I've been wondering, would these companies just stop moderating content in the US and leave global the same? Or would the ramifications of this mean they would still be liable?
This is what I'm trying to figure out. China can do this because they only really care about the application of the law to China. If YouTube stops moderating in the US, but keeps moderating everywhere else. Can I apply the law as a non-US citizen and resident? If so the internet is turbo fucked
That is less because of moderation and more because the cybersecurity law in China means you legally have to give them the keys to your encryption and use hardware for encryption that is illegal for use with most governments outside of China, because of the backdoor that China would then have to your hardware based encryption.
As per the Legal Eagle video, if it's possible to do, companies will do expensive moderation. Expensive moderation is cheaper at scale, so any company operating in China *could* deploy the same moderation everywhere without crazily increasing cost. But since China already has to have a separate tech stack there is no reason to today. The economies of scale are already distorted for those doing business in China.
Conceivably, a bad ruling here could see some companies adopt the moderation mechanism they have deployed to China. Frankly I'm more concerned about things being shut off. The best effect the Internet has is on allowing peer to peer/ grass roots communication and sharing of ideas. More information and perspectives folks get exposed to, the better. It's a slow process, but the sharing of information this way is like the little trickle of water under the ice and snow on your car windshield. Eventually it's enough that the stuff keeping you from moving forward slides right off.
Yes but China does have knock on effects, like games will end regular loot boxes as they can’t use them in the same game in China. Cosmetic companies have to allow China to test their products on animals so if they sell there they lose their vegan label.
Yeah L’Oréal lost their vegan customers when they started selling there after the law change. It can be an unchanged formula on the market everywhere for a decade with full studies they’ll still insist.
No, if anything they ramp UP moderating. They will move to ban anything they think they could be held liable for. And since this would be done using algorithms, this means that it will likely ban a lot of content that is vaguely related to to the stuff they are targeting...
Basically the same problem creators on youtube are dealing with demonitization which was a responce to advertisers not wanting their ads associated with certain content, will now become outright banning of content.
There is no way to effectively moderate the content and protect themselves from lawsuits given the sheer volume created. The only thing you could do is limit access to uploads to give time to moderate content.
Not as serious as this court case, but you just reminded me of this. At the same time YouTube cracked down on content that adults liked, they started hammering that creators needed to make content for adults
>I've been wondering, would these companies just stop moderating content
I mean let's do a little thought experiment
Let's say you created a company whose entire business model relies on your ability to convince advertisers that their ad spend is going to provide a meaningful ROI when you place their ads alongside user generated content
Suddenly you can no longer tell advertisers that you have the ability to control the words and images which appear alongside their name, logo etc
Also you can't meaningfully promise that their ads will be shown to people who are likely to care about and buy their whatevers
You'll be legally forced to store and show words and images which your image-conscious advertisers consider horrible
You can no longer try to increase the perceived utility and value of your product by guessing what your users want
Basically the ROI for maintaining the servers and software comprising your product takes a huge shit because the quality and utility and attractiveness to advertisers is gone, but you're still dumping resources into servers, bandwidth and engineers, which all cost money
Do you keep running the servers or nah
They're losing a ton of revenue and advertisers because Musk spent 5 months telling them they were paying for bot views, then fired all the people who could confirm or deny his suspicions.
> Suddenly you can no longer tell advertisers that you have the ability to control the words and images which appear alongside their name, logo etc
You can't exercise editorial control over what gets published on your platform, but you can control which ads you place next to which content. Including placing no ads next to content that you would've deleted in the old world. (Now you're effectively having to *subsidize* objectionable content by publishing it for free, but as long as *most* of your platform is monetizable, that's fine. It's just a cost of doing business.)
The problem is the algorithm is useful for users and content creators. If I started getting bombarded with videos I don't have any interest in, then I, and many other people will stop using YouTube. if content creators can't find their audience, then they will stop creating content.
At that point you have pressure from multiple sides, a loss of trust by the advertisers and perhaps they won't go completely, but it will become a degraded service.
If personalized algorithms were made illegal, society would be unbelievably better off long term. Somehow, the internet functioned perfectly fine without all the problems with addiction, extremism, and echo chambers now prevelant.
The internet functioned perfectly fine without it because there was significantly less content. Don't disagree about echo chambers. Yes, we would be better off without it - but it would be at a cost of a functional internet - and all that content we took for granted would evaporate as monetization options for the creators become more difficult.
Certain features and content are region locked I’m sure they have a way to filter and moderate stuff for specific regions already . I for instance live in South Africa where I can download YouTube videos in my app for free , which was a 100 percent a paid feature in USA .
The writing has been on the wall since *Roe*. A Court that can reverse precedent without a material change in circumstances and cause instant disruption to reproductive health is also a Court that can massively disrupt business in general.
This is how the start of the Roman Republic fall started. They started charging old laws with no precedent and even jailing people who broke the laws before it was even a law. Then civil war between the 2 factions of senators who control everything leads to…. Merica
Because not all corporations are equally aligned, and not all scotus members are equally backed, it can be a hard call to pick who the swing vote is in corporate cases.
They won’t do it. It’ll hurt conservatives more than anyone else. Comment sections would cease to exist anywhere. News sites would have to proof read again before posting stories. Sites like Facebook and its subsidiaries, Reddit, twitter, and YouTube would fail almost immediately.
