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Earlier quoted context omitted.
He discussed that: intent is implied by the phrases "directed to" and "advocacy of".
"Advocacy of" and "intent" aren't the same standard either! Again: if Twitter was held to the 1A standard, there is a great deal of content likely to cause imminent lawless action that they would be unable to block.
What's the difference between advocating violence and intending to cause violence?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Advocacy of" and "intent" aren't the same standard either! Again: if Twitter was held to the 1A standard, there is a great deal of content likely to cause imminent lawless action that they would be unable to block.
> "Advocacy of" and "intent" aren't the same standard either! What's the difference between advocating violence and intending to cause violence?
The entire Brandenberg case is about the distinction, on this particular word.
Like I said, this is a hash of an argument.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Advocacy of" and "intent" aren't the same standard either! What's the difference between advocating violence and intending to cause violence?
The expectation that your own words are going to cause the lawless action, rather than supporting an action that was going to happen with or without them. The entire Brandenberg case is about the distinction, on this particular word. Like I said, this is a hash of an argument.
The article, IMO, made it clear enough that information that causes violence but wasn't intended to cause violence is protected by the 1st amendment.
This is the most well thought out takes on Section 230 I've read yet. David Sacks is publicly conservative and I disagree with him on a lot. But he's also a lawyer and very, very smart. Worth a read, no matter where you stand on the issue.
Section 230 protects every moderated forum. Maybe it should distinguish between forums, where everyone sees the same content, and social networks, where people choose who to follow and who to block. Maybe social networks should be regulated as common carriers[1]. But simply removing the second paragraph of Section 230, making moderated forums liable for every post, would make them legally unviable. [1]: https://www2.…
Forums are too small of an audience to be even considered by most people, including political leaders considering such regulation, who consider Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit to be the only websites with UGC, and it's difficult to explain that distinction to folks, in my personal experience.
dang can ban me, remove this comment, hide it, etc, but in no way will he or hackernews be legally liable if someone sees it; I am.
If 230 were not there, then there could be legal liability and the protection against it would be positive moderation or none at all perhaps. Positive moderation meaning dang would have to read and approve each post because HN would be taking on the liability of said post. Simply not scalable.
The article correctly quotes and understands sec 230, and doesn't misrepresent it as either a license for censorship or a ban on moderation.
The article defines clearly what the author would like changed.
The Bad:
The article is very confused about what is or is not protected by the first amendment. For instance it claims (incorrectly) that hacked information is not protected. It is protected. If a reporter gets hacked information, but does no hacking himself, and the information is newsworthy, he's free to publish. The same applies to defamation and falsehood: I might be liable in civil court if I publish such things, but no one in the government has a right to take a red pen to what I want to publish pre-print because they decide it is false or defamatory. Also, be careful banning defamation separate to falsehood: that means I cannot say true-but-damaging things about people. Is that what the author or the general public want? I can't point out that someone is a thief even if they are and I can prove it?
The article's example is bad and I wonder if he will actually get what he wants. It complains about the censorship of the NYPost article about Hunter Biden's laptop. But then it goes on to claim that platforms should be able to censor hacked material (which that story was based on and that was the original reason it was censored on Twitter). And that it should be able to censor false information (again, most of that story was incorrect or at best remains unsubstantiated years later...) and defamation. So the sort of story he wants to be protected would fall under at least 3 of the categories he wants to be unprotected?!
The article misses the great un-written advantage of s230: s230 makes it clear who decides (the platform) what to moderate and uses a simple measure (whatever they want basically). That gives them a lot of power, but it also does away with a huge issue. Namely, if you give every twitter user recourse to courts AND you have complex rules over what is allowed (who defines falsehood? can you PROVE the moon landings occurred? is calling someone a bastard fighting-words or defamation? What if it's true? Is a penis "obscene"? What about Michelangelo's David?). So at best Twitter now has ungodly legal fees and every court in the land has to rule on all this nonsense. And that's without any judge making a mistake or (god forbid) falling to political partisanship. I don't envy the judge ruling on whether Trumps tweets on Jan 6th were incitement to violence. And they will of course have to give immediate and binding rulings in real time on such cases. S230 made all that disappear, just a tiny proportion of cases had any legal standing.
The truth is, and I suspect that the Author knows they but just cannot quite accept it, s230 isn't perfect. But its the best we can do without "the cure being worse than the disease"...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The expectation that your own words are going to cause the lawless action, rather than supporting an action that was going to happen with or without them. The entire Brandenberg case is about the distinction, on this particular word. Like I said, this is a hash of an argument.
I don't think anyone can know what's going to happen with or without their participation, but granting that for the sake of argument, he also quoted "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action". (Edit: also "organize actions that spill over into the physical world") The article, IMO, made it clear enough that information that causes violence but wasn't intended to cause violence is protected by the 1st…
There is a clear legal standard for incitement. Sacks hasn't articulated it. Either he doesn't know what it is, or he does know, but smartly recognizes that it cuts directly against his argument. The point he wants to make is that First Amendment jurisprudence already provides a basis for service providers to eliminate the most objectionable content. It does not.
Particularly in the case of incitement: if Twitter was held to the 1A standard, it would be unable to block a great deal of content likely to cause imminent lawless action.
The good: The article correctly quotes and understands sec 230, and doesn't misrepresent it as either a license for censorship or a ban on moderation. The article defines clearly what the author would like changed. The Bad: The article is very confused about what is or is not protected by the first amendment. For instance it claims (incorrectly) that hacked information is not protected. It is protected. If a reporter…
I don't understand why some people are so hellbent on eliminating Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which would only mean the most reasonable way to have UGC is to have none at all, because anything else leaves a non-zero probability of the UGC website operator (now being considered a publisher) being sued. This is the only good take on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and the one that I ag…