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

#151

Post by vharuck » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:02 PM UTC

meekrohprocess wrote: post #41

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 Nobody's speech would be censored if Section 230 were repealed.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 comm…

>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.

It would also cost however much a lawyer charges for helping to moderate every submission. Because I doubt the average WordPress blogger is familiar with all possible laws the submissions could violate. Or can make correct judgements based on precedent for things like copyright works.

Honestly though, the blogger would probably only need to pay for one hour of a lawyer's time. That lawyer would say "Turning off the comments is your best bet" and then round up to an hour for billing.

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

#152

Post by marcinzm » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

zerocrates wrote: post #43

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 allo…

>But, the other extreme is also possible, of totally removing moderation to escape liability the other way around.

No it's not a possibility. Social media is paid for by advertising and no large advertiser wants to have their ads show up next to child pornography. Just look at what happened with Youtube.

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

#153

Post by NovemberWhiskey » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:09 PM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #118

A lot of these are straw men arguments. In particular it's taking a lot of statements about how Section 230 ought to be amended or replaced, and falsely portraying those statements as being about how Section 230 currently works. Obviously Section 230 doesn't work that way right now, which is precisely why people are proposing changes.

I regularly read HN threads that end up in discussion of Section 230, and find many posts that contain these same wrong ideas about what the law means.

To that extent, I think you're giving the author of the article too little credit, and the general discourse too much.

Clearly that's my subjective experience, and YMMV.

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

#154

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:10 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #111

stale2002 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that supposed to be better? There already exists laws that act very similarly to what people are proposing. Specifically these laws are called common carrier laws, as they apply to phone systems, for example. Do you believe that the existing laws, that apply to phone networks, are tyrannical or worse or bad? I don't think it is unreasonable to consider how our existing laws, that most people find reasonable, suc…

I don't think phone and Internet providers are the same as social networking sites. I'm happy to let people I don't like have their own websites. I don't want to be forced to let them use mine to post about how I should die.

FWIW, Section 230 was added primarily so that ISPs and hosting providers wouldn't be liable for content on their sites given that social media as we know it today basically didn't exist.

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

#155

Post by NovemberWhiskey » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #77

TameAntelope wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of being banned from Twitter prevents someone from being heard? Also, who is getting banned for talking about the politicians? #2, #7, and #8 (obliquely) on trending right now are about the main politician who was banned...

I don't care about Trump getting banned from twitter. I care about the coordinated takedown of parler by google, apple and soon amazon. Section 230 is supposed to protect free speech on the internet by shielding platforms of legal liability for user generated content. But if a few tech monopolies can just kick a platform off the internet because they don't like its user generated content then what the hell is the poi…

>But if a few tech monopolies can just kick a platform off the internet because they don't like its user generated content then what the hell is the point?

... and yet somehow user-generated pornographic content (c.f. OnlyFans), which is never ever going to be in anyone's app store, somehow exists and by all accounts is exceedingly popular.

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

#156

Post by cwhiz » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

This article does not address curation or editorializing.

If you, the platform, are in charge of what I see, then you are a publisher.

If you, the platform, add comments to what I write, you are editorializing, and you are a publisher.

Publishers should not have 230 protections.

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

#157

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:20 PM UTC

meekrohprocess wrote: post #41

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 comm…

>No, I don't believe so. Any individual can easily create a website and publish whatever they like.

Absent Section 230, the hosting provider could potentially be liable for anything published. They already do have to take down illegal content if they're informed about it. Section 230 predates modern social media.

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

#158

Post by h_anna_h » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:21 PM UTC

gurkendoktor wrote: post #147

h_anna_h wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite wrong. The fediverse is a lot better, has less noise, and much less toxic than twitter.

I really wanted Mastodon to take off, but none of the people who discuss anything of consequence moved there (because they didn't want to lose their reach). Instead, I only found people in the fediverse that post smalltalk about their daily lives. Which isn't bad! But these people will not be affected by section 230 either way. Intuitively I expected political dissidents would move off Twitter first, but I can see ho…

There are also people discussing about programming, current events, politics, etc.

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

#159

Post by Daho0n » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

Meekro wrote: post #44

conistonwater wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."…

> I'm sure we'd see plenty of litigation on what constitutes harassment, terrorism, etc.

Let me predict how terror will end up being defined:

Promote storming the Capitol - No

Promote a free Palestine - Yes

Any fight against US oppression - No

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

#160

Post by spaetzleesser » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #104

EE84M3i wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For what it's worth, "Defund the police" does literally mean "reduce funding to what we currently refer to as the police force" I think the relevant part is that one definition of "defund" is (from Google answer box/featured snippet, only provided definition): >prevent from continuing to receive funds. So some people upon first hearing the phrase "defund the police" understand it to mean "prevent the police from con…

"Defund the police" is such a bad catchphrase, it does all sorts of disservices to the actual proposed measures. It sounds vengeful and petty, not thoughtful. It's also misleading - the purpose is not (or should not) be primarily to make sure police has less funds; it's to make sure social services and other programs have funds. Why not call it "fund social services" instead of "defund the police", instead? ("fund so…

The left has been historically bad at messaging. They use terms like “wealth redistribution” or “defund the police” which triggers a lot of people. The right is much better with terms like “tax relief” or “election integrity”. That’s definitely something the left should work on.