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FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

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Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#71

Post by hyper0perator »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #24
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #21

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…

And how are platforms to be regulated? Do they allow anonymous posters? Who investigates and removes harmful content?

The phone company does unfortunately allow spam callers

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#72

Post by dexen »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #62
dexen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>HackerNews could not exist in your proposed world Provably, definitively wrong. 1. HN relies on the "platform" choice to avoid responsibility for 3rd party posts. HN also relies on operators like dang moderating at the server side. 2. The proposed model would prevent operators moderating at the server side, when the "platform" model was selected. 3. Historically, Usenet had workflow, content, and userbase similar to…

w.r.t. your #4: Usenet also had epic flamewars as users failed to self-moderate and groups which suffered particularly from this were very hostile to new users. w.r.t. your #5: how does 'participation in some groups is subject to moderation, but participation is optional' fit with the platform/publisher dichotomy?

>w.r.t. your #4: Usenet also had epic flamewars as users failed to self-moderate and groups which suffered particularly from this were very hostile to new users.

No different from the present day centrally moderated platforms - whether Facebook, Twitter, or HN. There's significant amount of objectionable and even illegal content on Twitter. The central moderation is a figleaf over it.

>w.r.t. your #5: how does 'participation in some groups is subject to moderation, but participation is optional' fit with the platform/publisher dichotomy?

To re-emphasize: >>Certain groups were centrally moderated through middlemen; (participation in those was optional), and content was explicitly submitted to moderation.

Easily the key distinction is that the moderators weren't part of the platform. It was not the platform doing the moderating. It was pre-arranged users that were designated by the community to have a say who selects the best posts to then forward. It wasn't "this post breaks our ever-shifting rules"; it was "this post is good enough for me to to forward it to the list". The proverbial firewall separating the platform from the users doing the selection is the key distinction.

The closest modern analogy of how the moderated Usenet groups were is "a public-read, private-commit Git repo, with project heads accepting pull requests at their discretion".

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#73

Post by hyper0perator »

slg wrote: post #45
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #21

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…

>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). 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 practica…

Legality under US free speech laws. See first amendment law literature.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#74

Post by neuronexmachina »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #10

Twitter was asking for this to happen especially with there move today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379

If Twitter weren't shielded from liability for content posted on their platform, wouldn't that make them more eager to remove potentially-liable content?

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#75

Post by eropple »

hyper0perator wrote: post #68
akersten wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

Disagree. Platforms are immune to liability of their users. HN could become a platform and abide regulations like the phone company.

And be ruined by bad actors destroying the signal-to-noise ratio because--hey, you have to let them stay, even if they're trashing every discussion with nonsense or spam or they're spewing racist sludge you have no interest in endorsing.

Nah. This is just mendacity on behalf of the right wing of American culture that has changed their mind and decided that, yes, facts have to care about their feelings.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#76

Post by snowwrestler »

the8472 wrote: post #59
sfkdjf9j3j wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the GP post was specifically saying that if you're a "platform" you cannot moderate content. You are required to distribute anything users write on your "platform" that is not illegal (in the US?).

The platform operator can't. That's how common carriers work (telephone, your ISP etc.). But things running on that platform could. Basically look at reddit and perhaps take it up a notch. If the platform operator does not want to be associated with some of the stuff happening on their site then perhaps they should deemphasize their branding. It wouldn't be "reddit/watchpeopledie" just "watchpeopledie". I not sure ho…

Your ISP is explicitly not a common carrier, thanks to (aptly) an FCC rulemaking conducted under the chairmanship of Ajit Pai.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#77

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

jellicle wrote: post #58
blhack wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what section 230 already does. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 Whats being talked about here is stripping the assumption that twitter is acting in good faith, and therefore removing the protection they get from this section.

So much confusion about this. What the prior commenter describes is exactly the OPPOSITE of what section 230 does. Under current law, companies are free to - specifically encouraged to - moderate and delete content as much as they want, while they are also immunized from being treated as the publisher of that content and immunized from any liability for that moderation and deletion of content.

Right. The historical context for Section 230 is that some providers that were trying to offer a family-safe online service (e.g. Prodigy) by moderating the content available, and therefore became liable as publishers.

In fact, if you read Section 230 in its entirety, you can see that it is intended to encourage moderation of content based on what the provider considers to be objectionable.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#78

Post by mrtksn »

hyper0perator wrote: post #64
mrtksn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the Turkish model. A pioneer in censorship and totalitarian media control, it evolved in licensing and controlling everything. It started with simply getting your platform/publisher license(so they can make you take down illegal content, save the kids), now Turkey dictates your content depending on your internet business. Just few days ago Spotify was forced to get a license and establish a contact(probably be…

Disagree. Newspapers and ISP follow under this regulation. Social media networks have been able to skirt the issue. If newspapers can get sued for their content and the phone company can't, it only makes sense that this applies to social media companies are held to the same liabilities or protections.

Sure, the issue is that now it is technically possible To do much more.

With the phone company it’s impractical to listen to every conversation and “eliminate the threats”, it is practical with the internet.

EU wants upload filters(stop singing “happy birthday” to your friend, that needs lives), UK want porn and crypto control(no dirty talk on the phone, no secretive talks, must speak load and clear). Turkey wants to control the narrative(An operator jumps in your phone conversation to correct you or stop you talking).

I am sure That US, Canada, Norway , Iran, India etc all have their own agenda too and would loved to control your phone conversations.

As for the liability, it’s already here. A lot of people are serving time or paying damages for the things they did on the internet. The new stuff is to make it controllable at scale.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#79

Post by JoshTriplett »

juniper_strong wrote: post #69
jolmg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you both have a different idea of what a platform is. Given your idea of a platform, I think web forums are neither platform nor publishers, so where does that leave them? To be clear, it's not fair to classify them as publishers. Newspapers and magazines are not mediums of discussions like forums are, they're compilers of articles that people spend days to write and submit for approval. To use an offline met…

When they want the protections of section 230, they claim to be platforms, when they want to block content on a political basis, they act as publishers. I think they should have to decide on which they one want to be, and I think platforms should have greater protection against liability than publishers.

Destroying the concept of moderation does not make the world better. The liability shield is the whole reason Section 230 exists: to make it possible to have enjoyable communities online, without incurring so much liability that you have to shut them all down for fear of getting prosecuted.

If you want unmoderated communities, they exist. Go use them. Stop trying to destroy the concept of moderated communities. (Removing the liability shield would be tantamount to destroying such communities.)

Some people want the audience of moderated communities, but they don't want the standards of those communities. There's a reason unmoderated communities have fewer (and different) users.

Re: FCC to move ahead with 'rulemaking' on Section 230

#80

Post by jimmydorry »

slg wrote: post #45
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #21

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…

>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). 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 practica…

>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?

We have the DMCA to cover this... however it's currently an extremely broken process. While there is a penalty codified for making claim to something you don't own, it is never enforced. That part of it needs to change and the regulation should then act in the manner it was designed to.

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