Ultimately, isn’t the internet and WWW the same as a modern postal service.
Both are in two parts.
Firstly postal has a physical means of dispatch and carrying. iE inter connected systems for networking
And secondly a modern system of street addresses with national post codes pointing to the delivery. IE IP addresses and DNS servers.
Both the old school mail and modern electronic distribution are capable of being used for both good and evil. Mass marketing, spam mail surely started with the letter box, long before the inbox.
And surprisingly governments opening mail and censoring content or seizing illegal content has a time honoured tradition with post and parcels. Even identity and document theft date back to early postal crimes.
Should we really be talking about ‘Fixing the Web’?
It’s not the web that is broken.
When we can define what it is that is actually the problem, perhaps the way forward will be self evident?
That’s true but there is no comparison between the real cost of physically handling articles and carrying out human inspection, on the one hand, and the much lower cost in automatically ineffectively ‘blocking’ domains that the government doesn’t like.
Governments of today have possibilities that earlier authoritarian governments could only dream about.
I think we can’t.
There are so many different things that at least one person in the world is complaining about (in respect of the internet or the web) that the scope is enormous - and we will mostly disagree about what things really are problems and what things are not problems, let alone what an appropriate ‘fix’ is for the things that we do happen to agree about.
The original opinion piece took a real scattergun approach as far as its scope.
Sir TimBL (a Pom working for a long time in the UK and Switzerland) somehow thinks that “The use of targeted political ads in the United States’ 2020 presidential campaign” is a problem that he should be advocating ‘fixing’. Whereas I think that governments and corporations should have absolutely nothing to do with preventing or blocking political advertising.
It could be argued that manipulative misrepresentation is the essence of political advertising. I think that the arts of deceit and manipulation have developed to the point that they threaten every open Democracy. As the Cambridge Analytica saga showed, it’s now possible to finely focus misrepresentations so they’re more likely to deceive. Even banning political advertising altogether wouldn’t solve the problem. Lies would just be peddled in different guises.
Yes, or even all advertising, although more manipulation than outright misrepresentation.
I see no reason though why major political parties with big budgets (largely funded by the long-suffering taxpayer) running manipulative and deceitful TV advertising should have a monopoly on same.
Surely this would
a) threaten democracy more severely than the problem you perceive (this would be great for the incumbents)
b) be near impossible to enforce
c) be completely unconstitutional in Australia (so, in my opinion, highly undesirable but in any case very difficult to achieve as it would require a constitutional amendment).
Who decides what a “lie” is?
There are many political statements that are in the shades of grey. There are also statements that are unverifiable. (See earlier discussion on “puffery”, in the context of commercial advertising.)
It underpins our current political arrangements that the voting public decides what a “lie” is (in the context of an election campaign).
Do they trust the candidate making the statement? Do they agree with the idea behind the statement even if the details are questionable? In other words, the court of public opinion sorts the lies from the truth.
Not the government. Not the social media company. Not the courts.
That’s an easy one to answer: people are broken. Take people out of the loop and the web would be just fine. Take people out of the loop and the postal service would not feel that it needs to spy on everything we do.
You don’t even need to ban all advertising - just 50%.
Australia does not have any ‘freedom of speech’ clause in its constitution. While the courts have ruled that there is an implied freedom, I am not sure they would rule that this extends to political advertising if politicians were ever stupid enough to pass a law banning it.
The voting public is an ass! More importantly, it does not have the freedom of choice that you imply; our ‘winner takes all’ voting system for the lower house all but guarantees that known but despised quantities will beat unknowns almost every time. As for the ‘unrepresentative swill’ of the upper house, the major parties have made plenty of changes to ensure that it stays as unrepresentative of our preferences as they possibly can.
Your point is well taken, but I have some problems with that ruling.
From the Wikipedia article:
The court expressed the view that the reason why Australia does not have a bill of rights is because the framers of the Constitution believed that since Australia had a system of representative government, which gave all voters an equal share in political power, laws to protect rights were simply not necessary.
Seriously? Just ask someone living in a territory how many rights they have to be ‘represented’. Ask the Christmas Islanders, for instance, how their government represented them when an unwanted detention centre was opened. Oh, wait - it was the same government that opened that detention centre.
You might also ask if a person on Centrelink has the same representation in government as, say, Malcolm Turnbull.
I agree. That particular text looked doubtful to me. However if it really concerned me, I would rely on the text of the judgement, not the text and interpretation in the Wikipedia article, to verify what was actually written and to give it context.
The fix requires dealing with a number of spurious arguments in favour of a laissez faire free-for-all, here are two of the worst.
Freedom of speech. You have never had complete freedom to say anything you want to so why invoke it for the web? All governments apply some censorship and some limits to what you can say, we may argue about whether that is correct in any given case but saying it should never happen is absurd.
