Post AwVAL2p8PwXf2OJ7lQ by merc@techhub.social
(DIR) More posts by merc@techhub.social
(DIR) Post #AwVACuAygYx5ttdwCO by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:00:26Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
As much as I admire the techlash, I have some serious reservations. I worry that there's some pretty useful tech babies that we are at risk of throwing away with the bathwater.--If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/23/resto-modding/#itch-scratchers-r-us1/
(DIR) Post #AwVACvI6XYFNMHz8wi by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:00:59Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
For starters, there's the idea of "intermediary liability," which is the degree to which online services are held liable for the harms their users inflict on each other. Lots of people want to make Meta, Google and other tech giants liable for their users' actions, such as harassment and disinformation. These people are doubtless well-intentioned, but *boy* have they failed to pay attention to what happens when we create these liability rules.2/
(DIR) Post #AwVACw6nV4nRtVhcxc by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:01:13Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Historically, the most important intermediary liability law is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Despite the fact that this law is only 27 words long, it is among the most badly understood aspects of tech policy, worldwide:https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/3/
(DIR) Post #AwVACwpSp0We82bIa8 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:01:24Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
CDA 230 says that platforms aren't required to police their users' speech. If a user libels another user, or harasses them, or threatens them, that's between the users, who can sue each other, but not the platform (CDA 230 only relates to civil liability; it has no bearing on the ability of platforms to be held *criminally* liable for their users' actions).4/
(DIR) Post #AwVACxRkWf9O2mVsG0 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:01:38Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Importantly, CDA 230 also says that if a platform *does* intervene to prevent one user from harming another, that doesn't mean they have to intervene in *every* such case. There's a good historical reason for this: back in the paleolithic era, Prodigy, a commercial online service, was sued after they stepped in to protect some users from other users' bad actions. 5/
(DIR) Post #AwVACyDbejQoRCu5qq by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:01:50Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
The suit argued that once they'd set the precedent that they were going to police user conduct, they acquired an obligation to police *every* instance of bad user conduct. In response, Prodigy - and its competitors - stopped moderating altogether:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co.No one who's used big online services would say that the CDA 230 world is a great one - but it's provably a vastly *better* world than the world we get when we take away 230's protections.Yes, provably.6/
(DIR) Post #AwVACzG7mr2XfJ5cPo by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:02:02Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
In 2018, Donald Trump signed SESTA/FOSTA into law. This is a (supposedly) narrow exception to CDA 230 that makes platforms civilly liable when they are used in connection with sex trafficking:https://decriminalizesex.work/advocacy/sesta-fosta/what-is-sesta-fosta/Obviously, sex trafficking is a terrible crime (and again, CDA 230 has never affected a platform's *criminal* liability for sex trafficking, only civil liability). 7/
(DIR) Post #AwVACzxNC3dPpRK9pI by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:02:18Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
None of the people who spoke out against SESTA/FOSTA did so to protect sex traffickers.Rather, the opposition to SESTA/FOSTA was motivated by concern over the collateral damage that would ensue, and those concerns have been *entirely* borne out. Opponents of SESTA/FOSTA predicted that platforms would be unable or unwilling to distinguish between consensual sex work and trafficking, and that they would simply sweep all consensual sex work off of their platforms. 8/
(DIR) Post #AwVAD0iAO546AZDWlM by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:02:26Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
That's *exactly* what happened. Not only did the spaces where sex workers advertised and booked their work disappear, but so did the private "bad date" forums where sex workers helped one another steer clear of dangerous clients. Sex work moved back into the streets, and with it came a revival of pimping - a scourge that had been all but killed off by the use of online platforms by sex workers to find work and stay safe:https://www.vice.com/en/article/fosta-sesta-sex-work-and-trafficking/9/
(DIR) Post #AwVADYUAoc4ev0vpfk by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:02:32Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
To the extent that sex work survives online, it has been relegated to a few fringe services that have no competitors and exploit their captive audience of sex workers to rake in massive fees for sub-par services. Meanwhile, the forcible relocation of sex work from searchable, visible online spaces to the streets has made it significantly harder for law enforcement to detect and interdict actual sex trafficking:https://instituteforsheltercare.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/After-SESTA-FOSTA.pdf10/
(DIR) Post #AwVADZc0cxw6PbbbWa by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:02:40Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
