Yeah. I didn’t mention it, but in terms of “importance”, the service is fairly low-tier, which also weighs against a finding of it being/ought to be a utility.
Re: Re: Re: This cancellation is not about 1st Ammendment
First the internet/media platforms[] establish a police state, take away everyone[‘]s 2nd Ame[n]dment [rights], hollow out 1st Amendment protections.
Well, we’re nowhere near step 1, as neither internet nor media platforms have, could, or would want to establish a police state; have any power to take away anyone’s 2nd Amendment rights; nor have or can “hollow out” 1A protections. They aren’t the government.
Your [D]emocrat friends pushed th[ei]r ba[t]sh*t in [t]he last covid stimulus bill giving themselves a 40k raise, didn't reduce wasteful spending like they were supposed to at Trump's request and gave you $600.
First, the last COVID stimulus bill was tacked onto a government spending bill by both parties (it was the latter that dealt with the raise and spending).
Second, both Democrats and Republicans gave the incoming Congress a raise.
Third, Democrats don’t strongly prioritize “reduc[ing] wasteful spending”, nor do their voters, and we couldn’t care less about what Trump wanted in this area.
Fourth, what constitutes “wasteful spending” is subject to debate.
Fifth, the Dems and Trump wanted to increase the $600, but congressional Republicans refused.
Pushthevote never happened to force a MC4A bill to the floor, thanks to your friends #thesquad who campaigned on it.
Even if they had, it would’ve never got past the Republican-controlled Senate or the President, and there’s a lot of debate within the Democratic Party on whether or not MC4A is a good idea.
But, oh no, Trump supporters, you don't like them because they're on the other party, so you've gotta put them all in the same boat as agitators vandalizing property an[d] put them in the same category because one person who died inside the capitol in protest chanting USA with American flags wanting their voices heard because they've been demonized, censored, businesses destroyed, out of work,and locked down. All of a sudden they're criminals for support a just cause in protest not associated with terrorism, insurrection, or vandalism.
Did you even watch the videos of the inside? Also, I’ve seen no evidence that the protest had anything to do with anything other than the election results.
They were let inside the capital building at the time was there and many of whom went in came out with a completely different take on what happened inside, compared to the way you want to spin it.
Watch. The. Tapes.
And while I was outside I watched mostly peaceful protest
Let me be clear: if you were outside peacefully protesting, that’s fine. We’re talking about the people inside.
but once that girl was shot there was a flood of people going through the doors
Again, watch the videos. She was shot because she was trying to break into a restricted area.
while at the same time, differently clothed individuals were scaling the building to windows and trying to break in and Trump supporters were the ones stopping them.
It’s worth noting the people breaking in were also Trump supporters. And I haven’t seen any evidence to back-up this claim. You’re the only one I’ve seen make that claim.
But since they're not who you like, you can say whatever you want about the peaceful Majority and mix them to take blame because you say so.
Isn’t that what you did with BLM and Antifa? At any rate, the problem is that the person you support instigated a riot on Capitol Hill. If you were outside, peacefully protesting, then you are not to blame. Again, all the people inside or trying to break in were the problem, and they were not peacefully protesting. I’m not interested in arguing about whether or not there were also people not rioting outside.
Re: Re: Re: This cancellation is not about 1st Ammendment
I don’t think you have a clue what communism actually means.
(Side note: I’ve noticed that a lot of arguments from the right tend to be one or more of the following:
X is bad, therefore X is communist/socialist.
X is communist/socialist, therefore X is bad.
I don’t like X, therefore X is bad and/or communist/socialist.
T says X is bad/communist/socialist, therefore it must be bad/communist/socialist.
T doesn’t like X, therefore I don’t like X.
[If X is a person or organization:] X doesn’t like T or treats T poorly, therefore I don’t like X.
…where X is some person, organization, policy, or event, and T is a conspiracy theory or a rightwing “news” source, politician, organization, or talking head. I can’t tell you how many times I got into an argument like this:
R: I don’t like X.
Me: Why not?
R: Because they’re a socialist/communist.
Me: What makes them a socialist/communist?
R: Because they support Y.
Me: How is that bad?
R: Because it leads to socialism/communism!
Me: What makes that bad?
R: Because it leads to Y.
That’s setting aside me pointing out all the other faulty logic, like whether or not X actually supports Y, whether Y has any connection to socialism/communism, etc. It’s also only if they don’t simply go, “Because it just is/does,” at some point. Keep in mind, I think that full-on socialism isn’t really the American way, and communism is unrealistic, so they are unable to give a coherent argument to things I already agree with.)
When it comes to public policy, I choose to look at it completely abstractly, without considering who is removed or whether I agree with the end results of the termination. It tends to be good for removing biases and emotional reactions. Ultimately, on a scale from Comcast to Facebook, I think that Amazon’s hosting falls closer to Facebook, especially when I think of the amount of competitors available.
I try to temper my personal reactions based on what I think is good public policy, and then look at specifics as well as look at the flip-side. On this, I think we have some agreement in that this definitely raises serious questions about whether or not this was a good thing for Amazon to do. This is definitely a power that Amazon should exercise sparingly and with great caution. However, I still don’t think the laws should be changed to prevent it from happening, though I’m open to changing my mind on that.
Also, I am generally skeptical of most slippery-slope arguments, though this isn’t terribly fallacious and seems to be genuinely wondering about the answer.
I concur. The root DNS services essentially control the internet as a whole; if you can’t get through them, it can’t be put online. As such, barring clearly illegal activity, root DNS shouldn’t have any control over content.
For me, unless we’re discussing lobbying, antitrust or pro-competition laws, or taxation, I try to avoid worrying about the size of the business when dealing with policy questions. By doing so, I find it easier to deal with excesses and problems that come from big businesses without interfering with small businesses or private individuals beyond what I think is just.
Note that in my thoughts, I intentionally ignored the fact that Amazon is a big company. I thought more abstractly: regardless of size, should any company that provides cloud infrastructure be able to moderate the content it hosts? My answer was, ultimately, a (somewhat tentative) “yes”, though it should be done more sparingly than the owners of a website moderating content on their platform. Since that appears to already be the case, and there are a number of options for cloud infrastructure, my position on the relevant public policy questions is that the government has no need to be involved in this issue and so should not be.
Even with determining what are or aren’t utilities, the size of the business isn’t important to me; it’s the amount of competition, the ease with which newcomers can enter the marketplace—whether they can ultimately succeed or not is significantly less important—and the importance, fundamentality, and nature of the service provided that are by far the biggest determining factors. This is actually where I struggled, as providing cloud infrastructure is significantly more fundamental than providing a social media platform but significantly less so than an IAP. I determined that the amount of competitors readily available to anyone weighs against holding it as a utility, but I was still unsure on how strongly the nature of the service weighs in favor or against doing so. I’m still not sure, and it largely depends on stuff I don’t actually know about cloud computing. Specifically, does the provider of the infrastructure host/publish the content or merely transmit it?
Ultimately, I decided it wasn’t enough of a utility-type business to not have a free-speech and property interest in what content involves their services, but this is my main uncertainty. And in the end, the fact that there doesn’t appear to be significant abuse of their control in this area means that there isn’t a strong need for regulation on this front, anyways.
For the record, I’m pretty sure that most of us would support having broadband providers being treated as utilities, and thus the electrical utility’s property rights should not be inferior to a “bandwidth” provider’s property rights.
(Note: none of this applies to platforms, search engines, or (possibly) cloud servers.)
Do you believe electricity providers should be required to provide power to run servers they don't want to run?
Yes. The power company is not in the business of speech at all, and they aren’t hosting the content they have an issue with, so they have no business butting in on such things.
