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The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

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Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#261

Post by prepend »

ridaj wrote: post #6
prepend wrote: post #2

I wish they would address real problems like arbitrary enforcement of TOS that damages users with no recourse. There’s no regulation for what happens when Google or Facebook or whatever deletes or blocks an account and provides no support. Child abuse is serious, but not that common and this law will do little to change that. The lack of a UCC-style law for big tech platforms affects way more people. This seems like…

> There’s no regulation for what happens when Google or Facebook or whatever deletes or blocks an account and provides no support. Yes there is, per the trade regulations you're entitled to a refund . Wait I'm only partly sarcastic. If you think you're entitled to anything provided as a free service then the problem starts there. Do I miss the days when ISPs provided email as part of your subscription? Then made you…

I pay for their services with money every month and year. Their customer service sucks. I’m worried about getting hosed by them one day.

There are numerous stories of paying customers losing their account and getting no help.

I didn’t downvote you, but your response seems disengenuous. Even if the service was free, people depend on them substantially and losing that access disrupts businesses and lives.

Google is a monopoly for search. Losing the ability to buy ads or broadcast on YouTube without any due process is a big deal and needs regulation. I’m not a fan of regulation and thinks there are many inefficiencies. But Google has had 20 years without regulation and obviously won’t change because it’s profitable the way they have it now.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#262

Post by kmeisthax »

csomar wrote: post #140
mrandish wrote: post #10

While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. The pretext is, of course, "protect the children" and more generally law-and-order with a bonus side-helping of "stop those awful social media giants." While these justifications are (hopefully) obvious misdirection t…

> the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. I think, what most people are missing, is that Democratic (the free world) governments have lost control of the narrative. It's not that there wasn't corruption before, but people trusted the government more back in the day. Before the immersion of social media, information moved slowly. There w…

The Internet wasn't the first time we had free speech in both senses of the word, though. Before the era of broadcast television, the FCC running a de-facto censorship regime, and the Five Filters; everyone read newspapers to get their news. This prior era of media was a lot more like the Internet than I think a lot of people would care to admit. We had clickbait, they had yellow journalism; we had Trump, they had the Know-Nothings; etc.

One other constant shared between the pre- and post-broadcast eras of media was an extremely high level of distrust towards politicians. Why? Well, the handful of companies that owned TV broadcast licenses weren't about to start biting the hand that fed them. Also, the FCC outright banned them from pushing overtly political narratives. This ultimately acted to reduce the total amount of information voters knew about their candidates.

Let's say that you happen to have brainworms. And your local Senator promised on TV that every brainworm had a right to live in a person's head. You, obviously, vote for him. However, Congress then passes the Comprehensive Brainworm Mitigation Act of 1973. But you remember that your Senator fought for you and your brainworms, because that's all you saw of him on TV. In fact, he goes to the press and swears how he fought to tone down the brainworm bill, or included an amendment for brainworm sanctuaries.

Today? Well, the moment that the Worm Free Children Act of 2023 passes, you're already getting pings on Facebook and Twitter about how your Senator betrayed you. You hear rumors about how he secretly agreed to pass the bill months ago. Someone's already spamming you with memes about how he sleeps with earplugs in his ears, constantly in fear that a brainworm might slither into his ear canal. You're talking in realtime with millions of other brainworm hosts, all of whom are angry and planning protests against your brainworm-hating Senator.

Of course, all of that could be a complete and total fabrication. It does not matter. Defamation is dual to censorship, after all.

This actually isn't a new condition, but regression to the mean. American politics in the 1800s was chock full of people with brainworms trading wild accusations around in similar fashions. The main difference between then and now was just the speed at which news travelled, but the effects were the same.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#263

Post by j16sdiz »

zdragnar wrote: post #253
guy98238710 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want the police to have all the power they can get because, as far as they're concerned, they're the good guys, and giving the good guys more power helps them win against the bad guys. But we all know that giving excessive power to good guys turns them rather reliably into bad guys.

> But we all know Excepting the approval of end to end encryption and residential zoning, pretty much every problem thread on HN is littered with comments about how we need more regulation and laws to solve X or Y or Z. Wanting the "good guys" to have more power is pretty much the default response on here nowadays. I remember earlier- including before I had signed up for an account- when HN was much more libertarian,…

disclaimer: I am not American, and know nothing about American politics.

I think all these start around Trump's administration. Trump start calling some media/social media as fake news, and some media/social media start censoring his supporter.

After seeing the worse effects of misleading information, many free-speech-supporter back off alot.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#265

Post by j16sdiz »

r2_pilot wrote: post #256
callalex wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you writing years as if they are C octals? Standards in communication are important.

