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DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

justice.gov

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Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#131

Post by commandlinefan »

esoterica wrote: post #81
commandlinefan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this does destroy tech oligopolies, they'll have nobody to blame for it but themselves. They've had over a decade to prove that they're fair and impartial and, if anything, have worked overtime to prove the opposite.

Private organizations have zero obligation to be fair and impartial. If you want a company to be run differently, start your own. It's funny how conservatives were totally on board with deregulation and perfectly fine with corporations steamrolling every one else as long as they were aligned with conservative objectives. Then the moment a powerful corporate faction with liberal-ish sensibilities emerges, they freak o…

> the nanny state

That doesn't make much sense in this context - the "nanny state" refers to the government taking care of your physical needs, like a nanny. But even if you sweep all government regulation under the blanket of "the nanny state", that's still not what's being proposed here: what they're proposing is removing protections previously afforded by the government because they've been abusing them for so long. In essence, all that's being proposed is that everybody plays by the same set of rules.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#132

Post by DSingularity »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #93
joshuamorton wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. That's a good source. Section 5c is particularly problematic. It disallows shadow-bans if I'm reading correctly. Section f9 is...suspicious. Section d4 seems painful for small providers. You lose good samaritan status if there isn't a good way to contact you. Section c2A is the important one. It basically means that a site cannot remove content unless it is objectively obscene or extreme. Section g5A suggests th…

"objectively obscene or extreme" - is there a clear definition for obscenity? I feel like there was a famous quote from a judge on the SCOTUS to effect of "I'll know it when I see it", but law is not an area that I have expertise in.

It’s evolved over time. The basis was content which was deemed to “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences". The next step was to remove protection status only for speech which is “patently offensive" and "utterly without redeeming social value".

Maybe it’s time for another step.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roth_v._United_States

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#133

Post by hawkice »

Unsurprisingly, this is pretty horrifying for anyone who cares about either the 1st or 4th amendments (and the 5th amendment considerations of 'you can't blind yourself to bad content stuff', that's amazingly bad). It blows my mind this isn't a separations of powers concern to even allow these people to draft language or make any statements on the record of what they think the law ought to be.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#134

Post by inetsee »

t-writescode wrote: post #117
kordlessagain wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such designs and operation put our society at risk by: (1) severely eroding a company’s ability to detect and respond to illegal content and activity; (2) preventing or seriously inhibiting the timely identification of offenders, as well as the identification and rescue of victims; To me, that says if a company writes something that prevents or blocks illegal content from being accessed by law enforcement, any immu…

That’s a very narrow theory of it. I read it as saying “if the system is designed to keep out external viewers of the content, then it is illegal”. That is, E2E encryption, because it is impossible for someone to eavesdrop usefully by design, is intended to be made illegal.

>> “if the system is designed to keep out external viewers of the content, then it is illegal”

Does that mean that GEO-restricting content will be made illegal?

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#135

Post by donatj »

The argument is always made that the First Amendment doesn't protect speech hosted on corporate servers. I don't agree, I believe if you're operating without individual content review, you're hosting speech in the same way a telephone company is, but sure, I'll let you have it..

Regardless, that's where Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights comes in.

> "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers"

…

- "any media"

- "regardless of frontiers"

Seems pretty cut and dry to me.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#136

Post by stale2002 »

danso wrote: post #124
deadmik3 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be semantic, my point is why isn't speech codified at the same level? Clearly at some point someone said "freedom of religion should mean protection from persons and corporations", why can't we say the same about speech?

What do you mean “why isn’t speech codified at the same level”? You mean, why haven’t legislators made a law that protects free speech against discrimination by employers and businesses, in the same way the Civil Rights Act does for religion? I mean, what other answer is there than what’s implied by that very question: it’s because “legislators haven’t made a law”. Now you can believe all you want that there’s been a…

> I mean, what other answer is there than what’s implied by that very question: it’s because “legislators haven’t made a law”.

Imagine if someone ask you "Why is this Apple red?", and then you responded by saying "Well obviously, it is red, because it is red!"

Would this response be considered by anyone to be anything other than a pretty extreme bad faith response?

I think it is pretty obvious what the other person was asking. And yet, you responded... in the way that you did.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#137

Post by buhhh »

hartator wrote: post #29
buhhh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand the first amendment.

Enlight us. For example, calling for the murders of specific people based on their political views or races don’t fall under the first. And social medias allow the spread of some of these messages with no consequences at the moment.

I'm not here to educate you.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#138

Post by tstrimple »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #130
tstrimple wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this wealth of principled conservatives people keep pretending exist, but are no where to be seen in politics or political discussions? Like it or not, Republicans are the "conservative" party and around 95% of them support Trump and the vast majority of them consider themselves to be conservatives. Attempts from conservatives to distance themselves from the Republican party just reek of No true Scotsman.

> Like it or not, Republicans are the "conservative" party and around 95% of them support Trump and the vast majority of them consider themselves to be conservatives. I apologize but I may be missing your point. In the GP, I was suggesting that the term "conservative" is being used in competing ways by different groups, and we should be clear on that. Are you saying that it's not worth making such a distinction, beca…

If the vast majority of the public use the term conservative to mean Republican, that's pretty much what the words mean. That's how language works. Conservatives of today have the same hallmarks as the original conservatives. It's little to nothing to do with sound fiscal policy or responsible spending or size of government and everything to do with maintaining social hierarchies. From that perspective, Trump supporters are definitely conservative.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#139

Post by beervirus »

hawkice wrote: post #133

Unsurprisingly, this is pretty horrifying for anyone who cares about either the 1st or 4th amendments (and the 5th amendment considerations of 'you can't blind yourself to bad content stuff', that's amazingly bad). It blows my mind this isn't a separations of powers concern to even allow these people to draft language or make any statements on the record of what they think the law ought to be.

It blows my mind that anyone who purports to care about the first amendment would argue that we shouldn’t “allow these people to draft language or make any statements on the record of what they think the law ought to be.”

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#140

Post by ryanobjc »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #103

And the problem here is that it is inseparable from the political issue. The core is 4a, replace vague terminology. The point is to end 230 unless social media is compelled to reproduce right wing content. Nothing else. The other stuff about illegal material doesn't really matter. Why this? Because this is all right wing media talks about with respect to 230. They want social media punished for removing their materia…

Right wing 'material' is often refused for inciting violence, targeted harassment, and more now explicit lies on matters of significant civic importance - such as when/where to vote, lying health info in the middle of a pandemic, etc.

It's bad faith content, then when their crap is reasonably removed, there's endless crying. In fact a lot of the bad faith content is mixed up deliberately with political speech to incite action which allows them to claim marytrdom. If you do a long youtube video that is mostly political speech, and then you mix in a 5 minute targeted violent harassment in the middle, youtube is going to remove the whole thing. This is total bad faith.

The ironic thing is right-wing "alternative forums" to reddit/youtube/twitter, all have extensive moderation because, surprise surprise, trolling behavior degrades the value of online discussion boards. Don't be surprised if all you do is stand in a theater yelling you are shown the door. Or worse, you start yelling threats at another movie goer. That's the real analogy of 'right wing content' being banned.

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