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Neither can a great many other sites, such as this one.

austincheney 6y ago
That is not necessarily true. Section 230 is a protective shield against certain types of lawsuits, but it’s absence does not guarantee the opposite. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
- Karunamon 6y ago
  Its absence almost ensures the death of open forums anywhere on the internet. Nobody is going to take the legal risk of being held responsible for what some rando on the other side of the planet said. On the other hand, it would lead to the proliferation of distributed, decentralized systems where there's not a good way to demonstrate culpability for a suit, so maybe burning down Facebook is a nice side effect of a kind of decentralization that would be more healthy in the long run anyways.
  - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
    I wonder if it would result in something like what you said where every user hosts their own social media hub which only hosts their own content. But would the responsibility fall down to the one who owns the machine running the software? Is digital ocean responsible for the post I host on a vps in their datacenter?
  - tim333 6y ago
    Alternatively it might lead to centralized forums hosted from countries who are not bothered about the liability stuff. China etc.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Other than claiming the logical fallacy, what's your argument that HN won't be subject to lawsuits absent section 230? That' we're Not The Kind Of People Who Do That Sort Of Thing?
  - austincheney 6y ago
    Because there is no evidentiary reason to suggest otherwise.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      This sounds like you're saying "Let's make this change, because we don't have any evidence that it will bite us." Given that the evidence would show up after the change, that seems rather short-sighted. But if you want evidence, I would cite the lawsuit climate in the US. If it smells like money, there will be a lawyer willing to come up with a case, no matter how far-fetched or unrealistic. I've seen too many examples of that over the years. (If you want specifics, the one I'm most familiar with is SCO v IBM.) So if you make this change, I say there is enough evidence to believe that some lawyer will decide there's money to be made finding "hate speech" or "discriminator speech" or something on HN, and suing YCombinator for it. (Because even if HN per se doesn't have a lot of money, YCombinator does.) And if that happens, that's probably the end of HN.
      - austincheney 6y ago
        Imaginary speculation based on conspiracy theory type assumptions isn’t a strong reason to do anything. That is why I referenced the concerned logical fallacy, because fallacies aren’t worthy of supporting arguments.
    - teraflop 6y ago
      Are you not aware of the history behind CDA section 230? There was at least one actual court case in which the online service Prodigy was successfully sued for libel, on the grounds that by employing moderators to remove "offensive" content, Prodigy automatically became responsible for everything its users posted that was not removed. https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative-history https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative-history Where's your argument that returning the law to its previous state wouldn't result in exactly the same thing happening again?
      - 6y ago

That is not necessarily true. Section 230 is a protective shield against certain types of lawsuits, but it’s absence does not guarantee the opposite. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

Karunamon 6y ago
Its absence almost ensures the death of open forums anywhere on the internet. Nobody is going to take the legal risk of being held responsible for what some rando on the other side of the planet said. On the other hand, it would lead to the proliferation of distributed, decentralized systems where there's not a good way to demonstrate culpability for a suit, so maybe burning down Facebook is a nice side effect of a kind of decentralization that would be more healthy in the long run anyways.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  I wonder if it would result in something like what you said where every user hosts their own social media hub which only hosts their own content. But would the responsibility fall down to the one who owns the machine running the software? Is digital ocean responsible for the post I host on a vps in their datacenter?
- tim333 6y ago
  Alternatively it might lead to centralized forums hosted from countries who are not bothered about the liability stuff. China etc.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Other than claiming the logical fallacy, what's your argument that HN won't be subject to lawsuits absent section 230? That' we're Not The Kind Of People Who Do That Sort Of Thing?
- austincheney 6y ago
  Because there is no evidentiary reason to suggest otherwise.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    This sounds like you're saying "Let's make this change, because we don't have any evidence that it will bite us." Given that the evidence would show up after the change, that seems rather short-sighted. But if you want evidence, I would cite the lawsuit climate in the US. If it smells like money, there will be a lawyer willing to come up with a case, no matter how far-fetched or unrealistic. I've seen too many examples of that over the years. (If you want specifics, the one I'm most familiar with is SCO v IBM.) So if you make this change, I say there is enough evidence to believe that some lawyer will decide there's money to be made finding "hate speech" or "discriminator speech" or something on HN, and suing YCombinator for it. (Because even if HN per se doesn't have a lot of money, YCombinator does.) And if that happens, that's probably the end of HN.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      Imaginary speculation based on conspiracy theory type assumptions isn’t a strong reason to do anything. That is why I referenced the concerned logical fallacy, because fallacies aren’t worthy of supporting arguments.
  - teraflop 6y ago
    Are you not aware of the history behind CDA section 230? There was at least one actual court case in which the online service Prodigy was successfully sued for libel, on the grounds that by employing moderators to remove "offensive" content, Prodigy automatically became responsible for everything its users posted that was not removed. https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative-history https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative-history Where's your argument that returning the law to its previous state wouldn't result in exactly the same thing happening again?
    - 6y ago