Congress demands tech CEOs censor the internet even more aggressively

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congress-in-a-five-hour-hearing-demands-0cf

by kodisha • 5 years ago

103 105 5 years ago

greenwald.substack.com

db48x• 5 years ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks our congress–critters are mostly jack–booted thugs.

I'd be more than happy to see the likes of Facebook and Twitter go down the drain: I think they have had a negative effect on society.

However, this display of authoritarianism by the gov is chilling and should not be allowed: this is the start of fascism, plan and simple.

_y5hn3• 5 years ago

It's an overreaction to a failed coup. The problem is the power itself, who can wield it or foresee the consequences?

As another poster says here. It's the design of these social platforms that pose risks and harm, both to individuals and society. After all, people become depressed and upset using social media. So something's amiss.

yonaguska• 5 years ago

This has been going on all last year, much longer than the sixth.

Congress is just shaking down social media for lobbying bucks again. And the social media companies actually want the regulatory capture. It's all a show.

Eventually big social will write some legislation for congress to pass, congress-critters get paid and get to say they did something while big social media gets further entrenched.

Meanwhile, Biden's DHS announces that they will be working closely with technology and social media companies to preemptively snatch up potential "domestic terrorists". I think the consequences are clear. I think many people are in denial however.

glandberg• 5 years ago

How was that a coup? It was a disorganized powerless group of people who happened to make it into the capitol because of lax security.

At best this is something like the Reichstagsbrand. Rationally a completely inconsequential event, but politically exploited for another round of increasing totalitarianism.

alexmingoia• 5 years ago

Summoning these CEOs to Congress multiple times to be asked the same questions and to berate them, is criminal harassment.

Their testimony is sought not as part of an investigation, not as expert advice, but as an opportunity to publicly berate them.

skohan4• 5 years ago

Congressional hearings are and have always been theater before anything else

ThrustVectoring2• 5 years ago

Pressuring CEOs and executives by compelling testimony is not confined to Congress. Civil court - including small-claims court - has the power to compel the testimony of relevant parties, regardless of how many billions of dollars they happen to have.

frongpik• 5 years ago

I see the first two amendments have become too much of a burden for the modern government?

sokoloff4• 5 years ago

It’s convenient that they’re dismantling our rights in sequential order.

When they get around to the fourth and fifth, people will wish they’d acted while they were dismantling the first and second.

MrMan3• 5 years ago

That's right we need to act!

smolder• 5 years ago

They aren't doing them in order, the fourth amendment stopped being meaningful when dragnet spying on the entire citizenry became the norm.

fredgrott• 5 years ago

by whose definition? Let me explain the purpose of section 230 and it's right in the US Congress bill pre-amble(intro).

section 230 set's up liability protection for communication companies that accept user content IF THEY VOLUNTEER to moderate non private speech.

IE the public speech that occurs in what be called semi-private commons.

Tis is not censorship claimed by title baiting it's protection of the public commons from delving into a huge mess not-safe for anyone to speak into

marcus_holmes3• 5 years ago

the question, as always, is whose speech gets moderated? What ideas are so terrible that you are not allowed to mention them on the internet? And who gets to decide that?

Up until now, we've been drawing the line at child pornography. Now it seems we're moving the line somewhere else. Who gets to decide where that line is drawn?

amanaplanacanal• 5 years ago

In the US, it’s whoever owns the platform. Congress can’t do it, per the constitution.

mewse• 5 years ago

Intuitively (though I don’t know enough to talk about this from a legal standpoint), it seems fairly obvious to me that social media platforms are a kind of “shared speech” system.

You write something as a user, and the social media platform repeats it later to other visitors to the platform. In effect, both you and the platform are “speaking” whatever you write. The platform can’t compel you to say something, and you can’t compel them to say something either.

Conceptually it’s a bit like slogans on vehicle license plates in the US, where it’s legal for you to mask out the slogan on a license plate (though illegal to mask the functional parts of the plate, such as the registration number), and it’s also legal for the state to refuse to put your requested message on a license plate. It’s shared speech, and neither side can be compelled to engage in speech that they object to.

