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I disagree with the fundamental premise that we need centralized services to have “free speech” on the internet. Eliminating 230 doesn’t eliminate free speech,

by cwhiz 6y ago

I disagree with the fundamental premise that we need centralized services to have “free speech” on the internet. Eliminating 230 doesn’t eliminate free speech, it eliminates centralized socialization. This is a good thing for the future of the internet, and for the future of the United States. And I further disagree that curated or editorialized content falls within the purview of this law. If you curate what I see, you are a publisher. If you editorialize what I see, you are a publisher. This law was intended to allow sites to delete abusive or illegal content without being sued. It’s now being used by big tech to curate what you see, with no user control, and to editorialize content. This behavior absolutely should not be protected under Section 230. At minimum, this section needs to be amended to exclude curated content and editorialized content.

foolinaround 6y ago
I agree with the parent. The post says that online services are different from print services, but this law does not specify how. Those could be added on. Is there a line an online service can cross that makes it a publisher? Now that we are into a fully centralized world, a twitter (maybe unintentionally) has become one of the main highways in the information resources being transported. The question of whether Twitter, FB are private companies are next to the point. There can always be a size restriction? no. of users etc? Also how a twitter or a facebook might fare without Section 230 needs some thought? Maybe it is good for the internet
- cwhiz 6y ago
  If Facebook and Twitter vanished, the world would be immeasurably better.
  - politelemon 6y ago
    It would. But, I have less faith in humanity. I feel that if they disappeared we'd create and congregate on something equivalent, and possibly even worse.
thathndude 6y ago
Agreed. I’m a lawyer who practices in this area a bit. My female clients are subject to incredibly grotesque harassment online on these various platforms. The “report” functions rarely work and when they do, it’s a very slow process. The sites are so negligent that they are complicit at this point. I’ll defend Section 230 once the sites start holding up their end of the bargain and rigorously protect. And if those sites start editorializing, then anything should be fair game.
- GreenWatermelon 6y ago
  Your Client could stop visiting those sites, cuz they would disappear anyway if this law was repelled.
carapace 6y ago
> Eliminating 230 doesn’t eliminate free speech, it eliminates centralized socialization. This is a good thing for the future of the internet, and for the future of the United States. Yeah, it seems to me that socialization just doesn't scale Internet-style. There's no intrinsic need for massive platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They're kind of just "skins" over the underlying inter-networked machines anyway, not fundamental elements of "the online experience". They just happened. Like an oil spill. TFA pretty much admits that the problem is "impossible": > Compare this with YouTube, whose users upload at least 400 hours of video [pdf] every minute, an impossible volume to meaningfully vet in advance of publishing online. Maybe social stuff like this doesn't scale. I've said it before: if this were a hardware or software problem we (tech/engineer types) would have realized already that we're trying to do the impossible. We set up the Gordian NP Hard knot and then are stunned when it proves intractable. > But an additional purpose of Section 230 was to eliminate any distinction between those who actively select, curate, and edit the speech before distributing it and those who are merely passive conduits for it. I think that distinction is very important and should be recognized in law. At the very least, services should be required to label their content "We Vetted This" vs. "We're Just a Conduit for This".
- 0x445442 6y ago
  > At the very least, services should be required to label their content "We Vetted This" vs. "We're Just a Conduit for This". And if they label their content "We Vetted This" or "This statement is disputed" or any other editorialized comment, then they should be open to liable law suits.
  - carapace 6y ago
    Pretty much. To strain the metaphor: if you have a pipe (conduit) it works if what you put in at one end comes out the other; if you have a filter and it passes what it's supposed to filter out, then it's a broken filter, eh?
mountainb 6y ago
Your intuition on this point is correct. Section 230 is functionally mostly about making users liable for digital copyright infringement rather than platforms. It is not really about speech. The conflation of the First Amendment with copyright law is a common corporate sleight of hand, but it should be pushed back on vigorously. The issue with the editorializing (which has become absurdly aggressive on the part of the 230 platforms) is that it weakens the defense that these corporations have enjoyed in shunting the liability onto their users. Within hours, all the platforms would be litigated into oblivion for the actions of the users in the absence of 230 protections. The EFF are paid-for apologists for (some) corporations and gadflies against (other) corporations. >And Section 230 doesn’t only allow sites that host speech, including controversial views, to exist. It allows them to exist without putting their thumbs on the scale by censoring controversial or potentially problematic content. And because what is considered controversial is often shifting, and context- and viewpoint- dependent, it’s important that these views are able to be shared. “Defund the police” may be considered controversial speech today, but that doesn’t mean it should be censored. “Drain the Swamp,” “Black Lives Matter,” or even “All Lives Matter” may all be controversial views, but censoring them would not be beneficial. This verbal sleight of hand of conflating speech protections with this liability shield enjoyed by these multi-trillion dollar corporations is most clearly used by the EFF in their paid-for chatter about how this "could" be used to silence speech. No, it couldn't be. The proposed amendments to 230 that have gained the most traction extend the liability shield to services with fewer numbers of users. That means that the proposed amendments would not do what the EFF says that it would do, which would be to silence small websites. Unless the speech infringes copyright or breaks some other statute such as those against libel/defamation/threats of violence, the removal of the 230 liability shield would have no impact. If you are an independent web host, you are already liable for your speech and if you pay for a conventional hosting provider, they will be protected by 230 no matter what. https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-06/Ending-Support-Internet-Censorship-Act-Bill-Text.pdf https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-06/En... The proposed Hawley amendment would only impact companies that meet at least one of these three criteria: >‘‘(A) had more than 30,000,000 active monthly users in the United States; (B) had more than 300,000,000 active monthly users worldwide; or ‘(C) had more than $500,000,000 in global annual revenue 230 is about shifting liability to users and protecting mega-corporations. The EFF is being disingenuous and deceptive in