Obama Says Social Media Companies 'Are Making Editorial Choices, Whether They've Buried Them in Algorithms or Not' (cnbc.com) 190
Former U.S. President Barack Obama said that the extent to which social media companies claim they "are more like a phone company than they are like The Atlantic" is not "tenable," he told the publication in an interview published Monday. From a report "They are making editorial choices, whether they've buried them in algorithms or not," the former president said in the interview. "The First Amendment doesn't require private companies to provide a platform for any view that is out there. At the end of the day, we're going to have to find a combination of government regulations and corporate practices that address this, because it's going to get worse. If you can perpetrate crazy lies and conspiracy theories just with texts, imagine what you can do when you can make it look like you or me saying anything on video. We're pretty close to that now." Obama's statement that social media platforms should be considered more like publishers than public utilities would have significant implications on how the companies are regulated.
Well, duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
An algorithm is only a rule system to process data, based on the decisions of the writer.
But it's great that he said it so publicly. Maybe that will wake up some of those "The computer did it!" people.
Otherwise maybe a teensy dent with my sledghammer... "The hammer did it! I saw it!"
Re:Well, duh. (Score:4, Interesting)
Except he said the exact OPPOSITE of what the headline is claiming!
Obama is saying that social media companies should make MORE editorial decisions, like banning deepfakes of Obama. He is not saying that they should be like the phone company and not moderate content, he is saying they should moderate it MORE.
And as he notes none of that affects their protections under the law.
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"Obama is saying that social media companies should make MORE editorial decisions,"
No, you need to go back and reread the summary. He's saying that they are already making the editorial decisions via algorithms, and that humans should be making those decisions directly instead.
Re: Well, duh. (Score:3, Informative)
He is saying both guys. He is saying it's already being done, companies will need to do it more, and regulations in on the specific still need to develop further.
He is making a complex statement about a complex world. More to the point he isn't picking a side, he again is just pointing out the complexity at work.
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Remember that a decision to publish is as much an editorial decision as a decision to NOT publish.
Re: Well, duh. (Score:3)
"Obama is a deeply divisive person, it was under his reign that Antifa and Alt-Right and Anti-Police and BLM were established."
Wat
Only BLM was, and he didn't build that.
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Obama is deeply divisive because some people are deeply racist. Other than that he's pretty boring and centrist.
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I think you're both wrong. It appears what he's saying is that the big social media outlets should be regulated more like media companies, rather than like common carriers as they are now.
Now, that probably implies human content analysis rather than algorithmic, since the site would presumably become legally liable for the posts it promotes, and wouldn't want the liability for algorithmically approved obvious lies. But I don't see him making any direct claim on that front.
Meanwhile, Facebook seems to be of
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Maybe you should read the fucking article. He's saying the government should create regulations and corporate practices to make sure people can't say "crazy lies" on the Internet. What he is saying is beyond allowing social media to delete whatever they want, he wants the government to force social media to delete content that the government deems as "crazy lies". What he is saying is directly against the US first amendment.
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What he is saying is directly against the US first amendment.
That claim doesn't agree with how the courts have interpreted the first amendment since the very beginning. Freedom of speech is the right to express your honest beliefs. It doesn't include the right to knowingly tell lies. That's why laws against slander, fraud, perjury, etc. don't create any first amendment problems. The constitution doesn't give you the right to say things you know are false, especially if you're doing it with the goal of hurting someone. We've had laws about that for hundreds of ye
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And that they should make those decisions under the auspices of government control.
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Wat. Humans ARE making those decisions. That's what an algorithm is. That's what I said.
The problem that is to be addressed is that one should not blindly do it in advance, with no room for exceptions or corner cases or basic human empathy. Especially if the ones making the rules are about as socially competent regarding humans, as robots built by aliens. ;)
Re:Well, duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it should be a point, that the Social Media Companies should admit to themselves and the public, that they are indeed editorializing what they post.
Editorializing isn't necessarily a bad thing, nor is a violation of free speech. The Town Crier of Old, decided what to call out and what to not call out. News Papers edited their information to make sure what is posted is on task, and that the people get what they feel is important, and truthful. A key part of free speech and free press, is a degree of trust and honesty of the material.
Social Media may had started out just relaying whatever people posted without any editorial, like how the phone company works. However being that our feeds are rarely ever the newest stuff on top, but higher ranked posts, then going down to lower rank posts, and with Ads and request to see additional information mixed in our feed, they are indeed editorializing what we see. When that happens they hold some responsibility on how people react to misleading information.
