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FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

148 points by uncoder0 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dhimes 6y ago
What infuriates me the most is that those assholes would pass a law without knowing what it means. UnFuckingBelievable, yet not.
ajsnigrutin 6y ago
I think that every company should decide if they're a "publisher" or a "platform". If you're a platform, you're not responsible for what your users say (except directly illegal stuff, eg. child porn), and have no say in what stays on, or gets removed/hidden (except, again, illegal stuff). If you're a publisher, you have a say what is posted on your site, and you carry full responsibility for all the onsite content. Walking the line, and not wanting to take responsibility in some cases, but still deletin in other cases should be forbidden
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  And how are platforms to be regulated? Do they allow anonymous posters? Who investigates and removes harmful content?
  - trident1000 6y ago
    Really this is patchwork on what needs to be a major regulatory overhaul. Things that need to be addressed: no advertising to kids, mob control, fake accounts/social manipulation, free speech, transparent and auditable algorithms (screw their IP). Its not an easy task to achieve all of these and other goals but it needs to get done before society literally goes into a civil war.
  - hyper0perator 6y ago
    The phone company does unfortunately allow spam callers
    - eli 6y ago
      Is gmail allowed to filter out spam? Or does doing so make them an email publisher no longer exempt from liability for email contents?
    - sixothree 6y ago
      I'm honestly quite sick of this argument. The issue with the phone company isn't the spam. It's the anonymity. All solutions to the spam issue don't deal with unwanted calls at all.
- akersten 6y ago
  HackerNews could not exist in your proposed world. I doubt YC would hire a full-time staff of moderators to vet every single post. Since we remove things for being off-topic or overly mean, the only possible conclusion is that HN would shut down because they do not want to bear liability for the posts they leave up. The Internet as we know it would not exist without S230. Please read this[0] for a primer. [0]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
  - zarkov99 6y ago
    Different rules apply with scale. HN is fine doing whatever it does but global monopolies require special handling.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - gizmo385 6y ago
      Where does your cutoff apply? At what point are there "too many users"? How would you prevent something like that from being a completely arbitrary platform killer?
      - zarkov99 6y ago
        The courts would decide just like they do when a company is thought to have become a monopoly. This is not a new problem entirely but in this hyper politicized moment in the country it somehow has turned, just like everything else, into a left vs right issue. Its pathetic how we lost the hability to look at the issues without partisan glasses.
  - the8472 6y ago
    A platform does not mean there can be no moderation. Part of the platform can be offering moderation tools. One could also draw a distinction between burying content vs. completely deleting it. A lot of HN moderation already works by just dropping the content from the frontpage or making comments invisible rather than outright deleting it. I presume the FCC would still consider this
- the_pwner224 6y ago
  This does not work. Example: I want to set up a forum where people can discuss a specific topic. Such as the Arch Linux forum, or ones for vehicles (https://www.ninja400riders.com/ https://www.ninja400riders.com/, https://www.civicx.com/forum/ https://www.civicx.com/forum/). I am clearly not a publisher; I do produce content and do not want to produce content. So I am a platform. Am I no longer allowed to decide what is acceptable on my platform? Even if I am running a forum about the Ninja 400 motorcycle, I now have to allow people to post about their Toyota Corolla or about how vaccines cause autism or the earth is flat? What about if I want to moderate the forum to keep discussion on topic and I need to delete trolling or spam, or lock/delete threads that devolve into political fighting among forum members? You can't have platforms without moderation.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Metrics might matter. Exceptions for non profit (no ads) or orgs under undetermined amount of monthly active users?
    - tylerhou 6y ago
      That still doesn't answer the question — as soon as my forum gets popular, I can't moderate anymore? Do I limit the number of users so that I never hit these metrics? If I'd have to be non-profit (which doesn't mean no ads, by the way), then this kills a lot of business models.
      - snerbles 6y ago
        > Do I limit the number of users so that I never hit these metrics? A darkly amusing solution to Eternal September.
      - mc32 6y ago
        Right. After certain revenue or certain viewership or commercialization you have new responsibilities.
  - juniper_strong 6y ago
- ikeboy 6y ago
  "I think we should abolish the first amendment"
- mrtksn 6y ago
  That’s the Turkish model. A pioneer in censorship and totalitarian media control, it evolved in licensing and controlling everything. It started with simply getting your platform/publisher license(so they can make you take down illegal content, save the kids), now Turkey dictates your content depending on your internet business. Just few days ago Spotify was forced to get a license and establish a contact(probably because of the podcasts, will see), recently Netflix was forced to cancel a tv show because of a LGBT character, remove other shows and so on. They are trying to get their grip on Youtube to regulate it like a TV. Booking.com & Paypal are gone since years due to licensing. As soon as you have your definitions somebody will have to make sure that you are acting accordingly, so rules for the publishers and licensing For the platforms to control the publishers will follow. With the everything happening, that’s the feature for everyone and let me tell you, it’s not fun.
  - hyper0perator 6y ago
    Disagree. Newspapers and ISP follow under this regulation. Social media networks have been able to skirt the issue. If newspapers can get sued for their content and the phone company can't, it only makes sense that this applies to social media companies are held to the same liabilities or protections.
    - mrtksn 6y ago
      Sure, the issue is that now it is technically possible To do much more. With the phone company it’s impractical to listen to every conversation and “eliminate the threats”, it is practical with the internet. EU wants upload filters(stop singing “happy birthday” to your friend, that needs lives), UK want porn and crypto control(no dirty talk on the phone, no secretive talks, must speak load and clear). Turkey wants to control the narrative(An operator jumps in your phone conversation to correct you or stop you talking). I am sure That US, Canada, Norway , Iran, India etc all have their own agenda too and would loved to control your phone conversations. As for the liability, it’s already here. A lot of people are serving time or paying damages for the things they did on the internet. The new stuff is to make it controllable at scale.
- zarkov99 6y ago
  Not every company. But certainly google, facebook and twitter.
- slg 6y ago
