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panarky a day ago

Generalize this.

Every landlord should be directly accountable for all crimes committed by their tenants.

Every telco should be directly accountable for all crimes committed by their customers.

Meta should pay damages when their users stalk and harass people.

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shortstuffsushi a day ago | parent | next [-]

There are levels to this though.

You wouldn't hold a landlord accountable if it was a surprise that a crime took place, but if they were aware that some of their tenants were committing crimes and just "choosing not to ask about it," they could reasonably be called "accountable."

Telcos are regularly asked to give up information regarding crimes committed by their customers, see the Patriot Act for details - in some sense, we as a country have decided to hold them accountable for this (though, not spam).

Meta have been involved in a whole list of litigation that is at minimum adjacent to stalking/harassment, if not directly involving those things. I would need to look up to be more specific, though.

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panarky 12 hours ago | parent [-]

You moved the goalposts to make your arguments.

You say landlords should only have accountability for the crimes of their tenants if they chose to do nothing to prevent their property from being used for crime.

Google doesn't just ignore bad advertisers, they prevent the vast majority of malicious ads and report the worst offenders to law enforcement. Google is already doing far more than what you say immunizes landlords.

You say telcos are in the clear because they give info to law enforcement on demand.

Google also does this, so according to your goalposts, Google is also in the clear.

You say Meta is in the clear because they have been sued for crimes their platform enabled.

Google has also been sued and paid billions in damages.

The standard I'm asking you to generalize is the one I replied to: "hold Google directly accountable for every malicious ad they allow through their network".

If this standard can't generalize to landlords, telcos, Meta and everyone else who has a platform that bad actors abuse, then it's a bogus standard.

	▲	shortstuffsushi 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I will concede that I missed the "every" in the GP comment - and you're right, that by itself is probably an unreasonable standard. I do think there is more that Google could do to address what most of us would call "known" bad actors, in the same way that telcos could do more to drop bogus spoofers. It's great that Google is doing something, but it's also knowingly leaving channels open that are for illegitimate operators.

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BLKNSLVR a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I know what you're trying to say, but you're saying it terribly.

If Ad Platforms don't want to be held responsible for the fraud that their platform literally delivered to the victim, then they should have KYC for all of their Customers that pay them money to deliver advertising to their victims. That way, shock fucking horror, someone or something might actually be able to be held responsible.

And if the argument is that there are many ways that scapegoats can be used and shell companies setup to avoid actual responsibility, then we'll know more about the next layer of regulation that's required.

Or we just give up and say that fraud is OK (which, I believe, is the current thinking in the US).

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dpkirchner a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Try generalizing the argument without changing it substantially, then we'll talk.