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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

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Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Tech Reform Watch: Pre-Inauguration Edition

Tech Reform Watch: Pre-Inauguration Edition

by Major Major Major Major|  January 18, 20216:55 pm| 99 Comments

This post is in: Science & Technology, Tech News and Issues

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The Washington Post today has several articles about the incoming administration’s, and new congress’s, thoughts and priorities on regulating tech companies. If you’re interested in this–and you should be if you’re reading this on, say, the Internet–I recommend checking them out, or at least reading the overview. Silicon Valley braces for tougher regulation in Biden’s new Washington:

Democratic leaders for years have proposed a bevy of new legislation to shrink Silicon Valley’s corporate footprint, restrict its insatiable appetite for data and stop the spread of falsehoods online. But the party’s calls for regulation have grown more urgent in the days since Biden won the presidency, his party took control of the House and the Senate, and Trump and his allies further exposed the risks of a largely unregulated Web.

[…]“I think for the Internet industry, in particular, it’s going to be tough sledding for the next two years at least,” predicted Rob Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank that counts companies including Google and Microsoft on its board.

The accompanying articles drill down into “gig work” reform, making contractors into employees; net neutrality, the policy that internet service providers must treat all traffic equally regardless of origin or destination; antitrust; and Section 230 reform.

Of these, I think net neutrality will obviously happen, and gig work reform will probably not. Antitrust I can’t speak to. But Section 230 reform, well, damn near every politician wants a bite at that apple. I hate to both sides this, but in terms of the literal words that come out of their mouths, it’s sort of true: Trump vetoed the NDAA because he wanted a version that repealed Section 230 outright; Biden spoke in 2020 about how we should repeal Section 230 outright.

What is Section 230, you ask? I have a primer here. tl;dr: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act says that tech companies aren’t liable for content posted by their users, and can moderate it as they choose. You can comment about violent insurrection here without us being liable; we have the right to ban your ass.

The WaPo Article does a good job outlining the power players in this coming fight. The person to really keep an eye on is Brian Schatz (D-HI), chair of the Internet subcommittee. His current legislation, the Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency (PACT) Act, is offered in good faith, and sounds nice on the surface, but has a number of significant flaws. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a good explainer:

The PACT Act ends Section 230(c)(1)’s immunity for user-generated content if services fail to remove the material upon receiving a notice claiming that a court declared it illegal. Platforms with more than a million monthly users or that have more than $25 million in annual revenue have to respond to these takedown requests and remove the material within 24 hours. Smaller platforms must remove the materials “within a reasonable period of time based on size and capacity of provider.”

[…]On first blush, this seems uncontroversial—after all, why should services enjoy special immunity for continuing to host content that is deemed unlawful or is otherwise unprotected by the First Amendment? The problem is that the PACT Act poorly defines what qualifies as a court order, fails to provide strong protections, and sets smaller platforms up for even greater litigation risks than their larger competitors.

I will refer you to the link if you’d like to learn more. One very important point is that this, like many regulations, would benefit entrenched companies and make it harder for competitors to form and grow. There are ways to write regulations that minimize this, and we need to be very careful that we are doing so, unless we want Facebook and Twitter to be even more powerful. Indeed, Facebook is pushing for many of these regulations, for this reason. So if you find yourself on their side, maybe reconsider.

“Oh please don’t throw us into the complicated briar patch you’ll need to pay our lobbyists to help plant. We would just be soooo sad if you created regulations only large companies had the resources to follow!” pic.twitter.com/7lmHKGn2Ya

— ☃️ Tynan ? (@TynanPants) January 18, 2021

Twitter, by contrast, is literally invested in creating and elevating open standards for distributed social networks that would limit the coercive power of companies like Twitter. By all accounts Dorsey didn’t ask for this power and doesn’t want it. TechCrunch has a good writeup of where they are in the process, as well as a general discussion of what the heck I’m talking about. (You can also read my own post on distributed social networks.)

Section 230 reform will need sixty votes to pass, which will either doom it or mean we need to fold in Republican priorities, such as legally mandating that Republicans can say whatever the hell they want, anywhere, at any time. I wish I were joking:

Social media is our generation’s public forum. It ought to be subject to the same protections provided to all public forums.

I am calling for First Amendment protections to be applied to this New Town Square.

Censorship of elected officials by unelected elites is UNAMERICAN!

— Madison Cawthorn (@CawthornforNC) January 9, 2021

If we’re negotiating with people like this… maybe we’ll get lucky and nothing will happen. I don’t know, what do you folks think?

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Reader Interactions

99Comments

  1. 1.

    jl

    January 18, 2021 at 7:02 pm

    Thanks for a nice discussion of a complicated topic. By one theory, we could just let the Trumpsters do what they  want, try  to repeal 230 altogether. Then many gigantic legal battles will rage over whether it is legal to do it all, partly because of things Trump signed himself. If the courts keep the repeal in effect through the legal battles, watch it shutdown the whole reactionary hate movement and Trumpster base for fear of liability. I hope have that right correct, and someone correct me if I’m wrong.

