This only illustrates the point that centralizing server infrastructure and operations in one jurisdiction can quickly backfire.
230, or not 230? That is the EARN IT question
151–160 of 178 posts
Re: 230, or not 230? That is the EARN IT question
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signal server should respond with "I either don't know this person or they have not approved to be contacted by you". You should only get a prekey if they are in fact a signal user and have opted in to be discoverable by everyone or only by select people including you.
Ah, ok. So in that case, people would probably be have to be uncontactable by default (otherwise we'd be back to the current universe). Now you'll have to explicitly opt in to being contacted by every new person you meet. This is fine for some, but it's a massive usability tradeoff. Think about all the non-tehcnical people that Signal is intended to be used by, and imagine trying to teach them about Safety Numbers an…
Nothing necessary about it - those people (also all people) would be presented with a screen upon installation asking for their preferred discoverability policy - do they want to be contactable by: everyone in their phone contacts, only specific people from their contacts, only people they approve ad-hoc.
Re: 230, or not 230? That is the EARN IT question
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the standard scream of incumbent players when they want to discourage regulation. It both ignores the fact that what's "reasonable" for an incumbent monopoly and a small startup are different, and that the law generally accounts for scale.
The GDPR does not explicitly account for scale in practice, but pretends you're a $300 million dollar business, with the resources to do proper GDPR compliance, which is why the response of many small businesses is to stop serving europeans. And these businesses had nothing to do with privacy invasion, such as classes you pay for, paid note taking apps an so on.
While in theory you are right, there is a distinction.
GDPR makes business more difficult, but it codifies a human right to privacy that, much like worker safety, should have been implemented anyway.
The present regulation does the opposite. It ultimately implies that any company that does not comply with the insane US post 9/11 laws on large scale spying, extrajudicial sanctioning and, arguably, racial and ethnic discrimination, will be sued into the ground.
Scary especially for non US citizens, who are not in practice afforded judicatory or constitutional rights in the US
Re: 230, or not 230? That is the EARN IT question
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. The problem with imposing liability on moderators is that they're already doing about as well as they reasonably can at a job that isn't easy. Nobody wants a platform full of spam and disinformation. But it's inherently a difficult trade off between heavy-handed censorship that catches too many dolphins in the shark net vs. not catching strictly 100% of the bad stuff. If you start imposing liability on the mo…
I think it's simple. The US postal service uses postal inspectors to try and identify packages containing narcotics[0], and yet we don't make them liable for the packages they miss. Any attempt to moderate undesirable content on a website should not then make you liable for the content you miss. [0]: https://www.uspis.gov/about/what-we-do/
I will steal this argument! Very good example, thank you.
This is so clear, I hope I'll convince some people.
Re: 230, or not 230? That is the EARN IT question
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, so please do tell me how to sue `sk8rboy2020` on the forum then?
How do you sue the guy that shouted at you as they left the restaurant? Who stuck a defamatory sign on the electric pole? I don't see why the issues these present should move responsibility to the restaurant or electric company, however.
I don't think this is a good analogy.
Someone shouting at you in a restaurant will be overheard by only a few people, and only in that instant.
Someone publishing hurtful lies about you on the internet may be read by many, many people, and will be there on public record for years to come.
Re: 230, or not 230? That is the EARN IT question
#156I used the EFF form linked in the blog post to contact my representatives in California. I will also donate to EFF again. Privacy is important.
I did the same a few weeks ago. Here's the automated response from Feinstein's office: > Dear [Name]: > Thank you for writing to me to share your concerns about law enforcement access to encrypted communications. I appreciate the time you took to write, and I welcome the opportunity to respond. > I understand you are opposed to the “Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act of…
A typical canned response of the form "Fuck you... think of the children!".
Re: 230, or not 230? That is the EARN IT question
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. The problem with imposing liability on moderators is that they're already doing about as well as they reasonably can at a job that isn't easy. Nobody wants a platform full of spam and disinformation. But it's inherently a difficult trade off between heavy-handed censorship that catches too many dolphins in the shark net vs. not catching strictly 100% of the bad stuff. If you start imposing liability on the mo…
I think it's simple. The US postal service uses postal inspectors to try and identify packages containing narcotics[0], and yet we don't make them liable for the packages they miss. Any attempt to moderate undesirable content on a website should not then make you liable for the content you miss. [0]: https://www.uspis.gov/about/what-we-do/
That analogy is flawed because USPS doesn't know what's in the packages, but you know exactly what's on your forum.
Re: 230, or not 230? That is the EARN IT question
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's simple. The US postal service uses postal inspectors to try and identify packages containing narcotics[0], and yet we don't make them liable for the packages they miss. Any attempt to moderate undesirable content on a website should not then make you liable for the content you miss. [0]: https://www.uspis.gov/about/what-we-do/
That analogy is flawed because USPS doesn't know what's in the packages, but you know exactly what's on your forum.
Not if it's end-to-end encrypted, which is exactly the topic here. With this bill it's highly likely that policing will be required of services providing end-to-end encryption too, which then makes that encryption impossible while complying with the "best practices".
Re: 230, or not 230? That is the EARN IT question
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're ignorant or malicious the same thing happens: the government kindly informs you that someone is using your website to break the law, and then you can either do something or become clearly guilty of knowingly supporting them. (The government knows you know because they know they told you.)
They fix that case swiftly, then go on to ignore new cases?
Law enforcement, typically tasked with enforcing laws, would not ignore the new cases. Individual citizens enforcing laws themselves is nice but overall we don't depend on vigilantes.