Concentrated power is scary. I'd agree it's mostly being used for good here...
I don't think they should face legal sanctions or anything. I think they should step out of politics. But yeah, they don't have to.
So, since ISPs also own their platform, should they also be free to block content that competes with their services along with content they’re required to block by law?
The point is, we have a whole bunch of mores and law that work together to form a free society work that were formed in times when most interpersonal communications didn't go through a few concentrated intermediaries. This new equilibrium a really big concern for free communication and freedom of speech: just letting whatever dangerous stuff circulate at massive scale isn't good, but fully empowering corporate entities being able to squash and marginalize categories of speech isn't great either.
So, the relative merits and dangers of "censorship" should be evaluated against this. The bar for the censorship being "potentially greater risk" is reasonably high.
Squashing what one might think is dubious criticism of police potentially saves lives, too.
Not too long ago Youtube was removing videos criticizing the CDC for not advocating for masks... Squashing criticism of the CDC during a pandemic seems like an action that could potentially save lives, too.
What I meant was that giving a platform to Trump's deranged claims is harming the fabric of society, eroding trust in each other and in the society itself, sowing discord, and widens the opportunity for an aspiring tyrant to seize the public's interest, declare a bunch of "undesirables" as enemy of the state, and infringe upon individual rights while his supporters cheer him on. (And also kill some lives along the way.)
Just like censorship could potentially lead to a similar kind of outcome.
So, the danger of "censorship", in our current context, should be gauged against the danger of "non-censorship" in the same context.
It doesn't work so well to stop dangerous ideas, and it has a whole lot of risk of being used against unpopular ones.
Trump's ideas are doing damage to democracy, but attempting to suppress them in this way adds credence to many peoples' belief that there's some dangerous tech/liberal cabal squashing the true majority conservative opinion, too. And even attempts to use these in a bright-line, careful fashion have often squashed the wrong speech and silenced the wrong people; this is before any actual malicious use which is sure to come if the precedent strengthens.
In our rush to get rid of the most repugnant ideas, too, we tend to lose our ability to discuss nuance. To avoid COVID quackery, we can't have an open discussion of the merits of specific policies and interventions. In our rush to squash the dangerous idea of election fraud, we can't have the discussion about how to make our actual election system robust and beyond reproach.
> So, the danger of "censorship", in our current context, should be gauged against the danger of "non-censorship" in the same context.
Yes, which is why I acknowledged those risks in my first comment and said that I believed that these risks are potentially greater.
Think about how much important speech from the past few centuries has seemed dangerous and repugnant at the time it was uttered.
If anything, they're less censored than they used to be.
> The Australian white supremacist who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand was radicalized by YouTube, according to a 792-page report on the March 2019 shooting.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-sho...
Q: Were you taught violence and extremism by video games, music, literature, cinema?
Yes, Spyro the dragon 3 taught me ethno-nationalism. Fortnite trained me to be a killer and to floss on the corpses of my enemies. No.
People are more intelligent than these criticisms give them credit for. Their beliefs come from opinions and thoughts, not just from above. See Ross Douthat's recent column, "Why Do So Many Americans Think the Election Was Stolen?"
"The potency of this belief has already scrambled some of the conventional explanations for conspiratorial beliefs, particularly the conceit that the key problem is misinformation spreading downward from partisan news outlets and social-media fraudsters to the easily deceived. As I watch the way certain fraud theories spread online, or watch conservatives abandon Fox News for Newsmax in search of validating narratives, it’s clear that this is about demand as much as supply. A strong belief spurs people to go out in search of evidence, a lot of so-called disinformation is collected and circulated sincerely rather than cynically, and the power of various authorities — Tucker Carlson’s show or Facebook’s algorithm — to change beliefs is relatively limited."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/trump-elec...
Top-down disinformation primes the minds of the less-scrupulous, who then seek to rationalize and harden their half-baked beliefs through their everyday experiences.
https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
People used to believe in brainwashing too. We like to think people who disagree with us are easily swayed idiots. It keeps our opinions safe and justifies censoring their opinions instead of engaging with them.
