The problem with at least Facebook and Twitter (and possibly Google) in this analysis is that their attention-grabbing model requires them to analyse and interfere with the data which is coming through their systems. The only way not to do that would be for FB timelines and Twitter feeds to be strictly sequential feeds which at some point in the past they may have been but they are not now.

Once you start basing your business model on selectively making some content more visible, you have already crossed a rubicon between a strictly neutral common carrier and a publisher.

(There is an error in the quote where they use publisher when they mean common carrier, a publisher is precisely an organisation that does have full editorial control of what they put out which is the opposite of what they intend from the rest of the quote.

Exactly. At face value, I'm firmly in favor of what Ravikant was saying, but even the simple example of a spam filter proves how it's impossible in practice: without basic spam filtering, something like Twitter would be absolutely unusable in the face of endless crypto and malware spam. At some level, Twitter/FB/et al have to do SOMETHING to shape/filter the volume of traffic they receive.

I don't think calls to regulate Twitter/FB would get much traction if all they were doing was spam filtering. To see it from a different direction: imagine the shit show that would happen if Google started "moderating" gmail content, even though it currently does very aggressive spam filtering.

Indeed. Spam filters, porn filters, swearword filters... all of those have precedents (in mainstream, non-social/internet media) and are perfectly acceptable by most of society.

In addition, notice that even GMail doesn't actually filter spam. It just hides it - it's an assistant, not arbiter of what you should see. It's more than happy for you to adjust the filters (for yourself personally).

Edit: GMail also does prioritization as of recently - but again, the purpose of that is to help users not filter content. Again, those algorithms are also adjustable for each user separately, they just have some "smart" defaults.

>GMail doesn't actually filter spam. It just hides it

This is not accurate. There is a long on-going issue with GMail (and others) wholesale blocking delivery of email from domains/IPs/providers it deems to be spam or otherwise inappropriate. GMail users get no indication/notification, and generally have no idea that email sent to them was simply not delivered.

Kind of. You can't turn their anti-spam off, you can't exclude addresses from it and, worse for me, Gmail can hard bounce if it doesn't like something in your server/IP/content in a way that's not fully documented or reproducible.

You can now. You can create a filter matching whatever criteria you want (including from:[email protected] or a catch all), and specify matches 'never get flagged as spam'. Its not obvious, but it is there. And the usual limitations of filters apply, such as not being able to match arbitrary headers.

That only works on mail that actually gets delivered to your mailbox. Gmail can and will:

- Reject delivery of mail from sources it has determined to be spammy (e.g. residential IPs) - this mechanism allows the sender to be aware that delivery failed.

- Accept delivery and then silently drop the message somewhere between after accepting delivery but before appearing in the end user's mailbox.

In either case, there is nothing you (the mailbox holder) can do. In the second case, there is no way for anyone to know the message hasn't been delivered.

Things can get flagged outside of your mailbox as so spammy that they will never arrive. This is how every spam filter works that I have seen to date and google is no exception.

It’s still not so easy. At what point does “fake news” become spam?

Its pretty obvious what’s spam and what isn’t. “Fake news” is extremely subjective, so try not to anger half the country :)

Google does censor my email to some extent. It send a number of conservative emails straight to spam.

Political emails tend to get tagged as spam in general. I have someone close to me who is involved in local Democratic Party and progressive organizations. When you go to an event or donate money (say an award banquet), they share your name and spam the crap out of you. A lot of that mail gets tagged as spam as a result.

Conservative outlets work similarly, but they seem to have bigger online operations and are hard to get out of. My in laws get barraged with this stuff, and a mail provider like GMail or Microsoft gets a lot of spam signals from it I’m sure.

Political emails are spam. No matter from which direction they come from. So tagging them as spam seems just the right thing to do.

Political emails often are spam but not all of them. I subscribed to few newsletters from various political parties and I don't want google to block them from me.

It's only spam, if you don't want it.

If you explicitly solicit those emails, eg by signing up to a newsletter, it's not spam.

Some of the conservative emails I did not opt in, so could be considered spam. Others I did opt in and it still gets sent to spam.

On the other hand I get unsolicited email from some Democrat groups, and I never see such emails in spam.

I'm liberal, and lots of the unsolicited Democrat emails go to my spam folder.

I've heard people in the political world talk about buying and selling email lists, which I thought was illegal, but seems to be common practice.

In the early 90's I gave something like $20 to the Sierra Club or a similar group. After a deluge in physical mail asking for donations from around the political spectrum, I never did it again. I left no forwarding address after moving either. Pretty dumb on their part, they traded all their goodwill for a short-term dollar.

Is it doing that because they are “conservative emails” or because they violate spam rules?

If those emails are flagged because they’re “conservative” then I agree with you that needs to he corrected.

However, if those emails are flagged because they violate well known spam rules then let’s help “conservative” email senders to follow the rules. Examples include not using single or double opt-in for signup, not honoring or providing an opt-out link, using emails from a bulk list that includes known flagged emails, not including a plain text copy of the email in the message, and originating from a flagged server. Reputable email services like MailChimp go to great lengths to educate email list admins how to follow these rules & curate high value email lists.

Needs to be more specific as well. Is it intelligent conservatism in the vein of Bill Buckley or a knuckle-dragging ad hominem attacks from the lowbrow right?

Gmail thankfully sends all the republican and democratic party emails I receive straight to spam.

One year, I made a concerted effort to troll some friends by getting them bumper stickers from the opposing party that they supported (e.g. dems got republican bumper stickers, repubs got democrat bumper stickers).

Since then, despite being sure to opt out of mails at the time of purchase, and clicking 'unsubscribe' numerous times, both parties continue to spam me.

Gmail filters these emails into spam for me. Thank goodness.

I'm led to believe that if enough gmail users mark emails as spam, this will get fed across to other users that haven't. So you can probably blame people like me for marking these messages as spam, for it occurring to you.

Or y'know, they could actually honor the 'unsubscribe' request and stop spamming me, and I wouldn't have to mark it (legitimately) as spam.

Then it doesn't censor your email at all.

You can freely view the emails in your spam folder, with one click. You can optionally move the emails to your inbox and train Gmail ("not spam" button) not to place them there in the future.

It's going too far to call it censorship (in any manner) when an email provider places an email into a spam folder that requires one click to view/review.

A lot of overt spam (when gmail is most certain that it's spam) doesn't end up in the spam folder. A counter is incremented and the message is thrown out.

Unless you are talking about email coming from the most blacklisted of IPs, that’s not true.

It's not censorship. It's basic hygiene.

At Google the top metric used to be relevance for a long time (until Amit Singhal was kicked out) for a good reason: it's a metric that kicks out spam, but doesn't pick sides.

Times and leadership has changed since though.

All good things...

> without basic spam filtering, something like Twitter would be absolutely unusable in the face of endless crypto and malware spam

I don't understand this argument at all. Is it so difficult for users to curate the list of accounts they follow?

Replies. It would be impossible to follow a thread. Even today it can get rough following a thread spawned from an elon musk tweet, given all the crypto-scamming.

I think there is a "I know it when I see it" type of argument to say, we will make the strongest effort possible to never censor anything that is not attempting to sell a product but we reserve the right to force advertisements to go through a specific channel.

For better or worse the types Of things which get called to be banned from a platform for being unacceptable speech rarely resemble the specific styles of advertising we classify as spam.

Another argument is let users be ther own spam control.have some idiot acquaintance from middle school who keeps spamming pyramid scheme and/or nazism? Fine, just unfriend them.

As long as you are given control over what content is pushed at you directly, there is no need to sensor the whole platform because of a specific undesirable.

That's interesting because we desperately need spam filtering on our phones right now.

Firefox on Android allows extensions. Including ad blockers.

I was referring to filtering spam phone calls.

Oh, those are annoying. I've been getting some lately, but not nearly as many as other people seem to be getting.

I think Google lets you report numbers as spam? (And, of course, caller id can be faked, but the important bit is that spam will differ statistically from legitimate calls.)

I think if there are going to be filters, then it would make sense for users to be able to opt in or out of filters. That way you can choose what you want to see, instead of having an almighty force that determines what you see. Having global filters that users can't turn off, besides to filter out illegal content, needlessly take away freedom from users.

Usenet dealt with this via killfile. There is no reason why you cannot do client-side filtering (compare /silence with /ignore in IRC). Client-side and server-side each have their pros and cons.

Usenet also had Cancelmoose and the Cabal (TINC).

Both individual and administrative filters are necessary.

Anything can be spam because spam is in the eye of the beholder, but nonetheless, politics is generally not spam. You can have a politically-neutral policy against undesirable content that passes the smell test. It does require that you a) use reasonably objective terms in the definition of "spam", and b) that you resist the inevitable pressure to reinterpret those terms to cover that which others find undesirable political content.

Actually politics generally is spam - in the sense that much of it is knowingly dishonest self-promotion of individuals and social groups.

Just because politics isn't trying to sell you a penis extension doesn't mean it isn't trying to sell you something far worse.

It doesn't even matter how political content is published. What matters is that currently voters get more protection from a faulty toaster than from lies knowingly generated by politicians and corporate PR outfits.

The creation of deliberately false "talking points", fake news, smear campaigns, organised trolling and astroturfing, fake reviews, fake feedback, and other kinds of cognitive pollution should be banned from all forms of media.

Which is not to say this is easy or straightforward. But attempts should be made - because lying to voters and consumers is absolutely toxic to genuine democracy.

There’s something fascinating when you equate penis enlargement spam with political speech.

Btw, laying in politics has happened for like forever. Is there any evidence that it’s worse than in the past?

Both are messages coming to you. Just because they have the right to metaphorically knock on your door doesn't mean both campaigners and vacuum cleaner salesmen don't get the door slammed on them and doormen won't tell both to scram if they try to visit apartments unsolicited. The difference in categort broadness seems classically strawmen as well.

Not true at all.

Spam is unwanted email that you did not sign up to receive and sent from someone who you do not know.

He oversimplified the issue. Phone companies don't make money through ads. FB/Twitter/Google make money by "getting into the weeds". They chose a business model with much more reward (hence much more risk). They're basically running ads businesses. You post about shoes, they sell you shoes. You talk about unemployment, they sell you a candidate ? Gitlab/Microsoft et al have slightly less dependent business models that aren't dependent on ads (for the most part).

People warned that this would happen when Facebook (YouTube, Steam, etc.) started sliding in this direction.

And years before Facebook was even created, a middle way was also proposed where a carrier like Facebook wouldn't be legally responsible for the content they carried, unless they started to select and/or moderate that content, at which point they would lose the carrier status, becoming a simple broadcaster, which would be legally responsible for everything that they would help to broadcast.

> unless they started to select and/or moderate that content, at which point they would lose the carrier status

But since the homepage feed (or any medium really) displays contents in a certain order, some selection must take place.

Typically some algorithm (usually a recommender system together with some business logic) is used to determine which contents from all that's available to you are actually shown to you and in what order.

Bias seems to be an unavoidable part of the design to me.

There are shades of grey. However, we have leaked footage of a Google co-founder saying (at an all-hands meeting no less) that the outcome of a democratic election conflicts with Google's values. There is a lot of room for interpretation there, but there are signals from Google in particular (eg, donation streams; leaked video; the occasional scandal bubbling out) that their management might be seeing the world through a partisan lens.

Abstract ideas of unavoidable bias are only of academic interest; the right wing of politics is justified in seeing Google as a direct political threat. That would not be justified if Google had a strict "no political talk, no political campaigning, we are the Switzerland of the internet" style policy for their workplace.

I honestly don't see the problem with Google using its position to affect peoples' viewpoints. If we're going to allow other industries (such as energy) to hire lobbyists or advertisers to change peoples' viewpoints, and even worse, going straight to the decision-makers with lobbyist $$$, then criticizing Google is hypocritical.

>the outcome of a democratic election conflicts with Google's values.

What's wrong with this? The outcomes of the previous Presidential elections conflicted with many other companies' values. Every political election's outcome conflicts with some company's values, because companies stand to gain or lose depending on the policies enacted by that politician.

> If we're going to allow other industries (such as energy) to hire lobbyists or advertisers to change peoples' viewpoints, and even worse, going straight to the decision-makers with lobbyist $$$, then criticizing Google is hypocritical.

I'm curious that you would assume that as being the default position ?

I'm not making a moral case. I do think there is a moral case as well but it is a very complicated do-unto-others-as-you-would-have-them-do-unto-you style one with some nuances that isn't going to fit into one comment. The case is that Google is potentially a direct threat to the right wing of politics. It would be prudent for the right wing to respond by trying to break Google up and neutering them as a platform, so that there are several successful competitors in all their markets. Realistically it is possible that the moderate left wing could be convinced as well - nobody is served by the risk that an entity as powerful as Google becomes an active propaganda platform. If they aren't even professing neutrality internally then they are on the way to becoming one.

Google could have avoided this situation by not explicitly championing political views inside their organisation.

Also the energy situations you cite aren't really comparable, the companies are only lobbying for things that make them more money and they don't have the same sort of power as Google in the political sphere.

It would be totally hypocritical for the right wing to break up Google. The Democrats tried that with Microsoft back in the late 90s, and as soon as Bush took office the case was dropped because Republicans don't believe in enforcing anti-trust law.

>the companies are only lobbying for things that make them more money

Every company does this if they can, and it's either going to help or hurt some political side. The case you're making here is that Google is bad for Republicans. Maybe, but coal companies are bad for Democrats (they give money to Republicans to help them win races), so why is this OK for coal companies, but not Google? I don't see the difference. As long as other companies or industries are allowed to influence politics with money, it's perfectly OK for Google to influence elections however they want, and it would be wrong to break them up because, as I said before, the Republican party is opposed to anti-trust law.

> It would be totally hypocritical for the right wing to break up Google. The Democrats tried that with Microsoft back in the late 90s, and as soon as Bush took office the case was dropped because Republicans don't believe in enforcing anti-trust law.

Circumstances were different - Microsoft wasn't doing anything particularly political. They aren't pro-Republican. This is the difference between politically attacking an entity because it is a corporation (a bad reason) vs attacking because they are politically active (an acceptable reason).

That is the central point. Google are removing potential defences against a political attack.

> Maybe, but coal companies are bad for Democrats (they give money to Republicans to help them win races), so why is this OK for coal companies, but not Google?

It is OK for Google, they can donate to whoever they want to. The issue is if they are going to be an partisan actor they control too much information and have too much influence on how people gather information.

>It is OK for Google, they can donate to whoever they want to. The issue is if they are going to be an partisan actor they control too much information and have too much influence on how people gather information.

If they can donate to whomever they want, they are also morally correct to control information however they want. Giving money to politicians is bribery, and is much more direct than merely controlling information on the internet. Personally, as long as bribery is legal, I have no problems with Google using a different tactic. It's much more ethical to try to shape peoples' opinions at large than to directly bribe politicians.

That argument ignores scale though, giving money to politicians directly may well be unethical, but it is a path that is open to everyone and is at least somewhat out in the open. Compared to that, Google basically is the internet for a large chunk of people and tracking how they use their index is practically impossible.

Compared to news media where the actors are highly partisan but there are strong voices and opportunities to be heard for all points of view. The alternatives are a lot thinner for Web search and Youtube; and most people would be shocked if it did turn out they were actively pushing a message.

Besides, I'd expect political donation laws to come under attack to. It is a very political question. Google should have stuck to strategies and pronouncements that are neutral so that they were less likely to get involved in partisan politics.

It doesn't really matter whether you see it as ethical or not; what matters is that Google has huge and largely unchallenged reach in a field and appear to be official stances by management on social issues that they do not need to. This makes them a legitimate political target.

Every industry sees the world though a partisan lens to some extent. Those criticisms also apply to energy, education, repair, etc

Exactly. Criticisms about Google's politicking are unjustified as long as lobbyists are allowed in other industries.

Would you mind providing a source for this leak?

It was that one from late last yer. Might have been https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl... . There wasn't anything there that was particularly scandalous; it was just a really interesting that this was the state of affairs inside Google.

I mean, it's OK if management have political views, as long as those views don't influence search results.

As long as the experimental process is rigorous and the people are incentivised to use the right metric (and the metric isn't politically biased), then it should be fine.

However, upon making that argument I find myself concerned at the possibility that Google's corporate interests (and perhaps some political interests) may shape which questions get asked, and thus the direction the service takes.

It's quite analagous to Chomsky's views of news organisations in Manufacturing Consent.

Everyone was fine with chronological order.

In that case one can just spam the same (or similar) post every second and your feed will likely be filled with that post.

I know I'm setting up a bit of a straw man here but my point is even chronological order can be exploited.

> I know I'm setting up a bit of a straw man here

Especially as this thread has already mostly said spam filtering (which your example would easily trigger) isn’t in opposition towards a goal of neutral status.

And if you did that, people would unfriend/unfollow you. Problem solved.

> my point is even chronological order can be exploited

The question is, how easy can it be?

The straw man, is indeed, that you can filter such, client- or server-side. If you see the same shit the whole time, you ignore it all. Easy; even IRC clients with scripting had such features in the 90s. Here is a list of techniques used in e-mail filtering [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_filtering#See_also

I think it depends on how the recommendation algorithms are implemented. (I have no idea about how Facebook and Twitter recommendation algorithms work)

Let's say for example you have a community contributed labeling system that allows users to label content. A recommendation algorithm might then be written that simply pulls the top 10 highest number of viewed pieces content that have the same labels as a piece of content the viewer just viewed. In this case, there is nothing in the algorithm that evaluates the content itself. The evaluation was done by users of the software, not the software itself.

Simple "neutral" algorithms are generally easy to game. If you choose an algorithm that you already know will be gamed for harassment or whatever then you're essentially choosing that outcome.

The labeling algorithm is just a relatively naive example. More complex "neutral" algorithms can be designed. Mitigations for abuse that are "neutral" themselves may be added before/after initial implementation. (e.g To extend the labeling example, a moderation system could be added that allows users to flag inappropriate labels.) Also, I don't think it is always possible to foresee in what ways a system/algorithm might be abused; therefore, it might be necessary to address said abuse once it reveals itself.

I don't think it's been convincingly argued that ranking or recommendation algorithms necessarily represent any sort of editorial bias. The purpose of these algorithms is to rank content based either on a prediction of what the individual user would want to see based on their existing history or on which content is more broadly engaging in general. In other words, if YouTube decides I really like to watch Ben Shapiro owning the libs with FACTS and LOGIC, that doesn't mean YouTube is making an editorial decision to promote that content, it just means YouTube has profiled me as some sort of conservative. If YouTube profiled me differently, they would be equally happy to recommend TYT videos or whatever.

There may be some editorial bias introduced if the userbase of a given social media site is themselves skewed in a particular direction. For instance, there seems to be some skew in the content that shows up on my Tumblr dashboard that seems fairly irrespective of anything I've subscribed to. But even that isn't necessarily damning for Tumblr, because they're not necessarily making an editorial decision to promote that content.

These platforms (these meaning the ones with the most market cap) need to be advertiser-friendly in order to grow. They inherently require editorial bias.

I'm not an expert on advertising, but I suspect these concerns are often overblown. There are YouTubers who get demonetized--presumably because their content isn't "advertiser-friendly"--who still manage to get individual sponsorship deals. If these companies were serious about being a "common carrier", they would invest more money into developing an advertising market where advertisers could pick and choose the content they wanted to advertise and less money into demonetization.

demonetized video still get ads, it is a two tier system where ad space on demonetized videos is lower in price.

Even if that’s true—which I somewhat doubt—YouTube basically makes demonetized videos disappear in terms of recommendations. They don’t admit it but every YouTuber I’ve seen get demonetized confirms that views basically stop after demonetization, aside from subscribers.

There's a very simple solution here that avoids any and all bias and hidden agendas: simply make everything transparent.

- Users get to create their own profile. For instance in your profile you get to selected whether you would like to see content geared towards men/women/any. And this would follow for a whole slew of other topics, similar to the opaque profile companies are creating on users today without their consent or input.

- All recommended videos have all their profile tags openly shown. And the reason for recommendation is also completely open.

The cool thing about it is that this also works really well with the current neural network based recommendation systems since they output a weighting of things. Simply transform those weightings into a nice output and the user can see exactly what's going on and exactly how they're being viewed. As a nice aside this would also remove a big chunk of the incentive for increasingly aggressive spying as companies try to get ever more extensive profiles on each and every person that uses their products.

One downside here is that users might not be consciously aware of their own preferences. This could again be resolved transparently. "Hey PhilWelch, we've noticed you like videos about underwater basketweaving. Would you like for this interest to be ticked in your profile? [Yes, No, No + Never ask again]

That would be awesome for advanced users but unfortunately bad for mass ergonomics. A shockingly high percentage have never cracked open the settings page even once.