That's the evidence for what happens when you make intermediaries liable for their users' conduct. Far from being a gift to Big Tech, protections from intermediary liability primarily benefit smaller online spaces, which can't afford the high compliance costs of spying on and controlling their users, unlike, say, Facebook, which is why Mark Zuckerberg wants to get rid of CDA 230:https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/zuckerberg-calls-changes-techs-section-230-protections-rcna48611/
(DIR) Post #AwVADgekRBHoG7wOGW by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:02:52Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Every Fediverse host depends on limitation on intermediary liability. So does anyone who hosts one of the new, federated Bluesky relays:https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2lSESTA/FOSTA isn't the only experimental evidence we have for what happens when we kill CDA 230-like protections. In the UK, the Online Safety Act imposes a duty on people who provide online speech forums to monitor and police their users' words. 12/
(DIR) Post #AwVADnpHmOsIUpvPA8 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:03:03Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
The immediate effect of this was to kill off many small business and hobbyist forums. Now, even large, multinational corporations are killing off their forums and relocating them to Facebook, where there's the budget and resources to conduct the surveillance and control required by the Act:https://mastodon.sdf.org/@monkeyben/114902255326864878Moving every independent speech forum to Facebook is a funny way of punishing Big Tech. 13/
(DIR) Post #AwVADvJJx83ji11zRw by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:03:23Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Fundamentally, the lesson here is that we can't fix Big Tech by making it use its power more wisely - the only way to fix Big Tech is to get rid of it, to make it smaller, to take away its power.That's a lesson we keep missing. Take age verification laws: these require all online forums to exercise total control over their users, because they require platforms to know who a user is, to associate that user with every interaction, and, finally, to verify the user's age. 14/
(DIR) Post #AwVAE2rFtMMZ7Hxgoa by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:03:35Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
But you can't verify a user's age unless you know which user is at the other end of an online connection. This affects *every* user, not just kids, because the only way to prove you're an adult is to prove that you're not a kid.Age verification and intermediary liability are measures that are diametrically opposed to the mission of making Big Tech weaker. These measures only work if Big Tech stays all-powerful, and they devastate independent online alternatives to Big Tech.15/
(DIR) Post #AwVAEA15HDNtJnc8bg by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:03:51Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
What's more, they cut directly against efforts to make it easier for users to leave Big Tech, through interoperable gateways that make it possible for users who depart an online platform to stay in touch with the people who stay behind:https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebookThese interoperability mandates figure heavily in modern anti-Big Tech laws like the EU's DMA and DSA, but they cannot peacefully coexist with stricter liabilty and age verification rules. 16/
(DIR) Post #AwVAEGspkHwacEo9Dc by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:04:11Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
A platform simply cannot identify, monitor and control users *and* allow users to leave their platform while maintaining contact with their friends who stay. 17/
(DIR) Post #AwVAENpBwEBq8y9q0u by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:04:40Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
These efforts to force Big Tech to behave don't just undermine interoperability mandates, they also kill off "adversarial interoperability," the principle that a user of a technology should be allowed to reverse-engineer and modify it, for example, to block ads or tracking, to sideload apps or extract their data or to monitor a platform's moderation failures:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability18/
(DIR) Post #AwVAEVdQtpXOMoiYnQ by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:04:58Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
When Big Tech does adversarial interoperability, they call it "move fast and break things," and that's another baby the techlash stands ready to throw out with the bathwater. There's nothing wrong *per se* with a technologist changing how a device or service works without permission from its maker. Every ad-blocker does that. So do accountability tools that scrape Facebook to document its failures to police paid political disinformation:https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#quis-custodiet-ipsos-zuck19/
(DIR) Post #AwVAEdigqAUpRREs6K by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:05:07Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Moving fast and breaking things is fine, depending on whose things you're breaking. For example, I want every Tesla owner to be able to walk into any mechanic's shop and unlock all the subscription features and software upgrades, without paying a dime to Elon Musk:https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/08/turnabout/#is-fair-play20/
(DIR) Post #AwVAEktaA4MthFOAYC by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:05:17Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
And I want every person who uses a powered wheelchair to be able to alter its handling characteristics and other digital features without waiting months and paying through the nose to one of two private-equity backed duopolists:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/disability-rights-are-technology-rightsI want gig workers to be able to mod the apps that hand out their jobs so that they don't get ripped off by their bosses:https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek21/
