Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-status-coup

by walterbell • 5 years ago

206 318 5 years ago

taibbi.substack.com

thebible• 5 years ago

This is a good thing. It was only a matter of time before the perceived total unlimited sense of freedom of speech that pervaded the internet turned toxic. There's an expression "free as in speech or free as in beer," but in reality both of those things cost money.

klyrs• 5 years ago

"Free as in pony" is my favorite phrase to convey cost of otherwise "free" things

ClumsyPilot• 5 years ago

I am gonna steal that, its neat

cbozeman9• 5 years ago

My God this is truly the best phrase. It works on so many levels...

"Free", but there's the associated cost of upkeep... a barn, it has to be washed, dried, groomed, fed, vaccinated, check-ups, exercised, and lastly, you have to deal with the horseshit... and best part of your expression, is it means you have to deal with both the literal and metaphorical horseshit. :)

Bravo sir or madam.

teddyh• 5 years ago

I would suggest “Free as a white elephant.”:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/white_elephant

chrisco2553• 5 years ago

I for one, welcome our corporate overlords deciding what ideas are good for us and what ideas are bad for us. Thinking is difficult!

AmericanChopper2• 5 years ago

Don’t worry. Once all the speech loopholes have been closed, I’m sure they’ll figure out how to fix the remaining thought loopholes too.

tjr2254• 5 years ago

In a free market you can choose who your corporate “overlords” are. So; which are you for?

Should the government prevent monopolies from having free speech? Because telling google or whoever what or what not they allow in their private platforms is anti free speech.

0r should the government simply prevent monopolies so you have the choice to go somewhere else to consume whatever frothing angry garbage you wish to consume?

You don’t get to have it both ways but both are contrarian to ridiculous libertarian ideals- funny how that works.

emtel• 5 years ago

This article is about someone whose livestream was shut down while attempting to cover rallies where participants were carrying firearms. Why is it a good thing this was shut down?

alfalfasprout• 5 years ago

Ah, and internet mobs and companies should decide for us? This is a very, very troubling perspective.

SixDouble5321• 5 years ago

Yet another example of Google trying to solve all problems algorithmically. It's not useful to say "if firearm then block content."

koolba• 5 years ago

I had to squint to read the email, but I think it’s specific to live streams. I’m going to guess that the original intention was to block suicide / snuff live streams. Though that’s pure speculation on my part.

megous• 5 years ago

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world/new-zealand-mosque-s...

Maybe they don't want livestreams like this?

tmpz22• 5 years ago

Just 3 hours ago a group of teens live streamed themselves stabbing a 15 year old girl to death in Louisiana [1]. Like twitch swatting this is not a new phenomenon. Clearly something needs to be done to discourage or eliminate such content.

[1] https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/trending/4-teen-girls-char...

bpodgursky• 5 years ago

Do you have any evidence that this contributed to the actual act?

If anything, this just provides good evidence that will put the idiots in prison.

edbob• 5 years ago

The article is talking about Google's suppression of independent reporting content that regularly appears on the news. It has nothing to do with anyone being killed.

emptyparadise12• 5 years ago

You won't believe how many disturbing murders are not live streamed. Let's try to deal with the "murder" and not the "content" part.

cbozeman9• 5 years ago

Clearly something needs to be done to discourage or eliminate such content.

What do you plan to do, Dr. Manhattan? Because you're talking about human nature... and even you can't change that.

You said so yourself.

mamon2• 5 years ago

What did you expect? Several years ago Google openly declared that they are turning evil :)

onion2k• 5 years ago

The "And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"[1] line is still in Google's Code of Conduct. All they did is remove a line from near the start; it's always been there at the end as well.

[1] https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

mamon2• 5 years ago

And if an employee takes this rule seriously and speaks up, they fire them: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/03/timnit-...

cbozeman9• 5 years ago

Well nobody seems to be speaking up.

creata• 5 years ago

To Jordan Chariton exclaiming in all caps:

How are journalists supposed to chronicle history if YouTube — and others — are outlawing it?

Regardless of what YouTube says, they are an advertiser-friendly entertainment website. Why in God's name would you use it to "chronicle history"?

Swizec• 5 years ago

Why in God's name would you use it to "chronicle history"?

Because for better or for worse these platforms have become the public square. They are where modern life happens.

cbsks• 5 years ago

Clearly YouTube doesn’t want to be a public square.

TheRealDunkirk2• 5 years ago

Any argument AGAINST YouTube (and Twitter) being considered common carriers, and legislated accordingly, should be DOA after the past few weeks.

devmunchies7• 5 years ago

if a tree falls down in a forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

arthurcolle2• 5 years ago

No. By definition, sound is just the way that some creatures interpret waves propagating through the air that hit their weird inner ear structures that gets translated through neural pathways into meaningful qualia

yellow_lead• 5 years ago

I am also confused by the implication that if something wasn't posted to YouTube, it didn't happen.

Aerroon• 5 years ago

Because people use what they know and have. There are probably way better tools out there for most things, but if people don't know of their existence or how to use them, then they won't use these better tools.

Look at Minecraft. Some people end up building absolutely incredible things in it. Detailed art. Imagine if they had used a 3D modeling program instead! But those are way harder to use and way less inviting. So, Minecraft it is.

KingMachiavelli• 5 years ago

But I would not want to turn Minecraft into a 3D modeling program just because some people use it that way. Similarly, I do not want some external institution to force Youtube to become a video storage platform despite some people using it that way.

From a purely journalistic perspective, it is pretty cheap to run your own site. You can use efficient video codecs and there are many cheap VPS and CDN providers. New technology like peertube and IPFS can make this even cheaper. Taking a for-profit platform like Youtube and forcing it to cater to certain needs just makes it an even more entrenched part of peoples lives. Letting Youtube make itself worse for some purposes/topics encourages users to create and use other platforms.

hn_throwaway_99• 5 years ago

Regardless of what YouTube says, they are an advertiser-friendly entertainment website. Why in God's name would you use it to "chronicle history"?

I don't understand this argument at all. The entire Fourth Estate in the US has always been primarily paid for by advertisers, and just saying YouTube is an "entertainment website" seems like a poor attempt to say it can only be used for cat videos or something.

YouTube is the largest video distribution network on the planet. Of course I think someone would use it to chronicle video history.

TheRealDunkirk2• 5 years ago

As a de facto monopoly, it’s certainly the only one that matters right now. But if, say, the porn tubes wanted to wall off a non-NSFW side, they could become a serious competitor overnight. Or if Netflix or Amazon started allowing end-user content, for that matter.

CivBase7• 5 years ago

YouTube is not just a platform to host vidoes on. It's a search engine, content feed, and social network. There is no adequate replacement. You can back up your videos somewhere else, but there isn't anywhere else that offers a comparable package.

yew4• 5 years ago

It's simply irresponsible for so-called "independent journalists" to cover material that neither they nor their audiences are in a position to understand.

