
Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement - _mgr
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/389297/tech-companies-and-17-govts-sign-up-to-christchurch-call
======
CodiePetersen
This just sounds like a giant can of worms that is going to blow up in
people's faces. Remove for a moment any potential future government
alignments, just so we aren't talking about hypothetical fictitious
governments. Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it.

Indonesia has harsh religious laws, crack downs on illegal reporting, and
literally raids on LGBTQ gatherings. The Senegal government arbitrarily
arrests dissidents, the LGTBQ community has to hide because it's illegal, and
protests are outlawed. India already overuses counter terrorism laws to charge
dissidents and activists and there are religious minorities that suffer
heavily from discrimination.

This type of call to action will only further entrench government strangles
over freedom of speech. Now people have given them moral authority to curb an
already very broad and ambiguous category of terrorists and now extremists.
Sure I get it, there is a bunch of vile on the internet and the world would be
a better place without it. But my "better place without it" is different from
somebody else's and so is the "it". This won't end up like what is in your
head.

The hate isn't "spreading through social media" the hate and the fear were
already there. These people grew up with it. Social, cultural, religious,
sexual, moral borders, you name it, every border we have is being rewritten
and when you rewrite those borders, especially this quickly, people are gonna
get scared, they're gonna lash out, and because of it more people are getting
scared and want to control one of the most powerful tools to freedom.

~~~
qball
>Let's just examine the governments currently signed to it.

The interesting thing is that this really doesn't matter that much in the
grand scheme of things.

Consider weapons treaties, like the UN ones banning the use of land mines and
cluster munitions. The only countries that have signed them either don't have
any reason to use them, or are allied with a nation that hasn't signed that
treaty.

This is much the same story. The US hasn't signed this, and never will
(because it explicitly contravenes a cornerstone of its supreme law), and at
that point what the other countries do is pointless unless they outright block
US services from their networks- in which case there will be riots in the
streets. Governments don't survive for long when they alienate the vast
majority of their population, and the majority of the population uses US
services.

Combine that with the simple fact that 100% effective moderation of an online
service is unscalable to the point of being impossible without prohibiting any
meaningful content/conversation means that countries that do sign this and
implement it in their law will never be able to develop a competitive Facebook
alternative, and all you've accomplished (as a signatory nation) is political
posturing and shooting yourself in the foot.

You can't outcompete a free nation. That's kind of its main advantage.

~~~
giancarlostoro
> Combine that with the simple fact that 100% effective moderation of an
> online service is unscalable to the point of being impossible without
> prohibiting any meaningful content/conversation means that countries that do
> sign this and implement it in their law will never be able to develop a
> competitive Facebook alternative, and all you've accomplished (as a
> signatory nation) is political posturing and shooting yourself in the foot.

Hell 4chan trolls moderation with really bad content for sport from time to
time. I hate to go there but I think its sometimes necessary to see it happen
to prove that laws dont stop people already violating laws from _gasp_
violating laws. You cant moderate them IRL what makes you think you can stop
them online?

------
mortenjorck
This is a very hard problem that YouTube and Facebook made for themselves by
becoming the world’s largest advertising platforms. They depend on engagement
for ad revenue, they designed world-class algorithms to promote this
engagement, and it turned out that extremist content happens to be very
engaging.

And so the problem is, building an algorithm that blindly promotes whatever
keeps users on the site, for all its complexity, is a far more tractable
problem compared to building a system that can avoid promoting content that
promotes violence. In the meantime, they throw armies of people at the
problem, to moderate content and respond to user reports, but it’s a losing
battle.

They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology to
stop it.

~~~
rcoveson
> They had the technology to create a monster, but don’t have the technology
> to stop it.

At first I was going to argue that they could stop it and that they did have
the "technology" to do so, but the more I thought about it the more I
concluded that in the system we have built, they really cannot. Profitable
ideas are unstoppable until they are proved less profitable than some other
idea, or regulated out of existence. Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law.
Sufficient competition ensures that it is the only winning strategy.

Obligatory SSC: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

~~~
deogeo
> Fiduciary duty enshrines this into law.

