[HN Gopher] Repealing Section 230 won't do what anyone wants
___________________________________________________________________
Repealing Section 230 won't do what anyone wants
Author : spzx
Score : 162 points
Date : 2021-03-14 05:43 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (superwuster.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (superwuster.medium.com)
| mynameistoolon wrote:
| >Stated differently, some liberals seem to have the fantasy that
| potential civil liability would finally force platforms to do
| more about disinformation on their sites -- "to take
| responsibility." But what does that mean? Because whatever the
| moral responsibility may be, there isn't actually any legal
| repercussions for republishing, or publishing, crazy propaganda
| and conspiracy theories. If so, Newsmax and Gateway Pundit and
| even Fox News would not exist.
|
| He's completely wrong here. No one really cares that Brietbart
| publishes lies to their readers on their own site. What people
| are upset is that facebook, twitter, reddit, etc allow propaganda
| and lies to be published on their site for their users.
|
| If The_donald wants to make a site and push bullshit, go ahead,
| people that only want to see The_donald can read it, but
| coordinating so that hundreds of millions of redditors see
| bullshit and spread bullshit is ridiculous.
| function_seven wrote:
| Okay, but what does any of that have to do with Section 230?
| How would repealing it have any effect on how Facebook treats
| content on their site vs. how Brietbart does it?
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > If The_donald wants to make a site and push bullshit
|
| I wish this trope would die. Trump was probably the best
| President since Roosevelt 75 years ago.
|
| Virtually all of his policies have been shown to be not only
| correct, but exhibiting a clearer vision than the DNC can even
| imagine. All the while dragging the anchor of Pelosi around
| (besides 2 failed impeachments and the burning of our
| downtowns, what else did she do for this country in the past 5
| years? Worst "leader" ever.)
|
| There's a saying that we get the politicians that we deserve.
| Sadly, we've gone from a great leader to Sleepy Joe Biden
| (reportedly he goes to sleep at 6 pm daily.)
| Thorrez wrote:
| Here's an interesting question: would linking to a Breitbart
| article from Facebook be risky for Facebook if 230 was
| repealed? That is, we can probably agree that summarizing a
| Breitbart article into a Facebook post would be risky for
| Facebook, but a simple link might be fine.
| Thorrez wrote:
| >If The_donald wants to make a site and push bullshit, go
| ahead, people that only want to see The_donald can read it, but
| coordinating so that hundreds of millions of redditors see
| bullshit and spread bullshit is ridiculous.
|
| How would that work? If reddit loses its 230 protection, then
| this The_donald-only reddit alternative would also lose its 230
| protection.
|
| Additionally, I'm concerned whether reddit could exist at all.
| Would every single comment need to be human-moderated before
| it's posted? That doesn't seem feasible, and seems likely to
| kill reddit.
| mionhe wrote:
| The threat of revoking someone's 230 protection would ideally
| make them think about everything you just said, and hopefully
| decide to abide by the conditions of that protection. That
| is, they get to choose for themselves: either support free
| speech on their platform and receive the benefits of that
| protection, or don't. If they don't, then they'll need to
| figure out how to address the kinds of problems you
| mentioned.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Why should we force twitter to carry your speech instead of
| asking you to get your own site?
| chroem- wrote:
| > What conservatives really seem to want, meanwhile, is something
| more like a version of the "fairness doctrine" adapted for social
| media. (Ignore the fact that conservatives used to insist that
| the fairness doctrine was an unconstitutional left-wing
| conspiracy to destroy talk radio).
|
| This is not a good faith argument, and it's made worse by the
| fact that (as others have mentioned) Tim Wu coined the concept of
| net neutrality. Free speech advocates and conservatives want
| social media to be a dumb pipe that doesn't discriminate on
| content, much like other internet services. Tim is uncharitably
| misrepresenting their position here.
| spaced-out wrote:
| > Free speech advocates and conservatives want social media to
| be a dumb pipe that doesn't discriminate on content, much like
| other internet services.
|
| Do that and soon every post will be about diet pills or AMAZING
| OFFER MAKE $$$$$ FROM YOUR COMPUTER CLICK HERE!!!!
| me2021yuh wrote:
| We already have that with email and found solutions to it and
| the same solutions could apply (readers choose their own spam
| filtering). The hard problems are where something might or
| might not be illegal and people strongly disagree. Thats
| where 230 comes in and it suggests to me that platforms under
| its protection shouldn't censor unless directed by law
| enforcement .. The fact that they do is mysterious to me.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I don't want deplorables to be able to spread poison
| easier. A dumb pipe with user side filtering wouldn't allow
| major platforms to deny neo nazis, anti vaxxers, and cults
| a platform.
| visarga wrote:
| > readers choose their own spam filtering
|
| That would surely simplify the problem - user chooses
| filter, then user is responsible. Then every social niche
| could have their own filters.
|
| One thing I don't like about Google, FB and Twitter is that
| they don't tell us what content they have hidden from us.
| We should be able to know what was filtered out so we can
| re-rank with our own rules.
|
| Of course that would not sit right with the web giants and
| politicians because they can't control anymore how our news
| get ranked and filtered.
|
| If there's one outcome I wish to see from the new anti-
| trust push is to force them to open up the front-end and
| allow competing UIs and competing filters on their
| platforms. Why should a few people decide how information
| is accessed for the whole world by virtue of being the
| winners of a natural monopoly?
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| Behind the scenes email providers blackhole a huge amount
| of traffic that never touches even the spam inbox of their
| users. This is of course good, because it is what the users
| want. Social media companies likewise curate what content
| they allow to remain up because they want to please their
| users.
| 8note wrote:
| Spam filtering seems like a similar moderation issue?
|
| People want a right to an audience, and spam filters limit
| that right
| Const-me wrote:
| Not quite.
|
| Spam filters are controlled by, and acting on behalf of,
| end users who would be receiving the spam. When people
| are unhappy about their spam filtering, they can adjust
| or turn off these filters, or migrate to another e-mail
| provider (keeping all the e-mails, and ability to
| communicate with the same people).
|
| The issue with modern social media, they implement
| censorship no one asked for, in a completely opaque way,
| and don't even support user migration.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Nearly all useful communities make use of shared
| moderation to select context that is desired rather than
| merely filter out obvious spam.
|
| It's not obvious that you could reproduce reddit or
| hacker news for example with a dumb pipe and user
| filters.
|
| Maybe step one is proving that is even possible before
| insisting people do it.
| Const-me wrote:
| When you have 2.8 billion people using a web app, that's
| way too many people to be a community, let alone a useful
| one.
|
| Facebook or Twitter as a whole is not a community. You
| can build actual community on top of them if you want. I
| have no objections against moderators of these groups
| doing their moderation, if I don't like your moderation I
| can always leave your groups or unfriend you.
|
| The problem is, Facebook and Twitter themselves are
| censoring content. Apparently, FB even censors private
| messages with political views they don't like.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Give me some examples of things that are being blocked
| that ought not to be? Lay of the generalities unless you
| feel up to defending the kind of material being banned.
|
| I don't think Facebook ought to be required to provide a
| platform for people it doesn't want to. It is an absolute
| violation of their rights to force them to use their
| private property to promote beliefs they find abhorrent.
|
| For example I don't think neo nazis, anti vaxxers, or
| election truthers need to have a more efficient way to
| spread their poisonous lies. I don't think Facebook ought
| to be limited to throwing up their hands and suggesting
| individual communities that don't want to hear about the
| next final solution simply don't attend to their hate.
|
| The solution to undesirable speech isn't merely more
| speech when the undesirable speech is being used to plan
| the overthrow of democracy and the murder of their
| enemies because eventually you wont have the privilege of
| speaking against them.
| Const-me wrote:
| > Give me some examples of things that are being blocked
| that ought not to be?
|
| Last URL I encountered was this, check the comments:
| https://avoiceformen.com/featured/my-son-doesnt-want-to-
| be-a...
|
| > It is an absolute violation of their rights to force
| them to use their private property to promote beliefs
| they find abhorrent.
|
| If FB is that intolerant to other people's opinions, they
| should do something else instead of being a social
| network 35% of global population uses at least every
| month.
|
| My cell phone allows me to discuss anything using the
| property of the operator. My internet provider doesn't
| care what I do with their property as long as I don't
| break laws and pay bills. I don't see what makes social
| media so special that they're allowed to arbitrarily
| censor opinions on the internets in centralized manner.
| Especially in private messages. Especially after doing
| everything they possibly can to make sure there's no
| competition on the market.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Your link is full of hateful lies. It tells people that
| their transgender kid is really just a confused youngster
| who was somehow convinced by hucksters that he ought to
| whack his penis off for no reason which encourages
| parents to fix their kid by deprogramming them before its
| too late. This is exactly the attitude that leads to the
| massive suicide rate among transgendered teens. The world
| view it represents is basically a hallucination.
|
| They are allowed to censor stuff on their networks
| because you are ultimately using their property and do so
| under terms set by owners of that property. This is
| completely trivial to understand. No law protects your
| ability to use that property as you please and until you
| get sufficient support from the general populace and the
| legislature none shall.
|
| The dumb pipe that everyone is allowed to use as they
| please is the internet. This is more than sufficient. You
| don't need to have freedom to use facebook as you please
| in order to have reasonable freedom of expression. You
| can have your own website and express your opinion
| therein.
| Const-me wrote:
| > Your link is full of hateful lies.
|
| In my opinion, that link expresses a humble opinion of a
| middle-aged woman. I don't necessarily agree with her
| opinion, but I'm certain there's nothing hateful there.
| Also, I'm not certain but inclined to believe the OP is
| sincere therefore whetever's written is not a lie.
|
| Apparently you have different opinion. That's fine. What
| is not fine, Facebook suppressing opinions they don't
| like.
|
| I grew up in a communist country. You don't want a
| society where you only allowed to express one opinion,
| the official one, and go to jail or a psychiatric
| hospital for expressing disagreement with that officially
| blessed opinion.
|
| > you are ultimately using their property and do so under
| terms set by owners
|
| Same arguments apply to phone networks.
|
| > until you get sufficient support from the general
| populace
|
| Given what FB/twitter have been doing lately, that
| support won't take too long to build.
| girvo wrote:
| How do readers choose their own spam filters within
| services like Gmail et al? Honest question.
| sintaxi wrote:
| Not really a problem. All that means is the platform gets
| designed differently - such as actually giving users control
| of what accounts/content they are shown.
| atoav wrote:
| A dumb pipe within which real world law on speech applies? Or
| not?
|
| If I post defamatory stuff on my website I can be sued. If I do
| the same on your website, you can be sued unless you fall under
| that 230 regulation.
|
| So this is the choice between "social media is liable for what
| you say and will therefore censor you" and between " _you_ are
| liable and can therefore be sued ".
|
| The option "nobody can get sued" doesn't exist, because
| although there is free speech, there are limits to it (which
| get breached on a few times a minute on big platforms). I am
| not saying whether that is a good thing or not, that is just
| the current state of affairs. And as the author stated: if you
| are basing what you say on the truth you might be able to say a
| lot more (than e.g. if you are spouting weaponized propaganda
| which is factualy wrong)
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Wait. Are you sincerely making the argument that conservatives
| would like the social networks to become public utilities?
| (following net neutrality)
|
| We are living in weird times if a good faith argument really
| involves assuming conservatives want to make a class of
| businesses part of the public sector. Something seems off with
| your reasoning, but if you're right then I'm all about it!