It is more than say your Conservative Uncle or your Liberal Cousin posting something that you may not like, or may be false, but the fact it got you attention, keeps it on your feed longer, with links from other like "sources" to keep you engaged, and viewing and clicking on Ads. Is basically promoting such a message, without any tracking of the truthfulness, Because it isn't just letting time bury it, but it keeps on coming back.
Re:Well, duh. (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue about editorializing, is that traditional media outlets are legally liable for what they editorialize - If the Washington Post publishes my letter to the editor, they become legally liable for whatever I wrote.
Social media sites in contrast are free to publish obvious lies without risk of liability, since they're shielded by Section 230.
As I said above, I think there's much to be said for carving a hole in Section 230 around sites that actively promote content, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. While leaving the status quo for more traditional forums like this, where the content may be moderated, but there's no active promotion of particular posts.
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PREFACE: I can't post the proper link to CNBC because the Slashdot lameness filter filters out a word, that starts with N, which is in the actual link. When a link to a news article about censorship is censored, WE HAVE CROSSED A CLEAR LINE. I was forced to, ahem, "editorialize" the link belowm so you will have to replace the XXXX part if you want to follow the link.
News Papers edited their information to make sure what is posted is on task, and that the people get what they feel is important, and truthful. A key part of free speech and free press, is a degree of trust and honesty of the material.
Is FaceBook more like a newspaper, or more like a printer or telephone company? Previously, Facebook was more like the latter. So people re
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Are social media sites hiding the fact that they editorialize? You have to agree to their TOS when signing up and they all made a big deal of the special rules they were introducing for the election. I think they are pretty clear about it.
And also incredibly bad at making consistent decisions.
Re: Well, duh. (Score:2)
"social media companies get special protection from 230. "
No, they get the same protection as everyone else. Even newspapers get it, FOR THE CONTENT OTHERS POST TO THEIR PAGES. They are responsible for their own content, but not for others' comments.
Giving those protections to some and not others would be a violation of the first amendment.
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I don't know what you think I said, but it was neither that nor its opposite.
It was unrelated to editorial decisions. It only highlighted that many people believe a computer somehow is an independently acting entity, not related to the programmer, and that it is good that that is being said now.
Re:Well, duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I’m deeply uncomfortable with what Barack Obama said. He’s saying that the government should essentially sponsor censorship of viewpoints online. It’s breaking the first amendment through the back door.
The purpose of free speech is not to say things that are popular. It’s to say things that are offensive, hard to hear, disagreeable, or perhaps uncomfortable truths that will be conventional wisdom in the future.
And of course the way the law will work will be to ban conservative viewpoints but not lard left viewpoints. There are plenty of scary things or clever lies on the left too. And the words “hate speech” means almost anything that those who endive political correctness say it does. While I support get marriage, we have to tolerate those religious people who do not support gay marriage for example.
What if someone opposes affirmative action? I’m sure it will get labeled at hate speech and be banned. What if someone wants better relations with Russia? What if someone disagrees with the interpretation of Covid-19? Originally masks were bad, and then they were good. What if someone wants to oppose masks? What if someone says that Covid-19 is a huge threat but they don’t want regulations to bankrupt their business? What if someone merely wants to defend themselves when accused of a crime? We all know some people accused of terrorism turned out to be innocent. After 9/11 Muslims weren’t liked very much and I’m sure these proposed laws would have limited their speech.
To be clear I’m not denying that there are lies and fabrications online. People have lied about Covid-19 and said it was a conspiracy against Trump. But increasingly we are losing our freedom of speech. Recently Politico deleted an oped because the French Government rigorously disputed it. The New York Times forced out the editorial editor from the newspaper for publishing a Republican Senator’s oped. Yes, people disagreed with him, but he was articulating a point of view. Just remember the cancel culture. Recently an academic conference on the cancel culture in Australia was itself canceled.
Saying you can buy your own URL is silly because first companies have started to not offer server space to super controversial (but legal) points of view. And second, if your site gets too popular you too will get regulated. Or if it doesn’t, then no one will see it and your freedom of speech is fake. It would be like saying, you can give a speech and say what you want in a public forum. But if more than 5 people are listening, then the government will regulate the content.
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Wrongthink will not be banned, but will be shunted off to bubble sites like Parler. That will leave the cancelmobs in charge at Twitter and Facebook, which is what today's "journalists" read when the supposedly want to sample public opinion.
