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You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

439 points by tony101 6y ago

meatpuppeting 6y ago
I start to feel like whats the point, I'll just be told its "fake news" and they totally ignore it. Good article though.
1123581321 6y ago
Is it fair then to say that the only way to “lose section 230 protection” is to cease having content partners by paying them, or employing them, or something like that? I don’t have a political point with this question and apologies if it was covered in the article and I missed or misunderstood it.
- wyattpeak 6y ago
  I don't know that that would be losing protections, merely having nothing that qualifies for protection. If there were some content on that site which was 3rd-party generated, say comments, they would presumably remain protected.
- toast0 6y ago
  I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not your lawyer, but allow me to play one on the Internet. Looking at two parts of the law: > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. > The term “information content provider” means any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service. I think employing people to create or develop information under your direction would likely cause you to "lose 230 protection," but paying them for content they created or developed independently probably doesn't. If you contract them to independently create something new, it might be your responsibility in part; I dunno. Edit: reviewing the article linked by conistonwater's sibling comment, it seems pretty clear from Blumenthal v. Drudge that a contractor's work is not the site's responsibility. I imagine there could be circumstances where the site specifically sanctionable content, and they might be held responsible.
- conistonwater 6y ago
  Through [1] I found this article [2], and it seems even if you pay people for content (Blumenthal v. Drudge, page 7; AOL was paying somebody for writing articles and somebody sued both that person and AOL for defamation) you're still explicitly immune under Section 230. (I'm not a lawyer, I find this kind of confusing sometimes.) [1] https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/07/want-to-learn-more-about-section-230-a-guide-to-my-work.htm https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/07/want-to-learn-... [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3025943 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3025943
awb 6y ago
> if you're in a real rush, just read Section (c)(1), which is only 26 words, and is the part that basically every single court decision (and there have been many) has relied on. > (c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. Wouldn't repealing Section 230 mean more censorship and restrictions as the liability would be too great to be on the hook for what some random account might decide to publish, no?
- conistonwater 6y ago
  Yes, I believe that's why it was introduced in the first place because that used to be a problem. The EFF has a summary of its history [1] and the case was [2]. [1] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative-history https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative-history [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
- banana_giraffe 6y ago
  Yep, that was the original fear after a couple of landmark cases against CompuServe (no filters, so they were ruled not liable for what people said), and Prodigy (they had a team of editors filtering content, so it was ruled they were liable for what ended up on their platform).
- Nathanba 6y ago
  the idea I think is that certain platforms would emerge that have to allow all content or get into legal trouble. Even if those are just base layers such as an ISP
- erichocean 6y ago
  Every alternative to Twitter is shittier. It's practically a law of nature.
  - scruple 6y ago
function_seven 6y ago
I started reading this in the smug knowledge that I knew it already, that I wasn't wrong about 230. But then I saw this passage: > The "user" protections get less attention, but they're right there in the important 26 words. "No provider or __user__ of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker...." That's why there are cases like Barrett v. Rosenthal where someone who forwarded an email to a mailing list was held to be protected by Section 230, as a user of an interactive computer service who did not write the underlying material that was forwarded. I didn't know that! I guess I was wrong about Section 230 :)
- elliekelly 6y ago
  I feel like I’ve said this a hundred times in the last 30 days but you should read the book “The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet” for a really good history of why we have Sec. 230 and what it was intended to “solve”. It’s an interesting topic that’s the subject of intense debate amongst people on both sides who don’t fully understand the subject they’re arguing about but are convinced they do.
  - techer 6y ago
    Well thanks for saying it one more time as I missed the previous hundred. Will read.
chrisco255 6y ago
> If you said "Section 230 is a massive gift to big tech!" > Once again, I must inform you that you are very, very wrong. If section 230 is no big deal, let's just repeal it. What's the hoopla about it, then? Why are companies so adamant to protect it? The section itself is very broad, but the impetus for the passing of Section 230 was to protect free speech by removing liability concerns for what others say online. > On July 23, 2013, the attorneys general of 47 states sent Congress a letter requesting that the criminal and civil immunity in section 230 be removed. The ACLU wrote of the proposal, "If Section 230 is stripped of its protections, it wouldn't take long for the vibrant culture of free speech to disappear from the web." [1] So, apparently big tech has killed that vibrant culture and in 2021, I think we can declare it dead. Tens of thousands of people are getting purged from social media, others alienated, ostracized, and shadow banned. There is a concerted effort to manufacture consent through targeted algorithmic hijacking of free speech. And so, we find ourselves in a situation where the current situation is UNTENABLE. A free society cannot have its discourse completely dominated by a handful of corporations. This is a civil rights issue. I'm sorry, some people want to weasel out of this with arguments of technicality. Technically, before labor laws were passed in the 20th century, there was nothing wrong with asking someone to work 60-70 hours a week and paying them the same rate. There was nothing illegal about paying someone 10 cents an hour prior to minimum wage laws. But we realized that some broad protection for certain workers rights were worth intervening in the free market for. That is the issue of the 21st century. We are the content producers on social media. We should have rights to not be deplatformed. And no, it's not acceptable to arbitrarily empower a handful of corporations to decide what is acceptable speech and what is not. If the speech is not illegal, it should be protected. And in the U.S. we have broad, broad protections for speech for an extremely important reason. Cannot forget that. Too many societies have fallen to tyranny as a result of free speech restriction. Tens of millions perished for the right to speak freely. That can't be understated or forgotten. Ever. The 21st century deserves a movement for a digital bill of rights. [1] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/new-proposal-could-singlehandedly-cripple-free?redirect=blog/free-speech-national-security-technology-and-liberty/new-proposal-could-singlehandedly-cripple https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and-surv...
- onecommentman 6y ago
topkai22 6y ago
I was struck by a thought while reading the article- are the feeds of social media companies actually protected under section 230? My Facebook feed is more than just a simple serving of my friends content, it’s a work in and of itself (like a collection of essays). It seems like a stretch given that the law states that they can’t be considered the publisher of “information” provided by others, but possible as these sites are the ones engaged in picking content. The article mentions the roommates.com racial discrimination case. I wonder what a court would do if a site had some black box algorithm that ended up consistently showing a feed of rooms in one zip code to whites and rooms in another zip code to blacks, never overlapping. Edit- My point being- it might be possible to hold Facebook/Twitter/YouTube liable for the information in their feeds, particularly that which is surfaced out of order or from people a user isn’t subscribed to. But I’m not lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.
- hemloc_io 6y ago
  I've also wondered about this, I suspect because Facebook hired 75% of their lawyers in the last 3 months we will find out soon. I could see one argument about how an algorithm doesn't really editorialize. A metaphor that is often used is that social media companies is that they are more like a newsstand than an editorial board on a newspaper. A newsstand isn't under any obligation to sell all the papers available in their stand or place them in a specific order. I would expect the social media companies to say that their algorithms are closer to placing newspapers on a stand based on market conditions, not based on their personal opinions/eye. If that holds up to scrutiny we'll see.
  - liaukovv 6y ago
    These websites are like the proverbial 10000 monkeys generating random symbols. Tech companies can form any narrative by picking parts they promote, does that still make them not responsible for the result?
  - leereeves 6y ago
    Yes, in one sense an algorithm doesn't editorialize, not being intelligent, but humans can write an algorithm to editorialize for them. The editorial decisions are made while designing the algorithm. And if Facebook, knowing that outrage drives engagement, chooses to run an algorithm that displays the most engaging content, aren't they also choosing to display the most outrageous content?
nenenndndndn 6y ago
Actually quite an awesome read here. But also kind of funny that the resource does a great job explaining what 230 is not — while a terrible job of what it is. At this point, I have no idea what Section 230 is. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t really care for the details of this. Hell, I barely understand how a bill is actually turned into law. Though, I do know that the POTUS vs Twitter showdown today has put a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I hope they pass a new law whatever it is. I would even bet Jack is too to take the pressure off. He’s extremely measured every time I hear him speak, and I would bet he secretly wants a law explicitly forbidding him from being content cop.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  What law would that be? Internet service providers must provide their service to everyone? Great, now it’s illegal to kick people off your minecraft server and the new york times MUST publish my op-ed. Twitter gave orange-julius cesar a platform, they can take it away.
