[HN Gopher] Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patric...
___________________________________________________________________
Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of
internet discourse
Author : StuntPope
Score : 173 points
Date : 2021-08-08 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bombthrower.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bombthrower.com)
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > These companies think they're the patricians of internet
| discourse. The reality is they're the plumbing.
|
| That was true until they started promoting and demoting content
| in order to drive engagement and juice their ad revenues.
|
| Big tech is not plumbing. The minute Facebook invented the news
| feed they became editors and content promoters.
|
| If they really want to just be plumbing, they can shut down their
| algorithms any time.
|
| As an aside, I picked on that part of the post because the rest
| of it quickly pivots away from tech and reads as a self-
| promoting, semi-unhinged rant about covid that reads like the
| drunken ramblings of Q adjacent anarcho-libertarian, complete
| with the big hits: references to the "Davos elite",
| hydrochloroquine, ivermectin, Evil Dr. Fauci, etc, etc.
|
| Which reminds me, I should probably flag this post given it's
| relevance to HN is glancing at best...
| stale2002 wrote:
| > The minute Facebook invented the news feed they became
| editors and content promoters.
|
| Ok. If they are editors and publishers then perhaps the law
| should change so that should be treated like other content
| editors that exist already.
|
| We could do this by treating them legally equal to things like
| the New York Times, with all the legal responsibilities,
| freedoms, and liabilities that such a thing entails.
|
| And these companies that don't want to be treated like editors,
| then we could create new provisions in the law, that give them
| protections if they act like how the phone company acts.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I'm also gonna flag this, after careful deliberation. I'm gonna
| leave a comment, because I'm not the shadow powers that be, I'm
| just a dude who thinks this is an incohesive rambling that's a
| waste of everybody's time and, despite the promising title,
| ultimately rehashed flame-baity non-tech non-news.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| Yep, another day, another random dude who considers himself an
| expert on what freedom is, what tech platforms are, and the
| dangers of private businesses refusing to amplify his friends.
| Even a plumber will refuse to route your sewage back to the
| public water main...
| [deleted]
| tzs wrote:
| It was kind of amusing that in his section giving examples of
| what he said were various logical fallacies in the "vast
| majority of all media narrative around COVID-19" he committed
| several of those same fallacies, plus a few more.
| bena wrote:
| It would be funnier if it weren't so common. Everything is a
| cudgel to people like him. Fallacies exist, not to introspect
| on one's own arguments, but to assail arguments you disagree
| with. Data exists only so long as it supports your conclusion
| and any data to the contrary or supports other conclusions is
| wrong. Never defend, always attack.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| This is rehashing the old "common carrier" debate again, isn't
| it? Which of these are the common carriers: Physical
| wire/connectivity provider? ISP? Tier1 ISPs? Social media sites
| connecting messages with other folks?
|
| Where is the line drawn, and what responsibility does each level
| have?
| jeffbee wrote:
| You can't use the common carrier argument to force someone to
| be a common carrier. If you pick and choose your clients based
| on policy you are by definition _not_ a common carrier.
| Mailchimp is a private carrier. They choose what to carry.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Agreed -- but a lot of social media sites say "we just
| connect people" and then turn around and are forced to play
| moderator so things don't burn out of control...
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I don't know why social media companies haven't tried
| letting users opt out of different categories of
| censorship.
|
| Presumably every user appreciates the anti-spam filtering
| these sites do, and anti-scam/phishing, but there should be
| a separate checkbox (ticked by default) for "Remove
| misinformation about covid/vaccines", and one for "Remove
| misinformation claiming the election was stolen", etc.
|
| Then the social media companies can say to governments "If
| you would like all users in your jurisdiction to be unable
| to opt out from these categories, please pass a law
| requiring us to hardcode these settings for them, and we'll
| update our UIs to tell users why they can't opt out."
|
| Better yet, the social media companies should say to
| governments "Please provide your own list of which posts
| are misinformation, and we'll make sure that users see a
| blank page saying 'Your government has deemed this post to
| be misinformation' instead of the content they want".
| echelon wrote:
| It'd be nice if the plumbing worked together.
|
| I'd like to be able to export data easily, run my own programs
| easily, write software that doesn't get taxed or asked to be
| resubmitted (since when did Microsoft charge for Windows app
| development?)
|
| Every company purports to be _for you_ , but it's a big toothy
| grinned lie. Some of them sell you, others sell you out.
|
| It also sucks that these companies surface the worst of humanity
| to drive engagement. Are people _really_ this terrible?
|
| Tech started to sour in 2005.
| kfprt wrote:
| Lately being on the internet is feeling more like Junta era
| Argentina with content disappearing left and right.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| I agree but it's exceedingly rare that this is because of
| political reasons - usually, it's because of music rights
| issues.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| youtube-dl is the only proof I have that some of my favorite
| content ever actually existed
| kfprt wrote:
| For me it's the realization that I don't even know what I
| lost. I just have lists of dead URL's.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| modern day Poe
| mcint wrote:
| Odd critique coming from the head of a DNS company, that could
| easily offer a competitive service with MailChimp.
|
| The obsession with class (in the title, and content) and
| misunderstood genius reads more like within-class squabble than
| an argument for a different order.
|
| I did some freelance work helping someone worried about Google
| censorship move their services to more independent alternatives,
| including EasyDNS. This post makes a lot more sense to me as
| signaling, in that respect.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Odd critique coming from the head of a DNS company, that
| could easily offer a competitive service with MailChimp._
|
| I think you missed the author's point. His point is not that
| someone needs to start a competing service. his point is that
| the feel that tech companies are patricians rather than
| plumbers is widespread and common place.