    Edit: I think the main drawback to letting it happen is that it would shut down a lot of other people besides the toxic reactionaries and insurrectionists.

    I think the antitrust angle, as envisioned by Warren, is to separate out commercial versus private free speech. Sites retain a 230 type protection, so crazy uncles can send whatever to their nieces and nephews. But corporations can’t use it as a cover to segment their market for ad targeting for profit.

    I’m not sure I have all this correct, and am kind of throwing it out their for review and critique from the brilliant BJ legal flying wedge.

  2. 2.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 18, 2021 at 7:03 pm

    Isn’t Congressman HitlerYouth effectively calling for nationalization of twitter? The means of communication?

  3. 3.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    January 18, 2021 at 7:06 pm

    I think Cawthorne should resign for his role in the Capitol Insurrection

  4. 4.

    jl

    January 18, 2021 at 7:06 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: ‘Let the heathens rage’ says the Good Book

  5. 5.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 7:12 pm

    @jl: 230 has nothing to do with advertising. You could ban targeted advertising tomorrow (probably not actually, but IANAL) and wouldn’t have to touch 230. 230 is about liability for user generated content and the freedom to moderate as you see fit. Eliminating it would lead to far more censorship, companies would have to pre-approve everything. I recommend reading my post on 230 https://balloon-juice.com/2020/12/28/lets-talk-about-section-230-of-the-cda-or-why-youre-allowed-to-comment-on-this-post/

  6. 6.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    January 18, 2021 at 7:12 pm

    Speaking of Twitter, has anybody noticed accounts using Trump’s avatar from his old account? Or the whole “President-Elect X” thing people use as their Twitter account names?

  7. 7.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    January 18, 2021 at 7:13 pm

    People should stand in Cawthorn’s mom’s front yard and shout inanities.

    It is what he is advocating.

    Likewise, for everybody who lionizes Snowjob or Assange, maybe the NYT or Washington Post could commission people to break into their house, steal all accumulated mail, and then publish it. It’s the same thing…..

  8. 8.

    debbie

    January 18, 2021 at 7:13 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    He should resign for the crap that is on his Twitter feed.

  9. 9.

    Chyron HR

    January 18, 2021 at 7:16 pm

    Do you have to go to an image consultant to get the “Doogie Howser in Starship Troopers” makeover, or do nazis have their own version of Hot Topic to shop at?

  10. 10.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 7:22 pm

    @Chyron HR: Hugo Boss back catalog

  11. 11.

    Doug R

    January 18, 2021 at 7:25 pm

    I’m thinking you could put Facebook on the hook for deceptive advertising and promoted posts since they are making $ off it, they are indeed a publisher.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    January 18, 2021 at 7:26 pm

    Fuck Madison Cawthorn.

  13. 13.

    Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)

    January 18, 2021 at 7:27 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think Cawthorn should be expelled for his role in the insurrection. And charged, arrested, and tried.

  14. 14.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 7:27 pm

    @Doug R:

    they are making $ off it, they are indeed a publisher

    How’s that work?

  15. 15.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    January 18, 2021 at 7:27 pm

    @debbie:

    Haven’t seen it. Is it full of edgelord “libtards are the REAL fascists!” tripe?

  16. 16.

    debbie

    January 18, 2021 at 7:30 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    America First, etc., etc.

  17. 17.

    NotMax

    January 18, 2021 at 7:31 pm

    Congress is expert at designing legislation geared to the technology of five to ten years ago. Assessment of futurism is a can perpetually kicked down the road.

  18. 18.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 7:33 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): never did get the president-elect one. Is the joke that well if anybody can just claim they won the election, I will too? It’s… not a good joke. Not like I expected a good one.

    I change my handle regularly and was “president-elect” for a few days, cuz it was topical, but then I started getting MAGA followers and realized i must have stumbled into some dumbass right wing meme.

    I think most of them still follow me, lol

  19. 19.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    January 18, 2021 at 7:33 pm

    @NotMax:

    Then why don’t they get consultants from places like the EFF to help them craft better legislation?

  20. 20.

    debbie

    January 18, 2021 at 7:34 pm

    I don’t think the whole tech reform thing can be resolved because of things like this:

    Parler is back online now by routing 100% of its user traffic through servers located within the Russian Federation.

    Raise your hand if you understand the very significant impact this has on the ability to surveil and target insurrectionists who organize on Parler.
    — Chris Vickery (@VickerySec) January 18, 2021

    Frankly, what’s the point of trying to fix something that’s irredeemable?

  21. 21.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 7:34 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): they could also just like, go knock on Ron Wyden’s door. The fact of the matter is they mostly just don’t understand this stuff but think they do.

  22. 22.

    NotMax

    January 18, 2021 at 7:36 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    More or less what the movers and shakers behind the curtain are spouting.

    Members of President Donald Trump’s campaign helped organize the “stop the steal” rally in Washington D.C. that transformed into the Capitol riot, according to the Associated Press.

