[HN Gopher] Two Supreme Court cases that could break the internet
___________________________________________________________________
Two Supreme Court cases that could break the internet
Author : fortran77
Score : 62 points
Date : 2023-01-26 05:50 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It continues to amaze me how many people, even here on HN, just
| parrot various (factually incorrect) talking points from various
| groups. Others pick a single desired outcome (less moderation)
| and refuse to address any of the resulting outcomes (Nazi and
| Terrorist propaganda on all major sites for instance).
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| They aren't refusing to address it as much as they want that
| outcome. The Right in the US is tired of being hamstrung with
| fact-checkers when spreading dubious claims, so the only
| remaining avenue is to remove moderation altogether. If sites
| die because they become a Nazi and spam cesspool, then so be
| it.
| untech wrote:
| I think the terms "Nazi", "terrorist" and "propaganda" won't
| help you, if you want to have a complex view of the world.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I really just mean actual self-described neo-nazis...
| untech wrote:
| Well, for the audience of Russian _highly regulated_ TV,
| news sites and social networks, the invasion of Ukraine was
| necessary because the poor neighbour was suffering under a
| regime of "actual self-described Neo-Nazis". Russian
| Ministry of Defence even reports its daily _results_ in
| terms of "Neo-Nazis eliminated". My parents are consumers
| of Russian media, and it is impossible to discuss the war
| with them, because they talk and _think_ with these
| flexible terms like "Nazi", "terrorist" and "propaganda".
| And they are not unintelligent people.
|
| I wish citizens of the free world would be more careful
| with their freedoms. Democracy and autocracy is a spectrum,
| and the slide towards dictatorship, from my experience,
| could be gradual and subtle.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I am a little confused by your point. I don't disagree, I
| just don't see it as dictatorial for people to be allowed
| to decide what happens in their communities. In fact, I
| think they only way any community can actually function
| is to have the right to exclude bad content and bad
| actors. That's true for a church or a book club or hacker
| news or facebook or anyone else.
| untech wrote:
| Well, I agree that moderation is useful for communities.
| I disagree that moderation standards should be defined by
| a regulator. On reddit, different communities have
| different moderation policies. Same for various chat
| groups. And there are resources with no moderation, like
| anonymous boards. This is fine. If you don't like
| moderation policy of your community, argue for a change
| or create a fork. But don't involve the government in it.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I don't think the regulator should define moderation
| standards. I am not sure what gave you that idea?
|
| That is not the current system OR the result of removing
| s.230. Though removing s230 would mean courts were much
| much more involved and moderations was much much heavier
| (or non-existent al-la 4Chan etc).
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Two cases that could break Big Tech's hold on the internet.
|
| These cases are not going to stop anyone from publishing their
| own content via internet, but they might affect Big Tech
| intermediaries that publish only other people's content and
| produce no content themselves.
|
| These cases will not stop traditional media organisations that
| employ journalists from fact-checking and publishing the content
| they produce.
|
| Even if these cases are decided favourably to the defendants,
| "tech" companies will continue to publish low quality, low-brow,
| incendiary, false, "clickbait" content. That is what gets
| eyeballs. Section 230 is not incentivising them to moderate, as
| it was intended. Advertising is incentivising them to allow
| anything that garners more views and "engagement". Section 230 is
| only providing them with immunity from all manner of litigation
| around _any_ moderation. There is no incentive to fact-check
| anything. Even "recommending" terrorrist group videos is
| apprently fair game.
|
| If they have zero obligation to moderate and no incentive to
| fact-check, because they have immunity under 230, i.e., Google
| wins against Gonzalez, then they can grow their once modest
| websites to gigantic, overpowering size, with a disproportionate
| amount of influence on the open web.^1
|
| Reframing the situation, the gigantic websites now call
| themselves "platforms", sharecroppers and serfs are "publishers"
| and "creators".
|
| Grab a stake in the "Metaverse".
|
| You cannot break something that is already broken.
|
| 1. For Big Tech this web feudalism is the Holy Grail. Grow the
| audience size and reap the advertising revenue. Obviously any
| proposed change, an improved interpretation of Section 230, that
| could threaten this status quo is unacceptable to them. But they
| are not the majority of web users. Was the web created so that a
| few websites could control the majority of traffic. In their
| view, yes. That is the only way the web can operate. How
| convenient.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| It is relatively common to see HN thread discussions that
| complain about some form of "censorship" by Big Tech, or, more
| generally, about "free speech" issues (real or imagined) with
| respect to Big Tech websites.
|
| Perhaps it is worthwhile to ask ourselves what is it that
| allows such "censorhip" or threats to "free seech" to happen. A
| few ideas:
|
| 1. Big Tech's position as intermediaries, aka "middlemen". Web
| users and to some degree internet users (cf. "tech" workers)
| are not expected to communicate with each directly without
| using Big Tech to do it. All web traffic must be observable by
| Bog Tech in ways that allow Big Tech to sells its "online
| advertising services". End result: "Surveillance capitalism".
|
| 2. Section 230. Without this immunity from litigation, arguably
| Big Tech could not "censor" successfully. If they could do so,
| then why would they oppose any changes to Section 230
| interpetation. Of course, neither "censorship" nor "free
| speech" is really the correct word to describe the activity Big
| Tech is engaging in that draws controversy. Big Tech promotes
| certain content. It does not matter how they do it, whether
| they measure "popularity" or whether they accept payment for
| placement of ads that look like search results, or "targeted"
| ads or whatever.
|
| In Gonzalez, the facts are around "recommendations".
| Unsolicited promotion of certain content to certain users. This
| is done not at the request of the user, it is not optional.
| It's done for Google's benefit.
|
| These companies that profit from surveillance and associated
| advertising are not "neutral". They are not "dumb pipes". Given
| that they are under no contractual obligations to any web user,
| only a fool would claim they are "critical infrastructure".
| They are surveillance, data collection and advertising
| companies.
|
| Does Big Tech need Section 230 protection in order to continue
| to pull this off.
|
| When Section 230 was enacted, there were no "tech" companies.