We've seen what several decades of totally unregulated broadcasting have done, to the detriment of our society - without well-funded expert guidance, conspiracy theories and extremism run rampant. Platforms must be restricted to those who prove they can use them appropriately.

dadzilla• 5 years ago

And you are qualified to express this view how?

yew4• 5 years ago

Experts are usually vetted by regulators and other experts, not random members of the public. As anyone is presently free to say whatever they please, I see no reason to share my personal information with the world.

arthurcolle2• 5 years ago

He has a 3 letter username on HN, obviously he is legit

agarden• 5 years ago

I think you are getting this wrong. The problem is not all the inexpert persons styling themselves as "independent journalists", the problem is all the inexpert persons who think they understand enough about the world's problems to cast a vote on who should legislate solutions for them. The electorate must be restricted to those who prove they can use the franchise wisely. /s

Okay, you probably are not opposed to democracy. But if not, why not? If the people are too stupid to choose to consume good journalism and ignore bad journalism, how can they be considered wise enough to elect good legislators instead of bad ones?

The US system of government is predicated on having a populace that is sufficiently intelligent, prudent, and moral that it will not give in to mob excess. If we the people no longer possess that sort of character, restricting the speech of said people will not be sufficient to solve the problem. A full dictatorship will be the only solution.

Your point about the character of the people is a good one. But if you jettison free speech, you have jettisoned the entirety of democratic government with it.

yew4• 5 years ago

"We the people" have never possessed that quality, and direct democracy is a terrible idea for precisely that reason.

Our democratic norms are intended to filter that irrationality into something more functional - though the election of a certain someone I don't feel like naming at the moment shows those norms aren't perfect. I expect quite a few people are thinking very hard about how to make sure none of this ever happens again.

Nevertheless, the ideal of representative democracy relies on experts.

ufmace• 5 years ago

I seriously have no idea whether this is serious or sarcasm.

Either way, once it is decided by all who have the practical ability to distribute information to large numbers of people that only "correct" viewpoints approved by "experts" may be published, you're a short step away from living in a single-party state.

korethr• 5 years ago

Assuming this post is in earnest instead of accidentally omitting <sarc></sarc> tags:

Have you payed attention to mainstream journalism over the past couple decades? The material they cover and the framing with which they do so reflects an understanding not any better than the one you attribute to independent journalists, to say nothing of an expectation that the audience is even less capable of understanding. Have you never seen a mainstream news channel cover an event that you personally witnessed, and imply or outright state that the event happened differently than what you saw with your own eyes? Have you never witnessed someone interviewed, and then later seen the broadcast, edited interview, implying something else than what was originally stated for the editing done?

Who decides who the correct experts are? Who decides a person can responsibly use a platform?

throwawayboise• 5 years ago

Case in point the mainstream media headlines leading up to these events: "credible threats of violence" ... officials were "on edge" ... "possible secondary attack."

It's plainly apparent they were just salivating, waiting and hoping (some might say inciting) that something violent would happen, and yet the events "turned out to be peaceful and unremarkable." I'm sure there was profound disappointment in the major newsrooms that day.

SV_BubbleTime2• 5 years ago

Platforms must be restricted to those who prove they can use them appropriately.

Oh, I found it, the satire giveaway was at the end.

jancsika2• 5 years ago

Google is like a virtual version of Walmart, if Walmart had cornered U.S. flea markets and installed trapdoors in each stall to flush vendors down into the sewer at a moments notice.

The best part is that everybody starts quoting the first amendment, and Google is like, "Look, we hear you. Just tell us where our intractable flushing procedure fucked up, and we will promise to never again accidentally flush that vendor into the sewer."

SulfurHexaFluri2• 5 years ago

Basically. I get the "its their service, and you agreed to the terms" but these tech corps are so big and powerful its on a scale unimaginable when these laws and ideas were originally created and its probably time to rethink how we let corporations run when they basically control the world.

SpicyLemonZest4• 5 years ago

It seems to me that the first step is to stop letting the tech corps control your world. If the range of opinion on popular platforms is too restricted, make a deliberate effort to step back from popular platforms onto group chats and random blogs and web forums, the same way we used to a decade ago.

Most people who do this, in my experience, realize that it's actually pretty easy to see and talk about what you want these days. Youtube's content policies are still a problem, but they're the same kind of problem as CBS's content policies, not an existential threat to free speech.

tylerjwilk002• 5 years ago

Peaceful gun rights advocates doesn't fit the "Guns are bad, mkay." narrative.

emptyparadise12• 5 years ago

My question to everyone supporting restrictions on speech and supporting privacy violations, even for good reasons, is this: are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands? The same methods used to quickly shut down a dangerous website or to track down a terrorist by their online posts can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

scrollaway• 5 years ago

I would agree with you in the context of a government or public body. But in the context of private companies, these "tools" were always available. The wrong hands were always able to use them. And did, many times, in fact.

Like, the problems you're describing are real but they aren't new, and aren't particularly a bigger threat now than they were before.

thisiscorrect2• 5 years ago

Market concentration might make them a bigger problem today than before, though.

duxup4• 5 years ago

I'm not prepared to have them 'fall into the wrong hands'.

But these platforms are owned by these companies.

What rules do we put in place that they have to host some of this content? Blatant misinformation, vague encouragement of violence... hate?

Is the price of free speech that someone has to host it? Who doesn't want to?

revnode• 5 years ago

What rules do we put in place that they have to host some of this content? Blatant misinformation, vague encouragement of violence... hate?

Why do they have to be rules? Why can't we have a culture of tolerance? Robots aren't running these companies. They're people, just like you and me. They can choose to be tolerant.

Tolerance is about tolerating the most horrid things. Not because it's nice or those things have some value. They're horrid, they have no value. It's because the alternative is worse. Because censorship is worse. Because when a person is censored, when they can't speak, they resort to violence and through censorship, you encourage violence. And violence can't be censored. It can only be suppressed with further violence.

danaris• 5 years ago

I...beg your pardon?

What everyone's been talking about the past few weeks has absolutely nothing to do with shutting down dangerous websites, and any terrorist who leaves a trail of online posts that can be used to track them doesn't need anything special to be done to make that possible.

People have been talking about the major social media platforms—who are, arguably, already pretty high up there on the list of "the wrong hands"—deplatforming users actively supporting attacks—physical attacks, in some cases—on our government, our democracy, and our Constitution.

I mean, there is stuff to be genuinely concerned about in all of this as regards the future, and there's a real discussion to be had here, but frankly, I don't think this is it.

opendysphoria5• 5 years ago

Yes

Barrin923• 5 years ago

are you prepared to have these tools fall into the wrong hands?

Yes, because society has a plurality of institutions that constrain power. Restrictions (even speech restrictions themselves) are subject to the court of public opinion (we're talking about them right now), there's the judiciary, political opposition and so on.

This argument never had any pull for me for the same reason I'm against abolishing the police or abolishing surveillance or anything else. Power, even in the hands of people I don't like, can't be exercised arbitrarily.

emptyparadise12• 5 years ago

What country do you live in?

peytn• 5 years ago

Aren’t those institutions sort of circumventable by lying? Can’t I just say “Barrin92 is a bastard, so I’ve banned them from speaking. Look no closer lest I ban you, too.” Feels like we might be better off in the long run by agreeing on ground rules ahead of time and then sticking to them, no?

bawolff5• 5 years ago

I find this argument confusing. There is plenty of historical precedent for tyrany overcoming public opinion, judiciary, politics. I don't think the current topic is an example of this, but as a general statment on power i find this contrary to my experience.

