>If your site has been overrun by ultra-far-right types for basically its entire existence and you do nothing to mitigate this then you're very clearly complicit.
How do you mitigate without running counter to the original idea of "free speeech"?
It's not at all clear what "the original idea of 'free speech'" even was. In the US, the wording of the First Amendment is quite vague.
I think people have a mental model that social media sites and apps are like a communication medium. They are a neutral carrier that transmits an idea X from person A to B. The site itself is not "tainted" by the content of X or get involved in the choices of A and B.
But a more accurate model is that they are amplifiers and selectors. The algorithms and ML models at the heart of every social media app often determine who B is. A is casting X out into the aether and the site itself uses its own code to select the set of Bs that will receive it—both who they are and how large that set is. From that perspective, I think it is fair that apps take greater responsibility for the content they host.
Here's an analogy that might help:
Consider a typical print shop. You show up with your pamphlet, pay them some money, and they hand you back a stack of copies. Then you go out and distribute them. The print shop doesn't care what your pamphlet says and I think is free from much moral obligation to care.
Now consider a different print shop. You drop off your pamphlet and give them some money. Lots of other people do. Then the print shop itself decides how many copies to make for each pamphlet. Then it also decides itself which street corners to leave which pamphlets on. That sounds an awful lot to me like they have a lot of responsibility over the content of those pamphlets.
The latter is much closer to how most social media apps behave today.
but does gab use "algorithms and ML" to determine what gets shown? Doesn't it use a upvote/downvote model like hn or reddit? Is a site that uses a "order by upvotes" ranking system closer to the first print shop or the second? What about bulletin boards that ranks by last post?
> Doesn't it use a upvote/downvote model like hn or reddit?
Is that really any different? If your print shop counts the user-submitted tallies on a chalkboard to decide which pamphlets to print, the print shop is still choosing to use that rule to decide what to print.
Because then you can't make any sort of public facing site with UGC without being burdened with the responsibility of what's being posted. Come to think of it, the distinction is entirely arbitrary. Run a bulletin board that sorts by last reply? You are responsible for the user content. Run a mailing list that forwards every message to the end user, and the end-user implements the same sort by default? You're off the hook, even though the end result is the same.
> Because then you can't make any sort of public facing site with UGC without being burdened with the responsibility of what's being posted.
Now you've got it.
> Run a bulletin board that sorts by last reply?
There is maybe an argument that your level of responsibility somewhat depends on the complexity of the algorithm you use to decide how much amplification to apply to any given piece of content.
I don't think responsibility is black and white.
> Run a mailing list that forwards every message to the end user, and the end-user implements the same sort by default? You're off the hook, even though the end result is the same.
The end result is the same but the agency is not. The end-user chose to apply that sorting, so they have accepted some of the responsibility for what they consume.
If I shoot someone with a gun, I'm totally responsible. If I give you the gun and you shoot them, you are responsible. Maybe I still bear some responsibility for giving you the gun. But you certainly have taken on more responsibility than you would have if I shot them.
Here's maybe another way to think about it. If you're choosing to run a bulletin board, presumably you're doing so to get something out of it for yourself. Is it fair for you to receive that benefit while taking no responsibility for anything that happens on it?
Is that a net benefit for society? The last thing I want is for google (or other tech giants) to be even more trigger-happy about banning people because they view you as a high risk user. "decentralizing the web" isn't a good excuse, as most people don't have to know how to set up their own hosting, and only shifts the liability from the host to the search engine (because you have to find the content somehow).
>The end-user chose to apply that sorting, so they have accepted some of the responsibility for what they consume.
Don't we already have that? On reddit you can sort by "hot", "new", "rising", "controversial", and "top". On gab you can sort by "hot" and "top". I'm not sure how that would change things, other than forcing yet another modal that users have to click through.
>If you're choosing to run a bulletin board, presumably you're doing so to get something out of it for yourself. Is it fair for you to receive that benefit while taking no responsibility for anything that happens on it?
Not every website has to be a for-profit venture. Many (small) forums run essentially on donations, or are low maintenance side projects attached to a bigger project.
By having more than a middle school understanding of what "free speech" is about. There is no "original idea" of free speech, there never has been, it is a concept that is used to refer to a wide variety of legal frameworks across different times and places. In Germany a person's free speech rights do not include holocaust denial. For most of the history of the United States free speech has been more limited than it is today; it was not all that long ago that we had the "equal time" rule that required media outlets to host both liberal and conservative commentary. You generally do not have a right to organize an insurrection against any government and whining about free speech will not convince anyone otherwise.
>it was not all that long ago that we had the "equal time" rule that required media outlets to host both liberal and conservative commentary
That only ever applied to broadcast media (and maybe only to prime-time TV). Publishers of the written word have never been required by the US government to grant equal time.
>For most of the history of the United States free speech has been more limited than it is today
I don't know what you could mean by that unless you are referring to the fact that before the internet became mainstream, you had to own a printing press or something like that to reach a mass audience.
A century ago in the United States the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" was used in a Supreme Court ruling upholding the censorship of anti-draft activists during World War I, and within living memory the United States had various laws censoring pornographic photos and videos. There was even a time when it was illegal to have the Post Office carry written information about contraception:
In case anyone tries to claim that the founders intended for the most expansive possible understanding of freedom of speech, the fact is that one of the earliest laws passed in the United States was a law that censored criticisms of the Federal government (in an attempt to crack down on foreign misinformation campaigns):
>In case anyone tries to claim that the founders intended for the most expansive possible understanding of freedom of speech, the fact is that one of the earliest laws passed in the United States was a law that censored criticisms of the Federal government (in an attempt to crack down on foreign misinformation campaigns):
I'm not sure whether that proves your point. The wikipedia article says that it was controversial, caused the federalist party to lose the following election, and ultimately expired after 4 years.
The fact that the law was passed by the same men who ratified the constitution says a lot about their concept of freedom of speech, even if it was controversial and short lived. If the founders really meant for free speech to be as expansive as it is today it is hard to see how such a law could have been passed in the first place.
>The fact that the law was passed by the same men who ratified the constitution says a lot about their concept of freedom of speech
You can also argue that it was defeated by the same men who ratified the constitution, and that the "free speech" side ultimately prevailed, therefore they really did mean free speech to be that expansive.
OK, but the topic is hate speech in particular, and there has never been a time when hate speech modulo calls to violent action (and possibly calls on landlords or employers to discriminate) has been unlawful in the US.
>Hate speech in the United States is not regulated due to the robust right to free speech found in the American Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that hate speech is legally protected free speech under the First Amendment. The most recent Supreme Court case on the issue was in 2017, when the justices unanimously reaffirmed that there is effectively no "hate speech" exception to the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment.
Hate speech in the United States is not regulated by any government. Google is considered by the courts to be non-governmental, so the courts will not prevent Google from regulating hate speech on the platforms it owns as Google sees fit.
How do you mitigate without running counter to the original idea of "free speeech"?