bad take. that's the lane censorship we have today. on tiktok, even gun related channels have to say "pewpew". and book review people have to say "unalive" when describing a plot. it's borderline ridiculous.

now, advertises on the other hand. there is no excuse why companies making obscene profits can't be liable for now vetting obvious scams.

The solution isn’t censorship. Instead it should kill algorithmic feeds. A company is responsible if their algorithm rewards harmful content. Meanwhile, “just show me what I’m following in chronological order” is unbiased, and worked fine for years

Excellent job of putting my feelings in words. But to add to that: if an algorithmic feed has to be present, it should not pull people down an engagement hole without showing something different once in a while. acebook, for example, inject ads in curated feeds, so it is possible to show people things that are not a part of the "algorithm" if they have an initiative to do so

That's exactly what the algorithm is trying to do that forces people to say silly things like "unalive" or "PDF file" to avoid its wrath. The problem is, one persons "harmful content" is another persons innocent book review, or even just a reading of the daily news.

That sort of algorithmic nonsense shouldn't be mandated by you and your opinions of harmful content or anyone else. Should be optional. Let me have a straight chronological feed, but let me set via parental controls something much stricter for my kids. For example.

If you knowingly distribute something fraudulent you should be liable even if someone else is paying for it and you automated everything.

Ethically it's not much different than knowingly selling goods someone else stole.

> If you knowingly distribute something fraudulent you should be liable even if someone else is paying for it and you automated everything.

That's why they "automate" everything. So that they can claim no knowledge.

But that’s the point, automating it shouldn’t absolve you of responsibility.

“I didn’t know my automated lawn mower was running over children!”

I didn't suggest it should mean the company was not responsible. I'm just stating how these companies view the issue and operate.

Actually, "knowingly"[1] is a specific legal term that accounts for that. Deliberate ignorance or a reckless disregard for the truth are adequate to meet the standard. That is the legal standard most commonly used for such laws instead of "actual knowledge" which is the standard requiring positive knowledge.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/3729#b_1

This is the definition of "knowingly" under U.S. Code § 3729, which is part of a specific act (the False Claims Act).

There is not one single legal definition of "knowingly" that applies to all laws and claims in the US.

Furthermore, even under this specific law, you need to prove the accused acted in "deliberate ignorance of the truth or falsity of the information", which has its own standard of evidence which is not exactly trivial.

Bottom line: companies like Meta build in plausible deniability because it's legally more effective versus the alternative, even if it's not bulletproof.

You do know that this kind of doublespeak is because of advertising, right? Without advertisers we would not have the word "unalive".

Exactly, if it weren’t for advertisers there would be zero moderation, even then I suspect people self censoring like that are more afraid of being “shadow banned” by the algorithm rather than literally demonetized or kicked off the platform