4 ms·

I think the article is good and does a good job outlining how the legislators have basically abandoned their regulatory position for showboating. I disagree th

I think the article is good and does a good job outlining how the legislators have basically abandoned their regulatory position for showboating. I disagree that we have lost anything substantive here though, or that new regulation around this might even be necessary; When in American history would all of the major book publishers refusing to print someone’s words mean the publishers should be made legally liable?

whimsicalism 6y ago
> When in American history would all of the major book publishers refusing to print someone’s words mean the publishers should be made legally liable? I'd say that tech companies a. have more power than book publishers, b. are more concentrated than book publishers historically have been, c. are covered by section 230 safe harbor, unlike book publishers Moreover, why are we constrained by American history given that the challenges we face clearly are not?
- mattnewton 6y ago
  That’s a great criticism; I look to history to try and understand the consequences of principles in practice. But of course changing the details can change everything. The question then is, does the increased power and concentration move the internet companies to the category of something like a utility that needs public oversight, w.r.t. moderating content under section 230? To me that seems strange, other people’s attention does not seem like a utility. There may be other things large tech companies do with their power that mean they need to be regulated like utilities, but moderating user generated content so that users don’t leave or so that ads can be better sold over it doesn’t seem like it fits the bill. It’s not clear to me what is broken on section 230 specifically; I can’t separate a legitimate social ill from the politically motivated attacks.
- closeparen 6y ago
  Meta: how do you square this position with your usage of HN? Use social media only as much as necessary to bring about its demise? Regret its loss but feel it's socially necessary? Believe YCombinator will actually accept liability for everything posted here and it'll be fine?
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Accept that I am going to be complicit and have to engage in things that are structurally problematic. The same way I buy gasoline, knowing that I am indirectly complicit in resource dispossession just by participating in that market. > actually accept liability My end goal is not in making HN liable for comments here, but I do think platform regulation is needed and if 230 has to be used as the "stick" to incentivize compliance, that might be necessary.
    - closeparen 6y ago
      What is the shape of that regulation?
CookieMon 6y ago
> When in American history would all of the major book publishers refusing to print someone’s words mean the publishers should be made legally liable? Major book publishers are legally liable, which is fine because they decide what they publish, e.g. they refuse to print some people’s words. The tech industry was given immunity from that liability, with the idea they acted more like a common carrier than a publisher.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  Thank you for the clarification, I'd note this is a bad analogy but the edit window seems to have passed.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > with the idea they acted more like a common carrier than a publisher. This is pure invention. Information services' closest publishing analogue is letters to the editor. In print, the publisher has a far lower inbound volume of letters, and has to satisfy a less stringent SLA (letters are published daily or weekly). Publishers are able to moderate submissions effectively. Thus they can be held liable for user submissions they publish, even though they didn't write them. Information services cannot do this. If they adopt the moderation model of a traditional publisher, their usefulness is lost because: a) you'll need way more manpower to moderate (or the service cannot handle a high volume of submissions) b) you'll lose the low-latency of an information service (i.e. nobody wants to wait 10 hours for their tweet to be posted). Given these facts, treating information services as publishers by making them liable for what their users posted would have killed an entire industry in the cradle. Which is why Congress wrote the safe harbor into law. It has nothing to do with them being a "common carrier". You can read the law and it explicitly allows them to perform as much moderation as they wish.
  - CookieMon 6y ago
    You're railing against claims I didn't make. Section 230 explicitly allows the tech industry to perform moderation. It was needed because ISPs were being sued for user-generated content and if the service had not moderated content they were found not at fault (Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc), but if they had moderated their user content they were found to have editorial control and thus be a publisher and legally liable (Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.), this is directly relevant to whimsicalism's analogy. A Wikipedia summary: "The court held that although CompuServe did host defamatory content on its forums, CompuServe was merely a distributor, rather than a publisher, of the content. As a distributor, CompuServe could only be held liable for defamation if it knew, or had reason to know, of the defamatory nature of the content. As CompuServe had made no effort to review the large volume of content on its forums, it could not be held liable for the defamatory content." Section 230 was Congress clarifying which of those ways internet services should be treated. My phrase "with the idea they acted more like" is descriptive of what ISPs are / how they are classified, not prescriptive or Congress demanding how they act. It does sound like I should have said the idea was they're "more like a distributor than a publisher", instead of "more like a common carrier than a publisher".