    The rally was hosted by Women for America First alongside other groups, and the permits include the names of a handful of people that just weeks prior were being paid by the campaign.

    They include Megan Powers, formerly the campaign’s director of operations, Caroline Wren, who was paid by the campaign as a consultant and Maggie Mulvaney, niece of Mick Mulvaney and director of finance operations for the campaign.

    Much of the women’s social media posts about the event, like the online footprint of many groups involved in planning the rallies, have since been wiped.

    The Women for America First page in particular was almost completely bare after the rally, excepting one statement from Amy Kremer, the group’s founder.

    “Unfortunately, for months the left and the mainstream media told the American people that violence was an acceptable political tool,” the statement read. “They were wrong. It is not.” Source

  23. 23.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 7:38 pm

    @debbie:

    I don’t think the whole tech reform thing can be resolved because of things like this:

    Because of… the fundamental architecture of the Internet? That’s like saying we can’t regulate driving because there are private roads somewhere.

  24. 24.

    debbie

    January 18, 2021 at 7:39 pm

    @NotMax:

    Whichever Congressional committee is the first to hold hearings on the insurrection, I hope they haul in the RNC leadership. They got a lot of ‘splaining to do.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    January 18, 2021 at 7:40 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    There was an Office of Technology Assessment on Capitol Hill, on the the way to becoming a robust analytical service.

    One guess which party axed that.

  26. 26.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 7:41 pm

    Lol this seems relevant

    pic.twitter.com/FRFcrVEYgc

    — Poorly Aged Things (@PoorlyAgedStuff) January 19, 2021

  27. 27.

    dmsilev

    January 18, 2021 at 7:46 pm

    @debbie: Parler isn’t really “back on the Internet” except in the barest more minimal sense possible. They have a single web page up that basically says “we’re back”, but there’s no actual functionality. Nobody can post any messages, nobody can read any messages. They’ve got a long way to go before they’re “back” in any real sense.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    January 18, 2021 at 7:46 pm

    FYI, for those strong of stomach.

    ProPublica has published a new interactive resource of over 500 videos taken in Washington, DC on January 6th, the day of the Capitol riots, offering an unfiltered look at the day’s events. The videos were sourced from Parler, the social network popular with Trump’s supporters, whose database of over one million videos was archived before the service was taken offline.

    …what’s notable about ProPublica’s site is how easily you can scrub through a timeline of videos and sort by general location: Around DC, Near Capitol, and Inside Capitol. You can start by watching videos of crowds attending President Trump’s inflammatory speech at midday, before seeing events turn violent over the course of the afternoon. Source

  29. 29.

    Mike in NC

    January 18, 2021 at 7:46 pm

    @Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):  There will be investigations and after that — hopefully — censures and/or expulsions for several Republicans. Some nasty pieces of work in the new Congress.

  30. 30.

    debbie

    January 18, 2021 at 7:47 pm

    @Major Major Major Major:

    That’s like saying we can’t regulate driving because there are private roads somewhere.

    Well, there once was a time when “common good” was respected. Now that that’s been beaten into submission, I guess I don’t see the point of regulation when the baddest of bad actors find a way around it.

  31. 31.

    jl

    January 18, 2021 at 7:49 pm

    @Major Major Major Major: Thanks for info on the corporate commercial free speech. I’m very curious about this angle because I think Zuckerberg has intentionally confused the two issues in Congressional testimony and his media appearances. Looks like I was wrong about how it was related to 230.

    I agree with you about the fact that a straight elimination of 230 would shut down a very large segment of internet platforms, including this very blog. I alluded to that problem in my comment, but I guess not clearly enough.

  32. 32.

    danielx

    January 18, 2021 at 7:51 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    That little asshole wants to be president.

  33. 33.

    jl

    January 18, 2021 at 7:52 pm

    @danielx:

    ” That little asshole wants to be president. ”

    Hopeless quest. You need to be a big asshole to make progress in national GOP politics. Someone needs to explain that to him, lest he get his hopes hope too high and is sorely disappointed.

    Edit: to be more accurate, a gigantic raging asshole. Alex Jones going to give it a try? I think that direction is all that’s left to keep the hard core happy.

  34. 34.

    debbie

    January 18, 2021 at 7:53 pm

    @NotMax:

    It seems the thin blue line may be cracking a bit. Some of the officers who participated in the insurrection have been outed by other cops, and their police chiefs and unions are washing their hands of them.

  35. 35.

    catclub

    January 18, 2021 at 7:55 pm

    @debbie: Raise your hand if you understand the very significant impact this has on the ability to surveil and target insurrectionists who organize on Parler.

    Ever heard of onion routers? Or that maybe NSA owns  some  onion routers that are used by folks?

  36. 36.

    jl

    January 18, 2021 at 7:56 pm

    @debbie: Fact that it at least appears that a few of the Capitol Police didn’t mind abandoning their fellow officers who wanted to do their duty to mortal danger, savage beatings, tazings and violet death may have drawn some attention.

  37. 37.

