8 ms·

I fear a ruling where the interpretation of Section 230 puts dang at risk of liability for all of his necessary and appropriate historic moderation.

by xbar 4y ago

prettyStandard 4y ago
I'm pretty new here. Can you elaborate? Edit: On the "necessary and appropriate historic moderation" part.
- Aaron2222 4y ago
  dang is the moderator here.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  The claim by some is that 230 protections shouldn’t apply if the site at all influences what is shown to other users - essentially, moderation. There’s all sorts of made up distinctions between publisher and web site (most of it disingenuous) but it generally boils down to various political factions upset that the “wrong” sort of content isn’t moderated away, or the “right” sort of content is. Which is right or wrong depends on how you lean politically.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > if the site at all influences what is shown to other users - essentially, moderation Which is bizarre, given the legislative history of Section 230, whose entire point was to protect and encourage private censorship by sites and users.
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      What parent meant to mean is that "the claim by some is that section 230 is bad/unconstitutional and should be removed". > A key protection shielding social media companies from liability for hosting third-party content—Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—is set to face its first US Supreme Court challenge.
    - intrasight 4y ago
      Section 230s entire point is to encourage online communities
      - triceratops 4y ago
        You can't have a healthy online community without moderation. It gets overrun by spammers, trolls, off-topic conversations, and flamewars. Moderation is the reason that all of us are here instead of Usenet or 4chan.
        intrasight 4y ago
        Exactly. While in some ways moderation and censorship are synonymous, the intent is different. Moderation is necessary for healthy communities - online and offline.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        luckylion 4y ago
        They didn't say anything about 'healthy' though. Reddit, Twitter and Facebook have lots of trolls, off-topic conversations and flamewars (and spammers aren't that rare either), and yet they thrive.
  - Retric 4y ago
    The desire for protection isn’t the same as saying 230 actually applies. The case made it to the Supreme Court because it isn’t clear where exactly the law does and does not apply. User content and the promotion of user content are different things. If Facebook picks a specific message out of the billions posted they can find basically any message ever said. The choice of a handful of messages to post on a TV commercial moves the message from user content to Facebook’s message. Legally 230 could be limited to direct content and it’s moderation (removal) but not cover manual curation. Similarly purely algorithmic feeds may be yet another meaningful distinction. It’s a surprisingly complicated topic and I doubt the Supreme Court will make a broad ruling covering every case.
    - kmeisthax 4y ago
      Funnily enough DMCA 512 already works this way. If you manually curate a content feed you lose your copyright safe harbor. So you're actually incentivized to remain willfully blind to certain aspects of how your site is being used. The Copyright Office has been complaining about this and arguing that we should pull all recommendation systems outside of the copyright safe harbor. I kind of disagree with this. It would make both safe harbors kind of nonsensical, because we're incentivizing platforms to keep their systems broken. We understand that free speech on the Internet requires a minimal amount of censorship: i.e. we have to delete spam in order for anyone else to have a say. But one of the ways you can deal with spam is to create a curated feed of known-good content and users. Keep in mind too that "purely algorithmic feeds" is not a useful legal standard. Every algorithm has a bias. Even chronological timelines: they boost new posts and punish old news. And social media companies change the algorithm to get the result they want. YouTube went from watch time to engagement metrics and now uses neural networks that literally nobody understands beyond "it gives better numbers". And how exactly do you deal with an "algorithmic" feed with easter eggs like "boost any post liked by this group of people"? The alternative would be to do what the Copyright Office wants, and take recommendation systems out of the defamation and copyright safe harbors entirely. However, if we did this, these laws would only protect bare web hosts. If you had a bad experience with a company and you made a blog post that trended on Facebook or Twitter, then the company could sue Facebook or Twitter for defamation. And they would absolutely fold and ban your post. Even Google Search would be legally risky to operate fairly. Under current law, the bad-faith actor in question at least have to make a plausible through-line between copyright law and your post to get a DMCA 512 notice to stick.
andsoitis 4y ago
Rules will probably limited to communities over a certain size, larger than that of HN I would bet.
dragonwriter 4y ago
Weakening Section 230 doesn’t just put dang at risk, it puts every HN user that takes an action which alters the visibility of content, like flagging.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hgsgm 4y ago
  That's not true. Section 230 is based on a principle that someone is responsible for the content a post, and creators and publishers don't get to both deflect responsibility to the other. Next, YC would be the relevant entity, not dang personally. (But that's a minor point because dang is part of YC. ) The difference between you and YC is that YC actually collects posts and re- publishes them. Users simply tell YC if they like a post or not. They don't transmit the post content to anyone. YC decides whether to grey a post or remove it, or keep it. Showing a post higher or lower on a page doesn't mean anything related to whether the post violates some law and someone needs to be held responsible. Reddit mods are closer, since they have specific power to ban a post or poster.
  - bobmaxup 4y ago
    From the article, what Reddit is arguing: > “Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act famously protects Internet platforms from liability, yet what’s missing from the discussion is that it crucially protects Internet users—everyday people—when they participate in moderation like removing unwanted content from their communities, or users upvoting and downvoting posts,” a Reddit spokesperson told Ars.
    - DanAtC 4y ago
      Reddit is afraid they'll be held responsible for the actions of moderators they have no control over. Their business model is at risk so they're spinning it as something that threatens their users.
      - deleted 4y ago
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
It is interesting to read HN comments demanding more laws and regulations and restrictions on how social media operates. Usually the commenters are unaware that HN is a social media. HN has algorithmic ranking, it has invisible moderation, it has shadowbanning (sort of), and it has YC sponsored ads injected into the “feed” that get special treatment relative to user submissions. Many regulation proposals seem to have carve outs for sites and networks below a certain size, but if one past without such exceptions then a lot of the community sites we know and love would have no choice but to shut down. I suspect a lot of the proponents of these regulations aren’t really interested in seeing the sites they like subjected to these regulations. It has almost become a talking point about punishing social media companies people don’t like others using.
- archgoon 4y ago
  > it has shadowbanning (sort of) In what sense does HN have shadow banning (sort of)?
  - krapp 4y ago
    In the sense that HN has shadowbanning, but it's publicly reversible, so it's only sort of shadowbanning.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      Uh, no, it's straight up shadowbanning, just because it can be undoed doesn't mean it isn't shadowbanning
- ip26 4y ago
  Good moderation & ranking is nearly invisible, like good email spam filtering. We forget (or never even knew) just how much we depend on it.
  - MisterBastahrd 4y ago
    It isn't to the people who get actions taken against their commentary that they deem restrictive, though. And while the average person will simply take the moderation action with a grain of salt, I've been in a situation before where I've had to recommend en-masse banning of people who originally had constructive comments that I largely agreed with.
shadowgovt 4y ago
This Court case largely isn't about that; the protections for moderation Section 230 grants are largely not in question here. The question is whether an automated algorithm is protected by 230 in the same sense that manual moderation is. To the extent this might impact HN, it'd be more along the lines of "HN weights stories too heavily by (upvotes, time of post, some other metric) and as a result harm has occurred."

