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Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

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Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#71

This is a very hard problem that YouTube and Facebook made for themselves by becoming the world’s largest advertising platforms. They depend on engagement for ad revenue, they designed world-class algorithms to promote this engagement, and it turned out that extremist content happens to be very engaging. And so the problem is, building an algorithm that blindly promotes whatever keeps users on the site, for all its c…

> They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to stop it. At first I was going to argue that they could stop it and that they did have the "technology" to do so, but the more I thought about it the more I concluded that in the system we have built, they really cannot. Profitable ideas are unstoppable until they are proved less profitable than some other idea, or regulated out of existen…

> Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law.

A common misconception: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#72

Utterly nonsensical. You don't need the internet to be radicalized, people have been willing to kill in the name of their convictions for as long as humans have existed. I predict even if somehow every white supremacist were booted off the internet, no lives at all would be saved, as they just don't need the internet to kill people, or to learn to hate. This is purely giving up rights for the sake of security theatre…

Why should the web be treated any different to radio or TV?

A cable news channel doesn't get carte blanche to broadcast uncensored beheading or mass shooting videos at any hour of the day so why should a website not be obliged to take steps to curb the exact same thing?

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#73
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1st amendment also only applies in the US, in this case the US has essentially decided that it likes nazis and doesn't want to get involved with this international coalition

[flagged]

Also worth noting that an actual incitement of violence is expressly illegal under U.S. law, and the ChristChurch shooter's manifesto et.al. is probably already illegal, without requiring a new speech police

Your understanding of the law is wrong. Incitement is assessed (in federal law) by the standard set in Brandenburg v. Ohio which requires both the intention to produce imminent lawless action and the likelihood that it will be produced.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test

Let us consider a document whose entire text is "Reader, please commit a crime as soon as humanly possible." It is targeted (to the reader), specifically encourages lawless behavior, and has a sense of immediacy.

But does it produce imminent lawlessness? If I say those words to you in person, the time between my utterance and your hearing of it is negligible. If you find me sufficiently inspiring or intimidating you may be moved to act upon my exhortation. But when you read a document, it might have been written 5 minutes ago or 5000 years ago. It may have been produced near to you or on the other side of the world. You may know and care who the writer is, or have no clue. Conversely, as the writer of a document my ability to predict when and where it will be read, and by whom, is similarly limited. Thus, a document by itself lacks temporal, spatial, or social proximity compared to an interpersonal interaction - making imminence virtually impossible to prove.

Likelihood of producing action is very subjective (and thereby also hard to prove). In this case I have offered no incentives or specificity to my exhortations, so you probably feel little motivation to select and carry out a crime and put yourself in legal jeopardy. If you were to cite this document as an exculpatory factor few people would take you seriously. Even if I offered an elaborate rationale and specific directions for committing a crime, when they're in documentary form I don't really know who will read it and have even less knowledge of how readers will react to it; it's very hard to say how anyone could assert a definite probability of 0.5 or greater that the crime will be carried out within any given period.

tl;dr it's almost impossible to prove the US standard of incitement outside of a very narrow range of circumstances, so making the 'incitement is already illegal' argument is the legal equivalent of sweeping dirt underneath a rug and then forgetting about it.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#74
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1st amendment also only applies in the US, in this case the US has essentially decided that it likes nazis and doesn't want to get involved with this international coalition

[flagged]

No, I think the US administration, Trump in particular, sympathise with actual nazis - we saw this in Trump's reaction to the nazis marching in Charlottesville - "very fine people" he said

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#75
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness.

> What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness. No, it isn't. Inevitably someone like yourself will come into threads like these and attempt to start a slippery slope argument by trying to imply that the subject at hand is meaningless and, therefore, all attempts to address it are arbitrary. It really is strange how, for certain subjects, people just forget how English works…

It is a slippery slope. For all intents and purposes we're accelerating down the slope.

The Orwellian nightmare you talk about already exists in countries like China. The naive presumption that the West will always support free expression is baseless. It will not unless it's vigilantly defended by Westerners. And once given up, liberty is not easily regained (see Venezuela, Cuba, USSR, East Germany, etc).

It's also worth noting that whoever holds power and is defending status quo (however benevolent or malevolent) determines what constitutes extremism.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US would be a laggard here regardless, given its enshrinement of free speech

Perhaps. Unfortunately absolute enshrinement of anything and the inability to critically evaluate when to allow for common-sense deviation from such enshrinement is a bit of a progress-stopper.

The problem with common-sense as a guide for law is that it changes dramatically over time, and often over short periods. It also remains to be seen whether or not this will result in progress in the long term.

It's fortunate that we've been in one of the longest periods of relative peace in post dark age Western European history, but I don't generally count on that trend continuing forever. Making sure a government has significant enshrined limitations on its own power is important, not in the good times, but in the bad.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#77
post #56
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rather live with the remote threat of extremism rather than live in a censored world. Would you rather live in North Korea with no extremism? You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism and yet you'd give up your right to free speech for some remote threat? That kind of thinking is the cause of north korea and nazi germany. Authoritarians always use remote threats to justify t…

> You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism... I know this is pedantic, but you got me curious so I went to check the numbers. Odds of death in mass shooting (US only): 1 in 11,125 Odds of death by lightning strike (US only): 1 in 161,831 So it seems that it's actually a lot more likely for an American to die in a mass shooting than it is for us to die in lightning strikes. Edi…

From the same source:

Odds of death by police: 1 in 7700

Odds of death by car ("any motor vehicle incident"): 1 in 315

I'd agree with basetop, I'd rather live in a world free of censorship and "full" of extremism.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#78
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically meaninglessness. No, it isn't. Inevitably someone like yourself will come into threads like these and attempt to start a slippery slope argument by trying to imply that the subject at hand is meaningless and, therefore, all attempts to address it are arbitrary. It really is strange how, for certain subjects, people just forget how English works…

It is a slippery slope. For all intents and purposes we're accelerating down the slope. The Orwellian nightmare you talk about already exists in countries like China. The naive presumption that the West will always support free expression is baseless. It will not unless it's vigilantly defended by Westerners. And once given up, liberty is not easily regained (see Venezuela, Cuba, USSR, East Germany, etc). It's also w…

All Western countries have governments and are states based on the rule of law, and all place some limits on speech and expression. Even the US doesn't allow certain forms of expression, such as libel, slander, falsehoods, terroristic threats, etc. The West has therefore never supported free expression, just as it has never supported free markets.

We are already on, and have always been on, that slope. Yet not all Western countries are like China or North Korea, odd.

It's almost as if that slope isn't as slippery as some would have us believe.

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#79
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US would be a laggard here regardless, given its enshrinement of free speech

The US has plenty of laws against the use of speech to promote violence. The Netherlands has, in practice, some of the most expansive free speech rights of any corner of the planet, yet they had no problem signing on (to this non-binding agreement).

AFAIK courts have established precedents that it has to be "threat of imminent harm" - so promoting violence is OK ("kill all XXX") but shooting "fire" in a theater isn't.

Streaming a terrorist attack doesn't seem to result in a "threat of imminent harm" I think - if anything, it could prevent harm (because the viewers could report the violence and police could prevent further violence).

Re: Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement

#80
post #21

Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try and stop extremism online.

So "we must do something, this is something, we must do it"?

My lack of an alternative doesn't make your idea good.

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