One result is that by next election, the polls will be even more out of phase with the results than they are today.
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will be shunted off to bubble sites like Parler.
Can 70M people really be considered a "bubble"?
Re: Well, duh. (Score:2)
The defining characteristic of a bubble is not its size, unless it is large enough to represent a majority.
Re: Well, duh. (Score:2)
Free speech is not some kind of blanket statement that covers all offensive speech in all places. If you honestly believe this go to your local courthouse and cuss out a judge.
The first amendment really mentions free speech as a passing remark regarding more complex issues: freedom of religion and the right to assemble. In these regards free speech is still wholly preseved if some website doesn't allow your content. The lines more clearly crossed when all ISPs ban your speech which is akin to your right to
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> first amendment really mentions free speech as a passing remark
Please find a country where you will be more comfortable, such as perhaps Libya, North Korea, or Burma. You don't fit in here. Which is fine.
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Sound perfect for you. Enjoy!
Re: Well, duh. (Score:2)
He is saying we need a balance. It's unclear where exactly he wants regulations to stand because he doesn't push any specific policy. What he is saying is he doesn't think the current regulation is completely sufficient for the problem. It might be he wants to allow hosts to moderate as they see fit but are required to add additional information about doctored materials. It may be he wants them to be more libel for slander. He didn't really say much because he is a politician but because he is a politi
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I would argue that the current state of things is that it is far, far easier to publish whatever one wants with a chance of having a reasonable sized audience - more so than any time in history. So our freedom of speech in that sense is greater than ever. In 1776, to say anything that got heard beyond your local pub, you had to own or be able to hire your own printing press, costing a fair amount of money. Over time, this became cheaper (and hence more widely available). Today, it is virtually free to do so
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Perhaps there's room to carve a hole in Section 230 specifically for sites that promote content?
E.g. here we have a public forum, with moderation, but there is no active promotion of posts. Every post appears in a predetermined location based on the order it was posted and your settings. So we'd fall squarely under Section 230. Ideas spread, but popularity and engagement doesn't really affect the pace.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. on the other hand actively promote content they believe will cause grea
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No, you're not "deeply uncomfortable". You're just posting crap from a foreign government, a government, I might add, who is well known to censor, in the literal meaning of the word, opposing viewpoints to the point of jailing people who publicly speak out about Putin's corrup
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This is a great example of someone being supremely confident in something that is flat-out wrong.
The "indisputable fact" is that neither candidate has secured a single electoral vote because no state has certified their electors yet.
According to your own rules, your obviously wrong post should be removed. Is that what you want?
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I’m deeply uncomfortable with what Barack Obama said. He’s saying that the government should essentially sponsor censorship of viewpoints online. It’s breaking the first amendment through the back door.
This isn't about removing free speech, but rather returning to free speech in its traditional form.
Free speech isn't the freedom to say anything, it has limitations, including yelling fire in a crowded theatre, specific threats, and liable.
And if you walk around town violating those rules to passers by in conversation you're going to find yourself in legal trouble.
But on social media, the users are too disorganized and anonymous for effective legal deterrence, and the platforms themselves aren't liable so t
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I’m deeply uncomfortable with what Barack Obama said. He’s saying that the government should essentially sponsor censorship of viewpoints online. It’s breaking the first amendment through the back door.
No, he isn't. He's saying that these outlets can (and do) exercise editorial control, so they should be treated as entities that do that, with a combination regulatory and "industry practice" approach.
The purpose of free speech is not to say things that are popular. It’s to say things that are offensive, hard to hear, disagreeable, or perhaps uncomfortable truths that will be conventional wisdom in the future.
Sort of. Free speech does allow people to say things that are offensive, but that's not the reason we have it. It's not about protecting the right to lie. Free speech is meant so that people can't be arrested for saying things that are counter to what the government or its leaders want. This is in contras
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There's obviously a difference between political opinions about affirmative action, etc., where the speaker states "I believe ...", and made up facts that were purposefully made to disinform. There was never really a question about regulating political opinions, but obviously false facts is another issue.