  >If you're a platform, you're not responsible for what your users say (except directly illegal stuff, eg. child porn), and have no say in what stays on, or gets removed/hidden (except, again, illegal stuff). That sounds nice and easy until you start thinking about it for any length of time. The biggest problem might be who gets to decide what is illegal. This needs to be figured out in both a theoretical and practical sense. On the theoretical side does Twitter allow Holocaust denial which is legal in the US but illegal in much of Europe? Does the US get to impose its views of free speech on the world? Does every jurisdiction get a different version of the site? On the practical side, what happens when the legality of something is up for debate? Maybe an image is revenge porn or maybe it is perfectly legal porn. Maybe a movie clip is a copyright violation and maybe it is fair use. Does Twitter take down that content as soon as there is a complaint? Does it have to wait for some legal action to start or finish? What is the recourse if something is taken down and later found to be legal content?
  - hyper0perator 6y ago
    Legality under US free speech laws. See first amendment law literature.
  - jimmydorry 6y ago
    >Maybe a movie clip is a copyright violation and maybe it is fair use. Does Twitter take down that content as soon as there is a complaint? Does it have to wait for some legal action to start or finish? What is the recourse if something is taken down and later found to be legal content? We have the DMCA to cover this... however it's currently an extremely broken process. While there is a penalty codified for making claim to something you don't own, it is never enforced. That part of it needs to change and the regulation should then act in the manner it was designed to.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- blhack 6y ago
  That is exactly what section 230 already does. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 Whats being talked about here is stripping the assumption that twitter is acting in good faith, and therefore removing the protection they get from this section.
  - jellicle 6y ago
    So much confusion about this. What the prior commenter describes is exactly the OPPOSITE of what section 230 does. Under current law, companies are free to - specifically encouraged to - moderate and delete content as much as they want, while they are also immunized from being treated as the publisher of that content and immunized from any liability for that moderation and deletion of content.
    - blhack 6y ago
      Section 230 is outlining a way in which an internet service can be exempted from liability. What part of this is causing you to read it another way?
      - jakelazaroff 6y ago
        Section 230 shields platform operators from liability for user-generated content. It does not set conditions for immunity such as not moderating. In fact, it was arguably created expressly to prevent this publisher/distributor dichotomy. Look at the cases against Prodigy and Compuserve for examples of the ambiguity Section 230 was introduced to resolve.
    - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
      Right. The historical context for Section 230 is that some providers that were trying to offer a family-safe online service (e.g. Prodigy) by moderating the content available, and therefore became liable as publishers. In fact, if you read Section 230 in its entirety, you can see that it is intended to encourage moderation of content based on what the provider considers to be objectionable.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > have no say in what stays on, or gets removed/hidden (except, again, illegal stuff). That would eliminate HN, Reddit, basically anywhere with a moderated forum. How do you run a site like Ravelry (knitting/crafting site) with a rule like that? Under your idea, the reddit would consist of "News Sites" and "4chan". (Actually even 4chan does some moderation). There's no way that would be acceptable.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  I have a blog. Let’s say I wanted to let people comment on my blog posts. One day, I get a ton of “I just made $X from my couch!” type comments. My readers try to discuss my latest post, but the spam is suffocating the conversation. What can I do? They’re not saying anything illegal. If I delete the spam or add some sort of filter, I’m now a “publisher” and liable for every comment my readers make. But if I leave them up, my readers will be frustrated that they can’t have a real discussion. So I don’t have comments. I really want discussions with my readers, but it’s just not worth the risk. Now imagine this happening to every website. Every community. Hacker News as we know it wouldn’t exist — probably no voting and certainly no moderation. The whole Internet would turn into a cesspool of spam and flame wars. Many apps wouldn’t even exist in the first place. All because we decided to enforce this entirely arbitrary “publisher vs. platform” dichotomy.
- eli 6y ago
  I’m surprised to see this point take on HN. Most people who suggest this don’t realize that it would eliminate public participation from most of the internet. There can be no comment sections or Reddit or HN or StackOverflow or Wikipedia in this model. It would be very difficult to have any discussion forum at all. It would lead to an internet where powerful voices are even more powerful (because they have big publishers that will stand behind their words) and where the average user has a much much harder time being heard.
- sixothree 6y ago
  This sounds incredibly anti-democratic.
- morpheuskafka 6y ago
  So a forum like HN cannot even have rules that a discussion has to be on topic/within the scope of the site? Wikipedia cannot have notability and credibility policies (I guess that is an edge case since it is other editors actually doing the removing, but according to community consensus guidelines)? A forum for a marginalized group needs to allow hate speech against them, so long as its not illegal? All the while they are not only putting up with the unwanted content, but paying out of their own pocket to host it? What you are saying about platforms should apply to utilities (ISPs, possible PaaS like AWS), which is where net neutrality comes in. ISPs shouldn't block stuff they or the government doesn't like, slow it down, or otherwise interfere with traffic.
  - guscost 6y ago
    Is it time for Twitter to be considered a utility? ISPs evolved from “online service providers” which themselves evolved from “bulletin board systems”, and if you consider an ISP to be a utility today, then there was a point where that kind of service became a utility.
    - holler 6y ago
      Why? I'm not a fan of that idea as I'd rather find ways to spur new competition. Also, anyone can live without Twitter or any social network, whereas its harder to live without electricity, water, etc.
    - morpheuskafka 6y ago
      Historically, utilities/public services are things that have a natural monopoly, which absolutely applies to ISP/other wireline telcoms (city franchise licenses), mobile cell service (limited competition due to spectrum auctions and the need for enough nationwide spectrum to be accumulated to launch a viable service), water, sewer, power, gas, etc. It might apply to things like undersea cables, although there isn't really a natural monopoly (plenty of space under the ocean) and those primarily connect two privately owned datacenters. It applies to other services such as post office and city trash where either laws (private express statutes) prohibit competition for the sake of making the public service more profitable, or where taxes force the customer to "buy" the public trash pickup, making even the best-run private enterprise unable to compete. It is technically quite trivial to clone the basic functionality of Twitter and run a competing service. This has been done semi-sucessfully with Gab (not endorsing that community, but it is a good example), for example. People choose social media services based on their perceived value, social prestige, etc. There's no equivalent to "I have to use Twitter because they own the lines to the house/they have the only 5G coverage in my area/they are the only company licensed by my city." Twitter is not the only physically possible way to publish short messages to the world (unless the ISPs ruin that now that net neutrality is gone).
