After yet another mass shooting, the
founder of 8chan, the internet’s “go-to re-
source for violent extremists” says the site
needs to be shut down, said Kevin Roose
in The New York Times. Fredrick Brennan
started the fringe site in 2013 “as a free
speech alternative to 4chan, a better-known
online message board.” But Brennan, who
left 8chan last year, said it has devolved
into a recruiting platform for violent white
nationalists—including the one who mur-
dered 22 people in a Walmart in El Paso,
Texas, last weekend after posting a mani-
festo and urging his 8chan “brothers” to share it. And share
they did. The site has become a “megaphone” for mass shoot-
ers, populated not only by racists and anti-Semites but also sup-
porters of the dark conspiracy QAnon and “incels”—men who
are “involuntarily celibate” and hate women as a result.It’s not just about 8chan, said Jonathan Taplin, also in the
Times—Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and other big players all
provide homes for online hate. And thanks to Section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act, they’re “totally protected from
being sued” for it. This safe harbor provision, passed in 1996,
shields internet platforms from liability for the content posted
on their networks. It’s time to change that. These companies can
remove toxic content, just as they found ways to “filter pornog-
raphy and jihadist videos off their networks using artificial intel-ligence.” But only revising Section 230 will
give them incentive to do it.The government shouldn’t decide who tech
companies must censor, said Scott Shack-
ford in Reason.com. I had no issue when
Cloud flare, the web domain provider,
booted 8chan off its platform in response to
the El Paso shooting. Cloud flare is “refus-
ing to associate itself with a site that hosts
messages it finds offensive.” That’s the
business’s decision, and it has every right to
cut off extremist sites. When politicians get
involved, though, censorship usually limits only “speech that has
the potential to jeopardize their own power or influence.”Still, Big Tech must accept some responsibility, said Noam
Cohen in Wired. It rewards users for inhabiting virtual worlds
and discourages them from leaving. That’s how minds get
warped. “People in such isolated circumstances can become vul-
nerable to all manner of deception and manipulation, including
racist, hate-filled propaganda.” Indeed, the human brain “wasn’t
designed to endure the volume of relentless inner-directedness
that is driven by these new screens,” said Daniel Henninger in
The Wall Street Journal. The modern “life lived online” is the
epidemic. It’s too late to put the screen genies back in the bottle,
but “maybe the app masters who elevated self-obsession on
Insta gram and 8chan could turn toward apps rooted in reality.”Platforms: Who should be liable for online hate?
Newsco
m,
screenshot^(^2 )Parents peer into the NICU
New tools “give worried parents frequent
updates on what’s happening to their children
during surgeries or hospital stays,” said Julie
Jargon in The Wall Street Journal. One app,
EASE, which stands for Electronic Access to
Surgical Events, “buzzes every 30 minutes to
remind nurses to send a text, video, or photo
update to waiting relatives.” It encrypts mes-
sages between health-care providers and fami-
lies to comply with privacy laws, and the mes-
sages disappear after 60 seconds and can’t be
saved. Another company, Natus Medical, “of-
fers a streaming video service called NICVIEW
so that parents can watch their baby in a
neonatal ICU.” However, one concern is that
these tools might overtax nurses. And while
the EASE app is free for families, it charges
hospitals $20,000 to $500,000 annually.The world champ of office apps
A teenager in Alabama can now claim he is
the world’s best—at using PowerPoint, said
Molly Olmstead in Slate.com. Seth Maddox,
a recent high school grad from Geraldine,
Ala., (population: 900) beat 850,000 other
competitors from 119 countries over the
course of state and national rounds, culminat-
ing in a world championship competition inNew York City. He said it started when he
fulfilled a certification requirement for using
various Microsoft Office products as a class
project. “I received an email probably six,
seven days later saying that I was the Ala-
bama champion,” Maddox said. To practice
before the championship, he would “just kind
of start clicking buttons to try to find stuff I
never found before.” PowerPoint can be frus-
trating, he said, but “the skills are just know-
ing what’s possible.”A three-channel deal from Disney
Disney’s combined Hulu, ESPN+, and Disney+
streaming package will match the $12.99
monthly price of Netflix’s most popular plan,
said Julia Alexander in TheVerge.com. The
bundled Hulu service is the cheapest, ad-
supported tier. Still, the three channels add up
to an aggressively priced effort by Disney “to
provide a ton of content in three distinct areas:
general entertainment, family, and sports.”
Scheduled to launch Nov. 12, the service will
likely be available as an add-on to Apple TV
and Amazon Prime Video, though Disney
hasn’t finalized distribution deals. Disney CEO
Bob Iger called the planned streaming service
“the most important product Disney has intro-
duced” in his 14-year tenure.Bytes: What’s new in tech
Researchers at the University of
California, Berkeley have designed
a drone that can shrink itself like
Ant-Man to fit through tight spaces,
said Andrew Liszewski in Gizmodo
.com. The trick is that the quad-
copter’s four wings are attached to
the main body with hinged joints
and a spring that pulls the arms
down automatically when the craft
is turned off. So when approaching
a small opening, it automatically
cuts its power, causing the arms to
retract and enabling it to squeeze
through. “The drone’s momen-
tum carries it through to the other
side, at which point the rotors can
spin up again.” One downside:
It requires “plenty of space on
the other side to power back up,
recover, and steady itself before
continuing its explorations.”Innovation of the week
20 NEWS Technology
8chan founder Fredrick Brennan