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We managed to come up with broadcast laws that banned lies in advertising and libel without decimating the First Amendment. That was hard. Regulating publishers online will be harder, but I think we can find a route. But I am definitely worried about government overreach here. It's nice when I could take an absolute "hands off!" position, but I think we've come to the point where *some* regulation is needed, for the same reason that we have mortgage and other financial regulation: the information environmen
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Well, there's broad rules for the algorithm, created by a human. But the difference is that the algorithm follows the rules. A human moderator however sees all the corner cases and stuff at the fringes and makes a call on each individually. Granted, the human gets very little thought time for this decision because they're overloaded, but it is a case-by-case decision. The algorithms can fail because they don't have nuances unless those are programmed in. And with the pushbacks about a potentially incor
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Computers don't do this all by themselves.
The algorithms that they choose to use with the data are important. So the choice of algorithm plus the data set is what makes the decision. The data set is also annotated by humans along the way (or at least the rules on the annotation are) saying something like "this is what an acceptable/unacceptable post looks like".
The machine is just dumb and follows the algorithm chosen exactly as specified in its instructions. Despite the use of the word "artificial intellig
Re: Well, duh. (Score:2)
Right. In this case the rule is usually "present content to this user most likely to make us money". The problem is that conspiracy theories are inherently more interesting and engaging than actual facts about reality. The classic one. The true facts about killing jfk was it was a nice day out and they left the top off his limo. One disgruntled man with a gun happened to have a good opportunity and shot him to death. Fin. But a complex network of liars and the police are in on it and the mob and the so
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As Barky said - the rules *aren't* in the data itself - except insofar as human beings put them there by annotating the data and hoping the computer extracts the rules they meant for it to learn.
That said, I'm not seeing much commentary focused on algorithms versus humans - instead it's focused on legal liability. Section 230 means a social media site can promote obvious lies without facing any legal consequences, unlike a newspaper that accepts legal liability even for the content of your letter to the ed
Re: Well, duh. (Score:2)
The newspaper isn't responsible for comments left by readers, even if they decide to delete some of them. They aren't responsible for letters to the editor being wrong, either, only if they are hate speech or similar.
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>The newspaper isn't responsible for comments left by readers,
Not online comments, since those are on a website and thus currently covered by Section 230
> They aren't responsible for letters to the editor being wrong, either,
You might want to review the law there. They publish it, that makes them legally responsible for it. Here's an example, literally the very first result that came up when I searched for "libel in letters to the editor":
A small Virginia newspaper published a libelous lette
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Before the election, Google was pushing a "Go Vote" campaign on their landing page, but only to liberal voters [whatfinger.com]. When this was discovered and the fact published, the "Go Vote" page got pushed to ALL users.
The decisions don't come from the writers. I'll agree to that. They come from C-level.
"Platforms" turned themselves into publishers (Score:5, Interesting)
The concept of social media platforms being protected neutral utilities is from early message boards where anyone could post stuff. It makes sense that for such a platform to even exist, hosts have to be shielded from liability for what people put up. The platforms turned themselves into publishers when they started financially incentivizing the content, (looking at youtube.), and when they started charging for broader distribution of content,, (looking at facebook).
More like self-publishing companies than anything (Score:5, Interesting)
You pay to have your content published through these publishing houses by giving them you information, and watching their advertisements. They exercise only the broadest forms of editorial control, refusing to publish content that would damage their brand.
They are not really like the phone company, nor are they like old-media content distributors. The current laws were created specifically to protect them and make their business model viable. Without those special protections, they could not be profitable, as the amount of staff necessary to properly editorialize every post would be prohibitive.
If we made Facebook and its ilk unprofitable, we would revert to the old days of the web, where everyone could publish their own site, and find ways to drive eyeballs to that site. Not sure that's a bad thing.
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If carve-outs like Section 230 were removed I don't think it would make Facebook unprofitable but it would make all smaller players unprofitable. Without section 230 any site displaying user generated content would be considered the "publisher" WRT liability. That puts small forums (like /.), wikis, mailing lists, and even collaborative sites like GitHub on the firing line.
Facebook can afford an army of moderators and a machine learning auto mod system. They can afford the lawyers to help them skirt regulat
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But self publishers existed pre-communications decency act, and have never been held liable for content they published. They rent out their publishing equipment, whoever uses it is responsible for the content. Similar to social media. Except, of course, self-publishing companies do not print their own ads in the bad fanfics customers publish. And they don't keep track of who buys the stuff that authors self-publish.
Honestly, I'm not even sure what the right course of action is. I just know the current situa
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They exercise only the broadest forms of editorial control, refusing to publish content that would damage their brand.
