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DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

justice.gov

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Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#281

Post by kats »

ROARosen wrote: post #77

I don't care for most of it except this: >> Carve-Out for Actors Who Purposefully Blind Themselves and Law Enforcement to Illicit Material >>...it makes little sense to apply “Good Samaritan” immunity to a provider that intentionally designs or operates its services in a way that impairs its ability to identify criminal activity occurring on (or through) its services, or to produce relevant information to government…

Would WebRTC become practically illegal? Because any peer-to-peer communication might be argued to result "in an inability to identify or access most (if not all) unlawful content."

If a website has a feature like voice channels or video calls that are peer-to-peer, then for "most (if not all)" of it the website has an inability to identify unlawful content. e.g. Zoom, Slack, Google Voice, and Discord would have to monitor your calls so they have the ability to identify unlawful content.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#282

Post by ineedasername »

Drawing the line on this is one heck of a huge gray area

It says providers cannot purposely "turn a blind eye" to potentially illicit traffic, i.e., cannot choose not to track and record such data. Yet any data about individual users and their behavioral patterns has the potential to help reveal illicit activity.

Meaning a provider could essentially be required to track everything possible in order to avoid ignoring potential illicit content. Keystrokes? Absolutely they could reveal illicit activity. By deciding not recording them, a provider is turning a blind eye to that possibility.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#283

Post by webmaven »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #203
firebird84 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a tipline isn't so bad on its own, but then the problem becomes: User leaves unverifiable tip, what do you do with it? It's not like you can break the encryption...

Sounds like we are turning our entire website infrastructure into a 1984 monitoring system

> Sounds like we are turning our entire website infrastructure into a 1984 monitoring system

It already is one for all intents purposes, just not one that is used ubiquitously (except in the sense of getting us to buy stuff). All that is changing is that the panopticon is becoming slightly more explicit than implicit, making it that much easier to (eventually) flip a policy switch that designates groups wholesale as "enemies of the people" requiring active scrutiny and interference.

I'm reminded of this cartoon:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-x2BP9Xd7xfo/T7bvuweLPfI/AAAAAAAACj...

Twenty years later and it is still fresh as a daisy.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#284

Post by jackcosgrove »

BobbyJo wrote: post #268
ryukafalz wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, this is the one section that I don’t want added. The “Bad Samaritan carve-out” seems to cover cases where the platform is aware of the content pretty well, and I’d support adding that. This is about making them liable even when they aren’t aware of it, which is problematic for any site that handles anything user-generated, especially if you don’t have an army of moderators like Facebook does.

Maybe needing an army of moderators is just the cost of doing business when it comes to hosting user content. I'm weary of that change being made, but really, I don't see a viable alternative, or a good argument against it. If you can't moderate content at some scale, then maybe you just shouldn't host content at that scale. I think there may be a light, or a deeper darkness, that comes out of this though. We may see…

Moderation is the secret sauce of user-generated content. You shouldn't allow for user generated content if you aren't prepared to moderate it. It seems many people still don't understand that this is the biggest problem facing social media. Not scaling, not engagement, but moderation.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#285

Post by ryukafalz »

BobbyJo wrote: post #268
ryukafalz wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, this is the one section that I don’t want added. The “Bad Samaritan carve-out” seems to cover cases where the platform is aware of the content pretty well, and I’d support adding that. This is about making them liable even when they aren’t aware of it, which is problematic for any site that handles anything user-generated, especially if you don’t have an army of moderators like Facebook does.

Maybe needing an army of moderators is just the cost of doing business when it comes to hosting user content. I'm weary of that change being made, but really, I don't see a viable alternative, or a good argument against it. If you can't moderate content at some scale, then maybe you just shouldn't host content at that scale. I think there may be a light, or a deeper darkness, that comes out of this though. We may see…

And instantly every chat and email service without millions of dollars to throw at content filtering is forced to shut down.

No, they’re not social network type services like Facebook or Twitter, but... section 230 doesn’t discriminate between types of online services!

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#286

Post by webmaven »

hawkice wrote: post #219
gwright wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It blows my mind this isn't a separations of powers concern to even allow these people to draft language or make any statements on the record of what they think the law ought to be. That seem to be an untenable position. Legislation is drafted with input from lots of different groups including the agencies that might be enforcing the legislation. Proposing legislative changes isn't infringing on the powers of the L…

You want to pay a cop to write the law? Put it under their seal, the one they use to exercise police powers? Sure, other people vote on it. But it stinks.

> You want to pay a cop to write the law? Put it under their seal, the one they use to exercise police powers?

> Sure, other people vote on it. But it stinks.

Wait, do you think that police departments and police unions don't participate in drafting laws?

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#287

Post by salawat »

qball wrote: post #154
saurik wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so I was under the impression that if you are say, a telephone network, that people can't sue you for stuff people do during phone calls, under the premise that the phone company doesn't moderate phone calls; and my understanding of the "bargain struck" is then that online web forums felt that centralized moderation was absolutely critical to spam prevention and search/discovery services (I disagree on the practi…

That impression is correct; the precedent is here ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc .). A lot of people don't really seem to understand that about S. 230- services that exist basically to pass messages have never needed the protection and that won't change. The best example outside of messaging services is probably content delivery networks, and I'll pick on CloudFlare because they're a gr…

PayPal was already screwed in the moderation department because there is no equivalent of common carrier for financial services. In fact, operating under the common carrier model as a financial service is strictly illegal. You have to vet your customers and perform best effort blocking of sanctioned individuals.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#289

Post by ByteJockey »

refurb wrote: post #70
buttersbrian wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not exactly true. "Speech is not protected by the First Amendment if the speaker intends to incite a violation of the law that is both imminent and likely." Someone randomly spouting off that people of a race or ideology should be wiped out doesn't always/exactly pass this legal test.

Great point. Visit any US neo-Nazi website and you’ll see language that one could argue is “threatening to a specific group”. But unless it’s “hey, everyone gather at 5 pm on Main St so we can start shooting people”, it’s still protected language.

That's actually a point that I don't think has been decided yet, specifically "imminent". It's been ruled that "at some unspecified point in the future" doesn't count, but I can't find a case (with an admittedly short search) about where the exact boundaries are.

I don't know what the exact legal definition of imminent is, but the layman's definition involves the thing happening soon.

It may well depend on how close to 5 it is (but what timezone?).

The same sentence with the words "right now" would almost certainly meet the test though (assuming the action was actually likely to occur).

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#290

Post by shawticus »

"The current interpretations of Section 230 have enabled online platforms to hide behind the immunity to censor lawful speech in bad faith and is inconsistent with their own terms of service. To remedy this, the department’s legislative proposal revises and clarifies the existing language of Section 230 and replaces vague terms that may be used to shield arbitrary content moderation decisions with more concrete language that gives greater guidance to platforms, users, and courts.

The legislative proposal also adds language to the definition of “information content provider” to clarify when platforms should be responsible for speech that they affirmatively and substantively contribute to or modify."

Can someone competently defend this not being used directly as a tool by Trump to prevent his deeply deeply harmful misinformation about the virus and other things from being censored?

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