6 ms·

If platforms are going to start acting like publishers, they should no longer get special treatment when compared to other publishers. Remember, if the info pl

If platforms are going to start acting like publishers, they should no longer get special treatment when compared to other publishers. Remember, if the info platform monopolies help the democrats today, they can help the republicans tomorrow.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I'd suggest reading through some of the resources linked in the article. The idea that Section 230 gives special treatment to "platforms" as opposed to "publishers" is common but false. The Techdirt one (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...) in particular I think helps clear up the confusion.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. If they don't get special treatment as opposed to publishers, why is explicitly mentioned that they shall not be treated as the publisher? If there's no difference, what's the point in that?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    "Publisher" here doesn't refer to a special legal status. This sentence just means that, if you post something on a website, it's still you and not the website who said it. This law is applicable to any website, even ones which make no attempt to be a neutral platform.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    Probably because publishers are, by default, more liable (as liable as any other legal entity) and thus the law aims to reduce liability for the parties in question (the platform creators like twitter, facebook) so that the positive economic impact attributed to these platforms isn't burdened by the law.
- tim44 6y ago
  > To be a bit more explicit: at no point in any court case regarding Section 230 is there a need to determine whether or not a particular website is a "platform" or a 'publisher.' What matters is solely the content in question. If that content is created by someone else, the website hosting it cannot be sued over it. > Really, this is the simplest, most basic understanding of Section 230: it is about placing the liability for content online on whoever created that content, and not on whoever is hosting it. If you understand that one thing, you'll understand most of the most important things about Section 230. The way I understand it, these big sites aren't simply hosting content, they are themselves creators through editorializing content and so should not enjoy a blanket immunity.
jhayward 6y ago
> Remember, if the info platform monopolies help the democrats today, they can help the republicans tomorrow. Facebook has had its thumb on the 'balance' scale in favor of ultra-right-wing sites for half a decade, at least. - Zuckerberg calling a group of non-profit news sites "not real news" [1] - Zuckerberg ordering the algorithm of the news feed to be biased toward promoting Breitbart et. al. [2] [1] https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/1317124357873860609 https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/1317124357873860609 [2] https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1317160066047479809 https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1317160066047479809 [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-mark-zuckerberg-learned-politics-11602853200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-mark-zuckerberg-learned-pol...
formerly_proven 6y ago
> Remember, if the info platform monopolies help the democrats today, they can help the republicans tomorrow. They do?
- dimitrios1 6y ago
  Case in point: two town halls yesterday. One gets asked about their most current scandal (tax returns), another doesn't get a single question about their scandal (burisima). The media is undoubtably carrying water for Joe Biden. That isn't even arguable anymore. The question is why?
  - srdev 6y ago
    That just demonstrates that there isn't an easily definable political neutral. From my point of view, the "Burisma scandal" got all the attention it deserved. The reason the media isn't harping on it is because it wasn't a scandal, and one political party was desperately trying to make it so. In the same way, a lot of people would say it would be neutral for media to present arguments that global warming is not man-made, but people who care about scientific fact would claim that even presenting the skeptic argument is non-neutral, sense you are signal boosting an argument with no basis in reality.
    - dimitrios1 6y ago
      Jesus Christ I haven't realized just how far we have fallen until this comment. I don't necessarily blame anyone for thinking the way they do, it just baffles me. For the endless commentary on Trump profiting off the presidency, Trump running an "organized crime family", Trump this Trump that, we have actual hard, concrete evidence that a Vice President's cocaine addicted son was selling access to the office (presumably to fuel his addiction), and on top of that his father lied constantly to the American people about it. How is this not a scandal?
      - srdev 6y ago
        > For the endless commentary on Trump profiting off the presidency, Trump running an "organized crime family", Trump this Trump that, we have actual hard, concrete evidence that a Vice President's cocaine addicted son was selling access to the office (presumably to fuel his addiction), and on top of that his father lied constantly to the American people about it. The dispute is that we don't agree on whether there is concrete evidence that the vice president's son sold access to his office. Hunter certainly capitalized on his name, but to this point there is no hard evidence that this resulted in political access to Biden, that Biden accepted any money, or that Biden gave any favors with regard to Hunter's associates. If you can't prove any of those things, then hammering on it endlessly with no new evidence or any change in the story would be journalistic malpractice.
ChrisClark 6y ago
I think this comes down to the fact that removing lies and fake news hurts Republicans at this point in time. If in the future the Democrats are the lying ones, then those lies deserve to be removed too.
- jedmeyers 6y ago
  How do you know who is actually lying if half the information is removed from the sources you usually read?
