Up next: a lawsuit threatening your YouTube watch queue
mux.com
mux.com
This is where Twitter could get into hot water -- if the code that was released is accurate, they were specifically promoting tweets by certain people and with certain content. They can't claim "it's just the algorithm" because their algorithm is intentionally biased based on the content itself.
Even if it was, that could have the same effect. If they test every change and only keep the ones that don't harm Musk's visibility that is in effect making the algorithm consider Musk specially.
Seems like that would could even be considered hardcoding - Buy Twitter Blue get higher on replies on threads.
Actually, I think its probably "find content that will maximise monetisation through more engagement for this user".
Which would be a good point to argue, and a good distinction for the law to make, but Google's defense is that even a deliberately pro-ISIS algorithm would be exempt under 230. From the article:
>>They argue that in an internet brimming with content, there is literally no way to present things that doesn’t involve some deliberate prioritizing of what to show. Taking their argument to its logical extreme, Google’s lawyers even claimed that Section 230 would protect a platform against suit over a deliberately pro-ISIS algorithm.
That they asserted that any algorithm would be legal doesn't tell us that their case stands or falls on that assertion alone.
At the same time they are lobbying congress to keep 230 the way it is but do what I wrote as a compromise if they have to.
They just don't want to lose Section 230 protection because it would mean the end of user generated content. Without 230 protections, every user submission would have to be reviewed before going live, even here.
Yep. And if that goes, then the last major good thing about the web will be destroyed. Or second-to-last, since some real people still actually do still put up their own noncommercial websites.
Second, it pretty much nails it in this paragraph:
> A few outcomes are possible. First, the court could uphold the lower court decisions that 230 immunizes Google from liability in this case. Second, the justices could find in favor of the Gonzalez family, taking 230 immunity off the table and causing the lawsuit to move on to its next question: whether YouTube’s conduct violates specific antiterrorism laws. Last, the court could ultimately decline to rule on the question, citing clerical issues or the low likelihood Gonzalez would succeed on the antiterrorism element.
Those are the possibilities. I had to go back and look at my notes from a few months ago because there was a similar and related case against Twitter that had oral arguments scheduled the same day, and where I ended up coming down based off a reading of the room is that most likely Section 230 is upheld entirely in the Google case by 9-0 or 8-1 and it’s not even close; but it might still be very slightly curtailed by the outcome of the Twitter case which wasn’t a Section 230 (Communications Decency Act) case per se but a Section 2333 case under the Anti-Terrorism Act.
Here is the Oral Argument and transcript of Gonzalez v. Google LLC: https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2022/21-13...
And this is Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh: https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2022/21-14...
Both are worth listening to, and if you’re going to listen to both, listen to Gonzalez v Google first as it was argued first. Oral arguments are not always or not even usually the determining factor for how a case comes out, but reading the room, I just don’t see the votes for curtailing interpretations of 230 in any significant way on the Court.
Although to be fair, they did really well on Oracle v Google (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....). The questions the Justices asked were very good and the final judgement was definitely written by a clerk who understood software well.
It's possible they might mess this up. I'm having a hard time imagining a site that doesn't make a decision on what content to show. Even HN makes an editorial decision when choosing what to show on the front page. It would be absurd to hold dang accountable for that.
We have an adversarial court system and they don’t need to know software to know the law. It is the jobs of the attorneys to properly educate the Justices in their briefs, filings and oral arguments on the facts of the case and how they think the law should be read in their favor; and the Court watches what goes on in the Appellate and District courts to gauge what issues they will be dealing with. Lastly while the Justices themselves might have left school decades ago, they regularly rotate through clerks bringing fresh opinions and perspectives into the Courthouse.
What’s important is what the law says and the way it should be read, and that’s going to be inconvenient for someone but typically any perceived defects in the law lay squarely at Congress’s feet.
Congress writes laws with the assumption that ambiguities and complications will be intelligently and justly resolved by a human being - namely, these 9 people. The issue is not that one side or the other may fail to educate the Court, it's that the problems of "what the law says" and "what justice is" and "how the internet should work" may not be entirely coherent, especially when societal norms are changing as fast as they are today.
When the Constitution was written, the word "publisher" had a completely different meaning, completely unaware of the possibility of YouTube. Even in 1996, algorithmic Internet moderation had a different meaning to what providers are doing today. How will - how should - people in 5 or 10 years moderate websites and consume content? I'm not the greatest expert on the Internet, I started using it at approximately the same time that section 230 was passed, but I'm very familiar with it and that would be a really hard question for me to answer. A senior citizen who formed and solidified most of their ideas about the way society works or should work three to five decades ago would have a really hard time wrapping their mind around the concept even with excellent guidance from the best attorneys.
