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U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#281

Post by anon84873628 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #225
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the difficult thing is that apparently every day mundane activities can be "political" depending on who is doing them and in what context. Even a character in a show or video game suddenly becomes a political statement (to some people) just by being female, or brown, or gay, etc.

I kinda of want to go back in time when politics was sort of on the back burner. Both left and right wing politics is unrecognizable to me. Everything is politicized and taken into conflict where it need not be. Maybe I was in college and didn’t pay attention to this stuff or maybe the world has really gone mad. Start treating people as people and not some political entity embodied in an activist form. Most of my fri…

Some might say that you and your friends' ability to sit on the sidelines is a form of privilege not available to everyone. Along with this idea that in the past, politics was more polite, or less bothersome or whatever.

Maybe for some people, participating in politics has been a matter of life and death - something they don't have the luxury to ignore.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#282

Post by taeric »

solarmist wrote: post #269
taeric wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a silly distinction. At a broad level, all discussion can be seen as political. And it is natural for events to be dominated by actions from a side for a time, such that it would be natural for more criticisms of a political party over others at any time. This gets dangerously into the "whataboutisms" of toxic discourse. Especially when they are not presented in at all an even or good faith manner.

What? No they aren’t. A discussion about my week or grocery shopping isn’t political. You can make any discussion political, but that’s not at all the same.

You'd be surprised. Folks will pick brands for political reasons, too. More, folks will band against brands for said reasons.

I mean, you are correct that there can be neutral discussions. Typically, neutral isn't as neutral as you'd think.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#283

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

mikkergp wrote: post #164
encryptluks2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is often one sided. As soon as you say something that doesn't fall into line, like against the monarchy, then you get censored.

On hacker news the overwhelmingly hardcore libertarian forum? I could see that. I don’t see a lot of progressive discussion here

The political views of HN vary wildly depending on both the subject and the thread.

People tend to notice either their own opinions or the opposite much more though.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#285

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #260
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want smaller, tighter knit, and moderated communites. Why do we care about outcome anyway? The outcome of section 230 was arbitrary moderation, consolidation, and surveillance capitalism. It is unnatural for an entity to not be liable for what they publish.

When Section 230 goes every forum and smaller community becomes the legal wild west, open to being sued by any jackass claiming libel and to drag site owners into a years long legal battle.

No Section 230 means more centralization of discourse, not less.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#286

Post by systemvoltage »

anon84873628 wrote: post #281
systemvoltage wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda of want to go back in time when politics was sort of on the back burner. Both left and right wing politics is unrecognizable to me. Everything is politicized and taken into conflict where it need not be. Maybe I was in college and didn’t pay attention to this stuff or maybe the world has really gone mad. Start treating people as people and not some political entity embodied in an activist form. Most of my fri…

Some might say that you and your friends' ability to sit on the sidelines is a form of privilege not available to everyone. Along with this idea that in the past, politics was more polite, or less bothersome or whatever. Maybe for some people, participating in politics has been a matter of life and death - something they don't have the luxury to ignore.

True, it is the sign of bad times. Deglobalization is going to cause more hurt. I expect a rough ride for next decade or two until we come to our senses.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#287

Post by TobyTheDog123 »

Buttons840 wrote: post #163

Will this apply to bots? What if I have a big list of a complaints about a certain politician (use your imagination, there's more than one politician to complain about), but the "other party" doesn't follow me, in fact, I have very few followers overall. So I create a bot that spreads my opinions by replying to millions of other Tweets. Anyone who mentions the politician of interest will receive a reply from "me" (my…

> Users cannot have their speech limited on these platforms

"Will this also apply to [completely unrelated issue]? Bet they didn't think of that."

What?

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#288

Post by supernovae »

seydor wrote: post #211

It is weird that there is no country that allows such freedoms in the world. There is clearly a gap in regulation and constitutions when it comes to the internet because they could have never imagined it 400 years ago. But this needs to be settled in the positive direction and in an egalitarian way: speech that is legal should be free everywhere. and that's the basis upon which every tech business should be built . T…

Reddit is highly moderated and censored.

You can't even post facts in /r/conservative without being banned.

Reddit also has a Terms of Service and it has banned hate groups under such terms of service. With a large bias towards far right hate groups because there really is no existence of far left hate groups.

So of course moderation seems biased when your views are hateful to begin with.

Advertisers generally want nothing to do with advertising on low quality networks unless those advertisers are targeting people because they profit from their misery.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#289

Post by Buttons840 »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #263
Buttons840 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I know my political opinion is that you should check out my new product, and I'm going to express this political opinion a lot. If necessary I'll include a sentence about a US President. I'm half serious here. I would love to tell people about a new game I have on Steam (let's say), so I code a WebDriver "tool". It searches out gaming related Tweets and then expresses my political opinion. I have to press enter…

The very fact that you made this comment implies that you expect the public to understand what it means. Therefore, so would a jury of your peers. In other words, if you get that this behavior is just a twist on botting, it's safe to assume the courts will too.

If I have to run a thin thread of politics through my product from beginning to end I will. It won't be the first time a product is tied to a political identity, and it's often beneficial to do so.

Heck, I'll even make two similar products and tie each to a different political party, so everyone can buy the product that matches their political view. My products are political statements, and 1% of all profits go to political causes!

I'm not faking, if you give me an incentive to let my political opinion seep into every aspect of my life, I can do it; even without incentive I find it hard to avoid. Being able to spam social media about my product without punishment is a pretty big incentive.

If I genuinely believe that the most important thing people can do to support is buy my product, that is still far - far! - from the most extreme political views out there.

Someone out there is pushing their product as a supposed political view, you drag them into court and find that they actually believe it, and they also genuinely believe the world is flat and the government is run by lizard people. What are you going to do? All their speech about those things is now protected.

Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech

#290

Post by dustedcodes »

calculatte wrote: post #234
Buttons840 wrote: post #163

Will this apply to bots? What if I have a big list of a complaints about a certain politician (use your imagination, there's more than one politician to complain about), but the "other party" doesn't follow me, in fact, I have very few followers overall. So I create a bot that spreads my opinions by replying to millions of other Tweets. Anyone who mentions the politician of interest will receive a reply from "me" (my…

That's basically what Twitter is right now, with the exception that their moderators ban those they don't agree with. So you get millions of sockpuppets saying the same thing. What a great way to manufacture consent.

This was exactly my thought when I read the OP's message.
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