4 ms·

Section 230 needs to be gutted such that it separates transmission from content publication. The intention of section 230 is to isolate delivery mechanisms, fo

Section 230 needs to be gutted such that it separates transmission from content publication. The intention of section 230 is to isolate delivery mechanisms, for example ISPs and cell towers, such that they cannot become victims of torts for the content carried upon them, which remains necessary. Will separating transmission and content with regards to section 230 harm social media? Absolutely. I am not a huge fan of walled gardens or the preposterous legal shield provided to online content providers versus any other publisher. Commercial entities that proffer from walled gardens exist to subject their users as the product as opposed to proffering from their users' commercial desires. But but but then social media would have to be moderated... It is already aggressively moderated, such as YouTube taking down terrorism violence videos or removing anti-vaccine content. So, that argument has largely evaporated already.

madeofpalk 3y ago
> The intention of section 230 is to isolate delivery mechanisms, for example ISPs and cell tower Not quite true. The inciting cases was about ISPs hosting forums, and whether the forum host can be held liable for content it's users post. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod.... The text of Section 230 is so simple. It deliberately targets broader "interactive computer services". > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider_
- austin-cheney 3y ago
  In both of those cases the forum operator and ISP were one and the same. The cause for concern then is that the ISP regulated user submitted content and thus was found liable for content published because the inference is that the ISP implicitly blessed such content by not removing it in the course of their moderation. This is not a risk to ISPs today or content transmission generally. The web, as it exists today in common practice, is no different than an offline magazine publishing user submitted content because editorial discretion is applied and the magazine is well isolated from the transmission mechanism, such as postal delivery.
danielrhodes 3y ago
Says the person leaving a comment on a forum which would likely not exist due to legal risks without Section 230 protection. :-) I agree transmission should receive extra protection. But there is no case where moderating every piece of content that flies across the internet is economical nor even feasible given the volume and how insanely difficult it is to create repeatable one-size fits all rules. However, given the amount of public discourse that exists online now, we would only see a chilling effect from changing these rules. It gets even harder when you think about something like Mastodon. Is the current state of the world ideal? By no means. It wasn't ideal before either when media and public discourse was controlled and channeled by only a few entities. And we should expect to see evolutions in the future as well - we haven't found the happy place yet. At the very least, it seems reasonable if large public platforms were required to be more transparent about their moderation efforts and rules so at least we can see what is behind the curtain. The lack thereof has created a lot of distrust.
- austin-cheney 3y ago
  > would likely not exist due to legal risks without Section 230 protection. :-) There is no reason to believe that, because there is no precedent either way for online social media as social media did not exist before the passage of the law. If looking at offline media that publishes submissions from users this opinion is absolutely false.
  - habinero 3y ago
    Offline media curate user submissions. They don't just blindly publish anything sent to them. No magazine is accidentally publishing CSAM because someone sent it in. In any case, we can, in fact, believe it. The entire point of the statute is to cover user-generated content, which is exactly what social media is.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> The intention of section 230 is to isolate delivery mechanisms No, it wasn't, it was to enable forum hosts to moderate content without incurring general liability for all content in the forum by so doing. The motivating cases were about ascribing liability to forum hosts differently based on moderation as a trigger for publisher-style (no need to prove knowledge) liability, with unmoderated forum hosts getting only distributor-style (specific knowledge required) liability. It wasn't about ISPs qua ISPs (the CompuServe and Prodigy cases involved entities which were incidentally ISPs, but involved them in their role as forum hosts, not ISPs) or transmission at all. > But but but then social media would have to be moderated. No, if it was outside of Section 230, the opposite would be the case. Section 230 is what make it economically possible for it to be moderated instead of unmoderated given the threat of general tort liability attaching as soon as any moderation is done. Without Section 230, social media, if it was viable at all, would only be viable unmoderated.
- austin-cheney 3y ago
  > No, it wasn't, it was to enable forum hosts to moderate content That is incomplete. The actual reason was to isolate liability of ISPs that host online forums which receives user submissions and moderates those user submissions such that publication of content on those forums cannot be cause to sue the hosting ISP. The motivation had nothing to do with protecting forum moderators themselves even if that is the result of the law. > No, if it was outside of Section 230, the opposite would be the case. There is no reason to believe that outside of vague speculation, at least in the case of modern social media, because this issue remains untested against modern social media. When looking at other venues of publication moderation does occur economically without protection from section 230 or anything equivalent.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > > No, it wasn't, it was to enable forum hosts to moderate content > That is incomplete. Well, yes, you cut it in the middle of a sentence, so you have made it incomplete, but your explanation remains wrong. > The actual reason was to isolate liability of ISPs that host online forums which receives user submissions and moderates those user submissions such that publication of content on those forums cannot be cause to sue the hosting ISP. No, it wasn't. It had nothing to do with ISPs qua ISPs at all. It has to do with forum operators and their users being immune from being sued based on moderate actions. This is explicit not only in the findings and policy sections, and the legislative debates, but also in the operative text of Section 230. Its not a common carrier rule for ISPs; you seem to be confusing Section 230 with net neutrality. > The motivation had nothing to do with protecting forum moderators themselves Yes, it was entirely about that (and about encouraging them to censor content in ways in which thr government would not be free to, which is why it was packaged as part of the most extensive and intrusive internet censorship law ever passed by Congress, and is—because it is a liability shield for private censorship and not government censorship like the rest of the Communications Decency Act—the only significant part of that law not struck down for violating the First Amendment. > There is no reason to believe that outside of vague speculation No, there is the actual business environment at the time the CDA was being debated, where the inpact of the notivating decisions were working through the industry. There are very clear reasons to believe that, those reasons were the actual arguments made in Congress for Section 230, and they are the reason Section 230 exists. Your narrative is consistent neither with the text of the law, nor with the legislative history, nor with the broader legal and business history surrounding the adoption of Section 230. It seems to be a narratige constructed around presenting what a lot of people have argued that they would like to replace Section 230 with as if it were the original motivation for the bill, which is simply historically unsupportable. > When looking at other venues of publication moderation does occur economically without protection from section 230 Other venues of publication have scale controlled by things like manufacturing and distribution costs, so the marginal costs of comprehensive review once you are doing any moderation is a small share of total costs. Internet fora have extremely low distribution and manufacturing costs per unit of content, so the marginal cost of comprehensive review over limited moderation is enormous. The assumption of (and thus imposition of the burden of) comprehensive knowledge of and liability for contents when an entity takes any moderation steps that is reasonable with, e.g., print publication simply is not with interactive comluter services.