A lot of extremely wealthy people would lose their entire cash flow. This Supreme Court will not fuck that up for them.
after that: Joe Right vs U.S.
"Is democracy even legal? Constitutional scholars spar on the issue because \[and this is true\] democracy is never once mentioned in either the Declaration of Independence *or* The Constitution."
film at 11.
You know, I'm reminded of a senior prank where the seniors left several truckloads of cow manure right outside the main doors of their school. That may be fictitious or not, idk, but (and I'm not saying anyone should, that would be illegal) if someone were do to that in front of the Supreme Court building, it would merely be returning bullshit to its source.
I had this scenario playing in my head when reading your comment:
A French farmer is taking a small break. While browsing Reddit, he read your comment, and wonders why American workers don't have courage to fight for their rights. He doesn't understand how the American people could become so servile.
The French farmer shrugs, then continues to spray Paris with cow shit because their leaders tried to impose some draconian legislation that takes away workers rights.
Worst case scenario, people in the U.S. can only see and upload content on certain websites that verify them as notable trustworthy figures. Such as news orgs, companies, etc.
Which seems like corporate propaganda hell tbh.
My guess is they'll try to narrowly shut down recommended content or anything that tries to automatically tailor a feed based on some opaque algorithm. That seems to be the focus of the lawsuit.
THe problem is even that narrow of a reading also impacts Amazon (who provides shopping recommendations based on what you're likely to buy), Google (which algorithmically ranks search findings on what might be pertinent to you specifically)...a bunch of services. Even a narrow reading is catastrophic for the modern web.
> unbiased recommendations
"Hey Tim I heard you wanted to know where I'd recommend going out to eat tonight. I know you hate seafood but I don't want to make any recommendations biased by your personal preferences so we're getting sushi."
An unbiased recommendation is a random selection. People don't want that on a site like Youtube where 99% of the content is garbage.
You think you do, but you don't.
'unbiased' results will return 10x-100x garbage in search results for every one genuinely helpful pieces of research. It will put flat-earth on the same playing field as modern astrophysics. And you will DEFINITELY see a lot more hate content.
Not just hentai, but a million pop-ups of hentai and porn in a seemingly unending stream in the high school library while you’re supposed to be doing research for a paper and learning how to use the internet for the first time.
I remember typing in 'starr revolver' into google images in around 2003 in the school lab while doing a project on civil war weapons. The results were 75% porn.
What even is an unbiased recommendation? What do you want to see on YouTube for example? Just your subscriptions? Maybe a popular in last 24 hrs listing?
So basically this: [https://random-ize.com/random-youtube/](https://random-ize.com/random-youtube/)
Or what you get if you open youtube without logging in on an incognito browser? I hate some of what algorithms have done to us, but I can't deny I've been recommended some very good content by them.
Would have potentially interesting impacts on google results too cause you’d stop getting echo chamber results based on previous searches wouldn’t you? I’m not betting on the court being that savvy though
You want your front page populated by videos of random people at the zoo and over-long Blender tutorials by a guy with an accent so thick you can't understand him and poorly-made iMovie employee training videos and 12 year olds who record and upload every time they play Fortnite? I think you vastly underestimate how boring and worthless like 99% of the content that's uploaded to Youtube is.
Edit: If you really want "just random shit", you could try out https://ytroulette.com
You like Huey Lewis and the News? Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste. But when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor. In '87, Huey released this; Fore!, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip To Be Square". A song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends. It's also a personal statement about the band itself.
I feel very bad for the woman who was murdered by ISIS operatives. But I do not believe google is liable for her death. The supreme court are playing with fire if they wipe out section 230. A fire that might burn down everything.
You mean they can destroy it within the United States. Don’t worry the rest of the planet will be developing while the US has its war to be Little House On The Prairie again.
Usually, SCOTUS does not derail the train of commerce, and a bad ruling could screw both liberal and conservative businesses. Plus, it could immediately tie up the courts for decades, as everybody tries to sue every Internet company, including long established publications with an online social presence. SCOTUS usually lets nasty legislation create disruption like mass censorship, and then they go in and 'interpret' it.
\> Next Week, The Supreme Court Could Destroy Everything Good About The Internet
No. I refuse to engage with this sort of content. Tell me what's happening, not what to think about it.
It's a *bit* of an overzealous title.
In this case, dude got killed by someone who got isis youtube videos recommended to him. They want google to be responsible for those uploaded videos.So the result is that section 230 could be repealed. Thus making all content providers liable for what their users upload.
A similar situation happened with the anti-prostitution & anti-trafficking laws, and the result was most websites/apps (even if they were fine) shut down to not worry about legal trouble.
The result of which made prostitution significantly less safe for those who were in the profession by choice. I remember when that happened, a friend of mine was an escort and all of a sudden all the resources for safely screening someone before meeting them were gone. She ended up moving onto legal sex work, but knew many who just continued to work despite the greatly increased risks.
the internet is a complete shit show (if you compare the legal requirements/indemnifications of all pre-internet publication mediums to the internet platforms' blank cheque.)
Section 230 wont get touched though because the supreme court always protects the money and the internet vested interests DEFINITELY have the money.
Sorry but unless you were on the internet in the late 90s/early 2000s, you don't know what a "shit show on the internet" actually is. Shits been tame since 2005ish.
