[o10449366]

Why are you implying that Facebook isn't actively moderating their platforms or that governments would be able to do a better job? Facebook has hired thousands of human moderators in the past few years, significantly more than Google and Twitter. They've also invested significantly in improving their AI detection systems. That doesn't mean there isn't work to do still, but you're insinuating that they aren't actively moderating their platforms and that simply isn't true. Furthermore, the idea that harsh penalties and regulations are going to prevent psychopaths from broadcasting their killing spree is ridiculous. Facebook doesn't need an incentive to prevent mass shootings from being broadcast on its platform, and punishing them with monetary fines or regulations would only hurt their ability to do so.

[llukas]

> Furthermore, the idea that harsh penalties and regulations are going to prevent psychopaths from broadcasting their killing spree is ridiculous

Nobody is broadcasting in TV or newspapers - they are actually liable for content that gets published on those platforms.

Maybe we finally remove exception for internet?

[o10449366]

Haha, psychopaths don't have to publish in TV or newspapers because they do it for them. Go back a decade or two before Facebook was a big deal and you'd see CNN, NYTimes, NBC, etc. all feverishly covering Columbine, spending weeks profiling the shooters and every detail of their lives, broadcasting bar graphs and rankings of mass murders like it's a video game scoreboard and openly publishing their manifestos and names for all to read and be influenced by. This is despite the well-studied phenomenon of media coverage inspiring copycat killers and terrorists and yet none of these publishing companies are held liable for their part in encouraging and incentivizing these horrible events.

All of this still happens today. Just two weeks ago I read an article in the NYTimes reporting on how NZ's prime minister asked people not to use or spread the shooter's name. In the same article NYTimes revealed it multiple times. The only frames from the video I've seen are the ones the Washington Post used--The shooters face blown up as the huge cover photo for the story. It just happens that now the internet is the biggest publication platform instead of television or print, so it naturally attracts psychopaths that are seeking the greatest impact.

The reality is that none of these publishing platforms are held liable and the media and HN don't want the internet to be held liable, either--they want FB to be held liable because they don't like FB. No one here is screaming for YouTube's heads after they failed to prevent millions of copies of the videos from being uploaded in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

[HNthrow22]

There's a huge difference between covering terrible events as a news story and providing the platform for content engineered to divide and radicalize to proliferate to millions. Also yes YouTube should be liable, not for the video of the NZ shooting being re-uploaded, but for the thousands of hours of hateful violent propaganda they allow to spread on their platform even facilitating it by suggesting it to users with their algorithm.

Drawing parallels between mediums like TV/Film is problematic because there's never been anything like the internet in human history, that being said a TV example of the kind of content that shouldn't be legal: 30 minute produced broadcast dedicated to sharing fake crime stats about Muslims and encouraging viewers to organize violent attacks on their local mosques - this is what goes on the internet. Users from 8chan were (and still are) encouraging and validating the NZ shooter. We have specific incidents and shooters we can point to now. Elliot Rodgers (Santa Barbara shooter) was an active redditor and incel and had his extreme beliefs were both validated and enforced by that community before he took action, ending innocent lives. One could make a case that without the wide ranging communal support these psychotic individuals wouldn't have been emboldened to act on their hateful beliefs. Nothing even close to this is broadcast to a wide audience anywhere but the internet and it shouldn't be permitted on the internet either.

Relevant comment from HN in 2017: taurath on July 19, 2017 [-]

If 20 people were to stand up on a soapbox with a megaphone in times square screaming about /r/redpill, /r/fatpeoplehate, etc concepts they would be removed if legal, and if not legal a huge countermovement would appear to try to force them out. On Reddit you get both the megaphone and the safe space, but are still just as easily accessible to the public as anywhere.

Its "real" freedom of information, without many of the mechanisms that larger society uses to fight back against it. Instead it is just ignored and left to fester and grow until it pops into the public forum at the point where huge efforts are required to fight it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14806974

[pjc50]

> 20 people were to stand up on a soapbox with a megaphone in times square screaming about /r/redpill, /r/fatpeoplehate, etc concepts they would be removed if legal, and if not legal a huge countermovement would appear to try to force them out

I think you badly underestimate the apathy towards this stuff. Perhaps a better comparison would be the anti-abortion protestors, who can be pretty extreme.

> 30 minute produced broadcast dedicated to sharing fake crime stats about Muslims

This is absolutely routine in the regular media.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-the-british-media-i... / https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/27/islamo...

The Times is today running a series of highly misleading selectively quoted articles about gender identity services, presumably with the intent of causing violence against and suicide among trans people.

[ryanlol]

>If 20 people were to stand up on a soapbox with a megaphone in times square screaming about /r/redpill, /r/fatpeoplehate, etc concepts they would be removed if legal, and if not legal a huge countermovement would appear to try to force them out. On Reddit you get both the megaphone and the safe space, but are still just as easily accessible to the public as anywhere.

I wouldn't be so sure. People would probably just disregard the crazy screaming r/redpill or r/fatpeoplehate preachers, just like they disregard the Black Hebrew Israelites.

It's not terribly unusual to see people preaching about crazy hateful shit on the street, it is unusual for anyone to actually care though.

[cotelletta]

It amazes me that RedPill gets such hate. It's just Cosmo for men: mediocre life and dating advice, with a nugget of truth. Here are the current top posts.

- "Sexual Selection and Existential Fear": about disregarding the notion that men always want sex and women do the choosing. In other words, self respect.

