
Leaked white paper proposes U.S. Congressional regulation of social media - walterbell
https://www.cjr.org/the_new_gatekeepers/congress-white-paper-platforms.php
======
kodablah
Ug, never proposals for education, grants for preferred alternative
implementations, publicly funded communication platforms, recognition that the
status quo is people's preference, data transparency encouragement (not user
transparency...not "who", but "what" wrt internal analytics), enforcement of
existing advertisement/fraud/collusion statutes, etc. The first step always
has to be more legislation, very sad.

I'd argue in the scheme of things, it's not really that broken, and definitely
not deserving of the type of fix we're in for. It's funny to watch the masses
effectively manipulated into thinking there is effective mass manipulation
occurring. I wish they'd just leave things alone personally, but since they
won't and everyone is convinced this is a dire problem, I can only hope for
restraint.

~~~
slg
>recognition that the status quo is people's preference...I'd argue in the
scheme of things, it's not really that broken

Continuing the status quo means the people in power stay in power. It
therefore isn't surprising that the people in power prefer preserving the
status quo. It also isn't surprising that the people who believe the system is
broken and are most against the status quo are those that belong to
historically oppressed groups. If you really think the system isn't broken, I
suggest you look through the Twitter mentions of politically active famous
women, POC, or LGBTQ members. The harassment they receive on a regular basis
wouldn't be allowed in the physical world. Why do we allow it in the digital
world?

~~~
atomi
As long as it isn't libel/slander or 'fighting words', we do allow it in the
physical world.

Shouting words at someone is not illegal.

~~~
slg
We have to separate the words from the action of saying those words. The words
on Twitter do sometimes include slander and threats which would make them
illegal. However, often the words themselves are perfectly legal. That doesn't
mean the action of speaking those words are legal. Using your example, imagine
someone standing just outside your property and yelling at you 24/7\. The
words themselves might not be a problem but it doesn't mean they can't be
charged with any number of crimes from disturbing the peace to harassment.
Social media bots can function in a similar way.

~~~
jack9
> The words on Twitter do sometimes include slander and threats which would
> make them illegal.

The idea of a nebulous "illegality" is simplistic and wrong, in the US. They
might open an individual to civil liability, but they aren't in violation of a
criminal code, nor tort law.

> That doesn't mean the action of speaking those words are legal

Speech is always legal, in the US. What you think "legal" means is up for
debate.

~~~
karmelapple
Not all speech is always legal in the USA:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Illegal_speech_in_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Illegal_speech_in_the_United_States)

~~~
nostrademons
Note that the cases where speech is not legal are significantly more narrow
than most people think they are. The category you link to has only 11 pages,
and half of them are court cases where the Supreme Court decided _against_
limiting free speech. (In particular, the famous "shouting fire in a crowded
theater" quote is from a 1919 case that was overturned in 1969, and shouting
fire in a crowded theater is not, in fact, illegal. Inadvisable, probably, and
likely to get you banned from that theater for life, but not illegal.)

------
ilove_banh_mi
This leak looks like a trial balloon. I'm fascinated by the notion that
requiring disclosure of people's physical location, as well as demanding that
they prove their identity, would be conducive to an online culture of free and
healthy expression.

These proposals seem to be aimed at intimidation and breaching the privacy of
each and everyone, rather than at the surveillance-like operations and
propaganda-enabling structures of the Big Ad/Social Media companies.

~~~
ams6110
So, my local paper had a comment section that was dominated by the typical
hysterical, unhinged, anonymous arguing between far right and far left
partisans that we see in a lot of online discourse.

They changed to a "real name" policy and now the comments, while much reduced,
are also much more thoughtful and tend to stay on-topic.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> They changed to a "real name" policy and now the comments, while much
> reduced, are also much more thoughtful and tend to stay on-topic.

Real name policies eliminate specific categories of speech.

One of those categories is trolling, which naturally makes everybody very
happy. The problem is that some of the other categories are _really
important_.

If you require real names then people with minority views are afraid to
present them, even when they can make a major contribution. People won't
disclose relevant inside information, including malfeasance, because they face
being fired or abused until they quit. People won't say anything against the
interests of anyone in a position of power over them.

It's basically a mechanism that gets rid of the Nazis and SJWs by getting rid
of anyone critical of the government or existing power structures. The
resulting debate is unquestionably a lot more polite, but politeness is not
the only consideration.

