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DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

justice.gov

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Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could destroy the tech oligopolies. This would tangle them in unlimited court cases allowing for smaller sites with smaller pockets [1] to flourish. I imagine they will fight this to the death - or drag it in court at least until November elections for a pro-Oligopoly (Biden) camp to take over. [1] Lawyers hate small pockets.

If this does destroy tech oligopolies, they'll have nobody to blame for it but themselves. They've had over a decade to prove that they're fair and impartial and, if anything, have worked overtime to prove the opposite.

Private organizations have zero obligation to be fair and impartial. If you want a company to be run differently, start your own.

It's funny how conservatives were totally on board with deregulation and perfectly fine with corporations steamrolling every one else as long as they were aligned with conservative objectives. Then the moment a powerful corporate faction with liberal-ish sensibilities emerges, they freak out and abandon all their fake principles and run crying to the nanny state to save them from the big evil corporations.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is speech the only part of 1A that gets this treatment? You wouldn't say the same thing about religion

The same is 100% true about religion. 1A does not give you protection from religious discrimination among persons and corporations. It is the Civil Rights Act that does.

Don't be semantic, my point is why isn't speech codified at the same level?

Clearly at some point someone said "freedom of religion should mean protection from persons and corporations", why can't we say the same about speech?

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#83
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain more why the section is particularly disastrous? I agree that it's a dumb name. The section: (1) “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 purposeful…

If someone is selling drugs, distributing copyrighted material, publishing defamatory things, or participating in any other crime on your platform and you know about it, you lose 230 immunity for all content. Maybe this would encourage E2E encryption, but... If you read further, every single provider that allows user content also has to have a tipline for criminal activity and keep records on it.

Interesting. Thanks.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#84

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…

Wow, that seems to be written with Apple (at least) in mind, and is terrifying. I want operators to intentionally design and operate their services in way that impairs their ability to identify any activity, because any exceptions are exploits. Just saying "criminal activity" doesn't make it not spying on Americans.

No post body was provided.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#85

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…

Wow, that seems to be written with Apple (at least) in mind, and is terrifying. I want operators to intentionally design and operate their services in way that impairs their ability to identify any activity, because any exceptions are exploits. Just saying "criminal activity" doesn't make it not spying on Americans.

If it truly can't identify activity then does it need Section 230 in the first place? The immunity granted by Section 230 is for people who want the ability to moderate content, and if you are merely a dumb pass-through of a bunch of encrypted information you aren't using it as you are more of a common carrier, right?

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#86

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…

Wow, that seems to be written with Apple (at least) in mind, and is terrifying. I want operators to intentionally design and operate their services in way that impairs their ability to identify any activity, because any exceptions are exploits. Just saying "criminal activity" doesn't make it not spying on Americans.

I wonder if it would be applicable to end-to-end "messengers" like Telegra/Signal/WhatsApp etc. Though I don't see any language there to suggest it is just for online "platforms" but not "messengers".

Then again, could be this entire proposal to begin with is intended just for so-called "platforms" not messengers.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conservatives have raced so quickly to the right ... I'd like to suggest that we use care with the term "conservative". Is it possible that the parent post conflates "conservative" with "Republican"? I'm no authority on the U.S. Republic party, but I know it's sometimes said that that party has shifted hard to "the right". I could believe that's true, which would line up with the parent post. However, some of my ow…

Studies have shown that rank-and-file Democrats have moved leftward much more than rank-and-file Republicans have moved rightward[0], but at least one study shows that Republican representatives have tacked rightward much more dramatically[1]. [0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-... [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/02/this-...

I've seen [0] before and you can sort of explain [0] and [1] by adjusting the frame of reference. As [0] shows, Republicans have pretty much been unmoved for 30 years. At first view you might conclude it's democrats who are moving right, but if you consider the rest of the 1st world as some kind of "average", I think you would find Republicans are moving farther right. Issues like health care, social safety nets, and worker protections are pretty much close to "center" in Europe, but are "left" in the US.

One could argue Republicans moved much father rightward of the 1st world mean than democrats have, which reconciles with [1] - in order to stay mostly politically unchanged after 30 years you must be more and more steadfast.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#88

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…

> Is this the end of online privacy as we know it?

That would imply there was online privacy at some point, or at least that it was a thing that all users could reasonably understand and achieve.

If users understood that Facebook's business model might eventually require what (in hind-sight) appeared to be multiple privacy violations, but continued to use the service anyway because they couldn't help themselves, they really never had online privacy when using the service.

For those of you down-voting me, I'm pointing out this is a fallacious argument talking about online privacy. The companies who built these huge platforms didn't bake in online privacy when they built and evolved their systems. Talking about it like we've "lost it" is pointless, but I do think it's worth exploring how we can make it better!

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is. Conservatives have raced so quickly to the right that they've outrun the Overton Window. So rather than snap back, they're trying to push Big Tech to accelerate the movement of the window.

> Conservatives have raced so quickly to the right ... I'd like to suggest that we use care with the term "conservative". Is it possible that the parent post conflates "conservative" with "Republican"? I'm no authority on the U.S. Republic party, but I know it's sometimes said that that party has shifted hard to "the right". I could believe that's true, which would line up with the parent post. However, some of my ow…

Where is this wealth of principled conservatives people keep pretending exist, but are no where to be seen in politics or political discussions? Like it or not, Republicans are the "conservative" party and around 95% of them support Trump and the vast majority of them consider themselves to be conservatives. Attempts from conservatives to distance themselves from the Republican party just reek of No true Scotsman.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#90
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that seems to be written with Apple (at least) in mind, and is terrifying. I want operators to intentionally design and operate their services in way that impairs their ability to identify any activity, because any exceptions are exploits. Just saying "criminal activity" doesn't make it not spying on Americans.

If it truly can't identify activity then does it need Section 230 in the first place? The immunity granted by Section 230 is for people who want the ability to moderate content, and if you are merely a dumb pass-through of a bunch of encrypted information you aren't using it as you are more of a common carrier, right?

Exactly. They are also basically saying you don't need to moderate most illicit activity (if it's an unmoderated format) but you essentially can't operate such a platform in a form where it is "unmoderateable"/untraceable because you should be liable for any unlawful content that goes up, and for the the fact that you facilitated it.
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