I fear a ruling where the interpretation of Section 230 puts dang at risk of liability for all of his necessary and appropriate historic moderation.

by xbar 4y ago

I fear a ruling where the interpretation of Section 230 puts dang at risk of liability for all of his necessary and appropriate historic moderation.

prettyStandard 4y ago

I'm pretty new here. Can you elaborate? Edit: On the "necessary and appropriate historic moderation" part.

Aaron2222 4y ago
dang is the moderator here.
DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
The claim by some is that 230 protections shouldn’t apply if the site at all influences what is shown to other users - essentially, moderation. There’s all sorts of made up distinctions between publisher and web site (most of it disingenuous) but it generally boils down to various political factions upset that the “wrong” sort of content isn’t moderated away, or the “right” sort of content is. Which is right or wrong depends on how you lean politically.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > if the site at all influences what is shown to other users - essentially, moderation Which is bizarre, given the legislative history of Section 230, whose entire point was to protect and encourage private censorship by sites and users.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    What parent meant to mean is that "the claim by some is that section 230 is bad/unconstitutional and should be removed". > A key protection shielding social media companies from liability for hosting third-party content—Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—is set to face its first US Supreme Court challenge.
  - intrasight 4y ago
    Section 230s entire point is to encourage online communities
    - triceratops 4y ago
      You can't have a healthy online community without moderation. It gets overrun by spammers, trolls, off-topic conversations, and flamewars. Moderation is the reason that all of us are here instead of Usenet or 4chan.
      - intrasight 4y ago
        Exactly. While in some ways moderation and censorship are synonymous, the intent is different. Moderation is necessary for healthy communities - online and offline.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - luckylion 4y ago
        They didn't say anything about 'healthy' though. Reddit, Twitter and Facebook have lots of trolls, off-topic conversations and flamewars (and spammers aren't that rare either), and yet they thrive.
- Retric 4y ago
  The desire for protection isn’t the same as saying 230 actually applies. The case made it to the Supreme Court because it isn’t clear where exactly the law does and does not apply. User content and the promotion of user content are different things. If Facebook picks a specific message out of the billions posted they can find basically any message ever said. The choice of a handful of messages to post on a TV commercial moves the message from user content to Facebook’s message. Legally 230 could be limited to direct content and it’s moderation (removal) but not cover manual curation. Similarly purely algorithmic feeds may be yet another meaningful distinction. It’s a surprisingly complicated topic and I doubt the Supreme Court will make a broad ruling covering every case.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    Funnily enough DMCA 512 already works this way. If you manually curate a content feed you lose your copyright safe harbor. So you're actually incentivized to remain willfully blind to certain aspects of how your site is being used. The Copyright Office has been complaining about this and arguing that we should pull all recommendation systems outside of the copyright safe harbor. I kind of disagree with this. It would make both safe harbors kind of nonsensical, because we're incentivizing platforms to keep their systems broken. We understand that free speech on the Internet requires a minimal amount of censorship: i.e. we have to delete spam in order for anyone else to have a say. But one of the ways you can deal with spam is to create a curated feed of known-good content and users. Keep in mind too that "purely algorithmic feeds" is not a useful legal standard. Every algorithm has a bias. Even chronological timelines: they boost new posts and punish old news. And social media companies change the algorithm to get the result they want. YouTube went from watch time to engagement metrics and now uses neural networks that literally nobody understands beyond "it gives better numbers". And how exactly do you deal with an "algorithmic" feed with easter eggs like "boost any post liked by this group of people"? The alternative would be to do what the Copyright Office wants, and take recommendation systems out of the defamation and copyright safe harbors entirely. However, if we did this, these laws would only protect bare web hosts. If you had a bad experience with a company and you made a blog post that trended on Facebook or Twitter, then the company could sue Facebook or Twitter for defamation. And they would absolutely fold and ban your post. Even Google Search would be legally risky to operate fairly. Under current law, the bad-faith actor in question at least have to make a plausible through-line between copyright law and your post to get a DMCA 512 notice to stick.

