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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

#131

Post by freejazz »

spaced-out wrote: post #130
freejazz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most recent, the oldest, the closest match? That doesn't make it a recommendation system. Maybe try and read my post and make an effort to understand it rather than just responding with the first thing that comes to mind, because it is as if you have not understood my post at all and you seem to have not made any effort thereto.

>The most recent, the oldest Do you not recognize how lousy of a video sharing website this would be? Spammers are going to be constantly uploading marketing and other low-quality content with irrelevant keywords, while users that actually put work into making good quality videos will see their results pushed to the bottom quickly. How will you deal with that without implementing a system that can identify and recomm…

>Do you not recognize how lousy of a video sharing website this would be? Spammers are going to be constantly uploading marketing and other low-quality content with irrelevant keywords, while users that actually put work into making good quality videos will see their results pushed to the bottom quickly. How will you deal with that without implementing a system that can identify and recommend non-spam videos? Even the oldest versions of Youtube were boosting videos that got lots of likes.

Not sure why that's my problem, I'm not the one making money by promoting reactionary videos to reactionaries.

>How is deciding the "closest match" not considered a recommendation? They all have the user's keyword, what other criteria will you use?

Because it's not a recommendation, some are better matches than others, thats' all. Some match the entire keyword, some just parts, some in different places... I don't understand what is difficult about this for you.

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

#132

Post by kelnos »

falcolas wrote: post #67
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…

> Youtube would be in no danger if all it was doing was keyword-matching with recommended videos. What order should those keyword matching videos come back in? By total views, by 30 day views, popularity, by upvotes, by downvotes, by keywords in the title, the description, the comments, the video itself? Any choice made would be effectively indistinguishable from "designing the [search] to maximize engagement" as it…

> "designing the [search] to maximize engagement" as it comes to the law

I don't think the law has a definition for that term. I think it's -- probably correctly -- up to judges (and/or juries, depending on the type of case) to weigh intent and decide if a search engine to be liable for the results it produces.

This idea that "doing literally anything is an evil engagement maximizer" seems too simplistic for how the world actually works.

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

#133

Post by kelnos »

eli wrote: post #64
karmelapple wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My inbox is not available to the public, have public “like” counts and view counts, cannot be shared with a single click with the same viral network effects (sure, emails can be forwarded, but I think we can agree sharing emails vs sharing on social media is wildly different). So I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made about the difference here. Agree?

I'm having a hard time connecting this to Section 230. So you're saying there should be an exemption for recommending harmful content but only if the content is easier to share than forwarding an email?

The issue is that there is no connection to Section 230. Section 230 deals with liability for user-generated content posted publicly. Email is... not that.

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

#134

Post by kube-system »

tristor wrote: post #119
kube-system wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Judges don't make decisions about the laws of physics, they make the decisions about the laws of people. If the laws of physics are relevant, an expert can explain the relevant parts during the court proceedings. But the technical details are only of contextual relevance. If the law has ignorant technical consequences, that ain't the judiciary's problem. That has to be fixed by the legislature.

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

#135

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#136

Post by eli »

kelnos wrote: post #133
eli wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time connecting this to Section 230. So you're saying there should be an exemption for recommending harmful content but only if the content is easier to share than forwarding an email?

The issue is that there is no connection to Section 230. Section 230 deals with liability for user-generated content posted publicly. Email is... not that.

I don't think that is correct.

Section 230 is a very short section of law, you can read it yourself: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

In any event, it was just an example. Feel free to substitute "HN decides what to show on the homepage" instead.

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

#137

Post by bryan_w »

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #6

I wonder if making platforms liable for providing the identity of content producers is a fair balance between providing the platform immunity and allowing those potentially harmed by content to pursue the content creator if needed.

I think it's an interesting idea to explore. I think if a platform makes a good faith effort to know their users that it would be able to defer liability onto them. Ideally this would be coupled with a privacy aware proof of identity system but perhaps that's asking for too much.

Sites could still allow anonymous communication, but it would need to vet it first and assume liability.

You can't go out in public in a mask and say "John Smith eats worms" (when he doesn't) and not have any repercussions.

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

#138

Post by shagie »

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 heavy moderation of HN would mean that they would be more liable for content. And the algorithms showing the front page recommendations would likely be found to be similar to the "what a visitor to YouTube who isn't signed in sees" or "what you see if you go to https://twitter.com without being logged in."

Instead, HN's view would likely become "everyone sees https://news.ycombinator.com/newest and showdead is set to 'yes'"

I'm not sure how to construct an argument that would allow HN's front page while at the same time curtailing YouTube's not signed in front page - both are recommendation algorithms.

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

#139

Post by bikezen »

freejazz wrote: post #131
spaced-out wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The most recent, the oldest Do you not recognize how lousy of a video sharing website this would be? Spammers are going to be constantly uploading marketing and other low-quality content with irrelevant keywords, while users that actually put work into making good quality videos will see their results pushed to the bottom quickly. How will you deal with that without implementing a system that can identify and recomm…

>Do you not recognize how lousy of a video sharing website this would be? Spammers are going to be constantly uploading marketing and other low-quality content with irrelevant keywords, while users that actually put work into making good quality videos will see their results pushed to the bottom quickly. How will you deal with that without implementing a system that can identify and recommend non-spam videos? Even th…

And what do you do when there's 10,000 exact keyword matches, how do you sort them? If it's newest the entire thing is just going to be spam accounts reposing the same video(s) on any major keyword. "top", or anything notable is also likely to be gamed and abused too, especially if you fuzz "top" sorting because then its not really neutral, you're deciding the order and therefore making a recommendation.

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

#140

Post by pchristensen »

njharman wrote: post #124
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…

Newsstands, bookstores recommend items. Ones they put on front, at eye level, on the "look at this" table as you walk in. We don't typically hold them liable. In meatspace we don't generally hold those making recommendations liable for the 3rd party content. We shouldn't online either.

And those recommendations are the same for every person that shops there. So they would pay a stiff penalty in the market if they promoted extreme content, whereas YT and social media can present a customized "bookstore" for each person, without the consequences of everyone else seeing what it's recommending.
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