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It's not scary, it's promising. It means both sides understand the harm Section 230 causes, even if they disagree on how it plays out on their party specificall

It's not scary, it's promising. It means both sides understand the harm Section 230 causes, even if they disagree on how it plays out on their party specifically. It allows platforms to be judge, jury, and executioner, while insulating them from any risk of appeal (being taken to court and held liable). It's an incredibly bad law, and it took election tampering for politicians to realize it also harms them, not just the little people who voted for them. Politicians mostly care about themselves, and 2016 finally proved that 230 is a mistake that can no longer be ignored.

edmundsauto 6y ago
Judge, jury, and executioner of the behavior they allow on their property. Let’s not mix this up with the roles in the legal system that actually have those powers.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Social media is the public square in 2020. There's no way to claim we still have free speech while all speech is done in a private company's territory where said freedom "does not apply". So realistically, we have two options: Regulate what those companies are allowed to do and hold them liable for what they do, or nationalize them so that we can once again treat them as public space.
  - edmundsauto 6y ago
    I don’t concede that social media is the public square; at most, it is one piece. It also seems to be one of the less useful, judging by the overall timbre of the engagement. Even if true, what right does the govt or people have to reprieve the companies of their property rights? Nationalization is not generally in line with our system of laws in the US.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      I certainly don't think nationalization is the ideal outcome. I'd hate for Twitter to become "the" official state communication medium. I'd far rather we stop making social media public squares by requiring social use decentralized protocols, like email. But if we're not nationalizing, we need to accept that companies operating these platforms must at minimum be regulated, just like privately owned utilities are. They're conduct should be transparent, the public should be able to inspect the algorithms in use, and most crucially, these companies must be liable for their behavior. And that is directly contrary to the goals of Section 230.
csnover 6y ago
What is it that you think Section 230 does that “allows platforms to be judge, jury, and executioner”? What harm, specifically, do you think the Section 230 liability shield is causing? What change, specifically, do you think should be made to cure that harm? How would your proposed change not cause sites with UGC to either shut down entirely (thereby eliminating the ability to speak out at all), require pre-approval for all UGC (thereby increasing the amount of censorship), or be overrun by spammers and trolls (thereby making the site useless)? Don’t just think about Twitter and Facebook. Think about Hacker News, or a subreddit you like, or a small community forum that you visit, or the comments section of your favourite tech news site. A change to Section 230 affects everybody.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  This whole "sites with UGC will have to shut down entirely rather than face liability for their actions" nonsense is tiring. Facebook and Google are not going to decide to simply shutdown their eleventy billion dollar businesses because they will need to occasionally employ lawyers to defend themselves from lawsuits. We need to actually and actively stop pretending this talking point is a thing. Sure, they can threaten to leave Australia for regulating them (as they have recently done), but unless you think some of the most valuable companies on the planet are going to literally pack up and leave the US because they'll be subject to the law (like every other non-tech-company already is!), I have ocean front property in Arizona to sell you. Section 230 is a blanket immunity that allows Google, Facebook, and Twitter to avoid any sort of liability of any kinda for automated harms to society. That's it. Sure, Section 230 technically applies to smaller websites, but it is effectively immaterial: Smaller websites and communities have reasonable, defensible human moderation activities. The United States court system is not some madhouse that you can exploit with bad code: It's built on firm pillars like intent and reasonableness. We have judges that rule on cases based on the facts of the specific issue in question, who are elected and accountable to the people. Which is why, no, without 230, every website owner isn't suddenly going to jail because someone posted fraud. The intent isn't there. Intent is a crucial pillar of the law. Meanwhile, Google and Facebook have harmful intent. Their intent is to raise engagement as much as possible, even if it radicalizes users, and causes actual harm to lives and liberty. Because at the end of the day, their moderation decisions are solely determined by profit. If it's not profitable to have adult content on the site because advertisers don't like it, adult content is banned. If it's very profitable to take political ads that claim falsehoods, you bet they're going to, because it makes them money. And if scammers and fraudsters pay top dollar for ad space, you know they'll be favored customers. That is where Section 230 really applies: When bad people doing bad things can use it to hide behind any consideration of what they are doing. Section 230 doesn't defend tech companies, it dismisses all complaints against them, regardless of their merit. Sure, it's going to cost Google and Facebook more to reckon with what they've done without immunity. So they really really want to keep that immunity. And they'll pay off every lobbyist, think tank, and so-called expert to tell you Section 230 is crucial to the Internet. But when it's gone, they will suck it up and stay in business, because at the end of the day, they like money, and they'd still rather be in business even if it means they make a little less.
tzs 6y ago
Section 230 insulates them from the risk of not removing stuff. Your liability risk as publisher or as a host of third party content before 230 was in what appeared on your site, not what did not appear. There was little to no liability risk over removing specific material. E.g., if you posted something on my site and I took it down, you had virtually no chance of winning a lawsuit to force me to put it back up or to pay any damages. Section 230 did not change that, and that's the way it will be if 230 goes away. What section 230 addressed is the some courts had decided that if I removed some stuff from my site but not other stuff, then I could be liable for that other stuff even if it was posted by my users. So if I removed spam or off topic material, and someone slipped in some libel in another post I could be sued for the libel. Removing 230 would just go back to that, where I have to chose between letting everything (except stuff that is illegal) on, or being responsible for everything. No one is going to run a completely unmoderated site for long, which means they are going to opt for heavy moderation.

