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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

by 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

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.