4 ms·

Why Section 230 Is a Good Law and Why Messing with It Would Be Bad

32 points by speckx 9mo ago

tracker1 9mo ago
I think that censorship should be expressly limited based on size and usage of 230 protections. ex: if you have 10+ million users and you want to cite section 230 protections, you may not censor protected speech, but maybe allow users to opt-in to a "censored" feed, or otherwise limited such as for minors. I'm mixed, but I don't think companies should have 230 protection AND be able to make express publisher decisions on editorializing content.
- SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
  I think this is one of those things that only ever makes sense in the abstract. How would this rule apply to Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy? Would it make sense to tell Prodigy that they'll be immune from defamation suits if only they agree to make their offensive language monitoring opt-in and publish a new code of conduct permitting racial slurs?
  - tracker1 9mo ago
    I'm honestly not sure... it could also backfire with intentional social groups... such as someone created a social network expressly for progressives or conservatives, where repeated contrarian rhetoric is simply disallowed (for good or bad), for people who want to live in their bubbles, like MSNow. (last comment regarding MS Now is meant for humor)
- digiown 9mo ago
  I'm not sure that would work. How about spam or adverts? That's protected speech. And downranking based on viewpoint is not any different from censoring. Yeah you can say X but no one will see it. I can see potentially requiring platforms to moderate in a "viewpoint neutral" way, though, which only applies if you have ~5% of potential customer base as users. It would at least create a diseconomy of scale and discourage centralization.
  - TexanFeller 9mo ago
    Sounds like you’re talking about the presumed free speech rights of corporations, which is part of this debate. I think corporations should have much more limited speech than an actual person and the concept of corporate personhood in general needs to be walked back significantly. Yes it’s important for news organization and such to have unrestricted speech, but that seems solvable by keeping them in a separate category and excluding corps that engage in other lines of business. I don’t want say Google to be have full censorship and editorial privileges just because one of their many products surfaces news.
    - digiown 9mo ago
      I can spam or send misinformation here just fine without being a corporation. And it's legal speech. Should platforms not be able to moderate this? > news organization and such to have unrestricted speech [...] by keeping them in a separate category and excluding corps This is an misunderstanding of "freedom of the press". The "press" is a reference to the printing press as a device itself. News organizations (which are usually for profit) have the exact same rights to free speech as anyone else. The natural analogy is printers and the right to publish information online.
- nradov 9mo ago
  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that Congress could consider extending "Common Carrier" legislation to cover social media networks. I'm not convinced that would be an improvement over the current situation but it's an interesting idea. The telephone company doesn't censor which topics I can discuss in phone calls so perhaps other communication technologies should work in a similar way? https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-thomas-takes-aims-at-tech-and-its-power-to-cut-off-speech https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-th...
  - vel0city 9mo ago
    This completely ignores the history of why common carrier regulations were originally implemented. Common carriers had such regulation on them because their infrastructure was a natural monopoly. The lone train line through the town. The single telegraph and telephone operator. The only trucking company operating that route. It's not clear to me we're at the point that Facebook is the only real way for us to talk online. It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space.
    - digiown 9mo ago
      Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies. You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else. I can run a chat server to talk with a few specific friends too in the same way, but will you be able to use it to talk to a random company/store/stranger? > It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space. If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers and a couple developers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so. Fundamentally the idea is that you ought to be able to participate in society without undue hardship solely by the whim of the (power,phone,water,communications) company. I don't think it is that unreasonable to regulate Facebook in that sense. Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter. Do you think I should have to go through a hostile third party just to receive information from the government?
ocdtrekkie 9mo ago
(Reminder that TechDirt is also a lobbyist Copia Insitute who takes money from big tech clients.) Section 230 is a terrible law because it exempts one class of business from any responsibility for their actions. A global company which faces no penalties for allowing malicious and fraudulent content has no incentive to police itself, and its clients live outside the reach of the law. Ergo, they make money on crime and have no responsibility for it. If we want to fix the Internet, step one is deleting 230 in its entirety, and step two is ensuring a tech platform cannot profit from illegal activity. That means if they sell a malicious ad, they at bare minimum, have to give up that revenue, and ideally, face a penalty for it if they aren't taking adequate measures to prevent abuse. A true financial risk to tech platforms is the only way to incentivize good behavior.
- JSR_FDED 9mo ago
  I agree article reads like a lobbyist wrote it.
- adinisom 9mo ago
  There's some logic to wanting to assign responsibility for other's actions upon those who enable it. Like you say, to incentivize intermediates to police their users and those they do business with. But the problem with deputizing intermediates is that it's too effective. It creates incentives to over-police and we have less rights against corporate policing than we do government policing. We would not have the internet we have today without the user generated content and moderation that section 230 enabled.
  - ocdtrekkie 9mo ago
    Like, as someone who grew up in the formative years of the Internet, I get it, but also, what we have is incredibly bad and it's very possible we'd be better off without it. The tech crowd does not want to admit that every single effing website that lets you post images has CSAM. Every one! The tech crowd doesn't want to admit an entire generation of our kids are screwed beyond belief by social networking. The tech crowd doesn't want to admit that Donald effing Trump got elected because our population is incredibly easy to manipulate. Our society is very, very screwed up right now and it's very likely the principle cause is that we gave Google and Facebook complete blanket immunity, and that was an incredibly moronic thing to do. If something needs Section 230 to exist, it shouldn't exist. Full stop.

