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Should Facebook, Google be liable for user posts? asks U.S. Attorney General

133 points by jhatax 7y ago

harumph 7y ago
I believe the only discussion necessary involving Mr. Barr is when he be disbarred. No pun intended; the man should be in prison.
sneak 7y ago
Reading the following: > “No longer are tech companies the underdog upstarts. They have become titans,” Barr said at a public meeting held by the Justice Department to examine the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. > “Given this changing technological landscape, valid questions have been raised about whether Section 230’s broad immunity is necessary at least in its current form,” he said. ...all I can think of is “well, here comes the state-sponsored moat.” If they weaken these protections, the big four will just hire a few more entire buildings of minimum wage content moderators (like most of them already have running) and it’s curtains for small entrants. It makes me really sad to see the US thinking about shooting its only real growth industry in the foot. Edit: > while a few Democratic leaders have said the law allows the services to escape punishment for harboring misinformation and extremist content. It’s also terrifying to think that parts of our government want to explicitly punish people for hosting legal content that they don’t like to read.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  My big Q is what problem they are trying to solve here. As a not entirely impartial observer, it seems like what's actually happening is that Barr wants a way to punish tech companies for declining to broadcast certain far right voices. Like, does anyone actually believe the world is going to be a better place because these companies have to defend themselves against an infinite stream of proxy libel and tort lawsuits? Is user generated content viable at all in a world where the hosting provider takes on liability? Could this site exist in a world where these rules are implemented fairly?
  - sneak 7y ago
    Well, it’s not just far right stuff they’re censoring in bulk, so in a weird way I can see where he’s coming from. For example, YouTube has been taking down legal instructional gunsmithing videos (one of my hobbies) because guns. Other things that scare people but aren’t associated with a US political axis position, like the lockpicking lawyer, stay up. They are absolutely editorializing (see also: Apple’s squirt gun emoji, which I would find unconscionable even if I weren’t a firearms enthusiast because I am an accurate communications enthusiast first and foremost) and their behavior needs to change before it hurts our society even more. My friend, for example, lost a meme page he ran on Facebook with hundreds of thousands of readers for posting a male nipple (the man was wearing makeup). The censorship is not just political. They are burning books and destroying value: art, teaching, literature. It’s not okay. I just don’t think this is the right approach to it.
    - jaywalk 7y ago
      Censorship on Facebook and YouTube also goes beyond simply removing content. If the almighty algorithm decides your stuff shouldn't be seen, it won't appear in peoples feeds, drastically reducing your reach. That's another huge problem.
      - sneak 7y ago
        I deleted my Instagram account on Valentine’s Day this year for this exact reason. You can’t prioritize content without deprioritizing other content. https://sneak.berlin/20200211/instagram/ https://sneak.berlin/20200211/instagram/
    - azinman2 7y ago
      “They are burning books and destroying value: art, teaching, literature. It’s not okay.” What are you referring to, specifically? “ their behavior needs to change before it hurts our society even more.” What specific harm to society occurs when using a toy gun for an emoji?
      - 7y ago
- alharith 7y ago
  > sad to see the US thinking about shooting its only real growth industry in the foot. It appears you are not from the US. Can you elaborate more on your perspective on why you think this to be the case? I am genuinely curious. (Just for full disclosure, the top 10 industries experiencing large growth at the moment are mostly related to construction or engineering in the traditional sense, not much hyper growth coming from web apps these days)
  - sneak 7y ago
    I was born in the US, and I spend about half each year there. I think it is tradition in the US that whenever there is a new market or opportunity, to both celebrate the early entrants (in the case of tech, the persistent “two founders in a suburban garage” meme) and then also ignore the fact that it’s routine to make it as difficult as possible to replicate the conditions that lead to new companies or new people having wealth creation opportunities. I’ve heard it described as “pulling the ladder up behind you”. A lot of people play the game as if it’s zero-sum. It could also just be that I’m somewhat bitter because I have about five great ideas for companies that would make the world markedly better and more useful, and they have all recently been made either de facto or de jure illegal. I hate that we’re almost always stuck with large incumbents who rent-seek based on their position, or seek for the government to make it harder/illegal for others to use the same general wealth-creation methods that they did. Witnessing that level of selfishness hurts my soul, especially leveled against those who are most able and willing to build new businesses, cool products and services, and jobs.
    - alharith 7y ago
      Thanks for the reply, apologies for the incorrect assumption, but it's the internet.
- icheishvili 7y ago
  FAANG will need to decide if they're platforms or publishers. They currently moderate the communities, albeit selectively, while enjoying the protections granted by being a platform. This can lead to abuse of power where only select viewpoints are moderated out because unaccountable corporate leadership says so. It's correct to be thinking about this, notwithstanding the fact that I place little faith in the federal government to produce the correct outcome.
  - nnq 7y ago
    Where did people unearth this "platforms" vs. "publishers" argument from? It looks like a political tool someone with a dark agenda diged out of some dark swampy corner of polytics... Everything is both! Of course you'll have more and more proprietary-algos / blackbox-ML/AI-systems filtering content. And of course the content can't be manually reviewed (because SIZE) and you can't have the platform be responsible for it (what does it even mean to "be responsible for content"?!). It's sad there's not much we can do to regulate away some of the toxic infos (like the "platform vs publisher" meme currently floating around...), but here it's actually a case where doing nothing and stomacking some of the bad consequences is 1000% better that doing something! Because that "something" whatever it may be will limit fundamental freedoms simply by having something exists in this space!
    - heavyset_go 7y ago
      > Where did people unearth this "platforms" vs. "publishers" argument from? It's a red herring.
  - lallysingh 7y ago
    I think they have to move to purely mechanical moderation. It's the only way. Keyword and user reporting. Everything else is a mess politically (and that will end up being a political mess).
    - nradov 7y ago
      That has never worked, and never will work. Keywords are meaningless without understanding the surrounding context. User reporting fails when activist users engage in brigading to flag posts that they don't like even when those posts don't violate any laws or terms of service.
protomyth 7y ago
It really seems like this article is a bit off on the reasoning they ascribe to people. The biggest objections I have heard is that Facebook / YouTube / Twitter should now be classed as "publishers" and not "providers" because of the perceived bias in their removal of individuals and content.
- throwaway_tech 7y ago
  That is a clever legal argument. Of course to distinguish a traditional newspaper or publication from social media posts are the editorializing exercised by the tech companies occurs after publication/posting; whereas, traditional media exercises their editorial powers prior to publication. In practice, say I set up an anonymous social media account and publish false/defamatory statements about myself, then I sue the tech company and john doe (as the poster), what exactly can/could the tech company do to have prevented liability? Seemly they would have to somehow change their systems so posts are reviewed by editors prior to publication to minimize legal risk and potential liability.
  - protomyth 7y ago
    That is the type of situation that 230 was meant to stop. It would be impossible to be Twitter, etc. without the protection of 230 and that is why it was created. It carries over from not being able to sue the telephone or telegraph company because someone sent something defamatory about you over their system. The argument is that the services desire to keep the protections of 230 but act like publishers that are not afforded the same protections.
    - visarga 7y ago
      > It carries over from not being able to sue the telephone or telegraph company On the other hand, phone calls are not persistent and one to one, not one to anyone.
      - clmckinley 7y ago
        And you generally know the person who is on both ends. This leads to a sense of history and consequence which is most commonly not available on the internet.
goatinaboat 7y ago
Yes absolutely. They exercise editorial control even if they attempt to disguise it behind “algorithms”. Everything posted on Facebook should be treated as if it was a newspaper article, for all legal purposes.
- karatestomp 7y ago
  Yeah, easy yes from me too. "Oh but we won't be able to make a business out of exploiting user data and exposing hundreds of low-paid workers to psychologically damaging material anymore" right, yes, exactly, that's the point.
  - eyeinthepyramid 7y ago
    Won't they need to have even more low-paid workers to make sure they don't publish something that violates the law?
    - karatestomp 7y ago
      If they're treated like any other publisher, probably having that many workers manually vetting everything won't be viable. Which is fine, because it shouldn't be. It confuses me how every time we have one of those posts about how horrible that work is for the people doing it, most posters kinda throw up their hands and go "well whatcha gonna do" when the obvious answer is... simply not do it? If your business requires that, the easy answer to how to not cause that harm is to not have the business.
      - eyeinthepyramid 7y ago
        If the survival of their company depended on it, they would absolutely figure out a way to pre-moderate content, and almost certainly that would include significantly more low-paid moderators. They had something like $18 billion dollars in profit last year, you don't think they could afford to hire an army of moderators?
        7y ago
drannex 7y ago
Companies are liable for their employees. Employees produce content/products/sales/projects for the Company. Social media users create the content that give value to social networks, thus social media users are, in a way, employees of the company. The Company has the requirements of limiting and being liable for the content that exists on their platform.
cs702 7y ago
Sacha Baron Cohen proposed this in his widely seen/read keynote speech at the ADL's annual summit: https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-address-at-adls-2019-never-is-now-summit-on-anti-semitism https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-... If you haven't seen it before, I would highly recommend it -- regardless of whether you agree with him or not.
baby 7y ago
BTW this would probably include reddit and HN as well.
kryogen1c 7y ago
