Repealing Section 230 won’t do what anyone wants

https://superwuster.medium.com/liberals-and-conservatives-are-both-totally-wrong-about-section-230-11faacc4b117

by spzx • 5 years ago

170 244 5 years ago

superwuster.medium.com

Wu is amazingly dead on.

Wu's new boss has been parading some wholly wrong assumptions about Section 230. I hope Wu can convert him into the highest ranking politician who understands 230 in a non-delusional way.

more reading: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

qudchewer4• 5 years ago

Double think, double speak are alive and well. Using section 230 in an intelligent manner would require discernment. That doesn't forward anyone's agenda.

schoen• 5 years ago

(In case anyone doesn't recall, Tim Wu coined the term "net neutrality" and wrote The Master Switch.)

0df8dkdf• 5 years ago

Excellent book! Made a good case that realize that Internet too was designed to centralize control. As long as the few controls the Internet infrastructure and the space satellite lane, it is NOT FREE.

threatofrain4• 5 years ago

As this suggests, what the left and right really care about are the content moderation policies of Facebook, Twitter, and so on. And those, as it stands, have little to do with Section 230.
But content moderation, as an exercise of editorial discretion, is protected by the First Amendment. And that Congress can’t repeal.

[1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/418/241.html

TameAntelope16• 5 years ago

For folks (like me) who found the link a bit dense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_Herald_Publishing_Co._v....

Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974), was a United States Supreme Court case that overturned a Florida state law requiring newspapers to allow equal space in their newspapers to political candidates in the case of a political editorial or endorsement content.

me2021yuh2• 5 years ago

But at what point does content moderation turn an editor into the speaker and thus liable? As an extreme case I could censor many letters of your post leaving only a few letters expressing something you never expressed. Many people I've heard from on the right are making this case, not arguing to abolish 230, just to clarify it such that moderation is a form of speech and thus invites liability. Even Dershowitz made that point.

8note4• 5 years ago

Section 230 is clear on that, isn't it? Does the moderation happen before or after the post is visible?

mdpopescu• 5 years ago

Censoring? I've had posts EDITED on a stack exchange platform. Multiple times, with the result saying the opposite of what I said.

I did the only thing I could do, stopped using that site. Just like with Facebook :)

zuminator• 5 years ago

Selectively censoring letters so as to change the meaning of a post is not what is commonly thought of as moderation.

Anyway, I think you’re losing the bead a little here. Speech isn’t liable because it’s speech. It’s liable because it’s slanderous or defamatory. So calling moderation “speech” doesn’t suddenly invite liability, unless we’re claiming that the very act of exclusion is prima facie defamation, which is a more dangerous idea than the problem you’re trying to solve in the first place. If moderation as such were to be actionable, then my shitty band could sue you for not including us in your shared Spotify playlist. It would open the door for any sort of public curation whatsoever to carry legal risks.

Losing the tool of moderation would kill off this very forum, which would become overrun by crackpots, trolls, and V1Agra spam in short order. By pruning the weeds of bad-faith discourse, moderation allows good-faith open discussion to thrive.

imgabe2• 5 years ago

If the speech on Twitter is Twitter’s speech, then if someone defames me on Twitter, I should be able to sue Twitter. Just like if a reporter in the New York Times defames someone, you sue the paper, not the reporter.

If Twitter doesn’t have liability for the speech, then it belongs to the speaker and Twitter should have no obligation to censor it. They can’t have it both ways.

Likewise Twitter and Facebook should be paying their users for providing content that they profit off of, like newspapers pay reporters. Then they can have standing to choose what they want to publish.

8note4• 5 years ago

Don't have an obligation to censor it, sure, but they'll never have an obligation to keep it up. If they run out of money, the servers go down and the posts stop being available.

Unless the government is taking over paying for hosting the user content, the server owners will be able to not host it

bryanrasmussen• 5 years ago

Likewise Twitter and Facebook should be paying their users for providing content that they profit off of, like newspapers pay reporters. Then they can have standing to choose what they want to publish.

What? This sounds like you're arguing that Twitter and Facebook are legally obligated to publish everything a user posts because they don't pay their users?

TameAntelope16• 5 years ago

I'm trying to understand what you're trying to fix with these declarations. What is the consequence of Twitter/Facebook not being responsible for content that appears on their site?

Maybe you should be able to sue the NYT reporter. I think you can, in fact!

I just don't understand what we're trying to accomplish with the changes to how things are currently. Maybe it would help if you described the world you'd rather live in, and how it differs from this world.

pron2• 5 years ago

You don't need any kind of standing to do what you're not prohibited to do by law, and the freedom to choose what to publish and amplify -- not because it is obligated to but to shape the institution's reputation -- is both well-established and crucial to both media organisations and universities.

qudchewer4• 5 years ago

There is someone deciding on what content to post with the New York Times. If a site like twitter is engaging in that activity - then they should loose 230 immunity, because they are acting like a publisher instead of a platform. It seems relatively straight forward, doesn't it?

michaelmrose18• 5 years ago

Since we passed a law that says they can have it both ways they can indeed have it both ways and moderate as they choose while also avoiding legal liability for their users actions.

Which part of this is problematic?

DanBC3• 5 years ago

Your post is really confusing.

S230 says that a company won't be held responsible for some (but not all) user generated speech on their website. But it also says they do not lose those protections if they moderate that speech. The people who made the bill realised that companies need the ability to moderate content, and so they built it into the law.

The vast majority of Internet users do not want dumb pipes and unmoderated content.

nradov4• 5 years ago

The New York Times frequently publishes editorial content for which they pay nothing. People who aren't NYT employees want to get their message out so they write for free.

