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Comment by proactivesvcs | Hacker News Reader

Assuming that a company's terms of service are deemed fair and legal, why would it be "no longer acceptable" to apply them? I couldn't care less how high profile someone is, what public office they hold; if they break the agreement they made with a service provider, they should be subject to the consequences they agreed to.

What I would like to see is a company being obliged to enforce its terms of service promptly, and not allow profitable rule-breakers to continue. Especially when their abuse of the service also breaks laws.

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Because terms of service are vague and, more importantly, selectively enforced.

Selective enforcement of private contracts is totally legal, and the EU('s executive branch) is uncomfortable with the public policy implications of that when it comes to social media and would like new laws passed to add extra regulation on uniformity and specificity of moderation policies.

The selective enforcement - particularly when it's overt - really grinds my gears. When they are finally applied that doesn't make said application invalid or incorrect.

I think that some cases whereby $importantperson isn't banned because they're important are valid. It helps to have a public and verifiable record of a public office holder making provably false claims, particularly when a warning is then slathered over said bullshit. But the thought of a government body deciding when a company may and may not enforce its rules is chilling.

Well, laws are selectively enforced, too. How many company-crippling GDPR fines have been collected so far?

The idea behind the fines is to get compliance and not to destroy the company.

Selectively enforced laws grinds my gears.

> But the thought of a government body deciding when a company may and may not enforce its rules is chilling.

In general I agree with you; I only consider this kind of thinking valid at Twitter/FB/Google/AWS scale - where one decision affects populations the size of entire nations (or larger). It's a problem less than a dozen companies would ever face and any reasonable law would need to make that abundantly clear. I wouldn't favor opening that door for smaller companies.

I think we need to acknowledge that a lot of what these agreements outline is, to a large degree, subjective. If human language, or expression in general, weren't contextual and up for interpretation, then I think this would be a viable way of looking at things, but that simply isn't the case.

So long as there is room for interpretation, and the consequences (politically, economically, etc.) of those interpretations are potentially far reaching, leaving it up to private companies with no oversight isn't a good option.

So you have n companies each applying their own subjective judgement over their own networks, or you have 1 government applying its own subjective judgement over all networks in that country.

It's highly unlikely that the latter is more friendly to fringe or extremist views (setting aside whether or not that's a good thing).

One government is optimistic in this case. This is the EU talking, they'll gladly deliberate for months before any action is taken.

Furthermore, wouldn't this worsen an authoritarian or Trump-like scenario? We are expecting the government to moderate itself? Wouldn't a yes man/crony just sit in that seat ala William Barr and let the tweets go unchecked?

Yeah, in the US, depending on which dystopia you think we're living in, it's very easy to envision either some Trump crony making sure nobody was disrespectful to him on Twitter OR some "deep state" agents starting to censor him way back in 2015 to try to prevent his getting elected in the first place.

I've yet to see a realistic proposal for what should replace Twitter's ability to choose its own TOS that isn't either a worse situation like that, or isn't some "only illegal stuff should be taken down" that probably results in far fewer open places on the internet accepting user-generated content for broadcast in the first place.

The key difference is a government is decided by the people. n companies (let's be real, 2-4) have no accountability.

There is potential for an antitrust issue - two companies having immense control over the most popular way to access the internet, your phone. At least for now, it's really more of a convenience thing when app stores remove apps; limiting the feature set of your product offering to apps only may make sense, but it is an educated risk. If you feel you want the most people to access your content, you make it work on mobile and desktop computers without requiring a specific app store gatekeeper.

If you disagree with Apple removing something from an app store, you buy an Android compatible and enable side-loading, or you buy a Linux compatible phone, or if all else fails, you connect through a web site.

When I used Windows Phone, it was annoying that I couldn't download an app for my bank, inconvenient that I still had to use ATMs to deposit checks. And disappointing that I couldn't hop on the Snapchat bandwagon. But I was still able to communicate with friends and family, read the news, do research, learn things, and make use of the internet.

Allowing just a few companies enough control over the internet to take away your ability to choose how you use it is an antitrust issue.

> It's highly unlikely that the latter is more friendly to fringe or extremist views

This is empirically false though, at least in the the USA.

In the USA there are extremely strong protections for free speech.

If it was required that platforms followed the existing way that the government is allowed to ban certain speech, then platforms would be much less restrictive, because our laws of what speech is allowed is very pro free speech.

Many authors have speculated on how modern society would work if rather than 1 legal system you would have large companies that each have their own laws and enforcement. Usually the world is made into a dystopia.

