Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#51

Post by uniqueuid » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #43

klyrs wrote: post #22

My biggest technical issue with this "common carrier" movement is spam. The author mentions it, but seems to suggest that users can simply block or ignore spammers. As somebody who witnessed the commercialization of the internet, I find this extremely naive. We generally think of email as a "common carrier," but even there, spam is blocked. Blocking spam is censorship. Failure to automatically detect 1% of spam will…

I think this is a common failing for legal analysis of tech problems. Some years ago Lessig made the argument that radio bandwidth should be unregulated and belong to all, instead of licensed to cellphone carriers. The technical basis for the argument was that's how Ethernet hubs work, and they work great. Of course, nobody uses a hub today.

Could you explain what the common failing is?

To underestimate how technical changes affect real-life usage?

I often see the opposite fallacy: That tech people assume technically optimal solutions to be socially and legally optimal, which they often are not. To transfer this to your example: Perhaps the social and economic landscape of society would be better off if the spectrum belonged to us all. Maybe we would have developed legal and social norms to handle the hub nature?

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#52

Post by slownews45 » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

Majromax wrote: post #44

To me, the question is how a common carrier status can coexist with content curation and promotion. Looking at the ur-example of the phone company, AT&T doesn't try to preemptively place calls that a household "might be interested in based on analytics." The modern social media landscape, however, is dominated by "the algorithm." Youtube lives on its recommendations; Twitter wants you to keep refreshing its feed; eve…

I think you will be surprised at how DISENGAGED folks are vis a vis a phone call on their AT&T line.

Why? Because a damn ton of them are spam / scams. So yes, ATT doesn't filter calls, and users have learned not to answer them.

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#53

Post by slownews45 » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:28 PM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #35

Server6 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing, you don't NEED social media. It's not a utility. Your quality of life won't diminish if you don't have access to it. I suggest deleting it and not using it for a few months and see how you feel. I 100% guarantee your mental health will improve.

I understand where you're coming from, and I probably would agree that mental health would improve. But the reality is that the majority of political discourse today happens online on these digital platforms. It is only going to get more digital as Gen-Z comes of age. So while my immediate short-term mental health might improve, I also feel that not being present on social media means that I would be participating le…

The contribution of social media to our "democratic process" is to poison it.

Too many twitter warriors banging away on keyboards.

You AND SOCIETY will benefit if you check out of it and just meet your neighbors.

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#54

Post by amadeuspagel » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

labcomputer wrote: post #47

amadeuspagel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone companies are regulated as common carriers, but there's an exception allowing them "to block by default illegal or unwanted calls based on reasonable call analytics before the calls reach consumers."[1] [1]: https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/stop-unwanted-robocalls...

But that puts us back where we started: FB, et. al., will argue that they are blocking unwanted messages based on reasonable analytics. So we will continue to see exactly the same type of feed curation as today. The only difference (maybe) is that a platform (probably) can't just wholesale ban a particular person... but I bet that even the phone company is allowed to ban a person is deemed to be sufficiently abusive…

If you really believe that applying common carrier laws to social media companies, with the same exception for spam that phone companies have, wouldn't make a difference, you have no reason to oppose that, right?

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#55

Post by temp8964 » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

Majromax wrote: post #44

To me, the question is how a common carrier status can coexist with content curation and promotion. Looking at the ur-example of the phone company, AT&T doesn't try to preemptively place calls that a household "might be interested in based on analytics." The modern social media landscape, however, is dominated by "the algorithm." Youtube lives on its recommendations; Twitter wants you to keep refreshing its feed; eve…

If Twitter hides Trump from everyone doesn't follow him, but shows all his messages to everyone follows him. What is the problem then?

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#56

Post by tedunangst » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

uniqueuid wrote: post #51

tedunangst wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a common failing for legal analysis of tech problems. Some years ago Lessig made the argument that radio bandwidth should be unregulated and belong to all, instead of licensed to cellphone carriers. The technical basis for the argument was that's how Ethernet hubs work, and they work great. Of course, nobody uses a hub today.

