U.K. unveils plan to penalize Facebook and Google for harmful online content
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Having said that, Facebook et al. are US-based corporations, they'll take as much notice of this as me whinging about privacy violations.
We've also got that porn-pass coming in soon, apparently. Both of these government internet plans are completely routed with the use of a VPN.
Last I noticed, best they've had is some third-party contractor for Facebook, and they had to get the serjeant-at-arms to pin him down at his hotel.
If it hits the fan and they go to take profits, nothing stopping them pulling an Amazon and taking the cash out to a subsidiary abroad.
The UK has broad extradition rights with the United States. If Parliament wanted to get nasty, they could.
The chances of the US agreeing to any such extradition are even smaller.
If the UK charged him and got British court approval, American courts would defer. Given Zuckerberg’s present standing, it’s unlikely Congress would attempt to intervene.
The irony of the world is that progress often requires egregious action to finally drive counter-action. We should've long since been moving towards a decentralized internet, but 'meh, why? what we have works.' is typical. Until it doesn't work. And so for that, cheers to the UK!
The implementation of this was delayed because they couldn't make it work, which is something of a hallmark of this government. I suspect something similar will happen to anti-Facebook legislation.
They then will proceed to find another place that is less easy to control to carry on with their message, and will have a renewed feeling of legitimacy and urgency.
What's even worse is that it may very well be used to censor even more things in the future, as people with a new toy tend to make use of it.
In the end, removing space to debate about hot topics like those will make the angry people feel like loosing even more respect (a big motivator in their initial believe), while preventing anybody else to build a sane approach to it (you need to be exposed to hate to be a functional member of an imperfect society).
>>They then will proceed to find another place that is less easy to control to carry on with their message, and will have a renewed feeling of legitimacy and urgency."
You left out the most important part, by forcing them to 'another place' you cut off their entire supply of fresh young, disenfranchised lonely young men to indoctrinate and recruit into their hateful belief system. Yes they will claim they're persecuted and play that up but by denying them the platform they'll also lose relevance, reach and impact.
This is just a small step in the right direction. Despite warnings from many we've let the internet became a hate indoctrination tool under the guise of free speech. Only now that multiple shooters motivations can be directly connected to 'internet indoctrination' is action being taken. This is long overdue and truthfully just a good first step, closing this pandoras box will require a concerted global effort and even that may still prove to be unsuccessful.
What's more, we had plenty of hatred before internet. They managed to recruit enough people way before we had internet or even television.
The fact is, this "solution" is just hiding a symptom, which not only gives a false sense of security, but makes treating the disease even harder.
And of course, it's a slippery slope.
But are these regulation useful? Yes, they are.
When I was a teenager online - early 2000s - extreme violence was hidden behind obscure websites, not even indexed by search engines. I had friends who had "shocking videos" - think videos of actual killings - and I really tried to stay as far as I could.
In the past few years articles and publications regularly emerge that these topics and videos are now basically mainstream. After deep diving into instagram, tumblr, or twitter, to see if these claims are real, I'm going to say, they are, and this is very far from healthy.
We need some regulations; I'm only afraid they will be an overshoot, for what the chances are too high.
The proposition that something requiring a "deep dive" is now "mainstream" seems internally inconsistent. Also the proposition that offensive content being available on the internet following such a deep dive is "very far from healthy" needs a citation.
> > and this is very far from healthy.
> Citation needed.
I still believe in that bright future pre-cyberpunk science fiction was promising us. Citation enough?
Not to impose your will against free speech, no.
Until you start redefining "free" with State power, that is.
Either way, you're never conceptually "free" from consequence, official or otherwise.
At some point, unlimited personal freedom begins to look like taking away the freedoms of those you're targeting.
If articles and publications on these topics are basically mainstream, I imagine you wouldn't have to do a deep dive to find them.
IMO the fear that videos of extreme violence is just a rehash of the 1990s culture wars on violent video games and movies. There is no rise in violence or extreme acts around the globe despite availability. Certainly not enough to justify a ham-fisted centralized censorship attempt.
I am simply responding to your statement which seemed to conclude that only violence and extreme acts are the only measure to determine if something has a negative or positive impact on society. I do not believe it is the only measure, so I posed the question.