URSpider948• 5 years ago

What you’re describing is an untenable situation. So, let’s say that Twitter operates as you suggest, as an open platform, and people start posting child pornography, multi-level marketing scams, and racist imagery. Do they have to just suck it up and wait for the police and courts to tell them to take it down? In the mean time, they’ll lose all their customers. If you say, well of course they can take down kiddie porn, then you agree that they have the right to curate what is posted on their site, just not how much.

Let’s say I run a BBS for stamp collectors, and a crowd of new members join and start talking about their upcoming white supremacist rally on the site. Can I delete their posts and ban them while still having safe harbor under 230? Or should I instead lose my 230 immunity and be forced to face liability over that post where Fred calls Jenny a nitwit loser because she got the date of the Amelia Aerhart first-day cover wrong?

What if they’re just talking about knitting, on my stamp collecting forum? Then can I take it down?

What if my forum is for young Democrats? Can I take down posts supporting Republican candidates?

jerrya4• 5 years ago

As absolutely not a lawyer, and acknowledging my huge ignorance I'd suggest that First Amendment processes are heard in court and protected by due process. Aren't they?

For good or ill, §230 bypasses court hearings and due process and so I wonder if it is

a) itself an unconstitutional denial of rights to the users, or

b) actually just fine legally, however an overturning of it would not necessarily be an assault on the First Amendment, only on this congressional shortcut

My "reform" of §230 would be to add on to this congressionally mandated shortcut with some form of due process to the users whose court rights have been bypassed -- if a site wants to use §230 protections, then they have to provide some form of due process to users, perhaps a timely takedown/suspension/banning appeals process, held in the open

If a site doesn't want to provide that, then they can avail themselves of the First Amendment and their §230 immunities are stripped and they are open to lawsuits.

XorNot• 5 years ago

I'll post the same obligatory "actually read your Constitution" note:

The first amendment protects US citizens right to speak freely in public and private venues from being retaliated against by the government.

It specifically means you cannot be denied government services, support our rights because of any opinions you express publicly or privately.

It does not and never has obligated any private persons or business to listen, rebroadcast, or not *react" to what you say. You have never been protected from the consequences of your speech within your community, nor has anyone been required to enable it. It has never been a protection against the speech of anyone else, for example rallying their community to speak against you or for other private services to deny you patronage.

MrFlynn• 5 years ago

I'm not sure how section 230 bypasses due process. If a social media site removes something you posted, your first amendment rights have not been violated. The first amendment only protects you from being censored by the government. It says nothing about a private business enforcing whatever arbitrary rules it has against you.

michaelmrose18• 5 years ago

Saying I'm not a lawyer does not excuse you from doing the slightest bit of research.

You never had a due process right to be heard on facebook in the first place so 230 didn't abridge this completely fictional right.

It wouldn't abridge site owners rights to remove 230 it would just break the internet as we know it in the US. Your suggestion isn't a lot better. It would create pointless process that would likely be abused by vexatious litigants so you combine doing nothing for average joe's with giving special interests lisence to ruin the internet.

If you have not the slightest idea what the law us how can you hope to anmend it.

How about we leave everything as is and if you don't like how facebook runs their show you make your own site...with blackjack and hookers if desired.

Jonnax• 5 years ago

" it is possible that what conservatives want is not to repeal 230, but explicitly condition immunity on a “fair and balanced” content moderation — i.e., a social media fairness doctrine backed up a threat of immunity-stripping."

This makes a lot of sense. The idea of making forum owners responsible for the content their users post would result in far harsher moderation. Which is opposite to what they want.

Have the calls for Section 230 repeal subsided since the change in administration?

mynameistoolon• 5 years ago

Stated differently, some liberals seem to have the fantasy that potential civil liability would finally force platforms to do more about disinformation on their sites — “to take responsibility.” But what does that mean? Because whatever the moral responsibility may be, there isn’t actually any legal repercussions for republishing, or publishing, crazy propaganda and conspiracy theories. If so, Newsmax and Gateway Pundit and even Fox News would not exist.

He's completely wrong here. No one really cares that Brietbart publishes lies to their readers on their own site. What people are upset is that facebook, twitter, reddit, etc allow propaganda and lies to be published on their site for their users.

If The_donald wants to make a site and push bullshit, go ahead, people that only want to see The_donald can read it, but coordinating so that hundreds of millions of redditors see bullshit and spread bullshit is ridiculous.

function_seven2• 5 years ago

Okay, but what does any of that have to do with Section 230? How would repealing it have any effect on how Facebook treats content on their site vs. how Brietbart does it?

Thorrez4• 5 years ago

Here's an interesting question: would linking to a Breitbart article from Facebook be risky for Facebook if 230 was repealed? That is, we can probably agree that summarizing a Breitbart article into a Facebook post would be risky for Facebook, but a simple link might be fine.

Thorrez4• 5 years ago

If The_donald wants to make a site and push bullshit, go ahead, people that only want to see The_donald can read it, but coordinating so that hundreds of millions of redditors see bullshit and spread bullshit is ridiculous.

How would that work? If reddit loses its 230 protection, then this The_donald-only reddit alternative would also lose its 230 protection.

Additionally, I'm concerned whether reddit could exist at all. Would every single comment need to be human-moderated before it's posted? That doesn't seem feasible, and seems likely to kill reddit.

mionhe• 5 years ago

The threat of revoking someone's 230 protection would ideally make them think about everything you just said, and hopefully decide to abide by the conditions of that protection. That is, they get to choose for themselves: either support free speech on their platform and receive the benefits of that protection, or don't. If they don't, then they'll need to figure out how to address the kinds of problems you mentioned.

chroem-• 5 years ago

What conservatives really seem to want, meanwhile, is something more like a version of the “fairness doctrine” adapted for social media. (Ignore the fact that conservatives used to insist that the fairness doctrine was an unconstitutional left-wing conspiracy to destroy talk radio).

