U.S. Congress is getting ready to pass an internet censorship law

the_randomizer · Apr 2, 2018

TotalInsanity4 said:
I suppose you'd be fine without a penalty for murder or theft, then?...

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Ok THIS I can agree with

Did I say that? No, I'm just saying, I don't trust the government in regulating what's offensive, what needs censoring, etc. It's bad enough they took away net neutrality, now this BS?

Navonod · Apr 2, 2018

Oh your god. Better get your tin foil hat to.

TotalInsanity4 · Apr 2, 2018

the_randomizer said:
Did I say that? No, I'm just saying, I don't trust the government in regulating what's offensive, what needs censoring, etc. It's bad enough they took away net neutrality, now this BS?

You specifically said that you'd rather trust personal responsibility, rather than making more laws. I'm saying that that can't always be the case, nor should it, really

the_randomizer · Apr 2, 2018

TotalInsanity4 said:
You specifically said that you'd rather trust personal responsibility, rather than making more laws. I'm saying that that can't always be the case, nor should it, really

So people aren't worried that this will be a slippery slope for pusillanimous and unnecessary censorship? I'm just saying, someone could say an innocuous word and some butthurt punk will report is as "sexual" when it's not. This will totally be abused.

TotalInsanity4 · Apr 2, 2018

the_randomizer said:
So people aren't worried that this will be a slippery slope for pusillanimous and unnecessary censorship? I'm just saying, someone could say an innocuous word and some butthurt punk will report is as "sexual" when it's not. This will totally be abused.

There's a pretty bold line between something being "sexual" and something being "sexually exploitive". I'd like to think that we'd have some form of fair judge on the other end of the process, but that might just be me being optimistic to a fault

the_randomizer · Apr 2, 2018

TotalInsanity4 said:
There's a pretty bold line between something being "sexual" and something being "sexually exploitive". I'd like to think that we'd have some form of fair judge on the other end of the process, but that might just be me being optimistic to a fault

I'm not holding my breath to see any real good coming out of this.

osaka35 · Apr 2, 2018

Think of how functional youtube is with its flagging system. Now imagine your video could get flagged for people's comments on your video. Now imagine the entire internet is like this, but add jail time as a possible consequence. This is the potential people are worried about.

TotalInsanity4 · Apr 2, 2018

osaka35 said:
Think of how functional youtube is with its flagging system. Now imagine your video could get flagged for people's comments on your video. Now imagine the entire internet is like this, but add jail time as a possible consequence. This is the potential people are worried about.

Except imagine that the FBI was in charge of issuing flags rather than sites, and the sites are given a short window of time to take the content down after it's been flagged

osaka35 · Apr 2, 2018

TotalInsanity4 said:
Except imagine that the FBI was in charge of issuing flags rather than sites, and the sites are given a short window of time to take the content down after it's been flagged

how short of a window? and how many flags before they stop giving you chances? Will they use that as a way to bring litigation ("thousands of flags within a month" as justification)

Are they going to hire loads of agents to just police the internet, though? I suspect they'll have bots do the work with maybe a person reviewing it at some point once it's passed a certain threshold.

TotalInsanity4 · Apr 2, 2018

osaka35 said:
Are they going to hire loads of agents to just police the internet, though? I suspect they'll have bots do the work with maybe a person reviewing it at some point.

You do understand that they already have loads of agents "just" to police the internet, right?

Edit: For that matter, they actually even have a division specifically for policing child sex trafficking via the internet in place currently, but that division is currently chasing down leads, rather than being allowed to act in a preventative manner

kuwanger · Apr 2, 2018

TotalInsanity4 said:
Except imagine that the FBI was in charge of issuing flags rather than sites, and the sites are given a short window of time to take the content down after it's been flagged

Yep, the good old FBI. They're really good at issuing flags appropriately. Never let shooters through. Never issue out NSL with indefinitely spans allowing warrantless searches that amount to nothing. Yep, I totally trust the FBI.

Meanwhile, back in reality, if there's actual sex trafficking going on, I don't want a website pulled offline. I wanted subpoena and/or warrants issued, those being trafficked rescued, and those doing the trafficking put in prison. I want most* websites to be functional honeypots, where people are investigated legally (without censorship laws), and then the ads just silently disappear because they're no longer relevant. Goodness, what was stopping the FBI from doing the above up until this point? A lack of resources?

