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Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

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Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#291

Post by m463 »

emptyparadise wrote: post #46

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

> can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

Isn't this what is basically happening right now?

I don't have a horse in the game, but I do remember that quote:

"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

When I see lots of "this group denied" and "this online account disabled" stuff, I think they should weather the storm.

I don't know, is this just a control-grab-during-a-crisis move?

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#292

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

jancsika wrote: post #290
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the first step is to stop letting the tech corps control your world. If the range of opinion on popular platforms is too restricted, make a deliberate effort to step back from popular platforms onto group chats and random blogs and web forums, the same way we used to a decade ago. Most people who do this, in my experience, realize that it's actually pretty easy to see and talk about what you want…

> It seems to me that the first step is to stop letting the tech corps control your world. This sounds like the "Read the Manual" style of programming UX, vaguely applied to the entire U.S. population. I offer the "F" from "RTFM" as evidence that this technique doesn't scale well. > CBS's content policies Inside Edition cannot construct a personalized chain of increasingly engaging and outrageous conspiratorial conte…

I don't think it needs to scale well. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the idea that you should be able to easily find arbitrary content on mainstream platforms is very new; as recently as a decade or two ago, it was well-understood that if you're interested in niche ideas you've gotta seek out niche platforms that support them. We just have to resurrect that consensus.

Personalized rabbit holes are certainly a big problem, but establishing radically permissive Youtube moderation won't really do anything to fight them. It doesn't seem like a related issue.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#293

Post by CivBase »

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #249
CivBase wrote: post #147

The constitution protects our freedom of speech from the government, not from private entities on their own private property. Make no mistake, that's what centralized social media platforms are - private property. Freedom of speech is not protected by the constitution on social media platforms and, frankly, I don't want 100% free speech on social media. Take a look at HN. HN mods do a brilliant job of moderating. We…

Where does the article talk about freedom of speech? Especially as defined by the constitution? It's just making the argument that this speech should be allowed because it's relevant to the rest of the country.

The article doesn't talk about freedom of speech as protected by the constitution. I was just establishing background for my opinion on the broad subject of social media censorship, which is article is part of.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#294

Post by vmception »

Khaine wrote: post #274
vmception wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has strong speech protections, somehow when people are wrong in their beliefs about what that means they move the goal post to this mythical “ethical” free speech maxim. I dont believe in what those people imagine free speech means. I believe in the “first amendment” which includes freedom of association including for the non-government people that create venues and platforms. “We have the right to refuse serv…

Except you don't have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. It is against the law to refuse service on the basis of protected classes (i.e. race, sex, sexual orientation). These classes are thought to be immutable. More and more evidence shows that political beliefs are inheritable[1]. Should that be protected? What about height? We know that shorter men earn less than taller men. Should short people…

Insightful, I was curious if you had a position? Such as would you like additional protected classes? Or any particular outcome, its not necessary I was just making sure I didnt miss something you were advocating for.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#295

Post by seanp2k2 »

jonathankoren wrote: post #120
emptyparadise wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fundamentally i think the solution is competitors. This was a much easier position to take when the web did not just have a few social media giants with network effects, but still: if youtube becomes to dranicon, start a new website. The tools to stream video (albeit not at scale) are just an apt-get away. I agree. I wouldn't have a problem with YouTube doing anything if YouTube wasn't the video website. We need dec…

The market provides though. There are are tons of sites for alternative and niche content, and new sites come up all the time. Complaining that you don’t have a ready made audience is pretty weak. You need to hustle for this stuff. People used to xerox and give away zines for an audience. As the Pirate Bay founder said recently[0], it’s embarrassing how easily people are giving up. It’s almost as if they don’t want t…

This. I believe that the problem has more to do with most users relying on platforms that are fundamentally advertising companies, and content that doesn’t go well next to an ad gets removed because it becomes a direct threat to revenue. Video sites exist which show very graphic violence, among other things not allowed on YouTube. They’ve been around for years. The issue, I guess, is that they tend to run ads for sketchy business, as they’re the only ones willing to put their name next to that content. The problem IMO isn’t so much that free speech is in jeopardy as the financial incentives of the incumbents are not aligned to support some of the things people want to say.

It can be done, people are just being lazy instead of creative.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#296

Post by seanp2k2 »

Khaine wrote: post #272
shrimpx wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should clarify that "free speech" is unrelated to what Twitter and Facebook are doing. Free speech is a constitutional concept, protecting people from draconian government laws that suppress their speech, or discriminate them based on their speech. What Facebook and Twitter are doing is providing a product that amplifies and places speech in front of particular eyeballs and ears. There are many, many issues with w…

Free speech is not a "constitutional concept" whatever you mean by that. Free speech is a philosophical concept that has been embedded in the US Constitution as the 1st Amendment. The US Founders thought that people must have the ability to speak their mind, to discuss and challenge each others ideas. They thought this ability was so important they enshrined it in law.