| varelse wrote:
| I remain confused as to why anyone thinks they have unlimited
| first amendment rights on social media. It sounds a lot like
| thinking one has first amendment rights at a private employer.
| Let's clear this up right now. TLDR: you don't unless you
| explicitly do.
|
| https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/setting-the-record-straigh...
|
| Edit: keep bringing those freethinker(tm) downvotes. It won't
| change the law one bit, but I guess it gives good feels.
|
| I mean you could also try starting your own social media network
| that absolutely guarantees first amendment rights, but so far
| only hilarity has ensued from that premise along the lines of
| tragedy plus time equals comedy. You could be the first one to
| prove them all wrong. What's stopping you?
|
| Or if that's too hard, why don't you all apply to work at
| Facebook and Twitter? Then you can work your way up the ladder
| until you can depose Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg. And on the
| first day of your reign of your new empire you can proclaim to
| all shareholders and employees that your social media site is
| entirely unregulated. Otherwise WTH should these companies care
| about you? You won't build anything and you won't do the work to
| change the path of something already built.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| I have no problem with social media companies kicking off
| anyone they please. I do have a problem when the lines between
| government and private get blurred, and a government can
| indirectly or directly influence the censorship decisions of
| private companies through threat of regulation, a revolving
| door, or by explicitly flagging certain posts. That's a grey
| area 1A violation in my mind.
| varelse wrote:
| When has any of this not been blurry?
|
| Tech gets all sorts of tax breaks to innovate. That's okay,
| but if they proactively kick people off the platform so as to
| head off government regulation, that's not okay?
|
| Or wait, let me guess, all tax breaks are good! How'd I do?
| [deleted]
| mancerayder wrote:
| > Edit: keep bringing those freethinker(tm) downvotes. It won't
| change the law one bit, but I guess it gives good feels.
|
| Freedom to comment is not freedom to not be downvoted into
| oblivion. You can complain but we'll grey that one, as well.
| There's lesson in the irony.
| varelse wrote:
| And yet still not a single counter argument explaining why
| you guys don't build your own social media site instead of
| whining about the old and stupid leading brands. There's
| lesson in the irony.
| tstrimple wrote:
| They keep trying to build their own social media sites and
| are confused as to why they all degenerate into cesspools.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Us guys?
|
| You're making a lot of assumptions. One of the saddest and
| most frustrating aspects of big tech's narrowing of
| permissible discourse is the association of defenders of
| discourse with red ties, right wing ideas and all of that.
|
| An Intro to Constitutional Law course or book would
| demonstrate how false that is, that up until only a decade
| or less ago, conservatives were the ones assaulting free
| speech. And Progressives were vigorously defending freedom
| of speech. This includes hate speech. They were preventing
| 'consequences' as people like yourself like to remind us we
| have no protection from. I can suggest materials to read,
| but what has degenerated is this thread, so it's pointless
| effort unless someone wants it.
|
| The philosophical arguments made by the Progressives in
| those days in defense of speech resonate timelessly, from
| the 1600s to the 2020s. The arguments resonate also beyond
| narrow ideas of what constitutes government restrictions.
|
| Today the question is around whether the FB's and Twitter's
| and YouTube's should be regulated as utilities and in the
| public interest, rather than an outmoded ideal around
| private ownership rights and the 1st Amendment not
| applying. From misinformation to viewpoint discrimination,
| it's the real question of our present time.
| varelse wrote:
| Cool, how about some specific references to settled cases
| that are relevant to the situation rather than vague
| references to law books?
|
| Back in the day, I remember how Tipper Gore was all about
| warning us of the dangers of explicit lyrics and videos
| and she wasn't a conservative or have I lost track of
| who's on which team?
|
| Disliking what became of one political party because of
| the embrace of a demagogue does not necessarily make one
| a strong adherent of the other leading brand or is that
| too nuanced for you?
|
| I support the rights of social media sites to moderate
| content as they see fit and I support the rights of their
| customers to take their business elsewhere if they don't
| like how it's run. I won't be going into Hobby Lobby
| anytime soon nor will I be going to Carl's Jr, but I'm
| also not going to tell them how to run their businesses.
| I think that's where we really differ here. Facebook and
| Twitter will ultimately fall to superior successors that
| catch the zeitgeist just like they did. But not on any of
| our schedules.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Edit: keep bringing those freethinker(tm) downvotes
|
| Sauce. Goose.
|
| Edit: Maybe you should start your own tech news site. Or if
| that's too hard, why don't you apply to work at YC and work
| your way up to a position where you control the moderation for
| this site?
|
| Once again: Sauce. Goose.
| varelse wrote:
| You're assuming I'm not okay with the content moderation of
| Hacker News. You should never assume.
|
| If anything you should jump with joy at the rights of people
| who disagree with this article to flag it and at your right
| to register discontent without any substantive argument as to
| why you are registering your discontent with but a simple
| down vote.
|
| That's freedom of speech in action! And while my tone here is
| sarcastic, I believe sincerely that this moderation system is
| currently superior to any of the ham fisted bad AI deployed
| on either of the two leading social media sites.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| I'm not assuming anything.
|
| You were complaining about being modded down, so you quite
| clearly had a problem with it.
| bena wrote:
| By like the second sentence I was able to deduce pretty much most
| of what this guy was going to complain about and what side he was
| on every issue.
|
| I do miss the days before "big tech" and social media when every
| asshole with half an opinion wasn't given a bullhorn to shout it
| from the rooftops as if they had something worthwhile to say.