I don’t see a problem, personally, from this perspective. You don’t get to compel someone else to say what you want them to say; whoever you’re asking to repeat your words always gets an opportunity to refuse. And of course, there can then be consequences for that refusal or non-refusal.

skohan4• 5 years ago

Social media doesn't have a content problem, it has a design problem. Nobody would care about QAnon if it was just some random chat room somewhere with 100 members, but the problem is that Facebook basically endorses this type of content and puts it in front of your aging relatives' eyeballs.

Censoring specific content doesn't solve the design problem - social media will still be an engine for driving social divisions, aggressive behavior, and a general escalation of the level of alarm in society. All it will accomplish will be to give certain groups an ability to bias the direction the toxic impact on society tilts.

I think there are ways you could try to resolve the design problem, for instance:

1. Anti-trust regulation/interoperability requirements to make it harder for a few players to own so much of the online discourse.

2. Regulation on algorithmically generated content feeds, and the use of ML to drive engagement.

Closi• 5 years ago

Agreed with a third addition: limits to how much content can be shared.

The constant encouragement to share / retweet / recycle any content does not help. If people only posted their own unique content, and only people they were directly friends with could see it, half the battle would be solved.

Instead if my aunt ‘likes’ a post that one of her own friends ‘shared’ then suddenly it’s in my feed. Screw that, I don’t need to see it. This stuff isn’t viral because it’s good content, it’s mostly viral because facebook is designed to encourage ‘virality’ to increase the amount of new content you see to make you revisit the app.

Censorship is not the answer, but legislation is required to cut down on the incentive these companies have to design their apps to spread crap and make things viral.

skohan4• 5 years ago

Yes exactly - and I think it's compounded by the somewhat greedy approach that these organizations take in terms of trying to manage content delivery with the least amount of human hands possible in deciding what you should see. This kind of blind algorithmic delivery is what led to this really strange, anti-social content appearing on "children's" youtube a few years ago.

These platforms are literally designed to command your attention as much as possible. We have a history of regulating things which are unreasonably effective at hijacking the human reward system - like gambling, and narcotics. Sometimes I feel like we're an equivalent period to when you could buy cocaine or heroin over the counter at the chemist because society hasn't yet recognized the cost of failing to put some controls on it yet.

Guthur• 5 years ago

maybe just segregate the "discussions", (spoilers; they aren't actually real discussions as civil individual would recognize) and then everyone can sit in their own little fluffy echo chamber and be happy.

skohan4• 5 years ago

I actually think this is a real one. One of the main problems with Twitter is that suddenly people with radically different conflicting beliefs and contexts are in the same room talking past eachother

golergka• 5 years ago

Facebook basically endorses

Is it Facebook, or are it just a tool for people to endorse it on their own?

fendy3002• 5 years ago

Social media need to be prohibited from promoting political groups / ads, and prohibited from making money from political parties.

The only political promotion they can / need to show is encouragement people to vote.

Should be the same with news promotion. I think except disaster, no news are allowed to be promoted by social media.

However users are free to follow any group / pages they like, whether it is political or news group, and add the regulation of feed algorithm as op suggested.

Social media that failed to follow that need to be regulated as news / political platform.

snicksnak3• 5 years ago

That the government is trying to expand censorship and remove things it doesn't like is something I expect, of course, even if the extent of it surprises and deeply appals me. For me personally, however, it's the members of the cathedral, who are fomenting this wave of censorship and making it their mission to slander and de-platform things they don't like, who I deeply detest and think are the real villains here.

DocTomoe• 5 years ago

Maybe the first people tech CEOs should censor is Members of Congress.

mch822• 5 years ago

I’m disappointed by the lack of quotations in this article. The headline, tone, and conclusions of the author call for a higher level of direct citation.

Here’s the C-SPAN archive of the hearing with searchable text transcripts. https://www.c-span.org/video/?510053-1/facebook-google-twitt...

matthewmacleod• 5 years ago

Genuinely baffled what value anybody sees in this article.

