allen
8mo ago
This is roughly where I land with Section 230. The intention was to allow large tech companies (and small blogs, etc.) to host user comments without taking on liability for hosting illegal or defamatory content. Maybe I'm reading between the lines too much here, but the intent appeared to be to shield companies who had user-generated content from liability for content they didn't control.
As large companies work more and more toward controlling what users can say on their platform, the argument could be made that they are getting closer and close to editors, who choose what content goes in their paper. And if you're picking and choosing who can say what on your platform, and are telling users "you can't say this, it's misinformation", it sounds like editorial activities, and it certainly seems like platforms should have the capability (and as such, the responsibility) to police libelous and other content.
Were I able to dictate my preference to the big tech companies, my idealized solution would be a situation where the tech company itself doesn't police anything stricter than US guidelines, but provide an API for third parties to review and filter posts that users can subscribe to. You want to hide all posts with profanity? Choose that provider. Want to hide all posts with misgendering? There's a filter for that too. But then the user is doing the "editing" rather than the platform.
allen
1yr ago
If you're going quite young, The Wolf's Chicken stew has excellent illustrations, a moral about friendship, and no culture warring. My family read it to me a lot growing up.
allen
2yr ago
These are designed to be imported into a userscripts extension: Greasemonkey (for Firefox), TamperMonkey for Chrome and other Blink-based browsers, and Userscripts for Safari. You'd save the javascript file linked above, then import it into the extension of your choice, and you end up with infinite scrolling, thanks to bnfrmt's work.
allen
2yr ago
For me, I think it works when I hit "load additional comments" at the bottom, but not initially, and not for "load deeper threads" loads. On the default theme, it's suble-ish-- a grey highlight. Is that how's it working for you?
allen
2yr ago
While we're on the topic of quality contributions, do we want to continue them here? if so, should we just custom report them? TheMotte workflow looks different than our old digs, and I'd hate to clog up the queue too much.
allen
2yr ago
I read this book a few years ago. And it was impossible for me to put down. Something about knowing it was real and still survived for as long as it did was shocking.
I've been going down the "cons" rabbit hole lately (mostly with podcasts), and it surprises me how long it takes for some of the simple scams to really get people in trouble.
This is a good point that I hadn't previously considered. They had a previously designed compliance tool available to them, and in that case, why not use it to make their platform a better and more pleasant place (however they define it)?
If I'm looking to consume or ingest information (or keep up with friends), this is the way to go. The downside for companies is a lack of discoverability, which limits the time you spend on their platform.
I'm sure a large chunk of especially social media company's desire to curate/editorialize user content is a desire to keep users cozy, and incentivize time spent on the platform.
More options
Context Copy link