madeofpalk 3y ago

> The intention of section 230 is to isolate delivery mechanisms, for example ISPs and cell tower Not quite true. The inciting cases was about ISPs hosting forums, and whether the forum host can be held liable for content it's users post. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod.... The text of Section 230 is so simple. It deliberately targets broader "interactive computer services". > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider_

austin-cheney 3y ago
In both of those cases the forum operator and ISP were one and the same. The cause for concern then is that the ISP regulated user submitted content and thus was found liable for content published because the inference is that the ISP implicitly blessed such content by not removing it in the course of their moderation. This is not a risk to ISPs today or content transmission generally. The web, as it exists today in common practice, is no different than an offline magazine publishing user submitted content because editorial discretion is applied and the magazine is well isolated from the transmission mechanism, such as postal delivery.

danielrhodes 3y ago

Says the person leaving a comment on a forum which would likely not exist due to legal risks without Section 230 protection. :-) I agree transmission should receive extra protection. But there is no case where moderating every piece of content that flies across the internet is economical nor even feasible given the volume and how insanely difficult it is to create repeatable one-size fits all rules. However, given the amount of public discourse that exists online now, we would only see a chilling effect from changing these rules. It gets even harder when you think about something like Mastodon. Is the current state of the world ideal? By no means. It wasn't ideal before either when media and public discourse was controlled and channeled by only a few entities. And we should expect to see evolutions in the future as well - we haven't found the happy place yet. At the very least, it seems reasonable if large public platforms were required to be more transparent about their moderation efforts and rules so at least we can see what is behind the curtain. The lack thereof has created a lot of distrust.

