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Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

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Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

#111

Post by Ajedi32 »

> For instance, if you’re a journalist and you want to promote your work, there is simply no viable alternative to Twitter at the moment. No other microblogging platform comes even close to having the number of users Twitter does, and most of the alternatives are hotbeds of extremism, so that anyone who joins them is thereby disqualified in polite company.

IMO if you can't even try to use an alternative microblogging platform for fear of being labeled an extremist by "polite company", that's indicative of a much more serious societal issue.

The quote included in this article from John Stuart Mill's On Liberty explains the danger rather eloquently I think:

> Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.

Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

#112

Post by iron0013 »

gonational wrote: post #43
Miner49er wrote: post #7

So the author wants to protect "the marketplace of ideas" from monopolies caused by a different market. However, they don't want the government to do it. They also don't seem to think it's possible for smaller companies to challenge these monopolies. What then is the author's solution? One is never given.

In my opinion, the solution is simple: If any “platform” censors beyond removing illegal or copyrighted content or spam, they should have their “platform” status revoked, and they should be considered a publisher. This prevents such companies from using “platform” status as a cost saving mechanism to help them become large monopolies. Companies like Facebook would not have been able to take over so much of the market…

Hi, if you could stop spreading the lie that there is some magical distinction between a 'publisher' and a 'platform' that somehow limits what a business is legally allowed to do, I would really appreciate it, and I know a lot of other folks would too! Thanks!

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190613/03172142391/once-...

Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

#113

Post by buzzkillington »

imgabe wrote: post #107

Instead of an ideological bias, what if it is just a demographic bias? The author supposes that there are some mustache-twirling masterminds behind the scenes at Google, Twitter, and Facebook, picking and choosing what content is promoted. But the algorithms, at their most basic sense, promote what is popular. Based on voting records, in absolute numbers, there are simply more left-leaning people (at least in the US)…

>The author supposes that there are some mustache-twirling masterminds behind the scenes at Google, Twitter, and Facebook, picking and choosing what content is promoted. But the algorithms, at there most basic sense, promote what is popular.

Hardly. The algos have programmers thumbs on them heavily. A hilarious example was when Reddit was trying to deal with the_donald successfully spamming reddits hot algorithm. But someone screwed up the new weighting and instead of pushing td posts down it pushed them up, the whole front page was nothing but td posts for a day. They eventually fixed it, but never think that there isn't a human jury rigged mess of if else statements at the core of the algorithms.

Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

#114

Post by NeedMoreTea »

buboard wrote: post #109
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now consider the world wider than the USA. Imagine I am in the UK (I am), who have overly strong libel and defamation law. Other countries can too. I don't agree the law's balance is right, but that's a different discussion. Were HN and FB a publisher, and had a UK office (and similarly in other countries with strong laws in this area) they would be liable as well as the individual posters. Those laws are why when th…

That is already the case though, isnt it? You can say things in reddit that would get you in trouble in a UK-based forum. I believe the distinction between publisher and platform is US thing. FB And HN are subject to US law where they 're based.It's up to the UK to block access to them if they think they 're illegal - Or preferably to fix libel laws.

IANAL but as I understand it, the UK case at the moment is it might get me into trouble if they can pin me down, but not the discussion forum itself. There might be a legal request to reveal my identity, but purely to pin me down. As a publisher, the forum itself would be jointly and severally liable.

If Fred Smith writes a piece in The Times that libels me, I sue the newspaper, not Fred Smith.

FB and the other globals are subject to the laws of every place they operate. e.g. See all the US companies causing controversy changing their policies within China.

Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

#115

Post by danShumway »

gonational wrote: post #43
Miner49er wrote: post #7

So the author wants to protect "the marketplace of ideas" from monopolies caused by a different market. However, they don't want the government to do it. They also don't seem to think it's possible for smaller companies to challenge these monopolies. What then is the author's solution? One is never given.

In my opinion, the solution is simple: If any “platform” censors beyond removing illegal or copyrighted content or spam, they should have their “platform” status revoked, and they should be considered a publisher. This prevents such companies from using “platform” status as a cost saving mechanism to help them become large monopolies. Companies like Facebook would not have been able to take over so much of the market…

> It’s perfectly reasonable to want to set up some kind of publishing company that has user-generated content

Note that under this setup, a forum like HN would be basically impossible to maintain. How would you set up a publishing content that included user content without having a human pre-vet all of that content? And HN has, like, 3 moderators?

The practical end result of this would be that the Internet would split into a bunch of 8chans, and a bunch of TV stations, with nothing in-between. If you care about free expression, making businesses scared of user content is counterproductive.

Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

#116

Post by buboard »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #114
buboard wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is already the case though, isnt it? You can say things in reddit that would get you in trouble in a UK-based forum. I believe the distinction between publisher and platform is US thing. FB And HN are subject to US law where they 're based.It's up to the UK to block access to them if they think they 're illegal - Or preferably to fix libel laws.