- "How to Structure Your Day to Maximize Productivity." This could be plucked from a magazine.

- "Practice what you learn." Pretty much what it says, basic life advice about persistence.

- "Day game works--get out there and approach" If you want to date women, approach them and make conversation. Duh.

- "Be thoroughly logical about what you want from women and what you're prepared to pay for it" Again, have some self respect and don't roll over.

This is apparently so threatening that it must be quarantined. How fragile must women be that giving men some basic sanity checking, and telling them not to worship every vagina on sight, is a threat to society and must be hysterically misrepresented and demonized at every turn.

The sad part is, red pill is probably the first time in these guys' lives that someone has given these dudes a script that can actually succeed. It's not great, it misses a lot of nuance, but it's a start. What do you want instead, incels who resent the world and think they are literally incapable of being loved, so they shouldn't try?

Actually yes, that's exactly what people seem to want. For the undesirables to go away, and for sociable people to continue to enjoy the privilege of being sufficiently attractive and sufficiently high class that useless feel good advice like "just be yourself!" is all anyone will ever need. And then calling that empathy.

[HNthrow22]

To clarify you're responding to a comment I've quoted from another user-

The issue becomes with the internet being able to silence all dissent and create re-enforcing echo chmabers. The forces at play are not stupid and they target disenfranchised, lonely, young males full of angst.

Imagine a packed hall with hundreds of people loudly cheering for someone calling for genocide of X group, this is what these hate clusters look like and if we saw it in the real world no one would say "This is an acceptable cost of free speech"

There exists speech that has no redeeming qualities and serves only to incite violence and hate. To argue as many commented here have that outlawing this would lead down a slippery slope of authoritarian government censorship is simply ridiculous. We've outlawed child pornography and that hasn't led us down any slippery slopes.

[ryanlol]

>Imagine a packed hall with hundreds of people loudly cheering for someone calling for genocide of X group, this is what these hate clusters look like and if we saw it in the real world no one would say "This is an acceptable cost of free speech"

Do nazis not have conferences? I find it hard to believe that this doesn’t happen.

>We've outlawed child pornography and that hasn't led us down any slippery slopes.

Has it not? Many jurisdictions outlaw even computer generated porn depicting minors. We’ve essentially banned people of certain sexual orientation from consuming any porn at all, how is that not a slippery slope?

But hey, I guess lots of people want to live in a world where perverts go to prison for jerking off to anime girls.

[rndgermandude]

The internet isn't exempted. You're just looking at the wrong party for liability. The people who actually put up those live streams are liable, and abusing facebook's service.

Same as TV and newspapers; you don't sue Comcast or the guy who installed your satellite dish, you sue the TV station; You don't sue the paper boy, you sue the news paper.

[jocoda]

>The people who actually put up those live streams are liable

Yet we insist on allowing anonymity on the net.

Either you know exactly who is doing what and can then make them liable for any consequences that follow from their actions OR you allow anonymity and live with the consequences of that decision as dark as these may be.

[mcv]

One of the primary reasons anonymity is important, is to enable critics of oppressive regimes to voice their opinion.

However, enabling complete anonymity everywhere might not be necessary for that; if you can get someone else, in a different country, to take responsibility for it, that might work too. That's similar to how journalists keep their sources secret, or how wikileaks works.

Stuff that's important will still get published as long as you can get someone else to recognise its importance. But who's going to take responsibility to publish your child porn or snuff movie in their own name?

[NeedMoreTea]

Facebook, Youtube or whichever platform is the broadcaster in this instance.

If they're not, why do we sue the TV station rather than the production company of the programme? CBS can yell "don't look at us, we didn't make Game of Thrones".

It's their exception that is looking increasingly absurd.

[onion2k]

We don't sue the company who owns the radio tower if it's terrestrial TV, or the hosting company if it's on-demand, or the bandwidth provider if it's cable. The important bit is who makes the decision to broadcast something; in the case of a TV show it's CBS, and in the case of a live stream on Facebook that's the user.

I think a potential solution would be to delay livestreams by 20 minutes for anyone who isn't doesn't have a direct and established connection (eg following for more than 24 hours) to the broadcaster to give platforms time to censor the worst stuff. Obviously this would make platforms responsible for effective and fast moderation though...

[bloak]

"in the case of a live stream on Facebook that's the user"

You need to argue that rather than just state it. I can see arguments for and against the proposition, but the facts that Facebook attaches advertising, sometimes removes content, carefully tunes their platform to maximise "engagement", and the user has no direct relationship with the receivers of the live stream, do rather suggest that Facebook is the publisher and the role of the user is more like that of someone who writes a letter to the editor that gets published in a newspaper - except, of course, that Facebook is publishing nearly everything, but I don't see that that's a fundamental difference.

[afureta]

Isn't this letting Facebook and Comcast have their cake and eat it, too? Giving them full authority to censor whatever they want, but still not holding them liable for what they host?

[llukas]

Not true: https://www.fastcompany.com/90273352/maybe-its-time-to-take-...

(c) (1) No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

[tannhaeuser]

Nope. FB gets billions for ads. They can't just shrug and say "we're just providing the platform".

[rndgermandude]

I am not shrugging. I am saying, with conviction: They are just providing the platform.

[miluge]

TV is usually not user generated content though...

[ben_w]

And when it is, the TV programs (where I grew up) need a delay in the loop so they can beep-out rude words if it’s before 21:00. Even mere expletives, let alone directed personal threats of violence, get censored on TV and radio.