this press release made on behalf of its donors. The part of this release that is accurate is that 230 is not "at odds" with the First Amendment. While there are cultural concerns about whether or not the tech company actions are in line with the spirit of open debate, it is not really related to the First Amendment. The issue is that by actively moderating so much of the platform content and shaping what discussions are allowed, the companies are severely weakening their argument that they are not legally liable for the content that users publish outside of the bare requirements of the DMCA and the case law concerning the types of facilities they must have to handle copyright disputes. Modifying 230 is a recognition that when these platforms take an active hand in moderating content, modifying content, and publishing content, they should be held to the traditional liabilities of publishing content -- and those liabilities tend to be related to copyright rather than to speech per se. The EFF and its donors want to portray the issue as concerning speech rather than liability for what would overwhelmingly turn out to be copyright infringement. These are not the same things. If the companies want to maintain their immunities related to distributing content like child porn and illegally copied files, they must also avoid heavy handed moderation if they are operating at the scale described in the most popular proposed amendments so far. If they are not operating at the scale in the proposed amendments, literally nothing changes for them and they are still protected by the liability shield. The 230 beneficiaries under scrutiny want to continue shifting liability to their users while also gaining greater editorial control over what those users post and how that content is presented to other users. They want to continue to reap enormous profits with this legal privilege while ensuring that their users remain liable for content. You, the little guy, can be sued, whereas they, the big guy, cannot be sued for crimes committed using their network. Again, 230 is not about speech: this fundamental conflation is a beloved legal trick of corporate America, whether it is being used to extend the power of copyright law beyond reasonable historic bounds or to otherwise exploit the vagaries and loopholes in copyright law to make more money.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> Eliminating 230 doesn’t eliminate free speech, it eliminates centralized socialization. How is it any less eliminative for decentralized services? If you have a private moderated forum (e.g. HN), or even a small one with only 5000 users, that's still more than enough to attract spam and trolls. So the small forum operator deletes the spam and the trolling. If that makes them responsible for everything everybody says on that forum, first of all, they're screwed. People will post some liability-inducing material while the forum operator is on vacation and they'll get thrown in jail for hosting it. Small forum operators don't have the resources or the risk tolerance to put up with that, so they'll fold, and leave the huge centralized ones to pick up their user base. Worse, to avoid the liability the ones that remain will over-censor. We already see this with the DMCA. Even transparently fraudulent takedowns are typically executed anyway because it's not worth the risk if you're wrong or the resources of proving you're right. Web forums aren't courts; they aren't a valid entity to be making complex lawful speech determinations in an accurate way, and they won't, so instead they'll do something despicable. But you also can't use forums that don't moderate at all, because they're immediately overrun with spam and trolls. The actual problem with these centralized entities is not that they do moderation. It's that they're centralized. Break them up.
- 0x445442 6y ago
  > How is it any less eliminative for decentralized services? Not speaking for the parent here but I think you called out a distinction; private. There's a difference between running a private, not for profit, Mastadon node where anyone who signs up presumably knows what the forum is about versus Twitter who pitched their company to investors as merely a platform for people to tweet. Nobody is upset with Twitter moderating content that violates existing Federal Law, but they were never meant to be a moderating like a Mastadon node on the private side or even like a sub reddit on the public side. Again, looking at Reddit, most don't have an issue with moderated content on the sub reddit, the issue is when Reddit removes entire sub reddits because THEY don't agree with the content. BTW, I think Justice Thomas' recent remarks have made Twitter and Facebook take note because he hinted that the misrepresentation to investors was the attack vector, not the 1st Amendment.
  - 6y ago
russianbandit 6y ago
It’s baffling to me. In the article they provide the entire Section 230 text, and it does not mention curated content. So, how is it justified that curating content is protected by Section 230? Is curating users content protected be First Amendment somehow?
- xenadu02 6y ago
  There is no bright line between passively hosting content (in which case your site will become a magnet for spam and trolls) and "curating" content. Repealing Section 230 means making a pro-trump discussion forum would open you up to liability: you cannot ban or moderate anti-trump posters because that's "curation". The law was deliberately broad and that's a good thing for free speech.
xenadu02 6y ago
> This law was intended to allow sites to delete abusive or illegal content without being sued. That's not true at all. The law was created because lots of sites big and small were being dragged into lawsuits over comments or posts made by their users. The nuisance cost alone was having a chilling effect and courts were divided about liability. The law is very straightforward and obviously good: liability lies with the person making the statement, not with the person hosting the platform. Repealing it would mean the cost of hosting any user-provided content would be far too high to be worth doing. Even something as simple as a product review would subject the site (and their hosting provider) to liability.
jmull 6y ago
230 protects providers of all sizes, from the largest centralized service to a random guy hosting a dorm messsge board. Disallowing curation is the same as dropping 230 altogether. A provider could not organize content. If you want to punish/curb Twitter, Facebook or whoever, then do that. Don’t nuke the entire internet.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  It’s not nuking the internet. It’s just nuking this horrendous abomination that we’ve created. Just because the internet today exists a certain way does not mean it has to stay that way forever. We can make decentralized financial transactions. We, too, can make decentralized internet a thing. When 230 was created we didn’t have these technologies or ability to do this type of thing. In late 2020, we do.
  - Isinlor 6y ago
    USA is not the only country in the world! Do you think that 230 somehow magically blocks decentralized internet all across Europe? 230 has nothing to do with global decentralized internet.
Iv 6y ago
Do you want your comments to be inaccessible when your own computer is down? Do you want to be the only repository of all pieces of information posted online, forever? If not, then you want other people to be able to host these content for you. And they won't want to be liable for what you are saying.

