[rajin444]

Private companies should not get in the business of policing content. Follow the laws of the land and that’s it.

It’s not really a foreign concept. We don’t deny somebody sunlight or air because they do something we don’t like (we as in non government entities - governments do deny people “air”). The world would be a better place if businesses operated as close to a natural resource as possible and left politics to politicians.

It’s dumb luck that sunlight isn’t provided by some corporation. Systems like that are what we should strive for.

[georgyo]

> Follow the laws of the land and that’s it.

Which laws?

If Russia says that all posts that call the "Special Military Operation" a war are illegal and Ukraine says they are legal, which is correct?

[rajin444]

Companies at that scale can easily show different posts in different regions. It requires principles to remain a “natural resource” but it’s probably the most moral position to take if you believe your service helps better humanity (whether or not fb does that is a different discussion).

[georgyo]

I am going to remove morality from the discussion temporarily, and instead talk about how practical that is.

A post breaks a law in 100 countries, but does not break the law in 20 countries. Should all 100 countries file their own removal process? Should there be an army of reviewers who are knowledgeable about all laws reviewing all posts? What about that confusion that different people from different regions are seeing different timelines for the same user.

The US has Federal Laws, State Laws, and City Laws. All of these are laws of the land. No company can keep up with all local laws.

"Breaking the law" is highly subjective by itself. Take the US for example, we have "Freedom of Speech," but that does not protect all speech. Many of these cases go to court taking years to determine if something was or was not protected. Should meta defer all moderation to the legal court system?

What you are suggesting makes sense in a vacuum, but cannot exist in reality.

[gruez]

Okay, what's the alternative? Only following US law? That's just going to end up with the service being blocked in other countries. Follow the strictest law? The you end up having to cave to blasphemy laws in despotic countries.

[true_religion]

Well, not specific to US law… but it’s good for companies to simply only follow the laws of their own home nation. If this creates an unfair situation, then the country’s can work together to come to consensus.

I would love to see the allied governments talk more about trade pacts, and economic issues.

As for getting your service blocked, look at the GDPR for example. People will self censor themselves entirely if you are important enough. Out of mere fear of being sued over cookies, US regional media sites stopped displaying in Europe voluntarily. That’s something tin pot dictators couldn’t do even when they were clear the content of US news sites was illegal to the point of being punishable by death.

[lostlogin]

This is a terrible idea, and is how the whole ‘flag of convenience’ thing came to exist. Desperate countries will sell their lawmaking to the highest bidder (are you could argue that this already happens with taxation laws).

The idea that a company could do something blatantly illegal in my country because it’s legal someplace else is just crazy. Teslas are made in the US, should they follow US road rules when in left hand driving countries?

[des1nderlase]

TikTok for example?

[Traster]

That doesn't address the point at all. Russia would be just as happy to prosecute facebook for letting pro-ukrainian propaganda stay up anywhere anyway, and what exactly is facebook meant to show a facebook user in Crimea? Russian propaganda or Ukrainian?

[criddell]

Sometimes breaking the law is the moral thing to do.

[michaelmrose]

We shouldn't participate in promoting hateful lies used to justify genocide it isn't morally neutral nor is neutrality a virtue.

Such a stance would negate any claim of bettering humanity and represent moral injury to engineers you ask to possess such a hateful species of neutrality.

[jasonshaev]

In the US, the 1st amendment grants private companies the right to police content within their purview. Preventing them from doing so is in itself a violation of the 1st amendment. Thus, in my opinion, the suggestion that private companies should NOT police content, despite their explicit 1st amendment right to do so, is antithetical to the 1st amendment.

[LegitShady]

In the US, companies get 1st amendment protections as if they were people, but don't get any of the liability due to SEction 230 of the communications decency act.

Giving companies 1st amendment rights was ridiculous, but then giving them protections beyond the 1st amendment that no normal person gets was giving them too much power to control speech in society.

[jasonshaev]

Repealing 230 would force companies to moderate much more heavily so as to avoid liability. So if the goal is to reduce moderation, repealing Section 230 won't solve that. Not giving companies 1st amendment rights is very troubling to me because ultimately a company is just a collection of people with a governance structure. Compelling a jewish coffee shop owner to allow someone to post anti-semitic notices within their business would be an immediate consequence.

I don't see any easy answer here. I'm as uncomfortable with the amount of influence companies like Facebook yield as anyone but most of the "easy" solutions would, in my opinion, make the situation far worse.

[anamax]

Section 230 actually protects two groups, "interactive computer services" (Facebook, Twitter, et al) and users from liability wrt content that they get from others.

The "they can't do it at scale" argument applies to ICS, but why shouldn't users be subject to liability when they echo something?

We live in an approximation of the infinite monkeys with typewriters. It's relatively easy to find someone judgement-proof who has written pretty much anything that you'd like. Folks with huge audiences can use that to be as defamatory as they'd like without risking liability.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

[Lascaille]

So the 1st amendment's wrong. Fix it somehow. Landline telephone companies are obliged by their terms of licence to serve all customers in their coverage area (i.e they can't deny the KKK a landline.) There's precedent for forcing companies to provide a certain service. Just write a law. Find or invent a justification and write a law.

[jasonshaev]

You can't, uh, just write a law that overrides the 1st amendment. It's in the Constitution. Any law that overrides the 1st amendment is unconstitutional by definition.

[elliekelly]

We could nationalize facebook. That would fix all of the problems you’ve described. It would also create a lot of new ones...

[Lascaille]

I figure - at least for the US - that that's the inevitable conclusion. Not necessarily FB, perhaps a govt service that's created along the lines of twitter, simple and straightforward.

The internet is the de-facto public square, there has to be a public forum that's under the control of the public.

[NoSorryCannot]

All things about how society organizes and regulates itself are politics. There exists no pure, apolitical thing to prize for being beyond politics. Asserting that there will be no moderation of speech beyond the minimum required by law is a political perspective on how things should be conducted, and a pretty strong one.

[michaelmrose]

Not policing content changes the character of a forum as well usually for the worse.

[lxnn]

I think Mastodon solves this problem to some extent, with their federated way of doing things.