5 ms·

Bill suspends social networks' Section 230 protections for anti-vax conspiracies

31 points by MilnerRoute 5y ago

okwubodu 5y ago
In my view, we shouldn’t be suspending it for anything. Giving the government an inch on this should seem foolish to anyone who’s even skimmed a history textbook. Sometimes the slope is slippery.
- pwned1 5y ago
  Yup, as soon as one exception is allowed, everyone will jump on the bandwagon and demand their slice of the pie. They already got the "sex trafficking" exception, and of course new exceptions are being thrown out there.
- rektide 5y ago
  It's not just about slipperly slope to me. There is immediate & massive crushing impact, on everyone trying to host online systems. As soon as you begin to say, "safe harbor, except..." there is not really safe harbor. We either are liable for hosting content online or not. The first exception is all it takes for everyone hosting online content to have to develop & staff moderation systems for every word posted online. I really don't want to have to live in a world where people are NOT FREE to post things online. Ending safe harbor, to me, directly disables our ability to speak online. There has been countless really bad things happening, but to me, the government stepping in & trying to mandate moderation for all content is completely a no-go, is fascistic in extreme, a colossal & drastic curfew on basic & essential modern democratic functioning. I hope platforms volunteer to do better. I strongly believe (warning: optimist) that we are very early in our days of figuring out reptuation & credibility of things we read online, and that this situation will improve (especially via decentralized systems such as web annotations) over time, that we will better understand who & where the information we come across comes from, that there will be more ambient/less centrally hosted ways to explore & see criticism/critiques/context of the things (which themselves are likewise analyzable). I don't see any viable moves from the government right now, I haven't heard any thing they could do that would help us at all: I'm happy to listen. But dynamiting safe harbor because American's are being a bunch of stick in the mud tarts & subscribing to conspiracy theories left & right, is, alas, not exactly new or different, and this Klobucharian Satanic Panic moment is either mass stupidity, mass cowardice, or just outright totalitarianistic fascism amid the government.
akomtu 5y ago
A deliberately misleading title to farm clicks. I've flagged the post for this. A plain title would be "two senators want to change section 230 to ban 'misinformation' on social networks".
- yonaguska 5y ago
  I agree, but I'd rather this conversation happen than not. I think the readers of HN are smart enough to reach this conclusion, regardless of the headline.
  - dtjb 5y ago
    Every editor knows that the headline shapes the conversation more than the article.
  - hirako2000 5y ago
    Then it is to be renamed. Worth posting, but many of us don't read content of news outlet.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Well, two senators proposed a bill that would suspect 230. To fix the headline, I would just change "suspends" to "would suspend". The bill would do that... if it passed.
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago
  Bills only potentially become laws. "I'm just a bill." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFroMQlKiag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFroMQlKiag
yonaguska 5y ago
Either don't suspend it, or just scrap it altogether. One thing I keep seeing is people that are ideologically opposed to restriction of speech keep getting caught up in a semantic argument about the rights of private companies- and fail to actually come up with a solution. This far into the game, when the sitting White House press secretary goes on record stating that the current administration has been giving these social media companies guidelines and cues on what to clamp down on...we are so far past these arguments. And regulation/regulatory capture is not the solution. These exemptions are really just retroactive proposals to legalize what the big tech social media companies are already doing.
- mariodiana 5y ago
  It becomes more complicated than the simple case of private companies and their rights when those companies are being strong-armed by the threat of government regulation, and when a presidential administration has a hotline to those companies to flag "misinformation." That's backdoor government censorship.
- krapp 5y ago
  >These exemptions are really just retroactive proposals to legalize what the big tech social media companies are already doing. Big tech social media companies have always been allowed to moderate and ban content, that has always been legal. It's literally what Section 230 was written to permit.
  - yonaguska 5y ago
    > Section 230(c)(2) provides immunity from civil liabilities for information service providers that remove or restrict content from their services they deem "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected", as long as they act "in good faith" in this action. Hmm, they're just doing a lot of "acting in good faith" then. Ok.
- rektide 5y ago
  What an entitled belittling perspective. You keep talking about a solution. You are talking about ending democracy. You are talking about telling people they cannot speak. There is no solution. Trying to imagine this is a problem of big platforms, of social media, is a complete fantasy. It's a scape-goat against an easy, modern, popular target to rage against. It's low and it's cowardly & frankly it's besides the point. America has always had a conspiracy theorist problem, a huge one. It's metastatized somewhat. But it's not big platform alone that's causing this. Ideas are more viral with a better connected society. Blaming the easy obvious targets is lazy & boring & I'm exhausted by such callous hateful anti-speach views, so repetetively demanding "solutions", so angrily telling us we cannot allow speech online.
