4 ms·

A possibile solution is changes to section 230. I saw a good approach last year that you can read about here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/washington-

by kyrra 5y ago

A possibile solution is changes to section 230. I saw a good approach last year that you can read about here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/washington-can-put-a-stop-to-twitters-game-playing-on-censorship/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/washington-can-put-a-... The key bit was a recommendation from the Trump DOJ, which said: > The Justice Department, which last month announced recommended amendments to the statute, has suggested that Congress replace “otherwise objectionable” with “unlawful” and “promotes terrorism.” Which is in detail here: https://www.justice.gov/archives/ag/department-justice-s-review-section-230-communications-decency-act-1996 https://www.justice.gov/archives/ag/department-justice-s-rev...

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Make that change, and watch the definition of "terrorism" expand out of all recognition.
- kyrra 5y ago
  Agreed. Terrorism seems like it is unneeded.
geofft 5y ago
Reducing Section 230 protections is a giveaway to Big Tech. Remember that the thing Section 230 does is not that it permits you to moderate; the thing it does is that it permits you to moderate without taking liability for defamation posted by users (and other similar illegal content, but defamation was the motivating goal). One forum, CompuServe, didn't moderate anything, and wasn't held liable. Another forum, Prodigy, moderated a little bit and was. Lawmakers realized this created a clear incentive not to moderate, which goes backwards from the intended goal of defamation law of preventing defamatory speech. Hence Section 230. You can still moderate in a world without Section 230, provided that you do so well enough to protect yourself from liability, and you have the resources to fight any cases that arise against you. Who has the ability to do that? Big Tech. Platforms like Facebook will be able to cope with a weakened Section 230 just fine, while still moderating. They'll end up moderating much more aggressively, in fact, instead of deciding to host unmoderated content - because their paying customers are advertisers, not users, and advertisers don't want to pay to put ads on unmoderated forums. (Compare Facebook's advertising revenue with 4chan's.) But it's the smaller platforms, like this very site, blogs with comment sections, hobbyist-run Mastodons, etc. that will have trouble. They, also, won't decide to post all content without moderation; even in the world as it already is, so many blogs decided to stop having comment sections because they become swamps full of spam. YC runs HN because it reflects well on them; if they were unable to moderate, it wouldn't be worth their time. So a founder thinking of taking on Big Tech and making their own, better communication forum will realize that their options are to make an entirely unmoderated forum, something that people demonstrably won't prefer to the options they already have, or to spend a huge amount of time and money on moderating their forums as well as Big Tech does. And their potential investors will realize this too. And those companies just won't get started. (You might say, if this is all true, why was Big Tech so opposed to the Trump DOJ's proposals to reform Section 230? They weren't, they loved those proposals. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/544707-facebooks-zuckerberg-proposes-conditional-section-230-reforms https://thehill.com/policy/technology/544707-facebooks-zucke... Remember that Big Tech is the enemy, and they control what you hear.)
- kyrra 5y ago
  I agree that without Section 230 a company is effectively a publisher and takes responsibility for all content on the sites they host. I feel like that section should somehow be tailored to promote the First Amendment to let people say what they can that is legal. If you want protection from liability, you should allow people to post what they want as long as it's not illegal and then remove illegal content in a Good Samaritan or good faith effort. Then users of the big sites will know if they are under the section 230 bucket or not. Right now, it's very easy to just say that you're doing it under section 230 because of the Catch all wording. Doing this would allow people that did have their content moderated and the company said they were operating under section 230 to contest things that were removed if it is not illegal. This likely does open up the internet to a big troll fest, and it makes how algorithms rank things very interesting
  - geofft 5y ago
    How do you envision HN working under such regulations? If I spam my startup on every post (which is clearly not in any of the exceptions to First Amendment protection), are they allowed to remove my comments or ban my account? What liability do they incur from doing so? Must they also remove anonymous posts complaining about employment at Amazon or whatever, because those defame Amazon?
    - username90 5y ago
      Just say companies are counted as general social media after some % user penetration. Facebook with over 2 billion users is obviously a general social media site and should therefore have similar restrictions on what they can restrict as state governments, they can't be about some special topic with that many users. State governments do have the power to remove harassment and porn from public areas, so it could continue as is minus the political stuff. HN with almost no users can continue as is.