32 points by speckx 9mo ago

I think that censorship should be expressly limited based on size and usage of 230 protections. ex: if you have 10+ million users and you want to cite section 230 protections, you may not censor protected speech, but maybe allow users to opt-in to a "censored" feed, or otherwise limited such as for minors. I'm mixed, but I don't think companies should have 230 protection AND be able to make express publisher decisions on editorializing content.

SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
I think this is one of those things that only ever makes sense in the abstract. How would this rule apply to Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy? Would it make sense to tell Prodigy that they'll be immune from defamation suits if only they agree to make their offensive language monitoring opt-in and publish a new code of conduct permitting racial slurs?
- tracker1 9mo ago
  I'm honestly not sure... it could also backfire with intentional social groups... such as someone created a social network expressly for progressives or conservatives, where repeated contrarian rhetoric is simply disallowed (for good or bad), for people who want to live in their bubbles, like MSNow. (last comment regarding MS Now is meant for humor)
digiown 9mo ago
I'm not sure that would work. How about spam or adverts? That's protected speech. And downranking based on viewpoint is not any different from censoring. Yeah you can say X but no one will see it. I can see potentially requiring platforms to moderate in a "viewpoint neutral" way, though, which only applies if you have ~5% of potential customer base as users. It would at least create a diseconomy of scale and discourage centralization.
- TexanFeller 9mo ago
  Sounds like you’re talking about the presumed free speech rights of corporations, which is part of this debate. I think corporations should have much more limited speech than an actual person and the concept of corporate personhood in general needs to be walked back significantly. Yes it’s important for news organization and such to have unrestricted speech, but that seems solvable by keeping them in a separate category and excluding corps that engage in other lines of business. I don’t want say Google to be have full censorship and editorial privileges just because one of their many products surfaces news.
  - digiown 9mo ago
    I can spam or send misinformation here just fine without being a corporation. And it's legal speech. Should platforms not be able to moderate this? > news organization and such to have unrestricted speech [...] by keeping them in a separate category and excluding corps This is an misunderstanding of "freedom of the press". The "press" is a reference to the printing press as a device itself. News organizations (which are usually for profit) have the exact same rights to free speech as anyone else. The natural analogy is printers and the right to publish information online.
nradov 9mo ago
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that Congress could consider extending "Common Carrier" legislation to cover social media networks. I'm not convinced that would be an improvement over the current situation but it's an interesting idea. The telephone company doesn't censor which topics I can discuss in phone calls so perhaps other communication technologies should work in a similar way? https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-thomas-takes-aims-at-tech-and-its-power-to-cut-off-speech https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-th...
- vel0city 9mo ago
  This completely ignores the history of why common carrier regulations were originally implemented. Common carriers had such regulation on them because their infrastructure was a natural monopoly. The lone train line through the town. The single telegraph and telephone operator. The only trucking company operating that route. It's not clear to me we're at the point that Facebook is the only real way for us to talk online. It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space.
  - digiown 9mo ago
    Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies. You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else. I can run a chat server to talk with a few specific friends too in the same way, but will you be able to use it to talk to a random company/store/stranger? > It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space. If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers and a couple developers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so. Fundamentally the idea is that you ought to be able to participate in society without undue hardship solely by the whim of the (power,phone,water,communications) company. I don't think it is that unreasonable to regulate Facebook in that sense. Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter. Do you think I should have to go through a hostile third party just to receive information from the government?

ocdtrekkie 9mo ago

(Reminder that TechDirt is also a lobbyist Copia Insitute who takes money from big tech clients.) Section 230 is a terrible law because it exempts one class of business from any responsibility for their actions. A global company which faces no penalties for allowing malicious and fraudulent content has no incentive to police itself, and its clients live outside the reach of the law. Ergo, they make money on crime and have no responsibility for it. If we want to fix the Internet, step one is deleting 230 in its entirety, and step two is ensuring a tech platform cannot profit from illegal activity. That means if they sell a malicious ad, they at bare minimum, have to give up that revenue, and ideally, face a penalty for it if they aren't taking adequate measures to prevent abuse. A true financial risk to tech platforms is the only way to incentivize good behavior.

JSR_FDED 9mo ago
I agree article reads like a lobbyist wrote it.
adinisom 9mo ago
There's some logic to wanting to assign responsibility for other's actions upon those who enable it. Like you say, to incentivize intermediates to police their users and those they do business with. But the problem with deputizing intermediates is that it's too effective. It creates incentives to over-police and we have less rights against corporate policing than we do government policing. We would not have the internet we have today without the user generated content and moderation that section 230 enabled.
- ocdtrekkie 9mo ago
  Like, as someone who grew up in the formative years of the Internet, I get it, but also, what we have is incredibly bad and it's very possible we'd be better off without it. The tech crowd does not want to admit that every single effing website that lets you post images has CSAM. Every one! The tech crowd doesn't want to admit an entire generation of our kids are screwed beyond belief by social networking. The tech crowd doesn't want to admit that Donald effing Trump got elected because our population is incredibly easy to manipulate. Our society is very, very screwed up right now and it's very likely the principle cause is that we gave Google and Facebook complete blanket immunity, and that was an incredibly moronic thing to do. If something needs Section 230 to exist, it shouldn't exist. Full stop.