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The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

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Re: The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

#71

Post by freejazz »

eli wrote: post #63
freejazz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't difficulty there. Lawyers aren't having problems navigating this language. Obtuse techies who obsess over edge-cases definitions are having difficulty. No one reasonable would describe the SPAM filtering as a recommendation algorithm and to suggest otherwise is either outright ignorant or just facially disingenuous. The law doesn't care what can be argued to be a promotion algorithm based upon some HN-pos…

Navigating what language? The law today I agree is pretty clear. This is speculation on a ruling that doesn't yet exist that could change all that. Your suggestion is that there would be a carve out for spam filtering? Or that Google deciding what goes in "Promotions" and what goes in "Priority Inbox" isn't a recommendation?

The language in 230...

My suggestion is that your hypothetical is useless and inapplicable because it is at best, reflective of your own personal misunderstanding, or at worst, outright disingenuous.

Re: The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

#72

Post by mistermann »

ladyattis wrote: post #10
causi wrote: post #9

Whether Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act immunizes interactive computer services when they make targeted recommendations of information provided by another information content provider Should it? This feels a lot like a "have your cake and eat it too" situation. Either you're a neutral party or you are not. Being a trillion-dollar company doesn't exempt you from that. Letting a computer make the de…

The thing is that the law as written allows them to do just that. If they don't like your content on YouTube, they can punt it instantly. And it can be for ANY REASON. And that's not even including their first amendment right to refuse distributing or listing your content.

> The thing is that the law as written allows them to do just that. If they don't like your content on YouTube, they can punt it instantly. And it can be for ANY REASON. And that's not even including their first amendment right to refuse distributing or listing your content.

You're not wrong, but in addition to the leeway afforded to the rich and powerful by "the law", there is also substantial leeway afforded to every individual under "reality", and one option available is that it is technically possible to behave however one likes, including in a manner that is not compliant with "the law" or "the social contract", neither of which I or most anyone else was consulted on, despite living in a country governed by "democracy".

Interestingly, it seems like it is those who are classically "less intelligent" who are most likely to realize that this powerful exploit exists, buffoonery like January 6, anti-vaxx, and shooting power stations with an off the shelf rifle being prime examples of this.

I sometimes wonder if like corporations or most any other organization on the planet, it might be prudent to review our governmental and legal standard operating procedures from time to time to ensure they are working as intended (underlying, actual intent (as opposed to proclaimed intent) being another matter that more than a few people are starting to become rather dangerously curious about).

Re: The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

#73

Post by hrunt »

eli wrote: post #52
hrunt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I would not want HN legally responsible for comments posted by users. Hacker News does not directly promote content (aside from prioritizing content based on non-content factors [age, voting, etc.]). It does moderate, but that is not the same as promotion. The crux of the argument in this case is that the plaintiffs want Google held liable for promoting content, not hosting it. The difficulty the Supreme Court se…

I genuinely do not understand your definition of "promote"? Is the difference that Youtube recommendations are personalized? Of course HN promotes content. There's much more content submitted than can fit on a screen. Automated filtering, human moderation, and signals from other users decide what to show you -- on both sites.

I think your comment shows the difficulty SCOTUS is having with this case. What's the difference between "promotion" (in my definition, that means putting an influence behind it to improve its standing with the viewer) and other actions commonly necessary to display information, and is that difference enough to eliminate the Section 230 protections for the defendants?

In my language, I say HN does not "promote" content because the view for me is substantially the same as the view for everyone else. Contrast that with YouTube, where Google's algorithms elevate content specific to individual users, thus leading me to conclude that Google thinks I "should" watch the content. I would argue that far more than automated filtering, signals from other users, and human moderation goes into YouTube's recommendations -- particularly a calculation of the revneue to Google of you watching the video.

But again, this concept that Google "promoted" the content that harmed the plaintiffs and should thus be liable for that action is the heart of the case, not that Google should be liable for the content itself.

