Removing Section 230 would stifle engagement and interaction in the online realm.

Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act is currently being called into question by lawmakers, and this raises red flags for both producers and consumers within the online realm.

Section 230 states “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

If the granting of this protection were to be removed, any online sharing site (ranging from food blogs to Facebook pages to search engines to simulation games) could be held accountable for the online activity of users and affiliates.

For example, the current questionable image from Jaimie Lee Curtis’ account would hold Instagram as liable for the contested offensive or artistic picture featured in the post.

And while Big Tech may be able to bulk up capacity to counter claims for such cases, social media startups and casual content creators better beware.

It is not a matter of whether online activity should be moderated, but rather who does the moderating. If Section 230 protections were to be removed, this would discourage the creation of new social networking sites and create a mandate for an online surveillance state.

So, since some political officials believe online service providers should be held liable for suggestions, search results, and social feeds, and given that hearings on the Hill have exposed an ineptitude for most things tech related, here is an illustration of how Section 230 plays out in an offline scenario.

Read the full text here

L’Europe a choisi de ne pas devenir le marché mondial pour les produits et services innovants, préférant devenir le terrain de jeu ultime des restrictions bureaucratiques. 

Récemment, le commissaire européen au Marché intérieur s’est rendu à San Francisco avec une importante délégation de bureaucrates. Sa mission : s’attaquer de front aux grandes entreprises technologiques américaines.

Le rôle important de Thierry Breton – ancien PDG de France Télécom et d’Atos, entre autres, mais aussi ex-ministre de l’Economie sous Jacques Chirac – au sein de l’organe exécutif de l’UE consiste à superviser le commerce dans le système du marché unique européen, qui compte près de 500 millions de consommateurs et de citoyens. Ce rôle lui confère un pouvoir considérable. Quel autre homme politique européen pourrait organiser des réunions avec Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg et Sam Altman en une seule journée ?

Bien que le mandat de M. Breton soit assez vaste – il couvre tous les domaines, du haut débit aux plateformes en ligne, en passant par le changement climatique –, son objectif à San Francisco était de rencontrer des géants de la technologie et des PDG américains afin de les préparer à l’application imminente de la loi sur les services numériques (Digital Services Act, DSA), une loi européenne globale destinée à créer un « espace numérique plus sûr » pour les Européens. Cette loi entrera en vigueur à la fin de ce mois d’août et imposera des dizaines de nouvelles obligations aux sociétés de l’Internet qui souhaitent servir des utilisateurs dans l’Union européenne.

Cette législation sur les services numériques pourrait être décrite comme le modèle réglementaire européen pour les grandes entreprises technologiques et l’Internet. Le seul problème est qu’une infime partie des entreprises visées par la loi sur les services numériques pour des restrictions ou des réglementations sont basées dans l’UE. Sur les 17 entreprises désignées comme « très grandes plateformes en ligne » par la loi – ce qui signifie qu’elles seront soumises à la réglementation et aux règles les plus contraignantes – une seule est basée en Europe : Il s’agit de Zalando, un commerce de mode en ligne.

La responsabilité des autres

Les autres viennent principalement… vous l’avez deviné… des Etats-Unis. Il s’agit d’entreprises telles que Meta, Twitter, Google, Snapchat et Amazon, mais aussi d’entreprises chinoises telles que TikTok et Alibaba.

Le DSA met en œuvre une série de restrictions et de règles étendues qui vont bien au-delà de toute réglementation américaine sur ces groupes : des limites sévères sur la publicité ciblée, une modération plus diligente des contenus pour supprimer ce que l’UE considère comme des contenus « illégaux », des protocoles pour éliminer la « désinformation », et bien d’autres choses encore.

Si l’on considère à quel point les grandes entreprises numériques ont été contraintes de censurer les utilisateurs pour apaiser les régulateurs aux Etats-Unis, la situation ne fera qu’empirer à l’étranger. Si les principaux objectifs du DSA sont bien intentionnés – préserver la vie privée des consommateurs et protéger les mineurs – la manière dont ces dispositions sont appliquées ou interprétées devrait préoccuper tous ceux d’entre nous qui croient en un web ouvert.

Tout d’abord, la désinformation et les contenus illégaux sont soumis à la responsabilité des plateformes.