> escape punishment for harboring misinformation and extremist content its so bananas that statements like this are glossed over and unqualified. this is not a solved problem, and its not even being treated like its a problem at all. this perception that there are a set of correct facts and incorrect facts is just so meaingless. what does it even mean to be true? $Person is on $Video saying $Statement. True or false? Well, it depends. It ALWAYS depends. are you asking if $Video.Words = $Statement.Words? almost never. You are not investigating $Video.Soundwaves and $Person.VocalCords, you are making a case for $Person.Beliefs. What if $Person.Beliefs @ $Video.TimeStamp != $Person.Beliefs @ $Today? Is it true but meaningless, or are you trying to imply conclusions contextually - but guess what, different people interpret the same context differently! an example suitable for HN is talking about security. Is your company secure? You cant answer the question because _the question is bad_. the answer to security is ALWAYS it depends. Are you talking about physically secure against a wandering drunk trying to pee on your server, or physically secure against a disgruntled employee building a killdozer and driving through your building? Are you talking about secure from some kid who finds LOIC and tries to DoS you or from a long term campaign from a nation-state APT? The discussion _requires_ framing, and so does discussing "misinformation and extremist content"
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  Agreed. It is one of those phrases that raises my hair each time right along with lawful intercept and hate speech. It is disheartening to see it unquestioned and in mainstream.
- advisedwang 7y ago
  Sure, there's no black or white answer to what is misinformation or extreemist. But regulation and the courts aren't black and white. We regulate the content of broadcast media just fine without hand-wringing about the grey areas.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    Compared to internet UGC, the flow of new content into broadcast media minuscule. According to a random Google search, three hundred hours of new video are added to YouTube each minute. It's unlikely that much new broadcast media is created each hour. And YouTube is just one of many sites. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that UGC is created at a rate of more than 1000x that of broadcast media. That difference in scale, and the difference in economic value per unit of content, makes a solved problem in one medium an tricky challenge in the other.
jeffdavis 7y ago
The protections designed for phone companies, etc., make perfect sense: the phone company is just facilitating communication in a content-neutral way. Phone companies should not be responsible for knowing or caring what content is shared, even if it's some kind of slander or treasonous plot being discussed. But does that apply to web platforms that aren't content-neutral? I think probably not. There is such a huge volume of communication that they should have some protections built in, but not blanket protection.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > Phone companies should not be responsible for knowing or caring what content is shared, even if it's some kind of slander or treasonous plot being discussed. What if they influenced the content that each side hears, e.g. add strategic gaps where they leave out key noises, to make the phone call go on for the maximum amount of time (because they charge by second)?
eyeinthepyramid 7y ago
Will every post need to be pre-moderated to ensure that nothing objectionable is published? I wonder how this would affect sites like Hacker News and Reddit, or any forum sites really.
- jeffdavis 7y ago
  I don't think the big tech companies should get blanket common carrier protections because they aren't common carriers. They have knowledge and control over content, and therefore should be responsible for it to some degree. But that doesn't mean they should have no protections or that thry should be treated like a book publisher. There can be some reasonable processes amd limits of liability in place.
  - yibg 7y ago
    That all sounds nice but what does it mean? What knowledge do they have that common carriers don’t? Responsible for what to what degree? What is a reasonable process and what does that look like? These kinds of generalities and hand waving doesn’t really get us very far.
  - eyeinthepyramid 7y ago
    Are you suggesting that there should be a size requirement before a site has to pre-moderate their UGC? What metric would you use? Revenue? Taxable Income? Impressions? Volume of UGC? # of employees? If there's a blanket repeal of liability protection for UGC, it's going to have a much larger impact on smaller forums.
    - jeffdavis 7y ago
      No, I'm not suggesting company size should have anything to do with it.
vinniejames 7y ago
No. Full stop.
- slumdev 7y ago
  Saying "full stop" doesn't make or strengthen an argument.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    It says there is no need for an arguement because there is nothing to justify it. "Should it be legal for the government to kill and harvest the organs of underperforming schoolchildren?". "No. Full stop." Is a stance that there is nothing to even argue.
shmerl 7y ago
It's the same Barr who wages war on encryption.
bearcobra 7y ago
The question I have for people who advocate for "platform liability" is, at what size should they become liable for user generated content? Facebook & Google definitely seem big enough to most people, and maybe Twitter & Reddit. But what about Y Combinator?
- jeffdavis 7y ago
  Liability should not be black-and-white. HN has a process for flagging and burying content, and they employ moderators. If some kind of libel is buried in a greyed-out user comment or a flagged post, then no harm. If the libel sits on the front page in the title of a post for two days, there's a real issue there. It's interesting that you mention HN, because it's basically not a problem here.
  - bearcobra 7y ago
    That kind of goes to my question though. It seems that people are suggesting that by offering a process to flag & bury content and by employing moderators, HN becomes a publisher and therefore should be liable for our posts.
    - jeffdavis 7y ago
      To some degree, yes. Maybe not in the same way as a book publisher, but also not zero like a common carrier.
  - tzs 7y ago
    I don't see why it would not be a problem here. I could easily post a libelous but interesting comment here that I'm sure that no moderator or no HN user would recognize as libelous, so it isn't going to get buried.
ogre_codes 7y ago
I don't think it's a good precedence to make companies liable for the posts of users. I do think it's reasonable to examine the ways Google and Facebook profit off of extremist views and surface extremist views algorithmically. As soon as Google and Facebook moved to having an opinionated queue of content (Youtube's suggested videos and Facebooks timeline) based on things like engagement, I could see the argument made that they have both ceased being mere conduits of information and became publishers themselves.
fragsworth 7y ago
I don't know how Barr expects to have a civil discussion about any topic in the midst of what he did with the Roger Stone prosecution, and in the midst of this presidency. The public and his own Justice Department cannot have a reasonable discussion with him, when his behavior and actions up to this point have almost all appeared to be for one purpose - to help the President and his supporters in criminal issues. The question we all find ourselves asking is: "So how is this going to benefit the President at everyone else's expense?" and even if it doesn't benefit him, it colors the entire discussion in a bad light.
- riversflow 7y ago
  There’s such a thing as professional compartmentalization. If you don’t like a colleague‘s/vendor’s/customer’s/government’s behavior you can(but not necessarily should) quarrel about that and that only, when you start to act as if a slight(however large you perceive it to be) is enough to blockade all relations in everything you do together, the initiator looks weak. A decision to halt all relations has far reaching impacts, if you are a business it almost always effects your employees and could easily effect your customers. If you are a government it effects both country’s citizens and possibly others as well. If it is between colleagues it effects everyone below you. In the case of Barr or Trump, we are talking about effectively shuttering government progress/modernization. What does this serve? We don’t get these months/years back, the beat of progress marches on regardless. It’s unreasonable to think that we are just a few years away from a sweeping blue tide of progressives(or a red tide of conservatives under Obama) that are going to have the whole of congress on their side to make huge reforms, or whatever it is that would make the USG quickly modernize. Our system of governance stalls with sort of behavior, and it only really serves entrenched interests, if anyone.
  - fragsworth 7y ago
    So don't end the discussion. What I said is still true, the discussion is colored in a bad light because of his behavior. In that light, it is impossible to think about the issue objectively, without legitimately worrying about what Barr in particular going to do with it. It's not hard to imagine how he can abuse new powers over Facebook and Google to benefit Trump in the 2020 election. If he's already selectively applying criminal justice against opponents and not allies, do you think he'll apply fair and objective justice against Facebook and Google?
psychlops 7y ago
Since Facebook and Google shape the information that is seen using a proprietary algorithm, they have become publishers. Perhaps if their algorithm's were open and available, they may have an argument in their defense. Until then, it is entirely possible they are shaping a narrative based on whatever model they want. I don't buy the argument made by Barr that the scale of the platform reaches a point that it therefore requires regulation. This seems to be a simple money grab where large tech companies need to tithe to lawmakers.
- micmil 7y ago
  If it's coming from Barr it's not a money grab, it's a transparent attempt to shape ALL social networks to be right-wing propaganda outlets.
- decasteve 7y ago
  You hit the nail on the head. They want to shape the content and do whatever curation or editorializing via human or algorithmic means, yet be seen an an open forum of user-generated content. Have it and eat it too scenario. Not to mention adding paid content that blends in in a way that is indistinguishable from user submissions. This further complicates the intentions of the platform.
  - d1zzy 7y ago
    Yes, they most definitely want the cake and eat it too but there are lots of good arguments to make for that, arguments that have nothing to do with sustaining the business model of multi-billion dollar Internet companies.
RustyBucket 7y ago
If porn sites are liable for their content - FB should be too. Porn sites managed to survive and thrive and so will FB.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  Define "liable". They share the same Section 230 protection as FB.
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  Studios are liable for content they produce, but porn sites are not liable for the content their users upload.
admiral33 7y ago
Should International Paper be liable if an extremist writes down their ideas? Should the US postal service be liable if they mail it to their friends? The US postal service uses dogs to find drugs in the mail, and yet we don't charge the post master general with drug smuggling. Any attempt to get rid of undesirable content should not then make you liable for the content you miss. The platform vs publisher debate is silly.
cletus 7y ago
The Trump administration complaining about "harboring misinformatioN". The ironing [sic] is delicious [1]. There is no universal objective truth. Specifically there are things that reasonable people can disagree about and the same set of facts can be used to argue different positions. This fact is abused by the mentally challenged to argue ridiculous positions (eg anti-vaxxers, the Moon landings are fake, that sort of thing). Likewise, as seen here, one side will argue those who disagree are engaging is misinformation (and in the Trump administration's case, from the President down there are multiple claims per day that are demonstrably false such that no one can really keep up). The agenda is to silence the opposition and undermine confidence in any sort of news. ISPs were given safe harbor from liability for traffic on their network, for good reason. They just need to comply with certain standards. Tech companies really are no different and to argue otherwise would set an incredibly dangerous precedent (IMHO). [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p23mA2VV0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p23mA2VV0A
aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
>with any alterations to one of the internet’s key legal frameworks likely to draw unexpected consequences. “It’s hard to know exactly what the ramifications might be.” Since there is no direct bridge to the digital money, power and influence, analog types will wreck the whole thing trying to implement legislation to give them any kind of foothold on all of that easy profit. The lack of influence/sway will eventually drive the traditional powers to contrive the shortest-term solutions to destabilize the ecosystem. Its more than a "war of words" at play.
notamanager 7y ago
This is such a disingenuous framing from the AG as well from media outlets who keep misrepresenting section 230. That law isn't about protecting Facebook or Google it's about ensuring that anyone can express themselves online without needing a highly paid lawyer and a protracted trial to do so. It also isn't about publisher vs. platform, section 230 protects the Times from being sued for comments on their website same as for any bigger or smaller operation. It's tragic how the powers that be in this country are trying to insert a lawyer into every transaction like it's a jobs program, and the infuriating part is that they are trying to convince people that it's for their own benefit.
- yibg 7y ago
  The cynic in me says this is intentional. The more control over facts there are from any source the more limits there are in general to the spread of information and general discourse. From the governments perspective this is probably desired.
- rayiner 7y ago
  > That law isn't about protecting Facebook or Google it's about ensuring that anyone can express themselves online without needing a highly paid lawyer and a protracted trial to do so. If you post something defamatory on Facebook, you can be sued, but under Section 230 Facebook cannot. I happen to think that's a good arrangement, but it's definitely about "protecting Facebook or Google," and not about protecting the individuals "express[ing] themselves online."
  - notamanager 7y ago
    If Facebook were liable they wouldn't allow the posting or even the possibility of posting in the first place, the law protects individual rights by keeping the liability onus on the author as opposed to the "publisher".
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    > not about protecting the individuals "express[ing] themselves online." Who in their right mind would host content created by individuals online? GeoCities, blogs and personal sites wouldn't exist as they did or do today.
gonational 7y ago
I think a couple big concepts are being conflated. There are a couple really important questions: 1. Should Google, Facebook, etc. be responsible for user generated content hosted on their websites (i.e., should they not be treated as “public square”)? 2. Should the government have any hand in telling any company or any person what they can or cannot say, as long as they are not making threats or publishing illegal materials? I am of the personal opinion that most (all?) of the major tech companies have engaged in censorship and even politically driven enforcement of their content policies, and therefore should have lost their “public square” status a long time ago, making them responsible for illegal content posted by their users. Pertaining the second question, there simply is no question; the government does not and should never have any authority here, because the Constitution protects free speech, regardless of what kind of Ministry of Truth they would like to implement.
- GcVmvNhBsU 7y ago
  I think question 1 should really be: should Google, Facebook, etc, be responsible for the user generated content that they algorithmically focus presentation on? It’s one thing to have, say, an early 2000’s forum where users search for and consume information. It’s another to ignore timelines and present content that will likely generate the most engagement. The latter to me is editorialization of the content.
KorematsuFred 7y ago
Tech, Aviation and Agriculture are some of the areas where Americans are the world leaders by far and yet the American government is totally set to hurt these very industries (we'' break the evil google) and so on. This is beyond idiotic.
tboyd47 7y ago
The Section 230 saga just shows how dangerous it is for the government to interfere in industry. The CDA was passed when people were scared of the internet and looked to government to protect them from its evils. Section 230 was added to save "the little guy" from becoming collateral damage of this legislation. Fast forward 30 years and these "little guys" have grown into the scary forces that everyone wants the government to protect them from! Imagine if ordinary people had been allowed to sue Google and Facebook over this time. There's good reason to think that no one would have been able to monetize the internet in such a way as Google, Facebook, etc. if not for Section 230. I don't think anyone in Congress is interested in repealing Section 230 but I'm glad people in Washington are at least talking about it.
throw7 7y ago
I have no idea what Barr's exact problem is he's trying to solve? And if I run a web forum/mailing list/etc. I am now liable for anything users say on these services? It seems like he's unhappy that facebook/google/et al. are shaping (or trying to shape) a narrative... I mean, he's not wrong. But everyone is: businesses, politicians, cia, hacker news. Opening up people to easier liability for running a web forum, just means fewer will be able to provide this type of service; not to mention, this favors those with lots of money and time to spend on a lawsuit of such nature e.g. the gov't and large businesses... hmmm, maybe that's the point, only the gov't and monied interests should shape the narrative.
- Faark 7y ago
  As you stated, everyone is already shaping the narrative. But right now nearly all of the power to do so is highly centralized at a very short list of companies. You already mentioned some tech companies, but I'd certainly also add a bunch of classical media/news orgs like e.g. FOX and Disney. We could now discuss if democracy can work with so much centralized power. But the result we'll see is those powers fighting each others. It might be more obvious than before thanks to our current polarized times and such simple to identify targets.
nnq 7y ago
Look... if platforms become responsible for content published on them, it is the end of free speech? Period. You want THIS?! The point would be to limit/regulate targeting: either (a) they're a no-login and no-user-personalization place, and they do no targeting everyone gets a random sample from the same content (I'd really prefer this!), or (b) it needs to be very clear what kind of targeting is allowed... and the line gets very blurry here, amplifying hate speech for clicks and eyeballs can probably pay well and there need to be ways to solve this problem...
cassalian 7y ago
Can anyone explain why William Barr seems so intent on trying to change technology in such major ways as this? Does he not understand the implications of the things he proposes? Or worse, does he understand the implications and proposes them nonetheless? I just don't get this guy's motivation. As far as I can tell, revoking section 230 would just result in people putting up fake content themselves and then suing the platform they posted to. Is there a reason why this wouldn't be possible? Also, I see a lot of people focusing on major platforms, but why wouldn't such changes also impact tiny sites? In particular, it seems that anyone casually hosting their own site (not something they focus on often), will be forced to remove all user generated content or quit their day jobs to manage their site - am I misinterpreting the implications here?
- graeme 7y ago
  > As far as I can tell, revoking section 230 would just result in people putting up fake content themselves and then suing the platform they posted to. Is there a reason why this wouldn't be possible? Maybe not themselves, but they could get someone else to. Or any competing site could post stuff that would increase legal liability. It would be the end of forums.
  - cassalian 7y ago
    "I'll wreck you on twitter, you flatten me on Facebook; we both cash out" ;)
- Techies4Trump 7y ago
  Barr doesn't care about the "implications" for the tech companies or their employees. And he's not trying to "change technology" as you put it. He's just trying to stop these companies from playing dirty, as they have been for a long time. He's concerned with making services such as Youtube, FB and Reddit face up to the fact that they are publishers, and not really forums because they're so riddled with AI and fishy algorithms.
- busymom0 7y ago
  > Barr seems so intent on trying to change technology in such major ways as this He's not saying that. He's asking for a discussion on how the laws can be adapted for the current world. In the video of his speech, he specifically says they haven't made up their mind on how it should change. He's simply bringing up the points on how the current law is a bit outdated for the current world.
fareesh 7y ago
If these companies are treated as a "public square" then the first amendment ought to apply. It's disappointing to see enlightened ideas like free speech being taken apart by these large corporations to push what seems to be a political agenda. Recent example - a female Nascar driver shares a selfie with the President of the United States and Twitter's algorithms flag it as sensitive content. When algorithms make mistakes that lead to race based discrimination, it's treated extremely seriously. When this sort of thing happens it seems like everyone shakes their head and chuckles "oh those silly algorithms". Outcomes that marginalize folks based on political views are dangerous for your country. The shoe will be on the other foot someday.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Can’t wait for the end of flagging and modkilling on HN to preserve First Amendment rights. This is going to be good.
  - fareesh 7y ago
    I'm making the argument that the authority to moderate discussions is being misused and you are replying as if I am suggesting removal of this authority.
    - scarejunba 7y ago
      I'm riffing off what you're saying, not attempting to counter it.
deleted 7y ago
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AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Well, just to put the shoe on the other foot: Should US AG Barr be liable for (or bound by) comments/tweets by President Trump? This isn't as tight a parallel as I would like. But when I make a post on HN, say, it's my words and my opinion, and does not represent the opinion of HN (even though they moderate). I don't speak for HN; they don't speak for me. In the same way, when Trump sends his tweets-of-the-day, that doesn't speak for AG Barr or the DOJ (despite Trump's idea that he is the chief law-enforcement official). As I said, that isn't quite as tight as I would like it to be. But it's something that Barr should be able to understand at both an intellectual and an emotional level.
m0zg 7y ago
The sentiment expressed by many in this thread would flip 180 degrees if Zuck e.g. one day woke up and decided he doesn't like commies (which would be a very reasonable, and amply justified opinion, in my view), and had his underlings at Facebook censor the entirety of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign from the network. My position on the issue is simple: if a site owner censors/throttles/shadowbans/detrends/etc _any_ legal speech, they're a publisher, and and they should be liable for the stuff that remains on their site. Don't want that? Be a carrier and don't censor legal speech. Nothing could be easier.
