I really don’t like cases like this, nor do I like how much the legal system seems to be pushing “guilty by proxy” rulings for a lot of school shooting cases.
It just feels very very very dangerous and ’going to be bad’ to set this precedent where when someone commits an atrocity, essentially every person and thing they interacted with can be held accountable with nearly the same weight as if they had committed the crime themselves.
Obviously some basic civil responsibility is needed. If someone says “I am going to blow up XYZ school here is how”, and you hear that, yeah, that’s on you to report it. But it feels like we’re quickly slipping into a point where you have to start reporting a vast amount of people to the police en masse if they say anything even vaguely questionable simply to avoid potential fallout of being associated with someone committing a crime.
It makes me really worried. I really think the internet has made it easy to be able to ‘justifiably’ accuse almost anyone or any business of a crime if a person with enough power / the state needs them put away for a time.
I think the design of media products around maximally addictive individually targeted algorithms in combination with content the platform does not control and isn’t responsible for is dangerous. Such an algorithm will find the people most susceptible to everything from racist conspiracy theories to eating disorder content and show them more of that. Attempts to moderate away the worst examples of it just result in people making variations that don’t technically violate the rules.
With that said, laws made and legal precedents set in response to tragedies are often ill-considered, and I don’t like this case. I especially don’t like that it includes Reddit, which was not using that type of individualized algorithm to my knowledge.
This is the real shit right here. The problem is that social media companies’ data show that negativity and hate keep people on their website for longer, which means that they view more advertisement compared to positivity.
It is human nature to engage with disagreeable topics moreso than agreeable topics, and social media companies are exploiting that for profit.
We need to regulate algorithms and force them to be open source, so that anybody can audit them. They will try to hide behind “AI” and “trade secret” excuses, but lawmakers have to see above that bullshit.
Unfortunately, US lawmakers are both stupid and corrupt, so it’s unlikely that we’ll see proper change, and more likely that we’ll see shit like “banning all social media from foreign adversaries” when the US-based social media companies are largely the cause of all these problems. I’m sure the US intelligence agencies don’t want them to change either, since those companies provide large swaths of personal data to them.
Attempts to moderate away the worst examples of it just result in people making variations that don’t technically violate the rules.
The problem then becomes if the clearly defined rules aren’t enough, then the people that run these sites need to start making individual judgment calls based on…well, their gut, really. And that creates a lot of issues if the site in question could be held accountable for making a poor call or overlooking something.
The threat of legal repercussions hanging over them is going to make them default to the most strict actions, and that’s kind of a problem if there isn’t a clear definition of what things need to be actioned against.
It’s the chilling effect they use in China, don’t make it clear what will get you in trouble and then people are too scared to say anything
Just another group looking to control expression by the back door
Yeah, but algorithmic delivery of radicalizing content seems kinda evil though.
I think the distinction here is between people and businesses. Is it the fault of people on social media for the acts of others? No. Is it the fault of social media for cultivating an environment that radicalizes people into committing mass shootings? Yes. The blame here is on the social medias for not doing more to stop the spread of this kind of content. Because yes even though that won’t stop this kind of content from existing making it harder to access and find will at least reduce the number of people who will go down this path.
Is it the fault of social media for cultivating an environment that radicalizes people into committing mass shootings? Yes.
Really? Then add videogames and heavy metal to the list. And why not most organized religions? Same argument, zero sense. There’s way more at play than Person watches X content = person is now radicalized, unless we’re talking about someone with severe cognitive deficit.
And since this is the US… perhaps add easy access to guns? Nah, that’s totally unrelated.
“Person watches X creative and clearly fictional content” is not analogous in any way to “person watches X video essay crafted to look like a documentary, but actually just full of lies and propaganda”
Don’t be ridiculous
So it’s the severe cognitive deficit. Ok. Watching anything inherently bad and thinking it’s ok to do so becauses it seems legit… that’s ridiculous.
I mean, yes. People are stupid. That’s why we have safety regulations. This court case is about a lack of safety regulations.