Well, actually they exercise pretty significant editorial control. I go to the 'front' page of any of them and I'll be given a very small subset of the material posted that they have, one way or another, have decided deserves being on my screen. There's no way my screen can show me *everything* that is posted nor is there a sane unambiguously fair strategy to prioritize and paginate the content.
Even for searches, choices are being made about what is most 'relevant' to what you are looking for.
Now the pace
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Yeah, but the entirety of mainstream content/media says that choosing what to publish and what not to publish isn't really editorializing. That's what lets news organizations, from radio to TV to print, shit-can certain stories, all while claiming to be neutral and simply relaying facts to you. Picking and choosing what facts to present is completely unbiased, you see. Only printing actual opinions about those facts is editorializing. Yes, that was sarcasm just now.
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I don't think many people are claiming that traditional news aren't engaging in editorial control. Definitely not in the whole 'S230' context. I think it is well recognized that news organizations have unavoidable bias that comes out in their filtering and prioritization of stories. Some are subjectively considered better than others at fighting the their inherent bias, but all are widely recognized to be editorializing even when not running 'editorials'.
Social media company argues they should be more in li
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No, they literally are not arguing that. They don't have to. There is a law that specifically applies to online companies, the communications decency act, that sets up their legal rights and obligations. It literally does not matter, under the law, whether they editorialize or not. They have been defined, by law, as not being liable for what users publish. Simple as that.
The question is, should we change the law, and why?
Don'r criticise the media, become the media... (Score:2)
Just don't post to centralised sites like Youtube and you're done. Use something like Peertube which uses P2P to distribute material, if it becomes popular your viewers will take part in distributing it so you can run a popular channel off a reasonably fast residential or VPS connection. No, you won't make money through YT ads but if your material is controversial enough to be hit by the censor it would be demonitised anyway.
Re: Don'r criticise the media, become the media... (Score:2)
LBRY is another alternative. Would be interesting to see comparisons of P2P alternatives.
The people complaining about violations of the first should really be pushing this solution instead... how about you put your bits where your mouth is... damn windbags. /endrant
people must like the algorithm (Score:2)
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People like Heroin, Cults and ISIS too. The question isn't whether the algorithms are effective and enjoyed by the user the question is whether or not they are contributing to a better society.
America has been struggling with this for ages. For a long time the universally accepted position of most Americans was the core belief of the ACLU that if they defended the KKK's right to march then that would also protect MLK's right to march. As long as there was no editorialization of speech against hate speech
Democracy is dying (Score:3)
There were always people spreading "crazy lies" and "conspiracy theories". That was never a real problem before. What changed is that now governments, journalists, and even intellectuals are doing the same for "moral" reasons. Because of this, more and more people are losing confidence in any kind of authority.
Censorship won't work. Censorship under an authoritarian regime can slow down the spread of ideas, but it can't stop it. Worse, when people can't speak, they start to use civil disobedience and then violence.
Fight fire with fire (Score:2)
Interesting that Obama's theory is that to counter censorship we must impose more censorship.
How about actually forcing the social media companies to actually act like a phone company, and not make any editorial choices. You want recommendations? Get them from a 3rd party. That would be the right way to "break up" the social media companies.
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inaccurate content of their site when it is damaging to the country
But what is "damaging to the country"? A lot of things can only be subjectively called "damaging" and even things that can objectively be stated to cause damage often help in other ways.
EG, coronavirus lockdown measures: they help slow the spread of the virus, which will prevent some people from dying. On the other hand they also have unquestionably hurt the economy, which will cause other hardships (homelessness, etc) for people.
It's not their responsibility or privilege to determine what is damaging to
Social media is paranoid schizophrenic (Score:2)
Someone has to press emergency stop button or there won't be humanity left for much longer. It is very clear that t
Re: Social media is paranoid schizophrenic (Score:2)
Society has never been stable. It's built on agreements that require enough education to respect. A moral agreement leads to a legal framework. From a purely animalistic perspective there is nothing wrong with acts like infanticide which isn't some act humans have always avoided. Through empathy, we achieve a moral agreement, often with concessions, and through this we develop our legal frameworks. The emergent issue is not inherent in the system, it's a product of the society using it. A society becom
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I do not subscribe to your explanation that society is trending toward "devoid
Not a phone company (Score:2)
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They also can't stop the a*hole telemarketers from spoofing identities and spamming my phone all day.
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What year are you from again? 1984?
Spam (Score:2)
This is stupid how to you prevent spam if social media companies become forced to either allow everything or be manual curators (a non viable solution).
