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The US Supreme Court doesn’t understand the internet

wired.com

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

#111

Post by pgodzin »

hrunt wrote: post #96
pgodzin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 con…

I'm very unclear about what "otherwise" means in "elevating when it otherwise wouldn't be elevated".

There's no natural state of how content would be displayed, any choice of how to do it would result in a moderated list that elevates something that wouldn't have otherwise been elevated with a different approach.

There is no distinction to me between what YouTube and HN do, and I certainly don't think the law should treat them any differently. Both should be legally protected regardless of which specific approach it takes.

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

#112

Post by eli »

owisd wrote: post #92
eli wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The comments too? Everything in a moderation queue and potentially serious penalties for getting it wrong? I'm pretty sure you would notice.

And would the developer of a Mastodon client be personally liable if their algorithm recommends someone harmful as a new account to follow?

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

#113

Post by fortenforge »

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…

I encourage anyone who thinks the Supreme Court is composed of 9 wordcel idiots who can't possibly understand anything about computers to read their opinion in Google v. Oracle [1]. It's very readable and well-argued. It's like a reverse Gell-Mann amnesia—clearly the author of the draft understands the issues at play quite well.

[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf

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

#114

Post by tristor »

yamtaddle wrote: post #104
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…

Do you thing Cisco router configurations of BGP or whatever have anything to do with how this case is going to be decided? I'm pretty sure that's not what was meant by "understand the Internet", in this context.

This particular case? No. Many other cases, yes. I think there is a severe lack of understanding in the court system at every level, not just with BGP.

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

#115

Post by pgodzin »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #107
pgodzin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It absolutely can be differentiated. One major one is that Youtube is optimizing for engagement and increased viewing time to keep people on the website longer to see more ads and increase their profits. That intent is entirely different from HN's "promotion algorithm". The law can and does differentiate across lines like these even if they're both technically "promotion algorithms".

HN optimizes for increasing engagement from people in the tech industry to show more ads for portfolio companies job postings, which increases YC's profits.

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

#116

Post by wil421 »

glitchc wrote: post #99
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.

Wired has been in the same camp as the Verge, IGN, Mac Rumors, and so on for a while now. They are closer to a tabloid than what Wired Magazine once was.

Not sure who they are a mouthpiece for but they certainly don’t mind being one.

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

#117

Post by [deleted] »

spaced-out wrote: post #37
causi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 years ago. Why would it be safe for them to use an older recommendation system? It doesn't solve the problem, if their older system recommends a terrorism video, even if it only did so because that video came up chronologically, they're still liable. I would think th…

[deleted]

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

#118

Post by warner25 »

koboll wrote: post #46
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…

>The reality is that most people, EVEN technical people, don't actually understand the Internet. Nothing gives me Gell-Mann amnesia quite like the comments that get upvoted on HN posts relevant to the particular area in which I work...

Yeah, I actually find it really disconcerting. It's one thing when you read mainstream news stories and see that they're inaccurate; like, "OK, sure the writer is a journalist, obviously not a specialist in this area, and the intended audience is also comprised of non-specialists." But reading HN makes me feel very inadequate 99% of the time, in terms of my knowledge of the computing domain. Then every few months I see a thread about some specific thing that I feel quite comfortable with and it's like, "What on earth? I thought these people were all smarter than me, but look at these comments..."

I'm currently a PhD student doing research related to Tor, and there was a thread about Tor last month. I didn't even know where to start with the comments, so I didn't participate at all.

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

#119

Post by tristor »

kube-system wrote: post #109
tristor wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you're saying, but I think you might be missing the point that I'm making. DNS and BGP aren't JUST technical, they're also deeply geopolitical. The Internet isn't an accident, it's an intentionally and carefully formed set of peer autonomous networks, with a shared protocol and written (and unwritten) rules for how we name and resolve the path to get to those different networks from one another. These stan…

These things are not the court's job to figure out. It's the job of the parties arguing the cases to explain the technical details of the case and how the law applies. The court is not an expert on any topic other than the law.

These things are literally something which impacts the outcomes of court cases on a nearly daily basis somewhere on the globe, and they interlace into the law in various ways both in the legislative process and in the judicial process. It is possible to create a law which does not map correctly to technical reality if you do not understand, it is possible for the court to order something which does not map correctly to technical reality. Technical reality is not always fungible. At some level, it all becomes physics.

Both the legislature and the judiciary in the US, and in other governments around the world, are technically and scientifically illiterate.

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

#120

Post by warkdarrior »

ericmay wrote: post #74
eli wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 to…

If all that's allowed is "latest" or "most views", I will keep uploading my content to your platform and bot-voting/-viewing it to keep it at the top of everyone's feed.
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