4 ms·

If you tried to enforce a "neutrality" requirement, you'd slam face-first into the First Amendment. It would be government mandated viewpoint discrimination.

LegitShady 6y ago
which is why the legal exemption should be tossed entirely, and new publishers like twitter and facebook who have demonstrated control of what gets seen on their platform, should be liable for the content on their platforms.
- roywiggins 6y ago
  That would make Hacker News liable for any defamation posted in the comments section. Well done, you just killed HN.
  - LegitShady 6y ago
    shrug if thats the cost of stopping technocratic control of the flow of information in society and openly censoring, its cheap.
    - roywiggins 6y ago
      Throwing out all online discussion fora is rather throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The replacement would be centralized media companies that have total and absolute control over information flow. Goodbye Mastodon (every Mastodon instance is liable for all toots). Goodbye Internet Archive (can't host content that might be defamatory, they'll be liable). Goodbye GitHub pull requests (Git would be liable for any defamation contained in them). And so on.
      - LegitShady 6y ago
        I would happily see all of those things go away to make sure Silicon Valley can't control who sees what. It's not that I don't understand the value of those things, its that I see the value of not having information in society be controlled by a few companies as having far larger value.
        roywiggins 6y ago
        If you choke off user-generated content, the remaining content will be directly produced by Disney and other media conglomerates. That's not better, that's worse. The only people able to blog, for instance, would be people who have the technical chops to completely self-host. Everyone else would be reduced to handing out flyers on the corner like the bad old days. The behemoth old-media companies would be fine, because they can afford lawyers to go over everything they publish. Not only would it not be worth it, repealing section 230 would consolidate behemoth media companies' control, not break it. It would do the absolute opposite of what you want.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  You're aware that this will result in _more_ content from being moderated off the sites, right?
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    Full devils advocate mode here.. I think it would likely result in a severe scaling back of the operations of Facebook and Twitter (and Reddit and [...]). There are simply not enough people to hire as moderators and coordinate at the scales they're running at right now to operate in a manner that won't get them sued on the regular. I also think this would result in a mad dash for anonymous, distributed, decentralized communication methods, i.e. things that can't be the target of a subpoena. Given the toxic influence of both social media on society, and the severe centralization we're operating under... both of those things look very tempting.
    - madeofpalk 6y ago
      I think it would be a net negative for the internet, attacking the very thing that let it get to this place.
throwawaygh 6y ago
Not if you have a 6-3 majority on the court... 1A is whatever SCOTUS says it is.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Not if you have a 6-3 majority on the court... 1A is whatever SCOTUS says it is. That's true. Like much of the Constitution, the text is pithy and doesn't specify its definitions. The current legal interpretation of the First Amendment and free speech rest on a particular philosophical traditions that the court adopted in the last century, and especially after the 60s. A lot of people have absolute faith in the functioning of a "marketplace of ideas," but it's not at all clear to me that a such a market can work well when it's flooded by disinformation, just like a market of goods can't work well when it's flooded by counterfeits. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/free-speech.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/free-speech.html

LegitShady 6y ago

which is why the legal exemption should be tossed entirely, and new publishers like twitter and facebook who have demonstrated control of what gets seen on their platform, should be liable for the content on their platforms.

roywiggins 6y ago
That would make Hacker News liable for any defamation posted in the comments section. Well done, you just killed HN.
- LegitShady 6y ago
  shrug if thats the cost of stopping technocratic control of the flow of information in society and openly censoring, its cheap.
  - roywiggins 6y ago
    Throwing out all online discussion fora is rather throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The replacement would be centralized media companies that have total and absolute control over information flow. Goodbye Mastodon (every Mastodon instance is liable for all toots). Goodbye Internet Archive (can't host content that might be defamatory, they'll be liable). Goodbye GitHub pull requests (Git would be liable for any defamation contained in them). And so on.
    - LegitShady 6y ago
      I would happily see all of those things go away to make sure Silicon Valley can't control who sees what. It's not that I don't understand the value of those things, its that I see the value of not having information in society be controlled by a few companies as having far larger value.
      - roywiggins 6y ago
        If you choke off user-generated content, the remaining content will be directly produced by Disney and other media conglomerates. That's not better, that's worse. The only people able to blog, for instance, would be people who have the technical chops to completely self-host. Everyone else would be reduced to handing out flyers on the corner like the bad old days. The behemoth old-media companies would be fine, because they can afford lawyers to go over everything they publish. Not only would it not be worth it, repealing section 230 would consolidate behemoth media companies' control, not break it. It would do the absolute opposite of what you want.
madeofpalk 6y ago
You're aware that this will result in _more_ content from being moderated off the sites, right?
- Karunamon 6y ago
  Full devils advocate mode here.. I think it would likely result in a severe scaling back of the operations of Facebook and Twitter (and Reddit and [...]). There are simply not enough people to hire as moderators and coordinate at the scales they're running at right now to operate in a manner that won't get them sued on the regular. I also think this would result in a mad dash for anonymous, distributed, decentralized communication methods, i.e. things that can't be the target of a subpoena. Given the toxic influence of both social media on society, and the severe centralization we're operating under... both of those things look very tempting.
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    I think it would be a net negative for the internet, attacking the very thing that let it get to this place.

throwawaygh 6y ago

Not if you have a 6-3 majority on the court... 1A is whatever SCOTUS says it is.

ardy42 6y ago
> Not if you have a 6-3 majority on the court... 1A is whatever SCOTUS says it is. That's true. Like much of the Constitution, the text is pithy and doesn't specify its definitions. The current legal interpretation of the First Amendment and free speech rest on a particular philosophical traditions that the court adopted in the last century, and especially after the 60s. A lot of people have absolute faith in the functioning of a "marketplace of ideas," but it's not at all clear to me that a such a market can work well when it's flooded by disinformation, just like a market of goods can't work well when it's flooded by counterfeits. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/free-speech.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/free-speech.html