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I don’t see this as bad. Platforms invest on what impacts their pockets, so today they do restrict/boost what you see on the basis on making you engage more and

I don’t see this as bad. Platforms invest on what impacts their pockets, so today they do restrict/boost what you see on the basis on making you engage more and click on ads more. If they are liable for the content they make available to you they might spend some more real money on moderation. We have all seen what the effects of those platforms, and the smart an evil use of their rec engines, were around the world. We didn’t have this effect pre recommendation engines because the dark content would stay hidden and you had to search for it, while today it is brought to you on a algorithm silver plate by youtube, facebook and tiktok. As long as you engage with the platform, whatever makes you happy/angry mate!

disgruntledphd2 4y ago
What happens to HN? Is the point based ranking system considered an algorithm? And note that the only people who can comply with the requirements in a post Section 230 world are gonna be Google and Facebook.
- shagie 4y ago
  The safe harbor of 230 was to protect a company from doing good faith moderation. Without 230, it goes to "you are responsible for everything if you moderate anything" or "you are responsible for nothing nothing if you moderate nothing" options for a provider. Google and Facebook would likely go to "nothing is moderated, no recommendations and here is a firehose of crap" since there is no way for them to moderate everything and they don't want to be responsible for anything. In a no safe harbor for good faith moderation, the only sites with user generated content (UGC) that would survive are the ones where they don't moderate anything - 4chan and the like. While that is not a future that I would like, I suspect that I could get some popcorn watching the sites that try to maintain an idealogical pure stance dealing with UGC that isn't something they want to host but not wanting to take responsibility for all of the extreme potions that they do host. My crystal ball says that if 230 was stuck down, the remains of web2 (including all social media and blog comments) would fracture to small, invite only communities where moderation is unnecessary (e.g. got a 15 person slack that is unmoderated because everyone is an adult... while the 1000 person locale based community slack that occasionally deletes and bans spammers would close). The crystal ball says that TikTok and Twitter would try to comply by turning off their recommendation algorithms and "report" functionality, and would then promptly collapse as Sturgeon's law makes them unusable.

disgruntledphd2 4y ago

What happens to HN? Is the point based ranking system considered an algorithm? And note that the only people who can comply with the requirements in a post Section 230 world are gonna be Google and Facebook.

shagie 4y ago
The safe harbor of 230 was to protect a company from doing good faith moderation. Without 230, it goes to "you are responsible for everything if you moderate anything" or "you are responsible for nothing nothing if you moderate nothing" options for a provider. Google and Facebook would likely go to "nothing is moderated, no recommendations and here is a firehose of crap" since there is no way for them to moderate everything and they don't want to be responsible for anything. In a no safe harbor for good faith moderation, the only sites with user generated content (UGC) that would survive are the ones where they don't moderate anything - 4chan and the like. While that is not a future that I would like, I suspect that I could get some popcorn watching the sites that try to maintain an idealogical pure stance dealing with UGC that isn't something they want to host but not wanting to take responsibility for all of the extreme potions that they do host. My crystal ball says that if 230 was stuck down, the remains of web2 (including all social media and blog comments) would fracture to small, invite only communities where moderation is unnecessary (e.g. got a 15 person slack that is unmoderated because everyone is an adult... while the 1000 person locale based community slack that occasionally deletes and bans spammers would close). The crystal ball says that TikTok and Twitter would try to comply by turning off their recommendation algorithms and "report" functionality, and would then promptly collapse as Sturgeon's law makes them unusable.