I do not think there is any reason to be offended.
"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations" -- Osama bin Laden
You are only confirming that terrorism allows someone to be powerfully heard.
There is also a reason why many of these folks who finally decide to kill people also consume "alt-lite" content like Ben Shapiro / Jordan Peterson etc, it isn't a coincidence. Regulating that and keeping people from spreading racist propaganda, or content that just exists to undermine democracy is fine in my book.
With Peterson and Shapiro I feel like you're trending toward a standard of "anything terrorists like to read, but I don't, should be censored". They're close to as popular as, say, Rachel Maddow, which means almost all of their readers are peaceful.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/the-s...
https://www.wired.com/story/mosque-shooter-exploited-power-o...
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/16/18266930/christchurch-...
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/the-christchurch-sho...
Also Shapiro / Peterson should just be banned because they are racists and say racist things.
If "one incident is too many", then marijuana must stay strictly illegal and violent video games must be banned, because both have nonzero body count IRL. Remember Harris and Klebold?
Is this fixable at all? Do we just give up? Do we fight the lies directly by not spreading them? No good options as long as the lies are spreading.
I have a very hard time seeing Youtube or Twitter as the bad guys here. At least they're trying. Screaming about censorship as the civilization falls apart seems to really be missing the point.
If freedom of speech won't save us, what will?
Unclear what the solution is as that system breaks down because the subscription-free ad-fueled Internet dwarfs the traditional model.
Democracy isn't looking too healthy nowadays though, I agree.
For this reason, I am forced to wonder if democracy can survive the information age at all.
The US is a constitutional republic who's institution where designed in a way that the ONLY democratic part of that system of governance was the US House of representatives
Unfortunately for those that like individual freedom and see democracy as mob rule (people like myself) there is a strong push for more and more democracy into the system which is a net negative for individual liberty. Things like abolishing of electoral collage, even past changes like Electing Senators via Popular vote have been a net negative for liberty
https://www.journalism.org/2018/06/18/distinguishing-between...
>The main portion of the study, which measured the public’s ability to distinguish between five factual statements and five opinion statements, found that a majority of Americans correctly identified at least three of the five statements in each set. But this result is only a little better than random guesses. Far fewer Americans got all five correct, and roughly a quarter got most or all wrong.
there are two biological sexes?
do you want a corporation determining that for you and banning you from seeing anything otherwise? what if their view of the facts is different?
how about i argue for them not to censor, and you go to another platform if you want your safe space.
As
>Respondents were asked to determine if each was a factual statement (whether accurate or not) or an opinion statement (whether agreed with or not).
I never gave my opinion on the matter, but since you asked, no, I don't personally care if corporations ban me because I disagree with their TOS (which had inaccurate statements of fact in it), that's their right. I probably wouldn't be doing business with them in the first place, though it's also my right to petition them to change it if I wanted to. Example: When I was a kid Walmart only sold censored CDs so everyone knew not to buy CDs from Walmart.
Source: am European, speak Czech, German and (worse, but usable) Polish. We are all human, with all the expected flaws.
Notice how every thread here is about acting against alleged disinformation agents? It's not about any argument at all. It's a generic outgroup argument.
Should we expect people to just never question elections? It's completely bizarre.
If Google doesn't like it they are free to shutdown the service.
I believe in science, what I don't believe is that people will listen to truth when it is presented. They are two different things. Science has lost its power to object to a higher cultural malaise.
If you understood what it meant for the virgin mary to be contrary, you would understand the words I wrote on the page and my meaning.
You were not correct, you didn't understand my post. Stop dreaming. There are real truths being expressed here.
