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

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

#171

Post by boomboomsubban »

dd36 wrote: post #141
boomboomsubban wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When does a moderation choice becomes an editorial choice? For the purpose of this law, never. Promoting a post does not make you the creator of that post.

It makes you responsible for what your user sees and doesn’t see. If you’re not presenting info transparently by time or popularity, you’re editorializing. Perhaps the reason there hasn’t been a big, precedent setting court case yet is the difficulty getting the data or seeing the editorializing. It seems like that veil is slowly coming down though through some of these court cases. What comment on a local news artic…

First, your opinion on how things should work is separate from the discussion I was taking part in. "Editorializing" isn't relevant to the protection section 230 provides.

On your point, I'm not entirely sure what you want. Do you think Facebook should be sble face libel charges for how they present somebody else's post? Or do you want their ranking algorithm should be transparent. Should Google search results be considered the sane way?

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

#172

Post by ghaff »

mojzu wrote: post #168
ghaff wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My understanding was the origins of section 230 were because of a couple of lawsuits that targetted ISPs for content that users posted on their services. One company moderated their content, they were found liable for libel in user content in court. The other company did not moderate their content, they were not found liable for their user content. Anecdotally one of these services was seen as the good one and the ot…

Right. Compuserve and Prodigy. Compuserve didn't moderate and Prodigy did.

The concern is that absent Section 230, a provider needs to either be (almost) totally hands-off or they have to strictly moderate (which isn't really viable for the modern web and social media).

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

#173

Post by modmans2nd »

leereeves wrote: post #47
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…

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?

Section 230 doesn’t give social media any more power than they have under the first amendment. It is simply a shield from nuisance lawsuits.

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

#174

Post by graeme »

dd36 wrote: post #134
mpoteat wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean if a sports fan comes into my forum about programming and starts making sports threads, I cannot moderate that away, or else face legal action? Does it also mean HN could face legal action according to its current rule set?

What legal action would you be concerned about?

If your forum had money, you’d be a sitting duck for someone claiming their rights were violated and demanding compensation.

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

#175

Post by jojobas »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #144
post_below wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, aim measures at said entities, I support that idea. Repealing section 230 is not that.

Perhaps we can keep 230, but add a sentence that it no longer applies once you reach a certain number of users. So the small guys are protected, but not the biggest players. Or perhaps you lose the protection if you show advertising on your site. Or perhaps make it so that it only applies to nonprofits.

It's not really enough.

Twitter has political power well above any 20th century legislature could imagine, all at the fingertips of it's owners.

It's 20th century equivalent would be "members of political party X may not hear each other in bars".

I can't see how anyone could consider this "fair", even if this is just a side effect of silencing accounts that aren't ad-friendly.

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

#176

Post by modmans2nd »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #132
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…

This is simply wrong. It would mean platforms that don’t moderate have no liability. The law was created because a website that didn’t moderate was found to be not liable for the comments it’s users posted, and a website that did was found to be liable. This is even on the Wikipedia page for section 230. I guess the conclusion that repealing it would result in more censorship is based on the idea that platforms would…

They wouldn’t have to stop moderating. Some assholes would sue them and the courts would have to decide how the 1A handles such things.

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

#177

Post by modmans2nd »

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…

Let’s not forget, companies still have to remove child porn due to other statues so a repeal of 230 would still result in theoretical liability.

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

#178

Post by betterunix2 »

marcinzm wrote: post #152
zerocrates wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unmoderated forums also lose users to moderated forums, because nobody wants to sift through a pile of trolls, nazis, pedophiles, etc. just to find something on-topic. I have seen it happen with Usenet, with any number of loosely moderated mailing lists, websites, and so forth. Users want some degree of moderation, and advertisers are going to gravitate toward the platforms with the most users.

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

#179

Post by parsimo2010 »

scsilver wrote: post #167
parsimo2010 wrote: post #149

This is an informative article, but it is missing a couple key things. Maybe the article was strictly aiming to be factual, but it felt like it was taking the position that 230 is good and should stay in place. With the assumption that it means to argue for keeping 230, they failed to convince me that it was a necessary piece of regulation. Yes, they corrected many misconceptions, but at the end of the day there is s…

I just started heddit.com, I am one engineer, I have 2 million users, I am making 10 dollars a month from ads and losing 10 from hosting. How do I regulate my content to protect me when 230 is taken down? Maybe the solution is partial exceptions to 230 on 10 billion dollar+ corps? It seems a more anti trust approach would solve your concerns without removing protections for small upstarts. I dont think a blanket repe…

To me heddit.com looks like a parked domain that isn't serving any content, 3rd party or not, so isn't protected by Section 230 and doesn't need to be. Hypothetical examples aren't a great argument against real world situations that have already happened, but a fake example makes me suspect you aren't arguing in good faith.

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

#180

Post by twic »

praestigiare wrote: post #133
virgilp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Whether you agree with it or not, the purpose is to remove funds from police, which many believe is a positive outcome. Look at police budgets, how that money is spent, how it affects communities to have 60-80% of their tax money go to police. Again, you may disagree, but removing money from the police is the point of the slogan.

The point is that "defund" means "remove all funding from", not "remove some funding from". The person carrying the sign in this photo doesn't want 20% fewer abortions, they want abortions to stop altogether:

https://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12189446/mike-pence-planned-pa...

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