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HN already has moderators who do a very good job of filtering posts in a timely manner. HN's exposure to liability for libel would be rather minimal. People and

by wahern 6y ago

HN already has moderators who do a very good job of filtering posts in a timely manner. HN's exposure to liability for libel would be rather minimal. People and companies are exposed to legal risk all the time, everywhere they go, and somehow they don't curl up into a ball and die of starvation in their basements. Big, diverse sites like Facebook and Twitter need Section 230 because they can't effectively use human moderators to sift through the content. They have to rely on machine learning, which has false negative rates magnitudes higher than a human. Yet at the same time, they're constantly trying to shape and edit and, basically, narrate the user content, as part of their monetization strategy. That's their dilemma. Moreover, the distinction between publisher and distributor will still exist. The alternative to strong moderation is no moderation--you're just a distributor, like a Usenet node or the telephone company. But that's more difficult to monetize. (Of course, the legal landscape would be more nuanced than that--traditional libel law wouldn't demand a simple dichotomy between moderation and no moderation.) Without Section 230 companies would have a more difficult time trading profit potential for legal liability, but it would still be done. Newspapers, write-in columns, bulletin boards, and other forums were around for centuries, all the same exposed to libel law. Even the internet was around for decades prior to Section 230.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NationalPark 6y ago
We won't know the actual exposure until it ends up in the courts. Remember, we're talking about removing the good faith liability protections. Maybe a few thousand views of a libelous comment is enough, even if it was eventually removed. Either way, someone has to hire lawyers to go defend this, so it's not free. We should also expect new bad actors to take advantage of this. As long as they can spam libel faster than moderators can delete it, they can force the site to shut down or risk the lawsuits. While I'm sure YC has its share of enemies deserved or not, even perfectly innocent people are attacked online every day for no reason at all.
- gowld 6y ago
  There's no reason to assume that an operator would be liable for libel spam, since they lack mens rea intent. Libel would only be in play if they intentionally refused to take down content or tried to extort people with it.
eli 6y ago
> HN's exposure to liability for libel would be rather minimal. I don't understand how you reached that conclusion. They could be sued over any comment that appears for any amount of time. There are definitely comments that have appeared on HN that are libelous. Moreover even if they pre-screened every comment before it was posted with a team of lawyers who never make any mistakes, they'd STILL have to worry about defending against frivolous lawsuits. Would it even be possible to buy liability insurance for a forum in this world? It would cost a fortune. And this is for a site that has the resources to have full time moderators. Smaller sites are even worse off. I don't see how anyone could practically operate any forum or discussion board or comments section that allowed people to post messages in real time. >Even the internet was around for decades prior to Section 230. Sure and sometimes your ISP got successfully sued because someone didn't like a comment posted on a message board they hosted.
- nullc 6y ago
  > have appeared on HN that are libelous Not just have appeared, but which are still on display. Sometimes the difference between libellous and a critical statement protecting the public is purely the difference of the statement being true or not. This is not something a moderator is necessarily in a position to be able to judge but it's critically important to a community that its members can communicate true negative facts about other members.
  - eli 6y ago
    Worse yet: sometimes the difference is just who happens to be on your jury that day!
  - curryst 6y ago
    > Sometimes the difference between libellous and a critical statement protecting the public is purely the difference of the statement being true or not. Or whether the person making the statement knew that it was false at the time (or should have known). That won't protect the statement from being libelous, but it limits your maximum liability to actual damages that you can show (which in many cases is only going to be the lawyer fees; in the case of a widely repeated libelous statements, how do you determine what harm came from which sites?). > This is not something a moderator is necessarily in a position to be able to judge I would make that a harder statement. Moderators cannot tell whether a certain post is libelous. Even assuming that the moderator knows whether the post is factually true or not (and there are a lot of accusations where, when they come out, no one knows for sure who is telling the truth), whether it's libelous depends on whether the person in question is considered a public figure, and whether the person that posted it did enough fact checking to be deemed sufficient in attempting to prove or disprove it. The only person that can determine whether the person being defamed is a public figure, and whether the burden to verify the facts was met, is a judge with jurisdiction over the case. Anything else is just people guessing at how a judge would interpret this case, which is fraught with problems, including and up to that two judges who have jurisdiction would disagree on some facet of that.

by wahern 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

NationalPark 6y ago

We won't know the actual exposure until it ends up in the courts. Remember, we're talking about removing the good faith liability protections. Maybe a few thousand views of a libelous comment is enough, even if it was eventually removed. Either way, someone has to hire lawyers to go defend this, so it's not free. We should also expect new bad actors to take advantage of this. As long as they can spam libel faster than moderators can delete it, they can force the site to shut down or risk the lawsuits. While I'm sure YC has its share of enemies deserved or not, even perfectly innocent people are attacked online every day for no reason at all.

gowld 6y ago
There's no reason to assume that an operator would be liable for libel spam, since they lack mens rea intent. Libel would only be in play if they intentionally refused to take down content or tried to extort people with it.

eli 6y ago

> HN's exposure to liability for libel would be rather minimal. I don't understand how you reached that conclusion. They could be sued over any comment that appears for any amount of time. There are definitely comments that have appeared on HN that are libelous. Moreover even if they pre-screened every comment before it was posted with a team of lawyers who never make any mistakes, they'd STILL have to worry about defending against frivolous lawsuits. Would it even be possible to buy liability insurance for a forum in this world? It would cost a fortune. And this is for a site that has the resources to have full time moderators. Smaller sites are even worse off. I don't see how anyone could practically operate any forum or discussion board or comments section that allowed people to post messages in real time. >Even the internet was around for decades prior to Section 230. Sure and sometimes your ISP got successfully sued because someone didn't like a comment posted on a message board they hosted.

nullc 6y ago
> have appeared on HN that are libelous Not just have appeared, but which are still on display. Sometimes the difference between libellous and a critical statement protecting the public is purely the difference of the statement being true or not. This is not something a moderator is necessarily in a position to be able to judge but it's critically important to a community that its members can communicate true negative facts about other members.
- eli 6y ago
  Worse yet: sometimes the difference is just who happens to be on your jury that day!
- curryst 6y ago
  > Sometimes the difference between libellous and a critical statement protecting the public is purely the difference of the statement being true or not. Or whether the person making the statement knew that it was false at the time (or should have known). That won't protect the statement from being libelous, but it limits your maximum liability to actual damages that you can show (which in many cases is only going to be the lawyer fees; in the case of a widely repeated libelous statements, how do you determine what harm came from which sites?). > This is not something a moderator is necessarily in a position to be able to judge I would make that a harder statement. Moderators cannot tell whether a certain post is libelous. Even assuming that the moderator knows whether the post is factually true or not (and there are a lot of accusations where, when they come out, no one knows for sure who is telling the truth), whether it's libelous depends on whether the person in question is considered a public figure, and whether the person that posted it did enough fact checking to be deemed sufficient in attempting to prove or disprove it. The only person that can determine whether the person being defamed is a public figure, and whether the burden to verify the facts was met, is a judge with jurisdiction over the case. Anything else is just people guessing at how a judge would interpret this case, which is fraught with problems, including and up to that two judges who have jurisdiction would disagree on some facet of that.