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The analysis you present is very misleading. The CDA doesn't say anything about retroactive moderation or pre-vetting, but grants legal immunity with no regard

The analysis you present is very misleading. The CDA doesn't say anything about retroactive moderation or pre-vetting, but grants legal immunity with no regard for moderation styles. So how do you get from here to there? > 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. The antitrust route seems much more complicated to me because prosecutors would have to bring a new case to court for every major company, at taxpayers' expense. What's complicated about repealing a 2-clause law? Is there another part to this process I'm not aware of? > What problem does revoking section 230 solve that antitrust law doesn't? Aside from being much simpler and less expensive to taxpayers? It would solve the problem once and for all by removing the source of the problem, instead of forcing the government to handle it one company at a time.

danShumway 7y ago
> What's complicated about repealing a 2-clause law? There's substantial consensus among Internet scholars that this would change the entire Internet ecosystem in either negative or at least highly unpredictable ways. It's complicated because we need to consider and plan for the consequences, and because it opens up an entire new set of legal distinctions that have never been applied to the Internet and will need to be established and refined over decades. Repealing 230 is simple in the same way that SESTA/FOSTA was simple -- there are lots of things that seem simple until you consider the details. On the other hand, antitrust law is pretty widely established, it's something we need to be applying across the entire market (both online and offline) anyway, and breaking up companies has comparatively fewer fundamental consequences for the wider. It's a mistake to measure complexity in lines of law, in the same way that it's a mistake to measure program complexity in lines of code. The real test is, "how much of the system does this change, how invasive is it, and do we know what all of the effects will be?"
- tboyd47 7y ago
  The details and complications aren't the general taxpayer's problem, though. It's Google & Facebook's problem. We don't take any of the profits they made off of Section 230 -- why should we have to pay to clean it up? > It's a mistake to measure complexity in lines of law, in the same way that it's a mistake to measure program complexity in lines of code. Removing code that's outdated is usually a step in the right direction. And when you fix a bug, you always want to fix it at the source of the problem.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    > The details and complications aren't the general taxpayer's problem, though. It's Google & Facebook's problem. It's everyone's problem who wants to start an Internet business. And by extension, it's the taxpayer's problem because presumably they use the Internet. Passing laws is like fixing bugs live on a production machine, because we don't get to go through a testing phase. When you're in production, you should almost always do the simplest, least invasive fix you can.
    - tboyd47 7y ago
      Agree to disagree? You still haven't explained the moderation thing, and I'm curious how you arrived at that point.
      - danShumway 7y ago
        On moderation: If you treat platforms as liable for content posted, their only opportunity is to censor anything that might cause them to be liable. In practice, this amounts to option 2 (the NYT). The NYT is not a forum. It pre-vets all of its content and runs it by a team of editors. You can't run an open forum like HN or Reddit that way. I don't like option 2, because I would argue having a place where anyone can communicate and publish information outside of locked-down, establishment media channels is really good. If you tell platforms that they won't be liable as long as they don't moderate/censor (the "true platform" argument people bring up), then you've taken away their ability to moderate at all. That's how you end up with every open platform looking like 8Chan (option 1). I would also argue that allowing communities to filter and ban bad actors is necessary for an inclusive, open Internet. The innovation of Section 230 was that it gave companies, forum owners, and platform maintainers permission to moderate. It created option 3. Owners didn't have to make a decision between blocking everything or nothing, because they couldn't be held liable for user content at all, regardless of their moderation strategy. That meant that they could be as aggressive (or passive) with moderation as they liked without worrying that it would make them liable for any content that they missed. Section 230 is an attempt to deal with two facts -- first that moderation is fundamental to healthy communities, and second that when users have the ability to instantly post their own content there is no system (human or AI driven) that will ever be able to moderate perfectly. So far from being a misleading sidenote or a jump in logic, content moderation was the reason why section 230 was passed to begin with. From its very inception, section 230 was always about allowing a middle ground for moderation.