AFAIK there are reddits like (I'm making this up but it's probably something similar) r/PhotosOfDeadPeople and r/gore - but come on, you don't visit such a place accidentially.
This move is pure government censorship and/or security theater (the politicians want to be seen as doing something).
And having access to them caused them any kind of incurable psychological damage or something? Because most of the time I doubt the usefulness of any of those "we need to protect the children at all costs" regulations.
It's one thing to argue these regulations will have negative (unintended or otherwise) consequences, but it's quite another to just pretend the porblem doesn't exist.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/blowback-isi...
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-15/weapons-went-cia-i...
And yet that seems to be much of the anti-regulation debate position, including as I read, yours.
My view is that speech is consequential, and that we should, with extreme care, be prepared for some regulation.
Also, the categorization of people through these platforms is a mass psychological experiment and maybe it should be treated as such.
Finding what pushes people to engage in a topic is often the same as finding their fears. Feeding them with a barrage of imagery and headline that provoke and prod these fears is a recipe for disaster. AI has proven exceptionally good at that.
Profiting from all of this is morally bankrupt.
The saddest part for me is that these platforms are useful but easily replaceable. They are optional tools in our lives but are treated as societal infrastructure. I deleted social media over 2 years ago and I don’t see what all the fuss is.
The fact that you had to "deep dive" shows that you have to actively search for it so there goes your argument for more regulation.
Also, there is a difference between regulating and banning. Why are you conflating regulation with censorship? Those are two different things.
And why is showing real violence "far from healthy"? One of the reasons why I didn't join the military was seeing what actual violence. I think it is healthy to show what is really happening.
Maybe if we showed everyone the truth rather than PR packaged fake propaganda, we'd be less inclined to support wars ( territorial, drug, etc ).
If your logic is applied, then everything from porn to rap music to movies and literature needs to be banned.
Why do you and a few members of the british government decide what people can or cannot see based solely on your subjective opinions?
But the regulations are already in place. In the UK especially there are very strict and broad-range hate-speech laws. And most of the content referred to as problematic already breaches the ToS for the platforms mentioned. And evidence suggests those companies have already been pouring resources into trust and safety teams to detect and stop such content.
Getting rid of "problematic" user content on social networks for the masses is a very hard game of whack-a-mole as people quickly adapt their way of sharing content when it's being blocked. Ultimately you'd have to destroy the value of the social network altogether to ensure you block all of it.
This is just going to give legal power for government PR campaigns whenever a particular "problematic" opinion gains too much traction, since it's so vaguely defined that any website with user content could be penalized at any time at an official's discretion regardless of context and whether it's true hate speech or not. All the actual problematic crap (real hate speech, actual abuse/mutilation videos, etc.) will never gain that kind of spotlight and will continue to find new ways to circulate faster than it's stopped.
Makes me smell a rat. Perhaps a world in which Facebook can delete whatever posts they choose at the drop of a hat citing vague 'issues' is one they actively want?
This runs in the same vein as the "terrorism filters" that the EU plans to introduce after the "upload filters". They want to revert public discourse to the "old" model with newspapers as moderating gatekeepers and to kill independent (and free) venues.
This is not about terrorism, porn or "national security", this is about re-entering the Middle Ages. And the problem is that thanks to the ultimatively arrogant "disruption" culture the big tech companies are in a defensive position now and not an offensive one.
Perfect examples are hate speech and incitement to violence and even things like nudity and pornography. Most countries have laws against this. For instance most islamic extremism videos and content are already banned and taken down rapidly, preachers and other known purveyors of hate are not given visas and are not allowed to air their views. That's clear cut and no one has a problem with it.
Since most ideologies and religions have an extreme element they will propagate extreme views and incite hate, and the question then becomes if you are comfortable having social media full of people openly spreading hate against religions, race, sex or any other subgroup.
And its here we must explicitly beware of double standards and some people supporting some kinds of extremism opportunistically and muddying the waters under the pretext of free speech because it doesn't threaten them personally.
Look at the great firewall of China, how was that perceived initially and how is that perceived today. For some the perspective is still the same, for others, they see a more upfront way compared to how we are in effect seeing Governments implement comparable systems by forcing that filtering and content blocking/restrictions upon private companies.
Whilst we are all for free speech and openness, we see governments all around the World curtailing those area's on the back of laws and regulations that are born out of a small minority and edge-cases.
