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> What's complicated about repealing a 2-clause law? There's substantial consensus among Internet scholars that this would change the entire Internet ecosystem

> 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 Removing code that's outdated is usually a step in the right direction.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
- d1zzy 7y ago
  > The details and complications aren't the general taxpayer's problem, though. It's Google & Facebook's problem. Actually, it's any company's that wants to do that problem. And between multi-billion dollar established companies and smaller/starting up companies, who exactly do you think will be most impacted?

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
d1zzy 7y ago
> The details and complications aren't the general taxpayer's problem, though. It's Google & Facebook's problem. Actually, it's any company's that wants to do that problem. And between multi-billion dollar established companies and smaller/starting up companies, who exactly do you think will be most impacted?