Two Supreme Court cases that could break the internet

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/two-supreme-court-cases-that-could-break-the-internet

by fortran77 • 3 years ago

72 108 3 years ago

peyton• 3 years ago

these terrorism cases are about wanting platforms to take down more content, to step in more to prevent bad things from happening. And I think everybody sympathizes with that goal, whatever we think is the right set of rules to achieve it without a bunch of collateral damage.

Interviewee is a bit biased. I don’t think everyone sympathizes with the goal of taking down more content.

threeseed4• 3 years ago

4chan and early Reddit are classic examples of this.

There are people for whom abhorrent content is what they prefer and will defend.

And they want this content on mainstream sites so they can feel like they are normal.

throwawaylinux6• 3 years ago

Yes that's true. And there are others who believe governments are the peddlers and enablers of the most abhorrent crimes, from slavery to arms trafficking to war and assassination and "intervention" to human experimentation, and should absolutely be fought at every step of the way in their neverending thirst for more power and control, particularly where private speech is concerned.

The former group sadly does make a great strawman for people who are emotionally hysterical and don't care to think very deeply about the issue though.

jterrys3• 3 years ago

And they want this content on mainstream sites so they can feel like they are normal.

I think they want this content on mainstream sites because they know it pisses off people and makes them laugh

ever1337• 3 years ago

4chan and reddit are both mainstream sites

Sakos2• 3 years ago

It's the same manipulative argument you see with "protecting the children". Everybody agrees with the goal, so obviously we're doing the right thing by curtailing everybody's freedoms.

forgetfreeman4• 3 years ago

How about instead of "curtailing freedoms" we attach some really aggressive consequences for poor choices as regards broadcasting obvious bullshit in public spaces? We good now?

Dalewyn6• 3 years ago

I'm not about to read the article or concern myself with the minute details of the cases, but I will say I hope SCOTUS throws out section 230 protections for the likes of Google, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Hacker News, et al.

If you engage in editorializing (read: controlling) content beyond what is necessary to comply with laws and regulations (eg: no child porn, no tangible death threats), then you should be liable for the content you subsequently publish.

Paper media abides by this, there is no reason why internet-based media cannot abide by the same.

threeseed4• 3 years ago

Paper media abides by this

It's a meaningless comparison.

Traditional media produce and own their content. Online media is user generated.

Dalewyn6• 3 years ago

Paper media also has user generated content. Such content has been the liability of the publisher and things have worked just fine for at least the last two centuries if not more.

Again: There is no reason internet-based media can't act like their paper counterparts. The only plausible reason is because nobody wants liability, but hey: You modify user generated content in any way, /you the publisher/ are now liable for it.

stonogo2• 3 years ago

Paper media does not produce the advertisements, the customers or ad agencies do that. For decades the classifieds section, entirely 'user generated' was of massive import to society, to the degree that sunshine laws still frequently require governments to publish important announcements in the classified section of the local "paper of record."

In other words, traditional media produce and own content, but there has always been a tremendous amount of user-generated media mixed in.

Turing_Machine• 3 years ago

Traditional media produce and own their content.

Phone companies don't. The traditional choices were "have full control of the content, and take full responsibility for that content" (e.g., newspapers) or "don't attempt to control content, and bear no responsibility for that content" (e.g., telephone companies). Newspapers were legally responsible for what they published, phone companies weren't. The phone company (and other so-called "common carriers") weren't held responsible even if someone used the phone to plan a murder. In exchange for that immunity, they were required to give access to anyone with enough money to pay the monthly bill.

Online media is user generated.

As are phone calls.

With Section 230, tech companies both have a) full censorship powers and b) no responsibility. Absolute power with no responsibility has always been a recipe for abuse.

spaced-out• 3 years ago

If you engage in editorializing (read: controlling) content beyond what is necessary to comply with laws and regulations (eg: no child porn, no tangible death threats), then you should be liable for the content you subsequently publish.