    Amir Khalid

    January 18, 2021 at 7:56 pm

    @Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):

    Dos Cawthorn need to be expelled from the House before the FBI/police can arrest him? To my knowledge being a Rep doesn’t give him immunity from criminal charges.

  38. 38.

    Geoboy

    January 18, 2021 at 7:57 pm

    Natbe Mawthorn will spend a couple decades in Federal prison for instigating and insurrection.

  39. 39.

    catclub

    January 18, 2021 at 7:58 pm

    @NotMax: Newt Gingrich’s destructive mitts all over that.

  40. 40.

    Spanky

    January 18, 2021 at 7:58 pm

    @OzarkHillbilly: No one ever has.

  41. 41.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    January 18, 2021 at 7:58 pm

    @Major Major Major Major:

    never did get the president-elect one. Is the joke that well if anybody can just claim they won the election, I will too? It’s… not a good joke. Not like I expected a good one.

    I change my handle regularly and was “president-elect” for a few days, cuz it was topical, but then I started getting MAGA followers and realized i must have stumbled into some dumbass right wing meme.

    Oh, it was absolutely a right-wing meme. The joke went, “So Joe Biden has been declared ‘president-elect’? Yeah right! Trump won the election! I’ll can declare myself president-elect and it means just as much, lol!”

    And no, it wasn’t very funny. Just like the far-right “jokes” like this:

    “I’m so anti-fascist I report my friends and neighbors to the feds”

    “I would have never snitched on Anne Frank! Anyway, here’s a person I’m related to at the capitol!”

    Because y’know, snitching on Jewish people to the fucking Nazis is exactly the same as reporting far-right radicals who tried to overthrow the Constitution

  42. 42.

    jl

    January 18, 2021 at 7:58 pm

    @Amir Khalid: IIRC, Congresscritters only have immunity while in the chamber, and plenty of sitting Congresscriminals have been arrested.

    If he brings a port-a-potty and a big picnic basket onto the floor, might be a sign something is up.

  43. 43.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 8:00 pm

    @debbie: But like, say that about banks and see how it feels. Should we abandon all financial regulations?

  44. 44.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 8:02 pm

    @dmsilev: They’ll also need to up their game if they want their users to have even the faintest whiff of privacy, seeing as how every single Parler post and account was easily archived the other day since their architecture is shit (WordPress, in fact).

  45. 45.

    NotMax

    January 18, 2021 at 8:02 pm

    @Amir Khalid

    Correct. The office is a job, not a shield. Protection afforded for speech on the chamber floor when in session; beyond that confine, no immunity.

  46. 46.

    Walker

    January 18, 2021 at 8:05 pm

    230 reform is such a minefield because so much disinformation exists on both the left and the right and it is the result of Verizon of all places. Verizon’s goal is to turn the tech companies into “dumb pipes” like they are, so that they can better compete.

    That is why there is all this nonsense about publisher vs platform. This all goes back to the Prodigy lawsuit that 230 was meant to undo. Prodigy moderated it’s forums unlike Compuserve and Delphi which did not. So they were declared a publisher and held liable for the comments in their discussion forums.

    So, until 230, no one centrally moderated anything because it would open them to liability. They just acted like dumb pipes. And that is the world Verizon wants to return to, which is why they started spreading this disinformation.

  47. 47.

    Delk

    January 18, 2021 at 8:06 pm

    Crain’s Chicago Business had an article today about how bad things are at trump tower Chicago. Two units that sold for $700,000 in 2008 just sold for $130,000.

  48. 48.

    Brachiator

    January 18, 2021 at 8:07 pm

    Democratic leaders for years have proposed a bevy of new legislation to shrink Silicon Valley’s corporate footprint,

    This is insane

    restrict its insatiable appetite for data

    This is stupid

    and stop the spread of falsehoods online.

    This is the road to hell paved with good intentions.

    As noted, the right wing essentially wants the right to say whatever they want and to be able to spread any lies. They used to claim that they were trying to protect the children when pushing this line, but that did not work well enough.

    And while it is good to boot Trump off and to try to restrict harmful material, the government will do what governments always do (even good ones), and try to restrict the flow of political information they find unpleasant or damaging.

  49. 49.

    MisterForkbeard

    January 18, 2021 at 8:10 pm

    @debbie: It’s not really back online. The app and service are still dead.

    But they DO have a webpage now, I guess. That you can’t log into.

  50. 50.

    Viva BrisVegas

    January 18, 2021 at 8:10 pm

    Social media is our generation’s public forum. It ought to be subject to the same protections provided to all public forums.

    That sounds an awful lot like Republicans are now all in for socialism. Some of the world’s biggest corporations should not be private entities, but become public utilities.

    Socialism: a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

  51. 51.

    MisterForkbeard

    January 18, 2021 at 8:12 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): What’s interesting about this is that they really do see themselves as the put-upon minority who’s literally getting murdered.

    Despite having just lost the legislative and executive themselves, throwing a big revolt and killing 5 people. But that’s okay, that’s just like what the Jews did? Ugh.

  52. 52.