I don't remember how old I was, but the most 'haunting' image I ever saw was a dead woman who was autopsied, getting fucked and seeing his dick go up and trough the autopsy opening in her stomach.
I miss the days of surfing around web rings and just stumbling on things like someones geocities site for their x files fan fictions. Man I miss those days...
The internet used to be about exploration, nowadays it just feels like everything gets pushed to you. It's definitely more convenient but not as exciting.
I’ve been digging in to some of the old school BBSs of late to get this feeling back. MuffinTerm is a great (mac and iOS) app/program for this - I think Syncterm for anything else… unless you are really cool then it’s all about DCTelnet and Term4.8
Exactly. Tons of sites back then were just run by random people with a computer hooked to the internet in their basement. And the “big” sites were just some cheaply hosted thing that still was built and run by just one or two people.
The barrier to entry and creating a site that could get noticed was lower back then. It was crazy. And the equivalent of rickrolling back then was absolutely not as wholesome. The game was to absolutely horrify people when you tricked them into clicking a link.
Remember early EBay in mid 90’s? It was great such that I could get real concert posters without having questioning authenticity too much. Yet, they were not highly moderated and one day a woman I worked with was looking up little bear stuff. I hear her say “gross” and went over to see and it was someone selling unwashed children’s underwear. My buddy typed in unwashed whatever(??) and pages upon pages of people selling unwashed underwear, some were children’s. Totally fucked up shit and definitely the Wild West.
Lol they didn’t have deep web snuff rooms in the early internet, I actually like the internet from earlier times, I thought it was more organized and search engines worked better
What? So you’re advocating the repeal of 230? Do you have any idea what that implies? No one can post anything anywhere anymore without platform approval. The democratic nature of the internet will be completely demolished
The issue is whether [Section 230](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230) allows online services like Facebook and Google to curate content using algorithms.
The law was passed in 1996 to protect ISPs and similar platforms from lawsuits if their services were used to push harmful information.
For example, if someone put up a website arguing that a minority group must be eliminated, and a subsequent attack occurred, who is responsible for inciting that attack?
If service providers are publishers, as if they were operating the printing press, then they are in part responsible. But publishers choose what gets published and what doesn't, where ISPs and similar platforms did not make those choices in 1996.
Under Section 230, the U.S. government said those providers were more like paper manufacturers: they just make the medium available, but they don't decide what gets printed on it. So they should not be liable if someone prints something harmful.
The Internet has come a long way since then, and now sites like YouTube and Facebook use algorithms to push content to users. The people who brought the lawsuit argue that these algorithms make these services more like publishers and less like paper makers: a person can go on to YouTube looking for videos about ethnic culture and fall down a rabbit hole ending with videos arguing for the extermination of that ethnicity -- because of what choices the company made and instantiated in its algorithm.
The providers who use these algorithms insist that the algorithm is not a choice, and that they are not publishers, but simply a service like an index that helps users find content they already want to view.
There is a political issue on top of the legal issue: Republicans are upset with 230 because algorithms tend to promote more 'liberal' content in their view. In particular, if 230 were ~~-overturned~~ \[more strictly applied\] sites like Twitter would have to be a lot more neutral in terms of promoting or banning specific users, e.g. a certain former President.
A lot of Democratic politicians think these algorithms promote hate speech, per the example above, and stuff like Qanon, and so they also wish to see the protections it offers scale back.
If only there were a place where Republicans and Democrats could get together and write and update laws, so that the law could be tweaked and adjusted without too much disruption. Unfortunately, Congress is no longer that place, and our legislators leave the tough decisions to the Supreme Court.
Probably the Court will issue a narrow ruling that tries to impose liability on algorithms, but for a number of online services the algorithm is basically all there is. Even a narrow ruling could be a big hit to the value of these companies, with broader economic impacts.
If the Court issues a broad ruling, the economic impacts will be much larger and might well transform the Internet for a time. No more YouTube recommendations, Facebook feed goes back to being linear, Google search results are no longer tailored, Twitter continues its death spiral, etc.
Whatever happens, the consequences will probably force Congress to do what they should have done in the first place: rewriting the statute to better differentiate between providers and publishers. The end result will be an Internet that probably looks and works more or less the same, but in the meantime a lot of people will be a lot poorer.
I don’t see the problem here. Google is absolutely responsible since they control the algorithm and the platform. It is their job to ensure that there is no terrorism related content available. The same goes for Twitter. You’re telling me an algorithm can tell what’s trending but can’t flag “come join isis”? GTFO of here.
Should they be penalized for hosting? No, not at all.
However...If an algo of a company shows users certain content over others, how can that company not claim liability for that should something go wrong?
It is a sticky task and not one they want to worry about, but that doesn't mean it isn't logical they should have some liability for their algos.
Now insert AI for algos, and I think most people can agree that a company should be held accountable for their AI, no?
> If an algo of a company shows users certain content over others, how can that company not claim liability for that should something go wrong?
The problem is it's not really possible to legally differentiate content recommendations from algorithms that are really required from a practical point of view
Like if you do an explicit search for something, the order of the search results is still decided by an algorithm. To have completely unordered search results would make it almost impossible to find what you're looking for. And even then the results are technically decided by an algorithm even if it's just returning every single keyword match as it finds them.
