Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech
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Re: Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech
#2I feel like the EFF has slowly devolved into siding with corporate freedom over all else while only paying lip service to users.
Re: Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech
#3most of this stuff sounds like bad news, but I have felt for a while that we need to address the issue of moderation on the largest social media platforms. I don't think it should be a binary choice between safe harbor and doing any moderation whatsoever, but there ought to be some sort of gradient for liability. that is, the more you remove stuff you don't like, the more accountable you should be for whatever stuff you continue to host. as an extreme example, suppose you have a billion users and a hundred of them are making libelous posts about some guy. you shouldn't be able to remove everything but those posts and claim safe harbor because it's user generated content.
Re: Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech
#4I feel like the EFF has slowly devolved into siding with corporate freedom over all else while only paying lip service to users.
Why is that? S230 protects platform from trolls. Look at Twitch right now. You could run up to a stream in real-life, blast copyrighted music, and get the streamer banned for life.
How can you be held legally liable for content on your platform when you can’t actually control that content.
Re: Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech
#5>Section 230 is an essential legal pillar for online speech. And when powerful people don’t like that speech, or the platforms that host it, the provision becomes a scapegoat for just about every tech-related problem.
Does anyone actually believe this is an authoritarian attempt to squash speech that is "speaking truth to power"?
This is the result of years of work to remove any dissenting voice from the generally Left-leaning sites of the Internet -- Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. First they started disabling comment sections, calling all opposition "trolls". Then they tried to deplatform, go after advertisers, etc. Most recently, two sites were dropped from AdSense because they had unmoderated comment sections. Not only is Google saying what can live on it's platform, but also what can live on the sites of others.
But wait...they're a private company and have every right to remove people from their platform. Fine, then they lose all government protection from the results of their choice to decide what legal information people can and cannot see.
Re: Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech
#6Honestly I am not sure legal immunity for network platforms is actually a good thing. Those platforms are very much like traditional publishers in that they greatly amplify and spread the content posted on their network. Amplification* without accountability is very different than freedom of speech.
* if you want to quibble with “amplification,” I would more specifically say that _asynchronous_ and/or _targeted_ distribution is the key characteristic that makes it logical for these platforms to be held to the same standards as traditional publishers in my opinion.
Re: Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech
#7most of this stuff sounds like bad news, but I have felt for a while that we need to address the issue of moderation on the largest social media platforms. I don't think it should be a binary choice between safe harbor and doing any moderation whatsoever, but there ought to be some sort of gradient for liability. that is, the more you remove stuff you don't like, the more accountable you should be for whatever stuff…
> the more you remove stuff you don't like, the more accountable you should be for whatever stuff you continue to host
It seems to me that this just creates a perverse incentive to never moderate anything. How would that be an improvement? At a minimum, you’d end up with a space overrun by spammers.
Re: Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech
#8I feel like the EFF has slowly devolved into siding with corporate freedom over all else while only paying lip service to users.
Why is that? S230 protects platform from trolls. Look at Twitch right now. You could run up to a stream in real-life, blast copyrighted music, and get the streamer banned for life. How can you be held legally liable for content on your platform when you can’t actually control that content.
I think the answer is you can’t, and the implication is maybe those platforms don’t actually need to exist.
Re: Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech
#9>Section 230 is an essential legal pillar for online speech. And when powerful people don’t like that speech, or the platforms that host it, the provision becomes a scapegoat for just about every tech-related problem. Does anyone actually believe this is an authoritarian attempt to squash speech that is "speaking truth to power"? This is the result of years of work to remove any dissenting voice from the generally Le…
I’d rather the sites themselves decide than the US government decide. You can always go to a different site. But once we have the government intervening and saying “this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t”, that’s a whole nother level of censorship I’d rather avoid.
Re: Proposals to Amend Section 230 Share a Similar Goal: Damage Online Users’ Speech
#10>Section 230 is an essential legal pillar for online speech. And when powerful people don’t like that speech, or the platforms that host it, the provision becomes a scapegoat for just about every tech-related problem. Does anyone actually believe this is an authoritarian attempt to squash speech that is "speaking truth to power"? This is the result of years of work to remove any dissenting voice from the generally Le…
I’d rather the sites themselves decide than the US government decide. You can always go to a different site. But once we have the government intervening and saying “this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t”, that’s a whole nother level of censorship I’d rather avoid.
> this is what is acceptable speech online, this is what isn’t
But that isn't what they're saying. They're saying, "if you are deciding what is acceptable speech, you're now responsible for it." And for the record, I absolutely agree.