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| Utilities can and are run for profit, they're regulated
| though and market standards are set.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Take the internet fiber cable that allows a person to connect
| as an example. Public utilities exist in some countries to
| provide that. In the US a private company will usually lay
| the cable.
|
| In both cases when someone signs up for a service who they
| voted for doesn't affect there service.
|
| In social media's case it does change the experience
|
| Asking for a neutral playing field is fair.
|
| Facebook delivering that in a highly political environment
| where a lack of censorship scares one side is impossible.
|
| We are heading from free speech, into right speech but we are
| going to end up with no speech as people tune out.
| [deleted]
| 8note wrote:
| Conservatives are much more interested in culture wars than
| economic issues.
|
| By moving these companies from private to public sector,
| conservatives can use their gerrymandering and voter
| suppression power to control the companies, whereas under the
| more market capitalist approach, they follow closer to the
| demographic majority views
| compsciphd wrote:
| I'm not 100% sure if section 230 should protect those platforms
| providing anonymous speech. While anonymous speech is important
| for free speech purposes, section 230 is about shifting the
| liability of the speech from the "publisher" (facebook/twitter,
| using air quotes as publisher isn't really accurate) to the
| writer. However, if these platforms are providing anonymous
| speech, then it makes it much more difficult to actually go after
| the writer.
|
| perhaps one could argue that by providing such a speed bump in
| the process of figuring out who the writer is facebook/twitter
| are aiding and abetting said speech and hence have liability from
| it. And that service providers over a certain size either cannot
| allow anonymous speech at all, or at best have serious KYC rules
| with straight forward demasking.
|
| I don't like where my thought experiment leads, but I really dont
| have a good answer for this.
| xoa wrote:
| So, is "compsciphd" your family name or your given name? Have
| you really stopped to think these things through? You and every
| single other person posting here, on Hacker News, with
| pseudonyms including one time throwaway accounts, HN a
| "platform providing anonymous speech", do understand that 230
| makes this place possible right? _Right_? Are you suggesting
| dang and co should not be allowed to moderate ever again
| without Y Combinator becoming legally liable for every random
| thing here? That we should all have to hand over government ID
| to post here?
|
| This is fucking nuts. The good answer is for people to stop
| giving so much credence to anonymous speech without thorough
| analysis, or at most to have a more streamlined process to get
| it taken down if it's not defended.
| vharuck wrote:
| The platform may publicly provide a forum for anonymous speech,
| but that doesn't mean it is anonymous. One of the most famous
| forums for anonymous speech is 4chan's "Random" forum, and even
| there prosecution was possible against a user. The site owner
| cooperated with investigators. This wasn't a surprise to any
| long-time users, because everyone knows a site that doesn't
| cooperate in criminal investigations is not long for this
| world.
|
| http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/fbi/turns-out-4chan-not-...
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| This argument isn't wholly unreasonable. But it would lead, in
| practical terms, simply to the abolition of anonymous and
| pseudonymous accounts on social media.
|
| I could live with that, but I get the feeling those calling for
| Sec 230 abolition want something entirely different.
|
| I'm also not entirely sure what sort of "liability" people are
| talking about. In the US, there is very little liability for
| any sort of speech. Insults, no matter how gross and
| objectionable, are generally protected as simply being
| subjective opinions, for example. So is blatant racism.
|
| Only statements of facts that are false, made knowingly and
| with malicious intent, are actionable. I believe very little of
| what people object to on social media actually falls under that
| definition.
| qudchewer wrote:
| There is someone deciding on what content to post with the New
| York Times. If a site like twitter is engaging in that activity -
| then they should loose 230 immunity, because they are acting like
| a publisher instead of a platform. It seems relatively straight
| forward, doesn't it?
|
| Seems like people aren't thinking very well these days.
| Black101 wrote:
| > Seems like people aren't thinking very well these days.
|
| They are thinking that they want to control all content online,
| that's all.
|
| They just aren't going to tell you that.
| [deleted]
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| First, repealing Section 230 is different from reforming Section
| 230. I mostly see calls for reform - not repeal.
|
| Second, many people are debating how they think or believe it
| should work.
|
| Let us instead debate the actual content of Section 230 [1] law.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Code/Title_47...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| There's almost no such thing as "fair and balanced" content
| moderation. Wu's own bias leaks through in this article, as he
| lists right wing conspiracy theory but fails to recognize that
| mainstream news pitched a left wing conspiracy theory against
| Trump for the better part of 3 years: the "Trump is a Russian
| asset and puppet" theory.
|
| As he states that the left wing is concerned with violence, they
| failed to take any responsibility for their own rhetoric which
| lead to riots most of last summer in many major cities.
|
| As Wu says, the left thinks "We have a huge problem with fascist
| disinformation and propaganda". But what they fail to realize is
| that they've deluded themselves into believing that garden
| variety conservatism is fascism, because the f word was repeated
| loudly and often enough by people with influence, that people
| started to believe it. Nevermind that a healthy democracy demands
| at least two healthy and functioning parties or you might as well
| be North Korea. Nevermind that American conservatism has never
| been about fascism, ever. People are abusing a term, deluding
| themselves of its validity, flattening other people, and using it
| to justify the deplatforming of half the country.
|
| So much of what we see in politics today is an escalation of
| reaction and counter-reaction.
|
| I would argue that if you are a conservative and you haven't at
| least flirted with the idea of becoming more of a liberal, if not
| gone through that paradigm shift yourself, without losing your
| respect for those that hold conservative values, or vice versa,
| then you can't even begin to attempt to be unbiased. Unless you
| can hold both paradigms in your mind without contempt of either,
| you can't begin to be neutral. So few people are capable of this.
| I think less then 5% of the general population are, in today's
| heated political arena. And you can't expect institutions which
| bias their hiring towards one paradigm or the other to be
| neutral. If Jack Dorsey is a super liberal guy and he doesn't
| have a neutral personality himself, how can you expect the
| culture of Twitter to be neutral? It's far easier for Dorsey, and
| his Silicon Valley buddies to surround themselves with people
| from the Valley, or those willing to move to the Valley (who tend
| to co-opt themselves into the politics and worldviews of the
| Valley in order to fit in).
|
| The reason we feel slighted by Facebook and Twitter in a way that
| we don't feel towards MSNBC or Fox, is that we basically have to
| opt into news channels and we always have the option of opting
| out of cable news altogether. But tech has evolved to the point
| that you can't easily navigate without touching at least one of
| these homogeneous, corporate, left wing monopolies. The whole
| idea of Section 230 was to promote the vibrant free speech
| discussion forums that existed in the 90s (and still do on dark
| corners of the world wide web today). It's also evolved to the
| point that algorithmic feeds have been fine tuned to manipulate
| human emotions in a way that the 90s framers of the section 230
| law could not foresee. Social media and tech companies can alter
| your perception of reality and regularly do.
|
| I agree with using antitrust laws to bust up the multi trillion
| dollar behemoths. But I don't think "fair content moderation" is
| a realistic goal, given how few people are even capable of it and
| given that much of the problem is systemic to the homogeneous
| monopolies themselves. Ultimately, competition will solve this in
| the long run, I believe. But like a forest that has grown
| dangerously thick, it might be time for controlled burns of these
| corporations to spawn a healthier digital ecosystem.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The term "fascist" now means "anyone who disagrees with me."
| matwood wrote:
| Depends which side you're on. The other side tends to use
| marxist/socialist/communist pretty interchangeably.
|
| I'm also sure many of the people who call each other these
| names have little idea what the terms actually mean.
| Thorrez wrote:
| It's not a new phenomenon:
|
| >George Orwell wrote in 1944 that "the word 'Fascism' is
| almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person
| would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#%22Fascist%22_as_a_pej.
| ..
| noahtallen wrote:
| It's deeper than that. I think many are simply labeling those
| using fascist techniques as fascists. Let me explain:
|
| During the Great Depression, very similar rhetoric was used
| to create the authoritarian fascist regimes. One example is
| the false narrative that one could blame all of their
| economic problems on certain racial/ethnic groups. The horrid
| rhetoric suggesting that Jews caused the financial crisis in
| 1929 is very similar to the horrid rhetoric saying that
| Mexican immigrants are stealing American jobs and causing
| widespread economic devastation.
|
| We _should_ be very concerned to see concerning patterns
| repeating themselves. Frankly, if the Republican Party was
| all about "garden variety conservatism", it would be
| banishing the extremists from its ranks. That's not
| happening. Are republicans fascist? Maybe not. But do several
| use fascist techniques? Definitely. And those not actively
| using those techniques are complacent or even accepting.
|
| "Garden variety conservatives" did know what Trump was doing
| in 2016, and they called him for for it in the Republican
| primaries. Though I have no rosy view of the Conservative
| party before then either, it has now overtly embraced many
| fascist concepts.
|
| Though people would still disagree with "garden variety
| conservatives", people have a much bigger problem with
| fascist concepts.
| ttt0 wrote:
| Similar to how white people are blamed for everything
| today?
| np_tedious wrote:
| If you start calling "a thing that fascists also did"
| simply "fascist" then you're watering down the term quite a
| bit. It could extend far further than most people would
| find reasonable
| makomk wrote:
| Yeah, the mainstream media ended up getting behind some _really
| nutso_ anti-Trump conspiracy theories. One of my favourites was
| the one about Trump supposedly using DNS requests from email
| servers as a secret communication channel with Russia (and this
| one US chain of health clinics) because it made absolutely no
| sense on any level.
|
| It would make such a poor communication channel that using it
| would require some other communication channel that's better in
| every way and hasn't been found to agree what the supposed
| communications meant first (so why not just use that?), could
| only have been set up with the help of a subcontractor of a
| subcontractor who Trump had no reason to trust and yet who
| insisted no such thing happened, and all the evidence fits the
| alternative explanation of the DNS lookups being a normal
| response to receiving normal marketing emails about Trump
| hotels. About five publications rejected it for these reasons
| before it got published. Yet when it did, the New York Times
| got so much heat for pushing back in the gentlest way possible
| against the Clinton campaign's demands for the FBI to
| investigate - which went viral on social media - by saying that
| the FBI had looked into it and concluded all the evidence was
| consistent with normal marketing emails that they eventually
| said it was the wrong decision and they wouldn't do it again.
| And the only thing that was described as a conspiracy theory by
| the mainstream press was the idea that all the evidence was
| consistent with the normal operation of email systems, even
| though that's what most technical people concluded regardless
| of political affiliation.
|
| There was some really heinous bullshit around the legitimacy of
| the 2016 election as well, which meant the press really didn't
| have a leg to stand on when then opined about how dangerous it
| was for Trump to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 one.
| Though of course that didn't stop them.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Interesting that you brought up that DNS story, because an
| interesting link posted here at least a few times suggested
| those were fabricated. It was an interesting analysis. Check
| it out:
| https://weaponizedautism.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/trump-
| dns-...
| throwmehaweh wrote:
| Agree and thank you for articulating what I was thinking as I
| read this.
| epr wrote:
| https://archive.is/fK5D9
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Wu is amazingly dead on.
|
| Wu's new boss has been parading some wholly wrong assumptions
| about Section 230. I hope Wu can convert him into the highest
| ranking politician who understands 230 in a non-delusional way.
|
| more reading:
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
| qudchewer wrote:
| Double think, double speak are alive and well. Using section
| 230 in an intelligent manner would require discernment. That
| doesn't forward anyone's agenda.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Repealing 230 is the MAD option. If you're not willing to play
| ball, we'll destroy the ball.
| [deleted]
| schoen wrote:
| (In case anyone doesn't recall, Tim Wu coined the term "net
| neutrality" and wrote _The Master Switch_.)
| 0df8dkdf wrote:
| Excellent book! Made a good case that realize that Internet too
| was designed to centralize control. As long as the few controls
| the Internet infrastructure and the space satellite lane, it is
| NOT FREE.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| What if these platforms defaulted to showing everything users opt
| into, like before the AI started curating for engagement. Then
| they provided users a choice of curation algorithms tuned in
| various ways.
|
| Then so long as the platforms are removing clearly illegal
| content they would comply without engaging in editorializing.
| panny wrote:
| >The right-wing fantasies about 230 repeal are even more off
| base. For one thing, without Section 230 immunity, a figure like
| Donald Trump would almost certainly be kicked off Twitter,
| because he constantly defames people.
|
| Tim Wu seems to be misrepresenting what the right wants, or
| living in a left wing bubble. Repealing 230, for the right is
| about scorched earth. Deplatform the left too, by repealing 230.
| The right has already been deplatformed. Trump was already kicked
| off Twitter. The right has no expectations of Trump returning to
| twitter. Repeal 230 is about destroying twitter, and all the
| other left wing social media too.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Agree. And the competition alternative approach would have more
| weight before the coordinated attack of big tech against
| Parler.
|
| And I am not convinced that social media is something that we
| will miss. A decentralised approach with lots of independent
| websites, each responsible for their own opinion, is probably a
| healthier ecosystem.
| scsilver wrote:
| Online social media is simply a threat to monopoly over more
| traditional information grooming that goes on in certain
| communities.
| woopwoop wrote:
| It's worth remembering that up until very recently section 230
| was invoked in these debates mostly by people lying about what it
| says. When such people change their tune and now say we have to
| reform or repeal it, I think that should be met with a fair
| amount of skepticism.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Are you sure people are "lying" about section 230? Or maybe
| they have different understanding / misunderstanding? Is
| "lying" becoming another word lost its meaning?
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| Others have interpreted these debates in a similar way:
|
| https://popehat.substack.com/p/section-230-is-the-subject-
| of...
| molbioguy wrote:
| Worth reading this post on how section 230 is often
| misunderstood:
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Conservatives want political affiliation to be a protected class.
| It makes sense -- they're a minority (especially online, but also
| offline at a national level), and they'd like to be protected
| from the majority, who they feel at this moment are
| persecuting/abusing them for their beliefs.
|
| Lots of problems with that (and the irony is palpable), but I
| think that gets them all the protection they want without any of
| the Constitutional crisis.
| chii wrote:
| why should a minority be "protected" just because they are a
| minority? The only protection offered to a minority is and
| should be only for abuse of said minority in the past.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| There are a bunch of protected classes already in US law, and
| I believe the reasoning tends to be that the folks in those
| protected classes would, if not protected, be trampled by the
| majorities for things the members of those protected classes
| have no control over. Some protected classes include
| Americans with disabilities, African-Americans, etc.
|
| You can't fire members of the protected class, and (I
| believe) you can't ban folks from Twitter for being disabled
| or black.
|
| Conservatives seem to want that treatment.
| luckylion wrote:
| I think disability or skin-color are bad examples, religion
| is a better one. You can't change whether you're missing a
| leg (well... yet) and you can't change the color of your
| skin.
|
| You can (though probably not really actively) change your
| political convictions the same way you can change your
| religious beliefs.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I wonder what happens once you can get a new leg and
| refuse to do so. Will the protections still apply?
|
| This is not a morally clear situation; some people may
| refuse a cloned leg in the future because the price tag
| will be too high, others for religious reasons etc.
| hntrader wrote:
| It's a false dichotomy to begin with.
|
| If political belief is caused by personality traits (e.g.
| orderliness) and brain structure (e.g. amygdala size), is
| it really a choice?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| True. I do not really feel to have much latitude in what
| I believe. I only have choice to pretend X or Y.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| If you're interested in improving your ability to grow
| and change based on feedback, that is a skill that can be
| worked on.
| hntrader wrote:
| A conservative can shrink their amygdala in response to
| verbal feedback? A conservative can become low-
| orderliness when they've been high-orderliness since
| childhood?
|
| This is gay-conversion therapy territory.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I am honestly struggling to come up with a constructive
| response to, "People's beliefs are determined by
| biological factors at birth."
|
| What you seem to have said here is, on its face, so
| obviously wrong, it's hard to take seriously.
|
| I mean no disrespect, I just don't know how to continue
| engaging with you.
| hntrader wrote:
| Political beliefs are caused by brain structure and
| personality traits, in an interaction with
| environment/identity/self-interest.
|
| You saying people can just change their political beliefs
| when there are scientifically known biological causes of
| said beliefs is akin to proponents of gay-conversion
| therapy.
|
| If you think personality and brain structure aren't part
| of the picture, then you're not aligned with current
| scientific knowledge - your faux outrage and strawmanning
| notwithstanding.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| > when there are scientifically known biological causes
| of said beliefs
|
| This is false, at least to the degree of accuracy,
| potency, and certainty as you present it here. They are
| "part of the picture", but one small part, not the
| overriding majority of how people make choices about what
| to believe.
|
| > then you're not aligned with current scientific
| knowledge
|
| Yes I am. You are not. You misrepresent the degree to
| which the things you've mentioned impact the things you
| claim they impact, and I'm beginning to think it's a
| malicious choice to do so.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| That sounds like a very empty platitude.
|
| Can a libertarian _grow and change_ into a committed
| fascist who does not give a iota about personal freedom
| and measures everything by the interests of the State?
|
| If so, why didn't Mussolini convert everybody in Italy
| into committed fascists by peaceful means? It would have
| been easier than any suppression by force, not to mention
| less dangerous.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Mussolini's behavior I can't explain, but absolutely a
| person can change, and many often do, in dramatic and
| diametric ways.
|
| I am having a hard time engaging with this line of
| thinking, it's so counter to some pretty basic systems
| the scientific community has long considered about as
| close to certain as that community can come to on those
| topics.
|
| Are you seriously suggesting that behavior is chiefly
| determined by biology, and the entire concept of personal
| responsibility is not accurate?
| hntrader wrote:
| "chiefly determined by biology"
|
| Where's this strawman coming from? Nobody here has said
| that biology is the exhaustive explanation for political
| belief, only that it is _a_ cause(1). That isn 't saying
| that the environment the person exists in isn't also
| relevant.
|
| (1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4038932/
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The deaf community seems like it retains its protected
| class status, even when their members refuse cochlear
| implants.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| That does fit very well with the American conservative
| viewpoint, yes.
|
| What are the consequences of making that acceptable, I
| wonder?
| Aunche wrote:
| In the US, conservatives being a minority is mostly the product
| of the having disproportionate representation relative to
| population. The nature of a two party system incentives both
| parties to roughly obtain 50% of political power. There is no
| need to compromise your platform to get more votes when you
| already have enough to win. If larger states had more
| representation, then the Republicans would shift slightly
| further left.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| The tech companies are acting in co-ordinated effort to fortify
| elections (NY Times article). In helping to elect their preferred
| candidate, hiding negative stories, and skewed the algorithm for
| one candidate. At the very least they are making a massive
| campaign contribution, and section 230 gives them immunity to all
| the laws that apply. At the worse, they are spreading political
| propaganda. The anthesis of democracy. They also would not have
| gotten into market leader position had they disclosed their plans
| to do this. So I feel its a type of Fraud. Just like Joe Rogan
| lying to investors about not being censored on Spotify. When it
| now turns out he is. He personally gained 100 million from this
| lie. And Spotify investors got scammed. I hope more laws do get
| made so this kind of manipulation is punished.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| What are "the laws that apply"? Do you not feel like Fox News
| and OAN made billions of dollars in campaign contributions to
| Republican candidates? What repercussion did they face? Heck,
| remind me how we punished the government employees who violated
| the Hatch act and campaigned for the president while on the
| government payroll.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I agree with you. Its a problem that journalists are acting
| like advocates, or political activists. TV stations don't
| have section 230 protection. So at least there is some
| redress for defamation. The Covington kid, Nick Sandman, won
| a multimillion dollar settlement recently from CNN. However,
| its not looking like the suit against twitter for being
| called a "Hacker", by the Store owner, that turned over
| Hunter Biden's laptop to the FBI will succeed. Twitter called
| the contents of laptop hacked material, and even banned
| legitimate newspaper account for a week.
|
| The implication of the "hacked material" was that the store
| owner was a "hacker". The store owner claims the laptop was
| left behind in his repair store, and he legally gained
| possession of it. He sued twitter for defamation.
|
| Because of section 230 protection, the Judge will likely
| dismiss this case, on section 230 protection grounds.
| Something that would not happen if this was done by a
| newspaper.
|
| I think we want conflict of interest laws, that force
| disclose if you are paid to post, or materially manipulate on
| behalf of a candidate.
|
| In ideal world, I think Journalists should have an ethics
| body, similar to Engineers. So that at least in the most
| egregious circumstances, If you are found to be a paid and
| not disclose it, than you should not get to call yourself a
| journalist.
|
| I watched this American travel Youtuber that lives in China,
| and does travel promotional content for them sometimes. He
| come out in favour of a candidate before the election. If he
| received money for doing that, I think there should be a law,
| that it should be disclosed by him.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| I could be wrong, but if Twitter spoke as itself and said
| "Hunter's laptop was hacked," then they can be held liable
| outside of 230, because that is their own speech. There's
| no magic loophole where a platform's own speech can be
| immunized. However, this sounds like a horrible case, if
| they didn't specifically accuse someone of hacking it. In
| addition, just because the shop owner reportedly took title
| to the laptop hardware when it was abandoned, doesn't mean
| that he took title to all the material on the laptop. I
| doubt anyone is going to find someone guilty for defamation
| for calling the doxxing of someone with data from their own
| laptop, abandoned or not, "hacking".