whimsicalism 6y ago

> When in American history would all of the major book publishers refusing to print someone’s words mean the publishers should be made legally liable? I'd say that tech companies a. have more power than book publishers, b. are more concentrated than book publishers historically have been, c. are covered by section 230 safe harbor, unlike book publishers Moreover, why are we constrained by American history given that the challenges we face clearly are not?

mattnewton 6y ago
That’s a great criticism; I look to history to try and understand the consequences of principles in practice. But of course changing the details can change everything. The question then is, does the increased power and concentration move the internet companies to the category of something like a utility that needs public oversight, w.r.t. moderating content under section 230? To me that seems strange, other people’s attention does not seem like a utility. There may be other things large tech companies do with their power that mean they need to be regulated like utilities, but moderating user generated content so that users don’t leave or so that ads can be better sold over it doesn’t seem like it fits the bill. It’s not clear to me what is broken on section 230 specifically; I can’t separate a legitimate social ill from the politically motivated attacks.
closeparen 6y ago
Meta: how do you square this position with your usage of HN? Use social media only as much as necessary to bring about its demise? Regret its loss but feel it's socially necessary? Believe YCombinator will actually accept liability for everything posted here and it'll be fine?
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Accept that I am going to be complicit and have to engage in things that are structurally problematic. The same way I buy gasoline, knowing that I am indirectly complicit in resource dispossession just by participating in that market. > actually accept liability My end goal is not in making HN liable for comments here, but I do think platform regulation is needed and if 230 has to be used as the "stick" to incentivize compliance, that might be necessary.
  - closeparen 6y ago
    What is the shape of that regulation?

CookieMon 6y ago

> When in American history would all of the major book publishers refusing to print someone’s words mean the publishers should be made legally liable? Major book publishers are legally liable, which is fine because they decide what they publish, e.g. they refuse to print some people’s words. The tech industry was given immunity from that liability, with the idea they acted more like a common carrier than a publisher.

mattnewton 6y ago
Thank you for the clarification, I'd note this is a bad analogy but the edit window seems to have passed.
triceratops 6y ago
> with the idea they acted more like a common carrier than a publisher. This is pure invention. Information services' closest publishing analogue is letters to the editor. In print, the publisher has a far lower inbound volume of letters, and has to satisfy a less stringent SLA (letters are published daily or weekly). Publishers are able to moderate submissions effectively. Thus they can be held liable for user submissions they publish, even though they didn't write them. Information services cannot do this. If they adopt the moderation model of a traditional publisher, their usefulness is lost because: a) you'll need way more manpower to moderate (or the service cannot handle a high volume of submissions) b) you'll lose the low-latency of an information service (i.e. nobody wants to wait 10 hours for their tweet to be posted). Given these facts, treating information services as publishers by making them liable for what their users posted would have killed an entire industry in the cradle. Which is why Congress wrote the safe harbor into law. It has nothing to do with them being a "common carrier". You can read the law and it explicitly allows them to perform as much moderation as they wish.
- CookieMon 6y ago
  You're railing against claims I didn't make. Section 230 explicitly allows the tech industry to perform moderation. It was needed because ISPs were being sued for user-generated content and if the service had not moderated content they were found not at fault (Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc), but if they had moderated their user content they were found to have editorial control and thus be a publisher and legally liable (Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.), this is directly relevant to whimsicalism's analogy. A Wikipedia summary: "The court held that although CompuServe did host defamatory content on its forums, CompuServe was merely a distributor, rather than a publisher, of the content. As a distributor, CompuServe could only be held liable for defamation if it knew, or had reason to know, of the defamatory nature of the content. As CompuServe had made no effort to review the large volume of content on its forums, it could not be held liable for the defamatory content." Section 230 was Congress clarifying which of those ways internet services should be treated. My phrase "with the idea they acted more like" is descriptive of what ISPs are / how they are classified, not prescriptive or Congress demanding how they act. It does sound like I should have said the idea was they're "more like a distributor than a publisher", instead of "more like a common carrier than a publisher".