[HN Gopher] Ajit Pai, FCC drops Section 230 plan
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Ajit Pai, FCC drops Section 230 plan
Author : hundchenkatze
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-01-08 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| djsumdog wrote:
| Removing Section 230 would be horrific because it would prevent
| anyone else from being able to make competing platforms to those
| that have the massive ability to moderate everything.
|
| However, the platforms are too large to be allowed to moderate
| whatever the hell they want as they are now, while slurping up
| all our personal information and data. I think we need real
| reform, and people need to leave the big platforms and find
| better alternatives. I wrote about this last month:
|
| https://battlepenguin.com/politics/is-meaningful-section-230...
| bsradcliffe wrote:
| Fuck Ajit, the piece of shit. Good riddance.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Please don't fulminate
| kgwxd wrote:
| What kind of smart aleck, wise guy, braggart, windbag,
| smarty-pants, know-it-all, uses the word "fulminate"?
| m00x wrote:
| Please don't fulminate.
| threatofrain wrote:
| > Despite that, Pai did not criticize Facebook and Twitter for
| restricting Trump this week. When asked if he "agree[s] with
| Facebook and Twitter's decision to pull the president off of
| social media,"
|
| > Pai responded, "Given the circumstances we saw yesterday, I'm
| not going to second-guess those decisions."
| snowwrestler wrote:
| This was never going to go anywhere. The same companies who
| supported and appreciated Pai's net neutrality ruling (big ISPs)
| are all content companies now too, and they benefit as much as
| Facebook and Twitter from Section 230.
|
| Unlike net neutrality, which split the business community between
| network owners and application companies, I can't think of a
| category of business that benefits from repeal or weakening of
| Section 230. IMO it's a purely performative policy discussion.
| munificent wrote:
| I don't disagree with you but it makes me sad that we accept it
| as axiomatic that any law change is completely untenable unless
| it financially benefits some business sector.
| CivBase wrote:
| I have many disagreements with Ajit Pai, but I think this is a
| smooth move. I think there needs to be some regulation on content
| moderation policies for the platforms which are becoming
| increasingly entrenched as the new public square. But even just
| the last few days have proven it's a difficult subject on which
| there is little public consensus. I haven't read up on Section
| 230, but I'd rather them not rush a solution out the door in the
| final hours of the current administration.
| ryan29 wrote:
| I want to point out there really are two sides to Section 230. On
| one hand, it's absolutely crucial to have it if we want most of
| the online communications tools we've become accustomed to to
| exist. On the other hand I think some companies, like Facebook
| specifically, have massively abused the protections of Section
| 230 to benefit themselves at the expense of the general public.
| When you're to the point of hiring psychologists to manipulate
| your users into "engagement" regardless of the impact to mental
| health and public discourse, I think that's the point where
| everyone needs to recognize that _something_ needs to be done in
| terms of regulation.
|
| When regulation _does_ happen, I hope lawmakers around the world
| give no consideration to the impact on Facebook just as
| Facebook's given no consideration to the negatives they're
| creating for society. Let them fail if necessary IMO.
|
| And finally, the best middle-ground I've seen for Section 230 was
| here on Hacker News. I don't remember which user said it, so I'm
| sorry I can't attribute it, but the idea was solid. Things like
| reverse chronological data feeds that a user is specifically
| asking for should be protected under Section 230. Things like
| recommendation and engagement algorithms should be considered
| publishing and platforms should be liable for that content since
| they're surfacing it and putting it in peoples' faces.
|
| I've paraphrased that, but I really hope the general idea gains
| traction. I've been very anti-censorship my whole life, but
| there's no denying that social media can have a severe, negative
| impact if the platforms are susceptible to propaganda and
| misinformation, so I think it's time to talk about moderation.
| cjpearson wrote:
| I agree there needs to be some reform of Section 230 in that
| direction. The law simply can't handle what the internet and
| social media have become.
|
| When a platform is curating and recommending content to users,
| it should be treated more like a publisher and be held
| responsible for the content it promotes. It doesn't matter if
| the curation is done by hand or with algorithms.
|
| Providers that simply allow the hosting and basic browsing of
| content should be protected as long as they are willing to
| remove illegal content when it is found.
|
| Also, I wouldn't call it censorship at all. If a newspaper
| publishes an article they claim some responsibility for its
| content. The same should apply if Facebook highlights an
| article or YouTube recommends a video.
| dominotw wrote:
| > think some companies, like Facebook specifically
|
| Meta comment, Facebook seems to be the main go to comic
| villain. Things that were described in the comment like driving
| engagement is also done by platforms like Twitter. But twitter
| seems to be in peoples good graces for some reason.
| ryan29 wrote:
| I wouldn't say that Twitter is in my good graces, just that I
| think Facebook is worse. I don't have any empirical data to
| back that up, so it's just a general assessment from watching
| the industry. In my mind, Facebook pioneered a lot of the bad
| practices and has been the leader in unethical practices.
