If we as a society deem that type of content to be improper and that it should not be allowed on such platforms, then let's make that explicit from a legal perspective and regulate them.
Most people would also be pretty uncomfortable with the government vicariously deciding what they can say through Facebook. I'm sure it would cut both ways, as well. Not a stretch to see a president using an "anti-fake news" provision to stop damaging news about a scandal spread about him on social media.
Therein lies the problem. The video was slowed down and the audio slightly distorted. I don't see a set of metrics that can capture that "type" of alteration that doesn't also capture tons of content. Unless, of course, you go down the route of saying "it's illegal to post any altered video or image of any politician."
Ultimately the fact is that freedom of speech does not actually work if people have actual freedom of speech. It only works under certain circumstances where most of the media toes the line with the political establishment and is relatively controlled.
Ban SNL, ban the daily show?
It isn't unusual to misrepresent a politician's message. It certainly isn't unusual for partisans to refuse to fairly represent their opponent's central point - either through a sense of mischief, because they just don't understand it or a genuine belief that there are more important issues at stake.
This video is clearly a low blow, and deceptive, but it isn't at all obvious that it is different from lying about something that Nancy Pelosi said. 'Solving' that in any way will likely cause some spectacular partisan fireworks when a difficult case comes by. Whoever gets control of the body that gets to choose what is fact and what is fiction is going to have disproportionate power.
No, telcos were interoperable by fiat because there can only be so many phone lines.
A good faith interpretation of interoperability is that any service simply has to publish an equivalent API that allows interacting with "its" users in the service's own data model/paradigm. The market of competitors will then happily sort out the details of how to smooth the gaps.
Why the "scare quotes"? I know you weren't quoting me since I didn't use those words.
I don't trust a free market to get everything perfectly right. I simply trust a government even less and believe they will screw it up even more.
I describe myself as libertarian, and if you want to make the argument that regulation will be transmuted by the incumbents to calcify their own positions, I'm right there with you. But it's wholly disingenuous to assert that services could only be obtusely constrained to the lowest common denominator, rather than considering a sensible system of interoperability that would align incentives properly. Putting it in libertarian terms - instituting a demarcation point such that users' electronic data and identities actually belong to the users.
Personally I think the real answer is that we need to self actualize and move away from these surveillance companies, period. And in that context yes it is a worry that regulations could be applied to harass down Free software. But given that we're staring down a much worse censorship regime, from both de jure and de facto governments (eg payment processors), I think we're likely to end up needing to avoid packet censorship anyway. A few additional business-consumer regulations aren't going to appreciably worsen that burden.
I would say that indeed, we will end up with the lowest common denominator of services, because the services are all different. Also, have you thought about how giving all these companies more access to data would impact the whole problem? Regardless, my argument is more that I see no clause in the Constitution that justifies such an action, and certainly see no justification in morality.
Lastly, why are you writing in such a manner? It's clear you're trying to sound smart, but it just comes across as pompous. Just make good points. There's enough jargon on this site without people deliberately adding more. Also, a "demarcation point" does not convey what I think you wanted to ("law"). Furthermore, you cannot "harrass down" anything; that's bad English. Based on a quoted search, it looks like a piece of jargon specific to League of Ledgends gamers. I wouldn't pick on such things but for the insufferable tone. You've got some nice phrases, they're just in the wrong sentences.
Responding substantively, the difference between a "government" and a corporation to which everybody has involuntarily contracted is in name only. In fact, much of the government overreach in the US isn't based on pure mandate, but rather justified by needing to "opt in" in some way - eg license plates are justified with the fiction that you're choosing to drive on government-administered roads.
We don't say that just because you have the choice to move out of state, individual states are libertarian-justified in making whatever laws they'd like. "Migrating" between online services today feels akin to the friction of moving between states - moving away from your social circle. And similar to how the states generally follow national leads, major online services have begin acting in concert like this current censorship push.
As I acknowledged, the productive libertarian answer is to seek to change the conditions that give rise to unnecessary power structures in the first place. But when addressing the situation as it stands, giving corporate power a pass is ultimately just deprecating individual freedom. This sector's companies are in the process of mingling with governments regardless (government gives regulatory capture, companies give enforcement legibility), whether or not the interests of the Individual are represented.
> you would be requiring social media sites to replicate each other's functionality.
This is ironic, considering Facebook's Instagram has already copied Snapchat's funcionality wholesale without government intervention!
Phone number interoperability was to establish an unbranded phone network that could be serviced by any telco. Making every service deliver messages to and from Facebook would be an absolute nightmare.
Perhaps you should think of it more as e.g. e-mail.
We need privacy and accountability more than the ability to further reduce the cost of a message from $0.0001 to $0.00005
Newspapers publish lies and propaganda all the time. Ref any supermarket checkout magazine.
Today’s problems with tech aren’t tech. They’re all human problems. People forgot and don’t know how to sort through bullshit. If people really rely on Facebook to form opinions, then go vote, America, we have a problem.
Do they ban SNL impersonations too, Latenight TV mashups? No more Dana Carvey or Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey. Is that what they want?
Not as a communication platform.
If the video would have been right at home on late night television, it should be right at home on Facebook.
Do you think the late night shows aren’t being used to convince people to feel a certain way about Trump?
This is the shoe on the other foot, and if doesn’t feel so right, the wrong lesson is to blame the foot.
Facebook has a mix of real news, fake news and propaganda videos it isn’t nearly as clear.
Would labeling this on FB as parody be sufficient? Should raw footage be labeled as such. What about taking quotes out of context?
What about news which edits and editorializes? What about political campaigns which either only pull out the bad on an opponent and only highlights the good in another?
What about news orgs highlighting something as problem when it isn’t. Maybe animal content in food, but in actuality it’s within regulatory range and isn’t a threat to public health. Or what if they highlight the plight of a particular political prisoner but in general that country treats people well and doesn’t otherwise have political prisoners but the regime slighted the news org so they decide on a “smear” campaign.
Where do we draw the line? Especially with regards to political discourse, we ought to grant wide berth.
They already have that power - they've had it for a while. All that's being debated is how they should use it.
I rarely use Facebook anymore anyway, most of my chat happens in private groups or on scuttlebutt because at least there I have some control over what I see.
you might SAY that it’s a slippery slope but i’d argue that it’s likely (not that i know for certain) that there would have been just as much angst about these limits that are not only seen as common sense these days, but necessary
The US has truth-in-advertising laws, which forbid advertisers to make certain kinds of deceptive claims. I'm not sure whether the Supreme Court has explicitly considered whether they're constitutional, but it's certainly heard plenty of cases related to those laws and never taken the opportunity to say "oh, and by the way, laws against false advertising are unconstitutional".
If there's some reason why a law forbidding the use of faked/manipulated videos for political propaganda would be more inconsistent with the First Amendment than those, I'm not seeing it at all.
Political propaganda on the other hand is entirely protected by the first amendment. The term propaganda covers nearly all forms of political speech.
The new trend is that someone with a few thousand dollars can tell 10 million people that the Pope has endorsed a particular politician and a million people will believe it. I'd like to think that we are not so easily influenced, but then I find myself clicking on a screenshot I created just 30 seconds earlier and I realise the human brain just isn't designed to be constantly alert to fakery.
I don't think there is any consent for this.