A common misconception:
[https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-
co...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-
obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits)

------
Rapzid
It's amazing to me how political this is and how oblivious to that fact a
large portion of the NZ population is.

This horrible act happened on the current governments watch. I've seen more
outrage and effort from the government on the spreading of the video and
manifesto than introspection into how this slipped through in the first place.
I suppose in a country where carrying a weapon for the purpose of self defense
is considered a crime, something this terrible shattering the illusion of
nanny government protecting you requires a whole lot of deflection and ultra
maneuvers to secure the next election cycle.

New Zealand's knee has jerked so hard I'm feeling it in my groin 8k miles
away.

~~~
roca
NZers have observed the USA's experiment with reducing violent crime by
flooding the nation with guns, and there is very strong support across the
political spectrum for trying something else: restricting access to the most
dangerous guns, and deplatforming murder advocates. It is not some
authoritarian ploy.

~~~
eadmund
> It is not some authoritarian ploy.

Regardless of whether you think it's a good idea or not, restricting access to
guns and free speech _is_ an authoritarian play: it's using the authority of
the State to restrict certain liberties in the intent of doing good.

~~~
roca
All laws "use the authority of the State to restrict certain liberties in the
intent of doing good".

~~~
tathougies
Sure, all law is an exercise of authority, and hence authoritarianism. The
commenter was merely calling out that... no matter how you dice it... a new
law is always authoritarian, whether you acknowledge it or not.

Saying 'this law is not authoritarian' is always a contradiction.

------
mattnewport
> _Tech companies and governments sign up_

Two wolves and a sheep vote on what's for dinner. What's for dinner being our
most fundamental rights as citizens.

~~~
asdf21
Only Americans have fundamental rights.

Everyone else has "hate speech," which depending on how that's interpreted,
can mean anything from thinly veiled blasphemy laws, an inability to bluntly
criticize Scientology or Islam, or charges for making Nazi jokes.

------
not_a_moth
Preventing viral spreading of the videos I think is unquestionably ideal, but
there's also a section in this "Call" stating another goal, to "Counter the
drivers of terrorism ... to resist ideology and narratives... through
education and building media literacy..." [some words removed so the message
is less hidden]. It's hard not to suspect political motivation, given that
Internet platforms are turf wars for politics these days.

~~~
JudgeWapner
Imagine the next "favorite" presidential candidate that has $1.4 billion in
corporate funding. But late in the game it seems like the people may actually
vote for her opponent. What is this corporate money to do? Why, implicate her
opponent's followers in some kind of "terrorist" act and get their forum taken
down due to the "call" and "lessons learned from the tragedy"

------
elken
The Christchurch shooter amassed a cache of weapons, and also posted a copy of
his manifesto and a link to his real Facebook account to 4chan.

The censorship/Facebook algorithms amplifying abhorrent content debate is one
thing but I'm surprised by the lack of scrutiny of the security services over
this. Especially for a member of the 5 Eyes. I can't help but feel this could
have been prevented without any of the changes being proposed.

~~~
LilBytes
4Chan and LiveLeak have both been blocked (via DNS) in Australia and New
Zealand. So, the scrutiny albeit region specific has occurred.

~~~
0xADEADBEE
Just to expand on this a little bit, it is contingent on ISP and as far as I
know, the following websites:

\- voat.co

\- 4chan.org

\- 8ch.net

\- liveleak.com

\- archive.is

\- bitchute.com

\- zerohedge.com

\- kiwifarms.net

I think I'm right in saying that Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are the 'Big
Three', and they have blocked the above.

Here in NZ, It's Vodafone, Spark and 2 Degrees, all of whom, I understand,
blocked access, though I've been unable to verify this first-hand.

There are also hefty prison sentences [0] (up to 14 years) and fines for
people who read/distributed the manifesto and watched/shared the original
footage.

Edit: More comprehensive block-list can be found here: [1]

[0] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/world/asia/new-zealand-
at...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/world/asia/new-zealand-attacks-
social-media.html)

[1] - [https://www.citizensagainstidiocracy.com/93/internet-
censors...](https://www.citizensagainstidiocracy.com/93/internet-censorship-
in-australia-and-new-zealand-who-decides)

~~~
int_19h
Wait, are you saying that _watching_ the video is considered a crime in and of
itself? Not redistribution, and not even mere possession, but just seeing it?

