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

#181

Post by ceejayoz » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #97

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…

Judges are the ones we all officially trust to make judgments. It isn't better as such to get them involved, but it might become necessary. I won't worry about technicalities, because I have no idea what they are. But it is becoming abundantly clear that the social media companies have political power and are willing to wield it if they think that it is appropriate, similar to newspapers and television. It is reasona…

> Judges are the ones we all officially trust to make judgments.

That's not a good reason to DDoS them, though.

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

#182

Post by ceejayoz » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #142

praestigiare wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live round the corner from a UK housing estate with a drugs problem. I very often deeply wish that 60-80% of my local tax money would go to the police. I often also frankly wish that 10% of it would fund a Sharia-style hangman, but perhaps that is my inner misanthrope.

The US drug war is an abject failure, despite very generous and ever-increasing funding. Why would you think it'd work substantially better in the UK?

The point of "defund the police" is that that funding would be better used in treating the underlying causes of said drugs problem.

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

#183

Post by leereeves » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

modmans2nd wrote: post #173

leereeves wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It does though. For example, it gives them the power to refuse to remove false information without being held responsible for it, which the first amendment does not give to publishers like the NYT.

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

#184

Post by mojzu » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #172

mojzu wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That's definitely a concern I share, I manage a couple of work related servers that are miniscule in scale compared to social media companies, and the quantity of attempted spam/FUD/astroturfing they receive would render them pointless cesspools if we couldn't just block it

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

#185

Post by rubyist5eva » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

I like this law, and I don't think it needs reform. If anything, it encourages competition because if you don't like some company's moderation you can be free to go make your own damn website without moderation (or with moderation policy you prefer), or use a different that will take you instead.

This entire thing is just because of a pissing match between Twitter/FB and Donald Trump. Why doesn't he just an alternative? I thought Parler was supposed to be the "free speech platform"? I'm sure his audience would follow him, and I'd wager a lot of them are already there.

This entire "fight" about S230 is completely bonkers.

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

#186

Post by betterunix2 » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 2:20 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…

Section 230 is not supposed to promote free speech. It is supposed to promote a sustainable market for Internet services at various levels. An unmoderated Internet is not sustainable because it is overrun by trolls and nazis, and various kinds of unlawful activities; some degree of moderation is needed, but without liability protection nobody would take on that risk.

Parler has not been kicked off the Internet, it has only been removed from app stores. It can be hosted as a website if meeting the demands of those tech companies -- which amount to doing a better job of preventing terrorists from using the app to organize a violent overthrow of the US government -- and users can just visit that website.

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

#187

Post by kokokokoko123 » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

rubyist5eva wrote: post #185

I like this law, and I don't think it needs reform. If anything, it encourages competition because if you don't like some company's moderation you can be free to go make your own damn website without moderation (or with moderation policy you prefer), or use a different that will take you instead. This entire thing is just because of a pissing match between Twitter/FB and Donald Trump. Why doesn't he just an alternati…

Parler was removed from google store, though (and apple store is going to do the same). But sure, everything is allright.

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

#188

Post by elliekelly » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #5

I started reading this in the smug knowledge that I knew it already, that I wasn't wrong about 230. But then I saw this passage: > The "user" protections get less attention, but they're right there in the important 26 words. "No provider or __user__ of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker...." That's why there are cases like Barrett v. Rosenthal where someone who forwarded an e…

I feel like I’ve said this a hundred times in the last 30 days but you should read the book “The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet” for a really good history of why we have Sec. 230 and what it was intended to “solve”. It’s an interesting topic that’s the subject of intense debate amongst people on both sides who don’t fully understand the subject they’re arguing about but are convinced they do.

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

#189

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

mpoteat wrote: post #65

Meekro wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."…

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?

This is the definitive question that has to be asked of anybody proposing a repeal of 230. I personally dislike 230, and have from the beginning, but anybody who doesn't have a direct and complete answer to this question isn't being serious.

edit:

I personally think that the answer is to standardize terms-of-service documents and to make them into real legal statements that both the website visitor and owner can make claims regarding, and that those statements be registered with a federal agency. The standardization should be so tight that filing it should be a matter of picking from drop down menus on a form, and the implications of each choice should be common knowledge and taught in school. The form should be able to be filled out anonymously (as "owner of [X] site.")

If you run a site without having filed one, though, you would lose legal protections as a publisher based on modding behavior. If somebody filing suit can point out any decisions that have been defined by law as constituting a specific degree of editorial control (examples: spam-control, abuse-control, subject-control, position-on-a-subject-control, arbitrary-control, etc.) then they will be responsible for libel/tort claims as a site for individual posts. A site that has filed a terms-of-service will get the benefit of the doubt, and the ability to push liability onto completely onto posters or maybe even individual mods.

Those requirements would either be too onerous to run the walled gardens of Web 2.0 at scale and small players will have a profitable business opening again, or the big dogs would be forced to really bureaucratize or democratize, and small players will have a profitable business opening by providing them modding services at the forum level.

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

#190

Post by karldcampbell » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

glasss wrote: post #110

colllectorof wrote: post #85

Dismissive article that misrepresents both why "normal" people out there are unhappy about section 230 and what the higher levels of conversation about changing it really look like right now[1]. Articles like this are read meat for Hacker News. You endlessly reassert your political bias while pretending you are "informing" some imaginary group of stupid people (who in reality isn't even here to be "informed"). [1] He…

>Today its primary effect is to give an impenetrable legal shield to giant tech corporations that engage in deliberate society-wide manipulation of information. I think this would be better phrased as "... legal shield to websites that only want to show certain content to its users." "[S]ociety-wide manipulation of information" would imply that everyone gets their news and information from Facebook, Twitter, etc whic…

If one is following current events, it isn't possible to avoid Twitter, Facebook and even Reddit. Mainstream news outlets often report on content from those social media sites, so even if I'm not a user, social media still effects me.