  - lovecg 6y ago
    There’s a general anxiety of a big company taking a way a big chunk of your life on a whim. It’s not fun to be banned by Google or Amazon. I’m not doing anything wrong to get banned, but that seems backwards somehow. (“don’t break the law and you have nothing to worry about” gives off the same creepy vibe). It’s a similar feeling when driving next to cop while doing nothing wrong or dealing with a government bureaucracy. They have all (or a lot) of the power and decision making is never perfect. So perhaps this is an argument for stronger antitrust or whatever. More competition would reduce this anxiety for the regular person.
    - rubatuga 6y ago
      This is probably not the response you wanted, but I think it's an argument for decentralized and federated services, along with self-hosting.
      - 6y ago
Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
Before today I was a strong defender of section 230. After today, I say burn it all down.
- samvher 6y ago
  This makes me feel like I missed something. Are you writing this because you read the article today or did something else happen?
  - NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
    Today we had 4 tech billionaires/CEOs telling us what politicians we’re allowed to hear from or talk about. That’s not OK.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Today we had 4 tech billionaires/CEOs telling us what politicians we’re allowed to hear from or talk about. Nope, they are telling you who is allowed on their platform. You can hear from or talk about whoever you want.
      - NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
        Let me guess, you’re the type of person who will complain incessantly about the Koch brothers and money in politics and super PACs... and yet here you are gleeful about giving tech oligarchs the effective power to choose the next President.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Let me guess, you’re the type of person who will complain incessantly about the Koch brothers and money in politics and super PACs... Well, no, not the way you mean. That is, I think all those things are corrosive within the structure of the present US political system; OTOH, I also think that the ways people propose to constrain them tend to both have side effects as bad or worse than the problems they solve, and violate the First Amendment. > and yet here you are gleeful about giving tech oligarchs the effective power to choose the next President. I disagree that that is the result, and I'm not at all gleeful.
NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
This doesn’t seem that complicated to me. What’s all the I-am-smarter-than-you smugness about? > Law text: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher.” People who want Section 230 repealed or modified want to be able to make the legal argument that by actively banning certain speech while elevating other speech, social media companies ARE acting as publishers. The law doesn’t need to define publisher again. We already have an understanding of what publishers do: they selectively choose and publicize OTHER people’s content. What am I missing? Whether or not it’s justified, the reason some people want it repealed seem obvious to me.
- zerocrates 6y ago
  The snark isn't directed so much at people who want repeal (though techdirt pretty clearly would disagree with them on that point also) but rather at the very large contingent of people who express with total conviction that the law right now draws lines between neutral "platforms" who are protected and biased "publishers" who are not, when the law in fact does the exact opposite.
  - NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
    > when the law in fact does the exact opposite Yes. That’s exactly the problem people who want it repealed are pointing out: the current law offers broad blanket protection to social media companies to moderate content however they want, even if their moderation practices are highly editorial and partisan, akin to traditional publishers. Techdirt seems to think people don’t understand that the law doesn’t distinguish between platforms and publishers. On the contrary, that’s precisely why people want it repealed or modified. Either attach platform “neutrality” requirements to these broad protections, or eliminate the protections and allow social media companies to be subject to the old legal regime attached to publishers.
    - zerocrates 6y ago
      There are an enormous number of people who say things like, "by doing X, Twitter (replace as needed) is no longer a platform and loses its protection." Not in the sense of, that's how it ought to be or that a change in the law will bring it about, but under a belief that that's how things already are. The balance has shifted a bit as calls for its repeal have become louder, so "repeal 230" is now a much more common response to disliked moderation actions, but you still don't have to look far to find people saying that a ban or notice or whatever "violates section 230."
afterburner 6y ago
Honest question: is it possible that some of the repercussions of Section 230 are not just reliant on a strict reading of the law in question, but also the case law and precedents built around it in the form of court decisions? Precedents in the US are sometimes more important than a literal reading of the law.
ricardo81 6y ago
I remember reading an article about a correlation between IQ and prejudices, something that stuck with me as it seems prevalent, and likely the key ingredient when talking about bending opinions via hypertargeting of people on social media, such as supposed Russian involvement in Brexit. Cost effective propaganda when you can find all the people of a group on social media. Interesting that the first couple of paragraphs talk about a meme, a viral idea he can assume we'll know of because we're all so connected online. Also refers to another popular online article in the same format he liked and adopted. Disconnecting someone from social media feels like it may only be helping their cause. I think our social networks are too centralised and it's a problem, particularly because people can be accuraretly targeted with misinformation, as well as the social media algos displaying things out of order (i.e. their order). Unfortunately it's a truism that there are plenty people who are not empirically sceptical of what they read online and they're only too happy to share it. As much as I don't agree with Trump on pretty much everything, I think he has a point about social media being arbiters of truth is a problem. I'm also a Brit so say very little about other country's party/policies. If only we could accurately measure reasons why people stormed Capitol Hill. My hunch is that information read online is the primary motivator, weighed in with the fact how information discovery is heavily entrenched in social media. I would make platforms liable for their content (or at least greater emphasis on them taking an active role) and yes, I appreciate that would make them untenable as they currently stand, but I'm sure there's plenty of strong counterpoints that'd make me reconsider. At the very least, viral content's virality could perhaps be limited. Can't recall the last viral thing I saw that wasn't trivial but was positive. Social media has a lot of power at the moment.
colllectorof 6y ago
Dismissive article that misrepresents both why "normal" people out there are unhappy about section 230 and what the higher levels of conversation about changing it really look like right now[1]. Articles like this are read meat for Hacker News. You endlessly reassert your political bias while pretending you are "informing" some imaginary group of stupid people (who in reality isn't even here to be "informed"). [1] Here is a recent discussion about 320 from a few lawyers and an YouTuber who used to work for the mainstream media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a5H1A65wOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a5H1A65wOM As you will see if you watch the video, it is much more nuanced than the aggregate straw-man set up by the article. ... The crux of the issue is that Section 320 was drafted with a lot of assumptions in mind. At the time the Web was a fledgling thing. At the time Section 230's practical effect was to empower emerging platforms to do some common-sense moderation without fear of being held liable for all content they distributed. Does the law still has this effect? Yes, it does. But that is no longer the primary effect in terms of how this law affect most of the people out there. Today its primary effect is to give an impenetrable legal shield to giant tech corporations that engage in deliberate society-wide manipulation of information. That is what most people out there are unhappy about, even if they don't quite know how to phrase it.
- cjfd 6y ago
  As such it seems this law makes sense but it also seems to do little about some other problems. I have started to think lately that what is best is a law to forbid espionage on people. Like, you cannot collect and/or store large portions of the peoples browser history. Also, it should be forbidden for the data of one service to be shared with another. Like the example of facebook and whatsapp sharing their data.
- _yhdy 6y ago
  I do not like people like you who are intelligent enough to be intentionally intellectually dishonest while being extremely malicious underneath. You fool people for sure. I do not know why you do it, though. There is no manipulation going on by “Big Tech”. Your fear mongering is unfounded. Pushing this sort of rhetoric is what created the insurrectionist events a few days ago.
rho4 6y ago
"While this may all feel kind of mean, it's not meant to be." proceeds to say "you're wrong" a gazillion times
- danaliv 6y ago
  If finding out you’re wrong feels mean to you, you’re not going to get far in this world.
  - textgel 6y ago
    Gazillion +1 times.
glasss 6y ago
I don't believe that repealing or modifying 230 is right, all websites deserve the protections it provides. However, I do believe that social media feeds and the companies or people that thrive on them are a cancer on society that need be to regulated into hell and never brought out again. If people are going to get upset about recent events and how companies are reacting, I would really prefer it if they focus on what the root cause is, instead of trying to get a one up on their enemies.
TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