Furthermore, while the electric companies may own the power lines (IDK), they don’t own anything that ever contains or hosts the content they find objectionable, so this isn’t really an issue with their private property rights, nor does it impact the power company’s 1A rights.
It’d’ve been one thing if you said “phone companies” or “IAPs”, but electricity providers are too far removed. It makes as much sense as discontinuing your electricity because you read the Kama Sutra every night. Yes, cutting off your power will change that, but it’s none of their business, and not letting them do so doesn’t force any speech on them, thus their 1A rights are preserved.
Additionally, you don’t really have a choice in your electric company. That’s pretty much set in stone when you move in. Since they effectively have a monopoly, cutting off power to servers they don’t like violates antitrust laws.
(And don't appeal to the unprincipled exception about utilities)
It’s not unprincipled. Most utilities don’t really compete with each other; you’re basically locked in based on your physical location. As such, there is no “marketplace of ideas” to outweigh the downsides of free speech in that particular case; there isn’t a marketplace at all there. You can’t (readily) switch to another company that provides that same utility if you’re dissatisfied.
Additionally, utilities and similar services like cell service and IAPs don’t (or at least shouldn’t) monitor the content of what goes through them, and they (again) don’t host speech but merely transmit it.
Basically, the logic regarding platforms and server hosts moderating speech doesn’t really apply to utilities.
I mean, I was still able to make my case without appealing to that particular argument, but you failed to give a good reason why it shouldn’t be used, and (as I pointed out in my response) you chose a really bad example that was easy to refute, anyways.
Because everything with which the woke mob disagrees will eventually be labeled "extremist" or "hateful" or "potentially maybe dangerous", and therefore worthy of censorship.
Which is why the government should stay out of it.
The right has been doing that for even longer than the left.
There is no limit to cancel culture.
Except that it largely appears to not actually do anything. More importantly, platforms can moderate excesses without falling into “cancel culture”.
They will eventually be asked to become the gatekeepers of all speech.
No. At worst, they will be asked to become the gatekeepers of speech on their platforms/servers/whatever. Amazon’s servers =/= the Internet. Facebook =/= the Internet. Twitter =/= the Internet. Google =/= the Internet. A ban on Facebook has no effect on Twitter or Gab. If one service refuses to host your site, there are others available.
And, of course, they can always say, “no,” when asked to become gatekeepers.
It is better to announce that all speech is allowed, than to become the tool of authoritarianism.
False dichotomy. There is a massive amount of middle-ground there that you ignore. They can just remove the speech that is the most extreme and leave other unpleasant things up. They can decide they want to be “family friendly”. They can decide to remove spam, porn, harassment, and illegal content and leave everything else up. They can remove all those things and things that incite violence and leave everything else up. None of these involve allowing all speech or involve “becom[ing] the tool of authoritarianism”. You make it sound like an all-or-nothing deal, and it simply isn’t.
I think the question here is: are services like Amazon’s cloud services akin to or actually are public utilities like landlines or electricity? Or are they something else? I think they’re more like landlords or the people renting out storage units, but I can at least understand arguments that they’re public utilities.
I’m very, very torn on this issue. For all the others, there was a meatspace analogue to work with. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are like bookstores or pubs. Google Search is like a phone book or directory. Amazon retail, Apple’s App Store, and Google Play are retailers. ISPs and email are like phone lines. In all of these, it was clear to me what role each played; none should be held liable for the hosted content, and only ISPs shouldn’t have much, if any, control over what goes through; others should be free to moderate freely as long as there isn’t an anticompetitive issue.
Amazon Cloud Services (along with similar services) is more difficult for me to figure out how to make work in this line of thought. On the one hand, their control is so basic that it makes me lean toward ISP route of little control, but on the other hand, they own the servers that physically contain the data, so we go into the private property route of near total control.
