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

#291

Post by roenxi » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

neltnerb wrote: post #261

roenxi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So getting rid of it would let me sue Google for letting people forward conspiracy theories in emails? Huh. Sorry, I think you actually do want a new law, not to modify this one. I have no idea how to define the websites that you want this to even apply to -- size? revenue? number of users? does twitter count? mastodon server instances? gab? reddit? texas instruments support forums? IRC servers? This feels super arbi…

No, I don't think any of that. My starting point would be:

(1) Someone has a long-established relationship with an internet service.

(2) That service makes an arbitrary and unexpected change to the nature of that relationship.

(3) That change causes material damage.

Then the site can be sued.

I don't think that would cover the current Trump business, they've been telegraphing for years that he would be banned eventually. But it might close the door to more damaging abuses of power where they strategic on timing and opens up some review of how clearly they are giving notice. Might help with the app store complaints.

That specific idea isn't going to be good - I've probably missed a bunch of relevant stuff - but maybe the idea can be salvaged and implemented with only mild damage to the internet ecosystem.

> Sorry, I think you actually do want a new law, not to modify this one.

There isn't really a difference, but sure. I don't care if changes are implemented as an amendment or a new bill.

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

#292

Post by grumple » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 12:15 AM UTC

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #258

grumple wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should these companies be forced to provide access to a platform that’s largely used for coordinating insurrection and fomenting hate?

Its not.

Every source I’ve seen disagrees with you.

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

#293

Post by root_axis » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 12:19 AM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #229

root_axis wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we’re in a situation where even the speech of the POTUS is beholdent to corporate censors This is not true. The POTUS has the most prominent platform in the world, he could walk out to any random street corner and anything he says will be broadcast to every corner of the planet, he is not in any way beholden to "corporate censors".

That’s not true any more though. All of the media networks have shown examples of cutting away from the Presidents speeches when they detect he’s going to say something they don’t like. If you were Trump right now and want to directly address the nation, you know calling CNN and Fox and NBC are going to be a mixed bag at best. FAANG has given the indication right now that for two week no one should be giving the Pres…

The narrative you're trying to present is completely false. Any "cutting away" of Trump is utterly inconsequential compared to the complete domination of the media Trump has commanded since the beginning of his presidential campaign. Trump is literally the most famous man in the world, you're simply in denial if you can't admit that.

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

#294

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

root_axis wrote: post #293

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true any more though. All of the media networks have shown examples of cutting away from the Presidents speeches when they detect he’s going to say something they don’t like. If you were Trump right now and want to directly address the nation, you know calling CNN and Fox and NBC are going to be a mixed bag at best. FAANG has given the indication right now that for two week no one should be giving the Pres…

The narrative you're trying to present is completely false. Any "cutting away" of Trump is utterly inconsequential compared to the complete domination of the media Trump has commanded since the beginning of his presidential campaign. Trump is literally the most famous man in the world, you're simply in denial if you can't admit that.

I’m not in denial of that at all. The topic is can the media and tech silence the President of the USA, and the answer is apparently yes.

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

#295

Post by heavyset_go » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 1:43 AM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #252

vharuck wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Setting up your own Wordpress blog can be done with a domain name and server hosting outside the United States, and with some effort this can be done anonymously. In that case, you don't need to worry about Section 230, you only have to worry about the (possibly laxer, possibly stricter) local laws. The reason that big social media sites are vulnerable to this particular US law is because they are businesses that cho…

Repealing 230 would affect the site's host and registrar because the host would be found liable for illegal content on their servers.

That means that you aren't going to pay $100 for a WordPress site, because allowing you to upload content without the protection of Section 230 is too much of a risk to bear for only $100.

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

#296

Post by heavyset_go » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 1:53 AM UTC

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…

> Instead, people would have to self-host their own content on their own infrastructure. (230 provides no protection for people that do that.)

Without Section 230, hosting providers, registrars and ISPs would be held liable for your "self-hosted" content. It would be too much of a risk to host your content, unless you had deep enough pockets to assuage that risk.

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

#297

Post by heavyset_go » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 1:56 AM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #137

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #116

This is a great summary of what the law's function is. To address those trying to repeal it: • Some people think that if 230 was repealed, websites would moderate less. That's false. Because of the liability for users' posts, big websites would be forced to moderate more . And small websites would shut down out of fear of lawsuits. • Some people think that 230 must be repealed because websites are moderating too much…

IMHO "And small websites would shut down out of fear of lawsuits" is misleading - it would be more appropriate to say "And small websites would refuse all user-generated content out of fear of lawsuits". They would still operate, but without the immunity the only safe way of moderation is to either have very strict moderation that ensures that anything even remotely questionable can't be posted; or (if you can't affo…

Without Section 230, who is going to host these small websites and why would they take on the risk of having one of the sites' owners posting something illegal?

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

#298

Post by dang » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 4:33 AM UTC

kangaroozach wrote: post #57

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?

The answer depends on whether you are a radical or not. A hate filled SJW as well as a brainwashed NPC actually believes the ends justifies the means and their stone cold hatred of their “perceived” political enemies justifies total censorship and control over our “digital” public forums.

Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. The site is overrun with this kind of thing at the moment, and we're banning accounts who do it. I'm not going to ban yours because it doesn't look like you've been making a habit of it, but please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the intended use of the site from now on.

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

#299

Post by leereeves » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 7:36 AM UTC

lostcolony wrote: post #262

edoceo wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems reasonable, just costs a lot of money. The cost of harassment should out-weigh the cost of protection here tho. A) post video to YouTube for $0 b) contact lawyer to subpoena YT and then sue a jerk? $50,000

Which the removal or not of Section 230 doesn't change. No matter what the law says, no matter what culpability exists, if you can't afford a lawyer, you're not getting anything. An issue with the law in the US, but hardly relevant to the issue at hand.

But YouTube has deep pockets, so if you could sue YouTube, lawyers would work on contingency. What lawyer would take a John Doe case on contingency?

Worse, what if the defamer is able to hide their identity or from a jursdiction that doesn't care about an order from US courts? In that case, even paying for a lawyer won't help.

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

#300

Post by 3131s » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 10:21 AM UTC

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…

No idea why this is downvoted, there's no better example of censorship than this.

We would be in a better situation right now if voters had the facts about these four FBI investigations back in 2018, so perhaps the Democrats could have nominated a candidate that isn't a criminal.

I still voted for Biden, already aware of his family's influence peddling, because Trump is a repulsive moron in addition to being corrupt... just to be clear.