| Online service providers such as Compuserve, Prodigy and for a
| while AOL all charged fees. There were contracts between these
| companies and their users. There was customer service. Users
| were not ad targets, they were not "the product", they were
| customers. Users could sue these companies for not performing
| the job that they were being paid to do. Then came Section 230.
|
| People always envisioned that the internet would be used for
| commerce. However today "tech" companies and most importantly
| "Big Tech" try to make _all_ web activity commercial.
| Everything anyone does using the internet is surveilled with an
| eye toward its commercial significance, if any.
|
| And that practice is itself, the surveillance of _all_ internet
| activity, even academic or recreational use, is considered a
| "business model". Users pay nothing. Why would anyone pay to be
| surveilled and served with targeted ads. Advertisers pay for
| the surveillance.
|
| Don't be evil.
|
| Everyone anticipated selling widgets^FN1 over the internet. No
| one envisioned "tech" companies. Websites with no products for
| sale that conduct surveillance and collect data about web users
| as a "business model" and, unsuprisingly, in most cases, cannot
| turn a profit. No one envisioned a few gigantic websites with
| billions of pages doing this that manage engorge themselves
| with advertiser spend and take over the web.
|
| What (who) is Section 230 really for.
|
| If centralisation and single points of failure are undesirable,
| and Big Tech represents centralisation and gatekeeper
| chokepoints that can and do "fail", then perhaps it's worth
| considering that Section 230 protection for Big Tech is what
| allows this status quo to continue and for the situation to
| worsen.
|
| FN1. In Bezos' case, books.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeran_v._America_Online,_Inc.
|
| This was neither illegal nor obscene content. However it had a
| severe effect on a third party. Arguably, not as severe as the
| effect that the terrorist group videos that Google recommended
| had on the Gonzalez family.
| nindalf wrote:
| Remember that most content written by most people actually
| happens in these platforms owned and moderated by someone else.
| You say it won't stop anyone but how many people currently
| posting on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok are capable of
| creating their own websites, posting the content there, paying
| for the cost of hardware and bandwidth and also finding an
| audience somehow? 0.1%? 0.01%?
|
| The rest of your comment is equally wrong (perhaps even low
| quality, low brow, incendiary, false), but I have little time
| to fact check it.
| joeyh wrote:
| They would hop on a p2p or federated social network in a
| heartbeat if it were the only option.
|
| The fact that the CDA and 230 have tilted the internet away
| from those, by propping up currently large businesses does
| not mean that's the only way the internet can work.
| [deleted]
| lliamander wrote:
| > Section 230 is not incentivising them to fact-check and
| moderate, as it was intended.
|
| I think you misunderstand the intent of section 230. The vision
| of the bill was to support an internet of relatively free an
| unconstrained speech. No one expected these platforms to "fact-
| check" anything, and the moderation was not rule on who was
| right or wrong, but to mainly give them leeway to keep out
| genuinely illegal (and to a lesser extent, obscene) content.
| tzs wrote:
| > The vision of the bill was to support an internet of
| relatively free an unconstrained speech. No one expected
| these platforms to "fact-check" anything, and the moderation
| was not rule on who was right or wrong, but to mainly give
| them leeway to keep out genuinely illegal (and to a lesser
| extent, obscene) content.
|
| How did you reach that conclusion?
| i_dont_know_ wrote:
| The whole point of Section 230 was that we wanted to
| simultaneously incentivize user-content platforms (so, services
| that just allowed people to freely express themselves without
| concerning itself too much about the content) while
| simultaneously encouraging those services to take down illegal
| content. That was it.
|
| The whole reason it was needed was because these platforms were
| worried that if they took down content, it might be seen as
| implicitly endorsing the content that remained. If that was the
| case, then they'd be liable for the content that remained.
| Including things like libel laws... it would be the same as a
| newspaper printing that content.
|
| They didn't want that, so this was the compromise. You can do
| light moderation and we'll grant you exemption.
|
| Fast-forward to today. Facebook and Twitter do not do "light
| moderation". They decide what you see and what you don't... they
| direct your attention from smaller stories to bigger ones, they
| spend countless thousands of employee hours catering to the whole
| experience. If that doesn't count as a modern digital scaled form
| of editorialization, I don't know what would.
|
| I think a law designed to encourage very light moderation in no
| way applies to full-fledged algorithmic determination, and that
| distinction needs to be made and clarified.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Services could always take down illegal content (in fact they
| were legally required to).
|
| Section 230 is specifically for taking down legal content that
| the site controller wants gone (without then having endorsed
| what remains as you say).
|
| Section 230 was specifically to allow MORE than what you call
| "light moderation". That was always the point.
| lliamander wrote:
| You precisely describe the nature of section 230.
|
| > I think a law designed to encourage very light moderation in
| no way applies to full-fledged algorithmic determination, and
| that distinction needs to be made and clarified.
|
| I think this is where the definition of "good faith" in section
| 230 comes into play. If the platforms are simply removing
| illegal content and protecting the users from content they
| don't want to see, that would be good faith in the sense it is
| putting the interests of the users first.
|
| Now, optimizing feeds to benefit advertisers, or trying to
| socially engineer democratic elections? That is not good faith.
|
| And yet, some of these actions are done _at the request of_
| politicians and government agencies - often with the implicit
| threat of regulation and anti-trust action.
|
| As much as we need to expect good faith moderation from social
| media platforms, we also a stronger protections for private
| entities being strong-armed by state actors.
| qball wrote:
| >we also a stronger protections for private entities being
| strong-armed by state actors.
|
| It's important to note that this also needs (though I suspect
| that it already does) to apply to hosting providers and ISPs.
| (We need one for banks and payment processors, too, but one
| step at a time.)
|
| The whole "just make your own Internet" will ultimately be
| the death of free thought; in some respects, this has already
| happened. Cloudflare in particular makes a bundle on flat out
| illegal content; forcing them to moderate everything or just
| accept everyone's business (and ensuring ISPs can't blackhole
| routing requests) would likely be an improvement, and not one
| the enemy can as easily influence (as there's no viable "our
| payment processors said so" excuse).
|
| Of course, then the enemy will just amp up their efforts
| through the banks or the app stores, but one less avenue of
| attack they have is always better.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Perhaps I missed it, but what is the evidence for socially
| engineering elections? Cambridge Analytica was actually a
| violation of FB. I have seen emails where they discussed
| removing content or accounts due to policy violations, but
| that doesn't sound like what you mean. While the employee
| base is generally left leaning, there are plenty of studies
| showing that platforms actually favored conservative voices.
|
| Can you elaborate with details of what you meant?
