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The platform operator can't. That's how common carriers work (telephone, your ISP etc.). But things running on that platform could. Basically look at reddit and

The platform operator can't. That's how common carriers work (telephone, your ISP etc.). But things running on that platform could. Basically look at reddit and perhaps take it up a notch. If the platform operator does not want to be associated with some of the stuff happening on their site then perhaps they should deemphasize their branding. It wouldn't be "reddit/watchpeopledie" just "watchpeopledie". I not sure how this could work for a single-purpose community like HN. Maybe if YC ran a neutral HNaaS then the HN-prime could be operated and moderated by independent staff. An alternative approach would be exemptions for non-profit sites. I think it would be possible to operate within these broad rules if the details are crafted right, but even then it would require significant adjustments for many site operators.

JoshTriplett 6y ago
> An alternative approach would be exemptions for non-profit sites. Another alternative would be "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine". Site operators can and should have the ability to ban anyone or remove any content, for any reason or no reason, and doing so does not mean they should be liable for everything they might have missed. (In practice, "liable for everything they might have missed" is equivalent to "unable to operate" for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators, and it'd have a chilling effect even there.) Destroying the concept of moderation does not make the world better. The liability shield is the whole reason Section 230 exists: to make it possible to have enjoyable communities online, without incurring so much liability that you have to shut them all down for fear of getting prosecuted. If you want unmoderated communities, they exist. Go use them. Stop trying to destroy the concept of moderated communities.(Removing the liability shield would be tantamount to destroying such communities.) Some people want the audience of moderated communities, but they don't want the standards of those communities. There's a reason unmoderated communities have fewer (and different) users.
- the8472 6y ago
  > Site operators can and should have the ability to ban anyone or remove any content, for any reason or no reason. If a major fraction of human communication, especially during lockdowns, is facilitated by social networks then they are fulfilling a utility role. So being in the position of dictating what millions of people will talk about is at least questionable. > for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators Ok, I have not considered this angle and it is indeed concerning. > Destroying the concept of moderation does not make the world better. That may be the goal of the FCC, but I for one did not say that I am in support of destroying moderation. Quite the opposite, I was thinking how it could be made to work while providing more open communication platforms and putting more control in the hands of the users rather than the companies.
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    > If a major fraction of human communication, especially during lockdowns, is facilitated by social networks then they are fulfilling a utility role. Removing the ability of those sites to moderate will not make them better. (Even if it did by some metric, that still wouldn't be acceptable; what constitutes "better" is entirely up to the site owner to determine. But it's even less reasonable given that it wouldn't have the intended effect, unless the intended effect is to cause harm.) Having many users should not suddenly mean you don't own the site, nor should it mean that you cannot moderate the site as you see fit. "We came up with a new algorithm to automatically detect spam" should not need to come with "and several years later we managed to get the government to say we're allowed to use it without incurring liability". >> for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators > Ok, I have not considered this angle and it is indeed concerning. That angle is why Section 230 was created in the first place, and why it should remain intact. > That may be the goal of the FCC, but I for one did not say that I am in support of destroying moderation. Removing the liability shield for sites that moderate will destroy either the site or the moderation, and either way the usefulness of the site comes to an end. > Quite the opposite, I was thinking how it could be made to work while providing more open communication platforms and putting more control in the hands of the users rather than the companies. Make a new network that puts control in the hands of the users in the way you envision, and test it to see how well it works. Or join one of the existing efforts already working on that. This isn't a legislative problem; it certainly shouldn't have a legislative non-solution masquerading as a solution. I think most people's experience with moderation puts more weight on any encounters they've had with being moderated, and little to no weight (except perhaps in the abstract) on the volume of what they don't see. Moderation, when done well, is close to invisible; I think as a side effect of that, people underestimate its value in contributing to their good experiences.
    - the8472 6y ago
      > Having many users should not suddenly mean you don't own the site You continue to own it, but that does not mean you can do arbitrary things to your users. That's precisely how things work for utilities. You can do whatever with your private road or power generator. But if you're providing essential services to the masses then eventually universal service, non-discrimination and neutrality rules come into play. If doctors coordinate their covid response over facebook groups, elon musk makes stock-affecting announcement over twitter and the police sends out warnings via twitter than they're taking on the role of a public communication provider. You could argue that it's a free service and you're not a customer as you're with a utility. But on the other hand you're paying with your data and attention. > Removing the liability shield for sites that moderate will destroy either the site or the moderation, and either way the usefulness of the site comes to an end. You're assuming that there is no way to adapt to the new rules. Separation of platform services and moderation would be one. Would it work? Maybe not and you could be right and communities would be destroyed. Or maybe it would result in more Bloggers, Wordpresses and Signals. > Make a new network that puts control in the hands of the users in the way you envision, and test it to see how well it works. Regulation is a valid approach though? I'm not saying that the FCC is intending to do good here, just that I can can imagine a hypothetical well-intentioned version of what they're doing. > That angle is why Section 230 was created in the first place, and why it should remain intact. Let me rephrase, I find it concerning that it could specifically empower the entrenched players while harming the smaller ones. Requiring an army of moderators when you want to create a global communication platform on the one hand but impose your preferred corporate image (and be it just to remain attractive to advertisiers) on all participants then I am not feeling all that sympathetic. And this isn't just about communication in the narrow sense. The controversy around the apple app store is in a similar vein. On the one hand they pretend that they act as a simple market facilitator, a platform. On the other hand they categorically ban certain categories of legal software because it goes against their corporate interests. Forcing them to choose between platform and publisher could result in either a smaller, carefully curated official apple store + sideloading or larger, more open default app store. Either outcome seems desirable to me.
