| Bio | Despises the soundbite digestion of this tl;dr world. |
| Pronouns | He / him |
| Political/Social Philosophy | Direct democracy, social ecology, anti-abuse |
| Epistemology | Constructivist, phenomenology, enactivist / embodied, functionalist, Buddhist |
ex0du5
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- 175 Following
- 110 Posts
@K_Smith_MI @mmasnick @Julia Facebook internal memos show they refused to limit hate speech because of the ad revenue effects. Google is still rolling bank on YouTube (nearly 30 billion). Hell, Breitbart is profitable. This is a weird angle to attack the point that they don’t host out of generosity and wouldn’t flee if there was liability involved.
@evangreer I think this position comes from a place that does not recognize structures of oppression and recapitulates common arguments that fight structural accountability. Sad to see you take this position. More deets in my other posts linked here:
ex0du5 (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] Your reply sounds very yt. It seems to ignore the fact that platforms have monetary gain from hosting of harmful speech, and does not acknowledge the systematizing forces involved here. The “I can’t monitor everyone making me money” defense is weak. Air don’t make money off of transmitting speech. Twitter does. Twitter is a full-hearted participant in the speech, incentivizing it even. I don’t agree in tearing down all liability limitations, but these arguments are poor.
???
What kind of language game is this? This sounds like the kind of avoidance game a kid will play when caught doing something they were told not to. The law is crystal clear about entities such as “interactive computer service” being separate from “information content providers” for terms of liability treatment. What kind of interaction do you think it is talking about? How do you think these words are treated in case law?
This is such an odd comment.
@helge @mmasnick @Julia In many cases, the amplification actually structuralizes harm. It can be an enticement for others to join the harm, to grow the harm. In many, many (many) historical examples, that was it’s clear intent, often found communicated in private letters years later in historical research. Algorithmically, it often dynamically grows the harm and spreads it. That’s what Mr. Mad Nick is defending, and in the process belittling Julia’s commentary on.
@helge @mmasnick @Julia Definitely, there are those that say Section 230 is good at what it is intended, and that may be true. If you accept the legislative intent as shielding the blame of harm from certain decisions made by corporations that amplify harm, in some cases clearly deliberately, then yeah, it’s doing that. But if you think the social contract is about protection from harm, it’s actually pretty horrible at that. Kind of contrary, even.
@helge @mmasnick @Julia That’s the point of Section 230. It tries to make that distinction to focus the liability away from amplifiers of harm. It’s there to protect Twitter when it gets taken over by fascists to be the new Dearborn. It’s there to protect Google when it drives views to fascist thought. It’s there, not to promote the view of rightful governance in the harm principle but to instead ignore the harm of certain decision and point at other decision that on their own cause less harm.
@helge @mmasnick @Julia But generally, a theory of harm in speech is generally scoffed at except when presented as a producer/consumer model with transmission seen as a neutral act. “Don’t blame the messenger” is the general idiom.
Yet we do tend to blame the guy who helps the bank robber drive away.
So when the Dearborn was used to transmit antisemitism to hundreds of thousands, that was seen as Ford’s fault, not the company who delivered it to the doorsteps of those masses.
@helge @mmasnick @Julia For centuries, there has been this desire to claim that speech does not harm. Some of this is based on the authoritarian view of parental dictate over children, and some based in other colonialist distinctions to enforce power in society through oppression, but this leaves clear gaps where society would allow harm without additional distinctions. So exceptions are often listed like lying (contract breaking), libel, the theater fire case, and such.
@helge @mmasnick @Julia Section 230 is odd in this regard. It says that if you produce harm due to the structure of your technological choices, you aren’t responsible if that technology’s purpose is “purely” the amplification, not some initial production.
This is a vague distinction based on some idea of transmission that disregards structural features that may grow harm. It is also contrary to this Harm Principle from the liberal tradition, but based in some darker history.