Slashdot Mirror
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."
go on, define it
...and decides that things like "homosexuality", "pre-marital sex" and "mixed marriages" are "against the common decency" - then it's perfectly ok for any matching content to be removed from the internet, right? RIGHT?
Because THAT'S what this is saying...
"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.
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.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Social media cannot exist without the legal protections of Section 230. That protection is not constitutional, it's statutory.
The first amendment states the following:
The first amendment is intended to restrain congress from acting against free speech. If revising or removing the Section 230 protections has a chilling effect on free expression, then Congress has abridged free speech, and the act of modifying Section 230 was then unconstitutional. It does not matter that Section 230 did not exist at the time the constitution was made ---- Today we enjoy certain free speech rights, And a law protects platforms who enable us to exercise that free speech right. ANY attempt to curtail that by passing any kind of law or law that says an existing law shall change --- is an abridgement of Free Speech; Once congress passes a law protecting free speech (Such as Section 230) --- which is their authority to do in order to enforce the constitution, The first amendment ensures congress does not have the right to abridge the rights of expression by cancelling that protection.
But he's far less of an evil than Holocaust deniers and actual Nazis.
Actual Nazis, yes. Holocaust deniers, no. Actual Nazis were dangerous not because of their words, but their actions. It was the fact that they murdered millions of innocent people that made them evil and dangerous, not their speech. Holocaust deniers are not nearly as dangerous as those that would attempt to control the teaching of history through legislation.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Right on. I looked him up and the turned out to be a Democrat. What is it with liberals getting so worked up about controlling who is allowed to speak? Even Wikipedia says "Liberals sought and established a constitutional order that prized important individual freedoms, such as freedom of speech and freedom of association." Maybe it's time to redefine the terms.
Simply look at the problems global platforms are experiencing with foreign governments currently.
Twitter pressured to remove content because it offends the thin-skinned leader of another country (China, Turkey). I mean really, Winnie the Pooh is offensive? Imagine Trump having the power to ban all pictures and references to Cheetos from the internet because its "offensive" to his supporters!
The bigger problem though is vocal minorities.
Imagine the US Government forcing YouTube to remove Mark Meechan's (Nazi dog guy's) videos because a small group of people with no sense of humor complained.
Imagine Facebook removing a Harry Potter fan page because a group of angry Bible Belt moms complained it was "of the devil" and offensive.
Imagine the knee-jerk reaction to the next mass shooting being to remove whatever imagined influence (Ozzy Osbourne, Iron maiden, D&D, Magic the Gathering, Marilyn Manson, Call of Duty, etc) from the internet "to prevent it happening again".
This isn't a slippery slope. Its a cliff. And we're standing at the edge with one foot over the drop while politicians stand behind us screaming that somehow that step will be good for us.
Yes, its almost as if they dont already have plenty of existing laws that can be applied for anything that is ACTUALLY ILLEGAL.
What this is pushing for is government oversight on the morality of discussions, and anyone who doesn't understand that deserves to suffer the consequences.
Someone online engaging in actual slander, actual threats, actual hate speech (already getting blurry there) already has LAWS THAT CAN BE APPLIED.
'On the internet' is not some kind of magic legal umbrella.
The larger concern here is farcebook et.al. acting like they have common-carrier like protections and yet ALSO engaging in selective removal of content.
They cannot have it both ways.. Or at least they should not be able to.
It's stupid. I can call you a dick, a cunt, an asshole, a fuckwit, a retard, a moron, an imbecile, a douchebag, a jackass, or a buffoon, and that's all perfectly acceptable and not hate speech. But I can't call you a n*gger or a f*ggot, because hate speech. But you can call me a cracker or a breeder, because hand waving.
Who the fuck makes up this bullshit? Idiots with too much time on their hands and an IQ smaller than their waist band.
Who is the arbiter of what's "decent" under this law anyway?
Allow me to condense Sen, Wyden's remarks;
"We must infringe upon your freedom to prevent those we deem Nazis from infringing upon your freedom." -- Sen. Ron Wyden (D) 2018
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I would rather not. There have been conspiracy groups forever. JFK assasinations, moon landings, UFOs, con-trails, you name it. It was _never_ a real threat until they started banning it. By banning it they have given more credibility to this guy than anything they could have ever done by just letting him get on his soap box weekly.
It was _never_ a real threat until they started banning it.
I would say they were never a threat until POTUS started spreading them. These conspiracy theories have become a strategy to hold on to power when the shit hits the fan, and at the expense of the mental health of his base.
moon landings, UFOs, con-trails, you name it
You misspelled CHEMtrails. I see you're just another stoge of the deep state trying to spread misinformation: downplaying it by changing its name. We're on to you. and I'm safe protected from my tinfoil hat AND tinfoil breathing mask. Sure that make it a little hard to breathe and
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What's made conspiracy theories and Alex Jones in particular "a real threat" recently is their widespread harassment of the families of mass shooting victims, driven by the relatively recent rise of false flag conspiracy theories around mass shootings (the shooting was a false flag, therefore the families of the fake people who didn't die are "crisis actors," therefore let's harass the shit out of them until they admit their ties to the Illuminati!).
Alex Jones in particular has driven many targeted harassment campaigns against these family members.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel