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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

#231

Post by throwawayosiu1 »

The idea behind repealing 230 is not essentially about tackling censorship.

It's more so the idea, that the right wing believes that Social Media is unfairly applying their moderation rules targeting the right side of the political spectrum. They want these these rules (even if it's more censorship) applied evenly to both right and left speech.

While what we have right now is not "free" speech, even moderated speech has a bias and both sides point to the other when it comes to these rules being applied unfairly. Repealing 230 is a way to hurt who they see as responsible - the companies running the services as they are the one who apply these moderation rules unfairly.

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

#232

Post by leereeves »

lostcolony wrote: post #211
leereeves wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So there's a nuance there you're missing. Newspaper publishing is opt in; that is, anything published they chose to publish. Websites that allow third parties to post content on them is opt out; that is, anything published did so without initial moderation. If a website operator posts their own statements, they can theoretically be found to be libelous. They can't be held accountable for posts by other people. Newspa…

I understand the nuance you describe, but the situation I described is, at times, a problem with Section 230. For example:

> When a US Army reservist found herself at the center of a conspiracy about the coronavirus earlier this year, her life was upended.

> Hoax peddlers on the internet falsely claimed that Maatje Benassi was somehow the world's COVID-19 patient zero. Over time, conspiracy theorists posted at least 70 videos across multiple YouTube channels claiming that Benassi had brought the virus into the world. Along with those videos came death threats, which Benassi and her husband, Matt, took seriously.

> But at first, the couple did not know how to respond. Trolls hiding behind aliases on the internet were almost impossible to find, and the Benassis could not sue YouTube for allowing the content to be posted because of a now-controversial law known as Section 230.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/section-230-60-minutes-2021-01-...

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

#233

Post by belorn »

lostcolony wrote: post #211
leereeves wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So there's a nuance there you're missing. Newspaper publishing is opt in; that is, anything published they chose to publish. Websites that allow third parties to post content on them is opt out; that is, anything published did so without initial moderation. If a website operator posts their own statements, they can theoretically be found to be libelous. They can't be held accountable for posts by other people. Newspa…

If you have infinitive flow of third-party posts, where is the distinction between choosing to publish or choosing to not publish?

If you add black to a white background, you get black. If you remove white of a white background, you get black.

If the intention behind the action is the same, and the outcome is the same, should the legality of it hinge on the action?

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

#234

Post by TameAntelope »

epistasis wrote: post #214
TameAntelope wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you thought there was a large group of vocal people who believed that literally zero law enforcement was a genuine wish?

There are decades of academic work on police abolition, books upon books and papers upon papers. Not everyone who says "defund the police" is an abolitionist, but many are. As far as I can tell, there's no concrete replacement proposed for section 230, just a general wish for less protection for these platforms. Complete police and prison abolition is a much more thorough and considered philosophy.

Fair, which is what I assumed was the case, rather than the idea that we wake up one morning to literally zero recourse for someone stealing our stuff.

That assumption of cohesiveness of argument is what I’m trying to get at with my question. The argument we should be having is in the terms of the academic work, rather than the one-line phrase.

My point overall is that no equivalent academic work has been presented that actually attempts to remove Section 230 protections (as the protections stem ultimately from the first amendment), so it’s not fair to compare the two.

I may have gotten separated a bit from that point along the way, so I apologize for my lack of clarity!

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

#235

Post by [deleted] »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #208
leereeves wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s not true. The liability shield only covers content produced by other entities, e.g. tweets. Twitter is still liable for content it produces itself, such as fact checks and trend summaries. Likewise, the New York Times is liable for the articles published by its own writers, but it bears no liability for the comments section.

[deleted]

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

#236

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

rpdillon wrote: post #216
annoyingnoob wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur with your complaints about techdirt. Masnick comes across as self-righteous in most of the pieces on the web site that should be called the Daily Outrage. I think your first paragraph really describes techdirt and not HN.

Interesting. I find Masnick's writing quite accomplished, and he is quite correct that there is a lot of misinformation (which he links to!) about Section 230. I agree he writes confidently about technology's intersection with the law, but I don't see that as a flaw: the Techdirt team seems to have a much better handle on these issues than the average journalist, and certainly a better understanding than the average…

Agreed.

This part...

>If you said "Once a company like that starts moderating content, it's no longer a platform, but a publisher" I regret to inform you that you are wrong.

That’s not the argument. Not really. The argument is that these companies are removing entirely legal content they just don’t like. Their TOS pages are interpretive depending how much they dislike the poster of the content. They do this intentionally and target specific views. They curate their bubble and that is publishing. The issue isn’t moderating content, it’s the selective enforcement.

He starts with a complete strawman.

>It protects all websites and all users of websites when there is content posted on the sites by someone else.

That is the exact crux. I created the content, but EVERY one of these sites is clear they own it. Once I wrote it and hit send, I gave it to them and assumed ownership, they are clear about this. So they ARE publishing THEIR content.

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

#237

Post by TameAntelope »

prepend wrote: post #166
TameAntelope wrote: post #69

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" whereas "repeal section 230" couldn't (in your interpretation) literally mean "strike section 230 from the US code". The reality is what this article outlines towards the end; this is already covered by the 1st Amendment in large part, Section 230 does the bulk of its work in simplifying cou…

I think it’s hard to claim your definition for”defund the police.” Perhaps some people view it as “reduce police funding” but many mean it to mean “$0 to police” and that’s the definition of defund. Words matter and language matters and trying to nuance a pretty simple statement like “defund” is hard for people to understand. Especially with people, friends of mine to be specific, literally mean to defund and remove…

Do you think you’ll ever move past the initial shock of disagreement with a movement’s slogan that may be an oversimplification or misleading, or will you always need someone to clarify the argument before you can take it seriously (and not take it seriously until then)?

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

#238

Post by tony101 »

hedora wrote: post #220

I have one issue with this article. Section 230 certainly encouraged centralization of the internet. Without it, platforms would be liable for content they hosted, which would be financially unviable. Instead, people would have to self-host their own content on their own infrastructure. (230 provides no protection for people that do that.) In addition to preventing the big monopolies from arising, this would have mad…

> "The rest of the DMCA drastically shifted the balance of power... section 230 was necessary to offset that... Repealing 230 but not the rest of the DMCA would be madness."

Note that Section 230 is part of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). It is not part of the DMCA.

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

#239

Post by techer »

elliekelly wrote: post #188
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.

Well thanks for saying it one more time as I missed the previous hundred. Will read.

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

#240

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

hndudette2 wrote: post #215
_yhdy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not like people like you who are intelligent enough to be intentionally intellectually dishonest while being extremely malicious underneath. You fool people for sure. I do not know why you do it, though. There is no manipulation going on by “Big Tech”. Your fear mongering is unfounded. Pushing this sort of rhetoric is what created the insurrectionist events a few days ago.

Nonsense. A former Democratic staffer employed by Facebook censored the breaking news story about Hunter Biden's laptop on the eve of the election which we now know to be factually accurate. This is a literal and recent example of what the person you accused of being malicious talked about. We all know that if it was a smear against the Trump campaign instead, that this would've never happened. You must be able to se…

The NYPost was removed from the platforms for releasing this info. After the election, it was revealed that yes, all the pictures of Hunter smoking crack, fucking prostitutes, and the communications about being inappropriate with his 14yo niece were not fabricated and he is under investigation for tax fraud... not a peep from the orgs that silenced them for this. Memory holed.
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