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We need to reform section 230. Either you are a public square and you gain protection from your users commenting but you can't delete or moderate their conten

We need to reform section 230. Either you are a public square and you gain protection from your users commenting but you can't delete or moderate their content (sans actual spam/child p/etc), or you can moderate/curate your users content but you are no longer protected/can be held liable for things your users post. This worse of both worlds we have going on here results in these alphabet soup agencies/ngos having a place on the boardroom directly affecting people's speech.

freejazz 3y ago
What does 230 have to do with this at all? 230 is pretty limited in regards to what it protects against anyway. and the ADL isn't threatening him with action, so what does 230 have to do with it?
- Racing0461 3y ago
  The ADL is getting advertisers to drop Twitter since Twitter won't delete the posts they don't like. That seems like action to me. Also the ADL and similar orgs had a direct line of access to content moderation teams in the previous twitter leadership. Getting companies to not delete posts if they want to not be held liable for stuff their users posts helps prevent this issue.
  - freejazz 3y ago
    I meant a legal action, to which 230 would be a defense. Perhaps you should re-read 230 if you think it has relevance outside of legal actions. >Getting companies to not delete posts if they want to not be held liable for stuff their users posts helps prevent this issue. There's no circumstance here where twitter is being attempted to be made liable for their users posts, so what relevance is 230?
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      This is just more of the same "Independent entities invoking their legal right to free speech and association in a way I don't like is an impingement on my free speech" bullshit. It's telling they don't understand section 230 since they don't seem to understand 2/3rds of the first amendment either, and that's only a few sentences. If you want to require private companies to publish your content, you have to overturn the first amendment, or at the very least, replace the current supreme court with one open to extreme "interpretation" of the text, but maybe don't then complain when they ban guns.
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        > they ban guns Or speech, for that matter. There's never a guarantee that an activist court rules in the way a person wants them to rule.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Getting companies to not delete posts if they want to not be held liable for stuff their users posts helps prevent this issue. If you return to the “any effort to moderate lawful content at all gives you publisher-style liability over the whole service” rule that existed pre-230, you destroy all commercial UGC sites pretty quickly. Because flawless moderation at scale isn't possible, and the market for unmoderated sites is pretty limited. (Especially because either way you have to respond to reports of certain potentially unlawful content to avoid criminal liability, and that rule creates a huge risk that a slight error in that response suddenly opens you up to unlimited civil liability for other content.) We know this because that was the emerging situation that Section 230 was the response to.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    The ADL cannot hold ANYONE "liable" for anything. They can make a statement of their opinion, and advertisers are free to listen to that. Musk is mad that advertisers don't like being seen next to posts calling for violence, and are using their first amendment right of free association to NOT associate with a platform with a lot of calls to violence.
xenadu02 3y ago
Invoking 230 here is off-topic but reforming it the way you propose would destroy most communities, especially smaller niche ones. It will also bring down a wave of massive censorship and moderation to sites that try to continue. In the real world when someone is a loud asshole people generally avoid them. They don't invite them to parties. They don't hang out with them. Online is no different. Communities overrun with loud assholes drive away normal users. Again a real-world analogy: what you are proposing is that Starbucks, as a business that caters to the public, should not be allowed (by law) to eject or ban someone who comes in and starts screaming obscenities because they think it is funny. If they attempt to regulate the speech of patrons then Starbucks becomes directly liable for everything their patrons say. There are only two outcomes: Starbucks goes out of business because trolls show up and annoy people who don't want to hang out in a loud coffee shop with super annoying people who harass them... or Starbucks prohibits talking in their store to avoid liability. I can also come up with many ways for bad faith actors to cause huge problems in your proposed scheme. Imagine a competing electric car maker paying shills to invade all the Tesla owner forums to get them shut down or harass everyone into leaving. Or imagine a rival political party doing the same. It isn't that difficult to create 100 bot accounts that flood every thread with non-spam posts that are nevertheless not useful content and not posted in good faith. For that matter HN's posting policies would be prohibited under your own rules. It wouldn't take long for the usefulness of this site to disappear in that case.

freejazz 3y ago

What does 230 have to do with this at all? 230 is pretty limited in regards to what it protects against anyway. and the ADL isn't threatening him with action, so what does 230 have to do with it?

Racing0461 3y ago
The ADL is getting advertisers to drop Twitter since Twitter won't delete the posts they don't like. That seems like action to me. Also the ADL and similar orgs had a direct line of access to content moderation teams in the previous twitter leadership. Getting companies to not delete posts if they want to not be held liable for stuff their users posts helps prevent this issue.
- freejazz 3y ago
  I meant a legal action, to which 230 would be a defense. Perhaps you should re-read 230 if you think it has relevance outside of legal actions. >Getting companies to not delete posts if they want to not be held liable for stuff their users posts helps prevent this issue. There's no circumstance here where twitter is being attempted to be made liable for their users posts, so what relevance is 230?
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    This is just more of the same "Independent entities invoking their legal right to free speech and association in a way I don't like is an impingement on my free speech" bullshit. It's telling they don't understand section 230 since they don't seem to understand 2/3rds of the first amendment either, and that's only a few sentences. If you want to require private companies to publish your content, you have to overturn the first amendment, or at the very least, replace the current supreme court with one open to extreme "interpretation" of the text, but maybe don't then complain when they ban guns.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      > they ban guns Or speech, for that matter. There's never a guarantee that an activist court rules in the way a person wants them to rule.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Getting companies to not delete posts if they want to not be held liable for stuff their users posts helps prevent this issue. If you return to the “any effort to moderate lawful content at all gives you publisher-style liability over the whole service” rule that existed pre-230, you destroy all commercial UGC sites pretty quickly. Because flawless moderation at scale isn't possible, and the market for unmoderated sites is pretty limited. (Especially because either way you have to respond to reports of certain potentially unlawful content to avoid criminal liability, and that rule creates a huge risk that a slight error in that response suddenly opens you up to unlimited civil liability for other content.) We know this because that was the emerging situation that Section 230 was the response to.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  The ADL cannot hold ANYONE "liable" for anything. They can make a statement of their opinion, and advertisers are free to listen to that. Musk is mad that advertisers don't like being seen next to posts calling for violence, and are using their first amendment right of free association to NOT associate with a platform with a lot of calls to violence.

xenadu02 3y ago

Invoking 230 here is off-topic but reforming it the way you propose would destroy most communities, especially smaller niche ones. It will also bring down a wave of massive censorship and moderation to sites that try to continue. In the real world when someone is a loud asshole people generally avoid them. They don't invite them to parties. They don't hang out with them. Online is no different. Communities overrun with loud assholes drive away normal users. Again a real-world analogy: what you are proposing is that Starbucks, as a business that caters to the public, should not be allowed (by law) to eject or ban someone who comes in and starts screaming obscenities because they think it is funny. If they attempt to regulate the speech of patrons then Starbucks becomes directly liable for everything their patrons say. There are only two outcomes: Starbucks goes out of business because trolls show up and annoy people who don't want to hang out in a loud coffee shop with super annoying people who harass them... or Starbucks prohibits talking in their store to avoid liability. I can also come up with many ways for bad faith actors to cause huge problems in your proposed scheme. Imagine a competing electric car maker paying shills to invade all the Tesla owner forums to get them shut down or harass everyone into leaving. Or imagine a rival political party doing the same. It isn't that difficult to create 100 bot accounts that flood every thread with non-spam posts that are nevertheless not useful content and not posted in good faith. For that matter HN's posting policies would be prohibited under your own rules. It wouldn't take long for the usefulness of this site to disappear in that case.