'confused' is not the right word. I think the author might mean something like 'skeptical'. I was listening to Thomases questions, and I think I agree. He is b

'confused' is not the right word. I think the author might mean something like 'skeptical'. I was listening to Thomases questions, and I think I agree. He is basically saying that any choice constitutes an opinion. He brought up a bookstore that had a section for 'reliable' books versus 'unreliable' books. That leads to other hypotheticals. Like is a bookstore making a recommendation by putting some books at the front of the store, and some at the back? Is a bookstore making an opinion when it decides to organize books by sales instead of alphabetically? When you start to really analyze it, it starts to seem really ridiculous IMO. Google says their mission is to organize the world's information. But any sort of organization presents some sort of opinion. If you go to Google and search for 'shoes' something has to come up in the top slot. Should it be zappos? The Wikipedia article on footwear? An organization with the acronym SHOES? Finding a "neutral" algorithm is dubious. I think the plaintiffs are correct that the algorithm, even if 'AI' (they call it that), is a decision. They make the point that whether it was a human deciding what order to show results, or a human choosing an algorithm to order results is the same (I agree). But then the same could be said for any system. Even reddit style upvotes/downvotes is a decision. I also think this counters the spirit of section 230. From Wiki: > In Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., CompuServe was found not be at fault as, by its stance as allowing all content to go unmoderated, it was a distributor and thus not liable for libelous content posted by users. However, in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co., the court concluded that because Prodigy had taken an editorial role with regard to customer content, it was a publisher and was legally responsible for libel committed by its customers. Obviously the pithy response by Prodigy would have been 'Well I guess we will not moderate content at all then, if it results in our being liable' and congress did the right thing passing 230 to stop the implications of this ruling. To believe the plaintiffs we would have to conclude that 230 protects companies who moderate content by removing it, but not who moderate content by sorting or recommending it. IMO this is counter to the spirit of 230, which is to allow platform owners to exercise moderation without being liable for any mistakes.