8 ms·

I expect that you are correct. However, allowing an org to act as a publisher by heavily curating who is allowed to use their 'forum' is having wide-ranging con

I expect that you are correct. However, allowing an org to act as a publisher by heavily curating who is allowed to use their 'forum' is having wide-ranging consequences for our society. As they are occupying a spot in the regulatory scheme that they no longer deserve, redressing this with regulation is necessary.

tptacek 6y ago
I don't think anyone wants another long thread recapitulating the whole debate about Twitter's obligations to to society; they can just read the thousands of HN comments that have been written in the last week about it. What I will say is, however you hope to resolve this problem, eliminating the 230 protections is probably not the right way to go about it if you want providers like Twitter to be less intrusive, or for alternative venues to be viable at all. I think the only coherent "free speech" strategy that involves attacking 230 is accelerationism; that maybe by blowing up the US commercial Internet we'll somehow all migrate to a completely free blockchain Internet run out of the Azores or something.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  What do you think about not nuking 230, but making its protections reliant on specific conduct? We can sidestep the 1A issue altogether since these companies would do anything to avoid being held responsible for the libelous, harassing, defamatory, threatening and sometimes terroristic content that their users post every day. That is nothing short of a gift given by the government, and it can be modified or restricted. Moderation doesn't scale, so I think this is a case of either do what 230 requires or cease existing as a going concern - either of these would be good outcomes, so this is a powerful lever. Some ideas in no particular order; a platform owner is only shielded from liability inasmuch as they (choose as many as applicable): 1. Provide a forthright accounting of any negative actions taken against an account (no shadowbans, no silent editing or hiding of content from discovery) at the time the action is taken with a forthright explanation of how the conduct broke the stated rules. 2. Provide an appeals process for bans/negative actions run by a neutral third party, with any ambiguity resolved in favor of the appellant. 3. Do not make or enforce ex-post-facto rule changes 4. Demonstrate no pattern of unfair or unequal application of the stated rules 5. If a ban is issued, a "wind-down" period must be granted to allow the banned user time to move what they can of their social network somewhere else. 6. Upon request, your own account's data must be provided in full. OR 7. Remain completely hands-off from a content removal standpoint. Content is removed if it is either literally illegal or breaks the service and under no other circumstance. This last one would still allow for spam filtering and content categorization, which would allow the user experience to change little from today, and puts the most control in the hands of individual users.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    I think policy intervention that is backstopped by threats to remove provider liability protections is going to backfire, because when you get when providers are liable is radically more intrusive moderation, not less moderation. As a matter of principle, any regulatory regime that would put HN as Dan moderates it at risk is bad, and what you're proposing would seem to threaten HN. All your bullets here seem like things that will pull providers into litigation.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      It would make sense to combine these ideas with a circuit breaker that only kicks in once you have a certain MAU count. Having it apply to every forum everywhere would suck and be unworkable, but once you're at Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. levels of exposure, there are a different set of interests and responsibilities to society in play.
      - tptacek 6y ago
        You seem to be describing a scheme where Twitter is legally required to be very careful about moderation, but Parler isn't, which seems crazy to me. Also, it doesn't address other vehicles for suppressing toxic speech; for instance, no 230 change you come up with is going to obligate cloud providers to do business with Parler and StormFront. I should add a point I should have made earlier, which is that 230 is in no way based on a notion of being "publishers" or "platforms". That's a super common misconception about the law.
        Karunamon 6y ago
        Not at all. In my ideal world, Parler would have the same restrictions applied, and would have fallen afoul of point 4 at the very least, given their massive popularity spike. They also weren't completely hands off, so the last option is off the table for them. That ambiguity is precisely what I try to address. That distinction might not exist now, but it arguably should.
  - 6y ago

tptacek 6y ago

I don't think anyone wants another long thread recapitulating the whole debate about Twitter's obligations to to society; they can just read the thousands of HN comments that have been written in the last week about it. What I will say is, however you hope to resolve this problem, eliminating the 230 protections is probably not the right way to go about it if you want providers like Twitter to be less intrusive, or for alternative venues to be viable at all. I think the only coherent "free speech" strategy that involves attacking 230 is accelerationism; that maybe by blowing up the US commercial Internet we'll somehow all migrate to a completely free blockchain Internet run out of the Azores or something.

Karunamon 6y ago
What do you think about not nuking 230, but making its protections reliant on specific conduct? We can sidestep the 1A issue altogether since these companies would do anything to avoid being held responsible for the libelous, harassing, defamatory, threatening and sometimes terroristic content that their users post every day. That is nothing short of a gift given by the government, and it can be modified or restricted. Moderation doesn't scale, so I think this is a case of either do what 230 requires or cease existing as a going concern - either of these would be good outcomes, so this is a powerful lever. Some ideas in no particular order; a platform owner is only shielded from liability inasmuch as they (choose as many as applicable): 1. Provide a forthright accounting of any negative actions taken against an account (no shadowbans, no silent editing or hiding of content from discovery) at the time the action is taken with a forthright explanation of how the conduct broke the stated rules. 2. Provide an appeals process for bans/negative actions run by a neutral third party, with any ambiguity resolved in favor of the appellant. 3. Do not make or enforce ex-post-facto rule changes 4. Demonstrate no pattern of unfair or unequal application of the stated rules 5. If a ban is issued, a "wind-down" period must be granted to allow the banned user time to move what they can of their social network somewhere else. 6. Upon request, your own account's data must be provided in full. OR 7. Remain completely hands-off from a content removal standpoint. Content is removed if it is either literally illegal or breaks the service and under no other circumstance. This last one would still allow for spam filtering and content categorization, which would allow the user experience to change little from today, and puts the most control in the hands of individual users.
- tptacek 6y ago
  I think policy intervention that is backstopped by threats to remove provider liability protections is going to backfire, because when you get when providers are liable is radically more intrusive moderation, not less moderation. As a matter of principle, any regulatory regime that would put HN as Dan moderates it at risk is bad, and what you're proposing would seem to threaten HN. All your bullets here seem like things that will pull providers into litigation.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    It would make sense to combine these ideas with a circuit breaker that only kicks in once you have a certain MAU count. Having it apply to every forum everywhere would suck and be unworkable, but once you're at Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. levels of exposure, there are a different set of interests and responsibilities to society in play.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      You seem to be describing a scheme where Twitter is legally required to be very careful about moderation, but Parler isn't, which seems crazy to me. Also, it doesn't address other vehicles for suppressing toxic speech; for instance, no 230 change you come up with is going to obligate cloud providers to do business with Parler and StormFront. I should add a point I should have made earlier, which is that 230 is in no way based on a notion of being "publishers" or "platforms". That's a super common misconception about the law.
      - Karunamon 6y ago
        Not at all. In my ideal world, Parler would have the same restrictions applied, and would have fallen afoul of point 4 at the very least, given their massive popularity spike. They also weren't completely hands off, so the last option is off the table for them. That ambiguity is precisely what I try to address. That distinction might not exist now, but it arguably should.
- 6y ago