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posted by janrinok on Wednesday September 29 2021, @02:06PM   Printer-friendly

From: Techdirt

Content moderation is a can of worms. For Internet infrastructure intermediaries, it’s a can of worms that they are particularly poorly positioned to tackle. And yet Internet infrastructure elements are increasingly being called on to moderate content—content they may have very little insight into as it passes through their systems.

The vast majority of all content moderation happens on the “top” layer of the internet—such as social media and websites, places online that are the most visible to an average user. If a post violates a platform’s terms of service, the post is usually blocked or taken down. If a user continues to post content that violates a platform’s terms, then the user’s account is often suspended. These types of content moderation practices are increasingly understood by average Internet users.

Less often discussed or understood are the types of services facilitated via actors in the Internet ecosystem that both support and exist under the upper content layers of the Internet.

Many of these companies host content, supply cloud services, register domain names, provide web security, and many more features of what could be described as the plumbing services of the Internet. But instead of water and sewage, the Internet deals in digital information. In theory, these “infrastructure intermediaries” could moderate content, but for reasons of convention, legitimacy, and practicality they don’t usually do it on purpose.

However, some notable recent exemptions may be setting precedent.

Amazon Web Services removed Wikileaks from their system in 2010. Cloudflare kicked off the Daily Stormer. An Italian court ordered Cloudflare to remove a copyright infringing site. Amazon suspended hosting for Parler.

What does all this mean? Infrastructure may have the means to perform “content moderation,” but it is critical to consider the effects of this trend to prevent harming the Internet’s underlying architecture. In principle, Internet service providers, registries, cloud providers and other infrastructure intermediaries should be agnostic to the content which passes over their systems.

[...] Policymakers must consider the unintended impacts of content moderation proposals on infrastructure intermediaries. Legislating without due diligence to understand the impact on the unique role of these intermediaries could be detrimental to the success of the Internet, and an increasing portion of the global economy that relies on Internet infrastructure for daily life and work.

[...] Conducting impact assessments prior to regulation is one way to mitigate the risks. The Internet Society created the Internet Impact Assessment Toolkit to help policymakers and communities assess the implications of change—whether those are policy interventions or new technologies.

Policy changes that impact the different layers of the Internet are inevitable. But we must all ensure that these policies are well crafted and properly scoped to keep the Internet working and successful for everyone.

Austin Ruckstuhl is a Project & Policy Advisor at the Internet Society where he works on Internet impact assessments, defending encryption and supporting Community Networks as access solutions.

Should online content be controlled ? If yes, Is there a better way to censor online content and who should have the authority to do so ??


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:06PM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:06PM (#1182854)

    by facts or science

    As defined by who?
    By the government, as in Russia and China?
    By The Party, as in USSR and now in USA?
    By the billionaires controlling largest Internet monopolies maybe?

    radical left wing reality and facts.

    An interesting Newspeak renaming of rants and invective.
    The common leftie drones with their total lack of hard sciences education, cannot notice reality and facts even when those are biting their arses hard. And you know that perfectly well, now don't you?
    Have you absolutely no shame, dude? None at all?

    If censoring something can be conductive to free speech, that something is uncivil speech. The very thing I expect the left will defend to the last, as 99% of their propaganda force have literally nothing else to say.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:26PM (10 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:26PM (#1182888) Journal

    by facts or science

    As defined by who?
    By the government, as in Russia and China?
    By The Party, as in USSR and now in USA?
    By the billionaires controlling largest Internet monopolies maybe?

    Facts. Like, you know:

    * Does the sun rise in the East or in the West?
    * Is 2 + 2 equal to four or to five?

    Science. Like, you know:

    * how electromagnetism works
    * how physics works
    * how evolution works
    * how chemistry works
    * how biochemistry works
    * how microorganisms work
    * how biology works
    * how medicine works
    * how contagious diseases work

    radical left wing reality and facts.

    An interesting Newspeak renaming of rants and invective.

    Not Newspeak. Crazy people who deny reality and facts.

    * covid is not real
    * covid is a hoax
    * covid is no worse than the flu
    * I don't have covid
    * I will get better
    * I'm not dying
    * I do not have covid (said with last dying breath)

    Crazy is the correct word. Based on their craziness, then they turn science and medicine into a political issue. It should not be political. But a group of people with a certain political leaning are open to conspiracy theories and misinformation which they embrace as absolute truth.

    Now anyone can be wrong or mistaken about something. But I'm talking about a cult like embrace of obvious misinformation in the face of cold hard facts.

    And you call it Newspeak.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 29 2021, @08:53PM (3 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 29 2021, @08:53PM (#1182915) Journal

      Here is an example of a fact for you.

      Fact: vaccines do not contain microchips.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @11:02PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @11:02PM (#1182965)

      Facts. Like, you know:
      * Does the sun rise in the East or in the West?

      I know it only appears to "rise" as the Sun does not rotate around the Earth. Do you?

      * Is 2 + 2 equal to four or to five?

      I know in modulo-3 arithmetics it is equal to neither. Do you?

      Science. Like, you know:
      * how electromagnetism works
      * how physics works
      * how evolution works
      * how chemistry works
      * how biochemistry works
      * how microorganisms work
      * how biology works
      * how medicine works
      * how contagious diseases work

      Religion. Got it.
      Especially hilarious is "how physics works", "how biochemistry works", and "how biology works". While scientists are groping in the dark, a common leftle already Knows Everything!
      All that after studying nothing, I must add. The Total Knowledge™ is imparted from The Party.

      Meanwhile we lowly engineers and scientists, have to do with observations, error margins, statistical correlations, unexplained exceptions, empirical relationships, and all that mundane rightwing stuff.

