5 ms·

Common carriers (like a telephone company) are content-neutral (unbiased) and have no legal responsibility for what is said. If someone mails you a threatening

Common carriers (like a telephone company) are content-neutral (unbiased) and have no legal responsibility for what is said. If someone mails you a threatening letter, you can't sue USPS. Publishers can publish (or decline to publish) whatever they want, but they do have some responsibility for what they say. Libel, copyright infringement, and threats all carry consequences even if the publisher is not the author. Publishers can be as biased as they want. Is FB a publisher or a common carrier? What about Google? Youtube? Instagram? Twitter? (The answer is that they are kind of either depending on the exact part of the organization. And they are having it both ways: control without responsibility.)

woopwoop 7y ago
Here is section 230, the law protecting websites from liability for things published on them by third parties. [0] I do not see anything about a provider needing to be content neutral. In fact, part c2a seems to be explicitly saying the opposite. IANAL. Where does this legal concept of a distinction between a "carrier" and a "publisher" appear? [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
- schoen 7y ago
  It appears in the pre-230 litigation about intermediary liability, to which section 230 was a response. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  There is no distinction, it's a red herring.
koboll 7y ago
>Publishers can publish (or decline to publish) whatever they want, but they do have some responsibility for what they say. It is abjectly insane to label a tweet as something Twitter, the company, is "saying". If we're retooling the law to orient it toward that definition, then the inevitable endgame, after the avalanche of litigation, will be that the concept of posting text on social media or blogging platforms is dead. It kills Web 2.0 in its entirety. It regresses the United States back to the dark ages of a completely one-directional media, where the best you can do as an outsider is to submit a letter to the editor.
- gadders 7y ago
  Well, by the fact they are allowing some voices and silencing others, largely in one political direction, it would seem they are expressing an opinion indirectly. I don't think anyone wants Twitter to be responsible for every tweet. What most people want them to do is be more like they used to claim to be "We are the free speech wing of the free speech party"
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Fjolsvith 7y ago
    Maybe not disabling accounts, but they do shadow ban: https://metro.co.uk/2018/09/06/twitter-admits-shadowbanning-and-unfairly-filtering-600000-accounts-7920206/ https://metro.co.uk/2018/09/06/twitter-admits-shadowbanning-...
- leetcrew 7y ago
  ideally a platform with >n users or generating >m revenue would have to pick between publisher (editorial control and liability) or carrier (neither).
- karatestomp 7y ago
  > It is abjectly insane to label a tweet as something Twitter, the company, is "saying" If there were a company printing and distributing, to any passing person on the street, fliers with content provided by the company's clients, would they have any legal liability for what their clients put in the fliers? That seems very similar to what Twitter does. Certainly closer than their being treated like a phone company or mail carrier, which they don't much resemble (email provider? Yeah, sure, they do). Perhaps in that situation the printing & distribution company would also have no liability, I don't know.
  - koboll 7y ago
    If I invent a machine that passes out six thousand flyers per second, and allow people to feed text into it at will, then yes, it is insane to describe these as my "speech". I may provide a mechanism for the words to get onto a page, but I have zero agency in the process of thinking them up, drafting them, and enacting their distribution. I am providing a mechanism for others to say things. However, you would probably say I start to become liable if I erect a giant wall on which all of these flyers are posted, and allow illegal content to remain hanging there even when I'm informed of it and aware it's illegal. This gray area is exactly what Section 230 is designed around. It's totally unreasonable to expect a platform operator to act as the speaker of a post the moment it is posted. But after becoming aware of a post and the reasons it may be objectionable, they start to gain a sort of post-hoc liability. If someone prints out child porn, glues it to a yard sign, and plants it on your front lawn, you should probably not be liable for arrest starting that instant. But if, after coming and going and seeing it over and over for a week, you make no efforts to remove it or report it, then you should probably be liable for arrest. This is exactly the logic behind Section 230.
Fjolsvith 7y ago
FB is a publisher because they don't allow everyone on their platform. Edit: We try to make Facebook broadly available to everyone, but you cannot use Facebook if: You are under 13 years old. You are a convicted sex offender. We've previously disabled your account for violations of our Terms or Policies. You are prohibited from receiving our products, services, or software under applicable laws. From Facebook's Terms of Service: https://www.facebook.com/terms.php https://www.facebook.com/terms.php
esoterica 7y ago
They should be allowed to have it both ways. If I run a video game forum, I should be allowed to ban trolls and remove off-topic posts without accepting legal responsibility for any illegal content that gets posted on my forum by third parties without my prior knowledge or consent. Forcing people to choose between being a publisher and being a utility would completely and instantly kill every single internet community dead in its tracks. I don’t understand how people can post on a heavily moderated forum like HN while demanding that moderation be effectively made illegal. It’s like people hate Facebook and Google so much that they mindlessly get onboard with any form of retaliation against them regardless of the actual consequences.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  There should be a line somewhere between curbing abuse, curating content, and promoting ideology. But I personally don’t feel comfortable or qualified to decide where that line should be drawn. There must be some point between USENET and the NYT editorial section where the publisher becomes liable for the content they promote.
- carapace 7y ago
  FWIW, it doesn't sound insane to me that you should have "legal responsibility for any illegal content that gets posted on my forum by third parties without my prior knowledge or consent." You're the one who chose to set your forum up that way, eh? (We're not talking about hackers defacing your site, yeah?) As much as I find the idea of "illegal content" galling (I love freedom) I'm not so idealistic that I fail to recognize that freedom of speech cannot be an absolute. ("Fire" in theaters; revealing national security secrets; doxxing; there are limits. I'm glad I'm not on the hot seat when it comes to nailing them down: I don't run open internet forums, for example.) If you don't have a way to pass that responsibility onto the actual speakers then you must shoulder it yourself, no? Whether or not current systems can survive that is less important to me than the establishment of formal responsibility for one's speech.
iudqnolq 7y ago
Completely wrong with regard to current US law. First Amendment rights apply to corporations without distinguishing based any attribute. There is no such legal concept as a publisher or a platform. No legal scholar has argued that publisher/platform exists in current law, the academic community speculated it might be nice to change the law to make the distinction and then it gets misreported.

woopwoop 7y ago

Here is section 230, the law protecting websites from liability for things published on them by third parties. [0] I do not see anything about a provider needing to be content neutral. In fact, part c2a seems to be explicitly saying the opposite. IANAL. Where does this legal concept of a distinction between a "carrier" and a "publisher" appear? [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

schoen 7y ago
It appears in the pre-230 litigation about intermediary liability, to which section 230 was a response. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
heavyset_go 7y ago
There is no distinction, it's a red herring.

koboll 7y ago

>Publishers can publish (or decline to publish) whatever they want, but they do have some responsibility for what they say. It is abjectly insane to label a tweet as something Twitter, the company, is "saying". If we're retooling the law to orient it toward that definition, then the inevitable endgame, after the avalanche of litigation, will be that the concept of posting text on social media or blogging platforms is dead. It kills Web 2.0 in its entirety. It regresses the United States back to the dark ages of a completely one-directional media, where the best you can do as an outsider is to submit a letter to the editor.

gadders 7y ago
Well, by the fact they are allowing some voices and silencing others, largely in one political direction, it would seem they are expressing an opinion indirectly. I don't think anyone wants Twitter to be responsible for every tweet. What most people want them to do is be more like they used to claim to be "We are the free speech wing of the free speech party"
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  Maybe not disabling accounts, but they do shadow ban: https://metro.co.uk/2018/09/06/twitter-admits-shadowbanning-and-unfairly-filtering-600000-accounts-7920206/ https://metro.co.uk/2018/09/06/twitter-admits-shadowbanning-...
leetcrew 7y ago
ideally a platform with >n users or generating >m revenue would have to pick between publisher (editorial control and liability) or carrier (neither).
karatestomp 7y ago
> It is abjectly insane to label a tweet as something Twitter, the company, is "saying" If there were a company printing and distributing, to any passing person on the street, fliers with content provided by the company's clients, would they have any legal liability for what their clients put in the fliers? That seems very similar to what Twitter does. Certainly closer than their being treated like a phone company or mail carrier, which they don't much resemble (email provider? Yeah, sure, they do). Perhaps in that situation the printing & distribution company would also have no liability, I don't know.
- koboll 7y ago
  If I invent a machine that passes out six thousand flyers per second, and allow people to feed text into it at will, then yes, it is insane to describe these as my "speech". I may provide a mechanism for the words to get onto a page, but I have zero agency in the process of thinking them up, drafting them, and enacting their distribution. I am providing a mechanism for others to say things. However, you would probably say I start to become liable if I erect a giant wall on which all of these flyers are posted, and allow illegal content to remain hanging there even when I'm informed of it and aware it's illegal. This gray area is exactly what Section 230 is designed around. It's totally unreasonable to expect a platform operator to act as the speaker of a post the moment it is posted. But after becoming aware of a post and the reasons it may be objectionable, they start to gain a sort of post-hoc liability. If someone prints out child porn, glues it to a yard sign, and plants it on your front lawn, you should probably not be liable for arrest starting that instant. But if, after coming and going and seeing it over and over for a week, you make no efforts to remove it or report it, then you should probably be liable for arrest. This is exactly the logic behind Section 230.

Fjolsvith 7y ago

FB is a publisher because they don't allow everyone on their platform. Edit: We try to make Facebook broadly available to everyone, but you cannot use Facebook if: You are under 13 years old. You are a convicted sex offender. We've previously disabled your account for violations of our Terms or Policies. You are prohibited from receiving our products, services, or software under applicable laws. From Facebook's Terms of Service: https://www.facebook.com/terms.php https://www.facebook.com/terms.php

esoterica 7y ago

They should be allowed to have it both ways. If I run a video game forum, I should be allowed to ban trolls and remove off-topic posts without accepting legal responsibility for any illegal content that gets posted on my forum by third parties without my prior knowledge or consent. Forcing people to choose between being a publisher and being a utility would completely and instantly kill every single internet community dead in its tracks. I don’t understand how people can post on a heavily moderated forum like HN while demanding that moderation be effectively made illegal. It’s like people hate Facebook and Google so much that they mindlessly get onboard with any form of retaliation against them regardless of the actual consequences.

ryandrake 7y ago
There should be a line somewhere between curbing abuse, curating content, and promoting ideology. But I personally don’t feel comfortable or qualified to decide where that line should be drawn. There must be some point between USENET and the NYT editorial section where the publisher becomes liable for the content they promote.
carapace 7y ago
FWIW, it doesn't sound insane to me that you should have "legal responsibility for any illegal content that gets posted on my forum by third parties without my prior knowledge or consent." You're the one who chose to set your forum up that way, eh? (We're not talking about hackers defacing your site, yeah?) As much as I find the idea of "illegal content" galling (I love freedom) I'm not so idealistic that I fail to recognize that freedom of speech cannot be an absolute. ("Fire" in theaters; revealing national security secrets; doxxing; there are limits. I'm glad I'm not on the hot seat when it comes to nailing them down: I don't run open internet forums, for example.) If you don't have a way to pass that responsibility onto the actual speakers then you must shoulder it yourself, no? Whether or not current systems can survive that is less important to me than the establishment of formal responsibility for one's speech.

iudqnolq 7y ago

Completely wrong with regard to current US law. First Amendment rights apply to corporations without distinguishing based any attribute. There is no such legal concept as a publisher or a platform. No legal scholar has argued that publisher/platform exists in current law, the academic community speculated it might be nice to change the law to make the distinction and then it gets misreported.