And what that means, practically speaking, is that unlike other places in the world, we can speak out against the government and not worry about going to prison for it. That was the intention of it, and we still have that. Whether content critical of the government converts well enough for a company to allow it to stay on their platform is a different question, and hate speech

  public speech that expresses     hate or encourages violence toward a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation
yet another separate question.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#297

Post by seanp2k2 »

cudgy wrote: post #266
tspike wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think we are observing a symptom (unbridled speech amplification) of the disease (monetization of algorithmically targeted content), so to speak? Do you think that if we somehow broke this monetization model, that companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google would cease to be the behemoths they are, and the amplification mechanism might go away?

Yes. Imagine if the telecoms could play ads before, after, and during your conversations on your phone(s)? Why do we accept it from big tech social media?

Strong network effects + capitalism. They found a good way to make lots of money, which allowed them to pay lots of skilled people to spend their time getting more people into the system and looking at ads.

The problem, IMO, is that most users don’t understand how social media works from a business perspective. Advertising companies put a lot of effort into not being known as advertising companies.

Another fun thought experiment: consider who runs political ads, especially local advertisers (highway billboards etc) and what speech they’re willing to accept. Consider Comcast / cable networks and what speech they’re willing to accept. Who are their customers, how are they making money, and how does that affect what speech they are willing to accept on their platforms.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#298

Post by ogre_codes »

emptyparadise wrote: post #230
ogre_codes wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The public square analogy makes much more sense here. But even then, in a lot of places there are impartiality requirements on media outlets, as flawed as they may be. The "Public Square" assumes the space is owned by... well the public. Either the town or city. That's not the case here. Even if it were, the reach of a person in the public square is tiny... a few hundred people if they are absolutely lucky. Besides…

So let's go after TV and radio stations too, then? I'm not opposed to that. By the way, I don't think forcing broadcasters or social media to not police their content is the way to go - I'd much rather make sure they don't become monopolistic. The situation you describe with TV must not happen with social media too.

> I'd much rather make sure they don't become monopolistic. The situation you describe with TV must not happen with social media too.

I'd love to see more variety in social media. Unfortunately network effects favor big single player. Also, every time a new entrant threatens, they get sucked up by an existing player. Sadly, since we've allowed Facebook to swallow everything which isn't bolted down, the only real competition seems to be Chinese owned[0].

(And I sympathize with foreign governments struggling with Facebook & Instagram being US owned).

[0] I have no qualms about Chinese people or even Chinese companies in general. But the way the Chinese government operates, I am skeptical of platforms based on speech.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#299

Post by seanp2k2 »

sneak wrote: post #286
shrimpx wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is not that "all speech should be suppressed", but that, generally speaking, the suppression of speech should not be disallowed. Users and employees should be allowed to pressure companies to suppress hate speech; a bar owner should be allowed to kick into the street a racist and profane customer; a school should be able to fire a teacher who is getting a lot of complaints for teaching racist ideas…

> in any situation and on any public or private property, is far more destructive in my opinion. I think this is perhaps a straw man. Nobody is asking to protect unrestricted speech in all private venues. Would it be so bad to make it illegal for large services that have private DMs to snoop/censor those, such as we do presently for large services that have private telephone calls? The dichotomy isn't public/private.…

IMO that last point is because we’re still trying to govern the Internet based on telecom laws from decades ago. Tech moves way faster than laws, especially tech that is helping politicians get elected. The financial and political incentives aren’t aligned to make significant changes any time soon.

Re: Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

#300

Post by seanp2k2 »

username90 wrote: post #256
marcinzm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes although that's a tangential topic I feel related more to power concentration in a society. None of the organizations have close to a monopoly on communication or content. They simply all agree right now which is generally how implicit social rules tend to function. Eventually they'll start to disagree again in one way or another.

They all have American left wing bias. Personally I'd prefer if they had either European left wing bias or European right wing bias, but right now we only have one option and that is the American political bias which is a really shitty situation. I can't wait for Europe to either ban them in some way or reign in their rights to moderate.

What is to stop any European companies from starting their own social networks? They are not monopolies, and are much less of monopolies than other de-facto monopolies which are allowed to exist without being regulated as such, such as ISPs in the US.
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