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This forum likely wouldn't exist if we never had section 230 to begin with. Remember the original reasoning behind it - a company that ran a completely unmoder

This forum likely wouldn't exist if we never had section 230 to begin with. Remember the original reasoning behind it - a company that ran a completely unmoderated forum won a court case (because it wasn't moderated at all). A company that imperfectly moderated a forum lost. Section 230 means you can have user generated content that isn't perfectly moderated. The result of section 230 being abolished isn't some panacea of decentralized blogs and websites, its usenet flamewars and 4chan.

akvadrako 4y ago
No. Without 230 comments and forum posts would probably be on a decentralized network where only the author is liable. As say a blogger, you would only promote 3rd party content you approved of.
- beej71 4y ago
  If those decentralized comments ever appeared together on the same webpage, e.g. in the "comments section" of that page, lawmakers would absolutely consider that webpage liable _even if the content wasn't served from there_. Lawmakers don't care about the technical details.
  - akvadrako 4y ago
    Indeed, only the comments the author wants to promote should be embedded or linked on the page. Otherwise they should come out of band, either as a feature of the browser (or plugin) or another site.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  This forum is pretty heavily moderated, and its usefulness is largely because it is moderated. Back in the early days of HN the comparison was Reddit, which at the time was completely unmoderated (they didn't have subreddits or mods at the time), and Reddit was starting to become a cesspool of spam, low-effort posts, and offensive content. Many people moved over to HN simply because it avoided that. (And Reddit ended up introducing moderation a couple years later.) Unmoderated forums work fine when they're a small group of people with a vested interest in preserving the norms of the community. They fail quickly if they can't establish barriers against the outside world that prevent people with no skin in the game from hijacking the community for their own agendas. The modern Internet is much more similar to the latter than the former.
  - akvadrako 4y ago
    I'm not saying it wouldn't be moderated, but that moderation would be opt-in and also decentralized. You could pick people/algorithms you trust most to filter your view of the conversation.
kube-system 4y ago
Neither a completely unmoderated nor a perfectly moderated platform would have ever gotten to the size of the giant centralized platforms we have today. It just wouldn’t have been possible. And I think a good bit of the problems on the internet today are because moderation is inadequate on these huge platforms, but they are passed off as safe places for everyone. It has blurred the line between trustworthy and untrustworthy, everything is now just ambiguously okay-ish.

akvadrako 4y ago

No. Without 230 comments and forum posts would probably be on a decentralized network where only the author is liable. As say a blogger, you would only promote 3rd party content you approved of.

beej71 4y ago
If those decentralized comments ever appeared together on the same webpage, e.g. in the "comments section" of that page, lawmakers would absolutely consider that webpage liable _even if the content wasn't served from there_. Lawmakers don't care about the technical details.
- akvadrako 4y ago
  Indeed, only the comments the author wants to promote should be embedded or linked on the page. Otherwise they should come out of band, either as a feature of the browser (or plugin) or another site.
nostrademons 4y ago
This forum is pretty heavily moderated, and its usefulness is largely because it is moderated. Back in the early days of HN the comparison was Reddit, which at the time was completely unmoderated (they didn't have subreddits or mods at the time), and Reddit was starting to become a cesspool of spam, low-effort posts, and offensive content. Many people moved over to HN simply because it avoided that. (And Reddit ended up introducing moderation a couple years later.) Unmoderated forums work fine when they're a small group of people with a vested interest in preserving the norms of the community. They fail quickly if they can't establish barriers against the outside world that prevent people with no skin in the game from hijacking the community for their own agendas. The modern Internet is much more similar to the latter than the former.
- akvadrako 4y ago
  I'm not saying it wouldn't be moderated, but that moderation would be opt-in and also decentralized. You could pick people/algorithms you trust most to filter your view of the conversation.

kube-system 4y ago

Neither a completely unmoderated nor a perfectly moderated platform would have ever gotten to the size of the giant centralized platforms we have today. It just wouldn’t have been possible. And I think a good bit of the problems on the internet today are because moderation is inadequate on these huge platforms, but they are passed off as safe places for everyone. It has blurred the line between trustworthy and untrustworthy, everything is now just ambiguously okay-ish.