Is This the Beginning of the End of the Internet?

Leaf473 said:

If the big platforms are deemed part of the public square and thus have to allow whatever is allowed in said square, I wonder if a possible work-around would be for "spin off" corporations to form.

For example, there could be "YouTube hip hop" which would cater only to hip Hop themed videos. Maybe they would have 20 million users, not big enough to be the public square anymore.

Just musing.

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Even a threshold like 20 million could be enough to swing political outcomes. (especially if we're talking 20 million US members). Presidential elections are decided by far fewer votes than that.

It's a lot of grey area, and admittedly, I can't think of what that "magic number" would be with regards to the level of influence.

Somewhere on the spectrum of:

"I run a photography board with 1,000 members, and decide that I don't want to allow automotive photography" <-> "I run a platform with a billion global users that has become a free replacement for candidate advertising, and decide to block some core viewpoints of the party I oppose" lies the answer of where that "tipping point" is, but it's almost certain that it would be a hard public consensus to reach

A) ...because there will be varying opinions on it
and
B) ...because the side that it's favoring almost certainly wouldn't want to rock the boat if it's benefiting them

durangodawood said:

Interesting.

Govt mandated warnings for ideological bias.

This could be fun. Be careful what you wish for.

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After a certain point? Yeah...

I know Twitter doesn't exactly advertise....but the service they claim to offer is far different from the service that they provide.

And I think fundamentally that's where the government interest lies in this issue. If you're going to be biased and one-sided....then you shouldn't claim to be fair and favorable to free speech.

At that point, people should have some warning regarding what they are consuming....it's not fair. If you imagine that it somehow reflects the real world, you'll continually find yourself disappointed.

Ana the Ist said:

After a certain point? Yeah...

I know Twitter doesn't exactly advertise....but the service they claim to offer is far different from the service that they provide.

And I think fundamentally that's where the government interest lies in this issue. If you're going to be biased and one-sided....then you shouldn't claim to be fair and favorable to free speech.

At that point, people should have some warning regarding what they are consuming....it's not fair. If you imagine that it somehow reflects the real world, you'll continually find yourself disappointed.

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This^^^ is classic nanny state stuff.

People can see for themselves pretty quickly and painlessly what the forum moderation policies are - and whether they benefit or not by participation. This isn't child car seats or food safety.

durangodawood said:

This^^^ is classic nanny state stuff.

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Nah....if they did advertise they'd guilty of false advertising.

A functional capitalist economy (and any other economy really) requires the consumer to have some ability to evaluate a service or product.

Requiring these companies to be honest about what service they provide isn't "nanny state stuff". It's basic market regulation that minimizes the amount of deception companies can use to draw consumers. We have all kinds of examples of this.

People can see for themselves pretty quickly and painlessly what the forum moderation policies are - and whether they benefit or not by participation. This isn't child car seats or food safety.

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Right but they have no way of knowing that the company either makes no effort to enforce these fairly....or worse, deliberately enforces these policies unfairly.

Besides, people build networks....including those they use for business....and these companies are capable of creating new policies out of the blue....requiring either conformity or a loss in business.

The company should accurately advertise the service it provides. The fact that you want to protect their ability to lie to their users speaks volumes.

Ana the Ist said:

Nah....if they did advertise they'd guilty of false advertising.

A functional capitalist economy (and any other economy really) requires the consumer to have some ability to evaluate a service or product.

Requiring these companies to be honest about what service they provide isn't "nanny state stuff". It's basic market regulation that minimizes the amount of deception companies can use to draw consumers. We have all kinds of examples of this..

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No we dont have anything remotely as slippery and dangerous as the govt deciding whats "ideological bias" and what isnt, and then enforcing labels on it.

Hey lets bring back the "presidential truth commission". Perhaps they can also rule on when a show falsely claims a character is "likeable" or whether a hotel room view is "beautiful".

No one needs the government to tell them whether their free service's moderation is to their liking or not. Anyone can do that on their own on the free service - at the cost of a post getting deleted. So no, its not like food labeling or car gas mileage statements.

Total nanny state regulation for useless people, with a bonus of giving some govt commission the power to decide whats bias.

durangodawood said:

No we dont have anything remotely as slippery and dangerous as the govt deciding whats "ideological bias" and what isnt, and then enforcing labels on it.

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I would imagine this gets farmed out to the kind of agencies typically responsible for it...like usual.

Hey lets bring back the "presidential truth commission". Perhaps they can also rule on when a show falsely claims a character is "likeable" or whether a hotel room view is "beautiful".

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You mean the misinformation board the government tried to install until a whistleblower stepped up and exposed them?

With the FBI already going around pressuring these companies and Democrats in Congress already pressuring CEOs to comply with their demands....I would rather an agency with experience doing this, and a reputation for apolitical impartiality, be in charge of it.

No one needs the government to tell them whether their free service's moderation is to their liking or not.

