'Who the hell elected you?' U.S. Senate tech hearing becomes political tussle

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tech-senate/who-the-hell-elected-you-u-s-senate-tech-hearing-becomes-political-tussle-idUKKBN27D1AH

by simonswords82 • 6 years ago

55 109 6 years ago

uk.reuters.com

ycombonator• 6 years ago

Well its simple. There is overwhelming evidence they didnt play fair. They are not supposed to editorialize tweets (violation of sec 230 protection). They were free to let Nytimes publish supposed hacked tax returns yet blocked/ censored Nypost and other twitter users from sharing URLs in the same context. They got caught. Now its up to the congress on how they want to proceed to strip them of sec 230 protection and let the trial lawyers sue them into oblivion.

iron0013• 6 years ago

That’s not how section 230 works, as I suspect you know very well.

roywiggins4• 6 years ago

This is not how section 230 works.

https://popehat.substack.com/p/section-230-is-the-subject-of...

hn_throwaway_99• 6 years ago

These hearings only serve to show how these senators are complete and total idiots:

Senators: "Who the hell elected you?" The solution is for us to repeal Section 230 so then you'll be liable!!

Big Tech: Umm, you do realize that if you make us liable then our only option is to moderate content more stringently and have stronger controls over what people say, right?

Senators: Monorail!! or something...

bryanlarsen• 6 years ago

While Trump may be saying "Repeal Section 230", his actual proposal makes it bigger: https://www.justice.gov/file/1319331/download

vorpalhex2• 6 years ago

The goal of many senators is to force Twitter to be transparent in being partisan. If Twitter tomorrow says "We're pro-XYZ and we're going to take down content we don't like" then the hearings would be over.

Twitter (and Facebook, et al) don't want that because they would be at risk of losing large parts of their audience. They don't really make money from a bunch of people agreeing with each other and sending nice daily affirmations. They make money when your angry Uncle Billy posts something political and gets a bunch of other people in a big shouting match - views are money.

The senators aren't doing this out of the goodness of their own heart. They believe they will gain better platforms of their own uses (and potentially profit) instead of having to deal with what they perceive as an adversarial platform.

disgruntledphd2• 6 years ago

I mean, the real problem is that misinformation and lies are not evenly distributed across the political spectrum. If they were, everyone would complain and there would be no accusations of bias.

It's unfortunate, but it's true.

Nasrudith3• 6 years ago

The Senators are deluded or cynical power grabbers to equate "not bowing in deference to me" as "partisan". The bipartisan and contradictory nature of accusations should really be a hint that they are more full of it than feed lot sewage lagoon.

smileysteve• 6 years ago

This quote is incredibly awkward from Cruz, who has a family story about fighting nationalization in Cuba, asking a CEO of a sign up required company, with commercial advertisers funding, why he is a private CEO and isn't run by the government.

Animats• 6 years ago

A good answer: "340 million users choose to use Twitter. 4,440,137 voters voted for you, Sen. Cruz."

throwawaysea• 6 years ago

Is that really a fair characterization though? It may also be that many people feel obligated to use Twitter because it is already one of the "winners" and may not go anywhere due to network effects. So not engaging on it is the same as being silenced/unheard. Similarly, I don't think it would make sense to say "a billion users choose to use Google" and [N] voters voted for [politician].

saghm• 6 years ago

I don't think it's any less fair than implying that CEOs of companies should have to be elected

lostphilosopher• 6 years ago

You could say the same thing about people living in Texas who didn't vote for Cruz. :-)

inopinatus• 6 years ago

The point is that it's not a fair comparison. It's a retort revealing by absurdity the invalidity of the question.

yeetawayhn7• 6 years ago

That isn't a fair comparison because people outside of Cruz's district are not able to vote for him. The same is not true for Twitter users and Twitter.

paxys• 6 years ago

Everything is political in an election season. In a normal year Congress would delay stuff like court appointments, antitrust investigations, hearings etc. for a couple of months, but our current leaders just can't let an opportunity for free campaign ad footage pass by.

bluGill• 6 years ago

Every other year is a campaign year. The delays or lack of them depends on who is in power. When there is mixed power everyone benifets from delay so you see a lot.

mullingitover9• 6 years ago

'Who the hell elected you?'

The free market. Consumers who enjoy a curated platform.

There are plenty of alternative platforms, which conservatives are constantly failing to lure anyone to. There is nothing stopping consumers from using the competition other than personal preference for the experience twitter provides.

