11 ms·

> Libel is a method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a

• wpasc 5y ago
  Wow, this is a great point that I hadn't previously considered. These platforms can even conceivably get away with content removal more easily as ToS violations without stepping over the line to become publishers. But if one considers a fact-check as its own content, then that may become a defining point in a future ruling or examination of 230. I imagine there's a great case to be made that fact checks are platform sponsored content (if a fact check is viewed as an analysis of the content along with verdict [ie. "Misleading"], easy to view that similarly to the plethora of analysis content [reviews, summaries, etc] populating all social media platforms). I'm fascinated to see how this will play out.
  • cronix 5y ago
    > But if one considers a fact-check as its own content, then that may become a defining point in a future ruling or examination of 230 I believe that is why they, and other platforms in a similar position, use 3rd party "fact checkers." To try to legally skirt that. "It's not our content/fact check, it's from this unbiased third party. Don't look at us." They seem to have borrowed "plausible deniability" from some 3 letter agencies since it legally works well for them. > To fight the spread of misinformation and provide people with more reliable information, Facebook partners with independent third-party fact-checkers that are certified through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). Since we do not believe that a private company like Facebook should be the arbiters of truth, we rely on fact-checkers to identify, review and rate potential misinformation across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Their work enables us to take action and reduce the spread of problematic content across our apps. https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/programs/third-party-fact-checking/how-it-works https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject/programs/third-pa...
    • temp8964 5y ago
      Do Facebook pay for those “third-party” “fact-checks”?
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • jefftk 5y ago
        I doubt they'd need to: the third parties get traffic and prestige from participating
  • ch4s3 5y ago
    There is no platform/publisher distinction in the law. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 [1] was originally meant to be a carve out to allow websites to host comment sections without being considered the "speaker" of those comments and thereby being subjected to the speech restrictions in the rest of the law. The rest of the law has since been struck down. When people are mad about 230, what they're really mad about is the 1st Amendment. Is Facebook the speaker when it applies a fact check? Maybe but it doesn't matter much with respect to 230 offers minimal protection beyond the 1st Amendment. And as others have stated, the bar for libel against public figures is VERY high in the US. [1]https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
    • pjc50 5y ago
      > When people are mad about 230, what they're really mad about is the 1st Amendment. Exactly. Facebook are exercising their 1A rights to call him misleading. This is not complicated.
      • ch4s3 5y ago
        Yeah the whole 230 discussions is at best naive and at worst a cynical attack on 1A rights by no nothing dead enders and authoritarian leftists. The same coalition that brought you the drug war, the satanic panic, and the global war on terror.
        • kelnos 5y ago
          Uh, both the War on Drugs and War on Terror were started by Republican presidents (Satanic Panic is a little harder to unravel), with broad support (at the time, anyway) on both sides of the aisle. If you're going to spout nonsense, at least pick examples consistent with your nonsense.
          • betwixthewires 5y ago
            I just want to point out that the person you're responding to did not refer to this coalition they're describing as belonging to any political party.
• burkaman 5y ago
  Facebook is careful about this. On the fact check in question, Facebook only says "Missing Context" and "Independent fact-checkers say this information is missing context and could mislead people." Only if you click through to the independent site do you see a specific claim labeled as misleading: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores...
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    So he then proceeds to sue the fact-checkers. There is definitely liability here from which social media have been shielded so far
    • shkkmo 5y ago
      The fact checker is included in the lawsuit.
  • temp8964 5y ago
    If Facebook paste “this information is missing context and could mislead people” under every single post/story, it would still stand true but it would be bad for the business.
    • burkaman 5y ago
      That's true, I guess, but we're discussing legal issues here. I think that would still be legal even though it would be dumb.
      • nickff 5y ago
        If they were to do it to every post, they probably wouldn't be libeling anyone, but if they do it selectively, I think they may be guilt of libel. As an example, imagine that Yelp or AngelList posted "beware: this business may be perpetuating a fraud". If they did it to every business, it would be a general warning, not singling it out; but if they did it to a small proportion of businesses, and it turned out that many of the 'targets' were not committing fraud, it would be libel.
• hartator 5y ago
  Yes, it seems pretty obvious they are free to fact check if they want to but they also become responsible of all these new fact check contents they push.
  • vkou 5y ago
    Only if the fact checkers acted maliciously. Just like how when people say false things, they generally aren't held accountable for it. [1] Why are you so eager to hold fact checkers to a higher legal standard than the people they are responding to? It would truly be a bizarre universe if saying things that are damaging to other people were permitted, but fact-checking those statements were not. Fortunately, we don't live in such a universe. [1] If they were, most of our political class would be in prison.
• myfavoritedog 5y ago
  What's the difference between creating content directly vs fine-tuning what content is available on your platform through automatic and manual moderation rules that promote some messages and curtail others?
• lmilcin 5y ago
  That is interesting. So... basically we are waiting until they get their fact checking wrong against a wrong person? This must happen eventually. But you could argue that so many public persons openly lie and even declare that "they can lie to public since they are not under oath", that it is hard to punish a company that tries to do right by fact checking a lot of falsehoods. It is reasonable to assume that when you correct a million falsehoods you will make some mistakes.
  • thugthrasher 5y ago
    To be clear, if it's a public figure, then just getting the fact checking wrong is not enough to be defamation. There has to be "actual malice" which BASICALLY just means they knew they were wrong or should have known they were wrong. If they can show that they were just following the information that was publicly available then they can make mistakes without losing a lawsuit.
