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The Consequences of Indecency (techcrunch.com)
Ron Wyden, a senior U.S. Senator from Oregon, argues there should be consequences for internet companies that refuse to remove hate speech from their platforms. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report Wyden wrote via TechCrunch: I wrote the law that allows sites to be unfettered free speech marketplaces. I wrote that same law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to provide vital protections to sites that didn't want to host the most unsavory forms of expression. The goal was to protect the unique ability of the internet to be the proverbial marketplace of ideas while ensuring that mainstream sites could reflect the ethics of society as a whole. In general, this has been a success -- with one glaring exception. I never expected that internet CEOs would fail to understand one simple principle: that an individual endorsing (or denying) the extermination of millions of people, or attacking the victims of horrific crimes or the parents of murdered children, is far more indecent than an individual posting pornography.
Social media cannot exist without the legal protections of Section 230. That protection is not constitutional, it's statutory. Failure by the companies to properly understand the premise of the law is the beginning of the end of the protections it provides. I say this because their failures are making it increasingly difficult for me to protect Section 230 in Congress. Members across the spectrum, including far-right House and Senate leaders, are agitating for government regulation of internet platforms. Even if government doesn't take the dangerous step of regulating speech, just eliminating the 230 protections is enough to have a dramatic, chilling effect on expression across the internet. Were Twitter to lose the protections I wrote into law, within 24 hours its potential liabilities would be many multiples of its assets and its stock would be worthless. The same for Facebook and any other social media site. Boards of directors should have taken action long before now against CEOs who refuse to recognize this threat to their business. In an interview with Recode, Wyden said that platforms should be punished for hosting content that goes against "common decency." "I think what the Alex Jones case shows, we're gonna really be looking at what the consequences are for just leaving common decency in the dust," Wyden told Recode's Kara Swisher. "...What I'm gonna be trying to do in my legislation is to really lay out what the consequences are when somebody who is a bad actor, somebody who really doesn't meet the decency principles that reflect our values, if that bad actor blows by the bounds of common decency, I think you gotta have a way to make sure that stuff is taken down."
Social media cannot exist without the legal protections of Section 230. That protection is not constitutional, it's statutory. Failure by the companies to properly understand the premise of the law is the beginning of the end of the protections it provides. I say this because their failures are making it increasingly difficult for me to protect Section 230 in Congress. Members across the spectrum, including far-right House and Senate leaders, are agitating for government regulation of internet platforms. Even if government doesn't take the dangerous step of regulating speech, just eliminating the 230 protections is enough to have a dramatic, chilling effect on expression across the internet. Were Twitter to lose the protections I wrote into law, within 24 hours its potential liabilities would be many multiples of its assets and its stock would be worthless. The same for Facebook and any other social media site. Boards of directors should have taken action long before now against CEOs who refuse to recognize this threat to their business. In an interview with Recode, Wyden said that platforms should be punished for hosting content that goes against "common decency." "I think what the Alex Jones case shows, we're gonna really be looking at what the consequences are for just leaving common decency in the dust," Wyden told Recode's Kara Swisher. "...What I'm gonna be trying to do in my legislation is to really lay out what the consequences are when somebody who is a bad actor, somebody who really doesn't meet the decency principles that reflect our values, if that bad actor blows by the bounds of common decency, I think you gotta have a way to make sure that stuff is taken down."
"Free speech only important if it's offensive".
The thing is, the online services have already taken that first step by agreeing together to remove Alex Jones from all the major social media sites.
The fact that Alex Jones is a reprehensible conspiracy-mongering nutburger is beside the point. Of course he is. Anyone with two neurons capable of achieving a synapse can tell that.
But he's far less of an evil than Holocaust deniers and actual Nazis. If they can remove the lesser evil, whey are they hesitating to remove the greater evil?
They've already passed the "That's already been decided; now we're just haggling about the price" point with the Alex Jones thing.
The only way to win this game is to refuse to start playing it in the first place, but that horse left the barn a few weeks ago.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - from The Friends of Voltaire
This kind of commitment to free speech is a pillar of classical liberalism. Sen. Wyden is interested in the opposite: infringing civil rights.
Interestingly enough, when you actually read what he said, you are suggesting he is saying exactly the opposite of what he said:
I say this because their failures are making it increasingly difficult for me to protect Section 230 in Congress. Members across the spectrum, including far-right House and Senate leaders, are agitating for government regulation of internet platforms.
He's pointing out that others are wanting to put in place regulations on free speech, and it's becoming more difficult to defend section 230, but you're a scibing that position to him.
Hate speech does poorly in a free marketplace of ideas, and brings discredit upon the speaker. There is no need to infringe freedom of speech, one of the most fundamental civil rights.
I would agree that it "should" work that way, but we've seen years, and even decades, of exactly the opposite. There are more hate groups now than ever before. The problem isn't that they're not being stigmatized, it's that people without basic decency are now embracing the hate. That's the reason Trump was elected, and why this countries conservatives are on a seemingly one way ticket to all out fascism.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Nazi.
Ah, well, there's your problem. You have greatly expanded the definition of what constitutes a person.
I think he did: "an individual endorsing (or denying) the extermination of millions of people"
I think he didn't. That's an example. It's not a definition. If you can't tell the difference then you shouldn't be writing laws.
Ron Wyden is the poster child for why the First Amendment is critical to society. It was enacted not to protect speech that everyone approves of, but to protect unpopular speech. You know, the speech that doesn't fit fully within "community standards" or "approved by the government".
He got elected because more people hated Hillary than liked her.
No she got elected because while a LOT more people liked Hilary than Trump, they all lived a bit too close together so their opinions count for less.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
How do you determine if something is a real call to action? People harassed the families of murdered children after Jones peddled his conspiracy theories, is that enough or do you use some other threshold?
By the way, the court decided that the bakery thing wasn't a freedom of speech issue because no reasonable person would think that the message on the cake was the speech of the baker, but rather the speech of the couple.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Actually, even that is completely arbitrary, and can be modified by technology. It's now below 21 weeks, and dropping slowly.
But funny, Democrats voted against a 20 week ban on abortion, so obviously viability is a lie also.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.