Sacha Baron Cohen Calls Out ‘Ideological Imperialism’ Of Social Sites Boosting Hate | Talking Points Memo

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#54

I’m well aware of the nuance here. But if you think that Facebook is exactly equivalent to a regular publisher for first amendment purposes, you’re overreaching. Facebook is simultaneously taking advantage of the safe-harbor aspects of claiming to be a public forum while making whatever viewpoint-based decisions it wants, and that doesn’t work.

If S&S decides to publish something that’s defamatory, or that violates various other rights of private parties, or that contains certain restricted information, S&S is on the hook. As things stand now, there’s effectively no one with a right of action against FB for the things it publishes. And that’s because of government action.

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#55

Ain’t likely to happen, but that would work.

I was more than skeptical of these “things” from the git-go, and wanted nothing to do with 'em. E-mail apps seem to work just fine, and plenty of looney shit got propagated there, and still does. 'Course, I’m just a cranky old Luddite…
I wouldn’t pay fifty cents to see Zuckerberg immolate himself with rancid deep far fryer oil, but if he did it on my street, I might put out the fire after a decent interval.

@hahagoodman

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#56

That’s about as far as I go also.

(Not counting this place, of course.)

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#57

There has to be something seriously wrong with anyone who would think that it was a good idea to set up a website to rank the women students at Harvard based upon their appearance. It is frightening that such a deranged person has so much influence on public discourse.

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#58

Agreed. He was a creepy little schmendrick then, as he still seems to be today.

@moniker

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#59

If you want a truly frightening picture of what a monstrosity Facebook has become, and how it poisons free speech, I recommend “Zucked” by Roger McNamee. McNamee was one of Zuckerburg’s first mentors and has been a presence in the world of internet development for decades.

He too thought that the concept of creating a public forum for people to share data was amazingly great, until it turned into a nightmare monopoly that monetizes personal information without out permission (even if you’re not on FB) and has almost accidentally, through greed and apathy, morphed into a principle factor in destroying our democracy.

It’s not an exaggeration, nor a doomsday message. It’s a moral lesson with a ton of practical suggestions for correcting this error. He focuses on FB because he knows the executives there, but he says the same applies to Google and Amazon. To me, this issue of technology perverting our society is as critical an emergency as climate change.

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#60

Every online platform, including this one we’re currently chatting on, benefits from the safe-harbor provisions of the CDA while making whatever viewpoint-based decisions it wants. Congress could, of course, take away the safe harbor law, and that wouldn’t be illegal viewpoint discrimination. That would make platforms liable for all kinds of actionable content, such as defamation and imminent incitement to violence. But so long as the First Amendment protects Mein Kampf in meat space – which it unquestionably does – it will protect the same garbage online. As it should.

That said, everybody should delete Facebook unless and until they launch their resident Nazis into space.

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#61

Does anybody remember Usenet newsgroups? Those sure were the days.

Here’s my thoughts on the evolution of the internet as a platform for human communication.

Usenet -> bulletin boards -> discussion forums: These worked ok (not always great) as constrained hobbiest domains. The feedback loop was conversational engagement. Your contributions earned your way into a community. Conversations were listed, usually sorted by date or recency of latest contribution, rather than by intensity (eg, number of comments in a thread). Successful communities were tribal, generally with strong moderation. Trolls were generally not tolerated by the communities and eliminated by moderators.

Reddit: trolls endure but fall to the bottom of threads…out of sight out of mind. I don’t have a lot of experience with it but the format seems to eschew moderation. My sense of the user interface is that it favors drive-by Q&A/response over a tighter knit enduring community. But I’ve never really rolled up my sleeves and tried to join a sub-reddit, so I ould be mistaken.

Facebook/Twitter: I call this ‘broadcast’ social media. You just yell stuff out and hope someone notices. These platforms are purely for self-promotion. Their feedback loops are almost exclusively algorithmic, based upon engagement count (not quality). The feedback loop also strongly favors recency, which disfavors conversational engagement depth that’s you’d find on forums. Algorithmic attempts to drive endurance, particularly on facebook, are so, so, so poorly executed. For example, I once received a poke from fb to remind me to say happy birthday to my sister…who had died of cancer 4 years previously. Her fb account still exists even after requests for it to be deleted.

LinkedIn: I have no idea what purpose it serves,mostly because it has no feedback loop. LI profiles perform well in google search, making it easy to find people you know. But everybody ignores their profiles and LI emails, so it’s a horrible way to actually reach out to someone.

And don’t get me started on the technostalking…

These modern social medias (fb, twitter, probably linkedin) are just horribly failed social experiments.

We all need to stop using them.

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#62

Yes. Dan Quayle invented them, I believe.

 

In '92, Usenet was used by the Clinton campaign to get the word out – in part because Gore understood and trusted the medium.