You're basically saying, I don't worry about abuse of power because there will always be some check on it, no matter how ineffectual. That just flies in the face of every time someone managed to use their power to overcome whatever checks were in place.

And this is like a constant theme in history. All the checks on Ceaser's power didn't prevent the Roman Republic from falling.

bawolff5• 5 years ago

What tools are these actually - the delete button?

When it comes down to it - i like moderated spaces on the internet. I dont want to wade through spam, not to mention violent and abusive content. I don't like seeing shock images.

So yes, i support having moderation. The question to me is not: yes/no moderation, its where you draw the line; what are your policies and how are they enforced.

Fundamentally i think the solution is competitors. This was a much easier position to take when the web did not just have a few social media giants with network effects, but still: if youtube becomes to dranicon, start a new website. The tools to stream video (albeit not at scale) are just an apt-get away.

emptyparadise12• 5 years ago

Fundamentally i think the solution is competitors. This was a much easier position to take when the web did not just have a few social media giants with network effects, but still: if youtube becomes to dranicon, start a new website. The tools to stream video (albeit not at scale) are just an apt-get away.

I agree. I wouldn't have a problem with YouTube doing anything if YouTube wasn't the video website. We need decentralization.

But at the same time more and more often I also see these same concerns raised with decentralized networks (going beyond standard practices like blocking and preventing federation with instances), and that gets me worried.

calibas• 5 years ago

Whether or not you even see specific content on Facebook, Google or Hacker News depends on sorting algorithms, so that would be one of the tools used to censor content. It's not just "the delete button", it's so much more, like how DMCA processes are handled or AIs created to find naked people (which affects artists).

opendysphoria5• 5 years ago

What tools are these actually - the delete button?

Reach

golemiprague• 5 years ago

I don't have a problem with moderation but I do have a problem when infrastructure providers like AWS decide how their clients should moderate their content.

You can't have competition when some of the competitors can't use the infrastructure. It is not without reason that utility providers can't discriminate and I think it is time to decide what is considered a utility in the internet age.

natmaka2• 5 years ago

IMHO the central question is: do you tolerate zones moderated (or not moderated at all) by their owners exactly how they want it, provided that you remain free to avoid any zone and also to create your own zone(s)?

No one likes spam, abusive content, fake news... However many won't qualify a given content the same way.

IMO, for example, history shows that anyone thinking that he is _right_ and has to educate others by coercing them to pay lip service to his ideas and also by censoring contradiction, walks on a path leading to violent and abusive acts.

bloaf2• 5 years ago

Competition makes it harder for malicious actors to manipulate everyone's content, but lets not pretend that companies don't know how to create the illusion of competition [1,2]

We already have the problem of people creating too many filter-bubbles in their online lives. A fragmented social media environment will not usher in an age where everyone gets exposed to a more diverse set of ideas, we'll just get FoxNewsBook and MSNBCBook, or ChristianTube and MuslimTube, or whatever other social groups happen to be the most defining.

Moderated communities are basically the HOA neighborhoods of the internet. There is nothing wrong with liking the high property values, but competition alone does not prevent their abuses [3].

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/expresident/all-the-por...

[2] https://www.foodbeast.com/news/pepsi-boycott-kendall/

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/homeowners-...

stale20023• 5 years ago

I dont want to wade through spam, not to mention violent and abusive content.

I mean, ok? Can't you simply not watch that content? What if there were a warning on the content, so that you could choose to not watch it?

Or maybe you could specify on your account, that you don't want to see that content, so it never shows up for you. Problem solved, and everyone wins.

colllectorof2• 5 years ago

if youtube becomes to dranicon, start a new website.

You are clearly ignorant of the kinds of shit actual YouTube alternatives have to deal with. Their websites and videos get de-ranked or de-listed from search (Rumble [1]), their apps get removed from app store (LBRY [2]), their infrastructure gets constant attacks (BitChute [3]). Meanwhile, the mainstream media smears them at every opportunity.

This is nothing like the environment that Google and YouTube were started in.

https://rumble.com/vcxrxh-rumbles-anti-trust-lawsuit-against...

https://lbry.tv/@lbry:3f/googlebanslbry:7

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/censorship-bitchute-depl...

btinker• 5 years ago

Yep, that's part of why reddit is so great.

Fundamentally i think the solution is competitors. This was a much easier position to take when the web did not just have a few social media giants with network effects, but still: if youtube becomes to dranicon, start a new website. The tools to stream video (albeit not at scale) are just an apt-get away.

There's no serious YouTube competition because YouTube is not (just) a video host. Video hosting isn't that big a deal (though hard at scale).

YouTube is a network of videos, creators and viewers powered by recommendations, subscriptions advertisements (paying creators) and massive network effects.

You could build yet another video host and even have niche success with it. But you have no chance of providing the equivalent effect of a video landing on the YouTube frontpage.

nathias• 5 years ago

There would be no issue if this was plausible in practice, but its not.

LocalH• 5 years ago

The current climate is one of not allowing people to "start a new website". Sure, one can quite technically run their own platform, but the minute it becomes significant there seems to be a risk of shutdown via external pressure. Deplatforming is a very dangerous tool, the likes of which I think should only be reserved for the most heinous crimes. I have zero qualms about deplatforming a child molester, for example. But there was just a story on here about how someone lost their job simply for having accounts on Gab and Parler. Not for any content they posted, but for the mere existence of the accounts.

Even as recently as the 80s and 90s, liberals were much more likely to be anti-censorship. Now people who claim that label are all for shutting down "bad" things, without understanding that "good" and "bad" are largely human constructs, and the things that are considered "good" and "bad" can and will change over time. What about in the far future when bigotry inevitably becomes commonplace and systemic in a much worse way than humanity has already seen? Do we really want to just hand these tools of suppression and control to people like that on a silver platter? The entire point of freedom of speech is supposed to transcend that sort of control.

To go on a slight tangent, it's quite similar to how many traditional Christians in America would wish for their religion to have special privileges in law, when they don't realize that it would open the door for any other religion to do the same, should their population grow to the numbers they'd need to influence policy. The very same people who would wish to make Christianity privileged would bemoan Islam one day becoming the majority religion and instituting Islamic law via those same legal mechanisms. Nobody I've talked to face to face in my area has any kind of answer to that one.

joshuakelly• 5 years ago

They're already in the wrong hands. The only right hands are our own.

marcinzm5• 5 years ago

That is why I prefer these tools be used by private organizations to enforce their own private rules rather than being managed by government mandate. That ensures that enough social rules exist to maintain society but not rules which are so ingrained in law as to prevent progress or allow trivial total abuse.

emptyparadise12• 5 years ago

Would you support breaking the near-monopolies that certain organizations have?

jb7754• 5 years ago

When the private companies start getting billion dollar contracts with the government, or are lobbying politicians for laws massively benefitting the companies in the long run, it's safe to say the decisions behind the "private rules" will be impacted accordingly.

joubert2• 5 years ago

Aren’t there more ways how and more places where you can speak out today than ever before? Aren’t people able to say more radical or extreme things at scale than ever before?

