> Twitter, FB, etc still try to do rule-based moderation. Sometimes they later discover there's problem content that the rules don't cover.
Ex post facto laws are prohibited, ie. retroactively make something a crime and then charge people for breaking that law. This is something Twitter et all do all the time. The law is rules-based, and something like that is what this article is recommending. Whatever Twitter et al are doing is not that.
We can take a cynical guess at what they're doing though: negative PR minimization. Negative PR is proportional to the size of the mob that's upset about it, so this ultimately reduces to mob rule. The law is intended to eliminate mob rule.
> They still have these complicated appeals boards and processes.
Their appeals process is not complicated. It's "my word goes, so you'll take my judgment and like it; you have no representation or say in these decisions, and I'm not going to tell you what rule you broke or specifically how you broke that rule; I can in fact change any rule arbitrarily so that you are ex post facto guilty, and there's nothing you can do about it, but we're going to be performative about abiding to 'rules' to project the illusion of impartiality and fairness, unless of course the rules inconvenience us". There are countless examples of this.
Governments also try these tactics from time to time, but with the separation of powers they are often smacked back in line by the courts. Do you see a comparable separation of powers in these corporations?
> So I consider what they do 'not so far' from what the essay recommends because it's the same paradigm, just terribly implemented.
I disagree. It's not the same paradigm because the principles and processes at play are not remotely the same. These companies are acting on the principle maximizing their profitability, which I think leads to the negative PR minimization principle, which ultimately reduces to a form of mob rule. This is often the opposite of fair and just, and this article is about requiring these corporations to legally uphold other principles to re-align their incentives for fairer outcomes.
Ex post facto laws are prohibited, ie. retroactively make something a crime and then charge people for breaking that law. This is something Twitter et all do all the time. The law is rules-based, and something like that is what this article is recommending. Whatever Twitter et al are doing is not that.
We can take a cynical guess at what they're doing though: negative PR minimization. Negative PR is proportional to the size of the mob that's upset about it, so this ultimately reduces to mob rule. The law is intended to eliminate mob rule.
> They still have these complicated appeals boards and processes.
Their appeals process is not complicated. It's "my word goes, so you'll take my judgment and like it; you have no representation or say in these decisions, and I'm not going to tell you what rule you broke or specifically how you broke that rule; I can in fact change any rule arbitrarily so that you are ex post facto guilty, and there's nothing you can do about it, but we're going to be performative about abiding to 'rules' to project the illusion of impartiality and fairness, unless of course the rules inconvenience us". There are countless examples of this.
Governments also try these tactics from time to time, but with the separation of powers they are often smacked back in line by the courts. Do you see a comparable separation of powers in these corporations?
> So I consider what they do 'not so far' from what the essay recommends because it's the same paradigm, just terribly implemented.
I disagree. It's not the same paradigm because the principles and processes at play are not remotely the same. These companies are acting on the principle maximizing their profitability, which I think leads to the negative PR minimization principle, which ultimately reduces to a form of mob rule. This is often the opposite of fair and just, and this article is about requiring these corporations to legally uphold other principles to re-align their incentives for fairer outcomes.