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spamassassin (Score:2)
Spamassassin makes editorial choices too. That's why I run it.
Translation... (Score:3, Insightful)
Obama said...
Social Media MUST censor...
And in particular anything that challenges the narrative defined by such as himself particularly, and the Democrats generally. Anything else is BY DEFINITION a conspiracy theory or whatever.
For me, it just means social media as a means of publishing should die.
he starts off well (Score:2)
He starts off with something I agree with: Social media companies are exercising editorial control, and are not just conduits for information.
Then he gains the completely wrong idea from it: So we must control them more and make them do more to control their content.
It's like "This apple is red and delicious. Therefore ... we must put make all farmers listen to our advice on farming and toe the line."
Oh, and for anyone who says (Score:2)
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If you want post you na.zi porn or conspiracy theories or whatever host your own server. Facebook and Twitter very much are "newspapers" they just have a very large, very poorly managed editorial staff. The simple fact is facebook is a more to blame for the harm a libelous post about me is than the poster in the vast majority of cases. Had they put up their DarkOx hate page on a rented VPS somewhere (1) it would likely attract comparatively few viewers search engines or no, (2) lack any credibility.
facebook
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I am big free speech advocate. You'll see me push for rules preventing you from hosting your own content, printing your own pamphlets, that say anything you want to say.
You WONT see me do any of those things, I meant to say.
Please explain how FB & Twitter are newspapers (Score:2)
You're going to lose everything and I don't know how to get you and the free speech warriors on this forum to understand that. Every time I point out what's about to happen I get modded down into pulp (ironic given that I'm being modded down by people who oppose modding). The down mods themselves don't bother me, it's that I can't reach you to make you understand what's about to happen.
We're all about to lose everything that makes the Internet work and
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If you want post you na.zi porn or conspiracy theories or whatever host your own server.
Not that I don't agree in principle, but we have already seen hosting and internet providers pressured into de-platforming private sites. Where do we draw the line? Want your own blog you need to roll your own internet backbone?
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Well there are some natural lines I think we can draw. We don't expect Staples to ask you what you plan to print when you walk up the register with a package of paper and replacement fuser.
That line for me needs to break are you providing a 'space' in what is singular user experience, or are handing someone an IP address or even a raw ubuntu image as a VPS etc. The answer is maybe some of the hosting provider and and ISPs need to be the ones treated like utilities.
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No Obama is SUPPORTING Section 230 protections. The headline is misleading.
He is saying that companies should use the Section 230 protections even more to stop their platforms being used for fake news and conspiracy theories.
Thanks, I need to RTFA :) (Score:2)
You're one of the few sane people on
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Just remember that they don't make the decisions. They can abuse the moderation system, they can rant about it, but in the end social media companies have massive lobbying budgets and will spend an almost unlimited amount of money making sure they don't get screwed by this.
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Most of the internet is not free and open. We're not lifting up view points which are most useful or beneficial to ourselves, instead our specific biases are being exploited by algorithm to keep our engagement up. Society is being hacked. The reason it is so difficult to prosecute this hack in the public sphere is no one wants to believe that a reasonably bright human being can be manipulated by a social media company.
In systems where the control is most effective, those being controlled are the mos
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Section 230 is required in order for a free and open Internet to exist.
Nope.
A couple of my favorite sites are base in (and subject to the rules of) the UK. No Section 230 protections and pretty extensive libel and slander laws. And they are doing just fine. They just don't have a bunch of whiny conservatives that object to page three girls who waste no time flipping to page three to see if they should be offended.
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Section 230 is required in order for a free and open Internet to exist. Without it sites like /., Twitter, et al cannot risk letting users post without wealthy people in the Establishment can use lawsuits to silence whatever speech they want.
Does "free and open" social media really exists in 2020? After enduring heavy-handed moderation at the hands of "Twitter, et al" you will have hard time selling this point to conservatives.
Re: God dammit, both parties are trying to kill S2 (Score:2)
No it doesn't exist. It was always a pipe dream. Free and open doesn't mix well with capitalism. Open should be considered not preferential but the algorithms Obama points to feed people their biases because this is profitable.
It's most funny to me that people are basically wanting the internet to work like some utopian form of socialism while completely missing that any such state in the internet existed only for the shortest glimpse in history. I mean I all for the utopian socialism ticket but I think t
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To enough of a degree that it matters, you're on it right now. This website will serve as an excellent example.
