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Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

kateklonick.com

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Re: Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

#141

Post by lifeisstillgood »

My base level here is "Speakers Corner". This is a part of London's Hyde Park where free speech is (culturally if it legally) extra protected - the idea is anyone can stand and speak there, say anything, and culturally that is acceptable - one should not be moved on or prevented.

I think that right of speaking freely in a public space is deeply important (no surprises there).

But if someone spews vile speech while standing on my front lawn, frankly I want them to stop.

So what is public space on the internet? What is the minimum level - the sidewalk vs the front lawn?

It's not twitter. Hardly anyone has access to it? It's specialised and not open in its protocols.

I suspect it's not even facebook - is it just plain HTML on a plain server, perhaps plainly hosted in your own home?

This is going to be an interesting debate.

Re: Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

#142

Post by seemslegit »

sulam wrote: post #2

If I am to believe the poster, this is a draft of an Executive Order anonymously sent to her. As per: https://twitter.com/klonick/status/1265850206396076033?s=21 The implications are fairly dramatic if this is legitimate and were to be adopted / executed. Specifically it would declare that sites like Twitter and Facebook are subject to the Communications Decency Act by virtue of their editorializing the content vs ac…

Or they could stop editorializing their content.

Re: Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

#143

Post by geofft »

ilaksh wrote: post #77

There is no point in me saying this, because people are literally living in parallel universes at this point, but I feel that hatred for Trump and anything associated with the right is blinding people. What most young people or people on the left seem to want very badly is for tech companies to remove viewpoints they disagree with. Unfortunately the reality is that this is in fact political censorship. And it will le…

"Viewpoints" is a very broad word.

I do not want tech companies to remove political opinions I disagree with (e.g. "We should go to war against Iraq," "Brexit is our only hope," "If you reduce taxes, society will be better off," etc.).

I want tech companies to remove lies that do harm (e.g., "Someone should really investigate whether so-and-so killed so-and-so," "You should drink fish tank cleaner," "If you vote by mail, your vote won't be valid and you risk committing a felony"). Our society/culture has ample precedent that lies that do harm are not worth protecting and are worth penalizing.

I do not want tech companies to give special protection to lies that do harm simply because the liar has a particular political affiliation or a particular political office. I want everyone to be treated equally regardless of their political affiliation and office.

(If there happens to be a nonzero correlation between political affiliation and the telling of lies that do harm, well, that seems like a problem worth sorting out for the good of society, but tech companies should not put their fingers on the scale. They should remove lies that do harm without regard to political affiliation of the liars.)

Re: Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

#145

Post by bawolff »

geofft wrote: post #139
bawolff wrote: post #133

So after actually reading it, it seems to want two things: * prevent astro-turfing, especially by foreign governments * require that sites engaging in moderation basically follow some sort of rule of law-eaque process (there are rules posted, and you cant be arbitraily blocked unless you break them) Honestly in many ways those are things i agree with, but it seems inappropriate to do it with an executive order, and m…

There's nothing in the order to prevent astroturfing by foreign governments, is there? (If anything, it limits the ability of sites to censor foreign governments with unpopular opinions.) It's in the section about vague policies and opinions, but I don't think it actually does anything beyond saying "China bad."

There is an implication of they are going to crack down on sites banning americans to help the astro-turfers, but nobody does that, so sounds like bs. And i dont know, maybe the section on not allowing gov to advertise on such platforms is aimed at that (if you give very strong benefit of doubt).

But yeah, i think you are right.

Re: Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

#146

Post by JoshTriplett »

chrisco255 wrote: post #128
adrianmonk wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Therefore, this EO places such platforms outside scope of Sec. 230 protection So Trump is trying to tell the courts, via executive order, how to interpret the law? I'm no expert, but I don't think that's how the different branches of government work.

He's not "telling" the courts anything, he's telling the FTC, FCC, etc to interpret 230 as intended, where a social media site can now be interpreted as a publisher and not as a neutral platform if they engage in active editorial decision making (i.e. feed manipulation, shadow banning, editorial injections, etc). If Twitter wants to challenge the Federal Government on this, they'll have to do battle in court. In the…

> telling the FTC, FCC, etc to interpret 230 as intended, where a social media site

1) CDA section 230 was written before the phrase "social media" was invented, when the Internet barely existed, and many people were still on AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy.

2) Section 230 was, in fact, intended for exactly the opposite purpose. It was written because previous court rulings indicated that moderating could make you more liable, and legislators realized that was precisely the opposite of what they wanted to encourage ("nobody would have any incentive to keep the internet civil"), so they wrote section 230 to make sure that sites weren't liable if they moderate but don't catch everything.

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati... for details.

Re: Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

#147

Post by trevyn »

esoterica wrote: post #131
adventured wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would make them legally liable for the content posted on their sites. Exactly as it should be. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and others, now that they're getting into the business of editorializing and dictating the truth as they see it via heavy-handed moderation, should be fully liable for all things posted to their platforms. It should apply to any large platform that makes that shift. It's perfectly fine if the…

Hacker News has active moderation and would be effectively illegal to operate if you made websites that practice moderation legally responsible for any illegal content posted by their users. If you really believe this is the right path to go down you should stop being a hypocrite and delete your HN account since you clearly believe HN has no right to exist in its current form.

I support figuring out how to make Hacker News work without active moderation. It's simplistic to assume it can't be done.

Re: Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

#148

Post by trevyn »

geofft wrote: post #73
Trasmatta wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The implications are fairly dramatic if this is legitimate and were to be adopted / executed. Can anyone give a tl;dr of what the implications actually are? Maybe I'm just tired, but I'm having a hard time parsing what this would actually do (beyond soothe Trump's feelings after getting called out by Twitter).

Basically, - Unless they stop calling out Trump, they lose Section 230 protections. Section 230 is what allows a platform like Twitter or Hacker News to do limited good-faith moderation and not be deemed editorially responsible for every piece of nonsense someone tweets/posts that they don't get around to moderating. Without it, you either have to moderate heavily and get everything right, or not moderate at all. (Se…

I think bringing back the CompuServe model would be a good thing. I remember the discussions being unusually free at the time, but was not aware that there was legal reasoning that enforced that freedom.

Re: Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

#149

Post by coolspot »

geofft wrote: post #101
nicosaul wrote: post #69

Nobody thinks there is a big problem with online censoring that needs to be dealt with?

Not really - there is certainly a "problem" of major social media platforms banning abusive/hurtful behavior , and for whatever reason, such behavior seems to not be evenly distributed across the political spectrum, but there is not a big problem of them banning ideas or good-faith or even mostly-good-faith debate. You can find tradcaths on Twitter, threepers on Facebook, tankies on YouTube, and literally /r/politica…

Ummm... Reddit permanently banned theDonald using dubious reasoning. By “coincidence”, in the election year.

Re: Draft of Executive Order on Online Censorship [pdf]

#150

Post by dawnerd »

So they should just ban him and anyone else? That seems like the obvious solution to avoid any claim of them editorializing content. There's multiple cases where he violated long standing rules on Twitter.

I fail to see how this is any different than that bakery years ago that refused to make a cake for that gay couple. Or a business refusing service because you're saying things against them. Or many of the other reasons a company might decide you cant shop or be a customer.

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