"Red roses mean human trafficking" has the same energy as '90s urban legends about kids and drugs, the urban legends that my school administrators naturally believed. Watch out! Teens are getting high on "Pluto", the hot new party drug made from roasted banana peels. It's all fun and games, until they wake up in Mexico in a bathtub full of ice with sea salt on the rim....
I love using GIFs and memes to express myself. Especially ones referencing Star Wars and Star Trek
Memes can be genuinely good things in ways that don't get enough sincere celebration. For example, I think it's nice that we have ways to appreciate movies and TV shows that are fair-to-poor overall, because they give us little moments that run off and have lives of their own. And there are some kinds of pseudointellectual "argument" to which a detailed textual reply with footnotes (and circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back...) just isn't worthwhile. That kind of reply might even legitimize a grift, in a way that a GIF of a Muppet being embarrassed on your behalf wouldn't.
“This legislation has some admirable goals,” Wyden said. “Unfortunately, as written, it would devastate every part of the open internet, and cause massive collateral damage to online speech.” [...] “Creating liability for all commercial relationships would cause web hosts, cloud storage providers and even paid email services to purge their networks of any controversial speech,” Wyden added. “This bill would have the same effect as a full repeal of 230, but cause vastly more uncertainty and confusion, thanks to the tangle of new exceptions.”
If, as many people have been demanding, social media offers up paid options (say, to remove ads), doing so would remove their 230 protections. Incredibly, this bill is coming from the same people who have been saying that Facebook and Twitter should offer a "paid version" without ads or tracking -- but, under this bill, if they do that, they'd lose 230!
The example that immediately sprang to my mind was someone running a Mastodon instance and taking Patreon subscriptions to pay for hosting. Bye bye, fediverse!
Some of us have been working for years to create alternatives to Big Social Media. The last thing we need is a regulatory regime that Big Social Media can survive but we can't. Facebook and Twitter aren't the whole of the Internet today, but with the wrong law, they sure will be.
Wikipedia has a policy of "NPOV" --- Neutral Point of View. That's not neutral in the sense that Republicans would want, i.e. false balance, but rather an ethos of sticking to what the sources say. They've also developed a lengthy guideline for what can qualify as a "reliable source". And there's a more specific guideline just for writing about fringe theories, and a guideline for the extra-careful standards for writing about medicine. The acronyms are thick on the ground, because Wikipedia editors are the sort of people who think that all the problems of education and epistemology can be solved by applying more acronyms. Mind you, this is just a slice through the rulebook --- we haven't even gotten to the guidelines for "notability", which say what topics deserve to have articles about them. Or the Manual of Style, or the rules for Conflict-of-Interest editing. In short, it ain't simple.
The question raised by Birdwatch is, if you're trying to do community moderation to build a site that is fact-based and isn't a complete garbage fire, could the rules actually be any simpler? How do you write simple guidelines for a problem that is, itself, necessarily complicated?
Eine einst für terroristische Inhalte ins Leben gerufene Datenbank mit digitalen Fingerabdrücken soll künftig auch Darstellungen von Kindesmissbrauch aus dem Netz filtern. Das gab gestern die EU-Innenkommissarin Ylva Johansson auf einer Sitzung des EU Internet Forum bekannt. Zudem bereite sie ein neues Gesetz vor, das auf verschlüsselte Messenger-Nachrichten abziele, kündigte die schwedische Kommissarin an, ohne weitere Details zu nennen.
Machine translation:
A database with digital fingerprints that was once created for terrorist content will in future also filter depictions of child abuse from the Internet. This was announced yesterday by EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson at a meeting of the EU Internet Forum. In addition, she is preparing a new law targeting encrypted messenger messages , the Swedish commissioner announced, without giving any further details.
I was thinking the other day about "milkshake duck" and "sealioning", and how maybe we need a cute animal-themed word for "whining about being 'silenced' on a national media platform to which most of us have no access". Fox-crowing, perhaps?
“This coalition brings new voices and diverse perspectives to Washington’s current Section 230 debate, which too often focuses on the largest internet platforms,” [Ackil] said in a statement. The group plans to explain to policymakers how the companies see the core Section 230 protections as essential to the way they do business.
I wrote to my senators (Warren and Markey) and my representative (Pressley). In case anyone would like to adapt it, here's the text:
I have written your office recently about an alarming turn in what should be a dry subject. The news about changes afoot in copyright law has only grown more serious since then.(1) This area of law is too important for daily lives and livelihoods to be undermined by sneaking provisions into omnibus bills. The gravity and the complexity of the topic demand open, transparent policy-making.
