28.10.2017 - 08:31 [ Techdirt ]

Forcing Internet Platforms To Police Content Will Never Work

For many years now, we‘ve pointed out that whenever people — generally legacy content companies and politicians — started pushing for internet platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter to „police“ content, that no matter what those platforms did, it was never going to be enough. For example, after years of resisting, Google finally caved to the demands of the MPAA and the RIAA and started using DMCA notices as a signal for its ranking mechanism. This was the first time that Google ever allowed outside actors to directly have some level of control in how Google ranked them in organic search. And in doing so, we feared two things would happen: (1) it would just encourage others to start demanding similar powers over Google and (2) even those to whom Google caved would complain that the company wasn‘t doing enough. Indeed, that‘s exactly what happened.