[0] > One of the first legal challenges to Section 230 was the 1997 case Zeran v. America Online, Inc., in which a Federal court affirmed that the purpose of Section 230 as passed by Congress was "to remove the disincentives to self-regulation created by the Stratton Oakmont decision". Under that court's holding, computer service providers who regulated the dissemination of offensive material on their services risked subjecting themselves to liability, because such regulation cast the service provider in the role of a publisher. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#History
heavyset_go 7y ago
> The analysis you present is very misleading. The CDA doesn't say anything about retroactive moderation or pre-vetting, but grants legal immunity with no regard for moderation styles. So how do you get from here to there? This is correct. Section 230 removes liability for user content regardless of moderation. The moderation argument is a red herring. > What's complicated about repealing a 2-clause law? Is there another part to this process I'm not aware of? There is tomes of case law relying on Section 230 of the CDA, and much of the internet is able to operate as it does today because of it. Without Section 230, services that enable users to share content would be encumbered with a mountain of liability that would most likely scare off investors. Email providers are protected by Section 230, as are messenger apps, forums, Usenet, chat in games, etc. Social media as it exists today would be risky for any entity to host that couldn't afford to vet all content before serving it to others.
- tboyd47 7y ago
  Email and usenet both existed and ran just fine before Section 230. There's good reason to think that low-volume, heavily-moderated forums like this one would have no problem without the CDA. > Social media as it exists today would be risky for any entity to host that couldn't afford to vet all content before serving it to others. "As it exists today" - and why should we assume that the present manifestation of social media is the best possible one? Why assume that large-scale content moderation is an unsolvable problem? It may be that the only reason present-day tech companies haven't solved it is because they don't need to. If all their employees who are currently focused on getting people to click ads switched over to developing efficient moderation, could it be solved?
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    > Email and usenet both existed and ran just fine before Section 230. Email and Usenet didn't have the eyes on them and the billion dollar coffers legal teams could drain that they do today. > There's good reason to think that low-volume, heavily-moderated forums like this one would have no problem without the CDA. Without equivalent legislation that removes liability for hosting user content, all it would take is a cease & desist or arrest for someone to decide that the risk of hosting a free forum like HN just isn't worth the legal liability. > "As it exists today" - and why should we assume that the present manifestation of social media is the best possible one? Nobody suggested that the current manifestation is "the best one". You're posting on a forum where many people are able to amass small fortunes working for, and selling to, companies that regularly rely on Section 230. One only needs to look at the tomes of case law created by these companies based on Section 230 to recognize this. > Why assume that large-scale content moderation is an unsolvable problem? Again, nobody suggested that it is an unsolvable problem. It's a solvable problem with giant piles of money and an extremely lengthy payroll. The problem is that the liability for user content being unwaived has a chilling effect for those without giant piles of money and an infinitely long payroll. GeoCities, personal blogs, personal sites, hobbyist forums, and other mainstays of the nascent internet would either exist with massive censorship or not at all. > If all their employees who are currently focused on getting people to click ads switched over to developing efficient moderation, could it be solved? How many people would be able to bootstrap a site that allows users to upload content in any form if they needed a billion dollar payroll to hedge against the liability of being sued out of existence, or being raided and arrested in the middle of the night?