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I feel empathy for the store owner. He legitimately got
| in a situation in which people get whacked like in the
| movies. After he disclosed the laptop to the FBI, the FBI
| threatened him. So in such a political case, judges and
| the whole corrupt system is legitimately out to get you.
| The fact that he made copies that he gave to press may
| have saved his life. So I can't really blame him for any
| leaking anything either. Under the circumstances it was
| probably the smartest thing he could have done.
|
| The judge in the lawsuit, already made some rulings
| invoking section 230 protections
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > In helping to elect their preferred candidate
|
| If they were actually trying, then we don't have much to fear
| from them.
| roenxi wrote:
| There is a point here that transcends what the left and right
| think will happen: the tech giants are making editorial decisions
| that are reasonably opinionated.
|
| Whether or whether not it does what people want, it needs to be
| recognised that they are publishers, not dumb platforms. This is
| an acknowledgement of reality.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, but that's the easy-to-recognize part. moreover, we all
| want a line (more like a hyperplanar function, really) to be
| drawn somewhere, but the hard part is getting everyone to
| compromise and accept any given imperfectly-drawn line.
|
| the core concept of section 230 is that an expressed idea in
| any form has an author and it's inherently implied that the
| author endorses that idea by expressing it, but no one else in
| the chain delivering/amplifying that idea to others necessarily
| endorses it. the author, then, has liability but the
| intermediates don't.
|
| where it falls apart is dealing with "exceptions". these
| exceptions are really separate rules about what kinds of
| content are so egregious as to apply liability to the
| intermediates in the chain, piercing their liability shield.
| there's also contention around the plausible deniability
| provided by section 230 that allows the platforms to express
| ideas through others (e.g., editorial decisions).
|
| you could reasonably argue that an editorial decision is
| expressing an idea (perhaps different from the curated
| content's ideas) in itself, and therefore applies liability to
| the intermediate itself for that editorial decision (e.g.,
| racism as a emergent property of a platform).
|
| these kinds of granularities are why i'm partial to the idea of
| writing regulations as an intent statement (like the above core
| concept), a descriptive, not prescriptive, elaboration of that
| intent statement and its major facets, and then numerous
| examples that give shape to the hyperplanar function without
| trying to delineate it exactly (and inevitably imperfectly;
| that is, accepting that it's necessarily imperfect). the
| populace and (if need be) judges can competently
| interpolate/extrapolate between the given intent, description,
| and examples (this takes away power from lawyers as mediators
| of law, which is a reason it's resisted).
| [deleted]
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Also a similar point, Congress keeps summoning them and putting
| pressure on them so it's almost a damned if you do damned if
| you don't scenario. I am greatly opposed to censorship (other
| than say content that harms children or is fraudulent) and a
| platform having a stance on what is "truth" or "disinformation"
| is quite terrifying, but I also get that it's an unfortunate
| side effect of the risk aversion song and dance they are being
| forced to put on.
|
| To be clear about freedom of information in general, I think
| competing theories on things like coronavirus and election
| fraud should be entirely tolerated, especially when the only
| apparent consensus comes from blindly "trusting the officials"
| who are just other human beings. It's very ivory tower and
| dystopian of them to want to push a narrative of stability when
| really there's so much we don't know.
|
| The idea that we aren't adults who should be able to question
| and audit things and have free agency seems like it's not even
| on the table anymore which is sad. We're all walking our
| liberties into the grave just to avoid uncomfortable topics.
|
| Like Cypher in the Matrix, ignorance is bliss, plug my body
| back in!
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| There is a huge failure of imagination here. Repealing section
| 230... Would it completely upend existing social networks and
| internet norms? Yes, that's a good thing.
|
| Tim talks moderation... we're not going to moderate billions of
| people post-230, they'll just be responsible for their actions.
| function_seven wrote:
| They're responsible for their actions today.
|
| 230 doesn't immunize commenters from liability for the words
| they post online. It protects the platform, while also allowing
| them to moderate.
|
| Post-230, platforms would have to zealously moderate to avoid
| repercussions. You think bots are a little too aggressive
| today. Imagine those auto-van dials turned up to 11 if Twitter
| bore direct responsibility for every word tweeted out.
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| I don't want them to moderate. Many will/are unhappy with
| them moderating content. Allow people to moderate their own
| content.
|
| There is a huge market for shifting content curation and
| moderation to users and away from platforms.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Every site needs moderation. Otherwise it only takes 1 bot
| posting non-stop racial slurs to make a website completely
| unusable.
| fitzie wrote:
| I see three problems with the original posting. First is the
| presumption that repealing 230 will damage the internet in some
| way. I think that would have to be demonstrated in some way. tech
| companies already must have a strong legal department in 2020,
| especially the smaller unpopular ones fighting for basic banking
| and internet connectivity. Donald Trump the big defamer as the OP
| claims, only had one defamation lawsuit, from Stormey Daniels,
| which went no where. so I don't see how all of a sudden more
| lawsuits are going to jump in just because they can add twitter
| as a defendant.
|
| the second problem is the misunderstaning of what conservatives
| want. while it is correct to say that we want the terms of
| service to be applied consistently, and we disagree with vague
| labels of hate speech and disinformation, that is nothing like
| the fairness doctrine which is about balance. the core of what
| conservatives are asking for is that discussion over what
| government policy should be should not be censored by these
| platforms. when we have serious concerns about lockdown policies,
| election integrity, keeping predators out of girls bathrooms,
| preventing illegal immigration, these very discussions are
| censored by these platforms. this is dangerous, of course,
| because it allows our elected leaders to ignore potentially
| widely held views, and only see types of conversations that the
| left leaning heads of media and big tech permits.
|
| the third problem is the presumption that the left wants more
| censorship. while its true that the advocates for more
| restriction of potentially harmless speech because it is
| potentially harmful are on the left, there are studies that show
| people on the left feel more restricted about what they can say
| and see repercussions on. while there will always be some on the
| left that truely believes removing dissent is would be an
| improvement, that isn't widely believed, as anyone can figure out
| by talking to people with differing political views.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> We don't like you; we want you to suffer. Very 2020_
|
| That seems to sum it up.
|
| I don't think there's a way to legislate the way we treat and
| feel about each other.
|
| I guess we need to do that the old-fashioned way, by getting out
| of our pods and talking to each other in person, like the ending
| scene of _Surrogates_.
| threatofrain wrote:
| > As this suggests, what the left and right really care about are
| the content moderation policies of Facebook, Twitter, and so on.
| And those, as it stands, have little to do with Section 230.
|
| > But content moderation, as an exercise of editorial discretion,
| is protected by the First Amendment. And that Congress can't
| repeal.
|
| [1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/418/241.html
| TameAntelope wrote:
| For folks (like me) who found the link a bit dense:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Herald_Publishing_Co._v....
|
| > Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974),
| was a United States Supreme Court case that overturned a
| Florida state law requiring newspapers to allow equal space in
| their newspapers to political candidates in the case of a
| political editorial or endorsement content.
| me2021yuh wrote:
| But at what point does content moderation turn an editor into
| the speaker and thus liable? As an extreme case I could censor
| many letters of your post leaving only a few letters expressing
| something you never expressed. Many people I've heard from on
| the right are making this case, not arguing to abolish 230,
| just to clarify it such that moderation is a form of speech and
| thus invites liability. Even Dershowitz made that point.
| mdpopescu wrote:
| Censoring? I've had posts EDITED on a stack exchange
| platform. Multiple times, with the result saying the opposite
| of what _I_ said.
|
| I did the only thing I could do, stopped using that site.
| Just like with Facebook :)
| zuminator wrote:
| Selectively censoring letters so as to change the meaning of
| a post is not what is commonly thought of as moderation.
|
| Anyway, I think you're losing the bead a little here. Speech
| isn't liable because it's speech. It's liable because it's
| slanderous or defamatory. So calling moderation "speech"
| doesn't suddenly invite liability, unless we're claiming that
| the very act of exclusion is prima facie defamation, which is
| a more dangerous idea than the problem you're trying to solve
| in the first place. If moderation as such were to be
| actionable, then my shitty band could sue you for not
| including us in your shared Spotify playlist. It would open
| the door for any sort of public curation whatsoever to carry
| legal risks.
|
| Losing the tool of moderation would kill off this very forum,
| which would become overrun by crackpots, trolls, and V1Agra
| spam in short order. By pruning the weeds of bad-faith
| discourse, moderation allows good-faith open discussion to
| thrive.
| 8note wrote:
| Section 230 is clear on that, isn't it? Does the moderation
| happen before or after the post is visible?
| ttt0 wrote:
| On major platforms it's both
| imgabe wrote:
| If the speech on Twitter is Twitter's speech, then if someone
| defames me on Twitter, I should be able to sue Twitter. Just
| like if a reporter in the New York Times defames someone, you
| sue the paper, not the reporter.
|
| If Twitter doesn't have liability for the speech, then it
| belongs to the speaker and Twitter should have no obligation to
| censor it. They can't have it both ways.
|
| Likewise Twitter and Facebook should be paying their users for
| providing content that they profit off of, like newspapers pay
| reporters. Then they can have standing to choose what they want
| to publish.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Since we passed a law that says they can have it both ways
| they can indeed have it both ways and moderate as they choose
| while also avoiding legal liability for their users actions.
|
| Which part of this is problematic?
| kortilla wrote:
| That they escaped the legal liability despite clearly
| having the capability and intent to moderate. The reason
| the exemption was put in place initially was because they
| had no editorial goal and could not reasonably moderate
| users.
|
| Now they are no different than the NYT with a crowdsourced
| author pool except they aren't liable for libel.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| How can youtube personally vet years of videos that are
| added in a day.
|
| Hell even this sites moderation team can't read all
| content in a reasonable time frame.
| kortilla wrote:
| Yet they had done so for people who hinted at election
| fraud, anti-mask info, etc.
|
| They clearly have the capacity to quickly speech
| recognize audio and match on keywords. They could drop
| all videos that even mention Taiwan tomorrow.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I'm trying to understand what you're trying to fix with these
| declarations. What is the consequence of Twitter/Facebook not
| being responsible for content that appears on their site?
|
| Maybe you should be able to sue the NYT reporter. I think you
| can, in fact!
|
| I just don't understand what we're trying to accomplish with
| the changes to how things are currently. Maybe it would help
| if you described the world you'd rather live in, and how it
| differs from this world.
| [deleted]
| kortilla wrote:
| > What is the consequence of Twitter/Facebook not being
| responsible for content that appears on their site?
|
| Well it's what we have now. Mass misinformation and lies
| constantly being spread around. The trade-off we made was
| that it was supposed to be an unfiltered cesspool because
| it wasn't feasible to censor views to match the editorial
| decisions of the company.
|
| However, AI has made if feasible to censor at scale and the
| companies want it both ways. They want editorial control
| and they still don't want any responsibility for
| defamation.
|
| > Maybe you should be able to sue the NYT reporter. I think
| you can, in fact!
|
| That's worse than being able to sue the NYT. It allows the
| NYT to hide behind pawns they would love to sacrifice in
| the name of spreading convenient lies.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| AI has not made it feasible to censor at scale, that is
| not correct.
|
| And as the article makes clear, the idea that Facebook is
| not responsible for the content its users create has
| nothing to do with the problem of misinformation. To
| solve one would not even touch the other.
|
| The suggestions I replied to seem focused on holding
| Twitter and Facebook accountable for what is displayed on
| their own website, regardless of provenance. It's not
| clear to me how that would enable anyone to safely create
| content that Facebook doesn't believe should be published
| on its platform.
|
| Without the separation of the creator of the content and
| the organization displaying that content, Facebook would
| grow more strict, not less.
|
| Fundamentally, you're trying to involve the government in
| deciding what "truth" is. That seems much worse than
| misinformation, yes?
| luckylion wrote:
| > Fundamentally, you're trying to involve the government
| in deciding what "truth" is. That seems much worse than
| misinformation, yes?
|
| We already have the courts involved in deciding what
| "truth" is. Has worked out pretty well in general, and
| certainly better than having private companies do it.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Not to this extent, we do not. This would be a whole
| additional level, multiple levels even, more subjective.
|
| Honestly, it feels like a moot point anyway. The 1st
| Amendment makes all of this pointless to discuss. It will
| _never_ happen, short of a literal collapse of the US
| Government and a reformation under a new Constitution
| that doesn 't include the 1st Amendment.