edmundsauto 6y ago

Judge, jury, and executioner of the behavior they allow on their property. Let’s not mix this up with the roles in the legal system that actually have those powers.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Social media is the public square in 2020. There's no way to claim we still have free speech while all speech is done in a private company's territory where said freedom "does not apply". So realistically, we have two options: Regulate what those companies are allowed to do and hold them liable for what they do, or nationalize them so that we can once again treat them as public space.
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  I don’t concede that social media is the public square; at most, it is one piece. It also seems to be one of the less useful, judging by the overall timbre of the engagement. Even if true, what right does the govt or people have to reprieve the companies of their property rights? Nationalization is not generally in line with our system of laws in the US.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    I certainly don't think nationalization is the ideal outcome. I'd hate for Twitter to become "the" official state communication medium. I'd far rather we stop making social media public squares by requiring social use decentralized protocols, like email. But if we're not nationalizing, we need to accept that companies operating these platforms must at minimum be regulated, just like privately owned utilities are. They're conduct should be transparent, the public should be able to inspect the algorithms in use, and most crucially, these companies must be liable for their behavior. And that is directly contrary to the goals of Section 230.

csnover 6y ago

What is it that you think Section 230 does that “allows platforms to be judge, jury, and executioner”? What harm, specifically, do you think the Section 230 liability shield is causing? What change, specifically, do you think should be made to cure that harm? How would your proposed change not cause sites with UGC to either shut down entirely (thereby eliminating the ability to speak out at all), require pre-approval for all UGC (thereby increasing the amount of censorship), or be overrun by spammers and trolls (thereby making the site useless)? Don’t just think about Twitter and Facebook. Think about Hacker News, or a subreddit you like, or a small community forum that you visit, or the comments section of your favourite tech news site. A change to Section 230 affects everybody.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
This whole "sites with UGC will have to shut down entirely rather than face liability for their actions" nonsense is tiring. Facebook and Google are not going to decide to simply shutdown their eleventy billion dollar businesses because they will need to occasionally employ lawyers to defend themselves from lawsuits. We need to actually and actively stop pretending this talking point is a thing. Sure, they can threaten to leave Australia for regulating them (as they have recently done), but unless you think some of the most valuable companies on the planet are going to literally pack up and leave the US because they'll be subject to the law (like every other non-tech-company already is!), I have ocean front property in Arizona to sell you. Section 230 is a blanket immunity that allows Google, Facebook, and Twitter to avoid any sort of liability of any kinda for automated harms to society. That's it. Sure, Section 230 technically applies to smaller websites, but it is effectively immaterial: Smaller websites and communities have reasonable, defensible human moderation activities. The United States court system is not some madhouse that you can exploit with bad code: It's built on firm pillars like intent and reasonableness. We have judges that rule on cases based on the facts of the specific issue in question, who are elected and accountable to the people. Which is why, no, without 230, every website owner isn't suddenly going to jail because someone posted fraud. The intent isn't there. Intent is a crucial pillar of the law. Meanwhile, Google and Facebook have harmful intent. Their intent is to raise engagement as much as possible, even if it radicalizes users, and causes actual harm to lives and liberty. Because at the end of the day, their moderation decisions are solely determined by profit. If it's not profitable to have adult content on the site because advertisers don't like it, adult content is banned. If it's very profitable to take political ads that claim falsehoods, you bet they're going to, because it makes them money. And if scammers and fraudsters pay top dollar for ad space, you know they'll be favored customers. That is where Section 230 really applies: When bad people doing bad things can use it to hide behind any consideration of what they are doing. Section 230 doesn't defend tech companies, it dismisses all complaints against them, regardless of their merit. Sure, it's going to cost Google and Facebook more to reckon with what they've done without immunity. So they really really want to keep that immunity. And they'll pay off every lobbyist, think tank, and so-called expert to tell you Section 230 is crucial to the Internet. But when it's gone, they will suck it up and stay in business, because at the end of the day, they like money, and they'd still rather be in business even if it means they make a little less.

tzs 6y ago

Section 230 insulates them from the risk of not removing stuff. Your liability risk as publisher or as a host of third party content before 230 was in what appeared on your site, not what did not appear. There was little to no liability risk over removing specific material. E.g., if you posted something on my site and I took it down, you had virtually no chance of winning a lawsuit to force me to put it back up or to pay any damages. Section 230 did not change that, and that's the way it will be if 230 goes away. What section 230 addressed is the some courts had decided that if I removed some stuff from my site but not other stuff, then I could be liable for that other stuff even if it was posted by my users. So if I removed spam or off topic material, and someone slipped in some libel in another post I could be sued for the libel. Removing 230 would just go back to that, where I have to chose between letting everything (except stuff that is illegal) on, or being responsible for everything. No one is going to run a completely unmoderated site for long, which means they are going to opt for heavy moderation.