This is a great summary of what the law's function is. To address those trying to repeal it: • Some people think that if 230 was repealed, websites would moderate less. That's false. Because of the liability for users' posts, big websites would be forced to moderate more. And small websites would shut down out of fear of lawsuits. • Some people think that 230 must be repealed because websites are moderating too much. Well, the great thing about 230 is you can create your own websites. If you want to make your own free-speech forum and watch it be filled with far-right insurrectionists like all the other ones, you can, and you won't assume much liability for it. On the other hand, if 230 was repealed, you would not have this option, and the big tech companies you don't like would censor your friends for the same reasons they do today. I don't think everyone using Twitter and Facebook is good but this can't be solved by making it hard to run small forums. I also think it's dangerous to try to force people to run their forums with “fair” moderation. Free speech is important as a right to stop the state using violence against you. Being kicked out of a private group because you're disruptive, mean or faked your speedrunning scores, is on the other hand no great injustice that the law should interfere with.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  IMHO "And small websites would shut down out of fear of lawsuits" is misleading - it would be more appropriate to say "And small websites would refuse all user-generated content out of fear of lawsuits". They would still operate, but without the immunity the only safe way of moderation is to either have very strict moderation that ensures that anything even remotely questionable can't be posted; or (if you can't afford to have high quality manual moderation) simply not allow users to post anything at all.
  - dd36 6y ago
    I think the legal defense would be whether the site acted reasonably and liability would be difficult to establish without harm. If people use your site to coordinate doxxing someone and you don’t take reasonable actions to prevent, stop or legally identify the users behind it, then you’re going to have a tough time getting out of liability. AFAIK doxxing isn’t illegal but harassment can be. Side note: I wonder what the new requirements that beneficial owners of legal entities be disclosed will do to 4chan, 8chan, etc.
ummonk 6y ago
A lot of these are straw men arguments. In particular it's taking a lot of statements about how Section 230 ought to be amended or replaced, and falsely portraying those statements as being about how Section 230 currently works. Obviously Section 230 doesn't work that way right now, which is precisely why people are proposing changes.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  I regularly read HN threads that end up in discussion of Section 230, and find many posts that contain these same wrong ideas about what the law means. To that extent, I think you're giving the author of the article too little credit, and the general discourse too much. Clearly that's my subjective experience, and YMMV.
- boardwaalk 6y ago
  It’s hard to have a conversation when some (most even?) don’t understand how the law (both specifically this one and in general) work. I wouldn’t throw out “straw man” here — you need to have common (semi-accurate) ground, especially before proposing changes.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
IMHO the main issue is kind of orthogonal to Section 230 : It's that some companies have grown too big, and have too much power, which is a direct threat to democracy, especially in smaller countries. Where it does come around to Section 230 is that the way that they can (ab)use their power is tied to what they do and laws like it : an ISP with several billion customers but under net neutrality and common carrier laws would probably still be less problematic than current Facebook/Twitter/YouTube.
- coffeefirst 6y ago
  Right. 230 is probably fine as is for a small message board or discord server. All of the objections (or at least the non-trolling ones) are about giant global services with algorithms for optimizing engagements.
croes 6y ago
> if you're in a real rush, just read Section (c)(1), which is only 26 words, and is the part that basically every single court decision (and there have been many) has relied on. I'm in a rush, so no time to follow a link and scroll. Just put a citation of the law in that paragraph.
brigandish 6y ago
One might say that if a law is so misunderstood by so many and has an outcome that so many would disagree with then it should be replaced based on that fact alone, as what is more dangerous to a society than laws which rule over them that are misunderstood to such a great degree (this might be said of many other laws too). You can blame the people but we install law makers to produce good laws not bad ones (I wouldn't blame the users for not using my app the way I envisaged because they're ignorant, I'd hope I'd improve the app). But what should replace it? Perhaps something that does make the distinction between what is a platform and a publisher. That could be difficult. I'd most likely go for something tapered, so that smaller sites had more protections / less responsibilities and larger sites less protection/more responsibility, in order to promote competition because I think lack of competition is the main problem. So if small sites retained section 230 protection and larger sites didn't, perhaps that would produce better outcomes. Thus, I'm completely against stamping down on Parler and Gab, and any other upstart in the space. The more competitors the better, in my view.
- paulgb 6y ago
  > One might say that if a law is so misunderstood by so many and has an outcome that so many would disagree with then it should be replaced based on that fact alone, as what is more dangerous to a society than laws which rule over them that are misunderstood to such a great degree (this might be said of many other laws too). I agree that laws need to be coherent to the general public to work, but the problem here is that what people misunderstand is the pre-230 conditions that led to its creation, which we would return to if it were repealed and not replaced with something else. It’s a Chesterton’s fence.
  - brigandish 6y ago
    I agree that Chesterton's fence is a nice thing to have in any discussion of law but I'd disagree that we'd return to the same conditions as pre-230, the internet landscape is very different now which is why the law appears to favour larger companies. In fact, repealing it altogether might favour them, it wouldn't have back then.
murbard2 6y ago
Section 230 is a great thing and the consequences of repealing it or adding extra requirements to qualify for its protection would be unequivocally bad. From a pure logic standpoint, there is something that bugs me with the argument that moderation isn't the same as producing content. A website's moderation policy could be that, on any given day, any message other than "The archduke is a corrupt autocrat responsible for the assassination of members of the political opposition" -- which might be libel -- will be deleted by the content moderation team. The next day, the moderation policy might be that the only message that will not be deleted by the moderation team should be "Furthermore, the archduke is having a secret affair with his first cousin". The platform doesn't publish any content in this scenario, it merely awaits for some random anonymous account, on which no liability will be assessible, to post the unique string of characters that is allowed by the content moderation policy on that day. Of course, what I'm setting up here is a bit of a beard fallacy [1]. Laws are not enforced by algorithms and a human (in particular a judge) is perfectly capable of distinguishing between a content moderation policy that bans profanity and one that bans all but one string of character. Beard arguments are everywhere, human-made categories always have fuzzy boundaries. However, some categories have sharper boundaries than others. There is very little ambiguity as to what "running a red light" means for a motor vehicle, even though Buridan's paradox [2] tells us that there could be. There may be a continuous curve, but the slope is very steep, creating a sharp distinction between "running a red light" and "not running a red light". The slope from moderation policy to content publisher is not as steep of a slope. While everyone might agree that banning, say, profanities is not really a form of speech, and while everyone might agree that my cute hack above is really just speech, there are many intermediate points where reasonable people might disagree. Generally these uncharted areas get progressively cleared up through lawsuits creating precedent which creates uncertainty, and introduce layers and layers of complexity. My own feeling is that when the delineation of a category requires an accumulation of special cases, exceptions, distinctions, clarifications, it generally means that it does not map to something fundamental or important. A large part of software engineering consists in finding the right abstractions to think about a problem, and when one leaks that badly, it's generally and indication that one is thinking about the problem wrong. My hunch is that the fundamental issue lies in the concept of liability for libel in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass#Application_to_digital_logic:_metastability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass#Application_to...
parsimo2010 6y ago
This is an informative article, but it is missing a couple key things. Maybe the article was strictly aiming to be factual, but it felt like it was taking the position that 230 is good and should stay in place. With the assumption that it means to argue for keeping 230, they failed to convince me that it was a necessary piece of regulation. Yes, they corrected many misconceptions, but at the end of the day there is still a key argument against 230, and it goes like this: There are a lot of things posted by 3rd parties on websites that lead to harmful outcomes. Companies that leave that content up are able to make profit from the views/clicks generated. They have already demonstrated the ability to moderate content, they chose not to do so when it’s not favorable to their profit. Why should I protect platforms or give them the option to not moderate harmful content? If you’re making a profit from it, that’s part of your product and you should hold some liability. This wouldn’t absolve 3rd parties that post harmful content from also having liability because the courts regularly rule on splitting liability and deciding which people hold which portion of blame. Repealing 230 allows us to hold companies accountable for leaving harmful content up when they could have taken it down, it would not require the courts to fine them every time something bad happens- it would just give the courts the option to do so when it’s the right call. As of now, 230 is too strong of protection. I know they can do it. We have real time profanity filtering in video game chat, social media automatically detects faces for tagging, I know with a few automated solutions and a team of mods (paid and/or volunteer), and online platform can do a reasonable job. HN does a great job with surprisingly few mods. Reddit does it and has