Natsu3• 6 years ago

Weird, because I keep hearing about the alternative platforms getting kicked offline. Krebs has a story about trying to kill 8chan right now. Gab had its payment processing suspended, etc.

Now, right now, it's hard to blame platforms for wanting to get rid of Nazis. Nobody wants a Nazi on their front lawn.

But in the long term, having capitalist oligarchs with control over most of the public's ability to communicate with each other does not seem like a good plan.

The people who lead the companies won't be there forever and in the future, one of the leaders with all the control over what people can and cannot say may be a Nazi or perhaps someone in power will convert to one.

I'd like to believe that's unthinkable, but not thinking about things like this doesn't seem like a very solid plan. Maybe we should limit how much power and control any one media agency can have over public discourse. And yes, the government's power over that should also be limited.

mullingitover9• 6 years ago

Weird, because I keep hearing about the alternative platforms getting kicked offline. Krebs has a story about trying to kill 8chan right now. Gab had its payment processing suspended, etc.

8chan hosting is a legitimate liability concern. This is not an apples to apples comparison of businesses operating in good faith with reasonable policies and practices.

I don't see the slippery slope. "If someone is able to shut down our unabashed cesspool, eventually they're going to start coming for sites that aren't cesspools!"

aeternum• 6 years ago

Let users choose their visibility settings and news feed prioritization algorithm (similar to how users can select the search engine used by their browser/phone among various options).

This is a simple solution that should make everyone happy which does not require lawyers or revoking sec 230. It also provides the opportunity for others to publish algorithms that are less polarizing which we very much need right now.

Both Wolfram and Dorsey support this idea.

neuland2• 6 years ago

I also really like this option. But what about the default? I expect there would still be significant disagreement between different factions over what is censored / labeled / prioritized / deprioritized for those users that don't actively switch to the left or right or whatever other custom view.

For this, I wonder if this could be a feature of who you follow / engage with. When someone you engage with flags something, then you don't see it. And vice-versa on prioritization. You are more likely to see things that people you follow engage with.

Spartan-S63• 6 years ago

What if there were no default? You had to go through a setup process to assign the visibility settings you want. That way, there's no possibility of bias because everyone would be required to set their own settings.

kelnos• 6 years ago

This is a simple solution that should make everyone happy

It won't, though, because the best feed algorithm for increasing engagement and stoking outrage and making money off ads is not the one that is best for fostering calm discussion and building a community.

Twitter etc. want you to use the engagement one, but in order to actually fix the social problems created by their platform, people have to use something else that will make them less money.

I personally think that's fine, but I doubt Twitter will be happy with that. And I'm not sure how you legislate a requirement that your platform isn't psychologically tuned to bring out the worst in people.

bleepblorp• 6 years ago

I don't think fostering calm discussion is a necessary goal for large-scale social media platforms. Some percentage of conversations will get heated--both online and offline--but that's natural and is something society is able to deal with.

The danger of social media is that it fosters radicalization by connecting extremists far more efficiently than is possible offline, and that in creating communities of extremists who give themselves psychological permission to act out their beliefs. The consequences of this spill out into the real world in ways that society is not fully able to manage.

People using social media to call each other shitheads for supporting (or not supporting) Joe Biden isn't a problem. No one outside of those involved in the conversation will have any reason to care and the people involved will get over it.

Social media connecting unhinged people, however, and helping them create a parallel reality where burning down 5G towers becomes the right thing to do to protect people from autism, is very much a problem. This kind of activity spills over into the real world and does have direct consequences.

Regulations of social media platforms ought to be far, far more concerned with mitigating the risks of the latter problem than with maintaining civility.

MBCook• 6 years ago

There’s an even easier one. Stop pretending platforms or neutral. Trying to make up a rule after rule to enforce “neutrality“ and avoid the appearance of “bias“ doesn’t work. Both sides are convinced that they’re being shirked.

Just come out and say it. Our new rule is “behave and we will remove what we don’t like“. You don’t like our decision? Go somewhere else.

I don’t know how you could ever apply objective standards to 500,000,000 tweets per day. It’s not feasible. So stop pretending to try.

nostromo6• 6 years ago

Platforms can be neutral and once were. Algorithms can be made that are content neutral. Obviously banning users from even mentioning content from a newspaper because you don't like their perfectly legal content flies in the face of that.