~~~
Taniwha
Certainly, like child porn, watching snuff movies was already illegal in NZ
before the alt-right terrorist attack, all the NZ censor did was confirm that
the snuff movie fell under that category, it was essentially born illegal. No
one passed any special new laws to make it so.

It also falls under the US supreme court test for obscenity and is equally
illegal in the US

~~~
asdf21
>It also falls under the US supreme court test for obscenity and is equally
illegal in the US

I don't think that's correct.

There are no federal obscenity laws. The U.S. government does not expressly
prohibit obscene conduct. In fact, the U.S. government expressly protects some
communications in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

[https://legalcareerpath.com/obscenity-
law/](https://legalcareerpath.com/obscenity-law/)

~~~
Taniwha
18 USC 71 ... is the federal obscenity law, it's been much patched in and
around child porn, but the basic law is still there. Of course there's been a
lot of Supreme Court rulings in and around it culminating in the Miller test
... Your 'shooting video' is really a snuff film, probably one of the few
genuine ones (along with those made by ISIS, and just as bad) and certainly
falls under the Miller test

~~~
rgbrenner
You can't just redefine a murder video as pornographic because you don't like
it. You mentioned the miller test, so you already know it requires that it
depict "sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by
applicable state law".

Ignoring the state law requirement (which you haven't cited), the video does
not depict sexual conduct.. and there's no way you can twist this into being
illegal in the US. It's not illegal. Period. ISIS videos aren't illegal
either.

You've clearly misunderstood our laws.

~~~
Taniwha
18 USC 71 is about 'obscenity', which doesn't just include pornography. These
days it includes a bunch of clauses about child porn, but that's mostly about
politicians wanting to get their names on the board. The original, base law is
more general and its definition comes from common law modulated by many
supreme court decisions

------
scottlocklin
It's almost like they give more of a shit about people posting things on the
internet than some looney slaughtering 51 people.

~~~
dredds
\- he posted on sites which were considered targets. \- he posted a manifesto
online (it's been censored in NZ) \- he livestreamed the act (also censored)
\- his attack has been referenced by subsequent attacks (this was his goal) \-
he wants to use the courts as a platform (our media has voluntarily agreed to
censor proceedings) \- he said his rights are being infringed by not having
phone and other communication (his "rights" need to be weighed against all the
dead and injured) \- other groups want to politicize and publicize his agenda
(should they be censored?)

His efforts to use the web as a platform for inciting hate and further
violence led to our government's response. If the US President incites hate
and violence via Twitter we would be having the same discussion no?

~~~
55555
The idea of censoring his manifesto is strange to me. You'd think people would
just want to argue the points brought up in his manifesto on their merits and
win mindshare that way.

~~~
roca
How well is that working against the flat-earth and anti-vax communities?

~~~
makomk
Well, a good chunk of the US anti-vax movement seems to be ultra-Orthodox
Jews: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/nyregion/measles-
vaccine-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/nyregion/measles-vaccine-
orthodox-jews.html) Their religous beliefs don't permit them to have
unfettered Internet access because it'd expose them to corrupting ideas (like,
say, the idea that vaccines are safe).

~~~
roca
And yet more than a good chunk of the anti-vax movement worldwide has
unfettered Internet access. Ultra-orthodox Jews certainly aren't a factor here
in New Zealand.

~~~
makomk
Yeah, it's almost like the Internet has no inherent effect one way or the
other on the rise of anti-vax beliefs or something.

------
kken
More internet censorship?

------
mr_spothawk
I guess they're not going to ban content that glorifies war, though? That
would be a bridge too far.

~~~
cf498
Dont be mad, the military is paying quite a bit for advertisement.

------
ausbah
Everyone decried censorship, but always fails to provide an alternative to try
and stop extremism online.

~~~
BonesJustice
What constitutes ‘extremism’? It’s a term so vague as to be practically
meaninglessness.

~~~
solotronics
Extremism seemt to match up closely with an opinion that is opposite those in
power.

