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Comment by k4lk | Hacker News Reader

It's an unfortunate but inevitable outcome of the attention economys race to the bottom. This area needs better regulation. The best approach is to stay out of technical implementation and focus on what principles companies should adhere to. As James Williams argue: it should be a civil right to have "freedom of chance". We already knew all too well what it does to our democracy that a large part of the public only gets their news from Facebook. Prefiltered by the monetizing interests that drives it. In such an environment there is no fair chance of deciding for one self - at one end it's one individual on a smartphone, but the other is the entire R&D of Facebook with just the one goal of keeping your focus, making you engage.

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Many people are saying "regulation"

What would that regulation actually require social media companies to do?

It's not an easy answer, but an important discussion to have. In any case, what is made abundantly clear from this information is that Facebook and others like them neither will or can protect the public interest.

I like the argument that we have freedom of choice but we by no means have freedom of chance. To me that would be a place to start in terms of finding regulation that can protect the public.

This is not palatable but trivial. Your login tied to your actual ID. Sites that won't participate can't take US funds or do business with entities that also want to do business with the US.

Call for violence or threaten people go to jail. Spread malicious lies you knew are false for political gains go to jail.

Spread others harmful crap unwittingly that would tend to lead to others deaths get a ticket for actual money and a strike. 3 strikes you can't play on social media this year. Get banned 3 years in a row get a 10 year vacation from social media.

The internet and society would be better off within a year. Within 3 most of the real pieces of work would be conspiring with each other via tor unable to reach 90% of the population.

Let’s wait and see how that works in China before doing it ourselves, too.

I think we can maintain individual rights trivially while still sending people to jail who threaten to murder people. Other lines can be carefully drawn. The idea that if we regulate harmful behavior AT ALL we will suddenly enact 1984 seems thoughtless.

> I think we can maintain individual rights trivially while still sending people to jail who threaten to murder people.

Yes, we do that now.

> Other lines can be carefully drawn.

I challenge you to draw a careful line for what is considered “harmful crap”. If you think you can do this, you are most likely a person who sees everything in black and white, and we don’t want people like that enforcing laws or policies.

I called out a local individual for trying to scam people on the facebook market and got death threats from someone who lives an hour from me who wasn't banned from facebook.

They basically aren't doing anything.

But death threats are already illegal. What does your proposal bring? Making it extra illegal? A failure of the police and other authorities to act does not mean that the law is at fault.

I'm talking about enforcement and making social media platforms liable if they don't deal with such situations expeditiously.

We don't need such standards per se because neither of us is a lunatic but if I were in this very comment to make threats of horrific violence against you or your family you can be assured that hacker news tiny moderation team would waste little time in removing my ability to post because they give a fuck about the health of this community.

Facebook by contrast deals with a fraction of 1% of such issues.

Harmful crap defined. Statements that are either knowingly false or evidence a reckless disregard for the truth herein defined as being misinformation that a reasonable person would know it is false that would reasonably be said to lead to serious harm and death by actual persons.

For example telling people to bleach their autistic kids buttholes, that the vaccine contains a chip to track you or will kill you as part of a secret government plot, that covid isn't real, that you should prefer to treat covid with horse paste or take such as a preventative measure.

OK, so you’ve now basically outlawed sarcasm, parody, art, and a number of other worthwhile things. Try again, please.

Hard cases make bad law.

I don't think its hard to distinguish between telling people that they shouldn't get vaccinated against a deadly disease because the vaccine is part of an imaginary plot to kill you leading thousands of people to demonstrably die and sarcasm, parody, art, or those other unnamed worthwhile things.

Not only are some people unknowingly spreading such info but others are knowingly communicating such lies for the lols and for ad revenue.

When we enforce existing laws we take into account context and reasonable assertions of both judges and citizens to interpret situations and the law. The law books and case law is full of fuzzy situations we successfully litigate every day.

Problem here is enforcement, as we have seen ... The Legal representatives are also elected, meaning that the legal system is also political. Everyone has something to gain out of it.

Almost every single thing you proposed is radioactively unconstitutional in the United States.

Harmful misinformation is fire in a crowded theater and threats and incitement to violence have never been protected.

There have always been limits to free speech and it has always been possible to set ground rules for how companies operate.

"Fire in a crowded theater" is an assertion that there are limits to protected speech. It says nothing about what those limits are. Harmful misinformation is well inside those limits. (And in any case it's from a decision that was overturned 50 years ago.)

For a somewhat snarky lawyer's explanation, see: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

I'm not confused on this matter I'm asserting it ought to change.

You said these things "have never been protected", and that "there have always been limits". Those are descriptive (and incorrect) statements about the actual law.

If you think the law is bad and should be different, say that. Don't phrase your policy goals as if they're the way the law currently works.

I made a few suggestions elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28743057

Real deep regulation would mean breaking up the network effect, and forcing a federated system so either people have a choice or people have tools to manage what’s on their social streams.

Here is how i think of it:

Put people in an fMRI machine while reading and interacting with the facebook feed of a celebrity, or person that they dont have personal connection with

Then show people the feed of their friends or family

Then force facebook to change its algorithms until the two fMRI readings show similar level of activation of key areas in limbic system

The real power of facebook is that it exploits the stronger emotional relationship that people have with close friends/family , as opposed to the shallow relationship they have with other public figures, which is what the TV/radio/news exploited in the past

You're putting a lot of faith in the accuracy of fMRI there.

could use other physiological signals, heart rate, nerves etc

Facebook is supposed to somehow make people not recognize celebrities as different from their own family? Sounds like a dangerous goal.

Use a most recent first timeline like the old Facebook used to do. Stop manipulating people’s emotions to get them to click on ads by controlling the newsfeed.

That’s a good start anyway.

I’m starting to think section 230 protections (as I understand them) are a bad idea. The whole issue is these negative externalities. Facebook has to choose between money for them versus good things for others. It has misaligned incentives because it isn’t liable for the harm it imposes. So make it liable.

Everyone is entirely in control of their own thoughts and opinions- these being about the only things in life that are fully under our own control. Facebook, by itself, is zero threat to democracy, it neither votes nor stops people from voting for what they believe.

We are going the totalitarian route. Ministry of Truth will tell what numbers are legal and which ones are. Publishing data that goes against a narrative is a high crime punishable by Goolags. I know it might be news for the kids but this is a common practice in Socialist countries.

The inflation rate is a hate number and banned from all platforms. Enforced by the Soviet Ministry of Truth called Pravda the russian translation of Truth.

I am puzzled how quickly something Americans were completely scared about is being so beloved by people. Do we really see ourselves as so despicable that we want to replace individual speech with government speech ?

Nonsense. We're currently doing nothing, equivalent of no route at all. We have regulations for many other areas - and for good reasons too. Saying there is a playing field is not at all totalitarian, and shouldn't really be seen as that extreme of an idea.

I also dont see why a notion of "freedom of chance" could not go both ways: "the totalitarian route" would offer equally little _chance__for the individual.

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