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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

#111

Post by jakelazaroff »

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…

Let’s say this regulation passes and YC does decide to operate HNaaS. (Presumably they don’t want to, or they’d be doing it already, but under this regulation that’s how they have to operate.) So HN Prime pops up — which is basically HN as it exists today — and then a bunch of smaller constellation communities that allow things that Prime doesn’t, like spam and porn.

And that’s different from present situation because…? We already have Twitter Prime (Twitter), as well as the constellation Twitters — Conservative Twitter (Parler), Nazi Twitter (Gab), [Niche Interest] Twitter (various Mastodon people instances), etc. We haven’t fundamentally changed anything; all we’ve done is move the moderation “problem” around a bit.

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

#112

Post by Niksko »

trident1000 wrote: post #31
Niksko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's purely semantics, and everyone knows it.

What semantics? They were granted immunity with regulation and that regulation/immunity can be taken away.

I'll spell it out explicitly, since nobody else has.

In a semantic sense, deregulation is the same thing as removing laws. De = remove, regulation = regulation. But what de-regulation really means is "the reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry".

In this case, this law is basically an exemption. Putting the merits or validity of that exemption aside, if you remove the law, you're increasing the power the government has rather than reducing it. The courts now have the power over tech companies to enforce laws that make the tech companies responsible for what is posted on their platform.

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

stale2002 wrote: post #108
eli wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a discussion forum is not the same as a phone network. It just isn’t. Why would the rules that govern the phone network make sense to apply to Wikipedia? It’s weird to be having this argument on one of the very forums that benefits from 230. Do you think HN would be a better place if it were forbidden from moderating content? Were you here before dang came along? Can you imagine how much spam gets deleted bef…

> Why would the rules that govern the phone network make sense to apply to Wikipedia? Because it is a platform? I don't see a problem with enforcing neutrality on platforms, in the same way that I don't see a problem with enforcing it on my phone company, or my ISP. > Do you think HN would be a better place I think the old school reddit model is a reasonable goal to aim for for these types of platforms. (yes reddit h…

[deleted]

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

#114

Post by JoshTriplett »

juniper_strong wrote: post #110
JoshTriplett wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An alternative approach would be exemptions for non-profit sites. Another alternative would be "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine". Site operators can and should have the ability to ban anyone or remove any content, for any reason or no reason, and doing so does not mean they should be liable for everything they might have missed. (In practice, "liable for everything they might have missed" is equiva…

>> "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine" You have the major internet networks 3 weeks before an election banning speech because if they allowed it it might hurt their preferred political candidate. I mean they can claim otherwise, but they don't apply the criteria they use in this instance to instances where the speech is done by their political party. It is clear what is going on here. Maybe that is wor…

The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources. The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting of content they haven't checked yet. The world you propose is one in which nobody could take the risk of running a community online. The world you propose is one in which the site you're making this comment on cannot exist in a functional way. The world you propose has more governmental restraint on speech, not less; that restraint comes in the form of "we're not actually telling you that you can't administrate your site, but if do something we don't like, we'll just stand back and let you get prosecuted out of existence for the actions of your users". That's just regulation of speech by an indirect means.

> The ask of companies under section 230 is that they be allowed to publish

No. "publish" is a distortion promoted by people trying to use the repeal of Section 230 as a weapon. To the extent liability should exist for speech at all, companies should absolutely be liable for what they publish. They should not be liable for what their users publish. Without that distinction, the Internet cannot exist as a medium for any kind of user-generated content. Centralized services providing curated content would fare just fine, but anything that allows users to interact or contribute would die.

> The question is, what do we get back for allowing them that privilege?

A functional Internet. Websites that contains content supplied by others, that aren't "anything goes" cesspools. An Internet that helps people interact in a read-write manner, not just consume content in a read-only manner.

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

#115

Post by mcphage »

stale2002 wrote: post #97
eli wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand what outcome you are seeking here. Clearly social media companies can’t prescreen every piece of content so either you want them to all go out of business or you want to forbid them from moderating even to delete spam. There are already forums with “zero” moderation and there’s a reason all discussion hasn’t migrated there.

> or you want to forbid them from moderating The goal would be to put significant, very large restictions on their ability to moderate. > There are already forums with “zero” moderation How about we look at other examples of communication platforms, that are working perfectly fine. Just take a look at the phone network, or ISPs. ISPs and phone networks, have very little "moderation" from the parent company, and yet s…

> ISPs and phone networks, have very little "moderation" from the parent company, and yet seem to work pretty well, IMO.

I get multiple, unsolicited phone calls a day from spoofed phone numbers. I consider the phone network mostly useless.

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

#116

Post by mcphage »

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.

> when they want to block content on a political basis

And what about when the want to block content because they believe in an objective reality?

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

#117

Post by jakelazaroff »

blhack wrote: post #63
jellicle wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Section 230 is outlining a way in which an internet service can be exempted from liability. What part of this is causing you to read it another way?

Section 230 shields platform operators from liability for user-generated content. It does not set conditions for immunity such as not moderating. In fact, it was arguably created expressly to prevent this publisher/distributor dichotomy. Look at the cases against Prodigy and Compuserve for examples of the ambiguity Section 230 was introduced to resolve.