I think a 1 government is in general more friendly to fringe or extremist people. Not that the laws are better, but government legal system must in its core treat everyone similar where same act done by two people are punished similarly. This aspect of law make people feel safe against arbitrary enforcement and that benefits both people of fringe as well as non-fringe views.

I don't think we can enter science fiction stories into the evidence for this debate. They are fiction.

The events in these books don't even necessarily reflect the beliefs of the authors. An author might simply write what would be entertaining to read, or what has been written in the genre before. Even if these fictional megacorps do reflect the widely held belief of genre authors, that doesn't serve as any kind of factual basis on which to base public policy.

That is true, through we do have historical evidence during the colonial times where large shipping companies were large enough to rival nations and had their own laws and enforcement. Later we also have large mining companies with their own towns, laws and enforcement.

As far as I remember my history, companies that are larger than nation with their own laws and enforcement have not much nice things written about them.

"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." [0]

-- Winston Churchill

For any kind of platform that allows arbitrary users some level of control over the content that will be hosted, the options for ensuring that content is not harmful are:

* Community Moderation: users control contributing and moderating content. The platform chooses moderators, or enables voting for them. This gives users and all people (i.e. citizens) the most power, but has the most potential for abuse of the system to enable using the platform to host, spread and share harmful content.

* Platform Moderation: wholly moderated by platform chosen moderators. This is probably the most common system. The platform will use its own set of values and policies to decide what to moderate, and will likely target the most popular content deemed harmful. Per platform, this gives platforms the most power, but platforms much compete with each other

* Government Moderation: moderation likely by the platform, but with oversight from government - policy and values may be defined by the government; failure to moderate according to the government legislation could result in penalties or termination of the platform. If the government has sufficient checks and balances and citizen influence, this may be a desirable system, but if the government is not "of and for the people", it could also be used by the government to moderate opponents of the government as decided by that government. Anyone opposing the absolute power of the government may find their content "moderated" away. This is the stuff of nightmares for the founding fathers.

"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." [1]

-- Thomas Jefferson

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_democracy

[1] https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/whe...

That's a fair statement but as long as a company is not found to be applying bias to their application of their rules, again I see no problem. In the instances we're discussing though, there has been clear violation of terms over a sustained period of time.

this argument seems well & sound to me, if I replace "private companies" with "private monopolies". right now I don't think we know how monopolistic these companies are & i don't think we've tried doing much competing. so yes we are under the seat of a few big entities. it's our fault. athe failure of us, our unwillingness to compete, does not give the nation's of the world preimminent domain. the rights of the private entities to converse as they would is to be respected, including excluding unwanted voices. if you have something to say find your own places to say it.

these garbage fire bonanzas ablaze with calls for violence & insurrection with the flimsiest fakest of fabricated basis underneath are unfortunately really bad tests of how monopolistic big tech is, because they doom themselves, seem rankly incompetent, destined to self immolate. competitor platformsust follow some law, which is in many cases what companies do when they kick people off: protect themselves & the rest of the platform from grave risks. i believe companies should be encouraged to find their own ways to remain safe, that nation's ordering them around to control speech in certain governmentally dictated ways would be horrific. cyberspace doesn't deserve this infringement, people don't, even big tech, sucky g useless as it is, doesn't. this isn't china. we don't do that here.

Yeah, so, basically, and I can't believe I have to spell this out, the EU Commission is saying "we need new laws".

Please, continue to spell this out. Laws that forbid an organisation from applying its rules because that organisation is popular? Laws that compel an organisation to allow users to perpetrate abuse if they're important in one country? Where does liability now fall when say, incitement to violence end up with someone losing an eye, a life?

Don't misunderstand me - I absolutely think that those who allowed Trump to directly incite violence for years have blood on their hands. They absolutely have liability for this. They disgust me. But now suddenly the conversation seems to be that Twitter, for example, should have been forbidden from kicking Trump off now or years ago when they should have. So who would share the blame now?

Your point is fair and valid, but Europe has long been wary of US Tech's incipient power and they see Trump's permaban (warranted as it is) as a warning.

Yes, because, in different parts of the world, laws are different. EU is saying these orgs are to powerful. How is that bad? They are planning on crafting laws to limit the abuse potential of these companies.

If a company rules are illegal in an area, then it should 100% be followed. Look at how the NYtimes for a while did not allow California residents who signed up online, cancel online. Ironically, also a media company.