I’m reminded of folks claiming that their voices are silenced but say so on Twitter, at physical events, on the news, etc.?

The irony seems mind boggling to me.

sneak7• 5 years ago

Aren’t there more ways how and more places where you can speak out today than ever before?

No. There was for a little while, but the number of avenues that one has for publishing unpopular speech are at a major low vs 10 or 15 years ago.

Now, the internet has reached the status quo of broadcast media prior to it: a small handful of gigantic powerful organizations have total veto over what can be published.

root_axis3• 5 years ago

Nobody is being hunted, that's pretty hyperbolic. If YouTube were silencing protests I wouldn't like that, but I don't rely on YouTube to understand what's going on in the world and I would encourage anyone concerned about YouTube's content policy to consider visiting other websites on the internet in addition to YouTube.

opendysphoria5• 5 years ago

Nobody is being hunted, that's pretty hyperbolic.

That's pretty hyperbolic.

sneak7• 5 years ago

If YouTube were silencing protests I wouldn't like that, but I don't rely on YouTube to understand what's going on in the world

A lot of people do. You can't really find out what's going on in the world from the mainstream media in any real resolution or detail, and "other websites on the internet" don't generally have thousands and thousands of people livestreaming actual live video of what's happening.

Perhaps this could be rectified by our society working to make bandwidth an order of magnitude or two cheaper, so that there can be lots more live video hosts. As it stands, you're pretty much stuck with a few giant megacorps like Google or Twitch.

nl6• 5 years ago

Yes. The solution to trolling has always been moderation.

If the moderation is too strict then people leave and setup elsewhere. If it is just the trolls leaving then no one cares and it is a win/win.

joiguru• 5 years ago

It is important to acknowledge that this is a conflict between two ethical ideologies: Deontology/Kantian ethics vs Utilitarian ethics. The Deontological argument is that free speech is good, and any effort to curtail it would lead to a domino effect which will be disastrous. The Utilitarian argument is that this curtailing of free speech is acceptable as the alternative is causing more harm than good. Both ideologies have their limitations and criticisms, and there doesn't seem to be any clear winner.

varvar• 5 years ago

The philosophy that those who hold the power have will be the one winning, since they have the actual means to impose it, regardless of arguments.

In this case it is Utilitarian ethics.

mercurialshark3• 5 years ago

Yes, and I fundamentally reject the premise that inaccurate expression should be censored or moderated without a proximate cause to a specific harm or credible imminent apprehension of harm.

I do not think censorship is justifiable for potential or non-quantifiable, collective psychic harm.

opendysphoria5• 5 years ago

I do not think censorship is justifiable for potential or non-quantifiable, collective psychic harm.

Can you provide an example?

shrimpx9• 5 years ago

You can make the same argument in the opposite direction: for those who support unbridled electronic speech amplification, are you prepared for it to fall in the hands of people who are bent on changing minds en masse to fill society with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence?

On a more detailed note, I draw a sharp line between normal speech and selectively amplified speech. Twitter and Facebook are in a bind because their business is to curate speech amplification in order to maximize exposure to ads. So if you ask “why did person X see post Y?” it’s because Twitter/FB decided to show Y to X. So they have automatically become at least partially responsible for the effect of that post.

So to me this Twitter/FB censorship fiasco is not about free speech censorship whatsoever. It’s about these companies being in the business of deciding who sees what, being externally pressured to do a better job.

It wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever to ask Twitter/FB to “stop censoring” while admitting that they should be allowed to curate feeds to maximize ad revenue.

sneak7• 5 years ago

You can make the same argument in the opposite direction: for those who support unbridled electronic speech amplification, are you prepared for it to fall in the hands of people who are bent on changing minds en masse to fill society with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence?

This seems to equate the ability to publish with a society that's filled with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence. Is it possible that society won't have any more or less falsehoods, more or less uncertainty, or more or less violence than a society in which you don't appoint some "knows better than the reader" censor to decide what people are allowed to see and read?

It seems insanely presumptuous to me that some censor at Facebook or Google won't turn into a violent maniac when they see the things you seem to propose that they censor, but the general, unwashed masses will. Give adults some credit.

We've had the church around spreading falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence for centuries, and the world is still here (and still improving). I don't think letting people publish whatever legal content they like is going to suddenly send our world to hell in a handbasket. The danger from uncensored publishing is overblown.

tspike• 5 years ago

Do you think we are observing a symptom (unbridled speech amplification) of the disease (monetization of algorithmically targeted content), so to speak?

Do you think that if we somehow broke this monetization model, that companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google would cease to be the behemoths they are, and the amplification mechanism might go away?

julianmarq2• 5 years ago

for those who support unbridled electronic speech amplification, are you prepared for it to fall in the hands of people who are bent on changing minds en masse to fill society with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence?

You mean a society where the most charismatic/popular members get the attention of the masses, mostly by telling them what they want to hear? Yes, I think I'm prepared to live in such a society.

I think, in your attempt at making free speech look undesirable with your mention of "amplification", you forgot that this amplification is for everyone, including you and those who agree with you.

bondarchuk• 5 years ago

You can make the same argument in the opposite direction: for those who support unbridled electronic speech amplification, are you prepared for it to fall in the hands of people who are bent on changing minds en masse to fill society with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence?

Yes, obviously. "But people may say false things on the internet" is not nearly as strong an argument as "you will be prevented from criticizing your government on the internet".

cudgy5• 5 years ago

“You can make the same argument in the opposite direction: for those who support unbridled electronic speech amplification, are you prepared for it to fall in the hands of people who are bent on changing minds en masse to fill society with falsehoods, uncertainty, and violence?“

This is truly ironic given that exact abuse has been perpetrated by these tech companies in order to build their empires in the form of advertising and manipulating users on their platforms.

Also, your dismissal of humanism is appalling.

Thorrez3• 5 years ago

supporting restrictions on speech and privacy violations

That's a confusing phrase. It took me a while to realize you meant "supporting privacy violations" rather than "supporting restrictions on privacy violations". You seem to be lumping speech restrictions and privacy violations into the same bucket, but I see them as very different, often even opposed to each other. The US elevates free speech higher than privacy. Europe elevates privacy higher than free speech. In many European countries the press isn't allowed to report the names or faces of suspects. In many European countries you can't take pictures of people walking on the street.

Doxing is a clear case where free speech is directly opposed to privacy. Same with right to be forgotten.

julianmarq2• 5 years ago

You seem to be lumping speech restrictions and privacy violations into the same bucket, but I see them as very different, often even opposed to each other.

And yet today there was an article in the front page claiming that Signal is a problem because its end to end encryption can be used by anyone, even "bad actors", to communicate. That's an attack on both privacy and free speech, and I wouldn't be shocked if GP had that article (and others like it) in mind.

Mind you, most of the comments here rightfully called that article out for the absurd fear-mongering it was, and even the increasingly common censorship apologists were unusually silent. I was pleasantly surprised, even if it did still get a lot of upvotes and reached the front page.

emptyparadise12• 5 years ago

Fixed the wording to make it a bit more clear, thanks. Connecting doxing as a privacy violation to free speech is a very interesting point that I didn't think about - I was thinking about data collection and tracking when talking about privacy violations.