The best analogue I could think of is a landlord or one of those companies that houses physical storage units to house physical goods. I don’t really know much about that area of law since I have no personal experience with either. I know that a landlord isn’t responsible for the acts of the lessee(s), and the owner of the storage units isn’t legally responsible for the contents, so the liability checks out. However, I don’t know anything about their ability to control the content/speech on their property.
If I had to guess, they have a legal right to do it, but that it is and should be exercised sparingly. This makes sense to me as the physical/memory space available is a scarce resource, but no one pays attention to who hosts a website, and the host generally doesn’t pay much attention to what goes on within the website.
Regarding market pressures, well, a host that is too heavy-handed is not going to do well, but there is some (relatively weak) incentive not to associate with bad actors, so that means hosts should be largely hands-off. This does appear to be the case in real life. A host discontinuing service based on content is not unprecedented but not terribly common either. Since the market seems to be handling the idea well (for the most part), I don’t see any reason why the government should be involved one way or the other.
And, of course, 1A protections of free speech and free association mean the government shouldn’t get involved, either, but I have to acknowledge that a hosting service is closer to a utility than a platform would be (though ISPs and email are far, far closer), and utilities can be forced to host/transmit speech they don’t like. Still, on the whole, this area seems to lean in favor of “let the market work it out” rather than “we need regulations”.
That said, I’m not terribly certain whether this is the “right” way to look at it or not. These are just my thoughts on the subject, but I’m very open to changing my position on this and would like to hear what others think about what I said.
I never really understood why people have a problem with what people do indoors with consenting adults. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to look at it or do it yourself.
At any rate, if that’s what they meant by “sexual perverts”, it has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion up to that point. We were talking about gender, genetics, and biological sex on the internet. Furries and BDSM are a separate issue, as well as sexual activities, though it’s still the platform holder’s prerogative on what to do with them.
P.S. Odd to have a time-based restriction on a website like that. Isn’t /b where all the controversial stuff goes, anyways? Kids and the easily offended shouldn’t really be there at any time of day.
Interesting. In that case, it falls under “too new to have been reasonable to have been mentioned earlier or in the article itself”, just like with Apple and Google.
We’re not trying to shut Parler down, and we’re not complaining about the people being banned. Parler has every right to do so, as does Twitter, which is the main point. I’m all for the people who feel constrained on Twitter going to their own platform. They just don’t have any moral high-ground over Twitter.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re: Re: Re:
Yeah. I didn’t mention it, but in terms of “importance”, the service is fairly low-tier, which also weighs against a finding of it being/ought to be a utility.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re: Re: Re: Parler v Amazon
After a quick lookover, in my completely nonprofessional, inexperienced opinion, I don’t think Parler has much of a leg to stand on.
On the post: Snowflake Josh Hawley Seems To Think The 1st Amendment Means Simon & Schuster Has To Give Him A Book Contract
Re: Re: Re: This cancellation is not about 1st Ammendment
Well, we’re nowhere near step 1, as neither internet nor media platforms have, could, or would want to establish a police state; have any power to take away anyone’s 2nd Amendment rights; nor have or can “hollow out” 1A protections. They aren’t the government.
First, the last COVID stimulus bill was tacked onto a government spending bill by both parties (it was the latter that dealt with the raise and spending).
Second, both Democrats and Republicans gave the incoming Congress a raise.
Third, Democrats don’t strongly prioritize “reduc[ing] wasteful spending”, nor do their voters, and we couldn’t care less about what Trump wanted in this area.
Fourth, what constitutes “wasteful spending” is subject to debate.
Fifth, the Dems and Trump wanted to increase the $600, but congressional Republicans refused.
Even if they had, it would’ve never got past the Republican-controlled Senate or the President, and there’s a lot of debate within the Democratic Party on whether or not MC4A is a good idea.
Did you even watch the videos of the inside? Also, I’ve seen no evidence that the protest had anything to do with anything other than the election results.
Watch. The. Tapes.
Let me be clear: if you were outside peacefully protesting, that’s fine. We’re talking about the people inside.