by kyrra 5y ago

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Make that change, and watch the definition of "terrorism" expand out of all recognition.

kyrra 5y ago
Agreed. Terrorism seems like it is unneeded.

geofft 5y ago

Reducing Section 230 protections is a giveaway to Big Tech. Remember that the thing Section 230 does is not that it permits you to moderate; the thing it does is that it permits you to moderate without taking liability for defamation posted by users (and other similar illegal content, but defamation was the motivating goal). One forum, CompuServe, didn't moderate anything, and wasn't held liable. Another forum, Prodigy, moderated a little bit and was. Lawmakers realized this created a clear incentive not to moderate, which goes backwards from the intended goal of defamation law of preventing defamatory speech. Hence Section 230. You can still moderate in a world without Section 230, provided that you do so well enough to protect yourself from liability, and you have the resources to fight any cases that arise against you. Who has the ability to do that? Big Tech. Platforms like Facebook will be able to cope with a weakened Section 230 just fine, while still moderating. They'll end up moderating much more aggressively, in fact, instead of deciding to host unmoderated content - because their paying customers are advertisers, not users, and advertisers don't want to pay to put ads on unmoderated forums. (Compare Facebook's advertising revenue with 4chan's.) But it's the smaller platforms, like this very site, blogs with comment sections, hobbyist-run Mastodons, etc. that will have trouble. They, also, won't decide to post all content without moderation; even in the world as it already is, so many blogs decided to stop having comment sections because they become swamps full of spam. YC runs HN because it reflects well on them; if they were unable to moderate, it wouldn't be worth their time. So a founder thinking of taking on Big Tech and making their own, better communication forum will realize that their options are to make an entirely unmoderated forum, something that people demonstrably won't prefer to the options they already have, or to spend a huge amount of time and money on moderating their forums as well as Big Tech does. And their potential investors will realize this too. And those companies just won't get started. (You might say, if this is all true, why was Big Tech so opposed to the Trump DOJ's proposals to reform Section 230? They weren't, they loved those proposals. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/544707-facebooks-zuckerberg-proposes-conditional-section-230-reforms https://thehill.com/policy/technology/544707-facebooks-zucke... Remember that Big Tech is the enemy, and they control what you hear.)

kyrra 5y ago
I agree that without Section 230 a company is effectively a publisher and takes responsibility for all content on the sites they host. I feel like that section should somehow be tailored to promote the First Amendment to let people say what they can that is legal. If you want protection from liability, you should allow people to post what they want as long as it's not illegal and then remove illegal content in a Good Samaritan or good faith effort. Then users of the big sites will know if they are under the section 230 bucket or not. Right now, it's very easy to just say that you're doing it under section 230 because of the Catch all wording. Doing this would allow people that did have their content moderated and the company said they were operating under section 230 to contest things that were removed if it is not illegal. This likely does open up the internet to a big troll fest, and it makes how algorithms rank things very interesting
- geofft 5y ago
  How do you envision HN working under such regulations? If I spam my startup on every post (which is clearly not in any of the exceptions to First Amendment protection), are they allowed to remove my comments or ban my account? What liability do they incur from doing so? Must they also remove anonymous posts complaining about employment at Amazon or whatever, because those defame Amazon?
  - username90 5y ago
    Just say companies are counted as general social media after some % user penetration. Facebook with over 2 billion users is obviously a general social media site and should therefore have similar restrictions on what they can restrict as state governments, they can't be about some special topic with that many users. State governments do have the power to remove harassment and porn from public areas, so it could continue as is minus the political stuff. HN with almost no users can continue as is.