IANAL but as I understand it, the UK case at the moment is it might get me into trouble if they can pin me down, but not the discussion forum itself. There might be a legal request to reveal my identity, but purely to pin me down. As a publisher, the forum itself would be jointly and severally liable. If Fred Smith writes a piece in The Times that libels me, I sue the newspaper, not Fred Smith. FB and the other globa…

But what if (UK citizen) fred smith writes a piece in the new york times? I don't think you can sue the NYtimes, or that NYtimes will care - I bet they receive a ton of legal complaints from foreign countries every year most of which are readily dismissable by US law.

Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

#117

Post by iron0013 »

buboard wrote: post #100
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet HN are, as I understand it, responsible for dang and sctb. They regularly moderate away the shite - which preserves one of the less polluted spots on the net. How do you square that circle? Surely you should object to what HN does - in fact why would a believer in no censorship even have an account here if HN are censoring (moderating and limiting) what everyone is able to say?

Yeap, having paid moderators would classify you as a publisher - you 're essentially a newspaper publishing op-eds. HN would be a publisher and i don't find that wrong. However, HN could instead be subreddit in reddit's platform, with HN (or preferably an unrelated external entity) paying the moderators.

There is no legal distinction between a 'platform' and a 'publisher' that compels a business to conduct its activity in any particular way. That is a falsehood that has somehow wormed its way into the general discourse.

Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

#118

Post by jerf »

klyrs wrote: post #56
jerf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for the article, but I can speak for myself. The difference is that I, personally, have control over the blocking of the "make money fast" communication. I think part of the right to free speech is the right to be able to choose what speech you consume, i.e., everyone has the right to free speech but nobody has the right to impose upon you. For me personally, since I run my own incoming mail server, the…

> The difference is that I, personally, have control over the blocking of the "make money fast" communication Have you never encountered a phpBB forum, or a wiki, or a social network, that doesn't have spam blockers? In my experience, such sites are inundated with spam, occasionally to the point that signal is hard to find over the noise. Your "solution" only touches on email. Filtering spam from such diverse sources…

As a pragmatist on this matter, I believe the solution here is scale. The control I have over a phpBB forum is that if I don't like their spam policy, I can leave, and either join another or form my own.

We're not talking about a phpBB forum or a little blog with a few thousand commenters. We're talking about single companies with very significant fractions of the total discourse flowing through them. If Facebook blocks something, it affects a massive number of people, and "just go make your own Facebook" is not a suitable recourse. Scale matters. Small entities can do things without being a threat to the body politic that large entities can not.

As I've said before, I'm not entirely convinced that something the size of Facebook can actually work in the long term [1]. Trying to jam everybody into one set of rules may simply be infeasible, for reasons not entirely related to "rights". If you look at the current conflicts over Facebook through this window, you may find it makes sense over the conflict. Especially if you are one of the majority here on HN who are kinda lost over the idea of why so many have become anti-Facebook, when you just see Facebook imposing your perfectly sensible, obviously correct values on the world, why is everyone complaining? Well, it's that whole diversity thing you may have heard rumors about. It's real. It may not be the case that you can get everyone into one community with one set of standards, regardless of how "obviously right" those standards are.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20146868 - in fact, I'd amplify the original post I made by also pointing out Facebook is international, so we're not just trying to stick the diverse cultures of the US in there, but trying to stick all the diverse cultures of the world in one big pile. When I put it that way, does the idea that such a thing could work in the long term even pass the smell test?

Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

#119

Post by danShumway »

buboard wrote: post #93
pavel_lishin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If any “platform” censors beyond removing illegal or copyrighted content, they should have their “platform” status revoked, and they should be considered a publisher. What about spam? And would this extend to marketplaces? If a company allows users to sell educational resources for kids, what would happen if they start removing items that clearly don't fit?

They could have a checkbox "remove spam" that the moderators could turn on and off. There's not a lot of ambiguity about spam so it's not a real issue. I think the law should be "platforms should not tinker with their users' expressed preferences - you can't hide something that they 've chosen to subscribe to". > And would this extend to marketplaces? I believe these are already considered publishers ? In any case it…

> There's not a lot of ambiguity about spam so it's not a real issue.

People say this, I don't think it's true.

I think there is ambiguity around when marketing crosses into spam. If you look at different communities, even HN and Reddit, you'll find different opinions about what kind of promotion crosses that line.

Individual communities need to be able to make their own decisions on that, they don't need blanket rules applied across the board to all platforms.

Re: Censorship is bad even when it’s done by private companies

#120

Post by PavlovsCat »

mc32 wrote: post #99
root_axis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider it censorship when comments or articles are flagged on HN?

I would say if the mods do it yes, if it’s the hoi polloi then no.

> If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

-- John Stuart Mill

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