Why would it be hidden away in some settings instead of right in your face with a nice fat button "Change how my videos are recommended..."? Even beyond that though, most online platforms today offer very limited general customization - and so there's not much reason for users to go digging through settings. They are designed to work primarily with the default configuration, and so that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

No, if they instead worked to develop better user moderation tools, it would work just as well as it does now, just without their (appearance of) liability. Things like word filters, subscribable block lists, etc.

> The problem with at least Facebook and Twitter (and possibly Google) in this analysis is that their attention-grabbing model requires them to analyse and interfere with the data which is coming through their systems.

Not to mention a completely different topic - ads for scams. When I create a new ad on FB, they keep it in review for at least a couple of hours. But every day I see dozens of ads that are obviously dishonest. Some financial scams, ads for some fishy schemes, some of them badly translated.

When you are a publisher and accept an ad, obviously it's very tempting to claim all responsibility is with the advertiser (it is not, although details vary between jurisdictions). But even if you didn't have any responsibility legally, it still feels terribly wrong from the ethical point of view to get rich by helping scammers cheat some poor chaps of their money.

Not on a daily basis, but I see ads for scams on youtube as well.

Different topic, but the strangest thing I witnessed on youtube was ads for audible during a stolen audible book... So the owner of the content payed the thief (indirectly, but still) for placing an ad during performance of the stolen content. And youtube couldn't care less, as long as money moves...

This is where twitter screwing over third party developers comes in to play. I would have preferred if twitter main feed was sequential and then there were thriving third party alternatives to it. Twitter could have easily monetised by taking a slice of ad revenue from third party developers, or by charging API fees to them.

They could make the algorithm customizable and let the user to control it. That would be much better than the current blackbox where you get uninteresting stories promoted because of misclicking once, and have no way to tell the algorithm about its mistakes.

> They could make the algorithm customizable and let the user to control it.

It often gets it wrong, but that's the general idea, isn't it? You don't customize it by checking some boxes or adding some keywords, you customize it by giving attention to some results more than to others.

Obviously, there's the added layer that they aren't optimizing for your satisfaction but for your business value to them.

This business model is the reason that FB, T and G are dominant platforms worth discussing. Products that are purely transactional are easy to compete with, splitting up markets and driving down prices. This is why true "common carriers", like ISPs, have fought desperately against net neutrality and to capture more customer data -- they want in on the value capture that comes from shaping content, because they are rapidly being commoditized as carriers of bits.

IMO this is a moat in the eye of a lot of libertarian tech philosophy. Most software products become competitive by building networks -- with end users (e.g. social networks), with developers (e.g. open source), or indirectly via content (from media aggregators to spam filtering). Once you're in the business of curating a network, you are implementing values whether you acknowledge them or not.

Publishers don't exercise editorial control? Come on now.

The problem is also that they are advertisers, and I'll be damned if I want ads for my company appearing next to "Illinois Nazis" or ISIS or whatever other garbage.

There's another problem: it becomes a race to the bottom if it's nothing but trolls and garbage content.

And the problem this creates for society is that we censor content that isn't advertiser friendly. We've already seen where this leads with broadcast television, lowest common denominator trash that is safe for advertisers, escaping that advertiser optimum made youtube good in the first place.

I subscribe to a lot of history channels so I've seen the effects of this filtering directly, history contains a lot of talk about nazis and hitler and you can't even mention the big H without being demonetized.

But this is just another example of how advertising is a cancer on society.

> The problem is also that they are advertisers, and I'll be damned if I want ads for my company appearing next to "Illinois Nazis" or ISIS or whatever other garbage.

I don't understand the problem. Why can't Toyota or Proctor and Gamble say it only wants to bid on a certain white list of channels or videos? The only downside is a smaller reach for the advertiser and a smaller "pie" for the "content" company (be it Instagram or YouTube).

I think the main problem is the "content providers" be it Instagram or YouTube want to maximize the ad revenue and any suggestion I have such as strictly reverse chronological timeline by default goes against the idea of "growth hacking".

I would personally love to be a fly in the wall in Netflix or Spotify headquarters. Because in my naive mind, Netflix makes MORE money when people subscribe to Netflix but never watch anything. But then if people watch Netflix a lot, they are more likely to talk about what they watch to others and encourage others to subscribe to Netflix?

Any company probably wants to make sure they make more money the more customers they have? Kind of sounds obvious but I don't think it is the case with every company. I'd imagine there are some businesses where there is an ideal size and if you are bigger, the additional customers kind of follow a law of diminishing returns? I can't think of any examples but would love to hear if anyone reading this can...

They did this for many years - when I moved to Silicon Valley in 2009 tech's attitude was "We just provide the mechanism, we let our users determine policy". My first couple years at Google (09-10), management was very insistent that "We don't take sides - we show the user the best result for their query regardless of how much we dislike it." There were examples like literal searches for Nazis where the top result was a hate group and rather than censor it, Google took out a house ad (basically paid themselves, using the mechanisms available to the general public) saying "Don't like these results? We don't either, but we believe strongly in freedom of speech, and so we're using this space to explain our views without depriving others of theirs."

The thing is, sometime around 2012-2014 this became unacceptable. Public discourse shifted into "silence is complicitness - if you allow this speech on your platform, that means that you endorse it." So it became a forced-choice issue. And the thing is that if it's a forced choice, very few people are going to stand up and defend Nazis. Most of these tech execs personally hold fairly liberal, progressive views. When the general public said "You're a Nazi sympathizer because you show Nazi websites in the search results", a.) it wasn't true and b.) it was personally insulting, because that was essentially the opposite of what actually was true.

And then once that started happening, you run into the age-old problem with restricting freedom of speech, which is that the people who hold the power to restrict it might not agree with you on what's worth restricting. Be careful what you wish for.

> Public discourse shifted into "silence is complicitness"

It leads to the "deplatforming" approach, i.e. not only refusing to provide a neutral publishing platform (or assimilated-related tools), but also to actively fight against those who do so.

'Be careful what you wish for', indeed.

> Public discourse shifted into "silence is complicitness - if you allow this speech on your platform, that means that you endorse it."

Public discourse? Or the loudest segment of the discourse most influential on Googlers?

The loudest segment of the discourse most influential on Googlers, but this caveat is usually inherent when we talk about "public discourse". (If you've studied Foucault, you'll recognize that power and influence are inherently tied in with the concept of discourse. Public speech happens all the time, but it only gets labeled "discourse" when it influences or is intended to influence society in some way.)

The way you put it above seemed to imply the discourse in society as a whole, not a narrow and unrepresentative segment of it.

TL;DR the exercise of advertiser preferences not the shift in public discourse is the true cause.

I agree with your account in every way, but one and I recognize that I might be wrong about it.

In my opinion, it was not public discourse that shifted first. Instead, in my opinion, it was advertiser choice to not have their ads shown alongside certain content be it search results, YouTube videos, tweets, Facebook posts, or whatever else these tech companies were carrying.

I believe that ignoring advertiser preferences in this discussion is harmful in that ignores their impact on both business choices and public discourse such well-meaning commenters here end up talking past each other needlessly.