by cwhiz 6y ago

foolinaround 6y ago

I agree with the parent. The post says that online services are different from print services, but this law does not specify how. Those could be added on. Is there a line an online service can cross that makes it a publisher? Now that we are into a fully centralized world, a twitter (maybe unintentionally) has become one of the main highways in the information resources being transported. The question of whether Twitter, FB are private companies are next to the point. There can always be a size restriction? no. of users etc? Also how a twitter or a facebook might fare without Section 230 needs some thought? Maybe it is good for the internet

cwhiz 6y ago
If Facebook and Twitter vanished, the world would be immeasurably better.
- politelemon 6y ago
  It would. But, I have less faith in humanity. I feel that if they disappeared we'd create and congregate on something equivalent, and possibly even worse.

thathndude 6y ago

Agreed. I’m a lawyer who practices in this area a bit. My female clients are subject to incredibly grotesque harassment online on these various platforms. The “report” functions rarely work and when they do, it’s a very slow process. The sites are so negligent that they are complicit at this point. I’ll defend Section 230 once the sites start holding up their end of the bargain and rigorously protect. And if those sites start editorializing, then anything should be fair game.

GreenWatermelon 6y ago
Your Client could stop visiting those sites, cuz they would disappear anyway if this law was repelled.

carapace 6y ago

> Eliminating 230 doesn’t eliminate free speech, it eliminates centralized socialization. This is a good thing for the future of the internet, and for the future of the United States. Yeah, it seems to me that socialization just doesn't scale Internet-style. There's no intrinsic need for massive platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They're kind of just "skins" over the underlying inter-networked machines anyway, not fundamental elements of "the online experience". They just happened. Like an oil spill. TFA pretty much admits that the problem is "impossible": > Compare this with YouTube, whose users upload at least 400 hours of video [pdf] every minute, an impossible volume to meaningfully vet in advance of publishing online. Maybe social stuff like this doesn't scale. I've said it before: if this were a hardware or software problem we (tech/engineer types) would have realized already that we're trying to do the impossible. We set up the Gordian NP Hard knot and then are stunned when it proves intractable. > But an additional purpose of Section 230 was to eliminate any distinction between those who actively select, curate, and edit the speech before distributing it and those who are merely passive conduits for it. I think that distinction is very important and should be recognized in law. At the very least, services should be required to label their content "We Vetted This" vs. "We're Just a Conduit for This".