So how do you propose forums deal with spam?

throwawaylinux6• 3 years ago

Some reasonable terms of service might be required. Punishing political opinions or criticisms of corporations or governments, allowing government agencies to spread misinformation and censor people, etc., is certainly not necessary for dealing with spam though.

Dalewyn6• 3 years ago

You don't.

Seriously.

That is the price for avoiding liability: To be able to say you had nothing to do with it beyond providing a platform and abiding other applicable laws.

jterrys3• 3 years ago

I think that's a pretty sledgehammer-y view.

Like, I make a website for pregnant women and someone comes and rants about American politics. What the fuck am I supposed to do if I can't delete their comments? Let my project dwindle to shit because I'm "editorializing" content by deleting this obvious off-topic discussion?

Am I now responsible for the opinions of other people because, according to your logic, I now endorse them by not deleting their messages? You've basically reduced all forms of discourse by introducing liability into an open discussion. Someone gives incorrect advice that someone else takes on my forum. They kill their baby. Whops, time for me to go to fucking jail for someone else's opinion.

I think you have a problem with platforms and monopolistic behavior that's designed to colonize your attention.

The fact that searches on the internet are dominated by one private for-profit entity is a problem. The fact that the majority of internet traffic gets siloed into a few websites, which aggressively (and honestly sometimes borderline illegally and definitely morally reprehensibly) snuff out competition is a problem. The fact that registering a domain, setting up an internet connection, and trying to host a website, are all for profit, private driven workflows is a problem. The fact that all of the above can easily be taken away from you, due to a denial of service, which has nothing to do with the legality of the content you host or your opinions, is a problem. All of these are serious problems that require more than a band-aid, sledgehammer solution aimed at section 230.

Dalewyn6• 3 years ago

I make a website for pregnant women and someone comes and rants about American politics. What the fuck am I supposed to do if I can't delete their comments? Let my project dwindle to shit because I'm "editorializing" content by deleting this obvious off-topic discussion?

Yes; do nothing and assume no liablity. If you don't want to assume any liability you don't involve yourself beyond providing a platform. Simple as that.

I now endorse them by not deleting their messages?

You endorse nothing because you assume no liability by doing nothing (abiding by applicable laws notwithstanding).

Someone gives incorrect advice that someone else takes on my forum. They kill their baby. Whops, time for me to go to fucking jail for someone else's opinion.

You are not liable for the "incorrect advice" if you did not involve yourself in its creation and publication, beyond providing a platform.

I think you have a problem with platforms and monopolistic behavior that's designed to colonize your attention.

I have a problem with publishers pretending to be platforms and enjoying the benefits of being both a publisher and a platform while evading all liabilities thereof.

The fact that searches on the internet are dominated by one private for-profit entity is a problem.

It is, but it is neither here nor there.

The fact that the majority of internet traffic gets siloed into a few websites, which aggressively (and honestly sometimes borderline illegally and definitely morally reprehensibly) snuff out competition is a problem.

It is, and the removal of section 230 protections would serve to partially alleviate the problem.

The fact that registering a domain, setting up an internet connection, and trying to host a website, are all for profit, private driven workflows is a problem.

Hosting a website /should/ be a private endeavour for the sake of ensuring free speech. Once upon a time, making your own website (and assuming all the liabilities that entailed) was how you voiced your thoughts on the internet instead of posts on Twitter and Reddit.

The fact that all of the above can easily be taken away from you, due to a denial of service, which has nothing to do with the legality of the content you host or your opinions, is a problem.

That is a structural problem with how the internet is formed. Tangientially related it may be, it is not directly relevant to the question of free speech.

All of these are serious problems that require more than a band-aid, sledgehammer solution aimed at section 230.

Removing section 230 would only address some of the problems the internet faces, but it would be a start.

jrsj• 3 years ago

Problem is there won't be any sites which actually refrain from editorializing because they'll all be open to lawsuits over content on their site. That would be bad enough on its own, but a site which had that kind of content policy would be one that advertisers and financial institutions don't want anything to do with either so they won't have the funding to adequately defend themselves in court.

jedberg• 3 years ago

If that came to pass, then the only recourse the companies would have is to either let everything stay up (and if you showdead on here you'll see what kind of garbage that is) or they make every single submission sit in a queue until a human can review it.