    MisterForkbeard

    January 18, 2021 at 8:16 pm

    @Viva BrisVegas: The worst part about this is that these yahoos don’t seem to understand what happens if you go to another public forum (like your town hall!) and start threatening people, putting together plans to kill the Vice President and the Speaker, overturn the government, plan violence against minorities, etc.

    That shit gets you arrested in other public fora. In Twitter/facebook you sometimes get a temp suspension. This time, some people got banned. Oh. Noes.

    I’d love to see people get arrested for the shit they say online. Put stocks in private prisons, y’all, because they’re going to fill up awfully quick.

  53. 53.

    Bill Arnold

    January 18, 2021 at 8:17 pm

    The PACT Act ends Section 230(c)(1)’s immunity for user-generated content if services fail to remove the material upon receiving a notice claiming that a court declared it illegal.

    Sheesh. Read the EFF explainer on it, and it is (in the link version) clearly very easily gamed. All you need is a bought-and-paid-for judge and you can harass or bring down any site except those willing to fight court orders.
    Driving “traffic” to above 1M “monthly visitors” is easy if a venue is already in the 100s of thousands, but less than that is where the real harassment opportunities are, because litigation about promptness of responses could be involved. There would be harassment providers who would get sites shut down (or stripped of Section 230 protections) for a modest fee.

  54. 54.

    OzarkHillbilly

    January 18, 2021 at 8:18 pm

    @Spanky: What, you telling me he still has his cherry?

  55. 55.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    January 18, 2021 at 8:20 pm

    @danielx:

    All of the possible 2024-2028 GOP candidates scare the hell out of me

  56. 56.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 8:21 pm

    @Viva BrisVegas: let us seize the means of tweet production, comrades!

  57. 57.

    Brachiator

    January 18, 2021 at 8:21 pm

    Of these, I think net neutrality will obviously happen, and gig work reform will probably not.

    I largely agree here. There seems to be some consensus around net neutrality, or at least a desire not to screw things up.

    California has already made a mess of gig work reform.  The state legislature got too ambitious with bill AB5, and instead of focusing on Uber and Lyft, tried to turn as many people as possible into employees in all industries.  This made the unions happy.

    But then the state had to turn around and carve out a ton of exemptions.  The state Supreme Court is still forcing companies to adhere to its earlier decisions on employee v contractor.  And some companies are taking advantage of the opportunities handed to them by the passage of Prop 22 and are firing employee truck drivers and hiring contractors.

  58. 58.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    January 18, 2021 at 8:22 pm

    @Bill Arnold:

    All you need is a bought-and-paid-for judge

    Are you suggesting that judges are human and can be corrupted? ?

  59. 59.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    January 18, 2021 at 8:24 pm

    @MisterForkbeard:

    Exactly. What’s even more interesting is these people actually thought the police would be on their side and some were shocked police actually put up some resistance against them

  60. 60.

    jl

    January 18, 2021 at 8:24 pm

    @Brachiator: Maybe I am naive, but was surprising to me how quickly the CA initiative blew up from a good idea to a huge pointless fan waiting for the shit.

    Edit: I think at one point, independent musicians, actors, and artists claimed they  would be snagged up in red tap every time they took a gig. I don’t know if they were ginned up into terror by interest groups, or they started to run into problems themselves trying to get work.

  61. 61.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 8:24 pm

    @Brachiator: yeah I don’t see this Congress agreeing on anything re: gig work after the mess in California.

  62. 62.

    RSA

    January 18, 2021 at 8:27 pm

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    Social media is our generation’s public forum. It ought to be subject to the same protections provided to all public forums.

    That sounds an awful lot like Republicans are now all in for socialism. Some of the world’s biggest corporations should not be private entities, but become public utilities.

    It does. Even a less extreme version would have Republicans having to face the question, “So you’re arguing for increasing government regulation of private companies that run social media platforms?”

  63. 63.

    Brachiator

    January 18, 2021 at 8:27 pm

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    Socialism: a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

    I’m for this. Chinese workers should own Apple.

  64. 64.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    January 18, 2021 at 8:29 pm

    @NotMax:

    @Major Major Major Major:

    The Republicans of course ?

    That sucks. It won’t be long before they try to axe the CBO for being insufficiently politically correct (in the original sense of the term). Something like the Office of Technology Assessment for the Capitol should be brought back.

    I’m glad Biden has elevated the Head of the WH Office of Science and Technology to the cabinet. He gives me a lot of hope that things will turn around and improve

  65. 65.

    Gin & Tonic

    January 18, 2021 at 8:30 pm

    @Amir Khalid: Even expelling a Rep is hard. See, f’rinstance, Powell vs. McCormick.

    [Adam Clayton Powell was Congressman from Harlem, who was the subject of corruption charges. The 90th Congress refused to seat him, so in the special election forced by his vacancy he ran and got 86% of the vote and sued House leadership. The Supremes said he was duly elected by his constituents so had to be seated. There is now a street named after him in NYC.]

  66. 66.