a pretty robust process for addressing harmful subreddits. YouTube polices non-advertiser-friendly content, I know they could moderate more if required. Sure, some things slip through the cracks, but maybe a competent defense and a reasonable court can decide that a company isn’t liable for one-off failures, provided it has good processes in place to catch most of the issues. Like Ford isn’t held liable every time someone crashes a car and dies, they are only held liable when they are aware of their cars being dangerous and not doing anything about it- but after issuing a recall, the liability is back on the car owner for not getting it fixed. Anyway, the courts and lawyers are well equipped to decide questions of liability without Section 230. I guess the other thing I want to come back around to that the article didn’t really address, is that right now the protection seems unbalanced/one-sided because it protects platforms from choosing not to moderate, but it doesn’t force them not to moderate. IMHO, if the Facebooks and Twitters are allowed to say “we don’t have the ability to police our content” then they shouldn’t be deplatforming controversial people like Alex Jones. It’s hypocritical to say that tech companies need protections and then be in favor of kicking people off. I’m not actually sad when someone like Jones or Trump gets the ban hammer. But I have a hard time justifying allowing companies to have moderation power and then allowing them to choose only to use it when a situation gets so bad that it affects their profit. Like, you can’t be watching the a house burn while holding a fire hose and not expect me to be mad when you decide to water your garden instead. If you’re actually unable to moderate, you had better not be making headlines by moderation. Because it seems to me like you’re begging the question- oh, so you clearly can moderate some things, let’s figure out how much money you made while ignoring the harm you were causing up until that point. What I’m actually in favor of by the way, is repealing the wholesale protection of Section 230 and replacing it with something that requires a reasonable level of moderation, or provides a little bit of protection for companies that have made a good attempt at moderation. That would be a much better incentive for companies than the incentive 230 currently provides.
cwhiz 6y ago
This article does not address curation or editorializing. If you, the platform, are in charge of what I see, then you are a publisher. If you, the platform, add comments to what I write, you are editorializing, and you are a publisher. Publishers should not have 230 protections.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  To add an example, YouTube landing page is full of curated content from Google. I have not subscribed to any of it. In fact, my subscribed videos are on a completely separate page. Google has chosen what they want me to see. Therefore, Google is a publisher. The fact that they hide this behind an algorithm has no bearing on the outcome. Google is in charge of the content that I see. If Google is in charge, they are publishers.
rubyist5eva 6y ago
I like this law, and I don't think it needs reform. If anything, it encourages competition because if you don't like some company's moderation you can be free to go make your own damn website without moderation (or with moderation policy you prefer), or use a different that will take you instead. This entire thing is just because of a pissing match between Twitter/FB and Donald Trump. Why doesn't he just an alternative? I thought Parler was supposed to be the "free speech platform"? I'm sure his audience would follow him, and I'd wager a lot of them are already there. This entire "fight" about S230 is completely bonkers.
- kokokokoko123 6y ago
  Parler was removed from google store, though (and apple store is going to do the same). But sure, everything is allright.
diveanon 6y ago
Donald Trump is still in control of one of the most effective communication channels in the world. He could schedule a press conference at any time and have his words plastered all over Twitter within minutes by journalists. Twitter as a platform made a choice, as a private entity. This choice is legally protected. Likewise Apple and Google both have the right to ban apps like Parler from their app stores under the same protections. Nobody is banning "conservative" speech. What they are banning is outright lies, racist rhetoric, and calls for organized violent action. If that has become synonymous with conservatism and the Republican party, then I would say that their "political movement" needs to be dismantled.
- jpttsn 6y ago
  They surely haven’t put a blanket ban on lying on Twitter?
- hndudette2 6y ago
  Nobody is arguing that these platforms don't have a legal right to do what they've done. The only debate is about what they ought to do, and whether the laws should be changed as a result of those preferences. Regarding Parler: it is a large platform with a mixture of conservative speech and outright violent rhetoric. Does that justify its ban? The same is true for Twitter and FB (ie there exists a large amount of unmoderated extremist speech and calls for violence on these platforms). What makes it right to ban only Parler? Is there evidence that the density of such speech is higher there?
hedora 6y ago
I have one issue with this article. Section 230 certainly encouraged centralization of the internet. Without it, platforms would be liable for content they hosted, which would be financially unviable. Instead, people would have to self-host their own content on their own infrastructure. (230 provides no protection for people that do that.) In addition to preventing the big monopolies from arising, this would have made censorship and surveillance much more difficult. As it is, we’re in a situation where even the speech of the POTUS is beholdent to corporate censors. The rest of the DMCA drastically shifted the balance of power toward copyright holders (and was also designed to increase consolidation of the industry); section 230 was necessary to offset that. I’d be happy to see the whole law repealed, though it would have the side effect of shattering the business models of the big tech monopolies. Repealing 230 but not the rest of the DMCA would be madness.
- root_axis 6y ago
  > we’re in a situation where even the speech of the POTUS is beholdent to corporate censors This is not true. The POTUS has the most prominent platform in the world, he could walk out to any random street corner and anything he says will be broadcast to every corner of the planet, he is not in any way beholden to "corporate censors".
  - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    That’s not true any more though. All of the media networks have shown examples of cutting away from the Presidents speeches when they detect he’s going to say something they don’t like. If you were Trump right now and want to directly address the nation, you know calling CNN and Fox and NBC are going to be a mixed bag at best. FAANG has given the indication right now that for two week no one should be giving the President a platform. I fully expect him to use the national broadcast system. https://www.westernjournal.com/cnn-cuts-away-trump-coronavirus-briefing-calling-propaganda/ https://www.westernjournal.com/cnn-cuts-away-trump-coronavir... https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/cnn-msnbc-cut-away-donald-230651373.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADw7rrRBKXn4sBkNYPXLDfKFK2AhitQrICMlQrv5mqSFS8jOMUURjXnC_nVAruwxmWG6ddNAEIpQ4pdzHfyt7L9zivjDcfEh7mEG0wyl_Lgx1vMELCJ8uBsBjVIySwcFp_gSMHBUAXLumkfsHN3UialE7eKdaRLOlitDhQ8I82Ow https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/cnn-msnbc-cut-away-donal... https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-entertainment-brian-williams-elections-8159feee1f7539e0bd4815092c11952f https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-entert... https://heavy.com/news/2020/07/fox-news-neil-cavuto-trump-speech-fact-check/ https://heavy.com/news/2020/07/fox-news-neil-cavuto-trump-sp... https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/watch-nicolle-wallace-cuts-away-from-trump-we-hate-to-do-this-but-trump-isn-t-telling-the-truth-69905989594 https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/watch-nicol... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-news-cuts-away-from-trump-campaign-press-conference-cant-in-good-countenance-continue-showing-this/ar-BB1aQCUY https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-news-cuts-away-f... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2020/nov/06/msnbc-cuts-away-from-trumps-address-after-he-again-falsely-declares-election-victory-video https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2020/nov/06/msnbc-...
throwawayosiu1 6y ago
The idea behind repealing 230 is not essentially about tackling censorship. It's more so the idea, that the right wing believes that Social Media is unfairly applying their moderation rules targeting the right side of the political spectrum. They want these these rules (even if it's more censorship) applied evenly to both right and left speech. While what we have right now is not "free" speech, even moderated speech has a bias and both sides point to the other when it comes to these rules being applied unfairly. Repealing 230 is a way to hurt who they see as responsible - the companies running the services as they are the one who apply these moderation rules unfairly.
dwheeler 6y ago
THANK YOU for posting this link. This is really helpful in explaining what the law actually says.
kemitchell 6y ago
Ugh. I largely agree with the specific legal analysis in this guide. And it's nice to see a lawyer encouraging people who are not lawyers to read a law for themselves. But freely mixing legal analysis and political opinion, in a snarky format with debunker tone, isn't responsible. Law degrees don't turn our policy views into anointed fact. The section on "big tech" isn't legal analysis. The fact that a law doesn't call out a specific group doesn't mean that such a group won't specifically benefit, or suffer, in practice. The fact that Section 230 doesn't have any language about company size or market share doesn't mean the law doesn't benefit them, benefit them more than smaller players, or benefit them in ways competitors in other industries don't enjoy. There are arguments both ways there. It's not all the lawyers on one side, and everybody who hasn't read the law on the other. We know which side Mike's on. Reducing Section 230 claims to "a narrow set of frivolous lawsuits" was really cringey. Have a look at some of the cases that had folks reconsidering Section 230, back before Trump was even a candidate for president. The whole section where that jab appears is a straw man. I've not met anybody who thinks companies are totally immune from all laws.
waheoo 6y ago
This is a very nauseating read. Lots of If you said this, you are wrong. Great, but I didn't say the sky is green, I said it wasn't always blue.

