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Be careful of what you ask for. Section 230 exists because the courts punished Prodigy because they tried to moderate their forums but did it imperfectly, but

Be careful of what you ask for. Section 230 exists because the courts punished Prodigy because they tried to moderate their forums but did it imperfectly, but didn't punish CompuServe because they let anything go. The idea is to allow imperfect moderation in addition to both zero and perfect moderation. The internet without section 230 isn't a bastion of internet freedom. It's 4chan and 8chan. It's a shithole.

ooobit2 6y ago
It's a shithole with it too. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitch, the list goes on. Every single bad thing we've dealt with since 2010 has been started or exacerbated not even by the existence of these platforms, but by the way they've been managed, and the protections Section 230 has given them against any liability. This protection needed to be pulled when Twitch banned Hong Kong players. It needed to be pulled when Google agreed with the PRC to provide a backdoor into users' searches in China. Zuckerberg should be rotting in jail for the Facebook platform's policies... policies that have enabled election fraud, made child trafficking and pornography more accessible and easier to hide. We aren't even dealing with the worst of it. I have first-hand knowledge that one of telecom providers in India and South Asia has been trying for years to get out from under agreements it signed with Facebook that went south. These platforms have played a huge role in expanding substance abuse, tobacco use, and crime in youth elsewhere in the world. They get away with accountability because of crap policies like Section 230. At the very least, there needs to be a quick path to prosecution and regulation. 4chan is bad, but go to Twitter's company page and look at the organizations they are working with on their policies. Every single one is a progressive, special interest group. JK Rowling should be enough proof that the circle of approvable persons will eventually close in and exclude you too, and for a stupidly heinous reason, like, humans who lick their balls are just as domestic as any dog... or John Oliver is actually funny. You know, something real offensive.
- nothisisamerica 6y ago
  Start your own platform. Have the government run it. Compete using tax dollars. Here's one system you could use to run your own platform where you make all of the editorial decisions, you pay for all of the moderation, and you pay for the fallout from attempts to manipulate public opinion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
- AaronFriel 6y ago
  > Every single bad thing we've dealt with since 2010 has been started or exacerbated I think this is a difficult to argue claim because exacerbated could be defined so broadly as to fit any post on social media. > 4chan is bad, but go to Twitter's company page and look at the organizations they are working with on their policies. Every single one is a progressive, special interest group. And yet Twitter has struggled with whether to ban actual, self-avowed neo-Nazis. No, not the ones that users call Nazis, but the folks who call themselves that. If Twitter and other social media are too alike to 4chan, it seems to me they have a lot further to go than just put some "progressive special interest groups" on their policy boards. JK Rowling is welcome to air her views on the platform and users are able to express their disdain. That's just culture, y'know?
geofft 6y ago
More precisely, the internet without section 230 is two things: it's 4chan and 8chan on one side and tightly moderated corporate-run comment sections on the other (because you need extremely proactive moderation to avoid liability for things people post). You'll still have social media, because the world loves it, but everything will be reviewed by a compliance team at a big tech company instead of being available immediately. Smaller sites won't be able to staff a proper review team - you can still run personal blogs and let trusted friends comment, but you can't do things like run a Mastodon or a phpBB open to the public if you want to do any moderation at all (and if you don't do any moderation, 8chan will raid you).
- shrimp_emoji 6y ago
  Well, it's good to know it's not all bad then. Between the corporately-curated snail mail and 4chan, I think social media will skew toward 4chan, which I'd gladly accept. Frankly, I like it even more than moderately-moderated social media; it's a lot funner. :D Shithole, yes, but charming and fun. But that's probably mostly a product of its anonymity. Also, imperfect moderation is the thing that tends to annoy users most. With perfect moderation (like a blog with comments disabled?), you have no hope. With no moderation, there's no danger. With imperfect moderation, there's inconsistent or nonsensical bans, there's the urge to take chances and get punished, sometimes by capricious mods, and there's endless sidebars of rules to read before posting. Ugg.
Consultant32452 6y ago
I'm okay with imperfect moderation. What I'm not okay with is backdoor untracked political contributions under the guise of imperfect moderation. It feels, to me, that Twitter and Google have given Billions of dollars worth of political censorship/promotion/search bias. Let's get the FEC involved so we can measure and track this political spending.
- kthxbye123 6y ago
  This is absolute incoherent nonsense. Are TV networks that air press conferences giving 'untracked political contributions'? Is a network that chooses not to air a particular speech or event giving an 'untracked contribution' in the form of 'political censorship'?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- thomaslord 6y ago
  I'm curious... What dollar value would you place on Twitter contribution to the Trump campaign? They have long failed to enforce their terms of use against Trump's account despite him posting tweets that violate them, despite other accounts that posted the same text verbatim having the tweets removed and/or being banned from the platform. I can't think of any high-profile liberal politicians who have such a blatant disregard for the rules of the platform, so that must be what you're referring to, right? Or is your contention that rules like "don't use our platform call for violence" are themselves political censorship targeted at conservatives?
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    You might be interested in research by Robert Epstein which calculates how Google search rankings impact votes. He measured how many votes this changed and put some economic value on it. Here's a quick interview between him and Larry King. His Congressional testimony is also really great, but it's over an hour long. You can find it on Youtube if you're interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS3uETvzZZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS3uETvzZZ0 To put it simply, Google decides who wins every close election. If that's the future you want, where tech oligarchs and/or a rogue lower level employee controls entire elections across the globe, then that's the world you have today. Trump's tweets are a red herring. I'm not a Trump supporter.
prepend 6y ago
I don’t think everything devolves to 4chan. But if I had to choose, I suppose I’d rather have 4chan than Facebook. But I hope we never have to choose between those extremes.
themacguffinman 6y ago
I doubt that it will devolve into 4chan & 8chan which are abhorrent to common people, there's no money in doing that. The internet will find a different way to appeal to the mainstream, probably by becoming more similar to cable TV & Netflix & Disney: practically eliminate amateur content and stick to professional, big budget productions.

