Hideo Kojima linked to assassination of Shinzo Abe by.....

[Deleted member 11852]

Twitter is a publication that has people write content for them. Without that content twitter wouldn't exist.

There is a massive between between a publisher and a platform. Publications make a conscious choice about what content they commission to be produced and what chose to publish, Twitter does not. Publications exert full editorial control over everything published, Twitter does not.

 

[eastmen]

There is a massive between between a publisher and a platform. Publications make a conscious choice about what content they commission to be produced and what chose to publish, Twitter does not. Publications exert full editorial control over everything published, Twitter does not.

and they should both be responsible for what their content is.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

and they should both be responsible for what their content is.

Publishers already are responsible. If you want platforms to be responsible for what their users do, then expect you lose your land line, your cell phone and your ISP. Because they have no control over what you actually do with these communications platforms, but you if you chose to do something illegal, they would be responsible for that under your suggestion.

You see how that makes nonsense and why the law doesn't work that way. Democracy is predicated on personal responsibility.

 

[milk]

Twitter is a publication that has people write content for them. Without that content twitter wouldn't exist.

Twitter should also be responsible for the content they distribute. They have moderation teams and tools to enforce their rules and so they should abide by the rules set forth from the government.

Yes the telephone company should moderate who has access to their telephone lines. The FCC is on that https://www.fcc.gov/spoofed-robocalls . Telephone companies should absolutely be responsible for who they let use their services.


I think the fundamental part that you are missing is that twitter and other companies are making money off people using their services to commit crimes. If your friend asked for a ride to the bank and they decided to rob it you would be responsible also with aiding and abetting. Twitter and other companies should face the same penalties

Its all fine and dandy until someone from your family goes to jail because they were driving uber and gave a lift to somebody who later comited a crieme.

You are going with the "jUst dO sOmEtHiNg, AnYtHiNg ReALLy" "MaEk bAd ThiNg StAwP" mentality.

Sloppy solutions to complex problems often end up creating bigger unforseen problems than the original one it was trying to solve. Of course, the same kind of person to ask for sloppy solution, is the one who won't observe the results carefully and honestly enough to ever admit it was a net-negative.

 

[eastmen]

Publishers already are responsible. If you want platforms to be responsible for what their users do, then expect you lose your land line, your cell phone and your ISP. Because they have no control over what you actually do with these communications platforms, but you if you chose to do something illegal, they would be responsible for that under your suggestion.

You see how that makes nonsense and why the law doesn't work that way. Democracy is predicated on personal responsibility.

Except with twitter they already moderate and remove posts and users based on their content. So they are already self governing. They are just doing a shitty job at it.

Look at youtube. They are allowing videos up that teach you how to use an old microwave to burn traces into wood. People have died doing this. Creators have made content explaining the dangers and contacted youtube. What did youtube do? They removed the videos warning people but kept the original videos teaching how to do it up. Youtube should be responsible for anyone who follows those videos.

Its the same with twitter , they remove content that they deem harmful or breaks any one of their community guidelines all the time. Since they have the capabilities to do so they should be held accountable for what is on their platform.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Except with twitter they already moderate and remove posts and users based on their content. So they are already self governing. They are just doing a shitty job at it.

Twitter chose to self-censor/regulate following pressure and criticism, not because they are required too. And that itself has proven contentious among people with a lose association with facts and provable evidence. The challenge is trying to regulate 229 million Twitter users. That is the difference between being absolutely responsible for all content and making some effort to tame the worst of it.

Look at youtube. They are allowing videos up that teach you how to use an old microwave to burn traces into wood. People have died doing this. Creators have made content explaining the dangers and contacted youtube. What did youtube do? They removed the videos warning people but kept the original videos teaching how to do it up. Youtube should be responsible for anyone who follows those videos.

It sounds you don't believe that the idiot-poster and the idiot-received have personal responsibility and that the middleman is the party with sole responsibility. This sounds like an über nanny state by proxy.