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Nobody needs the government to require a warning label on their cigarettes either....but it's there.

durangodawood said:

This^^^ is classic nanny state stuff.

People can see for themselves pretty quickly and painlessly what the forum moderation policies are - and whether they benefit or not by participation. This isn't child car seats or food safety.

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Exactly.
Fox news can call themselves "Fair and balanced"
Truth social can state that they are a "social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology."
They can lie to their hearts content. They are not under oath, they are not a government agency.
They can moderate how they see fit.

It's just like the Comfort Inn hotel. You can bet your bottom dollar that they aren't going to be comfortable.

Companies and platforms build up a reputation through their actions, not through them telling you how great they are. People experience, learn and share their experience online (crowdsourcing). It is very easy to work out if Fox News is fair and balanced or if Truth social encourages open, free and honest discussion, or if the comfort Inn is actually comfortable.
These outfits live and die by the reputations they stand behind.

littleangelone said:

wowwwwww never heard of this before

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You have to understand the kind of government we have in Texas. The attorney general is under indictment for a felony, and he's struggling to keep putting off the trial date. And he's one of the more sane state officials.

John Owen said:

This is an intriguing article.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...dment-social-media-content-moderation/671574/

Occasionally, something happens that is so blatantly and obviously misguided that trying to explain it rationally makes you sound ridiculous. Such is the case with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’s recent ruling in NetChoice v. Paxton. Earlier this month, the court upheld a preposterous Texas law stating that online platforms with more than 50 million monthly active users in the United States no longer have First Amendment rights regarding their editorial decisions. Put another way, the law tells big social-media companies that they can’t moderate the content on their platforms. YouTube purging terrorist-recruitment videos? Illegal. Twitter removing a violent cell of neo-Nazis harassing people with death threats? Sorry, that’s censorship, according to Andy Oldham, a judge of the United States Court of Appeals and the former general counsel to Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

A state compelling social-media companies to host all user content without restrictions isn’t merely, as the First Amendment litigation lawyer Ken White put it on Twitter, “the most angrily incoherent First Amendment decision I think I’ve ever read.” It’s also the type of ruling that threatens to blow up the architecture of the internet. To understand why requires some expertise in First Amendment law and content-moderation policy, and a grounding in what makes the internet a truly transformational technology. So I called up some legal and tech-policy experts and asked them to explain the Fifth Circuit ruling—and its consequences—to me as if I were a precocious 5-year-old with a strange interest in jurisprudence.
...

To give me a sense of just how sweeping and nonsensical the law could be in practice, Masnick suggested that, under the logic of the ruling, it very well could be illegal to update Wikipedia in Texas, because any user attempt to add to a page could be deemed an act of censorship based on the viewpoint of that user (which the law forbids). The same could be true of chat platforms, including iMessage and Reddit, and perhaps also Discord, which is built on tens of thousands of private chat rooms run by private moderators. Enforcement at that scale is nearly impossible. This week, to demonstrate the absurdity of the law and stress test possible Texas enforcement, the subreddit r/PoliticalHumor mandated that every comment in the forum include the phrase “Greg Abbott is a little [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] baby” or be deleted. “We realized what a ripe situation this is, so we’re going to flagrantly break this law,” a moderator of the subreddit wrote. “We like this Constitution thing. Seems like it has some good ideas.”

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From the title, I thought you were going to talk about censorship being the death of the internet and how China and Russia were closing down free discussion. But then I read the article.

It seems this is an ill-thought-through law that needs clarification on many points.

Wikipedia already censors its articles, for example, it never endorses the considerable amount of support for an early dating of bible books nor accepts that the consensus of Christian scholars is increasingly that the people on the title pages wrote the books. Rather it points to a wider consensus of scholars that includes non-Christians. Social media firms also marginalize opinions that disagree with their agendas and these are not always pure and holy.

Freth said:

I think most of us older folk can remember a time when big tech censorship wasn't a thing on the internet, and the internet didn't end, it was just fine. I remember a time before the internet, when online communities policed themselves, or not at all, and we were just fine.

We don't need big tech to censor anything, we're grown adults. What we need is for big tech to get out of the way, and stop trying to be the politics and social justice police. Stop championing social and cultural causes for brownie points, and to sell more of their products. It has stifled creativity and ruined many a platform and franchise already.

When big tech can sway elections by controlling the narrative, something has to change.

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Big Tech engages in content moderation because advertisers demand it. Your average soap and toiletries company doesn't want to be associated with violent extremism or bigotry.

FireDragon76 said:

Big Tech engages in content moderation because advertisers demand it. Your average soap and toiletries company doesn't want to be associated with violent extremism or bigotry.

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This is true. Hence the far-right guys are twisting themselves into pretzels, trying to find a conservative was to justify government control of private businesses.

John Owen said:

Suggestions:

• Read a book

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This can be a big deal. If you don't continue to read books, you'll lose the skill. I try to get one a month in, and sometimes I don't.