    Yutsano

    January 18, 2021 at 8:32 pm

    I honestly don’t think Zuckerberg is afraid of regulation. He pays more than enough lawyers to get around that. What he (and the other tech giants) are really afraid of is being broken up. His empire gets smaller his stock price goes down and oh noes his net worth drops. That’s his biggest terror. He wants to keep the antitrust dogs leashed and muzzled like they have been for the last two administrations*.

    *Yes I’m including Obama in this. There were signs even back then that Facebook was pushing antitrust laws.

  67. 67.

    Steeplejack

    January 18, 2021 at 8:34 pm

    @Chyron HR, @Major Major Major Major:

    “Dress for the job you want, not the one you have.”

  68. 68.

    Brachiator

    January 18, 2021 at 8:37 pm

    @jl:

    Maybe I am naive, but was surprising to me how quickly the CA initiative blew up from a good idea to a huge pointless fan waiting for the shit.

    The damage caused is substantial.  For example, even though traditional publishing is dying AB5 said that if you were a freelance journalist, you had to be classified as an employee if you wrote more than 32 columns for any particular publication. So, publications simply cut freelancers loose.  And did not hire new writers.

    Edit: I think at one point, independent musicians, actors, and artists claimed they would be snagged up in red tape every time they took a gig. I don’t know if they were ginned up into terror by interest groups, or they started to run into problems themselves trying to get work.

    Yep. This was terrible, insane. Sadly, the pandemic destroyed the market for a lot of artists and musicians, which only added to the misery caused by AB5.

    And even tax people (including me) are unsure about all the ramifications, but it is possible to be an independent contractor for federal purposes, but an employee for California purposes for 2020.  How to prepare a tax return and properly reflect expenses might be a nightmare.

  69. 69.

    Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)

    January 18, 2021 at 8:38 pm

    @Amir Khalid: No, he doesn’t. They cannot arrest him on the floor of the house, that’s all I know.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    January 18, 2021 at 8:39 pm

    @Chyron HR,

    or do nazis have their own version of Hot Topic to shop at?

    Jewgo Boss.

    //

  71. 71.

    Brachiator

    January 18, 2021 at 8:42 pm

    @Yutsano:

    I honestly don’t think Zuckerberg is afraid of regulation. He pays more than enough lawyers to get around that. What he (and the other tech giants) are really afraid of is being broken up.

    What does this do for the consumer? Where is the harm that is dealt with?

    Even Elizabeth Warren ended up talking about theoretical companies that were not allowed to flourish, when she argued for regulation of the tech industry.

    Looking back, even forcing Microsoft to allow other browsers turned out to be largely useless.

  72. 72.

    Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)

    January 18, 2021 at 8:44 pm

    @NotMax: DUDE

     

    @NotMax:

  73. 73.

    LeftCoastYankee

    January 18, 2021 at 8:45 pm

    The most enduring motivator of improvements on existing technology is not how to make something better for the customer or user, but to find a way to make less work/responsibility for the developers/system owners (and preferably sell it as an improvement to investors).

    A decentralized platform is fine, but assuming it will be architected to be outside the jurisdictions of democratic governments will lead to a new and different lawless race to the bottom.  Allowing it be easily and readily accessible to authoritarian governments will create great misery and pain in those countries.

    The fact that these platforms are global and international is something that needs to be addressed in an international way, much like climate change.  It seems like the work of the next generation will be finding international cooperation for making the forces unleashed with “international free trade” beneficial as is possible.

    We should have a Secretary of Digital Technology (or whatever sounds nice) as a cabinet level concern.  It could be funded by dismantling the nonsense at DHS….

  74. 74.

    jl

    January 18, 2021 at 8:48 pm

    @Brachiator: Its progress through the leg was high profile and anyone who pays attention to the morning news could track it blowing up into a mess.

  75. 75.

    Brachiator

    January 18, 2021 at 8:50 pm

    @LeftCoastYankee: 

    The fact that these platforms are global and international is something that needs to be addressed in an international way, much like climate change.

    Countries don’t have the same aims with respect to social media. Uganda shut down the Internet just before their recent elections, and like Trump might do, claimed that they were doing this to prevent fake news (criticism of the government) from being disseminated. China and India clamp down on the Internet in various ways to deal and to discourage legitimate dissent.

    Even some EU policies are misguided and do more harm than good.

  76. 76.

    NotMax

    January 18, 2021 at 8:51 pm

    @LeftCoastYankee

    We should have a Secretary of Digital Technology

    “Take a byte out of crime!”

    ;)

  77. 77.

    Brachiator

    January 18, 2021 at 8:53 pm

    @jl:

    Its progress through the leg was high profile and anyone who pays attention to the morning news could track it blowing up into a mess.

    But no one could stop the legislature.  So high profile businesses lobbied to carve out exceptions, and we ended up with the bigger mess of Prop 22.

  78. 78.

    Brachiator

    January 18, 2021 at 8:54 pm

    @NotMax:

    “Take a byte out of crime!”

    Very good!

