7 ms·

Meta wants to be an impartial platform only and exactly when it suits them to be.

by mrwh 5mo ago

tiberius_p 5mo ago
That's exactly what they're saying.
kotaKat 5mo ago
I mean, they spun up a bullshit "Oversight Board" that they can fully 100% choose to ignore and decline to implement their demands when they're made.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5mo ago
[flagged]
- kelnos 5mo ago
  That phrase does not mean what you think it means.
- epistasis 5mo ago
  A few years ago this seemed a bit too extreme for me. Now, with the web mostly burned down anyway, I see little to lose and lots to gain in a section 230 repeal. My, how the Overton Window changes on some ideas. And when it's changing on some things it tends to accelerate on others too, like a social momentum on reconsidering past norms.
  - Pxtl 5mo ago
    My compromise pitch, since the "You need ID from your users" ship has sailed: Companies are not liable if they have proper ID of the person who submitted the content and can provide that to a plaintiff. If they have not made a good-faith effort to know who submitted this info (like taking ID, not just an email address) then they're taking responsibility for the submitted content. Which means sites that have responsible moderation can still allow anonymous contributions. The real problem is the inherent asymmetry of legal battles, where the wealthiest can fight forever with endless motions and have near-total impunity while a legal action would basically nuke a normal person's life. Not to mention the fact that an international border can often make this whole conversation moot.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5mo ago
      I like this compromise. One of my issues is the lack of liability in practice. The poster is technically liable but they're anon, behind proxies, foreign, etc. and unaccountable. It results in people being harmed online without recourse. These companies should have a duty to know who their users are.
    - epistasis 5mo ago
      > Which means sites that have responsible moderation can still allow anonymous contributions. Anonymous contributions, up to the point of somebody compromising the service? With the quantity of password hash thefts, I suspect we'll see even more ID thefts this way. I can't imagine using any service that asks for ID, except perhaps from the well-established giants, so an exception for identifiability would effectively be a gigantic moat granted to the largest internet companies to keep out competition. Anything like that would need to be paired with massive anti-trust changes, as well as perhaps government take-over of the giants as utilities, none of which sounds very appealing... That said, don't take any of my rambling as discouragement, your type of thinking is exactly what we need, we need massive amounts of policy discussion and your suggestion is very innovative.
    - pocksuppet 5mo ago
      That's basically how things used to work in Germany. It used to be that if someone torrented movies on your internet connection, you were fined. No ifs, no buts, they monitored 100% of the public torrents and courts agreed with 100% of the fines. And they didn't care who did it - if they didn't know (which is almost always true) they fined the owner of the internet connection. It was a really really bad law. For 10-15 years after every other country had public wifi hotspots, Germany didn't because the owner would get fined for every torrent. After a very long time, they eventually passed a law saying public wifi operators didn't have to pay.
- LocalH 5mo ago
  Throwing the baby out with the bathwater? I believe we need to strengthen 230, but with the added caveat that affected platform owners must stop gaming the algorithms, that it must require user-driven curation. Let me curate my own feed, stop shoving shit in front of my eyes. When you do so, you're making heavy editorial decisions, and should be open to liability.
  - deeponey 5mo ago
    This is really the essence of it. Section 230 is critical to a healthy internet, but there is large grey area between editorial and platform. Places like youtube, meta, X, etc. are pretending to be platforms when really they are algorithmic editors, gatekeepers, and curators. They are much more like traditional media newspapers than say your ISP, and they need to be treated as such.
    - freejazz 5mo ago
      What about the internet today is healthy such that anyone could point to Section 230 as the reason why?
      - LocalH 5mo ago
        The internet is unhealthy today specifically because the law elevates platform editorializing to the same level as individual freedom of speech.
        freejazz 5mo ago
        I agree, but I'm not sure the person I'm responding to would. I cannot imagine how anyone could describe today's internet as healthy.
- ndiddy 5mo ago