~~~
BonesJustice
And yet those in power are the ones who get to decide what the term means.

------
abraae
I would be interested to know what the technical difficulties are in scrubbing
a banned video, and all derivatives, from a Facebook.

Are there practical AI/video analysis techniques to detect that a video
contains a fragment of another video? Surely.

~~~
aeternus
There are, YouTube has a fairly effective algorithm that is used primarily to
remove copyright-infringing content:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID_(algorithm)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_ID_\(algorithm\))

------
DarkWiiPlayer
Aren't they missing the point here? The problem isn't that this guy streamed
what he was doing on facebook, it's the fact that he did it in the first
place?

As these large hosts move more and more away from mere platforms to content
curators it does make a lot of sense that they'd also be more responsible for
what they curate, but at the same time, it seems like this responsibility will
ultimately leak back into the parts of these services that are really just
platforms and ultimately to those that don't curate content at all.

~~~
dredds
> _The problem isn 't that this guy streamed what he was doing on facebook,
> it's the fact that he did it in the first place?_

The Las Vegas shooter we're told had no motive, but there's a public sense
that each massacre is trying to "out do" a previous kill count. With Facebook
being the go to place when one occurs, it's instant fame and notoriety for the
perpetrator. For this reason our government and media took the immediate
response of "de-naming" the killer, but with instant global online platforms
this is after the horse has bolted. This approach of involving platforms
directly is to neuter the draw of instant notoriety. To remove fame (or
widespread publicity if there is an agenda) from being another contributing
factor.

------
m0zg
Yeah, this is not a slippery slope at all, no sir. And the real extremists
will just use Tor.

~~~
cf498
The police in Germany already proposed to ban Tor as its "really not needed in
western democracies".

~~~
m0zg
Laying down the groundwork for the Fourth Reich, I see. 30 years down the road
someone gets elected who really doesn't want to go when the term is up. If
things are well bolted down by then, they could stay indefinitely by simply
sending people to jail for "extremism". It's as if history doesn't teach
people anything at all, even recent history of less than 100 years ago.

------
ehmish
The approach seems fairly reasonable, it sounds like it's limited to
explicitly violent extremist content, and it's being done using pension funds
of various governments in a activist investment manner to try to bring about
changes

~~~
basetop
Historically, a combined effort by corporate and government interests to take
away your rights was called fascism. But I guess if it is the far left doing
it, it's okay.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Who is far left in this? Jacinda Ardern represents a centre-left coalition
government.

~~~
p1necone
Some people like to use the term "far-left" to mean "far-left of me", without
acknowledging that they're nowhere near the center themselves.

~~~
Kalium
In fairness, people do the same thing with "far right". I've met some people
who would likely characterize President Obama as far right.

This particular pathology seems to arise from the idea that "far $TYPE" is
inherently de-legitmizing. And once you've de-legitimized someone or some
position, you don't actually have to take them seriously, so...

------
sonnyblarney
I find it problematic that there have been oodles of very classical kinds of
'terrorism' and 'extremism' on Social Media since the start.

ISIS has been recruiting with absolutely brutal kind of stuff on Twitter,
etc..

But now we have this nutbar thing in New Zealand and it's a 'global action'?

Aside from the complications mentioned in some other comments ...

... the Jacinda / Trudeau / Macron triumvirate I think were looking in the
wrong places.

So it's probably good that we're taking action, and just beyond repulsive that
that some massacre was broadcast live on Facebook, but I hope we accomplish do
this without too many existential issues.

------
TheLuddite
Make internet more expensive therefore limiting its impact among the stupidest
members of society - the working class.

------
seany
This is horrifying

~~~
happytoexplain
Why? I'm honestly surprised by the brevity of your comment and by how strong
your opinion apparently is in one direction.

~~~
cf498
It is organized censorship across a large part of media people use to
communicate today. As a cooperation between governments and those companies.

It really doesnt need more then OPs comment, this is abhorrent. Its quite a
big step towards an authoritarian society and the transformation into
dictatorships.

In hindsight the generation of the anti-authoritarian left growing up after
the fall of the USSR got rather careless with authoritarian tendencies on the
left. Lessons learned my ass, here we go again.

------
jamsch
[removed]

------
deogeo
"Never let a good crisis go to waste"

------
cprayingmantis
<This comment has been removed due to it's violent nature>

~~~
salawat
The Aristocrats!