How about ethics in general then? Facebook has been implicated in assisting genocide, the methodological execution of people in Myanmar - yet, people are focused on one recent event that, when you compare the effects of assisting a government in executing it's own people, to people using it as a platform to come together and raid the capitol - it seems to fall quite flat. Yes, humans lost their life in both examples, but how, why do we come together now that it is in our own backyard, vs happening in a distant part of the world? How do you quantify humanity value/loss of life or allow these social media orgs, that operate as an outlet, a communication platform, that bond "networks" together this unlimited power?

I wonder if there is a conflation (or I am misunderstanding) that the big social media orgs have some sort of duty to uphold freedom of speech but are at the same time vilified by some for banning abusive users. My criticisms align with yours it seems - that they have been complicit in perpetrating abuse for some time, including spilling of blood, and have only now, now the "optics are bad", decided to act. I guess my argument is that they should be allowed to ban any user for breaking their rules - as long as those rules are deemed fair and legal - and no organisation that does so should be decried by lawmakers or citizens for suppressing speech.

> Where does liability now fall when say, incitement to violence end up with someone losing an eye, a life?

Courts? The US is a bit weird in that one person is excluded for the normal legal system of judges, and instead replaces it with the congress, but regardless that is where the crime of "incitement to violence" and "conspiracy" is settled.

As with all other conspiracies, we also have the persons who committed the act of violence. If they are not dead they will hopefully end up in court and have their case brought up by the legal system.

A corporation is an abstraction, an artificial person created to pool resources and do business at scale. It's a good, useful abstraction --- but like all abstractions, it's leaky, and sometimes the abstraction does more harm than good. Governments are run for the benefit of natural people, not artificial ones, and when the latter behave in ways detrimental to the interests of the former, there's nothing wrong with setting rules.

For someone whose username is 'quotemstr' (quote master), that post is a great, short explanation of that idea and very.. quotable.

Well, for one, democratic countries are supposed to be governed by representatives elected by people, not by corporate boards.

Ability to selectively enable or disable people from being able to access voters is tantamount to having a huge influence on election results.

While in the past you could avoid using social media, today this is THE way to reach most of voters. Most people no longer pay substantial attention to what happens on television, forgot what radio is (it is a little bit of noise your car gives so that it is not quiet) and don't read printed papers.

Now, this time it happened for Trump and we can discuss whether this was or was not a good decision, but the question is who is going to wield the power like that in the future and whether it is even permissible do to something like that.

On one side you have the idea of free speech, but then added to social media you have inevitable disinformation as anybody can get amplified and amount of information is such that it is not possible to verify and vet it.

In the past you would have handful of news-generating organizations and it was easy to spot and call false information. But this is forever gone, there seems to be a need to find out some kind of new equilibrium that will allow detect and filter misinformation without anybody having power to singlehandedly "vanish" people from public life.

You discuss governance, access to voters, wielding of power and free speech but not the meat of my comment: a customer not playing by the rules they agreed to, and the implication that they should be allowed to break the rules they agreed to simply because they're important. An organisation must now allow people to flaunt their rules, helpless to remove them despite the abuse that they perpetrate?

Simple, how about just like a store is not allowed to refuse service, an online platform also not be allowed to refuse service? Is someone misbehaving, great, inform the actual authorities of their jurisdiction.

Actual governments, with the people's mandate, are the only ones with authority to set the laws. Not tech monopolies.

>Simple, how about just like a store is not allowed to refuse service

A store is absolutely allowed to refuse service. You're not allowed to walk in to Costco without a Costco card. Plenty of restaurants and clubs have a dress code. Most places have "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" rules.

> A store is absolutely allowed to refuse service.

No, that is not true for all private services.

For example, common carriers have strong restrictions on their ability to refuse service to others. Common carrier laws aren't particularly controversial.

These existing common carrier laws could be expanded to apply to other things.

Common carriers are a tiny minority of businesses. Plenty of other exception exist too, but they are exceptions. Because the default is that businesses do reserve the right to refuse service.

They are exceptions yes. And people are advocating for additional exceptions to be made and they are giving justification for it.

So you cant just straight up dismiss the idea that we should consider requiring a few more businesses to fall under our existing and uncontroversial laws common carrier laws.

I don't think you can square that circle.

Let's say it's 2024, and the dominant social media platform is called Witted[1]. They have their terms of service, but the terms of service have some ambiguity. In fact, Witted deliberately left some ambiguity, for two reasons. First, you can't absolutely codify human interactions - human communication is too complex. Second, Witted wanted the ambiguity, because it gave Witted more power.

