But it's unfair to block a guy that talked about a real flaw in Grammarly's plagiarism checker, at least pretend that you allow free speech and take down that video for a random reason specified in your ToS.
That said, with COVID-19 it really became apparent that these platforms have basically become a new public square, putting everyone in an awkward position. You can basically be ousted from the internet by just a couple entities like Facebook or Twitter and have your entire online presence torpedoed. IRL I can just go to a different bar, gym, whatever. On the internet, everything consolidates rapidly. It’s hard to argue that companies should be forced to allow things they don’t want on their platforms, but it’s clear that something has to be done here if platforms are going to consolidate this badly.
It's the difference between saying "$person got kicked off Google in a violation of their free speech" and "$person got kicked off Google for a totally specious reason that doesn't even violate Google's TOS".
The first one gets immediately shut down because they didn't violate anyone's free speech. If you try to make that argument it's a total non-starter. We can have a big fun discussion about free speech online some time - and that does happen here on HN - but that's not the issue here.
The second one gets at the actual issue - Google have just booted someone even though they didn't apparently violate their TOS. They just arbitrarily did so to appease a paying client.
I hope this is clear.
> at least pretend that you allow free speech
Which is different than that, and I'd argue most platforms do at least pretend to espouse the ideals of 'free speech' even if that notion has been weaker lately.
> The second one gets at the actual issue - Google have just booted someone even though they didn't apparently violate their TOS. They just arbitrarily did so to appease a paying client.
It is a speech issue, even if not a legal issue, if you can pay Google to shut down random accounts that say things you don't like. The ToS violation is a red herring.
I think we here all presume that interested parties can pay corporations to do anything that is both legal, and which remains within the letter of the contracts (e.g. Terms of Service) that the corporation has entered into; and that the only thing stopping corporations from not being actively malicious/malfeasant (though not illegal) in their interactions with customers/users, is that they don't want to be perceived as breaking the terms of contracts they themselves offer.
Voluntary self-bindings in a contract like a ToS are effectively precommitments about a corporation's own ethical behavior; with negative PR as a punishment for breaking said precommitment. Corporations offer these because they want people to have faith that they won't do certain things, even when interested parties offer to pay them to do those things.
So it's not interesting to me that Grammarly can pay YouTube to terminate creators that were already violating the ToS in some way, but where YouTube previously hadn't much cared. Of course they can. Selective enforcement is an omnipresent fact of how corporate social-network moderation works, because corporations have no legal mandate of 100% enforcement, and costs can be cut by doing as little as it takes to make users not complain. So there are always going to be cases where a corporation didn't notice a violation. And why shouldn't a paying customer (one of their advertisers) be able to prioritize YouTube's attention on a previously un-noticed violation? If YouTube wanted to promise us that they wouldn't do that, they'd put a self-binding to that effect in the ToS. YouTube, like all corporations, is an evil genie that starts off by telling you a bounded list of ways in which it won't screw you. You still have to assume it'll screw you in every way not mentioned in the list.
But it is interesting to me that Grammarly can pay YouTube to terminate creators that weren't already violating the ToS in some way. Because that sets a precedent for the ToS not limiting YouTube's behavior — of YouTube not abiding by the precommitments they have made, of not caring about the negative PR consequences of doing so. Which really means that — to the degree that this is a structural issue rather than a "renegade" actor — there is no reason to believe that YouTube will hold to any of its own precommitments in the future. Like, say, its precommitment to pay content creators.
The plagiarism check is for self-checking, as in users making sure they did not miss any quotations and references in their work, and thus it does not even attempt to defeat any plagiarism enforcement counter-measures. It's not an enforcement tool.
The root problem people are complaining about is the moderation policies, and the truth is that services like Facebook et al are simply too large to be effectively moderated. Appealing to (US ideas of) free speech would propose that the solution to bad moderation is no moderation whatsoever (speech restrictions must be content-neutral, and moderation by definition is not content-neutral)--and I think most people would rapidly find that no moderation is worse than bad moderation.
The most effective solution is to do what ought to have been done a decade ago and prevent further social media consolidation and consider breaking up the current oligopoly of social media.
Less moderation might be a good middle ground
Of course, people with power rarely like to share it, and they certainly don't want a free flow of information that they don't control. There's the rub.
This would certainly be a welcome feature, but it doesn't really solve the problem.
Suppose you want to see adult content, politics and cussing but you don't want to see bots. Nobody wants to see bots. Then their broken algorithm calls someone a bot who is not. Well, they're blocked from everyone, because nobody wants to see bots. That's the same as the status quo.
The problem is that there is a trade off between false positives and false negatives. If they tune the thing to get rid of 100% of actual bots, it's going to false positive 98% of real humans. But if they do anything less than this, there will be actual bots and people will give them a hard time about it.
And not just people, the government. The current government has explicitly stated that they want them to censor more stuff. And the current government is pursuing an antitrust case against them. So their incentive is to turn up the false positives and screw over whoever that happens to screw over in order to appease them.