For what you bring up with doxing, I don't think I have a very satisfying answer. I definitely won't advocate for keeping it on social media websites. But I can't advocate for all-powerful tools that would allow even for actually dangerous content like that to be tracked down and removed from everywhere, because there is no way to ensure that tools like that will not be abused.

Remove it from Twitter, block it on your own federation nodes, try to bring the perpetrators to justice, but, as painful as it is, you shouldn't have a magic button that would be able to completely eradicate that from the internet.

It would also be good to reduce data collection and to teach people to be more conscious of what they share to prevent private information from leaking to begin with.

ogre_codes4• 5 years ago

Your television and radio broadcasts have been "censored" and curated since the dawn of time. Newspapers have curated their content and various newspapers are known for having left or right bias.

This isn't just the stations own content. If you paid to put content on television, radio, or in the paper, the publisher has always had the right to publish or not publish content (with some limits, but nothing this article speaks about would be protected by law). You couldn't have a cable community access channel with whatever content you wanted.

YouTube/ Twitter/ Facebook have been and remain far more permissive in publishing outside content than any other media in history.

You are implying that there is some kind of "new" restrictions on speech, but this is literally hundreds of years old.

emptyparadise12• 5 years ago

I think social media is not directly comparable to television and radio broadcasts. The public square analogy makes much more sense here. But even then, in a lot of places there are impartiality requirements on media outlets, as flawed as they may be.

Let me use your analogy, though.

Let's say there are many newspapers in town. Is it fair for me to refuse to publish certain things? Sure.

What if I own the only newspaper in town? It gets more complicated. But hey, perhaps the town has a thriving samizdat culture, so maybe it's fine.

But then what if I start buying out every printing press in town? And on top of that, what if I'm pressured by the mayor to not publish something? This is a big issue now, right?

How can that situation be addressed? People often suggest regulating that sole paper, but to me the answer is taking steps to ensure that we never end up with one newspaper in town. And we definitely don't let that paper control all of the printing presses.

bostik• 5 years ago

Funny thing is, there might be a way out if we changed the incentives. Because let's be clear: FB, Twitter, YouTube, ... (and to a slightly lesser degree, Google) - they are all media distributors and opinion amplifiers. Much like traditional publishers. Only instead of creating or sourcing their own content, they syndicate.

We also have to acknowledge that content moderation at scale is impossible.[ß] The lines are hazy and fluid, context matters, and incentives are outright perverse. The volume of incoming material is overwhelming. On top of that, people with money, fame or lulz on the line will game any rules based system.

But what if these online syndicates had to publish corrections for their worst offenses? News outlets have had to do that for decades, after all. We could as a society take this as an opportunity to move the goal posts for the better. Instead of allowing the correction to be buried in a dark corner nobody ever sees, specify that the correction itself has to be displayed as prominently as the original news itself.

You're doing print? Then that correction will eat up prime eyeball real estate from the publication. (And make it clear you messed up.) You're an online syndicate? The correction needs to go through the same amplification mechanism and get as prominently on top of the users' feeds as the original item did. It eats up prime screen real estate and makes it equally clear that you messed up.

This would have three benefits:

1) Content publishers become accountable for their actions. The US media in particular is obsessed with just throwing whatever they get their hands on out there and have the readers sort it out for themselves. To hell with accuracy.

2) The requirement to surface corrections as widely as the original item(s) provides a second-order incentive. Your publication forfeits revenue and opportunity from whatever other news are currently floating around, costing both money and reputation. Mess up more often, get punished more often.

3) The readers would benefit from increased media literacy education. Get bombarded with garbage and outright lies? Receive more fact-checks after the fact, published and syndicated through the same funnels that fed you the original trash.

Freedom of speech is not freedom from accountability.

ß: Mike Masnick has been saying this for years. For a longer take, see https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191111/23032743367/masni...

ajkjk• 5 years ago

flatly, yes, that sounds like an good tradeoff.

It seems unlikely to go wrong the other way, since people are mostly sane about this stuff and agree on what should be shut out (calls for violence, conspiratorial nutjob stuff, widespread misinformation). obviously the calculation would change if Putin-style misinformation was being defended by these people, but it's not.

bzbarsky• 5 years ago

I disagree about people being mostly sane about this stuff, for what it's worth. We may have very different filter bubbles....

tylermenezes• 5 years ago

Yes. This isn't the government hunting down political opposition, this is a private company saying "hey, neonazis go somewhere else".

If a different private company wants to host the neonazis, they can go for it. It turns out it's /difficult/ for them because most people find them repulsive.

I don't hear anyone making this argument for child abuse images for what it's worth.

allarm• 5 years ago

That’s because child abuse images are objective while “neonazis” are not.

Regarding the “different private company”. Some of your people are already trying to deplatform Telegram now, because those “neonazis” went there after they were banned everywhere else.

I have been using this platform to connect with my family for years and now all of a sudden my family and I are supporters of the “neonazi” movement somehow, because of how broad the definition of “neonazi” is, for the American left wing activists.

Maybe you are okay with the collateral damage “for the greater good” but I am not willing to make this sacrifice to satisfy the American left-wingers and their witch hunt. I sympathize with the idea, but no, thank you. Please, think of another solution for your problems.

Maybe, just maybe, you need to somehow use the law system of your country to stop them criminals? Or, in case they don’t do anything illegal (I’m not implying that they don’t, I’ve no idea) - maybe you just leave them be until they do something illegal? And then like catch them and stuff? And leave me my Telegram to call my mum every evening?

Or - wow, even crazier idea - you do not ban them at all, but instead of that you follow their threads and actually prevent them from doing anything illegal when they starting to discuss it? My guess it would be much easier to do when you have this kind of transparency.

I understand it’s not that easy as massive bans of everything that moves in a slightly different direction than yours, but this would probably be the right way. Thanks in advance.

jb7754• 5 years ago

Since I primarily see the canned response of "they can build their own youtube if they don't like it", I'll rephrase to help get your actual point across:

Imagine if Hitler were currently alive and rising to power in Germany, and imagine if Silicon Valley were located in Germany. Would you be ok with Silicon Valley de-platforming and doing everything in their power to silence the Nazi-opposition political party? And knowing what's about to come, do you think the stance of "they can build their own communication systems" would be beneficial to humanity as a whole?

I'm aware this is kind of extreme but there are multiple responses that missed the point.

Khaine4• 5 years ago

You do know the Weimar Republic had hate speech laws and enforced them against the nazis:

Contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilising anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech.[1]

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...

lommelun4• 5 years ago

Would I be ok with suppressing speech if I was an omnipotent being who knew the future?

Probably yes.

vmception2• 5 years ago

The US has strong speech protections, somehow when people are wrong in their beliefs about what that means they move the goal post to this mythical “ethical” free speech maxim.

I dont believe in what those people imagine free speech means. I believe in the “first amendment” which includes freedom of association including for the non-government people that create venues and platforms. “We have the right to refuse service to anyone” as seen on any shop any where.

