Sixty Minutes Episode Is Pure Misleading Moral Panic About Section 230
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Then again, Sixty Minutes has a long history of making stuff up, lying about it, or peddling other peoples lies without bothering to investigate (eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#Controversies), so perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised...
Wage gap issue: https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlynborysenko/2020/03/31/grea...
Couric issue: https://www.npr.org/2016/05/26/479655743/manipulative-editin...
I guess people just want to downvote rather than discuss something which they are likely misinformed on.
It's been said quite blatantly that it doesn't matter that the statistics might not back up the claim because "there is obviously a problem", this has been going on for decades...
A handful of incidents in a show running since 1968 isn't enough to say that.
14 is only 0.6% of 2,325, so (assuming each controversy stems from one episode) less than 1% of their episodes have generated controversy.
Edit: That said, also according to the linked Wiki article, there have been only 13 aired controversies (the last one is an internal issue). The updated percentage is 0.56%.
Without the exact number of episodes that have aired since then, I cannot answer that question.
>Have they issued corrections for them?
It seems to me that you only skimmed the Wikipedia article to get a total count of controversies and to determine the dates around when they occurred. It would probably do you some good to take just a few minutes to read through them so that you better understand the nuance of them, the actual severity of the issues, and whether or not they issued corrections, retractions, etc.
In fact if you had read through them, you'd have noticed that the last one isn't a controversy about any aired content at all but is rather an internal issue, so there have only been 13 controversies.
This isn't a pissing contest. I believe 60 Minutes is of low journalistic/information quality (low value content/investigation, controversies in recent years, only some corrections, partial retractions, removal of content without issuing a correction/reason). It sounds like you have a different opinion - seemingly that an unknown number of episodes (14 or greater) over the course of over 2300 episodes and their actions/inactions related to them does not tarnish their reputation. And that's fine.
All that happened was that I saw you say that 14 issues “seems kind of high”, I got curious about how that compared with the total number of episodes aired, did the math and then shared the data. At best, my response was a suggestion that your “kind of high” claim didn’t line up with the data available to us at the time. Your subsequent responses, however, flagged some things for me; while you suggest that 60 Minutes has “low journalistic integrity/information quality”, your responses seem to demonstrate the same lack of attention to detail.
First, your initial post demonstrated that you simply counted Wiki sub-headings instead of reading about them to see if they actually counted as a “controversy” relevant to your point. One of the controversies listed was limited to internal sexual assault issues and, as far as we are aware, doesn’t have anything to do with on-air controversies or failures of journalistic integrity. I also mentioned that you should better understand the nuance of some of the issues because for instance, in the case of “Alar”, the issue was that the program highlighted a concern around a chemical used on apples, and sales of apples plummeted. The EPA ended up banning the same chemical the year that the program aired, so beyond apple sales plummeting there wasn’t much “controversy” that I can see. Because this specific comment chain was about the program “making stuff up, lying about it, or peddling other peoples lies”, I’m not sure whether or not the Alar/apple “controversy” actually falls in line with that specific concern.
In addition, your last response says that, “if you read it you would see some of these controversies spanned multiple episodes”, but that’s a lie - none of the controversies “spanned multiple episodes”. Let’s review:
- “Unintended Acceleration” aired on November 23, 1986, no mention of multiple episodes
- “Alar” aired in February 1989, no mention of multiple episodes
- “Werner Erhard” aired on March 3, 1991, no mention of multiple episodes
- “Brown & Williamson” aired in 1995, no mention of multiple episodes
- “US Customs Service” aired in 1997, no mention of multiple episodes
- “Kennewick Man” aired on October 25, 1998, no mention of multiple episodes
- “Viacom/CBS Cross-Promotion”, accusations of the program promoting books/films/interviews of value to sister company Viacom, but doesn’t mention “making stuff up, lying about it,” etc. nor does it say that those spanned multiple episodes
- “Killian Documents Controversy” aired on September 8, 2004, neither the 60 Minutes wiki page nor the linked Killian controversy page mentions multiple episodes
- “Benghazi Report” aired on October 27, 2013, no mention of multiple episodes
- “NSA Report” aired on December 15, 2013, no mention of multiple episodes
- “Tesla Automaker Report” aired on March 23, 2014, no mention of multiple episodes
Ultimately, I don’t have a problem with the fact that you don’t think 60 Minutes meets your standard of journalistic integrity. I also don’t have an opinion about the program myself. One doesn’t have to be defending something, or showing support for it, if they’re simply pointing out that data might not jive with a claim and that there is more nuance involved than someone seems to suggest.
