> If you want to build a train the best way to save money is to build exactly the same as everyone else does: standard off the shelf trains, running on standard off the shelf rails, and standard off the shelf overhead rail.
You are speaking like a naive person that thinks that most the challenge is the physical world
But in UK most of the challenge is archaic and idiosyncratic laws, disproportionately powerful NIMBY’s and the treasury brain.
The treasury brain will approve a project with 1X capex and 10x opex instead of one that has 2X capex and 1X opex
The NYMBY is wild and unpredictable, they just killed project for a data centre placed on top of a literal dump because it would ruin the view of that dump from a motorway (nobody lives there)
A project to re-open 3 miles of railway that already exists took 5 years to approve and 80,000 pages of environmental accessment
But if it’s innovate and designed in UK it might just slip through
> they're completely different cultures and jurisdictions
Separated by huge distance of 20 miles, both have thousands of same EU laws )still on the books,
share thousands of years of history and at one point ruled by the same aristocracy.
There are lots of national laws outside EU laws. For example, in France, compulsory purchase of private land by the state (to do things like build new railway lines) has to be 1.5 times its value, the idea being that this only happens when they really want to do it.
Okay, but still completely unhelpful to judge per km costs in one versus the other due to the enormously different political and legislative environment.
If they enormously different, what are you going to call South Korea, Armenia, China? I mean is anything comparable?
The real point I was trying to make is that they achieve similar outcomes, in passenger safety comfort.
And if we really do believe that legislation is so different, then is there any point of arguing about an innovation in the physical parameters of the system, after all you can only make a tram 20% lighter, but you can make the legislation 300% worse or 300% better
Important background:
Building the same tram in Britain costs at least 2X more than in France, often 3x more.
UK tram track construction typically involves deeper track beds compared to France/EU, using concrete slabs of 500-1000mm deep, is intended to protect utilities. In contrast, many European projects utilize shallower trackbeds, even with grassed areas, which are 300-400mm deep
The solution would be to revoke section 203 from any platform which acts as a digital public square if they do moderation beyond removing illegal content.
Ofc they would try there best to be excluded to have there cake and eat it too.
The entire point of section 230 is to allow platforms to remove non-illegal content [1].
Basically there were two lawsuits about platforms showing content. One of the platfroms tried to curate content to create a family-friendly environment. The second platform just didn't take anything down. The first platform lost their lawsuit while the second won their lawsuit. Congress wants to allow platforms to create family friend environment online so section 230 was written.
If something like that were put in place, any platforms acting as a “public square” should also be required to disable all recommendation and content surfacing features aside from search, algorithmic or otherwise.
Those recommendation features already do plenty of damage even with platforms having the ability to remove anything they like. If platforms are restricted to only removing illegal content, that damage would quickly become much greater.
* When a bot farm spams ads for erectile dysfunction pills into every comment thread on your blog... That's "legal content"!
* When your model-train hobbyist site is invaded by posters sharing swastikas and planning neo-nazi rallies, that too is "legal content"--at least outside Germany.
All sorts of deceptive, off-topic, and horribly offensive things are "legal content."
Sadly it turns out that the biggest driving force is politics, and the inability for our institutions to win with boring facts, against fast and loose engaging content.
The idea is that in a competitive marketplace of ideas, the better idea wins. The reality is that if you dont compete on accuracy, but compete on engagement, you can earn enough revenue to stay cash flow positive.
I would say as the cost of making content and publishing content went down, the competition for attention went up. The result is that expensive to produce information, cannot compete with cheap to produce content.
Your premise is incomplete. When someone posts illegal content on YouTube they are not liable if they are not aware of the illegality of that content. Once they learn that they are hosting illegal content they lose their safe harbor if they don't remove it.
Let me rephrase, since saying they lose their safe harbor was a poor choice of words. The safe harbor does indeed prevent them from being treated as the publisher of the illegal content. However illegal content can incur liability for acts other than publishing or distributing and section 230's safe harbor won't protect them from that.
The reason we're having this discussion this on this particular post because YT's AI is not infallible. There isn't a "standard rubric" - just automated correlation-based scoring derived from labeled training data. In this case, the AI learned that media piracy and self-hosted setups are correlated, but without actual judgement or a sense of causality. So YT doesn't truly "know" anything about the videos despite the AI augmentation.
I am curious what you consider to be a "standard rubric" - would that be based on the presence of keywords, or requires a deeper understanding of meaning to be able to differentiate the study/analysis of a topic versus promoting said subject.
> Interesting position - when somebody posts illegal content on YouTube, they are not liable, it’s not their speech.