Do you not think if someone encouraged a murderer they should be held accountable? It’s not everyone they interacted with, there has to be reasonable suspicion they contributed.
Also I’m pretty sure this is nothing new
Depends on what you mean by “encouraged”. That is going to need a very precise definition in these cases.
And the point isn’t that people shouldn’t be held accountable, it’s that there are a lot of gray areas here, we need to be careful how we navigate them. Irresponsible rulings or poorly implemented laws can destabilize everything that makes the internet worthwhile.
I didn’t say that at all, and I think you know I didn’t unless you really didn’t actually read my comment.
I am not talking about encouraging someone to murder. I specifically said that in overt cases there is some common sense civil responsibility. I am talking about the potential for the the police to break down your door because you Facebook messaged a guy you’re friends with what your favorite local gun store was, and that guy also happens to listen to death metal and take antidepressants and the state has deemed him a risk factor level 3.
I must have misunderstood you then, but this still seems like a pretty clear case where the platforms, not even people yet did encourage him. I don’t think there’s any new precedent being set here
Rulings often start at the corporation / large major entity level and work their way down to the individual. Think piracy laws. At first, only giant, clear bootlegging operations were really prosecuted for that, and then people torrenting content for profit, and then people torrenting large amounts of content for free - and now we currently exist in an environment where you can torrent a movie or whatever and probably be fine, but also if the criminal justice system wants to they can (and have) easily hit anyone who does with a charge for tens of thousands of dollars or years of jail time.
Will it happen to the vast majority of people who torrent media casually? No. But we currently exist in an environment where if you get unlucky enough or someone wants to punish you for it enough, you can essentially have this massive sentence handed down to you almost “at random”.
Everyone on lemmy who makes guillotine jokes will enjoy their life sentence I’m sure
Is there currently a national crisis of Jacobins kidnapping oligarchs and beheading them in public I am unaware of?
No
Unfortunately
Also worth remembering, this opens up avenues for lawsuits on other types of “harm”.
We have states that have outlawed abortion. What do those sites do when those states argue social media should be “held accountable” for all the women who are provided information on abortion access through YouTube, Facebook, reddit, etc?
This wasn’t just a content issue. Reddit actively banned people for reporting violent content too much. They literally engaged with and protected these communities, even as people yelled that they were going to get someone hurt.
I dunno about social media companies but I quite agree that the party who got the gunman the gun should share the punishment for the crime.
Firearms should be titled and insured, and the owner should have an imposed duty to secure, and the owner ought to face criminal penalty if the firearm titled to them was used by someone else to commit a crime, either they handed a killer a loaded gun or they inadequately secured a firearm which was then stolen to be used in committing a crime, either way they failed their responsibility to society as a firearm owner and must face consequences for it.
This guy seems to have bought the gun legally at a gun store, after filling out the forms and passing the background check. You may be thinking of the guy in Maine whose parents bought him a gun when he was obviously dangerous. They were just convicted of involuntary manslaughter for that, iirc.
Yup, I was just addressing the point of tangential arrest, sometimes it is well justified.
Well you were talking about charging the gun owner if someone else commits a crime with their gun. That’s unrelated to this case where the shooter was the gun owner.
The lawsuit here is about radicalization but if we’re pursuing companies who do that, I’d start with Fox News.
If you lend your brother, who you know is on antidepressants, a long extension cord he tells you is for his back patio - and he hangs himself with it, are you ready to be accused of being culpable for your brothers death?
Oh, it turns out an extension cord has a side use that isn’t related to its primary purpose. What’s the analogous innocuous use of a semiautomatic handgun?
Self defense? You don’t have to be a 2A diehard to understand that it’s still a legal object. What’s the “innocuous use” of a VPN? Or a torrenting client? Should we imprison everyone who ever sends a link about one of these to someone who seems interested in their use?
You’re deliberately ignoring the point that the primary use of a semiautomatic pistol is killing people, whether self-defense or mass murder.
Should you be culpable for giving your brother an extension cord if he lies that it is for the porch? Not really.
Should you be culpable for giving your brother a gun if he lies that he needs it for self defense? IDK the answer, but it’s absolutely not equivalent.