hirundo 5y ago
This would make the law depend on the content of the speech. I'd think that would make it subject to strict scrutiny for a potential first amendment violation. There is a vague sort-of exception to 1A around "false statements of fact": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions#False_statements_of_fact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... But even if that applies here, it would be constitutionally suspect to apply it to statements about just one particular topic.
yalogin 5y ago
This is just irresponsible. The threat of removing 230 protections is dangled by the nutjobs in politics all the time, this attempts feels like showing them how to do it.
mariodiana 5y ago
"Misinformation" is protected speech: meaning, government cannot be the arbiter of what is and isn't misinformation. The bill ostensibly limits only misinformation concerning "public health emergencies." Last week, New York's Governor Cuomo declared gun violence a public health emergency. "Public health emergency" will be the new term of art for politicians seeking greater power than the "confines" of our Constitution allow. This bill is trouble.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > "Misinformation" is protected speech In that case, the bill would have no effect, since suspending Section 230 protections only has an effect if there is some other basis for liability, and if misinformation is protected speech, there could never be any underlying basis for liability under state or federal law for 230 to protect against. But I don't think you are correct. Knowingly or recklessly false, harm-inducing speech can be a basis for liability notwithstanding the First Amendment (see, e.g., the whole law of defamation), so, even if no such basis for liability currently exists, I can quite easily see a narrowly crafted law on civil liability for harms from misinformation relating to a public health emergency surviving strict scrutiny, with a mental state requirement similar to the Times v. Sullivan actual malice standard (since the subject matter would inherently be a matter of public concern.)
  - mariodiana 5y ago
    If a person stands on a street corner handing out pamphlets falsely claiming that some individual, let's say a public figure, is a child molester, I understand the libel and liability. If, instead, that person handed out pamphlets saying that the Pfizer vaccine was experimental "gene therapy" that will result in "infertility," what happens then? I ask because the second seems closer to the liability you allege than cases of libel. In practical terms, the effect of this bill would be the government flagging "misinformation," the social media companies rushing to take it down (and likely being proactive to take down "misinformation"), and then the person or group allegedly wronged by the take-down having to fight it all out in court. The first amendment is fundamentally about protecting political speech. Curbing speech because of "public health emergencies" is — I will assert — a sly attempt at getting around that. What we're talking about is political speech by another name. Isn't this the "chilling effect" we hear so much about?
whoknowswhat11 5y ago
One issue I have is that the govt is not great at defining "misinformation". My local health department advised folks who were non-symptomatic NOT to wear masks on the subway. Masks harm no one, and cost about $1 (for an N95). I wrote to ask if I would be arrested or forced to remove my mask. They said I would not be arrested, but to not follow misinformation and masks were not shown to reduce risk of Covid. Yes, no study on COVID specially had been done, but COVID was a respitory disease so it made at least some possible sense that wearing a mask would reduce pathways in. When I posted the question what's the harm in me wearing on of my masks an epidemiologist jumped in to correct my "misinformation" and cited everything from CDC to surgeon general to tell me my masks don't do anything yadda yadda. My point was - even if you don't believe in masks - what harm (direct) to others am I causing by wearing a mask? And the list goes on. In Santa Clara the health dept offical said don't need to wear a mask - then put her finger in her mouth to lick it to turn a page. Uhh, a mask would help remind you to maybe reduce sticking your finger in your mouth? Instead of doing things like making more masks, sending 3 masks to every household (N95 not the silly little ones) we get these lectures and advise on "mininformation". Then we are told that getting infected doesn't generate any immunity - in contrast to almost EVERY OTHER virus? Sure, we haven't shown that it does, but isn't it POSSIBLE that it does? I've gotten tired of the claims of misinformation at this point. My only request - allow businesses to mandate things like vaccinated status etc once fully FDA approved. We have to take into account all sorts of exceptions where I am including ADA stuff and religious beliefs which practically means those who don't want to get vaccinated can skip it (which increases risks significantly all around)
29athrowaway 5y ago
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
mariodiana 5y ago
> The proposed exception would only kick in during a declared national public health crisis […] Imagine a future presidential administration with a majority in Congress declaring that the current pronounced uptick in young people declaring themselves "non-binary" (or something similar) and seeking hormone replacement therapy is evidence of a mass hysteria and, as such, represents a public health emergency; and then using this Section 230 exception as a stick to bully social media companies to take down media hosted on their platforms that allegedly encourages this recent phenomenon. "Misinformation" is in the eye of the beholder. That's why our Constitution declares that "Congress shall make no law."

