Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

People want platforms, not governments, to be responsible for moderating content

reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 152 posts

Re: People want platforms, not governments, to be responsible for moderating content

#91

Post by atoav »

aydyn wrote: post #80
pickledoyster wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Several European governments have jailed people for social media posts. Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand. I think quite a few Europeans have lasting and direct experience with totalitarian, oppressive regimes. Which might also explain why they have stricter (or simply more precise) laws governing expression – not as an oppressive tool, but as a…

Silencing speech IS the oppressive regime.

It can be. But there can be speech where most reasonable people would agree that it should be regulated. E.g. if some dude walks up to your 5 year old child and starts to tell them in intricate detail about his violent sexual fantasy, pretty much everybody notices that the kids right not to have to hear this outweighs the adults edgy itch to do this to a child.

And a lot of speech is like this, nearly no speech is consequence free. I am not saying we should ban any speech that has negative consequences. What I am saying is that with other rights we also have to way the active freedoms of one person ("the freedom to do a thing") against the passive freedoms of all the others ("the freedom to not have a thing done to you").

With other rights it is the same, you may have a right to carry a firearm and even shoot it. But if you shoot it for example in church, other peoples right not to have to deal with you shooting that gun in that church outweighs your right to do that.

In the German speaking part of the EU we decided that the right of literal Nazis to carry their insignia doesn't outweigh the right of the others to not have to see the insignia that have brought so much pain and suffering in these lands. To some degree this is symbolic, because it only bans symbols and not ideologies, but hey, I like my government to protect my state from a fascist takeover, because they are kind of hard to reverse without violence.

Re: People want platforms, not governments, to be responsible for moderating content

#92

Post by greenavocado »

bradley13 wrote: post #18

Several European governments have jailed people for social media posts. Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand. As for falsehoods: some people will be mistaken, some people will lie, and sometimes sarcasm will be misunderstood. Why should anyone be liable? It is on each individual to inform themselves, and to decide what to believe and what to disrega…

Telegram founder Pavel Durov on Sunday accused France of asking him to remove some Moldovan channels from the social media platform ahead of the country’s presidential election last year.

In a statement on the Dubai-headquartered company, Durov claimed that the French intelligence services asked him “through an intermediary” to help the Moldovan government to censor “certain Telegram channels” before the vote on Oct. 20, in which incumbent President Maia Sandu secured a second term in office following a runoff held on Nov. 3.

He said a few channels were identified to have violated Telegram’s rules following reviews of the channels concerned and were subsequently removed.

“The intermediary then informed me that, in exchange for this cooperation, French intelligence would ‘say good things’ about me to the judge who had ordered my arrest in August last year,” Durov said, describing this as “unacceptable on several levels.”

“If the agency did in fact approach the judge — it constituted an attempt to interfere in the judicial process. If it did not, and merely claimed to have done so, then it was exploiting my legal situation in France to influence political developments in Eastern Europe — a pattern we have also observed in Romania,” he further said.

Durov also said that Telegram later received a second list of "Moldovan channels," which he noted were “legitimate and fully compliant with our rules,” unlike the initial list.

CONTINUED...

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/telegram-head-accuses-france...

Re: People want platforms, not governments, to be responsible for moderating content

#93

Post by dragonwriter »

psunavy03 wrote: post #89
jszymborski wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most societies have decided that some speech should be illegal. The classic example is yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre in the absence of a fire. I think it is good and healthy to have conversations as to what should and should not be protected speech, but I think that there is this rote reaction that kinda boils down to free speech absolutism. But of course, all the free speech absolutists find at some point or a…

> The classic example is yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre in the absence of a fire. This is from an overturned US Supreme Court opinion, has no basis in anyone's jurisprudence, yet keeps coming up as an example of speech that's permissible to suppress for some reason. Oliver Wendell Holmes created that example to support jailing a socialist for speaking out against the World War I draft.

> This is from a dissenting opinion of a US Supreme Court justice

No, its dicta which neither was part of the substantive ruling nor an accurate description of pre-existing law from the Court’s opinion (which was unanimous, so there was no “dissenting opinion”) in a case that has since been overruled and is notorious for having allowed an egregious restriction on core political speech.

Re: People want platforms, not governments, to be responsible for moderating content

#94

Post by Braxton1980 »

gwd wrote: post #67
IAmBroom wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can make judgment calls. Those are opinions. That still doesn't make yours, nor theirs, wrong. Immoral, unethical, impractical, or contrary to human rights, perhaps.

> People can make judgment calls. Those are opinions. I'm not sure that's a helpful distinction. In some sense, everything we classify as a 'fact' is a judgement call: is the sun a giant ball of fusing hydrogen? I mean, probably , but maybe we're all living in some sort simulation and it doesn't really exist at all; Or maybe you are living in your own personal "Truman Show", being fed lies by everyone who shows you s…

An opinion can't be falsified.

"The sun is a giant ball of fusing hydrogen" has the possibility of being proven false. This means it's either a true or false fact.

