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Since Google is taking such a strong position against what they view as COVID19 misinformation, are they liable if I get sick as a result of some misinformation

Since Google is taking such a strong position against what they view as COVID19 misinformation, are they liable if I get sick as a result of some misinformation that managed to get through their filters? I might not try to go after some small time app developer or other rando on the Internet, but if Google is willing to stand behind their guarantee with those wonderfully deep pockets...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
logfromblammo 6y ago
Yes. They are partially liable if you went through them. Censorship of any content implies approval of all remaining content. One can't be protected from liability as a common carrier if one is curating. So if you have been provably harmed by anything Google has served you, you can sue the owner of the content and join Google as a defendant. (Not a lawyer.)
- danShumway 6y ago
  > Censorship of any content implies approval of all remaining content. One can't be protected from liability as a common carrier if one is curating. No, that's literally the opposite of current US law. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati... Moderation does not imply endorsement of remaining content. It only implies disapproval of the rejected content. There are plenty of people who who would like to change the current legal system, but (thankfully) by either grace, luck, or perseverance they have so far been prevented from doing so.
  - logfromblammo 6y ago
    I stand corrected. Does taking a third of the revenues imply endorsement?
    - danShumway 6y ago
      Not legally. If someone published an app on the Apple store that slandered you, Apple wouldn't be liable, even if they had profited from that app. The goal of Section 230 is to allow companies to moderate. It was based on two cases: one where a company that tried to moderate harmful content got stuck with liability, and one where a company that did no moderation at all got off by calling itself a platform. The point of Section 230 is that you should be able to moderate a forum you run or remove malware from the Ubuntu repositories without opening yourself up to liability. There is no exception to Section 230 based on revenue. If you put a paywall up on your forum, you don't suddenly become liable for slander that someone else posts. I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, but if you really wanted to find a way around that, probably the best strategy would be to argue that the company was purposefully disseminating unlawful content. A lot of old pirate hosting sites got hit with this. They weren't liable because they were publishers, they were liable because lawyers argued that piracy was the only reason their services existed, and that in some cases the companies had gone far as to encourage their own employees to upload pirated material. So I'm not going to make a 100% black-and-white blanket statement; there are ways you could get around Section 230. But none of them really apply to Google. Google isn't building its own ads for Covid misinformation, and it would be hard to argue that banning the Covid keyword was evidence that they actually wanted misinformation to spread.
      - logfromblammo 6y ago
        I don't think section 230 would be able to establish absolute immunity from liability that does not originate from moderation activity. If that were the case, it would be gamed to Hell and back with disparate legal entities and straw-man corporations, such that the immunized entity would book all the revenue, and the liability-exposed entities would be rendered judgment-proof. If Google takes 30% of revenues from all apps on the play store, should it not assume 30% of product liability for the content found therein? It seems like a common sense rule, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is anywhere in law, or that civil courts apply it. If you put up a paywall on your forum, and it is a platform for libel, you damned well should be liable, at minimum to the extent to which you profited from the wrongful behavior, and possibly lessened by the extent to which any libel is usually moderated away. If the moderation in place is so strict that it is producing significant false positives, why should the false negatives be protected? Having both is a symptom of sloppy, insufficiently earnest moderation. I would assume from the actions of Twitter that they implicitly endorse content from people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and I would assume from Facebook that they implicitly endorse misinformation campaigns. They are making money on their failure to moderate to their own published standards. Should that be legally protected? Section 230 presumably makes no exception for lazy, insufficient moderation.
tourist2d 6y ago
That's like saying the police are liable for you being robbed because the thief wasn't in jail.
- wtetzner 6y ago
  I think the point is, if Google isn't liable, then why are they censoring apps based on COVID-19 keywords? Doesn't seem to be any of their business.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    And if the police aren't liable, why are they putting people in jail? Liability is not the only reason Google might choose to censor Covid keywords. They might do it because their users expect them to. They might do it because they think it's the right thing to do. They might do it because they care more about blocking disinformation than allowing useful information. They might do it because a programmer has been working on this really cool censoring algorithm and they want to test it in production. They might do it because they're tired of people talking about Covid on their platforms and want it shut down in general. Section 230 applies to every major/minor platform in the US, granting all of them immunity from liability for most content. And yet, virtually all of them from Facebook to 4Chan, from Youtube to Pornhub, from Reddit to tiny 200-member Wordpress forums -- all of them censor some content. So liability is clearly not the only motivation for platforms to moderate, otherwise every comment section would be 8Chan.
mav3rick 6y ago
Don't use their services ?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

logfromblammo 6y ago

Yes. They are partially liable if you went through them. Censorship of any content implies approval of all remaining content. One can't be protected from liability as a common carrier if one is curating. So if you have been provably harmed by anything Google has served you, you can sue the owner of the content and join Google as a defendant. (Not a lawyer.)