Yep, the solution then is to give the FBI unilateral power to take down ads/web pages/web sites or...risk a punishment they can't be bothered/aren't capable of administrating? I guess they can leverage Google, Microsoft, or whoever to block the websites when they can't afford to do it or risk some sort of punishment...which they could probably have threatened before due to being some sort of co-conspirator and the general negative publicity of being associated with sex trafficking. Of course, this gives them a bigger threat club and the gray area is a lot bigger to swing it into, so double plus good for them.

* If you find a website that's explicitly** encouraging sex trafficking and/or makes no effort to block it but does block other content, there by making it pretty implicitly clearly they support sex trafficking, then yea, get them as co-conspirators.

** Not merely gray areas stuff will people conflate "Asian" with "must be human trafficking", "young" with "must be underage", or go by a list of "code words" that a lot of people don't know and wouldn't know to mean whatever the FBI says they mean. Sure, notify the people that you believe that's what's going on, but don't just presume everyone knows that "potato" means something special. Also, I really hope potato doesn't mean anything.

raystriker · Apr 2, 2018

A dystopian future isn't too unimaginable now, is it? So much for freedom, 'murica.

osaka35 · Apr 2, 2018

TotalInsanity4 said:
You do understand that they already have loads of agents "just" to police the internet, right?

Edit: For that matter, they actually even have a division specifically for policing child sex trafficking via the internet in place currently, but that division is currently chasing down leads, rather than being allowed to act in a preventative manner

There's a bit more work involved, though. It's not just like they're adding an extra click in their workload. And how is taking down a website preventative? I mean, why shut it down when you could exploit it to actually help people? Or, rather, just whatever Kuwanger said lol.

If they had actual science or data that supported this position as somehow better than what they're legally capable of at the moment, then maybe...but I suspect they'd rather just like the power to do what they want rather than actually being more effective at helping people.

TotalInsanity4 · Apr 2, 2018

osaka35 said:
There's a bit more work involved, though. It's not just like they're adding an extra click in their workload. And how is taking down a website preventative? I mean, why shut it down when you could exploit it to actually help people? Or, rather, just whatever Kuwanger said lol.

If they had actual science or data that supported this position as somehow better than what they're legally capable of at the moment, then maybe...but I suspect they'd rather just like the power to do what they want rather than actually being more effective at helping people.

It's not the taking down of the the site, it's the threat of action if content isn't pulled. If we're being honest, I'd rather that the action take the form of a fine equal to a percentage of daily revenue per day (or a fixed minimum, if it's a non-profit site), but this is at least a start

Transdude1996 · Apr 3, 2018

TotalInsanity4 said:
and the sites are given a short window of time to take the content down after it's been flagged

If you live in the United States and you ever took even a high-school level civics class, you probably ran across the concept of an ex post facto law. This refers to a situation where, if I’m in government and you do something legal that I don’t like, I make a law against it, I make that law retroactive, and then I use it to prosecute you for what you already did. That’s not how law works, and it’s not allowed.
But FOSTA contains this little tidbit:
(b) EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendments made by this section shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and the amendment made by subsection (a) shall apply regardless of whether the conduct alleged occurred, or is alleged to have occurred, before, on, or after such date of enactment.
Whoops. I guess Mrs. Mimi Walters of California (the author of the text above) skipped civics class. To be fair to Mrs. Walters, the US Constitution is very vague on this point, and the language is convoluted and hard to follow. (“No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” – Article 1, Section 9)
https://archive.fo/OsPBB
https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2018/02/28/act-now-the-latest-effort-to-censor-you-fosta-is-here/

the_randomizer · Apr 3, 2018

Yeah, this law totally won't be abused at all

kuwanger · Apr 6, 2018

Sex ads website Backpage.com seized by U.S. authorities: posting

<sarcasm>Never saw this coming</sarcasm>

Edit: Oh, apparently SESTA isn't even law yet. So, why did we need SESTA again?

U.S. Congress is getting ready to pass an internet censorship law

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