- Meph504 6y ago
  I'm having a hard time recalling any service that didn't have any content moderation, even on top of laws. The idea that content moderation makes you a publisher seems a bit silly to me. If I have a platform for selling say automobiles, and people keep trying to sell kitchenware of something equally not off brand. Removing that content doesn't make you a publisher, it makes you a steward of the purpose of a platform. The idea that moderation or cultivation of a platform, sudden makes you a "publisher" (which is frankly a term that shouldn't even be used in this case as it is too narrow for the web is) makes no sense. This is, a bullshit threat to try and assert control over platforms that people interact on by the government. It isn't needed, and is likely to be harmful.
- argomo 6y ago
  Is the following statement legal or illegal? "Man, nothing ends the day like a nice cold beer." Clearly, that's legal. But if I'm running a platform, I should be able to hide/downrank/shadowban/censor it based on what sort of community I'm trying to build. In a kid-oriented venue, it's inappropriate. In a recovering alcoholics group it's harmful/malicious. In a tech forum, it's low value. If you went to a school, an AA meeting, or a tech conference and talked about beer overbearingly, you'd be asked to leave the venue, and that would be their right. As onerous as it is to have legitimate, authentic speech banned from a popular platform, the alternative of allowing all speech effectively creates a worthless noise chamber dominated by bad actors.
post_below 6y ago
The most concerning thing about the tweet to me is the popular replies which support Pai's statement. The media, and those of us who understand what Pai did to net neutrality, need to do a better job of communicating to the general public exactly what Pai is, and what he's there to do. It would also be nice if people understood that section 230 protections allow the internet as we know it (not just the social media giants) to exist, but I'd settle for just the bit about Pai as a start.
- eli 6y ago
  230 is widely misunderstood on both the left and the right. Clearly even here on HN people don’t recognize how important it was to the development of the free and public internet.
- JungleGymSam 6y ago
  I have to tell you. You did a terrible job at "communicating to the general public exactly what Pai is". You insinuated some sort of malfeasance on his part but said exactly nothing about what it is. I used to want the government to not have its hand in things and I used to want the private sector solve issues. Now that the left-wing has overplayed their hand, they're going to bring potential harm on all of us by forcing the government to curtail their malfeasance.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  Much as I think its loose interpretation has a lot to do with the success of major internet hubs, it has become clear that unlimited liability for selective publishers is not a sustainable model for American public life. We can not sustain a system where a major paper and the U.S. Press Secretary is censored by corporations entrusted with a significant portion of the public square, but that corporation simultaneously has no liability for the things which they, by their non-interference, must be endorsing.
mindslight 6y ago
Putting aside the larger issue of unaccountable platforms, what is the rationale for seeing this as anything more than some ineffectual campaign stunt? I don't see anything in S230 that delegates judgment to the FCC or any part of the executive branch. Basically Trump is claiming to perform the functions of the legislature and judiciary by decree. I wonder if this is the natural extension of the two political teams talking past one another instead of working together. There's no way such legislation would pass the House right now, so instead they're just playing pretend on their own.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Rulemaking is a standard function of the executive, to execute laws.
  - protomyth 6y ago
    Yep, people really don't get the extent that bills actually only state intent and some rules, then the rule-making process actually sets the full rules that get published in the Federal Register. If you took the time to lets say read something as large as the Affordable Care Act you would see how little of the rules of implementation were in the bill. I generally look at this as the legislature abdicating its authority. The excuse is that its actually delegation to experts that actually have to enforce the rules. This is why it is so important to read the Federal Register and push the folks in the Senate and House to specify rules on important bills to give the executive branch as little wiggle room as possible (this advice should apply to all parties).
- uncoder0 6y ago
  You're probably correct on your first assumption that this is campaign related and most likely won't go anywhere. Legislation is the only 'real' way to change the section.
  - pstuart 6y ago
    Executive orders are increasingly used to do end-runs around legislation, so don't count them out.
Avshalom 6y ago
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201015/11555145508/blatant-hypocrite-ajit-pai-decides-to-move-forward-with-bogus-unconstitutional-rulemaking-section-230.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201015/11555145508/blata...
- Avshalom 6y ago
  N.B. same author, couple months back: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
supernova87a 6y ago
Might help to bring more popularity/attention to this story if "Section 230" could be explained in English in the title....
- sremani 6y ago
  Exact text of Section 230: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 EFF's view: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
- DanBC 6y ago
  Watch "I am Jane Doe". https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6398054/?ref_=tt_urv https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6398054/?ref_=tt_urv https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/13/17172762/fosta-sesta-backpage-230-internet-freedom https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/13/17172762/fosta-sesta-b... Women and children were kidnapped, drugged, and raped. Sex with these women and children was offered to paying men via ads in Backpage. When some of these women escaped they noticed their images were still being used in these ads. They tried to i) get Backpage to stop using these images of them being raped (sometimes of them as children being raped) and ii) get Backpage to take more corporate responsibility about taking adverts from traffickers. For some reason people seem to think this is about people who chose to sex work. It isn't. It's about people who were forced into it. Backpage declined to take down the images, and declined to stop taking ads. They then made it easier for people to place those ads; they helped people evade law enforcement; they gave people advice about what language to use when placing those ads. They got away with it because S230 means they're not responsible for what their users do, even though they're coaching their users about how to evade law enforcement.
tick_tock_tick 6y ago
Twitter was asking for this to happen especially with there move today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379
- neuronexmachina 6y ago
  If Twitter weren't shielded from liability for content posted on their platform, wouldn't that make them more eager to remove potentially-liable content?
- morpheuskafka 6y ago
  If they didn't do these things, then when Biden wins the election, the Democrats will be calling for them to "get their act together" and calling them to Congress for "spreading foreign propaganda/disinformation" or whatever.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