It is a higher level of responsibility, you know lives are in danger if you give them a tool for killing. I don’t think it’s unreasonable if there is a higher standard for loaning it out or leaving it unsecured.
“Sorry bro. I’d love to go target shooting with you, but you started taking Vynase 6 months ago and I’m worried if you blow your brains out the state will throw me in prison for 15 years”.
Besides, youre ignoring the point. This article isn’t about a gun, it’s about basically “this person saw content we didn’t make on our website”. You think that wont be extended to general content sent from a person to another? That if you send some pro-Palestine articles to your buddy and then a year or two later your buddy gets busted at an anti-Zionist rally and now you’re a felon because you enabled that? Boy, that would be an easy way for some hypothetical future administrations to control speech!!
You might live in a very nice bubble, but not everyone will.
So you need a strawman argument transitioning from loaning a weapon unsupervised to someone we know is depressed. Now it is just target shooting with them, so distancing the loan aspect and adding a presumption of using the item together.
This is a side discussion. You are the one who decided to write strawman arguments relating guns to extension cords, so I thought it was reasonable to respond to that. It seems like you’re upset that your argument doesn’t make sense under closer inspection and you want to pull the ejection lever to escape. Okay, it’s done.
The article is about a civil lawsuit, nobody is going to jail. Nobody is going to be able to take a precedent and sue me, an individual, over sharing articles to friends and family, because the algorithm is a key part of the argument.
Did he also use it as improvised ammunition to shoot up the local elementary school with the chord to warrant it being considered a firearm?
I’m more confused where I got such a lengthy extension chord from! Am I an event manager? Do I have generators I’m running cable from? Do I get to meet famous people on the job? Do I specialize in fairground festivals?
…. Aside from everything else, are you under the impression that a 10-15 ft extension cord is an odd thing to own…?
And ironically the gun manufacturers or politicians who support lax gun laws are not included in these “nets”. A radicalized individual with a butcher knife can’t possibly do as much damage as one with a gun.
Add Fox news and Trump rallies to the list.
Don’t forget Marilyn Manson and videogames.
/s
Marilyn Manson led a charge to overthrow the government??
Doubt it. Last time I saw him on stage, he made trump look like an eloquent speaker.
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Because I don’t like than an artist I once enjoyed is a drugged out and drunken mess? Based on the reaction it definitely sounds like it.
Didn’t think that many lemmings likes washed up has been metal acts, but to each their own I guess.
I actually responded to the wrong person and I apologize. I’ve actually heard the same thing about MM lately – just washed-up and sad.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted for an obvious joke lol
Because it’s not funny or relevant and is an attempt to join two things - satanic panic with legal culpability in social media platforms.
Not relevant?
Metal music and videos games have been blamed for mass shootings before.
And this is neither of those things. This is something much more tangible, with actual science behind it.
Yes, that exactly is the point.
How people who supposedly care for children’s safety are willing to ignore science and instead choose to hue and cry about bullshit stuff they perceive (or told by their favourite TV personality) as evil.
Have you got it now? Or should I explain it further?
Didn’t expect Lemmy to have people who lack reading comprehension.
People don’t appreciate having spurious claims attached to their legitimate claims, even in jest. It invokes the idea that since the previous targets of blame were false that these likely are as well.
They’re all external factors. Music and videogames have been (wrongly, imo) blamed in the past. Media, especially nowadays, is probably more “blameable” than music and games, but i still think it’s bs to use external factors as an excuse to justify mass shootings.
What are the internal factors of a person that are not influenced by the environment or culture?
I don’t understand the comments suggesting this is “guilty by proxy”. These platforms have algorithms designed to keep you engaged and through their callousness, have allowed extremist content to remain visible.
Are we going to ignore all the anti-vaxxer groups who fueled vaccine hesitancy which resulted in long dead diseases making a resurgence?
To call Facebook anything less than complicit in the rise of extremist ideologies and conspiratorial beliefs, is extremely short-sighted.
“But Freedom of Speech!”
