[HN Gopher] Big Tech's future is up to a Supreme Court that does...
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Big Tech's future is up to a Supreme Court that doesn't understand
it
Author : xrayarx
Score : 17 points
Date : 2023-02-20 18:34 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| elmerfud wrote:
| These articles just show how detached people are thinking the "on
| an iphone" is somehow new and never before seen. They've fallen
| prey to their own marketing ideology.
|
| What "big tech" is doing is not new it's the same game that
| companies have been doing since there have been companies. Common
| carrier status was always about not being party to messages of
| your users. Big tech is absolutely party to the messages of their
| users, even private ones. We all know it, they do it
| intentionally and even the stodgy old people on the supreme court
| can clearly see their game.
|
| If you're going to "control the narrative" by choosing what
| people see and what the don't, then you need to be responsible
| for what is displayed. This isn't and opt-in level of control
| there's not even an opt-out. They blatantly decide what the news
| is and feed it to you, no matter what you try and do to search
| around it.
|
| It has always blown my mind that google maps has no option to
| show all the points of interest no matter how far you zoom in.
| Just one tiny example of a service populated by users but then
| controlled by the machine.
|
| Be a common carrier or don't be. This manipulation game needs to
| end. I don't know what the court will do but hopefully provide
| guidelines on what common carrier is.
| l33t233372 wrote:
| How can you expect a service like Youtube to operate with "no"
| algorithm(the word "no" is in quotation marks because even a
| strictly chronological feed would be an algorithm)?
|
| You would actually prefer to get on Youtube and see the
| thousands of awful videos uploaded before the one that's
| related to what you've recently watched?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| They might not be able to operate. That's the point. In some
| cases, it might kill the service (and whether that's
| desirable is going to be a function of your viewpoint).
| l33t233372 wrote:
| Youtube is a great service and if the law will make it go
| away, we must change the law.
| scott00 wrote:
| This case has literally nothing to do with common carrier
| status. Neither side is claiming that Google or Twitter are
| common carriers.
| boh wrote:
| Tech isn't particularly complicated from a legal perspective
| especially in this case. Regardless of whatever algorithms or
| infrastructure being used to power it, Twitter and Google
| function mostly as media companies. Section 230 was put together
| in a completely different political and economic environment than
| what we have today--granting tech firms powers they would've
| unlikely been able to secure at any other time. If they lose the
| case it won't be because the Supreme Court doesn't "understand".
| freedude wrote:
| Just don't promote, suggest, or downvote content.
|
| This is a distraction and non-issue... "The court might think
| it's doing one thing and it's actually doing something very
| different," said Evelyn Douek, a law professor at Stanford who
| specializes in tech law. "It's ill-matched to the problem."
|
| If your algorithm can't be explained to a judge, someone who is
| highly educated at understanding logic and reason, then perhaps
| it is broken anyway.
|
| The fact is Big Tech has dug its own grave long ago, and that
| should have been obvious since the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
| remarkEon wrote:
| This Axios "article" does not mention the actual cases[1][2], so
| I'm left to trust that the two people in the by-line actually
| know what they're talking about. In case you don't like making
| those sorts of assumptions, here's the summary from scotusblog on
| the two cases. Oral argument is 21-22 FEB.
|
| >Issue: Whether Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency
| Act immunizes interactive computer services when they make
| targeted recommendations of information provided by another
| information content provider, or only limits the liability of
| interactive computer services when they engage in traditional
| editorial functions (such as deciding whether to display or
| withdraw) with regard to such information.
|
| >Issues: (1) Whether a defendant that provides generic, widely
| available services to all its numerous users and "regularly"
| works to detect and prevent terrorists from using those services
| "knowingly" provided substantial assistance under 18 U.S.C. SS
| 2333 merely because it allegedly could have taken more
| "meaningful" or "aggressive" action to prevent such use; and (2)
| whether a defendant whose generic, widely available services were
| not used in connection with the specific "act of international
| terrorism" that injured the plaintiff may be liable for aiding
| and abetting under Section 2333.
|
| [1] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/gonzalez-v-
| googl...
|
| [2] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/twitter-inc-v-
| ta...
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(page generated 2023-02-20 23:02 UTC)