If you would like Congress to create a new regulation on interstate commerce preventing internet platforms from doing some particular thing, then articulate that specific position.

I am absolutely not bothered the current reality, it is the expected reality and I would like the same privileges on my own venues and platforms.

andrewprock4• 5 years ago

I have to agree with this sentiment strongly. As much as I may lament today's social media landscape, it is only a drop in the bucket when it comes to my ability to participate in our cultural zeitgeist. And as long as we are going to pursue capitalism with gusto, I am in favor of capitalists controlling their own business - modulo protected class issues.

lommelun4• 5 years ago

People are upset because at the core of this debate lies a moral conflict between deontologists and utilitarians, where currently utilitarians are in control and wielding power with complete disregard for the fact that the majority are of different ethical persuasions.

So it’s more a question of how to maintain fair platforms, than it is of free speech. The free speech debate will likely be the dominant topic of the coming decade yet no one actually wants unmoderated public spaces. We just can’t agree to the terms. If this debate really was just about the rights of a few fringe groups of extremists, rather than perceived bias in moderation, it wouldn’t be popular.

You can solve this conflict simply by setting clear rules that everyone must abide by. Rules you’d assume any rational person would agree to. Let’s say: On public platforms you’re not allowed to target any individual or group with attacks. But then you’d also have to ban people who say that conservatives are evil. Which we both know is never going to happen - as just the suggestion would lead to political deadlock. The utilitarians believe in catharsis through the expression of justified hate and anger; no, we weed rules that censor not any division, but unjustified division. We need not rules that protect personal dignity, but the dignity of some over others. In Reddit’s term of service they ban abuse of minority groups; specifically because they don’t want to ban abuse of majority groups. The ministeries of truth of our time are staffed by blue haired ideological activists with a social engineering agenda who love science but only as longs as it’s produced by a faculty that’s struggling with a falsifiability crisis.

If you’re running the communications platforms at the heart of our modern societies you must either govern it from the center, or accept that your subtle guidance however well intentioned is driving us towards ever increasing conflict. You have to govern from the center even though your personal ideology tells you that everything is relative, that truths are only meaningful in context, and that ethics is a function of cause and effect. Because to people who rather view ethics as a categorical imperative _you_ are the one who’s is driving division and pushing us towards disaster. And regardless of who’s right or wrong; it’s arrogant and dangerous to allow yourself to become dogmatic.

Khaine4• 5 years ago

Except you don't have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. It is against the law to refuse service on the basis of protected classes (i.e. race, sex, sexual orientation). These classes are thought to be immutable.

More and more evidence shows that political beliefs are inheritable[1]. Should that be protected? What about height? We know that shorter men earn less than taller men. Should short people be protected from short jokes? Should the government ensure short and tall people have the same salary? What about attractiveness? Again uglier people are less successful and have less sex. Should they be protected? Should the government put their finger on the scale to ensure ugly people have the same amount of sex?

Either, I should be able to discriminate on any basis, or I can't. The problem at the moment is we have it both ways, in ways that asymmetrically attack one particular group of people.

Nobody really things through any of these inconsistencies though because it doesn't impact most people. As the values in Silicon Valley have significantly diverged from large parts of the US, more and more people are being impacted by these policies.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/09/study-on-tw...

onlydeadheroes• 5 years ago

It will be easier to see who were the useful idiots when the usefulness runs out.

m463• 5 years ago

can be used to silence protests and to hunt down political opposition.

Isn't this what is basically happening right now?

I don't have a horse in the game, but I do remember that quote:

"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

When I see lots of "this group denied" and "this online account disabled" stuff, I think they should weather the storm.

I don't know, is this just a control-grab-during-a-crisis move?

rat874• 5 years ago

Moderation has already been occuring for a while now

This includes moderation of left wing users and things that probably should not be banned(especially minority voices). It's just the the current crop of far right and conspiracy folks complain a lot more/louder.

That said I do worry that it will be an extra excuse for authoritarian countries but it probably won't change their behavior

specialist2• 5 years ago

Don't conflate omission with prohibition.

Twitter can omit realDonaldTrump, no concerns whatsoever.

But any one prohibiting realDonaldTrump from trolling, by whatever medium, would be alarming.

specialist2• 5 years ago

What's your opinion of Project Censored?

https://www.projectcensored.org/top-25-censored-stories-of-a...

Just to pick any example:

What's the culture war label for the fate of journalist Abby Martin?

https://www.projectcensored.org/24-silenced-in-savannah-jour...

bcronk• 5 years ago

I think there's no such thing as free speech, and there never has been. Any forum worth reading has to be heavily moderated in some way. Things like scamming people and counterfeiting money are rightfully illegal. Any legitimate state is going to need to quell protests and hunt down political opposition, because at any reasonable population size you are guaranteed to have people who disagree enough with those in power to get violent and criminal about it. We saw this play out recently enough earlier this month on Inauguration Day.

Politics is hard, and absolutist ideas like completely unrestricted speech, a completely unrestricted economy, or complete privacy are at best lunacy, at worst downright impossible. I don't think I would want to live in a society where anyone could say anything whenever and wherever, where corporations were completely unregulated, or where law enforcement could never hope to gather evidence because of privacy restrictions. So I think tools and methods for restricting speech and privacy must exist, and they will fall into the wrong hands, but it's ultimately up to the public to collectively decide and enforce what is acceptable and what's not. It's an endless struggle that's been happening not since the birth of the Internet, but since people started living in groups.

tribby• 5 years ago

independent media would probably do well to look at independent infrastructure. owncast[1] is an interesting project (no affiliation), I’d be curious if there are more like it.

1. https://github.com/owncast/owncast

colllectorof2• 5 years ago

The fact that an "independent infrastructure" project gets referenced by linking to GitHub should tell you everything you need to know about the state of "independent infrastructure" in 2021.

seanp2k28• 5 years ago

It’s not that it’s so hard to set up Redmine, just again that GitHub has strong network effects and a lot of convenience. I can go star stuff and come back later. Bookmarking a random open source project that self-hosts and hoping it’s still there when I need it is less convenient.

bjt2n39042• 5 years ago

...speech loopholes?

Oh that's right... The first amendment only applies to printed materials and live spoken word. The founding fathers couldn't have foreseen social media, and certainly would have worded the amendment differently if they saw how powerful Twitter was.

ghayes• 5 years ago

The First Amendment to the Constitution explicitly forbids "Congress" from "abridging the freedom of speech." It goes no further.

There's certainly a question of public policy here, but that result will be unlikely to turn on the First Amendment.

bloaf2• 5 years ago

On whether a private company could prohibit the distribution of written materials in a town that they owned:

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/326/501/

Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.

thaumasiotes• 5 years ago

The First Amendment to the Constitution explicitly forbids "Congress" from "abridging the freedom of speech." It goes no further.

True but meaningless; the text goes no further than that, as to freedom of speech -- actually, it doesn't even go that far[1] -- but the amendment does go much further than that. For example, it is considered to be binding on the states through "incorporation" under the 14th amendment.