If we consider the role of advertisers in this discussion, then the comparison of these tech companies to telephone, radio, and newspapers becomes more interesting if not more apt. The advertisers don’t have any sort of explicit freedom of association given to them by the tech companies about what kinds of content they are allowed to associate with, but the point becomes moot with advertisers being customers allowed to take their business anywhere.

1. Taking the comparison of telephone, what if there was a phone service that provided free calls with the caveat that the caller or the receiver had to listen to an ad? What if that had was in some way, shape or form related to past or present telephone conversations? I would personally find this feature annoying to have some third-party delay my conversation, but I can see where this might be useful for people who would not otherwise be able to afford the service. I assume that most people who use telephones would feel similarly to myself.

2. The comparison to radio, newspapers, and television is less interesting in that both mediums are essentially curated, but both do run ads and/or sell subscriptions. Some of them even offer services that come about from gaining expertise in their domains or being in close proximity to content creators in their respective mediums (record labels, television and movie studios, recommendation sites, marketing firms, public relations experts, etc.), which in turn can be funded by subscriptions, ads, or investments.

Consequently, there are similarities between these media. First of all, these tech companies offer services that allow ordinary people to broadcast themselves to a wide audience much like radio or newspapers. Second of all, these tech companies make a majority of their incomes from a combination ads and subscriptions. Third of all, users of Facebook, Twitter, Google and the like have conversational expectations much like those of telephone conversations: even the people working in radio, newspapers, and television feel really strongly negative when any other party tries to change their message or silence them.

Like some of the other commenters here, I too feel that these tech companies have made a mistake in policing content the way they do. I believe that they did so to this degree wholly to appease advertisers. Had they been laser-focused on preserving the integrity of what their users posted before the demands their advertisers then things could have been very different.

If I was an advertiser and I only wanted to show ads to people who like cat pictures, but absolutely never show those ads to people like pictures of other animals even if there are pictures of cats in some of those pictures then these tech companies should build the tool for that.

In my opinion, these tech companies should be even more of a transparent marketplace between the ad buyers and content producers and the free association that both these groups are allowed to have with other and not police or manipulate content or that is permissible by law (keep things chronological with a user being able to keep a list of favourites). Then this whole discussion would boil down to which set of advertisers pulled sponsorship from which set of content producers and vice versa.

Yes, this is all easier said than done. Yes, the thing that it would all boil down to is potentially a problem in itself. Yes, these tech companies still have to follow laws that can be in conflict with laws elsewhere or some set of values in general. Yes, people would still take tech companies over something else related or not.

But, at least then, we wouldn’t we talking about this.

If search engine results are a "public space", can you yell fire in a crowded theater?

Google listed its own services high in search results in order to promote and show favor to those services. Why shouldn't people use this same logic to criticize Google for effectively promoting hate groups?

The thing is - it didn't, at least while I was there. The triggering of universal result groups (eg. Local, Shopping, or News results within the search results page) was based on the probability that for a given query, the user would end up wanting to switch over to the respective Google property rather than click on the top result. There was no manual tweaking of search results, and the formulas were so simple (basically straight ratios) that it's hard for them to be mucked with.

What you say makes a lot of sense but a court ruled that Google's search ranks were self-promoting. I guess a good question here would be whether there were similar algorithms to funnel people towards E-Bay or other competitors' shopping services if they were likely looking for those.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/google-fined-e2-42bn-for-e...

But this is really a digression. The point is that search rank does promote. We can come up with many cases where Google perhaps shouldn't display the most relevant results. The question is whether Google should use their near-monopoly to influence the world via search results according to their moral code instead of strict legal responsibility.

Just because a court says something doesn't mean it is reality. At all.

Likewise can we all please give the open farce of abuse of the word "monopoly" to rest?

A court is a third party that is more objective than a Google employee. That is why I mentioned it.

Google is a great service (that I love and use daily by choice) but they also spend a lot of money to make sure they are the default search provider. They have more means than smaller search companies and they use those means to achieve almost total market share. Then Google used their vast market share to skew business in their favor. That is almost the textbook definition of monopolistic behavior.

> What you say makes a lot of sense but a court ruled that Google's search ranks were self-promoting.

And over a hundred years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that “seperate but equal” was a valid argument. Doesn’t make it correct.

Google was literally funneling people to its own services via its search results and had no similar linking for other services. The court's decision seemed reasonable.

The phone company analogy doesn't really work, because phone calls are by default private, between exactly two parties, usually just two people. If you look at the tech company equivalent of that, like FB messenger, or Hangouts, or other messaging systems, they behave more similarly to the phone company. It'd be difficult to get in trouble for something you said in a private message.

If you want the analogy to make sense, you'd have to use something that's more of a broadcasting platform, like TV or radio, or a magazine.

Perhaps if it's presented this way:

Group X that we don't like gets its phone service from AT&T. We know they're conducting their hateful business, fundraising, and coordination over AT&T's service. We need to put pressure on AT&T to cut off their service, or we'll assume that AT&T endorses their message.

Which is absurd. Putting that kind of censorship control in the power of ATT is dangerous. That’s why we have laws and elected officials.

That's the point of the analogy. People keeep saying Twitter etc. are private companies and can do whatever they want apparently without realizing how ridiculous it all seems when applied to another business.

The analogy still doesn't work. AT&T phone service is not a broadcast platform, and phone service is usually a government-granted monopoly that's highly regulated.

There are very obviously plenty of businesses where we'd expect people to cut off hateful organizations from service. I imagine most party caterers wouldn't want to host the KKK, and nobody would think this unreasonable.

> If you look at the tech company equivalent of that, like FB messenger, or Hangouts, or other messaging systems, they behave more similarly to the phone company.

FB Messenger censors pornhub links or at least it did a few years ago.

The "we're not being political" approach also fails at an earlier hurdle; which is that the decision to not allow "political" discussion at work -and the decision to refuse to review taking business from hate groups are themselves inescapably political decisions.

I think you're correct -- a phone call is one-to-one and the internet is a broadcast medium.

I believe radio (as in ham radio) actually has FCC rules regarding identification and profanity.

It does, but as far as I understand that's only because EM spectrum is a very limited (as used in practice) public resource. The logic wasn't (many to one) -> (regulation), it was (limited resource) + (EM interference problems) -> (government controlled public space) -> (regulation). The US National Parks might be a good analogy here - very high traffic combined with limited space availability.

In particular, note that in the public resource analogy the regulation is quite neutral; legal censorship of profanity in the US is very narrow.

Disagree with this.

First off, in the world of VOIP and conference calls this isn't true anymore, and we still don't censor VOIP providers.

The point is you can choose to be a carrier or you can chose to be a service.

We don’t need analogies.

It’s fairly clear how these organisations and their internet powered machination work.

So let’s talk about them in that context.

The phone analogy is terrible because the vitriol doesn't prevail. You aren't bombarded with 100 people's bigotry every time you pick up the phone.