~~~
seventhtiger
I'm in favor of deanonymizing social media. I don't think it will affect
whistleblowing, because so far mainstream social media has not been such a
great source of whistleblowing. Anonymous leaks are still best presented by a
journalist that's willing to vet the info and put their name on it.

What anonymity does do to social media is muddy the waters to a great degree.
Online discourse is now built on bad faith, because of the lack of consequence
and reputation.

I've enjoyed anonymity as much as the next person, but I believe it is a net
detriment to communication.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> I don't think it will affect whistleblowing, because so far mainstream
> social media has not been such a great source of whistleblowing.

It's not just about The Pentagon Papers and Wikileaks. It's about people being
able to point out banal incompetence and small scale corruption so it can be
corrected without being retaliated against by petty members of the city
government with egg on their face, even when there are no journalists willing
to take the small story.

It's not even just about whistleblowing. When you have to write everything
knowing your mother, your boss and every busybody in the PTA will probably
read it, people are going to self-censor.

And then there's this:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/twitter-t...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/twitter-
trump-lawsuit-anonymous-account-dropped)

> Anonymous leaks are still best presented by a journalist that's willing to
> vet the info and put their name on it.

Journalist is not a title of nobility, it's anyone engaged in that specific
activity.

To do what you're asking, a source would need to anonymously send the
information to different prospective journalists until one has the resources
and willingness to vet and publish it, in parallel if it's at all time
sensitive. In other words, the source needs the ability to send information
anonymously to an arbitrarily large number of people with no formal
credentials. Who then themselves need the ability to anonymously pass it on to
arbitrarily many others who they think might have more resources or be more
willing to formally attach themselves to something with risk of retaliation by
powerful forces.

Which is basically a description of anonymous social media.

> What anonymity does do to social media is muddy the waters to a great
> degree. Online discourse is now built on bad faith, because of the lack of
> consequence and reputation.

We already have the ability to verify identities. We know that @ggreenwald on
Twitter is Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept because it says so on the official
web page of The Intercept.

Nothing stops anyone from only reading things written by people with verified
identities. If you don't like anonymous or pseudonymous speech then why are
you listening to it? Instead what you're proposing is to prohibit _everyone
else_ from hearing it. Which is never something anyone should get to decide
for everyone else.

------
Teknoman117
I think we have to be careful about making companies liable for everything
their users upload. While companies like Google and Facebook have the
computational capacity to scan everything that they consume, what about
startups?

It shouldn't mean companies aren't liable for failing to remove content deemed
illegal, but having it be illegal for any single thing to slip between the
cracks seems harsh.

------
Venlin
The Congressional hearings involving Mark Zuckerberg showed that Congress is
not equipt to deal with the problems social media has brought to society. I am
highly skepticle of anything the senate convinces themselves is the right way
to deal with social media; it seems like an attempt to set the stage to grab
more power and control than anything else.

~~~
clarkevans
Marketplaces don't self-regulate. Providing a level playing field, such as
explicitly detailing a fiduciary duty to keep a subscriber's information
confidential, is the role of government.

------
nimbius
after returning to the United States as a citizen, I was detained briefly for
visiting a trifecta of middle eastern countries. I'd informed them I was
filming a cooking show for a broadcast network. I was asked for my social
media accounts and passwords, and after confessing that I did not maintain any
social media accounts I was kept for another 25 minutes for the same question
by three different people.

"you really dont have a facebook?"

------
writepub
Ah yes - empower politicians with regulatory powers, and expect them to not
use it to their advantage while in power. Lest we forget, everything from
gerrymandering to supposedly non-partisan agencies like the FCC have taken
giant craps on the general public, and sided with the party in power.

Hopefully, this never becomes law

------
1001101
This is what it looks like when the public square is on private property.

~~~
niij
How would it help having the government run a social media network? Or am I
misunderstanding your comment?

~~~
rossdavidh
When content got posted by people on their own servers, and you just linked to
other people's web pages instead of commenting on them, it was more of a
public square. When it's a social media site, it's easier for everyone non-
technical to use, but it's now run by a private company.

~~~
niij
>When content got posted by people on their own servers

Well, that is private property as well. But I see your point, centralization
is the enemy here.