[1] The text prohibits Congress from making laws which abridge the freedom of speech. This is one reason I don't really understand the argument that the first amendment should protect Trump from being impeached over a speech which is unquestionably protected by the first amendment -- the legislative power and the impeachment power are two separate grants of authority.

technick• 5 years ago

I'm starting to look forward to the downfall of any of the FAANGs that become censorship happy. This shit has to stop and I know the 1st wasn't mean for private business, but now that private business has such a reach, it needs to be forced on them.

SV_BubbleTime2• 5 years ago

I feel like I must be crazy that “speech loophole” is a serious term being thrown around at all.

We can wish them gone all we want, but man I just don’t see it happening.

erikpukinskis• 5 years ago

Where would your law end? I’m curious how you’d write it...

Would it be something like:

“No person may delete content which has been made publically accessible on a server they administer without a court order demanding that content’s removal”?

Would you have a certain size threshold, like the law kicks in when you hit 1 million monthly uniques?

stale20023• 5 years ago

Where would your law end? I’m curious how you’d write it...

There is an easy answer to this. We could just model this stuff after other similar laws, that apply to other networks.

Those similar laws, are called common carrier laws, and they could be expanded to apply to more things.

duxup4• 5 years ago

I don't think FAANGs are any more or less likely to take this stuff down than anyone else.

If Pepsi was hosting a social network for 'the next generation'... they would take similar actions.

ojnabieoot• 5 years ago

The thing is that private companies also have 1st amendment rights, and ideas like “we need to force FAANGs to do business with horrible racists like the people who run Parler” is much more of a threat to free speech than “Parler can’t buy a fleet of r4xlarge EC2 instances to broadcast their racist propaganda.”

root_axis3• 5 years ago

YouTube's content policy is clearly a failure in the case of journalists covering firearms, but if you're doing serious journalism you need to pay for your own hosting and stop relying on corporate ad delivery networks to give you a free platform.

nl6• 5 years ago

Why does all discussion on HN devolve into a "yes; all speech should be free" vs "no; any censorship is reasonable" discussion.

There are sophisticated discussions around the limits of free speech available (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance#Tolerance...) and yet no one attempts to address them. It's pretty frustrating to see another "oh no censorship = bad", which is a complete strawman argument.

spiralx• 5 years ago

Labelling one side of the arguments as "pro-censorship" is hardly a good faith interpretation of said positions that is likely to lead to nuanced discussion now is it?

Discussion of this issue on HN started semi-reasonably and has gotten worse and worse rapidly. There's nothing to be gained on the subject here other than occasionally satisfying my morbid curiosity about whether it has gotten even worse than the last time I looked.

2Gkashmiri2• 5 years ago

I think Peertube with its decentralized live streaming where the moderator of the instances and moderator of remote instances where their videos are federated to are the way forward.

You dont like some instances' moderation rules, go and set up your own and then federate with only like minded people and servers.

Will it "support" extremism, probably, but will it cause them to get stuck in their own defederated bubble where no outsider can be influenced by those views? Yes most definitely.

That is a good way forward, atleast one option and the good thing about it is, its already here

pdx62• 5 years ago

I see from their blog that they support live stream now. Very interesting solution, but it lacks a community (at least at first glance). I wonder what a good social pairing with it would be to help drive traffic between federations.

2Gkashmiri2• 5 years ago

instances are federated with similar instances. one video on instance A goes to all instances in its network. everyone from those nstances or from any activitypub account like mastodon or pleroma can interact, comment, like...

chroem-• 5 years ago

Ah yes, the classic approach of renaming "rights" to "loopholes" and then eliminating them.

milkrocks3• 5 years ago

^ this

Thorrez3• 5 years ago

jumped to encyrpted sites like Signal and Telegram.

AFAIK Telegram is usually not E2E encrypted.

CivBase7• 5 years ago

The constitution protects our freedom of speech from the government, not from private entities on their own private property. Make no mistake, that's what centralized social media platforms are - private property.

Freedom of speech is not protected by the constitution on social media platforms and, frankly, I don't want 100% free speech on social media.

Take a look at HN. HN mods do a brilliant job of moderating. We don't have 100% free speech here and the platform is better for it. The discussions here tend to be much higher quality than on similar platforms like Reddit. That's probably a big reason why you're here reading this comment thread.

However... I've noticed a difference between HN and the likes of Facebook or Twitter. As far as I can tell, HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say. If you're civil, respectful, and on-topic you're seemingly allowed to present just about any idea.

Meanwhile, most other social media platforms seem content to let other people be complete pricks to eachother as long as they don't present any ideas which the platform have decided are wrong or "dangerous".

I think the HN moderation strategy makes for a much better platform. I'd rather talk with a respectful person who I disagree with than a jerk with whome I agree.

artificialLimbs• 5 years ago

*incoming nitpick

If you're civil, respectful, and on-topic you're seemingly allowed to present just about any idea.

HN heavily follows the religion of scientism. If you reject science, you will be downvoted nearly immediately. HN forgets that the reason that we don't fog our kids with DDT anymore is because 'settled science' was questioned. Yes I am generalizing by using "HN".

This is still, however, one of my favorite platforms to read.

CivBase7• 5 years ago

Yeah. I'm more focused on mods removing content and suspending/banning users, though; not just other users downvoting posts.

xmprt• 5 years ago

That's the site's "algorithm" (ie, the audience) at work and not anything the mods are doing.

kortilla• 5 years ago

Downvotes aren’t the moderation the op is talking about.

jjcon• 5 years ago

The constitution protects our freedom of speech from the government, not from private entities on their own private property. Make no mistake, that's what centralized social media platforms are - private property.

I'm getting pretty tired of this line. The American first amendment is not the same thing as the freedom of speech. People who value the freedom of speech aren't making arguments against these companies based on the law, they are stating this is a deterioration of liberal values.

Furthermore, the argument is that no corporation should have these powers that they do, thus the need to regulate or break up the large tech companies.

CivBase7• 5 years ago

I want companies to be able to restrict speech though. That's what moderation is. I just want people to hold their moderation policies to a higher standard.

sneak7• 5 years ago

The constitution protects our freedom of speech from the government, not from private entities on their own private property.

Yet, it's somehow still illegal for the phone company to cancel your phone service because you said something they didn't like while making a call on their telephone network ("private property").

You seem to be conflating constitutional rights violations by the government (1A) with the abhorrent (but legal!) practice of censorship by private organizations.

We've passed all sorts of laws to protect our communications systems and secure access thereto. This "but it's private property!" argument is a red herring.

CivBase7• 5 years ago

Keeping with the analogy, if you call into a radio show with your phone, they aren't obligated to keep you on the air regardless if what you say. They can drop you at any time. It's their show and their hardware.

mercurialshark3• 5 years ago

I would encourage you to read this article from the EFF. They do an excellent job of explaining material concerns regarding private censorship and chokepoints for the freedom of expression:

"Beyond Platforms: Private Censorship, Parler, and the Stack"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/beyond-platforms-priva...

CivBase7• 5 years ago

Thanks! That was a good read.

While I want spcial media platforms to preserve their right to moderate content, I'm still not sure how I feel about services further down the stack getting involved (like AWS did with Parler).

dehrmann• 5 years ago

not from private entities on their own private property.