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > Cambridge Analytica was actually a violation of FB.
|
| Of their terms of service, less so the actual law.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Look, that stuff about the Big 5 and microtargeting just
| didn't work. How Cambridge analytical actually made money
| was sting operations on politicians featuring hookers and
| hotel rooms.
| danShumway wrote:
| > You precisely describe the nature of section 230
|
| In the original authors' own words
| (https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sen-
| wyden-a...):
|
| > Section 230 protects targeted recommendations to the same
| extent that it protects other forms of content presentation.
| [...] That interpretation enables Section 230 to fulfill
| Congress's purpose of encouraging innovation in content
| presentation and moderation. The real-time transmission of
| user-generated content that Section 230 fosters has become a
| backbone of online activity, relied upon by innumerable
| Internet users and platforms alike. Section 230's protection
| remains as essential today as it was when the provision was
| enacted.
|
| The original authors believe that algorithms are protected.
|
| The original authors of Section 230 also don't believe that
| Section 230 prohibits biased platforms or prohibits platforms
| from having an agenda. Ron Wyden's take on the "platforms are
| biased" argument
| (https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/16/18626779/ron-wyden-
| sect...):
|
| > Section 230 is not about neutrality. Period. Full stop.
|
| ----
|
| That being said, should we have better protections for
| platforms being strong-armed by state actors? Yes,
| absolutely. The government has many levers it can pull to
| influence private speech, and those levers need careful
| safeguards and we need checks in place to prevent state
| actors from threatening platforms and using political power
| to bully them into making specific moderation decisions.
|
| But while that is an admirable goal, it has nothing to do
| with Section 230, a law that is itself a check on government
| power to punish companies over moderation decisions.
|
| If you're worried about private entities being influenced by
| state actors -- as you say "often with the implicit threat of
| regulation and anti-trust action" -- then giving the
| government more power to determine what is and isn't "good
| faith" moderation is heading in the wrong direction and would
| make the problem even worse.
|
| The solution to the government strong-arming platforms into
| removing content is not to give the government more power
| over moderation decisions.
| asah wrote:
| serious q: what exactly is "light moderation" and how is this
| not itself an algorithm, just being executed by wetware neural
| nets with all sorts of biases, inconsistent judgments, etc ?
|
| if "light moderation" means an escalation path for exceptions,
| then the major platforms all have this.
| mjevans wrote:
| When content is offered, not based on a factual request from
| the user but as a 'recommendation' that is a decision (even
| if it's an algorithm) and NOT a simple fact of serving
| whatever matched the end user requested (not the provider
| with 230 immunity) filter / sorting order on other end user
| published (not the provider with 230 immunity) content.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Let me make a counterargument:
|
| If you're a government that wants to have substantial control
| over what sorts of content is available to users, then Section
| 230 is a problem for you. What you _don't_ want is a hundred
| million people responsible for their own posts. What you _do_
| want is a few dozen services that run the Internet and who you
| can say are "editorializing" and who thus face all kind of
| liability unless they obey specific speech codes that
| politicians then set. You might think that government control
| over platforms' speech is prevented by the First Amendment, but
| that's the insidious nature of Section 230: if you passed laws
| controlling how newspapers editorialize, the laws would be
| struck as violating the First Amendment. If instead you pass
| laws modifying platforms' civil liability for users' speech, it
| might have the same overall effect as the explicit laws would
| have on newspapers. Yet some will argue that it's
| constitutional to do so.
|
| But surely, you argue, you're not opposed to letting firms do
| light moderation. They just can't do _heavy_ moderation, like
| kick off users for "political" reasons or use any algorithms to
| help users discover content. But nobody has a clue what
| "political" means here and how it differs from spam, and coming
| up with a definition is not the job of the US government or the
| courts. Similarly, does anyone seriously think that firms are
| going to stop using content discovery algorithms and become a
| pure "common carrier" of all content? Of course they won't.
| They'll just accept whatever speech codes the government
| develops and they'll obey them so that they can continue to
| make money.
|
| It's depressing to see people on HN walk willingly into a
| speech-regulation regime for private companies, while claiming
| that the reason they want this is to ban algorithmic discovery.
| If you want to ban algorithms, just pass a law doing so and see
| if it's constitutional. Instead we get this end-run where the
| result of these reforms is very likely to be much worse than
| the current situation _and more critically we will still have
| most of the algorithms and moderation_ used to justify it.
| danShumway wrote:
| > You can do light moderation and we'll grant you exemption.
|
| Another article about Section 230, another top-rated post on HN
| that's wrong about its origin. Section 230 was always designed
| from the start to allow companies to moderate _legal_ content.
| "Light" moderation was never part of the equation.
|
| Look, the people who literally wrote and sponsored Section 230
| are still alive today and they are open about what their
| motivations were, and yet still every single time this subject
| comes up the top-rated comment on HN is some completely
| fictional notion about how Section 230 was based on an
| assumption that feeds wouldn't be algorithmic or wouldn't
| censor anybody.
|
| And it's just factually wrong, and I don't understand why it's
| impossible to correct. It's difficult to have a conversation
| about the political/social _merits_ of a law when people don 't
| even understand the basic factual information about why the law
| exists.
|
| Imagine if every time an article about Linux came up the top-
| rated HN post was someone saying that Linux was never really
| designed to be a desktop OS, it was always intended to just be
| used on servers and only on servers -- and it didn't matter if
| Linus Torvalds himself was out making the rounds correcting
| people on that, we still had to have this conversation every
| time Linux was mentioned. That's how HN discusses Section 230.
