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> This would dial the entire Internet ecosystem back to look a lot more like the 1990s. That would be wonderful. And while facebook could no longer aggregate a

> This would dial the entire Internet ecosystem back to look a lot more like the 1990s. That would be wonderful. And while facebook could no longer aggregate and weaponize feeds from your friends against you, a browser or a downloadable RSS feed viewer could use any algorithm to fetch and sort the feeds of your friends, whether they are on facebook or on their blogs or anywhere. Which sounds to me the way the internet should have evolved, with personal computers instead of dumb terminals.

cm2187 5y ago
Agree. Though you wouldn’t be able to read comments on hackernews.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  why not? even assuming that the ranking is removed it doesnt change much. I can't be the only one who reads all the comments. Plus it there is this phenomenon where everyone piles up on the top-ranking comment thread and it becomes enormous
  - the_pwner224 5y ago
    I don't follow your response to cm2187. He means very literally that you wouldn't be able to read comments on hacker news, because without section 230 it would be legally very dangerous for sites to host user-generated content, such as comments.
    - vintermann 5y ago
      Yet they did host comments, if not exactly in 1990 in hacker news form, then in many years before section 230 and the DMCA. Lawsuits happened, but they were de facto not very effective in getting information taken down (regardless of what they have since been ruled as having been entitled to).
      - jasode 5y ago
        >Yet they did host comments, if not exactly in 1990 in hacker news form, then in many years before section 230 [...] Lawsuits happened, but they were de facto not very effective in getting information taken down But lawsuits still cost defendants millions in expensive attorneys' fees to fight them in court. E.g. Oakmont's $200 million lawsuit against Prodigy. [1][2] So it's missing the point if people only emphasize that 1995 Prodigy didn't remove an anonymous user's comment about Oakmont. In other words, leaving the dangerous comment up isn't really "winning". Instead, it's not having to deal with lawsuits at all from future "Oakmonts" that Section 230 clarified. So would HN exist if Paul Graham had to deal with repeated $200 million lawsuits because anonymous posters kept writing "Facebook is a cancer on society..." ? It doesn't seem worth the liability risk without Section 230. [1] https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/overview-section-230-what-it-why-it-was-created-and-what-it-has-achieved#_Why_was_Section_230_Created https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/overview-section-23... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
      - rsynnott 5y ago
        Section 230 goes back to 1996. There would have been very few websites with comments in 1996 (mainstream web browsers, insofar as there was such a thing as a mainstream web browser in 1996, had only in the last couple of years got the ability to submit HTTP forms). And there were very few users interacting with that internet; only on the order of 100 million, and most of those _very_ infrequently. The scale of the problem is entirely different now.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      I mean that they'd switch to chronological mode They 'd have to moderate somehow. In this new world, if it is OK to force porn sites to get the ID card of everyone who posts videos, then HN should also be able to moderate user submissions.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  Except HN isn’t recommending comments, is it? I thought it’s mostly based on popularity and users have the majority of the influence for what bubbles up. Is that wrong? HN isn’t interfering with user generated rankings, right? That’s still a platform IMO. I’m sure any regulation changes will benefit big tech. Facebook will have their politically connected staff writing half the bill so it’s burdensome for anyone small (aka competitors), but tolerable for themselves.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > HN isn’t interfering with user generated rankings, right? /u/dang will absolutely step in where necessary, to flag a post, split a thread off, or warn/ban people.
    - Miner49er 5y ago
      Yeah, but since it's not an algorithm doing it, and it's not personalized per user, I don't think the law applies
      - xxpor 5y ago
        That's completely irrelevant to the current law.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > Except HN isn’t recommending comments, is it? HN is a recommendations engine and the front page is similar to a feed. HN has user-generated content and comments. HN is definitely a social media platform and would be covered under any such laws. HN has algorithms to determine which stories and comments are shown and in which order. The primary inputs are upvotes, downvotes, and flags, but it’s not a transparent or linear algorithm. Moderators (or single moderator, I’m not sure) have influence to override algorithm decisions like buried stories and force them to be shown again. Which is not really that much different than what Facebook and other sites are doing with likes, follows, and views in their own algorithms. If HN exceeded the unique monthly visitor threshold of this bill, it would absolutely be impacted. HN even has a feature that goes a step further than Facebook: The site allows privileged posters (YC companies) to insert special stories for hiring requests that don’t allow comments and, as far as I can tell, get some special priority in the front page rankings without necessarily requiring user upvotes. If someone decided to argue that such a job posting caused them “emotional harm” under this proposed law, they could have some standing.
rsynnott 5y ago
I think "This would dial the entire Internet ecosystem back to look a lot more like the 1990s" probably understates it, to be honest. In the 1990s, heavy USENET users, say, would generally use tools which highlighted posts from users they were interested in, downranked or hid posts from users they were specifically _not_ interested in, and similar. This made USENET usable (for a while). NNTP clients generally worked by just downloading the whole group, so this could be done client side. With the scale of modern internet services, however, you're not going to be downloading the whole day's twitter content and doing client-side filtering, so you'd need to provide your filtering list to the provider. At that point, you have a friends list, and on a naive reading this might be a problem.
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  I would just download headers and only pull the body for content I am interested in. Usenet doesn't have the same hierarchy as Twitter. One would not have to download all of twitter, just the sub-groups they are subscribed to. One could also filter what groups they want to pull down. alt.something.twitter.text-only.emotional-support-animals.fluffy-bunnies alt.something.twitter.text-only.checkmarked.public-figures alt.something.twitter.bin.sfw.memes The audience could optionally use some add-on in the news clients to validate things like twitter identities, validate checkmarks, etc... Another add-on to filter out what Twitter considers spam if you were so inclined, or maybe subscribe to a crowd-sourced spam filter. These addons could pull signed data from each respective usenet group. One could probably go as far as to make a Twitter Client that uses Usenet behind the scenes and communicates through a HTTPS gateway for VIP to avoid people needing firewall rules for NNTPS in corporate environments.
roenxi 5y ago
Maybe, but that is losing sight of the most likely outcome of the government rolling in to 'reform' whatever it is they decide needs it. It doesn't matter what the zeitgeist is going in. The likely outcome is this attention will to end up entrenching the current big players and cutting off avenues of competition.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  How?
  - roenxi 5y ago
    I dunno there are lots of ways to get to the same place. Maybe send in lots of expensive lobbiests, make sure the law is vague and complicated, then after it is implemented small social media companies can't legally form because they can't hire enough lawyers/provide better services. And the big companies reveal some sort of loophole that formed in the complexity that lets them keep making money with only minor tweaks to their business. The politicians throw up their hands and blame the other politicians/the 1%/the unvaccinated/immigrants/young people/rap music/whatever for why the mess can't be worked out. The problem around sec. 230 is that large groups of people disagree. Trying to solve that with law is going to be ugly. The politicians aren't going to roll in and make a useful contribution to how algorithms work technically, or civility on the internet. That is hard enough to do with years of experience working with algorithms - without having to run the lobbyist & special interest gauntlet like legislation does.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      I think the existence of 230 has always rubbed many people off in the wrong way. Newspapers had reader-contributed columns forever, but they were never given as much immunity as internet services get. But because the internet was exciting people never questioned it. 230 itself is a loophole . I dont know how it should change either, but there should be a broader debate.
lovecg 5y ago
If my reading of the bill is correct, it would expose any SaaS website to liability. What does Gmail do if not promoting content that’s specific to an individual?