If that speech causes harm like convincing a teenager walking into a grocery store and gunning people down is a good idea, you don’t deserve to have that speech. Sorry, you’ve violated the social contract and those people’s blood is on your hands.
Not just “remain visible” - actively promoted. There’s a reason people talk about Youtube’s right-wing content pipeline. If you start watching anything male-oriented, Youtube will start slowly promoting more and more right-wing content to you until you’re watching Ben Shaprio and Andrew Tate
I got into painting mini Warhammer 40k figurines during covid, and thought the lore was pretty interesting.
Every time I watch a video, my suggested feed goes from videos related to my hobbies to entirely replaced with red pill garbage. The right wing channels have to be highly profitable to YouTube to funnel people into, just an endless tornado of rage and constant viewing.
The algorithm is, after all, optimized for nothing other than advertisements/time period. So long as the algorithm believes that a video suggestion will keep you on the website for a minute more, it will suggest it. I occasionally wonder about the implications of one topic leading to another. Is WH40k suggested the pipeline by demographics alone or more?
Irritation at suggestions was actually what originally led me to invidious. I just wanted to watch a speech without hitting the “____ GETS DUNKED ON LIKE A TINY LITTLE BITCH” zone. Fuck me for trying to verify information.
YouTube is really bad about trying to show you right wing crap. It’s overwhelming. The shorts are even worse. Every few minutes there’s some new suggestion for some stuff that is way out of the norm.
Tiktok doesn’t have this problem and is being attacked by politicians?
it legit took youtube’s autoplay about half an hour after I searched “counting macros” to bring me to american monarchist content
Oh are we doing kings now?
Vote for me for King, I’ll make sure there’s a taco truck on every corner.
I’ll vote for you if you make me the Marquess of Michigan
… Deal. But I reserve the right to turn the upper peninsula in to my own personal resort.
Deal, but Michigan gets Cleveland then. I feel like Cleveland for the UP is a fair trade
That’s actually a great idea. I’ve always been a fan of the Browns.
This may seem baseless, but I have seen this from years of experience in online forums. You don’t have to take it seriously, but maybe you can relate. We have seen time and time again that if there is no moderation then the shit floats to the top. The reason being that when people can’t post something creative or fun, but they still want the attention, they will post negative. It’s the loud minority, but it’s a very dedicated loud minority. Let’s say we have 5 people and 4 of them are very creative time and funny, but 1 of them complains all the time. If they make posts to the same community then there is a very good chance that the one negative person will make a lot more posts than the 4 creative types.
Ok…don’t complain to me later when the thing you like gets taken down.
Please let me know if you want me to testify that reddit actively protected white supremacist communities and even banned users who engaged in direct activism against these communities
I was banned for activism against genocide. Reddit is a shithole.
Well yeah it is but… what did you think would happen?
Send your evidence to the lawyers, couldn’t hurt.
Back when I was on reddit, I subscribed to about 120 subreddits. Starting a couple years ago though, I noticed that my front page really only showed content for 15-20 subreddits at a time and it was heavily weighted towards recent visits and interactions.
For example, if I hadn’t visited r/3DPrinting in a couple weeks, it slowly faded from my front page until it disappeared all together. It was so bad that I ended up writing a browser automation script to visit all 120 of my subreddits at night and click the top link. This ended up giving me a more balanced front page that mixed in all of my subreddits and interests.
My point is these algorithms are fucking toxic. They’re focused 100% on increasing time on page and interaction with zero consideration for side effects. I would love to see social media algorithms required by law to be open source. We have a public interest in knowing how we’re being manipulated.
I used google news phone widget years ago and clicked on a giant asteroid article, and for whatever reason my entire feed became asteroid/meteor articles. Its also just such a dumb way to populate feeds.
Yo dawg, I heard you like asteroids. So I populated your entire feed with articles about asteroids.
Yeah, social media algorithms are doing a lot of damage. I wish there was more general awareness of this. Based on personal experience, I think many people actually like being fed relevant content, and are blind to the consequences. I think Lemmy is great, because you have to curate your own feed, but many people would never use it for that very reason. I don’t know what the solution is.