31 points by MilnerRoute 5y ago

In my view, we shouldn’t be suspending it for anything. Giving the government an inch on this should seem foolish to anyone who’s even skimmed a history textbook. Sometimes the slope is slippery.

pwned1 5y ago
Yup, as soon as one exception is allowed, everyone will jump on the bandwagon and demand their slice of the pie. They already got the "sex trafficking" exception, and of course new exceptions are being thrown out there.
rektide 5y ago
It's not just about slipperly slope to me. There is immediate & massive crushing impact, on everyone trying to host online systems. As soon as you begin to say, "safe harbor, except..." there is not really safe harbor. We either are liable for hosting content online or not. The first exception is all it takes for everyone hosting online content to have to develop & staff moderation systems for every word posted online. I really don't want to have to live in a world where people are NOT FREE to post things online. Ending safe harbor, to me, directly disables our ability to speak online. There has been countless really bad things happening, but to me, the government stepping in & trying to mandate moderation for all content is completely a no-go, is fascistic in extreme, a colossal & drastic curfew on basic & essential modern democratic functioning. I hope platforms volunteer to do better. I strongly believe (warning: optimist) that we are very early in our days of figuring out reptuation & credibility of things we read online, and that this situation will improve (especially via decentralized systems such as web annotations) over time, that we will better understand who & where the information we come across comes from, that there will be more ambient/less centrally hosted ways to explore & see criticism/critiques/context of the things (which themselves are likewise analyzable). I don't see any viable moves from the government right now, I haven't heard any thing they could do that would help us at all: I'm happy to listen. But dynamiting safe harbor because American's are being a bunch of stick in the mud tarts & subscribing to conspiracy theories left & right, is, alas, not exactly new or different, and this Klobucharian Satanic Panic moment is either mass stupidity, mass cowardice, or just outright totalitarianistic fascism amid the government.

akomtu 5y ago

A deliberately misleading title to farm clicks. I've flagged the post for this. A plain title would be "two senators want to change section 230 to ban 'misinformation' on social networks".

yonaguska 5y ago
I agree, but I'd rather this conversation happen than not. I think the readers of HN are smart enough to reach this conclusion, regardless of the headline.
- dtjb 5y ago
  Every editor knows that the headline shapes the conversation more than the article.
- hirako2000 5y ago
  Then it is to be renamed. Worth posting, but many of us don't read content of news outlet.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Well, two senators proposed a bill that would suspect 230. To fix the headline, I would just change "suspends" to "would suspend". The bill would do that... if it passed.
readflaggedcomm 5y ago
Bills only potentially become laws. "I'm just a bill." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFroMQlKiag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFroMQlKiag

yonaguska 5y ago

Either don't suspend it, or just scrap it altogether. One thing I keep seeing is people that are ideologically opposed to restriction of speech keep getting caught up in a semantic argument about the rights of private companies- and fail to actually come up with a solution. This far into the game, when the sitting White House press secretary goes on record stating that the current administration has been giving these social media companies guidelines and cues on what to clamp down on...we are so far past these arguments. And regulation/regulatory capture is not the solution. These exemptions are really just retroactive proposals to legalize what the big tech social media companies are already doing.

mariodiana 5y ago
It becomes more complicated than the simple case of private companies and their rights when those companies are being strong-armed by the threat of government regulation, and when a presidential administration has a hotline to those companies to flag "misinformation." That's backdoor government censorship.
krapp 5y ago
>These exemptions are really just retroactive proposals to legalize what the big tech social media companies are already doing. Big tech social media companies have always been allowed to moderate and ban content, that has always been legal. It's literally what Section 230 was written to permit.
- yonaguska 5y ago
  > Section 230(c)(2) provides immunity from civil liabilities for information service providers that remove or restrict content from their services they deem "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected", as long as they act "in good faith" in this action. Hmm, they're just doing a lot of "acting in good faith" then. Ok.
rektide 5y ago
What an entitled belittling perspective. You keep talking about a solution. You are talking about ending democracy. You are talking about telling people they cannot speak. There is no solution. Trying to imagine this is a problem of big platforms, of social media, is a complete fantasy. It's a scape-goat against an easy, modern, popular target to rage against. It's low and it's cowardly & frankly it's besides the point. America has always had a conspiracy theorist problem, a huge one. It's metastatized somewhat. But it's not big platform alone that's causing this. Ideas are more viral with a better connected society. Blaming the easy obvious targets is lazy & boring & I'm exhausted by such callous hateful anti-speach views, so repetetively demanding "solutions", so angrily telling us we cannot allow speech online.

