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Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

wsj.com

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Re: Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

#121

Post by SN76477 »

throwawaygh wrote: post #28

I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that Section 230 protections should come with some sort of obligation to allow free speech. However, the actual policy proposals for replacing Section 230 are all outright dystopian. Josh Hawley, in particular, is NOT a free speech advocate. His problem with Facebook/Tiwtter is perceived liberal bias, and the alternatives to Section 230 that he suggests are 100% about wrestling e…

> His problem with Facebook/Tiwtter is perceived liberal bias

This seems to be because they live in a bubble where everyone agrees with them. But when they look at the real world they do not see the same. giving them the perception of bias, but there is none. They simply have an unpopular opinion.

Re: Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

#122

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

throwawaygh wrote: post #28

I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that Section 230 protections should come with some sort of obligation to allow free speech. However, the actual policy proposals for replacing Section 230 are all outright dystopian. Josh Hawley, in particular, is NOT a free speech advocate. His problem with Facebook/Tiwtter is perceived liberal bias, and the alternatives to Section 230 that he suggests are 100% about wrestling e…

I see you chose to attack the person, not the proposal.

You are wrong. The bill does not designate a political board, it requires tech companies that have over $30 million U.S. users per month and an annual income of over $1.5 billion, to publish all of their content moderation policies. Users who charge that the companies are not implementing content moderation policies fairly would be able to sue for $5,000 plus attorney fees.

I think it's reasonable for these social media behemoths to post their mod logs.

I'd even like to see sites like HNs do it. Lobsters does: https://lobste.rs/moderations

If you have a specific gripe with this, let's discuss the legal.

I really don't see how GP is currently top comment.

Forcing giant social media companies to publish their content moderation is transferring power from the tech ELITE to the public. No political committee is in charge, the company will be forced to be published their logs, the courts can be used when users think companies are still acting in bad faith and not properly publishing their moderation logs.

PSA: READ THE BILL, IT'S SIX PAGES!!!

https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Li...

Re: Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

#123

Post by driverdan »

joshuaheard wrote: post #114
christkv wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just change the wording to illegal speech instead of vague definition like indecent speech.

Use the First Amendment standard, which is basically anything but obscenity and threats of imminent violence.

That's unreasonable. Without moderation you'd have a 100 to 1 ratio of spam to good content. Platforms should be able to control content in the way they see fit for their platform.

Re: Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

#124

Post by jasode »

throwawaygh wrote: post #28

I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that Section 230 protections should come with some sort of obligation to allow free speech. However, the actual policy proposals for replacing Section 230 are all outright dystopian. Josh Hawley, in particular, is NOT a free speech advocate. His problem with Facebook/Tiwtter is perceived liberal bias, and the alternatives to Section 230 that he suggests are 100% about wrestling e…

>Section 230 protections should come with some sort of obligation to allow free speech. [...] Does anyone have a good proposal [...] and values free speech?

Nobody has a good proposal because every discussion about the idealism of "values free speech" is always hiding the true difficulty: nobody wants to be forced to pay for others' undesirable speech.

E.g. Youtube can't be a "free speech" platform because advertisers have free will and can choose to not pay for it. (Previous comment about Adpocalypse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23259087)

Always mentally translate "create a website that allows free speech" into "create a website that forces others to always pay for undesirable speech they don't agree with" -- and you will see that's a virtually impossible dream to accomplish. There is no broadcasting medium (including websites) in any country that doesn't have interference and pressure to remove/ban content via consumer boycotts, advertisers, subscribers, business judgement, or government officials.

Websites have the hard reality of requiring cpu/disk/bandwidth and they all cost money and that's the lever used by others that keeps "absolute free speech" from getting realistically implemented.

