6 ms·

It fascinates me that the people most offended by the recent actions of google, amazon, facebook, etc are the ones pushing for the repeal of section 230.

valvar 6y ago
Yes, it's quite strange, but I'm guessing it's mostly due to media disinformation about section 230. People who are actually informed and in favour of free speech and opposed to megacorp oligopolies are strongly opposing changing section 230. Rather, they advocate breaking up the megacorps or making them utilities.
- hammock 6y ago
  I've heard this before, and I'm so confused by section 230. Where can I read some reliable info on it?
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actually https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actua...
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    In addition to NikolaeVarius' link, here's the law itself: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 It's a quick read, it's not long, and it's actually reasonably clear what it does and does not do.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    Ars Technica's got a good explainer, including bits on why the law was enacted and what a purported legal framework without it might look like: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-internet-law-politicians-love-to-hate-explained/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-...
  - nenadst 6y ago
    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
commandlinefan 6y ago
Maybe not repealed, but amended. Section 230 _allows_ for good-faith moderation, but says nothing about bad faith moderation. As much as I hate more legalese and overregulation, it's become pretty clear that these people can't be trusted to act with impunity, so an amendment to section 230 that prohibits arbitrary moderation might help. If you want to host user generated content, and not be held liable for it in a journalistic way, you can only remove content that violates specific, clear, well-defined guidelines.
- moate 6y ago
  Hi there. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello... Your thesis is flawed. You can't define "good faith" in any real way. You either have to accept that sites will be moderated and some number of people will disagree with the moderation, or you have to swing HARD in the opposite direction and decide all sites are now publishers and responsible for all content on their sites including user created content.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    Or you could define an objective standard by which platforms should moderate their content.
    - moate 6y ago
      HN posting rules require me to say more than just "LOLOK" so we'll go with this: That standard doesn't exist and isn't objective. No, even that really clever one you're about to come up with. It's not real. It's all subjective. The entire US legal system is a "Common-law" legal system, meaning it's all subjective. Objective is for mathematics, not the law. *edited for typo
      - CivBase 6y ago
        The quality of laws is also subjective, yet we've somehow managed to come up with working governments that operate somewhere between tyranny and anarchy.
chr1 6y ago
They most likely misunderstand what is being proposed, most people think the proposal is to limit section 230 only to services that do not censor user content.
inglor_cz 6y ago
I am offended by the recent actions of digital giants and I never called for repeal of S230. This is fairly clearly an antitrust case, which has nothing to do with S230. Behavior of the digital giants is very similar to the behavior of railroad oligopolies of the 19th century which actually led to antitrust legislation.
- eejit_compiler 6y ago
  How is it an antitrust case? Amazon doesn't have a monopoly on hosting internet services. And there is no oligopoly for this line of business, there are many thousands of suitable providers worldwide. It would be different if, say, CenturyLink were blocking content across their transit infrastructure. That would be more like your railroad analogy.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    Antitrust legislation isn't built around 100 % monopoly, but rather dominant force and cartel-like behavior, especially if they act to suppress growth of potential competitors. This is the core of antitrust jurisprudence: markets only work in presence of vigorous competition, but big incumbents are highly motivated to obtain so much influence that significant competition does not have a real chance to grow and threaten them. There is a longish recent staff report on the Web of the Congress regarding behavior of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook (almost 500 pages) [0]. I actually read most of it. These platforms have already engaged in a lot of stuff that is anti-competitive. And the latest purge of Parler is, among other effects, also a suppression of a potential competitor. Of course, the tech giants say that they weren't officially motivated by a desire to suppress a competitor, but they acted against potentially competing firms so many times already that one should be wary about their explanations. [0] https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...
    - eejit_compiler 6y ago
      Thanks for clarifying your position, but I still don't quite see how this applies to Parler in terms of their decision to host upon AWS. There are many thousands of other hosting companies worldwide, they didn't have to use one of the big three IaaS providers. It seems more like poor planning on their part: over-reliance on specific services of a single provider, and no disaster recovery plan for if this is made unavailable. Particularly considering the business they're in - publishing controversial content that gets its users banned on more mainstream social media sites. They would have been wise to have a backup plan for hosting. On the other hand, if you were also passing reference to the app store duopoly (as the report mentions this), I agree with you on that. At least on Android a banned app can be fairly easily side-loaded; iOS users are entirely subject to Apple's whims on what their device is permitted to run.
sascha_sl 6y ago
In the same way that you'd be fascinated by Trump wanting to "open up those libal laws" when he himself would be severely affected (but could probably mitigate it away with enough lawyers)? It's a special form of doublethink where aesthetics and actions can go into completely opposite directions. Many republican campaigns have made great use of this, particularly to appeal to rural america.
toast0 6y ago
Whatever you didn't like about recent actions of tech companies, section 230 made it possible. If they should have cut people off earlier and didn't, or haven't gone far enough, section 230 says they have no liability to moderate, unless specific other liabilities apply. If they cut people off that you don't think is appropriate, section 230 says they have no liability from moderation that they've taken, other than implicit liability of violating constitutional rights (which would need new case law to establish, if it's 1st ammendment speech)
neuland 6y ago
It's not strange if you view it through from their point of view. Rightly or wrongly, these people just want to see much less centralized moderation. And they feel unherd and oppressed (again regardless of whether that's actually true, that's what they experience and feel). They see things in a more absolutist free speech lens, meaning any content that is legal should be allowed. And they don't see platforms as being responsible for moderation. They view centralized moderation as inherently biased and illegitimate. If they can't or wont allow legal speech, then they think 230 should be repealed and these sites should cease to exist. They are reacting to takedowns from social media sites, SaaS providers, IaaS providers, and financial services because they view these sites as an oligopoly acting in unison to bar them from the basic infrastructure of modern life. Imagine if typewriter companies ganged up to stop selling to right leaning newspapers and authors. Or, imagine if telegraph companies said they wouldn't transmit messages for Abraham Lincon. On 230, they see social media sites as a monopoly due to network effects. Also/alternatively they talk about a bait-and-switch, where the social media sites held themselves out as public squares when they were small. But once they were big, they started enforcing their views. Generally, I think people are failing to put themselves in a Trump supporter's shoes. Imagine you genuinely believed that the election was stolen. The court cases were almost all dismissed on standing and laches. From their perspective, no one will substantively address their videos, affidavits, statistical anomalies, etc. And when they protest, people call them violent insurrectionists, despite all year BLM doing very similar things (again from their perspective).
khawkins 6y ago
Section 230(b): It is the policy of the United States- (1) to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media; (2) to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation; (3) to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services; ... Up until now, a Laissez-faire regulatory approach seemed to achieve these goals, but it's hardly fair to call what exists at this point a "vibrant and competitive free market" which "maximizes user control over what information is receives by individuals". Especially if a cartel of tech platforms can completely stamp out individuals' ability to listen to the speech of people they want access to. Regulation is needed now.