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > How do you know who is actually lying if half the information is removed from the sources that you usually read? As far as I know, they're not broadly removing "half the information" (which I'm taking to refer to conservative viewpoints), but disinformation related to QAnon, voting, covid, etc. Disinformation is not something that will help anyone make better judgements. https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-media-social-media-elections-mark-zuckerberg-14e8073ce6f7bd2a674c99ac7bbfc240 https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-media-social-media-... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54443878 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54443878 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/11/facebook-covid-misinformation-takedowns/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/11/faceboo... https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-twitter-block-trump-post-for-spreading-covid-19-misinformation/ https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-twitter-block-trump-post-... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-election-exclusive-idUSKCN1MP2G9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-election-exclusi... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-facebook-bans-us-ads-that-call-voting-fraud-widespread-or-election/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-fa...
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  This tidbit from a WSJ story is rather revealing of the actual issue going on here[1]: > In late 2017, when Facebook tweaked its newsfeed algorithm to minimize the presence of political news, policy executives were concerned about the outsize impact of the changes on the right, including the Daily Wire, people familiar with the matter said. Engineers redesigned their intended changes so that left-leaning sites like Mother Jones were affected more than previously planned, the people said. Mr. Zuckerberg approved the plans. That is: Facebook decided to intervene to benefit the right. I don't think this is just because of right-wingers at Facebook: surely a large part of it is bad-faith attacks from people like Ted Cruz. The idea that Twitter and Facebook are conspiring to suppress legitimate criticism of Biden and thereby defeat Trump is plain ridiculous. [1] Story is here: https://t.co/sjOYrLQdc3?amp=1 https://t.co/sjOYrLQdc3?amp=1 but I got the blurb from this tweet: https://twitter.com/patcaldwell/status/1317140564169625600 https://twitter.com/patcaldwell/status/1317140564169625600
ChrisClark 6y ago
Platforms and publishers are no different under Section 230. Platforms are not getting anything special.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  False. "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher..." The whole point is that the provider of the interactive computer service (ie "the platform") is not to be treated as the publisher of anything anybody says on the platform.
ojnabieoot 6y ago
From Popehat's post: > Among the most common lies: Section 230 requires sites to choose between being a “platform” or “publisher” The idea that Twitter moderating its users' posts means it's acting like a "publisher" is nothing but Republican propaganda[1]: >Furthermore, a number of senators have prominently criticized Section 230. For example, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) repeatedly (but completely falsely) claims that Section 230 only applies to “neutral public forums." Threatening Twitter and Facebook with liability for their users' content is authoritarian suppression of free speech. The US government should not be forcing Twitter or any other social media service to carry the president's re-election propaganda - even if the propaganda is factual, let alone if it's full of holes and lies like the NY Post story. [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3306737 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3306737
- luckylion 6y ago
  From the comment: > If platforms are going to start acting like publishers, they should no longer get special treatment when compared to other publishers. The GP doesn't argue that Section 230 says this or that, they're arguing that internet companies who act like news sites should be subject to the same laws as news sites.
  - ojnabieoot 6y ago
    The problem is that Twitter and Facebook are not acting like news sites because 1) they don't write the stories or in any way pay the journalists 2) news is a minority of the content 3) moderation is not the same thing as curation 4) hosting a story is not the same thing as publishing it. If I post an NBC News article to Twitter, NBC is the publisher. If that article contains libel, NBC is the one on the hook in court, not Twitter. (However, if Twitter discovered the article was very likely libelous then it would be both reasonable and responsible to restrict sharing the article). GP is really making one of two authoritarian arguments: a) Platforms are not allowed to make broad decisions about what sorts of content they want to host. Presumably GP would then also agree that YouTube's ban on pornography means that YouTube is a "publisher," and that every time Reddit remove a racist subreddit that it is acting like a "publisher." b) If a platform does not want to host the president's dishonest re-election propaganda, they should expect to face financial and legal consequences. Of course nobody would really say "b" out loud, hence the word games about "you see, Mastadon is a platform but Twitter is a publisher."
Analemma_ 6y ago
This is exactly the misconception that Ken is trying to correct. There is no difference between platforms and publishers according to Section 230, and there is no "special treatment". This meme has sprung up out of nowhere because people are angry at the social media companies and want to think that anger has legal backing, but it doesn't.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  No. It's not what Ken is trying to correct, because this is an opinion, not an interpretation of the law. Furthermore, as for the law, there is a difference between platforms and publishers. Section 230 says that platforms will not be treated as publishers.
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    For the people downvoting my comment, please note the following from Section 230: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher..." FB and Twitter are interactive computer services in this case, and we call them "platforms." The law says they are not to be treated as the publisher of the content that users post on their site. Thus, there is a big difference between a platform and a publisher. That's the whole point of the law. Downvote all you want, but... that's the law.
    - coldpie 6y ago
      You have to read the whole sentence: > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. The law doesn't establish two categories, called "publisher" and "platform." It says, if User writes something on Website, then Website will not be treated as the publisher of whatever User wrote. Instead, User will be treated as the publisher. It defines who is responsible for the content that is served by Website: the User who wrote it, not the Website that served it. At no point does it create a category called "publisher" who is subject to different rules from a category called "platform."