439 points by tony101 6y ago

I start to feel like whats the point, I'll just be told its "fake news" and they totally ignore it. Good article though.

1123581321 6y ago

Is it fair then to say that the only way to “lose section 230 protection” is to cease having content partners by paying them, or employing them, or something like that? I don’t have a political point with this question and apologies if it was covered in the article and I missed or misunderstood it.

wyattpeak 6y ago
I don't know that that would be losing protections, merely having nothing that qualifies for protection. If there were some content on that site which was 3rd-party generated, say comments, they would presumably remain protected.
toast0 6y ago
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not your lawyer, but allow me to play one on the Internet. Looking at two parts of the law: > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. > The term “information content provider” means any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service. I think employing people to create or develop information under your direction would likely cause you to "lose 230 protection," but paying them for content they created or developed independently probably doesn't. If you contract them to independently create something new, it might be your responsibility in part; I dunno. Edit: reviewing the article linked by conistonwater's sibling comment, it seems pretty clear from Blumenthal v. Drudge that a contractor's work is not the site's responsibility. I imagine there could be circumstances where the site specifically sanctionable content, and they might be held responsible.
conistonwater 6y ago
Through [1] I found this article [2], and it seems even if you pay people for content (Blumenthal v. Drudge, page 7; AOL was paying somebody for writing articles and somebody sued both that person and AOL for defamation) you're still explicitly immune under Section 230. (I'm not a lawyer, I find this kind of confusing sometimes.) [1] https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/07/want-to-learn-more-about-section-230-a-guide-to-my-work.htm https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/07/want-to-learn-... [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3025943 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3025943

awb 6y ago

> if you're in a real rush, just read Section (c)(1), which is only 26 words, and is the part that basically every single court decision (and there have been many) has relied on. > (c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. Wouldn't repealing Section 230 mean more censorship and restrictions as the liability would be too great to be on the hook for what some random account might decide to publish, no?

conistonwater 6y ago
Yes, I believe that's why it was introduced in the first place because that used to be a problem. The EFF has a summary of its history [1] and the case was [2]. [1] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative-history https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230/legislative-history [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
banana_giraffe 6y ago
Yep, that was the original fear after a couple of landmark cases against CompuServe (no filters, so they were ruled not liable for what people said), and Prodigy (they had a team of editors filtering content, so it was ruled they were liable for what ended up on their platform).
Nathanba 6y ago
the idea I think is that certain platforms would emerge that have to allow all content or get into legal trouble. Even if those are just base layers such as an ISP
erichocean 6y ago
Every alternative to Twitter is shittier. It's practically a law of nature.
- scruple 6y ago

function_seven 6y ago

I started reading this in the smug knowledge that I knew it already, that I wasn't wrong about 230. But then I saw this passage: > The "user" protections get less attention, but they're right there in the important 26 words. "No provider or __user__ of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker...." That's why there are cases like Barrett v. Rosenthal where someone who forwarded an email to a mailing list was held to be protected by Section 230, as a user of an interactive computer service who did not write the underlying material that was forwarded. I didn't know that! I guess I was wrong about Section 230 :)

elliekelly 6y ago
I feel like I’ve said this a hundred times in the last 30 days but you should read the book “The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet” for a really good history of why we have Sec. 230 and what it was intended to “solve”. It’s an interesting topic that’s the subject of intense debate amongst people on both sides who don’t fully understand the subject they’re arguing about but are convinced they do.
- techer 6y ago
  Well thanks for saying it one more time as I missed the previous hundred. Will read.

chrisco255 6y ago

> If you said "Section 230 is a massive gift to big tech!" > Once again, I must inform you that you are very, very wrong. If section 230 is no big deal, let's just repeal it. What's the hoopla about it, then? Why are companies so adamant to protect it? The section itself is very broad, but the impetus for the passing of Section 230 was to protect free speech by removing liability concerns for what others say online. > On July 23, 2013, the attorneys general of 47 states sent Congress a letter requesting that the criminal and civil immunity in section 230 be removed. The ACLU wrote of the proposal, "If Section 230 is stripped of its protections, it wouldn't take long for the vibrant culture of free speech to disappear from the web." [1] So, apparently big tech has killed that vibrant culture and in 2021, I think we can declare it dead. Tens of thousands of people are getting purged from social media, others alienated, ostracized, and shadow banned. There is a concerted effort to manufacture consent through targeted algorithmic hijacking of free speech. And so, we find ourselves in a situation where the current situation is UNTENABLE. A free society cannot have its discourse completely dominated by a handful of corporations. This is a civil rights issue. I'm sorry, some people want to weasel out of this with arguments of technicality. Technically, before labor laws were passed in the 20th century, there was nothing wrong with asking someone to work 60-70 hours a week and paying them the same rate. There was nothing illegal about paying someone 10 cents an hour prior to minimum wage laws. But we realized that some broad protection for certain workers rights were worth intervening in the free market for. That is the issue of the 21st century. We are the content producers on social media. We should have rights to not be deplatformed. And no, it's not acceptable to arbitrarily empower a handful of corporations to decide what is acceptable speech and what is not. If the speech is not illegal, it should be protected. And in the U.S. we have broad, broad protections for speech for an extremely important reason. Cannot forget that. Too many societies have fallen to tyranny as a result of free speech restriction. Tens of millions perished for the right to speak freely. That can't be understated or forgotten. Ever. The 21st century deserves a movement for a digital bill of rights. [1] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/new-proposal-could-singlehandedly-cripple-free?redirect=blog/free-speech-national-security-technology-and-liberty/new-proposal-could-singlehandedly-cripple https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and-surv...

onecommentman 6y ago

topkai22 6y ago

I was struck by a thought while reading the article- are the feeds of social media companies actually protected under section 230? My Facebook feed is more than just a simple serving of my friends content, it’s a work in and of itself (like a collection of essays). It seems like a stretch given that the law states that they can’t be considered the publisher of “information” provided by others, but possible as these sites are the ones engaged in picking content. The article mentions the roommates.com racial discrimination case. I wonder what a court would do if a site had some black box algorithm that ended up consistently showing a feed of rooms in one zip code to whites and rooms in another zip code to blacks, never overlapping. Edit- My point being- it might be possible to hold Facebook/Twitter/YouTube liable for the information in their feeds, particularly that which is surfaced out of order or from people a user isn’t subscribed to. But I’m not lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.

hemloc_io 6y ago
I've also wondered about this, I suspect because Facebook hired 75% of their lawyers in the last 3 months we will find out soon. I could see one argument about how an algorithm doesn't really editorialize. A metaphor that is often used is that social media companies is that they are more like a newsstand than an editorial board on a newspaper. A newsstand isn't under any obligation to sell all the papers available in their stand or place them in a specific order. I would expect the social media companies to say that their algorithms are closer to placing newspapers on a stand based on market conditions, not based on their personal opinions/eye. If that holds up to scrutiny we'll see.
- liaukovv 6y ago
  These websites are like the proverbial 10000 monkeys generating random symbols. Tech companies can form any narrative by picking parts they promote, does that still make them not responsible for the result?
- leereeves 6y ago
  Yes, in one sense an algorithm doesn't editorialize, not being intelligent, but humans can write an algorithm to editorialize for them. The editorial decisions are made while designing the algorithm. And if Facebook, knowing that outrage drives engagement, chooses to run an algorithm that displays the most engaging content, aren't they also choosing to display the most outrageous content?

nenenndndndn 6y ago

Actually quite an awesome read here. But also kind of funny that the resource does a great job explaining what 230 is not — while a terrible job of what it is. At this point, I have no idea what Section 230 is. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t really care for the details of this. Hell, I barely understand how a bill is actually turned into law. Though, I do know that the POTUS vs Twitter showdown today has put a bittersweet taste in my mouth. I hope they pass a new law whatever it is. I would even bet Jack is too to take the pressure off. He’s extremely measured every time I hear him speak, and I would bet he secretly wants a law explicitly forbidding him from being content cop.