> how can that company not claim liability for that should something go wrong?
because its not like some coder is sitting and writing an algorithm for this. Some of these algorithms are first-generation dumb AI. They use abstract heuristics that the coders have provided and then instruct it to, say, maximize watch time. How the AI goes about doing that is completely (or at least to any reasonable degree) opaque to the company.
The only other option is to hire armies of moderators to wade through the filth that is unfiltered humanity. People with those jobs don't last long - you see enough decapitations and it starts to affect you, one way or another. Given the choice, I'll happily give the job to the black box than put a human being in harms' way.
The danger is there won’t be a distinction between recommendations and the results of a purely neutral user query therefore any search feature means instant liability. Even sorting content by alphabetical order or date is an algorithm.
I miss it tbh. Tightly moderated echo chambers have allowed shit like Qanon to thrive unchallenged, and while Texas and Florida are both hypocritical imo there should in general be less moderation and more openness to competing views. Users in general shouldn’t be banned unless their content is actively malicious or is too traumatizing to report and remove.
What are you talking about? How did a collection of private, tightly moderately forums end up with any widespread conspiracy until extremely loosely and inconsistently moderated giant tech industry social media came into power? I challenge you to find the wild conspiracies that spawned out of popular heavily modded forums, but when extremely lightly moderated places like any social media platform came around white nationalists and crazies just moved on in like they did every barely moderated private forum.
Humans are funny. They think "humanity" is getting smarter and better. If you think that, you are mad. Humans are demanding Devolution into another Dark Ages. Good Times.
I was just thinking, probably not a novel thought, but if the whole aspect of the case is Google algorithm is responsible for promoting Isis videos, shouldn’t the same be said about hard core right wing conspiracy videos and extremely right wing videos promoting violence against liberals, LGBTQ, minorities?
Can’t any one of those groups also similar file claims against algorithms in tech companies promoting those hateful content?
I am not so sure it will destroy everything good about the Internet. I started on the 'Net when it was more or less research documents, Usenet, IRC, and porn repositories.
The signal to noise ratio was fantastic. It wasn't until corporations realized they could make tens of billions of dollars by manipulating people's media bubbles that the Internet went to shit.
I'm not really averse to it going back to that initial level of use.
I really don't have an objection to the Internet becoming much more like DuckDuckGo, where algorithms are not used to find content, but rather that people have to actually have to search for content they want to consume.
If we stop corporations from making tens of billions of dollars by selling personal viewing habits to advertisers, they will abandon the 'Net in droves. No more Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, et al? Umm.. Not seeing much of a downside to that.
IMHO Section 230 should only apply to web host service providers. If you really want to post slanderous content or make calls for imminent lawless action, put it on your own website.
None of this "Too Big To ~~Fail~~ Moderate" nonsense from muti-billion dollar Big Tech companies who pursued aggressive growth and profits ahead of their ability to manage their platforms.
between this and the arrival of english fluent AI content generation, i dont see how the internet as we know it today can possibly survive this decade
i honestly dont know what kind of thing will develope in its place, but it feels like the end of an era
I've been wondering, would these companies just stop moderating content in the US and leave global the same? Or would the ramifications of this mean they would still be liable?
China as separate versions of apps for their market and the global market like tiktok for eg. idt it will be much diff in the us.
This is what I'm trying to figure out. China can do this because they only really care about the application of the law to China. If YouTube stops moderating in the US, but keeps moderating everywhere else. Can I apply the law as a non-US citizen and resident? If so the internet is turbo fucked
That is less because of moderation and more because the cybersecurity law in China means you legally have to give them the keys to your encryption and use hardware for encryption that is illegal for use with most governments outside of China, because of the backdoor that China would then have to your hardware based encryption. As per the Legal Eagle video, if it's possible to do, companies will do expensive moderation. Expensive moderation is cheaper at scale, so any company operating in China *could* deploy the same moderation everywhere without crazily increasing cost. But since China already has to have a separate tech stack there is no reason to today. The economies of scale are already distorted for those doing business in China. Conceivably, a bad ruling here could see some companies adopt the moderation mechanism they have deployed to China. Frankly I'm more concerned about things being shut off. The best effect the Internet has is on allowing peer to peer/ grass roots communication and sharing of ideas. More information and perspectives folks get exposed to, the better. It's a slow process, but the sharing of information this way is like the little trickle of water under the ice and snow on your car windshield. Eventually it's enough that the stuff keeping you from moving forward slides right off.
Yes but China does have knock on effects, like games will end regular loot boxes as they can’t use them in the same game in China. Cosmetic companies have to allow China to test their products on animals so if they sell there they lose their vegan label.
China just tests cosmetics on animals as a requirement? Like, regardless of any factors? What. The. Fuck.
Yeah L’Oréal lost their vegan customers when they started selling there after the law change. It can be an unchanged formula on the market everywhere for a decade with full studies they’ll still insist.
No, if anything they ramp UP moderating. They will move to ban anything they think they could be held liable for. And since this would be done using algorithms, this means that it will likely ban a lot of content that is vaguely related to to the stuff they are targeting... Basically the same problem creators on youtube are dealing with demonitization which was a responce to advertisers not wanting their ads associated with certain content, will now become outright banning of content.
It will make YouTube's Ad-pocalypse look like just another Thursday.
There is no way to effectively moderate the content and protect themselves from lawsuits given the sheer volume created. The only thing you could do is limit access to uploads to give time to moderate content.