(DIR) Post #AwVAEsKQWf06kX0Crg by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:05:28Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Adversarial interoperability means that you and I don't need to convince tech bros to give us what we want: we can just *take it* - from *them*. That's important, because if there's one thing that tech companies keep proving, over and over again, it's that they don't give a shit what we want. 22/
(DIR) Post #AwVAF043lOf6k5PFSq by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:05:38Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Think of how they're force-feeding us AI (and how nice it would be to subscribe to a service run by adversarial interoperators who would automatically block every accursed AI popup in every app and service and device you use):https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-big-tech-is-force-feeding-usOr, more prosaically, how much mobile phone design has congealed around a monolithic design that has no room for a clicky little keyboard - something I first saw demoed *23 years ago*:https://memex.craphound.com/2002/03/25/the-danger-hiptop-kicks-azz/23/
(DIR) Post #AwVAF7TUDG9ziyM9ZI by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:05:53Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Or even how they stole our 3mm headphone jacks:https://www.fastcompany.com/90270691/i-still-miss-my-headphone-jack-and-i-want-it-backIt turns out that we don't have to take that shit lying down. Like Prometheus, we can steal our clicky keyboards and 3mm headphone jacks back from the tech gods. That's exactly what the Q25 Pro does: it's a mobile phone that is built inside the housing of a Research in Motion Blackberry Classic Q20, with a modern processor and camera, and a recent version of Android:https://linkapus.com/products/q25-pro-full-device24/
(DIR) Post #AwVAFEpiqz6eXxoVhQ by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:06:09Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
It's a project from Zinwa Technologies, led by a young Chinese hacker named Zinwa who explained the gadget's design in detail on a recent installment of Returning Retro:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOrKsVKAbGAZinwa explains how he grew up with Blackberries (and also Chinese clones of Blackberries) and never learned to enjoy a modern distraction rectangle. So, as all good hackers do when they get an itch, he *scratched it*. 25/
(DIR) Post #AwVAFMLAwRQPpXaECG by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:06:19Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
He realized that there was an essentially infinite supply of old Blackberry housings sitting around in drawers or making their slow, inexorable way to an e-waste dump, where they would leach out poisonous ooze forever, and that, rather than spending $200K+ to design a chassis for a new phone, he could just create a motherboard around a modern processor with a recent-model screen, all sized to occupy exactly the same space that the original Q20 board fit in.26/
(DIR) Post #AwVAFU5W8XeZrIJptw by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:06:26Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
The new device supports 4G/LTE networks and Android 13. It has an SD card slot, USB C, and NFC on-board, as well as the classic Blackberry keyboard and yes, a 3mm headphone jack. Zinwa is launching with a small batch of conversion kits for hardware hackers who want to try their hand at a retro-restoration, with fully assembled units to follow. 27/
(DIR) Post #AwVAFbxere7WHEhflI by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:06:35Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Now, this isn't for everyone, but there's a huge community of people who are very excited about it indeed:https://www.techradar.com/pro/the-return-of-the-og-chinese-firm-wants-to-androidify-the-blackberry-classic-and-sell-it-for-usd400-with-passport-and-keyone-to-follow28/
(DIR) Post #AwVAFjHldHMgzdAKZs by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:06:43Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Mostafa, who sent me a tip about this project, writes:> After using [a Blackberry-like phone] for 3 years now, the form-factor is *perfect* for healthy phone usage habits. I’ve found the physical keyboard/small screen combo to be an optimal solution to the problem having a simultaneously infinitely useful tool/infinitely novel toy in your pocket at all times - maximize the tool factor, minimize the toy. This concept has spawned a rich community around it.29/
(DIR) Post #AwVAFqHfc2RkhMAqtk by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:06:53Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
If you want to be a part of that community, you can hang out on their Discord:https://discord.com/invite/D2P7UqFdXzThe point here isn't merely that Zinwa is doing something very cool that meets the needs of a group of people who Big Tech doesn't give a shit about (though he is doing that): it's that *anyone* should be able to do this to *any* technology. 30/
(DIR) Post #AwVAFxVOlOaT5xePlg by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:07:08Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
That includes Zinwa's Q25: in his interview with Returning Retro, Zinwa waffles a little about whether the Q25 will have an open bootloader, which would allow other hackers to replace the OS with one that's been modded to their heart's delight. Whether or not you get to modify the tech you use to suit you better has nothing to do with whether it came from someone with good or bad intentions. 31/
(DIR) Post #AwVAG5IDoGnhFPY0LA by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:09:57Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
You should have that right, no matter what, because it's your technology and you should be in charge of it.This is the spirit of small tech: tech that communities bend to suit their needs. Just as CDA 230 primarily benefits small groups who are underserved or abused by Big Tech, the right to change your tech primarily helps marginalized groups. 32/
(DIR) Post #AwVAGCgwIljQC6ALL6 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:10:09Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Marginalized groups have always relied on adapting their tech, because their needs rarely get taken into consideration by design teams at tech companies:https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/19/the-weakest-link/#moms-are-ninjasThe world is full of "outdated" technology that has been replaced with enshittified versions. 33/
(DIR) Post #AwVAGJtFXOjoWIym00 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:10:17Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
A robust right to tinker means that we can divert this superior, well-built technology from landfills, by retrofitting it with modern guts that keep it up to date with the *good* things that have emerged since it was built, while discarding all the garbage that came along with it.Take the Thinkpad X220, one of the greatest computers ever made:https://btxx.org/posts/x220/34/
(DIR) Post #AwVAGQis8Nb1i9B5IO by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:10:30Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
As Brad at btxx wrote in 2023, the X220 is built like a tank, had every port under the sun, supported compact lightweight batteries and massive external ones, sported one of the greatest keyboards ever to grace a laptop, and had an open bootloader, making it a dream to run Linux on. It was incredibly easy to repair and maintain, too (I once swapped a keyboard on one of these one-handed while holding my infant daughter in my other hand).35/
(DIR) Post #AwVAGYKLrQjfIPlcBc by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:10:39Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I would love to have an X220 with a modern processor, a shit-ton of RAM, and and updated screen. There's no way *I'm* ever going to build it, but there's probably a couple thousand people like me who would pay, say, $2500 each for these retrofits. For some enterprising hardware hacker, that's a pretty good year's wages, and a project that could launch a reputation and future projects.36/
(DIR) Post #AwVAGfO9bgw7CEbFaK by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:10:51Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Thinkpads went steeply downhill after the X220, so much so that I abandoned them altogether, after more than a decade of annual hardware purchases, switching to the wonderful, repairable Framework:https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/21/monica-byrne/#think-differentThe fact that Lenovo - the current owner of the Thinkpad line - just *sucks* at making computers is no reason for those X220s to go to the landfill. Someone could - and should - move fast and break Lenovo. 37/
(DIR) Post #AwVAGmloA9165cijvU by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:11:03Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
For more than 20 years, we have tried to make tech better by "holding tech to account," trying to make giant tech companies wield their power more responsibly. This has been a total failure, which has done nothing but strengthen tech companies, making them both too big to jail *and* too big to care. A better tech future isn't one in which today's tech companies behave better, it's one in which their bad behavior doesn't matter because they no longer have any power over us.38/
(DIR) Post #AwVAGuK653bVVzoiqO by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:11:10Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
To bring that future into being, we have to take away tech power, not try and direct it in positive ways. We need to design our policy around evacuating tech platforms, not fixing them. We need to encourage moving fast and breaking (Big Tech's) things. The problem with the world isn't that the wrong tech bosses weild vast power over the lives of billions of people - it's that *anyone* has that power.39/
(DIR) Post #AwVAH2AotQw7rXXQUi by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-23T18:11:15Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Hey, German-speakers! Through a very weird set of circumstances, I ended up owning the rights to the German audiobook of my bestselling 2022 cryptocurrency heist technothriller *Red Team Blues* and now I'm selling DRM-free audio and ebooks, along with the paperback (all in German and English) on a Kickstarter that runs until August 11:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-auf-deutsche-drm-freieeof/
(DIR) Post #AwVAKuMTsarsnCq7zU by merc@techhub.social
2025-07-24T04:35:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pluralistic Couldn't an even narrower change to section 230 preserve the liability shield if someone isn't making any "editorial decisions"?For example, RSS and chronological feeds, no problem, fully shielded. But, as soon as you promote certain content, you become a "publisher" and can be held liable?Section 230 reads "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher..." But, when Facebook and YouTube are trying to boost engagement by selecting the most rage-inducing content and forcing it into your feed, they do seem like publishers.I'm sure the devil's in the details. Like, is a stickied forum post enough to make someone a publisher? But, generally this would draw a distinction between algorithmic platforms (big tech) and chronological platforms (traditional forums).
(DIR) Post #AwVAKvzVoxgRqY6oT2 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-24T13:01:50Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@merc What's "promotion"? If you downrank 10,000,000 identical spam posts, you necessarily uprank the one non-spam post.Are you not allowed to identify popular posts? Would every Mastodon host have to kill the "explore" tab?