Depends in the state. Free speech is protected in certain public parts of private property in California.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...

mrtksn• 5 years ago

HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say

Exactly. I think it works because it makes discussion possible even for the most extreme ideas by reducing the emotional response.

People don’t become racists/terrorists/etc simply because someone told them so. Content removal of speech supporting these ideas doesn’t do any good.

However removing things that break the discussion works. Spamming, flooding, being very rude or provocative, all make the discussion impossible.

proverbialbunny• 5 years ago

HN mods focus more on how you say something rather than what you say.

This is how the news used to be regulated in the US. Before the Fairness Doctrine news was all over the place, during it was sane and rational, after .. well we're all living it.

When it comes to checks and balances, the news can be under regulated which allows for lies and corruption like we're seeing right now, it can be regulated in an unfair or bias way, or it can be regulated in a balanced way that doesn't restrict speech, it enhances it.

The US has already solved this problem for previous platforms. It needs to go back and put checks and balances back in, instead of letting corruption remove those checks and balances and keep it removed.

ThrustVectoring• 5 years ago

Sufficiently powerful private corporations should be held to similar standards. It's a loophole in the first amendment, honestly - congress can't make a law punishing certain kinds of speech, but it can make Facebook's CEO show up to testify and threaten ruinous regulation if certain problems on the platform aren't handled.

bostonvaulter2• 5 years ago

Where does the article talk about freedom of speech? Especially as defined by the constitution? It's just making the argument that this speech should be allowed because it's relevant to the rest of the country.

CivBase7• 5 years ago

The article doesn't talk about freedom of speech as protected by the constitution. I was just establishing background for my opinion on the broad subject of social media censorship, which is article is part of.

Rochus• 5 years ago

There are also private highways and railroads, and yet the laws of the respective country apply there as well.

The laws are full of property restrictions that limit the ability of private individuals or companies to act in favor of the general interest. Our society depends on the state to impose such restrictions where necessary.

JeremyNT• 5 years ago

Freedom of speech is not protected by the constitution on social media platforms and, frankly, I don't want 100% free speech on social media.

The issue here is that a few monopolists have managed to capture so much of "the Internet" that competition is nearly impossible.

The current situation seems untenable: tech oligarchs deciding arbitrary rules on their own whims and for their own purposes, with no due process, on platforms that are impossible to actually compete against.

The obvious solution is breaking up the monopolies so meaningful competition is possible, and continue allowing platforms to moderate as they see fit. But tech oligarchs write big checks to politicians, and it's hard to imagine there's much appetite for biting the hand that feeds.

rebuilder3• 5 years ago

I find myself being more sympathetic to YouTube than most commenters here. It seems we want YT to both provide editorial oversight so that e.g. mass murderers are not given a platform to flaunt their crimes, and to provide a platform where anyone can start livestreaming at any time, anywhere.

The way broadcast media handles this is they have an editorial policy that is applied by humans producing a single stream at a time. There are multiple people monitoring everything a news station puts out at all times. It's kind of hard to see that happening with YouTube.

So while I think YT policies can probably be improved, I don't think it's ever going to be a great environment for content that depends on editorial staff to exist. Any moderation policy YT takes has to be applied to what must be billions of videos now. Complaining that they're not doing what broadcast media does feels like going to McDonalds and complaining that the chicken McNuggets aren't made of filet. It's part of the product, not a kink that can be ironed out.

dang• 5 years ago

If anyone can suggest a more accurate and neutral title, preferably using representative language from the article, I'd appreciate it. I think the story is about an interesting new phenomenon and therefore on topic for HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), but I don't think "Silicon Valley" is the right subject for that sentence, and it's not clear to me if the article is only about YouTube or just primarily.

We could change it to the article's main title, but it's a lot more obscure.

jt2190• 5 years ago

Not quite sure how to craft this into a headline, but this is the gist of the article:

Indie journalist live streams taken down due to “lack of moderation” and “non-authoritative content”

steele• 5 years ago

good.gif -- drive the violent and bigoted to coalesce in the fringe.

milkrocks3• 5 years ago

Radicalize them further, and give them nothing to lose... I bet that will work out well.

pdx62• 5 years ago

The article only mentions Rokfin, but what other live stream alternatives are there? Youtube has the most draw and algo suggestions, along with a huge community. I pay for YT because it offers a lot of great content and a good value, so I understand why creators would want to stick to that platform.

And what about indie streaming? Is there some package that glues some open source components, either to the cloud or bare metal?

I feel like there is a space for another livestream community, like YT, like Twitch, and like a Podcast, but without the main stream market filters. Maybe there is and I'm not aware of it.

When Defcon did their 'live stream' last year, they did a torrent of the pre-recorded content, YT, and Twitch because they were worried something might go wrong. By wrong it could have been anything from knocking over the service to getting banned for ... Defcon ideas. I don't think the Defcon shoot out was on there. They added live Q&A with Discord and YT. But that was it -- the only open source part was Discord (which did fall over).

Outdoorsman• 5 years ago

In my opinion, live content is often on target, just as often poorly thought out. The citizenry votes with ballots . . . and dollars. One is often as effective as the other in steering a nation toward ethical behavior. Keep in mind: A representative democracy is a grand historical experiment. If you value it, value the things that keep it going.

treeman79• 5 years ago

Have watched ad tech exes go out of there way to cut off any form of revenue to any center or right leaning site.

Was shocked out how routine it was for them.

To them shutting down alt view points was just fighting the good fight. Zero effort to comprehend the other side.

cudgy5• 5 years ago

I understand perhaps sole enterprise or small partnership having the right to control who they serve. However, if it is a public corporation, it is no longer an individual entity, a citizen entitled to control over whom you serve.

Once your company is public and traded on markets within the United States, it is now available to any individual to become a partial owner. To claim that you represent an individual opinion about whom you want to serve is only figurative. These companies are owned by thousands maybe even millions of people with all types of beliefs.

What I am seeing right now with big tech are the voices of a dominant billionaire leader and noisy, radical employees steering decisions about who should be served by the company. This minority of people in a public corporation should not have this kind of power. Their decisions should be driven entirely by the legal system and what is legally allowed and who can be legally served.

milkrocks3• 5 years ago

The fact that they're called loopholes at all is problematic.

4523454352• 5 years ago

Biden's DoJ just arrested a guy for posting misleading election memes back in 2016:

https://nypost.com/2021/01/27/alt-right-twitter-troll-ricky-...
Written on the photograph was the message, “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history,” the complaint states.
More than 4,900 people, encouraged by the misinformation campaign, cast their vote via text, officials said.
“There is no place in public discourse for lies and misinformation to defraud citizens of their right to vote,” said Acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Seth DuCharme.

Anyone dumb enough to think they could vote by sending a text message frankly shouldn't be voting. (I didn't vote in 2016, if it matters.)

And lies and disinfo are traditionally protected speech. Even lying about military service (without any intent to defraud) is protected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alvarez

The "it's a private company" argument is out the window.

4523454352• 5 years ago

To the downvoters: posting nasty, misleading memes on Twitter shouldn't warrant a prison sentence of upto 10 years. This will be a test case, not just for the First Amendment, but for the leftists who until now have been able to dodge the issue with the "it's a private company" line.

Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content

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