|
| When you are complaining about the Associated Press, maybe take a
| step back and consider whether or not you're just wrong.
|
| Because the Associated Press is one of the most milquetoast,
| boring, middle-of-the-road, non-opinion-giving, dry ass, plain
| organizations out there. They really don't give a shit. They
| report on things so other newspapers can run the story.
|
| And it seems like all he wants to do is commit the fallacy
| fallacy. He thinks by saying something is a fallacy, that makes
| them wrong. It doesn't.
|
| Not to mention, the authorities people are "appealing" to are
| experts in this field. Not to mention, we can turn that "appeal
| to authority" around on Ivermectin as well. He's just pimping it
| because "a doctor said so". And when you point that out, they'll
| point out _why_ we should blah blah blah. But that 's the rub.
| It's something they want you to do for them, but won't do for
| you. No one is listening to these people simply because they're
| in charge, but because they're proven experts in their field.
|
| And so on, with the rest. When he's not just completely
| misrepresenting a situation to claim something is fallacious when
| it's not.
| polskibus wrote:
| Exactly, tech giants are now a natural monopoly, which means we
| should force them to provide more utility than they want to give
| in exchange for tolerating their privilege. Either that or break
| them up.
| jeffbee wrote:
| These guys are parody-proof. "In my blog which is indexed by
| Google and Microsoft I reiterate the arguments from my book,
| available on Amazon, about how big tech is deplatforming me."
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| It's honestly deeply comical. It's a classic example of wanting
| to have both free speech and freedom from consequences.
|
| It seems to me the religion of capitalism has a solve, here,
| and it's called competition.
|
| If they really believe in freedom, they should support the
| freedom of Twitter to kick them off the platform, and these
| folks have the freedom to find another platform elsewhere.
|
| But, of course, freedom isn't what these people are after. They
| just want to manufacture a different kind of consent.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| I read the headline and was nodding along.
|
| Then I got to the part where he suddenly rants that content
| moderators are "probably...teams of purple-haired Millennials
| with nose hoops and personal pronoun mood-rings."
|
| And calls out the AP for marking a medical claim "false" _just_
| because no one has been able to produce any evidence for it.
|
| And says that calling anti-vaxxers nasty names is literally just
| as bad as racism.
|
| I'm looking at the comment I just typed and it sounds like I'm
| exaggerating to make him look bad. But I'm not. That's what he's
| actually claiming.
| distantsounds wrote:
| > We see Fauci removing his mask the moment the cameras stop
| rolling. We see AOC sitting amongst a fairly close knit crowd put
| one on for the express purpose of a photo op and then take it off
| again. But if you send an email to your own subscribers via
| Mailchimp wondering out loud if masks are nothing more than
| performative theatre, you'll get shut down.
|
| no, when you nitpick an _extremely complicated scientific matter_
| to where you are actively going against CDC guidelines for the
| sake of pushing your own argument, you get shut down. imagine
| that. it's almost as if Mailchimp would rather you believe
| scientists than some tech bro with a podcast.
| g42gregory wrote:
| I think this article spot-on. In my opinion, there is very little
| (but not zero) actual misinformation on the Internet. Most of
| what we call "misinformation" is an influence campaign by one
| side, which is thoroughly disliked by the opposing side. When Big
| Tech labels something "misinformation" they are essentially
| taking one side or the other on the issue at hand.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| > there is very little (but not zero) actual misinformation on
| the Internet.
|
| It's not the amount to take issue with but the spread of its
| influence. Anti-vaccine ideology was given a platform by big
| tech and now we have an endemic disease because folks believe
| that nonsense and let it hold sway over their medical
| decisions.
|
| Edit: for folks voting this down I'd be interested in a
| rebuttal or at least an explanation of how this doesn't add to
| the conversation. I try to be a good citizen here and thought I
| was engaging in good faith.
| mancerayder wrote:
| > Edit: for folks voting this down I'd be interested in a
| rebuttal or at least an explanation of how this doesn't add
| to the conversation. I try to be a good citizen here and
| thought I was engaging in good faith
|
| "Misinformation", someone might say, and we wouldn't have to
| give you any justification. No freedom from consequences,
| they say.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| You don't get to argue that it should be permissible to shut
| down people's opinions and then complain when your own
| opinions get shut down.
| guscost wrote:
| _Especially_ when in the latter case, it happened
| organically.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| I have downvoted you because you seem to believe that if
| there were no anti-vaccine sentiment, SARS-2 would not exist,
| which is patently absurd
| objectivetruth wrote:
| Nope, OP didn't say SARS-2 was caused by anti-vax
| sentiment, they said it _became endemic_ because of it.
| Words matter.
| spoonjim wrote:
| This comment shows the power of disinformation -- pure lies
| like "the election was stolen" or "vaccines cause autism" if
| repeated enough become "differences of opinion" with two
| different "sides."
| topkai22 wrote:
| I watched my mom's* Facebook feed for a bit on Jan 6. In a span
| of 30 minutes she was getting bombarded by claims that the
| people invading the capital in order to overturn the election
| were actually antifa complete with a veneer of evidence**, a
| passage that was misattributed to Dave Ramsey***, along with
| all the normal claims about a "stolen" election.
|
| The misinformation may be coming out of a organized campaign or
| it may arising organically, but it definitely exists in droves
| and is spread by social media. It exists on both sides, but it
| is not balanced.
|
| * thankfully, she's pretty discerning and don't believe any of
| this, but believes it is important to not le this sort of
| behavior cause her to "unfriend" people she's known for
| decades.