Now President Harris is running for re-election, and she is aware of how much power Witted has. She wants to rein it in. Witted therefore finds some grounds for declaring Harris to be in violation of Witted's terms of service, and kills her account. That leaves the Republican candidate, Romney, a channel to voters that Harris can't adequately respond to. Romney wins the election. (There's talk about Witted being biased, but that resonates less with voters than what Romney can do with a Witted feed that Harris can't answer.)

Now, you say, that shouldn't be allowed to happen. I agree. But how are you going to stop it, without giving the exact same power to someone else? And who are you going to trust with that power? The government? Absolutely not. The EU commission? Equally not. But who?

I assert that there is nobody that you can trust with that power. But the power already exists, and we've just seen it used. Now what do we do? (Preferably before 2024 rolls around...)

---

[1] Actually, Witted would be a pretty good name for a social media platform.

Democratize it: put government in charge of that company. (And also campaign finance.)

The power a media company has is derived from its market share, which starts with zero for a startup, and grows with the successful performance of the company.

Similarly, the effect a company has by withdrawing access to its services is proportional to the power it has earned through its performance over time.

Thus, the power and influence a media company has is not arbitrary. it is a function of its social relations i.e. the percentage of society it has converted into customers, patrons, and followers.

To directly address your example - it already exists. One example: Fox News is selective with its choice of guests. Some types of guests get more access than others. The way the system deals with this is to allow other vendors besides Fox to operate competing networks.

Thank you for clarifying the nuances at play. You've given me food for thought.

I think it's easy to say the rules are vague, a statement I agree with. In my understanding of how the big social media players have finally applied their rules against Trump it was for inciting violence and spreading disinformation. I'd suggest the latter is pretty clear-cut, with the former being somewhat more challenging. Trump's tactic of inciting violence while calling for peace is the pinnacle of examples. Even in this case, however, the fact he calls for peace doesn't nullify his call to arms.

In your example however, Harris surely has other wide-ranging channels to spread her message. She would also likely be able to bring a legal case that her alleged breaking of the terms was not the case - but I'm sure this would be decided on much to far down the path to be relevant. The damage would already be done.

Witter would likely already be known to have an axe to grind against Harris or her politics - would she even deign to engage on the platform at all?

Perhaps I'm splitting hairs and/or cherrypicking. It's not my intention to discuss this in bad faith. Just the thought of an organisation not being allowed to apply its rules really does shock me.

I think normal people have enough trouble sifting through the noise.

Having the noise additionally filtered by corporations with potentially strong, unclear interests, being able to arbitrarily decide who can or cannot use their platform is going to make the process of getting at truth impossible.

You are not able to tell what happened because you were not there. Most things that are discussed are things that you did not witness or have no expertise in.

To be able have some chance at telling the truth you need to listen to arguments presented by BOTH sides and decide which arguments you think are logically stronger. That ability to tell truth is compromised when you are not allowed to listen to one of the sides.

I personally believe people should be allowed to say whatever they want and be responsible for what they say according to the law. There are existing laws that can be used to determine whether something is incitement, libel, fraud, etc. and those should be used to prosecute in a court of law.

This rather than preemptively remove the possibility of committing a crime by deciding to block an account by a private company.

>Just the thought of an organisation not being allowed to apply its rules really does shock me.

It shouldn't. Think about this - hierarchically these organizations (companies) exist because of charters authorized by the government. The less your company impacts the greater society to the negative, the less likely you are to be regulated. As your company amasses power, influence, and data, your activities may be regulated by the government as they have a greater impact on how society works.

Your organization is only authorized to exist because of the government. Tomorrow they could remove your leadership, shut it down, or break it up - the only thing that is needed is a plausible justification and reason for social acceptance to overcome resistance.

This is all new territory for the human species, in many ways.

The point is that writing the rules should to a large extent be taken out of these organization's hands, because they control vital infrastructure. The new, regulated rules will probably look pretty similar to the existing ToS except without the "the company is allowed to do whatever it wants" clauses, and with actual appeals processes.

Because we have articles 10 and 11 of the Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union, and the EU does protect these rights.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12...

--- https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Article 10

Freedom of thought, conscience and religion

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

2. The right to conscientious objection is recognised, in accordance with the national laws governing the exercise of this right.

Article 11

Freedom of expression and information

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.

Does that mean, in the EU context, that the EU (whatever EU organization that may be), or the individual EU nations can compel private companies to publish certain speech?

Are all EU citizens entitled to publish on Twitter for instance, and can the EU force Twitter to publish?

Is that the EU version of freedom of expression and information?

Very good question.

It has been tested in court before and the test failed

https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/hans-bu...

