41–50 of 261 posts
I think that every company should decide if they're a "publisher" or a "platform". If you're a platform, you're not responsible for what your users say (except directly illegal stuff, eg. child porn), and have no say in what stays on, or gets removed/hidden (except, again, illegal stuff). If you're a publisher, you have a say what is posted on your site, and you carry full responsibility for all the onsite content. W…
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You clearly don't understand how [Administrative Law]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_law ) works, which is understandable, because it's a complex morass. We have, largely, FDR to thank for this, with the creation of all of the alphabet soup agencies. Basically, Congress passes laws that grant powers to the Executive to ... execute .. the law and enforce it. These laws instruct the Executive Branch to w…
That's only partially correct. Some laws that require executive action to interpret and enforce leave it up to executive agencies to fill in the details. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is one such law, which is why the FCC plays such a big role in net neutrality. Section 230 is not such a law. It creates a civil liability shield for interactive computer services and states who that applies to and how it is to be…
Right, and the limits of that liability shield are not well enough defined in the law so the policy must define the limits until Congress acts to clarify the law. Hence the rulemaking.
Facebook and Twitter's actions yesterday and the controversy over the role of 230 make the lack of clarity apparent.
If Congress doesn't like the new administrative policy, allow them to clarify.
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This does not work. Example: I want to set up a forum where people can discuss a specific topic. Such as the Arch Linux forum, or ones for vehicles ( https://www.ninja400riders.com/ , https://www.civicx.com/forum/ ). I am clearly not a publisher; I do produce content and do not want to produce content. So I am a platform. Am I no longer allowed to decide what is acceptable on my platform? Even if I am running a forum…
Metrics might matter. Exceptions for non profit (no ads) or orgs under undetermined amount of monthly active users?
If I'd have to be non-profit (which doesn't mean no ads, by the way), then this kills a lot of business models.
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That's purely semantics, and everyone knows it.
What semantics? They were granted immunity with regulation and that regulation/immunity can be taken away.
You could easily imagine a flipped situation where people were trying to add regulation to get the same final effect.
I suspect most people think more holistically about regulation than that. Being afraid of being sued and the results of those of those cases being enforced by the government certainly could be interpreted as “bigger government”/more regulation.
I think that every company should decide if they're a "publisher" or a "platform". If you're a platform, you're not responsible for what your users say (except directly illegal stuff, eg. child porn), and have no say in what stays on, or gets removed/hidden (except, again, illegal stuff). If you're a publisher, you have a say what is posted on your site, and you carry full responsibility for all the onsite content. W…
That sounds nice and easy until you start thinking about it for any length of time. The biggest problem might be who gets to decide what is illegal. This needs to be figured out in both a theoretical and practical sense.
On the theoretical side does Twitter allow Holocaust denial which is legal in the US but illegal in much of Europe? Does the US get to impose its views of free speech on the world? Does every jurisdiction get a different version of the site?
On the practical side, what happens when the legality of something is up for debate? Maybe an image is revenge porn or maybe it is perfectly legal porn. Maybe a movie clip is a copyright violation and maybe it is fair use. Does Twitter take down that content as soon as there is a complaint? Does it have to wait for some legal action to start or finish? What is the recourse if something is taken down and later found to be legal content?
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Metrics might matter. Exceptions for non profit (no ads) or orgs under undetermined amount of monthly active users?
That still doesn't answer the question — as soon as my forum gets popular, I can't moderate anymore? Do I limit the number of users so that I never hit these metrics? If I'd have to be non-profit (which doesn't mean no ads, by the way), then this kills a lot of business models.
A darkly amusing solution to Eternal September.
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Metrics might matter. Exceptions for non profit (no ads) or orgs under undetermined amount of monthly active users?
That still doesn't answer the question — as soon as my forum gets popular, I can't moderate anymore? Do I limit the number of users so that I never hit these metrics? If I'd have to be non-profit (which doesn't mean no ads, by the way), then this kills a lot of business models.
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HackerNews could not exist in your proposed world. I doubt YC would hire a full-time staff of moderators to vet every single post. Since we remove things for being off-topic or overly mean, the only possible conclusion is that HN would shut down because they do not want to bear liability for the posts they leave up. The Internet as we know it would not exist without S230. Please read this[0] for a primer. [0]: https:…
Different rules apply with scale. HN is fine doing whatever it does but global monopolies require special handling.
I think that every company should decide if they're a "publisher" or a "platform". If you're a platform, you're not responsible for what your users say (except directly illegal stuff, eg. child porn), and have no say in what stays on, or gets removed/hidden (except, again, illegal stuff). If you're a publisher, you have a say what is posted on your site, and you carry full responsibility for all the onsite content. W…
HackerNews could not exist in your proposed world. I doubt YC would hire a full-time staff of moderators to vet every single post. Since we remove things for being off-topic or overly mean, the only possible conclusion is that HN would shut down because they do not want to bear liability for the posts they leave up. The Internet as we know it would not exist without S230. Please read this[0] for a primer. [0]: https:…
One could also draw a distinction between burying content vs. completely deleting it. A lot of HN moderation already works by just dropping the content from the frontpage or making comments invisible rather than outright deleting it. I presume the FCC would still consider this
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HackerNews could not exist in your proposed world. I doubt YC would hire a full-time staff of moderators to vet every single post. Since we remove things for being off-topic or overly mean, the only possible conclusion is that HN would shut down because they do not want to bear liability for the posts they leave up. The Internet as we know it would not exist without S230. Please read this[0] for a primer. [0]: https:…
A platform does not mean there can be no moderation. Part of the platform can be offering moderation tools. One could also draw a distinction between burying content vs. completely deleting it. A lot of HN moderation already works by just dropping the content from the frontpage or making comments invisible rather than outright deleting it. I presume the FCC would still consider this