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FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

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Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#251

Post by joshuamorton »

juniper_strong wrote: post #249
joshuamorton wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if there's one poster printing company in town, they have first amendment rights. You don't lose those for being too successful.

If a poster printing company started making editorial decisions about which posters they printed, they would be at risk of being considered a publisher and as such being liable for the content of the posters they printed. That isn't true for internet content providers due to section 230.

They are already liable for such things because they make active editorial decisions.

If internet publishers make active editorial decisions, they are also liable. Consider the new york times online.

I gave an example elsewhere that the owner of a physical bulletin board wouldn't be liable for posters on it, even if they occasionally came by and took down ones that they felt should be removed (for any reason).

Section 230 claims that internet sites are more like a physical bulletin board then a newspaper, in that they are remove-later, not review-first models. Aa such they deserve the same liability as physical remove-later systems: relatively few.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#252

Post by Meph504 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #227
Meph504 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might want to do some double checking on your history. Firstly Microsoft monopoly got thrown out because of unethical behavior of the judge (which is why there isn't two Microsoft entities today. The whole thing hinged on "Microsoft installed its browser by default which gave it an unfair advantage." To allow the DOJ to save face, Microsoft agreed to make it easier to install other browsers. And My Space…

> Firstly Microsoft monopoly got thrown out because of unethical behavior of the judge No, it didn't. The remedy (not the finding of monopoly and abuse of that monopoly) got sent back by a higher court for new proceedings, and then due to a change in Administration to one friendlier to (and, coincidentally, heavily supported by) Microsoft, the government stopped seeking breakup as a remedy while the new proceedings w…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...

"The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge Jackson's rulings against Microsoft. This was partly because the appellate court had adopted a "drastically altered scope of liability" under which the remedies could be taken, and also partly due to the embargoed interviews Judge Jackson had given to the news media while he was still hearing the case, in violation of the Code of Conduct for US Judges.[24] Judge Jackson did not attend the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing, in which the appeals court judges accused him of unethical conduct and determined he should have recused himself from the case"

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#253

Post by eternalban »

eropple wrote: post #222
eternalban wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re. the scale of the effort required on the client side by the user, I think you missed the "kludgy UI/UX" bit. Obviously , we need to address the kludgy kill-file approach. > you're falling for .. You seem to think that you know a lot about me. Let me gently suggest that possibly your technical imagination is failing to show you alternatives that solves all these issues. So, actually, it is not a case of falling for…

Again, the bad actors in question will scream about tools made to help the general public deal with them, too, because it's not about some ethical thing, it is that they demand to have their sewage spewed at all comers and you are bad if you don't let them . There is a level of malice here that I feel you are definitely dismissing while charging end users with a level of responsibility that it is impractical to handl…

The lack of imagination on your part was an allusion to the inability to see a structural solution to the conflated issues of identity; access; location; and social affinity. Believe it or not, it is possible to have a social network where it is impossible to spam.

> There strongly seems to be a failing of appreciation of how modern supremacist movements operate on yours.

Well, the internet gifted to us, with its flat namespace and the inevitable conflation of user identity with device identity, [empowers] bad actors. I alluded to this.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#254

Post by clusterfish »

rayiner wrote: post #61
clusterfish wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? "Sympathetic" courts are explicitly Trump's strategy to stay in power by validating vote suppression and even allowing states to not count all the votes. And you think some puny section is exempt from such bullshit? We have a new standard for how much such technicalities as separation of power matter in America, better get used to it. It's not like Democrats will fix all that even if they sweep the election,…

Democrats invented obliterating separation of powers, and then bludgeoned the Supreme Court into accepting it through court packing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.L.A._Schechter_Poultry_Corp.... > This traditional reading of the Commerce Clause was later disavowed by the Court, which after threats from Roosevelt began to read congressional power more expansively in this area, in cases such as NLRB v. Jones & Laughl…

You don't need to go 85 years back to judge current political parties, and that was not the point of my comment. The point is, US governance is fucked, and nobody will save you.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#255

Post by webmaven »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #160
webmaven wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're suggesting crowd sourcing moderation in a democratic fashion, I would contend this both isn't effective and also that by providing systems that facilitate this, companies would be implicitly affecting the "censorship" of their platform. After all, someone has to decide what the voting algorithm is, what the chance of being a spammer before you are blocked is, etc. I think that what is being suggested is t…

That's my understanding as well, and my claim is that nothing would be fundamentally different from how it is now. Twitter would take on the role of today's ISP, and the moderation services would take on the role of Twitter/Mastodon/etc, and we're back to square one. There would be a couple big ones that people would flock to because of network effects, and some small "free speech" ones that most people avoid because…

Well, the one thing that would be different is that backend-Twitter has an incentive to keep all the baby-Twitters interoperable, so we kind of get federation for free, via an unlikely route.