The war on free speech continues apace. As ever, if there's anything both parties agree on it's screwing the public. Even Trump and Biden are united in gutting the one law, that is uniquely responsible for the proliferation of the open internet.
stefan_ 6y ago
The champion for no regulation wants to regulate Twitter content.
- trident1000 6y ago
  Well removing section 230 would actually be deregulation and clarifying the interpretation is just enforcing whats already in place. 230 is legislation that protects tech companies currently. But they are acting as publishers and not platforms which has sparked action.
  - Niksko 6y ago
    That's purely semantics, and everyone knows it.
    - trident1000 6y ago
      What semantics? They were granted immunity with regulation and that regulation/immunity can be taken away.
      - boardwaalk 6y ago
        If you’re just counting “number of rules on the books”. You could easily imagine a flipped situation where people were trying to add regulation to get the same final effect. I suspect most people think more holistically about regulation than that. Being afraid of being sued and the results of those of those cases being enforced by the government certainly could be interpreted as “bigger government”/more regulation.
      - khuey 6y ago
        Repealing the First Amendment is also "deregulation" by this standard.
      - Niksko 6y ago
        I'll spell it out explicitly, since nobody else has. In a semantic sense, deregulation is the same thing as removing laws. De = remove, regulation = regulation. But what de-regulation really means is "the reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry". In this case, this law is basically an exemption. Putting the merits or validity of that exemption aside, if you remove the law, you're increasing the power the government has rather than reducing it. The courts now have the power over tech companies to enforce laws that make the tech companies responsible for what is posted on their platform.
KingMachiavelli 6y ago
I always find it disappointing (ironic?) that so much government communication is using private platforms - even if it's a "publisher"/newspaper. Even if I follow a mailing list or RSS feed I'm worried that some stuff might only be put on Twitter (especially with Police/LE activity where frequent updates are useful). Anyway, if you don't want to use Twitter (just to read an image of a real document)... The link to Ajit Pai's comment is https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-statement-section-230 https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-statement-section-... where you can view it as a DOCX, PDF, or glorious TXT. If you are upset by Ajit Pai's actions or Twitter's, here's the RSS feed(s) alternative for the FCC: https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/rss-feeds-and-email-updates-fcc https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/rss-feeds-and-email-updates-...
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  There was mass shooter incident in Canada where the police used Twitter instead of emergency alert system to inform the public. Not many checked Twitter and got the memo. 22 people were killed at the hands of the shooter over the span of 13 hours. The number would have been significantly lower if they had used something more effective to inform the public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nova_Scotia_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nova_Scotia_attacks
  - pb7 6y ago
    >The number would have been significantly lower if they had used something more effective to inform the public. Genuine question: what would that be exactly? I agree that government shouldn't only use private sector communication channels as the primary channel.
    - pitaj 6y ago
      The same system as Amber alerts
      - dlp211 6y ago
        Yep, the Emergency Alert Systems have existed since at least WWII. From a quick Google search: Canada has a National Public Alerting System (NPAS) which provides emergency management organizations across the country with the capability to rapidly warn the public of imminent or unfolding hazards to life. Public alerts are issued through radio, cable and satellite television and on compatible wireless devices
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
I've reached the conclusion that this is not about censorship. It's really about attempting to force ideas into the definition of "the mainstream". Facebook and Twitter legitimize content. From a social media perspective, they define the vanilla. When people say "I saw it on Facebook", you instinctively intuit it was on their feed between a photo of a kid and advert for Red Robin. If you want rocky road rather than vanilla, you can go find it on (2^n)chan. It's not hard to find. The presence of FaceTwit doesn't stop those forums existing or censor them. When the President has a tweet deleted or some covid conspiracy group is removed from Facebook, it's not that there isn't somewhere else that content could go. I mean Trump is literally continuously on TV and has the entire Federal government at his disposal to get his message out. The covid conspiracy nuts can go to some smaller/madder corner of the Internet. The reason to raise a ruckus is because being kept out of TwitFace means being kept out of the mainstream. I saw the Proud Boys update next to that cute GAP ad. I got the latest @QAnon post after the one from @KimKardashian. To hell with that. Don't normalize that garbage. Moderate away.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  > I've reached the conclusion that this is not about censorship. It's really about attempting to force ideas into the definition of "the mainstream". Of course. That's why the people crying about the NY Post article said nothing when Twitter was threatening to suspend accounts for hoping Trump would die of COVID. It's why they're fine when conservative content gets algorithmically boosted but nut when it gets penalized. I'm happy to have a discussion about what the boundaries of acceptable speech should be. But it always gets cast as a discussion about censorship and freedom of speech, when really the goal is to shift those boundaries to a place they find acceptable.
DeonPenny 6y ago
What they did this week sealed their fate. Section 230 was supposed to make social networks public squares but that line is obviously being ignore especially by some people because they think censoring things they think are wrong is moral. Which has to be one of the most arrogant things I have ever witnessed.
- athms 6y ago
  >Section 230 was supposed to make social networks public squares Wrong. There is nothing in the statute that implies neutrality. Section 230 was to enable online platforms to engage in good-faith community moderation without fear of taking on undue liability for their users’ posts. Online platforms are within their First Amendment rights to moderate their online platforms however they like, and they’re additionally shielded by Section 230 for many types of liability for their users’ speech. It’s not one or the other. It’s both.
  - DeonPenny 6y ago
    Have you looked at the case that created section 230? Because it literally flies in the face of what you just said. It started off as a discussion between social networks. One that didn't moderate its content and one that did. The one that did got sued into the grown because its attempted moderation. So how is that not an attempt to make them into public squares. Also saying you just let them moderate doesn't square with how anyone in a government would look at this especially the US government. Why would anyone want them to regulate themselves.
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148 points by uncoder0 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

