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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

Requiring "trusted flaggers" should clash with freedom of press so i don't see this passing through parliaments.

Transparency of algorithms is unenforceable to irrelevant.

Things like "no personalized recommendations" are dead in the water- things like ai chat don't personalize, they just use the chat history, which can be stored locally.

Mandatory data sharing breaks international trade agreements

A lot of the other stuff is standard stuff that every website does

https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

There stuff in the regulation that is simply laughably worded:

>Providers of online platforms shall not design, organise or operate their online interfaces in a way that deceives or manipulates the recipients of their service or in a way that otherwise materially distorts or impairs the ability of the recipients of their service to make free and informed decisions.

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The "trusted flaggers": https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0045b1bf-165b...

It's not that different from existing ad-hoc systems for dealing with CSAM, like the IWF in the UK. And it will be within the exemptions of Article 10 ECHR. The only country that might object is Germany.

But they allow a government to directly remove content.

This is potentially evil, no matter how trusted a state (thinks) it is.

The status of ‘trusted flagger’ under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entity, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established, to an applicant that has demonstrated that it meets all of the following conditions:

(a)

it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content;

(b)

it is independent from any provider of online platforms;

(c)

it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices diligently, accurately and objectively.

You do know that the government can already remove whatever they want? Why is this evil at all compared to what we already have? All it does is give us more due process and clearer rules than before when it was up to private actors to do it.

For example, do you think it is more evil that Google can ban you for any reason without telling you why, or the government being able to ban you while stating exactly why and you having legal rights? I think the first is worse than the second, so moving from the first to the second is a positive development.

Which government does that?

They can sue and arrest people who publish, not play ducking big brother

If they tell Google that you have illegal content then Google will remove it, that is how it works today everywhere. What kind of world do you think we live in?

Which is crucial, that google has the chance to challenge the request , in court where it belongs

Removing content by government insiders has only been done in authoritarian countries

Google can challenge the content flagging as well. These trusted flaggers can only flag content for Google to review, they can't remove it themselves, as far I understand it. So it is exactly the same as before, just that it is formalized.

Edit: Think the Twitter files, with how the American government flags content on Twitter and then Twitter bans it. USA already has that trusted flagging system, but under the hood so you don't see it. I don't see why moving that to the open would be any worse.

> Think the Twitter files, with how the American government flags content on Twitter and then Twitter bans it

Yes this is pretty much what it is, and now it is a legal requirement, and the request by the government have to be prioritized and processed 'without delay'.

And if the government abuses the requests, then the website can complain to ... the government.

I don't understand why you think this is normal. it is not. This "government unable to stop itself" is precisely the reason why press freedom was written into constitutions

Much of EU doesn't rank low in corruption. What this means is, every 4 years the new government will be re-staffing the "national censorship service" (Digital Services Coordinator ) with its cronies. The countries which need free press the most will be affected for the worse

> Much of EU doesn't rank very low in corruption. What this means is, every 4 years the new government will be re-staffing the "national censorship service" with its cronies.

But Google could challenge that to the EU court, and the EU court isn't full of Bulgarian cronies. Or do you think that the EU court would take the side of Bulgarian cronies, really?

If Bulgaria wanted to censor the internet they would already have their own laws to do it. As you said, only extremely authoritarian countries censors the way you describe here, I doubt Bulgaria would get away with it, they would get kicked out of EU if they start to create a CCP style big brother state.

(I used Bulgaria as an example since it is ranked the most corrupt country in EU)

There is no EU court, only national courts can refer a case to the ECJ for consultation. There is also no way to "kick a country out of EU"

PS. You can't "force" anything to go to the ECJ, only national courts decide. EU law is integrated into local law

Google could just reject their requests and force them to go to EU court. The EU court is the only reason this law would have any more bite than a local law, without it you just have Bulgaria doing their own thing and they don't have enough weight to do that.

They would go to national court.

EU directives are turned into national laws.

Expecting technology to fix - or even be immune from - preexisting corruption is just too idealistic. There's no silver bullet for changing how a collection of people behave in the way you want.

Expanding and institutionalising the current situation will only serve to entrench it even further and make it practically impossible to move away from. I would not call this a positive development. Not even in the slightest.