Aux Etats-Unis, la section 230 du Communications Act de 1934 exempte les plateformes de toute responsabilité à l’égard des messages publiés par les utilisateurs. En Europe, toutes les grandes plateformes en ligne seront obligées de contrôler instantanément leurs utilisateurs ou de s’exposer à des sanctions sévères, tout en étant confrontées à des questions impossibles à résoudre. Les plateformes décideront-elles de ce qu’est la désinformation ou les gouvernements fourniront-ils des exemples ? Que se passera-t-il si un gouvernement se trompe, comme dans les premiers jours du Covid ? Ou s’il a des intentions plus malveillantes, comme dans les sociétés de surveillance non libres ?

« Réglementer d’abord, innover ensuite »

En l’absence d’une protection de la liberté d’expression comparable au premier amendement américain sur le continent européen, nous savons que les demandes de censure des fonctionnaires européens engloutiront bientôt des budgets entiers d’entreprises technologiques pour s’y conformer, de l’argent qui serait autrement utilisé pour apporter de la valeur aux utilisateurs. Cela en vaudra-t-il la peine ? La nouvelle plateforme de médias sociaux de Meta, Threads, n’a pas été lancée en Europe, très probablement parce que l’entreprise n’a pas la certitude qu’elle ne sera pas frappée par une réglementation stricte qu’elle n’est pas en mesure d’appliquer.

Nous savons que chaque plateforme a la capacité de modérer ou de censurer comme elle l’entend, mais cela se fait généralement par le biais de politiques et de codes internes que les utilisateurs acceptent volontairement, et non en réaction à un policier qui tient la matraque réglementaire. Plutôt que de se concentrer sur la restriction et la limitation des entreprises technologiques américaines, les Européens devraient faire tout leur possible pour changer leurs propres règles afin de favoriser l’innovation que la Silicon Valley a été en mesure de fournir pendant des décennies.

L’état d’esprit promulgué par Bruxelles est « réglementer d’abord, innover ensuite », dans l’espoir que le talent et les idées naîtront d’un environnement stable et réglementé. Si tel était le cas, nous aurions des dizaines de licornes technologiques européennes se disputant la domination mondiale. Au lieu de cela, il n’y en a pratiquement aucune. Ou bien elles ont été rachetées par une entreprise américaine.

L’Europe a choisi de ne pas devenir le marché test mondial pour les produits et services innovants, préférant devenir le terrain de jeu ultime des restrictions bureaucratiques et juridiques. Alors que certains politiciens et régulateurs américains peuvent regarder la situation d’un œil satisfait, il est clair que les consommateurs et les créateurs sont laissés pour compte sur le Vieux Continent, et que les utilisateurs américains seront bientôt dans le collimateur.

Originally published here

Last week, a bespeckled white-haired Frenchman strolled the streets of San Francisco in between high-profile meetings and uncomfortable photo ops.

With his horn-rimmed round glasses, wavy hair, and tailored suit, as well as a full entourage of slickly-dressed Europeans, the European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, made his rounds in Silicon Valley.

Breton’s powerful role within the EU’s executive body is to oversee trade in Europe’s single market system, comprising nearly 500 million consumers and citizens. It makes him tremendously powerful. What other European politician could secure meetings with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman in just one day?

While the mandate for Breton’s role is rather large — everything from broadband to online platforms, and climate change — his goal in San Francisco was to meet with US tech titans and CEOs to prepare them for the imminent enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA), an all-encompassing EU law intended to create a “safer digital space” for Europeans.

The law will come into force at the end of August and lay dozens of new obligations on internet companies that wish to serve users in the European bloc.

The DSA could best be described as Europe’s regulatory model for Big Tech and the Internet. The only problem? Only a sliver of the companies the Digital Services Act targets for restrictions or regulations are even based in the EU.

Out of the 17 companies designated “Very Large Online Platforms” by the law — meaning they will be held to the highest burden of regulation and rules — only one is based somewhere in Europe: Zalando, an online fashion retailer.

The rest are from…you guessed it…the United States. This includes firms such as Meta, Twitter, Google, Snapchat, and Amazon, but also Chinese firms such as TikTok and Alibaba.

The DSA enforces a litany of expansive restrictions and rules that go far beyond any US regulation: severe limits on targeted advertising, more diligent content moderation to remove what the EU deems “illegal” content, protocols for weeding out “disinformation”, and more.

Considering how much Big Tech has been forced to censor users to appease regulators in the free speech haven of the US, it will only get worse overseas.

While the principal aims of the DSA are well-intended — safeguarding consumer privacy and protecting minors — how these provisions are enforced or interpreted should concern all of us who believe in an open web.

To begin, there is platform liability attached to both disinformation and illegal content. In the US, we have Section 230, which exempts platforms from being liable for users’ posts. In Europe, every major online platform would be forced to instantly police its users or face severe penalties while still being weighed down by impossible questions.