|
| Section 230 was never about preventing algorithms. It was not
| designed to prevent "heavy" moderation. Again, the people who
| wrote the law are alive today and have explained their
| motivations.
|
| ----
|
| _Edit: it 's been pointed out (correctly) that I should
| probably throw some sources on this. Techdirt's article is a
| little snarkier than I like, but is generally good
| (https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-
| referre...), and even the Wikipedia article on Section 230 is a
| decent place to start looking at 230 motivations
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230). There's also a
| fairly decent book, "The 26 words that made the modern
| Internet."_
|
| _In regards to the parent comment, from Wikipedia:_
|
| _> Service providers made their Congresspersons aware of these
| cases, believing that if followed by other courts across the
| nation, the cases would stifle the growth of the Internet.
| United States Representative Christopher Cox (R-CA) had read an
| article about the two cases and felt the decisions were
| backwards. "It struck me that if that rule was going to take
| hold then the internet would become the Wild West and nobody
| would have any incentive to keep the internet civil," Cox
| stated._
|
| _Cox 's concern was not that platforms should only do "light"
| moderation, he wanted a way for platforms to be able to also
| moderate completely legal but "uncivil" content that would make
| it hard for platforms to be professional or organized; a "Wild
| West"_
|
| _Ron Wyden goes a step further in his recent interviews
| (https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/5/21339766/zuckerberg-
| priv...):_
|
| _> "There is not a single word -- not a word, not a comma, not
| a parenthesis, nothing -- that suggests that 230 was about
| neutrality. In fact, what we designed it to be is if you had a
| conservative website, good for you! Do what you want with it!
| If you had a progressive website, same thing."_
|
| _And if that 's not convincing to you, consider that both Ron
| Wyden and Christopher Cox have filed an amicus brief on this
| very case, saying that they believe Section 230 should protect
| Google (https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sen-
| wyden-a...):_
|
| _> The co-authors reminded the court that internet companies
| were already recommending content to users when the law went
| into effect in 1996, and that algorithms are just as important
| for removing undesirable posts as suggesting content users
| might want to see._
|
| _Really not much that can make it more clear than that, the
| assertion that Section 230 wasn 't designed to protect
| algorithmic recommendations is factually wrong, this is not
| something that's a matter of opinion._
| jfengel wrote:
| I find this to be a common pattern. "Moderation should be
| there to moderate against the things that concern me, but not
| against anything I might want to do or see."
|
| I interpret "light moderation" to mean "I disapprove of spam
| and child porn, but I'm not subject to racism or sexual
| harassment, and I don't personally know anybody harmed by my
| conspiracy theories."
| [deleted]
| d23 wrote:
| Thanks for this response. One thing that would make it even
| more compelling is citing sources.
| danShumway wrote:
| Good point, thanks for asking about references.
|
| I've updated the post above with links to a couple of
| decent resources and with quotes from the original authors
| of Section 230, as well as with information about the
| recent amicus brief they filed to the Supreme Court where
| they explicitly argue that Section 230 should protect
| algorithmic recommendations.
| d23 wrote:
| Great stuff, thanks.
| catiopatio wrote:
| Your post is itself dishonest by (gross) omission -- you
| don't even mention the Communications Decency Act, the
| legislation that introduced Section 230.
|
| "The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United
| States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate
| pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark
| case Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court
| unanimously struck the act's anti-indecency provisions."
|
| ... leaving behind the indemnification provided by Section
| 230 intended to ensure that hosting providers were not liable
| for user content under the CDA.
|
| That's it. Nothing more complicated.
| danShumway wrote:
| > ... leaving behind the indemnification provided by
| Section 230 intended to ensure that hosting providers were
| not liable for user content under the CDA.
|
| > That's it. Nothing more complicated.
|
| What on earth about those two sentences suggests that
| algorithmic content wouldn't be protected or that Section
| 230 would require platforms to be neutral?
|
| Again, and I can't stress this enough: the people who
| _wrote_ Section 230 disagree with you. You are arguing with
| people who wrote Section 230 that they are wrong about
| their motivations about why they wrote it.
|
| Why is this so hard for people? What part of Ron Wyden
| literally saying "Section 230 is not about neutrality" are
| people getting hung up on? What wiggle room exists in that
| quote? When you have the actual authors telling you that
| they wanted platforms to be free to be Conservative/Liberal
| biased, and you have the actual authors writing briefs in
| support of Google for the Supreme Court, where on earth are
| you getting the idea that Section 230 is just about
| pornography or illegal content, or that recommendation
| algorithms wouldn't be protected?
| catiopatio wrote:
| What Wyden happens to claim _now_ about the CDA and
| Section 230 is irrelevant.
|
| Were you alive and on the internet when the CDA
| (including section 230) was passed?
|
| I was; the public debate over the CDA and justifications
| for the Section 230 carve-out bear very little
| resemblance to what Wyden claims now.
| danShumway wrote:
| > What Wyden happens to claim now about the CDA and
| Section 230 is irrelevant.
|
| With respect:
|
| A) no it's not, or you wouldn't be on here arguing about
| intentions. Nobody who actually believes in Death of the
| Author wastes their time arguing about why a thing was
| originally made. If people were really embracing Death of
| the Author in regards to Section 230, we would just be
| talking about its merits, and that would be great! But
| instead we're doing this.
|
| B) it's unbelievably silly to ask people to trust your
| memory as a random internet commenter over both the
| original authors and over the many academic articles and
| legal decisions that have been written about Section 230.
| I guess every single legal precedent about Section 230 is
| also wrong about its intentions?
|
| C) recommendation algorithms existed when Section 230 was
| written. They are not a new thing that Congress didn't
| know about in 1996.
|
| D) biased platforms existed when Section 230 was written.
| They are not a new thing that Congress didn't know about
| in 1996.
|
| E) without revealing too much about my age, I was alive
| in 1996, and while I wasn't particularly involved in the
| Internet at that point, I've been involved on the
| Internet long enough to have seen how the conversation on
| Section 230 has evolved, and "evolved" the right word to
| use. I think the "algorithms aren't protected" argument
| is a fairly recent invention. The critiques people are
| making today are different from the critiques they used
| to make online.