  • ttyprintk 5y ago
    Certain famous persons are expected to lie, so it wouldn’t injure their reputation in the way that (the above) defamation is defined. A politician, for example, might pursue such a case only for publicity.
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  There are some infamous blog posts that will tell you that 230 protects websites no matter what happens. But when bad things happen and the law protects bad actors, then it's a bad law.
  • Nasrudith 5y ago
    Rights protect everyone - including bad actors. Any definition of a bad law that includes rights as such is euphemistically referred to as a "different understanding". Does nobody remember Blackstone's Principles these dats in their zeal to collect scalps? A good law is one which does not punish innocents - that should be where the lines are always drawn.
    • cblconfederate 5y ago
      230 is not a right, it's a special exception afforded to some businesses, and not to others (newspapers). i dont think it should be held that highly. It was a temporary measure to help the internet grow, now the internet IS the media of mass manipulation
      • nobody9999 5y ago
        >230 is not a right, it's a special exception afforded to some businesses Yes, section 230 is not a right. But it is afforded to everyone[0]: There is nothing in Section 230 that applies solely to big tech. Indeed, it applies to every website on the internet and every user of those websites. That means it applies to you, as well, and helps to protect your speech. It's what allows you to repeat something someone else said on Facebook and not be liable for it. It's what protects every website that has comments, or any other third-party content. It applies across the entire internet to every website and every user, and not just to big tech. [0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
        • deleted 5y ago
• filmgirlcw 5y ago
  But 230 wouldn’t even come into this discussion because the standard of libel for Stossel, as a public figure, is significantly higher. He has to prove that Facebook/the fact checkers had actual malice in stating its claims. Meaning, the Facebook/fact checkers had to be intentionally lying or acting in reckless disregard for whether the statement was true or not. It’s a more interesting situation if he wasn’t a public figure, but even then, I doubt Facebook would be the one deemed responsible for the so-called libel, it would come down to the fact checked. In fact, in the similar Candace Owens lawsuit (which the court threw out), she sued USA Today and the fact-checking company, not Facebook. And her claims were still thrown out, both because she couldn’t show there was actual malice involved or that the claims that her statement was “false” was untrue. That opinion is here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21068070-owens https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21068070-owens Owens is of course a public figure, but that wasn’t even a large part of the reason her lawsuit was thrown out on its face. Stossel is getting press time by suing but he’s a public figure and suing Facebook because a fact checking service elicited an opinion/notation that didn’t have the nuance he wanted is laughable.
  • tschwimmer 5y ago
    I feel like the malice standard makes libel essentially impossible to prove in the US. Are there any cases where malice has been proven? I imagine they would have had to look at private conversations by the accused indicated that they really didn't like alleged victim or something.
    • phrz 5y ago
      "Actual malice" is a confusing term for a layperson because it doesn't mean what it sounds like. It doesn't mean "not liking" the plaintiff. Instead, it is the defendant's knowledge or reckless disregard of the statement's falsity.
  • Aerroon 5y ago
    While this might not work in the US, it might work elsewhere. Other countries have legal protections for platforms from their users too, but that usually have lower standards for proving defamation of public figures than the US.
• mwcremer 5y ago
  Apparently not? See 'If you said "Once a company like that starts moderating content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher"' here: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
  • fortuna86 5y ago
    Via proprietary and non-transparent algorithmic content recommendation engines, they have all been publishers for a while now.
    • mwcremer 5y ago
      FTFA: To be a bit more explicit: at no point in any court case regarding Section 230 is there a need to determine whether or not a particular website is a "platform" or a "publisher." What matters is solely the content in question. If that content is created by someone else, the website hosting it cannot be sued over it.
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    they dont need to be a publisher to be sued for defamation
    • mwcremer 5y ago
      I suppose that depends on whether the courts agree that "flagging" is a form of original content, and is defamatory.
      • cblconfederate 5y ago
        i wonder if the courts take into account how things have changed since 230 became law
        • nobody9999 5y ago
• eli 5y ago
  That assumes anything they did was actually libelous which is... unlikely.
  • justinlink 5y ago
    Claiming a journalist makes "false claims" and is "misleading" could be injurious to their reputation as a journalist. Which would hurt them in their business or profession. It's not a slam dunk for him by any means, but I can understand why he filed.
    • eli 5y ago
      The bar for libel is high in the US. Something could be false, misleading and injurious to reputation and not be libel. Particularly if the person in question is a public figure, which is defined very broadly.
    • tssva 5y ago
      Ironically John Stossell has actually been caught making false and misleading claims previously. He had to know filing this would bring those episodes back up, so I don't know why he filed.
      • eli 5y ago
        Same reason Trump filed so many pointless libel suits. So that we would talk about them.
• newacct583 5y ago
  That's... not what 230 is about at all. This myth just recycles itself again and again. Why do people insist on repeating it? Section 230 immunizes a web content company from liability for statements made ON ITS SERVICE BY THIRD PARTIES (to wit: you can't sue Facebook for what its users say on it). No one here thinks Facebook is immune to a liability claim for its own speech. No one is invoking 230 to defend it. 230 is not applicable. Why do people keep insisting it's some kind of boogeyman that can be "revoked" to get "big tech" in line? It doesn't apply here.
• tomohawk 5y ago
  If burning a flag is speach, then so is shadow banning, deplatforming, cancelling, and the whole lot. If that speach is defamation, then it should also be actionable.