Posted on 08/06/2018 9:09:48 PM PDT by vannrox
All your base are belong to us. A leaked memo circulating among Senate Democrats contains a host of bonkers authoritarian proposals for regulating digital platforms, purportedly as a way to get tough on Russian bots and fake news. To save American trust in "our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets," it suggests, we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into online press and markets, including "comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation" of the sort enacted in the E.U.
Titled "Potential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms," the draft policy paper—penned by Sen. Mark Warner and leaked by an unknown source to Axios—the paper starts out by noting that Russians have long spread disinformation, including when "the Soviets tried to spread 'fake news' denigrating Martin Luther King" (here he fails to mention that the Americans in charge at the time did the same). But NOW IT'S DIFFERENT, because technology.
"Today's tools seem almost built for Russian disinformation techniques," Warner opines. And the ones to come, he assures us, will be even worse.
Here's how Warner is suggesting we deal:
Mandatory location verification. The paper suggests forcing social media platforms to authenticate and disclose the geographic origin of all user accounts or posts.
Mandatory identity verification: The paper suggests forcing social media and tech platforms to authenticate user identities and only allow "authentic" accounts ("inauthentic accounts not only pose threats to our democratic process...but undermine the integrity of digital markets"), with "failure to appropriately address inauthentic account activity" punishable as "a violation of both SEC disclosure rules and/or Section 5 of the [Federal Trade Commission] Act."
Bot labeling: Warner's paper suggests forcing companies to somehow label bots or be penalized (no word from Warner on how this is remotely feasible)
Define popular tech as "essential facilities." These would be subject to all sorts of heightened rules and controls, says the paper, offering Google Maps as an example of the kinds of apps or platforms that might count. "The law would not mandate that a dominant provider offer the serve for free," writes Warner. "Rather, it would be required to offer it on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms" provided by the government.
Other proposals include more disclosure requirements for online political speech, more spending to counter supposed cybersecurity threats, more funding for the Federal Trade Commission, a requirement that companies' algorithms can be audited by the feds (and this data shared with universities and others), and a requirement of "interoperability between dominant platforms."
The paper also suggests making it a rule that tech platforms above a certain size must turn over internal data and processes to "independent public interest researchers" so they can identify potential "public health/addiction effects, anticompetitive behavior, radicalization," scams, "user propagated misinformation," and harassment—data that could be used to "inform actions by regulators or Congress."
And—of course— these include further revisions to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, recently amended by Congress to exclude protections for prostitution-related content. A revision to Section 230 could provide the ability for users to demand takedowns of certain sorts of content and hold platforms liable if they don't abide, it says, while admitting that "attempting to distinguish between true disinformation and legitimate satire could prove difficult."
"The proposals in the paper are wide ranging and in some cases even politically impossible, and raise almost as many questions as they try to answer," suggested Mathew Ingram, putting it very mildly at the Columbia Journalism Review.
Not all Democrats are communists. but most communists in the US are Democrats
I’m beginning to think these Russians the Democrats speak of are really members of the Republican Party and American citizens.
regulating digital platforms, like net neutrality, do not mean what they sound like.
Fakebook, yourube, twitsh!t et al are free to downthrottle, shadowban, blacklist, ban, demonetize, etc anyone they want without oversight or review but if you post something critical of Democrats you should be required by law to be investigated and Comcast must offer top download speeds to Netflix and youtube content.
got it.
biggest fake news story in a political campaign was Dan Ratherbiased’s forged national guard memos and HBO-CBS-AP still insist that they were fake but accurate.
FUDNCMSM
Long live the anonymous “Mesh-Net”...
The Stasi could only wish for this.
The democrat party demands it!
Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”, advocating independence from England, was published anonymously. The Dems would prohibit this sort of activity.
Q !A6yxsPKia. No.122 📁 Aug 6 2018 18:39:46 (EST) The BILL that opened the door for TWITTER, FB, GOOG, etc. to CENSOR & CONTROL. https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/5181/text📁 Think Russian bots. Think Foreign propaganda. The more you know. Q
Clickable
https://archive.fo/20180807060826/https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/5181/text
I don’t ever want a lefty to speak if a free press ever again
They probably got it from the Red Chinese or the Communist Vietnamese. Both have that practice in effect.
Hmm. Do we have “Communist collusion” by the Democrats? Wouldn’t be the first time and won’t be the last time either. Why break a winning streak from the 1930’s?
It’s the liberal way - bastardize and abuse something so bad that “something needs to be done to prevent the abuse” and then let the abusers take it over as the “solution”....
Once again “the big lie” is employed to further a fascist policy goal.
You’re right. There are islamists, pedophiles, atheists, disaffected blacks and hispanos, every type of sexual perversion that crawls, thieves, murderers....You know. damnocrats.
They DO know, don't they, that these bots aren't robots manufactured in a plant with union workers, right? They don't get a VIN number. You might as well require terrorist bomb-makers to register their bombs.
required to offer it on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms" provided by the government.
"Reasonable and non-discriminatory''... as defined by Maxine Waters, etc... uh-huh
and a requirement of "interoperability between dominant platforms."
Brilliant! Rail against the vulnerability of systems to bots, and then centralize and streamline the systems to make them universally vulnerable, increasing the potential damage by orders of magnitude! Truly, yours is a dizzying intellect.
must turn over internal data and processes to "independent public interest researchers"
Yeah, those "independent" folks... just like there are no political slants to judges, or the UN, or the media... mm hmmmmmm...
This is a ploy. A well thought out plan to get Repubs pissed enough to pass a law giving control to a bureaucrat. Then they take control. Sue on the first Amendment and also on preventing business in the case of NRA and hundreds of others. Make sure the Banks and Credit card companies are included. All of it is Socialist tactics.
This was kind of a domino effect scandal We had few issues with media lies back then, now it is non stop every breath they take
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