andsoitis 4y ago

Rules will probably limited to communities over a certain size, larger than that of HN I would bet.

dragonwriter 4y ago

Weakening Section 230 doesn’t just put dang at risk, it puts every HN user that takes an action which alters the visibility of content, like flagging.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hgsgm 4y ago
That's not true. Section 230 is based on a principle that someone is responsible for the content a post, and creators and publishers don't get to both deflect responsibility to the other. Next, YC would be the relevant entity, not dang personally. (But that's a minor point because dang is part of YC. ) The difference between you and YC is that YC actually collects posts and re- publishes them. Users simply tell YC if they like a post or not. They don't transmit the post content to anyone. YC decides whether to grey a post or remove it, or keep it. Showing a post higher or lower on a page doesn't mean anything related to whether the post violates some law and someone needs to be held responsible. Reddit mods are closer, since they have specific power to ban a post or poster.
- bobmaxup 4y ago
  From the article, what Reddit is arguing: > “Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act famously protects Internet platforms from liability, yet what’s missing from the discussion is that it crucially protects Internet users—everyday people—when they participate in moderation like removing unwanted content from their communities, or users upvoting and downvoting posts,” a Reddit spokesperson told Ars.
  - DanAtC 4y ago
    Reddit is afraid they'll be held responsible for the actions of moderators they have no control over. Their business model is at risk so they're spinning it as something that threatens their users.
    - deleted 4y ago

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

It is interesting to read HN comments demanding more laws and regulations and restrictions on how social media operates. Usually the commenters are unaware that HN is a social media. HN has algorithmic ranking, it has invisible moderation, it has shadowbanning (sort of), and it has YC sponsored ads injected into the “feed” that get special treatment relative to user submissions. Many regulation proposals seem to have carve outs for sites and networks below a certain size, but if one past without such exceptions then a lot of the community sites we know and love would have no choice but to shut down. I suspect a lot of the proponents of these regulations aren’t really interested in seeing the sites they like subjected to these regulations. It has almost become a talking point about punishing social media companies people don’t like others using.

archgoon 4y ago
> it has shadowbanning (sort of) In what sense does HN have shadow banning (sort of)?
- krapp 4y ago
  In the sense that HN has shadowbanning, but it's publicly reversible, so it's only sort of shadowbanning.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Uh, no, it's straight up shadowbanning, just because it can be undoed doesn't mean it isn't shadowbanning
ip26 4y ago
Good moderation & ranking is nearly invisible, like good email spam filtering. We forget (or never even knew) just how much we depend on it.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  It isn't to the people who get actions taken against their commentary that they deem restrictive, though. And while the average person will simply take the moderation action with a grain of salt, I've been in a situation before where I've had to recommend en-masse banning of people who originally had constructive comments that I largely agreed with.

shadowgovt 4y ago

This Court case largely isn't about that; the protections for moderation Section 230 grants are largely not in question here. The question is whether an automated algorithm is protected by 230 in the same sense that manual moderation is. To the extent this might impact HN, it'd be more along the lines of "HN weights stories too heavily by (upvotes, time of post, some other metric) and as a result harm has occurred."