Allowing the oppressed an anonymous voice. We should allow any number of vested interests to communicate anonymously for any reason without hindrance so that somewhere in the world minorities can get out their view of things and organise their forces against a government that they don’t like: really? Like so many ethical and practical issues it is not a black and white choice, in this case we seem to be giving up a great deal for little return overall.
The fact that few of the parties who advocate these freedoms are disinterested philosophers is relevant. Most are motivated by money, or power, or both. When they bring these arguments to the public fora it is not a victimless crime if they get away with it because it is our money they are misappropriating and us whom they disempower.
Isn’t that a circular argument? Governments do it therefore it must be right. It’s right so governments should do it.
The only valid argument for censorship is to say what specifically you are going to censor, and to justify doing so on the merits of the situation.
Remember that Sir TimBL, in arguing for censorship, is most specifically arguing for a reduction in freedom of political speech (in the US or in the UK or both). Given that the High Court (in Australia) has found an implied right to freedom of political speech, you really are going to justify any reduction in freedom of political speech - and you don’t have to convince me or anyone else in the Choice Community or even the parliament. You have to convince the High Court.
The electoral incidents that are most frequently pointed to in order to “justify” this have not been shown to have occurred in Australia. So I think the High Court should exercise enormous amounts of scepticism about … a cure that is worse than the disease, for a disease that has not been shown to exist here.
However in reality Sir TimBL has such a grab bag of complaints - some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t - that it is impossible to know what “fixing the web” really means.
That justification already exists. There are already limits to freedom of speech in the non-web world. I was saying that there ought to be similar limits on the web. This is not anything new, I am not advocating tightening up on political speech but just making the web and those who control it as accountable as other media. Why should the publisher of a newspaper be held to account if they publish slander but the owner of a web publication is not?
There is plenty wrong with the way information flow is controlled in our society using traditional media but that is no reason to allow the web to be totally unregulated. I am not going into all the ways that FOI and secrecy over threats to security can be misused, that is another matter. I want rules to be applied regardless of technology. At the moment they are not.
But that is still falling back on … governments do it therefore it must be right.
You still haven’t said specifically what you think should be censored and provided a justification for it.
I’m pretty sure that Sir TimBL is not talking about libel (NB: libel, not slander) but that’s still a fair question and deserves consideration.
There are many differences.
the print media company creates almost all its content (syndicated content is technically created by a different media company)
it can afford to run content past lawyers before publication if there is the suggestion of libel
it produces at most one edition in 24 hours and the edition contains a modest (and declining) number of articles
a significant piece of investigative journalism may be worked on for weeks or months
On the other hand
the social media company creates no content at all
it would be completely unreasonable if you had to run each social media comment past a lawyer before posting
comments are posted in Facebook at the approximate rate of 2000 per second (!!)
you may have given all of 2 seconds consideration before making a social media comment
I would argue that in social media you are accountable for what you post - not the social media company. To hold the social media company accountable would be a bit like blaming the telephone company because you slandered a third person in a telephone conversation.
Coming back to
Another perspective is: This is just applying thinking that arose hundreds of years ago in the days of the newspaper barons and pretending that the world hasn’t changed (something that governments excel at). I would argue that the current approach is no longer fit for purpose.
Hence rather than trying to apply an outdated regime to new circumstances, we should rethink the regime. (I could sketch out what I think should be the regime but as I don’t think Sir TimBL is talking about libel, it isn’t really relevant.)
The current approach has many flaws that does not suggest a reason to me that the web should be allowed to be far worse.
What is your solution to stemming the flood tide of lies, manipulation, fraud, libel, irresponsibility, hate speech and just plain evil? Note I didn’t mention stupidity that is incurable under any system.
To be clear, the comment you quoted (“no longer fit for purpose”) was limited to my opinion about “libel” as it applies to the 21st century.
Noone is forcing you to participate in social media. If you are concerned about the “flood”, don’t sign up / cease involvement / UnFollow / UnFriend. My feed has a lot of s%%% in it too. I ignore it and scroll on.
I did also offer “you” above the option of alt-web, which is a sanitised alternative web that has nothing that you don’t want to see in it - but I won’t be participating in alt-web. That may also be an appropriate option for younger children. There are no legal impediments to this happening today. (This will probably happen anyway - many alt-webs - as national governments attempt to claw back their control. China is showing the way.)
For any of the above that are not a breach of the law (e.g. lies, manipulation, irresponsibility), do nothing.
It is not the case that the solution to every problem is more laws. Sometimes it is more responsible of government to resist the demands for more laws.
Politicians themselves are responsible for a good amount of lies and manipulation, hence they have no moral authority to act anyway.
For fraud, I think existing investigative and legal processes are working (and yes there is often an element of stupidity in a successful fraud, which no law can solve). Education is an element of the solution. Improved security arrangements are an element of the solution.
