Just replaced my last HP printer.
The product support is dramatically weaker than it was 10 years ago. In a very specific sense. Tell the chatbot "X is wrong." Chatbot first suggests fixing something else, then, when that doesn't work, says you can fix X with an Instant Ink subscription. I tried a few different X, not just my actual issue.
The regulation imposes an obligation on the distribution companies to compensate the consumers. That shifts bargaining power to the media companies, who will use it. Raises prices, it appears.
There is another disadvantage of requiring transparency in moderation. Bad actors study "transparent" moderation rules and comply with the letter of the rules, while remaining awful. It is hard enough to moderate, particularly at large scale, without having to tell the trolls exactly how to evade the rules.
When I was last in government, the place to send an underperforming staffer was Health and Human Services, a sea of incompetence so deep that even our worst worker might raise their average. DHS appears to be taking over that role.
Two points, each starting from things I know and then moving to conjecture about things not known in public.
There are dozens and dozens of police forces and similar in DC. These guys appear only to have claimed to be law enforcement in social situations. Claiming to be from a DHS unit of remarkable boringness would both explain why they seemed to have a lot of resources and lower any interest by other security types to ask them about work.
Once proper law enforcement began to leak about these guys to the press (no, I wasn't on the phone when they leaked but I sure as hell know this happened) they leaked that this might be a big, worrisome superbad security mess. That would explain all the "troops" if they either really believed it or hoped it was true to score a supercollar. The picture is for the Court, not for the public and it, like everything else the FBI had, didn't convince said Court to hold these guys for trial.
A few blocks east of Judge Willett's and Judge Wilken's court is the west pediment of the US Supreme Court, where it says "Equal Justice Under Law." Glad to hear these judges remember and care.
Congressperson Boebert was not trying, never tries, to be analytically accurate about policy. She was tryng to lash out at Disney as part of the culture wars. It's pretty funny to us policy types that she confuses copyright for trademark, and to many people that she can't spell Mickey. But it is irrelevant to her purposes. And perhaps she, better than we, half recalls that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was widely lampooned as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
Autocratic governments typically use business-facing policies to quash any political criticism from enterprise. Proposed retaliation by the government of Florida against Disney or by the USA against Apple, Amazon, Twitter, Google for political speech they don't like smacks of Republican autocracy. When the retaliation is done by a government there are serious 1A issues. Yeah, that's why we have the first amendment, trying to avoid kings or other autocrats.
The proposal seems entirely confused. This is as anyone who understands what "censorship" means would forecast.
Mr. Musk's friend asked: "Would you consider building a new social media platform, @elonmusk? One that would consist an open source algorithm, one where free speech and adhering to free speech is given top priority, one where propaganda is very minimal. I think that kind of a platform is needed." Mr. Musk replies: "Am giving serious thought to this"
How, precisely, do you make "propaganda ... vey minimal" on your platform? By giving "adhering to free speech ... top priority?" Wake up Mr. Musk, many of your users want "free speech" so they can post propoganda.
Whether or not Mr. Musk's goals are desirable, they are infeasible. They will not be realized.
Huge databases on American residents, gathered privately, have important uses in Government. Consider, e.g., the Census, which is drowning under the cost and clumsiness of on-foot data collection.
But do they have any legitimate law-enforcement purpose? Maybe pre-locating them at law enforcement agencies to speed up legit warranted searches. Other examples?
... Ms. Anderson does not seem quite so highly educated. Yet she seems to have gotten right to the heart of the issue about the attorney, which is a failure of basic professionalism. There is another issue that the attorney appears to have sussed out a weakness in the TN courts which lets the privileged and powerful clamp down on the free speech rights of Ms. Anderson. But the attorney was already far down the path of abusing the authority granted her by the Court against this poor woman.
One of the reasons to get DirecTV out of AT&T was to run it like a business, which AT&T couldn't do.
TPG ditched OANN, like private equity companies do, closing financially "underperforming" news media. I didn't put "news" in quotes there because a PE's spreadsheets can't tell the difference between Chanel Rion and real reporters. DirecTV will likely lose the My Pillow infomercial channel as a result of this decision -- not much revenue lost there with the My Pillow brand imploding.
... and disses everyone else with the same member name (something to do with Anonymous Coward)? Is there a locus classicus for the participants in this naming dispute so the rest of us could engage in discussion? Mods, could you issue these guys sequence numbers or something?
the DOJ, at least when I was there, acted as if the trust of the courts was its most valued asset. It's not an asset you buy cheap.
The AG's memo of last July says "[t]he Department of Justice will no longer use compulsory legal process for the purpose of obtaining information from or records of members of the news media acting within the scope of newsgathering activities."