My concern simply lies in the fact that you’re berating an outlet for not doing their due diligence with regard to the facts at hand, when you yourself are quite guilty of doing the same thing, continuing even after it was suggested that you hadn’t read the data you were using to back up your claims. You’re right, it’s not a pissing contest; I believe people should thoroughly read through anything they use to back up their claims, and it sounds like you have a different opinion.
And that’s fine.
On what basis? The cutoff is subjective. To you, your (incorrect) .6% might seem to be low, but to me, that might seem high.
You mention the Viacom controversy, but dismiss it because it's not lying and wrongly imply that reasoning as being my position. You also quote me about "journalistic integrity". One does not have to lie to be of low journalistic integrity. The Viacom controversy fits the complaint of low journalistic integrity and spans multiple years.
"I believe people should thoroughly read through anything they use to back up their claims, and it sounds like you have a different opinion."
I do believe people need to read and understand anything they are discussing. It's wrong of you to create these ad hominem attacks, and quite ironic as well.
The one with Fauci where he reveals he has to have security is genuinely disturbing.
- Pre-internet, generally speaking the only entities capable of widely spreading facts about private individuals were things you could sue for defamation or libel: newpapers, tv stations etc.
- Now Twitter, Facebook and YouTube can spread defamatory information about anyone without paying a similar price.
- It's true that the services will eventually accede to taking the content down (although in one case, that of a woman murdered on camera, it seemed to have proved difficult/impossible to fully do so given all the reposts).
- But they let it be put it up there in the first place! Once its up, all the damage to someone's life can be done in a day.
Do you think phone service providers should be sued for conversations their subscribers have? Similar thing.
Also without it you could sue companies like cloud flare, aws or anyone providing hosting infrastructure.
I think if they were just going to be ISPs then 230 should apply, but it seems odd that a company can select a piece of content and show it to a million people and then not be responsible. And then alternately, they can choose to remove content due to automated and manual rules, not required by law. It seems like they should either be regulated or not.
It seems off that if I solicit articles from random and print them out and mail them, I’m liable for libel. But if I review them all and publish them on a server then I’m no longer liable.
To be more precise, phone companies only block based on regulators and consistent (at least theoretically) rules based on legal authorities given to regulators.
New media isn't paid for by its consumers. Their computer, their rules. Nobody is wringing their hands over the decades of censorship by broadcast radio and television for "community standards".
I don’t think the need for regulation depends much on how much I pay to use the service or whether the publisher is responsible for content.
Another example is that even publishers of free newspapers get sued for libel.
It isn't their job --at least not what I think the job the US Constitution should protect-- to create their own version of what he said, embellish it or modify it in any way, in support or opposition.
I don't want news anchors to creatively interpret reality for me. I want facts. The interpretation is mine, not theirs. Most of them are politically biased liars.
It doesn't appear that they even have a duty to the buyer for it to be a good and useful work.
The duty you want to imagine is real would seem to be impossible to reasonably provide because the cost of paying out every time they were wrong would mean books would all cost $500 and in turn the book stores would all shut down. The only viable way to sell books would be to run a website overseas in a less insane jurisdiction selling epubs.
If you wanted to take it to the next level and enforce liability for anything that goes over the wire you could just give up 99.9% of content in the universe?
In other words: they aren't expected to have actually read every word of every book they sell. Publishers, newspapers, etc, are. But if a book defames me on page 154, the law doesn't hold the bookstore responsible unless it knew. Once it does know, you could probably sue. But that's not the same as treating it like a publisher- it's a different standard.
profit motive for recommendation/amplification is probably what damages humans at scale
If they have even an incidental financial benefit from this behavior and take human or algorithmic steps to encourage it on their platform, then yes.
> Also without it you could sue companies like cloud flare, aws or anyone providing hosting infrastructure.
And yet, telephone companies were explicitly not liable under previous doctrine without 230 even existing. The idea of a "common carrier" far predates section 230.
I think it's fair to ask if companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube should honestly deserve that common carrier status.
If a TV station had a call in show where the callers were pre-screened to be slanderous, would that be an example of a publisher or a common carrier?
I don't know the answers but it's not so obviously clear cut as running the pipes.
That presumes the account can be traced to a real person.