|
| For me, that makes Facebook worse than the others because
| increasing profits by being unethical is easy and as soon as
| one company in an industry starts doing it, others are left
| in an impossible situation. Either they become unethical to
| compete or they get outcompeted and fail.
|
| Facebook has also demonstrated they're not going to change
| until someone forces them. Even with all the pushback in the
| last couple years, they're still pulling anti-consumer stunts
| like the forced account tying / data collection with Oculus
| and Instagram. I tend to judge companies by their actions
| rather than their words and Facebook hasn't ever done
| anything to make me think they care even the tiniest little
| bit about the public good.
| grillvogel wrote:
| twitter is pretty much the literal modern incarnation of
| pitchfork mobs
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I would love a "Choose your algorithm" law for content
| recommendations. The default would be chronological order, and
| you can opt in to whatever other algorithms these platforms
| offer.
| voldacar wrote:
| > it's absolutely crucial to have it if we want most of the
| online communications tools we've become accustomed to to exist
|
| do we?
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > Things like recommendation and engagement algorithms
|
| So, how does this work for something like a search engine? Does
| Google/Bing/DDG need to get an audit from the government that
| their recommendation algorithm is sufficiently non-creative so
| as to be not publishing?
| ben_w wrote:
| I hadn't thought of that before, but you're right.
|
| I'm not sure how to properly distinguish between the case of
| "I'm a veterinarian so when I search for 'mouse' I mean the
| animal not the peripheral" versus the case of "I click on all
| the conspiracy theories so when I search for 'president' I
| mean the Satanic space-lizard who kidnapped Elvis and eats
| babies".
| dsr_ wrote:
| I am not against requiring people to put in more words to
| get better results.
|
| mouse => computer mouse | house mouse | feeder mice |
| common mouse diseases
|
| president => PTA president | US president | lizard
| president
| joshuamorton wrote:
| This is, I'll note without any judgement, a surprisingly
| anticapitalist opinion. You're essentially saying that
| you don't want to allow companies to compete on how good
| the product is from a consumer perspective (as a
| consumer, I value not having to precisely describe my
| search queries, I don't want to have to write SQL in my
| search tool!).
| derekp7 wrote:
| But also, when I search Google, I want to know if what
| category the results list is coming from. The
| recommendation engines have gotten so bad that I quite
| frequently will use private browsing on a lot of my
| searches that are intended for a single-use purpose (like
| when I read about something and want more info on it),
| without having to have future searches (or
| advertisements!!!) coming back in my face.
|
| A simple example is when I bring up a playlist on Youtube
| for when one of the grandkids is over. Well I really
| don't want my default recommendations to be mostly 70's
| metal but contaminated with The Wheels On The Bus
| peppered through the playlist.
| leetcrew wrote:
| okay, but I'm against me having to type more to get the
| same results.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Seems like push rather than pull matters? Recommendations are
| pushed, search results are pulled.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense to me. Recommendation algorithms are
| just curation (done by a machine), which is clearly not a
| neutral practice.
| baumandm wrote:
| IANAL, but if you remove Section 230 protection from
| algorithmically-curated content, Facebook would have to switch
| entirely to manually curating everything to avoid accidentally
| including libelous user-submitted content they could be sued
| over.
|
| Even basic features like ordering new posts by people you
| follow to show the most popular ones first are algorithmically-
| driven.
|
| There's no way Facebook could manage to do anything
| individualized, so it would turn into a chronological feed +
| manually-curated, Taboola-style content (which I doubt anyone
| wants).
|
| I agree with your perspective on the negative impacts of social
| media, and I'm open to the idea of some kind of regulation to
| improve things. But I think effectively banning algorithms from
| internet services is going to hurt more than help.
| ryan29 wrote:
| My general reaction to that is "tough luck!" If a site
| algorithmically generated recipes, but accidentally created
| recipes that poison people once in a while we'd ban those
| algorithms without thought or, at the very least, make the
| algorithm owners liable.
|
| If social media is destabilizing the mental health and
| critical thinking skills of the general public to the point
| that a subset of the population is becoming dangerous (and
| violent), isn't that basically the same thing?
|
| I don't care if Mark Zuckerberg needs to buy a smaller
| mansion if that means my friends / neighbors / family aren't
| going to get brainwashed by propaganda.
| pochamago wrote:
| I've generally liked the policies Pai has pushed through in his
| tenure, and I'm really relieved to see him pulling the rug out
| from under this.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| which ones?
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/fcc-blasted-for-...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/ajit-pai-uses-ba...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/fcc-fines-sincla...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/ajit-...
| trianglem wrote:
| So you like the repeal of net neutrality?
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Some people believe that having a choice between 128Mbit/sec
| DSL and a cable company that does everything it can to bundle
| services and make you pay for stuff you don't want is enough
| competition to ensure companies don't misbehave.
| dstick wrote:
| I'm paying EUR32 / mnth for 1000/1000 fibre in an urban,
| but not mega city urban, area of the Netherlands. Internet
| access should be a commodity like electricity and gas by
| now. It's become that important.
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(page generated 2021-01-08 23:01 UTC)