The Bush people did not think they needed it – and honestly I can’t say how much difference it made.

 

Yes, but only if we started.

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#63

Use your imagination…throw away the reflexive knob-slobbering afforded vets and see where that takes you. It’s sickening they overwhelmingly support Trump who openly mocks and humiliates true patriots. Get it now?

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#64

I claim no expertise on this subject, I haven’t joined FB and I never will, I participate lightly here and in one other unrelated forum. But it seems to me a strategy would be to abolish the whole system of “likes” and “recommends”. We post and then eagerly await social approval or opprobrium, but it ends up that both have the same effect, which is to amplify the content and place it in front of more users. But in real life I don’t wait around or go back later to see if people approve or disapprove of what I say, whatever feedback I get is there in the moment, rarely is there any followup, and for the most part I only care if I managed to piss someone off whom I care about, in which case I make amends. Everyone else can piss off. Policing particular speech is difficult, the purveyors of content should be always made to put real resources toward weeding out truly offensive and dangerous content, but those systems will never be sufficient to make more than a small dent in the problem. I think removing the mechanisms that amplify and broadcast the stuff that people react most strongly to would have a far greater effect. It seems like that amplification is FB’s entire operating principle, but since I refuse to use it, maybe I’m totally off the wall here.

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#65

Got a specific example for that? Because while the gov’t can’t limit speech, this might fall more under advertising restrictions and disclaimers, which they can certainly do to promote the general welfare and protect the populace from fraud and/or harmful ‘product’, just like there is certain content the FCC doesn’t allow broadcast on the public airwaves.

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#66

Public airwaves are treated differently – incorrectly, in my personal estimation, but nevertheless it’s established law – because the broadcast spectrum is “owned” by the public, not any private actors. Government can set broadly-applicable content rules because it owns the platform. And note that in the United States, television parental guideline ratings they are entirely voluntary and have no legal force. Social media could develop similar ratings for its users, but of course they have chosen not to.

Bottom line: The government does not own social media, so it doesn’t get to decide what can and cannot be published on it.

Advertising, which you and @paulw have both pointed to, has historically been treated with less protections under the First Amendment because it is considered “commercial speech.” But Supreme Court jurisprudence over the last several decades has granted more and more First Amendment protections to commercial speech. So you might be able to get some content-based regulations enacted on social media advertising without violating the First Amendment, but the government is not going to be able to just prohibit white supremacists from advertising for white supremacy. And the problem isn’t with Nazi ads anyway – it’s the user-generated Nazi content.

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#67

Cohen is calling out the various websites for being socially irresponsible. He’s not calling for regulations that don’t already exist in the publishing industry.

“Advocating for the websites to be held to standards similar to other large publishers, Cohen called for regulation and enforcement to stop extremist material from reaching millions of people”

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#68 
  Fan of Madam Secretary here(Madam President now).  
 Last episode dealt with something such as this.  In THAT world, South Korea HAD a YouTube like platform, which HAD safeguards built into its algorithm.  Téa Leoni's character HAD attempted to speak with social media king pins about the false items perpetuating on their platforms.
She was met with the argument of "we only provide the platform" - "free speech" - "etc, etc, etc.  When her character signed a historic treaty with South Korea, she told the social platform owners about South Korea's platform and how THEY can limit such things with THEIR algorithm, how much they would lose $$$ for NOT adapting theirs.
BOOM!  Only in a TV world do things fall into place in under an hour. BUT TV or NOT, these things CAN be accomplished.  Social Media chooses NOT to do what is needed.
#69

or FB could simply refuse paid political ads
oh wait that would cost money

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#70

This is well worth the 25 minutes to watch it.

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#71

It is flatly nonsensical to claim that Cohen is not calling for government censorship in his speech. “Regulation and enforcement” are quintessential government activities.

He explicitly writes: “Here’s an idea. Instead of letting the Silicon Six decide the fate of the world, let our elected representatives, voted for by the people, of every democracy in the world, have at least some say.” That’s calling for government censorship.

#72

“Nonsensical” seems a bit strong. At worst, I am in error.

Cohen says that he wants social media websites to adhere to the same standards that the rest of the publishing industry adheres to.

He explicitly writes: “Here’s an idea. Instead of letting the Silicon Six decide the fate of the world, let our elected representatives, voted for by the people, of every democracy in the world, have at least some say.” That’s calling for government censorship.

That’s a great quote. It’s also not in the article.

Don’t you think it’s a bit over-the-top to bring in quotes from other sources to imply that I’m making “nonsensical” points about this article? Surely we could reach the same conclusion in a less adversarial manner.

The way I would go about this kind of reply is “Cohen also has said…” (proper citation, including source) “Does that affect your thinking on this issue?”

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#73

Cohen’s written speech is linked in the article. Go read those remarks. In their entirety, it is very clear that he is advocating for some vague kind of content-based censorship by the government.

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