Weaponizing Terms of Service | Hacker News Reader

Weaponizing Terms of Service

commerce.senate.gov

10 pointsqwertyuiop_24 comments

Here I thought it was going to be about binding arbitration, but it's just culture war stuff.

I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss it using a label like “culture war”. This is an important topic to many people, because there is mass censorship of opinions and views that deviate from a window determined by employees of companies that operate these big technology platforms. That censorship has been normalized even though it heavily damages and skews politics. This document has details on numerous practices that are prevalent across the industry and not well understood by most - that alone is worth reading and considering, as it points at a need to regulate these platforms in order to protect our political process. The recommendations made on Page 10 are actually pretty mild for what it’s worth.

>there is mass censorship of opinions and views that deviate from a window determined by employees of companies that operate these big technology platforms.

More like deviate from reality. So tired of this feigned innocence and victimhood. "What did we do to deserve this? We just have different opinions."

You mean like QAnon, Bill Gates is trying to kill us all with COVID vaccines and 5G, and Trump won?

You can't have one side polluting the infospace with rank disinformation, propaganda and lies and expect a healthy society to come of it.

So, what you call "censorship", others would call "platforms being responsible".

You want to consume hysterical conspiracy theories? Cool. Go to InfoWars, et. al. But, you can't force every platform to host it and foist nonsense on society en masse. That would be the actual violation of rights.

I was willing to give this report a genuine read. I read the first paragraph of the report and thought "there is no way a minimally competent, breathing human could have wrote this and thought it was ok for release"

Then I read the authors name and figured out why.

> Weaponizing Terms of Service

"Oh man, this sounds awesome, I can't wait to hear about the plague of impenetrable "click wrap" contracts of adhesion being given any sort of legal force, rampant privacy issues, lack of corporate liability for damage done by leaks, and--" *Click*

> [...] How online service providers use broad policies to silence conservatives, by Ted Cruz [Senator, R-Texas]

Ugh. That went from intriguing to prima facie trash so fast I think I just got whiplash.

For those similarly disappointed, I suggest perusing the category from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

https://www.eff.org/issues/terms-of-abuse

Oh, you didn't make it to the second sentence that starts with, "Woke companies..."?

It really is ridiculous. But, the good news is that they seem to be making headway in riding their "censorship victimhood" to cow tech companies into platforming hard right-wing beliefs; to include kinder, gentler Hitler documentaries on YouTube. Comments sections there are filled with bots, cheering the "truth about Hitler finally coming out".

So, "yay, Conservative free speech!" Keep fighting the good fight, Ted.

A strong Internet Bill of Rights (IBOR) would wreck lots of surveillance state tools, shady business models, and the burgeoning censorship industrial complex.

I wonder if undermining terms of service in this way is a stop on the road to IBOR?

Can we have an article on weaponizing codes of conduct too?

The premise of this document is false:

> [C]ompanies ... have used their structural power to silence conservatives and deny them access to goods and services the companies readily make available to liberal Americans.

This is not happening. It is a lie.

What happens is some folks decide they want to make violent threats towards others, or espouse ideologies that are inherently violent (e.g. white supremacy, which aims for genocide to create a white ethno-state), or decide that they want to be misogynist, or racist. The folks that do this are selfish and don't deserve to have their hate* and ignorance amplified.

There's a difference between expressing an opinion and pushing ideologies that are incompatible with a free and open society where people are actually able to have civilized discussions on differences of opinion. (If you are unaware of this concept, brush up on "The Paradox of Tolerance".)

tl;dr - This is 40 pages of absolute utter nonsense.

> This is not happening. It is a lie.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

This document has deep details on moderation/censorship schemes across the industry. How can you claim it’s a lie when there is significant evidence throughout the document?

> There's a difference between expressing an opinion and pushing ideologies that are incompatible with a free and open society where people are actually able to have civilized discussions on differences of opinion. (If you are unaware of this concept, brush up on "The Paradox of Tolerance".)

Civilized discussions can happen if they aren’t censored. But using vague and highly subjective labels like “hate” to dismiss and censor discussions is what is incompatible with free societies. Obviously free speech is fundamental to any functioning democracy - why shouldn’t the same be true for online platforms when that’s where most citizens hold political discussions? It doesn’t make sense that this value is somehow only necessary for the government, when these large platforms have government-like power and influence.

> This document has deep details on moderation/censorship schemes across the industry.

It's not deep. It's Ted Cruz.

> How can you claim it’s a lie when there is significant evidence throughout the document?

Quoting another's lie doesn't make it evidence.

What specifically is a lie? You’ve clearly not read the document. Spraying vague accusations and labels is not convincing.

> What happens is some folks decide they want to make violent threats towards others, or espouse ideologies that are inherently violent (e.g. white supremacy, which aims for genocide to create a white ethno-state), or decide that they want to be misogynist, or racist. The folks that do this are selfish and don't deserve to have their hate* and ignorance amplified.