------
slg
At this point it seems clear that individual companies have disincentives that
prevent them from acting against these issue. Most people in the tech
community are generally opposed to the government getting involved since the
government is often slow to understand and react to technological changes. I
would generally agree with them. However we have to stop sticking our heads in
the sand and pretending that things that are crimes in the analog world aren't
crimes in the digital world (this includes campaign finance law). The only
real option seems to be for the industry to come together and self regulate.
Are any of the big tech companies actually working to make that happen? If no,
it is only a matter of time before the government gets involved.

~~~
cirgue
They will only have a disincentive to act when people are willing to leave
toxic platforms, and people will only leave toxic platforms when there are
viable alternatives.

------
crazynick4
I would agree with labeling automated bots but I think stopping anonymous
accounts is going too far. What is wrong with anonymity? You can label the
account as being intentionally anonymous but I don't think we need to go past
that.

If people failed to see past the trolls this past election cycle, hopefully it
will be a lesson learned. Most people here probably learned to spot/ignore
trolls when they were 14 but a lot of voters are still new arrivals to the
digital landscape.

If we need our government to confirm the information we use to make a
decision, is it still a democracy? I still think that if you want a population
that is responsible, you have to allow them the responsibility of figuring out
what is true and what is not on their own.

------
wesleytodd
I think the faster we make companies liable for the content on their servers
the better. Why? Because I want distributed/federated data to become an
_actual priority_ to these companies. I want it to hit their bottom line when
they get sued for content uploaded to their servers so they consider keeping
the data owned by the user who generated it.

~~~
shawn
I’ve been working on that. It’s a hard problem, but emule works quite well. I
propose something based on that: when you start a program, you advertise all
the sha256’s of all the files you share. Whenever you need a resource, you
send a request to the dht for its sha256. Anyone who has the file will
opportunistically try to send it to you.

Since it’s a dht, there’s nothing to take down. And since it operates on
sha256s of data, it’s implicitly secure. And it uses tor for the rendezvous,
so it’s not possible to track who is requesting what, except by unique ID
(which can just be a bitcoin wallet address you control).

The hard part is, what do you do about abuse? What if someone spams the
network with bots that try to fulfill every request with bad data?

If anyone has research refs in this direction, I’d be grateful to read them.
I’d also like to avoid a blockchain if possible, since it seems unnecessary
for simple federated distributed data.

~~~
cwkoss
I think a cool layer on top of this would be to create a P2P network where you
can 'friend' certain peers and produce a reddit-like aggregation of new
content from various sources.

\- Friend another user by adding their key and IP to a trust group.

\- When your client boots up, it connects to friend nodes and downloads their
recent DHT.

\- DHTs from all friends are summed to sort the hashes by descending
frequency, perhaps with a time decay factor.

\- Display reddit-like UI of content to User: see which files are recently
most popular among the set of all your friends.

Possible improvements:

\- User could customize time vs vote weighting, script custom sort rules

\- Give certain peers greater vote weighting ('best friend' vs 'acquaintance')

\- Allow peers to 'tag' hashes to create subreddit like collections of things.

\- Allow attachment of metadata to hashes - title, description, etc - figuring
out how to handle discrepancies between sources here could be tricky.

\- Make client automatically re-host content in your DHT: hosting IS the
upvote

~~~
kodablah
You and I must have like minds. I have even created an anon DHT PoC [0],
conceptualized how the messaging might work [1], made a lib to use Tor easier
since it's the best anon nat buster these days [2], began toying with a
superset of reddit/slack/forums/etc (some grpc files at [3] and some impl in
that same repo), and a bunch of other small things in order to arrive at this
final destination.

0 - [https://github.com/cretz/tor-dht-poc](https://github.com/cretz/tor-dht-
poc) 1 - [https://github.com/cretz/software-
ideas/issues/6](https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues/6) 2 -
[https://github.com/cretz/bine](https://github.com/cretz/bine) 3 -
[https://github.com/cretz/yukup/tree/master/yukup/pb/proto](https://github.com/cretz/yukup/tree/master/yukup/pb/proto)

~~~
shawn
Yesss, [0] saves me so much work if it does what the label says. Thanks!

------
adamnemecek
It's funny that their solution is removing privacy as opposed to combating
gathering of data and sales of hypertargeted ads.

Here's the problem with the US legal system. This regulation (if passed) will
likely fail to solve the problem but it will stay on the book and it won't be
removed until idk...ever?