valvar 6y ago

Yes, it's quite strange, but I'm guessing it's mostly due to media disinformation about section 230. People who are actually informed and in favour of free speech and opposed to megacorp oligopolies are strongly opposing changing section 230. Rather, they advocate breaking up the megacorps or making them utilities.

hammock 6y ago
I've heard this before, and I'm so confused by section 230. Where can I read some reliable info on it?
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actually https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-actua...
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  In addition to NikolaeVarius' link, here's the law itself: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 It's a quick read, it's not long, and it's actually reasonably clear what it does and does not do.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Ars Technica's got a good explainer, including bits on why the law was enacted and what a purported legal framework without it might look like: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-internet-law-politicians-love-to-hate-explained/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/section-230-the-...
- nenadst 6y ago
  https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

commandlinefan 6y ago

Maybe not repealed, but amended. Section 230 _allows_ for good-faith moderation, but says nothing about bad faith moderation. As much as I hate more legalese and overregulation, it's become pretty clear that these people can't be trusted to act with impunity, so an amendment to section 230 that prohibits arbitrary moderation might help. If you want to host user generated content, and not be held liable for it in a journalistic way, you can only remove content that violates specific, clear, well-defined guidelines.

moate 6y ago
Hi there. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello... Your thesis is flawed. You can't define "good faith" in any real way. You either have to accept that sites will be moderated and some number of people will disagree with the moderation, or you have to swing HARD in the opposite direction and decide all sites are now publishers and responsible for all content on their sites including user created content.
- CivBase 6y ago
  Or you could define an objective standard by which platforms should moderate their content.
  - moate 6y ago
    HN posting rules require me to say more than just "LOLOK" so we'll go with this: That standard doesn't exist and isn't objective. No, even that really clever one you're about to come up with. It's not real. It's all subjective. The entire US legal system is a "Common-law" legal system, meaning it's all subjective. Objective is for mathematics, not the law. *edited for typo
    - CivBase 6y ago
      The quality of laws is also subjective, yet we've somehow managed to come up with working governments that operate somewhere between tyranny and anarchy.

chr1 6y ago

They most likely misunderstand what is being proposed, most people think the proposal is to limit section 230 only to services that do not censor user content.

