Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday October 29 2018, @08:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the social-commentary-on-social-media dept.

The social network gab.com is apparently going down on Monday, October 29th at 09:00 ET. Their ISP has terminated their services, ostensibly because Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh mass shooting suspect, had made offensive posts on Gab.

To get this out of the way: I have mixed feelings about Gab, more specifically, about the founders. However, the idea that some social network somewhere should refuse to censor anything that is not outright illegal? This is good. Social media has become the modern "market square", and free speech should be guaranteed, even if the platforms are technically private.

If you want free speech, you apparently don't want to be in the U.S.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Monday October 29 2018, @10:17PM (1 child)

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Monday October 29 2018, @10:17PM (#755381)

    As to the first amendment, I thought I was clear above. If they are common carriers then ISPs don't have a right to impede traffic. (I would expect a court challenge to hosting and transmission to be equally successful.) If they are not common carriers the ISP has every right to impede traffic for any reasons they wish to, with or without advance disclosure.

    I think there is a huge difference between hosting and transmission. One of the biggest arguments for net neutrality is that ISP's should not allow greater access to any hosted content over another. That does not mean they should be required to host any content. Personally, I think the two areas should be completely divested from each other, an ISP should be a common carrier ISP and a host should be a host. It would be completely up to the host in that case to decide what it does and does not want to host. If you mix the two and eliminate net neutrality, as we apparently have done, then ISP's become responsible for their hosted content and all sorts of legal grey areas pop up. It is a lot easier in that case for the ISP's to simply eliminate anything that might cause them any potential legal or publicity issues.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday October 30 2018, @02:14PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Tuesday October 30 2018, @02:14PM (#755627) Journal

    I agree with you that there is (or ought to be) a distinction between the place holding the data and the service allowing transmission of it. But those that do both certainly benefit from conflating the two. Even then a host should be neutral and not responsible for the content held on it - the person placing the content there should be the responsible entity. I buy space on platform Y and platform Y should not care nor have any right to say what I do with that space. Which entails a different responsibility for a host - to positively identify the legal entity who would be held responsible for the content and provide that information when requested properly by legal authority.

    However, it is sufficient that ISP X allows me to connect hardware that will serve my content to any who ask for it. Again, the ISP is responsible for positive identification of who is legally responsible at the other end of that connection. (Maybe there should be no such thing as dynamic addressing if there is no concern with address scarcity). As it is an ISP can charge you differently for hosting content rather than accessing it. I see the argument that more bandwidth that a host may utilize more local network capacity thus resulting in greater expense to the host, but that is the only basis they should have to charge differently. I don't feel they should be able to profit from it - only recoup their expenses. Hence regulation is appropriate the same as any other utility. (I don't know if I buy that but it sounds good to me).

    --
    This sig for rent.