~~~
ada1981
Drug war?

~~~
adamnemecek
Like half of the laws passed in the US.

------
nyxxie
Does anyone truly believe that regulation is going to fix that in a way that
leaves people the ability to freely express their thoughts -- something that
is and should be a human right?

I think the real issue here is that social media has moved us to a place where
people's real thoughts are visible to all, and the problem we need to solve is
how society will work now that the genie is out of the bottle. Social media
isn't the cause, it's helped us see the world more clearly.

Solving that problem is going to mean empowering people with the knowledge and
tools to assess the quality of information they read and make decisions backed
by critical thinking. This is a problem that needs to be solved by society,
and expecting a governing body to prescribe to us how our society is meant to
think is no solution.

~~~
GreenToad5
The anonymous factor does allow people to voice their own thoughts without
fear. It also allows people to lie without having their physical reputation
damaged. They create new fake accounts if old ones become known to spread
information. People take so much information that they read as gospel.
Selective reporting and the use of loose "anonymous" sources by media outlets
(who have become so partisan and biased in one direction or the other) have
gone on to perpetuate this problem even further.

------
rossdavidh
So, I am picturing the whiplash when a large part of the American left, that
has been in favor of some kind of governmental control on companies like
Facebook and Google, actually faces the possibility of the current
administration being in charge of that regulation.

~~~
dragonwriter
There's “large a part of the left” that supported legislation under which the
executive branch would have discretionary regulatory power over Facebook and
Google?

------
madrox
Online discourse has been the wild west since Usenet. This was alright 10
years ago, back when it only mostly a certain kind of person accessing the
internet. Now social media more accurately reflects the world demographics.
I've long believed some government-issued, OpenID-like identity platform would
go a long way to enable a lot of other online activities (like voting), but
saying government will do a better job solving problems than corporations is
misunderstanding the issue. Before we run off trying to problems, we need to
figure out what kind of online society we want. I'm not yet convinced anyone
has really thought that through.

~~~
undersuit
I've always wanted something like the (inter)Nets of Ender's Game... minus
that particular US government.

------
Shivetya
watch for the term "weaponized" when applied to speech as this is the next go
to. by equating speech they don't like to warfare, arms dealers, and more,
they can try to suppress it under the connotation of violence which is key
because censorship of direct incitement of violence is permitted. The
difference will be to twist it enough to fall under it, think of it as "for
the children" but now suppressing any opinion they don't like.

as far as the big tech giants, well twitter's system was proven discriminatory
as substituting white/Caucasian with any other race or religion will flag the
comments; this was done based on the NYT hiring a tech writer whose twitter
comments would be considered hateful but are excused because of the target and
the person making them

it is not hard to prey on people's prejudices to take their rights from them.
they will gladly accept restrictions if they think it only hurts people they
don't like but may find one day they get in some other persons or algorithm's
cross hairs

------
gammateam
Read until

> Democratic Senator

Anything coming from the party without power is dead in the water for now.
Maybe it will inspire someone but this is just a waste of a cycle until then.

~~~
dominotw
There is only one party. Corporate party.

~~~
tasty_freeze
Both parties have their problems, but you are being simple minded to think
there is no difference between the parties.

------
smilesnd
It is funny to think a capitalist government could regulate anything. If it
makes money then it is good. If it doesn't make money then it is bad. If it
challenges the current way we make money it is bad, unless it makes more money
then the old way then it is good. The problem with social media is it sells
its user base to the highest bidder. No sort of regulation is going to stop
that. Social media not going to give the government a key to there land. They
have lobbyist, secret ninja assassins, black mail, and a endless supply of
money to throw at this problem to keep them going strong. What happen when the
government try to regulate sugar? Soda companies paid for studies to prove
sugar is good for you and is part of a balance diet. What will these social
media companies do? For starters they will lie like they currently are stating
the technology cannot keep up with fake news. They know when a user gets home
they should entice him/her to look at there phone as soon as they walk through
there door because they will score a minimal 15 min of eye ball time even if a
baby is screaming bloodie murder for them. Machine learning can automate
propaganda for entire country, but you telling me it cannot figure out a 1$
bought domain linking to a story for the first time might be fake news? The
government will "regulate" social media so they look like they are doing
something. The companies will make backdoor deals to benefit them. The
american people will cheer with joy knowing there is no more fake news on
there social media sites. And when some russian hackers get bored they will
buy 10$ worth of ad space on facebook targeting extremist in america. Just so
they can gamble what is the best way to get a moron to wave a assault rifle in
front of the white house.

