6 ms·

Is there some reason no digital platform producing company ever washes its hands of all moderation and leaves control of illegal activity to the people actually

Is there some reason no digital platform producing company ever washes its hands of all moderation and leaves control of illegal activity to the people actually responsible for it (the FBI, NSA, local law enforcement, etc.)? Are companies actually liable somehow if they don't take proactive steps to mitigate illegal content, which nowadays also leads into heavy-handed censorship because of what they interpret as being borderline illegal (like "hateful speech")? In other words, is this a purely risk assessment related action, or an ideological one as someone like Alex Jones would shout into a mic?

zepto 5y ago
Would you work for a cigarette company?
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Would you work for a distillery? A marijuana distributor? A casino? Plently of legal destroyers of lives to pick from.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Sure - pick any one. The point is that people are free to reject work they think is wrong, whether or not it is legal.
mulmen 5y ago
This is a reasonable question. I hope you are able to find an answer but I don’t have one for you. I’d start by reading the “you’re wrong about...” pair of posts covering the First Amendment [1] and Section 230 [2] as they are good primers, even if you aren’t “wrong”. I’d also read the text of Section 230 itself [3] and then read up on safe harbor in general [4]. That should get you going in the right direction. [1]: https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/11/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-the-first-amendment/ https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/11/hello-youve-been-referred... [2]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello... [3]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 [4]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_harbor_(law) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_harbor_(law)
- stevenicr 5y ago
  and fosta / sesta cut up some pieces of that for some sites / situations, which could create some of the issues that op was suggesting for some parts of the internet and not others (yet). Of course there has been talk on both sides of the aisles (especially the past 6 months or so) to remove 230 totally or update it so that moderating speech makes you lose 230 protections - the argument that 'we don't write the words our users do so we aren't responsible" - the 'dumb pipe' defense, starts to erode when you censor some things you don't like - especially if you censor them before they are posted - from what I understand. Of course some portals have already destroyed thier dumb pipe defense all on their own, aka cloudflare - This leads to interesting situations where I believe most users do not know that their assumed private speech is being monitored, censored, judged, reported, deplatformed etc.. IANAL, dr., etc - anyhow I think it's a fluid situation currently.
KirbyTetro 5y ago
America's free market capitalism is mostly just a ruse, the US government exercises a tight control over its people but does it through outsourcing with some carrot and stick tactics. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and other social media are allowed to stay in business just as long as they do what the US Government wants them to do. Free speech on the Internet is a direct threat to the power and wealth of the American ruling class. Keeping up this ruse of freedom is important to American society but recently conservatives in particular have started encountering the restrictive but invisible cage.
ska 5y ago
> Is there some reason no digital platform producing company ever washes its hands of all moderation Perhaps all that is necessary is the empirical observation that every completely unmoderated forum turns into a metaphorical sewage containment vessel once it gets beyond a certain size.
jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
We know what happens to totally unmoderated social platforms: you get 8chan, child porn, and the absolute worst content humanity produces. It's not just about legal liability, it's about what community you curate.
- zionic 5y ago
  This appears to be a common flaw in human reasoning. Email has sent countless child porn. BitTorrent as well. SMS? Check. Everyone understands you don’t blame AT&T when someone texts CP, but to wrap a pretty UI around your protocol and suddenly the unwashed masses expect you to be the sole arbiter of truth and legality for everything that flows over said protocol.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    Point to point communications platforms are different than social media / publishing platforms.
    - zionic 5y ago
      How cognizant is your average user of that though? A P2P facebook that broadcast your profile to another in a standard way would fool 99+% of users. Unless you're suggesting that a centralized algorithmic feed is a critical part of the FB experience.
themacguffinman 5y ago
Doesn't matter who's "actually responsible" for hateful and toxic speech if no one - neither users or advertisers - is willing to patronize your business for hosting that speech. Would you be willing to pay to use 4chan? If you ran another business, would you advertise on there? So ask yourself: if you owned a digital platform where users/advertisers were fleeing left & right because they constantly see vile content that they don't want to see or associate with, would you be content to wash your hands of moderation and impotently say "well actually the FBI/NSA is responsible for this, not me" as your platform dies around you?
NathanKP 5y ago
The goal of most platforms is to get more adoption and more users. People who post hateful, weird, and/or borderline illegal content are mutually exclusive with the vast majority of other "normal" people. When the majority of people view something as tainting then the platform will remove it because hosting it will taint the platform and the majority of people will leave the platform, or not join it in the first place. Remember Voat. They wanted to be "free speech Reddit" but predictably they turned into a cesspool of degenerate users, even for a time hosting the r/jailbait folks who had been kicked off Reddit a long time ago. And unsurprisingly Voat never got mainstream and now it is dead, while Reddit is still online and growing more and more all the time. It isn't "censorship". It is optimization.
rsynnott 5y ago
If you have one platform which bans, say, racists, and another platform which doesn't, then most normal people will gravitate to the sans-racist platform. The sales team of the latter platform then has to go out and convince people that they want to advertise to a small market of racists and racism appreciators. This, fairly obviously, isn't as easy as selling ad-space on the less racism-y platform. People have _tried_ unmoderated forums and other social media, again and again. It doesn't work. Being unappealing to advertisers is actually the _good_ case; the bad case is that people use it to orchestrate serious crimes.