Anyways, I honestly can't blame "them". Less than a year ago, the mainstream media was full of "information" like, masks don't work, it's racist to think that hugging a Chinese could make you infected, and people questioning the origin of the virus were deemed conspiracy theorists. Now some of these are suddenly considered "misinformation" or "COVIDiots" and you have "conspiracy theory" on front page of Washington Post
What's someone who's not 100% plugged in supposed to think?!
While flat earthers are mostly harmless, other misinformation have real tangible cost. People are literally dying due to the anti-vaxx and anti-mask misinformation. Not blocking these videos is equivalent to having blood on your hands.
So all the YT censorship in the world will not stop that unless you are going to advocate prohibition of religion as well which I feel you likely will not get as much support for
YT and online misinformation is a good scapegoat, much like Usenet was in the 1990's for people that do not understand the real, actual problem
you are not going to fix these problems by censorship
And it just happened to be perfectly in sync with the rise of anti-vaxx content on social media? You do realize these "religious fundamentalism" with fringe ideas also use Youtube, FB and other sites to share their anti-vaxx ideas and have their own ideas re-affirmed?
I hope I never encounter these psychopaths!
When has that ever not been the case? Fortunately there are natural barriers preventing most people with wild ideas from gaining enough support to be a detriment to society. Should I really care if someone else chooses to believe x, y, or z in the face of contradictory evidence? If they try and do something public with a wrong idea, their failure will be the teacher, not me.
Hate to break it to you, but if those ideas are succeeding, maybe they weren't wrong after all...
The internet has all but nullified these barriers. Just look at all the QAnon garbage. That would have gone nowhere 30 years ago, but today a sizable portion of this country believes it because there is no real difference in authority between one Facebook post, Youtube video, or Tweet and another.
>Should I really care if someone else chooses to believe x, y, or z?
You shouldn't, unless that view is harmful to society. I don't care if you think the COVID vaccine has a microchip in it. But if you delay our return to a normally functioning society because you refuse to get that vaccine, your stupidity is starting to infringe on my rights.
If enough people decide that the COVID vaccine is important enough for everyone to receive (regardless of their personal beliefs), then that will be codified into law. No need for censorship to try and manipulate public perception.
When it starts to get dangerous, yes. People are inspired toward violence when they believe that other people are killing children to drink their blood. For those unaware, that is at the heart of QAnon beliefs.
>If enough people decide that the COVID vaccine is important enough for everyone to receive (regardless of their personal beliefs), then that will be codified into law. No need for censorship to try and manipulate public perception.
Do you realize this is an exact analogy to what Youtube is doing here? They tried to let the people decide. We ended up with a result that was bad for society. So they instead tried to codify the "right" choice into the laws of their platform.
I see this argument a lot, but it fails to address the clear distinction between beliefs and actions. If people are actually violent, we have clear laws to deal with those actions.
If the argument is that certain beliefs shouldn't be allowed because they could be construed as "inspiring violence", then I'd love to hear about how tolerant you are towards Islam's idea of jihad or countless others who believe violence is justified in circumstances that you disagree with.
Why outlaw threats and fighting words then? They aren't violence.
Some of us want to stop easily predictable violence before it gets to the point of actual violence.
>If the argument is that certain beliefs shouldn't be allowed because they could be construed as "inspiring violence", then I'd love to hear about how tolerant you are towards Islam's idea of jihad or countless others who believe violence is justified in circumstances that you disagree with.
It is curious that you use Islam as your example here. Various religions preach violence. The Old Testament establishes the death penalty for people who break the Sabbath. What matters is the actual practice and how likely they are to inspire violence. The QAnon conspiracies are more dangerous in this regard than thousand plus year old religions.
Are you being serious? I honestly can't tell. This has played out in countless movies and books, and the result is never good. It has also played out in real life, and the result is even worse.
> What matters is the actual practice...
Bingo! Sounds like maybe you're beginning to see the error in trying to police thoughtcrime. It's the actions that matter, not the beliefs alone.
The line is "imminent lawless action" [1], with case law clarifying that "advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time" is not considered "imminent" (and therefore protected free speech). It's a pretty clear line, and one that most of the censored material being discussed objectively does not cross.
Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are within their rights as private companies to enforce content rules as they wish, but these recent censorship actions have strong implications as to their protections under Section 230, and are alarming insofar as they represent a trend that crosses the line of free speech protections normally recognized by the government and content platforms.
No, they don't; 230 exists to promote censorship, it does not involve a bar to it.
> and are alarming insofar as they represent a trend that crosses the line of free speech protections normally recognized by the government and content platforms.
They aren't the government, and there has never been a set of free speech protections “normally recognized by content platforms”, especially since 230 was adopted specifically to remove legal disincentives to active moderation.
> there has never been a set of free speech protections “normally recognized by content platforms”
I agree; legally there hasn't been anything like that, but in the past, those platforms were demonstrably more reluctant to censor political content (e.g., views that didn't align with the company's political views) because they knew that more active involvement might jeopardize their classification as neutral platforms (along with their protections under 230 as described above). In effect, they stayed out of politics not by law, but out of fear of being forced to censor all content if they became "publishers". Now that machine learning has made the censoring part easier, they're less concerned about that happening. However, at the moment they want to have their cake and eat it too – controlling content as they wish while also enjoying the protections of 230.
No. That's not what section 230 says.
There is no distinction in section 230 between "platform" and "publisher."
This has been noted and detailed repeatedly in this discussion.
Please see this[0] which will explain, in explicit detail, why you are wrong about section 230.
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
When a company like Twitter censors the president of the United States, while also embedding their own editorial comments over the content he posted, those actions could easily be seen as falling outside 230 (even if courts haven't decided that in the past). No one denies the fact that the internet today is very different from when 230 was drafted, and from a moral standpoint, we absolutely need more clarification codified into the law.
If your town's public square were seized by one of the richest companies in the world, and they began exerting political control over who was allowed to speak in the town square, it would certainly raise some red flags and likely encourage legal changes (even if, for a time, it was perfectly legal).
The 230 debate isn't even the core of my argument (if you read my previous comments). The point is, whether through legal means or simply by way of market pressure, we should not be allowing these companies to control the political discussion in such heavy-handed ways. Diversity of opinion is diversity, and we need more of it - not less (it's ironic how some push so hard for diversity, yet seem to think we can't handle it when it comes to speech).
I'm sure it's hard to imagine, but if they started silencing liberal views, there's no doubt there would be an uproar among democrats. Apart from any legal changes that may come, we vote with our clicks and platform usage, and there's a growing number of people who are tired of these political censorship games, so they're leaving for other platforms with less political bias. As censorship increases, that will likely accelerate.
This is the last of my comments in this thread.
No, they are a matter of clear and unambiguous historical fact.
> and people on both sides of the political spectrum are now realizing that the law needs clarification.
No, subsets within each major party are adopting preferences for regulation with opposed purposes to those for which CDA Section 230 was originally adopted. Which we could debate the merits of, but it's simply factually wrong to describe actions of the type that both the plain text and the legislative history of Section 230 show clearly to be exactly what 230 was adopted to remove existing barriers to are somehow in conflict with Section 230’s protections or purpose.
Please remember that Section 230 doesn't just apply to the big players. It applies to any internet resource that allows third-party content. Including any site that you may host/own.
I suggest you actually read the sharp end of Section 230 (section (C)(1), which pretty much all litigation around it has been resolved). I present it here for your review[4]:
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
That's it. Full stop.
I don't care about platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. I don't use them (well, okay, sometimes I listen to songs on YT and once in a while I'll dig up an amusing or enjoyable clip from a movie or tv show) because I find their business models personally offensive.
But you attack Section 230 at your own (and everyone else's) peril. And there are a bunch of reasons for this.
The impetus for Section 230 came out of the court decision in Stratton, Oakmont v. Prodigy[0], where the court ruled that if Prodigy did any moderation at all, they were then liable to be sued for third-party content they hosted.