This site would basically die.

x86_64Ubuntu2• 3 years ago

But that's what people want. If they can't spread lies and untruths without being fact-checked, then we all lose whatever platforms are tolerable only because of moderation.

vharuck• 3 years ago

or they make every single submission sit in a queue until a human can review it.

Even worse, it would be practically necessary to have the review done by a team of lawyers versed in all possible areas of law that might be open to liability for posted content.

In other words, only Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other tech giants would have the capability to safely moderate user content.

UncleMeat2• 3 years ago

Do you believe that websites should be able to delete spam and bot accounts?

Posting 10,000 links to a shitcoin ICO is not illegal.

i_dont_know_• 3 years ago

The whole point of Section 230 was that we wanted to simultaneously incentivize user-content platforms (so, services that just allowed people to freely express themselves without concerning itself too much about the content) while simultaneously encouraging those services to take down illegal content. That was it.

The whole reason it was needed was because these platforms were worried that if they took down content, it might be seen as implicitly endorsing the content that remained. If that was the case, then they'd be liable for the content that remained. Including things like libel laws... it would be the same as a newspaper printing that content.

They didn't want that, so this was the compromise. You can do light moderation and we'll grant you exemption.

Fast-forward to today. Facebook and Twitter do not do "light moderation". They decide what you see and what you don't... they direct your attention from smaller stories to bigger ones, they spend countless thousands of employee hours catering to the whole experience. If that doesn't count as a modern digital scaled form of editorialization, I don't know what would.

I think a law designed to encourage very light moderation in no way applies to full-fledged algorithmic determination, and that distinction needs to be made and clarified.

LatteLazy5• 3 years ago

Services could always take down illegal content (in fact they were legally required to).

Section 230 is specifically for taking down legal content that the site controller wants gone (without then having endorsed what remains as you say).

Section 230 was specifically to allow MORE than what you call "light moderation". That was always the point.

asah• 3 years ago

serious q: what exactly is "light moderation" and how is this not itself an algorithm, just being executed by wetware neural nets with all sorts of biases, inconsistent judgments, etc ?

if "light moderation" means an escalation path for exceptions, then the major platforms all have this.

mjevans• 3 years ago

When content is offered, not based on a factual request from the user but as a 'recommendation' that is a decision (even if it's an algorithm) and NOT a simple fact of serving whatever matched the end user requested (not the provider with 230 immunity) filter / sorting order on other end user published (not the provider with 230 immunity) content.

lliamander3• 3 years ago

You precisely describe the nature of section 230.

I think a law designed to encourage very light moderation in no way applies to full-fledged algorithmic determination, and that distinction needs to be made and clarified.

I think this is where the definition of "good faith" in section 230 comes into play. If the platforms are simply removing illegal content and protecting the users from content they don't want to see, that would be good faith in the sense it is putting the interests of the users first.

Now, optimizing feeds to benefit advertisers, or trying to socially engineer democratic elections? That is not good faith.

And yet, some of these actions are done at the request of politicians and government agencies - often with the implicit threat of regulation and anti-trust action.

As much as we need to expect good faith moderation from social media platforms, we also a stronger protections for private entities being strong-armed by state actors.

qball• 3 years ago

we also a stronger protections for private entities being strong-armed by state actors.

It's important to note that this also needs (though I suspect that it already does) to apply to hosting providers and ISPs. (We need one for banks and payment processors, too, but one step at a time.)

The whole "just make your own Internet" will ultimately be the death of free thought; in some respects, this has already happened. Cloudflare in particular makes a bundle on flat out illegal content; forcing them to moderate everything or just accept everyone's business (and ensuring ISPs can't blackhole routing requests) would likely be an improvement, and not one the enemy can as easily influence (as there's no viable "our payment processors said so" excuse).