> But when I want to post something they don’t like, suddenly it’s their freedom of speech to remove it.
There is no contradiction there.
Imagine a forum about knitting. Someone, who has it in for the owners of this knitting forum (or perhaps even just a SPAM bot) starts posting illegal, or even just non-knitting content on this forum.
The entire purpose of the forum is to be a community about knitting.
Why is it the legal or moral responsibility of the knitting forum to host SPAM content? And why should they be legally liable for someone else posting content on their platform?
You're equating specific pieces of content with the platform as a whole.
There is no reality where I will accept that if I create something. I spend and risk my money on web hosting. I write the code. I put something out there... that other people get to dictate what content I have to distribute. That's an evil reality to contemplate. I don't want to live in that world. I certainly wont' do business under those terms.
You're effectively trying to give other people an ultimatum in order to extract value from them that you did not earn and have no claim to. You're saying that if they don't host content that they don't want to distribute that they should be legally liable for anything that anyone uploads.
The two don't connect at all. Anyone is, and should be free to create any kind of online service where they pick and choose what is or is not allowed. That shouldn't then subject them to criminal or civil liability because of how others decide to use that product or service.
Imagine if that weird concept were applied to offline things, like kitchen knives. A kitchen knife manufacturer is perfectly within their rights to say "This product is intended to be used for culinary purposes and no other. If we find out that you are using it to do other things, we will stop doing business with you forever." That doesn't then make them liable for people who use their product for other purposes.
This isn’t really what’s being argued. We’re not talking about a knitting forum. We’re talking about content neutral hosting platforms. There is a distinction in the law. If you want to not be liable for the content posted to your platform then you may not moderate or censor it seems like a fair compromise to me. Either you are knitting forum carefully cultivating your content and thus liable for what people see there, or you are a neutral hosting service provider. Right now we let people platforms be whichever favors their present goal or narrative without considering the impact such duplicity has on the public users.
> We’re talking about content neutral hosting platforms.
There is no such thing as a "content neutral hosting platform." I know that people like to talk about social media services in the same umbrella as the concept of "common carrier", which is reserved for things like mail service and telecommunications infrastructure. And that might be what you're conflating here. If you're not, then please point me to the law, in any country even, where "content neutral hosting platform" is a legal term defined.
> If you want to not be liable for the content posted to your platform then you may not moderate or censor it seems like a fair compromise to me.
Compensation for what? The "platform" built something themselves. They made it. They are offering it on the market. If anyone is due compensation, it is them. No matter how much you don't like them. You didn't build it. You could have, maybe. But you didn't. I bet you didn't even try. But they did. And they succeeded at it. So where does anyone get off demanding "compensation" from them just for bringing something useful valuable into existence?
That is a pretty messed up way of looking at things IMO. It is the mindset of a thief.
> Either you are knitting forum carefully cultivating your content and thus liable for what people see there,
Thank you for conceding my argument and shining a spotlight on how ridiculous this is. You agree that according to your world view, the knitting forum should be liable for the content others post on it just because they are enforcing that things stay on topic. Even just for removing SPAM bot posts this would expose them to this liability.
> Right now we let people platforms be whichever favors their present goal or narrative without considering the impact such duplicity has on the public users.
The beautiful thing about freedom is that along as people don't infringe upon the rights of others, they don't need your permission to just go build things and exist.
The YouTube creators didn't have to ask you to "allow" them to build something useful and valuable. They just went and did it. And that's how it should be.
I get that certain creators run into trouble with the TOS. Hell, I've tried to create an Instagram account on several occasions and it gets suspended before I can even use it. And when I appeal or try to ask "why?" I never get answers. It's frustrating.
But the difference between you and me, is I don't think that people who build and create things and bring valuable shit into existence owe me something just by virtue of their existence.
> The beautiful thing about freedom is that along as people don't infringe upon the rights of others, they don't need your permission to just go build things and exist
This is hollow sophistry, and it’s not how things actually are.
You don’t have freedom for
Self dealing, price fixing, collusion, bribery, false marketing, antitrust violations, selling baby powder with lead and many other things.
In some states you can’t even legally collect rainwater.
Also the government will come after you with guns and throw you in jail if you violate some bogus and fictitious “intellectual property rights” that last for 70 years after creator has died.
It’s u helpful to pretend we live in Wild West of liberty
> You don’t have freedom for Self dealing, price fixing, collusion, bribery, false marketing, antitrust violations, selling baby powder with lead and many other things.
It's funny how often people will not read what you wrote, and instead read what they want to read.