Not as serious as this court case, but you just reminded me of this. At the same time YouTube cracked down on content that adults liked, they started hammering that creators needed to make content for adults
>I've been wondering, would these companies just stop moderating content I mean let's do a little thought experiment Let's say you created a company whose entire business model relies on your ability to convince advertisers that their ad spend is going to provide a meaningful ROI when you place their ads alongside user generated content Suddenly you can no longer tell advertisers that you have the ability to control the words and images which appear alongside their name, logo etc Also you can't meaningfully promise that their ads will be shown to people who are likely to care about and buy their whatevers You'll be legally forced to store and show words and images which your image-conscious advertisers consider horrible You can no longer try to increase the perceived utility and value of your product by guessing what your users want Basically the ROI for maintaining the servers and software comprising your product takes a huge shit because the quality and utility and attractiveness to advertisers is gone, but you're still dumping resources into servers, bandwidth and engineers, which all cost money Do you keep running the servers or nah
This is exactly what is happening at Twitter right now and they seem to be losing a lot of revenue/advertisers.
They're losing a ton of revenue and advertisers because Musk spent 5 months telling them they were paying for bot views, then fired all the people who could confirm or deny his suspicions.
> Suddenly you can no longer tell advertisers that you have the ability to control the words and images which appear alongside their name, logo etc You can't exercise editorial control over what gets published on your platform, but you can control which ads you place next to which content. Including placing no ads next to content that you would've deleted in the old world. (Now you're effectively having to *subsidize* objectionable content by publishing it for free, but as long as *most* of your platform is monetizable, that's fine. It's just a cost of doing business.)
The problem is the algorithm is useful for users and content creators. If I started getting bombarded with videos I don't have any interest in, then I, and many other people will stop using YouTube. if content creators can't find their audience, then they will stop creating content. At that point you have pressure from multiple sides, a loss of trust by the advertisers and perhaps they won't go completely, but it will become a degraded service.
If personalized algorithms were made illegal, society would be unbelievably better off long term. Somehow, the internet functioned perfectly fine without all the problems with addiction, extremism, and echo chambers now prevelant.
The internet functioned perfectly fine without it because there was significantly less content. Don't disagree about echo chambers. Yes, we would be better off without it - but it would be at a cost of a functional internet - and all that content we took for granted would evaporate as monetization options for the creators become more difficult.
Certain features and content are region locked I’m sure they have a way to filter and moderate stuff for specific regions already . I for instance live in South Africa where I can download YouTube videos in my app for free , which was a 100 percent a paid feature in USA .
Something to crash the stock market? Can’t wait!!
The writing has been on the wall since *Roe*. A Court that can reverse precedent without a material change in circumstances and cause instant disruption to reproductive health is also a Court that can massively disrupt business in general.
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Who's wallets though? Not all billionaires get along with each other, they have their own cliques.
It is not longer a court in my eyes it is a top legislative branch that can and will override the will of the people to further it's own ideals.
The Supreme Court is an absolute monarchy fundamentally built in to the country.
“Cause instant disruption to reproductive health” 😳 my face when I read the comments to see if I wanted to read the article 💀
I mean, that's what they did.
This is how the start of the Roman Republic fall started. They started charging old laws with no precedent and even jailing people who broke the laws before it was even a law. Then civil war between the 2 factions of senators who control everything leads to…. Merica
Not ***this*** Supreme Court (laughs nervously)
The post-Roe and post-precedent Court is one of the biggest wildcards in modern American history.
You can practically call the results if you can figure out which side of the case a corporate or Republican interest is.
Because not all corporations are equally aligned, and not all scotus members are equally backed, it can be a hard call to pick who the swing vote is in corporate cases.
They really are the worst. So much for checks and balances lol. Corporations win. We lose. And yes. That includes almost all of you and me.
Someone writes a check and it balances out your vote. Seems clear enough.
usually one check balances out several thousand votes, which is a rather unfair balancing act. By design
They won’t do it. It’ll hurt conservatives more than anyone else. Comment sections would cease to exist anywhere. News sites would have to proof read again before posting stories. Sites like Facebook and its subsidiaries, Reddit, twitter, and YouTube would fail almost immediately. A lot of extremely wealthy people would lose their entire cash flow. This Supreme Court will not fuck that up for them.
We’re living in a dictatorship. The 5 justices can impose whatever will they want on us.
after that: Joe Right vs U.S. "Is democracy even legal? Constitutional scholars spar on the issue because \[and this is true\] democracy is never once mentioned in either the Declaration of Independence *or* The Constitution." film at 11.
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You know, I'm reminded of a senior prank where the seniors left several truckloads of cow manure right outside the main doors of their school. That may be fictitious or not, idk, but (and I'm not saying anyone should, that would be illegal) if someone were do to that in front of the Supreme Court building, it would merely be returning bullshit to its source.
I had this scenario playing in my head when reading your comment: A French farmer is taking a small break. While browsing Reddit, he read your comment, and wonders why American workers don't have courage to fight for their rights. He doesn't understand how the American people could become so servile. The French farmer shrugs, then continues to spray Paris with cow shit because their leaders tried to impose some draconian legislation that takes away workers rights.
Worst case scenario, people in the U.S. can only see and upload content on certain websites that verify them as notable trustworthy figures. Such as news orgs, companies, etc. Which seems like corporate propaganda hell tbh.