That's the deal: you can be a service provider or a publisher. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

vorpalhex2• 6 years ago

This is why federated platforms are exciting - you can choose the host that is aligned with what you want (aggressive moderation, no moderation, etc) and still be connected to the rest of the fediverse typically.

I don't imagine the monopoly platforms will follow this though, too much risk of losing users once feeds are no longer optimized for "engagement" and revenue. It's easy to realize how boring Facebook and Twitter are once the algorithm is stripped away.

Jtsummers9• 6 years ago

If people were willing to pay for things they used, we could get rid of the damned ads. App.net was an interesting experiment in this, but it did not end up taking off (I don't recall the price anymore).

dbbk• 6 years ago

Twitter at least already has this, you can turn the algorithmic home feed off.

amanaplanacanal• 6 years ago

Would the idea be that platforms cannot moderate at all? They must allow all legal content? So spam and porn would have to be allowed?

juniper_strong2• 6 years ago

Historically the term platform has meant just that, they have a legal requirement to allow all content. Think something like a phone network.

There are rules about what constitutes spam on a phone network - laws limiting robocalls in some situations for example - but it isn't the phone company making those rules.

solarkraft• 6 years ago

Then how come Twitter doesn't support it? Who's controlling it?

TYPE_FASTER• 6 years ago

Or don’t browse to the site where you don’t agree with the results of the algo.

marta_morena_28• 6 years ago

It's definitely rich that US Senators are asking "Who the hell elected you?", while they are busy gerrymandering, suppressing voters and actively dismantling democracy.

Jtsummers9• 6 years ago

States establish their own districts, not the federal government. And senators (these days, not originally) are elected by popular vote within their state, districting doesn't matter. Now, the US House of Representatives is the way it is largely due to gerrymandering.

TMWNN• 6 years ago

It's hopeless. More than once I've seen claimed that "gerrymandering" affects the Electoral College and got Trump elected. Yet more proof that the word, like "fascism", simply means "anything I don't like".

LatteLazy2• 6 years ago

On the other hand, all states no matter how small get 2 senators. That means you can carry a majority in the senate with <12% of the population to support you. Maybe this is why US policy is so far to the right of US public opinion...

Maths:

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/2jnmbe/i_did_the_...

dsaavy• 6 years ago

For anyone who wants to actually look at Section 230, it's relatively short: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

It seems like the relevant parts of the discussion are:

(b) Policy (3)to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services;

and then this one:

(c)Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material (1)Treatment of publisher or speaker No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

(2)Civil liability No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— (A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or (B)any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).[1]

roywiggins4• 6 years ago

Additionally to this: for anyone who wants to assert that there's some implied requirement of "neutrality," I invite them to read what the authors of the law had to say quite recently.

"The first is that Section 230 does not require political neutrality. Claiming to "interpret" Section 230 to require political neutrality, or to condition its Good Samaritan protections on political neutrality, would erase the law we wrote and substitute a completely different one, with opposite effect. The second is that any governmental attempt to enforce political neutrality on websites would be hopelessly subjective, complicated, burdensome, and unworkable. The third is that any such legislation or regulation intended to override a website's moderation decisions would amount to compelling speech, in violation of the First Amendment" (pg 17)

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7213938-2020-09-17-C...

sleepysysadmin• 6 years ago

I'm not a lawyer, but that's what confuses me. Section 230 doesn't need to be changed; twitter violated it quite obviously.

Blocking the NYPost article was not in good faith. It wasn't obscene. It was harassing or violent.

Twitter should by this definition lose their Section 230 protections. Good luck operating Twitter without those protections.

nostromo6• 6 years ago

I agree with the left on so many issues -- and have voted for them consistently for a few decades -- but I'm really disgusted at how they have become the party of censorship and limits on free speech. It's telling that they are now the party that is overly cozy with the largest, most-powerful companies on the planet.

The Democratic Party has been moving away from the original meaning of "liberal" for a long time -- but supporting mega-corps censoring journalism must be the final confirmation that this is no longer a liberal party.

Semiapies• 6 years ago

Ted Cruz, known leftist and Democrat...

nostromo6• 6 years ago

leftist != liberal

Democrat != liberal

... that's the point. On this issue, Cruz is indeed more liberal than Schatz.

pksebben3• 6 years ago

we really gotta disambiguate some terms, here. Bernie is a leftist. Biden is a liberal. Hillary was / is neoliberal (which you could also peg biden as, and which we used to call neoconservative). The democratic party is, on a good day, liberal but actually neoconservative.