What about the postal service then? That is a common carrier. Never mind being bombarded with bigotry, people can bombard you with literal bombs using the postal service, but hey if some kids are shitposting memes on 8chan... well we have to shut down that service altogether.

Radio, TV, and newspaper are each a better analogy.

Postal service is more akin to the infrastructure of radio/TV/newspaper (which differs, and is rather not one but various, e.g. cable, FM, and paperboys).

The analogy with Internet would be transit providers. The undersea cables between US and EU, for example. These are heavily logged, e.g. by UK. Imagine all your post be scanned, that'd be GDR-esque.

The telephone analogy is terrible. Phone calls are usually between two people, or a small number of people. At the very least, they're bounded to some relatively small number.

When you post something on Twitter, unless your account is private, you've broadcasted your speech to anyone in the world who cares to see it.

Not moderating any speech at all is a quick way to allow a community to turn into a cesspit of spam and trolling. Look at any web board or forum over the past several decades for inspiration. They either have moderation, or they get overrun.

Twitter isn’t a phone call, but it also isn’t a message board. You only see the tweets of the people you personally choose to follow; it doesn’t matter if there are 100 billion spam accounts posting ads to nobody.

There are millions of Twitter accounts in Japanese, but if you don’t follow any of them, and nobody you follow retweets them, you’d never know they exist. You can also block or mute specific accounts, mute keywords, etc for even finer control.

> You only see the tweets of the people you personally choose to follow

That's not at all true by default; you also see tweets from people that have paid for involuntary reach for the tweet (promoted tweets), tweets that people you follow have interacted with, tweets that respond to or mention people you follow, and probably others that I'm forgetting.

So Twitter broke their platform, and they show ads. This is vastly different from a message board that shows all messages to all users.

That is a vast oversimplification of how Twitter works. People absolutely see tweets from people they don't follow, all the time. Sometimes it's a promoted tweet, sometimes a retweet, sometimes just by browsing through trending topics. It's pretty much impossible to use the platform in such a way that you'll only see tweets from people you follow, and nothing else.

Agreed that Twitter isn't a message board, but that's a much closer analogy than calling it a phone call.

Imagine if those promoted tweets were delivered to you as automated phone calls from spoofed numbers.

> You only see the tweets of the people you personally choose to follow

If that was true, that would help a lot.

>Twitter isn’t a phone call, but it also isn’t a message board.

Well, Twitter is Twitter. But Twitter is probably closer to a message board than it is to a phone call.

> They either have moderation, or they get overrun.

But those boards are moderated by people who are part of the community. Not by the software nor the software host.

Twitter, FB, Google are not part of those communities. If they want to be cesspit of spam and trolling they should be free to do so.

There should be only once choice, either you're a platform or a publisher.

A platform should be open, and only illegal stuff should be removed. No preferences, no nothing.

A publisher can be closed, can be whatever they want it, can filter whatever, promote whatever and censor whatever.

...but!

If you're a publisher, you've decided what to publish, and you should be responsible for all content published on your webpage. Fake news? Illegal porn? Nuclear bomb plans? Your problem, your responsiblity, you face the consequences.

If you want to be an open platform and blame users for content posted there (and have them face the consequences), then you should have no right to promote, censor or block/hide content (except illegal).

The "illegal" criteria seems rational for countries that have rational laws but in many countries there are laws against political speech or criticism of people in power. By removing that 'illegal' speech in those countries the platform is in effect working as a government actor to police customers in those nations.

In such nations (ex China), this entire debate is irrelevant - you follow their rules or they kick you out.

In western societies, this debate is relevant and I strongly side with the poster you replied to. That being said, reasonably unbiased filtering should probably be allowed in some form. For example, while I don't want YouTube picking sides politically, I also wouldn't want to force them to host hardcore pornography against their will.

'we're publishers' is exactly the wrong thing to say. Publishers have some responsibility over what they publish.

The smart thing to say would have been 'we're common carriers'. And then to actually behave like common carriers.. At least that would have gotten them to first base. Now they look like heavy handed censors with a stake in the game.

They fucked up when money entered the picture. Naturally some companies don't want their ads next to ISIL/ISIS beheading/recruitment videos for some reason... and it's allegedly bad for growing the audience too.

The bottom line is, that G/FB/Tw did not remain neutral, because that hurt the aforementioned bottom line. Now, of course - as you said/transcribed - the problem is that if fascism becomes profitable then what?

Edit: I see the Naval quote is from the Joe Rogan podcast (which I often enjoy). I haven’t listened to the episode, so don’t have full context but Naval seems to have the timeline, “publisher”, and “platform” confused.

Facebook, Google (YouTube), and Twitter have historically claimed to be “neutral tech platforms” like phone utilities or internet service providers. They maintained that claim so that responsibility for content would be on the user/sharer and so they could avoid regulation.

More recently, at least Facebook has claimed (2018) it is a “publisher”. They updated their claim in order to justify the right to editorialize & choose what content people see on Facebook.

The shift to “publisher” aligns with the reality that the news feed algorithm is a form of editorializing. The algorithm decides what you see. It doesn’t matter if a human or a computer is making the decision.

The news feed does not editorialize. It doesn't edit the content itself. It's automated curation.

Furthermore this whole "publisher" vs "platform" argument is not nearly as relevant as people make it seem. Contrary to popular belief, tech companies describing themselves as publishers instead of platforms does not affect the fact that they are not held liable for user generated content (so long as they meet reasonable standards for taking it down when notified). The New York Times is afforded the same protection for user generated content that they host (e.g. their comments section).

“Facebook, [company attorneys] repeatedly argued, is a publisher, and a company that makes editorial decisions, which are protected by the first amendment.” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-...

...which doesn't at all affect their section 230 protections. Again, contrary to popular belief, whether or not a service considers itself a "publisher" or a "platform" has no bearing on its protections under section 230. It's all about whether the content was user generated, or written by the service itself.

Why people are dedicating so much attention to the fact that Facebook calls itself a publisher is a mystery to me.

See https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/230 for more details.

It seems to be someone's talking points or more charitably a meme (differentiated by how organic the idea is). The publisher/platform dichotomy is a flat out wrong myth which keeps on being repeated - and often from high places.

I would call it outright propaganda at this point because the dogged insistence on not listening to objective facts seems more "big lie" style opinion shaping than mere ignorance which has caught on. At this point I reflexive downvote all who repeat it uncritically as "fact".

Thanks for that reference. Fan of EFF. I’ll check it out. The case history archive is a pretty cool resource.

A better analogy for Twitter and Facebook is the town square, rather than the phone company. They don't just enable point to point discussion, but broadcast to any and all who will listen.

Which is fine, and good, except when algorithms keyed only to engagement cause the noisiest, most provocative and potentially divisive content to be amplified.

We have, for a very long time, had laws concerning appropriate behaviour in a town square, or any other 'public' setting: don't incite riots, don't behave violently towards others, be respectful if someone doesn't want to talk and walks away. I support the efforts we're now seeing to bring those norms into online spaces.

This is the actual thing about technology, amplification. One person has 1 voice, but then they buy a megaphone, or say something to get attention online and the algorithms are programmed to say that's good. What's picked to be amplified, or muted, is the issue.

