Racist goons are targeting the FCC chief — and his family

[ThinkingSapien]

That being the case, if Facebook or Google wish to censor what appears on their sites, well, those sites are their property and they are within their rights to do so.

Or using another existing portal. They are out there. Note that in the YouTube case Google wasn’t removing video, the video was just eligible for less (or now) revenue.

 

[Rhubarb]

And while Google and Facebook have huge market shares they aren’t the only search engines and social media sites. Not in the same way that for a huge percent of the population, we’re limited to one or two ISPs of any worth. (Excluding dial up services that do not function at speeds that make them viable)

 

[upant]

Google wasn’t removing video, the video was just eligible for less (or now) revenue.

google was also accused of manipulating search results to place their point of view first and burying the actual search request results down the page.

if you can’t see the forest for the trees so be it.

i agree with franken.

There’s nothing stopping you building your own site or portal, and allowing whatever you want on it.

the big tech companies stifle competition.

adjustments of their demonetization process was that advertisers saw their videos were playing before some content to which they objected.

more to the story, items were demonetized because the company producing them was perceived to be so and so. not all demonetization was based on actual content. if you casually sold guns, even though you didn’t advertise them or link to them in your video, you were demonetized.

It’s not a Net Neutrality issue.

it was in the original rule written by obama’s fcc. google lobbying had it tossed.

 

[niceatheist]

niceatheist:

There’s nothing stopping you building your own site or portal, and allowing whatever you want on it.

the big tech companies stifle competition.

You could go register a domain and have a site up and running in about an hour. Facebook doesn’t owe you a platform.

 

[upant]

You could go register a domain and have a site up and running in about an hour. Facebook doesn’t owe you a platform.

how do people find your domain?

 

[niceatheist]

So start your own search engine. I fail to see why it’s Google’s obligation to index your web page.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

google was also accused of manipulating search results

An accusation isn’t necessarily a description of what happened. That’s not a strong way of supporting your stance to others. I’ll help you out here though. Google prevented the German BMW page from showing up in search results for one year, Disallowed “Rap Genius” from showing up on the first page of search result. It Blocked YouTube from working on Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Amazon’s Echo Show. These are not just accusations, Google made it known they were doing this and their reasons why. None of these were net neutrality issues.

By any chance are you referring to a very specific case?

more to the story, items were demonetized because the company producing them was perceived to be so and so. not all demonetization was based on actual content. if you casually sold guns, even though you didn’t advertise them or link to them in your video, you were demonetized.

A video’s classification isn’t based only on it’s dialog. It is also influenced by the classification of other videos uploaded under the same account, community feedback, and other data.

it was in the original rule written by obama’s fcc. google lobbying had it tossed.

Here you appear to be saying that there was something in a draft version of the net neutrality rules that didn’t actually make it to be part of the net neutrality rules and that it’s an issue in the context of the earlier draft. Is that correct? Have I misrepresented what you are communicating in any way? Because if I’m not then it sounds like you are saying that it is not an issue with the rules that did become what we call Net Neutrality.

how do people find your domain?

This gets into the domain that we call “Marketing.” To start you could tell people about your domain. If you can develop a friendly (or business) relationship with other sites you might be able to get them to link to yours.

 

[upant]

Here you appear to be saying that there was something in a draft version of the net neutrality rules that didn’t actually make it to be part of the net neutrality rules and that it’s an issue in the context of the earlier draft.

so if something doesn’t make the cut, it doesn’t exist? or do you keep trying until you get it passed into law.

again this is my point, as franken said

the same basic principles of net neutrality should apply here: no one company should have the power to pick and choose which content reaches consumers and which doesn’t.

“Marketing.”

good luck with your marketing scheme.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

so if something doesn’t make the cut, it doesn’t exist?

If something isn’t a part of a rule it can’t be used to say that someone is violating that rule.

 

[upant]

upant:

so if something doesn’t make the cut, it doesn’t exist?

If something isn’t a part of a rule it can’t be used to say that someone is violating that rule.

i did not say that.

it isn’t a rule. i am advocating it to be included in the rule.

i said, “should not be able to”; i did not say they were not allowed to.

i posted “was calling for laws against what google…” i did not say google violated anything

i said, they need to be regulated.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

i did not say that.
it isn’t a rule. i am advocating it to be included in the rule.
i said, “should not be able to”; i did not say they were not allowed to.

Okay, the word “should” can be ambiguous as it can be used to express obligation/duty, or to express expectation, or to express agreement with some position, or some combination of the above.

i said, they need to be regulated.

There already exists rules and regulations to which Google and YouTube are bound. Thus far it sounds like you are asking that privately owned companies that host third party have their rights revoked to make decisions on how that third party content is shown and which if any of their advertising partners that they pair that content with. You are asking for laws that protect this right to be revoked. You’ve mentioned there had existed some rule that would have been a solution without ever identifying or sharing what this rule would be. Would you mind sharing it?