That is to say: Leftist : power to the people. pro social programs, pro election reform, held of the belief that unchecked markets lead to unchecked evil. Liberal: pro regulation, socially left. don't-rock-the-boat political and economic mentality. pro middle class, pro tax neoconservative / neoliberal: let the markets run free, deregulate the banks, remove capital gains taxes and push tax burden down the chain to the working class. extremely permissive business laws. heavy focus on socially liberal policies like gun regulation, abortion, and gay rights because it makes for a wonderful distraction while their wall street buddies rob everyone blind and deaf.

please stop clumping leftists in with the rest. we hate that shit. there are barely any leftist politicians, and the democratic party spends most of it's time trying to get them to shut up. we're as mad about it as anyone else.

gremlinsinc2• 6 years ago

I totally agree with this (moving more from DSA territory recently to anarchist communism, myself)

I have a feeling that the lincoln project's goal is not just to get Trump out, but actually to instigate a coup within the dem party, give up some on abortion/2a to keep the neoliberal / centrist status quo. Mark my words in ten years, the dems will move more right, I wouldn't be surprised to see Kasich and Romney as democrats.

The left will be regrouping, and the far right, well they'll be hiding from the FBI mostly (at least the terrorist factions).

I mean, think about it. The dems are the epitomy of Reagan republicans. If you wanted to reboot the insanity that is Trumpism, all you'd need to do is get a significant number of fiscal republicans to become democrats, and run as democrats, and maybe embrace a 'few' social programs to 'appear' democrat enough.

pseudolus2• 6 years ago

GodFather II:

Senator Pat Geary: I can get you a gaming license. The price is $250,000, plus a monthly payment of five percent of the gross of all four hotels. [sneers] Mr. Corl-ee-own-eh.

Michael Corleone: Now, the price of a gaming license is less than $20,000. Is that right?

Senator Pat Geary: That's right.

Michael Corleone: So why would I ever consider paying more than that?

Senator Pat Geary: Because I intend to squeeze you. I don't like your kind of people. I don't like to see you come out to this clean country with your oily hair, dressed up in those silk suits, passing yourselves off as decent Americans. I'll do business with you, but the fact is that I despise your masquerade, the dishonest way you pose yourself. Yourself and your whole f*ing family.

Michael: Senator. We're both part of the same hypocrisy...but never think it applies to my family.

Senator Pat Geary: [exasperated] Okay. Some people need play little games. You play yours. Let's just say that you'll pay me because it's in your interest to pay me. But I want your answer and the money by noon tomorrow. And one more thing. Don't you contact me again, ever. From now on, you deal with Turnbull.

Michael: Senator? You can have my answer now, if you like. My offer is this: nothing. Not even the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally.

https://youtu.be/sG2-FI5_INA?t=96

99_00• 6 years ago

What is the point of posting this? What is the point you are trying to make?

pseudolus2• 6 years ago

That the hearing is little more second-rate theater for public consumption that has been done better in the movies (particularly Godfather II). The feigned indignation of senators, the stoicism of the various CEO's, it's a bit too much.

LatteLazy2• 6 years ago

That's a bit rich coming from the US senate...

justin66• 6 years ago

Senator Ted Cruz went after Twitter’s Jack Dorsey after the CEO said Twitter has no influence over elections.
“Who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear,” Cruz said ...

I hope Ted Cruz doesn't believe it's the role of an elected official, of all people, to be "in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear," as his comment seems to imply. If a shitty social media company wants to filter people's access to information that's one thing, if an elected official tries to do it that's something else entirely.

gremlinsinc2• 6 years ago

Maybe they should apply this same logic to make mainstream media require neutrality when reporting the news. (all are bad, not saying they aren't, but let's start with Fox News). If Fox news can't be forced to let equal number of progressives on as conservatives, then why should Twitter be forced to modify their algorithm at all?

jcadam• 6 years ago

Social media platforms definitely are exerting undue influence over our society and I don't think, after the last couple of weeks, anyone can seriously claim that these companies aren't using their market position to shape public opinion ahead of next week's election.

What to do about it? It's a tough problem. Simply repealing Section 230 would be a ham-fisted solution (like all govt solutions) that would do a lot of harm to smaller players in the industry.