Again, watch the videos. She was shot because she was trying to break into a restricted area.
It’s worth noting the people breaking in were also Trump supporters. And I haven’t seen any evidence to back-up this claim. You’re the only one I’ve seen make that claim.
Isn’t that what you did with BLM and Antifa? At any rate, the problem is that the person you support instigated a riot on Capitol Hill. If you were outside, peacefully protesting, then you are not to blame. Again, all the people inside or trying to break in were the problem, and they were not peacefully protesting. I’m not interested in arguing about whether or not there were also people not rioting outside.
On the post: Snowflake Josh Hawley Seems To Think The 1st Amendment Means Simon & Schuster Has To Give Him A Book Contract
Re: Re: Re: This cancellation is not about 1st Ammendment
I don’t think you have a clue what communism actually means.
(Side note: I’ve noticed that a lot of arguments from the right tend to be one or more of the following:
X is bad, therefore X is communist/socialist.
X is communist/socialist, therefore X is bad.
I don’t like X, therefore X is bad and/or communist/socialist.
T says X is bad/communist/socialist, therefore it must be bad/communist/socialist.
T doesn’t like X, therefore I don’t like X.
…where X is some person, organization, policy, or event, and T is a conspiracy theory or a rightwing “news” source, politician, organization, or talking head. I can’t tell you how many times I got into an argument like this:
R: I don’t like X.
Me: Why not?
R: Because they’re a socialist/communist.
Me: What makes them a socialist/communist?
R: Because they support Y.
Me: How is that bad?
R: Because it leads to socialism/communism!
Me: What makes that bad?
R: Because it leads to Y.
That’s setting aside me pointing out all the other faulty logic, like whether or not X actually supports Y, whether Y has any connection to socialism/communism, etc. It’s also only if they don’t simply go, “Because it just is/does,” at some point. Keep in mind, I think that full-on socialism isn’t really the American way, and communism is unrealistic, so they are unable to give a coherent argument to things I already agree with.)
On the post: Everything Pundits Are Getting Wrong About This Current Moment In Content Moderation
Re:
I’m pretty sure that punctuation marks aren’t allowed in hashtags, and the first character must be a letter/orthographical equivalent to a letter.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re: Re: Re: Re:
When it comes to public policy, I choose to look at it completely abstractly, without considering who is removed or whether I agree with the end results of the termination. It tends to be good for removing biases and emotional reactions. Ultimately, on a scale from Comcast to Facebook, I think that Amazon’s hosting falls closer to Facebook, especially when I think of the amount of competitors available.
I try to temper my personal reactions based on what I think is good public policy, and then look at specifics as well as look at the flip-side. On this, I think we have some agreement in that this definitely raises serious questions about whether or not this was a good thing for Amazon to do. This is definitely a power that Amazon should exercise sparingly and with great caution. However, I still don’t think the laws should be changed to prevent it from happening, though I’m open to changing my mind on that.
Also, I am generally skeptical of most slippery-slope arguments, though this isn’t terribly fallacious and seems to be genuinely wondering about the answer.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I concur. The root DNS services essentially control the internet as a whole; if you can’t get through them, it can’t be put online. As such, barring clearly illegal activity, root DNS shouldn’t have any control over content.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re: Parler v Amazon
Ultimately, I think it comes down to the contract.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re:
For me, unless we’re discussing lobbying, antitrust or pro-competition laws, or taxation, I try to avoid worrying about the size of the business when dealing with policy questions. By doing so, I find it easier to deal with excesses and problems that come from big businesses without interfering with small businesses or private individuals beyond what I think is just.
Note that in my thoughts, I intentionally ignored the fact that Amazon is a big company. I thought more abstractly: regardless of size, should any company that provides cloud infrastructure be able to moderate the content it hosts? My answer was, ultimately, a (somewhat tentative) “yes”, though it should be done more sparingly than the owners of a website moderating content on their platform. Since that appears to already be the case, and there are a number of options for cloud infrastructure, my position on the relevant public policy questions is that the government has no need to be involved in this issue and so should not be.