kennywinker 6y ago
What law would that be? Internet service providers must provide their service to everyone? Great, now it’s illegal to kick people off your minecraft server and the new york times MUST publish my op-ed. Twitter gave orange-julius cesar a platform, they can take it away.
- lovecg 6y ago
  There’s a general anxiety of a big company taking a way a big chunk of your life on a whim. It’s not fun to be banned by Google or Amazon. I’m not doing anything wrong to get banned, but that seems backwards somehow. (“don’t break the law and you have nothing to worry about” gives off the same creepy vibe). It’s a similar feeling when driving next to cop while doing nothing wrong or dealing with a government bureaucracy. They have all (or a lot) of the power and decision making is never perfect. So perhaps this is an argument for stronger antitrust or whatever. More competition would reduce this anxiety for the regular person.
  - rubatuga 6y ago
    This is probably not the response you wanted, but I think it's an argument for decentralized and federated services, along with self-hosting.
    - 6y ago

Acrobatic_Road 6y ago

Before today I was a strong defender of section 230. After today, I say burn it all down.

samvher 6y ago
This makes me feel like I missed something. Are you writing this because you read the article today or did something else happen?
- NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
  Today we had 4 tech billionaires/CEOs telling us what politicians we’re allowed to hear from or talk about. That’s not OK.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Today we had 4 tech billionaires/CEOs telling us what politicians we’re allowed to hear from or talk about. Nope, they are telling you who is allowed on their platform. You can hear from or talk about whoever you want.
    - NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
      Let me guess, you’re the type of person who will complain incessantly about the Koch brothers and money in politics and super PACs... and yet here you are gleeful about giving tech oligarchs the effective power to choose the next President.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Let me guess, you’re the type of person who will complain incessantly about the Koch brothers and money in politics and super PACs... Well, no, not the way you mean. That is, I think all those things are corrosive within the structure of the present US political system; OTOH, I also think that the ways people propose to constrain them tend to both have side effects as bad or worse than the problems they solve, and violate the First Amendment. > and yet here you are gleeful about giving tech oligarchs the effective power to choose the next President. I disagree that that is the result, and I'm not at all gleeful.

NE2z2T9qi 6y ago

This doesn’t seem that complicated to me. What’s all the I-am-smarter-than-you smugness about? > Law text: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher.” People who want Section 230 repealed or modified want to be able to make the legal argument that by actively banning certain speech while elevating other speech, social media companies ARE acting as publishers. The law doesn’t need to define publisher again. We already have an understanding of what publishers do: they selectively choose and publicize OTHER people’s content. What am I missing? Whether or not it’s justified, the reason some people want it repealed seem obvious to me.

zerocrates 6y ago
The snark isn't directed so much at people who want repeal (though techdirt pretty clearly would disagree with them on that point also) but rather at the very large contingent of people who express with total conviction that the law right now draws lines between neutral "platforms" who are protected and biased "publishers" who are not, when the law in fact does the exact opposite.
- NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
  > when the law in fact does the exact opposite Yes. That’s exactly the problem people who want it repealed are pointing out: the current law offers broad blanket protection to social media companies to moderate content however they want, even if their moderation practices are highly editorial and partisan, akin to traditional publishers. Techdirt seems to think people don’t understand that the law doesn’t distinguish between platforms and publishers. On the contrary, that’s precisely why people want it repealed or modified. Either attach platform “neutrality” requirements to these broad protections, or eliminate the protections and allow social media companies to be subject to the old legal regime attached to publishers.
  - zerocrates 6y ago
    There are an enormous number of people who say things like, "by doing X, Twitter (replace as needed) is no longer a platform and loses its protection." Not in the sense of, that's how it ought to be or that a change in the law will bring it about, but under a belief that that's how things already are. The balance has shifted a bit as calls for its repeal have become louder, so "repeal 230" is now a much more common response to disliked moderation actions, but you still don't have to look far to find people saying that a ban or notice or whatever "violates section 230."

afterburner 6y ago

Honest question: is it possible that some of the repercussions of Section 230 are not just reliant on a strict reading of the law in question, but also the case law and precedents built around it in the form of court decisions? Precedents in the US are sometimes more important than a literal reading of the law.

ricardo81 6y ago

I remember reading an article about a correlation between IQ and prejudices, something that stuck with me as it seems prevalent, and likely the key ingredient when talking about bending opinions via hypertargeting of people on social media, such as supposed Russian involvement in Brexit. Cost effective propaganda when you can find all the people of a group on social media. Interesting that the first couple of paragraphs talk about a meme, a viral idea he can assume we'll know of because we're all so connected online. Also refers to another popular online article in the same format he liked and adopted. Disconnecting someone from social media feels like it may only be helping their cause. I think our social networks are too centralised and it's a problem, particularly because people can be accuraretly targeted with misinformation, as well as the social media algos displaying things out of order (i.e. their order). Unfortunately it's a truism that there are plenty people who are not empirically sceptical of what they read online and they're only too happy to share it. As much as I don't agree with Trump on pretty much everything, I think he has a point about social media being arbiters of truth is a problem. I'm also a Brit so say very little about other country's party/policies. If only we could accurately measure reasons why people stormed Capitol Hill. My hunch is that information read online is the primary motivator, weighed in with the fact how information discovery is heavily entrenched in social media. I would make platforms liable for their content (or at least greater emphasis on them taking an active role) and yes, I appreciate that would make them untenable as they currently stand, but I'm sure there's plenty of strong counterpoints that'd make me reconsider. At the very least, viral content's virality could perhaps be limited. Can't recall the last viral thing I saw that wasn't trivial but was positive. Social media has a lot of power at the moment.

colllectorof 6y ago

Dismissive article that misrepresents both why "normal" people out there are unhappy about section 230 and what the higher levels of conversation about changing it really look like right now[1]. Articles like this are read meat for Hacker News. You endlessly reassert your political bias while pretending you are "informing" some imaginary group of stupid people (who in reality isn't even here to be "informed"). [1] Here is a recent discussion about 320 from a few lawyers and an YouTuber who used to work for the mainstream media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a5H1A65wOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a5H1A65wOM As you will see if you watch the video, it is much more nuanced than the aggregate straw-man set up by the article. ... The crux of the issue is that Section 320 was drafted with a lot of assumptions in mind. At the time the Web was a fledgling thing. At the time Section 230's practical effect was to empower emerging platforms to do some common-sense moderation without fear of being held liable for all content they distributed. Does the law still has this effect? Yes, it does. But that is no longer the primary effect in terms of how this law affect most of the people out there. Today its primary effect is to give an impenetrable legal shield to giant tech corporations that engage in deliberate society-wide manipulation of information. That is what most people out there are unhappy about, even if they don't quite know how to phrase it.

cjfd 6y ago
As such it seems this law makes sense but it also seems to do little about some other problems. I have started to think lately that what is best is a law to forbid espionage on people. Like, you cannot collect and/or store large portions of the peoples browser history. Also, it should be forbidden for the data of one service to be shared with another. Like the example of facebook and whatsapp sharing their data.
_yhdy 6y ago
I do not like people like you who are intelligent enough to be intentionally intellectually dishonest while being extremely malicious underneath. You fool people for sure. I do not know why you do it, though. There is no manipulation going on by “Big Tech”. Your fear mongering is unfounded. Pushing this sort of rhetoric is what created the insurrectionist events a few days ago.

rho4 6y ago

"While this may all feel kind of mean, it's not meant to be." proceeds to say "you're wrong" a gazillion times

danaliv 6y ago
If finding out you’re wrong feels mean to you, you’re not going to get far in this world.
- textgel 6y ago
  Gazillion +1 times.

glasss 6y ago

I don't believe that repealing or modifying 230 is right, all websites deserve the protections it provides. However, I do believe that social media feeds and the companies or people that thrive on them are a cancer on society that need be to regulated into hell and never brought out again. If people are going to get upset about recent events and how companies are reacting, I would really prefer it if they focus on what the root cause is, instead of trying to get a one up on their enemies.

TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago

This is a great summary of what the law's function is. To address those trying to repeal it: • Some people think that if 230 was repealed, websites would moderate less. That's false. Because of the liability for users' posts, big websites would be forced to moderate more. And small websites would shut down out of fear of lawsuits. • Some people think that 230 must be repealed because websites are moderating too much. Well, the great thing about 230 is you can create your own websites. If you want to make your own free-speech forum and watch it be filled with far-right insurrectionists like all the other ones, you can, and you won't assume much liability for it. On the other hand, if 230 was repealed, you would not have this option, and the big tech companies you don't like would censor your friends for the same reasons they do today. I don't think everyone using Twitter and Facebook is good but this can't be solved by making it hard to run small forums. I also think it's dangerous to try to force people to run their forums with “fair” moderation. Free speech is important as a right to stop the state using violence against you. Being kicked out of a private group because you're disruptive, mean or faked your speedrunning scores, is on the other hand no great injustice that the law should interfere with.