- juniper_strong 6y ago
  >> "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine" You have the major internet networks 3 weeks before an election banning speech because if they allowed it it might hurt their preferred political candidate. I mean they can claim otherwise, but they don't apply the criteria they use in this instance to instances where the speech is done by their political party. It is clear what is going on here. Maybe that is working fine for you, it isn't working fine for me. The ask of companies under section 230 is that they be allowed to publish libel, publish slander, publish copyright violations, publish content that violates laws against discrimination, publish threats of violence, publish posts by terrorists coordinating their attacks, publish all this with no liability whatsoever. That is a huge ask. The question is, what do we get back for allowing them that privilege? Increasingly, in my opinion, we get negative value back for that. It's not working just fine for me, it's time to amend section 230 so that the law advances the policies it advocates or abolish it altogether and let internet content providers live by the same rules that print content providers have lived by.
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources. The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting of content they haven't checked yet. The world you propose is one in which nobody could take the risk of running a community online. The world you propose is one in which the site you're making this comment on cannot exist in a functional way. The world you propose has more governmental restraint on speech, not less; that restraint comes in the form of "we're not actually telling you that you can't administrate your site, but if do something we don't like, we'll just stand back and let you get prosecuted out of existence for the actions of your users". That's just regulation of speech by an indirect means. > The ask of companies under section 230 is that they be allowed to publish No. "publish" is a distortion promoted by people trying to use the repeal of Section 230 as a weapon. To the extent liability should exist for speech at all, companies should absolutely be liable for what they publish. They should not be liable for what their users publish. Without that distinction, the Internet cannot exist as a medium for any kind of user-generated content. Centralized services providing curated content would fare just fine, but anything that allows users to interact or contribute would die. > The question is, what do we get back for allowing them that privilege? A functional Internet. Websites that contains content supplied by others, that aren't "anything goes" cesspools. An Internet that helps people interact in a read-write manner, not just consume content in a read-only manner.
snowwrestler 6y ago
Your ISP is explicitly not a common carrier, thanks to (aptly) an FCC rulemaking conducted under the chairmanship of Ajit Pai.
- the8472 6y ago
  You are assuming I am currently residing in the US. Buy yes, they have been and should be again.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jakelazaroff 6y ago
Let’s say this regulation passes and YC does decide to operate HNaaS. (Presumably they don’t want to, or they’d be doing it already, but under this regulation that’s how they have to operate.) So HN Prime pops up — which is basically HN as it exists today — and then a bunch of smaller constellation communities that allow things that Prime doesn’t, like spam and porn. And that’s different from present situation because…? We already have Twitter Prime (Twitter), as well as the constellation Twitters — Conservative Twitter (Parler), Nazi Twitter (Gab), [Niche Interest] Twitter (various Mastodon people instances), etc. We haven’t fundamentally changed anything; all we’ve done is move the moderation “problem” around a bit.
- the8472 6y ago
  It's not like the sites would continue to exist exactly as they did before only with a different coat of paint. The platformization would likely impact business model - who pays the platform? who makes deals with advertises? do publisher vs. platform rules also apply to the influence that advertisers have on a site? - and changes in moderation tooling provided as part of the platform. It would also separate the financial interests of the platform provider from that of the moderators. I think the actual escape hatch would be enabling users to filter content collaboratively in a way so that there is no entity in the system could be considered a commercial publisher. The platform providers only remove illegal content and the "not a publisher under the law" users do the community-interest moderation rather than corporate-interest moderation. Of course some could still choose to play under publisher rules and allow user submissions, but that wold probably be much smaller scale if they want to be on the safe side and and pre-check things individually. > like spam and porn. I assume (without having checked) that filtering spam would still be allowed even under platform rules.
  - benaadams 6y ago
    You filter spam; and that's censorship. So you'll either end up with a mired cesspool of spam or very strict censorship to reduce legal liability risks.
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
triceratops 6y ago
Even "common carriers" don't have to carry everything. ISPs will shut down your Internet if they find you running a server at home (not illegal, but against their ToS). The phone company will do the same thing if they find you used nefarious means to place long-distance calls. The common thread is that they act to prevent misuse of their network. You're arguing that social media companies should not be able to do the same.
- stale2002 6y ago
  > Even "common carriers" don't have to carry everything. Looking at your comments it seems like you at least agree that common carriers are subject to some laws. Great! It seems like you agree with me that there are laws and things that common carriers have to do, and that there is content that they are required to carry some content.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    And yet you don't seem to accept that common carriers perform moderation too. Nor have you acknowledged that ISPs aren't common carriers and the current FCC made it that way. Nor have you acknowledged the hypocrisy of this.
    - stale2002 6y ago
      > that common carriers perform moderation I've specifically clarified that common carriers are subject to certain restrictions on what they can do, and am saying that those restrictions should apply to social media, with a law change. > the current FCC My specific claim is that the law should be changed such that they are subject to common carrier laws. Social media companies are not currently subject to them, but I am saying that the law should be changed so that they are. If you want to say that the law should be changed so that ISPs are subject to those as well, then go ahead and argue that, but that does not contradict what I am arguing for. Anyway, I am just glad at this point that you agree that common carriers are subject to certain restrictions, which was my point the whole time. And I am saying that those same restrictions, that you agree exist, should be applied to social media companies, via a law change.