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I'd suggest reading through some of the resources linked in the article. The idea that Section 230 gives special treatment to "platforms" as opposed to "publishers" is common but false. The Techdirt one (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...) in particular I think helps clear up the confusion.

luckylion 6y ago
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. If they don't get special treatment as opposed to publishers, why is explicitly mentioned that they shall not be treated as the publisher? If there's no difference, what's the point in that?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  "Publisher" here doesn't refer to a special legal status. This sentence just means that, if you post something on a website, it's still you and not the website who said it. This law is applicable to any website, even ones which make no attempt to be a neutral platform.
- judge2020 6y ago
  Probably because publishers are, by default, more liable (as liable as any other legal entity) and thus the law aims to reduce liability for the parties in question (the platform creators like twitter, facebook) so that the positive economic impact attributed to these platforms isn't burdened by the law.
tim44 6y ago
> To be a bit more explicit: at no point in any court case regarding Section 230 is there a need to determine whether or not a particular website is a "platform" or a 'publisher.' What matters is solely the content in question. If that content is created by someone else, the website hosting it cannot be sued over it. > Really, this is the simplest, most basic understanding of Section 230: it is about placing the liability for content online on whoever created that content, and not on whoever is hosting it. If you understand that one thing, you'll understand most of the most important things about Section 230. The way I understand it, these big sites aren't simply hosting content, they are themselves creators through editorializing content and so should not enjoy a blanket immunity.

jhayward 6y ago

> Remember, if the info platform monopolies help the democrats today, they can help the republicans tomorrow. Facebook has had its thumb on the 'balance' scale in favor of ultra-right-wing sites for half a decade, at least. - Zuckerberg calling a group of non-profit news sites "not real news" [1] - Zuckerberg ordering the algorithm of the news feed to be biased toward promoting Breitbart et. al. [2] [1] https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/1317124357873860609 https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/1317124357873860609 [2] https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1317160066047479809 https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/1317160066047479809 [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-mark-zuckerberg-learned-politics-11602853200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-mark-zuckerberg-learned-pol...