Of course, then the enemy will just amp up their efforts through the banks or the app stores, but one less avenue of attack they have is always better.

danShumway5• 3 years ago

You precisely describe the nature of section 230

In the original authors' own words (https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sen-wyden-a...):

Section 230 protects targeted recommendations to the same extent that it protects other forms of content presentation. [...] That interpretation enables Section 230 to fulfill Congress’s purpose of encouraging innovation in content presentation and moderation. The real-time transmission of user-generated content that Section 230 fosters has become a backbone of online activity, relied upon by innumerable Internet users and platforms alike. Section 230’s protection remains as essential today as it was when the provision was enacted.

The original authors believe that algorithms are protected.

The original authors of Section 230 also don't believe that Section 230 prohibits biased platforms or prohibits platforms from having an agenda. Ron Wyden's take on the "platforms are biased" argument (https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/16/18626779/ron-wyden-sect...):

Section 230 is not about neutrality. Period. Full stop.

----

That being said, should we have better protections for platforms being strong-armed by state actors? Yes, absolutely. The government has many levers it can pull to influence private speech, and those levers need careful safeguards and we need checks in place to prevent state actors from threatening platforms and using political power to bully them into making specific moderation decisions.

But while that is an admirable goal, it has nothing to do with Section 230, a law that is itself a check on government power to punish companies over moderation decisions.

If you're worried about private entities being influenced by state actors -- as you say "often with the implicit threat of regulation and anti-trust action" -- then giving the government more power to determine what is and isn't "good faith" moderation is heading in the wrong direction and would make the problem even worse.

The solution to the government strong-arming platforms into removing content is not to give the government more power over moderation decisions.

edmundsauto• 3 years ago

Perhaps I missed it, but what is the evidence for socially engineering elections? Cambridge Analytica was actually a violation of FB. I have seen emails where they discussed removing content or accounts due to policy violations, but that doesn’t sound like what you mean. While the employee base is generally left leaning, there are plenty of studies showing that platforms actually favored conservative voices.

Can you elaborate with details of what you meant?

danShumway5• 3 years ago

You can do light moderation and we'll grant you exemption.

Another article about Section 230, another top-rated post on HN that's wrong about its origin. Section 230 was always designed from the start to allow companies to moderate legal content. "Light" moderation was never part of the equation.

Look, the people who literally wrote and sponsored Section 230 are still alive today and they are open about what their motivations were, and yet still every single time this subject comes up the top-rated comment on HN is some completely fictional notion about how Section 230 was based on an assumption that feeds wouldn't be algorithmic or wouldn't censor anybody.

And it's just factually wrong, and I don't understand why it's impossible to correct. It's difficult to have a conversation about the political/social merits of a law when people don't even understand the basic factual information about why the law exists.

Imagine if every time an article about Linux came up the top-rated HN post was someone saying that Linux was never really designed to be a desktop OS, it was always intended to just be used on servers and only on servers -- and it didn't matter if Linus Torvalds himself was out making the rounds correcting people on that, we still had to have this conversation every time Linux was mentioned. That's how HN discusses Section 230.

Section 230 was never about preventing algorithms. It was not designed to prevent "heavy" moderation. Again, the people who wrote the law are alive today and have explained their motivations.

----

Edit: it's been pointed out (correctly) that I should probably throw some sources on this. Techdirt's article is a little snarkier than I like, but is generally good (https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...), and even the Wikipedia article on Section 230 is a decent place to start looking at 230 motivations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230). There's also a fairly decent book, "The 26 words that made the modern Internet."

In regards to the parent comment, from Wikipedia:

Service providers made their Congresspersons aware of these cases, believing that if followed by other courts across the nation, the cases would stifle the growth of the Internet. United States Representative Christopher Cox (R-CA) had read an article about the two cases and felt the decisions were backwards. "It struck me that if that rule was going to take hold then the internet would become the Wild West and nobody would have any incentive to keep the internet civil," Cox stated.