zepto 5y ago

Would you work for a cigarette company?

throwawayboise 5y ago
Would you work for a distillery? A marijuana distributor? A casino? Plently of legal destroyers of lives to pick from.
- zepto 5y ago
  Sure - pick any one. The point is that people are free to reject work they think is wrong, whether or not it is legal.

mulmen 5y ago

This is a reasonable question. I hope you are able to find an answer but I don’t have one for you. I’d start by reading the “you’re wrong about...” pair of posts covering the First Amendment [1] and Section 230 [2] as they are good primers, even if you aren’t “wrong”. I’d also read the text of Section 230 itself [3] and then read up on safe harbor in general [4]. That should get you going in the right direction. [1]: https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/11/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-the-first-amendment/ https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/11/hello-youve-been-referred... [2]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello... [3]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 [4]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_harbor_(law) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_harbor_(law)

stevenicr 5y ago
and fosta / sesta cut up some pieces of that for some sites / situations, which could create some of the issues that op was suggesting for some parts of the internet and not others (yet). Of course there has been talk on both sides of the aisles (especially the past 6 months or so) to remove 230 totally or update it so that moderating speech makes you lose 230 protections - the argument that 'we don't write the words our users do so we aren't responsible" - the 'dumb pipe' defense, starts to erode when you censor some things you don't like - especially if you censor them before they are posted - from what I understand. Of course some portals have already destroyed thier dumb pipe defense all on their own, aka cloudflare - This leads to interesting situations where I believe most users do not know that their assumed private speech is being monitored, censored, judged, reported, deplatformed etc.. IANAL, dr., etc - anyhow I think it's a fluid situation currently.

KirbyTetro 5y ago

America's free market capitalism is mostly just a ruse, the US government exercises a tight control over its people but does it through outsourcing with some carrot and stick tactics. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and other social media are allowed to stay in business just as long as they do what the US Government wants them to do. Free speech on the Internet is a direct threat to the power and wealth of the American ruling class. Keeping up this ruse of freedom is important to American society but recently conservatives in particular have started encountering the restrictive but invisible cage.

ska 5y ago

> Is there some reason no digital platform producing company ever washes its hands of all moderation Perhaps all that is necessary is the empirical observation that every completely unmoderated forum turns into a metaphorical sewage containment vessel once it gets beyond a certain size.

jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago

We know what happens to totally unmoderated social platforms: you get 8chan, child porn, and the absolute worst content humanity produces. It's not just about legal liability, it's about what community you curate.

zionic 5y ago
This appears to be a common flaw in human reasoning. Email has sent countless child porn. BitTorrent as well. SMS? Check. Everyone understands you don’t blame AT&T when someone texts CP, but to wrap a pretty UI around your protocol and suddenly the unwashed masses expect you to be the sole arbiter of truth and legality for everything that flows over said protocol.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
  Point to point communications platforms are different than social media / publishing platforms.
  - zionic 5y ago
    How cognizant is your average user of that though? A P2P facebook that broadcast your profile to another in a standard way would fool 99+% of users. Unless you're suggesting that a centralized algorithmic feed is a critical part of the FB experience.

themacguffinman 5y ago

Doesn't matter who's "actually responsible" for hateful and toxic speech if no one - neither users or advertisers - is willing to patronize your business for hosting that speech. Would you be willing to pay to use 4chan? If you ran another business, would you advertise on there? So ask yourself: if you owned a digital platform where users/advertisers were fleeing left & right because they constantly see vile content that they don't want to see or associate with, would you be content to wash your hands of moderation and impotently say "well actually the FBI/NSA is responsible for this, not me" as your platform dies around you?

NathanKP 5y ago

The goal of most platforms is to get more adoption and more users. People who post hateful, weird, and/or borderline illegal content are mutually exclusive with the vast majority of other "normal" people. When the majority of people view something as tainting then the platform will remove it because hosting it will taint the platform and the majority of people will leave the platform, or not join it in the first place. Remember Voat. They wanted to be "free speech Reddit" but predictably they turned into a cesspool of degenerate users, even for a time hosting the r/jailbait folks who had been kicked off Reddit a long time ago. And unsurprisingly Voat never got mainstream and now it is dead, while Reddit is still online and growing more and more all the time. It isn't "censorship". It is optimization.

rsynnott 5y ago

If you have one platform which bans, say, racists, and another platform which doesn't, then most normal people will gravitate to the sans-racist platform. The sales team of the latter platform then has to go out and convince people that they want to advertise to a small market of racists and racism appreciators. This, fairly obviously, isn't as easy as selling ad-space on the less racism-y platform. People have _tried_ unmoderated forums and other social media, again and again. It doesn't work. Being unappealing to advertisers is actually the _good_ case; the bad case is that people use it to orchestrate serious crimes.