0x445442 6y ago
> At the very least, services should be required to label their content "We Vetted This" vs. "We're Just a Conduit for This". And if they label their content "We Vetted This" or "This statement is disputed" or any other editorialized comment, then they should be open to liable law suits.
- carapace 6y ago
  Pretty much. To strain the metaphor: if you have a pipe (conduit) it works if what you put in at one end comes out the other; if you have a filter and it passes what it's supposed to filter out, then it's a broken filter, eh?

mountainb 6y ago

Your intuition on this point is correct. Section 230 is functionally mostly about making users liable for digital copyright infringement rather than platforms. It is not really about speech. The conflation of the First Amendment with copyright law is a common corporate sleight of hand, but it should be pushed back on vigorously. The issue with the editorializing (which has become absurdly aggressive on the part of the 230 platforms) is that it weakens the defense that these corporations have enjoyed in shunting the liability onto their users. Within hours, all the platforms would be litigated into oblivion for the actions of the users in the absence of 230 protections. The EFF are paid-for apologists for (some) corporations and gadflies against (other) corporations. >And Section 230 doesn’t only allow sites that host speech, including controversial views, to exist. It allows them to exist without putting their thumbs on the scale by censoring controversial or potentially problematic content. And because what is considered controversial is often shifting, and context- and viewpoint- dependent, it’s important that these views are able to be shared. “Defund the police” may be considered controversial speech today, but that doesn’t mean it should be censored. “Drain the Swamp,” “Black Lives Matter,” or even “All Lives Matter” may all be controversial views, but censoring them would not be beneficial. This verbal sleight of hand of conflating speech protections with this liability shield enjoyed by these multi-trillion dollar corporations is most clearly used by the EFF in their paid-for chatter about how this "could" be used to silence speech. No, it couldn't be. The proposed amendments to 230 that have gained the most traction extend the liability shield to services with fewer numbers of users. That means that the proposed amendments would not do what the EFF says that it would do, which would be to silence small websites. Unless the speech infringes copyright or breaks some other statute such as those against libel/defamation/threats of violence, the removal of the 230 liability shield would have no impact. If you are an independent web host, you are already liable for your speech and if you pay for a conventional hosting provider, they will be protected by 230 no matter what. https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-06/Ending-Support-Internet-Censorship-Act-Bill-Text.pdf https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-06/En... The proposed Hawley amendment would only impact companies that meet at least one of these three criteria: >‘‘(A) had more than 30,000,000 active monthly users in the United States; (B) had more than 300,000,000 active monthly users worldwide; or ‘(C) had more than $500,000,000 in global annual revenue 230 is about shifting liability to users and protecting mega-corporations. The EFF is being disingenuous and deceptive in this press release made on behalf of its donors. The part of this release that is accurate is that 230 is not "at odds" with the First Amendment. While there are cultural concerns about whether or not the tech company actions are in line with the spirit of open debate, it is not really related to the First Amendment. The issue is that by actively moderating so much of the platform content and shaping what discussions are allowed, the companies are severely weakening their argument that they are not legally liable for the content that users publish outside of the bare requirements of the DMCA and the case law concerning the types of facilities they must have to handle copyright disputes. Modifying 230 is a recognition that when these platforms take an active hand in moderating content, modifying content, and publishing content, they should be held to the traditional liabilities of publishing content -- and those liabilities tend to be related to copyright rather than to speech per se. The EFF and its donors want to portray the issue as concerning speech rather than liability for what would overwhelmingly turn out to be copyright infringement. These are not the same things. If the companies want to maintain their immunities related to distributing content like child porn and illegally copied files, they must also avoid heavy handed moderation if they are operating at the scale described in the most popular proposed amendments so far. If they are not operating at the scale in the proposed amendments, literally nothing changes for them and they are still protected by the liability shield. The 230 beneficiaries under scrutiny want to continue shifting liability to their users while also gaining greater editorial control over what those users post and how that content is presented to other users. They want to continue to reap enormous profits with this legal privilege while ensuring that their users remain liable for content. You, the little guy, can be sued, whereas they, the big guy, cannot be sued for crimes committed using their network. Again, 230 is not about speech: this fundamental conflation is a beloved legal trick of corporate America, whether it is being used to extend the power of copyright law beyond reasonable historic bounds or to otherwise exploit the vagaries and loopholes in copyright law to make more money.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> Eliminating 230 doesn’t eliminate free speech, it eliminates centralized socialization. How is it any less eliminative for decentralized services? If you have a private moderated forum (e.g. HN), or even a small one with only 5000 users, that's still more than enough to attract spam and trolls. So the small forum operator deletes the spam and the trolling. If that makes them responsible for everything everybody says on that forum, first of all, they're screwed. People will post some liability-inducing material while the forum operator is on vacation and they'll get thrown in jail for hosting it. Small forum operators don't have the resources or the risk tolerance to put up with that, so they'll fold, and leave the huge centralized ones to pick up their user base. Worse, to avoid the liability the ones that remain will over-censor. We already see this with the DMCA. Even transparently fraudulent takedowns are typically executed anyway because it's not worth the risk if you're wrong or the resources of proving you're right. Web forums aren't courts; they aren't a valid entity to be making complex lawful speech determinations in an accurate way, and they won't, so instead they'll do something despicable. But you also can't use forums that don't moderate at all, because they're immediately overrun with spam and trolls. The actual problem with these centralized entities is not that they do moderation. It's that they're centralized. Break them up.