Cox's concern was not that platforms should only do "light" moderation, he wanted a way for platforms to be able to also moderate completely legal but "uncivil" content that would make it hard for platforms to be professional or organized; a "Wild West"

Ron Wyden goes a step further in his recent interviews (https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/5/21339766/zuckerberg-priv...):

"There is not a single word — not a word, not a comma, not a parenthesis, nothing — that suggests that 230 was about neutrality. In fact, what we designed it to be is if you had a conservative website, good for you! Do what you want with it! If you had a progressive website, same thing."

And if that's not convincing to you, consider that both Ron Wyden and Christopher Cox have filed an amicus brief on this very case, saying that they believe Section 230 should protect Google (https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sen-wyden-a...):

The co-authors reminded the court that internet companies were already recommending content to users when the law went into effect in 1996, and that algorithms are just as important for removing undesirable posts as suggesting content users might want to see.

Really not much that can make it more clear than that, the assertion that Section 230 wasn't designed to protect algorithmic recommendations is factually wrong, this is not something that's a matter of opinion.

d232• 3 years ago

Thanks for this response. One thing that would make it even more compelling is citing sources.

catiopatio2• 3 years ago

Your post is itself dishonest by (gross) omission — you don’t even mention the Communications Decency Act, the legislation that introduced Section 230.

“The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck the act's anti-indecency provisions.”

… leaving behind the indemnification provided by Section 230 intended to ensure that hosting providers were not liable for user content under the CDA.

That’s it. Nothing more complicated.

jfengel• 3 years ago

I find this to be a common pattern. "Moderation should be there to moderate against the things that concern me, but not against anything I might want to do or see."

I interpret "light moderation" to mean "I disapprove of spam and child porn, but I'm not subject to racism or sexual harassment, and I don't personally know anybody harmed by my conspiracy theories."

matthewdgreen• 3 years ago

Let me make a counterargument:

If you’re a government that wants to have substantial control over what sorts of content is available to users, then Section 230 is a problem for you. What you don’t want is a hundred million people responsible for their own posts. What you do want is a few dozen services that run the Internet and who you can say are “editorializing” and who thus face all kind of liability unless they obey specific speech codes that politicians then set. You might think that government control over platforms’ speech is prevented by the First Amendment, but that’s the insidious nature of Section 230: if you passed laws controlling how newspapers editorialize, the laws would be struck as violating the First Amendment. If instead you pass laws modifying platforms’ civil liability for users’ speech, it might have the same overall effect as the explicit laws would have on newspapers. Yet some will argue that it’s constitutional to do so.

But surely, you argue, you’re not opposed to letting firms do light moderation. They just can’t do heavy moderation, like kick off users for “political” reasons or use any algorithms to help users discover content. But nobody has a clue what “political” means here and how it differs from spam, and coming up with a definition is not the job of the US government or the courts. Similarly, does anyone seriously think that firms are going to stop using content discovery algorithms and become a pure “common carrier” of all content? Of course they won’t. They’ll just accept whatever speech codes the government develops and they’ll obey them so that they can continue to make money.

It’s depressing to see people on HN walk willingly into a speech-regulation regime for private companies, while claiming that the reason they want this is to ban algorithmic discovery. If you want to ban algorithms, just pass a law doing so and see if it’s constitutional. Instead we get this end-run where the result of these reforms is very likely to be much worse than the current situation and more critically we will still have most of the algorithms and moderation used to justify it.

belorn2• 3 years ago

Lets flip the discussion and rather than asking when section 230 should apply, lets ask when publisher ever should be held liable for published content. Platforms don't need immunity to laws regulating publisher if those laws did not exist.

If publishing laws only required that publisher prevented copyright infringement and sex trafficking, both being a requirement of existing 230, then everything could continue as before and the immunity provided by 230 would be unnecessary. The question is who if any would be harmed.

weitzj• 3 years ago

So maybe this will lead to more p2p Internet services like IPFS. And maybe for Google and such you have to use their p2p version probably baked into the chrome browser with an authentication system.

Something like the old AOL dialup but decentralized like ipfs and per website or with some kind of audit trail.