  The main problem with 230 is that the courts have decided to treat it as if it removes all legal liability from online platforms, rather than just publisher liability. The way the text was written seems to be intended to protect platform operators from publisher liability but still have them under distributor liability. For example, if you own a bookstore and carry a book that says something defamatory, you can be held liable if you don't remove the book after being informed about its contents. However, a court case soon after 230 passed created the precedent that it absolves online platforms of all forms of liability. This means that if a platform knows it hosts illegal or defamatory content and doesn't take it down, they aren't liable and any legal cases against them will get thrown out due to 230. One of the authors of section 230 later said that "the judge-made law has drifted away from the original purpose of the statute."
  - krapp 5mo ago
    >For example, if you own a bookstore and carry a book that says something defamatory, you can be held liable if you don't remove the book after being informed about its contents. I don't think you can in the US. Maybe elsewhere, but in the US AFAIK the author is responsible for the content they publish, not the bookstores carrying the books. >This means that if a platform knows it hosts illegal or defamatory content and doesn't take it down, they aren't liable and any legal cases against them will get thrown out due to 230. No it doesn't. Section 230 doesn't allow sites to host illegal content, of course only "legality" within the framework of US law matters. All it says is that the liability for user posted content lies with the user posting the content, not the platform hosting it. Which to me seems appropriate.
zeroonetwothree 5mo ago
I think there’s a clear difference in restricting advertising vs organic posts.
- HWR_14 5mo ago
  What difference is that?
- thimabi 5mo ago
  Meta does both. It has long been said that businesses have little organic reach in Meta’s platforms, as an incentive for them to use ads.
  - lazarus01 5mo ago
    I’m not a big poster at all, but ran into this precise issue. They analyze the video posts on instagram. If they detect the video has even a small amount of commercial value, they classify it as branded content and you need to pay for it to get promoted.
  - alex1138 5mo ago
    For all the creepy People You May Know stuff they don't even bother connecting people properly even on people's personal pages https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719
stronglikedan 5mo ago
Name one platform that doesn't, and I'm not just talking about lip service.
- mbesto 5mo ago
  Signal?
- _moof 5mo ago
  There are degrees.
- RobotToaster 5mo ago
  4chan?
- bloqs 5mo ago
  It's not unilateral but if it is a commercial interest, then I'll agree that it usually is
- latexr 5mo ago
  Not an excuse. We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to bad behaviour because “everyone does it”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- pocksuppet 5mo ago
  Hacker Ne.... no wait, not that one either.
rurp 5mo ago
Yeah, glad to see Zuck is sticking with those strong free speech principles he couldn't wait to get back to last year.
- alex1138 5mo ago
  Free speech which apparently includes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178 I actually am more at odds with HN than many people might be because I think the lies surrounding covid and the censorship were absolutely wrong and platforms could genuinely after things like that lay claim to being unfairly directed, but you can tell Zuck doesn't actually care because he immediately started doing that
PaulHoule 5mo ago
Wow. Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him? Sure this will slow down the personal injury lawyers finding clients but it won't stop them, meantime it is more ammunition for Facebook's enemies to use against it. It is one thing to do shady business, it is another thing to incriminate yourself. If you were involved with weed and somebody sent you an email asking if they could come around and pick up a Q.P. next Saturday I'd expect you to give the person a correction in person that they shouldn't do that again. Not to say you should be like Epstein but I mean he and the people he corresponded with had some sense so there is is very little evidence of criminal activity in millions of emails. At Facebook on the other hand all the time people sent emails about things that could just as easily been left as "dark matter" unexplained and minimally documented decisions but no it is like that M.F. Doom song "Rapp Snitch Knishes", like a bunch of children or something with no common sense at all.
- Lord_Zero 5mo ago
  Damn whos buying a Q.P.??
- jjtheblunt 5mo ago
  language failure on my end: what's a "Q.P."?
  - tadfisher 5mo ago
    Quarter-pound
  - ambicapter 5mo ago
    quarter pound
- jmye 5mo ago
  > Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him? Nah, he just doesn't care. Nothing he does will ever get people (en masse, onesie, twosies don't matter) to stop using Meta products. People can/will complain about him forever, but shitty people will continue to help him build things, and shitty people will continue to use them.
analog8374 5mo ago
Reddit is the same way. Poke a few sacred cows and suddenly you're banned for something you did 6 months ago that we aren't going to tell you about and no we don't want to discuss it. Kafkaism is natural and organic.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
Lihh27 5mo ago
one tos clause and neutrality disappears. now meta decides which claims get reach

