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100%. By the same token, however, despite how Section 230 has come to be interpreted, I think these companies should be held responsible for the user-generated

100%. By the same token, however, despite how Section 230 has come to be interpreted, I think these companies should be held responsible for the user-generated content they publish. They should be publishing their own content not acting as middlemen, providing a so-called "platform". All in the interests of surveillance and selling advertising services. Telcos and cable providers provide access to the medium, i.e. the internet, whereas the web is just one protocol that allows internet users to publish. Having websites with 100s of millions of people posting to them is no substitute for peer-to-peer protocols (private communication) or websites owned by news organisations that employ journalists (publication).

root_axis 6y ago
In my view we should leave Section 230 alone, instead we should target the true incentive of bad behavior: the ad model. If it were illegal for companies that collect PII and track users across 3rd party sites to sell ad space on their platforms, all these companies would have to switch to a subscription model like Netflix, shifting the economic incentives to favor user retention rather than advertiser appetites. This means companies lose money when they ban people rather than make money by cutting their losses on viral bandwidth that's too toxic to monetize through ads.
- apple_innocent 6y ago
  Sounds good to me. And what is the gratuitously complex instrumentation by which all of these companies collect personal data and track users: the so-called "modern" web browser. Authored by, you guessed it, companies who rely on advertisers. They purport to do many other things, wonderfully idealistic and technically impressive things, besides supporting web advertising. Those alleged pursuits seem to keep everyone distracted from their raison d'etre: Make money from advertising.

root_axis 6y ago

In my view we should leave Section 230 alone, instead we should target the true incentive of bad behavior: the ad model. If it were illegal for companies that collect PII and track users across 3rd party sites to sell ad space on their platforms, all these companies would have to switch to a subscription model like Netflix, shifting the economic incentives to favor user retention rather than advertiser appetites. This means companies lose money when they ban people rather than make money by cutting their losses on viral bandwidth that's too toxic to monetize through ads.

apple_innocent 6y ago
Sounds good to me. And what is the gratuitously complex instrumentation by which all of these companies collect personal data and track users: the so-called "modern" web browser. Authored by, you guessed it, companies who rely on advertisers. They purport to do many other things, wonderfully idealistic and technically impressive things, besides supporting web advertising. Those alleged pursuits seem to keep everyone distracted from their raison d'etre: Make money from advertising.