It seems we're at the point where stupid takes from apparent students (i.e. Tammana Malik, who specializes in intellectual property law) are uplifted as if they're serious policy takes. For instance, talking about Section 230 as if it would only make anti-social conduct go away, rather than broadly chilling expression, or leading to poorer moderation practices (i.e. blunter instruments), and to a greater number of frivolous lawsuits which might be good for a lawyer's career but bad for everyone else.
While writing about policy might be an interesting project for a student, and in that context, it might be alright, the problem lies in when a stupid take is treated as if it is an actually serious and informed take, rather than a clumsy and harmful one. It's the typical "I've been here for a few minutes and I have a simple fix in mind for all our problems", and being ignorant of all the ways in which "simple fixes" have been harmful in the past. The issues involved are fairly nuanced.
Then, there is an invocation of the slogan "safety by design" which was invented by a foreign politician more concerned with looking powerful over tech companies (even if in a manner which is extremely harmful), and shaking hands with Discord's executives, than with protecting anyone's rights. "looking powerful" is not a valid policy goal.
It is a close cousin of "duty of care" where anytime a feature is misused, that is taken as an invitation to demand a company "does something"[1], even if that something is something completely unreasonable. Then, someone pretends this is somehow the same as workplace safety where someone's rights are not implicated by measures to "make things safer".
Vacuous demands to "do something" are neither useful or productive but they do contribute to a higher word count for an article. So, in that sense, they might serve some purpose, even if practically speaking, they're harmful for society.
There are also elements of hypothesizing fantastical scenarios which "require" rights violating interventions and barely have any substance to them, or where if there are any, it is not remotely proportionate (much like shutting down a park because crime might happen there). Just because someone can come up with an idea or hypothetical doesn't mean that it is useful to do so. Maybe, that is useful for "padding the word count" but it is not in the slightest useful here.
One example of this is with VR and "CSAM" (which has never been documented to be an issue there, and as I've covered before, it would be a very poor medium for disseminating things like photographs through). There is hardly an incentive for someone to do so and it would be a lot of work to do so. And if someone is doing it, how about going after them specifically? Then, there is a general sense that bad people might do bad things to people with VR. If so, we can presumably punish them for that, or you know, someone could use those tools which already exist to keep people a certain distance away, or something which doesn't involve clumsy censorship (censorship of say porn, same interpretation as in the porn science post, wouldn't solve anything, it would stifle a lot of legitimate usage though #FreeSpeech) or messing around with statutes which the writer doesn't understand (they also clearly don't understand the First Amendment, although that is a whole story of it's own which I'd rather not get into here). Comparing it to "AI" also doesn't make it akin to "AI"[2] (and concerns about free expression also apply there). #Metaverse
It also remains fascinating how something like "VR", something which hardly anyone uses so far, and is considered a flop so far, still attracts people to regurgitate ignorant hot takes about what should be done, almost as if a laboratory. It's even tempting to ignore these ignorant takes, however, it might also be dangerous to do so, with someone talking about messing with Section 230 and other sensitive statutes.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism Politician's syllogism.
2 https://qoto.org/@olives/112402648186219830 Commentary on the U.S. Department of Commerce's "AI" takes.