|
| ** just to be clear, they weren't, and the evidence was that
| pictures of insurrectionists appeared on an antifa web site.
| That was true, but that's because they appeared on the part of
| the website dedicated to documenting people as fascists
|
| *** I found the original source in about a minute, and a public
| rebuttal from Dave Ramsey in two
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Mailchimp is "big tech" now? Can't these folks just throw a RSS
| feed together (hosted on the cheapest static webhost around) and
| tell people to subscribe to it? This is a big fat nothingburger
| if I ever saw one.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Because to a first approximation everyone understands, and can
| get, email, while maybe 5% of the population, if that,
| understand RSS feeds. My 80 year old aunt can read email. While
| I'm sure I could teach her to use RSS feeds, it would not be a
| task I would look foward to. And she has me. Most people don't
| have me, or anyone like me (or, likely, you, or the majority of
| other users of this site).
|
| What you're saying is roughly equivalent to "So what if they
| can't use the telephone or television? Can't these folks just
| use Morse code?"
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Because to a first approximation everyone understands, and
| can get, email, while maybe 5% of the population, if that,
| understand RSS feeds.
|
| At some point in history, 5% or less of the population
| understood email. RSS feeds are not inherently more complex
| than email, in fact they're quite a bit simpler. (And even if
| you don't grok RSS feeds, you'll probably grok a weblog; RSS
| is only relevant here because it gives the exact same
| affordances as something like a Mailchimp newsletter, even
| though it works differently under the hood.)
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Other than not coming preinstalled on every operating
| system and having reply capability, you mean?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| But power expands until it fills the possibility space
| gpsx wrote:
| Should big internet companies by plumbing and not exert control
| over content on their system? As much as it annoys me some of the
| things Google, for example, does exercising the power they have,
| it does have the right to control what is on there, to some
| extent. As I interpret it, I think the OP is saying it is not
| right to censure, but I am not sure how this applies to a private
| company and content on their own system.
|
| I agree a big company shouldn't have _complete_ power to control
| content on their site for reasons the OP says because at some
| point this becomes a danger to society. At the same time it is a
| danger to society to freely let users promote whatever content
| they want, for the same reasons.
|
| For all the examples or people who have been persecuted (or
| whatever word would fit better) for saying the "truth", like
| scientist who said the earth was not at the center of the
| universe, there are countless others who, for the better, were
| quieted from issueing harmful information.
|
| The OP says people should be taught a lesson in critical
| thinking, but I don't think this is a problem. I think most
| people are pretty logical, they are just dealing with
| misinformation, no matter what "side" they are on.
|
| So this is a real problem. It is good the OP raises these
| questions, but I don't think it has the solution.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| I'm not going to comment on the author's credibility or overall
| quality of his arguments.
|
| However, I think he brings up a very important point: who gets to
| decide what's misinformation?
|
| * Private organizations are run by fallible humans, chasing money
| and reduced liability
|
| * Governments lie. If you don't believe me, read any history book
|
| * Scientists are not a spherical mass floating in a vacuum with a
| unified opinion, nor are they correct by default
|
| Furthermore, only engineers believe most of the important issues
| in the world actually have an objective answer to them.
|
| So, who gets to decide? Who gets the power of saying what
| thoughts are bad and what thoughts are good? Is it someone you
| agree with? What if it changes to someone you don't?
| asymptosis wrote:
| > only engineers believe most of the important issues in the
| world actually have an objective answer to them.
|
| Was this really necessary? How many engineers do you know, and
| how many of them actually ascribe to this belief?
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| It's a playful jab at a category of people I am part of too,
| although I do not share that belief. The statement I made is
| wrong on purpose regardless (for light comedic effect): not
| only engineers hold that belief, nor are they the only ones
| who do.
|
| There is a significant overlap (higher than a random person's
| picked from the population) between engineers and what I
| would call "fundamentalist rationalists". That is, people who
| believe in reason and science to the point they wrap the
| speedometer back around to religious belief again. Those
| people become unable to think outside that framework and
| consider nuanced solutions. Not everything worth solving has
| measurable or falsifiable solutions. The world can be very
| uncertain and work against all common sense at times. This
| doesn't mean one shouldn't attempt to make sense of it
| obviously, but science does not a god make. It may,
| hopefully, but pretending it is that way now is no good.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'm not sure that the other end of the rationality axis is
| "nuanced".
| WalterBright wrote:
| Most evil in the world is perpetrated not by evil people, but
| by people with good intentions who believe they know what is
| best for others, and believe that justifies forcing it on those
| others.
|
| > So, who gets to decide?
|
| Each individual gets to decide for themselves.
| bumby wrote:
| I think you're right in your assessment of "evil" but
| pragmatically wrong (or maybe just oversimplifying) the
| solution.
|
| When there are large asymmetries (for example, in information
| or risk) regulation can be warranted. For example, most
| people feel regulating fissile material is prudent because
| the risk of it coming into the wrong hands is too high to
| just let unchecked freedom ring when it comes to owning it or
| not.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The problem with fissile material is the potential for
| hurting others. Stopping hurt of others is a reasonable
| function of government.
|
| Legal adults, however, have a fundamental right to hurt
| themselves.
|
| Yes, I know there are grey areas.
| tstrimple wrote:
| If anti-vaxxers just hurt themselves, there wouldn't be
| nearly as much animosity around these issues. They pose a
| legitimate risk to other people. Not just through direct
| infection of other people, but by offering themselves up
| as a breeding ground for more effective versions of the
| virus.
| objectivetruth wrote:
| Same with the anti-maskers. They cry out for their
| "rights" (to not wear a mask) but won't accept their
| responsibility (to somehow otherwise prevent themselves
| from spewing viral particles on us).