> We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down.

That's a great way to lose users though. They need to provide some limit for abuse. That means either good moderation tools for end-user (which I don't see how they could scale without also providing bad-people-lists) or moderation on their side. Otherwise you end up with /b/ or worse.

If they want their users (and advertisers) to stay, they need to filter content. They're social networks, not limited-scope opt-in party lines.

This sounds right, but what if the corporations are more powerful than the government? What if they have enough money to collectively rent enough politicians so that they never have to face the scrutiny that Naval is talking about here?

If social media platforms are picking the next congressmen and next president, and you’re in Congress vying to keep your seat, do you really want to introduce or sponsor legislation to upset these companies?

I mean you can say it's a clear analysis in the abstract, but if you look at the HN comments on the thread about CloudFlare cutting off 8chan it's clear that most people no longer agree with the principle as soon as they're presented with a real world example.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395

> ...so they will be controlled by the government."

The cynical Regulatory Capture inspired take is that they want to be regulated now. Because regulation always favors the established players and makes it very hard for newcomers to overthrow them.

Google, FB etc are now big and old enough to need that protection, and settle in to comfortable corporate middle age.

The problem is, the current law isn't match the pipe analogy. If it's a private communication, they can be a pipe. But they are publicly present the information as soon as it gets to the pipe.

There are many expressions you can't publicly present by law. For example, copyright infringement, privacy infringement, pornography, national/personal/organization secret, fraud, malware and all. You may argue some of them are ridiculous, but there are some expression you agree to be supressed. Like the fake news of you committing the crime.

Yes, In an ideal rule of the law world, you should take the court order to censor that expression. But it takes time. The current law is, if you knowingly publish the material that is obviously illegal and ignore the censorship demand, you are responsible for that.

> "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it."

It is not possible to do that and make as much money as google, fb, etc. The end result of unmoderated public places on the internet is always this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...

Which is great! But not for making money. From that article:

> Allowing any aspect of your brand to come anywhere near something unpopular and taboo is like a giant Christmas present for people who hate you [...] It doesn’t matter if taboo material makes up 1% of your comment section; it will inevitably make up 100% of what people hear about your comment section and then of what people think is in your comment section.

> It is not possible to do that and make as much money as google, fb, etc.

Exactly. This is a choice that companies need to make. Or a regulation coming.

A regulation is coming anyway; the CDA safe harbor, which is what both those complaining about what the big tech firms are censoring and those complaining about what they are not censoring are targeting, has been under broad, bipartisan attack for some time, under a variety of different pretexts. Pm

Google, Facebook, and Twitter are not "literally picking" the next president or the next congressman. That is delusional.

Obviously they're not "literally" picking the next president, however they have full control on what opinions you see first, and they have utilized that ability to tilt many (yes, very many) people's opinions (especially those whose understanding of even general politics is superficial) towards a specific candidate.

Under that logic we need to heavily regulate cereal boxes and milk cartons because many of us see that first thing every morning.

My philosophy is to always be suspicious of those grabbing at the keys to power - they are up to no good.

Worse, they don't want someone else doing their filtering. Try to write a Twitter or Facebook client with spam filtering. They don't want the user to have that kind of control.

People working for Google, Facebook, and Twitter are smart. They understand this and have used the argument of being just infrastructure in the past.

They had to switch their story because they are not a neutral carrier. They prefer some messages over others. This is linked to their revenue model.

The simplest solution to 'just be infrastructure' is to show all messages linearly.

A more complex solution with possibly lower revenue is this: they could let the users pick algorithms to filter and sort the content, then they could claim to be infrastructure again. The user would need to be able to inspect the algorithms. The simplest one would be: no sorting, no filtering. That would make the sites unpleasant.

The smart people at Google, Facebook, and Twitter must have considered this option but decided that it is more profitable to share the power over what people see with the regulators than to share it with the people.

This has actually been the law in i.e. Germany and I think many other countries as well. As long as the platform doesn't interfere with the content (§ 8 Abs. 1 TMG) they are directly accountable for the content (Which doesn't mean that they don't have to take it down in case of an infringement for example). But as soon as they moderate said content they are legally liable. And this is exactly what social media platforms have done and that is one reason why they are responsible for their content now. This is of course only one part of the truth, because at the same time there has been a shift in perception of these platforms and other laws (i.e. Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz) have been specifically aimed at social media platforms to hold them accountable.

It's inevitable these platforms will have government mandated restrictions on speech, as well as government mandates to NOT restrict speech. There's no other way to really manage the issue.

Whinging of the poorly informed that free speech protections can only apply to the government aside.

That's a great way to lose advertisers. Case in point: Youtube's demonetization policy.

Advertisers didn't care for over a decade until partisan agitators such as Media Matters and Vox methodically cherry picked screenshots of brands next to maligned youtube channels, and then contacted brands threatening to publish names and shame if they didn't pull their advertising.

The result of this short-sighted crusade was Youtube becoming unprofitable for millions of small creators around the world, and people of all sides of politics suffering including non-political LGBT creators.

This is the first I’ve heard this hypothesis. Do you have links to any data?

Any particular advertiser needs Youtube more than Youtube needs the advertiser. Youtube has a critical hold on the young adult market in particular. If Youtube just said, "if you don't like it, Pepsi, someone else can enjoy this ad space instead", what recourse would they have? In conclusion Youtube demonetizes because they want to and need an excuse.

If you look at the data, the "adpocalypse" cost alphabet over 70 billion dollars on their market cap.

It's also a great way to whitewash history. Want to educate the next generation about Hitlers atrocities? No money for you.

Basically anything war seems to be getting demonetized these days. Advertisers only want to appear next to cats on roombas.

I B M

Being a publisher might get you off in the States, but in a lot of countries publishers are held to be legally culpable for material they publish. So publishing nazis, online abuse, illegal content etc is a legal issue.

> If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it.

What about jurisdictions where the act of allowing something to be published will trigger a fine or other bad consequences? Doesn't it make sense to pro-actively remove things then?

This is also true in the US. See my reply to the parent. The Naval quote is wrong.

He's exactly right on it. Facebook is not a court. If certain speech is illegal, how would they even decide? If certain speech is illegal, have a court label it illegal and send them an order to remove.

That concept exists within our system.

Naval is exactly wrong.

Facebook must choose between being a “platform” like a phone company and being a “publisher” like a newspaper or broadcaster.

The rules are different and the accountability is different, which is why Fb lawyers spent years and millions arguing for “platform” status.

Edit: my main goal for posting my comment is to prevent some startup on HN from reading the parent & deciding to classify itself as a “publisher” only to find later that was a huge mistake. I’m not a lawyer & they shouldn’t take my advice, but hopefully they’ll at least double check with someone who is.

Facebook certainly wants to be a platform based on their lobbying. But they are clearly a publisher by setting editorial guidelines and sponsoring and removing content.

> If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it.

