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I hope this leads to stripping Section 230 protections from social media companies.

Clubber 5y ago
So the wonderful thing about social media is we're back to having citizen reporters. News and information isn't just what CNN and Fox tells us what is news, it's now done the way it was originally envisioned: by citizens. This has given us insights into things like which companies are shady, the widespread practice police brutalization, and many other things. Removing section 230 will remove that platform and return us to the CNN and Fox being the gatekeepers of information I'm afraid. The better answer is to disallow social media companies to consolidate and monopolize. We already have the laws on the books.
- infamouscow 5y ago
  Do you seriously think if congress passed a law stripping Facebook and Twitter of Section 230 that somehow, overnight, they will just magically disappear from the world? I sure don't, especially since it costs money to moderate content.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >that somehow, overnight, they will just magically disappear from the world? Those are your words not mine. It wouldn't happen overnight, but it wouldn't be recognizable within a year or less. They would remove almost all content to avoid liability, absolutely. 230 shields them from liability for the content they host (for the most part). It would turn into nothing but network shows and commercials, just like TV was 10-20 years ago. Here's what EFF describes it, and they support keeping it. https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 Removing 230 would absolutely be an affront to citizens free speech and freedom to broadcast. I understand why people don't like it, but the alternative (removing it) is much, much worse. Think of it this way, say you hosted a blog on your own server and you had comments. Now once 230 gets repealed, you are open to lawsuits from anyone concerning any of the comments on your blog, including lawsuits with no merit that you still have to defend. Would you keep comments open? Probably not and even if you did, you probably wouldn't for long for one reason or the other (probably because you were sued). Hell, HN probably wouldn't even be the same. As soon as someone says x company sucks in a comment, HN is now open to a libel lawsuit, meritless or not. HN would have to decide if hiring full time moderators and a legal team for content would be worth the effort to keep the site up. It might be, but for many, if not most sites, it's not.
_-david-_ 5y ago
Just removing the otherwise objectionable portion would solve this problem and be less of a change along with being more likely to pass.
thereddaikon 5y ago
Section 230 is flawed but important. Sites shouldn't be punished due to the actions of users. However it should be amended to require sites to uphold certain speech protections of their users in order to receive section 230 protection. In other words making the decision to censor content that isn't illegal or beyond a reasonable standard of moderation (ie: removing spam and the like) means the site is taking responsibility for the content posted by users and therefore is liable for it. Simple as that, you can't have it both ways. I think the provision should also only come into effect above a certain size. We dont want the FCC coming down hard on the petunia enthusiast's forms because they banned someone for starting threads about something other than petunias. And I think reasonable people can agree on the idea of a forum growing large enough to defacto become "public". There is already a legal framework for treating private property as public forums, for example when city councils would meet on private property they couldn't censor discussion just because they weren't on public land.
dexen 5y ago
We can be a bit more specific to it: no automatically curated feed should qualify for the Section 230 protection. Simple feeds ordered by time (or however the original poster arranged it) with no suppression, should carry regular Section 230 protection in the usual way. We understand that feeds curated manually by platform employees doesn't qualify for Section 230 protection, example being any regular newspaper's articles. In case of online platforms, automatically curated feed should be legally similar, given that the automation is wholy created and maintained by the platform, for the express purpose of scaling out their manual processes.
- tacitusarc 5y ago
  What qualifies as automatically curated? If someone in India just presses a button all day to accept algorithmic feed curation recommendations, is that automatic or manual? Where is the line?

So the wonderful thing about social media is we're back to having citizen reporters. News and information isn't just what CNN and Fox tells us what is news, it's now done the way it was originally envisioned: by citizens. This has given us insights into things like which companies are shady, the widespread practice police brutalization, and many other things. Removing section 230 will remove that platform and return us to the CNN and Fox being the gatekeepers of information I'm afraid. The better answer is to disallow social media companies to consolidate and monopolize. We already have the laws on the books.

infamouscow 5y ago
Do you seriously think if congress passed a law stripping Facebook and Twitter of Section 230 that somehow, overnight, they will just magically disappear from the world? I sure don't, especially since it costs money to moderate content.
- Clubber 5y ago
  >that somehow, overnight, they will just magically disappear from the world? Those are your words not mine. It wouldn't happen overnight, but it wouldn't be recognizable within a year or less. They would remove almost all content to avoid liability, absolutely. 230 shields them from liability for the content they host (for the most part). It would turn into nothing but network shows and commercials, just like TV was 10-20 years ago. Here's what EFF describes it, and they support keeping it. https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 Removing 230 would absolutely be an affront to citizens free speech and freedom to broadcast. I understand why people don't like it, but the alternative (removing it) is much, much worse. Think of it this way, say you hosted a blog on your own server and you had comments. Now once 230 gets repealed, you are open to lawsuits from anyone concerning any of the comments on your blog, including lawsuits with no merit that you still have to defend. Would you keep comments open? Probably not and even if you did, you probably wouldn't for long for one reason or the other (probably because you were sued). Hell, HN probably wouldn't even be the same. As soon as someone says x company sucks in a comment, HN is now open to a libel lawsuit, meritless or not. HN would have to decide if hiring full time moderators and a legal team for content would be worth the effort to keep the site up. It might be, but for many, if not most sites, it's not.

_-david-_ 5y ago

Just removing the otherwise objectionable portion would solve this problem and be less of a change along with being more likely to pass.

thereddaikon 5y ago

Section 230 is flawed but important. Sites shouldn't be punished due to the actions of users. However it should be amended to require sites to uphold certain speech protections of their users in order to receive section 230 protection. In other words making the decision to censor content that isn't illegal or beyond a reasonable standard of moderation (ie: removing spam and the like) means the site is taking responsibility for the content posted by users and therefore is liable for it. Simple as that, you can't have it both ways. I think the provision should also only come into effect above a certain size. We dont want the FCC coming down hard on the petunia enthusiast's forms because they banned someone for starting threads about something other than petunias. And I think reasonable people can agree on the idea of a forum growing large enough to defacto become "public". There is already a legal framework for treating private property as public forums, for example when city councils would meet on private property they couldn't censor discussion just because they weren't on public land.

dexen 5y ago

We can be a bit more specific to it: no automatically curated feed should qualify for the Section 230 protection. Simple feeds ordered by time (or however the original poster arranged it) with no suppression, should carry regular Section 230 protection in the usual way. We understand that feeds curated manually by platform employees doesn't qualify for Section 230 protection, example being any regular newspaper's articles. In case of online platforms, automatically curated feed should be legally similar, given that the automation is wholy created and maintained by the platform, for the express purpose of scaling out their manual processes.

tacitusarc 5y ago
What qualifies as automatically curated? If someone in India just presses a button all day to accept algorithmic feed curation recommendations, is that automatic or manual? Where is the line?