I'm all for having solid end to end identity verification, but that opens a lot of doors governments and companies dont want us to have. For one it makes end to end encryption easy, as its equivalent to ensuring you aren't being MITMed.
Not only that I think anonymity is important. Without you could also just as easily be threatened or harassed by people online. It cut both ways.
If someone threatens or harasses you online, and they are not anonymous you can take action. Like you say, both ways.
You can always have sites that drop your identity. It's technically easier to drop information than to verify it.
Section 230 also protects those providing infrastructure for the internet as they do not have common carrier status. Also where do you draw the line between hosting and not? I can use twitter and many other sites to host images. Alot these sites grew out of an easier to use means to host content.
Like what about sites like word-press and medium that also provide easy to use platforms for blogging. Should only the technically inclined be allowed to get hosting?
Section 230 extends that regime to websites that host other people's content.
Specialty bookstores are even less like an ISP, they might restrict themselves to one or a handful of genres. Leftist bookstores have an ideological filter. And so on. None of them are like ISPs at all.
It would be weird to make Medium treated like a publisher for hosting a defamatory blog post while a bookstore selling a bound copy of the same content would not be. That's why section 230 is a thing!
Is that necessarily true though? If someone spews libelous content on Twitter, are they not individually susceptible to being sued for libel?
Even then he still was sued, the case was not tossed for lack of standing or merit. The judge still thought there was a case worth arguing.
Almost all our tech media products default to treating things as "this is good enough to broadcast to the world until someone proves we should take it down" instead of defaulting to "this is probably low-value dreck that's not worth much distribution."
This is certainly easier from a product design perspective... but does it really make sense?
However, I do think it's a step in the right direction and makes sense. After all, if your platform is promoting specific content by your own actions/volition, then it's no longer just content posted by some user, but it's now being used or reposted/linked by the company that owns the platform for monetary gain (I would guess ToS would solidify this with some boilerplate statement saying they can use your content to make money and to promote the platform etc).
Knowing about history can be important when evaluating and thinking about some of these ideas. Most people I have seen posting comments to your comment are rehashing arguments that were at the core of the Cubby v. CompuServe some thirty years ago.
FB and Twitter MODERATE and control everything on their systems. This places them in a position of responsibility. While IANAL, I think I can say this is a case of legal precedent. Are there cases that reverse or modify Cubby v. CompuServe?
For all their AI prowess they sure as heck seem to just suck at it when it comes to moderating for quality. These platforms are oceans, no, galaxies, of lies, misinformation and manipulation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.
Totally made sense at the time. A quarter of a century later, these are now the largest companies in the history of humanity. We should at least be able to discuss what kind of liability we should be able to put on them.
By your logic, the phone companies would be legally liable for everything that users say or plan on phone calls.
Why not just approach a subject with which you are unfamiliar with healthy skepticism (like everything else)? And perhaps seek out a domain expert you trust for confirmation when at all possible.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senator-joe-manchin-introduces-...
For true liability, platforms would need to verify the ID of every user, essentially making the government completely control the content of the internet.
Absolutely ridiculous and honestly not even feasible.
Personally, I think even a complete repeal with no replacement would be a good thing. The vast majority of social networks, forums, comment sections, and other public spaces online are a cancer that are destroying our society.
And censorship is a poor alternative. Even if you find yourself on the favorable side of the censors now, inevitably they will come for you.
I don't think most of the participants in all those public spaces would agree with you. This forum we are having this conversation in right now is such a public space. Do you think it should just disappear?
What trade, exactly, do you think you would be accepting?
If you think you would be trading the absence of HN and rare sites like it for the absence of Facebook and Twitter, or even them rolling back their most egregious moderation policies, think again. Facebook and Twitter won't care if Section 230 is repealed; they can afford enough lawyers to handle any lawsuits thrown at them. In fact they would probably like it, since it would mean even less competition for them than they currently have. So repealing Section 230 would actually make the situation worse, not better.
A change that might improve the situation would be to pass legislation clarifying the boundaries of "good faith moderation", which is the part of Section 230 that Facebook and Twitter are abusing. Unfortunately, nobody seems to be talking about that.
> HN is a rare exception.
Maybe, but the fact remains that it exists, and we can come here and have discussions and not have to even pay attention to all the dreck that is out there. I don't use Facebook. I don't use Twitter. I do use HN and sites like it. Those sites are not replaceable, and they need the protection that Section 230 offers.