|
| ----
|
| And as respectfully as it is possible for me to phrase
| this:
|
| Whatever your personal memory is about your motivations
| or the motivations of the people around you when Section
| 230 was proposed -- and I am not doubting you that maybe
| you did have a certain view of Section 230 back then, or
| maybe you were seeing reporting that phrased the
| provision in a certain light -- but that perspective is
| irrelevant to what the law actually says and the way it
| has been interpreted ever since it came out, and it is so
| unbelievable that Section 230's origins are so well-
| documented and there are still people on HN saying,
| "well, but those sources are all wrong, _I_ remember what
| was going on at the time. "
|
| Maybe you did think of Section 230 a certain way back
| then. So? I'm supposed to trust you over the original
| authors?
|
| In what other topic do we tolerate this kind of logic on
| HN? We seriously are now arguing that the bypartisan
| politicians who wrote Section 230 are... lying about what
| they meant? That's where we are right now?
|
| At the very least, you'd better have some sources to back
| up what you're saying. The "algorithms are different"
| argument is very recent and from what I've seen doesn't
| really have any evidence for it suggesting that it is
| anything more than a fantasy about the law's origins that
| 230 critics would like to believe is true.
|
| ----
|
| _Edit: Okay, actually, let 's just nip this in the bud
| rather than argue back and forth. Here's how courts were
| talking about Section 230 in 1998, only 2 years after it
| was passed (https://cyber.harvard.edu/property00/jurisdic
| tion/blumenthal...):_
|
| _> If it were writing on a clean slate, this Court would
| agree with plaintiffs. AOL has certain editorial rights
| with respect to the content provided by Drudge and
| disseminated by AOL, including the right to require
| changes in content and to remove it; and it has
| affirmatively promoted Drudge as a new source of
| unverified instant gossip on AOL. Yet it takes no
| responsibility for any damage he may cause. AOL is not a
| passive conduit like the telephone company, a common
| carrier with no control and therefore no responsibility
| for what is said over the telephone wires. n11 Because it
| has the right to exercise editorial control over those
| with whom it contracts and whose words it disseminates,
| it would seem only fair to hold AOL to the liability
| standards applied to a publisher or, at least, like a
| book store owner or library, to the liability standards
| applied to a distributor. n12 [52] But Congress has made
| a different policy choice by providing immunity even
| where the interactive service provider has an active,
| even aggressive role in making available content prepared
| by others. In some sort of tacit quid pro quo arrangement
| with the service provider community, Congress has
| conferred immunity from tort liability as an incentive to
| Internet service providers to self-police the Internet
| for obscenity and other offensive material, even where
| the self-policing is unsuccessful or not even attempted._
|
| _So in summary, in 1998 courts were saying "yeah, it
| looks like this is a website making an explicit
| recommendation because it's actively promoting content
| instead of acting like a neutral telephone network, and
| we actually personally don't think that should be
| protected, but very clearly Congress has protected it and
| Section 230 applies to it." Their exact words are: "even
| where the interactive service provider has an active,
| even aggressive role in making available content prepared
| by others."_
|
| _But sure, Section 230 was only about getting rid of
| porn and had nothing to do with algorithms. /s The
| reality is that even all the way back in 1998, courts
| already recognized that Section 230 applied to "promoted"
| content and was not qualified on an assumption that
| platforms would act like a common carrier. Even early on,
| courts already recognized that Section 230 protected more
| content than just pornography or indecency._
| [deleted]
| kart23 wrote:
| comments here are a great example of the hn bubble. killing
| youtube, instagram or facebook would be a massive net negative
| for society right now. the amount of money and people that depend
| on these platforms far outweigh the concerns of people
| complaining against corporate censorship.
| em-bee wrote:
| how is that? it won't be more than a disruption. for each of
| these services alternatives exist, and just like mastodon has
| seen more users since the recent twitter upheaval, other
| services, existing or new, will quickly fill in any gap left by
| the demise of an existing service.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "This is the law colloquially known as Section 230, which is
| probably the most misunderstood, misreported, and hated law on
| the Internet."
|
| That by itself is a problem. For a law like this to survive,
| someone needs to explain to voters what problems it solves, the
| way companies take advatage of it, why that's hard to fix, and
| why it's still worth having.
| peyton wrote:
| > these terrorism cases are about wanting platforms to take down
| more content, to step in more to prevent bad things from
| happening. And I think everybody sympathizes with that goal,
| whatever we think is the right set of rules to achieve it without
| a bunch of collateral damage.
|
| Interviewee is a bit biased. I don't think everyone sympathizes
| with the goal of taking down more content.
| threeseed wrote:
| 4chan and early Reddit are classic examples of this.
|
| There are people for whom abhorrent content is what they prefer
| and will defend.
|
| And they want this content on mainstream sites so they can feel
| like they are normal.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Yes that's true. And there are others who believe governments
| are the peddlers and enablers of the most abhorrent crimes,
| from slavery to arms trafficking to war and assassination and
| "intervention" to human experimentation, and should
| absolutely be fought at every step of the way in their
| neverending thirst for more power and control, particularly
| where private speech is concerned.
|
| The former group sadly does make a great strawman for people
| who are emotionally hysterical and don't care to think very
| deeply about the issue though.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| > And there are others who believe governments are the
| peddlers and enablers of the most abhorrent crimes, from
| slavery to arms trafficking to war and assassination and
| "intervention" to human experimentation, and should
| absolutely be fought at every step of the way in their
| neverending thirst for more power and control, particularly
| where private speech is concerned.
|
| Which is an (in my opinion) very inmature position to take.
| Look at the governments of western Europe, particularily
| Scandinavia
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Oh, well I looked at them and in my opinion it is _not_ a
| very immature position to take. Solid debate.
| [deleted]
| ever1337 wrote:
| 4chan and reddit are both mainstream sites
| jterrys wrote:
| >And they want this content on mainstream sites so they can
| feel like they are normal.