This is not a good faith argument, and it's made worse by the fact that (as others have mentioned) Tim Wu coined the concept of net neutrality. Free speech advocates and conservatives want social media to be a dumb pipe that doesn't discriminate on content, much like other internet services. Tim is uncharitably misrepresenting their position here.

spaced-out• 5 years ago

Free speech advocates and conservatives want social media to be a dumb pipe that doesn't discriminate on content, much like other internet services.

Do that and soon every post will be about diet pills or AMAZING OFFER MAKE $$$$$ FROM YOUR COMPUTER CLICK HERE!!!!

me2021yuh2• 5 years ago

We already have that with email and found solutions to it and the same solutions could apply (readers choose their own spam filtering). The hard problems are where something might or might not be illegal and people strongly disagree. Thats where 230 comes in and it suggests to me that platforms under its protection shouldn't censor unless directed by law enforcement .. The fact that they do is mysterious to me.

sintaxi• 5 years ago

Not really a problem. All that means is the platform gets designed differently - such as actually giving users control of what accounts/content they are shown.

atoav• 5 years ago

A dumb pipe within which real world law on speech applies? Or not?

If I post defamatory stuff on my website I can be sued. If I do the same on your website, you can be sued unless you fall under that 230 regulation.

So this is the choice between "social media is liable for what you say and will therefore censor you" and between "you are liable and can therefore be sued".

The option "nobody can get sued" doesn't exist, because although there is free speech, there are limits to it (which get breached on a few times a minute on big platforms). I am not saying whether that is a good thing or not, that is just the current state of affairs. And as the author stated: if you are basing what you say on the truth you might be able to say a lot more (than e.g. if you are spouting weaponized propaganda which is factualy wrong)

earthscienceman• 5 years ago

Wait. Are you sincerely making the argument that conservatives would like the social networks to become public utilities? (following net neutrality)

We are living in weird times if a good faith argument really involves assuming conservatives want to make a class of businesses part of the public sector. Something seems off with your reasoning, but if you're right then I'm all about it!

thoughtstheseus3• 5 years ago

Utilities can and are run for profit, they’re regulated though and market standards are set.

ipaddr• 5 years ago

Take the internet fiber cable that allows a person to connect as an example. Public utilities exist in some countries to provide that. In the US a private company will usually lay the cable.

In both cases when someone signs up for a service who they voted for doesn't affect there service.

In social media's case it does change the experience

Asking for a neutral playing field is fair.

Facebook delivering that in a highly political environment where a lack of censorship scares one side is impossible.

We are heading from free speech, into right speech but we are going to end up with no speech as people tune out.

8note4• 5 years ago

Conservatives are much more interested in culture wars than economic issues.

By moving these companies from private to public sector, conservatives can use their gerrymandering and voter suppression power to control the companies, whereas under the more market capitalist approach, they follow closer to the demographic majority views

chrisco255• 5 years ago

There's almost no such thing as "fair and balanced" content moderation. Wu's own bias leaks through in this article, as he lists right wing conspiracy theory but fails to recognize that mainstream news pitched a left wing conspiracy theory against Trump for the better part of 3 years: the "Trump is a Russian asset and puppet" theory.

As he states that the left wing is concerned with violence, they failed to take any responsibility for their own rhetoric which lead to riots most of last summer in many major cities.

As Wu says, the left thinks "We have a huge problem with fascist disinformation and propaganda". But what they fail to realize is that they've deluded themselves into believing that garden variety conservatism is fascism, because the f word was repeated loudly and often enough by people with influence, that people started to believe it. Nevermind that a healthy democracy demands at least two healthy and functioning parties or you might as well be North Korea. Nevermind that American conservatism has never been about fascism, ever. People are abusing a term, deluding themselves of its validity, flattening other people, and using it to justify the deplatforming of half the country.

So much of what we see in politics today is an escalation of reaction and counter-reaction.

I would argue that if you are a conservative and you haven't at least flirted with the idea of becoming more of a liberal, if not gone through that paradigm shift yourself, without losing your respect for those that hold conservative values, or vice versa, then you can't even begin to attempt to be unbiased. Unless you can hold both paradigms in your mind without contempt of either, you can't begin to be neutral. So few people are capable of this. I think less then 5% of the general population are, in today's heated political arena. And you can't expect institutions which bias their hiring towards one paradigm or the other to be neutral. If Jack Dorsey is a super liberal guy and he doesn't have a neutral personality himself, how can you expect the culture of Twitter to be neutral? It's far easier for Dorsey, and his Silicon Valley buddies to surround themselves with people from the Valley, or those willing to move to the Valley (who tend to co-opt themselves into the politics and worldviews of the Valley in order to fit in).

The reason we feel slighted by Facebook and Twitter in a way that we don't feel towards MSNBC or Fox, is that we basically have to opt into news channels and we always have the option of opting out of cable news altogether. But tech has evolved to the point that you can't easily navigate without touching at least one of these homogeneous, corporate, left wing monopolies. The whole idea of Section 230 was to promote the vibrant free speech discussion forums that existed in the 90s (and still do on dark corners of the world wide web today). It's also evolved to the point that algorithmic feeds have been fine tuned to manipulate human emotions in a way that the 90s framers of the section 230 law could not foresee. Social media and tech companies can alter your perception of reality and regularly do.

I agree with using antitrust laws to bust up the multi trillion dollar behemoths. But I don't think "fair content moderation" is a realistic goal, given how few people are even capable of it and given that much of the problem is systemic to the homogeneous monopolies themselves. Ultimately, competition will solve this in the long run, I believe. But like a forest that has grown dangerously thick, it might be time for controlled burns of these corporations to spawn a healthier digital ecosystem.

WalterBright• 5 years ago

The term "fascist" now means "anyone who disagrees with me."