inglor_cz 6y ago

I am offended by the recent actions of digital giants and I never called for repeal of S230. This is fairly clearly an antitrust case, which has nothing to do with S230. Behavior of the digital giants is very similar to the behavior of railroad oligopolies of the 19th century which actually led to antitrust legislation.

eejit_compiler 6y ago
How is it an antitrust case? Amazon doesn't have a monopoly on hosting internet services. And there is no oligopoly for this line of business, there are many thousands of suitable providers worldwide. It would be different if, say, CenturyLink were blocking content across their transit infrastructure. That would be more like your railroad analogy.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Antitrust legislation isn't built around 100 % monopoly, but rather dominant force and cartel-like behavior, especially if they act to suppress growth of potential competitors. This is the core of antitrust jurisprudence: markets only work in presence of vigorous competition, but big incumbents are highly motivated to obtain so much influence that significant competition does not have a real chance to grow and threaten them. There is a longish recent staff report on the Web of the Congress regarding behavior of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook (almost 500 pages) [0]. I actually read most of it. These platforms have already engaged in a lot of stuff that is anti-competitive. And the latest purge of Parler is, among other effects, also a suppression of a potential competitor. Of course, the tech giants say that they weren't officially motivated by a desire to suppress a competitor, but they acted against potentially competing firms so many times already that one should be wary about their explanations. [0] https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...
  - eejit_compiler 6y ago
    Thanks for clarifying your position, but I still don't quite see how this applies to Parler in terms of their decision to host upon AWS. There are many thousands of other hosting companies worldwide, they didn't have to use one of the big three IaaS providers. It seems more like poor planning on their part: over-reliance on specific services of a single provider, and no disaster recovery plan for if this is made unavailable. Particularly considering the business they're in - publishing controversial content that gets its users banned on more mainstream social media sites. They would have been wise to have a backup plan for hosting. On the other hand, if you were also passing reference to the app store duopoly (as the report mentions this), I agree with you on that. At least on Android a banned app can be fairly easily side-loaded; iOS users are entirely subject to Apple's whims on what their device is permitted to run.

sascha_sl 6y ago

In the same way that you'd be fascinated by Trump wanting to "open up those libal laws" when he himself would be severely affected (but could probably mitigate it away with enough lawyers)? It's a special form of doublethink where aesthetics and actions can go into completely opposite directions. Many republican campaigns have made great use of this, particularly to appeal to rural america.

toast0 6y ago

Whatever you didn't like about recent actions of tech companies, section 230 made it possible. If they should have cut people off earlier and didn't, or haven't gone far enough, section 230 says they have no liability to moderate, unless specific other liabilities apply. If they cut people off that you don't think is appropriate, section 230 says they have no liability from moderation that they've taken, other than implicit liability of violating constitutional rights (which would need new case law to establish, if it's 1st ammendment speech)

neuland 6y ago

It's not strange if you view it through from their point of view. Rightly or wrongly, these people just want to see much less centralized moderation. And they feel unherd and oppressed (again regardless of whether that's actually true, that's what they experience and feel). They see things in a more absolutist free speech lens, meaning any content that is legal should be allowed. And they don't see platforms as being responsible for moderation. They view centralized moderation as inherently biased and illegitimate. If they can't or wont allow legal speech, then they think 230 should be repealed and these sites should cease to exist. They are reacting to takedowns from social media sites, SaaS providers, IaaS providers, and financial services because they view these sites as an oligopoly acting in unison to bar them from the basic infrastructure of modern life. Imagine if typewriter companies ganged up to stop selling to right leaning newspapers and authors. Or, imagine if telegraph companies said they wouldn't transmit messages for Abraham Lincon. On 230, they see social media sites as a monopoly due to network effects. Also/alternatively they talk about a bait-and-switch, where the social media sites held themselves out as public squares when they were small. But once they were big, they started enforcing their views. Generally, I think people are failing to put themselves in a Trump supporter's shoes. Imagine you genuinely believed that the election was stolen. The court cases were almost all dismissed on standing and laches. From their perspective, no one will substantively address their videos, affidavits, statistical anomalies, etc. And when they protest, people call them violent insurrectionists, despite all year BLM doing very similar things (again from their perspective).

khawkins 6y ago

Section 230(b): It is the policy of the United States- (1) to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media; (2) to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation; (3) to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services; ... Up until now, a Laissez-faire regulatory approach seemed to achieve these goals, but it's hardly fair to call what exists at this point a "vibrant and competitive free market" which "maximizes user control over what information is receives by individuals". Especially if a cartel of tech platforms can completely stamp out individuals' ability to listen to the speech of people they want access to. Regulation is needed now.