethics/rules of war will only get you dead.

Creating a new HN account is cheap, this is my fourth or fifth one.

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

#96

Post by GekkePrutser »

ww2buff wrote: post #51

A corporation deciding not to run ads on videos of a crank promoting snake oil is not a First Amendment issue. It is barely even a censorship issue in the broadest sense of the term. Very sad to see Taibbi reduced to this kind of totally empty hysteria.

Yeah I was a bit surprised when I read the article and what they're complaining about is being demonetised. Not blocked.

I don't think this constitutes censorship. They can still publish what they want. They just don't get paid for it this way. If what they have to say it's that important, does it really matter? If they're indeed scientists, don't they have a day job doing science?

I'm all for free speech but getting paid for it is another issue altogether IMO. Still an ethical topic worth debating, but not a free speech issue.

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

#97

Post by mistermann »

uniqueid wrote: post #60
api wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I picture a future with hordes of millions of gullible fools who can be commanded like armies by social media demagogues. I watched a stream of a London anti-lockdown protest the other day, and that's more or less what occurred to me. https://youtu.be/hy7bmdDGKZ8 The stream is six hours long, but it's packed with moments such as: 35m — Crowd listens to some conspiracy theorist blame all the world's ills on 'Kabalah'…

What illustrated the "can be commanded like armies" idea?

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

#98

Post by dang »

mnouquet wrote: post #95
II2II wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts on grey posts: these are messages that need further examination. If the author is making their point in a civil way, then we should be up-voting it. Whether we agree or disagree with their point should not matter since the aim is to maintain civil discourse rather than to create an echo chamber. If the author is taking away from civil discourse we should be down-voting grey posts. Whether we agree or disa…

Civil discourse is long dead, and with an enemy knowing no boundary, it is only fair to respond with no boundary. Morality/ethics/rules of war will only get you dead. Creating a new HN account is cheap, this is my fourth or fifth one.

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it a ton lately. It's not what this site is for. As you know, we ban accounts that do it.

Of course, it's cheap to create a new account, because we want HN to be open to newcomers. But why abuse that, when you could contribute to not destroying the ecosystem instead? I'm sure you wouldn't drop lit matches in a dry forest, or litter in a city park, or dump motor oil in a mountain lake. Please stop being that sort of person here.

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

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

#99

Post by kyrra »

geofft wrote: post #92
kyrra wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A possibile solution is changes to section 230. I saw a good approach last year that you can read about here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/washington-can-put-a-... The key bit was a recommendation from the Trump DOJ, which said: > The Justice Department, which last month announced recommended amendments to the statute, has suggested that Congress replace “otherwise objectionable” with “unlawful” and “promot…

Reducing Section 230 protections is a giveaway to Big Tech. Remember that the thing Section 230 does is not that it permits you to moderate; the thing it does is that it permits you to moderate without taking liability for defamation posted by users (and other similar illegal content, but defamation was the motivating goal). One forum, CompuServe, didn't moderate anything, and wasn't held liable. Another forum, Prodi…

I agree that without Section 230 a company is effectively a publisher and takes responsibility for all content on the sites they host. I feel like that section should somehow be tailored to promote the First Amendment to let people say what they can that is legal. If you want protection from liability, you should allow people to post what they want as long as it's not illegal and then remove illegal content in a Good Samaritan or good faith effort.

Then users of the big sites will know if they are under the section 230 bucket or not. Right now, it's very easy to just say that you're doing it under section 230 because of the Catch all wording.

Doing this would allow people that did have their content moderated and the company said they were operating under section 230 to contest things that were removed if it is not illegal.

This likely does open up the internet to a big troll fest, and it makes how algorithms rank things very interesting

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

#100

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

akomtu wrote: post #71
zugi wrote: post #9

It absolutely can be, and it's absolutely something to watch out for, but I'm not sure that it is government censorship in this case. YouTube is choosing who to ask ostensibly due to their expertise, not because of government threats or enforcement. That said, a few years ago one of things that kicked off the change from being relatively hands-off to more active content censorship by all of these platforms was being…

All those twitter-like companies have surprisingly uniform list of banned topics and list of topics that get promoted to the front page. If censorship wasn't a thing, there would be a variety of opinion, i.e. things you could say on Twitter but not on Facebook and vice versa.

The conclusion doesn't follow from the facts you state. There's a surprisingly large number of people who like Coldplay and short-sleeve dress shirts, and no government mandate was needed to get to that state of affairs, nor has any government succeeded in curbing these atrocities.
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