Re: The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

#74

Post by ericmay »

eli wrote: post #36
ericmay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would a non-harmful or less harmful (than what?) recommendation system look like? What's the end goal of a recommendation system?

Pick any definition you like. If recommendation systems come with existential legal risks for a small company, then only the biggest companies can afford to run them. Or think of it this way: How is Mastodon supposed to take on larger social networks without recommending people to follow? Should every Mastodon server operator be legally liable for recommending someone harmful?

My definition would be that they're all bad and there is no good use for them because the end results are harmful - more spend/engagements I view in the same way I would "more smoking". Any algorithm or curation excluding perhaps based on latest or "most views" or something similar would be a recommendation as far as I'm concerned.

But I'm just not sure how or why online platforms get to have their cake and eat it too. If the NYTs publishes a story that eating Tidepods is healthy and encourages kids and parents to do so, they get sued. If Facebook creates an algorithm that causes the same or similar to happen they get a free pass. They either have to be a public speech platform where anyone can say anything as long as it isn't literally breaking the law, or they have to follow the same rules as other entities that curate content. If you want to say "why not both?" then that's fine but you have to apply that to all entities, not just online content.

Re: The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

#75

Post by megous »

eli wrote: post #29
Veen wrote: post #3

It seems to me the difference in this case is that it complains about content promotion, not content publishing. The issue is that YouTube's algorithms promoted extremist content to people who were prone to extremist behavior. That's not quite the same as simply hosting extremist content uploaded by users. As it says on the Supreme Court site: "Issue: Whether Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act immuni…

Google decides what emails go in the gmail inbox vs spam folder vs rejected outright. Should they be legally responsible if an offensive email lands in your inbox?

There are not ToS associated specifically with gmail. The service has no guarantees or expectations set whatsoever. You get better guarantees on email reception from running your own server.

Therefore it's hard to say what the gmail user could even base their complaint on. Google can do whatever they want with the incomming email as far as categorization and blocking goes, and nothing in the nonexistent ToS is violated.

Re: The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

#76

Post by [deleted] »

mrguyorama wrote: post #31
Retric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn’t the definition it’s that companies want the common carrier status without actually acting like one. The phone company doesn’t editorialize and we would think it insane if they started doing so.

Except we are right now screaming that the phone companies should be responsible for eliminating spam from the phone system! That exact moderation should not cause them to lose their common carrier status, and that moderation should be expected, and that moderation should not cause them to be responsible if someone uses their phone network to call in a bomb threat. All section 230 does is make clear that if you don't…

[deleted]

Re: The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

#77

Post by ericmay »

dsr_ wrote: post #60
ericmay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would a non-harmful or less harmful (than what?) recommendation system look like? What's the end goal of a recommendation system?

What would it look like? It would look like a configurable search system with preloading of some choices. You're watching Tie Your Mother Down, Queen, Rock in Rio 1985. Would you like to see (select as many as you want): More videos by or about Queen More videos from Rock in Rio 1985 More videos from 1985 More video about Mothers More video tagged Live Concert More video tagged Progressive Rock More video tagged Rio…

Mothers like mothers in porn? Mothers giving birth? Grandmothers? What about animal mothers? What about fathers in videos with mothers? Are the mothers giving parenting or medical advice? Who is policing the filters and deciding what constitutes a video about mothers?

And either way, why bother? Just don't recommend content there's no point except to drive engagement which is fundamentally no different than what Facebook (or whoever) is doing.

Re: The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

#78

Post by freejazz »

commandlinefan wrote: post #69
freejazz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you'd have no problems if someone defamed you?

Well, you guys are nothing if not predictable, I knew this would be the first response. But you're living in a fantasy world if you think that I, personally, could ever recover meaningful damages from somebody with enough reach to meaningfully defame me. Rather, defamation laws are being successfully (ab)used to silence politically inconvenient people like Alex Jones.

