Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

blackeyeblitzar

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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