      Not Newspeak. Crazy people who deny reality and facts.

      Reality: I observed none of the people I know, who got diagnosed with COVID, suffered anything worse than in a bad flu season.

      * covid is no worse than the flu

      Fact, now?

      Crazy is the correct word. Based on their craziness, then they turn science and medicine into a political issue. It should not be political.

      Totally correct. Science and medicine should not be political.
      However when politicians use select studies to justify spending $trillions subsidizing select businesses or types thereof, and select medicines or types thereof, how can science or medicine not be political?
      A scientist or a doctor is a paying job like any other. They can and do get fired for telling things that are not politically correct. How are the results produced by those who chose not to get fired, not political?

      But a group of people with a certain political leaning are open to conspiracy theories and misinformation which they embrace as absolute truth.

      Isn't that the same group that very recently pocketed some heavy $trillions? https://inequality.org/great-divide/global-billionaire-pandemic-wealth-surges/ [inequality.org]
      Or is the money flow being purely coincidental?

      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 30 2021, @03:27AM (2 children)

        by Thexalon (636) on Thursday September 30 2021, @03:27AM (#1183017)

        Especially hilarious is "how physics works", "how biochemistry works", and "how biology works". While scientists are groping in the dark, a common leftle already Knows Everything!

        Knows everything? No. Knows enough to draw useful conclusions? Yes.

        Let's look at physics: Are the scientists groping in the dark about what happens inside black holes? Absolutely. Are they groping in the dark about downward acceleration of human-scale objects as a result of Earth's gravity? Absolutely not.

        By contrast, many of the official conservative positions, often voiced by prominent politicians or on major news networks, ignore well-established scientific theories and observations like:
        - Evolution.
        - Viruses.
        - Antibodies.
        - How human fertilization works.
        - Climate change.
        - Changes in and effects of ocean acidity.

        We're not talking cutting-edge controversial stuff, we're talking about the stuff that's been well established and well supported by ongoing research for 40+ years in the fields in question, where the non-crackpot scientists who study them are arguing over the minutia and trying to shrink the error bars and statistical ranges, not fighting over whether the main point is right. And if you really are a scientist, which I'm going to question since you state neither your field nor your credentials, then I'm quite certain there's a large body of work you don't call into question because none of your observations have given you any reason to do so (e.g. if you're a physicist, I doubt you're spending valuable time and resources re-measuring the speed of light just to make sure that all those other measurements that many other labs and teams made weren't wrong).

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @10:48PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @10:48PM (#1183219)

          Knows everything? No. Knows enough to draw useful conclusions? Yes.

          "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." -- Dr. Albert Einstein

          You can firmly believe you "know enough to draw useful conclusions", and still be totally, completely, utterly wrong. Some detail not included in your "enough" can easily be crucial to the case you try to analyze. Being aware of this, and being wary of it, is THE foundation of all good science and engineering.

          Are they groping in the dark about downward acceleration of human-scale objects as a result of Earth's gravity? Absolutely not.

          Good example. Is a human under a parachute a "human-scale object"? Is a human that reached the terminal velocity a "human-scale object"?
          See how talking in generalities leads you to laughably wrong answers?

          By contrast, many of the official conservative positions, often voiced by prominent politicians or on major news networks, ignore well-established scientific theories and observations like:
          - Evolution.
          - Viruses.
          - Antibodies.
          - How human fertilization works.

          Those who ignore the demonstrable parts of our knowledge about those things, do have a problem (and yes, evolution is demonstrable, due to evolutionary algorithms). But those who take a shallow kindergarten-oriented overview of those subjects and then believe they "know" them, have a worse problem.
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org]

          - Climate change.
          - Changes in and effects of ocean acidity.

          And those are a separate kettle of Elder Things. Here we have the left willfully ignoring a lot of easily demonstrable observed facts, while waving about some heavily doctored graphs. Such a behavior is antithetical to science.

          And if you really are a scientist, which I'm going to question since you state neither your field nor your credentials, then I'm quite certain there's a large body of work you don't call into question because none of your observations have given you any reason to do so (e.g. if you're a physicist, I doubt you're spending valuable time and resources re-measuring the speed of light just to make sure that all those other measurements that many other labs and teams made weren't wrong).

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index [wikipedia.org]
          Seems the question of whether YOU are a scientist, has serendipitously resolved itself. ;)

          Do learn some more of physics before diving into such discussions again.

          • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday October 01 2021, @03:07AM

            by Thexalon (636) on Friday October 01 2021, @03:07AM (#1183265)

            Good example. Is a human under a parachute a "human-scale object"? Is a human that reached the terminal velocity a "human-scale object"?

            Yes and yes. And in both cases, the acceleration due to Earth's gravity is effectively a constant. What's going to change is the countering force of wind resistance, which is still something we can calculate well enough to design parachutes that lead to survivable skydiving.

            Seems the question of whether YOU are a scientist, has serendipitously resolved itself.

            I'm not a professional scientist. Unlike you, I never claimed to be. I also can do enough of the basics to do some useful stuff. Just like I wouldn't describe myself as a professional carpenter, at all, but I can fix stuff around my house that looks decent enough.

            The way you're talking, you seem to think I'd need to be a professional astronomer to know what phrase the moon is in and understand how said moon phase comes about.

            --
            The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @05:17AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @05:17AM (#1183033)

      Based on their craziness, then they turn science and medicine into a political issue.

      It's not like the left would attack a sitting president for suggesting we look into medicines that seem to have beneficial effects against an illness.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @05:44PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @05:44PM (#1183137)

        Correct!