tech

As tech faces a reckoning, what you do offline can get you banned

16 Comments
By Elizabeth Culliford

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Internet sites are conduits and platforms, like pubs. To maintain free speech, they need to default to open and not be held liable for content or forced to act as judges beyond the basic remit of their T's & C's, which should be based upon what is and what is not actually lawful. In that case, incitement to violence is criminal, but simply being rude about someone or holding an unpopular opinion is not.

But the Republicans argue that Section 230 should be lifted allowing them to be sued over the third party content posted on their web platforms, even as the Republicans also demand the very same tech companies not moderate content calling it censorship. The free market economist in me says that if I own the web platform, I can moderate it to whatever degree I wish. it is not up to the government to tell me I cannot remove an offensive post as that post reflects badly on my company and perhaps me personally. Were I a shareholder I would expect the management of the web platform to protect the company image by eliminating objectionable posts. Just make sure the terms of service spell out clearly the mods have the last word. What you call "crowd funded bullying" isn't. I am old enough to remember the old saying "the customer is always right". If your customers object to what your web platform allows to be posted you stand to lose customers, which is emphatically the customers right to do. There are no beauty queens in this pageant, are there.

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Regarding schools, if kids do Bad Things in school or using school computers, it is a matter for the school to pursue. If they do Bad Things outside school, it is a matter for their parents, police or social services. They may all then work with the school afterwards, but teachers are not detectives, police officers or judges.

The only real issue for employers would be if someone was leaking company secrets. Anything else is their personal business. Your company does not own you, and in your free time you do not represent your company. You are an employee, not a slave.

The issue nowadays is when someone is targeted by an activist witch hunt online. This is an unpleasant and new form of crowd-sourced bullying, and the solution is to grow a pair and support the victims of it, as you should support victims of any other sort of bullying.

-Some employers even demand usernames and passwords.

Folk should avoid working for a company like that. Huge red flag that they are going to treat you like dirt.

Just find someone else to work for and leave them to employ the desperate, incompetent and unfortunate. It may actually be a crime in some countries to be forced to hand over your password to anyone who is not legally mandated to ask for it. And if you do hand over your password to anyone, your bank, your insurer and your ISP will consider you responsible for any issues that occur.

Internet sites are conduits and platforms, like pubs. To maintain free speech, they need to default to open and not be held liable for content or forced to act as judges beyond the basic remit of their T's & C's, which should be based upon what is and what is not actually lawful. In that case, incitement to violence is criminal, but simply being rude about someone or holding an unpopular opinion is not.

Woke activists, like every other fascist group and political regime before them, simply want to ban, de-platform, isolate and silence everyone whose opinions they disagree with. We need to stand up to this wave of censorship. Censorship has no place in a civilised society. It is a tool of repression. If someone says something that you do not agree with, voice your alternative. Do not burst into tears and run to the hurt feelings police, demanding that they be rendered an unperson.

Governments will use the tech companies as a tool of censorship and oppression by proxy, so they do not look like a bunch of dictators. We've already seen that in China, and in the West with the restrictions on search engines. We should not allow them to co-opt GAFA as a privatised version of the Stasi.

We need to flip to distributed systems in which people take control of what they see on the net and have the option to block from their screens what they do not wish to see. Tech companies would then be, by definition, conduits, as they would have no control over content for governments to force them to exercise through censorship. Content would be the legal responsibility of its creator, as it should be.

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None, not a single one, not one social website has an obligation, of any kind, to accept your posts.

Why people think they do is stunningly ignorant and unforgivably self centered.

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Twitch has no right to be judge and jury outside of its own app

Just being the devil's advocate here but how do you think Twitch in this example should deal with a member who turns out to be a terrorist? Or maybe has a side business making and selling child pornography? Is Twitch obliged to look the other way for the sake of free speech? Should Twitch face legal repercussions for hosting such objectionable members? Or should Twitch be legally immune? And how does Twitch deal with public outrage if such a person is identified having a Twitch account? If there are public demands to ban this person, and especially if it politicians demand Twitch banish this person, are they obliged to do so? Should they? Like I said, just being the devil's advocate.

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These tech companies really need to have their wings clipped.

There is more to it than just the "tech companies" involved in abuse. Private employers and public agencies both terminate employees routinely for posts that the employer or public agency deems to be objectionable. The public often demands this of them threatening legal / electoral action if they do not. Schools discipline students for what they post on the internet from their own homes on their families computer. No school time or school resources involved but the schools still punish kids for their after school internet activity. Punishing what is called "cyber bullying" is widely popular and schools that fail to do so expose themselves to potentially crippling lawsuits. Employers often demand to see all of a job applicants social media before considering this applicant for the position applied for. Some employers even demand usernames and passwords.

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I really recommend reading the US's Justice Thomas's opinion on regulating tech like Twitch as it seems quite appropriate and widely popular:

Treating internet platforms as common carriers as the justice suggests only works if Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that provides websites immunity from lawsuits for third party content is maintained. What won't work is to revoke Section 230, exposing internet providers to lawsuits for what third parties post while simultaneously requiring these same sites to allow anyone to post anything without restriction. If both actions occur, the internet as we know it today will disappear. No company is going to take the risks implied in allowing anyone to post anything as a common carrier while still being held liable for what is posted.

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These tech companies really need to have their wings clipped.

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Facebook Inc's rules .................... People who have murdered one person are mostly allowed, a spokeswoman said, due to the crime's volume.

"How many people did you murder"?

"Only one."

"That's OK then but don't do it again or we will ban you."

"OK, I won't."

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An open democratic society needs a public square.

Mike Lindell has you covered! But let me be Frank, you can’t take the Lord’s name in vain or use cuss words.

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So your enemies no longer have to hack your accounts to destroy your life. They can just pretend to be an evil version of you* on websites you have never heard of, and GAFA will render you an 'unperson'.

The world becomes more dystopian with every passing day.

For Trek fans, think bearded Spock from 'Mirror, Mirror'.
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