What infuriates me the most is that those assholes would pass a law without knowing what it means. UnFuckingBelievable, yet not.

ajsnigrutin 6y ago

I think that every company should decide if they're a "publisher" or a "platform". If you're a platform, you're not responsible for what your users say (except directly illegal stuff, eg. child porn), and have no say in what stays on, or gets removed/hidden (except, again, illegal stuff). If you're a publisher, you have a say what is posted on your site, and you carry full responsibility for all the onsite content. Walking the line, and not wanting to take responsibility in some cases, but still deletin in other cases should be forbidden

srtjstjsj 6y ago
And how are platforms to be regulated? Do they allow anonymous posters? Who investigates and removes harmful content?
- trident1000 6y ago
  Really this is patchwork on what needs to be a major regulatory overhaul. Things that need to be addressed: no advertising to kids, mob control, fake accounts/social manipulation, free speech, transparent and auditable algorithms (screw their IP). Its not an easy task to achieve all of these and other goals but it needs to get done before society literally goes into a civil war.
- hyper0perator 6y ago
  The phone company does unfortunately allow spam callers
  - eli 6y ago
    Is gmail allowed to filter out spam? Or does doing so make them an email publisher no longer exempt from liability for email contents?
  - sixothree 6y ago
    I'm honestly quite sick of this argument. The issue with the phone company isn't the spam. It's the anonymity. All solutions to the spam issue don't deal with unwanted calls at all.
akersten 6y ago
HackerNews could not exist in your proposed world. I doubt YC would hire a full-time staff of moderators to vet every single post. Since we remove things for being off-topic or overly mean, the only possible conclusion is that HN would shut down because they do not want to bear liability for the posts they leave up. The Internet as we know it would not exist without S230. Please read this[0] for a primer. [0]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
- zarkov99 6y ago
  Different rules apply with scale. HN is fine doing whatever it does but global monopolies require special handling.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gizmo385 6y ago
    Where does your cutoff apply? At what point are there "too many users"? How would you prevent something like that from being a completely arbitrary platform killer?
    - zarkov99 6y ago
      The courts would decide just like they do when a company is thought to have become a monopoly. This is not a new problem entirely but in this hyper politicized moment in the country it somehow has turned, just like everything else, into a left vs right issue. Its pathetic how we lost the hability to look at the issues without partisan glasses.
- the8472 6y ago
  A platform does not mean there can be no moderation. Part of the platform can be offering moderation tools. One could also draw a distinction between burying content vs. completely deleting it. A lot of HN moderation already works by just dropping the content from the frontpage or making comments invisible rather than outright deleting it. I presume the FCC would still consider this
the_pwner224 6y ago
This does not work. Example: I want to set up a forum where people can discuss a specific topic. Such as the Arch Linux forum, or ones for vehicles (https://www.ninja400riders.com/ https://www.ninja400riders.com/, https://www.civicx.com/forum/ https://www.civicx.com/forum/). I am clearly not a publisher; I do produce content and do not want to produce content. So I am a platform. Am I no longer allowed to decide what is acceptable on my platform? Even if I am running a forum about the Ninja 400 motorcycle, I now have to allow people to post about their Toyota Corolla or about how vaccines cause autism or the earth is flat? What about if I want to moderate the forum to keep discussion on topic and I need to delete trolling or spam, or lock/delete threads that devolve into political fighting among forum members? You can't have platforms without moderation.
- mc32 6y ago
  Metrics might matter. Exceptions for non profit (no ads) or orgs under undetermined amount of monthly active users?
  - tylerhou 6y ago
    That still doesn't answer the question — as soon as my forum gets popular, I can't moderate anymore? Do I limit the number of users so that I never hit these metrics? If I'd have to be non-profit (which doesn't mean no ads, by the way), then this kills a lot of business models.
    - snerbles 6y ago
      > Do I limit the number of users so that I never hit these metrics? A darkly amusing solution to Eternal September.
    - mc32 6y ago
      Right. After certain revenue or certain viewership or commercialization you have new responsibilities.
- juniper_strong 6y ago
ikeboy 6y ago
"I think we should abolish the first amendment"
mrtksn 6y ago
That’s the Turkish model. A pioneer in censorship and totalitarian media control, it evolved in licensing and controlling everything. It started with simply getting your platform/publisher license(so they can make you take down illegal content, save the kids), now Turkey dictates your content depending on your internet business. Just few days ago Spotify was forced to get a license and establish a contact(probably because of the podcasts, will see), recently Netflix was forced to cancel a tv show because of a LGBT character, remove other shows and so on. They are trying to get their grip on Youtube to regulate it like a TV. Booking.com & Paypal are gone since years due to licensing. As soon as you have your definitions somebody will have to make sure that you are acting accordingly, so rules for the publishers and licensing For the platforms to control the publishers will follow. With the everything happening, that’s the feature for everyone and let me tell you, it’s not fun.
- hyper0perator 6y ago
  Disagree. Newspapers and ISP follow under this regulation. Social media networks have been able to skirt the issue. If newspapers can get sued for their content and the phone company can't, it only makes sense that this applies to social media companies are held to the same liabilities or protections.
  - mrtksn 6y ago
    Sure, the issue is that now it is technically possible To do much more. With the phone company it’s impractical to listen to every conversation and “eliminate the threats”, it is practical with the internet. EU wants upload filters(stop singing “happy birthday” to your friend, that needs lives), UK want porn and crypto control(no dirty talk on the phone, no secretive talks, must speak load and clear). Turkey wants to control the narrative(An operator jumps in your phone conversation to correct you or stop you talking). I am sure That US, Canada, Norway , Iran, India etc all have their own agenda too and would loved to control your phone conversations. As for the liability, it’s already here. A lot of people are serving time or paying damages for the things they did on the internet. The new stuff is to make it controllable at scale.
zarkov99 6y ago
Not every company. But certainly google, facebook and twitter.
slg 6y ago
>If you're a platform, you're not responsible for what your users say (except directly illegal stuff, eg. child porn), and have no say in what stays on, or gets removed/hidden (except, again, illegal stuff). That sounds nice and easy until you start thinking about it for any length of time. The biggest problem might be who gets to decide what is illegal. This needs to be figured out in both a theoretical and practical sense. On the theoretical side does Twitter allow Holocaust denial which is legal in the US but illegal in much of Europe? Does the US get to impose its views of free speech on the world? Does every jurisdiction get a different version of the site? On the practical side, what happens when the legality of something is up for debate? Maybe an image is revenge porn or maybe it is perfectly legal porn. Maybe a movie clip is a copyright violation and maybe it is fair use. Does Twitter take down that content as soon as there is a complaint? Does it have to wait for some legal action to start or finish? What is the recourse if something is taken down and later found to be legal content?
- hyper0perator 6y ago
  Legality under US free speech laws. See first amendment law literature.
- jimmydorry 6y ago