It would be great if people weren't idiots and didn't rely so much on twitter/facebook for their news, but that apparently isn't going to happen...

titanomachy• 6 years ago

Doesn’t really seem fair to call people idiots for using social media considering the incredible amount of research and investment that’s gone into making it so addictive. And as for using it as primary source of news, people only have so many hours available to them... if they’re spending it on addictive social media they might not want to go seek out additional news, especially if they feel they’ve gotten enough news from Facebook.

Nasrudith3• 6 years ago

How do you define an "undue" influnce in the first place? Violating the "natural order of things" by not submitting to their "betters"?

The very assertion is deeply wrongheaded in its presumptions of control.

Jtsummers9• 6 years ago

Remember, this is the same Ted Cruz who opposes net neutrality. His position is wildly inconsistent between his apparent views on Twitter and his views on the Internet as a whole.

BluSyn• 6 years ago

Here's where I'm confused. As I understand if you repeal Section 230, and these companies become regulated as publishers, they will be required to censor ALL content. So how would repealing Section 230 protect free speech? It seems it would in fact do the exact opposite: result in EXTREME censorship on all these platforms. Furthermore, politicians would have direct control over what these platforms publish in form of laws governing publishers. So now we would have literal government censorship on private platforms. Perhaps this is what they actually want?

Am I missing something?

dragonwriter• 6 years ago

As I understand if you repeal Section 230, and these companies become regulated as publishers, they will be required to censor ALL content.

If you just repeal Section 230, then if they don't moderate at all, they will become (at least, based on the legal precedent which motivated 230) distributors, which generally have liability only when they have actual notice of unlawful content. If they actively engaged in preemptive moderation at all, then they will become publishers and fully liable, with no notice requirement, for all content.

So, self-initiated moderation becomes all-or-nothing.

Section 230 was passed to encourage the middle ground.

linkjuice4all• 6 years ago

These conversations seem to make more sense if you think of Facebook and Twitter as bars. They're open to the public but there's some rules for entry (e.g. state/federal laws precluding minors and the establishment's policies around dresscode/behavior).

The staff can ask you to leave or remove you when you're acting up and ban you from reentry if they deem it necessary. Other patrons of the establishment and the staff are welcome to listen to you but are not required to - and they certainly don't owe you a seat at their table just because you're inside.

Open mics don't require "both sides" and typically have the same enforcement mechanisms as above. One can expect to get booed off, muted, and potentially expelled from the place if the crowd doesn't like your singing or the content of your lyrics.

While I very strongly support viewing internet access as a utility - Facebook and Twitter (and similar) aren't essential (much like bars) and might be better off treated as vices to begin with.

These arguments should be focused on how to build protocols that everyone can use for communications instead of platforms. I think that the concepts, expectations, and regulations of the post office and post roads should be extended into the digital world. Of course you'll need to deal with the political vulnerability that was recently exposed when bad actors are put in charge of crucial communications mediums such as the post office.

Section 230 is a remarkably clear and short law which is surprising considering how recently it's been written and the protection it provides but it is probably because it is mostly stating that which is self-evident. Even opening the door to moderate reform of Section 230 is ceding ground to censors and "speech-forcers".

rektide• 6 years ago

I keep thinking it would be interested to see a digital governance initiative to host citizen's voices. Give each citizen 100kB a day that the government will try to protect, if it is lawfully able to do so, & make accessible, to a certain promised level of scale, for as long as it can.

mshron• 6 years ago

Just going to place this here, before people start talking about "platforms" and "publishers" despite neither of those terms being actually in Section 230

"Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act"

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

wux• 6 years ago

There’s much that can be said about Twitter’s moderation policies, but entirely orthogonal to that, this quotation should be mighty upsetting to anyone who hews to the basic tenets of American constitutionalism regardless of your political leanings.

“Who the hell elected you?” The implied statement here is that, because you (Jack) aren’t elected, you can’t decide what people read; the corollary being that, because I (Ted) am elected, I can decide what people read. This is entirely backwards! “Congress shall make no law,” says the Constitution. It’s precisely because Ted Cruz is elected that the Constitution says he cannot make laws deciding what people read. That’s the entire point of the exercise!

xtiansimon• 6 years ago

This article reads like the legislative opinion of ‘encryption’—- strong enough to ensure commerce, but easily back footed by law enforcement.

Legislators don’t do well with incompatible beliefs .

'Who the hell elected you?' U.S. Senate tech hearing becomes political tussle

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