Regarding the push for a felony streaming law, Sen. Tillis has claimed that his "proposal is narrowly tailored and only allows DOJ to prosecute commercial criminal organizations". But without the text in hand, none of us can say who qualifies as a "commercial criminal organization". That threshold could be incredibly low indeed.(2) Sen. Tillis has also stated that "tech groups like CCIA and public user groups like Public Knowledge have not come out against the proposal". The CCIA has in fact objected to another proposal also slated for the omnibus bill, a redux of the CASE Act. The CCIA has only said they do "not oppose compromise language reached with respect to “streaming.”" The rest of us --- i.e., those that the bill would affect --- have no way of telling if the CCIA's statements even apply to the current version of the felony streaming law, because we don't know what they saw and we don't know what the draft says now. The CCIA opposes the backroom-deal approach taken for the CASE Act; from out here where ordinary people live, it sure looks like that procedural point should apply across the board.(3) And as for "public user groups", Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight For the Future, has come out against the felony streaming proposal and has concerns with (what is known about) its substance.(4)
I urge you to keep the spending bill a spending bill and not to let the Internet be ridered to death.
Well, I wrote to my representative and both my senators.
On Friday, a few specialist news outlets reported that copyright and trademark legislation would likely be included in a "must-pass" spending bill (*). Here, far from Capitol Hill, that sounds fairly absurd. What is copyright reform doing in a budget bill, and is wedging it into "must-pass" legislation anything other than an admission it could not succeed otherwise? We are supposed to be the party of good governance and evidence-based decision-making. But the gap between the deep policy wonkery a subject like copyright reform demands and the donor-driven, lobbyist fantasy of 11th-hour politicking that we are actually getting is, in a word, dispiriting.
As to the specifics of the legislation, many outstanding questions remain. According to the news, the copyright portion would implement the CASE Act, a bill that can be described as addressing a real problem in an incredibly controversial way. Concerns about it range from a serious separation-of-powers issue to the question of in what universe can a $30,000 charge be considered a "small claim". As an author myself, and the kind who knows he will always be too niche to have the legal department of a giant publisher at his back, I am naturally interested in laws that purport to look out for the proverbial "little guy". By the same token, however, I don't want to risk all the ways that little guys like me will get hurt when the legislative equivalent of a Friday car loses its brakes.
Our country needs so many things --- stimulus checks, a vaccine rollout plan, accountability for lies in high places --- and it needs them far sooner than it requires a rejiggering of copyright law. I urge you to keep the spending bill a spending bill.
The footnote had a couple links to here and to the Protocol story.
The gap between the deep policy wonkery necessary for a subject like copyright reform and the 11th-hour, donor-driven politicking we actually get is just sickening.
I sent a letter to Tillis' staff, for what little that will do.
I am writing to express optimism regarding Sen. Tillis' open letter regarding copyright reform. It is past time that we acknowledge that both creators and consumers can benefit from legislation that reflects the epochal changes of circumstance we have witnessed with digital technology. As an author who will always be too niche to have the legal department of a giant corporation standing behind me, I am naturally interested in how regulation will affect the proverbial "little guy".
I do, however, have areas of concern. Chief among them is the proposal of a "notice-and-staydown system". Such a system would be ripe for abuse. Given the curerent prevalence of frivolous, spurious and censorious takedown notices, strengthening this mechanism will inevitably create a chilling effect upon legitimate speech and artistic expression. We do not need copyright law to become a way for people to be "cancelled" via takedown. The fact of the matter is that the same sequence of bytes can be an infringement in one context and fair use in another; fairness depends upon the use. Takedown-and-staydown is too blunt an instrument for an issue of this subtlety.
My second area of concern is the suggestion of website-blocking. Over the past fifteen years, the Internet has moved in the direction of having each website hosting the expressions of many individuals. Thinking of an issue like copyright infringement on a site-by-site basis would move us backward, to the Internet of 1995 rather than that of today and tomorrow. Moreover, on Constitutional grounds, the overarching principle of First Amendment jurisprudence is that regulation and legislation affecting the freedom of speech must be narrowly tailored to preserve the rights that Amendment enshrines. Website-blocking is again a blunt instrument that is not in accord with this principle.
I thank you for your time and attention.
I figured a Republican might respond favorably to a criticism of "cancel culture", but I'm neither rich nor a lawyer, so I doubt my words will have much impact at all.
On the post: Law Enforcement, Social Media Users Turn An Act Of Kindness Into A Human Trafficking Investigation
"Red roses mean human trafficking" has the same energy as '90s urban legends about kids and drugs, the urban legends that my school administrators naturally believed. Watch out! Teens are getting high on "Pluto", the hot new party drug made from roasted banana peels. It's all fun and games, until they wake up in Mexico in a bathtub full of ice with sea salt on the rim....
On the post: Chastity Penis Lock Company That Was Hacked Says It's Now Totally Safe To Put Your Penis Back In That Chastity Lock
Just goes to show that you should never stick your dick in the Internet.
On the post: The Many Reasons To Celebrate Section 230
Memes can be genuinely good things in ways that don't get enough sincere celebration. For example, I think it's nice that we have ways to appreciate movies and TV shows that are fair-to-poor overall, because they give us little moments that run off and have lives of their own. And there are some kinds of pseudointellectual "argument" to which a detailed textual reply with footnotes (and circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back...) just isn't worthwhile. That kind of reply might even legitimize a grift, in a way that a GIF of a Muppet being embarrassed on your behalf wouldn't.