Thorrez4• 5 years ago

It's not a new phenomenon:

George Orwell wrote in 1944 that "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#%22Fascist%22_as_a_pej...

noahtallen• 5 years ago

It’s deeper than that. I think many are simply labeling those using fascist techniques as fascists. Let me explain:

During the Great Depression, very similar rhetoric was used to create the authoritarian fascist regimes. One example is the false narrative that one could blame all of their economic problems on certain racial/ethnic groups. The horrid rhetoric suggesting that Jews caused the financial crisis in 1929 is very similar to the horrid rhetoric saying that Mexican immigrants are stealing American jobs and causing widespread economic devastation.

We _should_ be very concerned to see concerning patterns repeating themselves. Frankly, if the Republican Party was all about “garden variety conservatism”, it would be banishing the extremists from its ranks. That’s not happening. Are republicans fascist? Maybe not. But do several use fascist techniques? Definitely. And those not actively using those techniques are complacent or even accepting.

“Garden variety conservatives” did know what Trump was doing in 2016, and they called him for for it in the Republican primaries. Though I have no rosy view of the Conservative party before then either, it has now overtly embraced many fascist concepts.

Though people would still disagree with “garden variety conservatives”, people have a much bigger problem with fascist concepts.

matwood• 5 years ago

Depends which side you're on. The other side tends to use marxist/socialist/communist pretty interchangeably.

I'm also sure many of the people who call each other these names have little idea what the terms actually mean.

makomk• 5 years ago

Yeah, the mainstream media ended up getting behind some really nutso anti-Trump conspiracy theories. One of my favourites was the one about Trump supposedly using DNS requests from email servers as a secret communication channel with Russia (and this one US chain of health clinics) because it made absolutely no sense on any level.

It would make such a poor communication channel that using it would require some other communication channel that's better in every way and hasn't been found to agree what the supposed communications meant first (so why not just use that?), could only have been set up with the help of a subcontractor of a subcontractor who Trump had no reason to trust and yet who insisted no such thing happened, and all the evidence fits the alternative explanation of the DNS lookups being a normal response to receiving normal marketing emails about Trump hotels. About five publications rejected it for these reasons before it got published. Yet when it did, the New York Times got so much heat for pushing back in the gentlest way possible against the Clinton campaign's demands for the FBI to investigate - which went viral on social media - by saying that the FBI had looked into it and concluded all the evidence was consistent with normal marketing emails that they eventually said it was the wrong decision and they wouldn't do it again. And the only thing that was described as a conspiracy theory by the mainstream press was the idea that all the evidence was consistent with the normal operation of email systems, even though that's what most technical people concluded regardless of political affiliation.

There was some really heinous bullshit around the legitimacy of the 2016 election as well, which meant the press really didn't have a leg to stand on when then opined about how dangerous it was for Trump to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 one. Though of course that didn't stop them.

1MachineElf• 5 years ago

Interesting that you brought up that DNS story, because an interesting link posted here at least a few times suggested those were fabricated. It was an interesting analysis. Check it out: https://weaponizedautism.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/trump-dns-...

TameAntelope16• 5 years ago

Conservatives want political affiliation to be a protected class. It makes sense -- they're a minority (especially online, but also offline at a national level), and they'd like to be protected from the majority, who they feel at this moment are persecuting/abusing them for their beliefs.

Lots of problems with that (and the irony is palpable), but I think that gets them all the protection they want without any of the Constitutional crisis.

chii• 5 years ago

why should a minority be "protected" just because they are a minority? The only protection offered to a minority is and should be only for abuse of said minority in the past.

TameAntelope16• 5 years ago

There are a bunch of protected classes already in US law, and I believe the reasoning tends to be that the folks in those protected classes would, if not protected, be trampled by the majorities for things the members of those protected classes have no control over. Some protected classes include Americans with disabilities, African-Americans, etc.

You can't fire members of the protected class, and (I believe) you can't ban folks from Twitter for being disabled or black.

Conservatives seem to want that treatment.

Aunche• 5 years ago

In the US, conservatives being a minority is mostly the product of the having disproportionate representation relative to population. The nature of a two party system incentives both parties to roughly obtain 50% of political power. There is no need to compromise your platform to get more votes when you already have enough to win. If larger states had more representation, then the Republicans would shift slightly further left.

thoughtstheseus3• 5 years ago

There is a huge failure of imagination here. Repealing section 230... Would it completely upend existing social networks and internet norms? Yes, that’s a good thing.

Tim talks moderation... we’re not going to moderate billions of people post-230, they’ll just be responsible for their actions.

function_seven2• 5 years ago

They’re responsible for their actions today.

230 doesn’t immunize commenters from liability for the words they post online. It protects the platform, while also allowing them to moderate.

Post-230, platforms would have to zealously moderate to avoid repercussions. You think bots are a little too aggressive today. Imagine those auto-van dials turned up to 11 if Twitter bore direct responsibility for every word tweeted out.

thoughtstheseus3• 5 years ago

I don’t want them to moderate. Many will/are unhappy with them moderating content. Allow people to moderate their own content.

There is a huge market for shifting content curation and moderation to users and away from platforms.

compsciphd4• 5 years ago

I'm not 100% sure if section 230 should protect those platforms providing anonymous speech. While anonymous speech is important for free speech purposes, section 230 is about shifting the liability of the speech from the "publisher" (facebook/twitter, using air quotes as publisher isn't really accurate) to the writer. However, if these platforms are providing anonymous speech, then it makes it much more difficult to actually go after the writer.

perhaps one could argue that by providing such a speed bump in the process of figuring out who the writer is facebook/twitter are aiding and abetting said speech and hence have liability from it. And that service providers over a certain size either cannot allow anonymous speech at all, or at best have serious KYC rules with straight forward demasking.

I don't like where my thought experiment leads, but I really dont have a good answer for this.