|
| The government will _never_ be involved in deciding what
| people can and can 't say to the extent that this would
| require. It's antithetical to our current legal system
| (not to mention our cultural mores).
|
| _Of course_ Twitter gets to decide what to publish on
| Twitter. There 's literally no other way to operate,
| regardless of Section 230.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Misinformation is a flood by a million raindrops, and as
| courts are severely overtaxed, I shudder in asking for a
| magnitude more volume in a bunch of low severity cases.
|
| People will debate more or less police funding, but
| massively more judicial funding is on nobody's radar.
|
| What the modern age calls for is the ability to easily
| enjoin a class of defendants and sue them all for $5,
| with adjudication taking 1 minute. Now your mom just lost
| $5 because she retweeted a MLM health scare scam 2
| minutes ago.
| Volundr wrote:
| I don't think this is a good solution at all. If mom
| believed the scam at the time she retweeted it there's
| absolutely no crime there. Being wrong or deceived is not
| a crime. Frankly your proposing punishing the victim.
|
| Any actual solution would have to target the creators of
| the disinformation, and maybe those who knowingly spread
| it. Even that is hard in a freedom of speech context
| though. Even lies are free speech.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Saying false things which hurts other people is tortious,
| not criminal. That's why we don't need to talk about
| _mens rea_ , or whether or not metaphoral mom meant to be
| false or hurtful.
|
| When we're talking about Section 230, we're talking about
| torts, and when we're talking lawsuits, we're also
| talking torts.
| Volundr wrote:
| Sure, I take your point that I'm thinking about it the
| wrong way legally.
|
| But I still maintain the idea is bass-ackwards morally
| and legally problematic.
|
| If mum believes the false Facebook meme she's a victim.
| Yes passing it on passes on the harm, but honestly I also
| think that doing detailed research into every meme before
| passing it on is an unrealistic expectation. Almost a
| decade ago I passed on the meme about Mr. Rogers being a
| sniper with x number of confirmed kills and always
| wearing sweaters to cover his sleeve tats. Exactly how
| much money should that cost me? In many way these memes
| are the natural evolution of "old wives tales" that have
| existed for centuries. Probably all of human existence.
|
| And from a tort perspective I'm still not sure this
| applies. Part of the harm from tort comes from the fact
| it's repeated. If I tell people X bank is financially
| insolvent, it catches on and there's a run on the bank _I
| 'm_ certainly guilty of something, but I don't think the
| people who passed it on in good faith are. Rather the
| fact people were passing it around is evidence of the
| tort, not additional torts themselves (but IANAL of
| course).
|
| And even if passing on a meme is a valid micro-tort in
| this scenario, now my mom has been materially harmed by
| whoever shared it with her. Does she now sue them in her
| own micro-tort lawsuit and the whole thing bubbles up
| like some kind of legal reverse ponzi scheme? It seems
| like all of these micro-suits floating around and sure to
| create the exact problem the original comment is trying
| to avoid.
| kortilla wrote:
| But your mom shouldn't pass on memes that make statements
| like that then if she can't verify their authenticity.
| She is culpable in spreading it because it's a deliberate
| action she took. Don't spread information you don't know
| to be true.
|
| Your "mom" in this context is actively spreading fear
| about topics and not knowing something is true for
| certain is all the more reason she shouldn't be doing it.
|
| We have the Internet now, we don't need rumor mills and
| information spreading second hand.
| Volundr wrote:
| > But your mom shouldn't pass on memes that make
| statements like that then if she can't verify their
| authenticity. She is culpable in spreading it because
| it's a deliberate action she took. Don't spread
| information you don't know to be true.
|
| Are you sure you never spread information that isn't
| true? Really, really sure? I'd say with high confidence
| you have false beliefs you unknowingly pass on. I know I
| have in the past and assume I still do.
|
| People continue to pass on the whole "frog in a slowly
| boiling pot" anecdote over and over again even though
| there is no truth to it. It's simple common knowledge no
| one has thought to question. Should every person who does
| so from here on now be fined $5? How is this different
| than someone who is taken in by a meme shared by someone
| they trust?
| [deleted]
| cirno wrote:
| > It allows the NYT to hide behind pawns they would love
| to sacrifice in the name of spreading convenient lies.
|
| And when it comes to Twitter or other sites, how _do_ you
| sue one of its users who posts libel and defamation about
| your character, when said user is hiding behind a VPN
| anyway?
|
| Twitter is hosting the content, and chooses not to take
| it down, so _if that content breaks actual laws_ (libel,
| cyberstalking, etc), they should be held responsible for
| it.
|
| Whereas if it falls within the purview of free speech,
| then they should have nothing to worry about.
|
| I realize it's not a popular sentiment here because we
| want to build platforms and not worry about the legality,
| but giving websites blanket immunity to host law-breaking
| content because "it was posted by someone else" means
| that all of our laws become unenforcable on the internet.
| nradov wrote:
| Twitter does take down content that breaks actual laws
| when ordered to so by a court. So the state you're asking
| for already exists.
| cirno wrote:
| I can't say I've even heard of a court order for Twitter
| to remove a tweet before.
|
| Is that really practical, though? To spend thousands of
| dollars on legal fees to take down a single tweet from an
| anonymous account that will just repost it again and
| again? Meanwhile every time Twitter is completely immune
| to any consequences for hosting and distributing said
| content?
|
| It's a sucky situation. A service like Twitter can't
| really function if they're responsible for the content on
| the site, but all our existing laws are effectively
| unenforceable on the web otherwise.
|
| I think the hope people have for the removal of section
| 230 shielding is that Twitter and other content hosting
| providers will take existing laws more seriously. For
| instance, Cloudflare today says "there should be laws to
| handle this stuff, we don't want to enforce anything",
| and to date the CEO has only ever made two exceptions to
| that.
|
| The contrarian side to that is going too far and Twitter
| et al becoming too censorious and taking down legitimate
| free speech content. None of these service providers can
| afford to have a legal team on standby to determine what
| constitutes fair use and free speech or not.
|
| I don't have an answer, I'm just saying this isn't a one-
| sided issue. Right now the internet has a real problem
| with libel and cyberstalking. It's one of those things
| that one tends to not realize or think/care about until
| it happens to them.
| threatofrain wrote:
| If AI can do such things then we'd have much bigger
| questions to answer about how tomorrow should proceed,
| and what legal framework is right for the coming of a new
| era.
|
| In fact, we'd start talking about AI courts to scale with
| the flood of low severity cases.
| [deleted]
| URSpider94 wrote:
| Misinformation and lies are rarely punishable by either
| criminal or civil statutes, unless they are defamatory
| about an individual, and even then the bar is very high,
| especially if they are a public figure.
|
| Repealing 230 would not have any measurable benefit when
| it comes to controlling fake news or conspiracy theories.
| nradov wrote:
| The New York Times frequently publishes editorial content for
| which they pay nothing. People who aren't NYT employees want
| to get their message out so they write for free.
| DanBC wrote:
| Your post is really confusing.
|
| S230 says that a company won't be held responsible for some
| (but not all) user generated speech on their website. But it
| also says they do not lose those protections if they moderate
| that speech. The people who made the bill realised that
| companies _need_ the ability to moderate content, and so they
| built it into the law.
|
| The vast majority of Internet users do not want dumb pipes
| and unmoderated content.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| What the parent is saying is pretty plain. If <social media
| company> is moderating content then they should be liable
| for it. If they're not liable for it then they shouldn't be
| moderating it.
|
| I understand that point of view but honestly it won't work
| for the simple reason that no one - not the providers and
| not the users - wants it to work that way. I firmly believe
| that if you try and setup the legal framework to get that
| configuration people will create technical work around
| after technical workaround until they get back to the
| status quo.
|
| It will be like nothing so much as the way SPAC's are used
| today. Whatever else they are they're a way to do an IPO as
| it was done before SOX. It's a technical end run of a law
| no one likes.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| What you're describing is an untenable situation. So, let's
| say that Twitter operates as you suggest, as an open
| platform, and people start posting child pornography, multi-
| level marketing scams, and racist imagery. Do they have to
| just suck it up and wait for the police and courts to tell
| them to take it down? In the mean time, they'll lose all
| their customers. If you say, well of course they can take
| down kiddie porn, then you agree that they have the right to
| curate what is posted on their site, just not how much.
|
| Let's say I run a BBS for stamp collectors, and a crowd of
| new members join and start talking about their upcoming white
| supremacist rally on the site. Can I delete their posts and
| ban them while still having safe harbor under 230? Or should
| I instead lose my 230 immunity and be forced to face
| liability over that post where Fred calls Jenny a nitwit
| loser because she got the date of the Amelia Aerhart first-
| day cover wrong?
|
| What if they're just talking about knitting, on my stamp
| collecting forum? Then can I take it down?
|
| What if my forum is for young Democrats? Can I take down
| posts supporting Republican candidates?
| pron wrote:
| You don't need any kind of standing to do what you're not
| prohibited to do by law, and the freedom to choose what to
| publish and amplify -- not because it is obligated to but to
| shape the institution's reputation -- is both well-
| established and crucial to both media organisations and
| universities.
| 8note wrote:
| Don't have an obligation to censor it, sure, but they'll
| never have an obligation to keep it up. If they run out of
| money, the servers go down and the posts stop being
| available.
|
| Unless the government is taking over paying for hosting the
| user content, the server owners will be able to not host it
| 6510 wrote:
| I don't know. If I want to publish something I need a tool
| that publishes it. If everything can just vanish at any
| time it can have terrible consequences. Competing with
| businesses that are allowed to make false promises is
| really hard. I would have much rather paid in stead of
| losing the audience and the communities I build again and
| again and again and again until I just gave up. Before I
| deleted everything I had many thousands of well organized
| bookmarks gathered over decades. 90% of it was dead links.
| My blog is 90% dead links. Many people have some perverted
| fetish with deleting the proverbial geocities, I have
| hundreds of articles that don't function without. I'm not
| allowed to republish [your] lost content either.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Likewise Twitter and Facebook should be paying their users
| for providing content that they profit off of, like
| newspapers pay reporters. Then they can have standing to
| choose what they want to publish.
|
| What? This sounds like you're arguing that Twitter and
| Facebook are legally obligated to publish everything a user
| posts because they don't pay their users?
| tgragnato wrote:
| They are because there's been an historical division
| between publishers and carriers.
|
| 230 is about that, it lets intermediaries create policies,
| without having to choose between being publishers or
| carriers.
|
| Disclaimer: I don't like this side effect too
| nradov wrote:
| 230 isn't about that. It doesn't regulate Internet sites
| as common carriers. You're drawing a false distinction.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| There has been a division because historically
| publication was expensive and labor intensive not because
| of some inherent virtue of the arrangements.
|
| Some people who don't like the moderation policies have
| created a fictional world where such policies are wrong
| instead of merely disagreeable like someone who hates
| pineapple imagining that putting them on pizza violates
| some moral principal instead of merely their own tastes.
|
| If you examine such a request the user nearly always
| desires not broader liability for websites but for the
| government to use such liability as a cudgle to force
| websites to accept speech they would otherwise object to
| and host it on their platform. Effectively they want to
| take away others freedom and compell their speech. This
| is so obviously immoral that one wonders what moral
| principles could possibly justify this.