On the post: Now It's The Democrats Turn To Destroy The Open Internet: Mark Warner's 230 Reform Bill Is A Dumpster Fire Of Cluelessness
More from Wyden
Reported by Dell Cameron in Gizmodo:
On the post: Now It's The Democrats Turn To Destroy The Open Internet: Mark Warner's 230 Reform Bill Is A Dumpster Fire Of Cluelessness
The example that immediately sprang to my mind was someone running a Mastodon instance and taking Patreon subscriptions to pay for hosting. Bye bye, fediverse!
Some of us have been working for years to create alternatives to Big Social Media. The last thing we need is a regulatory regime that Big Social Media can survive but we can't. Facebook and Twitter aren't the whole of the Internet today, but with the wrong law, they sure will be.
On the post: Now It's The Democrats Turn To Destroy The Open Internet: Mark Warner's 230 Reform Bill Is A Dumpster Fire Of Cluelessness
From Cristiano Lima, tech reporter for Politico:
On the post: Can A Community Approach To Disinformation Help Twitter?
Re: Re:
Nice find. Thanks!
On the post: Can A Community Approach To Disinformation Help Twitter?
Wikipedia has a policy of "NPOV" --- Neutral Point of View. That's not neutral in the sense that Republicans would want, i.e. false balance, but rather an ethos of sticking to what the sources say. They've also developed a lengthy guideline for what can qualify as a "reliable source". And there's a more specific guideline just for writing about fringe theories, and a guideline for the extra-careful standards for writing about medicine. The acronyms are thick on the ground, because Wikipedia editors are the sort of people who think that all the problems of education and epistemology can be solved by applying more acronyms. Mind you, this is just a slice through the rulebook --- we haven't even gotten to the guidelines for "notability", which say what topics deserve to have articles about them. Or the Manual of Style, or the rules for Conflict-of-Interest editing. In short, it ain't simple.
The question raised by Birdwatch is, if you're trying to do community moderation to build a site that is fact-based and isn't a complete garbage fire, could the rules actually be any simpler? How do you write simple guidelines for a problem that is, itself, necessarily complicated?
On the post: No, Getting Rid Of Anonymity Will Not Fix Social Media; It Will Cause More Problems
Very Serious People: "Everyone would behave if we had to use our real names online!"
Marjorie Taylor Greene: (exists)
On the post: EU Takes Another Small Step Towards Trying To Ban Encryption; New Paper Argues Tech Can Nerd Harder To Backdoor Encryption
The plan seems to have taken another half-lurch forwards, sadly.
Machine translation:
On the post: Disingenuous, Lying, Whining, Bloviating, Insurrection Encouraging Senator Josh Hawley Given Pages Of Major Newspaper To Explain How He's Being Silenced
I was thinking the other day about "milkshake duck" and "sealioning", and how maybe we need a cute animal-themed word for "whining about being 'silenced' on a national media platform to which most of us have no access". Fox-crowing, perhaps?
On the post: Mitch McConnell Using Section 230 Repeal As A Poison Pill To Avoid $2k Stimulus Checks
And now we live in dread that anti-Facebook sentiment will be strong enough for Democrats to swallow that poison pill....
On the post: Congress (Once Again) Sells Out To Hollywood: Sneaks CASE Act And Felony Streaming Bill Into Government Funding Omnibus
CD Projekt Red: we're going to show the whole world what a disaster developing by crunch can be
United States Congress: hold our beer
On the post: Smaller Internet Companies Say They're Open To 230 Reform... To Keep Facebook From Being The Only Voice In The Room
Not as bad as it could be, I suppose?
On the post: Security Researcher Reveals Solarwinds' Update Server Was 'Secured' With The Password 'solarwinds123'
Whistler: Give me the number of something impossible to access.
Carl: Federal Reserve Transfer Node, Culpeper, Virginia.
Mother: Good luck, $900 billion a day go through there.
Carl: You won't get in --- it's encrypted.
Whistler: solarwinds123
On the post: Not This Again: Senator Tillis Tries To Slide Dangerous Felony Streaming Bill Into Must Pass Government Funding Bill
I wrote to my senators (Warren and Markey) and my representative (Pressley). In case anyone would like to adapt it, here's the text:
On the post: Biden's Top Tech Advisor Trots Out Dangerous Ideas For 'Reforming' Section 230
Free slogan: "You say you want to kill Facebook, but you're going to miss and kill Wikipedia."
On the post: Nancy Pelosi Sells Out The Public: Agrees To Put Massive Copyright Reform In 'Must Pass' Spending Bill
Well, I wrote to my representative and both my senators.
The footnote had a couple links to here and to the Protocol story.
On the post: Nancy Pelosi Sells Out The Public: Agrees To Put Massive Copyright Reform In 'Must Pass' Spending Bill
The gap between the deep policy wonkery necessary for a subject like copyright reform and the 11th-hour, donor-driven politicking we actually get is just sickening.
On the post: Senator Tillis Plans Major Copyright Overhaul: Recognizes Legit Problems, But Current Solutions Are Lacking
I sent a letter to Tillis' staff, for what little that will do.
I figured a Republican might respond favorably to a criticism of "cancel culture", but I'm neither rich nor a lawyer, so I doubt my words will have much impact at all.
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