The argument has been made that this is actually a First Amendment violation because of the state action: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1363175977531150338
The argument has been made, but not successfully. The thing is, threatening to pass a (flagrantly unconstitutional) law if companies don't do something isn't enough of a direct tie by itself to make someone a state actor. Especially when those countries from time to time ask Congress to pass such a law.
The constitution has nothing to say on the matter of holding them responsible for the libelous, defamatory, harassing, terrorist, etc. content they fail to moderate away every day.
[1] I suspect it's actually a fair bit more than half, given the semi-frequent occurrences of cases like this article that no one really wants to defend.
Also, outright revocation of 230 is just one option. Companies at Facebook/Twitter/Reddit scale would do nearly anything to keep that protection since moderation at that scale simply is not possible. This gives an inroad to all kinds of regulation.
Alternatively, your second scenario happens, and it likely leads to the destruction of large, centralized social media, and a proliferation of decentralized, hard-to-sue alternatives. This too, is a win.
If a company is discriminating on the basis of race and government officials tell them to stop, there is no constitutional problem there, even if it comes with an implied threat of enforcement or new legislation, because passing a law against discrimination on the basis of race is not a constitutional violation. The government can directly punish that behavior so there is no problem to indirectly or implicitly punish it.
If a company is allowing protected speech the government doesn't like and government officials tell them to stop, that's different. Because it would be unconstitutional for them to pass a law saying the same thing. And there are many other ways the government can punish a business, e.g. by breaking them up. So the implied threat is, censor or we'll break you up, or mess with Section 230, or some other thing you won't like. It's coercing them to do the thing the government isn't allowed to coerce them to do, under threat of adverse regulation that the same government could withdraw in response to compliance.
What the adverse regulation is doesn't matter. It doesn't even have to be specified. The problem is the direction to do something the government isn't allowed to make them do.
I want to see some bots but not others, but still, I want the choice to be mine. That's the most important thing to me, choice, because it leads to control.
Aside from that, I don't mind their broken algorithm because:
a) The perfect is the enemy of the good
b) We agreed that I get to choose (whether I see bots and which bots/kind-of-bots I see)
For instance, why can I not given some kind of confidence level? Surely their algorithm gives a score, so then I could say "If you think someone is >= 75% likely to be a bot, don't show me them, otherwise, do".
And as you say, free speech is an ideology, and in my opinion this should be repeated. It is a culture and a mindset, not just laws, laws being downstreams from culture anyway. If you do not wish for it to apply in all those areas, in my opinion, you do not defend it at all.
Yes, because the concept of free speech has never implied that you're entitled to have other entities hear or repeat your speech nor is there any principle that compels someone else to listen to or repeat what you're saying. If you want that to be the case, that's certainly your prerogative, but that's a different concept from any mainstream definition of free speech I've come across.
It'd be like complaining that you can't get sushi at McDonalds anymore. You couldn't ever do that, McDonalds haven't indicated that they would offer this and we all know it's not going to happen.
I am obviously not talking about our current legal framework, but proposing the idea that the concepts and reason for free speech are meaningful enough to transcend that framework.
It's not "my parents started beating me while they in the past didn't", it's just "parents are beating me." Or "google is suppressing my speech."
Past actions of the involved entities do not invalidate the complaint. Likewise, "the grocery store next door doesn't sell sushi" is a legit complaint for the afflicted regardless of whether sushi was sold in the past or not. (Coincidentally, my go-to store just stopped selling sushi a week or two ago)
See italicised section, it suggests there's a promise of free speech on Google that are somehow reneging on. I am just saying that this is a mistake, and now loads of people seem to be mad at the idea that I'm attacking "free speech". One of the reasons I thought it shouldn't be here is that it's fairly complex topic that IMO is orthogonal to the case in question because it raises all sorts of thorny side-issues that distract from the main thing: someone got booted from Google quite unfairly.
And "principles" are things you can adopt and agree with as you see fit. They are not law. Not everyone takes an absolutist position that "free speech" is a principle we should all be defending to the last ditch.
And if the customer can't take their business elsewhere, it appears we have arrived at the underlying problem.
You can call it a violation of rock and roll, if you like. Normally, "violate" is something you do the law, or a contract, or an agreement. You can't normally "violate" a principle that you haven't declared your adherence to, just because someone else adheres to it.
If you're a vegan libertarian who refuses to patronize agricultural conglomerates engaged in factory farming because it's a violation of the non-aggression principle, your argument for them not being in violation of it is that they never agreed to it?
It's not the company's principle, it's the customer's. The company is violating it so the customer is offended and is willing to take their business elsewhere. And to publicly condemn the company over it so others do the same. This is how the free market is supposed to work.
If a company is charging 6000% margins, you don't say "well I guess there's no law against it," you stop patronizing that company. And if you can't, the market is broken.
You make your point well.
However I don't know what this "non-aggression principle" is. That kind of "violation" doesn't seem to be like violating the terms of an agreement; it seems more like "violating my personal space".