| tgragnato wrote:
| What changed since 230 was enacted is simple from my pov
| ... There are few platforms.
|
| Without those few enormous platforms shaping the public
| discourse, 230 is largely good and unproblematic.
|
| Which is why I'd love to have more platforms, while
| retaining 230.
|
| But I also need to acknowledge that's not where we are
| heading to.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| What does the number of platforms have to do with
| anything?
| tgragnato wrote:
| Extreme and fringe ideas would naturally move to
| unpopular platforms, and die over time.
|
| With too few platforms some are arguing they feel
| censored, banned from participating in public discourse.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > With too few platforms some are arguing they feel
| censored, banned from participating in public discourse.
|
| The people making these arguments aren't doing so in good
| faith. They're playing the victim for extra attention.
| They claim they're banned from platforms because of their
| "conservative" politics when in fact it was them directly
| advocating for direct and explicit violence against
| political opponents that got them banned.
|
| There's nothing "conservative" about advocating murder
| for your political opposition. That's not a necessary
| part of a conservative ethos. It's also not any sort of
| political discussion. If someone openly advocates for
| your murder you can't meet them half way.
|
| When platforms get in trouble they make the same bad
| faith arguments. Parler whined claiming AWS dropped them
| for being a "conservative" platform while it was clear
| Amazon dropped them for not taking any meaningful steps
| to shut down open and explicit calls for violence.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You are describing an important and functional element of
| social networks going back thousands of years.
| Substantially new and different ideas most of which are
| bad and stupid face a trial by fire and over time society
| adopts the survivors.
| pron wrote:
| Any platform has always had the freedom to shape its
| reputation by choosing what to publish/amplify and how,
| within the law, regardless of what it pays the speakers
| (TV stations don't pay interviewees, for example). 230
| has absolutely nothing at all to do with that.
| tgragnato wrote:
| 230 protects moderation of published content.
|
| I hate the framing of the practical issues stemming from
| this in a matter of bipartisan policy.
|
| I'd suggests people are realizing giant Internet
| companies are chokepoints on the flow of information, and
| don't like how this is being handled.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| You are mistaken about the rights and responsibilites of
| carriers. Carriers have never been required to carry all
| content without distinction. Just think about your cell
| phone company - if I get a call from someone they thing
| is a phone scammer, their name pops up in my caller ID as
| "scam likely" - the phone company is doing that!
|
| The biggest flaw in thinking here is that carriers are
| forbidden from curating the content that they carry.
| qudchewer wrote:
| There is someone deciding on what content to post with the
| New York Times. If a site like twitter is engaging in that
| activity - then they should loose 230 immunity, because they
| are acting like a publisher instead of a platform. It seems
| relatively straight forward, doesn't it?
| qudchewer wrote:
| I don't understand why someone would down-vote this, please
| explain.
| Multicomp wrote:
| Sometimes downvotes are used for disagreement instead of
| a signal that a comment thread is off-topic or boring.
| FWIW asking why you are downvoted also makes for boring
| reading so is also discouraged. I'm somewhat doing the
| same to explain this but I'd rather you know for future
| discourse.
|
| As far as why they disagree, I'd suspect it is something
| more or less in the same ballpark as the below.
|
| Excerpt from https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/2
| 3325444617/hello...
|
| > If you said "Once a company like that starts moderating
| content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher"
|
| > I regret to inform you that you are wrong. I know that
| you've likely heard this from someone else -- perhaps
| even someone respected -- but it's just not true. The law
| says no such thing. Again, I encourage you to read it.
| The law does distinguish between "interactive computer
| services" and "information content providers," but that
| is not, as some imply, a fancy legalistic ways of saying
| "platform" or "publisher." There is no "certification" or
| "decision" that a website needs to make to get 230
| protections. It protects all websites and all users of
| websites when there is content posted on the sites by
| someone else.
|
| > To be a bit more explicit: at no point in any court
| case regarding Section 230 is there a need to determine
| whether or not a particular website is a "platform" or a
| "publisher." What matters is solely the content in
| question. If that content is created by someone else, the
| website hosting it cannot be sued over it.
| chewerofqud wrote:
| Had to create a new account, and use a vpn to reply to
| you. I broke some rule that isn't clearly defined on the
| site, and it's not indicating when I will be able to post
| again. Is Hacker News actually a place for free
| discussion of curious minds?
|
| Thank you for your answer - It's helped me in multiple
| dimensions. The sentiment that important discussion need
| be entertaining makes me sad, but it is what it is. Be
| well.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It sounds like you like a lot of people have insufficient
| understanding of what 230 is. Most people who express
| similar theories really just want the government to make
| it illegal to moderate deplorables with a thin
| justification. It's easier to vote down and move on the
| 95th time someone makes a bad argument.
| kortilla wrote:
| What is a "deplorable"? If you're using it in the same
| context as Hillary, that's not really helping your
| argument because it's an ill-defined slur used to
| describe millions of people.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| A deplorable defined one who holds odious beliefs or
| views that aren't merely wrong but actively harmful to
| themselves and others.
|
| Bigots, anti vaxxers, anti science (the process not a
| particular theory), people who support violence as a
| means to political change it n functional societies.
| kortilla wrote:
| Yep, keep in mind she described half of the people who
| voted for Trump like that
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basket_of_deplorables) so
| the word basically means "Republican". Using it is only
| useful as a Shibboleth to indicate you're aligned with
| American leftist views.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| It is not straightforward, because the law doesn't draw
| that distinction. Additionally, almost any "platform" has
| to reserve the right to moderate content to keep its
| customers and stay in business. Nobody wants to advertise
| on a site that is filled with white supremacist memes and
| pornographic material.
| jerrya wrote:
| As absolutely not a lawyer, and acknowledging my huge ignorance
| I'd suggest that First Amendment processes are heard in court
| and protected by due process. Aren't they?
|
| For good or ill, SS230 bypasses court hearings and due process
| and so I wonder if it is
|
| a) itself an unconstitutional denial of rights to the users, or
|
| b) actually just fine legally, however an overturning of it
| would not necessarily be an assault on the First Amendment,
| only on this congressional shortcut
|
| My "reform" of SS230 would be to add on to this congressionally
| mandated shortcut with some form of due process to the users
| whose court rights have been bypassed -- if a site wants to use
| SS230 protections, then they have to provide some form of due
| process to users, perhaps a timely takedown/suspension/banning
| appeals process, held in the open
|
| If a site doesn't want to provide that, then they can avail
| themselves of the First Amendment and their SS230 immunities
| are stripped and they are open to lawsuits.
| XorNot wrote:
| I'll post the same obligatory "actually read your
| Constitution" note:
|
| The first amendment protects US citizens right to speak
| freely in public and private venues from being retaliated
| against _by the government_.
|
| It specifically means you cannot be denied government
| services, support our rights because of any opinions you
| express publicly or privately.
|
| It _does not_ and never has obligated any private persons or
| business to listen, rebroadcast, or not *react " to what you
| say. You have never been protected from the consequences of
| your speech within your community, nor has anyone been
| required to enable it. It has never been a protection against
| the speech of anyone else, for example rallying their
| community to speak against you or for other private services
| to deny you patronage.
| Multicomp wrote:
| > It does not and never has obligated any private persons
| or business to listen, rebroadcast, or not *react" to what
| you say. You have never been protected from the
| consequences of your speech within your community, nor has
| anyone been required to enable it.
|
| So there might be an example of the supreme court requiring
| just that: in a case called Marsh vs. Alabama, a private
| community (a company town) was forced to allow some mormons
| to keep door-knocking on private property because of First
| Amendment rights.
|
| Something to the effect of 'if you have enough control over
| private space, you start to take on an increasing blend of
| public square obligations'. At least, that is the
| conclusion I drew from the below article. Unfamiliar domain
| name but I got it from memeorandum so it's not afaik some
| completely off the rails screed.
|
| https://lpeproject.org/blog/after-the-great-deplatforming-
| re...
| klyrs wrote:
| Marsh v Alabama is a pretty narrow ruling, and hasn't
| been interpreted to apply to much more than company
| towns, which are now illegal.
|
| Cyber Promotions v AOL is a subsequent case which is much
| closer to today's question: Cyber Promotions wanted to
| spam AOL, and AOL wanted to filter out spam because it
| threatened to ruin the internet. Thankfully, AOL won that
| case, and spam filtering is constitutional.
| jerrya wrote:
| Apologies, but it's not clear to me the relevance of what
| you are saying to what I have posted.
|
| I don't think I'm asking for freedom from consequences for
| anyone, just the reverse of anything, I think sites should
| be granted 230 immunities but only if they provide some
| form of due process to users, and if they don't, users
| should be able to take sites to court just like they could
| if there was no 230.
| [deleted]
| BostonFern wrote:
| The language you use seems to indicate that you either
| assume the First Amendment to be synonymous with freedom
| of speech, a common misconception, or that you believe
| the First Amendment would apply to tech companies
| currently protected by Section 230 were it repealed.
| jerrya wrote:
| > or that you believe the First Amendment would apply to
| tech companies currently protected by Section 230 were it
| repealed.
|
| Is that not what Tim Wu is saying?
|
| > But content moderation, as an exercise of editorial
| discretion, is protected by the First Amendment. And that
| Congress can't repeal.
|
| And so my understanding is that
|
| 1. Site content moderation actions are protected by the
| First Amendment.
|
| 2. Gov't can't tell a site what to moderate or not.
|
| 3. But without 230, a user can potentially sue a site for
| defamation or other reasons.
|
| 4. 230 provides a site a bypass to those suits, it gives
| sites publisher immunity.
|
| My suggestion is that publisher immunity from user
| lawsuits should come with some guarantee of due process.
| Congress took away the ability of users to sue. My
| suggestion is that seemed reasonable in 1996, but today
| Congress should return to the user some ability to
| negotiate/talk/appeal to sites regarding their
| takedowns/suspensions/bans. I refer to that as a form of
| due process. But if you wish, call that a consumer
| protection law.
|
| I've mentioned this twice now, and people tell me I need
| to read the Constitution or that I am confusing free
| speech and the First Amendment.
|
| I definitely have no idea what you folks are seeing, and
| wish you could more clearly express your ideas and help
| with that.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| What sort of suits do you wish could proceed?
|
| When you say due process regarding being banned what
| would that look like? Why should anyone have to justify
| to you why you can't use someone else's website?
|
| Under what terms and situations would they have to
| reinstate you? Why?
| [deleted]
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Saying I'm not a lawyer does not excuse you from doing the
| slightest bit of research.
|
| You never had a due process right to be heard on facebook in
| the first place so 230 didn't abridge this completely
| fictional right.
|
| It wouldn't abridge site owners rights to remove 230 it would
| just break the internet as we know it in the US. Your
| suggestion isn't a lot better. It would create pointless
| process that would likely be abused by vexatious litigants so
| you combine doing nothing for average joe's with giving
| special interests lisence to ruin the internet.
|
| If you have not the slightest idea what the law us how can
| you hope to anmend it.
|
| How about we leave everything as is and if you don't like how
| facebook runs their show you make your own site...with
| blackjack and hookers if desired.
| MrFlynn wrote:
| I'm not sure how section 230 bypasses due process. If a
| social media site removes something you posted, your first
| amendment rights have not been violated. The first amendment
| only protects you from being censored by the government. It
| says nothing about a private business enforcing whatever
| arbitrary rules it has against you.
| jerrya wrote:
| due process may not be the most appropriate or in any
| manner appropriate terminology.
|
| but prior to 230, I could sue a site for distributing
| defamatory material.
|
| Congress removes my right or my ability to do so. It gives
| my rights away to the site who it provides 230 immunity to.
|
| Sites and society may have benefited from this trade, but
| individual have lost fundamental abilities to seek their
| day in court and have gained nothing.
|
| I think Congress should temper 230 by saying that if a
| company accepts 230 immunity from lawsuits, it needs to
| provide basic due process rights to appeals processes to
| users.
|
| If it doesn't want to provide reasonable appeals processes,
| it forfeits its 230 immunities and can seek redress in
| court.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You can ask the website to take it down and you can sue
| the person who posted it why isn't that sufficient?
| notahacker wrote:
| You still have the right to sue the originator of the
| content, Section 230 just recognises the reality that
| platform owners (from Facebook down to little guy with a
| comment section on his blog) are not the originator of
| the content just because they filter spam and/or
| [occasionally] delete something manually. Without that,
| they would of course have deleted a lot more users and a
| lot more content a lot earlier, because who wants to pay
| the legal bills for defending some random citizen's claim
| about a person or company?
|
| How would a "due process" proposal even work? Do we have
| the US government step in and set global rules
| determining what is and isn't legitimate speech and who
| should have posting rights on your website? And if so,
| how is this making the Internet _more_ free?
| PeterisP wrote:
| This proposal starts looking weird as soon as you go into
| detail because it ties one persons rights to redress in
| court with the due process accorded to their opponent -
| because any due process would start only if a takedown
| (a) happens and (b) is appealed.
|
| I.e. if user A makes a post that defames you, you
| complain, it gets taken down, user A makes an appeal
| according to the new "230+ process" and gets it restored
| - then you'd have no redress in court because the
| provider followed the due process. (in any case, due
| process would be about _the process_ of evaluating
| whether the post meets some editorial criteria, but the
| criteria themselves can be absolutely arbitrarily set by
| the platform; if they decide to ban the posts which
| contain the letter "a", that's compatible with due
| process, as long as they look in the appeal and point out
| that yup, there was an "a" in it so the ban was
| appropriate; and if they decide to ban only posts which
| they're absolutely required by other laws and leave
| everything else, that still fits due process).
|
| In the opposite scenario, user A makes a post that might
| defame you but it gets immediately taken down by an
| automated algorithm; user A complains but gets auto-
| rejected without due process - so _then_ you 'd have a
| right to redress in court, but for what? The post got
| taken down.
|
| And if you had in mind right to redress in court for the
| person making the post, they don't have any valid claim
| pre-230, during 230 and in your proposed scenario either
| way.
| veselin wrote:
| I understand the issue a bit differently. If a user writes some
| content that stays as a comment somewhere and it is defamatory,
| then the user is responsible. So far, so good. This is what 230
| used to address.
|
| But the real issue at play is that an algorithm decides that this
| content will increase engagement within the platform. And it
| actually does. Now, I think the company behind this algorithm is
| responsible for the defamation. For example Facebook uses the
| current law to hide and so all its fight with disinformation is
| subject to keeping the same engagement levels, which is obviously
| a very hard task. (We tried hard, but the problem is too
| difficult).
|
| While the first case is good to address, the second one has
| severally outgrown it. Thus, so many people are even willing to
| give up something in order to address it.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| This implies the distribution of false information is the
| problem. What culpability do you place on the producer and
| consumer?
| hintymad wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's just algorithms. Twitter banned accounts
| for discussing why we needed to protest for fair elections
| because they "incite violence", yet Khamenei's tweet of calling
| for "eradicating" a people and a nation has been there since
| 2017.
|
| Twitter banned accounts for challenging the effectiveness of
| wear masks because they are "anti-science", yet it didn't do a
| thing when people were challenging CNN/WHO/CDC's messages that
| wearing masks was unnecessary and would cause public panic in
| March 2020.
|
| I'd support repealing of section 230 jsut for this level of
| double standards.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| How would repealing 230 address your perceived double
| standard? Platforms have the right to make editorial
| decisions about what appears on their platform. Without 230,
| they'd probably double down on it. Repealing 230 would not
| somehow provide an Avenue to force them to provide "fair and
| balanced" coverage.
|
| Maybe you just want 230 repealed so the networks can be
| burned to the ground through a mass of frivolous lawsuits. If
| so ... no?
| hintymad wrote:
| I don't mind bias or stricter rules. Left or right,
| progressive or conservative, all fair games. I do mind
| hypocrisy, as hypocrisy is the result of setting narratives
| regardless of facts or principles. And yes, I don't mind if
| twitter goes down.
| mushbino wrote:
| How does 230 address hypocrisy? Or are you just airing a
| personal grudge?
| lsh123 wrote:
| I think the point of the post is that repealing section 230
| would not help with "fairness" on the platforms. The
| arguments in the post are pretty strong imho.
| amaranth wrote:
| I think you're seeing this case from the article:
|
| > So when you see Trump or other conservatives calling for
| a Section 230 repeal, sometimes it is just an effort to
| inflict pain to try and get the platforms to do what they
| want.
| wernercd wrote:
| And what do they want? Fairness...
|
| IE: Violent posts from SJWs attacking white people and
| supporting violence in BLM/AntiFA "protests"? Many MANY
| still standing and complete silence from the platforms
| during YEARS of violence, hate and instigation...
|
| "violent posts" from conservatives supporting thousands
| of examples of voter fraud and calling for peaceful
| marches - just like Trump called for - while questioning
| the "truth" about mask mandates that have changed on
| political whims (Fauci: for masks, against masks, for
| masks, against masks, etc)? THOSE have to be taken down
| with extreme prejudice...
|
| The double standards the platforms are pushing is so
| extreme that "peaceful scholars" are honored... while
| American Presidents are banned...
|
| You can, for four years, say "russia hacked our
| elections" with the evidence being a single foreigner
| paid by the DNC for spy information. But you can't say
| "democrats hacked our elections" with thousands of
| Americans presenting evidence.
|
| The article is true that no one is going to be happy...
| but that won't change while the platforms are the massive
| hypocrites that everyone in the world can see on full
| display as they push 1984's "Truth".
| ineptech wrote:
| The fact that most of society thinks it's much worse to
| say mean things about black people than to say mean
| things about white people is not Twitter's fault.
| zo1 wrote:
| Does Twitter allow it because "most" of society believes
| it to be true... or does "most" of our perception of
| society believe it because Twitter allows it?
|
| True or not, we mustn't let a potentially minority-held
| opinion overtake the public sphere because the next
| generation will most certainly believe it because that's
| all they'll know. That is why absolute free debate is
| crucial and feelings should have no part in it.
| etchalon wrote:
| If you're going to make a point about the hypocrisy of
| demanding evidence, your example probably shouldn't
| include such an obviously incorrect statement as the
| belief that the Steele Dossier was the only evidence
| produced regarding Russian's interference in the 2016
| presidential campaign.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Very concisely put.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > While the first case is good to address, the second one has
| severally outgrown it.
|
| The problem with all of the repeal proposals is that none of
| them actually address the problem.
|
| Suppose you're a search engine. One of the search hits is
| making a factual claim. The search engine naturally has no way
| to validate the claim. That would require an investigation,
| giving the accused an opportunity to defend their claim and
| then having a neutral arbiter make a decision. This essentially
| describes a trial in court.
|
| We already have civil litigation. If you prove a defamation
| claim, you can have the court order it to be removed by the
| host or search engine.
|
| Anything Congress could do about this would be an attempt to
| end run around the First Amendment, i.e. de facto require
| private companies to operate a shadow court system and then
| pretend the First Amendment doesn't apply even though it's
| being instituted through legislation.
|
| It should be obvious why we don't want this -- if the
| government is imposing penalties only for _not_ censoring
| things then you 're going to get one-sided suppression of
| dissent, but if you punish them for over-censoring too then
| you're just cloning the actual court system and might as well
| use the real one.
|
| The root of the problem here isn't Section 230. It's that these
| platforms are too large, so that any mistake they make gets
| amplified across a billion people instead of a million. Break
| them up.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think there's a good case to be made for amending 230.
|
| 230 was written for a pre-algorithmic feed age where user
| content was displayed in a fixed context setup by the provider.
| The provider chose the frame, the user the painting.
|
| Now users send content to a machine that is constantly making
| new frames to better match the pictures it is given. The
| picture is still the picture - still made by the user, but the
| site bears _more_ responsibility for its presentation because
| its 'framing' is based on the contents / reaction to the
| picture. However, I do not think a total transformation has
| occurred. Choosing how to display the picture doesn't change
| its contents.
|
| Writing a law that sensibly engages with the huge diversity of
| algorithmic strategies would be difficult even for skilled
| legislators (if only we had some!). Maybe the answer is in
| formalizing shadowbanning in some way?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| The problem is that without section 230, it becomes impossible
| for any website to have user hosted content. If websites are
| responsible for shit their users say, no website that posts
| user content can exist. No one is going to risk being sued over
| something a user says.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Which ends up affecting sites like Github and support forums.
| The moment Section 230 was repealed you'd see thousands of
| frivolous lawsuits against any company with deep pockets.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Or maybe centralized services like GitHub should not exist?
|
| And internet should be back to BBS days where public
| content are moderated by volunteers in each community
| separately?
|
| Now I think section 230 is not a necessity for an open
| internet. It just changed how internet works by making
| centralized business easier.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Open source software has been _massively_ buoyed by the
| availability of platforms like Github and before them
| SourceForge. Before these platforms OSS maintainers _had_
| to manage their own version control, packaging
| /distribution, and issue tracking. Without those things
| in place (managed or self hosted) it's pretty hard to
| collaborate with others. Big projects could afford to do
| it (both money and effort) but most hobbyist projects
| would just dump a tarball on their university or ISP
| provided web space.
|
| Services doing that laborious work for no cost has let
| OSS authors more easily collaborate and just get work
| done on projects. They've also enabled small projects to
| just exist since the author doesn't need to even know
| about the infrastructure needed to host their code.
|
| You can, and many do, self host Github equivalents. It's
| not like Github used all the oxygen in the room and
| monopolized source control.
|
| The same is true for web fora. You can go host your own
| forum/fediverse site right now pretty cheaply. Domain
| names are cheap and TLS certs are free. There's nothing
| stopping you or anyone else from doing that. Plenty of
| people already are doing so.
|
| Centralized platforms come into being because of network
| effects. You can host your own forum (or whatever) but
| that doesn't mean people will come join it. Lots of
| groups formerly served by on-topic forums moved to
| Facebook groups because all the participants were already
| there. It's no-cost vs low-cost and all of the
| infrastructure is managed by Someone Else. Infrastructure
| maintenance is a pretty thankless task.
|
| Starting a new group on Facebook (or wherever) is pretty
| frictionless if all the participants are already on
| Facebook. There's a lot more friction starting a new
| little island of discussion with a forum.
|
| By wanting to go back to the "BBS days" you're wanting
| network effects to not be a thing that exist. You're also
| somehow expecting people to have the technical chops to
| run a site. In the "BBS days" only a minority of a
| minority of people even had the modems to host or call a
| BBS. Just by the nature of the home computer market those
| people would be more technically adept than the average
| person.