Interestingly the underlying assumptions in most analyses like this is that everyone lives in US and obeys US laws. What if China goes after a political dissident through Facebook? Even worse, what if Facebook propaganda is used to incite genocide by the government of Myanmar? Where do you get the court order to take it down?

Unfortunately the business model of Silicon Valley is at odds with this simplistic first-amendment/court-order sort of argument.

> Interestingly the underlying assumptions in most analyses like this is that everyone lives in US and obeys US laws.

Even better! Stop trying to act like global companies, and pick a jurisdiction to work out of. If Facebook is an American company (which they are), they are held to and follow US laws.

Maybe this means that Facebook doesn't remove Nazi propaganda because of the US 1st Amendment. What follows is actual proper competition, perhaps Germany bans Facebook, which means either a new German company GesichtBuch, can compete by being based in Germany and following german laws. Or, people enjoy Facebook and then rally their government for laws to be changed.

What we have now is companies trying to exist in every country, which means they have to follow the worst laws of every country.

> Or, people enjoy Facebook and then rally their government for laws to be changed.

It's not going to happen, because people can connect to FB easily using a vpn without giving FB the chance to monetize ads. It's already happening in countries that have banned FB.

Pretty much what happened with Google in China ?

So give up Germany (lost: billions in revenue) or give up Nazi propaganda (lost:thousands in revenue).

Companies are trying to make money. That's the purpose of a company.

So give up China (lost billions) or give up democratic propaganda.

It’s not the size of the market that should determine right or wrong. Having free speech laws means you get democracy and nazi stuff and spend time on more important stuff as to what’s too nazi or too democratic. Just rely on the rule of law.

It's the issue that should determine plus marketsize. Nazi symbols being sold or not is not going to push the needle. Pushing back on China for democratic injustices is what we should be doing.

They're more like broadcasters than carriers. The phone companies don't broadcast. If you broadcast, then you're going to run into this issue one way or another.

The problem wasn't so much about "taking stuff down that wasn't illegal because somebody screamed." More problematic wa sthe fact that, in the case of Facebook, their algorithms promoted content that was more "engaging" (read: controversial), so basically the whole system turned out to be optimized for fake news.

"Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it."

There's no way the three could have predicted the show that would have been put on today.

Just like we couldn't have predicted the massive impact iphones/android [steve jobs + android] would have had in the past decade on today's society.

My two cents, i guess.

> "If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it"

I think that works better on paper than in practice. If I get offended enough by something, can't I go try to sue under the premise of defamation?

Carriers can't be sued for the content they carry. It's been tried many times and so long as the carrier acts like a carrier (neutral channel), it fails.

Working at MySpace and getting sued by all the state attorney generals, that defense doesn’t work. We were ultimately responsible for the actions of our users including exploitation of minors which triggered the investigations.

If you sue successfully you can get a legal order to take down the content as part of the judgement.

Libel, slander, and harassment are all crimes or civil offenses (illegal). They work pretty well.

If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they... would have consulted deeply with lawmakers, regulators, copyright owners and other deeply entrenched parties before doing anything... move fast, and, er, what was it again ?

Considering In-Q-Tels involvement, sometimes I think they major social media companies were setup as trojan horses to enable censorship and governmental control in the first place. (besides the more obvious surveillance aspect)

Problem is that is only a carrier creates a barrier to monetize the platform through ads. Nobody with a serious brand doesn't want to see ads next to nazi propaganda and some kinky furry porn.

Excellent analogy! I'm so happy that telephone carriers do nothing to prevent my phone from being called by spammers 10x daily.

If you don't want to act as a steward of society - with your own leadership, governance, as a lead - if you don't want to be accountable to potential societal consequences, then sure, ignore the behaviour of bad actors or the irrational.

The problem has been lock-in and users unable to "take their network with them."

The idea of decentralization to me is being fully mobile and having the decision to be able to choose what network(s) you're part of, and in part that would be based on leadership, governance, rules that each platform can have in place - and ideally enforcing and evolving as necessary.

Imagine you could have Facebook but immediately you can decide who's leadership you're following for moderation and all other settings/decisions of the platform - and thus who your attention, money, goes to.

The government being in charge of moderating free speech - except for perhaps acting along with, setting rules for authority like police - is going to be very inefficient, bureaucratic, not leveraging the efficiencies of free market systems, capitalism.

Government could potentially play an important role, however private sector options are likely to exist sooner and be better. Let people choose who moderates their community, networks, allow the best options to naturally rise to the top - to act as role models for competitors to take notice and attempt to mimic the best parts.

This comments' votes have been going up and down since I posted it - funny to see.

Public-facing communication has always been trickier and much more muddied.

Twitter is not like telephone (except direct messages I suppose).

A more apt comparison would be newspapers (which have publishers and editorial staff) or radio/TV (with similar structures).

So the analogy only really works if you claim something like “Twitter should have been like paper mills“, but I’m not sure whether that’s the right analogy or useful way of thinking about Twitter.

Sometimes things are just complex and I do actually think it’s wrong for Twitter to run away from this responsibility. They are the ones who want to run this public-facing way of communicating as a capitalist enterprise, they should be beholden to doing it right (whatever that means – but that’s the hard part and it’s ok that it’s hard).

The day they started messing with ML driven results and TL's was the day the whole argument about neutrality went out the window.

Doesn’t make sense: a phone conversation is more akin to a gchat or messenger convo. A Facebook page or wall is more akin to publishing... and historically publishers have used considerable discretion about what gets published.

The problem with the analogy to the phone system is that conversations via phone are transient and private. There is no place with the AT&T logo on it where you can go and see that awful thing that person said. The internet itself is a much better fit for the phone company analogy, and indeed internet service and backbone providers have pretty much entirely been able to stay out of this.

A better (though still imperfect) analogy really is media: TV stations, newspapers, magazines, radio stations. And indeed you see similar problems there as the online media companies are facing now. The biggest difference is that traditional media companies were forced to make editorial choices because of physical constraints - physical space for print, airtime and spectrum for TV and radio - so this question of whether you could just let anyone say anything in your publication or on your broadcast just never really came up.

Naval, like most VC investors, think too highly of themselves and go on twitter tirades in areas where they have absolutely no clue what they are talking about. The quote above is a real example. Their views are tinged by living in advance Western societies, and in their libertarian bubbles. In real life, a platform like Google and Facebook, that has unprecedented reach globally, is the opposite of a private phone call. ISIS rode YouTube's lax enforcement policy to create a Caliphate and slaughter millions of people. Was Naval advocating Google to wait for an order from the Syrian government before taking out beheading videos ? In India, WhatsApp is used by religious extremists to form lynching mobs, resulting in deaths of multiple people just based on rumors. We are living in a world, where we have software platforms that hold unprecedented leverage to alter people's lives. We should try to move away from some one size fits all simplistic policies that are created in Sand Hill road thought bubble

If I understand the argument, he isn't saying that those horrible things are fine and should be allowed. He's saying that it's the government's job to do something about them. Once the tech companies took a bite out of that poisoned apple, their fate was sealed, to become government-controlled.

In many places across the world, there is barely any government to act on these things. A functioning government is limited to a handful of countries