  >Maybe a movie clip is a copyright violation and maybe it is fair use. Does Twitter take down that content as soon as there is a complaint? Does it have to wait for some legal action to start or finish? What is the recourse if something is taken down and later found to be legal content? We have the DMCA to cover this... however it's currently an extremely broken process. While there is a penalty codified for making claim to something you don't own, it is never enforced. That part of it needs to change and the regulation should then act in the manner it was designed to.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
blhack 6y ago
That is exactly what section 230 already does. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 Whats being talked about here is stripping the assumption that twitter is acting in good faith, and therefore removing the protection they get from this section.
- jellicle 6y ago
  So much confusion about this. What the prior commenter describes is exactly the OPPOSITE of what section 230 does. Under current law, companies are free to - specifically encouraged to - moderate and delete content as much as they want, while they are also immunized from being treated as the publisher of that content and immunized from any liability for that moderation and deletion of content.
  - blhack 6y ago
    Section 230 is outlining a way in which an internet service can be exempted from liability. What part of this is causing you to read it another way?
    - jakelazaroff 6y ago
      Section 230 shields platform operators from liability for user-generated content. It does not set conditions for immunity such as not moderating. In fact, it was arguably created expressly to prevent this publisher/distributor dichotomy. Look at the cases against Prodigy and Compuserve for examples of the ambiguity Section 230 was introduced to resolve.
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    Right. The historical context for Section 230 is that some providers that were trying to offer a family-safe online service (e.g. Prodigy) by moderating the content available, and therefore became liable as publishers. In fact, if you read Section 230 in its entirety, you can see that it is intended to encourage moderation of content based on what the provider considers to be objectionable.
newacct583 6y ago
> have no say in what stays on, or gets removed/hidden (except, again, illegal stuff). That would eliminate HN, Reddit, basically anywhere with a moderated forum. How do you run a site like Ravelry (knitting/crafting site) with a rule like that? Under your idea, the reddit would consist of "News Sites" and "4chan". (Actually even 4chan does some moderation). There's no way that would be acceptable.
jakelazaroff 6y ago
I have a blog. Let’s say I wanted to let people comment on my blog posts. One day, I get a ton of “I just made $X from my couch!” type comments. My readers try to discuss my latest post, but the spam is suffocating the conversation. What can I do? They’re not saying anything illegal. If I delete the spam or add some sort of filter, I’m now a “publisher” and liable for every comment my readers make. But if I leave them up, my readers will be frustrated that they can’t have a real discussion. So I don’t have comments. I really want discussions with my readers, but it’s just not worth the risk. Now imagine this happening to every website. Every community. Hacker News as we know it wouldn’t exist — probably no voting and certainly no moderation. The whole Internet would turn into a cesspool of spam and flame wars. Many apps wouldn’t even exist in the first place. All because we decided to enforce this entirely arbitrary “publisher vs. platform” dichotomy.
eli 6y ago
I’m surprised to see this point take on HN. Most people who suggest this don’t realize that it would eliminate public participation from most of the internet. There can be no comment sections or Reddit or HN or StackOverflow or Wikipedia in this model. It would be very difficult to have any discussion forum at all. It would lead to an internet where powerful voices are even more powerful (because they have big publishers that will stand behind their words) and where the average user has a much much harder time being heard.
sixothree 6y ago
This sounds incredibly anti-democratic.
morpheuskafka 6y ago
So a forum like HN cannot even have rules that a discussion has to be on topic/within the scope of the site? Wikipedia cannot have notability and credibility policies (I guess that is an edge case since it is other editors actually doing the removing, but according to community consensus guidelines)? A forum for a marginalized group needs to allow hate speech against them, so long as its not illegal? All the while they are not only putting up with the unwanted content, but paying out of their own pocket to host it? What you are saying about platforms should apply to utilities (ISPs, possible PaaS like AWS), which is where net neutrality comes in. ISPs shouldn't block stuff they or the government doesn't like, slow it down, or otherwise interfere with traffic.
- guscost 6y ago
  Is it time for Twitter to be considered a utility? ISPs evolved from “online service providers” which themselves evolved from “bulletin board systems”, and if you consider an ISP to be a utility today, then there was a point where that kind of service became a utility.
  - holler 6y ago
    Why? I'm not a fan of that idea as I'd rather find ways to spur new competition. Also, anyone can live without Twitter or any social network, whereas its harder to live without electricity, water, etc.
  - morpheuskafka 6y ago
    Historically, utilities/public services are things that have a natural monopoly, which absolutely applies to ISP/other wireline telcoms (city franchise licenses), mobile cell service (limited competition due to spectrum auctions and the need for enough nationwide spectrum to be accumulated to launch a viable service), water, sewer, power, gas, etc. It might apply to things like undersea cables, although there isn't really a natural monopoly (plenty of space under the ocean) and those primarily connect two privately owned datacenters. It applies to other services such as post office and city trash where either laws (private express statutes) prohibit competition for the sake of making the public service more profitable, or where taxes force the customer to "buy" the public trash pickup, making even the best-run private enterprise unable to compete. It is technically quite trivial to clone the basic functionality of Twitter and run a competing service. This has been done semi-sucessfully with Gab (not endorsing that community, but it is a good example), for example. People choose social media services based on their perceived value, social prestige, etc. There's no equivalent to "I have to use Twitter because they own the lines to the house/they have the only 5G coverage in my area/they are the only company licensed by my city." Twitter is not the only physically possible way to publish short messages to the world (unless the ISPs ruin that now that net neutrality is gone).
Meph504 6y ago
I'm having a hard time recalling any service that didn't have any content moderation, even on top of laws. The idea that content moderation makes you a publisher seems a bit silly to me. If I have a platform for selling say automobiles, and people keep trying to sell kitchenware of something equally not off brand. Removing that content doesn't make you a publisher, it makes you a steward of the purpose of a platform. The idea that moderation or cultivation of a platform, sudden makes you a "publisher" (which is frankly a term that shouldn't even be used in this case as it is too narrow for the web is) makes no sense. This is, a bullshit threat to try and assert control over platforms that people interact on by the government. It isn't needed, and is likely to be harmful.
argomo 6y ago
Is the following statement legal or illegal? "Man, nothing ends the day like a nice cold beer." Clearly, that's legal. But if I'm running a platform, I should be able to hide/downrank/shadowban/censor it based on what sort of community I'm trying to build. In a kid-oriented venue, it's inappropriate. In a recovering alcoholics group it's harmful/malicious. In a tech forum, it's low value. If you went to a school, an AA meeting, or a tech conference and talked about beer overbearingly, you'd be asked to leave the venue, and that would be their right. As onerous as it is to have legitimate, authentic speech banned from a popular platform, the alternative of allowing all speech effectively creates a worthless noise chamber dominated by bad actors.