IfOnlyYouKnew• 5 years ago

This argument isn’t wholly unreasonable. But it would lead, in practical terms, simply to the abolition of anonymous and pseudonymous accounts on social media.

I could live with that, but I get the feeling those calling for Sec 230 abolition want something entirely different.

I’m also not entirely sure what sort of “liability” people are talking about. In the US, there is very little liability for any sort of speech. Insults, no matter how gross and objectionable, are generally protected as simply being subjective opinions, for example. So is blatant racism.

Only statements of facts that are false, made knowingly and with malicious intent, are actionable. I believe very little of what people object to on social media actually falls under that definition.

compsciphd4• 5 years ago

so you're right, but part of the problem is that there is no personal consequence to this anonymous speech. It's also impossible to distinguish between "fake/non verified" users and "real/verified" users on a mass scale. So, I modify my proposal to argue that if we don't want to get rid of anonymous/pseudononymous accounts, we have to take steps to enable users to really devalue the anonymous speech and not put it on the same level as non anonymous speech.

xoa• 5 years ago

So, is "compsciphd" your family name or your given name? Have you really stopped to think these things through? You and every single other person posting here, on Hacker News, with pseudonyms including one time throwaway accounts, HN a "platform providing anonymous speech", do understand that 230 makes this place possible right? Right? Are you suggesting dang and co should not be allowed to moderate ever again without Y Combinator becoming legally liable for every random thing here? That we should all have to hand over government ID to post here?

This is fucking nuts. The good answer is for people to stop giving so much credence to anonymous speech without thorough analysis, or at most to have a more streamlined process to get it taken down if it's not defended.

compsciphd4• 5 years ago

so lets take a related solution that combines both of what we said.

The ability for everyone to get the equivalent of a blue check mark, i.e. this person has been verified as "real", there only exists one independent account associated with said "real" person (but perhaps can have multiple non independent accounts, that all are publicly associated with one identity. an example would be someone who has a public identity and a friends and family identity on social media, they would presumably tie their private identity to their public identity and both could be marked as "real").

then one can easily distinguish people who are "real" and those which are anonymous. Might also help with bot issues on these networks.

also my identity here isn't particularly anonymous. I've linked to my work often enough that anyone who cares would know who I am.

vharuck• 5 years ago

The platform may publicly provide a forum for anonymous speech, but that doesn't mean it is anonymous. One of the most famous forums for anonymous speech is 4chan's "Random" forum, and even there prosecution was possible against a user. The site owner cooperated with investigators. This wasn't a surprise to any long-time users, because everyone knows a site that doesn't cooperate in criminal investigations is not long for this world.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/fbi/turns-out-4chan-not-...

compsciphd4• 5 years ago

in legal cases, its possible. But it removes any consequence for the anonymous speech that is not legally actionable. While there's value to that type of speech, it should also be devalued by others.

So, see what I wrote above as a modification of the proposal. To encourage all users to be verifiable, for end users to be easily able to identify non verified users, and hence to be able to devalue those opinions.

panny• 5 years ago

The right-wing fantasies about 230 repeal are even more off base. For one thing, without Section 230 immunity, a figure like Donald Trump would almost certainly be kicked off Twitter, because he constantly defames people.

Tim Wu seems to be misrepresenting what the right wants, or living in a left wing bubble. Repealing 230, for the right is about scorched earth. Deplatform the left too, by repealing 230. The right has already been deplatformed. Trump was already kicked off Twitter. The right has no expectations of Trump returning to twitter. Repeal 230 is about destroying twitter, and all the other left wing social media too.

cm2187• 5 years ago

Agree. And the competition alternative approach would have more weight before the coordinated attack of big tech against Parler.

And I am not convinced that social media is something that we will miss. A decentralised approach with lots of independent websites, each responsible for their own opinion, is probably a healthier ecosystem.

scsilver• 5 years ago

Online social media is simply a threat to monopoly over more traditional information grooming that goes on in certain communities.

qudchewer4• 5 years ago

Seems like people aren't thinking very well these days.

Black101• 5 years ago

Seems like people aren't thinking very well these days.

They are thinking that they want to control all content online, that's all.

They just aren't going to tell you that.

ChrisMarshallNY• 5 years ago

We don’t like you; we want you to suffer. Very 2020

That seems to sum it up.

I don’t think there’s a way to legislate the way we treat and feel about each other.

I guess we need to do that the old-fashioned way, by getting out of our pods and talking to each other in person, like the ending scene of Surrogates.

epr• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/fK5D9

roenxi• 5 years ago

There is a point here that transcends what the left and right think will happen: the tech giants are making editorial decisions that are reasonably opinionated.

Whether or whether not it does what people want, it needs to be recognised that they are publishers, not dumb platforms. This is an acknowledgement of reality.

luxuryballs• 5 years ago

Also a similar point, Congress keeps summoning them and putting pressure on them so it’s almost a damned if you do damned if you don’t scenario. I am greatly opposed to censorship (other than say content that harms children or is fraudulent) and a platform having a stance on what is “truth” or “disinformation” is quite terrifying, but I also get that it’s an unfortunate side effect of the risk aversion song and dance they are being forced to put on.

To be clear about freedom of information in general, I think competing theories on things like coronavirus and election fraud should be entirely tolerated, especially when the only apparent consensus comes from blindly “trusting the officials” who are just other human beings. It’s very ivory tower and dystopian of them to want to push a narrative of stability when really there’s so much we don’t know.

The idea that we aren’t adults who should be able to question and audit things and have free agency seems like it’s not even on the table anymore which is sad. We’re all walking our liberties into the grave just to avoid uncomfortable topics.