So you won't respond whether or not you'd care that you were defamed, and instead offered some ridiculous made up scenario where there is no way you'd recover from defamation? Do you do defamation litigation? Oh, you don't?

>Rather, defamation laws are being successfully (ab)used to silence politically inconvenient people like Alex Jones.

LOL. Strong disagree there. He's not being silenced by any means. He's free to engage in whatever speech he wants, be it defamatory. He only need pay for the damages he causes in doing so. I cannot imagine what's more libertarian than that.

Re: The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

#79

Post by tristor »

automatoney wrote: post #38
tristor wrote: post #33

The reality is that most people, EVEN technical people, don't actually understand the Internet. The only people I consistently have conversed with who understand the Internet are technology advocates that have a deep background in Internet networking. Even on HN, most people believe many things about how the Internet works, at the networking layer, at the application layer, and socioculturally, that are not true, and…

> Even on HN, most people believe many things about how the Internet works, at the networking layer, at the application layer, and socioculturally, that are not true, and provably not true, but widely believed. Could you debunk some of the most common/biggest false beliefs you encounter? I'm curious to see which traps I fall into.

There's so many I'm not sure where to begin. A few simple ones that most people believe about networking on the Internet that aren't true are:

1. Routing paths are primarily decided by path distance as the metric.

2. IP ownership is authenticated and therefore the global route table is deterministic and stable.

3. DNS traffic is always over UDP/53

4. DNS is controlled by the network. Related, split horizon DNS is reliable.

5. Domain registrars and the root nameservers are required to be contacted in order to get a DNS response for a given public domain. As a corollary, seizing domains or blocking DNS at the root is a sufficient method to block access to a site. Secondary corollary, a correctly configured and valid public domain is reachable from anywhere on the Internet that can make a DNS query.

A lot of these are true in /some cases/, or in the general case, but not in the corner cases. A lot of policy and court decisions about the Internet assume the happy path or the common case when dealing with situations where motivated actors may take actions outside the happy path to work around that court order. It is entirely possible to bypass public DNS to resolve a public IP on the Internet as long as it routable, regardless of what registrars or public (and root) nameservers say. (see: Pirate Bay and their shenanigans, also see Tor resolvers, see non-authoritative DNS resolvers, see host file sharing, see alternate roots, etc.)

A lot of policies within organizations, including those set by network admins, are based on a belief that systems in their network obey the things provided by their network, when in fact the client controls nearly everything about how it decides to interact with a network, and the network can only provide configuration as a suggestion or recommendation. There are very limited options for enforcing policy at the network level. There is no guarantee that any given client on your network is actually utilizing your local DNS resolvers or successfully will resolve split horizon DNS.

A lot of configurations in the world are based on trust in systems which are inherently designed in an untrustworthy manner, or which require additional configuration and technology to provide an external basis for trust. This has had consequences with far-reaching impact and will continue to do (see BGP hijacking).

DNS, except when using newer protocols and taking extra measures to authenticate responses, is easily intercepted and hijacked. It is entirely possible to capture queries and inject non-authoritative responses, including responses which claim to be authoritative at any point in the path the query traverses. This is actually commonplace in some regions of the world (see: China). DNS that is authenticated and encrypted doesn't traverse UDP/53.

Re: The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

#80

Post by Retric »

mrguyorama wrote: post #31
Retric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn’t the definition it’s that companies want the common carrier status without actually acting like one. The phone company doesn’t editorialize and we would think it insane if they started doing so.

Except we are right now screaming that the phone companies should be responsible for eliminating spam from the phone system! That exact moderation should not cause them to lose their common carrier status, and that moderation should be expected, and that moderation should not cause them to be responsible if someone uses their phone network to call in a bomb threat. All section 230 does is make clear that if you don't…

I think we would rather have the tools to eliminate phone spam such as a working caller ID system rather than a phone company that monitors content a deprioritize people who curse excessively etc.
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