post_below 6y ago

The most concerning thing about the tweet to me is the popular replies which support Pai's statement. The media, and those of us who understand what Pai did to net neutrality, need to do a better job of communicating to the general public exactly what Pai is, and what he's there to do. It would also be nice if people understood that section 230 protections allow the internet as we know it (not just the social media giants) to exist, but I'd settle for just the bit about Pai as a start.

eli 6y ago
230 is widely misunderstood on both the left and the right. Clearly even here on HN people don’t recognize how important it was to the development of the free and public internet.
JungleGymSam 6y ago
I have to tell you. You did a terrible job at "communicating to the general public exactly what Pai is". You insinuated some sort of malfeasance on his part but said exactly nothing about what it is. I used to want the government to not have its hand in things and I used to want the private sector solve issues. Now that the left-wing has overplayed their hand, they're going to bring potential harm on all of us by forcing the government to curtail their malfeasance.
microcolonel 6y ago
Much as I think its loose interpretation has a lot to do with the success of major internet hubs, it has become clear that unlimited liability for selective publishers is not a sustainable model for American public life. We can not sustain a system where a major paper and the U.S. Press Secretary is censored by corporations entrusted with a significant portion of the public square, but that corporation simultaneously has no liability for the things which they, by their non-interference, must be endorsing.

mindslight 6y ago

Putting aside the larger issue of unaccountable platforms, what is the rationale for seeing this as anything more than some ineffectual campaign stunt? I don't see anything in S230 that delegates judgment to the FCC or any part of the executive branch. Basically Trump is claiming to perform the functions of the legislature and judiciary by decree. I wonder if this is the natural extension of the two political teams talking past one another instead of working together. There's no way such legislation would pass the House right now, so instead they're just playing pretend on their own.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
Rulemaking is a standard function of the executive, to execute laws.
- protomyth 6y ago
  Yep, people really don't get the extent that bills actually only state intent and some rules, then the rule-making process actually sets the full rules that get published in the Federal Register. If you took the time to lets say read something as large as the Affordable Care Act you would see how little of the rules of implementation were in the bill. I generally look at this as the legislature abdicating its authority. The excuse is that its actually delegation to experts that actually have to enforce the rules. This is why it is so important to read the Federal Register and push the folks in the Senate and House to specify rules on important bills to give the executive branch as little wiggle room as possible (this advice should apply to all parties).
uncoder0 6y ago
You're probably correct on your first assumption that this is campaign related and most likely won't go anywhere. Legislation is the only 'real' way to change the section.
- pstuart 6y ago
  Executive orders are increasingly used to do end-runs around legislation, so don't count them out.

Avshalom 6y ago

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201015/11555145508/blatant-hypocrite-ajit-pai-decides-to-move-forward-with-bogus-unconstitutional-rulemaking-section-230.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201015/11555145508/blata...

Avshalom 6y ago
N.B. same author, couple months back: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

supernova87a 6y ago

Might help to bring more popularity/attention to this story if "Section 230" could be explained in English in the title....

sremani 6y ago
Exact text of Section 230: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 EFF's view: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
DanBC 6y ago
Watch "I am Jane Doe". https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6398054/?ref_=tt_urv https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6398054/?ref_=tt_urv https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/13/17172762/fosta-sesta-backpage-230-internet-freedom https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/13/17172762/fosta-sesta-b... Women and children were kidnapped, drugged, and raped. Sex with these women and children was offered to paying men via ads in Backpage. When some of these women escaped they noticed their images were still being used in these ads. They tried to i) get Backpage to stop using these images of them being raped (sometimes of them as children being raped) and ii) get Backpage to take more corporate responsibility about taking adverts from traffickers. For some reason people seem to think this is about people who chose to sex work. It isn't. It's about people who were forced into it. Backpage declined to take down the images, and declined to stop taking ads. They then made it easier for people to place those ads; they helped people evade law enforcement; they gave people advice about what language to use when placing those ads. They got away with it because S230 means they're not responsible for what their users do, even though they're coaching their users about how to evade law enforcement.

tick_tock_tick 6y ago

Twitter was asking for this to happen especially with there move today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379

neuronexmachina 6y ago
If Twitter weren't shielded from liability for content posted on their platform, wouldn't that make them more eager to remove potentially-liable content?
morpheuskafka 6y ago
If they didn't do these things, then when Biden wins the election, the Democrats will be calling for them to "get their act together" and calling them to Congress for "spreading foreign propaganda/disinformation" or whatever.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

