Hacker News Reader

Comment by zelon88 | Hacker News Reader

So how do you feel about blog platforms or other service providers that allow posting user-supplied comments on their platform? Should companies and non-profits all be required be to expend resources to keep your hateful comments available to the world?

How do we determine what's spam? What's advertising? What's XSS? You have a first amendment right to type any of these things into an input box. Does that mean the organization receiving your message legally has to post it, even if it fails to meet a basic requirement of not breaking their platform or insulting their user-base?

Are terms-of-service a violation of someone's first amendment? In my case where I am the only employee of my small platform, do I not have a first amendment right to not host content I disagree with on my domain with my own servers?

View on HN

>So how do you feel about blog platforms or other service providers that allow posting user-supplied comments on their platform? Should companies and non-profits all be required be to expend resources to keep your hateful comments available to the world?

Yes.

And "hateful" is a weasel world, assuming in advanced what the comments that would get censored are.

The comments could also be unpleasant but not hateful, unpopular but not hateful, not to the taste of some group (e.g. evangelicals or vegans) but not hateful, stuff societies want to ignore and hide (e.g. past crimes or system injustices) but not hateful, sexually explicit but not hateful, out of the mainstream but not hateful, and several other categories, including hateful, but rightly so (e.g. "let's bring down this fucking oppressive dictatorship and put these bastards in prison" written referring to a country under military control, or the same such against some company's like Monsanto bad practices, etc).

>Are terms-of-service a violation of someone's first amendment?

I could not care less. That's a provincial US issue. We should care what the world should be, not think in the confine's of century old laws.

In the 21st century, some terms-of-service, especially of powerful players, should be considered a restriction on freedom of speech.

Even if one still has the freedom to open their own platform, or take a box, step on it, and say what they like to the crowds in the middle of Central park...

And some if it is plain hateful. Distasteful, and inflammatory. [1]

Not all words need to be respected. Sometimes people need help, and sometimes they ask for it in subliminal ways.

And of course it's a provincial US issue. The entire internet as we know it cannot exist without provincial US law holding it together, and a provincial US economy to keep it online. We own the internet. We own Microsoft. We own Android. We own Google and Apple and Facebook and Twitter and everyone else who matters. There are competitors in these fields, but they're not concentrated enough in any other nation to make a difference. If America fell off Earth tomorrow the internet and all the technology that connects to it would be useless. Full stop.

And that should be a good thing. Healthy for your point. You don't want the internet governed on the world stage, especially if you're American.

Grab your soap box and try that "easing of restrictions on freedom of speech on a global scope" bullshit in China. Even Chinese citizens will laugh at you. They don't care about their freedoms nearly as much as you do.

[1] https://cdn.hillreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/gab-...

>And some if it is plain hateful. Distasteful, and inflammatory. [1]

Saying what's "distasteful" is about arbiters of taste, and we shouldn't allow that. John Waters was "distateful" at some point, Rock music was, famous painters were, Henry Miller was, tons of movies, and tons of other things besides. Inflammatory stuff, doxing, etc, should be punishable under common law (libel, privacy laws, etc). Hate on the other hand is one of the basic human sentiments. Why censor it altogether? Besides, usually the case is that some hate is OK (if it's towards our enemies) but other hate is bad (if it's aimed towards our side). Again, arbiters of hate, like arbiters of taste.

>And of course it's a provincial US issue. The entire internet as we know it cannot exist without provincial US law holding it together, and a provincial US economy to keep it online.

Given the state of the modern internet, I'm not sure if that's for the better.

I'd take an old-style, CERN-invented internet back, any day of the week.

>We own Microsoft. We own Android. We own Google and Apple and Facebook and Twitter and everyone else who matters.

You say that as if it's a good thing.

>Grab your soap box and try that "easing of restrictions on freedom of speech on a global scope" bullshit in China. Even Chinese citizens will laugh at you. They don't care about their freedoms nearly as much as you do.

Well, if they don't, then I don't care about their freedoms either. I care about my freedoms, and of those countries that do care about their freedoms.

I don't want to "bring democracy" to places that don't want it (resource-grab style). I want to enjoy democracy (and fuller than today's theater of it) in places that do want it.

> You say that as if it's a good thing.

From just a practical perspective, if your goal is an increase in unfettered speech on these platforms, or the Internet in general, where would you want them to be besides the United States? Since you're talking about what would and would not, (or should and should not) be allowed, I assume some form of government is enacting and enforcing this as law.

I'm not aware of any nation that takes as close to absolutist of an approach to free speech other than the US. Even in the US we're currently in a relatively anomalous period of expansive free speech protection, historically speaking.

Relevant to this conversation, "hate speech" itself is a particularly common subject of bans in other nations otherwise generally considered equal to or greater than the US where "freedom" is concerned.

That's a good point.

I think such platforms should be publicly run, perhaps something like a UN-project, and follow absolutist rules of free speech.

To me, something as crucial as a 2 billion strong method of communication (like FB), or the primary platform for web search for 8 billion people (Google, that is) shouldn't be run from a single country, nor be run for profit, nor be subject to private interests.

Especially regarding e.g. Google search, the global political, economic, public opinion shaping, etc power this gives a single private company, and to the country where it resides, is absurd.

Such services should be more like a "total archive" than a reflection of seasonal/regional/private interests, ideologies, and wills.

> Well, if they don't, then I don't care about their freedoms either.