We need judgements that put our society in the best position for the next decade, and these 9 people may not be sufficiently able to be coached to think ahead far enough to do that.
That is a kind of judgement, but that kind of judgment is a policy judgment, not a legal one.
If you want a policy judgment, you go to Congress; they make a determination, decide if they’re going to pass a law, and if they do so then you have a law that reflects what their policy is in the text of the statute. If you want a legal one, you go to the Courts. If there’s ambiguity in the law, then you’re going to have different interpretations, and the attorneys at trial, and often the Solicitor-General of the United States are going to present their best arguments as to how the law should be interpreted.
In other words, a trial and its eventual outcome is a collaboration between adversaries, the Justices, their staff, and the US government when they choose to chime in (they usually can if they want even if they’re not one of try party’s at trial). You’re giving the Justices too little credit and more responsibility than they lawfully possess; it is already sufficient that they have the responsibility of interpreting the laws, facts and arguments before them.
Issues that come before the Supreme Court are by nature largely toss-ups with no clear right or wrong answer. Instead of taking a risk with those 9 people, lobby your members of Congress to write laws that are so clear and specific that no judicial interpretation is needed.
I would admit that the law may need changing given the rise of internet mega-corps.
Actually to save everyone a click, let’s bring it here:
=====================
(f) Definitions
As used in this section:
(1) Internet The term “Internet” means the international computer network of both Federal and non-Federal interoperable packet switched data networks.
(2) Interactive computer service The term “interactive computer service” means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions.
(3) Information content provider The term “information content provider” means any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.
(4) Access software provider The term “access software provider” means a provider of software (including client or server software), or enabling tools that do any one or more of the following:
-> (A) filter, screen, allow, or disallow content;
-> (B) pick, choose, analyze, or digest content; or
-> (C) transmit, receive, display, forward, cache, search, subset, organize, reorganize, or translate content.
The attorneys for both sides state their case well ahead of time before the oral arguments.
If YouTube's algorithm is deciding what to show me, then I (as the user) am asking for YouTube's opinion.
So I think that there is a coherent argument that YouTube 's recommendation algorithm is expressing an opinion, and is therefore YouTube 's content.
Would it have 1st amendment protection though?
To me it seems like a platform could easily skirt this by having users opt in to recommendations (and maybe even choose a sorting criteria option) at signup.
>Would it have 1st amendment protection though?
The 1st amendment only protects against government censorship, not private lawsuits for existing causes of action (e.g., defamation). It would be individuals (like the Gonzalez family) suing YT in a world where the recommendations were deemed to be YT's own content.
> To me it seems like a platform could easily skirt this by having users opt in to recommendations (and maybe even choose a sorting criteria option) at signup.
How does opting in make any difference, for this particular point?
Not from the platform itself. Not from an algorithm.
I want recommendations of channels to subscribe to from my friends. I want a world where things like consumer reports that do honest hard work succeed over SEO growth hackering. I want a world where the human judgement of people I trust decides who gets excluded, not easily gamed content moderation systems.
My web browser blocks all cookies and therefore no matter how often I visit YouTube, it thinks I'm a brand new user. The video recommendations I see are therefore YouTube's "default" set; presumably what's trending at the time.
The recommended videos are, without exception, pure trash. We're talking everything from Buzzfeed-level clickbait with blatantly Photoshopped thumbnails to the lowest-effort softcore-porn-level sensationalist crap which is mostly composed of lobotomised talking heads, mouths agog, "reacting" to other people's content.
Quite often YouTube presents starkly contrasting recommendations, for example a video of violent combat footage right next to some kids dancing, or stuff like this elegant pairing of the sexualisation of women next to some cUtE pUpPiEs: https://i.imgur.com/TcxhVhH.jpg
It's psychopathic.
I'm mostly just recapping what was said by each side at oral argument and the potential dramatic consequences if SCOTUS finds fully for Gonzalez -- not sure I follow where you're seeing bias.
However, something worth noting: wherever 230 lands, there's not some regulator using discretion in enforcing it (like a prosecutor deciding when to charge someone with murder) -- this is a law that gives tech platforms a defense from the private lawsuits that could otherwise put them out of business (e.g., suits by indviduals/businesses for defamation because the algo ended up recommending a "John Smith is a lying fraud" video).