Comment by rcoveson
5 years ago
No, I don't think that's how it would play out.
1. Google bans parler.com on Jan. 8th by adding it as an "unsafe URL" to their blacklist.
2. Mozilla issues statement: "While we don't believe it was prudent to use the Safe Browsing blacklist for this purpose, given recent events, we will not be unblocking parler.com, and do not currently deem it necessary to maintain a separate safe browsing list."
3. Something similar happens a few months from now, and this time there's no statement from Mozilla or Microsoft. It has now become accepted that blacklisting less-moderated social media, which can cause real-world harm, is a normal use for the Safe Browsing list.
The problem is, if a mainstream browser goes against the flow, it becomes "The Nazi Browser." Its market share was already less than Chrome's, and now it's getting all these new users who are outcasts. This is a Hard Problem of moderation in a small market. You can't be the one out of three players who moderates less, lest you be overwhelmed by undesirables and less-desirables.
I can't tell if this is true or not - was parler.com actually blocked with this mechanism?
No, they were taken down by their cloud provider and by the two mobile app stores. My story was hypothetical, though disturbingly the companies involved don't entirely change when you talk about a take down from a different layer.
I guess just entirely inventing the slope and start points as well as a predicted trajectory is a new achievement in "slippery slope" arguments. Congratulations.
More seriously, maybe invent imaginary third parties rather than arbitrarily assigning your imagined bad motives and awful consequences to real people who did none of what you've suggested?
Google could, if they wanted, just add a new category to Safe Browsing. They could call it "Arbitrary censorship" or "Nazis are bad" or whatever you want. There are already several categories which even use slightly different parameters for the core technology so this wouldn't substantially change the system and yet would add much more flexibility if you wanted (as you might well) to protect against Phishing whether from Nazis or not, while still visiting a popular web site organising the overthrow of American democracy.
How is talking about mechanisms for taking parler.com offline "entirely inventing the slope"? It was taken offline by its cloud provider and its apps were removed. Google was even involved in the takedown. Nothing outlandish is being discussed here.
As for "bad motives and awful consequences", what are you talking about? Is wanting to take parler.com offline an objectively "bad motive"? Is succeeding in that endeavor an "awful consequence"? This is the heart of the problem: Weighing consequences is hard when faced with real threats. So when the two consequences are "parler.com becomes inaccessible" and "the integrity of the Google Safe Browsing URL list is slightly compromised", I think it's at least possible that executives would decide to compromise the list.
The problem is, if a mainstream browser goes against the flow, it becomes "The Nazi Browser." Its market share was already less than Chrome's, and now it's getting all these new users who are outcasts.
This whole problem only started because browsers stopped being neutral to the content and basically adopted the harmful "if you're not with us, you're against us" stance that seems to be propagating through everything these days. None of the "smaller" browsers (and I mean smaller than Firefox - the Dillos, Netsurfs, and Lynxes) do anything like this.