danShumway 7y ago

> What's complicated about repealing a 2-clause law? There's substantial consensus among Internet scholars that this would change the entire Internet ecosystem in either negative or at least highly unpredictable ways. It's complicated because we need to consider and plan for the consequences, and because it opens up an entire new set of legal distinctions that have never been applied to the Internet and will need to be established and refined over decades. Repealing 230 is simple in the same way that SESTA/FOSTA was simple -- there are lots of things that seem simple until you consider the details. On the other hand, antitrust law is pretty widely established, it's something we need to be applying across the entire market (both online and offline) anyway, and breaking up companies has comparatively fewer fundamental consequences for the wider. It's a mistake to measure complexity in lines of law, in the same way that it's a mistake to measure program complexity in lines of code. The real test is, "how much of the system does this change, how invasive is it, and do we know what all of the effects will be?"

tboyd47 7y ago
The details and complications aren't the general taxpayer's problem, though. It's Google & Facebook's problem. We don't take any of the profits they made off of Section 230 -- why should we have to pay to clean it up? > It's a mistake to measure complexity in lines of law, in the same way that it's a mistake to measure program complexity in lines of code. Removing code that's outdated is usually a step in the right direction. And when you fix a bug, you always want to fix it at the source of the problem.
- danShumway 7y ago
  > The details and complications aren't the general taxpayer's problem, though. It's Google & Facebook's problem. It's everyone's problem who wants to start an Internet business. And by extension, it's the taxpayer's problem because presumably they use the Internet. Passing laws is like fixing bugs live on a production machine, because we don't get to go through a testing phase. When you're in production, you should almost always do the simplest, least invasive fix you can.
  - tboyd47 7y ago
    Agree to disagree? You still haven't explained the moderation thing, and I'm curious how you arrived at that point.
    - danShumway 7y ago
      On moderation: If you treat platforms as liable for content posted, their only opportunity is to censor anything that might cause them to be liable. In practice, this amounts to option 2 (the NYT). The NYT is not a forum. It pre-vets all of its content and runs it by a team of editors. You can't run an open forum like HN or Reddit that way. I don't like option 2, because I would argue having a place where anyone can communicate and publish information outside of locked-down, establishment media channels is really good. If you tell platforms that they won't be liable as long as they don't moderate/censor (the "true platform" argument people bring up), then you've taken away their ability to moderate at all. That's how you end up with every open platform looking like 8Chan (option 1). I would also argue that allowing communities to filter and ban bad actors is necessary for an inclusive, open Internet. The innovation of Section 230 was that it gave companies, forum owners, and platform maintainers permission to moderate. It created option 3. Owners didn't have to make a decision between blocking everything or nothing, because they couldn't be held liable for user content at all, regardless of their moderation strategy. That meant that they could be as aggressive (or passive) with moderation as they liked without worrying that it would make them liable for any content that they missed. Section 230 is an attempt to deal with two facts -- first that moderation is fundamental to healthy communities, and second that when users have the ability to instantly post their own content there is no system (human or AI driven) that will ever be able to moderate perfectly. So far from being a misleading sidenote or a jump in logic, content moderation was the reason why section 230 was passed to begin with. From its very inception, section 230 was always about allowing a middle ground for moderation.[0] > One of the first legal challenges to Section 230 was the 1997 case Zeran v. America Online, Inc., in which a Federal court affirmed that the purpose of Section 230 as passed by Congress was "to remove the disincentives to self-regulation created by the Stratton Oakmont decision". Under that court's holding, computer service providers who regulated the dissemination of offensive material on their services risked subjecting themselves to liability, because such regulation cast the service provider in the role of a publisher. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#History

heavyset_go 7y ago

> The analysis you present is very misleading. The CDA doesn't say anything about retroactive moderation or pre-vetting, but grants legal immunity with no regard for moderation styles. So how do you get from here to there? This is correct. Section 230 removes liability for user content regardless of moderation. The moderation argument is a red herring. > What's complicated about repealing a 2-clause law? Is there another part to this process I'm not aware of? There is tomes of case law relying on Section 230 of the CDA, and much of the internet is able to operate as it does today because of it. Without Section 230, services that enable users to share content would be encumbered with a mountain of liability that would most likely scare off investors. Email providers are protected by Section 230, as are messenger apps, forums, Usenet, chat in games, etc. Social media as it exists today would be risky for any entity to host that couldn't afford to vet all content before serving it to others.

tboyd47 7y ago
Email and usenet both existed and ran just fine before Section 230. There's good reason to think that low-volume, heavily-moderated forums like this one would have no problem without the CDA. > Social media as it exists today would be risky for any entity to host that couldn't afford to vet all content before serving it to others. "As it exists today" - and why should we assume that the present manifestation of social media is the best possible one? Why assume that large-scale content moderation is an unsolvable problem? It may be that the only reason present-day tech companies haven't solved it is because they don't need to. If all their employees who are currently focused on getting people to click ads switched over to developing efficient moderation, could it be solved?
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  > Email and usenet both existed and ran just fine before Section 230. Email and Usenet didn't have the eyes on them and the billion dollar coffers legal teams could drain that they do today. > There's good reason to think that low-volume, heavily-moderated forums like this one would have no problem without the CDA. Without equivalent legislation that removes liability for hosting user content, all it would take is a cease & desist or arrest for someone to decide that the risk of hosting a free forum like HN just isn't worth the legal liability. > "As it exists today" - and why should we assume that the present manifestation of social media is the best possible one? Nobody suggested that the current manifestation is "the best one". You're posting on a forum where many people are able to amass small fortunes working for, and selling to, companies that regularly rely on Section 230. One only needs to look at the tomes of case law created by these companies based on Section 230 to recognize this. > Why assume that large-scale content moderation is an unsolvable problem? Again, nobody suggested that it is an unsolvable problem. It's a solvable problem with giant piles of money and an extremely lengthy payroll. The problem is that the liability for user content being unwaived has a chilling effect for those without giant piles of money and an infinitely long payroll. GeoCities, personal blogs, personal sites, hobbyist forums, and other mainstays of the nascent internet would either exist with massive censorship or not at all. > If all their employees who are currently focused on getting people to click ads switched over to developing efficient moderation, could it be solved? How many people would be able to bootstrap a site that allows users to upload content in any form if they needed a billion dollar payroll to hedge against the liability of being sued out of existence, or being raided and arrested in the middle of the night?