hirundo 5y ago

This would make the law depend on the content of the speech. I'd think that would make it subject to strict scrutiny for a potential first amendment violation. There is a vague sort-of exception to 1A around "false statements of fact": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions#False_statements_of_fact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... But even if that applies here, it would be constitutionally suspect to apply it to statements about just one particular topic.

yalogin 5y ago

This is just irresponsible. The threat of removing 230 protections is dangled by the nutjobs in politics all the time, this attempts feels like showing them how to do it.

mariodiana 5y ago

"Misinformation" is protected speech: meaning, government cannot be the arbiter of what is and isn't misinformation. The bill ostensibly limits only misinformation concerning "public health emergencies." Last week, New York's Governor Cuomo declared gun violence a public health emergency. "Public health emergency" will be the new term of art for politicians seeking greater power than the "confines" of our Constitution allow. This bill is trouble.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> "Misinformation" is protected speech In that case, the bill would have no effect, since suspending Section 230 protections only has an effect if there is some other basis for liability, and if misinformation is protected speech, there could never be any underlying basis for liability under state or federal law for 230 to protect against. But I don't think you are correct. Knowingly or recklessly false, harm-inducing speech can be a basis for liability notwithstanding the First Amendment (see, e.g., the whole law of defamation), so, even if no such basis for liability currently exists, I can quite easily see a narrowly crafted law on civil liability for harms from misinformation relating to a public health emergency surviving strict scrutiny, with a mental state requirement similar to the Times v. Sullivan actual malice standard (since the subject matter would inherently be a matter of public concern.)
- mariodiana 5y ago
  If a person stands on a street corner handing out pamphlets falsely claiming that some individual, let's say a public figure, is a child molester, I understand the libel and liability. If, instead, that person handed out pamphlets saying that the Pfizer vaccine was experimental "gene therapy" that will result in "infertility," what happens then? I ask because the second seems closer to the liability you allege than cases of libel. In practical terms, the effect of this bill would be the government flagging "misinformation," the social media companies rushing to take it down (and likely being proactive to take down "misinformation"), and then the person or group allegedly wronged by the take-down having to fight it all out in court. The first amendment is fundamentally about protecting political speech. Curbing speech because of "public health emergencies" is — I will assert — a sly attempt at getting around that. What we're talking about is political speech by another name. Isn't this the "chilling effect" we hear so much about?

whoknowswhat11 5y ago

One issue I have is that the govt is not great at defining "misinformation". My local health department advised folks who were non-symptomatic NOT to wear masks on the subway. Masks harm no one, and cost about $1 (for an N95). I wrote to ask if I would be arrested or forced to remove my mask. They said I would not be arrested, but to not follow misinformation and masks were not shown to reduce risk of Covid. Yes, no study on COVID specially had been done, but COVID was a respitory disease so it made at least some possible sense that wearing a mask would reduce pathways in. When I posted the question what's the harm in me wearing on of my masks an epidemiologist jumped in to correct my "misinformation" and cited everything from CDC to surgeon general to tell me my masks don't do anything yadda yadda. My point was - even if you don't believe in masks - what harm (direct) to others am I causing by wearing a mask? And the list goes on. In Santa Clara the health dept offical said don't need to wear a mask - then put her finger in her mouth to lick it to turn a page. Uhh, a mask would help remind you to maybe reduce sticking your finger in your mouth? Instead of doing things like making more masks, sending 3 masks to every household (N95 not the silly little ones) we get these lectures and advise on "mininformation". Then we are told that getting infected doesn't generate any immunity - in contrast to almost EVERY OTHER virus? Sure, we haven't shown that it does, but isn't it POSSIBLE that it does? I've gotten tired of the claims of misinformation at this point. My only request - allow businesses to mandate things like vaccinated status etc once fully FDA approved. We have to take into account all sorts of exceptions where I am including ADA stuff and religious beliefs which practically means those who don't want to get vaccinated can skip it (which increases risks significantly all around)

29athrowaway 5y ago

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

mariodiana 5y ago

> The proposed exception would only kick in during a declared national public health crisis […] Imagine a future presidential administration with a majority in Congress declaring that the current pronounced uptick in young people declaring themselves "non-binary" (or something similar) and seeking hormone replacement therapy is evidence of a mass hysteria and, as such, represents a public health emergency; and then using this Section 230 exception as a stick to bully social media companies to take down media hosted on their platforms that allegedly encourages this recent phenomenon. "Misinformation" is in the eye of the beholder. That's why our Constitution declares that "Congress shall make no law."