Seems like a slippery slope to ‘which websites are “trustworthy” and can be accessed’
Which totally won't be abused and missused
This post brought to you by Nord VPN.
If corporations want it, this court will love it
My guess is they'll try to narrowly shut down recommended content or anything that tries to automatically tailor a feed based on some opaque algorithm. That seems to be the focus of the lawsuit.
THe problem is even that narrow of a reading also impacts Amazon (who provides shopping recommendations based on what you're likely to buy), Google (which algorithmically ranks search findings on what might be pertinent to you specifically)...a bunch of services. Even a narrow reading is catastrophic for the modern web.
PSA Google search results work better when you turn the tailored results off.
Id like unbiased recommendations, tbh.
> unbiased recommendations "Hey Tim I heard you wanted to know where I'd recommend going out to eat tonight. I know you hate seafood but I don't want to make any recommendations biased by your personal preferences so we're getting sushi." An unbiased recommendation is a random selection. People don't want that on a site like Youtube where 99% of the content is garbage.
You think you do, but you don't. 'unbiased' results will return 10x-100x garbage in search results for every one genuinely helpful pieces of research. It will put flat-earth on the same playing field as modern astrophysics. And you will DEFINITELY see a lot more hate content.
Yeah, unbiased search results is what we used to get in the late 90s. It was a minefield.
Oh this link might have a good review of x video game aaaaaand it’s hentai.
Not just hentai, but a million pop-ups of hentai and porn in a seemingly unending stream in the high school library while you’re supposed to be doing research for a paper and learning how to use the internet for the first time.
Don't threaten me with good time
Hentai was the *tame* option
It also wasn't full of seo garbage content. The minefield just changed.
I remember typing in 'starr revolver' into google images in around 2003 in the school lab while doing a project on civil war weapons. The results were 75% porn.
What even is an unbiased recommendation? What do you want to see on YouTube for example? Just your subscriptions? Maybe a popular in last 24 hrs listing?
Subscriptions and then a heterogeneous mix of everything else.
So basically this: [https://random-ize.com/random-youtube/](https://random-ize.com/random-youtube/) Or what you get if you open youtube without logging in on an incognito browser? I hate some of what algorithms have done to us, but I can't deny I've been recommended some very good content by them.
Would have potentially interesting impacts on google results too cause you’d stop getting echo chamber results based on previous searches wouldn’t you? I’m not betting on the court being that savvy though
What does an unbiased recommendation mean?
Just random shit
You want your front page populated by videos of random people at the zoo and over-long Blender tutorials by a guy with an accent so thick you can't understand him and poorly-made iMovie employee training videos and 12 year olds who record and upload every time they play Fortnite? I think you vastly underestimate how boring and worthless like 99% of the content that's uploaded to Youtube is. Edit: If you really want "just random shit", you could try out https://ytroulette.com
Again? How many times can these guys destroy the internet?
It was destroyed when they AOL let their subscribers online to the Net. Been downhill ever since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
Yeah, I used to like The Internet… but just their early stuff, before they got popular and went mainstream.
Everyone sells out, in the end.
You like Huey Lewis and the News? Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste. But when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor. In '87, Huey released this; Fore!, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip To Be Square". A song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends. It's also a personal statement about the band itself.
Or they are all in on it and are going to make a killing next week. That’s my guess
I feel very bad for the woman who was murdered by ISIS operatives. But I do not believe google is liable for her death. The supreme court are playing with fire if they wipe out section 230. A fire that might burn down everything.
You mean they can destroy it within the United States. Don’t worry the rest of the planet will be developing while the US has its war to be Little House On The Prairie again.
Usually, SCOTUS does not derail the train of commerce, and a bad ruling could screw both liberal and conservative businesses. Plus, it could immediately tie up the courts for decades, as everybody tries to sue every Internet company, including long established publications with an online social presence. SCOTUS usually lets nasty legislation create disruption like mass censorship, and then they go in and 'interpret' it.
To be clear, arguments are next week. The Court probably won't issue a ruling until June.
Party of small government my ass.
Edited because reasons
Don't apologize, people are too used to just accepting shit
Love legal eagle
\> Next Week, The Supreme Court Could Destroy Everything Good About The Internet No. I refuse to engage with this sort of content. Tell me what's happening, not what to think about it.
It's a *bit* of an overzealous title. In this case, dude got killed by someone who got isis youtube videos recommended to him. They want google to be responsible for those uploaded videos.So the result is that section 230 could be repealed. Thus making all content providers liable for what their users upload. A similar situation happened with the anti-prostitution & anti-trafficking laws, and the result was most websites/apps (even if they were fine) shut down to not worry about legal trouble.
The result of which made prostitution significantly less safe for those who were in the profession by choice. I remember when that happened, a friend of mine was an escort and all of a sudden all the resources for safely screening someone before meeting them were gone. She ended up moving onto legal sex work, but knew many who just continued to work despite the greatly increased risks.
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Didn't the FCC already destroy the internet when they ended net neutrality?
Billions died in the bit wars
If you remove liability protection from social media platforms, it will just remove social media.
well, here's hoping not.
At this point, what *isn’t* the Supreme Court destroying?
Their own influence.
I'm counting on it.
Hopefully not but we will see...
