Ben-L 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (56)

• On the post: Civil FOSTA Suits Start Showing Up In Court; Prove That FOSTA Supporters Were 100% Wrong About Who Would Be Targeted

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 09 Jan, 2020 @ 05:30pm

  Complaint

  Reads first sentence of the complaint:

  Fighting sex trafficking is hard enough without U.S. tech companies helping foreign-based sex trafficking companies grow and profit from their trafficking in this country.

  Losing too many brain cells, have to stop.

• On the post: New Study Suggests That YouTube's Recommendation Algorithm Isn't The Tool Of Radicalization Many People Believe (At Least Not Any More)

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2020 @ 04:38pm

  Re: Re: If Thanksgiving Dinner has tought us anything...

  I try explaining this to some of my friends, and the response I got was that I was letting big companies 'off the hook'. So the question is where does human behavior stop and corporate responsibility start? Youtube is an interesting test case since we have legacy media outlets arguing more responsibility is not promoting potentially dangerous voices, while individual creators argue this means better treatment and more creative freedom. Both these things are desirable in theory, but they also can conflict.

• On the post: Sacha Baron Cohen Is Wrong About Social Media, Wrong About Section 230… And Even Wrong About His Own Comedy

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2019 @ 12:05pm

  Re:

  It's hard to judge the bill without seeing the text, but my biggest concern is who determines what the "best practices" are (is it in the bill itself? will the FTC decide?). If you report someone as being a child predator, does that company have an incentive to investigate if that's true, or is the "best practice" just to block alleged pedos on sight for risk of getting sued?

• On the post: Sacha Baron Cohen Is Wrong About Social Media, Wrong About Section 230… And Even Wrong About His Own Comedy

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2019 @ 02:36am

  Pedos on the interwebs

  His claim about "internet companies can now be held responsible for pedophiles" seems to be a near total misreading of last year's passing of FOSTA, which added an exception to Section 230 for sex trafficking (not for pedophilia).

  I read in Politico that Lindsey Graham is preparing another Section 230 carve-out, this time for child predators (yeah, another one "for the kids"). The goal is, apparently, to use Section 230 as a carrot-on-a-stick to get app developers to adopt "best practices" when dealing with pedophiles and perverts.

• On the post: Ajit Pai Does a Good Thing As He Pushes For Public C Band Auction

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 20 Nov, 2019 @ 08:26pm

  broken clock

  pretty sure there's a saying about a broken clock that applies here

• On the post: Facebook Claims Users Sign Up Because They Want To See Personalized Ads, Max Schrems Disagrees — And Usually Wins These GDPR Arguments

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2019 @ 02:23pm

  Re: Re:

  Well, you can't expect companies to broaden their liability umbrella, as much as you can expect rich people to pay more taxes than they need to (if they pay any all).

• On the post: Report On Global Social Media Censorship Shows Russia, India, And Turkey Are Still Leading The Censor Pack

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2019 @ 10:53pm

  Props

  Props to Wikimedia for actually showing some spine against repressive governments.

• On the post: Marc Benioff Calls For Section 230 To Be Abolished At The Same Time His Company Is Relying On 230 To Get Out Of A Lawsuit

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2019 @ 02:31pm

  Re: Re: Re:

  Unless they're testifying under oath, they have no legal entitlement to be right, at least in the U.S. of A. This also applies everyone, with exceptions for defamation and lying to law enforcement.

• On the post: Senator Mark Warner Repeats Senator Ted Cruz's Mythical, Made Up, Incorrect Claims About Section 230

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 04 Oct, 2019 @ 10:50am

  Re: The Pipes

  Aside from stopping metering and throttling, you can stop the monitoring by encrypting the information that goes through these Big Dumb Pipes, which is already happening to some degree with the move to HTTPS and DOH.

• On the post: Private Companies Gathering Plate Data Are Selling Access To People's Movements For $20 A Search

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 24 Sep, 2019 @ 12:45am

  Plate Data

  I had to do a double take when I saw the headline. My first thought was that some high-tech food company was monitoring our eating habits and selling our bowel activities. The most food-related movements they're probably monitoring is what drive-thrus we're using and selling it to fast-food marketers.

• On the post: NY Times Publishes A Second, Blatantly Incorrect, Trashing Of Section 230, A Day After Its First Incorrect Article

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 13 Aug, 2019 @ 01:50pm

  Second time I've seen this mistake

  The first time I've seen an article mistake the DMCA with CDA 230 was in The Register, with the ironically titled article "The completely rational take you need on Europe approving Article 13: An ill-defined copyright regime to tame US tech". I suspect there's lots of confusion about the two laws since they both "protect" internet platforms. It's unfortunate that supposedly reputable sources are spreading this misconception instead of dispelling it.

• On the post: Josh Hawley Wants To Appoint Himself Product Manager For The Internet

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 02 Aug, 2019 @ 12:46pm

  All hail the Infinite Scroll!

• On the post: Complete Overreaction: Professor Calls For Shutting Down Facebook Live, Post-Christchurch

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2019 @ 11:27pm

  Re: Live and let Live

  Saying she's a "fascist dreamer" is probably overdoing it. She was probably just too emotional in the wake of a tragedy to think things through. Unfortunately our knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of events is usually to expand the surveillance state.

• On the post: We Interrupt All The Hating On Technology To Remind Everyone We Just Landed On Mars

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 27 Nov, 2018 @ 11:39pm

  Roadster

  We need to get Elon Musk's Roadster back on Mars to save us from the Luddites.

• On the post: To Obtain Documents About Facebook Data-Sharing, UK Gov't Seizes And Detains A US Executive Working For A Different Company

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2018 @ 03:17pm

  The guy is a Lawyer?

  His name wasn't included in initial reporting, but the detained person is Ted Kramer, the CEO and co-founder of Six4Three. I haven't found any other source saying he's also a company lawyer, though I suppose it's possible.

• On the post: To Obtain Documents About Facebook Data-Sharing, UK Gov't Seizes And Detains A US Executive Working For A Different Company

  

  Ben-L ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2018 @ 09:47am

  The saddest thing

  The saddest thing about this story is that the documents are probably over-hyped. As Casey Newton [noted on Twitter](https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1066470150516310016): "So the cache of secret documents reveals that ... Facebook had a developer API ... and promoted it ... to developers???"
  
  That Facebook had a broad and overreaching API was [known in 2011](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/24/facebook-was-warned-about-app-permissions-in-2011/). Only developers really cared when they started shuttering it in 2014 (hence the Six4Three lawsuit), until Cambridge Analytica gave politicians political cover to investigate it.
  
  I suppose the British parliament probably has broad authority to get these documents (perhaps they are explosive). However, it's troubling that they felt they needed to extort a Six4Three lawyer to get them.