Yes, we have federated services now, but the largest and most popular services are non-federated walled gardens.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#256

Post by triceratops »

juniper_strong wrote: post #250
triceratops wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when they want to block content on a political basis, they act as publishers. You keep saying that as though it's a fact or a law when it's only an opinion. You should stop doing that.

Publisher, distributor, and platform are legal definitions that have been worked out through case law over a long period of time. Blocking content on a political basis as a non-internet content provider would be more than enough to get you treated as a publisher. In pre-section 230 law, even blocking content for vulgarity was enough to get you treated as a publisher, that decision was Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodig…

> Blocking content on a political basis as a non-internet content provider would be more than enough to get you treated as a publisher.

The key point here is "in pre-section 230 law". Prodigy Services was one the cases that prompted Congress to pass Section 230. Why cite outdated cases to try to prove your point? What's next, Dred Scott v. Sandford?

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#257

Post by eropple »

eternalban wrote: post #253
eropple wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the bad actors in question will scream about tools made to help the general public deal with them, too, because it's not about some ethical thing, it is that they demand to have their sewage spewed at all comers and you are bad if you don't let them . There is a level of malice here that I feel you are definitely dismissing while charging end users with a level of responsibility that it is impractical to handl…

The lack of imagination on your part was an allusion to the inability to see a structural solution to the conflated issues of identity; access; location; and social affinity. Believe it or not, it is possible to have a social network where it is impossible to spam. > There strongly seems to be a failing of appreciation of how modern supremacist movements operate on yours. Well, the internet gifted to us, with its fla…

OK. So where's your white paper? I genuinely want to read it.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#258

Post by int_19h »

eli wrote: post #95
hyper0perator wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Newspapers and ISP follow under this regulation. Social media networks have been able to skirt the issue. If newspapers can get sued for their content and the phone company can't, it only makes sense that this applies to social media companies are held to the same liabilities or protections.

I don’t understand what outcome you are seeking here. Clearly social media companies can’t prescreen every piece of content so either you want them to all go out of business or you want to forbid them from moderating even to delete spam. There are already forums with “zero” moderation and there’s a reason all discussion hasn’t migrated there.

If such a system is implemented properly, moderation can be done by a third party service on top of the platform. This would be strictly better than the current model, since every specific user could pick a service that best matches their opinion on what does and doesn't constitute spam and other undesirable content.

Better yet, something like Aether, where everybody can moderate for their own feed, and any user can designate any other user or group of users as their moderators to get a curated feed with no effort of their own.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#259

Post by int_19h »

geofft wrote: post #173
guscost wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not put a protocol in the public domain and let service providers implement it, like email? Is there something about broadcast communication that makes impartiality or neutrality impossible? Even if the broadcast protocol is based on follow/subscribe interactions? This is an interesting subject!

That's a great idea, and I think if private individuals (either businesses or open-source hackers or whoever) want to do that, they should! But I think if private individuals (again, including business) don't want to do that, they shouldn't be compelled to! No law makes an email provider use SMTP; they do it because the industry / the market has settled on it. (Imagine if nobody could use STARTTLS until it got approv…

I don't think it's problematic to place more specific constraints on larger companies, including a requirement to use open protocols, and to allow federation.

In general, corporations are artificial entities that are established by society via laws that it enacts. They don't even have a natural right to exist, much less a right to operate without any constraints. This is very different from real persons.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#260

Post by eternalban »

eropple wrote: post #257
eternalban wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of imagination on your part was an allusion to the inability to see a structural solution to the conflated issues of identity; access; location; and social affinity. Believe it or not, it is possible to have a social network where it is impossible to spam. > There strongly seems to be a failing of appreciation of how modern supremacist movements operate on yours. Well, the internet gifted to us, with its fla…

OK. So where's your white paper? I genuinely want to read it.

I'd have to get off my lazy butt, but noted your contact info, should that happen.
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