Regulation of social media is a serious issue that deserves serious attention. There's a huge amount of nuance, with lots of deep questions about what publishing and freedom of speech look like in a world where everybody has access to an algorithmically-controlled global platform.

In contrast to that, Greenwald just presents an absolute mash of ridiculous clickbait, dogwhistle phrases, and vague insinuations. It contributes precisely nothing to answering any of those questions.

kristopolous5• 5 years ago

It's a shame how much Assange and Greenwald have fallen.

cutler• 5 years ago

Care to elaborate?

snicksnak3• 5 years ago

Assange is in prison, possibly for life for the crime of making US war crimes public.

Greenwald has 24/7 protection because his recent reporting exposed the corruption in Balsonaro's administration and lead to Lula being freed from prison.

All the journalists who advocate censorship of things they don't like and engage in smear campaigns have never broken or reported on anything meaningful and probably never will. Many of them probably think that Assange deserves to be extradited and charged, even though that is a direct attack on their profession.

roenxi3• 5 years ago

and vague insinuations

He isn't being vague, he is directly accusing the US Congress of authoritarianism. Then later despotism. He names names. He includes video excerpts. He questions if political censorship is maybe not a good idea and makes it clear he is accusing Congress of exactly that.

You can disagree, but he is specific.

jonahbenton2• 5 years ago

Most of his specific insinuations/inferences are simply wrong. Parler was not removed because some MoC said for it to be removed. It was removed because it was hosting calls for violence. Greenwald is a crank, looking for attention. He's not worth it.

equality_11382• 5 years ago

I think he successfully highlighted a certain lack of competent leadership, which therefore makes is difficult to do the deep regulatory Q&A you had hoped for.

mjgs• 5 years ago

It all sounds very bad, I like that Dorsey took the call from his kitchen, and that he pushed back against the interrogation, the description of Zuckerberg’s testimony is kind of classic and amusing, but weirdly I don’t think it makes him look bad, maybe robot Zuck is his way of pushing back, strange to see the generational gap so evident and in public, I’m interested to read some other angles on these hearings.

sokoloff4• 5 years ago

How does this square with “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I believe that political speech is the category of speech which demands the greatest amount of protection and freedom from government meddling, even (perhaps especially) political speech that I disagree with, find inconvenient, or even abhor.

Government overreach by actors that I’m politically aligned with is to be rejected just as much as by actors I’m not aligned with. Don’t think of all the great things a government controlled by “your side” can do with all this power. Think of all the terrible things the “other side” can do with this power when they’re in control.

NeverFade• 5 years ago

How does this square with “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The whole play here is that congress will not make a law to limit free speech. The tech giants will limit free speech on their own, out of fear that congress will make other laws, such as laws to hurt them and break them down.

They're basically being extorted by congress into doing dirty work (limiting free speech) that congress is forbidden from doing by the constitution.

Aerroon• 5 years ago

It turns out that the ability regulate interstate commerce in practice allows you to regulate everything else.

mch822• 5 years ago

I’m watching the hearing on C-SPAN. Congress is asking better questions. Congress allows the content can be posted. They’re asking why algorithms recommend the content to users.

For example, at 1:14:11 Frank Pallone asks if Facebook is aware that 64% of people in extremist groups joined after Facebook recommended the groups, not because those people actively looked for the groups. Facebook recommending a group (to make money by increasing time on site) is a separate issue from Facebook allowing a group (free speech).

sokoloff4• 5 years ago

I think 100% of the (tech, 3D printer, and dad jokes) Facebook groups I joined after they recommended them. If 36% went searching for these extremist groups, that seems likely way higher than the platform average to me, but in any case that comparison needs to be made I think for the datapoint to be meaningfully interpreted.

compressedgas• 5 years ago

It's a question of liability. Are the platforms liable for the speech of their users or are only the users liable?

If the platforms are liable for the speech of their users, then they must filter. If they filter, they might be liable.

But if they do not filter, they might not be liable.

I think that common carrier status means that a platform isn't liable if it doesn't filter.

ThrustVectoring2• 5 years ago

Current US law is extremely clear about the third-party liability that various internet companies have due to user speech. It's limited by Section 230 to knowingly infringing copyright and conduct by the platform that rises to the level of criminal activity (of particular importance is distribution of child pornography). If someone defames you on Twitter or uses it to send you death threats, you cannot successfully sue Twitter, their hosting provider, or their ISP.

The only thing Section 230 has to say about filtering is that you aren't allowed to sue websites over their moderation decisions. The protection of liability for third-party speech is in no way dependent on whether or not the platform does filtering.

AnimalMuppet• 5 years ago

Exactly.

A: Company decides that it won't allow X on its own platform.

B: Government requests company to not allow X on its platform.

C: Government tells company to not allow X on its platform.

D: Government forces company to not allow X on its platform.

Here on HN, we've been having a long conversation about A, and the majority opinion is that it does not violate the First Amendment. D clearly violates it. C also does, at least in spirit, and the more so if there is an implied threat to move to D. B... it's pushing the line, if not more.

So, was this B or C? Or C with the implied threat of D? Or C with the explicit threat of D?

smeej3• 5 years ago

Why is autism one of the few conditions it's OK to condemn people for?

Are people under the impression that Zuckerberg _deliberately_ keeps his affect flat? That he's proud he has difficulty responding to social cues? That he likes having to think before responding to make sure he isn't unintentionally crossing a line?

Calling someone non-human because of neuroatypicality is just as cruel as making fun of anyone with any other condition, and it needs to stop.

blfr• 5 years ago

I completely agree with your premise. It is unprincipled that you can make fun of some races, disabilities, and traits but not others.

But I completely disagree with your conclusion. The debate was much healthier with fewer limitations. The limits didn't make it more nuanced and interesting, quite the opposite. Instead of making a point, people just squabble over who offended whom. Unbelievably boring.

Since this is from Glenn Greenwald, here's an interview with him where the interviewer straight up calls him a "pinko faggot" and the thing is easily the best interview I saw this year.

https://niccolo.substack.com/p/the-kinshasa-interviews-glenn...

tome• 5 years ago

There's a difference between condemning him as a person and making an assessment that his character might lead to certain drawbacks if he is in charge of one of the world's most powerful media companies.

fooqux• 5 years ago

I agree. However, this article crosses the line IMHO.

With some lines as:

Zuckerberg in particular has minimal capacity to communicate the way human beings naturally do.
For every question directed to him, he paused for several seconds, had his internal algorithms search for the relevant place in the metaphorical cassette inserted in a hidden box in his back, uttered the word “Congressman” or “Congresswoman,” stopped for several more seconds to search for the next applicable spot in the spine-cassette, and then proceeded unblinkingly to recite the words slowly transmitted into his neurons.

And so on. That's not critiquing his character. That's ad hominem at best and bullying behavior that you'd find in grade school at worst.

smeej3• 5 years ago

There is absolutely a place, and even a critical place, for level-headed assessment of the advantages and disadvantages anyone brings to any role.

That's not what I'm criticizing. I'm criticizing the general acceptance of treating people with autism as though they're deficient as human beings.

ben_w3• 5 years ago

Why is autism one of the few conditions it's OK to condemn people for?

I’ve been listening Quirkology (the audiobook version the book, not the YouTube channel, though both are by Richard Wiseman), and I suspect the distrust of Autism spectrum is because the outward displays — limited or no eye contact in particular, though it isn’t the only one — are what most people think indicates dishonesty.

Extra bonus irony: the behaviours don’t even really correlate with dishonesty, people just think they do.

smeej3• 5 years ago

It's especially ironic given that one of the other criticisms is that people with autism can tend to be overly honest, and not pick up when the situation calls for a polite white lie.

lnl• 5 years ago

His writing really reminded me of my high school bullies. I couldn't help but imagine him reciting these lines against me with a smirk in his face.

Just a passing remark would have been bad enough, but he devotes a significant percent of his article to it even though it is not even tangentially related to his point. He clearly just enjoys mocking it so much.

djoldman5• 5 years ago

One thing Greenwald misses in this article is related to:

Zuckerberg in particular has minimal capacity to communicate the way human beings naturally do. The Facebook CEO was obviously instructed by a team of public speaking consultants that it is customary to address members of the Committee as “Congressman” or “Congresswoman.” ... For every question directed to him, he paused for several seconds, had his internal algorithms search for the relevant place in the metaphorical cassette inserted in a hidden box in his back, uttered the word “Congressman” or “Congresswoman,” stopped for several more seconds to search for the next applicable spot in the spine-cassette, and then proceeded unblinkingly to recite the words slowly transmitted into his neurons.

Anyone even superficially prepared by a lawyer for a deposition (and testifying before Congress may be the most serious deposition possible) is instructed to lengthen all responses to just before the line of "obstructing the questioning."

In this game of modern "congressional investigation," where congresspeople are incentivized to advertise their agenda as opposed to acquire new information (investigate), it is in the best interest of the testifier, as in most depositions, to say as little as possible.

Who knows what Zuckerberg is really like personality-wise. It is likely that how he is in front of Congress is not how he is in a relaxed setting. This fact doesn't generate the clicks that calling him a robot does though...

roenxi3• 5 years ago

Mmm, yes. There is a fun game to play of "what else could have happened?". I've watched enough politically charged interviews. The only people who come out ahead by being genuine either face a sympathetic questioner, or are experienced barristers. There are more pitfalls than people realise.

Honesty gets a bad outcome for the speaker. Lies get bad outcomes for the speakers. Reasonableness gets a bad outcome. Hysterics gets a really bad outcome. The best outcome is boring, forgettable, and managing to not actually say anything that isn't pre-prepared and vetted by a legal professional. It doesn't look good then it goes away after a few days.

imtringued• 5 years ago

Yeah, it is pretty obvious that he is trading legal consequences in exchange for reputation loss. The way he speaks didn't surprise me at all. The court case against that GME investor was also filled with robots. The Robinhood CEO was the most robotic of them all, because he had a lot to hide.

koheripbal3• 5 years ago

Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. This especially applies to congressional testimony.

No one WANTS to be subpoenaed by Congress. There is no upside. If you want to talk to congress honestly, Mark Z could do that anyway, at any time.

There is only downside in testifying before congress.

MrMan3• 5 years ago

This is a superficial take and extraneous to the article.

djoldman5• 5 years ago

In a 1,317 word article, the author used 195 of them to describe Zuckerberg's affect (14.8%).

I'm confused as to why the author would devote around 15% of an article to something they thought was superficial and/or extraneous.

throw0101a3• 5 years ago

(and testifying before Congress may be the most serious deposition possible)

Is it though? How many people face any kind of consequences for, e.g., lying under oath? (Compared to a civil case or being a witness in a criminal trial.)

djoldman5• 5 years ago

That's a good question. I think you're right that there probably isn't much personal liability (although Martin Shkreli probably didn't help himself). I think it's more of a corporate liability - whatever they say will be used against them in future lawsuits.

imgabe• 5 years ago

The personal attacks on Zuckerberg are really inappropriate. I don't know him or what he's like in person. I do think Facebook does plenty of questionable things. But so much criticism of him is literally elementary school playground level "Ewww He's weeeeiiirrrrdddd". It's stupid and embarrassing. Talk about the substance.

koheripbal3• 5 years ago

It discredits the author.

Unfortunately we have no system to track and weigh articles based on a notion of author credibility. ...which is really too bad.

I would love a HN community credibility score of authors weight-adjusting the ranking of articles posted here.

djoldman5• 5 years ago

Reading Greenwald (at least lately) means to almost constantly run into phrases like:

  "Words cannot convey..."
  "one of the most stunning displays"
  "truly despotic hearings"

It is tiresome.

domnomnom• 5 years ago

I actually don't mind this.