cm2187 5y ago

Agree. Though you wouldn’t be able to read comments on hackernews.

cblconfederate 5y ago
why not? even assuming that the ranking is removed it doesnt change much. I can't be the only one who reads all the comments. Plus it there is this phenomenon where everyone piles up on the top-ranking comment thread and it becomes enormous
- the_pwner224 5y ago
  I don't follow your response to cm2187. He means very literally that you wouldn't be able to read comments on hacker news, because without section 230 it would be legally very dangerous for sites to host user-generated content, such as comments.
  - vintermann 5y ago
    Yet they did host comments, if not exactly in 1990 in hacker news form, then in many years before section 230 and the DMCA. Lawsuits happened, but they were de facto not very effective in getting information taken down (regardless of what they have since been ruled as having been entitled to).
    - jasode 5y ago
      >Yet they did host comments, if not exactly in 1990 in hacker news form, then in many years before section 230 [...] Lawsuits happened, but they were de facto not very effective in getting information taken down But lawsuits still cost defendants millions in expensive attorneys' fees to fight them in court. E.g. Oakmont's $200 million lawsuit against Prodigy. [1][2] So it's missing the point if people only emphasize that 1995 Prodigy didn't remove an anonymous user's comment about Oakmont. In other words, leaving the dangerous comment up isn't really "winning". Instead, it's not having to deal with lawsuits at all from future "Oakmonts" that Section 230 clarified. So would HN exist if Paul Graham had to deal with repeated $200 million lawsuits because anonymous posters kept writing "Facebook is a cancer on society..." ? It doesn't seem worth the liability risk without Section 230. [1] https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/overview-section-230-what-it-why-it-was-created-and-what-it-has-achieved#_Why_was_Section_230_Created https://itif.org/publications/2021/02/22/overview-section-23... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      Section 230 goes back to 1996. There would have been very few websites with comments in 1996 (mainstream web browsers, insofar as there was such a thing as a mainstream web browser in 1996, had only in the last couple of years got the ability to submit HTTP forms). And there were very few users interacting with that internet; only on the order of 100 million, and most of those _very_ infrequently. The scale of the problem is entirely different now.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    I mean that they'd switch to chronological mode They 'd have to moderate somehow. In this new world, if it is OK to force porn sites to get the ID card of everyone who posts videos, then HN should also be able to moderate user submissions.
donmcronald 5y ago
Except HN isn’t recommending comments, is it? I thought it’s mostly based on popularity and users have the majority of the influence for what bubbles up. Is that wrong? HN isn’t interfering with user generated rankings, right? That’s still a platform IMO. I’m sure any regulation changes will benefit big tech. Facebook will have their politically connected staff writing half the bill so it’s burdensome for anyone small (aka competitors), but tolerable for themselves.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > HN isn’t interfering with user generated rankings, right? /u/dang will absolutely step in where necessary, to flag a post, split a thread off, or warn/ban people.
  - Miner49er 5y ago
    Yeah, but since it's not an algorithm doing it, and it's not personalized per user, I don't think the law applies
    - xxpor 5y ago
      That's completely irrelevant to the current law.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > Except HN isn’t recommending comments, is it? HN is a recommendations engine and the front page is similar to a feed. HN has user-generated content and comments. HN is definitely a social media platform and would be covered under any such laws. HN has algorithms to determine which stories and comments are shown and in which order. The primary inputs are upvotes, downvotes, and flags, but it’s not a transparent or linear algorithm. Moderators (or single moderator, I’m not sure) have influence to override algorithm decisions like buried stories and force them to be shown again. Which is not really that much different than what Facebook and other sites are doing with likes, follows, and views in their own algorithms. If HN exceeded the unique monthly visitor threshold of this bill, it would absolutely be impacted. HN even has a feature that goes a step further than Facebook: The site allows privileged posters (YC companies) to insert special stories for hiring requests that don’t allow comments and, as far as I can tell, get some special priority in the front page rankings without necessarily requiring user upvotes. If someone decided to argue that such a job posting caused them “emotional harm” under this proposed law, they could have some standing.