If I follow this, they are saying that they will not ask the court for a warrant without making the determination that there was an activity outside the scope of newsgathering activities. And this court wants to hear about that determination. (Lots of formal statements of prosecutorial discretion policy drift toward regulating DOJ/court interactions as if they were law.)
So, e.g., if they are asking for an arrest warrant for an act which is illegal and falls outside the scope of newsgathering, this is conceptually easy -- so if they are accusing Mr. Shroyer of a violent act, or of interfering with an official proceeding, might be easy. If they are accusing him of something journalists do all the time -- failing to disperse or taking photos of the police pushing the crowd -- also conceptually easy, within the scope of newsgathering. Who has any doubt that a difficult border of "scope of newsgathering activities" will arise in some future matter?
Shroyer appears to have declared himself to be part of the event not part of the coverage of the event, so it seems the DOJ could easily meet its own test. But that's not all that's needed, they also need to leave courts with a high level of trust that they did meet their own test.
The multiband nature of 5G standards has been out there for over a decade. I first heard of it in 2008, and I don't do this every day. Interested parties, such as the airline industry, weighed in on the FCC rules for it for years. The FAA now thinks further testing and adjustment is needed. Where were they when the issues were being decided? To come in now, after many billions of dollars have been spent in reliance on the regs, is not good government. There is an orderly process for interagency communication about future decisions to avoid messes like this. DOD and DOT are the least cooperative, in my experience, and through delay, the least responsible -- soldiers will die if I don't get to decide your policy for you, and planes will fall from the sky. No details needed, just the assertion that planes might fall, coming in decades late.
This is a broad general problem for automatic/algorithmic flagging, which the FB guys are farther down the road of understanding than the twitter folks because they got burned on it earlier. An automatic flagging system predicts whether there is a policy violation based on observables (including, e.g., photo content, automatic systems can be super powerful.) As long as that relationship is stable, the system will work. When a hostile actor can change that relationship, either by trying to change it or just by changing behavior, it blows up.
Why don't engineers quickly tumble to this? It is a human behavior problem, not a technical one.
Selling subscriptions crowds out product support
Just replaced my last HP printer. The product support is dramatically weaker than it was 10 years ago. In a very specific sense. Tell the chatbot "X is wrong." Chatbot first suggests fixing something else, then, when that doesn't work, says you can fix X with an Instant Ink subscription. I tried a few different X, not just my actual issue.
Tough thing to regulate
The regulation imposes an obligation on the distribution companies to compensate the consumers. That shifts bargaining power to the media companies, who will use it. Raises prices, it appears.
Transparency in Moderation
There is another disadvantage of requiring transparency in moderation. Bad actors study "transparent" moderation rules and comply with the letter of the rules, while remaining awful. It is hard enough to moderate, particularly at large scale, without having to tell the trolls exactly how to evade the rules.
DHS taking over HHS' old slot
When I was last in government, the place to send an underperforming staffer was Health and Human Services, a sea of incompetence so deep that even our worst worker might raise their average. DHS appears to be taking over that role.
Two points, each starting from things I know and then moving to conjecture about things not known in public. There are dozens and dozens of police forces and similar in DC. These guys appear only to have claimed to be law enforcement in social situations. Claiming to be from a DHS unit of remarkable boringness would both explain why they seemed to have a lot of resources and lower any interest by other security types to ask them about work. Once proper law enforcement began to leak about these guys to the press (no, I wasn't on the phone when they leaked but I sure as hell know this happened) they leaked that this might be a big, worrisome superbad security mess. That would explain all the "troops" if they either really believed it or hoped it was true to score a supercollar. The picture is for the Court, not for the public and it, like everything else the FBI had, didn't convince said Court to hold these guys for trial.
A few blocks east of Judge Willett's and Judge Wilken's court is the west pediment of the US Supreme Court, where it says "Equal Justice Under Law." Glad to hear these judges remember and care.
Congressperson Boebert was not trying, never tries, to be analytically accurate about policy. She was tryng to lash out at Disney as part of the culture wars. It's pretty funny to us policy types that she confuses copyright for trademark, and to many people that she can't spell Mickey. But it is irrelevant to her purposes. And perhaps she, better than we, half recalls that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was widely lampooned as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
Autocratic governments typically use business-facing policies to quash any political criticism from enterprise. Proposed retaliation by the government of Florida against Disney or by the USA against Apple, Amazon, Twitter, Google for political speech they don't like smacks of Republican autocracy. When the retaliation is done by a government there are serious 1A issues. Yeah, that's why we have the first amendment, trying to avoid kings or other autocrats.
Also, the city's or county's or police union's attorneys may not want crime stats available as evidence in future litigation.
