The problem is they almost never actually honor these requests. I know several victims of stalking (including myself) who have had no luck with these forms, even when we've met the narrow and extreme criteria required including doxxing, death threats, etc. And if the forms don't work, there is no option B: courts will reject any challenges to remove content due to section 230, and if they won't take it down, then Google won't either and you're just stuck dealing with it indefinitely. It's been a special kind of hell that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. It impacts your reputation, your career, your friends, etc. It makes you suspicious of everyone because you don't know when it's just another stalker digging for more dirt. Section 230 really needs a carve-out for cyberstalking and extortion.

They have no competition to care anymore. Their closest competitor, Bing, has a 2.24% market share which consists mostly of people who don't bother to change their default browser's default search engine. Competition is necessary to breed innovation. See for example, IE6.

That is true! Why should google do something? They say "use ads", to make money.

Use other search engines is the only way to do something.

Or Twitter could let accounts create categories for their tweets so that you could opt-in or opt-out to them when you follow people. I may be into finance but I want to be able to post other things too, as I'm human. Trying to juggle multiple accounts is frustrating and time-consuming, and often thwarted by randomized phone number verification requirements on new accounts.

I suspect this is going to be a huge boon for services like ahrefs that crawls the web and provides information on which URLs on the internet link to which other URLs.

> It allows the NYT to hide behind pawns they would love to sacrifice in the name of spreading convenient lies.

And when it comes to Twitter or other sites, how do you sue one of its users who posts libel and defamation about your character, when said user is hiding behind a VPN anyway?

Twitter is hosting the content, and chooses not to take it down, so if that content breaks actual laws (libel, cyberstalking, etc), they should be held responsible for it.

Whereas if it falls within the purview of free speech, then they should have nothing to worry about.

I realize it's not a popular sentiment here because we want to build platforms and not worry about the legality, but giving websites blanket immunity to host law-breaking content because "it was posted by someone else" means that all of our laws become unenforcable on the internet.

Twitter does take down content that breaks actual laws when ordered to so by a court. So the state you're asking for already exists.

I can't say I've even heard of a court order for Twitter to remove a tweet before.

Is that really practical, though? To spend thousands of dollars on legal fees to take down a single tweet from an anonymous account that will just repost it again and again? Meanwhile every time Twitter is completely immune to any consequences for hosting and distributing said content?

It's a sucky situation. A service like Twitter can't really function if they're responsible for the content on the site, but all our existing laws are effectively unenforceable on the web otherwise.

I think the hope people have for the removal of section 230 shielding is that Twitter and other content hosting providers will take existing laws more seriously. For instance, Cloudflare today says "there should be laws to handle this stuff, we don't want to enforce anything", and to date the CEO has only ever made two exceptions to that.

The contrarian side to that is going too far and Twitter et al becoming too censorious and taking down legitimate free speech content. None of these service providers can afford to have a legal team on standby to determine what constitutes fair use and free speech or not.

I don't have an answer, I'm just saying this isn't a one-sided issue. Right now the internet has a real problem with libel and cyberstalking. It's one of those things that one tends to not realize or think/care about until it happens to them.

Twitter already does take down legitimate free speech content. Their terms of service are far more restrictive than the US Constitution. And sometimes Twitter management takes down content or bans users on a purely arbitrary basis just because they don't like it (or they think their major advertising customers won't like it).

There's nothing special about Twitter or any other Internet site. If someone libels you then you have recourse through the civil courts. And if you file pro se then it's very cheap.

> API, CLI & Web App for analyzing & finding a person's profile across +300 social media websites

> could help in investigating profiles related to suspicious or malicious activities such as cyberbullying, cybergrooming, cyberstalking, and spreading misinformation.

It will much more likely be used to aid cyberbullying and cyberstalking. Those types love digging for more information by finding their targets' profiles on other social media sites.

Those types of trolls are much more adept at using randomized usernames, disposable e-mail addresses, and VPN clients because they know what they're doing is potentially illegal.

Lol, exactly. This is a doxxing tool, who do you think is going to use that?

People who dox are doing to do it anyway. This tool will make it really easy for people to find holes in their own (or their organizations) presence.

Surely you don't expect ordinary people to "find holes in their [online] presence" using this tool...

This tool is recipe for stalking.

Honestly, searching for myself was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this. Although I might not be an "ordinary" person.

Would you also consider Google search a recipe for stalking? It provides a larger set of results, but you can easily narrow down your results to social media sites...

It’s a tool, much like a knife is a tool. They can be used for good or bad. The tool is indifferent.

People who have something to be ostracized over do this all of the time. This tool is great for someone trying to hide something about their identity (e.g. being gay).

You can use it to find your own forgotten stuff, or on third parties for which you have approval (ie. security gig).

It is not the first tool in that spirit, there's a lot more available in Kali Linux for example, including Maltego.

Targeted enterprise sales^W^Wspam?

Exactly.

BUT, this may bring awareness to regular folks. You can also use it to remove your own stuff from said networks because people do not catalogue their online activity and it can be hard to remove your digital footprint.

I'd pay for a service that would do this,

1. Find my digital footprints on social media

2. Compare that to my desired level of public activity, e.g., do not share photos of me

3. Provide tools to delete, scrub, send takedowns, etc.

4. template an online persona, and cede it across the web, create footprints use SEO type methods to promote a desired public image.

4. Hope they don't keep their own backup copies for later use :-P

There’s privacy duck and delete me, but they’re mostly focused on the scammier public data collection sites where it’s harder to remove your information.

Yup, I'm more curious to find out what I can find out about myself more than anything else.

I know when I started out what I struggled with and how difficult it was to learn things. But after having learned them, I have a lot of trouble explaining how I got there. I can't remember why it was hard anymore, as it just seems easy to me now. This is a large part of why I don't enjoy writing documentation or teaching others. Point being, I know about this problem in me, it's not a blind spot, there's just not a lot I can do about it.

Exactly, most things are easy when you understand them, so even if it took a long time to "get" them, once you do, you tend to forget with time, how difficult it is.

> it's often the cognitive aspect that challenges the autistic

Yes, that perfectly matches my experiences.

I have far too much affective empathy, but struggle with cognitive empathy and often unintentionally make enemies because I am too clumsy with my words and social interactions, and can't properly gauge social roles (such as when a person looks up to me and would be hurt to hear any criticism from me.)

It stings me when people repeat that I have no empathy at all, and I wish this was better understood by others. Thank you for pointing it out so eloquently.

(Only speaking for myself here, not others! All of us are very different.)

Perhaps those who misunderstand you also lack the cognitive empathy towards you!?

(edit: removed the phrase "your unintentional enemies" from my sentence above)

If you are sufficiently hurt you can be angry about what someone says to you even if you nominally understand they didn't mean to.

> all of this happened over a year ago and is essentially a closed chapter.

Very credibly threatening to sue your employer with a legal firm, regardless of whether you were in the right to do so, is never a closed chapter. Companies are made of people, and those people are not going to forget something like that. They're going to be waiting for their first chance to get rid of you.

Right or wrong, justified or not, if you threaten your employer with a lawsuit, you need to be looking for a new employer that very same day. The employment relationship is now irrevocably a hostile one.

While Japan has great national health insurance, you still have to pay 30% of it. So a month supply of Concerta will still cost you $100, which is a lot better than in the US without insurance, but it's not free.

What's nice are the yearly comprehensive medical checkups, what's not nice is your employer pays for it and gets a copy of the results too.

Japan has monthly and yearly caps, as well as discounts for chronic diseases and for people with low or no income. So while it's true that you pay 30% yourself, the people who would have difficulty paying that 30% are also taken care of.