|
| I think they want this content on mainstream sites because
| they know it pisses off people and makes them laugh
| Sakos wrote:
| It's the same manipulative argument you see with "protecting
| the children". Everybody agrees with the goal, so obviously
| we're doing the right thing by curtailing everybody's freedoms.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| How about instead of "curtailing freedoms" we attach some
| really aggressive consequences for poor choices as regards
| broadcasting obvious bullshit in public spaces? We good now?
| Sakos wrote:
| I'm absolutely fine with not necessarily being able to say
| anything and everything. I'm generally supportive of anti-
| hate speech laws and I'm not a free speech absolutist.
| However, just because I might agree with their goal doesn't
| mean I agree with how they choose to achieve it and I'm
| skeptical of the above approach.
| Idk__Throwaway wrote:
| You support this until you and the arbiter of "obvious
| bullshit" begin to disagree.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| How about we treat freedom of speech like the inalienable
| right it is? We better now?
| vuln wrote:
| No worries I'm already dead from lack of Net Neutrality. /s
| weitzj wrote:
| So maybe this will lead to more p2p Internet services like IPFS.
| And maybe for Google and such you have to use their p2p version
| probably baked into the chrome browser with an authentication
| system.
|
| Something like the old AOL dialup but decentralized like ipfs and
| per website or with some kind of audit trail.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I'm not about to read the article or concern myself with the
| minute details of the cases, but I will say I hope SCOTUS throws
| out section 230 protections for the likes of Google, Twitter,
| Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, et al.
|
| If you engage in editorializing (read: controlling) content
| beyond what is necessary to comply with laws and regulations (eg:
| no child porn, no tangible death threats), then you should be
| liable for the content you subsequently publish.
|
| Paper media abides by this, there is no reason why internet-based
| media cannot abide by the same.
| jterrys wrote:
| I think that's a pretty sledgehammer-y view.
|
| Like, I make a website for pregnant women and someone comes and
| rants about American politics. What the fuck am I supposed to
| do if I can't delete their comments? Let my project dwindle to
| shit because I'm "editorializing" content by deleting this
| obvious off-topic discussion?
|
| Am I now responsible for the opinions of other people because,
| according to your logic, I now endorse them by not deleting
| their messages? You've basically reduced all forms of discourse
| by introducing liability into an open discussion. Someone gives
| incorrect advice that someone else takes on my forum. They kill
| their baby. Whops, time for me to go to fucking jail for
| someone else's opinion.
|
| I think you have a problem with platforms and monopolistic
| behavior that's designed to colonize your attention.
|
| The fact that searches on the internet are dominated by one
| private for-profit entity is a problem. The fact that the
| majority of internet traffic gets siloed into a few websites,
| which aggressively (and honestly sometimes borderline illegally
| and definitely morally reprehensibly) snuff out competition is
| a problem. The fact that registering a domain, setting up an
| internet connection, and trying to host a website, are all for
| profit, private driven workflows is a problem. The fact that
| all of the above can easily be taken away from you, due to a
| denial of service, which has nothing to do with the legality of
| the content you host or your opinions, is a problem. All of
| these are serious problems that require more than a band-aid,
| sledgehammer solution aimed at section 230.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I make a website for pregnant women and someone comes and
| rants about American politics. What the fuck am I supposed to
| do if I can't delete their comments? Let my project dwindle
| to shit because I'm "editorializing" content by deleting this
| obvious off-topic discussion?
|
| Yes; do nothing and assume no liablity. If you don't want to
| assume any liability you don't involve yourself beyond
| providing a platform. Simple as that.
|
| >I now endorse them by not deleting their messages?
|
| You endorse nothing because you assume no liability by doing
| nothing (abiding by applicable laws notwithstanding).
|
| >Someone gives incorrect advice that someone else takes on my
| forum. They kill their baby. Whops, time for me to go to
| fucking jail for someone else's opinion.
|
| You are not liable for the "incorrect advice" if you did not
| involve yourself in its creation and publication, beyond
| providing a platform.
|
| >I think you have a problem with platforms and monopolistic
| behavior that's designed to colonize your attention.
|
| I have a problem with publishers pretending to be platforms
| and enjoying the benefits of being both a publisher and a
| platform while evading all liabilities thereof.
|
| >The fact that searches on the internet are dominated by one
| private for-profit entity is a problem.
|
| It is, but it is neither here nor there.
|
| >The fact that the majority of internet traffic gets siloed
| into a few websites, which aggressively (and honestly
| sometimes borderline illegally and definitely morally
| reprehensibly) snuff out competition is a problem.
|
| It is, and the removal of section 230 protections would serve
| to partially alleviate the problem.
|
| >The fact that registering a domain, setting up an internet
| connection, and trying to host a website, are all for profit,
| private driven workflows is a problem.
|
| Hosting a website /should/ be a private endeavour for the
| sake of ensuring free speech. Once upon a time, making your
| own website (and assuming all the liabilities that entailed)
| was how you voiced your thoughts on the internet instead of
| posts on Twitter and Reddit.
|
| >The fact that all of the above can easily be taken away from
| you, due to a denial of service, which has nothing to do with
| the legality of the content you host or your opinions, is a
| problem.
|
| That is a structural problem with how the internet is formed.
| Tangientially related it may be, it is not directly relevant
| to the question of free speech.
|
| >All of these are serious problems that require more than a
| band-aid, sledgehammer solution aimed at section 230.
|
| Removing section 230 would only address some of the problems
| the internet faces, but it would be a start.
| tzs wrote:
| So if I run a chess forum and delete posts that are not
| about chess, and I delete 10 legal but off topic posts
| about baby care that give advice that will kill some
| babies, but I happen to miss one of those baby care posts
| and some babies die, I'm liable because I was actively
| deleting some legal posts?
|
| But if I don't delete posts (other than those I'm legally
| required to delete), so let all the baby care posts remain
| I'm free from liability?
|
| So the net result is that my chess forum (and all other
| forums run by entities that don't have the resources to
| review every post before allowing it to go public) becomes
| a topic-free general forum.