0x445442 6y ago
> How is it any less eliminative for decentralized services? Not speaking for the parent here but I think you called out a distinction; private. There's a difference between running a private, not for profit, Mastadon node where anyone who signs up presumably knows what the forum is about versus Twitter who pitched their company to investors as merely a platform for people to tweet. Nobody is upset with Twitter moderating content that violates existing Federal Law, but they were never meant to be a moderating like a Mastadon node on the private side or even like a sub reddit on the public side. Again, looking at Reddit, most don't have an issue with moderated content on the sub reddit, the issue is when Reddit removes entire sub reddits because THEY don't agree with the content. BTW, I think Justice Thomas' recent remarks have made Twitter and Facebook take note because he hinted that the misrepresentation to investors was the attack vector, not the 1st Amendment.
- 6y ago

russianbandit 6y ago

It’s baffling to me. In the article they provide the entire Section 230 text, and it does not mention curated content. So, how is it justified that curating content is protected by Section 230? Is curating users content protected be First Amendment somehow?

xenadu02 6y ago
There is no bright line between passively hosting content (in which case your site will become a magnet for spam and trolls) and "curating" content. Repealing Section 230 means making a pro-trump discussion forum would open you up to liability: you cannot ban or moderate anti-trump posters because that's "curation". The law was deliberately broad and that's a good thing for free speech.

xenadu02 6y ago

> This law was intended to allow sites to delete abusive or illegal content without being sued. That's not true at all. The law was created because lots of sites big and small were being dragged into lawsuits over comments or posts made by their users. The nuisance cost alone was having a chilling effect and courts were divided about liability. The law is very straightforward and obviously good: liability lies with the person making the statement, not with the person hosting the platform. Repealing it would mean the cost of hosting any user-provided content would be far too high to be worth doing. Even something as simple as a product review would subject the site (and their hosting provider) to liability.

jmull 6y ago

230 protects providers of all sizes, from the largest centralized service to a random guy hosting a dorm messsge board. Disallowing curation is the same as dropping 230 altogether. A provider could not organize content. If you want to punish/curb Twitter, Facebook or whoever, then do that. Don’t nuke the entire internet.

cwhiz 6y ago
It’s not nuking the internet. It’s just nuking this horrendous abomination that we’ve created. Just because the internet today exists a certain way does not mean it has to stay that way forever. We can make decentralized financial transactions. We, too, can make decentralized internet a thing. When 230 was created we didn’t have these technologies or ability to do this type of thing. In late 2020, we do.
- Isinlor 6y ago
  USA is not the only country in the world! Do you think that 230 somehow magically blocks decentralized internet all across Europe? 230 has nothing to do with global decentralized internet.

Iv 6y ago

Do you want your comments to be inaccessible when your own computer is down? Do you want to be the only repository of all pieces of information posted online, forever? If not, then you want other people to be able to host these content for you. And they won't want to be liable for what you are saying.