He's representing the year numeral as YYYYY to avoid a Year 9999 problem and make it into a Year 99999 problem instead. (see The Long Now and other long-term thinking projects)

Wikipedia say Roman empire falls at 395AD, not 0395AD. Text comments are not COBOL, we don't need zero-padding in daily communication.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#266

Post by dotnet00 »

emmelaich wrote: post #191
t-3 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't really think that some politicians are knowingly and deliberating proposing an existential threat to "free society and democracy." Why not? Many people oppose free society, and democracy has never been popular among elites.

OK I should have changed 'some politicians' to 'most of those politicians proposing this law'

If you mean to say that the ones who aren't knowingly doing this to weaken democracy are simply useful idiots, yeah, you're right.

Most of them probably aren't malicious, they're likely just entirely ignorant and easily manipulated, making them just as bad as the malicious ones, given their job is supposed to be to make informed decisions for the benefit of their constituents.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#267

Post by wutbrodo »

kragen wrote: post #216
guy98238710 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want the police to have all the power they can get because, as far as they're concerned, they're the good guys, and giving the good guys more power helps them win against the bad guys. But we all know that giving excessive power to good guys turns them rather reliably into bad guys.

Everybody thinks they're incorruptible, and they often extend that to institutions they identify with. Very, very few people have ever honestly grappled with their shadow side. Even if you do, you may still prefer your own shadow side to that of whoever your opponents are.

> Everybody thinks they're incorruptible

It chafes me a little to see this so often phrased as something "everybody" thinks. There are enough people who feel otherwise in my social circles that it's pretty easy for me to consider this as a shockingly dumb assumption for a person to hold.

Though I do acknowledge that you're probably close to right from a purely numerical perspective.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#268

Post by chris_va »

takeda wrote: post #225
NewMountain wrote: post #92

For those living in California: https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me A copy of my note if you would like a template: ``` Dear Senator Feinstein, I am deeply disappointed with your support of the EARN IT act and am expressing my deep concern and disapproval of such a bill. Congruent with the recent report released by Stanford, I am expressing my deep disappointment in your sponsorship of the EAR…

So far for this type of laws she always have a canned response essentially saying "I know better than you". Anyway I emailed her, and encourage everyone do so. Not doing anything, by assuming it is pointless is a self fulfilling prophecy. I wish somebody younger would replace her :(

Having peeked behind the political shroud on occasion (and still by no means an expert), I think people overestimate the complexity of the US political system.

Most politicians are not imposing some personal beliefs, they are just representing whichever voice their staffers/office hears most often. And, even for a senator, there aren't that many people who actually call to talk to a staffer.

The ones that do usually have a strong interest, so the staffers generally hear a skewed version of reality (and while these folks are often bright, deep domain experts they generally are not).

Sooo... Calling/writing does quite a bit more than you might think, if you can get even a reasonable number of people to do it who the staffers believe actually have expertise and are within the district/state.

The staffers will probably give a mostly generic response, but these are all tallied up internally and definitely drive policy.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#269

Post by throwaway058527 »

mrandish wrote: post #10

While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, the critiques I've read don't get much into the real "why" behind this legislation continuing to be pushed so forcefully. The pretext is, of course, "protect the children" and more generally law-and-order with a bonus side-helping of "stop those awful social media giants." While these justifications are (hopefully) obvious misdirection t…

Isnt it true that the "society" has dug its own grave ?

Where were the freedom of speech defenders (aclu et al) when the progressives and policians in that spectrum celebrated shutting down opinion by effectively monopolies of information (twitter, FB, google, cc infra)

Why is there no common ground? When speech is shut down, no matter the side its on, the net winner is the state.

Frankly there is no room for bipartisan support of anti security state.... Until and unless there is recognition of section 230 enabled abuses that are still ongoing.

Obviouly 230 should not apply uniformly to every single website, but thats the kind of nuance that is missing from the current debate.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#270

Post by smaudet »

zdragnar wrote: post #253
guy98238710 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want the police to have all the power they can get because, as far as they're concerned, they're the good guys, and giving the good guys more power helps them win against the bad guys. But we all know that giving excessive power to good guys turns them rather reliably into bad guys.

> But we all know Excepting the approval of end to end encryption and residential zoning, pretty much every problem thread on HN is littered with comments about how we need more regulation and laws to solve X or Y or Z. Wanting the "good guys" to have more power is pretty much the default response on here nowadays. I remember earlier- including before I had signed up for an account- when HN was much more libertarian,…

The flip side to being a libertarian is that you still support legislation to e.g. breakup monopolies and protect 'basic' rights, as needed. A sibling comment mentions Trump - he went so far in the opposite direction there is a considerable backlash to seeing what a truly regulated and unprotected environment looks like...

Trump it can be argued went so far to break basic things like US mail, and encourage corporate monopoly, the course correction in the other direction is not only reasonable but expected...turns out divisive (fascist) wannabe dictators are not a good recipe for freedom either...

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