Imagine that I post something forbidden in this comment.
With Section 230 protection, Slashdot wouldn't be fucked. They just pass the buck to me and/or remove the forbidden comment. They don't get held responsible for other people's actions. Common sense prevails.
Without Section 230 protection, my comment could cause Slashdot, not just me, to b
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And for the most part, I'm fine with S230 protections. I think what most conservatives are made about though is that Twitter, Facebook, etc have gone extremely overboard.
The most recent election was the nail in the coffin. See, I'm not personally convinced that there was any true fraud at the polls themselves - at least not on a large enough scale to matter. I think that mail-in ballots make it a little too easy for people to "gather up" votes (ie, most of my relatives don't vote, but if I felt motivated
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If they're really conservatives, then they'll demand their money back. OTOH, if they can't do that (i.e. they're demanding to use Twitter and Facebook's curated lists of gullible people for free and also without any TOS restrictions) then I think the voter fra
Modded own to Troll (Score:2)
Please address the actual point I raised. What is going to stop Twitter and Facebook from outsourcing censorship to third parties in exactly the way YouTube does today so that they can comply with the law while protecting the powers that be?
Pretty sure you can't, because that's exactly what happened at YouTube
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Truth trolls the best ...
Re:both parties are trying to kill S230, Not true (Score:5, Insightful)
You do, but understand: Facebook and Twitter are trying to walk both sides of a line. If they are merely a communications medium with no editorial control then they are not legally liable for slander, libel, etc. They are protected from that because they are merely facilitating communications - the individual user to posted the content would be liable.
HOWEVER, if they are going to make editorial choices about what is and isn't allowed on the site, then they are no longer a communications utility and instead are a publisher, with all the legal responsibilities that entails.
So they need to make a choice: allow everything that legally would be protected under the 1st amendment and be treated like a common carrier, or moderate more and accept the legal liability.
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Why does it have to be one or the other? I think it's clear (and the law recognizes) that social media networks are neither a fully dumb pipe like the phone company nor an affirmative publisher like a newspaper. They are a private forum, that can set guidelines for conversation without necessarily having full editorial control.
I liken it to a comedy club with an open mic night. They may have no idea what the people going up on the stage will say. They don't curate who comes up. But, they can boot someone of
Re: both parties are trying to kill S230, Not true (Score:2)
Bingo. It's like people using a forum don't know how a forum works...
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So they need to make a choice: allow everything that legally would be protected under the 1st amendment and be treated like a common carrier, or moderate more and accept the legal liability.
By that logic, should every book store in America be legally required to stock my Big Book of Insane Ramblings on their shelves because, "heh it's legally protected free speech and we wouldn't want them making editorial decisions right"?
Re: both parties are trying to kill S230, Not true (Score:2)
If enough people wanted to buy the book they would stock it. Social media just has made the cost of 'stocking' something much lower.
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If enough people wanted to buy the book they would stock it. Social media just has made the cost of 'stocking' something much lower.
But by choosing not to stock a book (either because it wouldn't be economically worthwhile or because they object to the book's contents) is the bookstore somehow infringing on the free speech rights of the book's author?
I would personally say, absolutely not. Your right to free speech does not impose upon anyone else an obligation to disseminate your speech.
Is choosing to stock a book an "editorial" decision that should open the bookstore up to libel liability if a book they stock contains something untr
So you oppose Section 230 (Score:2)
And be aware of what that means, it means the end of speech on the Internet. It will instantly become impossible for any company to allow users to post content without using the censorship system YouTube employs.
Just be aware of what you're giving up. I'm not sure what you're getting in return for it, but be aware that you're giving up the free and open Internet.
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You don't seem to realize that there was an internet before Facebook and Google.
Quite to the contrary, it will mean giving up the hegemony of these elitist giants, and a move to smaller social networks. Like things used to be.
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The current legislation allows them to straddle that line. If that is amended or removed, and sites become liable for their contributors' posts, then many sites will either shut down user comments, or even censor them even more. Now if you're goal is to destroy Facebook and Twitter (and by extension Slashdot and pretty much any other service that allows user comments), then just come out and say it and quit hiding behind anti-censorship claims.
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What exactly are you proposing? I have seen nothing that suggests that any voter irregularity greater than 0.001% of the total votes cast. If half the country thinks the election was stolen they are certainly welcome to offer evidence to that effect. I know I'd be interested in seeing it.