Even with determining what are or aren’t utilities, the size of the business isn’t important to me; it’s the amount of competition, the ease with which newcomers can enter the marketplace—whether they can ultimately succeed or not is significantly less important—and the importance, fundamentality, and nature of the service provided that are by far the biggest determining factors. This is actually where I struggled, as providing cloud infrastructure is significantly more fundamental than providing a social media platform but significantly less so than an IAP. I determined that the amount of competitors readily available to anyone weighs against holding it as a utility, but I was still unsure on how strongly the nature of the service weighs in favor or against doing so. I’m still not sure, and it largely depends on stuff I don’t actually know about cloud computing. Specifically, does the provider of the infrastructure host/publish the content or merely transmit it?
Ultimately, I decided it wasn’t enough of a utility-type business to not have a free-speech and property interest in what content involves their services, but this is my main uncertainty. And in the end, the fact that there doesn’t appear to be significant abuse of their control in this area means that there isn’t a strong need for regulation on this front, anyways.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re: Re: Re: Re:
For the record, I’m pretty sure that most of us would support having broadband providers being treated as utilities, and thus the electrical utility’s property rights should not be inferior to a “bandwidth” provider’s property rights.
(Note: none of this applies to platforms, search engines, or (possibly) cloud servers.)
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re: Re:
Yes. The power company is not in the business of speech at all, and they aren’t hosting the content they have an issue with, so they have no business butting in on such things.
Furthermore, while the electric companies may own the power lines (IDK), they don’t own anything that ever contains or hosts the content they find objectionable, so this isn’t really an issue with their private property rights, nor does it impact the power company’s 1A rights.
It’d’ve been one thing if you said “phone companies” or “IAPs”, but electricity providers are too far removed. It makes as much sense as discontinuing your electricity because you read the Kama Sutra every night. Yes, cutting off your power will change that, but it’s none of their business, and not letting them do so doesn’t force any speech on them, thus their 1A rights are preserved.
Additionally, you don’t really have a choice in your electric company. That’s pretty much set in stone when you move in. Since they effectively have a monopoly, cutting off power to servers they don’t like violates antitrust laws.
It’s not unprincipled. Most utilities don’t really compete with each other; you’re basically locked in based on your physical location. As such, there is no “marketplace of ideas” to outweigh the downsides of free speech in that particular case; there isn’t a marketplace at all there. You can’t (readily) switch to another company that provides that same utility if you’re dissatisfied.
Additionally, utilities and similar services like cell service and IAPs don’t (or at least shouldn’t) monitor the content of what goes through them, and they (again) don’t host speech but merely transmit it.
Basically, the logic regarding platforms and server hosts moderating speech doesn’t really apply to utilities.
I mean, I was still able to make my case without appealing to that particular argument, but you failed to give a good reason why it shouldn’t be used, and (as I pointed out in my response) you chose a really bad example that was easy to refute, anyways.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re:
Which is why the government should stay out of it.
Except that it largely appears to not actually do anything. More importantly, platforms can moderate excesses without falling into “cancel culture”.
No. At worst, they will be asked to become the gatekeepers of speech on their platforms/servers/whatever. Amazon’s servers =/= the Internet. Facebook =/= the Internet. Twitter =/= the Internet. Google =/= the Internet. A ban on Facebook has no effect on Twitter or Gab. If one service refuses to host your site, there are others available.
And, of course, they can always say, “no,” when asked to become gatekeepers.
