I think the best way to put it is, users with the same user picked settings should see the same things, in the same order.

That's a given on HackerNews, as there's only one frontpage. On Reddit that would be, users subscribed to the same subreddits would always see the same things on their frontpages. Same as users on YouTube subscribed to the same channels, users on Facebook who liked the same pages, and so on.

The real problem starts when the algorithm takes into account implicit user actions. E.g., two users are subscribed to the same channels, and both click on the same video. User A watches the whole video, user B leaves halfway through. If the algorithm takes that into account, now user A will see different suggestions than user B.

That's what gets the ball rolling into hyper specialized endless feeds which tend to push you into extremes, as small signals will end up being amplified without the user ever taking an explicit action other than clicking or not suggestions in the feed.

As long as every signal the algorithm takes into account is either a global state (user votes, total watch time, etc), or something the user explicitly and proactively has stated is their preference, I think that would be enough to curb most of the problems with algorithmic feeds.

Users could still manually configure feeds that provide hyper personalized, hyper specific, and hyper addictive content. But I bet the vast majority of users would never go beyond picking 1 specific sport, 2 personal hobbies and 3 genres of music they're interested in and calling it a day. Really, most would probably never even go that far. That's the reason platforms all converged on using those implicit signals, after all: they work much better than the user's explicit signals (if your ultimate goal is maximizing user retention/addiction, and you don't care at all about the collateral damage resulting from that).

Another possibility would be to somehow incorporate the possibility of publishing the algorithm and providing some kind of "under the hood" view that reveals to people what determined what they're seeing. Part of the issue currently is that everything is opaque. If Facebook could not change their algorithm without some of kind of public registration process, well, it might not make things better but it might make it get worse a bit slower.

So a simple "most viewed in last month" page would trigger a loss of protection? Because that ranking is determined by number of views, rather than a proactive user decision like upvoting.

The thing that's missing is the difference between a unsolicited external content (ie. pay-for-play stuff) and directly user-supplied content.

If you're doing editorial decisions, you should be treated like a syndicator. Yep, that means vetting the ads you show, paid propaganda that you accept to publish, and generally having legal and financial liability for the outcomes.

User-supplied content needs moderation too, but with them you have to apply different standards. Prefiltering what someone else can post on your platform makes you a censor. You have to do some to prevent your system from becoming a Nazi bar or an abuse demo reel, but beyond that the users themselves should be allowed to say what they want to see and in what order of preference. Section 230 needs to protect the latter.

The thing I would have liked to see long time ago is for the platforms / syndicators to have obligation to notify their users who have been subjected to any kind of influence operations. Whether that's political pestering, black propaganda or even out-and-out "classic" advertising campaign, should make no difference.

So to be clear, anything other than a 4chan-like unmoderated chronological feed results in loss of section 230 protection?

Heck, even 4chan wouldn't qualify, because despite considerably looser content rules they still actually do perform moderation.

> literally the opposite of a pitchfork idea

The mere fact that commenters think banning advertising is a simple and realistic idea, without any constitutional road blocks or practical objections, is what I mean when I say these comment sections are just angry bloviating with unrealistic expectations.

If you think banning all advertising is “simple” then I don’t know what to say, but there isn’t a real conversation here.

The parent comment called for banning all advertising, not for banning ads promoting social media platforms.

They don’t want anyone to be able to advertise anything. Not even your local contractors trying to advertise their businesses that you want to find, because that’s advertising.

The tobacco ad ban isn’t relevant to what was claimed.

I think we can separate the banning of things which affect personal freedom from the rest. Like if oil were "banned", I'm imagining it's not illegal to possess oil, but rather oil companies wouldn't be able to drill it up and sell it anymore. A bit like fazing out asbestos. The ordinary people with asbestos tiles in their basement don't get into trouble, but new house builds can't/won't use that tile anymore.

ID requirements seem like the main burden is being put on ordinary people instead of corporations, and by extension seems clearly bad.

It really has turned into a bitter losers bitch fest in here.

I imagine that prosecutors don’t pierce the corporate veil for public companies often because “DA charges 87 year old grandmother with stake in Evil Corp in her pension fund with manslaughter, local union members brace for additional charges against members” doesn’t make for good headlines or good justice either.

The officers and board of the company aren’t protected by the corporate veil concerning their actions. They retain some degree of protection from actions of others within the corporation provided they did not have (or did not have a reason to suspect) knowledge of those activities. But to my knowledge that’s not special to officers, it applies to any employee which is why the rank and file Enron employees didn’t get prosecuted.

> You can prosecute and imprison officers and/or the board.

Right, that's just normal individual criminal prosecution; it doesn't require prosecuting the corporation.

Of course, it's possible for the corporation to be guilty of a crime without any individual officer or board member being guilty.

> A corporation isn’t a magical immunity shield for them - for some reason prosecutors have shied away from piercing the corporate veil.

Piercing the corporate veil is holding shareholders liable for certain debts (including criminal or civil judgements) of the corporation. It has nothing directly to do with criminal prosecution of corporate officers or board members for crimes committed in the context of the corporation (though there are certainly cases where both things are relevant to the same circumstances.)

This. I've reported scammers so many times in Facebook, it's so obvious but obviously it's not a priority for them.