Re: Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

#125

Post by danShumway »

throwawaygh wrote: post #28

I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that Section 230 protections should come with some sort of obligation to allow free speech. However, the actual policy proposals for replacing Section 230 are all outright dystopian. Josh Hawley, in particular, is NOT a free speech advocate. His problem with Facebook/Tiwtter is perceived liberal bias, and the alternatives to Section 230 that he suggests are 100% about wrestling e…

If you're looking for an alternative take, check out some of Cory Doctorow's writing on this. His position is that forcing platform neutrality is less important when platforms don't have a monopoly over communication.

Different people have come up with different plans about how you could address tech monopolies, with varying degrees of extremity:

- Splitting up companies that control entire vertical slices of a market. Warren in particular was campaigning pretty hard on this, especially in regards to Amazon/Apple app stores.

- Forcing companies to allow data exports by consumers, and specifically to allow automated data exports. For example, Facebook would need to allow you to access an API to pull your data, so you could plug that API into a competitor instead of manually downloading everything.

- Weakening Computer Fraud and Abuse laws around site scraping and adversarial interoperability.

- Adding additional exceptions to the DMCA around interoperability. For example, allowing companies to break Kindle DRM for the purpose of moving books to a competing service if Amazon didn't provide a way for them to migrate books on its own.

- Forcing certain data formats to be standardized, or requiring standardized API layers on top of services.

There's a lot of debate in those areas about how far is too far, and what counts as a natural monopoly, and what negative side effects might exist for particular strategies. But, the thread running through all of them is that Section 230 is fine, awesome even. There's no need to get rid of it, 99% of the time we want moderation on most of our platforms.

Platform censorship is really only a problem when consumers don't have the ability to easily switch platforms/hosts, and in that case we should break the monopolies, not the Right to Filter[0]. You see people complain about censorship on Twitter, you don't see as many people complain about censorship on Mastodon, because on Mastodon you can set up your own server if you really need to. One of the biggest points of federated services is to allow communities to choose how aggressive they want to be about moderation.

[0]: https://anewdigitalmanifesto.com/#right-to-filter

Re: Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

#126

Post by haberman »

SN76477 wrote: post #121
throwawaygh wrote: post #28

I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that Section 230 protections should come with some sort of obligation to allow free speech. However, the actual policy proposals for replacing Section 230 are all outright dystopian. Josh Hawley, in particular, is NOT a free speech advocate. His problem with Facebook/Tiwtter is perceived liberal bias, and the alternatives to Section 230 that he suggests are 100% about wrestling e…

> His problem with Facebook/Tiwtter is perceived liberal bias This seems to be because they live in a bubble where everyone agrees with them. But when they look at the real world they do not see the same. giving them the perception of bias, but there is none. They simply have an unpopular opinion.

Twitter is a bubble. In the public at large, Trump still polls at a better than 40% approval rating and Joe Biden easily beat Twitter darlings like Warren and Sanders.

Re: Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

#127

Post by majormajor »

jasode wrote: post #124
throwawaygh wrote: post #28

I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that Section 230 protections should come with some sort of obligation to allow free speech. However, the actual policy proposals for replacing Section 230 are all outright dystopian. Josh Hawley, in particular, is NOT a free speech advocate. His problem with Facebook/Tiwtter is perceived liberal bias, and the alternatives to Section 230 that he suggests are 100% about wrestling e…

>Section 230 protections should come with some sort of obligation to allow free speech. [...] Does anyone have a good proposal [...] and values free speech? Nobody has a good proposal because every discussion about the idealism of "values free speech" is always hiding the true difficulty: nobody wants to be forced to pay for others' undesirable speech. E.g. Youtube can't be a "free speech" platform because advertiser…

> Always mentally translate "create a website that allows free speech" into "create a website that forces others to always pay for undesirable speech they don't agree with" -- and you will see that's a virtually impossible dream to accomplish. There is no broadcasting medium (including websites) in any country that doesn't have interference and pressure to remove/ban content via consumer boycotts, advertisers, subscribers, business judgement, or government officials.

