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DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

justice.gov

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Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#231

Post by tga_d »

jimbob45 wrote: post #227
InTheArena wrote: post #19

here is the DoJ's breakdown and red-line changes: 1. Incentivizing Online Platforms to Address Illicit Content The first category of potential reforms is aimed at incentivizing platforms to address the growing amount of illicit content online, while preserving the core of Section 230’s immunity for defamation. a. Bad Samaritan Carve-Out. First, the Department proposes denying Section 230 immunity to truly bad actors.…

>Bad Samaritan carve-out You mean...Samaritan? The Samaritans were the Nazis of their day and the legend is about a Samaritan that rose above his race and did what was good - thus, the one Good Samaritan. You wouldn’t say Bad Nazi. You just say Nazi and Good Nazi.

That is not what the parable of the Samaritan was implying, nor the context of it. Samaritans were and are an ethnic group that historically has had friction with other Semitic groups (notably, Jews). They were not in any way "Nazis of their day," and the parable was not about that particular Samaritan being better than other Samaritans, but about morality being a stronger tie than culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Good_Samaritan

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#232

Post by tomcam »

shadowgovt wrote: post #173
majormajor wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd think people who operate in a realm where text becomes action executed by a machine designed wholly around faithful, reliable execution of text fed to it would come to learn the reality-defining power of rules. Ah, but don't forget how often the code that gets written doesn't do exactly what the writer expected! Or is exploited by another party...

Indeed. I wouldn't say the law is for show; I would say the written law isn't the whole story. Reality is a three-edged sword: the law, the intent, and the implementation. "For show," to me, implies you can ignore it and charge forward, bull-in-a-china-shop-style. That doesn't work in law or computers; naive invalid input gets rejected by the first-stage parser, and a court complaint completely ignorant of the law ca…

Username strangely appropriate

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#233

Post by tomcam »

tdrp wrote: post #189
tangjurine wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Section 5c is particularly problematic. It disallows shadow-bans if I'm reading correctly. Can you explain more, I'm not really seeing it... Also how is disallowing shadowbanning problematic? I always never liked it.

As a user I don't like it but as an app/website provider, it significantly delays spammers, giving them the illusion that what they're doing is working so they should just maintain the status quo. If instead you outright ban them, they adjust or learn about your anti-spam algorithms and just keep going.

Wonder if one answer would be to move potential spam, etc. to a separate-but-equal area. So if you're in /r/Politics and start advertising your get-rich-quick scheme your post is moved to /r/PoliticsSandbox.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#234

Post by ryanmarsh »

(5) GOOD FAITH. To restrict access to or availability of specific material “in good faith,” an 16 interactive computer service provider must— 18 (A) have publicly available terms of service or use that state plainly and with particularity the criteria the service provider employs in its content20 moderation practices;

This is going to be very interesting for Reddit. Not that I disagree with the text.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#236

Post by shakezula »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #222
reb wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better measuring stick might be lawyers and judges regularly applying the law in inconsistent ways.

Police discretion is a great example imho. Watch everywhere in your day to day as laws are applied based on a subjective real time evaluation of the situation.

And most cops barely even know the laws themselves. There have been multiple times I’ve heard cops incorrectly cite state laws.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#237

Post by cirno »

InTheArena wrote: post #19

here is the DoJ's breakdown and red-line changes: 1. Incentivizing Online Platforms to Address Illicit Content The first category of potential reforms is aimed at incentivizing platforms to address the growing amount of illicit content online, while preserving the core of Section 230’s immunity for defamation. a. Bad Samaritan Carve-Out. First, the Department proposes denying Section 230 immunity to truly bad actors.…

> b. Carve-Outs for Child Abuse, Terrorism, and Cyber-Stalking. Second, the Department proposes exempting from immunity specific categories of claims that address particularly egregious content, including (1) child exploitation and sexual abuse, (2) terrorism, and (3) cyber-stalking. These targeted carve-outs would halt the over-expansion of Section 230 immunity and enable victims to seek civil redress in causes of action far afield from the original purpose of the statute.

Can we please just do this one on its own either way? This has been a real problem online with companies like Cloudflare offering hosting to websites engaging in these areas. These three are explicitly illegal and yet sites that harbor this content, especially cyber-stalking sites like Kiwi Farms (47 U.S.C. § 223), are still somehow online.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#238

Post by intended »

tangjurine wrote: post #119
joshuamorton wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. That's a good source. Section 5c is particularly problematic. It disallows shadow-bans if I'm reading correctly. Section f9 is...suspicious. Section d4 seems painful for small providers. You lose good samaritan status if there isn't a good way to contact you. Section c2A is the important one. It basically means that a site cannot remove content unless it is objectively obscene or extreme. Section g5A suggests th…

>Section 5c is particularly problematic. It disallows shadow-bans if I'm reading correctly. Can you explain more, I'm not really seeing it... Also how is disallowing shadowbanning problematic? I always never liked it.

You could break up moderation issues into 2 types:

Type 1: Errors, ignorance, human foibles. Primarily annoying/asshole behavior.

Type 2: Malice and malformed content. Spam, propaganda, trolling.

I can argue against shadow bans for the first type. For the second type, any evidence of your operational method is a data point to break the moderation barrier and infect/manipulate users.

If a spammer knows its been banned, it switches over to another account. If a troll knows where your ban lines are, they come back and stay exactly on the edge to trigger someone or make them fall over the line.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#239

Post by ryanmarsh »

“BAD SAMARITAN” CARVE-OUT. Subsection (c)(1) shall not apply in any criminal prosecution under State law or any State or Federal civil action brought against an interactive computer service provider if, at the time of the facts giving rise to the prosecution or action, the service provider acted purposefully with the conscious object to promote, solicit, or facilitate material or activity by another information content provider that the service provider knew or had reason to believe would violate Federal criminal law, if knowingly disseminated or engaged in.

Color me surprised this wasn't already in the law.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#240

Post by teawrecks »

shadowgovt wrote: post #170
reb wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers are specifically interested in exploring/exploiting the way human nature makes all machines vulnerable. IE taking a reasonably well-defined system of rules built with good intentions and using them for something entirely unintended. In this sense, law is similar to code, but far easier to exploit.

> In this sense, law is similar to code, but far easier to exploit. I see way too few computer engineer criminal masterminds to accept this hypothesis at face value. ;)

They're just that good ;)
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