formerly_proven 6y ago

> Remember, if the info platform monopolies help the democrats today, they can help the republicans tomorrow. They do?

dimitrios1 6y ago
Case in point: two town halls yesterday. One gets asked about their most current scandal (tax returns), another doesn't get a single question about their scandal (burisima). The media is undoubtably carrying water for Joe Biden. That isn't even arguable anymore. The question is why?
- srdev 6y ago
  That just demonstrates that there isn't an easily definable political neutral. From my point of view, the "Burisma scandal" got all the attention it deserved. The reason the media isn't harping on it is because it wasn't a scandal, and one political party was desperately trying to make it so. In the same way, a lot of people would say it would be neutral for media to present arguments that global warming is not man-made, but people who care about scientific fact would claim that even presenting the skeptic argument is non-neutral, sense you are signal boosting an argument with no basis in reality.
  - dimitrios1 6y ago
    Jesus Christ I haven't realized just how far we have fallen until this comment. I don't necessarily blame anyone for thinking the way they do, it just baffles me. For the endless commentary on Trump profiting off the presidency, Trump running an "organized crime family", Trump this Trump that, we have actual hard, concrete evidence that a Vice President's cocaine addicted son was selling access to the office (presumably to fuel his addiction), and on top of that his father lied constantly to the American people about it. How is this not a scandal?
    - srdev 6y ago
      > For the endless commentary on Trump profiting off the presidency, Trump running an "organized crime family", Trump this Trump that, we have actual hard, concrete evidence that a Vice President's cocaine addicted son was selling access to the office (presumably to fuel his addiction), and on top of that his father lied constantly to the American people about it. The dispute is that we don't agree on whether there is concrete evidence that the vice president's son sold access to his office. Hunter certainly capitalized on his name, but to this point there is no hard evidence that this resulted in political access to Biden, that Biden accepted any money, or that Biden gave any favors with regard to Hunter's associates. If you can't prove any of those things, then hammering on it endlessly with no new evidence or any change in the story would be journalistic malpractice.

ChrisClark 6y ago

I think this comes down to the fact that removing lies and fake news hurts Republicans at this point in time. If in the future the Democrats are the lying ones, then those lies deserve to be removed too.

jedmeyers 6y ago
How do you know who is actually lying if half the information is removed from the sources you usually read?
- ardy42 6y ago
  > How do you know who is actually lying if half the information is removed from the sources that you usually read? As far as I know, they're not broadly removing "half the information" (which I'm taking to refer to conservative viewpoints), but disinformation related to QAnon, voting, covid, etc. Disinformation is not something that will help anyone make better judgements. https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-media-social-media-elections-mark-zuckerberg-14e8073ce6f7bd2a674c99ac7bbfc240 https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-media-social-media-... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54443878 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54443878 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/11/facebook-covid-misinformation-takedowns/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/11/faceboo... https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-twitter-block-trump-post-for-spreading-covid-19-misinformation/ https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-twitter-block-trump-post-... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-election-exclusive-idUSKCN1MP2G9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-election-exclusi... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-facebook-bans-us-ads-that-call-voting-fraud-widespread-or-election/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-fa...
ojnabieoot 6y ago
This tidbit from a WSJ story is rather revealing of the actual issue going on here[1]: > In late 2017, when Facebook tweaked its newsfeed algorithm to minimize the presence of political news, policy executives were concerned about the outsize impact of the changes on the right, including the Daily Wire, people familiar with the matter said. Engineers redesigned their intended changes so that left-leaning sites like Mother Jones were affected more than previously planned, the people said. Mr. Zuckerberg approved the plans. That is: Facebook decided to intervene to benefit the right. I don't think this is just because of right-wingers at Facebook: surely a large part of it is bad-faith attacks from people like Ted Cruz. The idea that Twitter and Facebook are conspiring to suppress legitimate criticism of Biden and thereby defeat Trump is plain ridiculous. [1] Story is here: https://t.co/sjOYrLQdc3?amp=1 https://t.co/sjOYrLQdc3?amp=1 but I got the blurb from this tweet: https://twitter.com/patcaldwell/status/1317140564169625600 https://twitter.com/patcaldwell/status/1317140564169625600