But that didn't just apply to Prodigy. It applied to any connected device that hosted any content, whether that content originated from the owner or a third-party.
Try to imagine what the world would look like under such a legal regime:
A site like HackerNews, if they (as they do now) allowed the upvote/downvote/flag moderation system, would be liable to be sued for just about any post that someone didn't like, or for a submission that wasn't sufficiently up or down voted.
In such an environment, HackerNews (and every single other website, mailing list, Usenet group, Mastodon instance, Github repo, etc., etc., etc.) would be liable to be sued for just about anything that anyone posted if they did any form of moderation (like blocking spam, porn or any content unrelated to the purpose of the site).
If there was no Section 230, you could be sued if you hosted a mirror of the lkml[1] list and someone didn't like a snarky response from Linus about a rejected patch merge request.
You could also be sued just for forwarding an email that contained statements that someone didn't like. In fact, Section 230 protections stopped just such a lawsuit[2] in 2006.
Companies with deep pockets like FB, Twitter, YT, Reddit, etc., have the resources to fight most such lawsuits, but what about sites like HackerNews?
Do you really think we'd be having this pleasant conversation right now if YC could be sued for any post or submission on this site?
YC would run for the hills, because they don't want that sort of liability. If they moderated anything (and that includes user up/downvotes/flags), they could be sued for any content hosted here. The only alternatives they would have would be to shut down or not make or use any moderation tools at all.
Which would quickly turn this site into a cesspit of spam, porn, irrelevant postings and other garbage (essentially, 4chan/8chan/8kun).
Do you have a github repo? If there were no Section 230, and you blocked even one PR that contained spam, porn, discussions about placentas and/or other irrelevant content, you are now liable to be sued for any statements made by others in that repo.
As such, the result of removing Section 230 protections would create two kinds of Internet resources:
1. Sites which do not allow any third-party content;
2. Sites which allow all third-party content without any limit (think gay, midget furry porn plastered all over a knitting website)
And so, no. I wouldn't mind at all if a particular site moderated in favor of a political (or any other) view with which I disagree. If I don't like it, I'll go elsewhere.
Because of all this, I say that Section 230 is essential to free speech, not a hindrance to it.
Feel free to disagree, but you'll be wrong[3]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal
[3] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
[4] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
Edit: Fixed spacing issues.
Also to users, on sites where user action can affect the visibility of other content. Were 230 not in place, users making use of such features (not just site operators) could face civil liability.
But I don’t think the goal should be to attack 230, but a desired goal would be stop platforms like Twitter and Facebook and YouTube to stop acting like a publisher. They are simply abusing 230 privileges while still acting like a publisher with editorial muscle.
The term "publisher" has no legal meaning in the context of section 230.
I (and at least a half-dozen other folks) have explained this repeatedly in this discussion.
I won't do so again, but in the interest of expanding knowledge, I'll point you over here[0] so you can understand the deal as it stands.
If you (or anyone else) would like to see changes to Section 230, that's perfectly fine with me. I suggest you write your congressperson/senators and demand the changes for which you advocate.
That said, what you are describing is not the law as it is now. Whether you (or I for that matter) agree or disagree, that's irrelevant to current jurisprudence.
But we have ways to change our laws and we should take advantage of them where we feel it appropriate.
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
230 was expressly adopted to let service providers (and users!) of interactive computer services take actions that would otherwise make them publishers without the liability that goes with that, with regard to content that is created by someone else. That's it's whole purpose. Key operative text: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider” and ”No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of [...] any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”
Oh, the entire history of religious and pseudoreligious movements begs to differ.
A relatively recent, but decidedly pre-Internet example with a high death toll: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
The combination of absurdity of the core claims of the movement and width of audience gained seems fairly similar to me.
I am against censorship, but not because I believe that bad ideas can't take hold and cause enormous damage. I just believe that the benefits of living in a society with free speech outweigh the costs.