| ghoward wrote:
| > They pose a legitimate risk to other people.
|
| This is not true, any more than it is for vaccinated
| people.
|
| Viruses will still spread through a fully-vaccinated
| population, and they will still mutate in a fully-
| vaccinated population.
|
| The CDC released a report [1] showing proportional
| numbers of cases coming from fully vaccinated people (74%
| of cases against 69% of the population fully vaccinated).
|
| Treating people who are not getting the vaccine as
| enemies is not going to convince us. In fact, this whole
| thing has made me, in particular, suspicious of _other_
| vaccines that I will research and make decisions for
| myself about.
|
| [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7031e2
| -H.pdf
| taurath wrote:
| The CDC study gives some credence to your theory but your
| conclusion is by all evidence wrong. It shows nothing
| about the transmissibility of vaccinated people who test
| positive. It also disregards previous evidence before the
| delta variant that vaccinations widely prevented positive
| tests. So there is SOME effect there. Taking a study that
| says "there's definitely some chance of transmission" and
| making the conclusion "there's no difference" only
| happens due to your predetermined conclusion. A real look
| at the actual body of evidence on vaccines necessarily
| draws different conclusions.
|
| One need only look at the overlay of cases and
| vaccination rates across different US states to show
| you're just flat out wrong.
| ghoward wrote:
| Most of what you say is correct, but saying absolutely
| that unvaccinated people are endangering other people and
| vaccinated people are _not_ is also false.
| devwastaken wrote:
| >Most evil in the world is perpetrated not by evil people,
| but by people with good intentions who believe they know what
| is best for others, and believe that justifies forcing it on
| those others.
|
| Other way around. Evil would convince you that leaded
| gasoline is fine, and that "good intentions" of regulating
| lead out of gas are evil because government power.
| geofft wrote:
| OK, but, we already have social/legal/cultural norms for
| deciding what thoughts are bad and what thoughts are good. Here
| are some things I can't do via Mailchimp for either legal or
| cultural reasons (see also
| https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/):
|
| - Advertise pornography
|
| - Plan attacks against the United States government
|
| - Advertise medical cures that the government doesn't approve
| of
|
| - Sell counterfeit products
|
| - Pump and dump a stock
|
| - Reveal the identities of CIA operatives
|
| All of these are _thoughts_ , just as much as advocating
| against vaccines or for alternative cures or what-have-you are
| thoughts.
|
| Who gets to decide any of the above?
|
| Would it be a good idea to set up society such that all of the
| above thoughts are protected speech?
| kmonsen wrote:
| They are not thoughts as sibling mentioned.
|
| If you think any of these things in your own mind but don't
| take any action on it that is perfectly ok and carries no
| legal risk.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Other than advertising (legal) pornography, all of those are
| _actual violations of the law_ , at least in the United
| States.
|
| Clearly MailChimp (or any other service) can't _knowingly_
| allow their platform to be used to violate the law, or they
| would be held accountable.
| naasking wrote:
| They're not just thoughts but also actions. Actions are
| typically what's regulated by governments, not thought. Maybe
| by "thoughts" you meant "ideas".
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > who gets to decide what's misinformation?
|
| Whoever wants to. and then people can compare the competing
| arbiters and decide who would earn their trust. That used to
| work with mass media until the internet came along. Now we no
| longer have multiple newspapers, but "The Newspaper" , "The TV"
| and "The telegraph" (Twitter?), like 2-3 news sources in total
| which are basically politically aligned. The name of the game
| changed from "popularity and copy sales" to "the network
| effect". I m not sure if this can ever change within a
| centralizing communication medium like the internet, but
| perhaps at some point people will realize that the network
| effect is evil and it will get a bad name.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _I m not sure if this can ever change within a centralizing
| communication medium like the internet,_
|
| The internet, centralising... what went wrong?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| wrong or right? The internet was designed to be
| "decentralized" in the sense of robust communications, but
| ultimately the goal was to convey the commands of one,
| centralized US army
| j-bos wrote:
| I found this to be a novel perspective on your question:
| https://samoburja.com/the-centralized-internet-is-
| inevitable...
| whatshisface wrote:
| Who gets to decide who goes to jail? All of the same
| fallibility arguments apply.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Yes, I agree. My arguments extend to the law too. Previously,
| you could've gone to jail for being black or having a beer.
| Women got to vote in 1920.
|
| I personally follow the law so I don't go to jail, since
| historically it has been made by idiots.
| bumby wrote:
| I think the better answer is not "whom" but "what process".
|
| People will always be fallible. Processes, however, can
| layer checks and balances in a way that people often can't.
| Processes are also easier to change than people in my
| experience.
|
| Processes certainly aren't perfect but considering your
| examples are past tense, they can tend to arc towards "more
| perfect."
