Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 185 posts

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

#91

Post by kube-system »

shadowgovt wrote: post #27

FWIW, the Supreme Court doesn't need to understand the Internet to do its job. A judge's job is to understand the law. It is the job of the lawyers to bring facts and argumentation before the judges to pursuade them that the law should be interpreted one way or the other. The expertise is expected to live with the lawyers, not the judges (and the ability to find expert witnesses and spin up on the details of what the…

Yes, this is the most frustrating thing about these kind of article titles. Justice Kagan isn't saying "we have no clue what we're doing" she's saying, "I'm not sure you're in the right place"

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

#92

Post by owisd »

eli wrote: post #57
hrunt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but I would start developing my argument with the idea that emails Google placed in my Priority Inbox were sent to me specifically, and the intention of the sender is that I specifically would see it. Google is still not putting anything in front of my eyes that was not intended to be there anyway. When YouTube recommends content to me, the original author did not target that content specifically to me, and Yo…

When you post a story on HN you aren't specifically choosing to send it to a person. Is HN responsible if a harmful story reaches the front page?

They could rule against personalised recommendations (YouTube) vs while protecting recommendations where everyone sees the same thing (HN). In HN’s case I’m not sure it would matter much either way. HN is pretty heavily moderated already. If stories went into a moderation queue before hitting the main page rather than being retroactively moderated I’m not sure many of us would notice a difference.

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

#93

Post by saynay »

causi wrote: post #12
ladyattis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they don't like your content on YouTube, they can punt it instantly. And it can be for ANY REASON Certainly. But Section 230, at least from my reading, does not protect them for the promotion of content. I could be wrong about that. The Supreme Court will decide. Personally I'd find it delightful if the rage-engine got smashed with a legal hammer and my Youtube recommendations were as useful as they were fifteen y…

I am curious which clause of 230 you think would not cover recommendation systems?

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

#94

Post by commandlinefan »

freejazz wrote: post #84
commandlinefan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether or not you'd care I'd just defame him right back.

So, you would care, and you would be petty. Got it.

I definitely think that the negatives of establishing legal liability for written words outweigh the positives, by a lot.

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

#95

Post by shagie »

migf wrote: post #87

I think the Supreme Court has a real out here to say, "Fuck, we dunno" and rule to change nothing and suggest that Congress remedy the situation through new laws. That's ideologically consistent and the right move. I would be astonished if they don't do that here.

https://wapo.st/3lWw2Rg

> Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said one could question why Congress provided such immunity when passing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. But she drew laughter when she wondered how far the Supreme Court should go in cutting back such protection.

> “We’re a court. We really don’t know about these things. You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the internet,” Kagan said.

> Kavanaugh said Congress knows that lower courts have interpreted the protections broadly. “Isn’t it better ... to put the burden on Congress to change that, and they can consider the implications and make these predictive judgments?” he asked Stewart.

---

Justice Kagan's exchange for that segment is on page 45 https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr...

JUSTICE KAGAN: Yeah, so I don't think that a court did it over there, and I think that that's my concern, is I can imagine a world where you're right that none of this stuff gets protection. And, you know, every other industry has to internalize the costs of its conduct. Why is it that the tech industry gets a pass? A little bit unclear.

On the other hand, I mean, we're a court. We really don't know about these things. You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the Internet. (Laughter.)

JUSTICE KAGAN: And I don't have to -- I don't have to accept all Ms. Blatt's "the sky is falling" stuff to accept something about, boy, there is a lot of uncertainty about going the way you would have us go, in part, just because of the difficulty of drawing lines in this area and just because of the fact that, once we go with you, all of a sudden we're finding that Google isn't protected. And maybe Congress should want that system, but isn't that something for Congress to do, not the Court?

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

#96

Post by hrunt »

pgodzin wrote: post #83
hrunt wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" conte…

So if YouTube used the same deep learning models to push people to more extremist content but without using any user signals so that everyone has the same recommendations that's no longer promotion? Fundamentally any decisions a site makes to filter and sort content to show, including HN ordering by vote count and mixing in new content to allow it to make the top page, is an explicit choice they are making that canno…

> So if YouTube used the same deep learning models to push people to more extremist content but without using any user signals so that everyone has the same recommendations that's no longer promotion?

I don't want to respond to part of your comment and not the other, so I'll just say: I don't know, because exactly defining the specifics is not my goal.

> Fundamentally any decisions a site makes to filter and sort content to show, including HN ordering by vote count and mixing in new content to allow it to make the top page, is an explicit choice they are making that cannot be differentiated from "promotion"

This is the part of your comment that actually matters to me. This statement is so definitive, and yet there are people arguing just as definitively that some ways of prioritizing content for users create liability while others do not. I think there is a difference between "elevating when it otherwise wouldn't be elevated" and "providing a moderated list", but those two states are probably separated by a grey area, not a bright line. I think how YouTube identifies content for users is distinguishable from what HN does, but I also don't know if that difference matters with regard to liability, especially with regards to Section 230, which makes no attempt to legislate HOW content is made discoverable.

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

#98

Post by kube-system »

eli wrote: post #23
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.

You would want Hacker News or any other forum to be legally responsible for comments posted by users?

I do think that any site which believes it is too burdensome to be legally responsible for their content should not be permitted to market their content as safe for children.

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

#99

Post by glitchc »

rayiner wrote: post #45

The Wired article’s title is frustrating. I’m pretty sure the Supreme Court does “understand the internet.” The judge I clerked for wrote the original decision that struck down most of the CDA except Section 230, which the Supreme Court later affirmed. If you go read that decision, it’s got a pretty accurate description of the internet: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/we... (see Findings of…

Hear hear! Sounds like Wired is a mouthpiece for Big Tech.

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

#100

Post by not2b »

Based on reporting of the oral arguments, it seems to show that the Supreme Court understands that they don't understand (other than Alito, perhaps), are worried about breaking the whole thing, and will probably do nothing and issue a ruling saying that if changes are needed it's Congress's job to do it.

See for example https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/brett-kavanaugh-...

Post reply on HN