JoshTriplett 6y ago

> An alternative approach would be exemptions for non-profit sites. Another alternative would be "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine". Site operators can and should have the ability to ban anyone or remove any content, for any reason or no reason, and doing so does not mean they should be liable for everything they might have missed. (In practice, "liable for everything they might have missed" is equivalent to "unable to operate" for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators, and it'd have a chilling effect even there.) Destroying the concept of moderation does not make the world better. The liability shield is the whole reason Section 230 exists: to make it possible to have enjoyable communities online, without incurring so much liability that you have to shut them all down for fear of getting prosecuted. If you want unmoderated communities, they exist. Go use them. Stop trying to destroy the concept of moderated communities.(Removing the liability shield would be tantamount to destroying such communities.) Some people want the audience of moderated communities, but they don't want the standards of those communities. There's a reason unmoderated communities have fewer (and different) users.

the8472 6y ago
> Site operators can and should have the ability to ban anyone or remove any content, for any reason or no reason. If a major fraction of human communication, especially during lockdowns, is facilitated by social networks then they are fulfilling a utility role. So being in the position of dictating what millions of people will talk about is at least questionable. > for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators Ok, I have not considered this angle and it is indeed concerning. > Destroying the concept of moderation does not make the world better. That may be the goal of the FCC, but I for one did not say that I am in support of destroying moderation. Quite the opposite, I was thinking how it could be made to work while providing more open communication platforms and putting more control in the hands of the users rather than the companies.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  > If a major fraction of human communication, especially during lockdowns, is facilitated by social networks then they are fulfilling a utility role. Removing the ability of those sites to moderate will not make them better. (Even if it did by some metric, that still wouldn't be acceptable; what constitutes "better" is entirely up to the site owner to determine. But it's even less reasonable given that it wouldn't have the intended effect, unless the intended effect is to cause harm.) Having many users should not suddenly mean you don't own the site, nor should it mean that you cannot moderate the site as you see fit. "We came up with a new algorithm to automatically detect spam" should not need to come with "and several years later we managed to get the government to say we're allowed to use it without incurring liability". >> for anything but the most massive sites that could theoretically afford an army of moderators > Ok, I have not considered this angle and it is indeed concerning. That angle is why Section 230 was created in the first place, and why it should remain intact. > That may be the goal of the FCC, but I for one did not say that I am in support of destroying moderation. Removing the liability shield for sites that moderate will destroy either the site or the moderation, and either way the usefulness of the site comes to an end. > Quite the opposite, I was thinking how it could be made to work while providing more open communication platforms and putting more control in the hands of the users rather than the companies. Make a new network that puts control in the hands of the users in the way you envision, and test it to see how well it works. Or join one of the existing efforts already working on that. This isn't a legislative problem; it certainly shouldn't have a legislative non-solution masquerading as a solution. I think most people's experience with moderation puts more weight on any encounters they've had with being moderated, and little to no weight (except perhaps in the abstract) on the volume of what they don't see. Moderation, when done well, is close to invisible; I think as a side effect of that, people underestimate its value in contributing to their good experiences.
  - the8472 6y ago