I mean, I can set up whatever "principles" I like, and start accusing others of violating them. That's not like violating the terms of a law or agreement. It's a different use of the word "violate".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle
Often summarized as "don't hurt people and don't take their stuff."
Kind of used it on purpose because vegans would want to apply it to animals and then there would be a debate about whether it should be etc., when that doesn't really matter here -- the vegan libertarian is perfectly entitled to consider factory farms a violation of the principle and use that to condemn them and refuse to patronize them.
> That kind of "violation" doesn't seem to be like violating the terms of an agreement; it seems more like "violating my personal space".
We're getting caught up on the semantics of the word "violate." Someone could just as easily accuse the company of not supporting free speech and end up in the same place.
So while your statement is true, it is not the discussion-stopper that most people seem to think it is.
The phone company used to be regulated so even if you were a hated Republican they still had to provide phone service to you if you lived in their service area. Those days are over and monopolies in practice will never be redefined again as "legal monopolies".
Regardless of the situation you're in, you have the ability to say, "I should have the right to free speech in this situation." Whether this belief will be validated in the reality of the situation is an entirely different matter.
I just thought it was a mistake in this case to get into a broader debate about free speech online, what should be allowed, how it needs to account for various countries' conflicting laws, etc. Because that's a huge issue, it's probably not what was intended by the original commenter and we have a much more narrow and clearly defined issue we can focus on (being kicked off despite adhering to TOS).
That's a legitimate opinion.
I am of the view that rights are things that are granted by some authority, not something you acquire by simply existing. I envy the USA their constitutional protections on speech. But unless Google has made a grant of free speech rights on their platform, no such rights exist.
That's an interesting view, and not one that is supported by the US Constitution.
> First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This doesn't state that either Congress or the Constitution is granting the freedom of speech, or the right to assemble peacably, but rather states that Congress may not make a law that abridges those rights. The right
> Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Again, the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures is something that exists before the Constitution. It isn't something that is granted by the Constitution, but a pre-existing right that may not be violated.
> Ninth Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
This is the most direct counter-argument, that rights exist outside of the enumerated rights. That some rights are explicitly enumerated may not be used to imply that those are the only rights that exist. If the Constitution and authorities derived from the Constitution were the source of rights, then there couldn't be rights that exist outside of them. But instead, the Constitution states that there exist rights outside of those mentioned, so they must have been pre-existing rights.
If we want to fight for a change to the various laws in various countries, then that is a conversation I would be very willing to have. But let's not pretend that any of these companies have ever offered their services as a place where you can exercise whatever version of free-speech laws your country has.
Interestingly the places that tout "free speech" as a feature tend to descend into pretty grim places full of racism, anti-semitism, conspiracy theories and more besides (hello, 8chan/kun!).
Slinging insults, hate, disinformation, or just posting plain nonsense is easy. Explaining how things work properly takes a lot of effort and is hard. Eg, saying "The moon landings were a hoax" is easy. Explaining why that makes no sense, and how exactly humans did land on the Moon takes a good amount longer.
There's also that the valuable, accomplished people in a community are a scarce resource. What would you prefer the resident rocket scientist to do, provide useful information for the community on something new going on, or try to reason with the newly arrived conspiracy theorist?
1. Tout free speech to great success and become a dominant platform
2. Get advertiser and political blowback
3. Ban unpopular speech
4. Now "free speech" platforms only have unpopular content
As a tangent, pre 2010, the best argument I had with conspiracy nuts was "if all this shit you're saying is true, then why is the government / corporations not trying to silence you, like you say they are doing to all the people involved." Can't use that anymore.
Unfortunately I think this strategy is doomed, it relies on people who have rejected reality to use basic common sense. I don't even know if there is a good strategy to calm a conspiracy nut, thankfully I don't really talk to such people.
Freedom of speech
You do not have a right of free speech on Google's platforms.
But nonetheless in this case it seems they removed someone who _didn't_ violate TOS, which bodes rather badly for the all of us because it means we are subject to the whims of whoever possesses the banhammer at any given time.
And with that I'm out. I cannot deal with this thread any more.
The way you break a network effect is adversarial interoperability. You build a new (ideally open) network by bootstrapping from the old one. But companies use the DMCA and CFAA and other laws to stop competitors from doing that, so it doesn't happen.
I some twist of irony, this comment is against the HN TOS. So please stop.
Second, this is not a flaw or a hack but an unsuccessful attempt to use Grammarly for an UNINTENDED purpose. Grammarly is not meant for anti-plagiarism enforcement. Grammarly aims to help users avoid accidental or unintentional plagiarism by highlighting parts that may need to be cited. So it does not attempt to deal with any plagiarisms enforcement countermeasures - if someone is deliberately masking plagiarism, it's definitely not unintentional or accidental. It's trivial to overcome these particular counter-measures but that's just not what Grammarly is for.
"...Our free plagiarism check will tell you whether or not your text contains duplicate content. Our Premium plagiarism check highlights passages that require citations and gives you the resources you need to properly credit your sources."