[goatinaboat]

Yes, Google and similar companies should be 100% responsible for anything published on their platforms. No more “safe harbour”. They have chosen to take positions in many issues, that makes them more like newspapers than phone companies.

[akersten]

Positions like what? And no, banning radicals from their platform for violating their terms of service is not a position.

Even if they were responsible, it's still legal to lie. You don't see pseudoscience websites being taken down because they are objectively false either.

[goatinaboat]

It’s OK for the NYT to attempt to “prevent another Trump situation”. They have an editor and that person is legally responsible for what they publish. They don’t even pretend to be non-partisan. But Google takes a position then hides behind “common carrier” status. It’s not reasonable that they can pick and choose. Either they’re the phone company or they’re a publisher. It’s their right to be either of course, but they must choose.

Similarly for Twitter.

[root_axis]

> It’s not reasonable that they can pick and choose. Either they’re the phone company or they’re a publisher. It’s their right to be either of course, but they must choose.

This is 100% wrong, the opposite is true. The law explicitly protects website operators from being liable for content posted by 3rd parties while simultaneously granting them the explicit freedom to curate content that they deem objectionable.

[pyrale]

No content on Google is posted there by 3rd parties. Google does select what is displayed and, in the case of snippets, they go out of their traditional way to promote that content.

[root_axis]

The use of the word "post" is my own colloquially imprecise language, the law actually states

> 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.

So content indexed by google absolutely falls under the definition of "provided by another information content provider"

[pyrale]

Providing links is indeed within this definition. However, cards go beyond that: by selecting one out of the many results promoting it and possibly alterating its meaning by selecting which parts, and how it is displayed goes far beyond merely displaying content provided by others.

Of course, there is plenty of room for google attorneys to wiggle, but in the end the objective for them is to 1) give credibility to a source and 2) to get the benefits of being the providers of information.

[akersten]

Common carrier and safe harbor are 100% separate and distinct concepts. The same way that a forum could have a theme ("political party X posts only") and still be allowed to remove illegal content is Safe Harbor (both curation at their discretion and no responsibility for illegal posts) - and I don't see how one could be against that - and Google is nowhere near that, whatever "positions" you envision them to have taken.

Google and other tech never claimed to be common carriers, and even internet service providers have been cleared of that status - barely anyone is legally required to transmit without discretion (it's pretty much just phone companies). So why make it about Google and Twitter, and start with ISPs?

[goatinaboat]

Stay tuned for the next batch of revelations from Project Veritas.

[root_axis]

They're not like either. If anything they're like a phone book for URLs instead of phone numbers.

[goatinaboat]

Except this is a phone book that sorts not alphabetically (no pun intended) but according to its own interests. No phone company ever did that.

[root_axis]

Of course it doesn't sort the internet alphabetically, that'd make no sense and be a bad user experience as well as optimize for URLS starting with A.

[goatinaboat]

I don’t mean literally alphabetically but according to some objective measures. In the old days it was by incoming links (PageRank). But now it is opaque and many people are finding that it orders by whatever is best for Google, not for the user.

[root_axis]

There is not nearly enough room on the front page for everyone that wants to be there, google has to make subjective decisions about what shows up there, it's impossible to do it any other way.

[amelius]

They could randomize it. Allow everybody to be on the front page an equal number of times.

[scarface74]

It’s called the Yellow Pages. The more money you spent, the more noticeable your business was.

On top of that every Locksmith and towing company had names like “AAAAA Aaron’s Locksmith”.

[goatinaboat]

Yet there is no spam in the Yellow Pages. It’s very unlikely that if you call Aaron he’ll clone your credit card or install hidden cameras in your house. Also, it’s very likely that he actually is a locksmith, has the accreditation he claims to, is a legitimate business registered at Companies House, fully insured, all the things you expect of a normal business.