Meta wants to be an impartial platform only and exactly when it suits them to be.

by mrwh 5mo ago

Meta wants to be an impartial platform only and exactly when it suits them to be.

tiberius_p 5mo ago

That's exactly what they're saying.

kotaKat 5mo ago

I mean, they spun up a bullshit "Oversight Board" that they can fully 100% choose to ignore and decline to implement their demands when they're made.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5mo ago

[flagged]

kelnos 5mo ago
That phrase does not mean what you think it means.
epistasis 5mo ago
A few years ago this seemed a bit too extreme for me. Now, with the web mostly burned down anyway, I see little to lose and lots to gain in a section 230 repeal. My, how the Overton Window changes on some ideas. And when it's changing on some things it tends to accelerate on others too, like a social momentum on reconsidering past norms.
- Pxtl 5mo ago
  My compromise pitch, since the "You need ID from your users" ship has sailed: Companies are not liable if they have proper ID of the person who submitted the content and can provide that to a plaintiff. If they have not made a good-faith effort to know who submitted this info (like taking ID, not just an email address) then they're taking responsibility for the submitted content. Which means sites that have responsible moderation can still allow anonymous contributions. The real problem is the inherent asymmetry of legal battles, where the wealthiest can fight forever with endless motions and have near-total impunity while a legal action would basically nuke a normal person's life. Not to mention the fact that an international border can often make this whole conversation moot.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5mo ago
    I like this compromise. One of my issues is the lack of liability in practice. The poster is technically liable but they're anon, behind proxies, foreign, etc. and unaccountable. It results in people being harmed online without recourse. These companies should have a duty to know who their users are.
  - epistasis 5mo ago
    > Which means sites that have responsible moderation can still allow anonymous contributions. Anonymous contributions, up to the point of somebody compromising the service? With the quantity of password hash thefts, I suspect we'll see even more ID thefts this way. I can't imagine using any service that asks for ID, except perhaps from the well-established giants, so an exception for identifiability would effectively be a gigantic moat granted to the largest internet companies to keep out competition. Anything like that would need to be paired with massive anti-trust changes, as well as perhaps government take-over of the giants as utilities, none of which sounds very appealing... That said, don't take any of my rambling as discouragement, your type of thinking is exactly what we need, we need massive amounts of policy discussion and your suggestion is very innovative.
  - pocksuppet 5mo ago
    That's basically how things used to work in Germany. It used to be that if someone torrented movies on your internet connection, you were fined. No ifs, no buts, they monitored 100% of the public torrents and courts agreed with 100% of the fines. And they didn't care who did it - if they didn't know (which is almost always true) they fined the owner of the internet connection. It was a really really bad law. For 10-15 years after every other country had public wifi hotspots, Germany didn't because the owner would get fined for every torrent. After a very long time, they eventually passed a law saying public wifi operators didn't have to pay.
LocalH 5mo ago
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater? I believe we need to strengthen 230, but with the added caveat that affected platform owners must stop gaming the algorithms, that it must require user-driven curation. Let me curate my own feed, stop shoving shit in front of my eyes. When you do so, you're making heavy editorial decisions, and should be open to liability.
- deeponey 5mo ago
  This is really the essence of it. Section 230 is critical to a healthy internet, but there is large grey area between editorial and platform. Places like youtube, meta, X, etc. are pretending to be platforms when really they are algorithmic editors, gatekeepers, and curators. They are much more like traditional media newspapers than say your ISP, and they need to be treated as such.
  - freejazz 5mo ago
    What about the internet today is healthy such that anyone could point to Section 230 as the reason why?
    - LocalH 5mo ago
      The internet is unhealthy today specifically because the law elevates platform editorializing to the same level as individual freedom of speech.
      - freejazz 5mo ago
        I agree, but I'm not sure the person I'm responding to would. I cannot imagine how anyone could describe today's internet as healthy.
ndiddy 5mo ago
The main problem with 230 is that the courts have decided to treat it as if it removes all legal liability from online platforms, rather than just publisher liability. The way the text was written seems to be intended to protect platform operators from publisher liability but still have them under distributor liability. For example, if you own a bookstore and carry a book that says something defamatory, you can be held liable if you don't remove the book after being informed about its contents. However, a court case soon after 230 passed created the precedent that it absolves online platforms of all forms of liability. This means that if a platform knows it hosts illegal or defamatory content and doesn't take it down, they aren't liable and any legal cases against them will get thrown out due to 230. One of the authors of section 230 later said that "the judge-made law has drifted away from the original purpose of the statute."
- krapp 5mo ago
  >For example, if you own a bookstore and carry a book that says something defamatory, you can be held liable if you don't remove the book after being informed about its contents. I don't think you can in the US. Maybe elsewhere, but in the US AFAIK the author is responsible for the content they publish, not the bookstores carrying the books. >This means that if a platform knows it hosts illegal or defamatory content and doesn't take it down, they aren't liable and any legal cases against them will get thrown out due to 230. No it doesn't. Section 230 doesn't allow sites to host illegal content, of course only "legality" within the framework of US law matters. All it says is that the liability for user posted content lies with the user posting the content, not the platform hosting it. Which to me seems appropriate.

