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Comment by nickdothutton | Hacker News Reader

I’m continually surprised that Facebook, Twitter, and the rest dont simply create a web interface for law enforcement that allows them to delete (or more likely make invisible) content they want to censor. Noting in place of the post or tweet or whatever “law enforcement in your jurisdiction has deemed this post illegal and have hidden it for your safety”.

There’s a culture war afoot, the government wants to insert itself between the warring parties, there’s no need for executives to place their (their shareholders) company in the way. “Let the dog see the rabbit” as they say. Just harvest the energy in the system and monetise it, if that’s your mission.

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> I’m continually surprised that Facebook, Twitter, and the rest dont simply create a web interface for law enforcement that allows them to delete (or more likely make invisible) content they want to censor.

In the US, we have the First Amendment, which prohibits government censorship. Of course, the government still sometimes uses political pressure to censor things, but there's a need to keep a semblance of rule of law.

Actually, if Twitter et al. want to provide the tools to block arbitrary content, they can do that just fine - companies can speak with the police and follow their wishes regardless of the first amendment because Twitter's own protected speech allows them to block any content for any reason, whether that be "it violated our content on harassment" or "the police don't like it and we're voluntarily following their wishes".

> companies can speak with the police and follow their wishes regardless of the first amendment because Twitter's own protected speech allows them to block any content for any reason, whether that be "it violated our content on harassment" or "the police don't like it and we're voluntarily following their wishes".

Even if that wasn't against the First Amendment (which is a more complicated issue [1]), that wouldn't fly politically in the US. The side which likes law enforcement also currently puts emphasis on free speech, and the side which doesn't like the police wouldn't want them to be in charge of censorship.

I think a company doing that would make everyone their enemy, and generate a lot of bad PR.

[1]: For example, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

Companies generally already do this with non-FISA "National Security Letter Requests" - Apple received between 1 and 499 between January and June 2021[0], and Google received between 500 – 999 in the same time frame[1].

Of course, this is nothing like allowing arbitrary content censorship in collaboration with law enforcement, which would indeed trigger a lot more outrage and bad PR.

0: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html

1: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/us-national-...

Not really. National Security Letters [1] are for requesting data, not censorship. And of course, they are also controversial. Many of us consider the PATRIOT act a disaster.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

I fail to see how you connected all of these points together. How did you get from "a private company chooses who they service" to "the government inserts itself between warring parties"? It really looks like you're pushing an agenda.

I suppose my point of view is probably coloured by the fact I’m in a society where we do not have freedom of speech enshrined in law, and once upon a time I worked for a firm with common carrier/Telco protections. If there is an agenda I’m pushing, it is simply that private companies stick to what they are good at (in this case running a DDoS prevention service) and do not engage in removing things they are not legally required to remove. Not all slopes are slippery, but some are.

I made a similar suggestion a couple of years ago[0] on a discussion about Google banning a podcasting app ("after 9 years for letting users play podcasts that reference COVID-19").

Of course it's a terrible idea (which might be why you're being downvoted) but that's the point. If we don't want governments deciding (in secret, without due process) which apps and accounts and pages to censor, then we shouldn't be comfortable with a situation where a handful of unrepresentative CEOs (who might all share the same politics, and golf together, in a foreign jurisdiction relative to most of their users) have an equally big narrative-controlling effect on multiple societies.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23230550

I had faith. I knew someone would get it eventually.

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