Not only did my comment preempt that specific reply of yours in the very sentence you quoted, but you seem to have a warped working definition of the word "freedom": where you think that if someone uses it they mean "freedom to do literally whatever the hell they want to no matter who they hurt."
That means that your mental model of the word "freedom", at least when you hear others say it, begins with a straw-man.
No discussion is possible under those conditions.
I'll help you out: my personal operating definition of "liberty" is "An environment in which all interpersonal relations are consensual."
That's why, as long as you are not infringing upon the rights of others (the part of my quote that you just completely dropped and ignored so that you could react to what you wanted to read instead of what I actually wrote) you don't need the permission of others to build something. You can just go and do it.
So then, your actual opinion is Yes a "content neutral hosting platform." does exist?
Its seems very obvious here that people are saying that the laws that apply to common carriers could be changed so they apply to social media platforms.
Problem/confusion solved here, and the world doesn't fall apart. As we already have these laws, and the world didn't fall apart before.
> So then, your actual opinion is Yes a "content neutral hosting platform." does exist?
No. Common carrier and "hosting platform" are not the same thing. If someone wanted to apply common carrier status to broadband infrastructure, it might make sense. Applying common carrier to knitting forum does not. They are two very different things. One facilitates discrete communication between two distinct parties while the other publishes and distributes content to a wide audience. Conflating the two is an exercise in mental gymnastics that only makes sense if you have a political agenda and don't care about being intellectually honest.
I honestly don’t know what you are spewing off about. At one point you quote me saying “compromise” then proceed to argue as if I said “compensation”. I’m not going to respond to a mischaracterization.
To your challenge:
> In the United States, companies that offer web hosting services are shielded from liability for most
content that customers or malicious users place on the websites they host. Section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230 (―Section 230‖). protects hosting providers from
liability for content placed on these websites by their customers or other parties. The statute states
that ―[n]o 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.‖ Most courts find
that a web hosting provider qualifies as a ―provider‖ of an ―interactive computer service.‖
>Although this protection is usually applied to defamatory remarks, most federal circuits have
interpreted Section 230 broadly, providing ―federal immunity to any cause of action that would
make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service.‖
There is clear legal handling in the US beyond common carrier provisions for hosting providers on the internet.
The nuance here is an argument over what constitutes a hosting provider and how far we extent legal immunity.
My “worldview” is that if you want to claim your business is a hosting provider so that you are granted the legal protection from content liability, that you have a responsibility—which I’d argue we should codify more formally—to remain a neutral hosting provider in spirit, because it is in line with the type of liberty (freedom of expression) we aim to protect in the US. You are saying “legally I’m a neutral hosting provider”, and we already tolerate removal of spam and legally obscene/objectionable content so your point there is moot, so if you are making that claim legally then it’s two faced to turn around and say “IMA private entity I can do whatever I want to curate the content on my platform because I’m responsible for the brand and image and experience I want to cultivate in my house”.
I’m okay with hosting providers not being liable for user content, and I’m okay with yarn forums deleting any post that doesn't reference yarn. It’s the mix of both that I feel is partly responsible for the poor state we’re in now where users get demonetized on YT for questioning the efficacy of new vaccine technology.
Hopefully it’s clear what the nuance is here. And if you don’t think there’s a whole conversation that has been happening here read up on Cloudflare’s philosophy and what Prince has written about the topic. Because they were faced with the same dilemma with The Daily Stormer (but not quite as flagrant as Google/YT trying to play both sides for profit).
The issue is that the knitting forum is a different beast from youtube. The latter is a platform. Its scale makes it QUALITATIVELY different. And there's network effects, there's dumping behaviour, there's preinstalls on every phone, there's integration with the ad behemoth, all to make sure it remains a platform.
This is correct. In the US tiktok is currently being sued for feeding kids choking game content through the algorithm that was earlier judged to be free speech.
Curation and promotion, even if done by a machine (LOL, why does that matter at all?) needs to come with significant liability.
It should be possible to protect content hosting services from extensive liability while not protecting companies from the consequences of what they choose to promote and present to people. Those are two separate and very different activities that aren't even necessarily connected (you could curate and promote without hosting, and in fact this happens all the time; you can host without curating and promoting, this also happens all the time—in fact, these typically are not mixed together outside of social media companies with their damned "algorithms", as far as content from 3rd parties goes)
It would not be necessary, as you pointed out, plenty of Ukrainians still live in Russia and they are free to drive trucks. Best of my knowledge, there is nothing like interment of Japanese that happened in US during WW2.
