2 ms·
How many articles, podcasts, tweets, and comment replies did it take to finally put a dent into the endless repetition of the myths about Section 230? Cloudfare
by IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
How many articles, podcasts, tweets, and comment replies did it take to finally put a dent into the endless repetition of the myths about Section 230? Cloudfare is continuing to use the very same faulty logic: that, somehow, preventing the most egregious misuse of their service would create some sort of requirement to do so perfectly, in every case, or to assume liability for everything crossing their servers.
There is no such mechanism in either law, logic, or morality.
Morally, rescuing a drowning child does not create a requirement for you to rescue every person in danger of drowning, everywhere. Because that would obviously disincentivize anyone from ever helping, and it would also just be impossible to do.
Legally, there just is no law or principle of that kind. The laws that exists, for specific domains, do the opposite: Good Samaritan Laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law) protecting individuals rendering help, as in the drowning-child example, from any liability, including for failing in that very rescue effort, for whatever reason.
More similar to the Cloudflare case, Section 230 does exactly the same, but for publishers on the web.
As to logic: if you once jumped into the water and got that child out, just in time, people may indeed expect you to do it again, under similar or easier circumstances, because they remember that you are a good swimmer.
But in the Cloudflare case, acting in the obvious case does not change anything, because there is absolutely no doubt that they have the ability to shut down any customer they do not want on their service. Doing so therefore does not give any (valid) extra ammunition to further requests to act.