You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA • Hacker News Board

Re: You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

#41

Post by meekrohprocess » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 7:36 AM UTC

awb wrote: post #4

> if you're in a real rush, just read Section (c)(1), which is only 26 words, and is the part that basically every single court decision (and there have been many) has relied on. > (c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information…

No, I don't believe so. Any individual can easily create a website and publish whatever they like. It costs maybe $100/year and takes a couple of hours for an inexperienced user to set up a Wordpress blog with manually-moderated comments. Nobody's speech would be censored if Section 230 were repealed.

Instead, platforms would be treated as though they had consciously decided to publish every publically-available comment/file upload/post/etc. That would probably mean manually moderating everything, and rejecting a lot of it for capricious reasons.

But honestly, I am not convinced that that would be a bad thing. It would certainly encourage more people to create their own publishing mediums, and it might help break up the titanic oligarchs that currently occupy the market.

Put it this way: I would happily give up sites like HN to remove the business model that makes mass-scale social media viable. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have inflicted unconscionable harm on our collective humanity, and they have demonstrated a complete inability to self-regulate.

Re: You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

#42

Post by post_below » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 7:37 AM UTC

Meekro wrote: post #18

awb wrote: post #4

> if you're in a real rush, just read Section (c)(1), which is only 26 words, and is the part that basically every single court decision (and there have been many) has relied on. > (c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information…

You're right, repealing section 230 would result in more censorship, not less. But I think "repeal section 230" has been shorthand slogan for a more detailed set of proposals (much like "defund the police" doesn't mean $0 budgets for all law enforcement). For example, see the DoJ's proposal to amend and clarify section 230 [1] [2]. Among other changes, they suggest limiting the extent to which a platform can moderate…

To be clear we're talking about the Barr era justice department in this context. The proposed changes would give the justice department a stick to shake at platforms they didn't like for political reasons.

We hope that the justice department would act in good faith, without political influence, but we're fresh out of an intensive course on how naive it is to rely on that.

Re: You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

#43

Post by zerocrates » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 7:37 AM UTC

awb wrote: post #4

> if you're in a real rush, just read Section (c)(1), which is only 26 words, and is the part that basically every single court decision (and there have been many) has relied on. > (c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information…

Basically the issue prior to 230 was that the major precedents worked out like this: if you didn't moderate at all, you were not treated as a publisher and were not liable for the speech of your users. But if you did do some moderation/blocking, you could be seen as a publisher of the things you didn't block. So you have a kind of "all or nothing" type of situation.

The problem is: in terms of legal risk, "just allow everything" is safer, since it's quite expensive or even infeasible to completely moderate the platform. But Congress wanted to encourage internet companies to do moderation for things like pornography and other "indecent" content (this is part of the Communications Decency Act, after all), which is why this "Good Samaritan" section exists: to remove the specter of liability that could arise from even light-touch moderation. (But note that despite that title, the language is broad and not conditional on the presence or absence of any moderation scheme.)

Repeal has a few possibilities, one of which is as you said, just eliminate user-controlled content completely from some spaces, or moderate it extremely heavily (like requiring manual review before something is posted). But, the other extreme is also possible, of totally removing moderation to escape liability the other way around.

Re: You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

#44

Post by Meekro » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 7:40 AM UTC

conistonwater wrote: post #23

Meekro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, repealing section 230 would result in more censorship, not less. But I think "repeal section 230" has been shorthand slogan for a more detailed set of proposals (much like "defund the police" doesn't mean $0 budgets for all law enforcement). For example, see the DoJ's proposal to amend and clarify section 230 [1] [2]. Among other changes, they suggest limiting the extent to which a platform can moderate…

Wait, so is the idea of those proposals that the federal government or the courts or the lawyers are going to be in charge of deciding what counts as aggressive moderation as opposed to regular moderation? Is that supposed to be better? Also, your comment is confusing because "limiting moderation to illegal content and viagra spam" was the legal limit before section 230, if I understood correctly, so it's not making…

The proposal still lets platforms moderate on certain grounds, a repeal would mean that a platform can't moderate for any reason other than "illegal content" if it wants to keep the protection. The law currently says that a platform can moderate material that is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected." That "otherwise objectionable" has been interpreted as a catch-all that lets platforms moderate on any grounds at all.

The DoJ proposal removes the catch-all and add "unlawful" and "promotes terrorism" to the list.

So if you moderate for a reason on that list, you keep the protection. If you moderate for other reasons, you lose it. And yes, I'm sure we'd see plenty of litigation on what constitutes harassment, terrorism, etc.

Re: You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

#45

Post by laurent92 » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 7:40 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #40

hemloc_io wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also wondered about this, I suspect because Facebook hired 75% of their lawyers in the last 3 months we will find out soon. I could see one argument about how an algorithm doesn't really editorialize. A metaphor that is often used is that social media companies is that they are more like a newsstand than an editorial board on a newspaper. A newsstand isn't under any obligation to sell all the papers available in…

Yes, in one sense an algorithm doesn't editorialize, not being intelligent, but humans can write an algorithm to editorialize for them. The editorial decisions are made while designing the algorithm. And if Facebook, knowing that outrage drives engagement, chooses to run an algorithm that displays the most engaging content, aren't they also choosing to display the most outrageous content?

That is a good point, you not only demonstrated that choosing which comments to display is editorializing, but displaying the most outrageous content to provoke engagement is, in itself, an algorithm that incites violence.

Re: You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

#46

Post by ricardo81 » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 7:41 AM UTC

topkai22 wrote: post #10

I was struck by a thought while reading the article- are the feeds of social media companies actually protected under section 230? My Facebook feed is more than just a simple serving of my friends content, it’s a work in and of itself (like a collection of essays). It seems like a stretch given that the law states that they can’t be considered the publisher of “information” provided by others, but possible as these s…

>liable for

Think 10-15 years ago looking at the concept of these centralised platforms it'd pretty obvious any kind of arbitration would not be scalable and therefore there wouldn't be. I mean, the business model depends on it.

I'm not a fan of them being arbiters of truth, also not a fan of there being 10's of thousands of blatant copyright infractions on their platforms daily which they monetise.

I don't think there's any other answer than decentralising groups on the web.

Re: You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

#47

Post by leereeves » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 7:41 AM UTC

conistonwater wrote: post #23

Meekro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, repealing section 230 would result in more censorship, not less. But I think "repeal section 230" has been shorthand slogan for a more detailed set of proposals (much like "defund the police" doesn't mean $0 budgets for all law enforcement). For example, see the DoJ's proposal to amend and clarify section 230 [1] [2]. Among other changes, they suggest limiting the extent to which a platform can moderate…

Wait, so is the idea of those proposals that the federal government or the courts or the lawyers are going to be in charge of deciding what counts as aggressive moderation as opposed to regular moderation? Is that supposed to be better? Also, your comment is confusing because "limiting moderation to illegal content and viagra spam" was the legal limit before section 230, if I understood correctly, so it's not making…

Making decisions like that is why we have courts. They are responsible for deciding whether a particular act was murder or self-defense, whether something is pornography or art, whether something is protected or forbidden by the Constitution, etc.

They're far from perfect, but is it better to give the power to control digital communications to a few corporations?

Re: You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

#48

Post by afterburner » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 7:42 AM UTC

Honest question: is it possible that some of the repercussions of Section 230 are not just reliant on a strict reading of the law in question, but also the case law and precedents built around it in the form of court decisions? Precedents in the US are sometimes more important than a literal reading of the law.

Re: You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

#49

Post by zerocrates » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 7:43 AM UTC

NE2z2T9qi wrote: post #36

This doesn’t seem that complicated to me. What’s all the I-am-smarter-than-you smugness about? > Law text: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher.” People who want Section 230 repealed or modified want to be able to make the legal argument that by actively banning certain speech while elevating other speech, social media companies ARE acting as publishers. The law do…

The snark isn't directed so much at people who want repeal (though techdirt pretty clearly would disagree with them on that point also) but rather at the very large contingent of people who express with total conviction that the law right now draws lines between neutral "platforms" who are protected and biased "publishers" who are not, when the law in fact does the exact opposite.

Re: You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 of the CDA

#50

Post by post_below » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 7:46 AM UTC

NE2z2T9qi wrote: post #36

This doesn’t seem that complicated to me. What’s all the I-am-smarter-than-you smugness about? > Law text: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher.” People who want Section 230 repealed or modified want to be able to make the legal argument that by actively banning certain speech while elevating other speech, social media companies ARE acting as publishers. The law do…

The reasons are obvious but the outcome is the important thing. Largely the sentiments behind wanting to repeal section 230 seem to be about the big platforms.

The point that often gets missed is that without 230 ONLY the big platforms could afford to exist (and probably not even them in their current form).

So while the goal to limit the power of the tech giants may be good, the proposed method will likely accomplish the opposite by removing all competition present and future.

You may be aware of this, if so consider this post to be for someone who isn't.