Like Cypher in the Matrix, ignorance is bliss, plug my body back in!

clairity• 5 years ago

yes, but that's the easy-to-recognize part. moreover, we all want a line (more like a hyperplanar function, really) to be drawn somewhere, but the hard part is getting everyone to compromise and accept any given imperfectly-drawn line.

the core concept of section 230 is that an expressed idea in any form has an author and it's inherently implied that the author endorses that idea by expressing it, but no one else in the chain delivering/amplifying that idea to others necessarily endorses it. the author, then, has liability but the intermediates don't.

where it falls apart is dealing with "exceptions". these exceptions are really separate rules about what kinds of content are so egregious as to apply liability to the intermediates in the chain, piercing their liability shield. there's also contention around the plausible deniability provided by section 230 that allows the platforms to express ideas through others (e.g., editorial decisions).

you could reasonably argue that an editorial decision is expressing an idea (perhaps different from the curated content's ideas) in itself, and therefore applies liability to the intermediate itself for that editorial decision (e.g., racism as a emergent property of a platform).

these kinds of granularities are why i'm partial to the idea of writing regulations as an intent statement (like the above core concept), a descriptive, not prescriptive, elaboration of that intent statement and its major facets, and then numerous examples that give shape to the hyperplanar function without trying to delineate it exactly (and inevitably imperfectly; that is, accepting that it's necessarily imperfect). the populace and (if need be) judges can competently interpolate/extrapolate between the given intent, description, and examples (this takes away power from lawyers as mediators of law, which is a reason it's resisted).

veselin• 5 years ago

I understand the issue a bit differently. If a user writes some content that stays as a comment somewhere and it is defamatory, then the user is responsible. So far, so good. This is what 230 used to address.

But the real issue at play is that an algorithm decides that this content will increase engagement within the platform. And it actually does. Now, I think the company behind this algorithm is responsible for the defamation. For example Facebook uses the current law to hide and so all its fight with disinformation is subject to keeping the same engagement levels, which is obviously a very hard task. (We tried hard, but the problem is too difficult).

While the first case is good to address, the second one has severally outgrown it. Thus, so many people are even willing to give up something in order to address it.

wizzwizz4• 5 years ago

Very concisely put.

adgjlsfhk12• 5 years ago

The problem is that without section 230, it becomes impossible for any website to have user hosted content. If websites are responsible for shit their users say, no website that posts user content can exist. No one is going to risk being sued over something a user says.

GavinMcG3• 5 years ago

Fine. Websites aren't responsible for the content. But make them responsible for promoting or curating the content, if they choose to do so.

Instagram just shows me all the stuff my friends post. That's it, as far as I can tell. It's great. Facebook amplifies some things and doesn't show me others. If it wants to be in that game, of distorting informational impact, it needs to take responsibility for what it's amplifying.

giantrobot5• 5 years ago

Which ends up affecting sites like Github and support forums. The moment Section 230 was repealed you'd see thousands of frivolous lawsuits against any company with deep pockets.

thaumasiotes• 5 years ago

The problem is that without section 230, it becomes impossible for any website to have user hosted content. If websites are responsible for shit their users say, no website that posts user content can exist.

That has nothing to do with section 230. Websites weren't responsible for user-generated content before section 230 and they still wouldn't be if it went away.

What section 230 does is extend the same immunity that content-blind hosts have always had to hosts that modify the content they get from users.

This comment upthread:

If a user writes some content that stays as a comment somewhere and it is defamatory, then the user is responsible. So far, so good. This is what 230 used to address.

is wrong. Section 230 didn't address that case; the user was always the responsible party. To see section 230 at work, you need a more complicated setup:

1. User A posts defamatory content to a web forum.

2. User B posts defamatory content to the same forum.

3. The forum operators see User B's post, are outraged, and take it down.

This is where section 230 makes a difference. It says that, even though the forum takes control of user-generated content for the purpose of expressing its own views, it still isn't liable for content that it hasn't directly touched. In the absence of section 230, the forum would bear liability for user A's defamatory post as soon as they took down user B's post.

There's no problem hosting user-generated content without section 230. You only have a problem if you editorialize on top of that content.

heavyset_go3• 5 years ago

No one is going to risk being sued over something a user says.

No small company would, but some multi-billion dollar companies might. They sure would censor the hell out of any user content, though, or else they'd run the risk of being raided in the middle of the night by the FBI if a user found it funny to upload something illegal to their servers.

Which brings us to the OP's argument, that repealing Section 230 wouldn't do what the repeal proponents want. The end result of repealing Section 230 of the CDA is that total online censorship becomes the norm, and only giant companies would be able to benefit from the limited user-generated content that's allowed to exist after the repeal.

boatmansloth• 5 years ago

It's possible, but your scale is severely limited as you have to actively moderate your site. You also have to build a culture where users value their position in the community and fear losing access to it for doing the wrong thing.

Websites/forums exist in countries without an s230 equivalent.

upbeat_general• 5 years ago

In your view does this apply to all algorithms or just ones that discriminate based on the content itself (ie use content as an input).

If the algorithm simply prioritizes say the most upvoted comment, is that the same? Or how about prioritizes the most watched/liked video?

I ask this because it’s basically impossible to not prioritize content unless a website is a mere directory of user information with no search box. Where do you think the distinction lies between being responsible for user engagement and not?

bobthepanda2• 5 years ago

Any promotion of content without the user explicitly asking for it should be considered as an endorsement.

People can search for things they want to follow if they want too. It is crazy, logging back into Facebook, how far it has gone away from the chronological feed of your friends that it started off as.

pessimizer• 5 years ago

If the algorithm simply prioritizes say the most upvoted comment, is that the same? Or how about prioritizes the most watched/liked video?

This used to be handled by the user clicking a button that said "sort by most votes" or the top of a column called "votes." Now it's a mystery how to handle that no one could possibly know how to do.

hintymad2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure if it's just algorithms. Twitter banned accounts for discussing why we needed to protest for fair elections because they "incite violence", yet Khamenei's tweet of calling for "eradicating" a people and a nation has been there since 2017.

