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Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

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131–140 of 195 posts

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

#131

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 like HN’s approach and wish more platforms would follow a similar format. As far as I know, nothing is ever “removed” from the site - it’s just greyed out or hidden by default. Anyone who wants to read the bothersome comments can flip the switch to see them but no one can reply to them which seems like a really effective approach to me.

If a “censored” tweet couldn’t be shared/retweeted/replied to but was still available for anyone who wanted to seek it out then the idea (however distasteful) hasn’t been censored strictly speaking but it also hasn’t been amplified. I’d prefer a compromise that leaves control over acceptable content in the hands of the platform owner or the users rather than the government.

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

#132
post #124

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…

This is close, but misses the mark slightly I think. The cpu/disk/bandwidth to store and serve text are so small as to be irrelevant. I don't think it's a cost issue.

The issue is one of association. There are strong social forces that punish association with any distasteful speech. The association taints everything (and everyone) it touches, and the liability in the form of negative blowback can grow far beyond whatever costs were involved in actually serving the content.

Even if some set of individuals were willing to donate all the hosting costs of the distasteful speech, there would be strong social pressure for hosting platforms not to accept the money.

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

#133
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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, subscr…

[deleted]

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

#134

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 like HN’s approach and wish more platforms would follow a similar format. As far as I know, nothing is ever “removed” from the site - it’s just greyed out or hidden by default. Anyone who wants to read the bothersome comments can flip the switch to see them but no one can reply to them which seems like a really effective approach to me. If a “censored” tweet couldn’t be shared/retweeted/replied to but was still ava…

In this comment thread you can find at least one comment removed. Search for the text "[flagged]".

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

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Banning spam might be possible without giving platforms the power to make their own judgements about the truthfulness or decency of the content they host.

If 90% of (a random subset of) users agree that a given piece of content is spam, the platform should be entitled to delete the content. The company would then be allowed to ban a user after a certain number of strikes, possibly subject to an appeals process where a human employee checks that this isn't a case of a minority viewpoint being unfairly silenced by false reports.

This would democratise these platforms, and only give companies the discretion to allow more content than their users are interested in, rather than less.

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

#136
post #118

Be careful of what you ask for. Section 230 exists because the courts punished Prodigy because they tried to moderate their forums but did it imperfectly, but didn't punish CompuServe because they let anything go. The idea is to allow imperfect moderation in addition to both zero and perfect moderation. The internet without section 230 isn't a bastion of internet freedom. It's 4chan and 8chan. It's a shithole.

More precisely, the internet without section 230 is two things: it's 4chan and 8chan on one side and tightly moderated corporate-run comment sections on the other (because you need extremely proactive moderation to avoid liability for things people post). You'll still have social media, because the world loves it, but everything will be reviewed by a compliance team at a big tech company instead of being available im…

Well, it's good to know it's not all bad then.

Between the corporately-curated snail mail and 4chan, I think social media will skew toward 4chan, which I'd gladly accept. Frankly, I like it even more than moderately-moderated social media; it's a lot funner. :D Shithole, yes, but charming and fun. But that's probably mostly a product of its anonymity.

Also, imperfect moderation is the thing that tends to annoy users most. With perfect moderation (like a blog with comments disabled?), you have no hope. With no moderation, there's no danger. With imperfect moderation, there's inconsistent or nonsensical bans, there's the urge to take chances and get punished, sometimes by capricious mods, and there's endless sidebars of rules to read before posting. Ugg.

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

#137
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

This is close, but misses the mark slightly I think. The cpu/disk/bandwidth to store and serve text are so small as to be irrelevant. I don't think it's a cost issue. The issue is one of association . There are strong social forces that punish association with any distasteful speech. The association taints everything (and everyone) it touches, and the liability in the form of negative blowback can grow far beyond wha…

>I don't think it's a cost issue. The issue is one of association. There are strong social forces that punish association with any distasteful speech.

Yes, association is also an issue so there are at least 2 forces happening: cost and/or association.

Since I used the word "undesirable" and you used the word "distasteful", I believe we're thinking of 2 different scenarios:

(1) inconvenient/controversial content like politics or alternative COVID theories

(2) vile or obscene content like beheadings or adult porn

My perception is that the censorship topics I see getting press is more of (1) than (2) and the levers putting pressure on the money trail is the primary weapon for (1).

E.g. supporting Hong Kong protests are not category (2) vile/obscene (maybe your "distasteful"?) but nevertheless, Apple removed podcasts with that subject matter from the App Store to appease China[1].

Even with Apple's billions in its war chest, Tim Cook did not say "China can fuck off -- we're keeping the podcasts because our App Store is all about free speech!". That didn't happen because Apple wants to sell smartphones in China and so they will cooperate with China's limits on "free speech".

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/12/apple-rem...

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

#138
post #26

Can someone who supports "let's hold internet platforms responsible for what their users do on their platform" explain how that's any different than "let's hold gun manufacturers responsible for what users do with their guns?" I fail to see a difference between the two, and think both are untenable fantasies.

You don't see the difference between "let's hold companies responsible for what people do as part of utilizing their services, while utilizing their services" and "let's hold companies responsible for what people do with an item they have purchased once entirely out of the supervision of that company, without any possible oversight or control"? I can't hold a skateboard co. responsible for what people do with skatebo…

Okay, so are electric companies responsible for people growing weed?

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

#139

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…

To me, the question is whether the web is a something people use through a middleman, i.e., someone else's website like Mark Zuckerberg's, versus a thing that we use directly, i.e., having our own websites. If we follow the later thinking, then of course we are personally responsible for what content we place on the website.

In either case, the web in its design is still a "public place" where "free speech" can occur, where anyone who is connected to the internet has the potential (setting aside issues of state censorship) to communicate, via a public website, anything to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Section 230 was reputed to be passed in response to a lawsuit against Prodigy, an online subscription service, which technically, IMO, was not the same as the emerging "web". IMO, services like Prodigy, Compuserve, America Online, etc. were walled gardens that could exist outside of the web. Rightly or wrongly, I always viewed Section 230 as protecting ISP's from litigation arising out of the content people included on their websites, not as protecting websites from litigation arising out of the publication of the content. It is up to the website owner to remove offending content, not the ISP to block access to it. This makes practical sense. We wanted ISPs to stay in businesss.

As crazy as it may seem to consider messing with Section 230, there is certainly an argument that the protection it affords has been usurped in ways never anticipated, by enormous "communal" websites larger than anyone could have imagined. When someone's website has billions of pages, comprising submissions from the general public, it becomes impractical to remove offending content. I doubt Section 230 was intended to address this problem, to keep a small number of individual websites in business and ensure the creation of a small number of advertising services billionaires.

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

#140
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic you would hold the phone company responsible for calls and texts happening over their network.

A phone company doesn't have algorithms that decide which calls go through and which don't, or which calls are marked as important and which are not.

They don't? What about VOIP?
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