431–440 of 577 posts
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>Also, Twitter now is blocking an URL of a legitimate university promoting a trial with hydroxychloroquine. What university? What sources do you have on that?
McGill University in Canada. Source: https://twitter.com/DrToddLee/status/1261442201369939968
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> It's just a rephrasing of the theory that Google is acting like a publisher (information content provider) not a platform (interactive computer service), You are creating a test for platform vs. publisher that is not in the law. The law as linked does not even prohibit the censorship of political opinions, and in fact states that internet service providers may block constitutionally protected speech . It may be int…
> You are creating a test for platform vs. publisher that is not in the law. There's a clear distinction between "publisher" (information content provider) and "platform" (interactive computer service) in the law. But the law provides no test for which category a particular entity falls into, so we have to provide this. No one is claiming that the proposed test is the current test, just that it's a good test, consist…
> The term “interactive computer service” means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions.
> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
These two combined mean that you cannot find a way to consider Google to be a publisher under section 230. If they meet the definition of an Interactive Computer Service, then they cannot be a publisher under 230.
> But the courts do.
The courts have not weighed in on this aspect of Section 230, but they taken a very expansive view of the level of immunity that it grants. Particularly interesting here would be Blumenthal vs. Drudge, which granted AOL Section 230 immunity even though the content in question was written by AOL’s contractor, which is probably closer to the line than moderation.
Outside the courts, the general legal consensus is that Section 230 does not require impartiality or neutrality at all, based on both the text of the law and the congressional record around when it was passed.
> That sounds like fear mongering. If we can trust the US government to do anything, its to respect the first amendment.
Or, you know, it’s in line with the past few centuries of liberal democratic tradition to limit the power of the government in the area of free speech. The point of the 1st amendment is explicitly to get the government out of the business of deciding what is and is not acceptable speech. You would put it back into that process.
Also, you probably shouldn’t trust the government too openly here. Ever heard the phrase “shout fire in a crowded theater”? It comes from a supreme court case that jailed somebody for protesting WW1 (Schenck v. United States). That bad precedent stood for 50 years. Just saying.
Of course, there are so, so, so many practical problems with just saying “Google cannot block anything that’s protected speech.” Pornography is protected, violent videos are protected, hate speech is protected. Much of the internet becomes completely inoperable if you set the bar at protected speech; surely we’ve all seen enough poorly moderated forums to predict that.
It’s easy to imagine a scenario where Google can block “obscene” speech but not political speech. But where is that line? And who do you trust to have permanent, hegemonic power to decide what is and is not offensive for the entire Internet? Remember that we got into this mess partly because one group of people decided that another group of people’s political opinions were offensive; do not assume that they wouldn’t use the power of the government to suppress each other given the opportunity.
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We're advocating moving this power from massive corporations to the government, because at least the government has some accountability, whereas Google has NONE.
I argue that the government has essentially zero accountability, while the private sector has a huge degree. Our bandwidth for holding government accountable is so limited as to be useless. Consider the federal gov't, since I think it's what you're mostly talking about anyway. We get to vote for * 1x Presidential primary every 4 years, from a field of, let's say, 8 to be generous: 3 bits * 1x President every 4 years,…
Public protests/rallies/marches do bring about change in government/government policies. Many politicians do care about their public image, and are susceptible to manipulation based on public pressure.
>Compare that with private sector. Even for entities like Google, we've got huge latitude to vote with our feet. We can use DuckDuckGo, etc. Our choices as consumers provides a comparatively enormous bandwidth.
Okay, so agreeing with you for the sake of argument - they provide a bandwidth, in theory, but what is the pointif nobody actually uses it? It is "effectively" zero accountability. No mass exodus from Google/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook/Twitter/Whatsapp/TikTok/insert bad company/...
This is the result of out-sourcing juristic work to private companies: If we treat Android, Window, Twitter, Facebook, as public spaces/goods, then private companies should not have a say in what is allowed/not-allowed on their platforms. This is work for the courts and police to decide and enforce. If we treat those platforms as private. Then we are playing in s/o's backyard. You are totally at their mercy. They hav…
The only thing that needs to be constitutionally challenged is whether discretionary content filtering constitutes agency in publication under section 230 of the CDA.
What's the constitutional argument against the current legislation of the CDA?
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I argue that the government has essentially zero accountability, while the private sector has a huge degree. Our bandwidth for holding government accountable is so limited as to be useless. Consider the federal gov't, since I think it's what you're mostly talking about anyway. We get to vote for * 1x Presidential primary every 4 years, from a field of, let's say, 8 to be generous: 3 bits * 1x President every 4 years,…
> Even for entities like Google, we've got huge latitude to vote with our feet. We can use DuckDuckGo, etc. Great, that's two options. Maybe there's half of another.
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We're advocating moving this power from massive corporations to the government, because at least the government has some accountability, whereas Google has NONE.
Maybe you're advocating that, but -- even as someone who is generally skeptical of corporate power and the presumed wonders of the marketplace, and more amenable to reasonable government regulation (as subjective as that clearly is) -- this sounds like a pretty dubious idea. The government regulation that might be called for in situations like this is regulation that puts a few limits on corporate control of massive…
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Do I understand you correctly that you're talking about whether discretionary content filtering by a platform makes them into a publisher? This would mean that protections that apply to platforms wouldn't apply to them anymore for things like copyright infringement, right?
Section 230 provides immunity to Google and similar for content posted by other users and services. The notion that section 230 requires that Google be neutral in order to maintain that protection is not in the text of the law, and appears to be made up out of whole cloth. I will quote the entirely of section 230 below, see for yourself. > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the…
To be more clear, Google and other web publishers already enjoy immunity for content posted by other users and services. That is the default state of things under American law.
What section 230 does is preserve their immunity even if they exercise editorial discretion over some of the content that other users/services post. Without section 230, they would still have immunity. But they'd lose it as soon as they did any moderation at all of user-provided content.
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Where is this accountability? The Senate by design has two senators regardless of the population of the state, meaning that if you live in a more populous state, you have less voting power than people living in the flyover states. The electoral college also biases the Presidential election to less populous states. Not to mention even in the House of Representatives the ratio between the parties doesn’t match the popu…
In the US, bills (new laws) have to pass both the Senate and the House, and the House is population based. It's a system of checks and balances to ensure that large states and small states don't control each other. In theory, if a particular change is favored by one set and not the other, then it doesn't pass. In practice it's a little murkier than that, but the way you presented it makes it sound like the system is…
So let’s say this mythical law is passed where you give the government more power over private business. The actual execution of the law is going to be carried out by unelected regulatory agencies where your main recourse is unelected judges.
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> Even for entities like Google, we've got huge latitude to vote with our feet. We can use DuckDuckGo, etc. Great, that's two options. Maybe there's half of another.
There is also Bing.
This is the result of out-sourcing juristic work to private companies: If we treat Android, Window, Twitter, Facebook, as public spaces/goods, then private companies should not have a say in what is allowed/not-allowed on their platforms. This is work for the courts and police to decide and enforce. If we treat those platforms as private. Then we are playing in s/o's backyard. You are totally at their mercy. They hav…
Maybe this depends on the laws of a country. Also, IMHO either a company offers their services to everyone or to no one. There are, of course, exceptions that aren't really exceptions. Creative work in an "exception". For instance, French painter Monet was so popular that he could choose his customers.