Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@social.cleverlibre.org

@drustevenson As long as marijuana is on that list, people will be prosecuted under this law for marijuana. Someone being charged and sentenced for this is an injustice, and thus it is good that it was struck down.

As for the second part of your post, it took me like three seconds to find this for my home state:
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0700-0799/0790/Sections/0790.157.html#:~:text=(1)%20It%20is%20unlawful%20and,a%20firearm%20in%20this%20state.

@ocdtrekkie And I'm glad that the federal judiciary isn't as excited about chilling speech as you seem to be.

@ocdtrekkie If the OEM chooses to stop supporting old hardware, then yes, they're the ones responsible for hardware discard cycles.

Unless Google is preventing them from updating their old devices to new versions of the software, it's not Google's fault. And even then, there are some extenuating circumstances where it makes sense.

Is Microsoft responsible for hardware that ran Windows 3.1 not being able to run Windows 10?

@ocdtrekkie No, they can't be held liable. Fast food isn't liable for diabetes. Video games aren't liable for health effects of sedentary lifestyle. Movie studios aren't liable for people who decide to copy something stupid they saw in a movie and end up dead or in jail.
The opioid thing was for misleading marketing, aka outright fraud. That's different.

Those companies aren't liable for those things because human beings are responsible for our own actions. We're responsible for deciding not to cram as much McDonalds into our mouths as we can until we die.

We can choose whether we just want to watch a video of some dogs or a bullet going through a watermelon in slow-mo or if we want to go down the rabbit hole of radicalization.

I can tell you right now I wouldn't be radicalized no matter how many times some company recommended it to me. If someone is getting those videos recommended to them, it's because they probably want to watch them. If they're clicking on the recommendations, it's because they definitely want to watch them.

It's crazy to me that the three parties here are: (1) the user, actively seeking out harmful content, (2) the uploader, actively creating and sharing harmful content, and (3) the provider, slightly reducing the friction in connecting 1 and 2 to make a profit.

And 3 is where you're most concerned. 🤦‍♂️

@ocdtrekkie Do you also have significant issues about fast food companies deliberately promoting unhealthy meals because doing so is more profitable than presenting healthier meals?

Do you have significant issues about video game companies deliberately promoting games because doing so is more profitable than presenting educational software?

Do you have significant issues about film studios deliberately promoting exciting fiction full of violence because doing so is more profitable than presenting factual documentaries?

These issues exist across the spectrum of our commercial world. So long as we consumers are given the choice to reject a company if we disagree with their actions, it's fine.

The way these algorithms work has been covered so extensively that it's common knowledge, even among people who don't use social media. If people continue to choose to use them, that's an implicit endorsement of the status quo. That's because the status quo gives them what they want too because it works both ways.

If Facebook or Google had little meters in the back labelled "Fascism" and there was some worker back there dialing them up while cackling maniacally, I'd be on your side.
But all these algorithms do is recommend the well-beaten path that others have chosen to travel before. If human nature leads us to beat paths to bad places, that's not Facebook's or Google's fault, and it shouldn't be their liability.

@ocdtrekkie Boy you really gloss over that "didn't manufacture the hardware" problem really easily, didn't you?

There's no reason that old hardware can't run new software.

Google isn't the one dropping support: It's the manufacturers. They could keep pushing firmware updates for the phones they manufacture until the end of time, but because people want to buy shiny new phones every couple years, it isn't worth it to them, so they assign an end-of-life.

Once again, this is a problem driven by demand as much, if not more so, than supply.

@ocdtrekkie I'm well aware of externalities are.

I guess my bigger concern is this: You're trying to cut off the supply of dangerous content, like videos intended to radicalize people, even if it does a ton of collateral damage. And you're not considering the demand side of the equation at all.

In other words, your strategy is indistinguishable from the War on Drugs.

@ocdtrekkie That's complete bullshit. They already implement hundreds of systems to protect the safety and security of their users, not because any law demands it, but because it's good for the user experience which (get this!) drives profits.

It's up to users to vote with their wallets about which features they care most about.

By leaving Twitter for Mastodon, users such as me (and presumably you) are active participants in the marketplace of ideas that is currently punishing the hell out of Twitter's profitability for its poor decisions.

@ocdtrekkie Again, you've got the agency in that sentence backwards. Nobody forces anyone to watch. Nobody forces anyone to click the recommendations in the list.

People make those decisions for themselves.

You write about Facebook like crime reporters write about police sidearms.

"The victim was injured when the officer's weapon discharged."
"The victim was injured when the assailant was fully radicalized by Facebook."

@ocdtrekkie You left out the last bit.

"Google has decided this will make them more ad money to show you because they think you'll like it because it resembles other things you've liked in the past."

@brody This really scares me. I really wanted KSP2 to be awful. Both because I was concerned about executive meddling and because I don't want to lose another 800 hours of my life...

@ocdtrekkie No, they're entirely responsible for all content they create themselves.

The rules work the same for everyone. They're not responsible for your speech and you're not responsible for theirs.

That's how it should be.

@ocdtrekkie Except it's really more like the Dewey Decimal System.

Like reading one book on Hitler? Just go to that shelf and you'll find a dozen more, plus other books on tangential subjects.

That's also effectively a recommendation system.

@ocdtrekkie Facebook can't "drive" anyone to suicide. Suicide is a deeply personal decision based on multiple factors.

All Facebook can do is expose people to triggers, but it's still the choice of the user whether they want to expose themselves to Facebook.

It's not any tech company's responsibility to sanitize the internet to protect every individual.

People are responsible for their own actions.

@ocdtrekkie No, they aren't "unaware", but they're also not active participants.

If someone asks a librarian for books about Hitler, and the librarian gives them a list, is the librarian responsible for radicalizing a new fascist?

@ocdtrekkie As for your other question, yes. You can't prevent harm without first performing studies to determine what causes it. It's a good thing that they're doing such studies.

@ocdtrekkie It's from the same Haugen document release you're talking about, lol. https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/facebook-removed-the-news-feed-algorithm?s=09