16 ms·

If youtube (and every similar website) was forced to abandon content moderation (or cease being "you"tube), that wouldn't substantially increase their chargebac

If youtube (and every similar website) was forced to abandon content moderation (or cease being "you"tube), that wouldn't substantially increase their chargeback rate. > ramp up their moderation hard Not good enough. Every claim about a person in every video posted to youtube would need to be fact checked prior to being visible on youtube. You are underestimating the degree to which this kills youtube qua youtube. This is subtantially more true for facebook, or for comment sections. >still have liabilities in countries that aren't the US Already most sites that are required to censor content for a certain locale only block it for IPs from that locale. I doubt this would change.

jcranmer 2y ago
> Every claim about a person in every video posted to youtube would need to be fact checked prior to being visible on youtube. No it doesn't. Defamation requires some form of mens rea of the statement being made (negligence or actual malice depending on who it's about), so liability for defamation in a no-§230 world largely means "will take it down after someone complains" as there's a pretty solid defense that not verifying the statements before uploading doesn't constitute even negligence, much less actual malice. The liability rules in a no-§230 world aren't entirely clear since we're basing everything on just two court cases that existed pre-§230, but the social media companies are going to be extremely willing to throw down millions of dollars in legal fees to persuade judges to evolve liability rules that make their moderation policies feasible. And this comes back to the main point again: no moderation just doesn't scale, not even in channels of merely a hundred people, let alone hundreds of millions. It is naïve to think that companies are going to suddenly decide that "no moderation" is less risk than "tailor both our moderation policies and the law to find some middle ground that is actually feasible."

jcranmer 2y ago

> Every claim about a person in every video posted to youtube would need to be fact checked prior to being visible on youtube. No it doesn't. Defamation requires some form of mens rea of the statement being made (negligence or actual malice depending on who it's about), so liability for defamation in a no-§230 world largely means "will take it down after someone complains" as there's a pretty solid defense that not verifying the statements before uploading doesn't constitute even negligence, much less actual malice. The liability rules in a no-§230 world aren't entirely clear since we're basing everything on just two court cases that existed pre-§230, but the social media companies are going to be extremely willing to throw down millions of dollars in legal fees to persuade judges to evolve liability rules that make their moderation policies feasible. And this comes back to the main point again: no moderation just doesn't scale, not even in channels of merely a hundred people, let alone hundreds of millions. It is naïve to think that companies are going to suddenly decide that "no moderation" is less risk than "tailor both our moderation policies and the law to find some middle ground that is actually feasible."