As far as I’m aware, the USSR (read: Russia) forced everyone to know Russian, and not just know, but know only Russian and forget their own languages and culture. So, most of the populations once occupied by Russia, they can pretend they’re Russians quite easily, especially when they look European. Including former Polish territories. They had plenty of Russian occupation too.
I also was born in USSR, and can assure you that there were and are distinct accents in speech coming from European ex-Soviet republics, including Baltic states, Ukraine and Belarus. For native speakers it will sound different enough.
That depends individually. I can speak Russian accent both with Russian and English that nobody ever would recognise. Normally I have American accent, but I’m having ‘you think this is bad neighbourhood’ kinds of hires with friends very well made Russian accent.
I know many people like that either. I personally spent some time in Moscow, nobody ever knew I’m not a local. Same goes for a friend, we both were laughing at them being unable to recognise we’re not locals.
I believe this might be truer for small distant regions, where people might have their own local accent there. Plus not too many people to blend in that easily. But in general, even if one speaks differently, it might not take too long to adapt to speak like everyone else.
You are mistaken. I don't blame you - it's a common narrative of Russophobic propaganda.
I'd suggest reading "The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939" by Terry Martin [0]
"The Soviet Union was the first of Europe's multiethnic states to confront the rising tide of nationalism by systematically promoting the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and establishing for them many of the institutional forms characteristic of the modern nation-state. In the 1920s, the Bolshevik government, seeking to defuse nationalist sentiment, created tens of thousands of national territories. It trained new national leaders, established national languages, and financed the production of national-language cultural products.This was a massive and fascinating historical experiment in governing a multiethnic state."
Am I? I was born under Russian occupation, before my parents migrated. I know all this very well, and much better than I’d want to. As much as I can fluently understand and speak Russian. As much as I can blend in, even despite the fact I haven’t been there for a very long time. Their culture didn’t change much for generations.
Everyone else reading this nonsense, go read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, where he writes exactly that very time frame. You’d learn a lot of new things about the USSR and its attitude towards minorities.
I love how you have just ignored the reference to the book that contradicts your comment.
I've read and watched enough of Timothy Snyder to know that he's quite biased when talking about modern affairs, so no, I don't have Gell-Mann amnesia and don't feel like trusting him when he writes about history.
I mean. Are you seriously telling me I’m wrong and continue forcing this weird book upon me? Like yeah, my personal life experience as well as millions others make no sense, there’s a non forced upon me by some presumably not biased westplainer.
Half of Ukraine — the one closer to Russia — does not speak Ukrainian, mostly Russian. All of Belarus knows only Russian, mostly not knowing Belarusian. Latvia and Estonia have huge parts of their population who don’t speak local national languages, but speak only Russian.
I’m telling you to back off, I don’t like you and your attempts to diminish me and westplain me something you don’t know personally, basically spreading Russian propaganda how wonderful it was under Russian occupation during the Holodomor timeline. I wish you to get blocked on here sooner than later.
>Half of Ukraine — the one closer to Russia — does not speak Ukrainian, mostly Russian
This half?
"The name Novorossiya, which means "New Russia", entered official usage in 1764, after the Russian Empire conquered the Crimean Khanate, and annexed its territories, when Novorossiya Governorate (or Province) was founded. Official usage of the name ceased after 1917, when the entire area (minus Crimea) was annexed by the Ukrainian People's Republic, precursor of the Ukrainian SSR." [0]
Maybe because it used to be a part of Russia and was gifted to the Ukraine by Lenin, the evil bolshevik? Hmm...
>Latvia and Estonia have huge parts of their population who don’t speak local national languages, but speak only Russian.
Because they are children and grandchildren of Russians who migrated there after the WW2 and now are subjected to discrimination by local nationalistic government.
Back? Those Russians were born in that country and you suggest they must move to Russia because they are ethnic Russians? It's called ethnic cleansing.
>refusing to learn the local, official language
Do you realize that you are writing this in the thread where another commenter condemns the USSR for forcing everybody to learn Russian language?
>still wanting to have the citizenship of the country they are living in
That's how it works in the civilized countries - citizenship is gained by the birth right, not by the ethnicity of their parents.
START treaty between US and Russia requires that the Bombers are stored out in the open so that they can be monitored from satellite, to check compliance.
I guess after today's attack, that treaty is dead.
> The obligation not to use concealment measures shall not apply to cover or concealment practices at ICBM bases or to the use of environmental shelters for strategic offensive arms.
Anti-drone nets or simple hangars won't violate it.
Russians can and will violate any treaty they have signed, also lying about their actions if caught. It is their handbook since forming of the Russian empire.