False dichotomy. There is a massive amount of middle-ground there that you ignore. They can just remove the speech that is the most extreme and leave other unpleasant things up. They can decide they want to be “family friendly”. They can decide to remove spam, porn, harassment, and illegal content and leave everything else up. They can remove all those things and things that incite violence and leave everything else up. None of these involve allowing all speech or involve “becom[ing] the tool of authoritarianism”. You make it sound like an all-or-nothing deal, and it simply isn’t.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re: Re: You're not thinking this through
It doesn’t sound like there’s any need for the government to be involved, then.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re: Re:
I think the question here is: are services like Amazon’s cloud services akin to or actually are public utilities like landlines or electricity? Or are they something else? I think they’re more like landlords or the people renting out storage units, but I can at least understand arguments that they’re public utilities.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I’d say it’s principle tempered by reality.
On the post: The Slope Gets More Slippery As You Expect Content Moderation To Happen At The Infrastructure Layer
I’m very, very torn on this issue. For all the others, there was a meatspace analogue to work with. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are like bookstores or pubs. Google Search is like a phone book or directory. Amazon retail, Apple’s App Store, and Google Play are retailers. ISPs and email are like phone lines. In all of these, it was clear to me what role each played; none should be held liable for the hosted content, and only ISPs shouldn’t have much, if any, control over what goes through; others should be free to moderate freely as long as there isn’t an anticompetitive issue.
Amazon Cloud Services (along with similar services) is more difficult for me to figure out how to make work in this line of thought. On the one hand, their control is so basic that it makes me lean toward ISP route of little control, but on the other hand, they own the servers that physically contain the data, so we go into the private property route of near total control.
The best analogue I could think of is a landlord or one of those companies that houses physical storage units to house physical goods. I don’t really know much about that area of law since I have no personal experience with either. I know that a landlord isn’t responsible for the acts of the lessee(s), and the owner of the storage units isn’t legally responsible for the contents, so the liability checks out. However, I don’t know anything about their ability to control the content/speech on their property.
If I had to guess, they have a legal right to do it, but that it is and should be exercised sparingly. This makes sense to me as the physical/memory space available is a scarce resource, but no one pays attention to who hosts a website, and the host generally doesn’t pay much attention to what goes on within the website.
Regarding market pressures, well, a host that is too heavy-handed is not going to do well, but there is some (relatively weak) incentive not to associate with bad actors, so that means hosts should be largely hands-off. This does appear to be the case in real life. A host discontinuing service based on content is not unprecedented but not terribly common either. Since the market seems to be handling the idea well (for the most part), I don’t see any reason why the government should be involved one way or the other.
And, of course, 1A protections of free speech and free association mean the government shouldn’t get involved, either, but I have to acknowledge that a hosting service is closer to a utility than a platform would be (though ISPs and email are far, far closer), and utilities can be forced to host/transmit speech they don’t like. Still, on the whole, this area seems to lean in favor of “let the market work it out” rather than “we need regulations”.
That said, I’m not terribly certain whether this is the “right” way to look at it or not. These are just my thoughts on the subject, but I’m very open to changing my position on this and would like to hear what others think about what I said.
On the post: As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
Re: Perverts
I never really understood why people have a problem with what people do indoors with consenting adults. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to look at it or do it yourself.
At any rate, if that’s what they meant by “sexual perverts”, it has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion up to that point. We were talking about gender, genetics, and biological sex on the internet. Furries and BDSM are a separate issue, as well as sexual activities, though it’s still the platform holder’s prerogative on what to do with them.
P.S. Odd to have a time-based restriction on a website like that. Isn’t /b where all the controversial stuff goes, anyways? Kids and the easily offended shouldn’t really be there at any time of day.
On the post: As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
Re: Re: Re:
Huh. Still not censorship, but interesting.
On the post: As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
Re: Amazon stopped hosting Parler
Interesting. In that case, it falls under “too new to have been reasonable to have been mentioned earlier or in the article itself”, just like with Apple and Google.
On the post: As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
Re: Same old Tactics By Liberals
We’re not trying to shut Parler down, and we’re not complaining about the people being banned. Parler has every right to do so, as does Twitter, which is the main point. I’m all for the people who feel constrained on Twitter going to their own platform. They just don’t have any moral high-ground over Twitter.
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