2 ms·

You make good points. But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing,

You make good points. But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street. In this context it is not at all that “government should be in charge of these decisions”, it is entirely that Twitter’s privileged status should be questioned, given the amount of control they are exercising over the amount of content they distribute. Put another way: AT&T should not be liable for what I publish on my personal website, but if they were dropping packets from my server because of a “content policy” then I would think differently!

jakelazaroff 6y ago
> But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street. That’s not quite true — Section 230 protects all platforms from liability for content produced by third parties. You enjoy that exact same immunity for comments others post on your personal website. And conversely, Twitter does not enjoy immunity for content that they themselves produce, such as descriptions of trending topics.
- guscost 6y ago
  > Twitter does not enjoy immunity for content that they themselves produce Exactly. If the law is not changed, any challenge would hinge on the court defining their curation process as an act of production. It may not be as far-fetched as you think: DJ Shadow can copyright a song made entirely from snippets of other recorded music. For the record, I think the law should be changed. Twitter is categorically different from a small/personal website. You could argue that it is a natural monopoly.
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    > Exactly. If the law is not changed, any challenge would hinge on the court defining their curation process as an act of production. Any challenge to what? I don’t understand what you’re proposing here. Even if Section 230 were repealed, Twitter would be perfectly free to e.g. censor all conservative content. The issue is that by doing so, they might be liable for unrelated content they allow that ends up being defamatory. > Twitter is categorically different from a small/personal website. You could argue that it is a natural monopoly. This would be a hard argument to make. There are hundreds of competing social networking communities, some of which are even bigger!

jakelazaroff 6y ago

> But the fact remains that Twitter is a viable product only because it is granted special immunity from legal consequences for publishing, immunity that you or I would not enjoy if we were to publish the very same content on a personal website, or hand out pamphlets on the street. That’s not quite true — Section 230 protects all platforms from liability for content produced by third parties. You enjoy that exact same immunity for comments others post on your personal website. And conversely, Twitter does not enjoy immunity for content that they themselves produce, such as descriptions of trending topics.

guscost 6y ago
> Twitter does not enjoy immunity for content that they themselves produce Exactly. If the law is not changed, any challenge would hinge on the court defining their curation process as an act of production. It may not be as far-fetched as you think: DJ Shadow can copyright a song made entirely from snippets of other recorded music. For the record, I think the law should be changed. Twitter is categorically different from a small/personal website. You could argue that it is a natural monopoly.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  > Exactly. If the law is not changed, any challenge would hinge on the court defining their curation process as an act of production. Any challenge to what? I don’t understand what you’re proposing here. Even if Section 230 were repealed, Twitter would be perfectly free to e.g. censor all conservative content. The issue is that by doing so, they might be liable for unrelated content they allow that ends up being defamatory. > Twitter is categorically different from a small/personal website. You could argue that it is a natural monopoly. This would be a hard argument to make. There are hundreds of competing social networking communities, some of which are even bigger!