YouTube does the exact same thing.
thats why i always use youtube by subscribed first, then only delve into regular front page if theres nothing interesting in my subscriptions
Nice, now do all regigions and churches next
YouTube feeds me so much right wing bullshit I’m constantly marking it as not interested. It’s a definite problem.
It’s amazing how often I get a video from some right wing source suggested to me companting about censorship and being buried by youtube. I ended up installing a third party channel blocker to deal with it.
I can’t prove that they were related but I used to report all conservative ads (Hillsdale Epoch times etc) to Google with all caps messages how I was going to start calling the advertisers directly and yell at them for the ads, about 2-3 days after I started doing that the ads stopped.
I would love for other people to start doing this to confirm that it works and to be free of the ads.
That worked for me also. I like a lot of sports docs on YouTube. That triggered non stop Joe Rogan suggestions and ads for all kinds of right wing news trash.
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Can you try my method and see if it works? I am really curious
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I quit drinking years ago and I reported every (e alcohol) ad explaining that I am no longer their target market and the ads are literally dangerous to me. They were gone within a few weeks - haven’t seen a booze ad in 5+ years.
Is fucking insane how much that happens I stopped using Instagram for that reason at least yt listened to my “not interested” choices. I also have revnaced so IDK what ads it would shoot at me.
YouTube started feeding me that stuff too. Weirdly once I started reporting all of them as misinformation they stop showing up for some reason…
I just would like to show something about Reddit. Below is a post I made about how Reddit was literally harassing and specifically targeting me, after I let slip in a comment one day that I was sober - I had previously never made such a comment because my sobriety journey was personal, and I never wanted to define myself or pigeonhole myself as a “recovering person”.
I reported the recommended subs and ads to Reddit Admins multiple times and was told there was nothing they could do about it.
I posted a screenshot to DangerousDesign and it flew up to like 5K+ votes in like 30 minutes before admins removed it. I later reposted it to AssholeDesign where it nestled into 2K+ votes before shadow-vanishing.
Yes, Reddit and similar are definitely responsible for a lot of suffering and pain at the expense of humans in the pursuit of profit. After it blew up and front-paged, “magically” my home page didn’t have booze related ads/subs/recs any more! What a totally mystery how that happened /s
The post in question, and a perfect “outing” of how Reddit continually tracks and tailors the User Experience specifically to exploit human frailty for their own gains.
Edit: Oh and the hilarious part that many people won’t let go (when shown this) is that it says it’s based on my activity in the Drunk reddit which I had never once been to, commented in, posted in, or was even aware of. So that just makes it worse.
Its not reddit if posts don’t get nuked or shadowbanned by literal sitewide admins
Yes I was advised in the removal notice that it had been removed by the Reddit Administrators so that they could keep Reddit “safe”.
I guess their idea of “safe” isn’t 4+ million users going into their privacy panel and turning off exploitative sub recommendations.
Idk though I’m just a humble bird lawyer.
Yeah this happens a lot more than people think. I used to work at a hotel, and when the large sobriety group got together yearly, they changed bar hours from the normal hours, to as close to 24/7 as they could legally get. They also raised the prices on alcohol.
“Noooo it’s our algorithm we can’t be held liable for the program we made specifically to discover what people find a little interesting and keep feeding it to them!”
I wonder if you built a social media site where the main feature was that the algorithm just showed you things in sequential order like in the old days, would it be popular
I enjoy using Lemmy mostly that way, just sorting the feed by new / hot / whatever and looking at new posts of random shit. Much more entertaining than video-spamming bullshit.
So a paper encyclopedia set? How is Britannica doing?
I find it very weird to be living in a country legalizing drugs and assisted suicide (even for depression) but simultaneously trying to severely curtail free speech, media freedom and passing legislation to jail people at risk of breaking the law who don’t meet the “conspiracy to commit” threshold".
What exactly are you referring to here?
Been on the canadian news the last few days, federal Liberals are trying to bring in pre-crime legislation.
This thread is about a mass shooter from New York. Are you lost?
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Good.
There should be no quarter for fascists, violent racist or their enablers.