> Websites have the hard reality of requiring cpu/disk/bandwidth and they all cost money and that's the lever used by others that keeps "absolute free speech" from getting realistically implemented.

There seems to be a blind spot here in the idea that "websites" have to be big monolithic platforms that give everyone a megaphone.

"Websites" where you can say whatever you want are and have been cheap, and there have been famous examples of this for decades (Timecube!).

But expecting to get access to someone else's megaphone is a very different question. Recently it's been mediated by "engagement" which is a socially terrible base metric, editorially - it encourages the most ridiculous, provocative thing. But this is still a choice, not just some technological inevitability or "correct" ideal state. Big platforms will always necessarily do some sort of curation.

Putting the government in charge of that curation seems silly, since the real cost of bypassing the platforms is so low. Yeah, you have to earn the eyeballs then, instead of piggybacking on other people's shit, but is that so bad?

It's like saying "people shouldn't make independent movies anymore, we're just gonna have the government review all the scripts the big studios take on and make them take some they normally wouldn't."

Re: Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

#128

Post by throwaway_USD »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #105
throwaway_USD wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you bothered to read the articles I linked they include many other examples such as: >last year, in a Wisconsin case, a jury found a Milwaukee gun store liable for selling a gun to a 21-year-old customer

The liability springs from enabling a straw purchase the plaintiff alleges should have been obvious and therefore the sale should have been denied. I imagine there is evidence (video, witnesses, etc.) that tend to indicate that the dealer knew or should have known he was facilitating a straw purchase.

Yes, you need a underlying cause of action...that's how law works.

The point is liability, gun manufactures and dealers can be liable for the products used in killings by third parties...even after lawful sales.

Take the case of the Sandy Hook victims that sued Remington. Initially their case was dismissed, because the lower court rules the manufacture is shielded from any liability under Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), but on appeal the Court overturned the ruling and declared in fact the victims families could sue under State law on separate causes of actions/theories. In that case they were suing Remington for violating the States Fair Trade Practices Act (on the factual basis that Remington marketed military style weapons to civilians). So you could just as easily shrug that of and say "well, liability there sprang from...", of course liability has to spring from somewhere.

So in the case of tech, if you wanted to sue the platform, you need an underlying cause of action...whether that may be defamation, or trademark infringement, or copyright infringement. Liability for the tech platforms would have to spring from somewhere just like any other cause of action.

Re: Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

#129

Post by timmytokyo »

joshuamorton wrote: post #104

Perhaps the most important line from the article: > The Justice Department proposal is a legislative plan that would have to be adopted by Congress.

This is an important point. Given that Congress is divided between the two parties, the chances of something like this becoming law are zero. So why is the proposal being made? It's a presidential election year, and the president is working the refs, trying to scare them away from anything that might make it even a little bit harder for him to get his "message" out.

Re: Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

#130

Post by throwaway_USD »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #106
throwaway_USD wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the articles: >in a Wisconsin case, a jury found a Milwaukee gun store liable for selling a gun to a 21-year-old customer...The gun was later used by an 18-year-old to shoot and critically wound two police officers, who were awarded damages by the jury. Jury verdict (legal liability) against the seller of the gun which was used in a murder by someone other than the person they sold it to. FYI: Walmart doesn't se…

The liability in these cases was related to alleged negligence related to facilitating straw purchases. And, in the PA case, possibly selling bullets to an underage buyer.

As mentioned before that's how law works. Before the erosion of the federal law protecting manufacturers and sellers of firearms, cases with the very same set of fact would have been dismissed, because there was a law shielding them from liability.

The parties have to be liable for something...and the same would be true with tech companies if their current federal protections were removed, they would have to be liable for some valid legal claims such as negligence, defamation, copyright infringement, trademark infringement.

The point is removing the federal shield the multi-billion dollar companies lobbied for to protect themselves from lawsuits, so when their is an otherwise lawful claim for which they are liable they can be sued.

Honestly, how did you think it works?

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