5 ms·

Of course the have the ability and the right to host and moderate your own content! You just do it without Section 230 protection. That means you have a respon

by zaroth 6y ago

Of course the have the ability and the right to host and moderate your own content! You just do it without Section 230 protection. That means you have a responsibility for that content; the same legal liability that newspapers and magazines have when publishing articles and editorials.

tzs 6y ago
Newspapers and magazines run each article past editorial review before publishing it, and usually fact check anything that looks like it might be libelous or controversial. They don't just accept what the writer submitted and go to press. It's hard to see how you could run a site that provided near real time broadcast communication to the general public if you had to do that level of vetting of each post to make sure nothing slipped through that might get you sued.
eli 6y ago
Newspapers and magazines have a staff of editors (and sometimes lawyers!) review each issue before it's published. That's the standard you want to apply to anyone running any forum anywhere on the internet? That every comment has to be carefully prescreened for legal compliance? And even then you have to operate under a substantially increased risk of lawsuit. Maybe you prescreen every comment but you make a bad call and something defamatory gets through. Or maybe someone sues you under bad faith and you have to pay to defend it or settle. This is a very bad future for the internet. It's an internet where the powerful, who have the full support of publishers, will get to have their voices heard loudly. And the less powerful, who do not have teams of lawyers willing to fight on their behalf, will have a very hard time getting their voices heard.
- zaroth 6y ago
  > That every comment has to be carefully prescreened for legal compliance? And even then you have to operate under a substantially increased risk of lawsuit. No, that’s only the standard I want to apply if they are editorializing the content that’s being posted.
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    So, to use the same CatTalk example from before: if you're running a site dedicated to cats, and you want to disallow user posts about dogs (or cars or pornography or...), you want that site to have to carefully prescreen every comment for legal compliance and operate under a substantially increased risk of lawsuit?
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    So HN moderates its content, quite strictly imho. Do you think they should be sued because of a comment you or I make on this site?
nullc 6y ago
In practice this means that it would be extremely irrational to run a not-for-profit or nearly not-for-profit venue that accepted posts from anything but close friends. Is that the world you want?
fiblye 6y ago
So this might be an extreme example, but if the people running CatTalk become legally liable for the content, would they be held responsible for someone planning and carrying out a crime on their site? Because that seems like an easy law to abuse and destroy the lives of site-owners. For example, one could post about drug deals or something in a thread that mods might not read, then hold them legally responsible for enabling drug deals on their site.
madeofpalk 6y ago
> You just do it without Section 230 protection. But that's the thing. Section 230 doesnt really have anything to do with moderation. In fact, it allows websites that has user generated content to exist without moderation. I think/hope we agree that its completely reasonable and normal for websites to moderate the content on their sites. For example, I want Twitter to take down child pornography posted. Literally hate speech - calls for genecides and violence against people - websites should have the legal ability to remove that from their sites. I do not think there should be any consequences towards the websites for wanting to remove this content. If you remove 230 protections from websites, it forces the sites that are able to survivce to moderate more by making them legally liable for the content published.

by zaroth 6y ago

tzs 6y ago

Newspapers and magazines run each article past editorial review before publishing it, and usually fact check anything that looks like it might be libelous or controversial. They don't just accept what the writer submitted and go to press. It's hard to see how you could run a site that provided near real time broadcast communication to the general public if you had to do that level of vetting of each post to make sure nothing slipped through that might get you sued.

eli 6y ago

Newspapers and magazines have a staff of editors (and sometimes lawyers!) review each issue before it's published. That's the standard you want to apply to anyone running any forum anywhere on the internet? That every comment has to be carefully prescreened for legal compliance? And even then you have to operate under a substantially increased risk of lawsuit. Maybe you prescreen every comment but you make a bad call and something defamatory gets through. Or maybe someone sues you under bad faith and you have to pay to defend it or settle. This is a very bad future for the internet. It's an internet where the powerful, who have the full support of publishers, will get to have their voices heard loudly. And the less powerful, who do not have teams of lawyers willing to fight on their behalf, will have a very hard time getting their voices heard.

zaroth 6y ago
> That every comment has to be carefully prescreened for legal compliance? And even then you have to operate under a substantially increased risk of lawsuit. No, that’s only the standard I want to apply if they are editorializing the content that’s being posted.
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  So, to use the same CatTalk example from before: if you're running a site dedicated to cats, and you want to disallow user posts about dogs (or cars or pornography or...), you want that site to have to carefully prescreen every comment for legal compliance and operate under a substantially increased risk of lawsuit?
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  So HN moderates its content, quite strictly imho. Do you think they should be sued because of a comment you or I make on this site?

nullc 6y ago

In practice this means that it would be extremely irrational to run a not-for-profit or nearly not-for-profit venue that accepted posts from anything but close friends. Is that the world you want?

fiblye 6y ago

So this might be an extreme example, but if the people running CatTalk become legally liable for the content, would they be held responsible for someone planning and carrying out a crime on their site? Because that seems like an easy law to abuse and destroy the lives of site-owners. For example, one could post about drug deals or something in a thread that mods might not read, then hold them legally responsible for enabling drug deals on their site.

madeofpalk 6y ago

> You just do it without Section 230 protection. But that's the thing. Section 230 doesnt really have anything to do with moderation. In fact, it allows websites that has user generated content to exist without moderation. I think/hope we agree that its completely reasonable and normal for websites to moderate the content on their sites. For example, I want Twitter to take down child pornography posted. Literally hate speech - calls for genecides and violence against people - websites should have the legal ability to remove that from their sites. I do not think there should be any consequences towards the websites for wanting to remove this content. If you remove 230 protections from websites, it forces the sites that are able to survivce to moderate more by making them legally liable for the content published.