rsynnott 5y ago

I think "This would dial the entire Internet ecosystem back to look a lot more like the 1990s" probably understates it, to be honest. In the 1990s, heavy USENET users, say, would generally use tools which highlighted posts from users they were interested in, downranked or hid posts from users they were specifically _not_ interested in, and similar. This made USENET usable (for a while). NNTP clients generally worked by just downloading the whole group, so this could be done client side. With the scale of modern internet services, however, you're not going to be downloading the whole day's twitter content and doing client-side filtering, so you'd need to provide your filtering list to the provider. At that point, you have a friends list, and on a naive reading this might be a problem.

LinuxBender 5y ago
I would just download headers and only pull the body for content I am interested in. Usenet doesn't have the same hierarchy as Twitter. One would not have to download all of twitter, just the sub-groups they are subscribed to. One could also filter what groups they want to pull down. alt.something.twitter.text-only.emotional-support-animals.fluffy-bunnies alt.something.twitter.text-only.checkmarked.public-figures alt.something.twitter.bin.sfw.memes The audience could optionally use some add-on in the news clients to validate things like twitter identities, validate checkmarks, etc... Another add-on to filter out what Twitter considers spam if you were so inclined, or maybe subscribe to a crowd-sourced spam filter. These addons could pull signed data from each respective usenet group. One could probably go as far as to make a Twitter Client that uses Usenet behind the scenes and communicates through a HTTPS gateway for VIP to avoid people needing firewall rules for NNTPS in corporate environments.

roenxi 5y ago

Maybe, but that is losing sight of the most likely outcome of the government rolling in to 'reform' whatever it is they decide needs it. It doesn't matter what the zeitgeist is going in. The likely outcome is this attention will to end up entrenching the current big players and cutting off avenues of competition.

cblconfederate 5y ago
How?
- roenxi 5y ago
  I dunno there are lots of ways to get to the same place. Maybe send in lots of expensive lobbiests, make sure the law is vague and complicated, then after it is implemented small social media companies can't legally form because they can't hire enough lawyers/provide better services. And the big companies reveal some sort of loophole that formed in the complexity that lets them keep making money with only minor tweaks to their business. The politicians throw up their hands and blame the other politicians/the 1%/the unvaccinated/immigrants/young people/rap music/whatever for why the mess can't be worked out. The problem around sec. 230 is that large groups of people disagree. Trying to solve that with law is going to be ugly. The politicians aren't going to roll in and make a useful contribution to how algorithms work technically, or civility on the internet. That is hard enough to do with years of experience working with algorithms - without having to run the lobbyist & special interest gauntlet like legislation does.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    I think the existence of 230 has always rubbed many people off in the wrong way. Newspapers had reader-contributed columns forever, but they were never given as much immunity as internet services get. But because the internet was exciting people never questioned it. 230 itself is a loophole . I dont know how it should change either, but there should be a broader debate.

lovecg 5y ago

If my reading of the bill is correct, it would expose any SaaS website to liability. What does Gmail do if not promoting content that’s specific to an individual?