Justice Department to propose limiting internet firms’ Section 230 protections • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

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…

You assume that they have the same values and definitions of transgressions. That just plain isn't true no matter how "obvious" it is that something is or isn't one.

Besides blaming them for being unable to stop state actors is a bizzare form of victim blaming - complicity would make sense sure but not inability to stop it. Asking to be both stronger than and weaker than states at the same time is an unusual demand.

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

#192

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

I wonder if the colloquial understanding of platforms and ownership got bad for reasons even aside from the blatant propaganda of special interests.

Back in even the 90s and 00s even the dim bulbs responding to other dim bulbs like Yahoo or AOL doing dumb stuff like shutting down child molestation victim support group channels from ham-handed attempts to try to moderate didn't lead to any idiots thinking that the government should somehow punish them even though it was rightfully called stupid and morally wrong. Was it because they actually understood the internet existed as many small sites as well as the big names?

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

#193

Post by seemslegit » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #189

seemslegit wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah all those dumb secretaries, presidents, senators and the people who work for them, they really ought to be reading more HN to learn about how things work. Unless of course any company whose viability materially depends on Section 230 protections would have been dead in the water pretty much in any other jurisdiction on earth in the first place, the threat of moving out of the US was a naked bluff and the powers…

They have a lengthy history of technically illiterate demagoguery and utterly idiotic statements about it while only paying attention to what their lobbyists feed them.

What does this have to do with technical literacy ? They're not writing an RFC and there's nothing technical about section 230 of the communication decency act.

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

#194

Post by g-b-r » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

charwalker wrote: post #187

g-b-r wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what you meant with "experimenting with markdown"? (since I see you're not a new user)

Markdown is a common formatting system for github, reddit, and a few other sites. I like how it works so have been looking up more complex how to's and messed around with comments on some sites to see which may support markdown formatting. One thing it lets you do is hyperlink sites where [This would be the link itself](and the actual website goes here) like [Google](www.google.com). That doesn't work here, but I gav…

Thanks, I didn't need to know what Markdown is, but thanks :)

I asked you because it seemed strange that a user with 120 points and 9 months of usage didn't know yet that this site doesn't support Markdown or anything close, and I wondered if they added some support lately without me noticing.

The only markup/formatting supported by Hacker News is what's described at https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc .

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

#195

Post by Communitivity » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 12:23 PM UTC

seemslegit wrote: post #70

sobani wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you name many EU startups that IPOd or got acquired for an impressive amount during the last decade or were even considered "unicorns" at any point by anyone other than themselves? You mean besides companies like Spotify, Rovio (Angry Birds) or Mojang (Minecraft)?

That's really not that much to show for an economic superpower of almost half a billion people and none of these companies rely on the protections offered by Section 230. I mean maybe if you got creative enough in minecraft you could trigger some but it's owned by Microsoft now so you'll have to deal with their censorship first.

We have different ideas of success. My idea of a successful startup is not that it must reach unicorn status, but that it either has a successful exit where the founders and early employees comfortable enough that they can spend time on their next startup adventure; or that the company survives and continues to grow.

You place a lot of value in unicorns, but there are downsides to shooting to be a unicorn too. If you make it there you may be fabulously wealthy, but you'll have so much investment that most lose control of what they created and many succumb to bad investments that have so much dilution the cap table becomes upside down. Also most who aim for unicorn status ("I want to be rich!") fail. I'm ignoring bubbles, because if you have something that has no real contribution but rides/sparks a fad, then you can still get a lot of investment during a bubble - don't know if you could get to unicorn status though.

As for those companies not being capable of being platforms for hate speech: Minecraft obviously, Spotify is music so that should be a clear possibility, Telegram is messaging so that is also a possible. The ones that are financial apps are unlikely hate speech platforms, unless they allow comments or reviews.