  79. 79.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 8:56 pm

    @LeftCoastYankee:

    A decentralized platform is fine, but assuming it will be architected to be outside the jurisdictions of democratic governments

    I’m really surprised to learn how many people think like, the fundamental architecture of the internet is a bad thing? The ability to go around governments is a feature.

    @Brachiator:

    Even some EU policies are misguided and do more harm than good.

    And when they’re bad they can be bad, thinking of their recent-ish copyright reforms that I sort of lost track of a year ago.

  80. 80.

    sab

    January 18, 2021 at 8:57 pm

    I haven’t read the whole thread. Wouldn’t repeal of sec 230 be more risky for sites like Balloon Juice than it would be for big rich sites that have money to buy loopholes? That has been my takeaway for months now. That is what I am telling my Congress critter and Sherrod Brown. Am I wrong?

  81. 81.

    jl

    January 18, 2021 at 8:57 pm

    @sab: Mr. MMMM corrected me on this, so see our exchange above.

    Edit: I’ve given Major Major Major Major another M, he is welcome.

  82. 82.

    Steeplejack

    January 18, 2021 at 9:00 pm

    @NotMax:

    Just threw ProPublica a donation an hour ago. I have been giving to places as I browse and remember that they do good work. And I’ve gotten comfortable with how easy PayPal makes it to donate.

  83. 83.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 9:00 pm

    @Yutsano:

    I honestly don’t think Zuckerberg is afraid of regulation.

    He’s not! That’s why he keeps saying, out loud, that he wants to be regulated*!

    *in a way that only he can comply with

    @sab: It’s not that they have the money to buy loopholes so much as that they simply have the resources to comply with regulations, whereas my theoretical new social network I’m starting in my garage does not. Even if I’m exempt until I hit a million users, for a lot of sites (1M is not actually a lot of users depending on how you’re counting and what the site is) this is an effective cap of 999,999 users; they won’t have the resources to enter into the new regulatory environment.

  84. 84.

    catclub

    January 18, 2021 at 9:06 pm

    @Brachiator: Looking back, even forcing Microsoft to allow other browsers turned out to be largely useless.

     

    I remember that the GWBush admin axed the suit/ settled for a pittance.How faulty is my memory?

  85. 85.

    Dan B

    January 18, 2021 at 9:07 pm

    I’m feeling obtuse about this issue so here is what I feel the situation is.

    We have many social media outlets that are spreading propaganda that has shown that it can motivate people to dangerous acts.  There are platforms that facilitate this becoming organized groups.  We’ve seen what has happened in Myanmar and a growing number of countries.  How far this will go and how fast we cannot predict but it feels ominous even with the Democrats in charge for the next couple years.  Right wing billionaires have more money than dog to poison the media.

    Could this bring our country to civil war or to serious violence?  How great are the risks to free speech?  How does regulation avoid being a new tool to reduce political views the powerful don’t like?

    Is there a regulatory approach that reduces lies to a manageable level?  What kind of agency would be necessary?

    And I’m with Susanne that we tend to believe that what we as a group, and as individuals, can easily manipulate our thoughts and emotions.  My partner’s sister and brother are spouting talking points that are nonsense but are brute force weapons against discussion.

    Finally, is it worth the risk that new regulation would cause damage that we could not resolve in the future?

  86. 86.

    LeftCoastYankee

    January 18, 2021 at 9:20 pm

    @NotMax:

    Oy that was bad.

    I’m now picturing a cross between Mcgruff and the 3rd wheel dog (voiced by Homer) added to the Itchy and Scratchy cartoons.

  87. 87.

    patroclus

    January 18, 2021 at 9:21 pm

    Madison Cawthorn is a hottie and he’s apparently not all that homophobic given that he supports legal gay marriage so long as churches and businesses can legally discriminate against us.  But he is somewhat anti-semitic given his trip to the Eagle’s Nest to see where Hitler lived (it was “long on his bucket list” and he just had to go there before he hit his 25th birthday).  He’s also kind of racist given that he’s apt to complain about journalists who pointedly work for “non-white men.”  He’s also kind of a misogynist given that he’s already been accused by at least 3 women for inappropriate advances while he briefly attended a Christian college.  He also believes that Republicans who don’t support Trump should be and have their families “lightly” threatened.  He was badly injured in an auto accident a few years ago and is apparently permanently disabled and he likes to weaponize that to promote his victimhood status.  He likes to go armed everywhere he goes, including Capitol Hill now.  His tweet when he was elected was “cry harder libs.”

    I could not care less what his views on 230 are.  His views are trash.

  88. 88.

    Brachiator

    January 18, 2021 at 9:29 pm

    @catclub:

    I remember that the GWBush admin axed the suit/ settled for a pittance.How faulty is my memory?

    The courts held against Microsoft. Some observers thought the settlement did not go far enough. Everyone is using Chrome or Safari, etc. Life goes on.

  89. 89.

    persistentillusion

    January 18, 2021 at 9:34 pm

    @Steeplejack: Squints.  English squire with sadistic tailor?

