Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

justice.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 392 posts

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#141

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

tstrimple wrote: post #138
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 support…

> That's how language works.

I agree. It sounds like we have disagreeing estimates regarding how popular each definition is. We may be at an impasse on this, unless you know of a good source of reliable data for it.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#142

Post by esoterica »

commandlinefan wrote: post #131
esoterica wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lon…

What censorship-related rules are they not playing by now that everyone else is?

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#143

Post by buhhh »

donatj wrote: post #135

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 opin…

Well the first amendment isn't Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Not sure where you're going with that.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#144

Post by coldcode »

greatgib wrote: post #7

I think that the title is correct but it is not very descriptive of what it is about for people having a look at it. Tldr quote from it: "We therefore urge Congress to make these necessary reforms to Section 230 and begin to hold online platforms accountable both when they unlawfully censor speech and when they knowingly facilitate criminal activity online.”

Congress will not likely accept this law without major changes and the DoJ, unless we wind up tossing out the Constitution entirely (which could still happen sadly), cannot create law.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#145

Post by ashtonkem »

Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all.

Also, the DOJ really should back off here. They’re an article II department, their job is enforcement and not legislation. If the law should change, that is emphatically congresses responsibility. They can recommend all they want, it should be valueless though.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#146

Post by [deleted] »

beervirus wrote: post #139
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.”

[deleted]

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#147

Post by Enginerrrd »

joshuamorton wrote: post #76
InTheArena wrote: post #19

here is the DoJ's breakdown and red-line changes: 1. Incentivizing Online Platforms to Address Illicit Content The first category of potential reforms is aimed at incentivizing platforms to address the growing amount of illicit content online, while preserving the core of Section 230’s immunity for defamation. a. Bad Samaritan Carve-Out. First, the Department proposes denying Section 230 immunity to truly bad actors.…

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…

d4 could be accomplished by making an email to report complaints to. Doesn't seem especially onerous.

f9 is suspicious how? This document is not intended in anyway to prevent anti-trust actions, so why is a specific exclusion suspicious? There's a lot of public push right now to act on anti-trust issues for large tech companies, so there's no secret there.

5c... is more complex, and I'm not sure it means what you think it does.

c2A does seem particularly problematic to me in the context of trying to combat disinformation which is neither illegal nor obscene, nor violent.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#148

Post by wahern »

Brendinooo wrote: post #52
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conservatives have raced so quickly to the right ... I'd like to suggest that we use care with the term "conservative". Is it possible that the parent post conflates "conservative" with "Republican"? I'm no authority on the U.S. Republic party, but I know it's sometimes said that that party has shifted hard to "the right". I could believe that's true, which would line up with the parent post. However, some of my ow…

Studies have shown that rank-and-file Democrats have moved leftward much more than rank-and-file Republicans have moved rightward[0], but at least one study shows that Republican representatives have tacked rightward much more dramatically[1]. [0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-... [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/02/this-...

See also https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/party-id-t...

Democrats have always outnumbered Republicans, but the gap was much wider mid-century. The gap has narrowed considerably, but mostly because of declining Democratic party affiliation. Independents now outnumber Democrats.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#149

Post by sudosysgen »

donatj wrote: post #135

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 opin…

The US, as with most States, cares little about the UDHR. The only human rights you have are those that the government suffers too strong a penalty to disrespect, and there is no real penalty for running foul of the UDHR.

It's sad, but it is what it is.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#150

Post by whiddershins »

InTheArena wrote: post #19

here is the DoJ's breakdown and red-line changes: 1. Incentivizing Online Platforms to Address Illicit Content The first category of potential reforms is aimed at incentivizing platforms to address the growing amount of illicit content online, while preserving the core of Section 230’s immunity for defamation. a. Bad Samaritan Carve-Out. First, the Department proposes denying Section 230 immunity to truly bad actors.…

1b seems problematic and unnecessary in light of the other things.
Post reply on HN