PeterisP 6y ago
IMHO "And small websites would shut down out of fear of lawsuits" is misleading - it would be more appropriate to say "And small websites would refuse all user-generated content out of fear of lawsuits". They would still operate, but without the immunity the only safe way of moderation is to either have very strict moderation that ensures that anything even remotely questionable can't be posted; or (if you can't afford to have high quality manual moderation) simply not allow users to post anything at all.
- dd36 6y ago
  I think the legal defense would be whether the site acted reasonably and liability would be difficult to establish without harm. If people use your site to coordinate doxxing someone and you don’t take reasonable actions to prevent, stop or legally identify the users behind it, then you’re going to have a tough time getting out of liability. AFAIK doxxing isn’t illegal but harassment can be. Side note: I wonder what the new requirements that beneficial owners of legal entities be disclosed will do to 4chan, 8chan, etc.

ummonk 6y ago

A lot of these are straw men arguments. In particular it's taking a lot of statements about how Section 230 ought to be amended or replaced, and falsely portraying those statements as being about how Section 230 currently works. Obviously Section 230 doesn't work that way right now, which is precisely why people are proposing changes.

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
I regularly read HN threads that end up in discussion of Section 230, and find many posts that contain these same wrong ideas about what the law means. To that extent, I think you're giving the author of the article too little credit, and the general discourse too much. Clearly that's my subjective experience, and YMMV.
boardwaalk 6y ago
It’s hard to have a conversation when some (most even?) don’t understand how the law (both specifically this one and in general) work. I wouldn’t throw out “straw man” here — you need to have common (semi-accurate) ground, especially before proposing changes.

BlueTemplar 6y ago

IMHO the main issue is kind of orthogonal to Section 230 : It's that some companies have grown too big, and have too much power, which is a direct threat to democracy, especially in smaller countries. Where it does come around to Section 230 is that the way that they can (ab)use their power is tied to what they do and laws like it : an ISP with several billion customers but under net neutrality and common carrier laws would probably still be less problematic than current Facebook/Twitter/YouTube.

coffeefirst 6y ago
Right. 230 is probably fine as is for a small message board or discord server. All of the objections (or at least the non-trolling ones) are about giant global services with algorithms for optimizing engagements.

croes 6y ago

> if you're in a real rush, just read Section (c)(1), which is only 26 words, and is the part that basically every single court decision (and there have been many) has relied on. I'm in a rush, so no time to follow a link and scroll. Just put a citation of the law in that paragraph.

brigandish 6y ago

One might say that if a law is so misunderstood by so many and has an outcome that so many would disagree with then it should be replaced based on that fact alone, as what is more dangerous to a society than laws which rule over them that are misunderstood to such a great degree (this might be said of many other laws too). You can blame the people but we install law makers to produce good laws not bad ones (I wouldn't blame the users for not using my app the way I envisaged because they're ignorant, I'd hope I'd improve the app). But what should replace it? Perhaps something that does make the distinction between what is a platform and a publisher. That could be difficult. I'd most likely go for something tapered, so that smaller sites had more protections / less responsibilities and larger sites less protection/more responsibility, in order to promote competition because I think lack of competition is the main problem. So if small sites retained section 230 protection and larger sites didn't, perhaps that would produce better outcomes. Thus, I'm completely against stamping down on Parler and Gab, and any other upstart in the space. The more competitors the better, in my view.

paulgb 6y ago
> One might say that if a law is so misunderstood by so many and has an outcome that so many would disagree with then it should be replaced based on that fact alone, as what is more dangerous to a society than laws which rule over them that are misunderstood to such a great degree (this might be said of many other laws too). I agree that laws need to be coherent to the general public to work, but the problem here is that what people misunderstand is the pre-230 conditions that led to its creation, which we would return to if it were repealed and not replaced with something else. It’s a Chesterton’s fence.
- brigandish 6y ago
  I agree that Chesterton's fence is a nice thing to have in any discussion of law but I'd disagree that we'd return to the same conditions as pre-230, the internet landscape is very different now which is why the law appears to favour larger companies. In fact, repealing it altogether might favour them, it wouldn't have back then.

murbard2 6y ago

Section 230 is a great thing and the consequences of repealing it or adding extra requirements to qualify for its protection would be unequivocally bad. From a pure logic standpoint, there is something that bugs me with the argument that moderation isn't the same as producing content. A website's moderation policy could be that, on any given day, any message other than "The archduke is a corrupt autocrat responsible for the assassination of members of the political opposition" -- which might be libel -- will be deleted by the content moderation team. The next day, the moderation policy might be that the only message that will not be deleted by the moderation team should be "Furthermore, the archduke is having a secret affair with his first cousin". The platform doesn't publish any content in this scenario, it merely awaits for some random anonymous account, on which no liability will be assessible, to post the unique string of characters that is allowed by the content moderation policy on that day. Of course, what I'm setting up here is a bit of a beard fallacy [1]. Laws are not enforced by algorithms and a human (in particular a judge) is perfectly capable of distinguishing between a content moderation policy that bans profanity and one that bans all but one string of character. Beard arguments are everywhere, human-made categories always have fuzzy boundaries. However, some categories have sharper boundaries than others. There is very little ambiguity as to what "running a red light" means for a motor vehicle, even though Buridan's paradox [2] tells us that there could be. There may be a continuous curve, but the slope is very steep, creating a sharp distinction between "running a red light" and "not running a red light". The slope from moderation policy to content publisher is not as steep of a slope. While everyone might agree that banning, say, profanities is not really a form of speech, and while everyone might agree that my cute hack above is really just speech, there are many intermediate points where reasonable people might disagree. Generally these uncharted areas get progressively cleared up through lawsuits creating precedent which creates uncertainty, and introduce layers and layers of complexity. My own feeling is that when the delineation of a category requires an accumulation of special cases, exceptions, distinctions, clarifications, it generally means that it does not map to something fundamental or important. A large part of software engineering consists in finding the right abstractions to think about a problem, and when one leaks that badly, it's generally and indication that one is thinking about the problem wrong. My hunch is that the fundamental issue lies in the concept of liability for libel in the first place. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass#Application_to_digital_logic:_metastability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass#Application_to...

parsimo2010 6y ago

This is an informative article, but it is missing a couple key things. Maybe the article was strictly aiming to be factual, but it felt like it was taking the position that 230 is good and should stay in place. With the assumption that it means to argue for keeping 230, they failed to convince me that it was a necessary piece of regulation. Yes, they corrected many misconceptions, but at the end of the day there is still a key argument against 230, and it goes like this: There are a lot of things posted by 3rd parties on websites that lead to harmful outcomes. Companies that leave that content up are able to make profit from the views/clicks generated. They have already demonstrated the ability to moderate content, they chose not to do so when it’s not favorable to their profit. Why should I protect platforms or give them the option to not moderate harmful content? If you’re making a profit from it, that’s part of your product and you should hold some liability. This wouldn’t absolve 3rd parties that post harmful content from also having liability because the courts regularly rule on splitting liability and deciding which people hold which portion of blame. Repealing 230 allows us to hold companies accountable for leaving harmful content up when they could have taken it down, it would not require the courts to fine them every time something bad happens- it would just give the courts the option to do so when it’s the right call. As of now, 230 is too strong of protection. I know they can do it. We have real time profanity filtering in video game chat, social media automatically detects faces for tagging, I know with a few automated solutions and a team of mods (paid and/or volunteer), and online platform can do a reasonable job. HN does a great job with surprisingly few mods. Reddit does it and has a pretty robust process for addressing harmful subreddits. YouTube polices non-advertiser-friendly content, I know they could moderate more if required. Sure, some things slip through the cracks, but maybe a competent defense and a reasonable court can decide that a company isn’t liable for one-off failures, provided it has good processes in place to catch most of the issues. Like Ford isn’t held liable every time someone crashes a car and dies, they are only held liable when they are aware of their cars being dangerous and not doing anything about it- but after issuing a recall, the liability is back on the car owner for not getting it fixed. Anyway, the courts and lawyers are well equipped to decide questions of liability without Section 230. I guess the other thing I want to come back around to that the article didn’t really address, is that right now the protection seems unbalanced/one-sided because it protects platforms from choosing not to moderate, but it doesn’t force them not to moderate. IMHO, if the Facebooks and Twitters are allowed to say “we don’t have the ability to police our content” then they shouldn’t be deplatforming controversial people like Alex Jones. It’s hypocritical to say that tech companies need protections and then be in favor of kicking people off. I’m not actually sad when someone like Jones or Trump gets the ban hammer. But I have a hard time justifying allowing companies to have moderation power and then allowing them to choose only to use it when a situation gets so bad that it affects their profit. Like, you can’t be watching the a house burn while holding a fire hose and not expect me to be mad when you decide to water your garden instead. If you’re actually unable to moderate, you had better not be making headlines by moderation. Because it seems to me like you’re begging the question- oh, so you clearly can moderate some things, let’s figure out how much money you made while ignoring the harm you were causing up until that point. What I’m actually in favor of by the way, is repealing the wholesale protection of Section 230 and replacing it with something that requires a reasonable level of moderation, or provides a little bit of protection for companies that have made a good attempt at moderation. That would be a much better incentive for companies than the incentive 230 currently provides.

