5 ms·

> I believe the world would be a better place if web properties took more responsibility of what happens on their premises. A lot of the complaints against 230

> I believe the world would be a better place if web properties took more responsibility of what happens on their premises. A lot of the complaints against 230 is that the sites are doing that too much, in ways that aren't to the liking of elected politicians, i.e. if twitter makes an anti-hate speech filter republicans say it's targeting conservatives, or if Facebook takes down an anti-fascism group democrats will say liberals are being targeted. Forcing more legal liability on the major content hosting platforms won't make them go away, it will just make them into record labels or movie studios from the 1950s, where only an exclusive group of tightly controlled creatives get their mundane, uncontroversial content hosted. It's not going to create some cambrian explosion of alternative platforms - that already exists, and they don't get traffic because a one-stop shop for content is a natural monopoly.

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
Killing 230 would make things much harder for smaller platforms. Big players like Google and Facebook have enough resources to find a way to reduce their chances of being fined into oblivion, but smaller sites don't.
- rmilk 4y ago
  Also the major players can lobby legislation to add burdens to new players that they already have in place themselves. This locks out new players unless they can invest upfront, while allowing the existing players to use what they already have in place. This was the biggest issue with the EU copyright restrictions where it required a massive investment up front to match what YouTube already had implemented.
- treis 4y ago
  I think there's a middle ground. If you do a timeline or up/down vote rankings then that's just transmitting what your users post and falls under 230. If you use an algorithm to curate then you're exercising editorial discretion and get the liability that goes along with it.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
    I do not think a world where sites either must moderate everything or not at all is a good world. The most realistic way for a tiny site to be moderated is in a reactive rather than proactive fashion.
    - treis 4y ago
      It's not moderation it's promotion. If you're going to start promoting stuff it's on you to ensure you're not promoting stuff that gets people killed.
zztop44 4y ago
Although it’s interesting that the book publishers, record labels and movie studios of the 1950s and especially 1960s did actually put out a significant amount of extremely controversial art (along with the mundane, uncontroversial stuff) and suffered the lawsuits accordingly. I don’t know what that teaches us other than that capital, whether represented by algorithms or studio execs, tends to follow the culture as much as it creates it.
d35007 4y ago
> a one-stop shop for content is a natural monopoly We have YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and TikTok. We have Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Hacker News. We have Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, and AppleTV. Which of those is the “natural monopoly” for content?
- pixl97 4y ago
  All those things listed are pretty damned large companies....
deepsun 4y ago
Making a record label or movie studio needs a big investment. But .com domain is just $11.
- meragrin_ 4y ago
  Now all you need is processing power, a design, business logic, storage, bandwidth, users, and employees to deal with all of that.

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago

Killing 230 would make things much harder for smaller platforms. Big players like Google and Facebook have enough resources to find a way to reduce their chances of being fined into oblivion, but smaller sites don't.

rmilk 4y ago
Also the major players can lobby legislation to add burdens to new players that they already have in place themselves. This locks out new players unless they can invest upfront, while allowing the existing players to use what they already have in place. This was the biggest issue with the EU copyright restrictions where it required a massive investment up front to match what YouTube already had implemented.
treis 4y ago
I think there's a middle ground. If you do a timeline or up/down vote rankings then that's just transmitting what your users post and falls under 230. If you use an algorithm to curate then you're exercising editorial discretion and get the liability that goes along with it.
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
  I do not think a world where sites either must moderate everything or not at all is a good world. The most realistic way for a tiny site to be moderated is in a reactive rather than proactive fashion.
  - treis 4y ago
    It's not moderation it's promotion. If you're going to start promoting stuff it's on you to ensure you're not promoting stuff that gets people killed.

zztop44 4y ago

Although it’s interesting that the book publishers, record labels and movie studios of the 1950s and especially 1960s did actually put out a significant amount of extremely controversial art (along with the mundane, uncontroversial stuff) and suffered the lawsuits accordingly. I don’t know what that teaches us other than that capital, whether represented by algorithms or studio execs, tends to follow the culture as much as it creates it.

d35007 4y ago

> a one-stop shop for content is a natural monopoly We have YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and TikTok. We have Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Hacker News. We have Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, and AppleTV. Which of those is the “natural monopoly” for content?

pixl97 4y ago
All those things listed are pretty damned large companies....

deepsun 4y ago

Making a record label or movie studio needs a big investment. But .com domain is just $11.

meragrin_ 4y ago
Now all you need is processing power, a design, business logic, storage, bandwidth, users, and employees to deal with all of that.