Isn't it much more annoying when someone is pushing an agenda and pretends to be objective? At least I can relax and not get trojan-horsed by opinions.

djoldman5• 5 years ago

I think a question that journalism is trying to answer is: is pursuit of objective reporting possible and/or worth it?

The dean of the Columbia Journalism School basically said it needs to be re-examined [0].

I think one can push an agenda without the over-the-top inflammatory phrases. This is probably just a pet peeve of mine.

[0]https://journalism.columbia.edu/message-j-school-community

concordDance• 5 years ago

While the main point about government censorship being cause for concern is important, this is a remarkably poor article on the subject.

With offputting digressions such as critique of Zuckerberg's manner of speaking and it not really attempting to address the arguments of the pro-censorship crowd. He doesn't have to refute them in the article itself, but should at least acknowledge their existance and point at a decent attempt at a refutation (likely a book or blog series).

decasteve• 5 years ago

These companies are not "the Internet".

Why don't members of congress lead by example and delete their accounts/memberships with these social media companies? And stop spending their campaign money on social media. Boycott them, as individuals.

Then stop these companies from stalking everyone around the Internet by passing legislation to call it as such. Pass real privacy legislation.

Go after their advertising business model with anti-trust. Prevent tech monopolies from continuing to acquire and conglomerate.

Censorship becomes an unwinnable game of whack-a-mole without addressing the root causes.

knorker• 5 years ago

Recall that Parler, at the time it was the most-downloaded app in the country, was removed in January from the Apple and Google Play Stores and then denied internet service by Amazon, only after two very prominent Democratic House members publicly demanded this.

Uh, correlation does not imply causation. You think maybe that an attempted insurrection caused both the demands and the action completely independently? They are both effects. One did not cause the other.

But it's interesting that politicians are demanding censorship be done by private companies, because they know the constitution prevents it being done by the government.

The legislative threats they imply or state cannot be censorship directly, and they know it.

intended2• 5 years ago

Honestly the level of discussion on HN when it comes to these issues (speech and tech) drops fast.

However it is a question that is pretty open to objective analysis, provided you don’t start at ideological positions.

Right now around the world, in autocracies and democracies, nations are working to manage tech and speech.

1) Media (social/new/cable) and Democracies have been having a falling out.

2) Tech simply accelerates that process, and creates its own new patterns.

Define the problem further, break it down and then solve.

intended2• 5 years ago

No... people want govt to censor tech and social media. Every country in the world is doing this.

Cypher• 5 years ago

funny how the site talks about freedom of expression and then puts a paywall up for it's comments. Bravo

xfitm3• 5 years ago

Censorship must not be tolerated: free speech is a cornerstone of the US.

lamp987• 5 years ago

hate speech is not free speech & freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.

some level of censorship is necessary to stop nazis and such from spreading their dangerous ideas, which result in mass shootings.

censorship doesnt automatically mean totalitarian state. every country in the world has some limitations on speech, its working perfectly well in europe.

chrismcb• 5 years ago

Why is censorship needed to stop nazis? You can't have a free society if you have this kind of censorship.

threatofrain• 5 years ago

Whether right or not, Glenn Greenwood has gone all-in on conspiracy. Now it is either win or die, but there is no middle way anymore.

Here is Glenn on the CIA, NSA, DOJ, and the FBI infiltrating the news industry:

https://youtu.be/l8pkCZBjgrk?t=252

Here’s Tucker Carlson on the Biden story that Greenwald has gone all in on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXgO7L0rcAQ

Unfortunately when people go all in on exciting conspiracies of scale, I’m inclined to believe they are making a self immolating bet. It’s notable that to mitigate liability, Tucker Carlson’s lawyers have characterized him as a mere entertainer, and that no reasonable person would believe his entertainment show.

sershe• 5 years ago

I am really fond of Dorsey's attitude (the words too, as quoted at least). Myself having very little respect for most congresscritters from either party, it is really refreshing to see this displayed so brazenly. "You are stupid and this meeting is useless, I'm going to go on my phone."

Congress demands tech CEOs censor the internet even more aggressively

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