Musk's proposal is (surprise!) confused
The proposal seems entirely confused. This is as anyone who understands what "censorship" means would forecast. Mr. Musk's friend asked: "Would you consider building a new social media platform, @elonmusk? One that would consist an open source algorithm, one where free speech and adhering to free speech is given top priority, one where propaganda is very minimal. I think that kind of a platform is needed." Mr. Musk replies: "Am giving serious thought to this" How, precisely, do you make "propaganda ... vey minimal" on your platform? By giving "adhering to free speech ... top priority?" Wake up Mr. Musk, many of your users want "free speech" so they can post propoganda. Whether or not Mr. Musk's goals are desirable, they are infeasible. They will not be realized.
If its paid for, send it to Census
Huge databases on American residents, gathered privately, have important uses in Government. Consider, e.g., the Census, which is drowning under the cost and clumsiness of on-foot data collection. But do they have any legitimate law-enforcement purpose? Maybe pre-locating them at law enforcement agencies to speed up legit warranted searches. Other examples?
Lotta highly educated people here on Techdirt and ....
... Ms. Anderson does not seem quite so highly educated. Yet she seems to have gotten right to the heart of the issue about the attorney, which is a failure of basic professionalism. There is another issue that the attorney appears to have sussed out a weakness in the TN courts which lets the privileged and powerful clamp down on the free speech rights of Ms. Anderson. But the attorney was already far down the path of abusing the authority granted her by the Court against this poor woman.
This content moderation effort is like the invasion itself ...
... more Fahrenheit 45.1 than 451.
just an ordinary business decision
One of the reasons to get DirecTV out of AT&T was to run it like a business, which AT&T couldn't do.
TPG ditched OANN, like private equity companies do, closing financially "underperforming" news media. I didn't put "news" in quotes there because a PE's spreadsheets can't tell the difference between Chanel Rion and real reporters. DirecTV will likely lose the My Pillow infomercial channel as a result of this decision -- not much revenue lost there with the My Pillow brand imploding.
thank you
Re: Re: so everybody has the same member name ....
Okay, thanks. You are Purple AC.
so everybody has the same member name ....
... and disses everyone else with the same member name (something to do with Anonymous Coward)? Is there a locus classicus for the participants in this naming dispute so the rest of us could engage in discussion? Mods, could you issue these guys sequence numbers or something?
prosecutorial discretion and the trust of the courts
the DOJ, at least when I was there, acted as if the trust of the courts was its most valued asset. It's not an asset you buy cheap.
The AG's memo of last July says "[t]he Department of Justice will no longer use compulsory legal process for the purpose of obtaining information from or records of members of the news media acting within the scope of newsgathering activities."
If I follow this, they are saying that they will not ask the court for a warrant without making the determination that there was an activity outside the scope of newsgathering activities. And this court wants to hear about that determination. (Lots of formal statements of prosecutorial discretion policy drift toward regulating DOJ/court interactions as if they were law.)
So, e.g., if they are asking for an arrest warrant for an act which is illegal and falls outside the scope of newsgathering, this is conceptually easy -- so if they are accusing Mr. Shroyer of a violent act, or of interfering with an official proceeding, might be easy. If they are accusing him of something journalists do all the time -- failing to disperse or taking photos of the police pushing the crowd -- also conceptually easy, within the scope of newsgathering. Who has any doubt that a difficult border of "scope of newsgathering activities" will arise in some future matter?
Shroyer appears to have declared himself to be part of the event not part of the coverage of the event, so it seems the DOJ could easily meet its own test. But that's not all that's needed, they also need to leave courts with a high level of trust that they did meet their own test.
time is needed for testing and making planes safe: 2008-2019
The multiband nature of 5G standards has been out there for over a decade. I first heard of it in 2008, and I don't do this every day. Interested parties, such as the airline industry, weighed in on the FCC rules for it for years. The FAA now thinks further testing and adjustment is needed. Where were they when the issues were being decided? To come in now, after many billions of dollars have been spent in reliance on the regs, is not good government. There is an orderly process for interagency communication about future decisions to avoid messes like this. DOD and DOT are the least cooperative, in my experience, and through delay, the least responsible -- soldiers will die if I don't get to decide your policy for you, and planes will fall from the sky. No details needed, just the assertion that planes might fall, coming in decades late.
hard to do automatic flagging when behavior changes
This is a broad general problem for automatic/algorithmic flagging, which the FB guys are farther down the road of understanding than the twitter folks because they got burned on it earlier. An automatic flagging system predicts whether there is a policy violation based on observables (including, e.g., photo content, automatic systems can be super powerful.) As long as that relationship is stable, the system will work. When a hostile actor can change that relationship, either by trying to change it or just by changing behavior, it blows up.
Why don't engineers quickly tumble to this? It is a human behavior problem, not a technical one.