Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindvirus | Hacker News Reader

If the primary use and purpose of highways was to commit crimes, and the people running them refused to do anything about it, then yes I'd question them or at least their management.

I think when speech starts to risk real harm to others, we need to start thinking carefully about it. It's not so clear cut, but I think that if someone threatens to harm someone with some degree of seriousness, society should be able to act before that harm occurs.

With Parler (and to be fair, Twitter), I see it creating more radicalization, which very directly creates a risk of harm to others as we saw play out on the 6th. And I don't think we should tolerate it, or we're stuck just treating symptoms rather than causes.

View on HN

For the analogy to work it's not even enough for the roads to be used to commit crimes. The roads would have to be continuously re-routing you from your intended destination and taking you down roadways filled with signs inciting violence, cult indoctrination, and lies about reality.

The algorithmic curation of all social media platforms that is intentionally built to assault users with the most distasteful, extreme lies (because it's good for engagement!) is the real problem in my view. If every social media platform stopped all algorithmic curation/recommendation and simply presented a chronological list of updates from people you follow (and did not recommend who to follow), then I think the bulk of the problem goes away.

I have no problem with free speech (even abhorrent speech). But I have a problem when a person's online experience is controlled by algorithms specifically designed to ratchet up the garbage and inundate people with hateful rhetoric.

It's pretty telling that "64 percent of people who joined an extremist group on Facebook only did so because the company’s algorithm recommended it to them" according to facebook's own research into divisiveness. https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-divisio...

With all the discussion about Section 230, could such opaque algorithmic curation constitute a form of editorial control, not unlike that of a publisher? Could we reform Section 230 in a way that is pro-user, so if a website wishes to be a "platform" they would have to make their raw feed available to the user, or if they provide algorithmic curation, it's transparent to the user how information is prioritized? Could we clarify the distinction between platform and publisher?

> Could we reform Section 230 in a way that is pro-user, so if a website wishes to be a "platform" they would have to make their raw feed available to the use

That's not reforming 230, that's abolishing it and repudiating it's entire purpose. Enabling host action to suppress perceived-as-undesirable content without increasing host liability for content not removed was the purpose of 230.

> Could we clarify the distinction between platform and publisher?

The distinction in 230 is crystal clear: to the extent content items are user-generated, the online service provider (land other users, even if they may have the power to promote, demote, or suppress the content are not publishers or speakers, period, the end.

The source (whether it is the user that is the source or the service provider for it's internally-generated, first-party content) is the publisher or speaker.

Fortunately, the source is easily and transparently held responsible for their actions....

Wow. That is an amazing statistic- I find it hard to accept that the average person would be influenced by social media to that extent but that type of study result is undeniable.

What if two groups of people both use the highways to commit crimes, but the moderators of the highways only enforce the rules on one group?

That's some sneaky language but this isn't a philosophical hypothetical. Parler hosted people calling for specific acts of violence and did hardly anything to moderate them. Those people were almost entirely right wing and you can see for yourself looking through the data dumps provided recently by a hacker or looking up articles about Parler.

If you have evidence o some other app hosted on AWS where left wing groups calling for violence and applauding it when it materializes, but not being shut down, please show everyone. I won't even go to the extreme of saying it has to be at the same level or quantity of violent speech we saw on Parler.

Uhh, yeah. Twitter, Reddit, etc, etc.

Edit to reply the post below:

Actual terrorism? Al-Queda and ISIS are active on Twitter. There is content still up calling for genocide against certain ethnicities. Real genocide and terrorism. Not the hyperbole in U.S. politics.

U.S. politicians were actively egging on protestors and calling for violence around the country this summer. Where do you draw the line? It's cool if one side does it but not the other?

There's clearly an uneven application of their moderation policies. And, they are afforded legal protections as platforms under the assumption / intent that users create the content and they stay out of curation. IMO, they aren't being equitable with enforcing their own rules and should lose status as platforms. Because clearly they are opinionated in their enforcement of the ToS.

When it became undeniable that the traffic was connected to actual terrorism, other sites acted swiftly to cut it off. Parler did not.

Now, it's arguable that the other sites knowingly facilitating crime and just hoping to escape consequences because no one was going to make a big deal of it, and they only cut it off because the risk of that strategy increased after the Capitol attack. But while that may paint the past actions of the other firms in a worse light, it doesn't paint Parler’s actions before it was cutoff by other suppliers in a better one.

> When it became undeniable that the traffic was connected to actual terrorism, other sites acted swiftly to cut it off.

Remind me when the politicians who promoted the Antifa and BLM riots and actually set up funds so the protestors would be bailed out had their accounts "indefinitely suspended" for doing just what you're describing as the reason Parler got shut down.

I don't always go 85 in a 55 but when I do I get passed by a cop going 95.

Unequal enforcement is already very much a thing on the roads. Ever heard of a "fishing stop" or "driving while black". Getting cut less slack than a boring sedan and a work truck is one of the few things red Porche drivers and 30yo shitbox drivers have in common.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com