    > Having many users should not suddenly mean you don't own the site You continue to own it, but that does not mean you can do arbitrary things to your users. That's precisely how things work for utilities. You can do whatever with your private road or power generator. But if you're providing essential services to the masses then eventually universal service, non-discrimination and neutrality rules come into play. If doctors coordinate their covid response over facebook groups, elon musk makes stock-affecting announcement over twitter and the police sends out warnings via twitter than they're taking on the role of a public communication provider. You could argue that it's a free service and you're not a customer as you're with a utility. But on the other hand you're paying with your data and attention. > Removing the liability shield for sites that moderate will destroy either the site or the moderation, and either way the usefulness of the site comes to an end. You're assuming that there is no way to adapt to the new rules. Separation of platform services and moderation would be one. Would it work? Maybe not and you could be right and communities would be destroyed. Or maybe it would result in more Bloggers, Wordpresses and Signals. > Make a new network that puts control in the hands of the users in the way you envision, and test it to see how well it works. Regulation is a valid approach though? I'm not saying that the FCC is intending to do good here, just that I can can imagine a hypothetical well-intentioned version of what they're doing. > That angle is why Section 230 was created in the first place, and why it should remain intact. Let me rephrase, I find it concerning that it could specifically empower the entrenched players while harming the smaller ones. Requiring an army of moderators when you want to create a global communication platform on the one hand but impose your preferred corporate image (and be it just to remain attractive to advertisiers) on all participants then I am not feeling all that sympathetic. And this isn't just about communication in the narrow sense. The controversy around the apple app store is in a similar vein. On the one hand they pretend that they act as a simple market facilitator, a platform. On the other hand they categorically ban certain categories of legal software because it goes against their corporate interests. Forcing them to choose between platform and publisher could result in either a smaller, carefully curated official apple store + sideloading or larger, more open default app store. Either outcome seems desirable to me.
juniper_strong 6y ago
>> "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine" You have the major internet networks 3 weeks before an election banning speech because if they allowed it it might hurt their preferred political candidate. I mean they can claim otherwise, but they don't apply the criteria they use in this instance to instances where the speech is done by their political party. It is clear what is going on here. Maybe that is working fine for you, it isn't working fine for me. The ask of companies under section 230 is that they be allowed to publish libel, publish slander, publish copyright violations, publish content that violates laws against discrimination, publish threats of violence, publish posts by terrorists coordinating their attacks, publish all this with no liability whatsoever. That is a huge ask. The question is, what do we get back for allowing them that privilege? Increasingly, in my opinion, we get negative value back for that. It's not working just fine for me, it's time to amend section 230 so that the law advances the policies it advocates or abolish it altogether and let internet content providers live by the same rules that print content providers have lived by.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources. The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting of content they haven't checked yet. The world you propose is one in which nobody could take the risk of running a community online. The world you propose is one in which the site you're making this comment on cannot exist in a functional way. The world you propose has more governmental restraint on speech, not less; that restraint comes in the form of "we're not actually telling you that you can't administrate your site, but if do something we don't like, we'll just stand back and let you get prosecuted out of existence for the actions of your users". That's just regulation of speech by an indirect means. > The ask of companies under section 230 is that they be allowed to publish No. "publish" is a distortion promoted by people trying to use the repeal of Section 230 as a weapon. To the extent liability should exist for speech at all, companies should absolutely be liable for what they publish. They should not be liable for what their users publish. Without that distinction, the Internet cannot exist as a medium for any kind of user-generated content. Centralized services providing curated content would fare just fine, but anything that allows users to interact or contribute would die. > The question is, what do we get back for allowing them that privilege? A functional Internet. Websites that contains content supplied by others, that aren't "anything goes" cesspools. An Internet that helps people interact in a read-write manner, not just consume content in a read-only manner.