Its the same with twitter , they remove content that they deem harmful or breaks any one of their community guidelines all the time. Since they have the capabilities to do so they should be held accountable for what is on their platform.

In most countries, any service provider or retailer can chose to offer their service (or sell to) anybody at their discretion. And they can impose whatever rules of use that they please, like you cannot just go into any shop and piss on the floor. What you seemingly want to do is make this third party - between the content creator and content consumer - to bear all the responsibility, because that is where it takes place.. If you invited me into your house and I shot somebody's dog from inside, would you responsible because it's your house?

Where do you stand on personal responsibility?

 

[milk]

By the way, the Publisher vs. Platform discussion reggarding twitter, facebook, youtube and other has been had before. Including in US congress. And it was rulled then that they are platforms and not publishers.

As is, in most countries, platforms are not accountable for what users wrote on them, but they still can receive warrants to remove criminal content from circulation by authorities and that indeed does happen, and Kojima could very well seek that action with the law as it is right now, but I think it would not even be necessary because I'd bet all tweets with the incorrect news have already been removed or corrected by their very authors.

Notice, though, that in this scenario, the persons responsable for defamation is still exclusevely the posters. The platforms are just required to remove the content to be compliant with a legal rulling, but are not seen as responsable for the crime itself, just as an unfortunate 3rd party that got caught in the cross-fire so to speak.

Now I don't think the legalist argument is that interesting since these decisions can often be overulled and social-utilitarianism (with all the limitations of measuring and predicting that very subjective ideal) has about as much weight as technicalities of legal classifications of what constites publishers vs. platforms.

I'm way more interested in the spirit of the choices we make, the kind of phenomena and behaviour our systems insentivise vs. punish.

@DSalready already mentioned the nanny-state aspect of holding twitter accountable for every single tweet as if it was a publisher. When too much responsability is put on "higher-up" entities and authorities, the indirect effect is the infantilization of the individuals bellow, and the gradual increase in arrogance of the decision makers higher up.

Out of good intentions, you are asking for bureocrats and clerigy to constantly police everyone (including you and me) in ways that once established are much harder to disassemble. And there is no guarantee the bureocrats will do a better job than the individuals bellow. The bureocrats are humans themselves. Only difference is the bureocrat can hide behind an official "stamp of aproval" to tell you to shut the fuck up, and you cannot respond in kind. A flatter more equalitarian struture (self responsability, no holy-protector) avoids such power disparities (but it doesn't avoit others: such as more popular vs less popular individuals etc).

Secondarely, but I think even more importantly, it goes against the best aspects of the internet. Its an outdated, centralizing, gate-keeper-based mentality.

Wikipedia is the best enciclopedia ever devised because instead of relying way too much on a centrilized curating entity, it allows for more collaboration and self-regulation. If everybody thought the way you do, wikipedia would never have come to be.

Yes, wikipedia is flawed, but so are other publisher-centric publications too. But with wikipedia, whatever flaws are there are collectively OUR OWN fault too, since we all have the power to go in and improve it. Wikipedia does not fight missinformation with censorship, but rather: with Better information. Stop and think for a moment about how powerful of a psychological and cultural change of mindset that is.

None of the awesome platforms we use today such as twitter, youtube, instagram would exist in an environment of severe unilateral punishment dished out at everybody as the one you are suggesting. Your draconian system would not abolish dissinfotmation. It would kill off most information, good or bad, all together. Not even Beyond3D would be able to exist. I mean, I don't think anybody in their right mind would chose to host a forum in which any lunatic can come at anytime and invent that Shiguiro Myiamoto murdered JFK and get everyone involved sued that way. Would you?

New lies and missconceptiins will always come to be, no matter how many layers of official fact-checking staff and legal punishment you dish out. But I'd rather have the tools to fix those mistakes be in my hand, rather than in that of some opaque authority hidden multiple levels away from me.