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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 sort

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.

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.