Feels like they're just protecting their ass while keeping overselling their product.
Not that law enforcement should use AI irresponsibly and without boundaries, but I'm not sure it is the responsibility of a company to make that kind of call.
I could argue that my tool used wrong presents a legal risk to ME because I let law enforcement do some terrible things that I know don't work.
Semi-related, most cloud services do not allow crypto mining, the reason there being it's not cost effective. So whatever mining does happen is stolen credentials, or some inside company job where dude is using company resources for personal gain ... pretty much all illegal activity. So they ban it and I believe actively try to detect / aggressively disable it.
Personally, I think companies above a certain size should not be able to deny customers because they are effectively like public agencies or utility services due to their size. Banks, big tech, large social media platforms should be regulated like utilities in my opinion.
It’s part of an infrastructure as a service platform, which is why I view it as utility. But I also am saying we need to broaden what we call a utility for the modern world. Not having access to large platforms (like social media) or centralized services (banking) or large companies (which have lots of market share and are one of a few options) is very damaging. What are your thoughts on that?
> and they're not banning police on political or moral grounds.
How do you know this? This seems like it would almost certainly be the result of pressure from political groups.
They haven't securely broadened it to the internet or mobile phone service, and you want them to broaden it to individual privately-produced software packages. So the police can't be refused as a customer.
It's not like I can get electricity from another provider if there is literally only one in my area. And what they're providing (water, sewage, electricity) is deemed essential.
Even with banks, if one bank rejects me, I can (hypothetically) go to another one down the street.
Another angle is network effects - social media companies face reduced competition due to this and so they too should be regulated above a certain size since there isn’t enough competition or choice there, because the value of access to those particular platforms is very high due to their size.
> Even with banks, if one bank rejects me, I can (hypothetically) go to another one down the street.
What if they all reject you though? For example what if all banks decide they are better off debanking someone to stay in the good side of politicians who might punish them otherwise (like via regulation)? Some of these services are fundamental and should be forced to provide service no matter what.
But remember why common carrier status exists. Imagine I rob a stagecoach and lie low until the next day, when I catch a train to the next town over.
Is the train engineer my accomplice in the robbery? Or my accessory after the fact? Is the train company?
He and it might be, except that the train company “holds itself out” as a transporter of goods and services open to all. In exchange, the law grants the company that holds itself out as a carrier for all the freedom not to worry about whether carriage is a criminal act for the customer.
But without holding one’s self out as a carrier for all, there is no common carrier status. You cannot hold out a company as sufficiently large; they must hold themselves out as wanting this status.
When I see people clamor for social media platforms, I get doubly confused, because not only have these companies never held themselves out as common carriers, they would take nothing they do not already have (under 230) from doing so.
No, even without common carrier status. Being an accessory to a crime is much more narrow than "unknowingly conveyed a criminal during routine operation of a transportation company".
That broad of an interpretation makes everything being an accessory to the crime. The federal government created and backs the bills the thief stole, so they helped. The city built the roads they used, so they help. Old Mister McCollem down the lane stopped walking so the thief didn't run them over, which might have helped.
> But without holding one’s self out as a carrier for all, there is no common carrier status. You cannot hold out a company as sufficiently large; they must hold themselves out as wanting this status.
This is not true, you're misconstruing the difference between companies that had mens rea in transporting illegal goods and companies that don't.
Common carrier is an involuntary status. The government decides whether a company is or is not a common carrier and is obligated to provide services to anyone that asks (basically). Common carriers are almost categorically excluded from liability for the goods they transport because they are effectively incapable of mens rea. They did not choose to transport those goods, therefore they could not have had criminal intent in making a choice to provide service.
Companies that are not common carriers _do_ have a choice when deciding whether to provide service, and thus are capable of having criminal intent when making that decision.
Inversely, companies that choose to act like a common carrier _do not_ receive the same protections as an actual common carrier. Their decision to provide service to everyone without asking questions is still a decision, and can meet the mens rea bar.
The most well known cases I can think of here would be The Pirate Bay and Silk Roads. Both behave as if they were common carriers and will sell/convey almost whatever you want without questions. They do not receive immunity for not asking questions, because the intent of that policy is to allow (encourage, really) illegal usage.
On the flip side, the Post Office/UPS have indemnity for conveying drugs bought on Silk Roads because they actually are common carriers. They didn't decide to just not check packages, they are legally prohibited from invasive package checking and denying service to customers they find sketchy (would need a fact check on the prohibition of checking packages; I believe there are limits on what they can check, but I don't know offhand what they are).
As an odd sort of comparison, this is why you can't just take a magic 8 ball into the courtroom and shake it; 'for amusement only'
Companies can choose their clients in a non cyperbunk world too.
Though it does seem rare in the US for companies to prevent others from using their product based on ethical or moral reasons, but more should.
This doesn't pass the sniff test. You have been able to purchase porn for decades in various mediums - why would a website suddenly invoke the ire of the "morality police"? Even more-so when porn is freely available in almost every case when it comes to the internet.
Really though, it has nothing to do with morality - it is straight up the risk profile of those websites. There's even a movie about the start of the online paid-porn industry and all the stuff they had to do to figure out how not to bleed money on chargebacks etc.
Have you? Or has it been patchwork and limited and volatile, with people being fined and jailed fairly arbitrarily? There were periods in the 80s and 90s where people were going through pornographic tapes and removing the swearing.
> suddenly invoke
Suddenly, after decades. Is the adjective just to make it sound more unlikely?
I'm curious to know more about this. I'm not aware of any laws in any state (assuming the US) where it's illegal or forbidden from purchasing video games using a credit card, or even a debit card.
I know cases have been brought against Wikileaks and Assange, but in my opinion they broke no laws. They acted within the bounds of journalistic freedom. I don’t understand how people are OK with news outlets leaking things like Trump’s tax returns but think that freedom of the press works differently in other circumstances. Why would it be different case by case?
The current era of tech is all about disguising web services as "products" you can "buy" (most recently exemplified by the Humane AI pin and Rabbit R1), so I can see how there'd be confusion, though.
Yes. Freedom of association is literally part of the first amendment. The only limits are around protected classes.
How in the world is forcing a company to do business with someone a LESS dystopian solution than allowing them to decide who they do business with?