Twitter banned accounts for challenging the effectiveness of wear masks because they are "anti-science", yet it didn't do a thing when people were challenging CNN/WHO/CDC's messages that wearing masks was unnecessary and would cause public panic in March 2020.

I'd support repealing of section 230 jsut for this level of double standards.

lsh123• 5 years ago

I think the point of the post is that repealing section 230 would not help with “fairness” on the platforms. The arguments in the post are pretty strong imho.

URSpider948• 5 years ago

How would repealing 230 address your perceived double standard? Platforms have the right to make editorial decisions about what appears on their platform. Without 230, they’d probably double down on it. Repealing 230 would not somehow provide an Avenue to force them to provide “fair and balanced” coverage.

Maybe you just want 230 repealed so the networks can be burned to the ground through a mass of frivolous lawsuits. If so ... no?

aeturnum• 5 years ago

I think there's a good case to be made for amending 230.

230 was written for a pre-algorithmic feed age where user content was displayed in a fixed context setup by the provider. The provider chose the frame, the user the painting.

Now users send content to a machine that is constantly making new frames to better match the pictures it is given. The picture is still the picture - still made by the user, but the site bears more responsibility for its presentation because its 'framing' is based on the contents / reaction to the picture. However, I do not think a total transformation has occurred. Choosing how to display the picture doesn't change its contents.

Writing a law that sensibly engages with the huge diversity of algorithmic strategies would be difficult even for skilled legislators (if only we had some!). Maybe the answer is in formalizing shadowbanning in some way?

edmundsauto• 5 years ago

This implies the distribution of false information is the problem. What culpability do you place on the producer and consumer?

AnthonyMouse• 5 years ago

While the first case is good to address, the second one has severally outgrown it.

The problem with all of the repeal proposals is that none of them actually address the problem.

Suppose you're a search engine. One of the search hits is making a factual claim. The search engine naturally has no way to validate the claim. That would require an investigation, giving the accused an opportunity to defend their claim and then having a neutral arbiter make a decision. This essentially describes a trial in court.

We already have civil litigation. If you prove a defamation claim, you can have the court order it to be removed by the host or search engine.

Anything Congress could do about this would be an attempt to end run around the First Amendment, i.e. de facto require private companies to operate a shadow court system and then pretend the First Amendment doesn't apply even though it's being instituted through legislation.

It should be obvious why we don't want this -- if the government is imposing penalties only for not censoring things then you're going to get one-sided suppression of dissent, but if you punish them for over-censoring too then you're just cloning the actual court system and might as well use the real one.

The root of the problem here isn't Section 230. It's that these platforms are too large, so that any mistake they make gets amplified across a billion people instead of a million. Break them up.

sleepysysadmin• 5 years ago

I understand your position but I'm curious.

There's more depth to the subject.

any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;

That's section 230.

Yes if it's defamatory or libel. Then section 230 is explicitly allowing the platforms to censor.

The 2 sides of the problem come when it's speech that isnt listed right there. It can be offensive, unpopular, or controversial but section 230 does not allow the platforms to censor those subjects. Section 230 outright says constitutionally protected.

So the main problem is that platforms have illegally broken good Samaritan protections and have effectively removed their section 230 protection on their own.

However, that's problem #2. Section 230 never made allowances for punishment or lawsuits. If Twitter lost their section 230 protection, they stop existing the next day. That's the only punishment but that would be tremendous wealth destruction.

TrispusAttucks• 5 years ago

First, repealing Section 230 is different from reforming Section 230. I mostly see calls for reform - not repeal.

Second, many people are debating how they think or believe it should work.

Let us instead debate the actual content of Section 230 [1] law.

[1] https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Code/Title_47...

molbioguy• 5 years ago

Worth reading this post on how section 230 is often misunderstood:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

fitzie• 5 years ago

I see three problems with the original posting. First is the presumption that repealing 230 will damage the internet in some way. I think that would have to be demonstrated in some way. tech companies already must have a strong legal department in 2020, especially the smaller unpopular ones fighting for basic banking and internet connectivity. Donald Trump the big defamer as the OP claims, only had one defamation lawsuit, from Stormey Daniels, which went no where. so I don't see how all of a sudden more lawsuits are going to jump in just because they can add twitter as a defendant.

the second problem is the misunderstaning of what conservatives want. while it is correct to say that we want the terms of service to be applied consistently, and we disagree with vague labels of hate speech and disinformation, that is nothing like the fairness doctrine which is about balance. the core of what conservatives are asking for is that discussion over what government policy should be should not be censored by these platforms. when we have serious concerns about lockdown policies, election integrity, keeping predators out of girls bathrooms, preventing illegal immigration, these very discussions are censored by these platforms. this is dangerous, of course, because it allows our elected leaders to ignore potentially widely held views, and only see types of conversations that the left leaning heads of media and big tech permits.

the third problem is the presumption that the left wants more censorship. while its true that the advocates for more restriction of potentially harmless speech because it is potentially harmful are on the left, there are studies that show people on the left feel more restricted about what they can say and see repercussions on. while there will always be some on the left that truely believes removing dissent is would be an improvement, that isn't widely believed, as anyone can figure out by talking to people with differing political views.

paulryanrogers• 5 years ago

What if these platforms defaulted to showing everything users opt into, like before the AI started curating for engagement. Then they provided users a choice of curation algorithms tuned in various ways.

Then so long as the platforms are removing clearly illegal content they would comply without engaging in editorializing.

woopwoop• 5 years ago

It's worth remembering that up until very recently section 230 was invoked in these debates mostly by people lying about what it says. When such people change their tune and now say we have to reform or repeal it, I think that should be met with a fair amount of skepticism.

temp89644• 5 years ago

Are you sure people are "lying" about section 230? Or maybe they have different understanding / misunderstanding? Is "lying" becoming another word lost its meaning?

the_why_of_y2• 5 years ago

Others have interpreted these debates in a similar way:

https://popehat.substack.com/p/section-230-is-the-subject-of...

