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by apotheothesomai 2994 days ago
What would be effective is a real-life way for families or friends of a mentally ill and possibly violent adult to have some useful recourse.

Banning her videos wouldn't have made her less violent, and a tech company wouldn't have any resources beyond what her family had. The problem wasn't the effect her videos had on other people.

In the U.S., it's already illegal to threaten violence against others. "Conspiracy to commit" charges and "terroristic threats," for example.

Select illustrative incidents:

Florida night club shooter - mentally ill and violent in word and deed - his dad warned the FBI and police and asked for help.

Florida school shooter - mentally ill, violent in word and deed, multiple instances of minor run ins with the law - family and friends warned the FBI and police.

This woman - mentally ill and voicing intent for violence - family warned Law Enforcement and tried to get help.

1 comments

I am not sure why i got down voted, but I was wondering if it is possible to isolate policy + enforcement of policies by the industry, through an independent body (say w3.org) over all, instead of individual companies. This will make sure that the policy is uniform no matter where the content gets posted, be it youtube or face book or any site. Think about movie ratings by Motion picture association. If a movie is rated R, it is R no matter where you watch it, be it netflix or any movie theater.
I believe that different countries have different ratings systems. This is part of the problem as well. Germany for instance has recently crafted laws to try to financially punish companies for content on their site that is deemed "hate speech". [0]

Should this "universal" body be established country by country?

Should laws in Germany affect what people in the US can see?

What about competitors who want to have different policies in an attempt to give themselves a competitive advantage?

Personally I'm not a fan of the direction the major tech companies have gone with free speech, but I hope and believe that ultimately these principles will win out. However, when a man is convicted by the UK government of committing "gross offense" by recording a joke video of his pug responding to Nazi references; the situation seems a bit more dire. [1]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/17/german-of...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD_QlnY8Ggg

You got downvoted because you put a ton of slashes + plus signs in your question that made it difficult/impossible to read.