The war on free speech continues apace. As ever, if there's anything both parties agree on it's screwing the public. Even Trump and Biden are united in gutting the one law, that is uniquely responsible for the proliferation of the open internet.

stefan_ 6y ago

The champion for no regulation wants to regulate Twitter content.

trident1000 6y ago
Well removing section 230 would actually be deregulation and clarifying the interpretation is just enforcing whats already in place. 230 is legislation that protects tech companies currently. But they are acting as publishers and not platforms which has sparked action.
- Niksko 6y ago
  That's purely semantics, and everyone knows it.
  - trident1000 6y ago
    What semantics? They were granted immunity with regulation and that regulation/immunity can be taken away.
    - boardwaalk 6y ago
      If you’re just counting “number of rules on the books”. You could easily imagine a flipped situation where people were trying to add regulation to get the same final effect. I suspect most people think more holistically about regulation than that. Being afraid of being sued and the results of those of those cases being enforced by the government certainly could be interpreted as “bigger government”/more regulation.
    - khuey 6y ago
      Repealing the First Amendment is also "deregulation" by this standard.
    - Niksko 6y ago
      I'll spell it out explicitly, since nobody else has. In a semantic sense, deregulation is the same thing as removing laws. De = remove, regulation = regulation. But what de-regulation really means is "the reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry". In this case, this law is basically an exemption. Putting the merits or validity of that exemption aside, if you remove the law, you're increasing the power the government has rather than reducing it. The courts now have the power over tech companies to enforce laws that make the tech companies responsible for what is posted on their platform.

KingMachiavelli 6y ago

I always find it disappointing (ironic?) that so much government communication is using private platforms - even if it's a "publisher"/newspaper. Even if I follow a mailing list or RSS feed I'm worried that some stuff might only be put on Twitter (especially with Police/LE activity where frequent updates are useful). Anyway, if you don't want to use Twitter (just to read an image of a real document)... The link to Ajit Pai's comment is https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-statement-section-230 https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-statement-section-... where you can view it as a DOCX, PDF, or glorious TXT. If you are upset by Ajit Pai's actions or Twitter's, here's the RSS feed(s) alternative for the FCC: https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/rss-feeds-and-email-updates-fcc https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/rss-feeds-and-email-updates-...

smnrchrds 6y ago
There was mass shooter incident in Canada where the police used Twitter instead of emergency alert system to inform the public. Not many checked Twitter and got the memo. 22 people were killed at the hands of the shooter over the span of 13 hours. The number would have been significantly lower if they had used something more effective to inform the public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nova_Scotia_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nova_Scotia_attacks
- pb7 6y ago
  >The number would have been significantly lower if they had used something more effective to inform the public. Genuine question: what would that be exactly? I agree that government shouldn't only use private sector communication channels as the primary channel.
  - pitaj 6y ago
    The same system as Amber alerts
    - dlp211 6y ago
      Yep, the Emergency Alert Systems have existed since at least WWII. From a quick Google search: Canada has a National Public Alerting System (NPAS) which provides emergency management organizations across the country with the capability to rapidly warn the public of imminent or unfolding hazards to life. Public alerts are issued through radio, cable and satellite television and on compatible wireless devices

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago

I've reached the conclusion that this is not about censorship. It's really about attempting to force ideas into the definition of "the mainstream". Facebook and Twitter legitimize content. From a social media perspective, they define the vanilla. When people say "I saw it on Facebook", you instinctively intuit it was on their feed between a photo of a kid and advert for Red Robin. If you want rocky road rather than vanilla, you can go find it on (2^n)chan. It's not hard to find. The presence of FaceTwit doesn't stop those forums existing or censor them. When the President has a tweet deleted or some covid conspiracy group is removed from Facebook, it's not that there isn't somewhere else that content could go. I mean Trump is literally continuously on TV and has the entire Federal government at his disposal to get his message out. The covid conspiracy nuts can go to some smaller/madder corner of the Internet. The reason to raise a ruckus is because being kept out of TwitFace means being kept out of the mainstream. I saw the Proud Boys update next to that cute GAP ad. I got the latest @QAnon post after the one from @KimKardashian. To hell with that. Don't normalize that garbage. Moderate away.

jakelazaroff 6y ago
> I've reached the conclusion that this is not about censorship. It's really about attempting to force ideas into the definition of "the mainstream". Of course. That's why the people crying about the NY Post article said nothing when Twitter was threatening to suspend accounts for hoping Trump would die of COVID. It's why they're fine when conservative content gets algorithmically boosted but nut when it gets penalized. I'm happy to have a discussion about what the boundaries of acceptable speech should be. But it always gets cast as a discussion about censorship and freedom of speech, when really the goal is to shift those boundaries to a place they find acceptable.

DeonPenny 6y ago

What they did this week sealed their fate. Section 230 was supposed to make social networks public squares but that line is obviously being ignore especially by some people because they think censoring things they think are wrong is moral. Which has to be one of the most arrogant things I have ever witnessed.

athms 6y ago
>Section 230 was supposed to make social networks public squares Wrong. There is nothing in the statute that implies neutrality. Section 230 was to enable online platforms to engage in good-faith community moderation without fear of taking on undue liability for their users’ posts. Online platforms are within their First Amendment rights to moderate their online platforms however they like, and they’re additionally shielded by Section 230 for many types of liability for their users’ speech. It’s not one or the other. It’s both.
- DeonPenny 6y ago
  Have you looked at the case that created section 230? Because it literally flies in the face of what you just said. It started off as a discussion between social networks. One that didn't moderate its content and one that did. The one that did got sued into the grown because its attempted moderation. So how is that not an attempt to make them into public squares. Also saying you just let them moderate doesn't square with how anyone in a government would look at this especially the US government. Why would anyone want them to regulate themselves.

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