They are stored out in the open because of the START treaty between US and Russia, it requires that nuclear strategic bombers should be visible from satellite to monitor compliance with the treaty.
This attack, potentially, might spell the end of that treaty.
B2 is definitely stored in climate controlled hangers to help protect their stealth coatings.
START has long since been a dead treaty, replaced by New START. New START has two verification methods, none of which rely on overflight by satellites; instead, verification is performed by onsite inspections of nuclear facilities.
Russia has also "paused" it's compliance with New Start as of February 2023, which is odd.
Though they are unlikely to exceed the treaty warhead numbers, as nukes are expensive. It's too bad really, the START treaties were some of the best "reduce military spending" treaties ever made. Trump called it a bad deal back in 2017 and told Putin that he didn't want to extend it because it was too favorable, which is dumb since it was only ever a boon to both parties.
Despite all the bluster and bullshit and "Super duper turbo America killer 9000" weapons like the Satan, Russia does like the START treaties and wanted to keep them going, at least until the war.
As of today(!), the US has suspended the VISAs of Russia nuclear weapon inspectors as retaliation.
> An amazing idea: Drive a truck full of drones deep into enemy territory and let them loose.
Is it such an amazing idea? Imagine the shoe is on the other foot - would you normally be able to drive a truck full of drones into a country at war, say Israel? This puts a target on civilian vehicles.
> In the process, manage to poke serious holes into Russia's nuclear deterrent.
Again, is it such an amazing idea? Do you want to make people in charge of nuclear weapons more jumpy and likely to make a rash decision?
Put a target on civilian vehicles? This changes nothing. I don't know if you read or watched "generation kill" but even US troops shot at everything which came too close for comfort in Iraq. And I understand that, any unidentified vehicle could be hostile. You are not going to sit and wait to find out as a soldier.
Also they didn't drive a truck into Russia. The trucks were acquired and modified in Russia. And according to Russia they are not in a war. They are in a "special military operation"...
I would support this idealistic approach and disregard for consequences if we didn’t have an “ally” that’s doing exactly the same thing, and potentially vulnerable if a major power decides to intervene
> anti-capitalist activists using iPhones, riding in Ubers, and ordering Amazon deliveries…
> every single job, iPhone, and modern convenience they enjoy exists because someone, somewhere, took a risk to make a profit.
Amazingly capitalists use things invented by socialists, like satellites, or the LED. Or things invested by Nazis and Monarchists.
Their favourite iPhone is made by communists, with minerals mined by .. well I am not sure what you call em but they are not capitalists
Every day Capitalists use public sanitation, running water, Education, GPS, police and prosecution but they imagine they could exist in a mad max world instead of dying of cholera
China is the most economically capitalist major country on earth. In fact, they embrace capitalism more than the US if you compare percentages of GDP driven by government spending.
50% of European GDP is government spending. The USSR was 70-80%. Meanwhile China is currently at 30%.
China has been a capitalist state since the 70s with a turn to State Capitalism in the 2010s. Furthermore, China's leadership remains anti-Welfarism, with Xi himself making speeches against expanding the already weak social safety net.
> Every day Capitalists use public sanitation, running water, Education, GPS, police and prosecution but they imagine they could exist in a mad max world instead of dying of cholera
Capitalism doesn't preclude public infrastructure. That's just a facile argument.
> the LED
The modern LED was developed by Texas Instruments and Bell Labs in the 1950s.
> like satellites
Both the US and the USSR knew about how to launch satellites in space by the mid-1950s. It was the USSR that chose to prioritize it, and the US that chose to deprioritize it.
> Their favourite iPhone is made by communists, with minerals mined by .. well I am not sure what you call em but they are not capitalists
Do you think those miners are volunteering out of revolutionary solidarity? Or perhaps "disposable cogs in the global supply chain" was the term you were looking for?
The USSR was a state-run economy. Workers got wages, sure, but the mines, the profits, the whole system was controlled by the government, not private owners chasing profit. Capitalism isn't just "getting paid," it's about who owns the means of production and how wealth circulates.
You are speaking like a naive person that thinks that most the challenge is the physical world
But in UK most of the challenge is archaic and idiosyncratic laws, disproportionately powerful NIMBY’s and the treasury brain.
The treasury brain will approve a project with 1X capex and 10x opex instead of one that has 2X capex and 1X opex
The NYMBY is wild and unpredictable, they just killed project for a data centre placed on top of a literal dump because it would ruin the view of that dump from a motorway (nobody lives there)
A project to re-open 3 miles of railway that already exists took 5 years to approve and 80,000 pages of environmental accessment
But if it’s innovate and designed in UK it might just slip through