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| I like this idea. Perhaps I'm committing the same fallacy
| that the Romans did around the fall of the Republic. The
| prevailing idea was that their problems were caused by a
| "failure of Roman morals", rather than by a failure of
| their system, even as they realized the inevitability of
| their situation and tried to enact changes.
|
| > Processes certainly aren't perfect but considering your
| examples are past tense, they can tend to arc towards
| "more perfect."
|
| Agreed. My use of the past was to illustrate a basic
| truth: given the big ( _colossal_ ) failures of the past,
| is it more likely we have largely found the truth, or
| that we are still very far away from it? It's impossible
| to know of course. That said, the amount of people who
| will claim their truth is ultimate and all of who do not
| see it their way must be idiots is staggering. It's human
| nature though, I literally did that one comment above.
| andi999 wrote:
| If the government enacts a law to ban misinformation, I am sure
| there will also be a ministry of truth by that government,
| which will decide what information is truthful and what
| information is not.
| la6471 wrote:
| That started when politicians shifted their responsibilities of
| governance and policy making to private entities to cover for
| their inefficiencies and their vote bank politics.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Not only politicians. A lot of people support this.
|
| Regarding trump being banned: "Twitter can ban whomever they
| want".
|
| We are now in a screaming match. Who can scream at the twitter
| exec louder win.
| devwastaken wrote:
| James Charles, a very popular individual on Twitter, has been
| cancelled about 5 times. Guess what? They're still there. That's
| because "Cancel Culture" is largely made up by talking heads.
| Very few people actually get "cancelled", and when they do, it's
| not because of posts on Twitter by themselves.
|
| Youtube houses plenty of conspirators, right wing news, gun
| channels, and they're monetized. Not only that, but youtube
| comment sections are notorious for being inline with
| "conservative" views.
|
| If you want to see "cancelling" how about the crowds of hate that
| target minority groups with significant harassment? Why is online
| canceling from Twitter talked about, but not actual real life
| militia groups and violent groups that gather to kill transgender
| individuals? One of those actually harms people.
|
| Do you see these "cancellers" showing up to city council
| meetings, forming actual physical protests? Nope. Everyone is
| actually quite free to ignore it. The only time things change is
| when those in positions of power decide to change it. They make
| those changes not on the outrage on Twitter, but on their own
| personal beliefs on whom they want to do business with.
|
| >No tech company should be enforcing their Terms of Service based
| on what they think their users have done or might do off of their
| own platforms. Yet Twitter, Facebook, Patreon and who knows who
| else do that.
|
| Reworded: No individual should be enforcing their morals based on
| what they think someone has done or might do when not next to
| them.
|
| These "I should be able to say anything I want on someone elses
| platform" is uniquely american privledge talking. If Youtube, or
| Twitter, or Facebook allowed whatever people want, guess what?
| They'd be regulated tomorrow to not allow it. Words actually do
| have harm, and words do not inherently have 1st ammendment
| protections.
|
| There are already plenty of misinformed people whom want a
| "repeal of 230". These companies have both a moral and financial
| responsibility to enforce their terms of service.
|
| >A mailer company like Mailchimp has no business even parsing the
| content of their paying clients, let alone summarily judging
| whether it is misinformation or not. Mail providers should care
| about two things and two things only:
|
| Yes, they do. They have to parse them for _illegal_ content, and
| then they have to parse for content that might have their
| services used in ways that harm others. Disinformation can easily
| be harmful, and a company like Mailchimp does not want to be
| implicated in it regardless of 230 protections or not.
| yssrnjm wrote:
| I have been told to disagree with this post. Therefore I disagree
| with this post.
| jsnell wrote:
| There's some chutzpah in an anti-vaxxer pushing fraudulent Covid
| miracle cures and invoking Semmelweis in the very same post.
| StuntPope wrote:
| Where is the anti-vax material in that post?
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| The part where he says that being snarky to vaccine deniers
| is literally just as bad as racism.
|
| > _"Covidiots", "Deniers" these are not rational counter-
| arguments, they're slurs. Anybody employing them is not
| engaging in discourse but rather bigotry and prejudice. This
| is as inexcusable as racism. Over the past few years many
| have been challenged to examine their own biases and
| privilege, in certain contexts for perfectly valid reasons.
| Anybody engaging in this type of othering toward skeptics and
| contrarians lacks self-awareness and empathy to the same
| degree as a racist._
| bena wrote:
| If the guy you responded to is not the author of that
| piece, he's connected to the site in some way.
|
| I do not believe his question is in good faith, but is an
| attempt to deflect any criticism by instead forcing his
| critic to defend and explain in detail any such criticism
| before he even attempts to defend his half-baked ideas.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Not sure if there's a more eloquent name for these kinds of
| "throw enough shit and hope some of it sticks" arguments but the
| article is very confused, from claiming ad hominem attacks are as
| bad as racism, to ranting about millenials and throwing in WMD's
| in Iraq for good measure.
|
| The actual key issue is somewhere in the middle of that article:
|
| > _" When tech companies take it upon themselves to arbitrate
| what is or isn't misinformation, or taking action based on events
| that occur outside of their own platforms what they are doing, at
| its core, is adjudicating international law"_
|
| No, it isn't. It's a private company determining how and who it
| conducts business with. Being a 'patrician' of your own property
| is completely fine and in fact a basic right, and if you don't
| like Mailchimp's content policies, go to a competitor.
|
| Unless someone explains to me, in plain English, why we ought to
| abolish the very important freedom of deciding for themselves who
| and how private entities do business with, I don't want to read
| any essay length pieces any more about the Gulag archipelago,
| Orwell or how his friend being cancelled by Mailchimp is like
| being stuck in Soviet Russia.
|
| And to preempt the inevitable _" but they're so large!"_. This is
| not an indicator of anything. Tech companies are large yes, but
| competitors are, as Google actually correctly put it at one
| point, one click away. Size is not an indicator of market power,
| inability to chose alternatives is.
| tangjurine wrote:
| > [explain] to me, in plain English, why we ought to abolish
| the very important freedom of deciding for themselves who and
| how private entities do business with
|
| The explanation for this is the same explanation for why
| eminent domain exists. If you own a piece of land that will be
| in the middle of a busy road, in the US you likely can't
| construct that part of the road yourself and charge people or
| arbitrarily restrict people from using it - you likely will
| have to sell it to the US government.