snowwrestler 6y ago

Your ISP is explicitly not a common carrier, thanks to (aptly) an FCC rulemaking conducted under the chairmanship of Ajit Pai.

the8472 6y ago
You are assuming I am currently residing in the US. Buy yes, they have been and should be again.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jakelazaroff 6y ago

Let’s say this regulation passes and YC does decide to operate HNaaS. (Presumably they don’t want to, or they’d be doing it already, but under this regulation that’s how they have to operate.) So HN Prime pops up — which is basically HN as it exists today — and then a bunch of smaller constellation communities that allow things that Prime doesn’t, like spam and porn. And that’s different from present situation because…? We already have Twitter Prime (Twitter), as well as the constellation Twitters — Conservative Twitter (Parler), Nazi Twitter (Gab), [Niche Interest] Twitter (various Mastodon people instances), etc. We haven’t fundamentally changed anything; all we’ve done is move the moderation “problem” around a bit.

the8472 6y ago
It's not like the sites would continue to exist exactly as they did before only with a different coat of paint. The platformization would likely impact business model - who pays the platform? who makes deals with advertises? do publisher vs. platform rules also apply to the influence that advertisers have on a site? - and changes in moderation tooling provided as part of the platform. It would also separate the financial interests of the platform provider from that of the moderators. I think the actual escape hatch would be enabling users to filter content collaboratively in a way so that there is no entity in the system could be considered a commercial publisher. The platform providers only remove illegal content and the "not a publisher under the law" users do the community-interest moderation rather than corporate-interest moderation. Of course some could still choose to play under publisher rules and allow user submissions, but that wold probably be much smaller scale if they want to be on the safe side and and pre-check things individually. > like spam and porn. I assume (without having checked) that filtering spam would still be allowed even under platform rules.
- benaadams 6y ago
  You filter spam; and that's censorship. So you'll either end up with a mired cesspool of spam or very strict censorship to reduce legal liability risks.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago

triceratops 6y ago

Even "common carriers" don't have to carry everything. ISPs will shut down your Internet if they find you running a server at home (not illegal, but against their ToS). The phone company will do the same thing if they find you used nefarious means to place long-distance calls. The common thread is that they act to prevent misuse of their network. You're arguing that social media companies should not be able to do the same.

stale2002 6y ago
> Even "common carriers" don't have to carry everything. Looking at your comments it seems like you at least agree that common carriers are subject to some laws. Great! It seems like you agree with me that there are laws and things that common carriers have to do, and that there is content that they are required to carry some content.
- triceratops 6y ago
  And yet you don't seem to accept that common carriers perform moderation too. Nor have you acknowledged that ISPs aren't common carriers and the current FCC made it that way. Nor have you acknowledged the hypocrisy of this.
  - stale2002 6y ago
    > that common carriers perform moderation I've specifically clarified that common carriers are subject to certain restrictions on what they can do, and am saying that those restrictions should apply to social media, with a law change. > the current FCC My specific claim is that the law should be changed such that they are subject to common carrier laws. Social media companies are not currently subject to them, but I am saying that the law should be changed so that they are. If you want to say that the law should be changed so that ISPs are subject to those as well, then go ahead and argue that, but that does not contradict what I am arguing for. Anyway, I am just glad at this point that you agree that common carriers are subject to certain restrictions, which was my point the whole time. And I am saying that those same restrictions, that you agree exist, should be applied to social media companies, via a law change.