cwhiz 6y ago

This article does not address curation or editorializing. If you, the platform, are in charge of what I see, then you are a publisher. If you, the platform, add comments to what I write, you are editorializing, and you are a publisher. Publishers should not have 230 protections.

cwhiz 6y ago
To add an example, YouTube landing page is full of curated content from Google. I have not subscribed to any of it. In fact, my subscribed videos are on a completely separate page. Google has chosen what they want me to see. Therefore, Google is a publisher. The fact that they hide this behind an algorithm has no bearing on the outcome. Google is in charge of the content that I see. If Google is in charge, they are publishers.

rubyist5eva 6y ago

I like this law, and I don't think it needs reform. If anything, it encourages competition because if you don't like some company's moderation you can be free to go make your own damn website without moderation (or with moderation policy you prefer), or use a different that will take you instead. This entire thing is just because of a pissing match between Twitter/FB and Donald Trump. Why doesn't he just an alternative? I thought Parler was supposed to be the "free speech platform"? I'm sure his audience would follow him, and I'd wager a lot of them are already there. This entire "fight" about S230 is completely bonkers.

kokokokoko123 6y ago
Parler was removed from google store, though (and apple store is going to do the same). But sure, everything is allright.

diveanon 6y ago

Donald Trump is still in control of one of the most effective communication channels in the world. He could schedule a press conference at any time and have his words plastered all over Twitter within minutes by journalists. Twitter as a platform made a choice, as a private entity. This choice is legally protected. Likewise Apple and Google both have the right to ban apps like Parler from their app stores under the same protections. Nobody is banning "conservative" speech. What they are banning is outright lies, racist rhetoric, and calls for organized violent action. If that has become synonymous with conservatism and the Republican party, then I would say that their "political movement" needs to be dismantled.

jpttsn 6y ago
They surely haven’t put a blanket ban on lying on Twitter?
hndudette2 6y ago
Nobody is arguing that these platforms don't have a legal right to do what they've done. The only debate is about what they ought to do, and whether the laws should be changed as a result of those preferences. Regarding Parler: it is a large platform with a mixture of conservative speech and outright violent rhetoric. Does that justify its ban? The same is true for Twitter and FB (ie there exists a large amount of unmoderated extremist speech and calls for violence on these platforms). What makes it right to ban only Parler? Is there evidence that the density of such speech is higher there?

hedora 6y ago

I have one issue with this article. Section 230 certainly encouraged centralization of the internet. Without it, platforms would be liable for content they hosted, which would be financially unviable. Instead, people would have to self-host their own content on their own infrastructure. (230 provides no protection for people that do that.) In addition to preventing the big monopolies from arising, this would have made censorship and surveillance much more difficult. As it is, we’re in a situation where even the speech of the POTUS is beholdent to corporate censors. The rest of the DMCA drastically shifted the balance of power toward copyright holders (and was also designed to increase consolidation of the industry); section 230 was necessary to offset that. I’d be happy to see the whole law repealed, though it would have the side effect of shattering the business models of the big tech monopolies. Repealing 230 but not the rest of the DMCA would be madness.

root_axis 6y ago
> we’re in a situation where even the speech of the POTUS is beholdent to corporate censors This is not true. The POTUS has the most prominent platform in the world, he could walk out to any random street corner and anything he says will be broadcast to every corner of the planet, he is not in any way beholden to "corporate censors".
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  That’s not true any more though. All of the media networks have shown examples of cutting away from the Presidents speeches when they detect he’s going to say something they don’t like. If you were Trump right now and want to directly address the nation, you know calling CNN and Fox and NBC are going to be a mixed bag at best. FAANG has given the indication right now that for two week no one should be giving the President a platform. I fully expect him to use the national broadcast system. https://www.westernjournal.com/cnn-cuts-away-trump-coronavirus-briefing-calling-propaganda/ https://www.westernjournal.com/cnn-cuts-away-trump-coronavir... https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/cnn-msnbc-cut-away-donald-230651373.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADw7rrRBKXn4sBkNYPXLDfKFK2AhitQrICMlQrv5mqSFS8jOMUURjXnC_nVAruwxmWG6ddNAEIpQ4pdzHfyt7L9zivjDcfEh7mEG0wyl_Lgx1vMELCJ8uBsBjVIySwcFp_gSMHBUAXLumkfsHN3UialE7eKdaRLOlitDhQ8I82Ow https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/cnn-msnbc-cut-away-donal... https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-entertainment-brian-williams-elections-8159feee1f7539e0bd4815092c11952f https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-entert... https://heavy.com/news/2020/07/fox-news-neil-cavuto-trump-speech-fact-check/ https://heavy.com/news/2020/07/fox-news-neil-cavuto-trump-sp... https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/watch-nicolle-wallace-cuts-away-from-trump-we-hate-to-do-this-but-trump-isn-t-telling-the-truth-69905989594 https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/watch-nicol... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-news-cuts-away-from-trump-campaign-press-conference-cant-in-good-countenance-continue-showing-this/ar-BB1aQCUY https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-news-cuts-away-f... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2020/nov/06/msnbc-cuts-away-from-trumps-address-after-he-again-falsely-declares-election-victory-video https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2020/nov/06/msnbc-...

throwawayosiu1 6y ago

The idea behind repealing 230 is not essentially about tackling censorship. It's more so the idea, that the right wing believes that Social Media is unfairly applying their moderation rules targeting the right side of the political spectrum. They want these these rules (even if it's more censorship) applied evenly to both right and left speech. While what we have right now is not "free" speech, even moderated speech has a bias and both sides point to the other when it comes to these rules being applied unfairly. Repealing 230 is a way to hurt who they see as responsible - the companies running the services as they are the one who apply these moderation rules unfairly.

dwheeler 6y ago

THANK YOU for posting this link. This is really helpful in explaining what the law actually says.

kemitchell 6y ago

Ugh. I largely agree with the specific legal analysis in this guide. And it's nice to see a lawyer encouraging people who are not lawyers to read a law for themselves. But freely mixing legal analysis and political opinion, in a snarky format with debunker tone, isn't responsible. Law degrees don't turn our policy views into anointed fact. The section on "big tech" isn't legal analysis. The fact that a law doesn't call out a specific group doesn't mean that such a group won't specifically benefit, or suffer, in practice. The fact that Section 230 doesn't have any language about company size or market share doesn't mean the law doesn't benefit them, benefit them more than smaller players, or benefit them in ways competitors in other industries don't enjoy. There are arguments both ways there. It's not all the lawyers on one side, and everybody who hasn't read the law on the other. We know which side Mike's on. Reducing Section 230 claims to "a narrow set of frivolous lawsuits" was really cringey. Have a look at some of the cases that had folks reconsidering Section 230, back before Trump was even a candidate for president. The whole section where that jab appears is a straw man. I've not met anybody who thinks companies are totally immune from all laws.

waheoo 6y ago

This is a very nauseating read. Lots of If you said this, you are wrong. Great, but I didn't say the sky is green, I said it wasn't always blue.