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

#118

Post by the8472 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #111
the8472 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Let’s say this regulation passes and YC does decide to operate HNaaS. (Presumably they don’t want to, or they’d be doing it already, but under this regulation that’s how they have to operate.) So HN Prime pops up — which is basically HN as it exists today — and then a bunch of smaller constellation communities that allow things that Prime doesn’t, like spam and porn. And that’s different from present situation becaus…

It's not like the sites would continue to exist exactly as they did before only with a different coat of paint. The platformization would likely impact business model - who pays the platform? who makes deals with advertises? do publisher vs. platform rules also apply to the influence that advertisers have on a site? - and changes in moderation tooling provided as part of the platform. It would also separate the financial interests of the platform provider from that of the moderators.

I think the actual escape hatch would be enabling users to filter content collaboratively in a way so that there is no entity in the system could be considered a commercial publisher. The platform providers only remove illegal content and the "not a publisher under the law" users do the community-interest moderation rather than corporate-interest moderation.

Of course some could still choose to play under publisher rules and allow user submissions, but that wold probably be much smaller scale if they want to be on the safe side and and pre-check things individually.

> like spam and porn.

I assume (without having checked) that filtering spam would still be allowed even under platform rules.

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

#119

Post by juniper_strong »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #114
juniper_strong wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "leave this problem alone, it's working just fine" You have the major internet networks 3 weeks before an election banning speech because if they allowed it it might hurt their preferred political candidate. I mean they can claim otherwise, but they don't apply the criteria they use in this instance to instances where the speech is done by their political party. It is clear what is going on here. Maybe that is wor…

The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources. The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting of content they haven't checked yet. The world you propose is one in which nobody could take the risk of runni…

>> The world you propose gives more power to large site operators, not less, because they're the only ones that could possibly afford the requisite moderation resources

Not true, someone running a small blog can read every single comment that gets submitted. Twitter can't.

>> The world you propose does not have functional real-time public communication, because nobody could risk the liability of allowing the posting of content they haven't checked yet

Not true, even pre-internet the world had functional real-time public communication. We called them telephones. You didn't get cut off if your politics didn't match the phone company's. And if you act as a platform like that on the internet, you could allow the posting of content you haven't checked yet.

Platform or publisher, pick one.

>> The world you propose is one in which nobody could take the risk of running a community online

Not true, there are print communities that publish users' content - people take that risk.

>> "publish" is a distortion promoted by people trying to use the repeal of Section 230 as a weapon

Dictionary definitions of publish: "to make generally known", "to disseminate to the public". No, "publish" is not a distortion, it's a dictionary definition, you just don't like the consequences of that definition.

>> "Without that distinction, the Internet cannot exist as a medium for any kind of user-generated content"

Not true, user generated content exists in print and it should be cheaper on the internet than in print. False claim.

>> A functional Internet

An internet where 3 weeks out from an election, the major providers of information ban information that hurts their political candidate is not a functional internet, it's an Orwellian dystopia.

No. Just no.

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

#120

Post by JoshTriplett »

the8472 wrote: post #107
JoshTriplett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a major fraction of human communication, especially during lockdowns, is facilitated by social networks then they are fulfilling a utility role. Removing the ability of those sites to moderate will not make them better. (Even if it did by some metric, that still wouldn't be acceptable; what constitutes "better" is entirely up to the site owner to determine. But it's even less reasonable given that it wouldn't ha…

> Having many users should not suddenly mean you don't own the site You continue to own it, but that does not mean you can do arbitrary things to your users. That's precisely how things work for utilities. You can do whatever with your private road or power generator. But if you're providing essential services to the masses then eventually universal service, non-discrimination and neutrality rules come into play. If…

> You're assuming that there is no way to adapt to the new rules.

If you're liable for user-posted content, you either need massive resources to review literally everything your users post (and a sufficient delay for such review to take place, and a massive insurance policy for the inevitable mistake), or you stop allowing user-posted content entirely.

This proposal would make it nearly impossible to simultaneously have user-posted content and moderation. Sites that post read-only content for user consumption would do just fine, but any site that enables the usage of the Internet in a read-write contributory way would be dead. There's no "adapting" to that, nor should there be.

> if you're providing essential services to the masses

Twitter is not in any way an "essential service". The collective set of communication platforms that people use are, in concert, important, but it'd still be a stretch to say even that combination was "essential"; I certainly don't think it's reasonable to consider any one of them "essential" by itself. If any one of those sites went away, people would adapt and use others, and more would arise rapidly to fill the void.

If the power goes out, people die. If Facebook goes down, people probably become on balance happier.

Ignore for a moment that Facebook is publicly traded; imagine it weren't. Do you believe, by way of example, that Facebook should be prohibited from pulling the plug and formatting all the servers one day, just because they decided they were tired of it? I don't.

Twitter is not an "essential service". It's useful. We're not utterly dependent on any one site; we're dependent on some site. If it went away, life would go on, and people would find alternatives. The only critical issue would be if all such sites went away simultaneously, rather than just one. "Widely used" is not "essential".

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