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Does this mean if a sports fan comes into my forum about programming and starts making sports threads, I cannot moderate that away, or else face legal action? D

Does this mean if a sports fan comes into my forum about programming and starts making sports threads, I cannot moderate that away, or else face legal action? Does it also mean HN could face legal action according to its current rule set?

username90 6y ago
Spamming would go under harassment in most cases.
agrajag 6y ago
Yes, except for the fact that 1st amendment protections would still exist. How much protection that actually provides is unknown and it would need to be litigated to find out.
- notahacker 6y ago
  Suffice to say a redraft which means that you'll have to go to court to determine what types of content you are and aren't allowed to moderate without the side effect of becoming responsible for everything people say on your web property is not an improvement.
- danShumway 6y ago
  What does that mean? Off-topic discussion does not fall outside of the 1st Amendment, and a restriction of the 1st Amendment to try and classify that as somehow less deserving of protection -- that would be a much greater curtailment of 1st Amendment rights than anything Facebook has done. Bluntly, "would need to be litigated to find out" isn't an acceptable answer given that the people giving this answer are the same people proposing the legislation. Courts don't decide what the law is, they interpret it. You have to have an idea of what you want the law to be, you can't kick that off to the courts. They're trying to interpret your intention and the letter of the law you propose, not the other way around.
dd36 6y ago
What legal action would you be concerned about?
- graeme 6y ago
  If your forum had money, you’d be a sitting duck for someone claiming their rights were violated and demanding compensation.
  - daniellarusso 6y ago
    Or once they obtain a judgement, seize your domain name.
  - dd36 6y ago
    And they’d have to prove it in a court of law.
pessimizer 6y ago
This is the definitive question that has to be asked of anybody proposing a repeal of 230. I personally dislike 230, and have from the beginning, but anybody who doesn't have a direct and complete answer to this question isn't being serious. edit: I personally think that the answer is to standardize terms-of-service documents and to make them into real legal statements that both the website visitor and owner can make claims regarding, and that those statements be registered with a federal agency. The standardization should be so tight that filing it should be a matter of picking from drop down menus on a form, and the implications of each choice should be common knowledge and taught in school. The form should be able to be filled out anonymously (as "owner of [X] site.") If you run a site without having filed one, though, you would lose legal protections as a publisher based on modding behavior. If somebody filing suit can point out any decisions that have been defined by law as constituting a specific degree of editorial control (examples: spam-control, abuse-control, subject-control, position-on-a-subject-control, arbitrary-control, etc.) then they will be responsible for libel/tort claims as a site for individual posts. A site that has filed a terms-of-service will get the benefit of the doubt, and the ability to push liability onto completely onto posters or maybe even individual mods. Those requirements would either be too onerous to run the walled gardens of Web 2.0 at scale and small players will have a profitable business opening again, or the big dogs would be forced to really bureaucratize or democratize, and small players will have a profitable business opening by providing them modding services at the forum level.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- not2b 6y ago
  I was a founding member of the egcs steering committee. When we were creating the rules, we had a debate over whether we should have a specific list of offenses that would allow us to ban someone: some wanted a specific list, others just wanted a supermajority to vote the person out. We settled on a 3/4 vote of steering committee members. I wrote the justification, saying that we shouldn't be stuck if someone came up with a new and creative way to cause damage. And sure enough, we only banned one person ever. We banned him because he made a series of scary threats against the release manager, including "I know where you live", but these threats were made off-list, it was a campaign of personal harassment because no one wanted this idiot's patches. Suppose we had forgotten to include threats of violence off-list in our expected set of rules? And remember, we were talking about our mailing lists, which are forums according to section 230. So, would we lose our section 230 protections under your proposal?

username90 6y ago

Spamming would go under harassment in most cases.

agrajag 6y ago

Yes, except for the fact that 1st amendment protections would still exist. How much protection that actually provides is unknown and it would need to be litigated to find out.

notahacker 6y ago
Suffice to say a redraft which means that you'll have to go to court to determine what types of content you are and aren't allowed to moderate without the side effect of becoming responsible for everything people say on your web property is not an improvement.
danShumway 6y ago
What does that mean? Off-topic discussion does not fall outside of the 1st Amendment, and a restriction of the 1st Amendment to try and classify that as somehow less deserving of protection -- that would be a much greater curtailment of 1st Amendment rights than anything Facebook has done. Bluntly, "would need to be litigated to find out" isn't an acceptable answer given that the people giving this answer are the same people proposing the legislation. Courts don't decide what the law is, they interpret it. You have to have an idea of what you want the law to be, you can't kick that off to the courts. They're trying to interpret your intention and the letter of the law you propose, not the other way around.

dd36 6y ago

What legal action would you be concerned about?

graeme 6y ago
If your forum had money, you’d be a sitting duck for someone claiming their rights were violated and demanding compensation.
- daniellarusso 6y ago
  Or once they obtain a judgement, seize your domain name.
- dd36 6y ago
  And they’d have to prove it in a court of law.

pessimizer 6y ago

This is the definitive question that has to be asked of anybody proposing a repeal of 230. I personally dislike 230, and have from the beginning, but anybody who doesn't have a direct and complete answer to this question isn't being serious. edit: I personally think that the answer is to standardize terms-of-service documents and to make them into real legal statements that both the website visitor and owner can make claims regarding, and that those statements be registered with a federal agency. The standardization should be so tight that filing it should be a matter of picking from drop down menus on a form, and the implications of each choice should be common knowledge and taught in school. The form should be able to be filled out anonymously (as "owner of [X] site.") If you run a site without having filed one, though, you would lose legal protections as a publisher based on modding behavior. If somebody filing suit can point out any decisions that have been defined by law as constituting a specific degree of editorial control (examples: spam-control, abuse-control, subject-control, position-on-a-subject-control, arbitrary-control, etc.) then they will be responsible for libel/tort claims as a site for individual posts. A site that has filed a terms-of-service will get the benefit of the doubt, and the ability to push liability onto completely onto posters or maybe even individual mods. Those requirements would either be too onerous to run the walled gardens of Web 2.0 at scale and small players will have a profitable business opening again, or the big dogs would be forced to really bureaucratize or democratize, and small players will have a profitable business opening by providing them modding services at the forum level.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
not2b 6y ago
I was a founding member of the egcs steering committee. When we were creating the rules, we had a debate over whether we should have a specific list of offenses that would allow us to ban someone: some wanted a specific list, others just wanted a supermajority to vote the person out. We settled on a 3/4 vote of steering committee members. I wrote the justification, saying that we shouldn't be stuck if someone came up with a new and creative way to cause damage. And sure enough, we only banned one person ever. We banned him because he made a series of scary threats against the release manager, including "I know where you live", but these threats were made off-list, it was a campaign of personal harassment because no one wanted this idiot's patches. Suppose we had forgotten to include threats of violence off-list in our expected set of rules? And remember, we were talking about our mailing lists, which are forums according to section 230. So, would we lose our section 230 protections under your proposal?