------
mooseburger
Utterly nonsensical. You don't need the internet to be radicalized, people
have been willing to kill in the name of their convictions for as long as
humans have existed. I predict even if somehow every white supremacist were
booted off the internet, no lives at all would be saved, as they just don't
need the internet to kill people, or to learn to hate.

This is purely giving up rights for the sake of security theatre.

~~~
standardUser
You don't accept that the internet has enabled people with obscure and extreme
views to better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and
recruit others to their causes?

~~~
stcredzero
_better find each other, legitimize each other, spread their views and recruit
others to their causes?_

It's allowed everyone to do that. That's why we have more acrimony today.
Allow a level playing field, and the violent stupid losers will lose. Start
taking away people's rights, and you've only given those toxic people a
pretext. (Which is exactly what the Christchurch shooter was trying to do.)

~~~
roca
Are the stupid flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers losing? No, they're doing much
better than they ever were before, thanks to Internet platforms.

------
alfiedotwtf
Why should the likes of Fox News be exempt

~~~
Barrin92
I don't think they are. Fox News as slanted as it is, doesn't endorse
terrorism or anything along these lines the way some internet communities or
message boards do.

There's really no comparison between even the worst tabloid newspaper and some
of the stuff that festers on the internet.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
> doesn't endorse terrorism

The use propaganda to make people support the war effort against the Middle
East. Ask people in the Middle East who the terrorists are.

~~~
sadris
Every mainstream outlet promotes wars in the middle East.

The only individual who is saying to not do that is... Tucker Carlson, who is
on Fox.

------
shiado
Considering that religious speech and the guiding religious books are often
completely intolerant of all other views of the world and can thus be
considered extremist, it would appear that such an agreement could ironically
cause the censorship of the very religion that was brutally targeted in these
attacks. Or perhaps they have specific censorship goals in mind? Think of the
result in Alabama just yesterday, it is abundantly clear that Christianity as
an ideology causes real tangible harm to women and ought to be completely
scrubbed from social media.

------
sarcasmOrTears
I hope one day we will be able to condemn these politicians, bureaucrats and
big corps for their crimes against free speech, just like we did with the
nazis when they tried to subvert Europe. We need serious laws with draconian
punishments to protect our rights, what we have now is insufficient.

------
anigbrowl
It'd be great if people who want to explore this as a free speech issue would
engage with the question of what happens to the free speech (and other) rights
of people who are killed by extremists, and whether they are more or less
important than the rights of people who advocate such killings.

~~~
BigJono
The comparison isn't between 40 people's right to live vs every terrorist's
right to free speech. It's between some probabalistic chance that 40 people's
right to live isn't violated in the future due to these actions, versus some
probabalistic chance of millions of innocent people being silenced and having
their privacy violated in various ways due to the collateral damage from this
kind of policy making for the foreseeable future. This shit _never_ gets
revoked once it's in place.

History is wrought with examples of people's free speech being violated. How
many examples do we really have of when someone's free speech was successfully
violated to protect proportionally more important rights?

The entire western world is slowly giving up every single ounce of privacy and
freedom, in exchange, and for what? ISIS is finished, the rate of Muslim
terrorist attacks seems to be falling off pretty fast, and the swell of
fascist sentiment will slowly wind down too once the factors that triggered it
are no longer present. This isn't some new concept that's never happened
before. And in 10 or 15 years are we going to be happy with the state of
government control in countries like Australia, NZ, UK etc given what we've
got out of it?

~~~
anigbrowl
There's a lot of counterfactuals here, both numerical and historical - for
example, your suggestion that policies put in place to deal with a problem
never being revoked which is simply not supported by fact. As your whole post
is dedicated to invalidating the question I posed I hope you'll excuse me for
not spending an hour on a point-by-point refutation of your numerous and very
broad claims.