For some reason governments tend not to be proponent's of anarchy. Couldn't imagine why.

That is not at all what I'm proposing and I'm honestly baffled as to how you ever came to that conclusion.

Surely you can imagine the possibility of us coming up with systems and processes that are both non-anarchic as well as different from what we have today.

I took your comments to be against the government being involved in this process at all, and I cannot imagine a way that system would work. If you have an alternative system that is not sans government I would be interested in hearing it.

Considering you wanted the government to confine people to their homes a year ago for not receiving the covid vaccine (even if they had natural immunity), I'm not at all surprised that you want the government to be more involved. Some people are just wired to want to have a parental figure that tells everyone else what to do.

The user you are replying to has an authoritarian nature.

See this thread where he extolled the virtues of confining people who didn't get the covid vaccine to their homes, and insisted that natural immunity wasn't a thing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120181

> But they allow a government to directly remove content.

> This is potentially evil, no matter how trusted a state (thinks) it is.

Is this worse than a company doing it? Right now there is practically 0 accountability and 0 recourse for corporate internet moderation.

yes it is in fact worse.

you can choose another company, you can't choose another government, and it can imprison you

How can a business survive for example if it is banned by google? What do you “choose” then?

This is just capitalist utopia, capitalism tends toward monopolies/duopolies by itself - it is precisely the governments job to create an order in which fair competition can continue. Having a more or less democratically elected body help with the tyranny of these few megacorps is absolutely essential.

Interesting use of the word tyranny.

It's defined as cruel and oppressive government or rule.

It is also worse in that it creates a framework for special interest groups to act with special status for "detecting" and removing content without due process.

Any group with an ideological bent, or an agenda can set themselves up as agents for monitoring "dangerous" content. They may even do that job for the stuff we want actually policed, but they'll also do things like remove all negative mentions of Xi Jinping, or any rumblings against the new Soma product...

A company does it on their own service. You go to another. A government sanctioned agent can do it to all services.

Transparency of algorithms is more enforceable than one might think. Check out “Structured Transparency” tooling.

A few days go, in the front page thread "Opted out, yet tracked: Are regulations enough to protect privacy?", the top comment contained this common dismissal: "Until that happens, just passing more and more laws is going to be meaningless."

Yet Big Tech makes significant effort to try to delay and thwart the passage of these laws.

https://corporateeurope.org/en/2020/12/big-tech-brings-out-b...

How do we reconcile this with the common HN commenter dismissal something like, "No one cares. Things will never change."

This is perhaps a nice fantasy for people who have bet their futures on "tech" companies, but how long does this fantasy last. Current reality indicates Big Tech cares. The lobbyists and lawyers hired to help Big Tech fend off governments can confirm it. Why should Big Tech care, if the language in proposed regulations is, to borrow the top comment's term, "laughable".

Has any country besides Sweden expressed reservations about "free speech".1

https://www.brusselsreport.eu/2022/04/25/the-eus-digital-ser...

A country like Estonia might oppose regulating "tech" companies but it seems to be an outlier.

1. She thinks that courts should be the sole arbiters of what should be taken down. It is funny to contrast this with Kagan's comments in the US Supreme Court's recent hearing on Section 230 in the Gonzalez case. When petitioner's counsel mentioned regulation in Europe, Kagan was quick to point out that was not the work of courts. According to Kagan, courts lack the expertise. Several justices seemed to think that requiring compaints about content be reviewed by courts, e.g., on a motion to dismiss, was too burdensome on defendants, nevermind the courts. No doubt Big Tech loves it when legislatures and courts go around in circles on how to grapple with the novel problems "tech" companies have created. The question is how long can this delay be relied on.

HN comments often take a fatalistic tact, more or less advocating "Just give up." Personally, I would bet against anyone "giving up" on regulating "tech" companies. It's a slow, ugly process, thanks in no small part to the work of Big Tech to make it a mess. We are just getting started. I would be more willing to take a bet that many "tech" companies will "give up" when faced with having to comply with the quantum of regulation that legitimate businesses do.

Giving up is a great strategy, then we can let the market self regulate -- keep in mind that Tik Tok has to compete viciously with Facebook on who can design a more trusted platform :) In the end, we all win if we just let things play out.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not...

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