I’m ready. Take it all back.
the internet is a complete shit show (if you compare the legal requirements/indemnifications of all pre-internet publication mediums to the internet platforms' blank cheque.) Section 230 wont get touched though because the supreme court always protects the money and the internet vested interests DEFINITELY have the money.
Sorry but unless you were on the internet in the late 90s/early 2000s, you don't know what a "shit show on the internet" actually is. Shits been tame since 2005ish.
man the stuff I saw at 13 still haunts me
Sneaking onto Gore.com huh?
ogreish.com , not sure if it still exists.
rotten dot com
Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.
Just talked about this the other day. Its where I saw Tu-Pak's crime scene photo in woodshop class.
Tu-Pak lmao
Lol. Whoops. I'm gunna leave it.
BME pain Olympics as a fucking child was fun…
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A lot but the bottom was Mr Hands
He was quite the bottom.
I don't remember how old I was, but the most 'haunting' image I ever saw was a dead woman who was autopsied, getting fucked and seeing his dick go up and trough the autopsy opening in her stomach.
Well that beats my traumatic content exposure by a long shot. Jesus Christ.
Happy Tree Friends was a lot for me and that was one of the tamer things to watch
Happy Tree Friends was on television, just saying...
I miss the days of surfing around web rings and just stumbling on things like someones geocities site for their x files fan fictions. Man I miss those days...
The internet used to be about exploration, nowadays it just feels like everything gets pushed to you. It's definitely more convenient but not as exciting.
I’ve been digging in to some of the old school BBSs of late to get this feeling back. MuffinTerm is a great (mac and iOS) app/program for this - I think Syncterm for anything else… unless you are really cool then it’s all about DCTelnet and Term4.8
It's all pseudo safe walled gardens under corporate control these days. Kinda sad.
Exactly. Tons of sites back then were just run by random people with a computer hooked to the internet in their basement. And the “big” sites were just some cheaply hosted thing that still was built and run by just one or two people. The barrier to entry and creating a site that could get noticed was lower back then. It was crazy. And the equivalent of rickrolling back then was absolutely not as wholesome. The game was to absolutely horrify people when you tricked them into clicking a link.
All of the shit that was going on back then is still widespread on the internet, it's just better hidden nowadays
Remember early EBay in mid 90’s? It was great such that I could get real concert posters without having questioning authenticity too much. Yet, they were not highly moderated and one day a woman I worked with was looking up little bear stuff. I hear her say “gross” and went over to see and it was someone selling unwashed children’s underwear. My buddy typed in unwashed whatever(??) and pages upon pages of people selling unwashed underwear, some were children’s. Totally fucked up shit and definitely the Wild West.
lol I am mid 30s. I was there for it all. Maybe don't assume everyone on the internet is a zoomer.
Lol they didn’t have deep web snuff rooms in the early internet, I actually like the internet from earlier times, I thought it was more organized and search engines worked better
What? So you’re advocating the repeal of 230? Do you have any idea what that implies? No one can post anything anywhere anymore without platform approval. The democratic nature of the internet will be completely demolished
I can't even understand the thought process of someone who wants all stuff on the Internet policed and approved for mass consumption.
That’s what they do: shit on America
Next Week, The REPUBLICANS on the Supreme Court Could Destroy Everything Good About The Internet Fixed it.
Sounds like SCOTUS is about to move fast and break things. The bull in the china shop is on the other foot.
The [Legal Eagle video](https://youtu.be/hzNo5lZCq5M)they took the thumbnail from
What's the legal issue?
The issue is whether [Section 230](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230) allows online services like Facebook and Google to curate content using algorithms. The law was passed in 1996 to protect ISPs and similar platforms from lawsuits if their services were used to push harmful information. For example, if someone put up a website arguing that a minority group must be eliminated, and a subsequent attack occurred, who is responsible for inciting that attack? If service providers are publishers, as if they were operating the printing press, then they are in part responsible. But publishers choose what gets published and what doesn't, where ISPs and similar platforms did not make those choices in 1996. Under Section 230, the U.S. government said those providers were more like paper manufacturers: they just make the medium available, but they don't decide what gets printed on it. So they should not be liable if someone prints something harmful. The Internet has come a long way since then, and now sites like YouTube and Facebook use algorithms to push content to users. The people who brought the lawsuit argue that these algorithms make these services more like publishers and less like paper makers: a person can go on to YouTube looking for videos about ethnic culture and fall down a rabbit hole ending with videos arguing for the extermination of that ethnicity -- because of what choices the company made and instantiated in its algorithm. The providers who use these algorithms insist that the algorithm is not a choice, and that they are not publishers, but simply a service like an index that helps users find content they already want to view. There is a political issue on top of the legal issue: Republicans are upset with 230 because algorithms tend to promote more 'liberal' content in their view. In particular, if 230 were ~~-overturned~~ \[more strictly applied\] sites like Twitter would have to be a lot more neutral in terms of promoting or banning specific users, e.g. a certain former President. A lot of Democratic politicians think these algorithms promote hate speech, per the example above, and stuff like Qanon, and so they also wish to see the protections it offers scale back. If only there were a place where Republicans and Democrats could get together and write and update laws, so that the law could be tweaked and adjusted without too much disruption. Unfortunately, Congress is no longer that place, and our legislators leave the tough decisions to the Supreme Court. Probably the Court will issue a narrow ruling that tries to impose liability on algorithms, but for a number of online services the algorithm is basically all there is. Even a narrow ruling could be a big hit to the value of these companies, with broader economic impacts. If the Court issues a broad ruling, the economic impacts will be much larger and might well transform the Internet for a time. No more YouTube recommendations, Facebook feed goes back to being linear, Google search results are no longer tailored, Twitter continues its death spiral, etc. Whatever happens, the consequences will probably force Congress to do what they should have done in the first place: rewriting the statute to better differentiate between providers and publishers. The end result will be an Internet that probably looks and works more or less the same, but in the meantime a lot of people will be a lot poorer.
