The thought police over at Reddit are going to have some issues after this.
U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
301–310 of 1001 posts
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having run a mail server, I don't think it's reasonable to expect most people to contain the deluge of spam and phishing attacks they would get if just told them to "sort it out" themselves.
You misunderstood. Don’t require users to build their bubbles, but have providers offer bubbles for a user to choose from. You could even have external bubble providers that offer different technologies and qualities of filters. Just don’t have one centralised overlord.
> providers offer bubbles for a user to choose from
How is this different from the current internet?
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#303The consequences of this law aren’t very clear, especially in the post Citizens United world where scotus has established that corporations have first amendment rights that are protected by constitution. Now, if a corporation is in some sense required to carry someone’s message due to some law, that gets into (arguably) the realm of forced speech. Don’t get me wrong, I think Citzens United is a horrible ruling, and t…
It's been done before. See: the Fairness Doctrine for TV, or common carrier laws for phones.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would actually like this. Imagine if online discussion was so visibly bad that no one used it anymore. Talk to real people. Go outside.
YouTube comments used to be that bad. People still read them.
Well you kind of need to ever since the dislike count was removed.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I agree, but you’re being pedantic. Most discussions people have not about political topics wouldn’t be viewed as such even if individual decisions, such as your brand example, were politically motivated.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you want the government deciding what is acceptable? Yes. Entire world except the US does. People elect parliaments, who make laws according to their voters' agendas. Then the laws are enforced. What's acceptable and what's not acceptable are decided in the same manner. Like how going out naked in any city in the civilized world constitutes an offense unless you have a mental disorder. You already obey with a zi…
I mean, sure. But there’s a reason this stuff was invented in the US and not elsewhere. I want everyone to think about how increasing the difficulty in moderation will affect all your favorite forums/platforms, including HN. And if you think these laws can be written so they easily apply only to “the big ones”, or that it will stop there, you are being naive. Government will always take a mile if you give them an inc…
> But there’s a reason this stuff was invented in the US and not elsewhere.
And that reason is the immense amounts of liquidity that both the US Federal Reserve and the private banks who are allowed to do fractional reserve lending, pump into the US economy. Thanks to the US dollar not losing value when that happens because it is (or was) used as the exclusive reserve currency due to the Gulf countries exclusively selling their oil for dollars until recently.
When you have THAT much free money, its impossible to not invest and innovate. And now that the reserve currency status of the US is challenged and some of the dollars that were used to buy stuff in the international trade is flowing back to the US and causing inflation, we are seeing how the investment landscape totally changed. With SV firms trying to reach profitability, doing layoffs, Twitter and Facebook being questioned as to the profitability etc.
This is before the fact that there is immense innovation elsewhere but you just are not aware of that since the US media need to sell US stocks. Therefore they drum the US businesses up. All of them talk about Elon Musk or whatever hot investment unicorn is coming up incessantly instead of what anyone in any other tech ecosystem is doing.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
The term “conservative” means nothing if you apply it to a court which has overturned years of legal norm across various areas of law.
The appropriate description for the 5th circuit is “corrupt, incoherent activism”.
All court activism is corruption; their job is not to make law or have political opinions of any sort, they should be slaves to the text of the law, not bending it to their will.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet Reddit, that follows this model, still manages to engage in suppression of on-topic viewpoints that moderators and/or Reddit employees disagree with.
Probably because mods are unpaid and not employees.
The admins, who are paid employees, also engage in similar suppression by banning subreddits they dislike.
Proof? Read about how reddit suppressed dissent during the pandemic.
I'm not going to post any particular link because the topic is too political and every source (left and right) spins things in some way that I dislike.
The facts, without spin, are these: reddit banned and/or quarantined many anti-lockdown subs. Initially, they said they would not, because "Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy", but ultimately, they did.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
By some readings of section 230, they may not be able to unless they want to be treated as a publisher of speech. However, almost nobody is going to actually argue that this is the case. Also, IIRC moderation rules are allowed, and if your rule is "no politics on the forum" and someone talks politics, they can be banned. Same with "no racism" or "no antisemitic comments."
> By some readings of section 230 No, only by a reading of a made up text that some people wish was in section 230. If you're bringing it up I'm sure you've had pointed out before that there is no publisher/platform distinction in it. > Also, IIRC moderation rules are allowed, and if your rule is "no politics on the forum" and someone talks politics, they can be banned. The first person you ban is going to argue with…
It turns out that there actually are several subjects that are pretty well defined to be "politics," and there are lots of subjects of conversation that are definitely not "politics." There is a gray area, and as a forum moderator you can choose where the line is as long as you apply the rule consistently. Most of the discussion about this right now is about the consistent application of those rules: people point out one side getting moderated more heavily on certain forums than the other side.
Re: U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right to regulate online speech
#310Will Truth Social be complying?