After all - seeing sites blocked on the net because 0.01% of the content falls foul of some law or regulation and that being classed as fine. Yet transpose that same mentality onto people and cries of discrimination and racism jump right out at you.
Are we seeing the majority of people being sleep-walked into being firewalled upon what content they can see and what they can say akin to the great firewall of China? Sadly, I think we are.
How is the information about the act illegal?
Furthermore, there is a distinction in motivation between propaganda and journalism, but the information itself is unaware of this. If a terrorist beheads someone, then sends a video of it to a journalist who publishes it, is the journalist simply reporting the news, or are they aiding terrorism? Certainly, the video may influence the audience, and cause fear, as the terrorist desires. How we can, or even whether we should solve issues like this is a polarising topic.
Just like when germany passed censorship laws, the media praised it and russia copied the german censorship laws and the media spun it as "tyrant oppressing and controlling the russian people".
So is romeo and juliet going to be banned suicide because it "encourages" suicide? What about suicide/euthanasia documentaries which support doctor-assisted end of life programs?
What about books like ( bible, koran, mein kampf, etc ) that encourages violence? Is project gutenberg going to be shut down? What about all the media companies who supported wars in iraq, libya and the middle east? Are they going to be shut down? Are they going to be shut down for encouraging violence?
We have government agencies that spread fake news and disinformation. Is that going to be banned? What about PR firms whose business is spreading fake news and disinformation?
And what is children accessing inappropriate material? A christian or muslim parent thinks that lgbt material is inappropriate. Does that mean we have to scrub the internet of lgbt material? An atheist might be religious material as inappropriate for children. Do we ban religious material from the internet?
Whenever politicians use "children" as an excuse to justify more laws and regulations, it's rarely about protecting children. These people don't care about children. They care about power and control.
Once agin, the UK is at the forefront of censorship.
Speaking of censorship, why has my comment been grayed out?
Second, people here refuse to engage with the arguments of those proposing regulations. There are real problems that we will not be able to brush off. On the internet, "think of the children" has long been a sarcastic phrase. In reality, faced with a choose between allowing for example pro-ana content that encourage teenagers to starve themselves to death, and annoying 25-year-olds who want a free internet, most people will choose regulation.
It is not the platform's or the internet's responsibility if a minuscule percentage of teenagers starve themselves to death because they watch a video. If a teenager isn't equipped enough to be able to not starve himself to death because someone on the internet tells him to do so, it is the parents' fault, and the parents' responsibility to keep that teenager off the internet and into a psychiatrist or psychologist office.
The idea that parents should have such sole responsibility over their children is one extreme of a spectrum of opinion. UK government policy tends to be on the other end of that spectrum, with the opinion that children are the state's responsibility, with forced adoption being used much more readily than the rest of Europe, for example.
It's also hard to reconcile the idea of childrens' mental health being the sole responsibility of parents with the causes of childhood mental health problems very commonly being abusive and neglectful parenting.
Children should be educated and protected by their parents and family, not the State. First, because very kid is different and it's unthinkable to create a catch-all solution that is good for everybody. Second, what is the State good at? Anything that is done at the government level is about 100 times worse than private businesses, and 1000 times worse than what the vast majority of parents can do. You don't want the State deciding what you are allowed to look at on the internet, if anything they would do more damage than anything else.
I also don't get why people have to freak out about everything nowadays, as if kids are completely helpless against the outside world. When I was a kid there was all kind of extremely dangerous stuff going on, and as kids we got warned by our parents and everyone is still alive.
In the extremely rare cases where parents aren't able to take care of children, new guardians might be assigned by the government, but then they would take on the same responsibilities as the original parents, including not letting a kid starve himself to death because of an internet video.
If you mean that the State is justified to intervene in some cases sure--but it depends how extreme these cases are. Certainly not what people post on the internet (on top of already existing laws that regulate dangerous behavior).
Not every child has this though. Parents vary greatly in competence and ethics, and virtually every society and government recognises children as having rights separable from their parents' and draws a line somewhere as to what parental conduct is acceptable.
In addition to not being granted every responsibility, parents often don't want every responsibility. Most people in western societies expect the state to provide education, and some level of public security.
That said, I agree that the UK takes this to an authoritarian extreme.