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> Are you serious? Absolutely. I'm not saying that's the best possible solution, but it has the advantage of historical precedent for a similar problem: a few

> Are you serious? Absolutely. I'm not saying that's the best possible solution, but it has the advantage of historical precedent for a similar problem: a few companies have too much influence on public discussion. And it addresses the flaw in Section 230: companies that act like publishers but claim the protections of platforms. So is that the best reply you can come up with, or do you have any other reasonable objections besides those I've already addressed?

SllX 6y ago
Your proposal is for Congress to essentially blackmail server owners, note: not just corporations, but server owners with anything that can be called an “interactive computer service” such as a comments section, with an extant statutory liability shield, because the news media, note: not social media, not search engines, we were actually discussing the news media, are not viewpoint neutral. There is no such thing as viewpoint neutrality by the way so enjoy your selective enforcement. Your proposal as to how it could work amounts to while the First Amendment does say “Congress shall make no law etc.”, it doesn’t say anything at all about Congress not weasel around it, engage in political blackmail, and make bad law anyway”, just so you can get away with calling it “not technically compelled speech”. Your motivation appears to be to increase the number of forums in the broadest sense of the term in which people can talk freely as like if they were on government property instead of private property, at the expense of private property rights, that other thing that is integral to a free society and liberty. The mechanism by which you propose to do so would however provide a strong incentive for existing server owners to get out of the forum business thus actually reducing the total number of servers and services connected to the internet on which you can post. There isn’t anything I can say to your position that you haven’t said yourself if this is seriously your position. I mean it’s immoral, antithetical to both free speech as a cultural phenomenon as well as our laws, antithetical to private property rights, and probably also unconstitutional, and at the very least a massive abuse of legislative authority. I guess if you can convince Congress to pass your proposal, the New York Times and Fox News should also be quaking in their boots at the prospect of turning off their comments sections (do they even still have comments sections?). My recommendation instead is to make peace with the idea that there’s a website, podcast, subreddit, Facebook group, IRC, Slack and/or Discord channel for every opinion, every gradation of an opinion, and every type of audience. The web is a big place. Not quite as big as the Universe but from our puny positions with our lack of perspective it might as well be as big.
- leereeves 6y ago
  Almost every regulation on business could be considered "at the expense of private property rights". That doesn't matter to anyone except libertarians. Likewise, any law could be called "blackmail", because they all threaten negative consequences if someone doesn't do what the government says, but that doesn't matter to anyone at all. Those aren't serious objections to any regulation. And it's ironic to call this "antithetical to free speech as a cultural phenomenon" when this would be a defense of free speech for 99% of the population. The rights of a few billionaires who own web companies shouldn't trump the rights of the public. Finally, where do you get the idea that companies simply couldn't exist if they didn't remove user content that doesn't violate a few regulations the law would allow (like spam, threats, obscenity, and copyright, which would all be clearly Constitutional content-based exceptions)? That reddit, for example, would have to shut down if they hadn't banned The_Donald or ChapoTrapHouse? That would be a fair objection, if you can support it.
  - defen 6y ago
    > Finally, where do you get the idea that companies simply couldn't exist if they didn't remove user content that doesn't violate a few regulations the law would allow (like spam, threats, obscenity, and copyright, which would all be clearly Constitutional content-based exceptions)? So if I want to run a website with comments I need a lawyer to review each comment? Like how am I, a layman, supposed to determine whether a comment violates copyright or is actually fair use? Or whether it's a "true threat" as opposed to bluster ("Next person who comments about X is getting slapped")? What happens if I wrongly remove a comment?
    - leereeves 6y ago
      How that's different from any other business? Businesses have to remove disruptive customers, fire employees, etc; there are rules about that; and somehow they manage. Probably there would be exceptions for personal non-commercial sites and even small businesses. There's plenty of room for compromise between the status quo and draconian rules that shut down every website.
  - 6y ago

SllX 6y ago

Your proposal is for Congress to essentially blackmail server owners, note: not just corporations, but server owners with anything that can be called an “interactive computer service” such as a comments section, with an extant statutory liability shield, because the news media, note: not social media, not search engines, we were actually discussing the news media, are not viewpoint neutral. There is no such thing as viewpoint neutrality by the way so enjoy your selective enforcement. Your proposal as to how it could work amounts to while the First Amendment does say “Congress shall make no law etc.”, it doesn’t say anything at all about Congress not weasel around it, engage in political blackmail, and make bad law anyway”, just so you can get away with calling it “not technically compelled speech”. Your motivation appears to be to increase the number of forums in the broadest sense of the term in which people can talk freely as like if they were on government property instead of private property, at the expense of private property rights, that other thing that is integral to a free society and liberty. The mechanism by which you propose to do so would however provide a strong incentive for existing server owners to get out of the forum business thus actually reducing the total number of servers and services connected to the internet on which you can post. There isn’t anything I can say to your position that you haven’t said yourself if this is seriously your position. I mean it’s immoral, antithetical to both free speech as a cultural phenomenon as well as our laws, antithetical to private property rights, and probably also unconstitutional, and at the very least a massive abuse of legislative authority. I guess if you can convince Congress to pass your proposal, the New York Times and Fox News should also be quaking in their boots at the prospect of turning off their comments sections (do they even still have comments sections?). My recommendation instead is to make peace with the idea that there’s a website, podcast, subreddit, Facebook group, IRC, Slack and/or Discord channel for every opinion, every gradation of an opinion, and every type of audience. The web is a big place. Not quite as big as the Universe but from our puny positions with our lack of perspective it might as well be as big.

leereeves 6y ago
Almost every regulation on business could be considered "at the expense of private property rights". That doesn't matter to anyone except libertarians. Likewise, any law could be called "blackmail", because they all threaten negative consequences if someone doesn't do what the government says, but that doesn't matter to anyone at all. Those aren't serious objections to any regulation. And it's ironic to call this "antithetical to free speech as a cultural phenomenon" when this would be a defense of free speech for 99% of the population. The rights of a few billionaires who own web companies shouldn't trump the rights of the public. Finally, where do you get the idea that companies simply couldn't exist if they didn't remove user content that doesn't violate a few regulations the law would allow (like spam, threats, obscenity, and copyright, which would all be clearly Constitutional content-based exceptions)? That reddit, for example, would have to shut down if they hadn't banned The_Donald or ChapoTrapHouse? That would be a fair objection, if you can support it.
- defen 6y ago
  > Finally, where do you get the idea that companies simply couldn't exist if they didn't remove user content that doesn't violate a few regulations the law would allow (like spam, threats, obscenity, and copyright, which would all be clearly Constitutional content-based exceptions)? So if I want to run a website with comments I need a lawyer to review each comment? Like how am I, a layman, supposed to determine whether a comment violates copyright or is actually fair use? Or whether it's a "true threat" as opposed to bluster ("Next person who comments about X is getting slapped")? What happens if I wrongly remove a comment?
  - leereeves 6y ago
    How that's different from any other business? Businesses have to remove disruptive customers, fire employees, etc; there are rules about that; and somehow they manage. Probably there would be exceptions for personal non-commercial sites and even small businesses. There's plenty of room for compromise between the status quo and draconian rules that shut down every website.
- 6y ago