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> As this suggests, what the left and right really care about are the content moderation policies of Facebook, Twitter, and so on. And those, as it stands, have

> As this suggests, what the left and right really care about are the content moderation policies of Facebook, Twitter, and so on. And those, as it stands, have little to do with Section 230. > But content moderation, as an exercise of editorial discretion, is protected by the First Amendment. And that Congress can’t repeal. [1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/418/241.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/418/241.html

TameAntelope 6y ago
For folks (like me) who found the link a bit dense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Herald_Publishing_Co._v._Tornillo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Herald_Publishing_Co._v.... > Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974), was a United States Supreme Court case that overturned a Florida state law requiring newspapers to allow equal space in their newspapers to political candidates in the case of a political editorial or endorsement content.
me2021yuh 6y ago
But at what point does content moderation turn an editor into the speaker and thus liable? As an extreme case I could censor many letters of your post leaving only a few letters expressing something you never expressed. Many people I've heard from on the right are making this case, not arguing to abolish 230, just to clarify it such that moderation is a form of speech and thus invites liability. Even Dershowitz made that point.
- 8note 6y ago
  Section 230 is clear on that, isn't it? Does the moderation happen before or after the post is visible?
  - ttt0 6y ago
    On major platforms it's both
- mdpopescu 6y ago
  Censoring? I've had posts EDITED on a stack exchange platform. Multiple times, with the result saying the opposite of what I said. I did the only thing I could do, stopped using that site. Just like with Facebook :)
- zuminator 6y ago
  Selectively censoring letters so as to change the meaning of a post is not what is commonly thought of as moderation. Anyway, I think you’re losing the bead a little here. Speech isn’t liable because it’s speech. It’s liable because it’s slanderous or defamatory. So calling moderation “speech” doesn’t suddenly invite liability, unless we’re claiming that the very act of exclusion is prima facie defamation, which is a more dangerous idea than the problem you’re trying to solve in the first place. If moderation as such were to be actionable, then my shitty band could sue you for not including us in your shared Spotify playlist. It would open the door for any sort of public curation whatsoever to carry legal risks. Losing the tool of moderation would kill off this very forum, which would become overrun by crackpots, trolls, and V1Agra spam in short order. By pruning the weeds of bad-faith discourse, moderation allows good-faith open discussion to thrive.
imgabe 6y ago
If the speech on Twitter is Twitter’s speech, then if someone defames me on Twitter, I should be able to sue Twitter. Just like if a reporter in the New York Times defames someone, you sue the paper, not the reporter. If Twitter doesn’t have liability for the speech, then it belongs to the speaker and Twitter should have no obligation to censor it. They can’t have it both ways. Likewise Twitter and Facebook should be paying their users for providing content that they profit off of, like newspapers pay reporters. Then they can have standing to choose what they want to publish.
- 8note 6y ago
  Don't have an obligation to censor it, sure, but they'll never have an obligation to keep it up. If they run out of money, the servers go down and the posts stop being available. Unless the government is taking over paying for hosting the user content, the server owners will be able to not host it
  - 6510 6y ago
    I don't know. If I want to publish something I need a tool that publishes it. If everything can just vanish at any time it can have terrible consequences. Competing with businesses that are allowed to make false promises is really hard. I would have much rather paid in stead of losing the audience and the communities I build again and again and again and again until I just gave up. Before I deleted everything I had many thousands of well organized bookmarks gathered over decades. 90% of it was dead links. My blog is 90% dead links. Many people have some perverted fetish with deleting the proverbial geocities, I have hundreds of articles that don't function without. I'm not allowed to republish [your] lost content either.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  >Likewise Twitter and Facebook should be paying their users for providing content that they profit off of, like newspapers pay reporters. Then they can have standing to choose what they want to publish. What? This sounds like you're arguing that Twitter and Facebook are legally obligated to publish everything a user posts because they don't pay their users?
jerrya 6y ago
As absolutely not a lawyer, and acknowledging my huge ignorance I'd suggest that First Amendment processes are heard in court and protected by due process. Aren't they? For good or ill, §230 bypasses court hearings and due process and so I wonder if it is a) itself an unconstitutional denial of rights to the users, or b) actually just fine legally, however an overturning of it would not necessarily be an assault on the First Amendment, only on this congressional shortcut My "reform" of §230 would be to add on to this congressionally mandated shortcut with some form of due process to the users whose court rights have been bypassed -- if a site wants to use §230 protections, then they have to provide some form of due process to users, perhaps a timely takedown/suspension/banning appeals process, held in the open If a site doesn't want to provide that, then they can avail themselves of the First Amendment and their §230 immunities are stripped and they are open to lawsuits.
- XorNot 6y ago
  I'll post the same obligatory "actually read your Constitution" note: The first amendment protects US citizens right to speak freely in public and private venues from being retaliated against by the government. It specifically means you cannot be denied government services, support our rights because of any opinions you express publicly or privately. It does not and never has obligated any private persons or business to listen, rebroadcast, or not *react" to what you say. You have never been protected from the consequences of your speech within your community, nor has anyone been required to enable it. It has never been a protection against the speech of anyone else, for example rallying their community to speak against you or for other private services to deny you patronage.
  - jerrya 6y ago
    Apologies, but it's not clear to me the relevance of what you are saying to what I have posted. I don't think I'm asking for freedom from consequences for anyone, just the reverse of anything, I think sites should be granted 230 immunities but only if they provide some form of due process to users, and if they don't, users should be able to take sites to court just like they could if there was no 230.

