>His argument that we should have opt in moderation rather than censorship is largely based on consent, but it misses a third category of communications which is where two parties are engaged in a consensual communication about a third party who does not consent. Basically the CSAM scenario, but also non consensual adult porn, snuff, libel etc.
>There needs to be some way of dealing with this that respects the rights of the person who is being talked about, and that has to involve some censorship.
IANAL, but isn't exchanging CSAM, non-consensual adult porn and snuff videos, in fact criminal action in most jurisdictions?
If that's true, legal action can be taken against those involved.
As for libel (let's call it defamation to make it more inclusive), there are legal avenues (civil litigation and, in very rare cases, criminal charges) which can be pursued there too.
Are those avenues insufficient in your view? If so, what would you suggest, other than the current legal regime, in such situations?
we demand reasonable levels of due diligence from owners of private businesses when criminal activity is concerned. If you run a business that sells stolen goods, someone runs a drug ring out of your restaurant or you serve alcohol to minors you have a big problem.
This is so because law enforcement can only ever act after the fact and would of course be completely overburdened if every private actor was willfully ignorant of what goes on in their establishments. Not to mention that this is also to our benefit because without that level of civic involvement as a first line of defense the logical conclusion is a police/legal state involved in every transaction. Which is literally what you see in countries with weak civil societies but big tech firms. if neither the people nor business owners take responsibility, who is left?
>we demand reasonable levels of due diligence from owners of private businesses when criminal activity is concerned. If you run a business that sells stolen goods, someone runs a drug ring out of your restaurant or you serve alcohol to minors you have a big problem.
Absolutely.
And as I understand it, many of those social media companies do a piss poor job in policing the kinds of criminal activity mentioned by GP.
That might be an area where targeted regulation could be useful.
But the larger discourse around moderation tends to be focused on political actors (both legitimate and otherwise -- I'm not going to get into a political discussion here, as it's tangential to my point and not likely to spark worthwhile interactions) and the slights they claim are disadvantaging them.
In my view, that's the wrong discussion. We should be much more focused on the very real criminal and tortious conduct that pretty much runs rampant on those platforms.
I voted with my feet a long time ago and don't give my attention to those sites, but that only helps me and doesn't address the larger issues.
As I mentioned in another (tangentially related) discussion[0]:
The best-case scenario in my mind would be more decentralization of
discussion forums. That gives us both the best and worst of both worlds:
Folks can express themselves freely in forums that are accepting of those
types of expression, while limiting the impact of mis/dis-information to
those who actively seek it out.
Which may well be a good idea in this domain as well. Smaller, more focused and decentralized forums are more likely to have decent moderation (as those involved actually have some interest in the topic(s) at hand) regimes, and those that cater to criminal activity are isolated (and both more difficult to find and more vulnerable to being taken down) from the majority of folks.
It's not a good solution, but it's becoming clear that moderation of huge forums like Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc. isn't really practical.
If you accept that premise, what options (other than decentralization) could address these issues effectively?
>There needs to be some way of dealing with this that respects the rights of the person who is being talked about, and that has to involve some censorship.
IANAL, but isn't exchanging CSAM, non-consensual adult porn and snuff videos, in fact criminal action in most jurisdictions?
If that's true, legal action can be taken against those involved.
As for libel (let's call it defamation to make it more inclusive), there are legal avenues (civil litigation and, in very rare cases, criminal charges) which can be pursued there too.
Are those avenues insufficient in your view? If so, what would you suggest, other than the current legal regime, in such situations?