(DIR) Post #AwVAKwsSWfdUaxoh72 by merc@techhub.social
2025-07-25T07:01:33Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pluralistic If Meta and friends were to lose the ability to manipulate feeds and emotions without being seen as publishers, losing the explore tab seems like the tiniest possible price to pay.But, yeah, the devil is in the details. Losing the option to block spam would be a problem.If a law could be crafted by Tim Wu, Lina Khan, Elizabeth Warren etc. I think it could improve 230. But, this congress would do the exact wrong thing, especially once big tech got their FAANGs into it.
(DIR) Post #AwVAKxalrv56oOY5BI by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-25T13:58:53Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@merc How about losing Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and footage of atrocities in Gaza, all of which would attract threats from authoritarians, criminals, and monsters, whom large platforms would choose not to fight, and whom smaller, federated services could not afford to fight/
(DIR) Post #AwVAKyChatQGi2INIu by merc@techhub.social
2025-07-25T17:02:48Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pluralistic I don't really see the connection to section 230 there. Meta has full section 230 protection, but bent the knee and adjusted its algorithms immediately when Trump was elected. Something only possible *because* it has algorithmic feeds, not a chronological ones.It seems like what's saving small instances right now isn't section 230, it's that they're too small to bother with.
(DIR) Post #AwVAKymrQSLWWBDFfE by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-25T17:23:51Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@merc indeed, the point here is that Facebook finds it very easy to comply with these liability restrictions and they often do so by simply blocking everything that doesn't come from someone powerful and connected. Meanwhile smaller platforms that we hope will serve as a refuge from Facebook would be completely hamstrung.
(DIR) Post #AwVAKzIPX9aE61yRqC by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-25T17:36:15Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@merc if you don't think that small servers are vulnerable to legal threats, I invite you to apply for a job at eff monitoring our intake, because the vast majority of people we hear from are tiny little individuals being threatened by gigantic corporations, vindictive millionaires, and governments
(DIR) Post #AwVAKzqnTJ5Zog3uRE by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-25T17:37:36Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@merc Harvey Weinstein literally hired ex mossad agents to torment the women who accused him, you think that they would be above trying to get the servers where those women post shut down?
(DIR) Post #AwVAL0LHdxTXLEKFxQ by merc@techhub.social
2025-07-25T18:41:52Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pluralistic Facebook finds it easy to comply with the restrictions in the 230-as-is world. Do you think their behaviour would change if they were seen as a publisher and had to treat user content the way radio stations handle listener call ins?
(DIR) Post #AwVAL0sbe4890Zurtg by merc@techhub.social
2025-07-25T18:42:38Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pluralistic Again, I'm not suggesting scrapping 230, just adjusting it. The original purpose was to treat online sites as a "public library, book store, or newsstand" (Cubby v Compuserve) that couldn't be expected to know the contents of the things they were distributing. But, algorithmic social media sites definitely do know what they're distributing, and choose the most "engaging" things to show to their users. IMO they are definitely more publishers than distributors these days.
(DIR) Post #AwVAL1S3WGUEmWVB9U by merc@techhub.social
2025-07-25T18:43:08Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pluralistic Meanwhile, old-school forums and chronological fediverse sites are still acting as distributors not publishers. They don't examine each post for potential engagement and publish the most engaging ones at the top, so they should still receive the section 230 shield.
(DIR) Post #AwVAL21rN97uZZFlxY by merc@techhub.social
2025-07-25T18:43:36Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pluralistic Small servers are clearly vulnerable to legal threats. But that's today, in a world where section 230 exists as-is. If Weinstein were being accused today he'd go after fediverse sites, no question. But, he wouldn't need 230. He'd use bogus copyright claims, go after payment processors, dox the site operators, etc.
(DIR) Post #AwVAL2p8PwXf2OJ7lQ by merc@techhub.social
2025-07-25T18:44:06Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pluralistic Is your argument that the status quo is best because we can't imagine how much worse things could get? Or that every medium should have equivalent of section 230 protection, including TV, radio and newspapers? If a newspaper editor hand-selects a "juicy" op-ed in which someone defames someone else, should the newspaper be able to claim 230 protection because they merely hosted the op-ed? Or is that only OK when it's online?
(DIR) Post #AwVAL3bhVNOFT11uSm by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2025-07-25T19:02:12Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@merc Every medium *does* have 230 protection. The paper manufacturer, printer manufacturer and contract printer aren't responsible for the words in the newspaper.But if they print their OWN words, they are. That's what 230 says.