ChrisClark 6y ago

Platforms and publishers are no different under Section 230. Platforms are not getting anything special.

jtbayly 6y ago
False. "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher..." The whole point is that the provider of the interactive computer service (ie "the platform") is not to be treated as the publisher of anything anybody says on the platform.

ojnabieoot 6y ago

From Popehat's post: > Among the most common lies: Section 230 requires sites to choose between being a “platform” or “publisher” The idea that Twitter moderating its users' posts means it's acting like a "publisher" is nothing but Republican propaganda[1]: >Furthermore, a number of senators have prominently criticized Section 230. For example, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) repeatedly (but completely falsely) claims that Section 230 only applies to “neutral public forums." Threatening Twitter and Facebook with liability for their users' content is authoritarian suppression of free speech. The US government should not be forcing Twitter or any other social media service to carry the president's re-election propaganda - even if the propaganda is factual, let alone if it's full of holes and lies like the NY Post story. [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3306737 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3306737

luckylion 6y ago
From the comment: > If platforms are going to start acting like publishers, they should no longer get special treatment when compared to other publishers. The GP doesn't argue that Section 230 says this or that, they're arguing that internet companies who act like news sites should be subject to the same laws as news sites.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  The problem is that Twitter and Facebook are not acting like news sites because 1) they don't write the stories or in any way pay the journalists 2) news is a minority of the content 3) moderation is not the same thing as curation 4) hosting a story is not the same thing as publishing it. If I post an NBC News article to Twitter, NBC is the publisher. If that article contains libel, NBC is the one on the hook in court, not Twitter. (However, if Twitter discovered the article was very likely libelous then it would be both reasonable and responsible to restrict sharing the article). GP is really making one of two authoritarian arguments: a) Platforms are not allowed to make broad decisions about what sorts of content they want to host. Presumably GP would then also agree that YouTube's ban on pornography means that YouTube is a "publisher," and that every time Reddit remove a racist subreddit that it is acting like a "publisher." b) If a platform does not want to host the president's dishonest re-election propaganda, they should expect to face financial and legal consequences. Of course nobody would really say "b" out loud, hence the word games about "you see, Mastadon is a platform but Twitter is a publisher."

Analemma_ 6y ago

This is exactly the misconception that Ken is trying to correct. There is no difference between platforms and publishers according to Section 230, and there is no "special treatment". This meme has sprung up out of nowhere because people are angry at the social media companies and want to think that anger has legal backing, but it doesn't.

jtbayly 6y ago
No. It's not what Ken is trying to correct, because this is an opinion, not an interpretation of the law. Furthermore, as for the law, there is a difference between platforms and publishers. Section 230 says that platforms will not be treated as publishers.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  For the people downvoting my comment, please note the following from Section 230: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher..." FB and Twitter are interactive computer services in this case, and we call them "platforms." The law says they are not to be treated as the publisher of the content that users post on their site. Thus, there is a big difference between a platform and a publisher. That's the whole point of the law. Downvote all you want, but... that's the law.
  - coldpie 6y ago
    You have to read the whole sentence: > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. The law doesn't establish two categories, called "publisher" and "platform." It says, if User writes something on Website, then Website will not be treated as the publisher of whatever User wrote. Instead, User will be treated as the publisher. It defines who is responsible for the content that is served by Website: the User who wrote it, not the Website that served it. At no point does it create a category called "publisher" who is subject to different rules from a category called "platform."