Could you explain what the common failing is? To underestimate how technical changes affect real-life usage? I often see the opposite fallacy: That tech people assume technically optimal solutions to be socially and legally optimal, which they often are not. To transfer this to your example: Perhaps the social and economic landscape of society would be better off if the spectrum belonged to us all. Maybe we would hav…

Assuming some existing technical solution is optimal. Hubs existed for a time because they were cheap, not because they were good. Or assuming that some solution to an unsolved problem will be pulled out of the magical innovation hat. We'll just devise more efficient time sharing algorithms.

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#57

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

Anon1096 wrote: post #50

klyrs wrote: post #22

My biggest technical issue with this "common carrier" movement is spam. The author mentions it, but seems to suggest that users can simply block or ignore spammers. As somebody who witnessed the commercialization of the internet, I find this extremely naive. We generally think of email as a "common carrier," but even there, spam is blocked. Blocking spam is censorship. Failure to automatically detect 1% of spam will…

Couldn't a social media site implement support for custom blocklists or moderators, and have users opt into them? Facebook can have their own Official TM Facebook Moderation Blocklist, which users can subscribe to and filter out all spam and hate according to Facebook's algorithm. Or users can choose not to and subscribe to someone else's or no blocklist at all. Therefore, there wouldn't be any issue with common carr…

[deleted]

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#58

Post by naasking » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #22

My biggest technical issue with this "common carrier" movement is spam. The author mentions it, but seems to suggest that users can simply block or ignore spammers. As somebody who witnessed the commercialization of the internet, I find this extremely naive. We generally think of email as a "common carrier," but even there, spam is blocked. Blocking spam is censorship. Failure to automatically detect 1% of spam will…

> We generally think of email as a "common carrier," but even there, spam is blocked. Blocking spam is censorship. Failure to automatically detect 1% of spam will still overwhelm non-spam content.

These aren't quite the same. The paper recommends common carrier protections only for publishing that people explicitly seek out or to whom they subscribe. If you're subscribed to spam, the solution is obvious and technically trivial (unsubscribe).

The spam problem for email is not trivial because email is, by design, a public addressing system which permits unsolicited messaging.

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#59

Post by cameldrv » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #22

My biggest technical issue with this "common carrier" movement is spam. The author mentions it, but seems to suggest that users can simply block or ignore spammers. As somebody who witnessed the commercialization of the internet, I find this extremely naive. We generally think of email as a "common carrier," but even there, spam is blocked. Blocking spam is censorship. Failure to automatically detect 1% of spam will…

In a decentralized system, users could have various "vouches" for the authenticity of their messages.

A trusted user could vouch for a new user, and/or the user could go through various types of third party verification, such as phone number, ID verification, or other verification, and then the third party could vouch for them on that basis.

You could even have monetary vouches, where a third party vouched that the user paid a certain amount of money, solved a captcha, or solved some computational problem.

The user could be in control of what measures would be required to reach their screen. As it stands, social media essentially incorporates a combination of trusted user vouching (you can see who is a friend of a friend), and monetary vouching (advertising).

Re: Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers? [pdf]

#60

Post by naasking » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

labcomputer wrote: post #47

amadeuspagel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone companies are regulated as common carriers, but there's an exception allowing them "to block by default illegal or unwanted calls based on reasonable call analytics before the calls reach consumers."[1] [1]: https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/stop-unwanted-robocalls...

But that puts us back where we started: FB, et. al., will argue that they are blocking unwanted messages based on reasonable analytics. So we will continue to see exactly the same type of feed curation as today. The only difference (maybe) is that a platform (probably) can't just wholesale ban a particular person... but I bet that even the phone company is allowed to ban a person is deemed to be sufficiently abusive…

> There isn't some magic set of laws and regulations you can create to force the silent majority to listen to you when they think you're dumb and annoying.

You're not applying the rule correctly. Twitter and FB are preventing, say Trump, from posting at all, even to those who want to receive his messages, so they aren't just blocking his messages to recipients who don't want to receive them. That goes beyond simply "blocking unwanted messages".