Oh, come on. While I may not agree with these things, the first page talks about things like lab leak theory, Hunter Biden's laptop, and questioning "that children needed to wear face masks." It is obnoxious and credibility-destroying to conflate that with stuff like "violent threats towards others" or "ideologies that are inherently violent."

This is an important discussion to protect America’s democracy. Most of our political discussion as a society happens online. The public square is now big online social media platforms, which are pretty shielded from competition due to network effects. This document leads with some loaded language, but I think its core ideas are true - technology companies have employees that are overwhelmingly left leaning and this shows up in their products - like their terms of service, content polices, moderation practices, etc. That skews our entire democratic process.

The recommendations on Page 10 are actually very mild. It’s basically pushing for transparency, and it’s hard to argue for something so basic. But I think the recommendations should actually go much further. Personally I think technology platforms above a certain number of users should just be treated like public utilities or common carriers and regulated to serve all users neutrally. Your power utility (even if privately operated) cannot cut you off based on your political opinion, and it shouldn’t be possible for big tech companies to do the same.

How do you define a "political opinion"?

Here's some extreme examples for the sake of illustrating my point:

- Is "Trans women aren't women" a political opinion?

- Is "The earth is flat" a political opinion?

- Is "Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of babies to keep her alive" a political opinion?

- Is "Michelle Obama is secretly a man" a political opinion?

- Is "Donald Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide" a political opinion?

Just debate, talk more. You'll get lots of kudos and people agreeing with you. The dummies will stay dumb.

Why do you lack confidence in your positions and feel justified in appealing to power to silence your opposition? Probably because your positions are debatable and that scares you.

Demonstrate your ability to convince everyone with your dazzling philosophy and concrete facts on any topic you choose and see where all that smug superiority gets you.

>> Your power utility (even if privately operated) cannot cut you off based on your political opinion, and it shouldn’t be possible for big tech companies to do the same.

> How do you define a "political opinion"?

Do you think your power company should be allowed to cut off service to anyone who believes the things you listed?

That's not at all related to what I asked (I addressed the topic of political opinions instead of this because I think it's a more interesting discussion) but sure, I'll bite. I think it's comparing apples to oranges. Providing electricity is a basic necessity for life nowadays, on the same level of necessity for most people as water and waste removal. So to say that a power company should cut off access to people saying these things is tantamount to saying these people don't deserve to have basic living necessities. That's a lot different than "Hey, we don't want this text to be displayed on our website."

Many today consider Internet access to be a basic necessity as well... is it ok for service providers to censor opinions they don't like? Because that's happening too.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police...

I think you might be dwelling a bit too much on their specific analogy, I don't think their argument should be so easily minimized in scope with things such as "basic utilities don't count" etc., which is also just a subjective opinion as well.

It might not seem like it but you're actually just asking me what my opinion on net neutrality is, which again, is completely unrelated to the topic at hand (Though I am strongly in favor of it FWIW). Again, the fundamental issue is "morally speaking, should these websites be forced to host speech". Comparing them to ISPs, utilities, or whatever other essential services makes no sense because these sites (massive social media platforms to be specific) are not basic necessities for living modern life.

> So to say that a power company should cut off access to people saying these things is tantamount to saying these people don't deserve to have basic living necessities. That's a lot different than "Hey, we don't want this text to be displayed on our website."

What's a basic necessity? Do you think they should have their phone service cut off, because the phone company doesn't want those words being transmitted over their wires? It's worth noting that not too long ago electricity wasn't considered a basic necessity.

I think there's an inflection point where a website's scale morphs it into a utility that needs to be governed by different rules than smaller websites. Where the line exactly is is not clear, but the large social networks are definitely on the "different rules" side of it. And personally, my preference is that social networks and internet services become a lot smaller and more diverse than stay large and be governed by some regulatory framework.

For the sake of this discussion all that really matters is that these sites are not basic necessities. Perhaps one day they will be, in which case I'd agree their moderation policies should be far more strictly regulated. But that's just not the case now.

FWIW these sites are already under-regulated as is and there are legitimate concerns - for example, under certain circumstances if you get banned from a Google based social media platform it can affect your ability to use Gmail... And if your whole life is on that Gmail account, I believe that strays into "basic necessity" territory. But that's not quite the same thing that's being discussed here.

I think all views that are not illegal should be permitted on these online platforms. Your Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama examples might be defamatory if they are not opinion or speculation, and so they might be illegal - not sure. But I think all of these are valid to discuss and debate. Just as we have a right to discuss things in person, I think that should be true on big online platforms.

> Is "Trans women aren't women" a political opinion?

Yes, as this view is related to policy, highly contentious policy at that.

> Is "The earth is flat" a political opinion?

No, it's factually incorrect.

> Is "Hillary Clinton drinks the blood of babies to keep her alive" a political opinion? Is "Michelle Obama is secretly a man" a political opinion?

No, a view about something a politican might do in their personal life isn't a political opinion as it's not about policy. There's no evidence for either of these outlandish views either.

> Is "Donald Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide" a political opinion?

No, it's factually incorrect.

All of these views should be allowed to be freely expressed though, whether they're considered political or not.

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