austin-cheney 3y ago
> would likely not exist due to legal risks without Section 230 protection. :-) There is no reason to believe that, because there is no precedent either way for online social media as social media did not exist before the passage of the law. If looking at offline media that publishes submissions from users this opinion is absolutely false.
- habinero 3y ago
  Offline media curate user submissions. They don't just blindly publish anything sent to them. No magazine is accidentally publishing CSAM because someone sent it in. In any case, we can, in fact, believe it. The entire point of the statute is to cover user-generated content, which is exactly what social media is.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> The intention of section 230 is to isolate delivery mechanisms No, it wasn't, it was to enable forum hosts to moderate content without incurring general liability for all content in the forum by so doing. The motivating cases were about ascribing liability to forum hosts differently based on moderation as a trigger for publisher-style (no need to prove knowledge) liability, with unmoderated forum hosts getting only distributor-style (specific knowledge required) liability. It wasn't about ISPs qua ISPs (the CompuServe and Prodigy cases involved entities which were incidentally ISPs, but involved them in their role as forum hosts, not ISPs) or transmission at all. > But but but then social media would have to be moderated. No, if it was outside of Section 230, the opposite would be the case. Section 230 is what make it economically possible for it to be moderated instead of unmoderated given the threat of general tort liability attaching as soon as any moderation is done. Without Section 230, social media, if it was viable at all, would only be viable unmoderated.

austin-cheney 3y ago
> No, it wasn't, it was to enable forum hosts to moderate content That is incomplete. The actual reason was to isolate liability of ISPs that host online forums which receives user submissions and moderates those user submissions such that publication of content on those forums cannot be cause to sue the hosting ISP. The motivation had nothing to do with protecting forum moderators themselves even if that is the result of the law. > No, if it was outside of Section 230, the opposite would be the case. There is no reason to believe that outside of vague speculation, at least in the case of modern social media, because this issue remains untested against modern social media. When looking at other venues of publication moderation does occur economically without protection from section 230 or anything equivalent.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > > No, it wasn't, it was to enable forum hosts to moderate content > That is incomplete. Well, yes, you cut it in the middle of a sentence, so you have made it incomplete, but your explanation remains wrong. > The actual reason was to isolate liability of ISPs that host online forums which receives user submissions and moderates those user submissions such that publication of content on those forums cannot be cause to sue the hosting ISP. No, it wasn't. It had nothing to do with ISPs qua ISPs at all. It has to do with forum operators and their users being immune from being sued based on moderate actions. This is explicit not only in the findings and policy sections, and the legislative debates, but also in the operative text of Section 230. Its not a common carrier rule for ISPs; you seem to be confusing Section 230 with net neutrality. > The motivation had nothing to do with protecting forum moderators themselves Yes, it was entirely about that (and about encouraging them to censor content in ways in which thr government would not be free to, which is why it was packaged as part of the most extensive and intrusive internet censorship law ever passed by Congress, and is—because it is a liability shield for private censorship and not government censorship like the rest of the Communications Decency Act—the only significant part of that law not struck down for violating the First Amendment. > There is no reason to believe that outside of vague speculation No, there is the actual business environment at the time the CDA was being debated, where the inpact of the notivating decisions were working through the industry. There are very clear reasons to believe that, those reasons were the actual arguments made in Congress for Section 230, and they are the reason Section 230 exists. Your narrative is consistent neither with the text of the law, nor with the legislative history, nor with the broader legal and business history surrounding the adoption of Section 230. It seems to be a narratige constructed around presenting what a lot of people have argued that they would like to replace Section 230 with as if it were the original motivation for the bill, which is simply historically unsupportable. > When looking at other venues of publication moderation does occur economically without protection from section 230 Other venues of publication have scale controlled by things like manufacturing and distribution costs, so the marginal costs of comprehensive review once you are doing any moderation is a small share of total costs. Internet fora have extremely low distribution and manufacturing costs per unit of content, so the marginal cost of comprehensive review over limited moderation is enormous. The assumption of (and thus imposition of the burden of) comprehensive knowledge of and liability for contents when an entity takes any moderation steps that is reasonable with, e.g., print publication simply is not with interactive comluter services.