TameAntelope 6y ago

For folks (like me) who found the link a bit dense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Herald_Publishing_Co._v._Tornillo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Herald_Publishing_Co._v.... > Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974), was a United States Supreme Court case that overturned a Florida state law requiring newspapers to allow equal space in their newspapers to political candidates in the case of a political editorial or endorsement content.

me2021yuh 6y ago

But at what point does content moderation turn an editor into the speaker and thus liable? As an extreme case I could censor many letters of your post leaving only a few letters expressing something you never expressed. Many people I've heard from on the right are making this case, not arguing to abolish 230, just to clarify it such that moderation is a form of speech and thus invites liability. Even Dershowitz made that point.

8note 6y ago
Section 230 is clear on that, isn't it? Does the moderation happen before or after the post is visible?
- ttt0 6y ago
  On major platforms it's both
mdpopescu 6y ago
Censoring? I've had posts EDITED on a stack exchange platform. Multiple times, with the result saying the opposite of what I said. I did the only thing I could do, stopped using that site. Just like with Facebook :)
zuminator 6y ago
Selectively censoring letters so as to change the meaning of a post is not what is commonly thought of as moderation. Anyway, I think you’re losing the bead a little here. Speech isn’t liable because it’s speech. It’s liable because it’s slanderous or defamatory. So calling moderation “speech” doesn’t suddenly invite liability, unless we’re claiming that the very act of exclusion is prima facie defamation, which is a more dangerous idea than the problem you’re trying to solve in the first place. If moderation as such were to be actionable, then my shitty band could sue you for not including us in your shared Spotify playlist. It would open the door for any sort of public curation whatsoever to carry legal risks. Losing the tool of moderation would kill off this very forum, which would become overrun by crackpots, trolls, and V1Agra spam in short order. By pruning the weeds of bad-faith discourse, moderation allows good-faith open discussion to thrive.

imgabe 6y ago

If the speech on Twitter is Twitter’s speech, then if someone defames me on Twitter, I should be able to sue Twitter. Just like if a reporter in the New York Times defames someone, you sue the paper, not the reporter. If Twitter doesn’t have liability for the speech, then it belongs to the speaker and Twitter should have no obligation to censor it. They can’t have it both ways. Likewise Twitter and Facebook should be paying their users for providing content that they profit off of, like newspapers pay reporters. Then they can have standing to choose what they want to publish.

8note 6y ago
Don't have an obligation to censor it, sure, but they'll never have an obligation to keep it up. If they run out of money, the servers go down and the posts stop being available. Unless the government is taking over paying for hosting the user content, the server owners will be able to not host it
- 6510 6y ago
  I don't know. If I want to publish something I need a tool that publishes it. If everything can just vanish at any time it can have terrible consequences. Competing with businesses that are allowed to make false promises is really hard. I would have much rather paid in stead of losing the audience and the communities I build again and again and again and again until I just gave up. Before I deleted everything I had many thousands of well organized bookmarks gathered over decades. 90% of it was dead links. My blog is 90% dead links. Many people have some perverted fetish with deleting the proverbial geocities, I have hundreds of articles that don't function without. I'm not allowed to republish [your] lost content either.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
>Likewise Twitter and Facebook should be paying their users for providing content that they profit off of, like newspapers pay reporters. Then they can have standing to choose what they want to publish. What? This sounds like you're arguing that Twitter and Facebook are legally obligated to publish everything a user posts because they don't pay their users?

jerrya 6y ago

As absolutely not a lawyer, and acknowledging my huge ignorance I'd suggest that First Amendment processes are heard in court and protected by due process. Aren't they? For good or ill, §230 bypasses court hearings and due process and so I wonder if it is a) itself an unconstitutional denial of rights to the users, or b) actually just fine legally, however an overturning of it would not necessarily be an assault on the First Amendment, only on this congressional shortcut My "reform" of §230 would be to add on to this congressionally mandated shortcut with some form of due process to the users whose court rights have been bypassed -- if a site wants to use §230 protections, then they have to provide some form of due process to users, perhaps a timely takedown/suspension/banning appeals process, held in the open If a site doesn't want to provide that, then they can avail themselves of the First Amendment and their §230 immunities are stripped and they are open to lawsuits.

XorNot 6y ago
I'll post the same obligatory "actually read your Constitution" note: The first amendment protects US citizens right to speak freely in public and private venues from being retaliated against by the government. It specifically means you cannot be denied government services, support our rights because of any opinions you express publicly or privately. It does not and never has obligated any private persons or business to listen, rebroadcast, or not *react" to what you say. You have never been protected from the consequences of your speech within your community, nor has anyone been required to enable it. It has never been a protection against the speech of anyone else, for example rallying their community to speak against you or for other private services to deny you patronage.
- jerrya 6y ago
  Apologies, but it's not clear to me the relevance of what you are saying to what I have posted. I don't think I'm asking for freedom from consequences for anyone, just the reverse of anything, I think sites should be granted 230 immunities but only if they provide some form of due process to users, and if they don't, users should be able to take sites to court just like they could if there was no 230.