------
jaunkst
Wait.. what about televison.

------
jewelthief91
I doubt this would help. Judging by my Facebook feed Americans are perfectly
capable of vicious, polarized discourse without foreign influence. In fact
this may backfire as it would allow the hateful in society to have more of a
right to preach on these platforms as no one would be able to accuse them of
being foreign trolls. Its probable that this level of discourse is here to
stay and that the previous elevated, comparably "civilized" discourse was a
result of broadcast media and its top-down structure.

~~~
clarkevans
Is there something that can be done about our polarized discourse without
trampling over our civil rights? I think this is necessary dialogue.

~~~
maxxxxx
First stop blaming the Russians and then tell your parties to work for the
country and for themselves. I think best would be if people stopped calling
themselves "Republicans" or "Democrats" and stopped identifying with a party.

~~~
mikec3010
I wish there were a way to dispel the tricks the media and politicians use to
divide us such as religion and abortion. There are countless other issues that
affect us, but many voters only care about 1 or 2 issues. The "polarizing
issues" are then just proxies that won't have a material effect on most people
anyway. But people are so susceptible to emotion, and I doubt there's a way
around this.

------
1996
What about freedom of speech, or freedom of press? The government shall make
no law?

I guess the convenient exception made by the FCC for regulating content shown
on TV (OMG nudity!! censor this!!) will prove useful as a precedent. Sad.

~~~
User23
Obscenity isn’t protected by the first amendment.

Obviously there is disagreement over what is and isn’t obscene.

~~~
nybble41
> Obscenity isn’t protected by the first amendment.

Right, I must've missed the "except for obscenity" clause. Oh wait, there
isn't one... that's just something the courts made up out of thin air.

The freedom of speech includes _all_ speech, even obscene speech. It is
_never_ appropriate to respond to speech with force.

~~~
User23
I happen to agree with you, but it’s not our opinion that determines the law,
it’s the Supreme Court’s. And they have clearly and consistently held that
obscenity is not protected by the first amendment, for the lifetime of the
Republic.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
They also held that slavery was fine, until it wasn't. We have major problems
in this country and the failures of our legal system are prime among them.

~~~
mikeash
Slavery _was_ fine under the law. Once the Constitution was amended to
prohibit it, the Court had no problem upholding that.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The Constitution was amended to explicitly prohibit Congress from making laws
abridging the freedom of speech as well.

What's relevant is the Supreme Court reconsidering a previous decision without
any change to the Constitution, but that too has happened before, e.g. Brown
v. Board of Education.

~~~
mikeash
We have a comment complaining about the Court reading beyond what’s written,
and another complaining about them failing to do so. I’m just pointing out the
inconsistency. If you want total free speech based on a plain reading of the
first amendment without considering context, then there’s no reasonable way
for the Court to find slavery to be unconstitutional prior to the 13th
amendment.

I’m not taking a position here, just pointing out the implications of the
slavery thing.

------
dominotw
Social media companies are self regulating( see: alex jones).

Tech gaints have been fusing their role into in form identical to publicly
elected govt. Ultimately becoming indistinguishable from elected govt, except
they aren't answerable to general public and can make up rules as they go.

~~~
collective-intl
Don't see why this was down voted. Have an upvote.

------
tcbawo
The financial industry created self-regulatory organizations (SROs) to police
themselves (in theory) more effectively than the government. They set up rules
of ethics and policies and have the power to fine companies and bar
individuals. Agencies like the SEC let them take the lead, but will step in to
investigate fraud and crimes. The industry may need to mature, but this would
probably be the most sensible solution.

~~~
forapurpose
The financial industry collapses and needs to be rescued every ~10 years (S&L
crisis in the 80s, Long Term Capital Management in the 90s, Great Recession in
the 00's). Last time they crippled the world economy. Massive fraud is
commonplace, based only on the fines they pay. I don't see them as a model of
success!

~~~
tcbawo
The financial industry is enormous and diverse. What I was referring to
specifically was the US equity markets and FINRA. They have been very stable
and reliable through the years. Commercial and mortgage lending is a whole
other ball of wax.

