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

reuters.com

651–660 of 1001 posts

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

#651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Reamde, Neal Stephenson posits a future where we pay individuals/services to filter and prioritize the unordered deluge of data from the web. It seems like this ruling pushes us along that path.

Welcome to microdata refinement

Can’t wait for my melon bar and the music dance experience.

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

#652
post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A possible solution to this is to allow any user to be a moderator, and to allow other users who want moderation to subscribe to one or moderation "feeds" from other users. If one wants to wade through the degenerate cesspool of content, they'd have that option. If one wants to only see fluffy non-hateful things, they could subscribe to moderation feeds that achieve that. The notion that we can impose a single perspe…

This solution would run into the same problem. X moderator doesn't give preferential enough treatment to conservatives, and therefore must be stopped

On the contrary, moderation feeds would almost certainly be completely protected by free speech laws, as they would essentially be the expressed opinions of individual people.

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

#653
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So can I hire someone from a low cost-of-living jurisdiction and get them to behave like a bot for me?

It's already being done by reputation management firms. As someone who worked as a resource liaison manager at one, it is not uncommon to see the majority of our social media operators are from diverse cost-of-living locations such as Nepal, rural Pakistan, and parts of Africa.

"diverse cost-of-living locations" is such a corporate way to call it

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

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't run a spam filter on the Twitter app on my phone That's nothing fundamentally preventing this. It's Twitter themselves who've decided not to allow you to do this. Were their app more open to extension you would be able to download and configure a spam filter of your choosing.

Are they allowed to provide a default filter?

They can provide a first-party/recommended filter, but like with default browsers, search engines, or other preferences, the app should present the user with the choice in clear terms rather than silently applying the default. Defaults are powerful, so having the app apply its default first-party filter and hide away the option to change it in some menu would be approximately equivalent to changing nothing but forcing Twitter to act as a datastore/api for competing microblogging platforms.

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

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This opinion is badly reasoned so it's not even worth debating" strikes me as a very poor way of engaging in dialectic. I mean, maybe it is poorly written and poorly reasoned, but best to demonstrate that to us, otherwise we're just kind of taking your word for it...

"This opinion is badly reasoned so it's not even worth debating" strikes me as a very poor way of engaging in dialectic. It's not a way of engaging in dialectic/dialogue. It's saying it's so bad you won't engage in dialogue. That's a legitimate position in some circumstances. That this is a court decision, however, might mean that in these circumstance one does need to directly challenge despite it's qualities.

> That's a legitimate position in some circumstances.

If someone doesn't want to discuss a topic, all they have to do is not discuss the topic.

Expressing such a position isn't a legitimate contribution to public discourse; it's a tactic that inhibits the process of building mutual understanding through discourse.

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

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let each user block what they don’t want to see. With filters, ai, etc. Don’t have a centralized “overlord” decide what an individual is allowed to see. That should be obvious and not controversial.

"Hey Twitter, please block this crap" is users trying to block what they don't want to see. Blocking unpopular content doesn't become a political act just because one side produces more of it than the other.

It does when the block is for everyone, not just the people who asked to not see it.

Giving people option to filter out what they don't want to see is fine; but the moment when (aside from reporting illegal stuff) you block content for user B because user A asked, it quickly becomes picking a side and censoring the other side.

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

#657

Good. This is especially welcome news in the context of the unprecedented attack on kiwi farms. As I said in a different thread, we have laws preventing businesses from discriminating. We do not allow shops to put up “no blacks here” signs. Why do we allow infrastructure providers from doing essentially the same thing? Censorship, of any kind from anyone, government or corporation is an abomination that must be stamp…

This wouldn’t be my first choice of examples. Unmoderated swatting forums (as I understand that it was) goes beyond free speech. The first amendment does not protect death threats.

Swatting is illegal. If Kiwi Farms or its members are implicated in illegal activities then it should be handled through the legal system where due process is respected.

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

#658
post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And suddenly you no longer live in a country that has a meaningful First Amendment. The overarching issue is that I don't see what the first amendment has to do with this at all. Corporations have zero obligations to anyone under the first amendment, which only applies to the government.

The intent of the first amendment was to preserve free speech in the public square; "what the first amendment has to do with this at all" is a desire to preserve that underlying societal principle. Section 230 was a give-away to corporations that allowed them to privatize and co-opt the public square; they reap the economic benefit of being shielded from liability for what people post, but none of the responsibility…

> Wyden, now a Senator, stated that he intended for Section 230 to be both "a sword and a shield" for Internet companies, the "sword" allowing them to remove content they deem inappropriate for their service, and the shield to help keep offensive content from their sites without liability. However, Wyden warned that because tech companies have not been willing to use the sword to remove content, they could be at risk of losing the shield.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#Platform_neutralit...

Given that hate speech (the context of that quote) is very often political and/or protected free speech, I don't think one of the two authors of the bill agrees with how you're interpreting it.

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

#659
post #634

Long overdue. Just let people say what the want, by censoring them, you are validating their perspective.

Aight. You now have to repeat every thing i say to your loved ones, as if you were the one saying it.

Your post is a great example of analogies not being HN users strong point.

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

#660
Texas is setting itself up to be a huge regulatory counterweight to California.

1. We had the finance ruling related to fossil fuels.

2. We had the abortion ruling.

3. We now have this.

This is going to be a huge shift politically. California, given the size of its economy, has often been a defacto regulatory power across the US. Given California's energy issues and high debt levels, their influence may wane even further.

What I find even more fascinating is that Texas has a heavy libertarian bent coupled with cultural conservatism while California is the opposite. Neither, in my opinion, are bastions for freedom proper.

May you live in interesting times they say...

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