zeroonetwothree 5mo ago

I think there’s a clear difference in restricting advertising vs organic posts.

HWR_14 5mo ago
What difference is that?
thimabi 5mo ago
Meta does both. It has long been said that businesses have little organic reach in Meta’s platforms, as an incentive for them to use ads.
- lazarus01 5mo ago
  I’m not a big poster at all, but ran into this precise issue. They analyze the video posts on instagram. If they detect the video has even a small amount of commercial value, they classify it as branded content and you need to pay for it to get promoted.
- alex1138 5mo ago
  For all the creepy People You May Know stuff they don't even bother connecting people properly even on people's personal pages https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719

stronglikedan 5mo ago

Name one platform that doesn't, and I'm not just talking about lip service.

mbesto 5mo ago
Signal?
_moof 5mo ago
There are degrees.
RobotToaster 5mo ago
4chan?
bloqs 5mo ago
It's not unilateral but if it is a commercial interest, then I'll agree that it usually is
latexr 5mo ago
Not an excuse. We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to bad behaviour because “everyone does it”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
pocksuppet 5mo ago
Hacker Ne.... no wait, not that one either.

rurp 5mo ago

Yeah, glad to see Zuck is sticking with those strong free speech principles he couldn't wait to get back to last year.

alex1138 5mo ago
Free speech which apparently includes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178 I actually am more at odds with HN than many people might be because I think the lies surrounding covid and the censorship were absolutely wrong and platforms could genuinely after things like that lay claim to being unfairly directed, but you can tell Zuck doesn't actually care because he immediately started doing that

PaulHoule 5mo ago

Wow. Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him? Sure this will slow down the personal injury lawyers finding clients but it won't stop them, meantime it is more ammunition for Facebook's enemies to use against it. It is one thing to do shady business, it is another thing to incriminate yourself. If you were involved with weed and somebody sent you an email asking if they could come around and pick up a Q.P. next Saturday I'd expect you to give the person a correction in person that they shouldn't do that again. Not to say you should be like Epstein but I mean he and the people he corresponded with had some sense so there is is very little evidence of criminal activity in millions of emails. At Facebook on the other hand all the time people sent emails about things that could just as easily been left as "dark matter" unexplained and minimally documented decisions but no it is like that M.F. Doom song "Rapp Snitch Knishes", like a bunch of children or something with no common sense at all.

Lord_Zero 5mo ago
Damn whos buying a Q.P.??
jjtheblunt 5mo ago
language failure on my end: what's a "Q.P."?
- tadfisher 5mo ago
  Quarter-pound
- ambicapter 5mo ago
  quarter pound
jmye 5mo ago
> Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him? Nah, he just doesn't care. Nothing he does will ever get people (en masse, onesie, twosies don't matter) to stop using Meta products. People can/will complain about him forever, but shitty people will continue to help him build things, and shitty people will continue to use them.

analog8374 5mo ago

Reddit is the same way. Poke a few sacred cows and suddenly you're banned for something you did 6 months ago that we aren't going to tell you about and no we don't want to discuss it. Kafkaism is natural and organic.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

Lihh27 5mo ago

one tos clause and neutrality disappears. now meta decides which claims get reach