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The Growing Threat to Free Speech Online:
There are times when vitally important stories lurk behind the headlines. Yes, impeachment is historic and worth significant coverage, but it's not the only important story. The recent threat of war with Iran merited every second of intense world interest. But what if I told you that as we lurch from crisis to crisis there is a slow-building, bipartisan movement to engage in one of most significant acts of censorship in modern American history? What if I told you that our contemporary hostility against Big Tech may cause our nation to blunder into changing the nature of the internet to enhance the power of the elite at the expense of ordinary Americans?
I'm talking about the poorly-thought-out, poorly-understood idea of attempting to deal with widespread discontent with the effects of social media on political and cultural discourse and with the use of social media in bullying and harassment by revoking or fundamentally rewriting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
[...] In 1996, [Congress] passed Section 230. The law did two things. First, it declared that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." In plain English, this means that my comments on Twitter or Google or Yelp or the comments section of my favorite website are my comments, and my comments only.
But Section 230 went farther, it also declared that an internet provider can "restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable" without being held liable for user content. This is what allows virtually all mainstream social media companies to remove obscene or pornographic content. This allows websites to take down racial slurs – all without suddenly also becoming liable for all the rest of their users' speech.
It's difficult to overstate how important this law is for the free speech of ordinary Americans. For 24 years we've taken for granted our ability to post our thoughts and arguments about movies, music, restaurants, religions, and politicians. While different sites have different rules and boundaries, the overall breadth of free speech has been extraordinary.
[...] Large internet companies that possess billions of dollars in resources would be able to implement and enforce strict controls on user speech. Smaller sites simply lack the resources to implement widespread and comprehensive speech controls. Many of them would have no alternative but to shut down user content beyond minimalist input. Once again, the powerful would prevail.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday January 29 2020, @02:47PM
Moderation is a public interest job, private entities cannot do it properly.
The introduction of pervasive communications networks to society is a change to human society that the constitution and law can either adopt to, or which will result in private entities simply taking over the world, which is what we are seeing, ala Ethos Capital.
https://archive.is/2MFbn [archive.is]
https://archive.is/YxuED [archive.is]
https://archive.is/xXs6r [archive.is]
I have been advocating for this since around 2003 when I wrote a book about how this is all going to suck hard if we do not create a way to moderate at the very least factional conflict.
And if you look at what is going on right now in the U.S. Senate, what passes for debate and dialogue is an anti-intellectual sham, and this is supposed to be the 'highest deliberative body' in the land, or the world.
The two problems go hand in hand, and since no one can solve them without money, and all the people who have money enjoy it the way it is where they can do whatever they want with their money, everything sucks, unless you own a yacht.
All of my long form creations deal with this issue:
https://archive.is/9AhsD [archive.is] mr. rogers called before parallax board
https://archive.is/bRCdQ [archive.is] neo morph chat
https://archive.is/TjIwI [archive.is] snowpiercer
https://archive.is/cKeB9 [archive.is] metal 1
https://archive.is/9T2tC [archive.is] kung fu hustle zersetzung
https://archive.is/Ljm4X [archive.is] little big man iran
Especially,
https://archive.is/5b8cm [archive.is]
Which is to say that the internet in its current form is serving to censor any story the oligarchy says we can't hear, very effectively, to the point that even the most obvious expectations of the surveillance state, that i report at length, are considered outlandish, outside the scope of the possible.
That is very bad. Peoples' brains are being shredded by design and intent. Talk about dark psychic energy...which is to say this dilemma is itself suffering from a disinformation tactic of 'demand perfect solution' and 'declare impenatrable enigma' and 'poison the well of all possible solutions at time of birth.'
https://archive.is/5SRMf [archive.is] this fallacy applies to several dozen issues in the united states at the moment, where the mass media will simply not allow the discussion of the fact by moving goalposts, like with the robach situation where abc needed more than 36 witnesses to be able to say they could confirm the epstein story in 2016. mhm.
https://archive.is/blM4a [archive.is] this sort of mega ignorance, being broadcast, is just what oligarchic censorship leads to.
They are broadcasting via tv and asocial media, mental illness. And then saying the sane people are crazy.
Sad but true.