|
| And you think this is a _good_ thing!?
| jterrys wrote:
| >Yes; do nothing and assume no liablity. If you don't want
| to assume any liability you don't involve yourself beyond
| providing a platform. Simple as that.
|
| So your solution is to actually do nothing and let the
| project die? What an awful non-solution.
| less_less wrote:
| Worse than that: their "solution" is that all platforms
| should be 8chan.
| spaced-out wrote:
| >If you engage in editorializing (read: controlling) content
| beyond what is necessary to comply with laws and regulations
| (eg: no child porn, no tangible death threats), then you should
| be liable for the content you subsequently publish.
|
| So how do you propose forums deal with spam?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You don't.
|
| Seriously.
|
| That is the price for avoiding liability: To be able to say
| you had nothing to do with it beyond providing a platform and
| abiding other applicable laws.
| [deleted]
| nickthegreek wrote:
| So I have to allow my resources to be clogged up by others
| who have no skin in the game? It is my harddrive, I get to
| choose the ones and zeros on my private property. You do
| not get to fill them up with spam that I have to maintain
| forever.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You're welcome to control what goes on your hard drive,
| but the price is (or at least should be) you're assuming
| liability.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Some reasonable terms of service might be required. Punishing
| political opinions or criticisms of corporations or
| governments, allowing government agencies to spread
| misinformation and censor people, etc., is certainly not
| necessary for dealing with spam though.
| Gh0stRAT wrote:
| ...and what happens when spammers realize they can mix in a
| political opinion with their Canadian pharmacy spam in
| order to gain immunity from the filters?
|
| Prepare for a world of spam like: "Your car's extended
| warranty is about to expire unless you act NOW. Press 1 to
| connect to a specialist, or press 2 to acknowledge that the
| FCC should be dismantled."
|
| All of a sudden, removing spam is stifling political speech
| and is forbidden.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Still looks like spam to me. Arguing minutiae about what
| exactly spam looks like or the technical details of how
| it would get filtered is putting the cart before the
| horse though, and pretty pointless to get bogged into
| here.
|
| First you agree on the principles, and then you can talk
| about how they might be implemented and regulated. Do you
| agree in general that political opinion should not be
| punished or censored? If not you can just say that, no
| need to come up with increasingly byzantine ways that it
| couldn't be made to work.
| Gh0stRAT wrote:
| I think people should be free to make spaces where they
| exclude some things as off-topic, flamebait, trolling,
| etc. eg If I want to run a forum about woodworking then I
| should be free to remove posts about abortion, guns, CRT,
| or whatever political hot button issue people might post
| about.
|
| In principal, I think the 1st amendment protects us from
| the government censoring speech, not from private parties
| doing so.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >people should be free to make spaces where they exclude
| some things
|
| They are. The problem is such people want that freedom
| with none of the liability.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| If it still looks like spam to you then we are right back
| where we started, with people disagreeing about what
| counts as essential speech to protect and what doesn't.
| jrsj wrote:
| Problem is there won't be any sites which actually refrain from
| editorializing because they'll all be open to lawsuits over
| content on their site. That would be bad enough on its own, but
| a site which had that kind of content policy would be one that
| advertisers and financial institutions don't want anything to
| do with either so they won't have the funding to adequately
| defend themselves in court.
| jedberg wrote:
| If that came to pass, then the only recourse the companies
| would have is to either let everything stay up (and if you
| showdead on here you'll see what kind of garbage that is) or
| they make every single submission sit in a queue until a human
| can review it.
|
| This site would basically die.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| But that's what people want. If they can't spread lies and
| untruths without being fact-checked, then we all lose
| whatever platforms are tolerable only because of moderation.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Paper media abides by this
|
| It's a meaningless comparison.
|
| Traditional media produce and own their content. Online media
| is user generated.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Traditional media produce and own their content.
|
| Phone companies don't. The traditional choices were "have
| full control of the content, and take full responsibility for
| that content" (e.g., newspapers) or "don't attempt to control
| content, and bear no responsibility for that content" (e.g.,
| telephone companies). Newspapers were legally responsible for
| what they published, phone companies weren't. The phone
| company (and other so-called "common carriers") weren't held
| responsible even if someone used the phone to plan a murder.
| In exchange for that immunity, they were required to give
| access to anyone with enough money to pay the monthly bill.
|
| > Online media is user generated.
|
| As are phone calls.
|
| With Section 230, tech companies both have a) full censorship
| powers and b) no responsibility. Absolute power with no
| responsibility has always been a recipe for abuse.
| stonogo wrote:
| Paper media does not produce the advertisements, the
| customers or ad agencies do that. For decades the classifieds
| section, entirely 'user generated' was of massive import to
| society, to the degree that sunshine laws _still_ frequently
| require governments to publish important announcements in the
| classified section of the local "paper of record."
|
| In other words, traditional media produce and own content,
| but there has always been a tremendous amount of user-
| generated media mixed in.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, but my impression is that readers submit classified
| ads, someone at the paper says it's ok, and it gets
| published in the classifieds.
|
| A social media platform would not be viable if someone had
| to approve every post before it went live. (Maybe that
| means that social media platforms should just not exist,
| but that's not really the specific point we're arguing
| here.)
| stonogo wrote:
| What _is_ the specific point? That ownership of content
| implies slow production? What if a social media network
| established a contractor relationship with each user, and
| paid them for their content at a rate of, say, one cent
| per million posts, with a maximum of one hundred billable
| posts per day?
|
| The content would be coming thick and fast, the company
| would have more standing to enforce its terms of service,
| and you've dodged whatever moderation rules might apply
| to user-generated content, since it's all work-for-hire
| by our vast cadre of contractors.
|
| I'm just not convinced that "traditional media own and
| produce their content" is indicative of anything
| particularly important, and just muddies the waters
| surrounding the actual problems at play.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Paper media also has user generated content. Such content has
| been the liability of the publisher and things have worked
| just fine for at least the last two centuries if not more.
|
| Again: There is no reason internet-based media can't act like
| their paper counterparts. The only plausible reason is
| because nobody wants liability, but hey: You modify user
| generated content in any way, /you the publisher/ are now
| liable for it.
| threeseed wrote:
| I've worked for a large News Corp paper before.
|
| The amount of user generated content in comments, letters
| to the editor etc is tiny and was moderated by a single
| person.
|
| It is simply incomparable to the estimated 500 million
| tweets a day by Twitter:
|
| https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/04/14/twitter-
| statis...