|
| I'm not trying to argue about if this is the ideal way to do
| things, but the more society views tech companies owning
| platforms like landowners owning parts of roads, the more
| government control.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Eminent domain exists because land use is _exclusionary_.
| Land owners have the ability to hamper development by
| exercising coercive power. If AT &T or your phone provider
| start to cancel you, you have a pretty good analogy.
|
| Services and products on the internet however are not
| landowners. The reason eminent domain exists is because land
| is not fungible. Mailchimp however does not sit on mail-land.
| There is nothing that prevents dozens of mailchimp
| competitors to exist, offering whatever content policies
| people prefer. Google does not sit on search-land and somehow
| excludes anyone from building a search engine. Tech
| companies, in almost all cases, derive their value from the
| intellectual property that they built, not some sort of
| analog to land they stumbled upon. If that was the case we
| would be on MySpace.
| hobs wrote:
| I dont know if your defense applies as much to Google
| search as it does sit on an existing search-land, if you
| scrape someone's website like google does you'll find
| different policies apply - on this website alone people
| link sites using referral tricks to accomplish the same
| thing, scraping as if we were googlebot.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Unless someone explains to me, in plain English, why we
| ought to abolish the very important freedom of deciding for
| themselves who and how private entities do business with_
|
| Not a lawyer, but I wonder if the Commerce Clause and Necessary
| and Proper clause give regulatory power to the government under
| the guise of promoting the general welfare. After all, this has
| been applied to commodities in the past, even when said
| commodities weren't even used in trade/commerce.
|
| In plain English, there's precedent in the constitution and law
| for the government to regulate business if it promotes the
| general welfare.
| kwere wrote:
| The issue about policing Is not "muh private property, people
| choiche", but about controlling a "public utility" like a
| nation Wide communication medium. Here the society needs hamper
| the private business (or monopolization in general) side, Like
| in journalism, food safety, health services. I would dare say
| that any social medium that get Mass adoption and can influence
| massively society needs public oversight & regulation (with
| good regulators). Facebook & Co. Need to comply as Purdue had
| to when society realized their shenanigans in a "lasseiz faire"
| enviroment
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| Regulation of private companies is sane and normal, there is no
| need to appeal to their inherent freedoms and such, everyone
| should be on the same page about that. If you ideologically
| believe that no regulation should ever be imposed on a company,
| or individual, then take that idea to where it goes logically.
| Add problems like ecology, climate, transportation, and yes:
| control over information.
|
| The problem is rather __who__ will regulate a __global
| company__, when infact companies like google arguably hold more
| political power than many smaller countries do.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Regulation of private companies is very sane and normal, I
| never said anything to the contrary. But yes there is a need
| to appeal to our fundamental freedoms apparently because you
| still need to actually justify and make a coherent argument
| why a given piece of regulation or limitation of freedom is
| reasonable, rather than just being mad that you got kicked
| off Twitter.
|
| It's very important to distinguish between the actual right
| you have, which is that nobody should be able to compel you
| to speak, or how to speak, _which is a right that in this
| case Mailchimp has_ , and the complete reversal of this,
| namely forcing private entities to host the speech of others,
| and have the government coerce platforms on behalf of third
| parties.
|
| The author wants nothing less than a complete reversal on how
| we treat association and speech on the grounds that in his
| perception, 'purple haired millenials' run a business in a
| way that he doesn't approve of.
| geofft wrote:
| There is a simple, straightforward answer here - prevent
| companies from amassing such power in the first place.
|
| It is far more obvious to me that there is an inherent right
| to choose whom you do business with and whom you don't than
| that there is an inherent right to have a single corporate
| entity employing unbounded numbers of employees and making
| unbounded amounts of money. The individual person can buy and
| sell on their own, without the government; the corporate
| entity only really works because it is recognized by the
| government.
|
| To be clear, I'm not claiming that regulations are
| illegitimate. We do regulate, say, the individual farmer to
| make sure they're selling actual milk and not melamine. We do
| regulate the individual storekeeper to obligate them not to
| discriminate on race. But those regulations are all very
| measured and designed to solve specific problems (ultimately
| - protecting those who are even weaker than the individual
| businessperson).
|
| Mailchimp is not some tech titan. They do not have more
| political power than any functional government. They are in
| no sense a monopoly in their industry, and they have exactly
| one industry, unlike the usual juggernauts that come up here.
| Calling them "Big Tech" is a clear example of the terrible
| slippery slope of adding regulations about _obligating
| companies to do business_ vs. regulating their accrual of
| power, if that 's the real problem.
|
| Any regulation that would apply to Mailchimp would - if it's
| going to be effective - also have to apply to a startup that
| wants to be in the same industry. (It may not apply
| immediately, but it will certainly apply to the startup's
| medium-term goals, and thus affect its profitability.) If you
| just want to regulate Google and Facebook, I could almost
| believe that, but if "Big Tech" includes Mailchimp, who
| doesn't it include?
|
| What we'll end up with is a system where anyone who wants to
| do business must have their business plan approved by Big
| Government, and where a professional specialization in
| complying with those regulations arises, and where there's a
| nice revolving door between implementing and enforcing them,
| and where Google continues to hold more political power than
| several countries and can engage in regulatory capture. It's
| hard to imagine that this aligns with the political desires
| of anyone except the current leadership at Big Tech. (Even
| the aspirational leadership of the next generation of Big
| Tech will find themselves shut out by this regulatory
| regime.)
