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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 alo

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that what people misunderstand is the pre-230 conditions that led to its creation, which we would return to if it were repealed and not replaced with something else.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.
  - paulgb 6y ago
    That’s fair, I think it’s safe to say nobody really knows what the second- and third- order effects of 230 repeal would be. An optimistic take is that we would revert to a ~2008 internet where Twitter and Facebook are much less dominant and “the feed” is a self-curated list of RSS feeds (or ActivityPub subscriptions). A more pessimistic one is that we all run for cover in private self-moderated Slacks and WhatsApp groups.
cujo 6y ago
You can't say this law is misunderstood. How many people do you think have ever read the text of this law that are making claims on it? Even in this thread it's clear that way too many commenters haven't read the article in question. 230 isn't complicated. People's ability/willingness to read and interpret it outside of online rhetoric is a problem.

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.
- paulgb 6y ago
  That’s fair, I think it’s safe to say nobody really knows what the second- and third- order effects of 230 repeal would be. An optimistic take is that we would revert to a ~2008 internet where Twitter and Facebook are much less dominant and “the feed” is a self-curated list of RSS feeds (or ActivityPub subscriptions). A more pessimistic one is that we all run for cover in private self-moderated Slacks and WhatsApp groups.

cujo 6y ago

You can't say this law is misunderstood. How many people do you think have ever read the text of this law that are making claims on it? Even in this thread it's clear that way too many commenters haven't read the article in question. 230 isn't complicated. People's ability/willingness to read and interpret it outside of online rhetoric is a problem.