Supreme Court will hear challenge to legal immunity for tech sites
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
In it's new push for partisanship, I have confidence that the Supreme Court will issue some arbitrary, abjectly stupid ruling with far reaching and unintended consequences.
And the same should apply to this forum that you obviously enjoy using free of charge?
What you and these ultra-partisans are proposing is a set of contradictory mandates that will effectively kill off everything about the internet except apps, shopping and advertising --- and even the advertising may be in jeopardy too.
[0] Who is deciding what is a lie and what isn't? Too often, what appears to be a lie to someone is someone else's lived experience. The internet doesn't have an oath. Social network randos aren't obligated to post the truth.
LOL!
Thank you for illustrating my point. The first victims of any such mandate will be the ultra-partisans promoting this case --- they have zero tolerance for dissent.
Do you honestly think Truth Social will continue to operate without Trump having the ability to ban and remove people and posts he disagrees with? He is very definition of intolerant --- the only tolerance he has any interest in is that afforded himself.
The job for this biased court will be to craft a decision that impacts one side but not the other. I'm skeptical that this can be achieved in a fair and consistent and workable manner.
https://mashable.com/article/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-conser... https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-algorithms-amplify-conservati... https://www.inputmag.com/tech/twitter-anti-conservative-bias... https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/researchers-have-alr...
I read the above links as showing that there's a mild-to-pronounced pro-conservative bias in almost all "big tech" social media.
Yes, you can find Dennis Prager or Ben Shapiro claiming anti-conservative bias, but what's their methodology? I think the above studies have a methodology, they attempted to be non-partisan. Prager and Shapiro don't even pretend to be objective.
There are some who would say that this is a good thing.
This is basically in-place already, if your subreddit becomes toxic they ban it. And the moderators on each sub aren’t Reddit employees (for the most part).
Facebook has the same thing with groups and pages, individuals moderate it and FB bans it if it goes off the rails.
The logical next step would be trying to hold the page/ community owners legally liable for their content.
This new responsibility would imply ownership of the content, which would mean more ability to directly monetize it and possibly cut out the meta organizer (FB, Reddit, etc) by moving the community to another platform if there’s any friction.
Obviously the platforms don’t want a looser connection with their participants, they want all of the money and none of the responsibilities.
Previous discussion on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25697823
No single authority "censored" usenet articles. People posted what they wanted. It ended up as an ocean of spam, abuse and off-topic articles.
That's what the Texas law will entail. I think Abbott and Paxton didn't understand the consequences, or are gambling on a situation like what happened to radio, TV and newspapers in the 1990s after the "Fairness Doctrine" went away. Abbott and Paxton may hope that an informal cartel of conservative owners will let conservative/Republic viewpoints run wild, while behind the scenes or under the table manipulation suppresses liberal/other viewpoints, just like what happened to broadcast TV, radio and newspapers.
> The case — Gonzalez v. Google — seeks to hold Google legally liable for a deadly 2015 Paris terrorist attack, alleging the tech giant recommended ISIS videos to users and boosted the terrorist group's recruitment.
If the focus is on the recommendation of content and not on the hosting of content (I know they're both related, but bear with me), then the effect of the ruling might have a narrower scope. If a company like Google is recommending terrorist content in such a way that affects many people, that's a problem with the recommendation engine. If the problem is broader and about hosting the content (as opposed to just recommending), the effect might be more extreme
Notwithstanding this ruling could have a catastrophic effect and turn social media sites into lawsuit piñatas, it could be the single most significant fuck up of this court to date
So what would happen then? Content is still protected by 230, but only if there's no recommendation algorithm, but what about an algorithm that only culls content from an otherwise chronological timeline?
Freedom of association is a perfectly good answer for a partisan group, in my mind. But why is it a less good answer, constitutionally, for those other groups? Under current law the constitutional line between things a business may and must not discriminate against does not appear to be very bright.
Speech is an action. Saying you can't be banned from a private venue for your speech (or any other action) runs contrary to everything we currently hold true about private property. You always have the choice to not do or say something if you wish to continue enjoying access to that private property. But you can't stop being X nationality or Y religion.
* Go on, go change your religion right now. Like for real. With actual, deeply-held, genuine faith. Did it work?
You can't distinguish ideology from religion so easily. Religion is just what we call ideology on a theological topic.
People stick with the same religion through trials and tribulations. They change their political affiliation and vote for candidates of different parties pretty frequently. Don't treat politics like religion.
What will end up happening is most big US websites will just relocate to Europe, or another country without such liability.
This preserves the spirit of free speech AND allows companies to both: not be forced to being responsible for user content AND allows them to moderate to whatever bias they want on their platforms.
Facebook has facilitated/amplified quite a bit of awful things that have lead to real world violence, most particularly outside of the United States. Which is saying something, considering their contribution to political polarization in the US.
Whether or not they are a monopoly is orthogonal to the question put forward in this case.
"ought to" is a dangerous cudgel to put in the hands of a government or a self-righteous mob, and "monopoly" was what everyone was arguing should be the standard, but I guess now it's open season.
That's great, because I'm not arguing that. My post does not imply as such either. You are creating a fake argument that is easier for you to argue against.
"Ought to" is the basis of rule of law. By what measure do you decide that a "monopoly" is bad? It has certain outcomes, some positive, some negative, but on balance government in previous generations decided that they are negative.
But once you know that the outcome is negative, what do you do about it? You only take another step and break it apart if you decide that you "ought to" do so. Because you place value in a healthy society, or you place value in non-monopolistic market competition, or you place value in something else. But whatever you choose, in order to justify actually action you inevitably rely on an "ought to."
If the reason for breaking up monopolies is to improve society, in some broad sense, then you could use a similar reason to break up companies that are harmful to society. We do sanction companies that damage the environment, or lie to consumers with false claims, etc.
There is always an "ought to."