Do platforms decide what is disinformation or will governments provide examples? What if a government gets it wrong, like in the early days of COVID? Or has more malicious intent like in unfree surveillance societies?

With no First Amendment-like protections for speech on the European continent, we know the censorious demands of European officials will soon swallow entire budgets of tech firms in order to comply, money that would otherwise be used to deliver value for users. Will it all be worth it?

We know that each platform has the ability to moderate or censor as they see fit, but this is usually done by internal policies and codes that users voluntarily accept, not reaction to a policeman holding the regulatory baton. Rather than focusing on restricting and limiting American tech firms, the Europeans should be doing everything possible to change their own rules in order to foster the innovation that Silicon Valley has been able to provide for decades.

The mindset promulgated from Brussels is “regulate first, innovate later,” in hopes that the talent and ideas will spring from a stable, regulated environment. If that were the case, we’d have dozens of European tech unicorns vying for global dominance. Instead, there are barely any. Or they’ve been bought up by an American company.

Europe has chosen to forgo becoming the world’s test market for innovative products and services, opting instead to be the ultimate playground of bureaucratic and legal restrictions. While some American politicians and regulators may look over with a gleeful eye, it is clear that consumers and creators are getting left behind on the Old Continent, and American users will soon be in the crosshairs.

Originally published here

A lawsuit against Google seeks to hold tech giants and online media platforms liable for their algorithms’ recommendations of third-party content in the name of combating terrorism. A victory against Google wouldn’t make us safer, but it could drastically undermine the very functioning of the internet itself.

The Supreme Court case is Gonzalez v. Google. The Gonzalez family is related to Nohemi Gonzalez, an American tragically killed in a terror attack by ISIS. They are suing Google, YouTube’s parent company, for not doing enough to block ISIS from using its website to host recruitment videos while recommending such content to users via automated algorithms. They rely on antiterrorism laws allowing damages to be claimed from “any person who aids and abets, by knowingly providing substantial assistance” to “an act of international terrorism.”

If this seems like a stretch, that’s because it is. It’s unclear whether videos hosted on YouTube directly led to any terror attack or whether any other influences were primarily responsible for radicalizing the perpetrators. Google already has policies against terrorist content and employs a moderation team to identify and remove it, although the process isn’t always immediate. Automated recommendations typically work by suggesting content similar to what users have viewed since it’s most likely to be interesting and relevant to them on a website that hosts millions of videos. 

Platforms are also shielded from liability for what their users post and are even permitted to engage in good-faith moderation, curation and filtration of third-party content without being branded publishers of it. This is thanks to Section 230, the law that has allowed for the rapid expansion of a free and open internet where millions of people a second can express themselves and interact in real time without tech giants having to monitor and vet everything they say. A lawsuit victory against Google will narrow the scope of Section 230 and the functionality of algorithms while forcing platforms to censor or police more.

Section 230 ensures that Google won’t be held liable for merely hosting user-submitted terrorist propaganda before it was identified and taken down. However, the proposition that these protections extend to algorithms that recommend terrorist content remains untested in court. But there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. The sheer volume of content hosted on platforms like YouTube means that automated algorithms for sorting, ranking and highlighting content in ways helpful to users are essential to the platforms’ functionality. They’re as important to user experience as hosting the content itself. 

If platforms are held liable for their algorithms’ recommendations, they’d effectively be liable for third-party content all the time and may need to stop using algorithmic recommendations altogether to avoid litigation. This would mean an inferior consumer experience that makes it harder for us to find information and content relevant to us as individuals.

It would also mean more “shadow-banning” and censorship of controversial content, especially when it comes to human rights activists in countries with abusive governments, peaceful albeit fiery preachers of all faiths, or violent filmmakers whose videos have nothing to do with terrorism. Since it’s impossible to vet each submitted video for terrorism links even with a large moderation staff, tooling algorithms to block content that could merely be terrorist propaganda may become necessary. 

Conservative free speech advocates who oppose big-tech censorship should be worried. When YouTube cracked down on violent content in 2007, it led to activists exposing human rights abuse by Middle Eastern governments being de-platformed. Things will get even worse if platforms are pressured to take things further.

Holding platforms liable like this is unnecessary, even if taking down more extremist content would reduce radicalization. Laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provide a notice-and-takedown process for specific illegal content, such as copyright infringement. This approach is limited to user-submitted content already identified as illegal and would reduce pressure on platforms to remove more content in general.

Combating terrorism and holding big tech accountable for genuine wrongdoing shouldn’t involve precedents or radical laws that make the internet less free and useful for us all.

Originally published here