Google has shared arguments on it’s rights to do this using other cases and existing laws as part of the foundation for these arguments.
Google:

Google Is Immune Under Section 230(c )(1)
Section 230(c )(1) prohibits any claim that would treat the provider of an “interactive computer service” “as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 47 U.S.C.§230(c)(1), As the Ninth Circuit has explained, this provision, “by itself, shields from liability all publication decisions, whether to edit, to remove, or to post, with respect to the content generated entirely by third parties” Barnes, 570 F.3d at 1105. In essence, “any activity that can be boiled down to deciding whether or not to exclude material that third parties seek to post online is perforce immune under section 230”
[…]
Section 230(c )(1) also extends to other “traditional editorial functions”, Zeran, 129 F.3d at 330, including selecting ads to run with user-submitted content, filtering, user content, and applying age verification rules.
[…]
Section 230(c )(2)(B) bars claims against interactive computer service providers for “any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to the material described in paragraph(1).” Under this provision, a service provider that provides “tools that filter, screen, allow, or disallow content that the provider or user considers obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable may not be held liable for any action taken to make available the technical means to restrict access to that material.”

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Additionally Google argues that First Amendment rights also give YouTube the ability to decide if and how to make content available.
Google:

These protections fully apply to online service providers, which have the First Amendment right to decide how to best select, arrange, and display third-party content on their private services. That is why, for example, search engines have been consistently immunized from liability for their decisions not to include certain websites in search results.
[…]
These decisions are akin to those of the motion picture association issuing an “R” rating, or cable operator deciding whether and at what time certain programming should air, or newspapers deciding whether and where ads should appear in their pages.

Some have argued that because of YouTube’s size that access to their platform is necessary for free speech. Google points out that this was argued before against Facebook. Facebook successfully defended themselves a case last year in which someone claimed free speech violations (among many other alleged violations) after he was suspended from making comments. He was trying to defend Kelly Anne Conway when some articles were published about her comments on the fictitious “Bowling Green Massacre” and he felt his first Amendment rights were violated by Facebook not allowing him to have unrestricted access to post his opinions, facts, and false facts. A court dismissed this case (Schulman v Facebook) saying they failed as a matter of law, that Facebook is not a state actor and thus isn’t obligated to allow all comments without restrictions.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

google was also accused of manipulating search results to place their point of view first and burying the actual search request results down the page.

Looking for something else I came across a conservative opinion site that made this exact same claim with a video from Veritas Visuals composed of a number of clips played back out of order with a lot of context removed. Is that where you got this from?

 

[upant]

Is that where you got this from?

this case applies to the search being manipulated in europe. the ec has other cases against google pending. please link to the veritas, i haven’t seen it.

Antitrust: Commission fines Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service

The European Commission has fined Google €2.42 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules. Google has abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service.

ec.europa.eu

European Commission - Press release
Antitrust: Commission fines Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service

The Commission also continues to examine Google’s treatment in its search results of other specialised Google search services.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

this case applies to the search being manipulated in europe.

I read the legal documents. As I understand what I read this appears to be a case on whether or not Google can be allowed to give preference to Google Comparative Shopping results over comparative shopping results offered by other companies. It’s also an unsettled case that is in it’s infancy; the EU filed charges, three months later Google filled an appeal claiming that the EU’s method of evaluating its impact to be flawed and doesn’t take other online retailers into account such as Amazon and Ebay. That’s been the entirety of the transactions in the case. But either way that turns out that doesn’t appear to be something to have implications on monetization algorithms and filtering results on YouTube.

Are you in the EU? In the USA there have been numerous settled cases (against Twitter, Facebook, and others) that have ruled that these companies that host user content are also by their own free speech rights allowed to make “editorial decisions” on the content. The limits of “Free Speech” are different in europe. A case demonstrating this is when Facebook removed a post of what they thought to be a pornographic photograph of a vagina. The image was actually a picture of a painting a vagina named “l’Origine du Monde.” They were sued for a free speech violation in France on that. I don’t know if that case had a final ruling.

I think it may be best though to interpret each case thought of as a potential violation according to the local laws. The people specifically named thus far within this thread have been within the USA

please link to the veritas, i haven’t seen it.

I can’t immediately find it and have to hop in my car for some meetings. I will try to post it later on today. The basic assertions behind the video though are that relationships between people that know each other in Google and news outlets results in those news outlets having higher rankings in Google Search results than more conservative outlets get. The video was much in the same style as the secretly recorded planned parenthood videos.

 

[SuperLuigi]

It’s obvious to anyone with a brain that Google, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook are censoring conservative opinions.

Whether or not they are allowed to is a question based on

1. Monopoly and
2. Contract violations

Otherwise, people do need to find alternative markets and we’ll see if these companies change their mind with dollars fleeing their pockets or if they want to go down like Nero into his blackhole of self-righteous indignation.

 

[petra22]

I noticed just this week on fb on DT add 6K likes for the add 304 angry and two responses were uncovered and posted both angry… go figure… happened more than once this week with the negative responses being visible but nothing positive… That’s new.

 

[SuperLuigi]

The responses to Donald Trump are often just as bad what he said (when it was bad) if not worse.