danShumway 6y ago
> Censorship of any content implies approval of all remaining content. One can't be protected from liability as a common carrier if one is curating. No, that's literally the opposite of current US law. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati... Moderation does not imply endorsement of remaining content. It only implies disapproval of the rejected content. There are plenty of people who who would like to change the current legal system, but (thankfully) by either grace, luck, or perseverance they have so far been prevented from doing so.
- logfromblammo 6y ago
  I stand corrected. Does taking a third of the revenues imply endorsement?
  - danShumway 6y ago
    Not legally. If someone published an app on the Apple store that slandered you, Apple wouldn't be liable, even if they had profited from that app. The goal of Section 230 is to allow companies to moderate. It was based on two cases: one where a company that tried to moderate harmful content got stuck with liability, and one where a company that did no moderation at all got off by calling itself a platform. The point of Section 230 is that you should be able to moderate a forum you run or remove malware from the Ubuntu repositories without opening yourself up to liability. There is no exception to Section 230 based on revenue. If you put a paywall up on your forum, you don't suddenly become liable for slander that someone else posts. I am not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, but if you really wanted to find a way around that, probably the best strategy would be to argue that the company was purposefully disseminating unlawful content. A lot of old pirate hosting sites got hit with this. They weren't liable because they were publishers, they were liable because lawyers argued that piracy was the only reason their services existed, and that in some cases the companies had gone far as to encourage their own employees to upload pirated material. So I'm not going to make a 100% black-and-white blanket statement; there are ways you could get around Section 230. But none of them really apply to Google. Google isn't building its own ads for Covid misinformation, and it would be hard to argue that banning the Covid keyword was evidence that they actually wanted misinformation to spread.
    - logfromblammo 6y ago
      I don't think section 230 would be able to establish absolute immunity from liability that does not originate from moderation activity. If that were the case, it would be gamed to Hell and back with disparate legal entities and straw-man corporations, such that the immunized entity would book all the revenue, and the liability-exposed entities would be rendered judgment-proof. If Google takes 30% of revenues from all apps on the play store, should it not assume 30% of product liability for the content found therein? It seems like a common sense rule, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is anywhere in law, or that civil courts apply it. If you put up a paywall on your forum, and it is a platform for libel, you damned well should be liable, at minimum to the extent to which you profited from the wrongful behavior, and possibly lessened by the extent to which any libel is usually moderated away. If the moderation in place is so strict that it is producing significant false positives, why should the false negatives be protected? Having both is a symptom of sloppy, insufficiently earnest moderation. I would assume from the actions of Twitter that they implicitly endorse content from people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and I would assume from Facebook that they implicitly endorse misinformation campaigns. They are making money on their failure to moderate to their own published standards. Should that be legally protected? Section 230 presumably makes no exception for lazy, insufficient moderation.

tourist2d 6y ago

That's like saying the police are liable for you being robbed because the thief wasn't in jail.

wtetzner 6y ago
I think the point is, if Google isn't liable, then why are they censoring apps based on COVID-19 keywords? Doesn't seem to be any of their business.
- danShumway 6y ago
  And if the police aren't liable, why are they putting people in jail? Liability is not the only reason Google might choose to censor Covid keywords. They might do it because their users expect them to. They might do it because they think it's the right thing to do. They might do it because they care more about blocking disinformation than allowing useful information. They might do it because a programmer has been working on this really cool censoring algorithm and they want to test it in production. They might do it because they're tired of people talking about Covid on their platforms and want it shut down in general. Section 230 applies to every major/minor platform in the US, granting all of them immunity from liability for most content. And yet, virtually all of them from Facebook to 4Chan, from Youtube to Pornhub, from Reddit to tiny 200-member Wordpress forums -- all of them censor some content. So liability is clearly not the only motivation for platforms to moderate, otherwise every comment section would be 8Chan.

mav3rick 6y ago

Don't use their services ?