- NE2z2T9qi 7y ago
  I share the exact same sentiment as you, but I don't know if I'm being fair to how ugly a unmoderated forum can be. For example, spamming advertisements in comment sections is completely legal speech. So would be typing in gibberish and hitting enter a thousand times. But both of these things would ruin the point of the forum. Even if I compare Hacker News to Reddit, the former is consistently high quality while the later is 95% garbage in my opinion. Why? Probably because Hacker News is far more highly curated. At the same time, I feel like YouTube has crossed the line with idea suppression. YouTube gives the impression that it's an open non-biased platform that links you to content you're interested in. But there are several egregious examples where popular videos with near-mainstream "conservative" viewpoints are suppressed into oblivion (e.g. appears on the 12th page of results even when you search for the video title verbatim and it has millions of more views than every other "relevant" result). But, just because I can give examples of things which cross the line (suppressing popular conservative videos) vs things that don't (suppressing random gibberish, suppressed bot-created videos)... I don't think I could clearly articulate any rules to say exactly where that line is in a way that is scalable. YouTube created YouTube... I might just have to defer to their moderation policies while hoping another competitor comes along to challenge them.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Well, we did make robocalling illegal, right? We could do the same for ad spam quite easily. IMO 99% of YouTube issues would be resolved by just not showing comments by default. I.e. you're welcome to read and write comments if you like, but you have to click a button first to show the comment section, and don't have to see them otherwise. Some sites already do this.
lanternslight 7y ago
If they are censoring, then yes.
- OrgNet 7y ago
  this, 100%... and label them as dangerous internet entities
- lanternslight 7y ago
  Down votes?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
WaitWaitWha 7y ago
When we used to run BBSes, we were repeatedly warned by lawyers and courts that if we start actively manage the content of other people's posts, we become publishers and our legal protection vanishes. Why is this not the case for large social media orgs that do exactly that?
danShumway 7y ago
There are 3 options for moderation: 1. Platforms with no moderation (8Chan -- except probably even worse, because even 8Chan moderates some content) 2. Publishers that pre-vet all posted content (the NYT with no comment section) 3. Platforms that retroactively moderate content only after it's been posted, in whatever way they see fit (Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Youtube, Reddit, Hackernews, and every public forum, IRC channel, and bug tracker ever built) Revoking section 230 just gets rid of option 3. It's not magic, it just means that we have one less moderation strategy. And option 3 is my favorite. Option 2 takes voices away from the powerless and would be a major step backwards for freedom of expression. It would entrench powerful, traditional media companies and allow them greater control over public narratives and public conversations. Option 1 effectively forces anyone who doesn't want to live on 8Chan off of the Internet. Moderation is a requirement for any online community to remain stable and healthy. Even taking the premise that Twitter is an existential threat to democracy (which I am at least mildly skeptical of), it's still mind-boggling to me that people are debating how to regulate giant Internet companies instead of implementing the sensible fix, which is just to break those companies up and increase competition. All of the "they control the media and shape public opinion" arguments people are making about Facebook/Twitter boil down to the fact that ~5 companies have become so large that getting kicked off of their services can be at least somewhat reasonably argued to have an effect on speech. None of this would be a problem if the companies weren't big enough to control so much of the discourse. So we could get rid of section 230 and implement a complicated solution that will have negative knock-on effects and unintended consequences for the entire Internet. Or, we could enforce and expand the antitrust laws that are already on the books and break up 5 companies, with almost no risk to the rest of the Internet. What problem does revoking section 230 solve that antitrust law doesn't?
- anfilt 7y ago
  I think your missing an option that is kinda similar category of 1. The platform only removes illegal content, but moderation is not done by the provider at all. Instead users moderate the content themselves. Think of how search engines can apply safe search filters going from safe, moderate, and off. So let users mark content with tags/categories, or some kind of rating. Then users can had posts that have or don't have certain content tags or a rating below x ect... Also you have platforms like discord that lets users create areas dedicated to a topic and self moderate.
dfischer 7y ago
The solution we need is a p2p social network with user opt-in moderation lists. The gov should be no where close to this.
kilo_bravo_3 7y ago
My favorite thing about the "publisher" vs. "platform" rabbit hole people of a certain political persuasion seem to be burrowing through as a not-so-veiled threat towards service providers that "censor" posts consisting of pictures of Michelle Obama photoshopped to look like a gorilla is the delusional alternate-reality plane of existence on which they seem to reside where they think that going through with the threat will mean that their preferred content will be more likely to be hosted.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  That's a bingo
mikedilger 7y ago
Conservatives want platforms to moderate in a politically neutral way. Passing a law requiring such would be unconstitutional as it would violate the free speech of those companies. Making section 230 conditional upon political neutrality might not be unconstitutional. No Internet platform would ever risk operating without section 230 protections, so they would essentially be forced into political neutrality. So the same effect would be achieved. Nobody is seriously considering simply removing section 230; that would be devastating to the economy and to free speech both. Any such assertions are no more than sword rattling and idle threats. Neither is anybody seriously talking about ceasing all moderation entirely. Platforms would become flooded with spam, among other things making them virtually unusable. Where this all gets very complicated very fast, IMHO, is in how you define political neutrality. And I'll stop here because that's much too long of a discussion to have in a HN comment.
carapace 7y ago
Should Facebook, Google shield users from the legal consequences of posting illegal posts? If we were using e.g. Ted Nelson's Xanadu (instead of the WWW) every post and link would have provenance information and it would be technologically feasible to make the original source of a given piece of illegal content liable for the legal consequences of publishing it, as well as each and every person/entity that promulgated it across the network. As it is now, these platforms omit or delete provenance information, making it technically impossible to moderate at scale.
013a 7y ago
I tend to believe that the only path forward is for these "global platforms" to become more sharded, allowing smaller, more focused communities to thrive and self-moderate. Platforms like Reddit, Discord, etc have "tiers" of moderation whereby community leaders handle the day-to-day moderation of individual content posted within the community, yet there is still Big Company Inc. at the top capable of moderating entire communities (you can't create a subreddit focused on school shootings, stuff like that). These platforms have problems; there are problems intrinsic to any situation where Speech and Social Interaction is involved. But their problems are far less in both magnitude and quantity than the global platforms. It seems to me that holding any organization or moderator liable for what people post on their platform would have a Supreme Court-level case on their hands concerning the first amendment. Who would win, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, but that feels like the ground we're treading on.
m463 7y ago
There's another facet to this story. If companies are to moderate, they must have the ability to view at the content. Say there's a requirement to moderate an encrypted chat client. see where this is going? Even light moderation means they keep the data collection going.
acd 7y ago
In Sweden they most probably are by a law called BBS lagen. This is the bulletin board system law. Where the provider of content are to some extent liable for the content.
tasty_freeze 7y ago
It is easy to ascribe bad motives to a person of a party of a different affiliation and to assume this is just selective application of the law to advance political goals. However, there is another way to look at this different from my own political leanings. As little effort as Democrats put into anti-trust prosecutions, Republicans (of the past 30 years) have been anti-anti-trust. In the late 90s when the DOJ had Microsoft on the rack, nominee Bush said he'd stop the antitrust effort. In fact even though MS had been found in violation of antitrust laws, then President Bush stopped the effort to break up MS and instead they were told to make relatively minor changes in their behavior. https://slashdot.org/story/01/09/06/157258/Bush-Administration-Stops-Microsoft-Breakup https://slashdot.org/story/01/09/06/157258/Bush-Administrati... So is it that the current administration finally believes there is a place for antitrust, or is it using the law as a political tool?
- busymom0 7y ago
  To be fair, even more "moderate" democrat like Tulsi was censored/throttled by Google. She has an ongoing lawsuit on this.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  It is a political tool - they aren't even considering the actual monopolies. I thought it was obvious by now with their very flexible standards.
OrgNet 7y ago
Of course they should, because they moderate content. (you can't have it both ways... you either moderate or don't... but if you do moderate, you are responsible for what you let through)
dingo_bat 7y ago
Simple answer: no
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kelnos 7y ago
I think we need to stop trying to fit these things into old laws that weren't written with them in mind. Twitter isn't a telephone company or a newspaper. I think for the most part they should have the liability protection that a telephone company has. But users do want moderation. They often want to restrict what they see to posts by people in their own echo chamber. They want the ability to flag things as spam or abuse. They want to be able to block people. They want posts taken down if enough people complain about them. And to extend that further, they often won't mind if there's a system in place to automatically do the above without their prior action. The problem ends up being bias, even if it's just perceived, and not real. If a certain group thinks "the algorithms" are suppressing their speech, then the algorithms are either bad, or aren't transparent enough to prove that they're unbiased. At the end of the day, people believe that these companies have an agenda that they push by shaping discussion in certain ways. Whether true or not, the best way to combat that is complete transparency, or just no filtering or reordering at all.
rayvd 7y ago
Obviously, whoever has money lawyers can go after should be liable...
acd 7y ago
In Sweden they are probably liable for moderating user content. The Swedish law is called BBS lagen, the bulletin board system law. Yes the law is a bit old but it should regulate content published by users and that the hoster of content has liability for the data published on the platforms.

133 points by jhatax 7y ago

I believe the only discussion necessary involving Mr. Barr is when he be disbarred. No pun intended; the man should be in prison.

sneak 7y ago

Reading the following: > “No longer are tech companies the underdog upstarts. They have become titans,” Barr said at a public meeting held by the Justice Department to examine the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. > “Given this changing technological landscape, valid questions have been raised about whether Section 230’s broad immunity is necessary at least in its current form,” he said. ...all I can think of is “well, here comes the state-sponsored moat.” If they weaken these protections, the big four will just hire a few more entire buildings of minimum wage content moderators (like most of them already have running) and it’s curtains for small entrants. It makes me really sad to see the US thinking about shooting its only real growth industry in the foot. Edit: > while a few Democratic leaders have said the law allows the services to escape punishment for harboring misinformation and extremist content. It’s also terrifying to think that parts of our government want to explicitly punish people for hosting legal content that they don’t like to read.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
My big Q is what problem they are trying to solve here. As a not entirely impartial observer, it seems like what's actually happening is that Barr wants a way to punish tech companies for declining to broadcast certain far right voices. Like, does anyone actually believe the world is going to be a better place because these companies have to defend themselves against an infinite stream of proxy libel and tort lawsuits? Is user generated content viable at all in a world where the hosting provider takes on liability? Could this site exist in a world where these rules are implemented fairly?
- sneak 7y ago
  Well, it’s not just far right stuff they’re censoring in bulk, so in a weird way I can see where he’s coming from. For example, YouTube has been taking down legal instructional gunsmithing videos (one of my hobbies) because guns. Other things that scare people but aren’t associated with a US political axis position, like the lockpicking lawyer, stay up. They are absolutely editorializing (see also: Apple’s squirt gun emoji, which I would find unconscionable even if I weren’t a firearms enthusiast because I am an accurate communications enthusiast first and foremost) and their behavior needs to change before it hurts our society even more. My friend, for example, lost a meme page he ran on Facebook with hundreds of thousands of readers for posting a male nipple (the man was wearing makeup). The censorship is not just political. They are burning books and destroying value: art, teaching, literature. It’s not okay. I just don’t think this is the right approach to it.
  - jaywalk 7y ago
    Censorship on Facebook and YouTube also goes beyond simply removing content. If the almighty algorithm decides your stuff shouldn't be seen, it won't appear in peoples feeds, drastically reducing your reach. That's another huge problem.
    - sneak 7y ago
      I deleted my Instagram account on Valentine’s Day this year for this exact reason. You can’t prioritize content without deprioritizing other content. https://sneak.berlin/20200211/instagram/ https://sneak.berlin/20200211/instagram/
  - azinman2 7y ago
    “They are burning books and destroying value: art, teaching, literature. It’s not okay.” What are you referring to, specifically? “ their behavior needs to change before it hurts our society even more.” What specific harm to society occurs when using a toy gun for an emoji?
    - 7y ago
alharith 7y ago
> sad to see the US thinking about shooting its only real growth industry in the foot. It appears you are not from the US. Can you elaborate more on your perspective on why you think this to be the case? I am genuinely curious. (Just for full disclosure, the top 10 industries experiencing large growth at the moment are mostly related to construction or engineering in the traditional sense, not much hyper growth coming from web apps these days)
- sneak 7y ago
  I was born in the US, and I spend about half each year there. I think it is tradition in the US that whenever there is a new market or opportunity, to both celebrate the early entrants (in the case of tech, the persistent “two founders in a suburban garage” meme) and then also ignore the fact that it’s routine to make it as difficult as possible to replicate the conditions that lead to new companies or new people having wealth creation opportunities. I’ve heard it described as “pulling the ladder up behind you”. A lot of people play the game as if it’s zero-sum. It could also just be that I’m somewhat bitter because I have about five great ideas for companies that would make the world markedly better and more useful, and they have all recently been made either de facto or de jure illegal. I hate that we’re almost always stuck with large incumbents who rent-seek based on their position, or seek for the government to make it harder/illegal for others to use the same general wealth-creation methods that they did. Witnessing that level of selfishness hurts my soul, especially leveled against those who are most able and willing to build new businesses, cool products and services, and jobs.
  - alharith 7y ago
    Thanks for the reply, apologies for the incorrect assumption, but it's the internet.
icheishvili 7y ago
FAANG will need to decide if they're platforms or publishers. They currently moderate the communities, albeit selectively, while enjoying the protections granted by being a platform. This can lead to abuse of power where only select viewpoints are moderated out because unaccountable corporate leadership says so. It's correct to be thinking about this, notwithstanding the fact that I place little faith in the federal government to produce the correct outcome.
- nnq 7y ago
  Where did people unearth this "platforms" vs. "publishers" argument from? It looks like a political tool someone with a dark agenda diged out of some dark swampy corner of polytics... Everything is both! Of course you'll have more and more proprietary-algos / blackbox-ML/AI-systems filtering content. And of course the content can't be manually reviewed (because SIZE) and you can't have the platform be responsible for it (what does it even mean to "be responsible for content"?!). It's sad there's not much we can do to regulate away some of the toxic infos (like the "platform vs publisher" meme currently floating around...), but here it's actually a case where doing nothing and stomacking some of the bad consequences is 1000% better that doing something! Because that "something" whatever it may be will limit fundamental freedoms simply by having something exists in this space!
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    > Where did people unearth this "platforms" vs. "publishers" argument from? It's a red herring.
- lallysingh 7y ago
  I think they have to move to purely mechanical moderation. It's the only way. Keyword and user reporting. Everything else is a mess politically (and that will end up being a political mess).
  - nradov 7y ago
    That has never worked, and never will work. Keywords are meaningless without understanding the surrounding context. User reporting fails when activist users engage in brigading to flag posts that they don't like even when those posts don't violate any laws or terms of service.

protomyth 7y ago

It really seems like this article is a bit off on the reasoning they ascribe to people. The biggest objections I have heard is that Facebook / YouTube / Twitter should now be classed as "publishers" and not "providers" because of the perceived bias in their removal of individuals and content.

throwaway_tech 7y ago
That is a clever legal argument. Of course to distinguish a traditional newspaper or publication from social media posts are the editorializing exercised by the tech companies occurs after publication/posting; whereas, traditional media exercises their editorial powers prior to publication. In practice, say I set up an anonymous social media account and publish false/defamatory statements about myself, then I sue the tech company and john doe (as the poster), what exactly can/could the tech company do to have prevented liability? Seemly they would have to somehow change their systems so posts are reviewed by editors prior to publication to minimize legal risk and potential liability.
- protomyth 7y ago
  That is the type of situation that 230 was meant to stop. It would be impossible to be Twitter, etc. without the protection of 230 and that is why it was created. It carries over from not being able to sue the telephone or telegraph company because someone sent something defamatory about you over their system. The argument is that the services desire to keep the protections of 230 but act like publishers that are not afforded the same protections.
  - visarga 7y ago
    > It carries over from not being able to sue the telephone or telegraph company On the other hand, phone calls are not persistent and one to one, not one to anyone.
    - clmckinley 7y ago
      And you generally know the person who is on both ends. This leads to a sense of history and consequence which is most commonly not available on the internet.

goatinaboat 7y ago

Yes absolutely. They exercise editorial control even if they attempt to disguise it behind “algorithms”. Everything posted on Facebook should be treated as if it was a newspaper article, for all legal purposes.

karatestomp 7y ago
Yeah, easy yes from me too. "Oh but we won't be able to make a business out of exploiting user data and exposing hundreds of low-paid workers to psychologically damaging material anymore" right, yes, exactly, that's the point.
- eyeinthepyramid 7y ago
  Won't they need to have even more low-paid workers to make sure they don't publish something that violates the law?
  - karatestomp 7y ago
    If they're treated like any other publisher, probably having that many workers manually vetting everything won't be viable. Which is fine, because it shouldn't be. It confuses me how every time we have one of those posts about how horrible that work is for the people doing it, most posters kinda throw up their hands and go "well whatcha gonna do" when the obvious answer is... simply not do it? If your business requires that, the easy answer to how to not cause that harm is to not have the business.
    - eyeinthepyramid 7y ago
      If the survival of their company depended on it, they would absolutely figure out a way to pre-moderate content, and almost certainly that would include significantly more low-paid moderators. They had something like $18 billion dollars in profit last year, you don't think they could afford to hire an army of moderators?
      - 7y ago

drannex 7y ago

Companies are liable for their employees. Employees produce content/products/sales/projects for the Company. Social media users create the content that give value to social networks, thus social media users are, in a way, employees of the company. The Company has the requirements of limiting and being liable for the content that exists on their platform.

cs702 7y ago

Sacha Baron Cohen proposed this in his widely seen/read keynote speech at the ADL's annual summit: https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-address-at-adls-2019-never-is-now-summit-on-anti-semitism https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-... If you haven't seen it before, I would highly recommend it -- regardless of whether you agree with him or not.

baby 7y ago

BTW this would probably include reddit and HN as well.

kryogen1c 7y ago

> escape punishment for harboring misinformation and extremist content its so bananas that statements like this are glossed over and unqualified. this is not a solved problem, and its not even being treated like its a problem at all. this perception that there are a set of correct facts and incorrect facts is just so meaingless. what does it even mean to be true? $Person is on $Video saying $Statement. True or false? Well, it depends. It ALWAYS depends. are you asking if $Video.Words = $Statement.Words? almost never. You are not investigating $Video.Soundwaves and $Person.VocalCords, you are making a case for $Person.Beliefs. What if $Person.Beliefs @ $Video.TimeStamp != $Person.Beliefs @ $Today? Is it true but meaningless, or are you trying to imply conclusions contextually - but guess what, different people interpret the same context differently! an example suitable for HN is talking about security. Is your company secure? You cant answer the question because _the question is bad_. the answer to security is ALWAYS it depends. Are you talking about physically secure against a wandering drunk trying to pee on your server, or physically secure against a disgruntled employee building a killdozer and driving through your building? Are you talking about secure from some kid who finds LOIC and tries to DoS you or from a long term campaign from a nation-state APT? The discussion _requires_ framing, and so does discussing "misinformation and extremist content"

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
Agreed. It is one of those phrases that raises my hair each time right along with lawful intercept and hate speech. It is disheartening to see it unquestioned and in mainstream.
advisedwang 7y ago
Sure, there's no black or white answer to what is misinformation or extreemist. But regulation and the courts aren't black and white. We regulate the content of broadcast media just fine without hand-wringing about the grey areas.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  Compared to internet UGC, the flow of new content into broadcast media minuscule. According to a random Google search, three hundred hours of new video are added to YouTube each minute. It's unlikely that much new broadcast media is created each hour. And YouTube is just one of many sites. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that UGC is created at a rate of more than 1000x that of broadcast media. That difference in scale, and the difference in economic value per unit of content, makes a solved problem in one medium an tricky challenge in the other.

jeffdavis 7y ago

The protections designed for phone companies, etc., make perfect sense: the phone company is just facilitating communication in a content-neutral way. Phone companies should not be responsible for knowing or caring what content is shared, even if it's some kind of slander or treasonous plot being discussed. But does that apply to web platforms that aren't content-neutral? I think probably not. There is such a huge volume of communication that they should have some protections built in, but not blanket protection.

luckylion 7y ago
> Phone companies should not be responsible for knowing or caring what content is shared, even if it's some kind of slander or treasonous plot being discussed. What if they influenced the content that each side hears, e.g. add strategic gaps where they leave out key noises, to make the phone call go on for the maximum amount of time (because they charge by second)?

eyeinthepyramid 7y ago

Will every post need to be pre-moderated to ensure that nothing objectionable is published? I wonder how this would affect sites like Hacker News and Reddit, or any forum sites really.

jeffdavis 7y ago
I don't think the big tech companies should get blanket common carrier protections because they aren't common carriers. They have knowledge and control over content, and therefore should be responsible for it to some degree. But that doesn't mean they should have no protections or that thry should be treated like a book publisher. There can be some reasonable processes amd limits of liability in place.
- yibg 7y ago
  That all sounds nice but what does it mean? What knowledge do they have that common carriers don’t? Responsible for what to what degree? What is a reasonable process and what does that look like? These kinds of generalities and hand waving doesn’t really get us very far.
- eyeinthepyramid 7y ago
  Are you suggesting that there should be a size requirement before a site has to pre-moderate their UGC? What metric would you use? Revenue? Taxable Income? Impressions? Volume of UGC? # of employees? If there's a blanket repeal of liability protection for UGC, it's going to have a much larger impact on smaller forums.
  - jeffdavis 7y ago
    No, I'm not suggesting company size should have anything to do with it.

vinniejames 7y ago

No. Full stop.

slumdev 7y ago
Saying "full stop" doesn't make or strengthen an argument.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  It says there is no need for an arguement because there is nothing to justify it. "Should it be legal for the government to kill and harvest the organs of underperforming schoolchildren?". "No. Full stop." Is a stance that there is nothing to even argue.

shmerl 7y ago

It's the same Barr who wages war on encryption.

bearcobra 7y ago

The question I have for people who advocate for "platform liability" is, at what size should they become liable for user generated content? Facebook & Google definitely seem big enough to most people, and maybe Twitter & Reddit. But what about Y Combinator?

jeffdavis 7y ago
Liability should not be black-and-white. HN has a process for flagging and burying content, and they employ moderators. If some kind of libel is buried in a greyed-out user comment or a flagged post, then no harm. If the libel sits on the front page in the title of a post for two days, there's a real issue there. It's interesting that you mention HN, because it's basically not a problem here.
- bearcobra 7y ago
  That kind of goes to my question though. It seems that people are suggesting that by offering a process to flag & bury content and by employing moderators, HN becomes a publisher and therefore should be liable for our posts.
  - jeffdavis 7y ago
    To some degree, yes. Maybe not in the same way as a book publisher, but also not zero like a common carrier.
- tzs 7y ago
  I don't see why it would not be a problem here. I could easily post a libelous but interesting comment here that I'm sure that no moderator or no HN user would recognize as libelous, so it isn't going to get buried.

ogre_codes 7y ago

I don't think it's a good precedence to make companies liable for the posts of users. I do think it's reasonable to examine the ways Google and Facebook profit off of extremist views and surface extremist views algorithmically. As soon as Google and Facebook moved to having an opinionated queue of content (Youtube's suggested videos and Facebooks timeline) based on things like engagement, I could see the argument made that they have both ceased being mere conduits of information and became publishers themselves.

fragsworth 7y ago

I don't know how Barr expects to have a civil discussion about any topic in the midst of what he did with the Roger Stone prosecution, and in the midst of this presidency. The public and his own Justice Department cannot have a reasonable discussion with him, when his behavior and actions up to this point have almost all appeared to be for one purpose - to help the President and his supporters in criminal issues. The question we all find ourselves asking is: "So how is this going to benefit the President at everyone else's expense?" and even if it doesn't benefit him, it colors the entire discussion in a bad light.

riversflow 7y ago
There’s such a thing as professional compartmentalization. If you don’t like a colleague‘s/vendor’s/customer’s/government’s behavior you can(but not necessarily should) quarrel about that and that only, when you start to act as if a slight(however large you perceive it to be) is enough to blockade all relations in everything you do together, the initiator looks weak. A decision to halt all relations has far reaching impacts, if you are a business it almost always effects your employees and could easily effect your customers. If you are a government it effects both country’s citizens and possibly others as well. If it is between colleagues it effects everyone below you. In the case of Barr or Trump, we are talking about effectively shuttering government progress/modernization. What does this serve? We don’t get these months/years back, the beat of progress marches on regardless. It’s unreasonable to think that we are just a few years away from a sweeping blue tide of progressives(or a red tide of conservatives under Obama) that are going to have the whole of congress on their side to make huge reforms, or whatever it is that would make the USG quickly modernize. Our system of governance stalls with sort of behavior, and it only really serves entrenched interests, if anyone.
- fragsworth 7y ago
  So don't end the discussion. What I said is still true, the discussion is colored in a bad light because of his behavior. In that light, it is impossible to think about the issue objectively, without legitimately worrying about what Barr in particular going to do with it. It's not hard to imagine how he can abuse new powers over Facebook and Google to benefit Trump in the 2020 election. If he's already selectively applying criminal justice against opponents and not allies, do you think he'll apply fair and objective justice against Facebook and Google?

psychlops 7y ago

Since Facebook and Google shape the information that is seen using a proprietary algorithm, they have become publishers. Perhaps if their algorithm's were open and available, they may have an argument in their defense. Until then, it is entirely possible they are shaping a narrative based on whatever model they want. I don't buy the argument made by Barr that the scale of the platform reaches a point that it therefore requires regulation. This seems to be a simple money grab where large tech companies need to tithe to lawmakers.

micmil 7y ago
If it's coming from Barr it's not a money grab, it's a transparent attempt to shape ALL social networks to be right-wing propaganda outlets.
decasteve 7y ago
You hit the nail on the head. They want to shape the content and do whatever curation or editorializing via human or algorithmic means, yet be seen an an open forum of user-generated content. Have it and eat it too scenario. Not to mention adding paid content that blends in in a way that is indistinguishable from user submissions. This further complicates the intentions of the platform.
- d1zzy 7y ago
  Yes, they most definitely want the cake and eat it too but there are lots of good arguments to make for that, arguments that have nothing to do with sustaining the business model of multi-billion dollar Internet companies.

RustyBucket 7y ago

If porn sites are liable for their content - FB should be too. Porn sites managed to survive and thrive and so will FB.

vorpalhex 7y ago
Define "liable". They share the same Section 230 protection as FB.
heavyset_go 7y ago
Studios are liable for content they produce, but porn sites are not liable for the content their users upload.

admiral33 7y ago

Should International Paper be liable if an extremist writes down their ideas? Should the US postal service be liable if they mail it to their friends? The US postal service uses dogs to find drugs in the mail, and yet we don't charge the post master general with drug smuggling. Any attempt to get rid of undesirable content should not then make you liable for the content you miss. The platform vs publisher debate is silly.

cletus 7y ago

The Trump administration complaining about "harboring misinformatioN". The ironing [sic] is delicious [1]. There is no universal objective truth. Specifically there are things that reasonable people can disagree about and the same set of facts can be used to argue different positions. This fact is abused by the mentally challenged to argue ridiculous positions (eg anti-vaxxers, the Moon landings are fake, that sort of thing). Likewise, as seen here, one side will argue those who disagree are engaging is misinformation (and in the Trump administration's case, from the President down there are multiple claims per day that are demonstrably false such that no one can really keep up). The agenda is to silence the opposition and undermine confidence in any sort of news. ISPs were given safe harbor from liability for traffic on their network, for good reason. They just need to comply with certain standards. Tech companies really are no different and to argue otherwise would set an incredibly dangerous precedent (IMHO). [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p23mA2VV0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p23mA2VV0A

aSplash0fDerp 7y ago

>with any alterations to one of the internet’s key legal frameworks likely to draw unexpected consequences. “It’s hard to know exactly what the ramifications might be.” Since there is no direct bridge to the digital money, power and influence, analog types will wreck the whole thing trying to implement legislation to give them any kind of foothold on all of that easy profit. The lack of influence/sway will eventually drive the traditional powers to contrive the shortest-term solutions to destabilize the ecosystem. Its more than a "war of words" at play.

notamanager 7y ago

This is such a disingenuous framing from the AG as well from media outlets who keep misrepresenting section 230. That law isn't about protecting Facebook or Google it's about ensuring that anyone can express themselves online without needing a highly paid lawyer and a protracted trial to do so. It also isn't about publisher vs. platform, section 230 protects the Times from being sued for comments on their website same as for any bigger or smaller operation. It's tragic how the powers that be in this country are trying to insert a lawyer into every transaction like it's a jobs program, and the infuriating part is that they are trying to convince people that it's for their own benefit.

yibg 7y ago
The cynic in me says this is intentional. The more control over facts there are from any source the more limits there are in general to the spread of information and general discourse. From the governments perspective this is probably desired.
rayiner 7y ago
> That law isn't about protecting Facebook or Google it's about ensuring that anyone can express themselves online without needing a highly paid lawyer and a protracted trial to do so. If you post something defamatory on Facebook, you can be sued, but under Section 230 Facebook cannot. I happen to think that's a good arrangement, but it's definitely about "protecting Facebook or Google," and not about protecting the individuals "express[ing] themselves online."
- notamanager 7y ago
  If Facebook were liable they wouldn't allow the posting or even the possibility of posting in the first place, the law protects individual rights by keeping the liability onus on the author as opposed to the "publisher".
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  > not about protecting the individuals "express[ing] themselves online." Who in their right mind would host content created by individuals online? GeoCities, blogs and personal sites wouldn't exist as they did or do today.

gonational 7y ago

I think a couple big concepts are being conflated. There are a couple really important questions: 1. Should Google, Facebook, etc. be responsible for user generated content hosted on their websites (i.e., should they not be treated as “public square”)? 2. Should the government have any hand in telling any company or any person what they can or cannot say, as long as they are not making threats or publishing illegal materials? I am of the personal opinion that most (all?) of the major tech companies have engaged in censorship and even politically driven enforcement of their content policies, and therefore should have lost their “public square” status a long time ago, making them responsible for illegal content posted by their users. Pertaining the second question, there simply is no question; the government does not and should never have any authority here, because the Constitution protects free speech, regardless of what kind of Ministry of Truth they would like to implement.

GcVmvNhBsU 7y ago
I think question 1 should really be: should Google, Facebook, etc, be responsible for the user generated content that they algorithmically focus presentation on? It’s one thing to have, say, an early 2000’s forum where users search for and consume information. It’s another to ignore timelines and present content that will likely generate the most engagement. The latter to me is editorialization of the content.

KorematsuFred 7y ago

Tech, Aviation and Agriculture are some of the areas where Americans are the world leaders by far and yet the American government is totally set to hurt these very industries (we'' break the evil google) and so on. This is beyond idiotic.

tboyd47 7y ago

The Section 230 saga just shows how dangerous it is for the government to interfere in industry. The CDA was passed when people were scared of the internet and looked to government to protect them from its evils. Section 230 was added to save "the little guy" from becoming collateral damage of this legislation. Fast forward 30 years and these "little guys" have grown into the scary forces that everyone wants the government to protect them from! Imagine if ordinary people had been allowed to sue Google and Facebook over this time. There's good reason to think that no one would have been able to monetize the internet in such a way as Google, Facebook, etc. if not for Section 230. I don't think anyone in Congress is interested in repealing Section 230 but I'm glad people in Washington are at least talking about it.

throw7 7y ago

I have no idea what Barr's exact problem is he's trying to solve? And if I run a web forum/mailing list/etc. I am now liable for anything users say on these services? It seems like he's unhappy that facebook/google/et al. are shaping (or trying to shape) a narrative... I mean, he's not wrong. But everyone is: businesses, politicians, cia, hacker news. Opening up people to easier liability for running a web forum, just means fewer will be able to provide this type of service; not to mention, this favors those with lots of money and time to spend on a lawsuit of such nature e.g. the gov't and large businesses... hmmm, maybe that's the point, only the gov't and monied interests should shape the narrative.

Faark 7y ago
As you stated, everyone is already shaping the narrative. But right now nearly all of the power to do so is highly centralized at a very short list of companies. You already mentioned some tech companies, but I'd certainly also add a bunch of classical media/news orgs like e.g. FOX and Disney. We could now discuss if democracy can work with so much centralized power. But the result we'll see is those powers fighting each others. It might be more obvious than before thanks to our current polarized times and such simple to identify targets.

nnq 7y ago

Look... if platforms become responsible for content published on them, it is the end of free speech? Period. You want THIS?! The point would be to limit/regulate targeting: either (a) they're a no-login and no-user-personalization place, and they do no targeting everyone gets a random sample from the same content (I'd really prefer this!), or (b) it needs to be very clear what kind of targeting is allowed... and the line gets very blurry here, amplifying hate speech for clicks and eyeballs can probably pay well and there need to be ways to solve this problem...

cassalian 7y ago

Can anyone explain why William Barr seems so intent on trying to change technology in such major ways as this? Does he not understand the implications of the things he proposes? Or worse, does he understand the implications and proposes them nonetheless? I just don't get this guy's motivation. As far as I can tell, revoking section 230 would just result in people putting up fake content themselves and then suing the platform they posted to. Is there a reason why this wouldn't be possible? Also, I see a lot of people focusing on major platforms, but why wouldn't such changes also impact tiny sites? In particular, it seems that anyone casually hosting their own site (not something they focus on often), will be forced to remove all user generated content or quit their day jobs to manage their site - am I misinterpreting the implications here?

graeme 7y ago
> As far as I can tell, revoking section 230 would just result in people putting up fake content themselves and then suing the platform they posted to. Is there a reason why this wouldn't be possible? Maybe not themselves, but they could get someone else to. Or any competing site could post stuff that would increase legal liability. It would be the end of forums.
- cassalian 7y ago
  "I'll wreck you on twitter, you flatten me on Facebook; we both cash out" ;)
Techies4Trump 7y ago
Barr doesn't care about the "implications" for the tech companies or their employees. And he's not trying to "change technology" as you put it. He's just trying to stop these companies from playing dirty, as they have been for a long time. He's concerned with making services such as Youtube, FB and Reddit face up to the fact that they are publishers, and not really forums because they're so riddled with AI and fishy algorithms.
busymom0 7y ago
> Barr seems so intent on trying to change technology in such major ways as this He's not saying that. He's asking for a discussion on how the laws can be adapted for the current world. In the video of his speech, he specifically says they haven't made up their mind on how it should change. He's simply bringing up the points on how the current law is a bit outdated for the current world.

fareesh 7y ago

If these companies are treated as a "public square" then the first amendment ought to apply. It's disappointing to see enlightened ideas like free speech being taken apart by these large corporations to push what seems to be a political agenda. Recent example - a female Nascar driver shares a selfie with the President of the United States and Twitter's algorithms flag it as sensitive content. When algorithms make mistakes that lead to race based discrimination, it's treated extremely seriously. When this sort of thing happens it seems like everyone shakes their head and chuckles "oh those silly algorithms". Outcomes that marginalize folks based on political views are dangerous for your country. The shoe will be on the other foot someday.

scarejunba 7y ago
Can’t wait for the end of flagging and modkilling on HN to preserve First Amendment rights. This is going to be good.
- fareesh 7y ago
  I'm making the argument that the authority to moderate discussions is being misused and you are replying as if I am suggesting removal of this authority.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    I'm riffing off what you're saying, not attempting to counter it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Well, just to put the shoe on the other foot: Should US AG Barr be liable for (or bound by) comments/tweets by President Trump? This isn't as tight a parallel as I would like. But when I make a post on HN, say, it's my words and my opinion, and does not represent the opinion of HN (even though they moderate). I don't speak for HN; they don't speak for me. In the same way, when Trump sends his tweets-of-the-day, that doesn't speak for AG Barr or the DOJ (despite Trump's idea that he is the chief law-enforcement official). As I said, that isn't quite as tight as I would like it to be. But it's something that Barr should be able to understand at both an intellectual and an emotional level.

m0zg 7y ago

The sentiment expressed by many in this thread would flip 180 degrees if Zuck e.g. one day woke up and decided he doesn't like commies (which would be a very reasonable, and amply justified opinion, in my view), and had his underlings at Facebook censor the entirety of Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign from the network. My position on the issue is simple: if a site owner censors/throttles/shadowbans/detrends/etc _any_ legal speech, they're a publisher, and and they should be liable for the stuff that remains on their site. Don't want that? Be a carrier and don't censor legal speech. Nothing could be easier.

NE2z2T9qi 7y ago
I share the exact same sentiment as you, but I don't know if I'm being fair to how ugly a unmoderated forum can be. For example, spamming advertisements in comment sections is completely legal speech. So would be typing in gibberish and hitting enter a thousand times. But both of these things would ruin the point of the forum. Even if I compare Hacker News to Reddit, the former is consistently high quality while the later is 95% garbage in my opinion. Why? Probably because Hacker News is far more highly curated. At the same time, I feel like YouTube has crossed the line with idea suppression. YouTube gives the impression that it's an open non-biased platform that links you to content you're interested in. But there are several egregious examples where popular videos with near-mainstream "conservative" viewpoints are suppressed into oblivion (e.g. appears on the 12th page of results even when you search for the video title verbatim and it has millions of more views than every other "relevant" result). But, just because I can give examples of things which cross the line (suppressing popular conservative videos) vs things that don't (suppressing random gibberish, suppressed bot-created videos)... I don't think I could clearly articulate any rules to say exactly where that line is in a way that is scalable. YouTube created YouTube... I might just have to defer to their moderation policies while hoping another competitor comes along to challenge them.
- m0zg 7y ago
  Well, we did make robocalling illegal, right? We could do the same for ad spam quite easily. IMO 99% of YouTube issues would be resolved by just not showing comments by default. I.e. you're welcome to read and write comments if you like, but you have to click a button first to show the comment section, and don't have to see them otherwise. Some sites already do this.

lanternslight 7y ago

If they are censoring, then yes.

OrgNet 7y ago
this, 100%... and label them as dangerous internet entities
lanternslight 7y ago
Down votes?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

WaitWaitWha 7y ago

When we used to run BBSes, we were repeatedly warned by lawyers and courts that if we start actively manage the content of other people's posts, we become publishers and our legal protection vanishes. Why is this not the case for large social media orgs that do exactly that?

danShumway 7y ago

There are 3 options for moderation: 1. Platforms with no moderation (8Chan -- except probably even worse, because even 8Chan moderates some content) 2. Publishers that pre-vet all posted content (the NYT with no comment section) 3. Platforms that retroactively moderate content only after it's been posted, in whatever way they see fit (Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Youtube, Reddit, Hackernews, and every public forum, IRC channel, and bug tracker ever built) Revoking section 230 just gets rid of option 3. It's not magic, it just means that we have one less moderation strategy. And option 3 is my favorite. Option 2 takes voices away from the powerless and would be a major step backwards for freedom of expression. It would entrench powerful, traditional media companies and allow them greater control over public narratives and public conversations. Option 1 effectively forces anyone who doesn't want to live on 8Chan off of the Internet. Moderation is a requirement for any online community to remain stable and healthy. Even taking the premise that Twitter is an existential threat to democracy (which I am at least mildly skeptical of), it's still mind-boggling to me that people are debating how to regulate giant Internet companies instead of implementing the sensible fix, which is just to break those companies up and increase competition. All of the "they control the media and shape public opinion" arguments people are making about Facebook/Twitter boil down to the fact that ~5 companies have become so large that getting kicked off of their services can be at least somewhat reasonably argued to have an effect on speech. None of this would be a problem if the companies weren't big enough to control so much of the discourse. So we could get rid of section 230 and implement a complicated solution that will have negative knock-on effects and unintended consequences for the entire Internet. Or, we could enforce and expand the antitrust laws that are already on the books and break up 5 companies, with almost no risk to the rest of the Internet. What problem does revoking section 230 solve that antitrust law doesn't?

anfilt 7y ago
I think your missing an option that is kinda similar category of 1. The platform only removes illegal content, but moderation is not done by the provider at all. Instead users moderate the content themselves. Think of how search engines can apply safe search filters going from safe, moderate, and off. So let users mark content with tags/categories, or some kind of rating. Then users can had posts that have or don't have certain content tags or a rating below x ect... Also you have platforms like discord that lets users create areas dedicated to a topic and self moderate.

dfischer 7y ago

The solution we need is a p2p social network with user opt-in moderation lists. The gov should be no where close to this.

kilo_bravo_3 7y ago

My favorite thing about the "publisher" vs. "platform" rabbit hole people of a certain political persuasion seem to be burrowing through as a not-so-veiled threat towards service providers that "censor" posts consisting of pictures of Michelle Obama photoshopped to look like a gorilla is the delusional alternate-reality plane of existence on which they seem to reside where they think that going through with the threat will mean that their preferred content will be more likely to be hosted.

clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
That's a bingo

mikedilger 7y ago

Conservatives want platforms to moderate in a politically neutral way. Passing a law requiring such would be unconstitutional as it would violate the free speech of those companies. Making section 230 conditional upon political neutrality might not be unconstitutional. No Internet platform would ever risk operating without section 230 protections, so they would essentially be forced into political neutrality. So the same effect would be achieved. Nobody is seriously considering simply removing section 230; that would be devastating to the economy and to free speech both. Any such assertions are no more than sword rattling and idle threats. Neither is anybody seriously talking about ceasing all moderation entirely. Platforms would become flooded with spam, among other things making them virtually unusable. Where this all gets very complicated very fast, IMHO, is in how you define political neutrality. And I'll stop here because that's much too long of a discussion to have in a HN comment.

carapace 7y ago

Should Facebook, Google shield users from the legal consequences of posting illegal posts? If we were using e.g. Ted Nelson's Xanadu (instead of the WWW) every post and link would have provenance information and it would be technologically feasible to make the original source of a given piece of illegal content liable for the legal consequences of publishing it, as well as each and every person/entity that promulgated it across the network. As it is now, these platforms omit or delete provenance information, making it technically impossible to moderate at scale.

013a 7y ago

I tend to believe that the only path forward is for these "global platforms" to become more sharded, allowing smaller, more focused communities to thrive and self-moderate. Platforms like Reddit, Discord, etc have "tiers" of moderation whereby community leaders handle the day-to-day moderation of individual content posted within the community, yet there is still Big Company Inc. at the top capable of moderating entire communities (you can't create a subreddit focused on school shootings, stuff like that). These platforms have problems; there are problems intrinsic to any situation where Speech and Social Interaction is involved. But their problems are far less in both magnitude and quantity than the global platforms. It seems to me that holding any organization or moderator liable for what people post on their platform would have a Supreme Court-level case on their hands concerning the first amendment. Who would win, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, but that feels like the ground we're treading on.

m463 7y ago

There's another facet to this story. If companies are to moderate, they must have the ability to view at the content. Say there's a requirement to moderate an encrypted chat client. see where this is going? Even light moderation means they keep the data collection going.

acd 7y ago

In Sweden they most probably are by a law called BBS lagen. This is the bulletin board system law. Where the provider of content are to some extent liable for the content.

tasty_freeze 7y ago

It is easy to ascribe bad motives to a person of a party of a different affiliation and to assume this is just selective application of the law to advance political goals. However, there is another way to look at this different from my own political leanings. As little effort as Democrats put into anti-trust prosecutions, Republicans (of the past 30 years) have been anti-anti-trust. In the late 90s when the DOJ had Microsoft on the rack, nominee Bush said he'd stop the antitrust effort. In fact even though MS had been found in violation of antitrust laws, then President Bush stopped the effort to break up MS and instead they were told to make relatively minor changes in their behavior. https://slashdot.org/story/01/09/06/157258/Bush-Administration-Stops-Microsoft-Breakup https://slashdot.org/story/01/09/06/157258/Bush-Administrati... So is it that the current administration finally believes there is a place for antitrust, or is it using the law as a political tool?

busymom0 7y ago
To be fair, even more "moderate" democrat like Tulsi was censored/throttled by Google. She has an ongoing lawsuit on this.
Nasrudith 7y ago
It is a political tool - they aren't even considering the actual monopolies. I thought it was obvious by now with their very flexible standards.

OrgNet 7y ago

Of course they should, because they moderate content. (you can't have it both ways... you either moderate or don't... but if you do moderate, you are responsible for what you let through)

dingo_bat 7y ago

Simple answer: no

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kelnos 7y ago

I think we need to stop trying to fit these things into old laws that weren't written with them in mind. Twitter isn't a telephone company or a newspaper. I think for the most part they should have the liability protection that a telephone company has. But users do want moderation. They often want to restrict what they see to posts by people in their own echo chamber. They want the ability to flag things as spam or abuse. They want to be able to block people. They want posts taken down if enough people complain about them. And to extend that further, they often won't mind if there's a system in place to automatically do the above without their prior action. The problem ends up being bias, even if it's just perceived, and not real. If a certain group thinks "the algorithms" are suppressing their speech, then the algorithms are either bad, or aren't transparent enough to prove that they're unbiased. At the end of the day, people believe that these companies have an agenda that they push by shaping discussion in certain ways. Whether true or not, the best way to combat that is complete transparency, or just no filtering or reordering at all.

rayvd 7y ago

Obviously, whoever has money lawyers can go after should be liable...

acd 7y ago

In Sweden they are probably liable for moderating user content. The Swedish law is called BBS lagen, the bulletin board system law. Yes the law is a bit old but it should regulate content published by users and that the hoster of content has liability for the data published on the platforms.