Consultant32452• 5 years ago

Repealing 230 is the MAD option. If you're not willing to play ball, we'll destroy the ball.

Firebrand• 5 years ago

Debating whether repealing Section 230 will suddenly grant people free speech on social media platform is missing the real issue. We should repeal Section 230 in order to destroy the social media industry.

Online you do not interact with "regular people" but people who put the most effort into online presence and those people are overwhelmingly individuals with very real mental disorder on the narcissistic spectrum often with other comorbid disorders.

On social media in particular you are exposed to both narcissists and in general a narcissistic mode of communication - because that's what social media is. Social media is a vehicle for turning an individual into a narcissistic persona. So even if you are not narcissistic in real life your social media activity will make it look like you are.

Social media is very unhealthy. It is a recipe for a mental disorder. It is primarily used by people with mental disorders. It is designed by people with mental disorders.

Quit social media—these online free speech advocates just want more people to pay attention to them which leads to more screen addiction. It's cancer for your soul. And I am not sure I am just being metaphorical.

jedberg• 5 years ago

You do realize you are writing this on a social media platform, right?

barbacoa• 5 years ago

The key difference is AI curation. What you see here depends on what time things get posted and how many up-votes posts get. FB, twitter, et al, decide what to show you based on what they think you will like using opaque complex software.

If a newspaper publishes a 'letter to the editor' that is libel they are liable because they chose it to publish. that's what the big tech social media do.

If section 230 got repealed it would have effects on sites like HN, but the would be catastrophic for big tech social media.

dkdk8283• 5 years ago

these online free speech advocates

No, I want to challenge cancel culture and all the other radical activism that’s plaguing the country.

If you want to affect real change let’s reintroduce FCC fairness doctrine and prohibit the Sinclair group from giving talking notes to local media outlets.

The media is far more toxic than social media.

yibg• 5 years ago

So basically “ We don’t like you; we want you to suffer.”

We don’t bans or destroy things just because they contain narcissistic people. We certainly shouldn’t lump all social media into this camp.

BikiniPrince• 5 years ago

230 protections needs to be something that can be challenged in court. Today, it is abused worse then the DMCA and there is no recourse. Good luck trying to strip protection from an entity that is essentially a publisher.

I think companies would be very honest if there was risk of repeated and consistent infractions.

I wholly believe in reform which brings some power back to the consumer.

URSpider948• 5 years ago

What would you like to challenge them on? Are you thinking that stripping their 230 protection would essentially put them out of business, and therefore force them not to discriminate against viewpoints?

rootusrootus2• 5 years ago

It is primarily used by people with mental disorders.

You've been on HN for a decade. Repealing Section 230 would kill it just as dead as the other social media platforms.

dukeofdoom3• 5 years ago

The tech companies are acting in co-ordinated effort to fortify elections (NY Times article). In helping to elect their preferred candidate, hiding negative stories, and skewed the algorithm for one candidate. At the very least they are making a massive campaign contribution, and section 230 gives them immunity to all the laws that apply. At the worse, they are spreading political propaganda. The anthesis of democracy. They also would not have gotten into market leader position had they disclosed their plans to do this. So I feel its a type of Fraud. Just like Joe Rogan lying to investors about not being censored on Spotify. When it now turns out he is. He personally gained 100 million from this lie. And Spotify investors got scammed. I hope more laws do get made so this kind of manipulation is punished.

URSpider948• 5 years ago

What are “the laws that apply”? Do you not feel like Fox News and OAN made billions of dollars in campaign contributions to Republican candidates? What repercussion did they face? Heck, remind me how we punished the government employees who violated the Hatch act and campaigned for the president while on the government payroll.

dukeofdoom3• 5 years ago

I agree with you. Its a problem that journalists are acting like advocates, or political activists. TV stations don't have section 230 protection. So at least there is some redress for defamation. The Covington kid, Nick Sandman, won a multimillion dollar settlement recently from CNN. However, its not looking like the suit against twitter for being called a "Hacker", by the Store owner, that turned over Hunter Biden's laptop to the FBI will succeed. Twitter called the contents of laptop hacked material, and even banned legitimate newspaper account for a week.

The implication of the "hacked material" was that the store owner was a "hacker". The store owner claims the laptop was left behind in his repair store, and he legally gained possession of it. He sued twitter for defamation.

Because of section 230 protection, the Judge will likely dismiss this case, on section 230 protection grounds. Something that would not happen if this was done by a newspaper.

I think we want conflict of interest laws, that force disclose if you are paid to post, or materially manipulate on behalf of a candidate.

In ideal world, I think Journalists should have an ethics body, similar to Engineers. So that at least in the most egregious circumstances, If you are found to be a paid and not disclose it, than you should not get to call yourself a journalist.

I watched this American travel Youtuber that lives in China, and does travel promotional content for them sometimes. He come out in favour of a candidate before the election. If he received money for doing that, I think there should be a law, that it should be disclosed by him.

rootusrootus2• 5 years ago

In helping to elect their preferred candidate

If they were actually trying, then we don't have much to fear from them.

cwhiz• 5 years ago

Why do we have to be broadly in one of these categories?

“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.”

This should only be true for platforms that don’t algorithmically curate the content that users see, or platforms that don’t editorialize. I don’t care about hypothetical censorship or bias toward conservatives. I want platforms to stop algorithmically curating content. I want platforms to stop editorializing.

These companies are choosing the content that users are seeing, and they are editorializing that content. They don’t deserve Section 230 protection, and they shouldn’t have it.

Repealing Section 230 won’t do what anyone wants

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