Conspiracy for cash isn’t a free speech issue.
I gave up reporting on major sites where I saw abuse. Stuff that if you said that in public, also witnessed by others, you’ve be investigated. Twitter was also bad for responding to reports with “this doesnt break our rules” when a) it clearly did and b) probably a few laws.
I gave up after I was told that people DMing me photographs of people committing suicide was not harassment but me referencing Yo La Tengo’s album “I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass” was worthy of a 30 day ban
I remember one time somebody tweeted asking what the third track off Whole Lotta Red and I watched at least 50 people get perma’d before my eyes.
The third track is named Stop Breathing.
I TAKE MY SHIRT OFF AND ALL THE HOES STOP
BREATHIN’accessing their Twitter accounts WHEH? 🧛♂️🦇🩸sLatt! +*
On youtube I had a persistent one who only stopped threatening to track me down and kill me (for a road safety video) when I posted the address of a local police station and said “pop in, any time!”
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Laws against threats to kill, rape and assault tend to be pretty constant across the world… 🤷♂️
Americans online regularly tell me that that’s protected free speech down there! Haha
Excuse me what in the Kentucky fried fuck?
As much as everyone says fuck these big guys all day this hurts everyone.
I agree with you, but … I was on reddit since the Digg exodus. It always had it’s bad side (violentacrez, jailbait, etc), but it got so much worse after GamerGate/Ellen Pao - the misogyny became weaponized. And then the alt-right moved in, deliberately trying to radicalize people, and we worked so. fucking. hard to keep their voices out of our subreddits. And we kept reporting users and other subreddits that were breaking rules, promoting violence and hatred, and all fucking spez would do is shrug and say, “hey it’s a free speech issue”, which was somewhere between “hey, I agree with those guys” and “nah, I can’t be bothered”.
So it’s not like this was something reddit wasn’t aware of (I’m not on Facebook or YouTube). They were warned, repeatedly, vehemently, starting all the way back in 2014, that something was going wrong with their platform and they need to do something. And they deliberately and repeatedly choose to ignore it, all the way up to the summer of 2021. Seven fucking years of warnings they ignored, from a massive range of users and moderators, including some of the top moderators on the site. And all reddit would do is shrug it’s shoulders and say, “hey, free speech!” like it was a magic wand, and very occasionally try to defend itself by quoting it’s ‘hate speech policy’, which they invoke with the same regular repetitiveness and ‘thoughts and prayers’ inaction as a school shooting brings. In fact, they did it in this very article:
In a statement to CNN, Reddit said, “Hate and violence have no place on Reddit. Our sitewide policies explicitly prohibit content that promotes hate based on identity or vulnerability, as well as content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or group of people. We are constantly evaluating ways to improve our detection and removal of this content, including through enhanced image-hashing systems, and we will continue to review the communities on our platform to ensure they are upholding our rules.”
As someone who modded for a number of years, that’s just bullshit.
Edit: fuck spez.
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Yep that’s how the Nazis work on every site. The question is who lets them on these sites so easily to do this work on society. And why do sites fight for them to stay? Are Nazis high up in government? Is it the wealthy? Probably something like that.
Part of the reason they get so high up on nerd sites (And Reddit at least started as a nerd site) is that they hunger for power, and the right people are too shy to seek power themselves.
This would all be greatly relieved if communities asked for communities to nominate other members, and asked for the type of folks who are the types who would mostly only consider the position of asked/ or if they were write-ins.
People with the capacity but are looked over because they maybe lack the ego or self confidence to take such power.
This works especially well in smaller communities under 4K users or so, which kinda falls apart in our Big Internet world, sadly…
media: Video games cause violence
media: Weird music causes violence.
media: Social media could never cause violence this is censorship (also we don’t want to pay moderators)
Since media (that you define by the trophes of unsubtantiated news outlets) couldnt sensibly refer to a forum like reddit or even facebook, this makes no sense.
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I think there’s definitely a case to be made that recommendation algorithms, etc. constitute editorial control and thus the platform may not be immune to lawsuits based on user posts.