If I said "NYC is the capital of the United States"* I'm either lying or mistaken

What makes it a lie vs mistaken? Whether it's a genuine belief, that I have a reason to have the belief. For example if I made the assumption it's the capital because it's the biggest city then I'm mistaken.

It's a lie if I know it's not true, if I ignore information that falsifies the fact.

*To avoid semantics I mean the official capital of the country not like "it's important"

Re: People want platforms, not governments, to be responsible for moderating content

#95

Post by necrobrit »

bradley13 wrote: post #18

Several European governments have jailed people for social media posts. Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand. As for falsehoods: some people will be mistaken, some people will lie, and sometimes sarcasm will be misunderstood. Why should anyone be liable? It is on each individual to inform themselves, and to decide what to believe and what to disrega…

> Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand.

This argument can be made for government in general, although granted technology does make it easier for a smaller group to overreach. I'm a European and do hear your concern, but I feel comfortable supporting restrictions on speech _as long as_ there is also a functioning and just legal system that those restrictions operate within. Though there does seem to be a worrying trend towards technology bypassing the legal system and just giving enforcement agencies blanket access of late.

We all also have our own cultural biases and blind spots. I offer this not as whataboutism but as a different perspective: I'm _way_ more frightened by the authoritarian police culture (I base this on interactions with the police in a period I lived in the US) in the US than I am of the UK governments internet censorship. The internet censorship could do a lot of harm, but I think not as much potential harm as a large militarised police force willing to bust down doors on command from above.

Re: People want platforms, not governments, to be responsible for moderating content

#96

Post by whycome »

jszymborski wrote: post #84
aydyn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silencing speech IS the oppressive regime.

Most societies have decided that some speech should be illegal. The classic example is yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre in the absence of a fire. I think it is good and healthy to have conversations as to what should and should not be protected speech, but I think that there is this rote reaction that kinda boils down to free speech absolutism. But of course, all the free speech absolutists find at some point or a…

Imagine a situation where a person reasonably believes there was a fire (they saw smoke, but it turned out to be a vape or some sort of smoke machine part of the show). They're arrested for the false claim. Others know that it's too risky. Now, when there's a fire, people are reluctant to speak up just in case. It's the chilling effect that can affect speech. We have whistleblowers who are afraid to speak up. And when the means of speaking out or alerting others (ie via email or social media or smartphone) is controlled by a large corporation that may feel threatened...

Re: People want platforms, not governments, to be responsible for moderating content

#97

Post by potato3732842 »

psunavy03 wrote: post #89
jszymborski wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most societies have decided that some speech should be illegal. The classic example is yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre in the absence of a fire. I think it is good and healthy to have conversations as to what should and should not be protected speech, but I think that there is this rote reaction that kinda boils down to free speech absolutism. But of course, all the free speech absolutists find at some point or a…

> The classic example is yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre in the absence of a fire. This is from an overturned US Supreme Court opinion, has no basis in anyone's jurisprudence, yet keeps coming up as an example of speech that's permissible to suppress for some reason. Oliver Wendell Holmes created that example to support jailing a socialist for speaking out against the World War I draft.

> yet keeps coming up as an example of speech that's permissible to suppress for some reason

Because they don't actually have an example of not imminently violence causing non-fraudulent speech that SCOTUS has upheld a ban of. And then when you call them out they'll say "but wait, it's metaphorical". If they had a better example they'd be using it.

Re: People want platforms, not governments, to be responsible for moderating content

#99

Post by [deleted] »

philipallstar wrote: post #40
jgeada wrote: post #2

I think this might be a misinterpretation of the word "responsible". If a platform lies or spread malicious content, it seems people want the platform to have the liability and consequences for the malfeasance. That is what most people mean by "responsible". Government sets the rules, and if someone fail to comply, there are consequences against those responsible. Government isn't responsible, it is holding them resp…

> If a platform lies or spread malicious content, it seems people want the platform to have the liability and consequences for the malfeasance. That is what most people mean by "responsible". The platform isn't lying, any more than if I write "1 equals 2" on a letter and send it via the mail system to someone else is the mail system lying.

[deleted]

Re: People want platforms, not governments, to be responsible for moderating content

#100

Post by tsss »

necrobrit wrote: post #95
bradley13 wrote: post #18

Several European governments have jailed people for social media posts. Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand. As for falsehoods: some people will be mistaken, some people will lie, and sometimes sarcasm will be misunderstood. Why should anyone be liable? It is on each individual to inform themselves, and to decide what to believe and what to disrega…

> Many Europeans support this - they don't understand how government censorship can quickly get out of hand. This argument can be made for government in general, although granted technology does make it easier for a smaller group to overreach. I'm a European and do hear your concern, but I feel comfortable supporting restrictions on speech _as long as_ there is also a functioning and just legal system that those rest…

There has never been a functioning and just legal system in the history of mankind. Not to mention that what is "just" is very much up to debate.
Post reply on HN