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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."
Wyden says "platforms should be punished" if they don't censor despicable Alex Jones-type speech.
Sorry, the end of "protecting Section 230" doesn't justify that means. Saying that we should censor, so that we won't have to censor, is a pretty poor solution.
Now, I said that hate speech does poorly in a free marketplace of ideas. You disagreed.
Look at the highly-publicized white nationalist rally that was held on Aug 12. Out of 326 million Americans, only 24 people showed up to that rally.
If that's not an example of an idea that's "doing poorly," I don't know what is.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
so if you say something like "lawyers are the scum of the earth, they should all be loaded on buses and driven off a cliff" , which is most likely not a real call to action, is hate speech?
Here is what pisses me off... we tell providers they have the right to refuse to allow someone like Alex Jones to air his content on their site because they do not agree with what he says. Fine. But at the same time they condemn a bakery for refusing to make a wedding cake for someones position they do not agree with. The 1st amendment assures you free speech, the 14th amendment assures you equal protection. If we bend the rule to allow providers to pick and choose whom they allow to have accounts and post based on whether we agree with what they say or political agenda, what grounds do they have to go after a baker for doing the exact same thing?
That’s just his definition. Other definitions of “indecent” that others have actually tried to enshrine into censorship include pornography (both vanilla and deviant), critique of Islam, calls for LGBT rights, “cultural appropriation” and so on. Indecency should never be sufficient to censor something; if you do, you are giving up free speech. Because pretty much every expression of culture or opinion offends someone’s idea of decency.
Free speech draws the line at explicit inciting of violence, the proverbial cry of “fire” in a theatre. But we should be free to insult and offend. And they way things are going it might not be a bad idea to actually put that explicitly in our respective constitutions.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Thing is I'm reading the transcript of the actual interview and it seems like the summary is misrepresenting him a bit. For example:
I guess, if people wanna say, âoeYou know, we oughta just have the government start dictating...â By the way, one of the most stunning aspects of the last couple of days is to see conservative politicians, people like Kevin McCarthy and Ted Cruz, they are essentially saying that the government should run private companies, the government should dictate to private companies what theyâ(TM)re doing. Iâ(TM)m sure itâ(TM)s very popular with their base, but doesnâ(TM)t happen to be the right thing.
So apparently he doesn't want the government to be too heavy handed here.
You know how Backpage was essentially busted? They were busted under existing Section 230 law. The reason we had problems is because law enforcement didnâ(TM)t move aggressively enough and quickly enough. And after a while everybody said, âoeOh, we canâ(TM)t do anything about it, letâ(TM)s go pass this really flawed law, SESTA and FOSTA,â
His goal is to avoid over-reaching legislation like SESTA and FOSTA by having more reasonable rules.
In fact if you grep for the "lay out what the consequences" quote you can see that he wants to avoid trying to define morality or "common decency" and instead lay out what sanctions the social media companies are allowed to use (I guess he means bans, demoting in search results etc.) at their own discretion.
The summary is confusing because it makes it look like he is trying to define "common decency", when in fact he is just giving his personal opinion and using it as an example of how he would create the rules on his own imaginary social network.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC