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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 de
by 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 agoLiability 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 agoThat 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 agoTo some degree, yes. Maybe not in the same way as a book publisher, but also not zero like a common carrier.
- tzs 7y agoI 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.