  90. 90.

    RSA

    January 18, 2021 at 9:34 pm

    @Dan B:

    I think you raise two important points:

    “We cannot predict…” We have only limited predictive models of what happens when we change a software application or environment even for a single user, much less systems used by millions of users. Some studies claim to reproduce the spread of beliefs through a population, for example, but they’re not very convincing and results are hard to validate.

    “Is there a regulatory approach…” If I think of regulations as constraints on design, then prediction becomes even harder.

    We don’t have good or even promising solutions that I know of.

  91. 91.

    LeftCoastYankee

    January 18, 2021 at 9:40 pm

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I’m not talking about internet architecture, which does not “go around governments”.  Physical devices in physical locations are not extra-legal, no matter how sure we are the traffic is secure.

    The idea that tech companies are beyond regulation by democratic entities is untenable, and allowing them to continue to dictate the terms of the conversation is naive as hell.

  92. 92.

    catpal

    January 18, 2021 at 9:59 pm

    Internet security is top of the list, and content and misinformation – but we need to start with

    Broadband as a public utility. The pandemic showed us how much ALL people need affordable access to the internet for school and jobs and some medical care, etc

    Why are ISPs still allowed to charge huge fees for access? Any ideas how we get this changed?

  93. 93.

    Major Major Major Major

    January 18, 2021 at 9:59 pm

    @LeftCoastYankee:

    I’m not talking about internet architecture, which does not “go around governments”. Physical devices in physical locations are not extra-legal, no matter how sure we are the traffic is secure.

    I mean, okay, then nothing at all is extra-legal, since everything definitionally must consist of matter and energy inside a country.

    I guess mostly I just don’t get the point you were trying to make? Like, it’ll be a race to the bottom just because it’s distributed? Monopoly therefore better? Like, what did you mean by this?

    Allowing it be easily and readily accessible to authoritarian governments will create great misery and pain in those countries.

  94. 94.

    NotMax

    January 18, 2021 at 10:07 pm

    @catpal

    Any ideas how we get this changed?

    One way is to jettison restrictions on municipalities providing service. Not a be all and end all answer but a step in the right direction.

  95. 95.

    Eolirin

    January 18, 2021 at 10:45 pm

    @Brachiator: Forcing MS to change how they were pushing IE was the most visible effect of the antitrust suit, but it was not the most important.

    The consequences of the antitrust action severely damaged their ability to compete in emerging technologies, and is a huge part of why they dropped the ball as hard as they did with mobile phones. Balmer and Gates have both talked about this pretty explicitly. Having to deal with the fall out and extra oversight hampered their ability to adapt to changing circumstances and put the company back a decade at least.

    It’s quite possible that they could have done more to compete with the iPod and iTunes if they hadn’t had to worry about bundling too. That would’ve cut Apple off at the knees.

    Without the antitrust action there’s a very good chance that iOS and Android don’t exist in 2020.

  96. 96.

    Another Scott

    January 18, 2021 at 11:38 pm

    @Eolirin: One could argue it was the same with IBM.  Having federal regulators literally camped out in their offices is a distraction at the very least.

    MS was a malevolent force in the PC business for a very long time.  While Judge T.P. Jackson got slapped down in his ruling, he kinda had the last laugh via the way MS was eventually brought to heel.

    Companies that are too large are a danger unless they are strictly regulated.  We shouldn’t need to keep relearning these lessons…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  97. 97.

    FlyingToaster

    January 19, 2021 at 12:18 am

    @catpal:

    Any ideas how we get this changed?

    See Lyndon Johnson: Rural Electrification Project.

    Make sure that broadband wiring is a requirement to build or gut-rehab an effing residential structure.  No ifs, ands, or buts.

    Municipalities should be allowed to provide broadband (hell, if it’s left to me, ALL physical utilities will be provided by the municipality; they contract with whoever the fuck as a provider), and states should subsidize (and then require maintenance of) the “last mile” for rural customers.

    Pie in the sky?  Johnson forced it for electricity; I think we can do it for broadband.

    Toaster+2 (and midnight baking to boot)

  98. 98.

    Original Lee

    January 19, 2021 at 10:06 pm

    @catpal: 
    Co-sign!

  99. 99.

    Original Lee

    January 19, 2021 at 10:23 pm

    @Original Lee: Need to add, rural broadband really needs attention. My county is pretty rural despite suburban sprawl, with big pockets of rural poverty. In the 2010 census, IIRC approximately 3 percent of residences did not have flush toilets. (I hope this number has gone down in the last 10 years, but is probably nonzero.) When we went to remote learning in the spring, so many students didn’t have any internet access to speak of at home, that the school system made homework optional for the schools in the poverty pockets. I think the grades were all pass/fail based on what was in the grade book on March 21. Anyway, many teachers also did not have good enough internet to work from home. Some of them called the 3 cable companies that operate in the county to find out how much it would cost to get physical internet-capable cable (as opposed to satellite dishes), and the answer was pretty uniformly $10K/mile. They’re screwed, too.

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