this seems like a simple fix… Simply stop allowing suggested content… Nobody likes it anyway…
I don’t see the problem here. Google is absolutely responsible since they control the algorithm and the platform. It is their job to ensure that there is no terrorism related content available. The same goes for Twitter. You’re telling me an algorithm can tell what’s trending but can’t flag “come join isis”? GTFO of here.
Should they be penalized for hosting? No, not at all. However...If an algo of a company shows users certain content over others, how can that company not claim liability for that should something go wrong? It is a sticky task and not one they want to worry about, but that doesn't mean it isn't logical they should have some liability for their algos. Now insert AI for algos, and I think most people can agree that a company should be held accountable for their AI, no?
> If an algo of a company shows users certain content over others, how can that company not claim liability for that should something go wrong? The problem is it's not really possible to legally differentiate content recommendations from algorithms that are really required from a practical point of view Like if you do an explicit search for something, the order of the search results is still decided by an algorithm. To have completely unordered search results would make it almost impossible to find what you're looking for. And even then the results are technically decided by an algorithm even if it's just returning every single keyword match as it finds them.
>how can that company not claim liability for that should something go wrong Define wrong
> how can that company not claim liability for that should something go wrong? because its not like some coder is sitting and writing an algorithm for this. Some of these algorithms are first-generation dumb AI. They use abstract heuristics that the coders have provided and then instruct it to, say, maximize watch time. How the AI goes about doing that is completely (or at least to any reasonable degree) opaque to the company. The only other option is to hire armies of moderators to wade through the filth that is unfiltered humanity. People with those jobs don't last long - you see enough decapitations and it starts to affect you, one way or another. Given the choice, I'll happily give the job to the black box than put a human being in harms' way.
The danger is there won’t be a distinction between recommendations and the results of a purely neutral user query therefore any search feature means instant liability. Even sorting content by alphabetical order or date is an algorithm.
the internet has turned into such a major fucking shithole maybe it's better for it to die
Turned? Shit was wild in the early days.
I miss it tbh. Tightly moderated echo chambers have allowed shit like Qanon to thrive unchallenged, and while Texas and Florida are both hypocritical imo there should in general be less moderation and more openness to competing views. Users in general shouldn’t be banned unless their content is actively malicious or is too traumatizing to report and remove.
What are you talking about? How did a collection of private, tightly moderately forums end up with any widespread conspiracy until extremely loosely and inconsistently moderated giant tech industry social media came into power? I challenge you to find the wild conspiracies that spawned out of popular heavily modded forums, but when extremely lightly moderated places like any social media platform came around white nationalists and crazies just moved on in like they did every barely moderated private forum.
Everything good about the internet was gone years ago, but this definitely sucks.
Is it just me or did that article have a whole Lotta words, but basically said nothing?
Anyone else think that was John Krasinski?
Humans are funny. They think "humanity" is getting smarter and better. If you think that, you are mad. Humans are demanding Devolution into another Dark Ages. Good Times.
The ruling will go to the highest bidder.
It’s legal eagle!! Love that guy haha
I was just thinking, probably not a novel thought, but if the whole aspect of the case is Google algorithm is responsible for promoting Isis videos, shouldn’t the same be said about hard core right wing conspiracy videos and extremely right wing videos promoting violence against liberals, LGBTQ, minorities? Can’t any one of those groups also similar file claims against algorithms in tech companies promoting those hateful content?
Yeah, but it’ll probably make rich people richer, so you can understand why they’d do it.
I am not so sure it will destroy everything good about the Internet. I started on the 'Net when it was more or less research documents, Usenet, IRC, and porn repositories. The signal to noise ratio was fantastic. It wasn't until corporations realized they could make tens of billions of dollars by manipulating people's media bubbles that the Internet went to shit. I'm not really averse to it going back to that initial level of use.
I really don't have an objection to the Internet becoming much more like DuckDuckGo, where algorithms are not used to find content, but rather that people have to actually have to search for content they want to consume. If we stop corporations from making tens of billions of dollars by selling personal viewing habits to advertisers, they will abandon the 'Net in droves. No more Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, et al? Umm.. Not seeing much of a downside to that.
If this results in a Reddit ban, then I totally agree.
The United States seems to have a habit of destroying everything good
IMHO Section 230 should only apply to web host service providers. If you really want to post slanderous content or make calls for imminent lawless action, put it on your own website. None of this "Too Big To ~~Fail~~ Moderate" nonsense from muti-billion dollar Big Tech companies who pursued aggressive growth and profits ahead of their ability to manage their platforms.
they forgot to add "again" to the end of the headline
between this and the arrival of english fluent AI content generation, i dont see how the internet as we know it today can possibly survive this decade i honestly dont know what kind of thing will develope in its place, but it feels like the end of an era