> personal blogs, company sites, LWN and other news sites
I don't want "news". I want discussion. And the whole point of Section 230 is that we can have sites like this one where actual discussion can take place, not just someone posting their thoughts on blog A and someone else responding on blog B. The reason sites like this exist is that everyone just posting what they think on their own blog is not a good way to have online discussions. I don't want to give up the added value that discussion forums provide. Nor, as I said above, do I think giving it up by repealing Section 230 would actually improve anything.
What is not feasible about this? Anonymity, in particular, is not assured. Establishment media routinely publishes think pieces about why we might want to outlaw anonymity.
This is a true gem, a mic drop of mic drops if there ever was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRNypdYQoWk
[0]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776?s=20
But, and just as this written journalism can influence, that doesn't mean the adversarial stance is wrong.
Information feed and stimuli are becoming increasingly powerful. It's not clear where lines should be drawn, but there may be some moral dilemmas worth discussing.
The author presents no information to support a claim that 60 Minutes has such an agenda. Much more likely is that 60 Minutes didn’t understand the story and got it wrong. Absent evidence, to do otherwise is to claim the ability to read minds.
From New Latin propāganda, short for Congregātiō dē Propagandā Fide, "congregation for propagating the faith", a committee of cardinals established in 1622 by Gregory XV to supervise foreign missions, and properly the ablative feminine gerundive of Latin propāgō (“propagate”) (see English propagation). Modern political sense dates from World War I, not originally pejorative.
It basically means advertising or public relations, pejoratively.
A modest proposal to remove some of the malicious misinformation on the internet without killing 230.
Have all users pay a small bond say $10 to an org of their own choosing in exchange for something not entirely dissimilar to an ssl cert that certifies that they are an actual person not identity #53434 created by a script and that they will not use it to sign provably false statements or those that are undertaken with reckless disregard for the truth.
Allow anyone to risk a fee designed to deter frivolous claims in order to challenge an existing bonded statement. This can be more than the $10 if needed but it is not lost if the claim is provably true. A small fee to be retained by the agency to cover its costs either way. For example it may require one to risk $30 to receive $8. Attacking things that are questionable but not outright lies would be non productive. Attacking broadly shared falsehoods that are trivially verifiable would be.
Social media platforms can require a bond in good standing to create an account. Bots would become expensive and ephemeral sources of income for scripts hunting for them. Nobody would bother to create bots for major platforms any longer as it would be non viable.
The individuals running the cert providers wouldn't turn into the ministry of truth because they would go out of business if everyone took their business elsewhere.
Ultimately permissive cert providers that dismiss all claims would be equally non viable because no providers have to accept their certs for account creation or posting.
Platforms can also allow you to sign statements which ought to be visually indicated by your browser for extra visibility or can require all posts to be signed (also visually indicated). Optionally they can provide a check to help users test their own shared media to see if what they are sharing is something so obviously wrong and stupid that a script can identify the bullcrap you are trying to post. See the flat earth, lizard people, or Rathensperger's brother works for China conspiracies.
The third time they have to pay an extra $10 or stop posting on Facebook they are liable they are likely to start doing actual fact checks themselves.
None of this stops dubious networks like parler or gab either having no certification requirements or having a certification authority that forwards fact checks to /dev/null but browsers can be configured with a list of legitimate certification authorities and be configured to show a visible indication that the page is untrusted for example a red outline around the entire page area.
This list should be provided by the browser/computer/OS vendor but be user editable so that if the user can decide to trust the gab certification authority they can do so. This ability will not destroy the utility of the system which is that most information exchanged on the internet will require a small amount of skin in the game making spreading deliberate lies difficult and expensive.
Networks whose only claim to fame is that they will allow any hideous misbehavior the users please to entertain will never be the majority of the internet.
The obvious question is what is the implications for anonymity on the internet. Your cert authority would not receive a notification for every action you take on the internet but they would be liable to both know who exactly who you are and any statement that was challenged. They would probably know broadly what sites you interacted with.
This information would under court order be subject to seizure by the government. Such a system isn't resilient against a repressive regime but neither is the system we have now as it is used by 99.9% of users today.
I can imagine it also serving to allow more John Doe lawsuits to be launched against individuals more easily as there is now a viable party to sue to reveal the identity of the poster but this is already a problem given that most users can in fact be unmasked by their ISPs now.
Of course the freedom loving part of me doesn't want it to be a tax but a platform of its own.