For libel, I think I have said enough about it already and I don’t think that that is what Sir TimBL was concerned about.
Hate speech is a difficult area.
Reducing the scope of the law would reduce the amount of hate speech. That is, I don’t agree with the law in its current form. People should be free to feel hate and to express that feeling, as long as it is not incitement to commit a crime and as long as it is not intimidation. This is a grey area as some hate speech may also legitimately be political speech.
However if the government chooses not to do that (very likely i.e. the legal status quo) and the speech is actually against the law, I think existing processes are adequate.
This however would be a very clear cut case of where the person making the speech should be liable, not the social media company. Therefore the only obligation on the social media company should be to cooperate with the authorities in identifying the person responsible and if and when the court makes an order (person found guilty), removing the speech.
There are ample precedents for how this works and it does work.
“just plain evil” is too vague for a meaningful solution.
If we are slandered or libeled or both we do have actions we can take, the web can just make it harder to trace who said or wrote it. Just as my conversations and or interactions with my neighbour are free (as distinct from legal or right) to be had there are also consequences to those actions or words. There are also consequences of doing it on the Web just harder to get action taken because of Laws of differing lands. So if someone says something that offends us on the Web we have the right to seek redress just we may not be able to get even some token vindication of our case informally. If we don’t like the result we get from less legally formal means it must still in the end be tested in a Court of Law/Arbitration which we can do now but it may be ineffectual for the most part or too costly (even in Australia we need sums of money to properly fight matters).
The difficulty of what you appear to be asking for is that to make that universally held, upheld and uniform law, is to get universal agreement. We would need agreement for every country whether fascist, totalitarian, liberal, democratic, monarchy, dictatorship, pro humane, anti humane, theocratic, authoritarian and what ever other systems make up the World, in all a number of many ideologically opposed systems. At the moment they can’t even agree on cutting emissions, even within our own borders. Making us homogeneous I think is almost impossible and we would need that to get rules that are both possibly fair and possibly free enough to allow all our societies to agree.
For sure. That applies to defamation where you will typically have to fund the case yourself - and one reason why I said that the defamation regime as it applies to the web is not “fit for purpose”.
Paying tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands is fine when a rich person sues a newspaper baron. Their money. Their life. Maybe they win. Maybe they lose.
That doesn’t apply to fraud or hate speech where the taxpayer will foot the bill (on the plaintiff’s side).
There is a philosophical question about how content on the web should be treated.
The way it is actually being treated in law means that universal agreement is not required.
What matters is the law in the country where the person who claims to have been defamed is.
Maybe your comment was in response to the more general issue of “fixing” the web. Even then governments will try to preserve their relevance by legislating the same approach i.e. their law applies, no matter where the person who created the content is and no matter where the content is hosted.
So effectively I can create any content that is legal to create in the country in which I am and I can host the content in any country where it is legal to do so … but I have to prevent that content being served / alter the content being served in order to conform to individual country laws. (Large companies already do this. It is possible if cumbersome. Randoms have no chance.) If I don’t comply with an individual country’s law, individual country will presumably block my site - and I can then decide whether to spend my time attempting to comply with that individual country or I can leave it blocked and assume that anyone in that country who really wants to access my site will find a way.
I agree that we can take action in our own Country but cost as I noted and what result you get can be less than effective. As I stated “If we don’t like the result we get from less legally formal means it must still in the end be tested in a Court of Law/Arbitration which we can do now but it may be ineffectual for the most part or too costly (even in Australia we need sums of money to properly fight matters)”.
My reply in the post you referenced was to what @syncretic wanted ie “rules to be applied regardless of technology. At the moment they are not”. This implies to me they want some sort of a set of universal uniform application of Law/rules regardless of borders and differing laws/rules within those borders. That would require that Universal agreement.
If someone in the US uses their right of “Free Speech” to produce porn in that Country and applies the needed rules for that Country re access etc then they are free to do so. If we are offended by that and it is against our Laws/rules we have little more we can do than block or not visit that site or sites where the material resides or we can choose not to buy the product printed or otherwise…I remember people buying brown paper wrapped material. If however we are defamed (online or otherwise) we can take action in the Country where it arose, or even at times take action here. Depending on our case the cost may be prohibitive or outcome may be totally or largely ineffective.
Facebook, Twitter and others have implemented policies that somewhat address this as they may leave themselves open to action because they enabled the commentary or as some think published it (such as an international newspaper chain/organisation may publish defamatory comment and be held responsible). Thus as they have been made to alter their behaviour we see new policies within these large Social Media portals that allow people to report what they feel is inappropriate, the trouble is that the decision on appropriateness is made by the organisation according to their standards or the standards of where they are incorporated. This is not so easy to fix or in reality there is no fix as such.
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