> The Court first acknowledged that Mr Nix’s conviction for having displayed a picture of Himmler with a swastika armband in his blog post amounted to an interference with his right to freedom of expression. Then, it went on to analyse whether this interference was prescribed by law, in pursuit of a legitimate aim, and necessary in a democratic society. On the first two parts of this test, the Court noted that Mr. Nix’s conviction had a legal basis (Article 86a of the Criminal Code) and that it pursued the legitimate aim of the prevention of disorder.

> The Court went on to say that, “[i]n the light of their historical role and experience, States which have experienced the Nazi horrors may be regarded as having a special moral responsibility to distance themselves from the mass atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis”. [para. 47] Furthermore, it considered that the “legislature’s choice to criminally sanction the use of Nazi symbols, to ban the use of such symbols from German political life, to maintain political peace (also taking into account the perception of foreign observers), and to prevent the revival of Nazism must be seen against this background.”

> The Court concluded by reiterating that the historical experience of Germany was a weighty factor to be taken into account when considering cases involving Nazi symbols, and whether there exists a pressing social need for interfering with an individual’s right to freedom of expression in this context. ... Therefore, the interference was found to be proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued and “necessary in a democratic society”.

Sounds like wishy washy nonsense to me

How are Germany's Nazi laws permitted under this framework?

Just realised that this charter contains a rule against double jeopardy:

"No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings for an offence for which he or she has already been finally acquitted or convicted within the Union in accordance with the law."

which slightly surprised me, as the UK has allowed this for about 10 years, (I think). (I guess "finally" may be a getout.)

The power imbalance means companies can use all sorts of crazy leverage to do all sorts of things that wouldn't really be fair in a free market, and certainly not a free market of ideas etc..

I'll bet $100 that companies would love to wash their hands of a lot of this stuff, and just be able to 'comply' with some regulatory things so they can't be blamed or get into trouble one way or another.

I'd take that bet. Leaked conversations from Twitter and Google insiders show that the platform owners are well aware of the power their platforms give them. That's a power that can't be accurately measured in dollars, and speaking purely selfishly on their behalf, one that they'd be fools to give up.

Twitter tanked 10% on the Trump ban announcement.

Trump pushed very hard to dump legislation that favours them.

Angela Merkel, Macron and the EU Comission have spoken negatively about the ban.

i.e. the most powerful people in the world are speaking up, against you. Bad.

Parler - their 'evileenemy' was the #1 download (!) on App Store before the ban.

There is serious talk of breaking up those companies and issues of 'free speech' are top spot in the headlines.

Empathically - no - those companies do not want to be in that position.

I think you're misinterpreting those leaks.

It makes certain individuals feel powerful, gives them the influence to 'stop Trump' - but in the end, it's a massive distraction for their business.

They will be fighting these fires daily for some time.

From a business perspective - they just want to make money. They don't want to be fighting political wars because if they're taking on the US, the EU and other governments, they're going to lose somewhere.

They don't 'make more money' by being able to ban Trump and Bannon under their own guise - they risk it.

But if an independent board acting according to government regulation bans Trump, well, then it's 'not their fault'.

It's not just as simple as you make it sound. What this Censorship has done is conveyed to the World that American Government cannot be trusted. That America has 2 power centers not 1. The two power centers being American Government and Big Tech.

Any ban or removal should come from the elected Government. In this case it is the US Congress. This is what the World expects as this is how all Democratically elected Governments all over the World function. It is the Government which has a final say.

Now when Big Tech unilaterally decides to censor a sitting US President and bans a rival competitor this will cause every World leader and Government to sit up and take note. Everyone will ask themselves: are we now supposed to trust US Government for its word? What if tomorrow a private company decides to censor the US Government? If they can ban the US President's account they wield more power than even elected representatives. Why then should we liaison with US Government and why not directly talk to Big Tech as they seem to hold the power over even the US President.

Then it goes further than that: how do we trust that the incoming President won't be censored? Since all communications happen through a digital forum where one of the Big Tech companies is an intermediary in relaying such communications what is the guarantee that the communication is not tampered with? When Big Tech enjoys so much power in US, that it can censor the Government itself, then why can't this also be possible? If Big Tech can attach disclaimers to a sitting US President's content then why can't they tamper with the messaging too?

This sort of confusion existed for countries like Pakistan which has dual power centers: the elected Government and the military. You won't know whom to talk to as one can override the other. Which is why you have so many successful coups in Pakistan. What Big Tech has done is set a very dangerous precedent. Now no World leader will trust the word of the American Government at face value and will double/triple check every communication.

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