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Why is it my problem that their business model is stupid
| and doesn't work when treated equally to traditional
| publishing?
|
| Equality before the law. If your business can't adapt it
| should die.
| [deleted]
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Ahh yes, the old "we're too successful to be able to
| operate responsibly" argument.
|
| Here's a thought: there's nothing that says that Twitter
| and friends have to exist. There was a time when being
| able to comply with the law was part of the business
| model, not a minor obstacle that needed to be worked
| around.
|
| As a (purely hypothetical) heroin dealer, I can't run a
| business if I keep getting thrown in jail. What's the
| solution?
| threeseed wrote:
| > "we're too successful to be able to operate
| responsibly"
|
| No. I am simply pointing out that comparing print media
| to online makes no sense.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| yes, because print media's business model allows it to
| operate responsibly
| zuminator wrote:
| Ok, so Twitter and Facebook go out of business, only to
| be replaced by offshore businesses outside the legal
| reach of what replaces section 230.
|
| Honestly what you've done there is present a good case
| for why dealing heroin should be legal.
| trifurcate wrote:
| Here's a thought: I am purely hypothetically able to sell
| some previously unknown and unforeseen (therefore legal)
| opioid agonist that is just as addictive and dangerous as
| heroin with no issues of legality. Or maybe it isn't even
| an opioid agonist and has some novel mechanism of action
| that is yet unknown.
|
| What's the solution? New legislation that adapts to such
| a threat to societal welfare. And this is what is
| effectively happening here with litigation over Section
| 230 et al. (worth mentioning that it's not even the case
| that Twitter's business model involves working around the
| law; Section 230 _is_ the law and it shields Twitter from
| liability. So there is really no case here like you are
| describing to begin with.)
|
| The end of society and government is more or less to
| identify and avoid bad societal outcomes, and an evolving
| legal system is necessary to keep up with technological
| and social changes in the world. Maybe you are correct
| and Twitter shouldn't exist to begin with, alas Twitter
| exists and other things like Twitter exist. They aren't
| currently in grave violation of any law to my knowledge,
| and any law that is to be enacted regarding things like
| Twitter should be written in light of the current state
| of the world, which is that Twitter exists and that
| things like Twitter are easy to create.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| Maybe it's fitting that this thread-- in its
| consideration of the balance between freedom and
| benevolent force-- invokes an analogy involving a subject
| of the war on drugs.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Where I live psychoactive drugs are blacklisted by law.
| If you want to sell a new one legally you need to apply
| to get it put on the whitelist.
|
| They did this so that hypothetical you can't dodge the
| law by tweaking molecules and that new legislation
| doesn't have to be enacted every time you come up with a
| new recipe.
|
| I'm not saying that twitter shouldn't exist, I'm just
| saying that it and platforms like it don't have to exist
| in their current state. Section 230 _is_ the workaround
| that didn't have to be created just so that the platforms
| could operate outside of the regulations that other
| publishers are bound by
| kelnos wrote:
| Newspapers are default-deny. The editors decide which
| letters to the editor to publish.
|
| Social media platforms are default-allow. If they were
| default-deny, it would take months to get your newsfeed
| posts approved.
|
| Newspapers were also not designed to be a way for readers
| to express themselves. Social media platforms exist so that
| users can express themselves.
|
| I'm not saying that social media companies are doing a good
| job, or that their moderation practices are good, or that
| their quest for increasing engagement above all else is
| good. In fact I wouldn't mind if FB, Twitter, etc. just
| disappeared tomorrow. But comparing them to newspapers is
| just not a reasonable thing to do.
| lodovic wrote:
| With the current state of AI text processing, checking if
| the contents of a user submitted text would be approved
| really shouldn't take months but instead seconds.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Sentiment analyzers which take bug reports as toxic but
| consider beyond the pale statements like "I hope you
| enjoy eating your family." the opposite of toxic?
| smeagull wrote:
| I guess every forum will become a general everything forum
| following your stupid rules.
|
| Hacker News will now have to keep every post that isn't illegal
| and no communities sorted by topic will be allowed to exist.
|
| Could you think next time before you share an opinion?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| A small price to pay to guarantee free speech, as far as I'm
| concerned.
|
| Hacker News is welcome to continue editorializing its
| content, of course; it just has to accept liability for it.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| How free is speech when the only medium allowed is
| concurrent shouting? After all the attempts by governments
| to disorganize citizens through censorship and outright
| internet blockages, I almost can't think of a better
| approach than to simply make platforms so drowned in chaos
| as to be unusable.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >How free is speech when the only medium allowed is
| concurrent shouting?
|
| I would argue that is the /epitome/ of free speech.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| So to you, only the most vocal users, shouting the most
| popular things, with everything else removed or hidden,
| is the _epitome_ of free speech?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Speech hindered by nothing is the epitome of free speech.
|
| And no, other speech is not a hinderance of your speech
| and vice versa.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1357/
|
| > I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once
| said that defending a position by citing free speech is
| sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the
| most compelling thing you can say for your position is
| that it's not literally illegal to express.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| Especially in the current case, it's an outcome only
| arrived at through force.
| pr0zac wrote:
| I completely disagree with your opinion but I do
| appreciate how consistent and fully aware of the outcomes
| consequences you are being with it.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Do you believe that websites should be able to delete spam and
| bot accounts?
|
| Posting 10,000 links to a shitcoin ICO is not illegal.
| bradwood wrote:
| How does the outcome of a couple of court cases in one
| jurisdiction, in one country, break the _entire, global_
| internet?
|
| This just sounds like clickbait.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-26 23:02 UTC)