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I am so ready for law suits to tear down Section 230 and similar legal shields. Web sites should not have unique legal protections just to show outrageous ad co

I am so ready for law suits to tear down Section 230 and similar legal shields. Web sites should not have unique legal protections just to show outrageous ad content only to plead ignorance when publishing content is the revenue stream. They should be held liable for all content expressed on their platforms like any other publisher. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communica...

TheAsprngHacker 6y ago
It is my understanding that website owners (especially owners of small websites) rely on Section 230 in order to host user-submitted content (such as comments), as they cannot feasibly moderate all the content and they don't want to be held liable for anything inappropriate or illegal. Am I mistaken?
- fossuser 6y ago
  The person you’re replying to is mistaken - 230 protects owners by allowing them to moderate, without it the existing legal precedent would force them to do nothing because any moderation would make them responsible for everything (as was the case before 230). This point is often confused and misunderstood. People think without 230 owners would be liable, but they’d only be liable if they moderated (so they wouldn’t). Without 230 owners would not moderate which would be worse for everyone. https://stratechery.com/2019/a-framework-for-moderation/ https://stratechery.com/2019/a-framework-for-moderation/ > “ In other words, the act of moderating any of the user-generated content on its forums made Prodigy liable for all of the user-generated content on its forums — in this case to the tune of $200 million. This left services that hosted user-generated content with only one option: zero moderation. That was the only way to be classified as a distributor with the associated shield from liability, and not as a publisher.” > “The point of Section 230, then, was to make moderation legally viable; this came via the “Good Samaritan” provision” > “In short, Section 230 doesn’t shield platforms from the responsibility to moderate; it in fact makes moderation possible in the first place. Nor does Section 230 require neutrality: the entire reason it exists was because true neutrality — that is, zero moderation beyond what is illegal — was undesirable to Congress.”
  - saurik 6y ago
    I think the argument is that someone merely hosting something horrible on YouTube isn't really a problem if no one can find it? YouTube could still exist without Section 230, and it would work "great": it wouldn't have any "recommendation" or "discovery" algorithms--which we all know have been shown to actively drag people into extreme positions, and are of a class of systems that optimize for "engagement", which isn't even a healthy thing for a user to have--and would feel more like Instagram (without the discover page that doesn't work well anyway, and without the new recommended feed that maybe you like but a lot of us despise), where if you know about someone you follow them and you can see what the people you follow posted and you can get notifications when those person post new videos and if you dislike them you unfollow them... what sucks about all of these systems right now is someone posts something horrible and you then that content is actively pushed at people all while YouTube is making a profit, and then they can choose how quickly they want to respond to different kinds of moderation, and the whole thing is a bit evil :(.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      This is unrelated to 230. 230 is specifically about giving protection to sites so they can moderate their content without being legally responsible for every thing users post. It’s an update to older law that was written pre-internet for older style publishers (where they had more editorial control over what was published because the content wasn’t user generated). It doesn’t have to do with recommendation algorithms. Killing 230 would force YouTube to have zero content moderation beyond removing illegal content. It would be a bad outcome (which is why 230 was created).
      - alacombe 6y ago
        > Killing 230 would force YouTube to have zero content moderation beyond removing illegal content. It would be a bad outcome (which is why 230 was created). That actually sounds much better than arbitrary moderation.
        azinman2 6y ago
- austincheney 6y ago
  The primary interest of section 230 is to allow user submitted content for public exposition without a barrier and typically for an advertising based revenue stream. In this context the profit margins are incredibly tiny and thus utterly reliant upon high transaction frequency. The larger the website the more reliant they are on this protect, because there is more revenue in jeopardy and the cost of moderation scales disproportionately to the profit margin. The immediate consequence of revoking 230 is hindering anonymous user contributions to websites for public exhibition. The liability associated with such can be substantially marginalized by any number of practices that cripple a public facing ad based revenue model.

TheAsprngHacker 6y ago

It is my understanding that website owners (especially owners of small websites) rely on Section 230 in order to host user-submitted content (such as comments), as they cannot feasibly moderate all the content and they don't want to be held liable for anything inappropriate or illegal. Am I mistaken?

fossuser 6y ago
The person you’re replying to is mistaken - 230 protects owners by allowing them to moderate, without it the existing legal precedent would force them to do nothing because any moderation would make them responsible for everything (as was the case before 230). This point is often confused and misunderstood. People think without 230 owners would be liable, but they’d only be liable if they moderated (so they wouldn’t). Without 230 owners would not moderate which would be worse for everyone. https://stratechery.com/2019/a-framework-for-moderation/ https://stratechery.com/2019/a-framework-for-moderation/ > “ In other words, the act of moderating any of the user-generated content on its forums made Prodigy liable for all of the user-generated content on its forums — in this case to the tune of $200 million. This left services that hosted user-generated content with only one option: zero moderation. That was the only way to be classified as a distributor with the associated shield from liability, and not as a publisher.” > “The point of Section 230, then, was to make moderation legally viable; this came via the “Good Samaritan” provision” > “In short, Section 230 doesn’t shield platforms from the responsibility to moderate; it in fact makes moderation possible in the first place. Nor does Section 230 require neutrality: the entire reason it exists was because true neutrality — that is, zero moderation beyond what is illegal — was undesirable to Congress.”
- saurik 6y ago
  I think the argument is that someone merely hosting something horrible on YouTube isn't really a problem if no one can find it? YouTube could still exist without Section 230, and it would work "great": it wouldn't have any "recommendation" or "discovery" algorithms--which we all know have been shown to actively drag people into extreme positions, and are of a class of systems that optimize for "engagement", which isn't even a healthy thing for a user to have--and would feel more like Instagram (without the discover page that doesn't work well anyway, and without the new recommended feed that maybe you like but a lot of us despise), where if you know about someone you follow them and you can see what the people you follow posted and you can get notifications when those person post new videos and if you dislike them you unfollow them... what sucks about all of these systems right now is someone posts something horrible and you then that content is actively pushed at people all while YouTube is making a profit, and then they can choose how quickly they want to respond to different kinds of moderation, and the whole thing is a bit evil :(.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    This is unrelated to 230. 230 is specifically about giving protection to sites so they can moderate their content without being legally responsible for every thing users post. It’s an update to older law that was written pre-internet for older style publishers (where they had more editorial control over what was published because the content wasn’t user generated). It doesn’t have to do with recommendation algorithms. Killing 230 would force YouTube to have zero content moderation beyond removing illegal content. It would be a bad outcome (which is why 230 was created).
    - alacombe 6y ago
      > Killing 230 would force YouTube to have zero content moderation beyond removing illegal content. It would be a bad outcome (which is why 230 was created). That actually sounds much better than arbitrary moderation.
      - azinman2 6y ago
austincheney 6y ago
The primary interest of section 230 is to allow user submitted content for public exposition without a barrier and typically for an advertising based revenue stream. In this context the profit margins are incredibly tiny and thus utterly reliant upon high transaction frequency. The larger the website the more reliant they are on this protect, because there is more revenue in jeopardy and the cost of moderation scales disproportionately to the profit margin. The immediate consequence of revoking 230 is hindering anonymous user contributions to websites for public exhibition. The liability associated with such can be substantially marginalized by any number of practices that cripple a public facing ad based revenue model.