LatteLazy5• 3 years ago

It continues to amaze me how many people, even here on HN, just parrot various (factually incorrect) talking points from various groups. Others pick a single desired outcome (less moderation) and refuse to address any of the resulting outcomes (Nazi and Terrorist propaganda on all major sites for instance).

untech3• 3 years ago

I think the terms “Nazi”, “terrorist” and “propaganda” won’t help you, if you want to have a complex view of the world.

LatteLazy5• 3 years ago

I really just mean actual self-described neo-nazis...

x86_64Ubuntu2• 3 years ago

They aren't refusing to address it as much as they want that outcome. The Right in the US is tired of being hamstrung with fact-checkers when spreading dubious claims, so the only remaining avenue is to remove moderation altogether. If sites die because they become a Nazi and spam cesspool, then so be it.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 3 years ago

Two cases that could break Big Tech's hold on the internet.

These cases are not going to stop anyone from publishing their own content via internet, but they might affect Big Tech intermediaries that publish only other people's content and produce no content themselves.

These cases will not stop traditional media organisations that employ journalists from fact-checking and publishing the content they produce.

Even if these cases are decided favourably to the defendants, "tech" companies will continue to publish low quality, low-brow, incendiary, false, "clickbait" content. That is what gets eyeballs. Section 230 is not incentivising them to moderate, as it was intended. Advertising is incentivising them to allow anything that garners more views and "engagement". Section 230 is only providing them with immunity from all manner of litigation around any moderation. There is no incentive to fact-check anything. Even "recommending" terrorrist group videos is apprently fair game.

If they have zero obligation to moderate and no incentive to fact-check, because they have immunity under 230, i.e., Google wins against Gonzalez, then they can grow their once modest websites to gigantic, overpowering size, with a disproportionate amount of influence on the open web.^1

Reframing the situation, the gigantic websites now call themselves "platforms", sharecroppers and serfs are "publishers" and "creators".

Grab a stake in the "Metaverse".

You cannot break something that is already broken.

1. For Big Tech this web feudalism is the Holy Grail. Grow the audience size and reap the advertising revenue. Obviously any proposed change, an improved interpretation of Section 230, that could threaten this status quo is unacceptable to them. But they are not the majority of web users. Was the web created so that a few websites could control the majority of traffic. In their view, yes. That is the only way the web can operate. How convenient.

nindalf• 3 years ago

Remember that most content written by most people actually happens in these platforms owned and moderated by someone else. You say it won’t stop anyone but how many people currently posting on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok are capable of creating their own websites, posting the content there, paying for the cost of hardware and bandwidth and also finding an audience somehow? 0.1%? 0.01%?

The rest of your comment is equally wrong (perhaps even low quality, low brow, incendiary, false), but I have little time to fact check it.

joeyh• 3 years ago

They would hop on a p2p or federated social network in a heartbeat if it were the only option.

The fact that the CDA and 230 have tilted the internet away from those, by propping up currently large businesses does not mean that's the only way the internet can work.

lliamander3• 3 years ago

Section 230 is not incentivising them to fact-check and moderate, as it was intended.

I think you misunderstand the intent of section 230. The vision of the bill was to support an internet of relatively free an unconstrained speech. No one expected these platforms to "fact-check" anything, and the moderation was not rule on who was right or wrong, but to mainly give them leeway to keep out genuinely illegal (and to a lesser extent, obscene) content.

tzs2• 3 years ago

The vision of the bill was to support an internet of relatively free an unconstrained speech. No one expected these platforms to "fact-check" anything, and the moderation was not rule on who was right or wrong, but to mainly give them leeway to keep out genuinely illegal (and to a lesser extent, obscene) content.

How did you reach that conclusion?

1vuio0pswjnm73• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeran_v._America_Online,_Inc.

This was neither illegal nor obscene content. However it had a severe effect on a third party. Arguably, not as severe as the effect that the terrorist group videos that Google recommended had on the Gonzalez family.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 3 years ago

It is relatively common to see HN thread discussions that complain about some form of "censorship" by Big Tech, or, more generally, about "free speech" issues (real or imagined) with respect to Big Tech websites.

