Policing the Internet: A Bad Idea in 1996 and Today | Hacker News Reader

Policing the Internet: A Bad Idea in 1996 and Today

realclearpolitics.com

143 points_sbrk15 comments

A somewhat confusing point: the author of this is Chris Cox the former US Congressman [1], not Chris Cox the Facebook CPO [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Cox [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Cox_(Facebook)

The legislative history is interesting but the arguments in the article aren't great. From invented phrases like "neo-regulators" (I think they are just called regulators and that is their job), to "25% of them didn't have an email account", a lot of it boils down to "Ok boomer, you don't understand the internet".

I don't understand at all how technical details of the internet should be guideline for the limits that the law imposes on online platforms.

If there is a social norm and already laws that prohibit say, pornography being available to children, on every medium, then internet platforms shouldn't get a free pass simply because they're internet platforms. (opinions on the particular issue aside for a minute).

I'm a little tired of somehow having to accept that internet giants can do what they want and deserve a special role in society because they're internet companies, and every critic is brushed off with personal attacks.

> then internet platforms shouldn't get a free pass simply because they're internet platforms.

Internet platforms cannot exist if they're liable for individual things that users put on their platforms.

And that is society’s problem how?

As a society we’ve decided that some standards are important enough to be codified into law. It doesn’t matter to us if you’re violating it by engraving cuneiform into clay tablets or using electrons in a distributed platform. Everyone must follow the same laws, no special pass for you because you get to make money from the violation.

It's society's problem because society is better for the Internet existing. I don't think that's a seriously disputable point outside of basic contrarianism. For all its faults, society today is better than it was 40-50 years ago on almost every measurable axis. We've made faster progress on human rights in the past 40-50 years than we did in the first 150-160 years of our country's history. We know more about the wider world now than we ever did. More minority communities have mainstream voices now then ever did in the past.

We should, of course, try to improve the Internet; there's plenty wrong with it. We certainly don't want to stay where we are now. But we are a better world because we are more connected. Getting rid of the Internet because "other systems don't get a pass" would be cutting off our own nose to spite our face. As a society, we have a vested interest in a democratizing platform that allows ordinary people to publish information and coordinate on an unprecedented scale.

So if a set of standards don't allow the globalized democratizing communication platform to exist, then the standards are wrong.

Okay, but how is that our problem? If your company can't exist without pouring lead into the river it doesn't exist. That's exactly what I'm asking, why are internet platforms supposed to let Frankenstein's monster lose on the world and we are supposed to deal with the consequences?

If a scientist can't guarantee that their scientific experiments comply with the safety standards we demand of them they can't do them.

Not to mention of course that internet platforms do exist that handle individual content reliably, they're just smaller and don't collect the economic rents that Facebook does.

> Not to mention of course that internet platforms do exist that handle individual content reliably

I'm not talking about whether they can or not. The case that makes them unable to exist is when one single item slips past their moderation net. If they're liable, that's the end of them.

Sure I want them held to a higher standard as well, but they will not be able to exist at all if they were liable for user content. None of them. The ones that are moderating successfully and the ones that aren't. User content sites will have too much liability to be able to run. That's the end of social media - for everyone.

Can't you just not let your kids use the internet if it's that bad?

If lots of people feel like you can't they just have their own network without blackjack or hookers.

Call it the ckeanernet and allow selective content like Wikipedia from the broader internet.

I'm tired of somehow having to accept that giant corporations and their lobbyists get to dictate what I'm allowed to read on the internet.

Which corporations get to dictate what you're allowed to read on the Internet? Are you blocked from accessing a particular server?

The grandparent post was calling for internet censorship.

No, the GGP post said that Internet censorship by corporations is already happening, and he's "tired of having to accept [it]." The article itself is about proposals for government censorship of the Internet that are not being pushed by corporations.

So you’re saying that the censorship by corporations is not a thing? )

I'm saying that corporations don't dictate what he can and cannot read. He can access whatever server he wants that serves whatever information the server wants to send.

The actual quote is

>Only 26% of members had an email address.

That is to say 74% didn't have an email address

Also

>of senators who voted for his legislation, 52% had no Internet connection.

It's not objectionable to propose that they hadn't bothered to use the thing they were trying to regulate out of existence.

The decentralized, global, many to many nature of the internet is why its just not possible to regulate like TV.

Whose norms? Just like you don't care for my idea of norms France doesn't care for the United States who doesn't care for Zimbabwes.

Even if we could agree how do you review content created by billions? Sisyphean doesn't begin to describe it.

In short if you don't want your kids to see boobies please install boobie blocking software on your own computers rather than expecting billions of people in 100 odd nations to conform to your households standards.

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