I was making the comparison because you were comparing the internet to the world. You can't (read: shouldn't) really do that. The internet is an American invention built with selfless American principals and ingenuity. Gifting it to to the world is one thing, but assume it's for the worlds benefit (as you did in your OP) is naive. The internet, as the free world knows it, is an American invention built in an American image using American resources in an American economy with American resources. It isn't compatible with Chinese or Iranian or Russian politics, and they struggle with that. That's their problem.

When I said "they don't care as much as you do" I meant to say "they don't care as much as you do about them." In other words, you're fighting for the rights of a populace that won't fight for it's own rights. Instead they'll stand by and watch you die in vain. There is no martyr-ism in giving the Chinese civil rights. They don't understand it and they don't want it. They want a strong labor market. They want cheap goods. They don't care about being able to call out jews on some insecure gab loaded with technical debt that prevents them from being secure. They simply don't fucking care. So you making any argument on their behalf is wasted. Especially on someone else in the US. Lets talk about the internet we created for ourselves and when the Chinese get off their asses and contribute to it we can worry about them. Banggood and Alibaba doesn't count. They never will. They are B class companies and in the absence of an A class company they would still rather look for another A to shadow than become one themselves. That's their business model and it ensures their survival in an unstable market. We don't worry about those problems because we don't have too.

So worry about us. You're trying to assert your first amendment right as a consumer over mine as a content aggregator. Our rights are equal in the scope of the law. Maybe because Facebook is publicly traded there is recourse for you, but demanding FB "switch off" content moderation for the first amendment is short sighted. You signed a fucking agreement. Period. If you want to post about how jews are awful, do that on your own dime. Not Zuck's, and certainly not mine.

If your shit didn't stink so bad maybe someone with a brain and money would come hang out with you.

The big, ostensibly neutral, communications monopolies need their censorship practices heavily regulated.

People with private blogs needs to be absolutely free to control commenting however they would like.

I believe that we can respect both of these positions easily, 99% of the time, with our court systems deciding on some of the grey in the middle.

Twitter doesn't even remotely have a monopoly on political communications.

What counts as a "private" blog? That seems like an arbitrary distinction.

Seems like a very pertinent distinction to modern democracy / society.

Unlike in the 1800 when everyone could just go the the town square or publish their own pamphlet and have almost equal reach, today most discussion happens in 2-3 outlets: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

Whether those started as private companies, whether those are not public goods, etc, should be irrelevant. They have de facto captured a big chunk of the conversation that shapes the public opinion.

I'd argue the same was true for TV and newspapers in the 1900-2000 -- they had a disproportionate power of shaping public opinion, and a monopoly of control on it. That was bad -- and it was already said that "he who controls the mass media, controls democracy". Even if people still had the "first amendment right" to open their own newspaper (as if that's practical), or whatever.

But at the time, at least, newspapers and tv stations had limited pages and run time, expensive production costs, and it was at least reasonable that they couldn't include everybody's voice.

Today, services like Twitter, Facebook, etc, not only have small marginal costs for including another voice, but they encourage and actively want to add more (all) people in their platform. So there's no excuse (from that point) of censoring people.

There are a lot more than 2-3 outlets some of which have completely different and less restrictive acceptable use policies. For example I understand Reddit is huge, although I don't use it myself.

And there's always email.

The most popular websites in the U.S. where users share content are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram (Facebook's subsidiary), Reddit, Twitch, then arguably Imgur which is more a hosting site of images for other services, and maybe even iTunes for podcasts. You can monetize your content on most of these sites but if you get banned from say YouTube, your audience just dropped from the whole country to say half of the country. To compare to the real world, imagine if you were banned from speaking where half of the country lives. Besides the fact you can't get your message out even to those who want to hear it, but that your income is earned from speaking and now you can't reach your audience. These are real concerns for most content creators now that their voice and livelihood relies on these services. There is a point where we can decide these companies have too much control. Whether it be by site visits, % of total internet audience, or number of accounts/reach... YouTube has more accounts than the entire population of the U.S. Maybe that could be the threshold where we consider a company should be a 'public forum' or subject to meet certain free speech standards/regulations with their policies.

I have zero sympathy for entitled content creators who whine about getting demonetized. Earning some money from Youtube or Twitch might be a nice bonus but only a fool would rely upon it to live. If someone needs income then get a real job or start a company.

And for those that just want to get their message out, well it's never been easier or cheaper to start a web site on any number of different hosting services. If they can't manage to gain an audience on their own site then their content is crap. The percentage of traffic on other sites is completely irrelevant; any user can jump to another site with literally a single click.

I think you are underestimating the size of these companies. You say get a "real job" but YouTube pays millions upon millions of people and may be the largest employer by number of people paid. It is already a real job. There are many insanely huge YouTubers who have started their own websites and they have all failed with them. Even being the largest creator on YouTube they couldn't move traffic to their own website.

I'm not underestimating anything: traffic and revenue data is publicly available for most of those sites. Only a tiny fraction of content creators earn any significant income. Everyone else in the long tail are just picking up crumbs.

>There are a lot more than 2-3 outlets some of which have completely different and less restrictive acceptable use policies. For example I understand Reddit is huge, although I don't use it myself.

That's mostly a reason why Reddit (and others) should also be included in the list.

But even if we don't have all outlets, enforcing freedom of speech to say, the top-3 by users, is good enough for a start...

>And there's always email.

Yes, just like one is always free to think what they want inside their head, or tell it like it is, within their home.

I'm not talking about that, nor care about that "freedom".

It seems perfectly reasonable to set a (somewhat subjective) threshold and start treating companies that exceed it (in some way - e.g. number of users, % of coverage, revenue) as "public services" and controlling them more tightly. The precedent is well established (e.g. GDPR, breakup of Standard Oil, ...).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com