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| So we're on to time machines this early in the discussion?
|
| Government is toothless and unmotivated to reign them in
| for the same revolving door issues you wrote about already
| happening today. The only thing that changes any of this
| will be whistle blowers and exposition from the inside of
| these companies. Then you have the issue of what media
| company will run that story? Think about how much the media
| rely on Twitter for "content" now.
|
| I am skeptical of any positive changes for quite some time.
| closeparen wrote:
| That part isn't the problem. But the part where we make it
| clear that by carrying the wrong speech, tech companies are
| sticking their necks out for antitrust enforcement and other
| regulatory curtailment, is a bit worrying.
| psacawa wrote:
| I think the term you're looking for is "gish gallop" [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
| axguscbklp wrote:
| If I wanted to and could find the funds, would I in practice
| (as opposed to just in theory) be legally allowed to create my
| own financial services organization that would provide
| financial services like payment processing and banking to
| people who have been banned by other financial services
| providers for their theoretically legally protected speech?
| Honest question - I do not know the answer.
| achenatx wrote:
| Since the beginning of forums there have been trolls and
| misinformation. There has always been the option to ignore,
| either by not replying or by blocking an offender from their
| view. However my experience has been that 1) people are almost
| universally incapable of ignoring trolls. 2) it is somehow almost
| impossible for people to stomach banning a troll knowing the
| troll is still posting.
|
| The closest system that seems to work is for people to downvote
| whatever it is they dont like and for that to cause posts to have
| lower priority.
| StuntPope wrote:
| lol. Flagged.
| grzm wrote:
| The title's been editorialized: Actual title is "When dissent is
| misinformation, fallacies become facts"
| epoxyhockey wrote:
| I think the title is distasteful, but the title tag of the
| article matches the hn title and is also the first title
| displayed above the fold (on a mobile browser, at least).
| grzm wrote:
| Good catch.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| There was another submission a few minutes ago in the same light.
| It linked to an article about how Big Tech companies are
| censoring doctors and decide what is accurate medical
| information. It was removed.
| StuntPope wrote:
| This one will be flagged any second.
| dang wrote:
| Just to be clear, when you see [flagged] on a submission it
| means that users flagged it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
| aaronchall wrote:
| I don't see [flagged] anywhere, though, dan?
| gpm wrote:
| Turn on showdead in your settings.
| [deleted]
| aaronchall wrote:
| And now so has this one.
| mberning wrote:
| Maybe it was flagged to death. Maybe it will be back. All I
| know is when these type of stories come out two things are
| assured. 1) Shenanigans do take place. 2) The powers that be
| definitely don't like it if you notice and talk about these
| shenanigans.
| rvz wrote:
| Soon, your devices, smartphones, laptops and watches are going to
| have a political opinion.
|
| They are the little brothers reporting your 'thinking' to big
| brother to see if they will ban you or not.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Fountain pens and notebooks, fountain pens and notebooks.
| toiletaccount wrote:
| sometimes I wonder how people and politicians would react to a
| user-friendly decentralized and distributed social network with
| strong crypto in the right places and no hierarchy.
|
| if such a thing were ever made, it would be very difficult to
| monitor or moderate.
| creato wrote:
| It also sounds difficult to curate (just another kind of
| moderation), and much of the success of the current social
| media heavyweights is due to their curation.
| grishka wrote:
| It's a fallacy. _Good_ social media platform doesn 't need
| curation. It doesn't need any recommendation system
| whatsoever. Every single thing you see in your feed is the
| result of your conscious decision to follow someone. It's
| just you and your friends. And exactly zero content from
| people you don't know.
|
| Current social media doesn't respect you because being
| respectful doesn't drive metrics.
| psyc wrote:
| This is one of my favorite thought experiments, except in my
| version it is guaranteed that nobody can moderate anything,
| ever. My best guess is: There is a threshold for how much of a
| problem something can become before congress makes a law
| prohibiting "access" to this network or running the client, or
| any analogue thereof. Then there's another threshold at which
| the government ratchets up resources for real enforcement.
|
| In short, the conclusion I always come to is that no matter
| what the math and the game theory say, if the legislative,
| executive, and judicial all agree that it's a big enough
| problem, it's dead. There's nothing technologists can do about
| this. At least, this is the conclusion I always run into
| whenever I've tried to brainstorm technical solutions over the
| years.
| vkou wrote:
| It'll immediately fill up with pirated content, porn, porn of
| dubious legality, spam, and harassment, ensuring that all the
| normies would stay on Facebook.
|
| It'll be a social network for people who were banned from all
| the other social networks, which is not a great town to live
| in.
| toiletaccount wrote:
| it could, but the internet in general is like this and
| everyone still uses it. imagine if user/content
| discoverability is impossible without a fingerprint or token.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| That's what Mastodon is. It looks good and is about as easy to
| sign up for as it gets with a federated network. I don't think
| there's much demand for it. A lot of people seem to
| overestimate how relevant decentralization is to the vast
| majority of users.
|
| The _inherent_ complications or disadvantages of
| decentralization aren 't worth it for most people.
| grishka wrote:
| It's easy to sign up but then you don't know what to do
| because you have no way of finding people you know on the
| fediverse. Any social media platform that has had any
| semblance of success had at least one of the two ways to
| bootstrap your social graph: either by importing your contact
| list from somewhere else, or through global search with
| enough parameters to find someone by name and city. Mastodon
| has none of this.
| Animats wrote:
| Tor?
| spikels wrote:
| Hey Big Tech!
|
| * No Liability For User Content
|
| * Arbitrary Control Over User Content
|
| Pick one!
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