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Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

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Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#471

Post by leereeves »

ashtonkem wrote: post #466
leereeves wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar regulations have existed in the past (common carrier and the fairness doctrine, for example) without giving the government the power to "declare which ideological believes are and are not protected from moderation".

The fairness doctrine was only constitutional because there were a limited number of channels (Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC), and it was impossible for anyone else to create one due to FCC regulations. I genuinely doubt that it would be constitutional today with cable television, let alone the internet.

I'm not proposing that we reestablish the fairness doctrine, just using it as an example of similar government regulation in the past that didn't have the disastrous effects you predicted.

But since you brought up the limited number of choices, I would like to mention that we find ourselves in that situation again today in the smartphone and online video markets, although for different reasons. And that's relevant because regulation is only necessary when the free market fails to provide the choices and freedoms we expect.

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#472

Post by nyolfen »

emteycz wrote: post #268
nyolfen wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's the effect of trying to avoid regulation by self-regulating. after trump got elected, one of the big media narratives was that it happened because of misinformation ("fake news"); the response has been censorship by platform owners to avoid the charge in the future and any potential federal action

Why do you think so? How do you know it's not the response to multiple attempts to put liability for content on platform owners like Google and Facebook? How do you know they did not respond strongly because most governments have declared state of crisis, which means more severe punishment, and punishment of things that would be OK otherwise (and of course nobody knows what that actually means, let alone all around t…

there can be more than one reason, but the censorship began in earnest after trump's election and before covid.[1] this isn't even a controversial position and i'm nowhere near the only person to have remarked upon it.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/08/06/636030043/youtube-apple-and-f...

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#473

Post by AmericanChopper »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #437
ashtonkem wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Section 230 provides immunity to Google and similar for content posted by other users and services. The notion that section 230 requires that Google be neutral in order to maintain that protection is not in the text of the law, and appears to be made up out of whole cloth. I will quote the entirely of section 230 below, see for yourself. > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the…

> Section 230 provides immunity to Google and similar for content posted by other users and services. To be more clear, Google and other web publishers already enjoy immunity for content posted by other users and services. That is the default state of things under American law. What section 230 does is preserve their immunity even if they exercise editorial discretion over some of the content that other users/service…

This is not true. The default state of US law was that those who published without moderation were protected, and those that did moderate were not. Section 230 was created specifically because publishers who moderated user generated comments had been successfully sued for defamation [0].

Section 230 did not preserve any rights at all, it created entirely new ones. Companies were previously able to enjoy common carrier immunities, if they behaved like common carriers. Section 230 granted them those immunities without giving them the obligation to behave like common carriers.

It's hard to argue that the legislature in 1996 were imaging the future we would have in 2020 where the vast majority of content is controlled by such a small collection of companies, and where those companies often operate a lot like a cartel when it comes to moderation of that content. Section 230 is really the only example we have of common carrier immunities being granted to non-common carriers. The reason you don't see that more often is because it creates exactly this set of problems. It's clear that section 230 has had impact far beyond the scope of the 1996 legislation, the world has changed significantly since then, and those problems really should be addressed.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#475

Post by CWuestefeld »

ksk wrote: post #433
CWuestefeld wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I argue that the government has essentially zero accountability, while the private sector has a huge degree. Our bandwidth for holding government accountable is so limited as to be useless. Consider the federal gov't, since I think it's what you're mostly talking about anyway. We get to vote for * 1x Presidential primary every 4 years, from a field of, let's say, 8 to be generous: 3 bits * 1x President every 4 years,…

>Yes, we can write letters and stuff, but that doesn't really allow us to hold them accountable Public protests/rallies/marches do bring about change in government/government policies. Many politicians do care about their public image, and are susceptible to manipulation based on public pressure. >Compare that with private sector. Even for entities like Google, we've got huge latitude to vote with our feet. We can us…

In the political arena, the status quo is that each voter must choose one of:

A) I must vote for the Democrat candidate because the Republicans are evil and they'll subjugate women and minorities.

B) I must vote for the Republicans because the Democrats are evil and they'll turn us into a bunch of commies.

There is no room in today's political debate for even mention of finer points of free speech philosophy, when all we can do is scare people into voting for the lesser evil.

Many politicians do care about their public image, and are susceptible to manipulation based on public pressure.

And this is no less true in the private sector.

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#476

Post by scep12 »

Seems like a mistake by an automated system. It's a bummer that there's infrequent mixups like this, but I do wonder what the alternative is. YouTube faces a similarly hard moderation problem. There's nothing they could do to appease even just 90% of criticisms.

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#478

Post by leshenka »

emiliovesprini wrote: post #474

Aren't podcasts essentially audio files over RSS? Broke: culture war over general purpose computation. Woke: culture war over general purpose content distribution.

There are now podcast distribution services where you can host your podcasts and there are several things wrong with them:

- as a consumer, I am expected to install every podcast application that hosts podcasts I like.

- they usually don't expose RSS feeds because god forbid someone uses a third-party, general-purpose, RSS-based podcast application.

Re: Google bans Podcast Addict app over non-approved Covid-19 content

#479

Post by newacct583 »

blhack wrote: post #286

At this point: I wish they’d just take a stronger stance and ban everything they don’t like. Just ban the political party they don’t like, ban anything that speaks out against China, just ban it all. We need to go back to the web, where anybody could install Apache and off they went. Bandwidth is cheap now. BitTorrent exists. I hope google and twitter and Facebook and all the rest just hurry up with all this. Some ot…

> At this point: I wish they’d just take a stronger stance and ban everything they don’t like.

Is there even any evidence that this app was banned because they "don't like" it? I mean, come on. This surely got flagged by an automatic system that thought it was a covid app. Google and Apple and social media and basically everywhere are absolutely flooded with apps and content designed to scam people by using fear of the pandemic. The need for a heavy hand to prevent this is real.

The world you want where people are free to talk about covid on every forum is a world where everyone's terrified grandparents are being scammed out of their savings. Scams like that were literally front page news on this very site not 15 hours ago!

Now... if they don't reinstate the app, then there's an argument. But I think the direction of the cuts made by Occam's Razor are really clear in this case: this is a false positive from a scam detector.

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