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Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

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Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#131

Post by atoav »

ameister14 wrote: post #50
ploika wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty silly example. North Korea is North Korea precisely because of the extremism.

I don't understand that statement. I believe North Korea is a totalitarian state with concentrated power in few hands and no tolerance for dissidence. Are you saying they allow non-state actors to speak and take action freely to promote extreme ideologies there?

The poster probably means that NK is NK, because of its own extremist ideology. So the only way to really get rid of extremists seems to be to become more extreme than them.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#133

Post by ocdtrekkie »

bsder wrote: post #130
mortenjorck wrote: post #27

This is a very hard problem that YouTube and Facebook made for themselves by becoming the world’s largest advertising platforms. They depend on engagement for ad revenue, they designed world-class algorithms to promote this engagement, and it turned out that extremist content happens to be very engaging. And so the problem is, building an algorithm that blindly promotes whatever keeps users on the site, for all its c…

> They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to stop it. They don't have the incentive to stop it. All you have to do is make posting have an actual price, no matter how nominal, and most of this goes away. Unfortunately for their profits, it will wipe out 90+% of their user base. And it will kill virality cold (you won't forward something to your whole address book if it costs you a d…

The other incentive option is to charge the platform for the violation. Aka, remove Section 230. If the platform was to be charged for posting dangerous content, the platform would magically be able to largely prevent it overnight.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#135

Post by LilBytes »

elken wrote: post #125

The Christchurch shooter amassed a cache of weapons, and also posted a copy of his manifesto and a link to his real Facebook account to 4chan. The censorship/Facebook algorithms amplifying abhorrent content debate is one thing but I'm surprised by the lack of scrutiny of the security services over this. Especially for a member of the 5 Eyes. I can't help but feel this could have been prevented without any of the chan…

4Chan and LiveLeak have both been blocked (via DNS) in Australia and New Zealand. So, the scrutiny albeit region specific has occurred.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#137

Post by EdwardDiego »

basetop wrote: post #42
ehmish wrote: post #28

The approach seems fairly reasonable, it sounds like it's limited to explicitly violent extremist content, and it's being done using pension funds of various governments in a activist investment manner to try to bring about changes

Historically, a combined effort by corporate and government interests to take away your rights was called fascism. But I guess if it is the far left doing it, it's okay.

Who is far left in this? Jacinda Ardern represents a centre-left coalition government.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#138

Post by lliamander »

krapp wrote: post #57
BonesJustice wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness.

> What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness. No, it isn't. Inevitably someone like yourself will come into threads like these and attempt to start a slippery slope argument by trying to imply that the subject at hand is meaningless and, therefore, all attempts to address it are arbitrary. It really is strange how, for certain subjects, people just forget how English works…

> Although this is Hacker News, and I know it's futile here to suggest that standing in the way of bigots and extremists is anything but a slippery slope towards an Orwellian dystopian nightmare of fascism and thought-police and boots crushing our heads forever

Of course it's futile, because you're not really "standing in the way bigots and extremists" but deciding for other people what ideas they are allowed to hear. I don't like extremist speech, anymore than I like obscene, purile, blasphemous, or false speech.

I do enjoy using platforms which curate content so that it fits within these preferences, but I reserve the right to listen to other peoples' ideas and make up my own mind. If I then proceed to do something unlawful as result of my judgement, then that is my own fault and I will be held liable for it.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#139

Post by ausbah »

Kalium wrote: post #22
ausbah wrote: post #21

Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try and stop extremism online.

What kind of alternative would you like to see? How do you propose to evaluate if it's preferable to censorship?

That's the thing, I can't recommend an alternative other than censorship. All I know is that violent extremist groups or identities like ISIS, white nationalism, and others can be linked in part to a good chunk of the mass shootings and other acts of mass violence that many parts of the world have experienced over the past 10-15 years.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#140

Post by qball »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #133
bsder wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to stop it. They don't have the incentive to stop it. All you have to do is make posting have an actual price, no matter how nominal, and most of this goes away. Unfortunately for their profits, it will wipe out 90+% of their user base. And it will kill virality cold (you won't forward something to your whole address book if it costs you a d…

The other incentive option is to charge the platform for the violation. Aka, remove Section 230. If the platform was to be charged for posting dangerous content, the platform would magically be able to largely prevent it overnight.

>Aka, remove Section 230. If the platform was to be charged for posting dangerous content, the platform would magically be able to largely prevent it overnight.

That's not actually what Section 230 does. It prevents the platform from being charged if while moderating it makes a mistake.

Removing Section 230 would do more harm than good if you consider censorship good- because then the only option to escape legal liability would be to allow everything. Remember that Section 230 was part of the Communications Decency Act and was designed to ensure that websites could remove pornographic and objectionable content without being responsible (of course, it's also the only part of that law that was found constitutional, and for good reason).

By taking the only legal immunity for half-baked censorship away (i.e. private company gets to moderate what's posted but won't suffer consequences for getting it wrong) you've closed the door even harder on it- US law won't actually let you censor consequence-free otherwise, which is the whole reason S.230 was added in the first place.

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