Perhaps it is worthwhile to ask ourselves what is it that allows such "censorhip" or threats to "free seech" to happen. A few ideas:

1. Big Tech's position as intermediaries, aka "middlemen". Web users and to some degree internet users (cf. "tech" workers) are not expected to communicate with each directly without using Big Tech to do it. All web traffic must be observable by Bog Tech in ways that allow Big Tech to sells its "online advertising services". End result: "Surveillance capitalism".

2. Section 230. Without this immunity from litigation, arguably Big Tech could not "censor" successfully. If they could do so, then why would they oppose any changes to Section 230 interpetation. Of course, neither "censorship" nor "free speech" is really the correct word to describe the activity Big Tech is engaging in that draws controversy. Big Tech promotes certain content. It does not matter how they do it, whether they measure "popularity" or whether they accept payment for placement of ads that look like search results, or "targeted" ads or whatever.

In Gonzalez, the facts are around "recommendations". Unsolicited promotion of certain content to certain users. This is done not at the request of the user, it is not optional. It's done for Google's benefit.

These companies that profit from surveillance and associated advertising are not "neutral". They are not "dumb pipes". Given that they are under no contractual obligations to any web user, only a fool would claim they are "critical infrastructure". They are surveillance, data collection and advertising companies.

Does Big Tech need Section 230 protection in order to continue to pull this off.

When Section 230 was enacted, there were no "tech" companies. Online service providers such as Compuserve, Prodigy and for a while AOL all charged fees. There were contracts between these companies and their users. There was customer service. Users were not ad targets, they were not "the product", they were customers. Users could sue these companies for not performing the job that they were being paid to do. Then came Section 230.

People always envisioned that the internet would be used for commerce. However today "tech" companies and most importantly "Big Tech" try to make all web activity commercial. Everything anyone does using the internet is surveilled with an eye toward its commercial significance, if any.

And that practice is itself, the surveillance of all internet activity, even academic or recreational use, is considered a "business model". Users pay nothing. Why would anyone pay to be surveilled and served with targeted ads. Advertisers pay for the surveillance.

Don't be evil.

Everyone anticipated selling widgets^FN1 over the internet. No one envisioned "tech" companies. Websites with no products for sale that conduct surveillance and collect data about web users as a "business model" and, unsuprisingly, in most cases, cannot turn a profit. No one envisioned a few gigantic websites with billions of pages doing this that manage engorge themselves with advertiser spend and take over the web.

What (who) is Section 230 really for.

If centralisation and single points of failure are undesirable, and Big Tech represents centralisation and gatekeeper chokepoints that can and do "fail", then perhaps it's worth considering that Section 230 protection for Big Tech is what allows this status quo to continue and for the situation to worsen.

FN1. In Bezos' case, books.

chmod600• 3 years ago

"This is the law colloquially known as Section 230, which is probably the most misunderstood, misreported, and hated law on the Internet."

That by itself is a problem. For a law like this to survive, someone needs to explain to voters what problems it solves, the way companies take advatage of it, why that's hard to fix, and why it's still worth having.

kart232• 3 years ago

comments here are a great example of the hn bubble. killing youtube, instagram or facebook would be a massive net negative for society right now. the amount of money and people that depend on these platforms far outweigh the concerns of people complaining against corporate censorship.

em-bee• 3 years ago

how is that? it won't be more than a disruption. for each of these services alternatives exist, and just like mastodon has seen more users since the recent twitter upheaval, other services, existing or new, will quickly fill in any gap left by the demise of an existing service.

kart232• 3 years ago

https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

The eff articulates it better than I ever could. Those alternative services will also fail to exist without section 230.

bradwood• 3 years ago

How does the outcome of a couple of court cases in one jurisdiction, in one country, break the entire, global internet?

This just sounds like clickbait.

vuln• 3 years ago

No worries I'm already dead from lack of Net Neutrality. /s

fourmajor• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/DQEkR

Two Supreme Court cases that could break the internet

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