Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 195 posts

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

#141

Post by bilbo0s »

haberman wrote: post #132
jasode wrote: 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…

>The cpu/disk/bandwidth to store and serve text are so small as to be irrelevant.

Just wondering, in your view, if these costs are so "small", who pays them when advertisers abandon the website? Where does the money come from to cover these costs? (Small as they are.)

Full Disclosure: My own belief is that IRL these costs, especially for something at the scale of YouTube, are not likely to be terribly "small" at all. I seriously doubt most organizations could countenance such costs with no return on that investment.

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

#142

Post by dane-pgp »

haberman wrote: post #126
SN76477 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Joe Biden easily beat Twitter darlings like Warren and Sanders.

It's worth asking whether Biden's popularity relative to Warren and Sanders is actually an artefact of an under-use of preferential/ranked voting systems for polls and primaries.

To pick an example from last September[0], Warren and Sanders had 19.7% and 17.1% support, respectively, while Biden had 29.6%. That's not to say that Warren or Sanders would have had twice as much support if the other had ended their candidacy then, but it does cast doubt on the claim that Biden "easily beat" them.

[0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/25/20882026/d...

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

#143

Post by amanaplanacanal »

dane-pgp wrote: post #135
driverdan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems that could easily be weaponized to remove minority opinions.

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

#144

Post by scarface74 »

save_ferris wrote: post #12
scarface74 wrote: post #5

And this is all because the President got mad at Twitter on the right and the left always think more government is the answer. This is what happens when you get government involvement in tech.

Why isn't the market holding Facebook accountable for the numerous transgressions we've seen coming out of that company over the last several years? Because people don't understand or care how the money is made, which fundamentally undermines the argument that the market is always right. From broad, repeated invasions of online privacy to numerous scandals involving state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, Facebook…

The market had spoken. They don’t care.

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

#145

Post by christkv »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #143
dane-pgp wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems that could easily be weaponized to remove minority opinions.

I would rather hope it kills the big platforms and forces a reverting to smaller platforms and message boards. Social media has become a scourge on humanity.

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

#146

Post by notahacker »

ch4s3 wrote: post #31
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…

> some sort of obligation to allow free speech Isn’t that the opposite of what the text of the law says? Doesn’t it provide for protection when moderate content that “one may find objectionable”, which could basically be anything.

The text of the law is a mess: it gives content providers the ability to define whatever moderation policy they want, but also gives objectors the right to sue for punitive damages in the event that they disagree with how it is applied, with their claims being judged by an whether they uphold undefined 'fair dealing standards'.

It's not so much an attempt to defend free speech as to bury the affected companies in litigation if their moderation policies aren't either nonexistent or up front and aggressive: exactly the situation Section 230 was written to avoid. It's just in this case the lawsuits will come from the parties seeking to cause offence rather than the offended.

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

#147

Post by CM30 »

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…

Is it really the case that advertisers won't pay for it though?

I get that many advertisers won't, but even companies who do want to advertise on controversial content don't really get the choice to do so, since platforms seem more prone to flat out removing/banning said content rather than putting it behind a 'controversial' flag and letting advertisers opt in/out of advertising on it.

These sites already have systems to mark what kind of content something is, and advertisers can already choose to market on content in some categories and not others. So it'd seem like if there are companies willing to pay for such speech, they should be allowed to.

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

#148

Post by root_axis »

jhawk28 wrote: post #73
pavlov wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s surreal that a popular Republican position now is: “We want the government to impose giant fines and new regulations on the most successful American businesses of the past decade, hopefully destroying them.” Regardless of the merits of the idea, it’s an amazing paradigm shift for the GOP.

I don't think that is the position. I think they are just tired of a perceived bias against the right by left leaning aggregation organizations compounded with the cancel culture.

What about the perceived bias against the left by right leaning news and radio organizations? This is dishonest partisan hackery.

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

#149

Post by duskwuff »

mudil wrote: post #83

When social media firms ban conservative voices, they need to be sued for interference with interstate commerce. Because that's what it is.

This is a gross misunderstanding of the Commerce Clause. It does not, and has never, placed any responsibility on private businesses to facilitate interstate commerce. (Nor is it clear that publishing an online posting is even a form of commerce.)

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

#150

Post by notahacker »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #122
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 at…

The published text doesn't require companies to publish logs, it requires them to publish a policy [something Twitter and Facebook already do to some extent] and then allows vexatious litigants to sue for $5k in imaginary damages if they disagree with how the policy is applied.

This isn't transferring power from the tech elite to the public, it's making trolling the new patent trolling.

Post reply on HN