ooobit2 6y ago

It's a shithole with it too. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitch, the list goes on. Every single bad thing we've dealt with since 2010 has been started or exacerbated not even by the existence of these platforms, but by the way they've been managed, and the protections Section 230 has given them against any liability. This protection needed to be pulled when Twitch banned Hong Kong players. It needed to be pulled when Google agreed with the PRC to provide a backdoor into users' searches in China. Zuckerberg should be rotting in jail for the Facebook platform's policies... policies that have enabled election fraud, made child trafficking and pornography more accessible and easier to hide. We aren't even dealing with the worst of it. I have first-hand knowledge that one of telecom providers in India and South Asia has been trying for years to get out from under agreements it signed with Facebook that went south. These platforms have played a huge role in expanding substance abuse, tobacco use, and crime in youth elsewhere in the world. They get away with accountability because of crap policies like Section 230. At the very least, there needs to be a quick path to prosecution and regulation. 4chan is bad, but go to Twitter's company page and look at the organizations they are working with on their policies. Every single one is a progressive, special interest group. JK Rowling should be enough proof that the circle of approvable persons will eventually close in and exclude you too, and for a stupidly heinous reason, like, humans who lick their balls are just as domestic as any dog... or John Oliver is actually funny. You know, something real offensive.

nothisisamerica 6y ago
Start your own platform. Have the government run it. Compete using tax dollars. Here's one system you could use to run your own platform where you make all of the editorial decisions, you pay for all of the moderation, and you pay for the fallout from attempts to manipulate public opinion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
AaronFriel 6y ago
> Every single bad thing we've dealt with since 2010 has been started or exacerbated I think this is a difficult to argue claim because exacerbated could be defined so broadly as to fit any post on social media. > 4chan is bad, but go to Twitter's company page and look at the organizations they are working with on their policies. Every single one is a progressive, special interest group. And yet Twitter has struggled with whether to ban actual, self-avowed neo-Nazis. No, not the ones that users call Nazis, but the folks who call themselves that. If Twitter and other social media are too alike to 4chan, it seems to me they have a lot further to go than just put some "progressive special interest groups" on their policy boards. JK Rowling is welcome to air her views on the platform and users are able to express their disdain. That's just culture, y'know?

geofft 6y ago

More precisely, the internet without section 230 is two things: it's 4chan and 8chan on one side and tightly moderated corporate-run comment sections on the other (because you need extremely proactive moderation to avoid liability for things people post). You'll still have social media, because the world loves it, but everything will be reviewed by a compliance team at a big tech company instead of being available immediately. Smaller sites won't be able to staff a proper review team - you can still run personal blogs and let trusted friends comment, but you can't do things like run a Mastodon or a phpBB open to the public if you want to do any moderation at all (and if you don't do any moderation, 8chan will raid you).

shrimp_emoji 6y ago
Well, it's good to know it's not all bad then. Between the corporately-curated snail mail and 4chan, I think social media will skew toward 4chan, which I'd gladly accept. Frankly, I like it even more than moderately-moderated social media; it's a lot funner. :D Shithole, yes, but charming and fun. But that's probably mostly a product of its anonymity. Also, imperfect moderation is the thing that tends to annoy users most. With perfect moderation (like a blog with comments disabled?), you have no hope. With no moderation, there's no danger. With imperfect moderation, there's inconsistent or nonsensical bans, there's the urge to take chances and get punished, sometimes by capricious mods, and there's endless sidebars of rules to read before posting. Ugg.

Consultant32452 6y ago

I'm okay with imperfect moderation. What I'm not okay with is backdoor untracked political contributions under the guise of imperfect moderation. It feels, to me, that Twitter and Google have given Billions of dollars worth of political censorship/promotion/search bias. Let's get the FEC involved so we can measure and track this political spending.

kthxbye123 6y ago
This is absolute incoherent nonsense. Are TV networks that air press conferences giving 'untracked political contributions'? Is a network that chooses not to air a particular speech or event giving an 'untracked contribution' in the form of 'political censorship'?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
thomaslord 6y ago
I'm curious... What dollar value would you place on Twitter contribution to the Trump campaign? They have long failed to enforce their terms of use against Trump's account despite him posting tweets that violate them, despite other accounts that posted the same text verbatim having the tweets removed and/or being banned from the platform. I can't think of any high-profile liberal politicians who have such a blatant disregard for the rules of the platform, so that must be what you're referring to, right? Or is your contention that rules like "don't use our platform call for violence" are themselves political censorship targeted at conservatives?
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  You might be interested in research by Robert Epstein which calculates how Google search rankings impact votes. He measured how many votes this changed and put some economic value on it. Here's a quick interview between him and Larry King. His Congressional testimony is also really great, but it's over an hour long. You can find it on Youtube if you're interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS3uETvzZZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS3uETvzZZ0 To put it simply, Google decides who wins every close election. If that's the future you want, where tech oligarchs and/or a rogue lower level employee controls entire elections across the globe, then that's the world you have today. Trump's tweets are a red herring. I'm not a Trump supporter.

prepend 6y ago

I don’t think everything devolves to 4chan. But if I had to choose, I suppose I’d rather have 4chan than Facebook. But I hope we never have to choose between those extremes.

themacguffinman 6y ago

I doubt that it will devolve into 4chan & 8chan which are abhorrent to common people, there's no money in doing that. The internet will find a different way to appeal to the mainstream, probably by becoming more similar to cable TV & Netflix & Disney: practically eliminate amateur content and stick to professional, big budget productions.