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> After all, it’s their right to as a private company. Isn’t that how that works? Everyone always says that, and this is a case of that. Unless I missed it, un

> After all, it’s their right to as a private company. Isn’t that how that works? Everyone always says that, and this is a case of that. Unless I missed it, until you wrote this nobody had argued it wasn't their right to do this.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
It's their right but it's still crummy. I want Section 230 to be repealed.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  I don’t know what section 230 repeal has to do with it. Companies would still be able to block random links like this if section 230 is repealed; they’d probably do it more often.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Repealing 230 would literally kill large swaths of the internet. If platforms like Twitter or Reddit were legally responsible for what their users post, they would need to institute white lists to avoid being bankrupted. Can you imagine the amount of low-level casual defamation across the entirety of Facebook? Or Reddit? The amount of copyrighted material stolen and posted? There would be an overnight industry of people shadow-posting defamatory statements and then turning around and suing the platforms for hosting it. It's literally the dumbest idea possible.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
      Heck, under the precedent that Section 230 was meant to overturn, Twitter could sue HN for a lot of what people are saying right here. I struggle to even engage with the idea sometimes because you're 100% right that it doesn't make sense.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      > It's literally the dumbest idea possible. Unless the aim was literally to destroy these large left-leaning, people-empowering, highly profitable, internationally reaching businesses. Now imagine which political party and which geopolitical adversary would like to make the internet less liberal, silence the powerless, make American tax revenue lower, and make more space for authoritarian voices on the world stage.
      - aiilns 4y ago
        Facebook, twitter, etc left-leaning in the US sense where left is right and right is near the edge of the right spectrum I get. But people-empowering? These large platforms are very much anti-democratic and anti-empowering people. Even more, subverting peoples wills about what they buy by managing what they see and algorithmically trying to guide what they should think is very much anti people. Any people empowering is merely a side effect and not at all the purpose
        dane-pgp 4y ago
        I see what you're saying, and there's definitely reason to question which entities have gained the most influence from social media (out of corporations, governments, or activists). As for "the purpose" of social media, I suppose a simple reductive answer would be "to make money", but there were (and I think still are) people who are idealistic about social media giving a voice to the voiceless, even if you think that, in practice, commercial messages and misinformation end up having a bigger and more negative effect. A thought experiment I think is useful is to imagine how Western political discourse could have been shaped (by politicians and the traditional media) if grassroots movements couldn't form and raise awareness through things like "hashtag activism".[0] The fact that authoritarian countries invest resources in censoring or banning social media also seems to confirm that they see it as a threat rather than a harmless distraction. [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/hashtagactivism https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/hashtagactivism
- input_sh 4y ago
  In other words, you want every website to be held liable for all user generated content on their platform, which would benefit every large social media (because smaller ones wouldn't be able to afford to moderate every single post), leading to them becoming even more of a monopoly? Or do you have something concrete in mind on what to replace it with? Because just repealing it would lead to a much different Internet than it is today — and not in a good way.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - baisq 4y ago
    >In other words, you want every website to be held liable for all user generated content on their platform, which would benefit every large social media (because smaller ones wouldn't be able to afford to moderate every single post), leading to them becoming even more of a monopoly? In the EU it works well: the only social networks that exist are American :P
    - input_sh 4y ago
      > Or do you have something concrete in mind on what to replace it with? In the EU that would be Digital Services Act, chapter two of which offers websites similar protection to the Section 230. It's gonna be voted on soon™. At the moment the EU has precedence in the opposite direction, with an Estonian news site Delfi having been held liable for anonymous user comments made on their platform: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delfi_AS_v._Estonia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delfi_AS_v._Estonia

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

It's their right but it's still crummy. I want Section 230 to be repealed.

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
I don’t know what section 230 repeal has to do with it. Companies would still be able to block random links like this if section 230 is repealed; they’d probably do it more often.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Repealing 230 would literally kill large swaths of the internet. If platforms like Twitter or Reddit were legally responsible for what their users post, they would need to institute white lists to avoid being bankrupted. Can you imagine the amount of low-level casual defamation across the entirety of Facebook? Or Reddit? The amount of copyrighted material stolen and posted? There would be an overnight industry of people shadow-posting defamatory statements and then turning around and suing the platforms for hosting it. It's literally the dumbest idea possible.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
    Heck, under the precedent that Section 230 was meant to overturn, Twitter could sue HN for a lot of what people are saying right here. I struggle to even engage with the idea sometimes because you're 100% right that it doesn't make sense.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    > It's literally the dumbest idea possible. Unless the aim was literally to destroy these large left-leaning, people-empowering, highly profitable, internationally reaching businesses. Now imagine which political party and which geopolitical adversary would like to make the internet less liberal, silence the powerless, make American tax revenue lower, and make more space for authoritarian voices on the world stage.
    - aiilns 4y ago
      Facebook, twitter, etc left-leaning in the US sense where left is right and right is near the edge of the right spectrum I get. But people-empowering? These large platforms are very much anti-democratic and anti-empowering people. Even more, subverting peoples wills about what they buy by managing what they see and algorithmically trying to guide what they should think is very much anti people. Any people empowering is merely a side effect and not at all the purpose
      - dane-pgp 4y ago
        I see what you're saying, and there's definitely reason to question which entities have gained the most influence from social media (out of corporations, governments, or activists). As for "the purpose" of social media, I suppose a simple reductive answer would be "to make money", but there were (and I think still are) people who are idealistic about social media giving a voice to the voiceless, even if you think that, in practice, commercial messages and misinformation end up having a bigger and more negative effect. A thought experiment I think is useful is to imagine how Western political discourse could have been shaped (by politicians and the traditional media) if grassroots movements couldn't form and raise awareness through things like "hashtag activism".[0] The fact that authoritarian countries invest resources in censoring or banning social media also seems to confirm that they see it as a threat rather than a harmless distraction. [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/hashtagactivism https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/hashtagactivism
input_sh 4y ago
In other words, you want every website to be held liable for all user generated content on their platform, which would benefit every large social media (because smaller ones wouldn't be able to afford to moderate every single post), leading to them becoming even more of a monopoly? Or do you have something concrete in mind on what to replace it with? Because just repealing it would lead to a much different Internet than it is today — and not in a good way.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- baisq 4y ago
  >In other words, you want every website to be held liable for all user generated content on their platform, which would benefit every large social media (because smaller ones wouldn't be able to afford to moderate every single post), leading to them becoming even more of a monopoly? In the EU it works well: the only social networks that exist are American :P
  - input_sh 4y ago
    > Or do you have something concrete in mind on what to replace it with? In the EU that would be Digital Services Act, chapter two of which offers websites similar protection to the Section 230. It's gonna be voted on soon™. At the moment the EU has precedence in the opposite direction, with an Estonian news site Delfi having been held liable for anonymous user comments made on their platform: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delfi_AS_v._Estonia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delfi_AS_v._Estonia