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IANAL, but ... Section 230 says that ISPs are not treated as the publisher or speaker of what their users publish or say. That does not mean that prosecutors c

by hrunt 6y ago

IANAL, but ... Section 230 says that ISPs are not treated as the publisher or speaker of what their users publish or say. That does not mean that prosecutors cannot try to find companies criminally responsible for allowing users to post illegal content on their platforms, especially if they have knowledge of such content. See Backpage. And even if the companies win, the battle itself is quite damaging. Furthermore, Section 230 says nothing about how the court of public opinion will treat the provider. These companies are thinking about more than just the legal repercussions. If their business suffers because people do not want to do work with companies that support this kind of content, then all the Section 230 protections in the world will not bring in revenue.

kristofferR 6y ago
Parler is removing illegal content and encouragement of violence, they've just been unable to completely do so due to massive growth. They're not like Backpage at all in that regard (and that verdict was harmful regardless). All the violent parleys Amazon mentioned are from nobodies and they have barely any upvotes. You're right with the second paragraph though, in the US de-facto monopolistic companies are allowed to discriminate their customers regardless of public interest. Visa and Mastercard is allowed to ban Wikileaks from receiving any donations at all (thank God for cryptocurrencies) since they posted info about war crimes and Amazon is allowed to ban social networks that doesn't fact check. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be that way. Public interests needs some protection, even though companies are the suppliers.