|
| My mom, a non-technical user, can join a Facebook group
| very easily. She's not going to seek out let alone join
| some forum even if it's dedicated to the same subject as
| the Facebook group. She's also not going to run her own
| forum to talk about some topic where she can simply and
| easily start a Facebook group.
|
| People seem to forget that in the "good old days" of the
| early web it was mostly the technically adept building
| and browsing sites. In terms of conversations had or
| bytes transferred the _vast_ majority was on closed
| platforms like AOL and CompuServe. Even in the "BBS
| days" (the latter era) Prodigy, CompuServe, and AOL were
| far more popular than BBSes. Even with a BBS being "free"
| online services had a national reach and just far more
| resources available. Unless you had a big multi-line BBS
| in your area dialing into a board could be a crap shoot.
|
| The olden days were not necessarily better than today
| despite nostalgia and fetishization. Some stuff today is
| not better than things in the olden days. I'm not saying
| I like or support Facebook or Twitter or that
| centralization is unalloyed good. Centralization doesn't
| just happen in a vacuum and for no reason. Usability is
| very important as well.
| nine_k wrote:
| What is the material difference between a web site and a
| BBS?
|
| BBS operators would be equally responsible, and won't run
| BBSes. Same with chat rooms and IRC channels -- their
| operators could be sued, so they won't run anything like
| that for public service.
|
| Of course, a web forum could still be run over Tor,
| hiding the webmaster and the participants. There would be
| no one to sue, so whatever inflammatory content were on
| such a forum, it would stay unless the moderators cared.
|
| If the point is to stifle the public discussion and push
| it underground, then removing the protection of operators
| from liability for UGC is the way to go.
| adolph wrote:
| The good old "frivolous lawsuit" trope, the classic
| Republican boogieman since the days of malpractice
| "reform." What's wrong with people seeking justice through
| the courts? Lawyers need to feed their kids too. They do
| the job others won't do--ambulances don't chase themselves.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Frivolous lawsuits are a literal denial of service
| attack. It costs money to defend yourself in a lawsuit.
| In the US there's no default loser pays system.
|
| If I sue you and lose, you're out the cost of your
| defense. You'd have to sue me for your expenses. While an
| attorney might take the suit on contingency you're
| guaranteed to win and unlikely to recoup all of your
| original expenses even if you do.
|
| Frivolous lawsuits are not in any was a boogeyman. One
| need look no further than bullshit DMCA takedowns and
| bullshit patent suits filed in East Texas to see the
| model for frivolous lawsuits with a Section 230 repeal.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Frivolous lawsuits are not in any was a boogeyman._
|
| They certainly were in the 90's and 2000's. This
| lawsuit[1] became a talking point against "frivolous
| lawsuits", and ammo in a PR war for tort reform[2] in the
| US.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s
| _Restau...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tort_reform#Frivolous_l
| awsuits
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| I find it quite odd that [1] is considered frivolous,
| given that the plaintiff required emergency surgery, left
| the hospital weighing 38kg and ended up partially
| disabled.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I agree with your point in general, but I'd also argue
| that there are companies that weaponize copyright and
| patent law in order to intimidate individuals and
| companies without the means to go to trial, even if they
| don't have a real legal standing to do so. GitHub seems
| like a great place for patent trolls to find their marks.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _No one is going to risk being sued over something a user
| says._
|
| No small company would, but some multi-billion dollar
| companies might. They sure would censor the hell out of _any_
| user content, though, or else they 'd run the risk of being
| raided in the middle of the night by the FBI if a user found
| it funny to upload something illegal to their servers.
|
| Which brings us to the OP's argument, that repealing Section
| 230 wouldn't do what the repeal proponents want. The end
| result of repealing Section 230 of the CDA is that total
| online censorship becomes the norm, and only giant companies
| would be able to benefit from the limited user-generated
| content that's allowed to exist after the repeal.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The problem is that without section 230, it becomes
| impossible for any website to have user hosted content. If
| websites are responsible for shit their users say, no website
| that posts user content can exist.
|
| That has nothing to do with section 230. Websites weren't
| responsible for user-generated content before section 230 and
| they still wouldn't be if it went away.
|
| What section 230 does is extend the same immunity that
| content-blind hosts have always had to hosts that modify the
| content they get from users.
|
| This comment upthread:
|
| > If a user writes some content that stays as a comment
| somewhere and it is defamatory, then the user is responsible.
| So far, so good. This is what 230 used to address.
|
| is wrong. Section 230 didn't address that case; the user was
| always the responsible party. To see section 230 at work, you
| need a more complicated setup:
|
| 1. User A posts defamatory content to a web forum.
|
| 2. User B posts defamatory content to the same forum.
|
| 3. The forum operators see User B's post, are outraged, and
| take it down.
|
| This is where section 230 makes a difference. It says that,
| even though the forum takes control of user-generated content
| for the purpose of expressing its own views, it still isn't
| liable for content that it hasn't directly touched. In the
| absence of section 230, the forum would bear liability for
| user A's defamatory post as soon as they took down user B's
| post.
|
| There's no problem hosting user-generated content without
| section 230. You only have a problem if you editorialize on
| top of that content.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Fine. Websites aren't responsible for the content. But make
| them responsible for promoting or curating the content, if
| they choose to do so.
|
| Instagram just shows me all the stuff my friends post. That's
| it, as far as I can tell. It's great. Facebook amplifies some
| things and doesn't show me others. If it wants to be in that
| game, of distorting informational impact, it needs to take
| responsibility for what it's amplifying.
| blendergeek wrote:
| > Instagram just shows me all the stuff my friends post.
| That's it, as far as I can tell.
|
| Unfortunately, Instagram is not just "showing you
| everything your friends post".
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I'm kind of curious as to what the person is seeing,
| because every third post I see is an ad placed by
| Instagram, and for some of the meme pages you reach
| nearly that much saturation with sponsored posts.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| I mean obviously there are ads, but if my friends post
| something, it's at the top of my feed, and I can scroll
| through _only_ content that my friends post (and ads).
| kelnos wrote:
| It's still not just a linear feed, though. Years ago it
| was just a reverse-chronological feed of things your
| friends post. Now the ordering is "algorithmic". I can't
| think of any good reason to reorder posts other than to
| try to increase engagement, which is the problem we're
| talking about here.
| roywiggins wrote:
| If you don't allow curation, that's the end of moderated
| forums like Hacker News, isn't it?
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Who said anything about _not allowing_ curation?
|
| > make them responsible for promoting or curating the
| content, _if they choose to do so_
| roywiggins wrote:
| So, Y Combinator can choose to be liable for anything
| defamatory that manages to get onto the front page (there
| is, after all, an algorithm), or anything defamatory that
| they fail to delete out of the comment section. It
| doesn't seem sustainable.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| In your view does this apply to _all_ algorithms or just ones
| that discriminate based on the content itself (ie use content
| as an input).
|
| If the algorithm simply prioritizes say the most upvoted
| comment, is that the same? Or how about prioritizes the most
| watched/liked video?
|
| I ask this because it's basically impossible to not prioritize
| content unless a website is a mere directory of user
| information with no search box. Where do you think the
| distinction lies between being responsible for user engagement
| and not?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Any promotion of content without the user explicitly asking
| for it should be considered as an endorsement.
|
| People can search for things they want to follow if they want
| too. It is crazy, logging back into Facebook, how far it has
| gone away from the chronological feed of your friends that it
| started off as.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > If the algorithm simply prioritizes say the most upvoted
| comment, is that the same? Or how about prioritizes the most
| watched/liked video?
|
| This used to be handled by the user clicking a button that
| said "sort by most votes" or the top of a column called
| "votes." Now it's a mystery how to handle that no one could
| possibly know how to do.
| Jonnax wrote:
| _" it is possible that what conservatives want is not to repeal
| 230, but explicitly condition immunity on a "fair and balanced"
| content moderation -- i.e., a social media fairness doctrine
| backed up a threat of immunity-stripping. "_
|
| This makes a lot of sense. The idea of making forum owners
| responsible for the content their users post would result in far
| harsher moderation. Which is opposite to what they want.
|
| Have the calls for Section 230 repeal subsided since the change
| in administration?
| Firebrand wrote:
| Debating whether repealing Section 230 will suddenly grant people
| free speech on social media platform is missing the real issue.
| We should repeal Section 230 in order to destroy the social media
| industry.
|
| Online you do not interact with "regular people" but people who
| put the most effort into online presence and those people are
| overwhelmingly individuals with very real mental disorder on the
| narcissistic spectrum often with other comorbid disorders.
|
| On social media in particular you are exposed to both narcissists
| and in general a narcissistic mode of communication - because
| that's what social media is. Social media is a vehicle for
| turning an individual into a narcissistic persona. So even if you
| are not narcissistic in real life your social media activity will
| make it look like you are.
|
| Social media is very unhealthy. It is a recipe for a mental
| disorder. It is primarily used by people with mental disorders.
| It is designed by people with mental disorders.
|
| Quit social media--these online free speech advocates just want
| more people to pay attention to them which leads to more screen
| addiction. It's cancer for your soul. And I am not sure I am just
| being metaphorical.
| yibg wrote:
| So basically " We don't like you; we want you to suffer."
|
| We don't bans or destroy things just because they contain
| narcissistic people. We certainly shouldn't lump all social
| media into this camp.
| jedberg wrote:
| You do realize you are writing this on a social media platform,
| right?
| barbacoa wrote:
| The key difference is AI curation. What you see here depends
| on what time things get posted and how many up-votes posts
| get. FB, twitter, et al, decide what to show you based on
| what they think you will like using opaque complex software.
|
| If a newspaper publishes a 'letter to the editor' that is
| libel they are liable because they chose it to publish.
| that's what the big tech social media do.
|
| If section 230 got repealed it would have effects on sites
| like HN, but the would be catastrophic for big tech social
| media.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| > What you see here depends on what time things get posted
| and how many up-votes posts get.
|
| Is that not a large part of how most social media
| algorithms work?
| berryjerry wrote:
| It appears sites regularly add or remove items from their
| trending lists, both by manual review as well algorithms
| which are essentially automated manual review by the
| person who wrote the algorithm. That kind of control is
| the same as a Newspaper determining what headlines you
| read and what stories get the most attention, basically
| controlling the conversation and making editorial
| decisions.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| 230 protections needs to be something that can be challenged in
| court. Today, it is abused worse then the DMCA and there is no
| recourse. Good luck trying to strip protection from an entity
| that is essentially a publisher.
|
| I think companies would be very honest if there was risk of
| repeated and consistent infractions.
|
| I wholly believe in reform which brings some power back to the
| consumer.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| What would you like to challenge them on? Are you thinking
| that stripping their 230 protection would essentially put
| them out of business, and therefore force them not to
| discriminate against viewpoints?
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| > these online free speech advocates
|
| No, I want to challenge cancel culture and all the other
| radical activism that's plaguing the country.
|
| If you want to affect real change let's reintroduce FCC
| fairness doctrine and prohibit the Sinclair group from giving
| talking notes to local media outlets.
|
| The media is far more toxic than social media.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > It is primarily used by people with mental disorders.
|
| You've been on HN for a decade. Repealing Section 230 would
| kill it just as dead as the other social media platforms.
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